The whole world waited to see whether Joe Biden would stumble. He was walking to the podium at the UN General Assembly floor to deliver what could be his last foreign policy speech as president. Days before, Biden had an awkward moment when he got mildly confused on stage with President Modi. Incidents like these meant his audience at the UN was perhaps listening for the slip-up, not to what he said – the problem which the Democrats belatedly realised doomed his candidacy.  Biden admitted that this was the “last time” he would address the room. His tone was avuncular. He shied away from the Manichean rhetoric about a fight between democracy and autocracy which has long animated his speeches. Instead, ...

Last year’s Labour conference speech saw Keir Starmer transformed - in a shower of fairytale glitter, thanks to the efforts of an errant protester - from an opposition leader to a Prime Minister in waiting. This year’s speech necessitated a similarly impressive magic trick, albeit one of a different flavour. As my colleague George Eaton wrote this morning, Starmer needed to use to today to “recast his image” and add definition to the new Labour government, while also injecting some hope and optimism into the doom and gloom narrative he’s settled into over the summer. Rachel Reeves made a start yesterday, with a quite literal change of tone (she was smiling so emphatically you could hear the renewed positivity in her ...

Volodymyr Zelensky understands that time and American political capital are not on his side. As the Ukrainian president arrived in the United States on 22 September, at the start of a critical week of diplomacy, he recorded a video message on board his plane. “This fall will determine the future of this war,” Zelensky said. He is not wrong. Ahead of another long winter, Russia is systematically bombarding Ukraine’s power infrastructure, and slowly advancing towards the strategically important city of Pokrovsk, an important road and rail hub in the eastern region of Donetsk. The Ukrainian military has seized hundreds of square miles of territory in the Kursk region of south-west Russia, but they need more ammunition and troops to hold the ...

The party conference after a landslide general election victory should be a joyous affair. Not that I ever had that experience myself, but in 2010 my party was back in government after 13 years, albeit in coalition. The election result had fallen short of expectations but that was behind us. There was a sense that ours was the conference that mattered, where proper announcements would be made of policies that would be actually implemented. The activists could celebrate victory, the ministers could celebrate power. In contrast, Labour’s conference in Liverpool after a resounding general election victory is less of a celebration than it might be. Most governing parties get a honeymoon period in which their poll rating, and that of their ...

There’s a clear message that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves want voters to hear from this Labour conference: there will be no return to austerity. It’s a line that was used repeatedly during the general election campaign and that has now been revived.  In her keynote speech today, Reeves will say: “There will be no return to austerity. Conservative austerity was a destructive choice for our public services – and for investment and growth too.” But this prompts an important question: how is austerity defined? When I asked Reeves’ team what they meant by ending austerity, they made three points: first, that Labour cannot be accused of implementing it when raising public-sector pay by £9.4bn in real terms. Second, that austerity was ...

In 2000, Nigel Farage attended a Ukip conference held at Birmingham’s Motorcycle Museum. This was still deep in his and the party’s rudderless, baccy-stained era. They were better known for the insults they attracted than their politics – “swivel-eyed”, “fruitcakes and loonies”, “cranks and gadflies”. And the chaotic conference of that year was typical of Ukip’s general management at the time – a winding chronicle of factionalism, feuding and office break-ins. A generation later, the annual conference for Farage’s new vehicle, Reform UK, deflected nicknames and sneers. They’ve upgraded the venue to the Birmingham NEC (thank you very much) – a bigger and brighter spot than the Tories have managed to book in the city for next week. And the event ...

Picture the Piazza San Marco, the beating heart of Venice, in the manner it was surely always meant to be seen: packed to the brim with Fiat Puntos. Or imagine Barcelona’s Las Ramblas the way nature intended, the trees and cafes pulled out, the pedestrians shoved aside, the cars bumper to bumper as far as the eye can see. Does Manhattan even need Central Park? Central Car Park has a nice ring to it. Even in a country as petrol-headed as the United States, there are parts of New York that remain closed to cars. In Britain, though, we might love our existing pedestrianised spaces but any attempt to create new ones is greeted with a storm of protest. The attempts ...

“Latex balloons will be used in this show.” That was the warning on the screens around the arena. And there they were, up in the gantry high above the stage, little white and turquoise orbs, straining against their netting. As Nigel Farage closed his speech this afternoon, they were released. Smirking like a little boy with a secret, Farage gently kicked and punched at them as they fell to the floor. No pyrotechnic was spared for a Farage speech similarly accompanied by fizzing sparklers and streams of ribbons. After all, here was the high point of Reform conference: the keynote address by its party leader. Following the comparably thin appearances of Lee Anderson, Richard Tice and party chairman Zia Yusuf, here ...