(Alamy)

2 min read12 min

In a Downing Street press conference on Monday morning, the Prime Minister said the Australia-style ban is “not something I do lightly” and isn’t “cost-free”.

However, the Prime Minister added: “I will not be prepared to compromise on the safety and happiness of our children.”

Starmer said he would now “move at speed” to introduce the necessary legislation with the aim of the ban coming into effect “in the early part of next year”.

While Starmer was believed to be sceptical about hardline measures like Australia’s ban initially, he told reporters this morning that he had reached this decision “having looked at the evidence, having gone through the consultation, having looked at what happened in other countries, having listened to parents, listened hard”.

The proposals announced today will include restrictions on specific platforms for under-16s, including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, but also restrictions on gaming services, live streaming platforms, and stranger communication.

Children will not be banned from accessing messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal. 

The government is also expected to make further announcements about night-time social media curfews for 16-and 17-year-olds in the coming weeks.

Speaking this morning, the PM said he did not accept the argument that an under-16 social media ban is not worthwhile because some children will get around it, saying it would be like opposing drinking laws because underage people sometimes drink alcohol.

“This is not something I do lightly, and I will not present it as cost-free, as if social media has brought no benefits to young people, because clearly that is wrong, but government is always about choices, and it’s clear to me that a full ban is the right choice,” Starmer said.

“Social media is making children unhappy. It’s making it easier for bullies to harass and abuse them, and it could even be harming their mental health, exposing them to content that is dangerous, because that is what grabs the attention. It is designed to be addictive.”

Starmer said that the Online Safety Act meant the government had an understanding of how to apply age verification, and powers introduced under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, will allow them to “now move at pace”, and “adapt as technology changes”.

13 min read10 min

In the election for Birmingham City Council, no party came close to the 51 seats needed for a majority. Reform UK ended up with 23 seats, while the Greens have 19, Labour 17, the Conservatives 16, the Liberal Democrats 12, and a group of independents under the umbrella of ‘Better Birmingham’ has seven councillors. And yet, while Reform emerged as the largest party on the council, every other party ruled out working with them – leaving them effectively unable to govern. Labour, meanwhile, decided not to seek to form an administration, with the group leader ruling out joining a governing coalition.

That left the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Better Birmingham to strike a deal, forming a coalition-style administration made up of 38 councillors – but still short of a majority. Lib Dem councillor Roger Harmer has become council leader, but the Greens will take over the leadership in 2028 under a rotation agreement. All three groups will be represented on the council’s cabinet.

Birmingham is the prime example of a phenomenon being seen across the country, with 23 councils of the 136 up for election this year pushed into no overall political control. Where rainbow coalitions have emerged to lead these councils, the trend is clear: rather than share power with Reform, almost every other political group would prefer to co-operate with one another.

You can broadly split the multi-party arrangements on English councils into different categories: the ‘anyone but Reform’ coalitions; the ‘anyone but Labour’ coalitions; and the ‘necessary to govern’ coalitions, where parties have been forced to accept the support of other parties or independents to govern effectively.

With the national polling looking as fractured as it does on a local level, political parties are scratching their heads over what the implications of these forms of local co-operation might have for the political picture in Westminster.

According to Green and Lib Dem councillors, the directives coming from their national parties on striking arrangements with other parties have been relaxed. Sources in both camps describe themselves as “bottom-up” and “democratic”, meaning local party groups have widely been allowed to organise their own negotiations without input from the national parties. And both the Greens and Lib Dems see blocking Reform from local power as a key priority.

In Newcastle, the Labour vote collapsed but the Liberal Democrats and Greens formed a confidence-and-supply arrangement that locked out Reform, despite it being the second-largest party. Lib Dem council leader Colin Ferguson and Green councillor Nick Hartley claim the reaction from Newcastle residents to the arrangement has been “overwhelmingly positive”. They insist that people want more “grown-up politics” that crosses political divides.

Hartley says they want the arrangement to show a way of “doing things differently” and suggests there could be “lessons learned for parliamentarians” going into a future general election.

The Greens appear more open to multi-party arrangements than any of the other parties. Green MP Siân Berry says increasing numbers of councils are demonstrating that parties can work together when no one commands a majority. She tells The House she plans to keep in contact with Green leaders who have made power-sharing arrangements on councils to learn from their experiences working with other parties.

Berry rejects the idea that such arrangements are “back-room deals”. Still, she admits the party would have to consider the extent to which Green voters would tolerate further arrangements between the Greens and other parties, including Labour.

The Local Government Association Green Group has just been established, which plans to put together a set of principles to guide Green-led councils around the country to ensure national cohesion on policy and negotiations with other parties.

Both the Greens and Lib Dems want to see a voting system with proportional representation introduced before the next general election, with Berry saying that under first-past-the-post, the “risk of Reform getting a majority on a tiny percentage of the vote at Westminster is very, very high”. She adds: “And then there is no possible way that making arrangements between the other parties can help us.”

The Lib Dems have benefited from the fragmented two-party system in local elections. The Lib Dem identity is partly built around being anti-Labour in some areas and anti-Tory in others. This dual identity plays out in the sort of multi-party deals that it does across the country.

The flexibility helps explain why the Lib Dems are leading councils where they do not have the most seats. In the case of Birmingham, where a Lib Dem councillor is leading the council, the party is in fact the fifth-largest group.

And yet deputy Lib Dem leader Daisy Cooper tells The House that these local-level coalitions and arrangements cannot be considered as a predictor of how a national coalition in Westminster might take place.

“It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how these things work,” she says. “Different political parties have been in different coalitions in local government for decades, and it’s the nature of local politics, because local authorities are less partisan because they have fewer powers… That’s really quite different from the cut and thrust of what happens in Westminster.”

But she did admit that “people are desperate to try and stop Reform”.

“But I genuinely think that if you look back in just recent years, and historically, voters hate it when they think there is a stitch-up,” Cooper says.

This is a sign of things to come

Asked whether the Lib Dems have to start being more transparent about a potential future coalition, Cooper says: “It’s going to be incumbent on political parties to be really transparent with the public about what they themselves are offering and about what their priorities are.

“But the idea that we should be wasting our time and our energy right now, you know, indulging in that kind of naval gazing about who we might work with and what deals we might do, and what the red lines might be… We’ve got no idea where the country is going to be in six months, let alone in another three years.”

Increasingly, councils are also seeing the rise of organised independent groups, community alliances, resident associations, and former Labour and Conservative councillors who left their parties or were suspended – all sitting under the independent banner.

In many cases, they have slotted in to provide the numbers for multi-party arrangements headed up by other parties. The seven-member Better Birmingham group, which has formed part of the Birmingham coalition, includes councillors such as Harris Khaliq and Nosheen Khalid, who were backed by Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party.

In other areas, smaller parties have joined together to block Labour from staying in power, for example, in the London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth.

In Southwark, the Greens and Lib Dems joined together to form an administration, with Green Party councillor James McAsh (formerly the council’s Labour leader), now leader of the council, with Lib Dem councillor Victor Chamberlain serving as deputy.

They claim Southwark Labour was uncooperative in the run-up to the elections when they were approached to discuss the possibility of making an arrangement.

Both McAsh and Chamberlain tell The House they want to push their national parties to continue to support these arrangements happening more often, and be more transparent about preparing for a national coalition.

“This is a sign of things to come,” Chamberlain says. “We are very firmly in multi-party politics in London. This is something that we can hopefully push our national parties to be more aware of and more inclusive… It’s in the interest of residents that parties should work together.”

For Labour and the Conservatives, approaching multi-party arrangements, even on a council level, has proven more complicated. Both the Tories and Labour are very wary of any perception of backroom deal-making, and see formal arrangements with the smaller parties as potentially detrimental if the mainstream parties begin to be seen as the minor players.

Labour blocked its councillors in Brent from making a deal with the Green Party, and the Labour minority administration has therefore had to make a deal with the Conservatives in order to stay in power.

However, elsewhere, Labour councillors have been permitted to enter rainbow coalitions, like in West Sussex, where the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, Labour and an independent councillor agreed a partnership to run the council.

The House understands, from speaking to multiple Labour sources, that the Labour leadership is generally hostile to the idea of any pacts or deals with other parties, not least because they believe the majority of Labour MPs would also be hostile to the idea. A senior source who worked for Starmer in opposition, confirms to The House there was an informal, unspoken accommodation with the Lib Dems in some areas ahead of the 2024 general election, but only where the Lib Dems were not directly contesting Labour for seats.

The political landscape looks very different today, with the Greens, independents, and sometimes the Lib Dems fighting Labour in areas they considered ‘safe’ just two years ago.

For Labour, advocating for multi-party deals to stop Reform makes little electoral sense when the other parties are often trying to win seats from the Labour Party. As Prime Minister Keir Starmer set out at Labour conference in the autumn, the Labour strategy will continue to set out the next general election as a Labour vs Reform fight.

For the Conservatives, their red lines have started to become clear. CCHQ has accepted a broad range of multi-party deals between Tory councillors and other parties, including Reform and Labour. According to multiple Tory sources, the one party that CCHQ will not accept deals with under any circumstances is the Green Party.

In Worcestershire, this caused tensions between the national party and its local councillors. Although Worcestershire County Council was not up for election this year, the council has been embroiled in a row over the emergence of a new four-way arrangement involving Conservatives, Greens, Liberal Democrats and independents to keep Reform out of power, after some Reform councillors quit and left their group short of a majority on the council.

The Conservative Party, with direct intervention by leader Kemi Badenoch, suspended the Tory group leader Adam Kent for attempting to form this arrangement, with Badenoch’s team arguing they had made clear that a deal of this kind was not authorised. Kent is now threatening legal action against the party.

The remaining Conservative councillors have withdrawn from the power-sharing arrangement, though The House understands they did so reluctantly. Many local Conservatives felt the deal was justified because Reform’s administration had become unstable and difficult to work with. This hints at a growing divide between the national Conservative position and what some Tory councillors are actually doing on the ground.

Nigel Farage is a realist, and he will know that the only way the left is going to be gone is if the right actually works together

In the remaining coalition, Green councillor Matt Jenkins is serving as council leader. He believes the larger national parties are “just living in the past” where they used to have clearer-cut majorities on councils.

“I don’t think people really understand that two-party politics went a few years ago, and now it is really multi-party politics,” he says.

According to Jenkins, the feedback from Worcestershire residents so far has been that they are glad that the Greens are working with any party, “as long as it’s to stop Reform”.

While Reform made huge gains in these elections, the fractured vote and strong anti-Reform turnout meant many councils were pushed into no overall control, leaving Reform unable to govern by itself.

In some councils, like Hartlepool, Reform has had to enlist the support of independent councillors to run an administration. In other areas, such as Redditch, Reform has had to enter informal arrangements with the Conservatives.

After the May elections, Labour was left short of a majority on Redditch Borough Council. Despite the Conservatives only holding four of the council seats, compared to Reform’s eight, the right-wing parties agreed on a confidence and supply arrangement where Conservative councillor Matthew Dormer has been appointed as leader and Reform councillors have been given largely ceremonial roles. The deal was directly approved by CCHQ.

Dormer tells The House that Reform reluctantly agreed to work with the Tories as they were “just hell-bent on getting Labour out”.

He says that while some voters backed his party to keep Reform out, he believes that Conservative supporters are broadly tolerant of such an arrangement, while many in Reform are less pleased.

“Nigel Farage is a realist, and he will know that the only way the left is going to be gone is if the right actually works together,” he says. “That has to happen, whether they want it or not.”

Reform sources see this confidence-and-supply arrangement as a necessary one to give the town a stable budget, though one senior party insider says they are aware that Reform’s supporters are “wary” of such deals.

“Many left the Tories because they felt let down,” one senior Reform insider says. “They elected us to govern, not to posture. Value for money, an end to non-jobs, and lower waste. Deliver that, and the arrangement vindicates itself.”

Reform voters and Tory voters are generally very hostile to the other party, and the national parties are acutely aware of this.

“No pacts, no deals,” a Reform spokesperson says. “Reform UK is focused on delivering for voters, not propping up the broken establishment parties.

“As we’ve previously seen in places like Bradford and Worcestershire, where ideologically different Tories and Greens have colluded, other parties will go to desperate lengths to block Reform. We will focus on delivering for the British people instead of betraying voters for the sake of political convenience.”

A Reform insider says the party’s focus in local government will be on delivery rather than “setting the world alight”. They agree there is “plainly” an establishment effort to block Farage’s party.

“Every other party is now prepared to run a rainbow coalition against us, combining for one purpose: keeping the largest party out,” they say.

They add that agreements made on local councils amounted to “working relations” between parties rather than “pacts”. “A pact is a carve-up. A working relationship is the ordinary business of passing a budget and running services.”

They believe that Reform will not work with the Greens or the Liberal Democrats under any circumstances: “I cannot conceive how we could; there is no common ground. Otherwise, the test is good faith and delivery, not the rosette.” 

9 min read7 min

If ever there was a child of his time, it is George Finch.

“My mum was a hairdresser, my dad worked as a carpenter for the council at the time,” says Finch, Reform UK’s leader of both Warwickshire county council and Nuneaton and Bedworth borough council. “Finances were fine, but then they had me in 2006, and then obviously the financial crash happened… It destroyed what we did, and the income wasn’t sustaining a family.”

Growing up in the shadow of the crash and austerity shaped Finch – and arguably makes him perfectly attuned to the politics it has produced.

“Every system was just failing,” he says. “Everything was cut, nothing was working… and this was a kind of carbon-copy of families across Bedworth at the time… The system was completely broken. Families like mine were left and thrown to the curb.”

There were additional strains: both of Finch’s sisters have significant health issues that continue to confront them with the harsh reality of the state of some NHS services. Speaking of one sister with a neurological disorder, he says: “Even when I’ve been in this job, I’ve spent hours and hours and hours in A&E waiting by her side on a ward where there’s kids self-harming, and it’s not right.”

If the council leader is daunted by the weight of the responsibility of his office, he does not show it. Indeed, in his telling, this is light work when compared to his previous gig as a carpenter and plasterer.

“I was working when I was 16, 17 – not on building sites but in doing up homes, carpentry, plastering, all that type of stuff,” says Finch. “I’ve done that type of stuff before, and I know what it’s like to sit in a damp house when it’s dripping, while just eating a sandwich. You don’t get a nice little tea break like you do in offices.”

He [Lee Anderson] was really my type of people… just say how it is.

Despite his tender age, Reform isn’t even Finch’s first party. “I was a young conservative who joined the Conservative Party at 16,” says Finch. “It was more the conservative values, not necessarily the party.” He speaks of his disillusionment with the party and is especially critical of Boris Johnson – describing the former prime minister as a “wet liberal in proper Conservative clothing”.

The catalyst for joining Reform UK, he says, was an encounter with Reform MP Lee Anderson at school. “I was in the politics class, and me and my mate, we love Lee Anderson,” says Finch. “He was really my type of people… just say how it is. You know, like, ‘Oh, have a lovely day, lovely ladies’… Say something like that in Warwick? ‘How dare you call me a lovely lady?!’”

Finch says he asked Anderson a question about education, namely, ‘How will Reform UK resist the wave of wokeism that’s washing across our education establishments?’. “I practiced that, because it’s so important to me,” says Finch. He recalls Anderson “spoke to so many” in the room and behaved like such “a normal chap” that when he approached Finch and asked whether he’d join Reform, he did. “He said: ‘George, you going to join?’ I went: ‘Go on, then – I’ll join tomorrow.’ So, I did. And then helped the general election candidate – we got third place, 9,000-odd votes, great from a standing start. We’re going to win at the next election.”

Asked why he was attracted to politics, he replies: “It goes to my old background: my family, my town.” Finch is sitting next to a stuffed bear clawing a tree, the symbol of the county he presides over. The bear’s name is Wendy, according to The Times, loaned to Finch’s office from a local museum – something Finch reportedly made an early priority upon taking office.

Bedworth, the town he is from, is in the borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth in North Warwickshire. The last coal mine in the town closed in 1982, ending a long history of coal mining dating back centuries; in many ways, it is typical of the area Reform must win to make it to No 10. “It’s been totally forgotten about, even though it is a town that’s got a huge pride in what it does,” says Finch.

In the several years since then, Finch has enjoyed a meteoric rise. He says his priorities locally have been to “change the entire foundation of which the council is built on” – describing running two councils as “phenomenal”. He says highways, crime awareness and prevention and finances are all areas where he’s seeking improvements, as well as home school transport, which he says costs the council £50m a year. The way he speaks about local issues makes it clear he sees Reform’s record in local government as an opportunity to gain the electorate’s confidence, saying it’s “the only chance” the party has to prove itself to the people. “We have to work as hard as we can to get the best value for money for taxpayers, voters,” says Finch. “If we get local champions, we’re winners.”

But it has not been plain sailing; Finch narrowly won a no-confidence motion earlier this year by one vote – something he dismisses as a “farce” that “backfired”. The Green Party tabled the motion concerning Finch’s remarks relating to the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Warwickshire, and a dispute with county council chief executive Monica Fogarty over Pride flags. On the former, Finch had risked contempt of court after sharing details about the suspects and accusing the police of attempting to cover up their immigration status – claims which Warwickshire police rejected.

I haven’t got a problem with young kids and women coming over on boats – if they have got a genuine refugee status and they need genuine help

Finch defends himself, telling The House he “had to fight tooth and nail for transparency”. “They’ll refute that,” says Finch, saying that they argued for the need to preserve community cohesion. He recalls being told, “’You don’t want riots like in Epping’.” He replied: “‘We won’t have riots in Epping if we tell them the truth’… And I put a statement out: no riot.”

There is growing speculation that Rupert Lowe’s breakaway party, Restore Britain, could put pressure on Reform at the next general election, given its standing in the polls for the Makerfield by-election. The race is expected to be tight between Labour’s Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon, meaning any votes lost to Restore may cost Reform the election – something to which Finch is very much alive.

Finch says he is waiting to see the results in Makerfield before passing judgement but likens Restore to the British National Party (BNP) and questions whether its social media presence is “matching up” to votes. “What are their policies?” asks Finch. “What are their people? Look at other political parties in the past, when they stand a load of candidates – parties like BNP and Ukip… you can see their candidates and what they stand for.”

Finch tells The House he believes a Restore government would deport people based on their colour, and believes a lot of Restore voters do not realise this – nor do the two previously Reform Warwickshire councillors who have defected to the party. “[Gurkhas would] be gone… no excuse, no reason; gone, just because of their colour,” claims Finch.

While it’s obvious Finch sees Reform as different to Restore, he describes immigration as “terrible, terrible, terrible” and “a complete failure”, defending Reform’s Zia Yusuf’s remarks on deporting legal immigrants living in social housing.

“Zia is absolutely right, and we’re looking at it on the borough council,” says Finch. “Social housing, council housing, should be there for British nationals – British citizens.”

Finch also says veterans and care leavers should be at the top of housing lists, “not asylum seekers, not illegal immigrants” – though he does express some sympathy for women and children arriving on small boats. “I haven’t got a problem with young kids and women coming over on boats – if they have got a genuine refugee status and they need genuine help,” says Finch. “I haven’t got a problem with that, but I’m not seeing that materialise on the boats.”

The council leader is also dismissive of allegations that Reform’s agenda is racist, saying people “need to understand our policies a bit more”. “Those people that are just ignorant, they go: ‘Oh, you’re all racist’,” says Finch. “Well, if you sit down with me for an hour, I can tell you that I’m not racist.”

Sitting beneath a framed Reform football shirt reading ‘FARAGE’, Finch insists the party is not a “one-man band”, but one of policies, local champions, councillors, council leaders and MPs, as well as its high-profile leader. “I know what it’s like in a head office, I’ve seen it – I’ve seen the way it works,” he says. He adds that no politician alive deserves the keys to No 10 more than Nigel Farage. “He’s changed his country for the better – and he’s not even been elected to British Parliament until recently,” says the 19-year-old. “So, he deserves it.”

Finch also praises the recent policy announcement on tax-free overtime by the party. “The no tax on overtime – great policy… In the town centre, they love that policy,” says Finch. “I think it’s great. We have our own policies, we are our own party, we’ve got fresh-thinking people.”

As the interview winds down, we circle back to whether Finch has ambitions beyond leafy Warwickshire, a question side-stepped earlier on.

“To become a Member of Parliament for North Warwickshire and Bedworth, or the East, or wherever: it’d be a great honour to serve locally, in my home town – but I’m not focused on that at the moment,” he says. “When a general election comes, we’ll see, but I am 100 per cent committed to these two councils. That’s a new line – these two councils – because that’s why people get elected.”