Ed Davey continues his electioneering antics, Jonathan Reynolds treads carefully as global trade takes a tumble, and CCHQ hits the snooze button.
Read all about it in this week's Who's Top Who's Not.
Top of the pops: Ed Davey
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The unlikely break-out star of the 2024 general election short campaign was Ed Davey and his array of ‘wacky’ stunts that garnered plenty of publicity for the Liberal Democrats.
And it seems that Davey wants to continue this template in 2025 as he launched the Lib Dems’ local election campaign by riding a hobby horse at a golf club near Henley and trying to demonstrate that Oxfordshire would be a ‘two-horse race’ with the Tories
Davey is seemingly prepared to do whatever is needed to guarantee his party some ink, with some success. But will the media get bored of these stunts? will the party’s policy messaging get lost in the PR? And will the voters start to feel as though they are being taken for a ride?
Middle of the pack: Jonny Reynolds
The world finally found out the details of Trump’s tariffs plan this week when he announced which country got hit by what level of tax on Liberation Day (or recession day as the Democrats are calling it).
The UK got off relatively lightly (‘relatively’ being the key word here) with ‘only’ tariffs of 10%. This narrative seems to suit a surprisingly large number of Westminster stakeholders: Brexiteers claim vindication as the EU is slapped with 20% tariffs, and the government claims this proves that their careful diplomacy has resulted in a better outcome for the UK.
Starmer has said that the UK won’t introduce retaliatory tariffs as he doesn’t want to start a global trade war, but that war has already started and there are no winners, only losers that include consumers facing higher prices and governments seeing lower economic growth from reduced trade.
Trillions have already been wiped out on global stock markets (including the UK’s) and whilst the full economic consequences won’t be known for some time, there is a very real risk of increased inflation from higher priced consumer goods, or a recession from a downturn in economic growth, or even a combination of the two with stagflation.
An open and connected economy like ours is not immune to these global economic shocks, even if our tariff rate is lower than those for other countries. Business and Trade Secretary Jonny Reynolds has had to tread very carefully with his economic diplomacy, and briefings from government claim that a UK-US trade deal is doable. But are these briefings realistic or are they just an attempt to placate the UK media? And even if a UK-US deal does emerge, is this going to be enough to counter the negative economic headwinds blowing across the world and towards the UK?
Bottom of the class: Kemi Badenoch
It’s often said that being Leader of the Opposition is the hardest job in politics, and sometimes Kemi Badenoch does herself no favours with questionable questions at PMQs and making strategic errors in the first few months of her tenure. But she also needs a decent support team and perhaps the rumoured redundancies at CCHQ are starting to show.
At the Tories’ cost of living press conference (an issue that the Conservatives can surely use to attack Labour, even if they inevitably respond with ’14 years of Conservative government’) the attack line was somewhat blunted by having Kemi speak in front of what appeared to be an upturned mattress.
Times may be tight at CCHQ, but Tory staffers can’t afford to be caught napping.