Is the government’s Covid testing strategy sinking without trace?
With unemployment rising two a two-year high and thousands of post-furlough redundancies expected, what’s next for the UK economy?
Rishi Sunak says he wants to “get creative” to support jobs and employment. But how will he do that?
And are the testing fiasco and the rebellion over the Internal Market Bill jeopardising Boris Johnson’s premiership?
All this and more will be put to the (readily-available) test in tonight’s Live with Littlewood from the IEA.
Joining host Mark Littlewood will be the Times’ science editor Tom Whipple, ConservativeHome’s Mark Wallace, and former Brexit Party MEP Alexandra Phillips.
Also taking part in our 90 minutes of free-rolling conversation will be the new Director of the Politeia think tank Jonathan Isaby, independent economist Julian Jessop, Matthew Lesh of the Adam Smith Institute, Duncan Simpson of the Taxpayers’ Alliance plus the IEA’s Annabel Denham and Christopher Snowdon.
Be sure to join in the debate – LIVE at 6 – here or on YouTube.
Two Brexit Party MEPs are embroiled in a spectacular Twitter bitch fight following yesterday’s announcement that the party will stand down in 317 sets next election. It led South East MEP Alexandra Phillips to declare she will abstain from voting. London MEP Lance Forman was not impressed…
Alex. You are not 16.
What’s the point in spending your life fighting for democracy and then not voting.
Vote.— Lance Forman MEP (@LanceForman) November 12, 2019
Would you like to hold the biro for me? Parties must earn support. I expect people to vote on the virtues of the party they choose as a personal private choice. It’s not for you to coerce me to vote for a party I was NOT elected to represent. Perhaps YOU should think about that https://t.co/5WF52fzllZ
— Alexandra Phillips MEP (@BrexitAlex) November 12, 2019
Guido has got out the popcorn…
A second top Kipper has defected to the Tories in two days, just as UKIP conference gets underway in Bournemouth. Alexandra Phillips, who used to be an aide to Nigel Farage and was head of media at the party’s HQ, says it is “time to go home”. She tells Guido:
“After watching UKIP tragically turn in on itself for the past year I felt that I had personally and professionally outgrown the party. When Theresa May became Prime Minister and immediately embarked on promoting a policy reintroducing selective education to build social mobility, assenting to explorative fracking for future energy security and approaching Brexit with a pragmatism and determination I find admirable, I knew it was time to go home.”
UKIP having a bit of an existential crisis at the moment…
