Retained EU law has found an unlikely champion in Nigel Farage, whose battle with NatWest has culminated in the resignation of the bank’s CEO, Alison Rose. Farage has yet to thank the EU for creating the laws that allowed him to win this battle, but his victory would not have been possible without European data regulations, which Brexiteers have long sought to remove. The former Ukip and Brexit Party leader’s account at Coutts bank was closed against his wishes, and he filed a subject access request (SAR) to find out why. This is a right we all enjoy thanks to the UK's implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in which article 15 gives “data subjects” (the person to whom ...

Nigel Farage is arguably the most important British politician of the past decade. When he speaks, listen. His political storytelling, galvanising persona and understanding of the public have given him the power to shape what drives British politics, from the media to the two main parties. It is no surprise, then, that a campaign he started in response to Coutts bank closing his account has resulted in Alison Rose, the chief executive of NatWest, Coutts’s owner, resigning. The furore has resulted in calls for tighter banking regulation to protect free speech. But there’s also an essential political lesson: people must stop underestimating Farage. On the Today programme on 26 July, Nick Robinson suggested Farage's campaign was really about positioning for a return ...

We are at the point in summer when parliament has shut down and most of Westminster has disappeared to somewhere on the Mediterranean coast. Given the weather there, one might expect our sweltering politicians to return from their hols agitated about global warming. As it is, the political weather has been set by the voters of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. The Tories appear to have taken a lesson from their unexpected victory there: attack is the best form of defence. The Prime Minister has returned to the issue of asylum seekers and complained about what he is “up against”, namely: “The Labour Party, a subset of lawyers, criminal gangs… all on the same side, propping up a system of exploitation that profits ...

Labour’s unexpected loss in the Uxbridge by-election on 20 July has been widely interpreted as a rejection of London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s plans to expand the so-called Ultra Low Emissions Zone (Ulez). Londoners in all boroughs would be required to pay a daily rate of £12.50 to drive in the city if their cars do not meet certain emissions standards. The move has been criticised for negatively impacting working people. Shift workers, for example, might end up paying twice, and those whose work involves transporting materials across the capital would also end up paying more than other commuters. The voters of Uxbridge were not having it. Nor should anyone. Within this political debate lies a much deeper tension between economic justice ...

Say what you will about Humza Yousaf, but he’s certainly putting in the hours campaigning for independence. Having launched his “summer of independence” late last month, the self-proclaimed First Activist has been sacrificing his weekends to the good fight. At the weekend, he was in Dundee – billed as “Scotland’s Yes City”, which might put sensitive Glaswegian noses out of joint – and the Highlands. He spent a recent Saturday in Lanarkshire, too. Unsuspecting weekend shoppers will be collared elsewhere in the coming weeks by a beaming First Minister with a mirage to sell them. Like a thirsty man spying an oasis in the desert, it seems like the harder Yousaf runs, the further away the prospect of independence drifts. But as ...

There are causes that get broad levels of support in Britain. Love for the NHS. Admiration for the monarchy. Fixing potholes. Here is another: approval of the government’s Illegal Migration Bill. A recent poll by the firm I run, JL Partners, for the British Foreign Policy Group think tank proves as much. At the start of June we asked a representative sample of 2,000 British adults the following question: “The UK’s Illegal Migration Bill is currently being debated in the House of Lords. The bill would see those who enter the UK via unauthorised routes removed to their home country, or a ‘safe’ third country, such as Rwanda. Do you support or oppose this policy?” The answers were resounding: the British public ...

Before he betrayed his boss and became Prime Minister, the word journalists often used to describe Rishi Sunak was “genial”. In Going for Broke, the only biography of Sunak to date, Michael Ashcroft paints a bloodless portrait of a schoolboy who never received detentions, a hedge-fund partner who never screwed anyone over, and a politician who advanced without making enemies. You can bench the geniality for good. Five days after the Tories washed past Labour in Uxbridge on a tide of whines about Sadiq Khan’s Ultra Low Emission Zone expansion, Sunak is trying to embrace his inner bastard.  What David Cameron once called the “green crap” is now at risk under Rishi too. A ban on new petrol and diesel cars by ...

“Spaniards, comrades,” Pedro Sánchez declared outside his Socialist Party’s Madrid HQ on the evening of Sunday 23 July, “there’s many more of us who want Spain to move forward, and we will continue doing so.” Exit polls from the country’s general election had come in and gleeful supporters chanted “no pasarán”, celebrating the prime minister’s success in stopping the conservative Partido Popular (PP) and the far-right Vox. Yet while Sánchez suggested he had “many more” supporters than his right-wing opponents, he didn’t win outright. Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s PP secured 33 per cent of the vote to the Socialists' 32 per cent, and fourteen more MPs. Yet this was a weaker showing for the right than expected, and Feijóo lacks a majority ...