In the next week, two sets of elections will be held on two continents, the outcomes of which could have profound consequences for the world.
\nBy a fluke of electoral timetabling, millions of voters around 6,000 miles apart will unite in exercising their democratic rights within days of each other.
\nVoters in Israel go to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new parliament; a week later, voters in the United States will elect a new Congress.
\nA former speaker of that Congress, Tip O'Neill, may have once said that "all politics is local". But the consequences of these elections will undoubtedly be global.
\nFor these elections are not just proximate, they are intertwined.
\nThe future governance of Israel will have a lasting impact on the Middle East and wars raging across the region.
\nAnd any change in the electoral map of America could shape not just those wars but also the future of the global economy.
\nBetween the two there is a physical connection: the lobby group Republicans Overseas Israel estimates about half a million Israelis with American passports can vote in both polls.
\nMarc Zell, the group's chairman, said these electors could influence tight races in the US, such as the Michigan senatorial contest, in which he estimated 10,000 absentee ballots would be cast from Israel. "They can really make a difference," he told the BBC.
\nBut the policy connection is perhaps deeper - and most acute regarding the US-Israeli war on Iran. The massive aerial attack, which began in February, destroyed many military targets and killed much of Iran's leadership. But it failed to overthrow the regime which hit back hard across the Gulf and seized control of the Strait of Hormuz and the energy that flowed through it.
\nThe sheer fact of the elections has already shaped decision-making.
\nIsrael's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used the campaign to talk up the possibility of launching a fresh attack on Iran.
\nHe has made new claims \u2013 without providing evidence \u2013 about Iran's nuclear threat, insisting again the Islamic regime must be overthrown.
\nHis aim: to shore up his reputation as a security leader, which took such a battering after the deadly 7 October Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
\nUS President Donald Trump has added to the speculation of renewed attacks on Iran by endorsing Netanyahu's re-election campaign, saying both men should "soon finish the job" in Iran.
\nYet for all the sabre-rattling, there have also been contradictory reports that Trump intervened to restrain Netanyahu from attacking Iran before polling day, fearing a fresh spike in energy prices would remind US voters of his unpopular war.
\nSo might an attack on Iran, then, be delayed until after the elections? Israel's media is full of speculation Netanyahu could try to engineer his survival by attacking Iran as caretaker prime minister after the election.
\nHe would argue, so the theory goes, for a government of national unity \u2013 involving him \u2013 rather than a coalition between opposition parties. Netanyahu has long been seen as a great survivor of Israeli politics. If he were to lose power, he would face an official inquiry into his actions before the October 7 attacks and renewed legal proceedings involving allegations of corruption.
\nSo real is this speculation that Netanyahu's rival, the former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, has already ruled out joining any unity government. Like all mainstream Israeli politicians, Eisenkot sees Iran as an existential threat to Israel and supports military action against the Islamic regime. But he has explicitly warned against escalating the war for political purposes.
\nCertainly, Trump may be more willing to attack Iran after the midterms if he is unconstrained electorally and hoping to extract himself from the war with one more push. Some analysts believe Iran is so economically weak from the war and economic sanctions that a fresh round of military strikes might encourage Iranians to overthrow the regime. Others see this as yet more wishful thinking. It is a strategy that has repeatedly failed, but still has currency in Washington.
\n"After the midterms, he will be in legacy mode," one well-placed Western diplomat told me. "He will want to show agency on anything that is not the quagmire at home."
\nIn Israel there is a broad consensus across most parties about the threat from and the need to constrain Iran. But if voters elect a new government, they might have a prime minister with less political and personal investment in fresh attacks.
\nIn those circumstances, Trump has suggested his thinking may change, too. "If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi [a nickname for Netanyahu], America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so," he wrote on social media.
\nThe two elections again intertwine around the global economy. Affordability and cost of living have dominated campaigning for the midterms, issues made worse by Trump's war that raised prices as Iran choked the flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz.
\nThe economy is also an election issue in Israel, where voters face high costs and low wages. But here, too, the war plays its part with soaring defence spending putting even more pressure on the public finances.
\nTrump has sought to appease voters ahead of the midterms. He has lifted sanctions on Russia, hoping in vain that by importing diesel from Moscow, prices might fall significantly. He has been taking a tough line with Ukraine, calling on its leadership to make concessions in the hope \u2013 also so far in vain \u2013 of claiming a foreign policy victory.
\nBut Republican ire at his controversial strategy is growing. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a frequent critic of Trump, told CBS News: "If the President wants to actually bring down energy prices, he can do it by solving the Iran problem, not by doing a solid [favour] for Vladimir Putin."
\nOf course, if Israel's prime minister were to lose, his departure would end a scratchy bromance that has seen Trump blow hot and cold. Last week the president called his Israeli counterpart a "great warrior prime minister". During the summer, he said Netanyahu was "effing crazy". A new Israeli leader would have to forge a new relationship with an outgoing US president, a very different dynamic.
\nIf the Democrats were to win greater control in Congress, that might place some check on blanket US support for Israel. Congress has traditional powers that it can use to restrain military spending. It could also cut military aid to Israel. But as president, Trump would retain significant executive power \u2013 and a veto \u2013 to continue prosecuting the conflict as he saw fit.
\nThe decision by Israel and the US to go to war with Iran earlier this year transformed the global economy and international geopolitics. The choices voters in both nations make in coming days may shape where the world goes next.
\nTop image credit: Getty.
", "summary": "In the next week, two sets of elections will be held on two continents, the outcomes of which could have profound consequences for the world.
\nBy a fluke of electoral timetabling, millions of voters around 6,000 miles apart will unite in exercising their democratic rights within days of each other.
\nVoters in Israel go to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new parliament; a week later, voters in the United States will elect a new Congress.
\nA former speaker of that Congress, Tip O'Neill, may have once said that "all politics is local". But the consequences of these elections will undoubtedly be global.
\nFor these elections are not just proximate, they are intertwined.
\nThe future governance of Israel will have a lasting impact on the Middle East and wars raging across the region.
\nAnd any change in the electoral map of America could shape not just those wars but also the future of the global economy.
\nBetween the two there is a physical connection: the lobby group Republicans Overseas Israel estimates about half a million Israelis with American passports can vote in both polls.
\nMarc Zell, the group's chairman, said these electors could influence tight races in the US, such as the Michigan senatorial contest, in which he estimated 10,000 absentee ballots would be cast from Israel. "They can really make a difference," he told the BBC.
\nBut the policy connection is perhaps deeper - and most acute regarding the US-Israeli war on Iran. The massive aerial attack, which began in February, destroyed many military targets and killed much of Iran's leadership. But it failed to overthrow the regime which hit back hard across the Gulf and seized control of the Strait of Hormuz and the energy that flowed through it.
\nThe sheer fact of the elections has already shaped decision-making.
\nIsrael's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used the campaign to talk up the possibility of launching a fresh attack on Iran.
\nHe has made new claims \u2013 without providing evidence \u2013 about Iran's nuclear threat, insisting again the Islamic regime must be overthrown.
\nHis aim: to shore up his reputation as a security leader, which took such a battering after the deadly 7 October Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
\nUS President Donald Trump has added to the speculation of renewed attacks on Iran by endorsing Netanyahu's re-election campaign, saying both men should "soon finish the job" in Iran.
\nYet for all the sabre-rattling, there have also been contradictory reports that Trump intervened to restrain Netanyahu from attacking Iran before polling day, fearing a fresh spike in energy prices would remind US voters of his unpopular war.
\nSo might an attack on Iran, then, be delayed until after the elections? Israel's media is full of speculation Netanyahu could try to engineer his survival by attacking Iran as caretaker prime minister after the election.
\nHe would argue, so the theory goes, for a government of national unity \u2013 involving him \u2013 rather than a coalition between opposition parties. Netanyahu has long been seen as a great survivor of Israeli politics. If he were to lose power, he would face an official inquiry into his actions before the October 7 attacks and renewed legal proceedings involving allegations of corruption.
\nSo real is this speculation that Netanyahu's rival, the former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, has already ruled out joining any unity government. Like all mainstream Israeli politicians, Eisenkot sees Iran as an existential threat to Israel and supports military action against the Islamic regime. But he has explicitly warned against escalating the war for political purposes.
\nCertainly, Trump may be more willing to attack Iran after the midterms if he is unconstrained electorally and hoping to extract himself from the war with one more push. Some analysts believe Iran is so economically weak from the war and economic sanctions that a fresh round of military strikes might encourage Iranians to overthrow the regime. Others see this as yet more wishful thinking. It is a strategy that has repeatedly failed, but still has currency in Washington.
\n"After the midterms, he will be in legacy mode," one well-placed Western diplomat told me. "He will want to show agency on anything that is not the quagmire at home."
\nIn Israel there is a broad consensus across most parties about the threat from and the need to constrain Iran. But if voters elect a new government, they might have a prime minister with less political and personal investment in fresh attacks.
\nIn those circumstances, Trump has suggested his thinking may change, too. "If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi [a nickname for Netanyahu], America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so," he wrote on social media.
\nThe two elections again intertwine around the global economy. Affordability and cost of living have dominated campaigning for the midterms, issues made worse by Trump's war that raised prices as Iran choked the flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz.
\nThe economy is also an election issue in Israel, where voters face high costs and low wages. But here, too, the war plays its part with soaring defence spending putting even more pressure on the public finances.
\nTrump has sought to appease voters ahead of the midterms. He has lifted sanctions on Russia, hoping in vain that by importing diesel from Moscow, prices might fall significantly. He has been taking a tough line with Ukraine, calling on its leadership to make concessions in the hope \u2013 also so far in vain \u2013 of claiming a foreign policy victory.
\nBut Republican ire at his controversial strategy is growing. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a frequent critic of Trump, told CBS News: "If the President wants to actually bring down energy prices, he can do it by solving the Iran problem, not by doing a solid [favour] for Vladimir Putin."
\nOf course, if Israel's prime minister were to lose, his departure would end a scratchy bromance that has seen Trump blow hot and cold. Last week the president called his Israeli counterpart a "great warrior prime minister". During the summer, he said Netanyahu was "effing crazy". A new Israeli leader would have to forge a new relationship with an outgoing US president, a very different dynamic.
\nIf the Democrats were to win greater control in Congress, that might place some check on blanket US support for Israel. Congress has traditional powers that it can use to restrain military spending. It could also cut military aid to Israel. But as president, Trump would retain significant executive power \u2013 and a veto \u2013 to continue prosecuting the conflict as he saw fit.
\nThe decision by Israel and the US to go to war with Iran earlier this year transformed the global economy and international geopolitics. The choices voters in both nations make in coming days may shape where the world goes next.
\nTop image credit: Getty.
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-26T08:30:34Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-26T08:30:34Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck87z4ng2l03o#1", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck87z4ng2l03o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "Healey's Budget needs to sustain the stronger economy through gathering clouds", "content_text": "", "content_html": "There have been almost no Budget leaks.
\nThe chancellor's aides are using intelligence-style security measures to guard its secrets: the Budget has been split into "compartments" with very few given access to all of them. There are codenames. The IT has been locked down and ministers viewing the plans have to sign a digital promise not to brief media.
\nSuch security is a response to the feeling that speculation around the last Budget, sometimes informed by insiders, was economically destabilising.
\nAs a recent former defence secretary, Chancellor John Healey has embraced such strict procedures, and has approached most of his public engagements and interviews with a sturdy refusal to break the Budget omert\u00e0, akin to his fellow Yorkshireman Geoffrey Boycott's at times ultra-defensive stance on a cricket pitch.
\nThe economic news has been good - growth has been better than expected and the International Monetary Fund has endorsed the UK for "standing out" among the G7 countries for at least planning to cut borrowing.
\nThe bond market's reverse beauty contest, in which investors single out the countries they distrust most, has moved on from Britain. Traders I occasionally hear from who were once focused on UK borrowing costs are now more preoccupied with "le spread" - the widening gap between French and German borrowing costs (the former being higher than the latter) - and with America's long-term debt outlook.
\nAnd yet there are clouds on the horizon. The inflation rate rose more than forecast to 3.5% in September, and borrowing numbers were also higher than forecast. This means an imminent Bank of England rate rise is very much on the cards, with the resultant rise in mortgage repayments for some.
\nCredibility with investors requires not just that Budget maths add up on Wednesday, but also belief that growth plans are realistic, and the perception that Downing Street can actually convince MPs to pass its Budget.
\nThe question for John Healey is whether he can deliver a Budget that can sustain the revival in growth and offer the help with the cost of living that his backbenchers demand. At the same time he needs to reassure the markets that his budget will keep a check on borrowing.
\n"Is it resilient, or is it actually strong?" has been the tone of the debate among economists about the curious case of the UK economy ahead of what is a vital Budget.
\nThe UK is the fastest growing G7 country so far this year, at 0.6% in Q1 and 0.5% in Q2. The widespread assumption of stagnation in the second half is being defied with Q3 heading for 0.6 to 0.8%.
\nEach quarter has seen growth twice as fast as predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in March and independent forecasters. This is the fastest growth in the first eight months of a year since 2017, ignoring the post-lockdown re-opening.
\nIt's more resilient than it was in 2022. Back then, the Ukraine war, massive energy bailouts, and Liz Truss' mini budget all culminated in the UK facing the highest borrowing costs in the G7, in what was derided in financial markets as a "moron premium".
\nThen last year, with constant policy u-turns, UK borrowing costs rose the most of the G7.
\nThis year the gap has narrowed, as uncertainty about the US and France takes centre stage, but all advanced economies are feeling the heat from the Iran war energy shock.
\nInflation has risen, but not just in Britain. The link between gas and electricity prices has weakened, meaning spikes in gas prices have less impact on electricity bills than they used to and helping to keep inflation lower than it otherwise might have been.
\nThe fact that up until now the Iran war has been more of an oil shock than a gas shock (where the UK is more exposed) has been another saving grace. Meanwhile, the significant amount of AI and tech investment in the UK is another boost to the economic numbers.
\nThe net result is that doom-mongering predictions of recession, of being hit worst by the Iran war, and, in some quarters, of imminent national bankruptcy, have been defied.
\nThat economic defiance of the early part of 2026 has persisted in the first three months of the Burnham-Healey tenure in Downing Street, buoyed by a lull in the Iran war and the energy price shock.
\nBurnham was advised upon entry to Downing Street that if consumers could at least feel more confident, they might save less and spend more and therefore help boost growth.
\nSo far Burnham and Healey appear to be relying on a series of relatively inexpensive "feel-better" policies - such as capped bus fares and a temporary VAT cut on household energy bills - that have improved confidence without significantly increasing spending.
\nBut there isn't a lot of spare money, which limits just how much can be offered for "temporary and targeted" measures. And come January, the clouds on the horizon could be overhead, with typical energy bills predicted to rise by 16%, interest rates potentially up and an enduring fear that the AI bubble could burst.
\nAt a gleaming hi-tech robotics research facility in Coventry last month, John Healey sought to set out the broad contours of his approach to the economy. On a walkabout at the Manufacturing Technology Centre, I asked him if there had been too much doom-mongery.
\n"I know the global conditions mean that it is hard\u2026 we have huge latent potential in this country. Great talent, and deep capital markets.
\n"The challenge now is to make sure that we balance the books, we manage and control public spending, and the prime minister and I are in lockstep in our determination to meet the fiscal rules with a buffer," he said.
\nThe giant orange robot arms whizzing around were being trained by AI to use lasers to carve the most intricate metal shapes for prototype parts for the jet engines of the future. The Budget manoeuvres required by Healey may require even more precision.
\nThe essential question is whether he has chosen to impress the markets and explain himself to his MPs, or impress his MPs and explain himself to the markets. Judging by my three interviews with him in recent weeks, it is more the former than the latter.
\nThe answer may not be found in his speech at all, but in the borrowing tables that will reveal how much money the government expects to borrow over the coming years, published in the OBR's forecast released - assuming no repeat of last year's disaster - when Healey sits down in the House of Commons around 13.00.
\nJust after that, as Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is delivering the Opposition's response, the real reaction the chancellor's team will be looking for is whether the markets move, particularly when the Debt Management Office publishes the "gilt remit" - the detail of any changes to its plan to sell UK government bonds to investors.
\nMy sense is that every effort is being made to minimise this number, and help guide down medium and long-term borrowing rates for the government and for mortgages. (It was at this moment in 2022 that markets vomited at the prospect of how much extra they thought the government would need to borrow after Liz Truss' mini budget.)
\nFrom Healey's first day in office, the prudence message was practically tattooed to his head. He has spent more time working in the Treasury than any recent chancellor. He spent five years from 2002 to 2007 as a junior minister when Gordon Brown was chancellor - five finance bills, five Budgets, pre-Budget reports and two Spending Reviews.
\nFor his Labour Party conference speech, Healey sported Brown's old conference tie. But the Treasury he returned to this year is a changed place in important ways. When his predecessor wore the tie, the Treasury was running an annual surplus, not a \u00a3120bn deficit adding to a \u00a33 trillion total national debt.
\nI asked him just afterwards, and just before he was whisked off to a meeting of the government's emergency COBR committee on RAF Fairford, if he was going to have another go at some of the things that proved so difficult for his predecessor, former Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
\nHe replied: "100%. I was very clear to the conference today and the public beyond. There isn't the money that there was in the 1990s. People understand that. The public aren't daft.
\n"Running through the Budget I deliver must be fiscal discipline and the maintenance of control on the public finances, because otherwise we won't get on top of the debt costs."
\nOne intriguing element of what we may see on Wednesday is that this theoretically more left-leaning Labour government appears to believe they have the political capital to save money on welfare payments.
\nThe aim is to get some of the 1.35 million people currently off work with mental health issues back into jobs.
\nSome reporting suggests some affected younger people may see benefits payments cut, with the government instead investing more in getting them into jobs and keeping them in them through the offer, for example, of in-work therapy.
\nBack in Healey's time under Gordon Brown, there was no OBR. Back then it was not unknown for late budget maths problems to be settled with an optimistic tweak of a forecast, a date change to the economic cycle, or choosing a stronger rate of long term growth.
\nThe OBR's verdict is crucial now - to what extent it agrees with projected welfare savings or even the importance it places on stronger GDP figures matters now.
\nThe bigger point here is that the chancellor must be shocked by the contrast between the sheer power of the Brown Treasury to do what it wanted, and the reality of what he currently faces: the constraints of the OBR, manifesto red lines, bond markets, significant debts and an energy shock.
\nThere are reasons to postpone some of the toughest decisions beyond this Budget, such as how to fund desired increases in spending on defence and social care. The economic outlook could improve were the Iran war to settle at some point in the next few months, and after revised statistics the OBR may also have cause to rethink last year's downgrade to long term economic growth.
\nThere is an imaginable pathway to a forecast next year with higher growth, lower inflation and lower debt interest costs, plausibly improving the public finance projections by tens of billions.
\nThis would be a much more agreeable basis upon which to decide the pace of those big ticket spending rises. It also may be a tempting option for anyone thinking about an election. Former Treasury officials lament: "There is always a reason for procrastination."
\nExpect the Chancellor to laud the resilience and strength of the UK economy and seek to sustain it, and spread growth geographically. His key judgement, however, will be a balance between extra financial and economic support and the peril of still elevated borrowing costs.
\nHe will try to offer breathing space. It may be needed not just for households and families, but for the Exchequer itself.
\nTop image credit: Reuters/Getty Images
", "summary": "There have been almost no Budget leaks.
\nThe chancellor's aides are using intelligence-style security measures to guard its secrets: the Budget has been split into "compartments" with very few given access to all of them. There are codenames. The IT has been locked down and ministers viewing the plans have to sign a digital promise not to brief media.
\nSuch security is a response to the feeling that speculation around the last Budget, sometimes informed by insiders, was economically destabilising.
\nAs a recent former defence secretary, Chancellor John Healey has embraced such strict procedures, and has approached most of his public engagements and interviews with a sturdy refusal to break the Budget omert\u00e0, akin to his fellow Yorkshireman Geoffrey Boycott's at times ultra-defensive stance on a cricket pitch.
\nThe economic news has been good - growth has been better than expected and the International Monetary Fund has endorsed the UK for "standing out" among the G7 countries for at least planning to cut borrowing.
\nThe bond market's reverse beauty contest, in which investors single out the countries they distrust most, has moved on from Britain. Traders I occasionally hear from who were once focused on UK borrowing costs are now more preoccupied with "le spread" - the widening gap between French and German borrowing costs (the former being higher than the latter) - and with America's long-term debt outlook.
\nAnd yet there are clouds on the horizon. The inflation rate rose more than forecast to 3.5% in September, and borrowing numbers were also higher than forecast. This means an imminent Bank of England rate rise is very much on the cards, with the resultant rise in mortgage repayments for some.
\nCredibility with investors requires not just that Budget maths add up on Wednesday, but also belief that growth plans are realistic, and the perception that Downing Street can actually convince MPs to pass its Budget.
\nThe question for John Healey is whether he can deliver a Budget that can sustain the revival in growth and offer the help with the cost of living that his backbenchers demand. At the same time he needs to reassure the markets that his budget will keep a check on borrowing.
\n"Is it resilient, or is it actually strong?" has been the tone of the debate among economists about the curious case of the UK economy ahead of what is a vital Budget.
\nThe UK is the fastest growing G7 country so far this year, at 0.6% in Q1 and 0.5% in Q2. The widespread assumption of stagnation in the second half is being defied with Q3 heading for 0.6 to 0.8%.
\nEach quarter has seen growth twice as fast as predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in March and independent forecasters. This is the fastest growth in the first eight months of a year since 2017, ignoring the post-lockdown re-opening.
\nIt's more resilient than it was in 2022. Back then, the Ukraine war, massive energy bailouts, and Liz Truss' mini budget all culminated in the UK facing the highest borrowing costs in the G7, in what was derided in financial markets as a "moron premium".
\nThen last year, with constant policy u-turns, UK borrowing costs rose the most of the G7.
\nThis year the gap has narrowed, as uncertainty about the US and France takes centre stage, but all advanced economies are feeling the heat from the Iran war energy shock.
\nInflation has risen, but not just in Britain. The link between gas and electricity prices has weakened, meaning spikes in gas prices have less impact on electricity bills than they used to and helping to keep inflation lower than it otherwise might have been.
\nThe fact that up until now the Iran war has been more of an oil shock than a gas shock (where the UK is more exposed) has been another saving grace. Meanwhile, the significant amount of AI and tech investment in the UK is another boost to the economic numbers.
\nThe net result is that doom-mongering predictions of recession, of being hit worst by the Iran war, and, in some quarters, of imminent national bankruptcy, have been defied.
\nThat economic defiance of the early part of 2026 has persisted in the first three months of the Burnham-Healey tenure in Downing Street, buoyed by a lull in the Iran war and the energy price shock.
\nBurnham was advised upon entry to Downing Street that if consumers could at least feel more confident, they might save less and spend more and therefore help boost growth.
\nSo far Burnham and Healey appear to be relying on a series of relatively inexpensive "feel-better" policies - such as capped bus fares and a temporary VAT cut on household energy bills - that have improved confidence without significantly increasing spending.
\nBut there isn't a lot of spare money, which limits just how much can be offered for "temporary and targeted" measures. And come January, the clouds on the horizon could be overhead, with typical energy bills predicted to rise by 16%, interest rates potentially up and an enduring fear that the AI bubble could burst.
\nAt a gleaming hi-tech robotics research facility in Coventry last month, John Healey sought to set out the broad contours of his approach to the economy. On a walkabout at the Manufacturing Technology Centre, I asked him if there had been too much doom-mongery.
\n"I know the global conditions mean that it is hard\u2026 we have huge latent potential in this country. Great talent, and deep capital markets.
\n"The challenge now is to make sure that we balance the books, we manage and control public spending, and the prime minister and I are in lockstep in our determination to meet the fiscal rules with a buffer," he said.
\nThe giant orange robot arms whizzing around were being trained by AI to use lasers to carve the most intricate metal shapes for prototype parts for the jet engines of the future. The Budget manoeuvres required by Healey may require even more precision.
\nThe essential question is whether he has chosen to impress the markets and explain himself to his MPs, or impress his MPs and explain himself to the markets. Judging by my three interviews with him in recent weeks, it is more the former than the latter.
\nThe answer may not be found in his speech at all, but in the borrowing tables that will reveal how much money the government expects to borrow over the coming years, published in the OBR's forecast released - assuming no repeat of last year's disaster - when Healey sits down in the House of Commons around 13.00.
\nJust after that, as Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is delivering the Opposition's response, the real reaction the chancellor's team will be looking for is whether the markets move, particularly when the Debt Management Office publishes the "gilt remit" - the detail of any changes to its plan to sell UK government bonds to investors.
\nMy sense is that every effort is being made to minimise this number, and help guide down medium and long-term borrowing rates for the government and for mortgages. (It was at this moment in 2022 that markets vomited at the prospect of how much extra they thought the government would need to borrow after Liz Truss' mini budget.)
\nFrom Healey's first day in office, the prudence message was practically tattooed to his head. He has spent more time working in the Treasury than any recent chancellor. He spent five years from 2002 to 2007 as a junior minister when Gordon Brown was chancellor - five finance bills, five Budgets, pre-Budget reports and two Spending Reviews.
\nFor his Labour Party conference speech, Healey sported Brown's old conference tie. But the Treasury he returned to this year is a changed place in important ways. When his predecessor wore the tie, the Treasury was running an annual surplus, not a \u00a3120bn deficit adding to a \u00a33 trillion total national debt.
\nI asked him just afterwards, and just before he was whisked off to a meeting of the government's emergency COBR committee on RAF Fairford, if he was going to have another go at some of the things that proved so difficult for his predecessor, former Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
\nHe replied: "100%. I was very clear to the conference today and the public beyond. There isn't the money that there was in the 1990s. People understand that. The public aren't daft.
\n"Running through the Budget I deliver must be fiscal discipline and the maintenance of control on the public finances, because otherwise we won't get on top of the debt costs."
\nOne intriguing element of what we may see on Wednesday is that this theoretically more left-leaning Labour government appears to believe they have the political capital to save money on welfare payments.
\nThe aim is to get some of the 1.35 million people currently off work with mental health issues back into jobs.
\nSome reporting suggests some affected younger people may see benefits payments cut, with the government instead investing more in getting them into jobs and keeping them in them through the offer, for example, of in-work therapy.
\nBack in Healey's time under Gordon Brown, there was no OBR. Back then it was not unknown for late budget maths problems to be settled with an optimistic tweak of a forecast, a date change to the economic cycle, or choosing a stronger rate of long term growth.
\nThe OBR's verdict is crucial now - to what extent it agrees with projected welfare savings or even the importance it places on stronger GDP figures matters now.
\nThe bigger point here is that the chancellor must be shocked by the contrast between the sheer power of the Brown Treasury to do what it wanted, and the reality of what he currently faces: the constraints of the OBR, manifesto red lines, bond markets, significant debts and an energy shock.
\nThere are reasons to postpone some of the toughest decisions beyond this Budget, such as how to fund desired increases in spending on defence and social care. The economic outlook could improve were the Iran war to settle at some point in the next few months, and after revised statistics the OBR may also have cause to rethink last year's downgrade to long term economic growth.
\nThere is an imaginable pathway to a forecast next year with higher growth, lower inflation and lower debt interest costs, plausibly improving the public finance projections by tens of billions.
\nThis would be a much more agreeable basis upon which to decide the pace of those big ticket spending rises. It also may be a tempting option for anyone thinking about an election. Former Treasury officials lament: "There is always a reason for procrastination."
\nExpect the Chancellor to laud the resilience and strength of the UK economy and seek to sustain it, and spread growth geographically. His key judgement, however, will be a balance between extra financial and economic support and the peril of still elevated borrowing costs.
\nHe will try to offer breathing space. It may be needed not just for households and families, but for the Exchequer itself.
\nTop image credit: Reuters/Getty Images
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-25T16:26:49Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-25T16:26:49Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmvg7w0x742do#1", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmvg7w0x742do?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "The bitter row over military service that could shape Israel's future", "content_text": "", "content_html": "Furious protesters are denouncing Israeli security forces as "Nazis" - but this is not a scene from a pro-Palestinian rally on the streets of London or Paris. This clash is in the heart of Israel, in which hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men in white shirts, black fedoras and long black frock coats face off against the military police.
\nThe flashpoint is a building in the city of Modi'in, midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where a young ultra-Orthodox Jewish (or Haredi) man lives. The police have come to arrest him after he failed to report for military service.
\nThe clash in early October, seen by the BBC in a video, is one of many in recent months in which one of the deepest schisms in Israeli society has become ever more exposed.
\nThis widening fault line is playing out against the backdrop of the wars Israel is currently fighting, including the unresolved conflict against Hamas in Gaza - as well as increasing violence by extremist settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
\nOnce a tiny minority, the ultra-Orthodox remain a group apart even as their numbers expand year by year. Currently, they are estimated to make up about 14% of the population, and the birth rate within the community remains far higher than among other Israelis. If their numbers continue to grow at a similar rate, they could make up one-third of the Jewish Israeli population by 2050.
\nAs the ultra-Orthodox community becomes bigger, so has the debate around the expense of supporting them with stipends so they can devote themselves to full-time religious study. Subsidies to the group are estimated to cost the government 35bn shekels (\u00a38.4bn) per year and, until recently, they were exempted from military service.
\nNow they're no longer an insignificant minority, they're facing pressure to engage more with wider Israeli society.
\nFrom the ultra-Orthodox perspective, their social contract with the Israeli state is increasingly coming under pressure. Their all but exclusive focus on the study of Judaism's religious texts - such as the Torah, the Jewish Bible - means their education system is separate and many Haredim are not part of Israel's workforce.
\nFor the ultra-Orthodox, the biggest issue of all is holding on to the exemption from serving in the IDF for students at traditional religious - or yeshiva - institutions. This dates back to the earliest days of the Israeli state when the Haredim were a minuscule community of survivors struggling to rebuild from the near extinction of the Holocaust.
\nBut as Israel has become more embattled after the attacks of October 7, fighting wars on several fronts, their near complete absence from the country's conscription army has become more controversial.
\nReligious students and their rabbis believe that if young ultra-Orthodox men enter the military, they will be exposed to influences and behaviours that may decisively turn them away from their community. Beyond that, they believe that their staying true to the traditions of their community is vital for the very survival not only of Israel but the Jewish people.
\nWhen asked not long after October 7 why the ultra-Orthodox didn't contribute more to the military in such an emergency, one of the community's most senior leaders, Rabbi Dov Landau, said that not only should religious students not serve in the army, but they shouldn't even visit the wounded or attend the funerals of soldiers.
\nThe rabbi said that in a time of such danger, only Torah students could protect Israel spiritually. "Salvation only comes through Torah learning, orderly Torah learning. And any neglect of or disruption to Torah learning, woe and alas for what will happen\u2026 The more Torah learners multiply, the more Torah learners increase their learning, the better. They protect us."
\nIt would be a considerable understatement to say that this view is not shared by wider Israeli society. Polls have shown public support for conscripting the ultra-Orthodox surge throughout the war in Gaza. Many see it as a dereliction of responsibility by the Haredi community, made all the more galling by the fact that such a stance comes at the expense of taxpayers. The IDF has bemoaned a deficit in manpower, while many Israelis have had to serve hundreds of days in the past three years.
\nDahlia Scheindlin is a leading political consultant and pollster in Israel. She says this issue is critical for Netanyahu and is key to understanding this moment in Israeli society against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, particularly among the political right. "Really the most burning, more immediate issue is the right-wing communities who are furious at the government for protecting the blanket exemption from the IDF at a time when, especially among the right, but really everybody in the Jewish community in Israel, is serving and many dying in these wars."
\nTwo years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the exemption for ultra-Orthodox men from serving in the military was effectively null and void. That could have meant that those dedicated to full-time religious study would now be drafted.
\nThe reaction from the Haredi community was one of fury. Hundreds of thousands of Haredim held protests, blocking the main highways. And as with the incident in Modi'in, they tried to prevent the arrest of religious students for evading conscription. Protests have continued off and on, and densely-populated Haredi areas are often the backdrops for confrontation with the security forces.
\nThis is a row that is playing out in the election.
\nThere are two parties that have traditionally represented the Haredi community. One is United Torah Judaism \u2013 or UTJ \u2013 and represents Ashkenazi Jews, or Jews of European origin. The other is Shas, which was formed later and represents the Sephardi and Mizrahi \u2013 Jews from North Africa and the Middle East. They share a core agenda, which puts religious study above all else, including any questions around relations with the Palestinians.
\nBoth UTJ and Shas have been part of Netanyahu's coalition - and they used their political clout to find ways to try to block enforcement of the Supreme Court ruling. On several occasions, they threatened to pull out of the alliance and bring the government down. UTJ acted on this but continued to support the government from outside, while Shas remained within the coalition.
\nCentre-right politician Gadi Eisenkot, who's shaped up as Netanyahu's main rival in this month's election, does not support their stance. He has made clear his belief that the idea of the ultra-Orthodox constituting a separate state within Israel with its own rules has become increasingly toxic. "A country that sends its best sons and daughters to fight and sacrifice their lives cannot tolerate a reality in which a state within a state exists," he said.
\nAll this has meant that the issue of conscription exemption for ultra-Orthodox men is the number one priority on the electoral agenda of both Shas and UTJ.
\nA recent remark by a UTJ parliamentary candidate, Eliakim Stark, has raised the temperature further. He compared the plight of ultra-Orthodox men evading the military draft to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. It triggered furious rebukes from opposition leaders from across the political spectrum.
\nDaniel Goldman, an activist who specialises in Haredi issues, says that the two main Haredi parties feel increasingly embattled and less open to compromise.
\nHe says the ultra-Orthodox don't believe that the state really needs their boys to bolster numbers. "It's at least partly down to the fact that the Haredi parties see the state as wanting to take their boys out of the community and change them from ultra-Orthodox to either regular religious or secular, God forbid, as they perceive it," he says. "And so in that environment of tension, they've actually hardened their positions."
\nYitzhak Goldknopf from the UTJ, a former minister, has gone so far as to issue an ultimatum: "The Haredim will not change their way of life because there is an army and a war... If there is no choice and they must leave the country, they will leave."
\nBut this is having a clear impact on the electoral fortunes of the Netanyahu coalition - of which Shas in particular has long been a key part. Without them, Netanyahu's alliance would fall short of the more than 60 seats needed for a majority in the Knesset.
\nDahlia Scheindlin, the Israeli pollster, says that the refusal to give up the draft exemption by Shas and UTJ is damaging Netanyahu's coalition. "It is one of the main reasons why the coalition is unable to win back the kind of support that they had in 2022 when they won 64 seats," she says. "They're currently polling at about 50 to 52 seats."
\nAll Netanyahu's challengers advocate for ending the ultra-Orthodox exemption and cutting funds to institutions or individuals who refuse the draft. On the left, Yair Golan has called for an immediate mobilisation of those who are eligible.
\nSo, despite statements from Shas and UTJ that they would switch allegiance from Netanyahu if he were to dilute his support, there seems for now nowhere else for them to go.
\nAnshel Pfeffer has been a leading commentator on the Israeli political scene for years - now mainly as the Economist's correspondent in Israel. He says Netanyahu's position looks shaky. "There are two things that are bringing together the current opposition bloc," he says. "One is obviously they want to replace Netanyahu and the other is they are capitalising on this really hostile environment nowadays towards the ultra-Orthodox, mainly over the issue of the draft to the army.
\n"Netanyahu has been willing for many years, to basically give the ultra-Orthodox whatever they want. They're not going to get that from the opposition."
\nInto this arena of resentment and intransigence, a new Haredi party has emerged this year, presenting itself as a break with the traditional mindset of Shas and UTJ.
\nEssentially, the Haredi Public Party is offering a compromise in which the ultra-Orthodox would contribute more to Israel as a whole while maintaining the core of their identity.
\nFor the first time in the ultra-Orthodox community, it is also fielding two female candidates.
\nOne of them, Ziva Ginz, explained to the BBC her party's position on the military draft. Key to it is men serving being allowed to remain culturally Haredi. "Anyone whose life is genuinely devoted to full-time Torah study should be able to continue learning. Everyone who isn't sitting and studying for a full day should serve alongside the rest of Israeli youth, in frameworks where a young man can enter as a Haredi and finish as a Haredi," she says.
\nBut it may be too soon for such efforts at compromise to make an impact this election.
\nAnshel Pfeffer says that it's difficult to sway the base vote in the ultra-Orthodox community, where most still essentially follow what their rabbi says they should do.
\n"And once people are voting for other parties, they won't necessarily do so for another Haredi party," Pfeffer explains. "That's why we're seeing people like [far-right leader and National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir making inroads in the Haredi community, because he's the only non-Haredi party leader who actually talks to young Haredi. Basically, every other party in Israel doesn't even try."
\nNo alliance appears close to achieving a majority, however, so there is bound to be a lot of horse trading to secure a workable coalition after the vote.
\nNetanyahu will naturally apply his exceptional political skills to trying to find one way or another to stay in power.
\nAs ever, that leaves the smaller parties with the ability to play the role of kingmaker. That's a role that the ultra-Orthodox parties have been known for in the past. But this time they may not be the decisive factor.
\n"The truth is, any small party can become a kingmaker," Dahlia Scheindlin says. "I don't think it would take too much to lure the Haredi parties away from Netanyahu... The thing is, though, I don't think the opposition parties will want to lure them in unless they have some promise that they're really prepared to make serious concessions on the draft. The opposition parties are absolutely staking their platforms and their promise to the voters on that issue."
\nThis time, rather than being the kingmakers, it may turn out that the ultra-Orthodox parties help bring down the king.
\nLead image: AFP via Getty
", "summary": "Furious protesters are denouncing Israeli security forces as "Nazis" - but this is not a scene from a pro-Palestinian rally on the streets of London or Paris. This clash is in the heart of Israel, in which hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men in white shirts, black fedoras and long black frock coats face off against the military police.
\nThe flashpoint is a building in the city of Modi'in, midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where a young ultra-Orthodox Jewish (or Haredi) man lives. The police have come to arrest him after he failed to report for military service.
\nThe clash in early October, seen by the BBC in a video, is one of many in recent months in which one of the deepest schisms in Israeli society has become ever more exposed.
\nThis widening fault line is playing out against the backdrop of the wars Israel is currently fighting, including the unresolved conflict against Hamas in Gaza - as well as increasing violence by extremist settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
\nOnce a tiny minority, the ultra-Orthodox remain a group apart even as their numbers expand year by year. Currently, they are estimated to make up about 14% of the population, and the birth rate within the community remains far higher than among other Israelis. If their numbers continue to grow at a similar rate, they could make up one-third of the Jewish Israeli population by 2050.
\nAs the ultra-Orthodox community becomes bigger, so has the debate around the expense of supporting them with stipends so they can devote themselves to full-time religious study. Subsidies to the group are estimated to cost the government 35bn shekels (\u00a38.4bn) per year and, until recently, they were exempted from military service.
\nNow they're no longer an insignificant minority, they're facing pressure to engage more with wider Israeli society.
\nFrom the ultra-Orthodox perspective, their social contract with the Israeli state is increasingly coming under pressure. Their all but exclusive focus on the study of Judaism's religious texts - such as the Torah, the Jewish Bible - means their education system is separate and many Haredim are not part of Israel's workforce.
\nFor the ultra-Orthodox, the biggest issue of all is holding on to the exemption from serving in the IDF for students at traditional religious - or yeshiva - institutions. This dates back to the earliest days of the Israeli state when the Haredim were a minuscule community of survivors struggling to rebuild from the near extinction of the Holocaust.
\nBut as Israel has become more embattled after the attacks of October 7, fighting wars on several fronts, their near complete absence from the country's conscription army has become more controversial.
\nReligious students and their rabbis believe that if young ultra-Orthodox men enter the military, they will be exposed to influences and behaviours that may decisively turn them away from their community. Beyond that, they believe that their staying true to the traditions of their community is vital for the very survival not only of Israel but the Jewish people.
\nWhen asked not long after October 7 why the ultra-Orthodox didn't contribute more to the military in such an emergency, one of the community's most senior leaders, Rabbi Dov Landau, said that not only should religious students not serve in the army, but they shouldn't even visit the wounded or attend the funerals of soldiers.
\nThe rabbi said that in a time of such danger, only Torah students could protect Israel spiritually. "Salvation only comes through Torah learning, orderly Torah learning. And any neglect of or disruption to Torah learning, woe and alas for what will happen\u2026 The more Torah learners multiply, the more Torah learners increase their learning, the better. They protect us."
\nIt would be a considerable understatement to say that this view is not shared by wider Israeli society. Polls have shown public support for conscripting the ultra-Orthodox surge throughout the war in Gaza. Many see it as a dereliction of responsibility by the Haredi community, made all the more galling by the fact that such a stance comes at the expense of taxpayers. The IDF has bemoaned a deficit in manpower, while many Israelis have had to serve hundreds of days in the past three years.
\nDahlia Scheindlin is a leading political consultant and pollster in Israel. She says this issue is critical for Netanyahu and is key to understanding this moment in Israeli society against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, particularly among the political right. "Really the most burning, more immediate issue is the right-wing communities who are furious at the government for protecting the blanket exemption from the IDF at a time when, especially among the right, but really everybody in the Jewish community in Israel, is serving and many dying in these wars."
\nTwo years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the exemption for ultra-Orthodox men from serving in the military was effectively null and void. That could have meant that those dedicated to full-time religious study would now be drafted.
\nThe reaction from the Haredi community was one of fury. Hundreds of thousands of Haredim held protests, blocking the main highways. And as with the incident in Modi'in, they tried to prevent the arrest of religious students for evading conscription. Protests have continued off and on, and densely-populated Haredi areas are often the backdrops for confrontation with the security forces.
\nThis is a row that is playing out in the election.
\nThere are two parties that have traditionally represented the Haredi community. One is United Torah Judaism \u2013 or UTJ \u2013 and represents Ashkenazi Jews, or Jews of European origin. The other is Shas, which was formed later and represents the Sephardi and Mizrahi \u2013 Jews from North Africa and the Middle East. They share a core agenda, which puts religious study above all else, including any questions around relations with the Palestinians.
\nBoth UTJ and Shas have been part of Netanyahu's coalition - and they used their political clout to find ways to try to block enforcement of the Supreme Court ruling. On several occasions, they threatened to pull out of the alliance and bring the government down. UTJ acted on this but continued to support the government from outside, while Shas remained within the coalition.
\nCentre-right politician Gadi Eisenkot, who's shaped up as Netanyahu's main rival in this month's election, does not support their stance. He has made clear his belief that the idea of the ultra-Orthodox constituting a separate state within Israel with its own rules has become increasingly toxic. "A country that sends its best sons and daughters to fight and sacrifice their lives cannot tolerate a reality in which a state within a state exists," he said.
\nAll this has meant that the issue of conscription exemption for ultra-Orthodox men is the number one priority on the electoral agenda of both Shas and UTJ.
\nA recent remark by a UTJ parliamentary candidate, Eliakim Stark, has raised the temperature further. He compared the plight of ultra-Orthodox men evading the military draft to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. It triggered furious rebukes from opposition leaders from across the political spectrum.
\nDaniel Goldman, an activist who specialises in Haredi issues, says that the two main Haredi parties feel increasingly embattled and less open to compromise.
\nHe says the ultra-Orthodox don't believe that the state really needs their boys to bolster numbers. "It's at least partly down to the fact that the Haredi parties see the state as wanting to take their boys out of the community and change them from ultra-Orthodox to either regular religious or secular, God forbid, as they perceive it," he says. "And so in that environment of tension, they've actually hardened their positions."
\nYitzhak Goldknopf from the UTJ, a former minister, has gone so far as to issue an ultimatum: "The Haredim will not change their way of life because there is an army and a war... If there is no choice and they must leave the country, they will leave."
\nBut this is having a clear impact on the electoral fortunes of the Netanyahu coalition - of which Shas in particular has long been a key part. Without them, Netanyahu's alliance would fall short of the more than 60 seats needed for a majority in the Knesset.
\nDahlia Scheindlin, the Israeli pollster, says that the refusal to give up the draft exemption by Shas and UTJ is damaging Netanyahu's coalition. "It is one of the main reasons why the coalition is unable to win back the kind of support that they had in 2022 when they won 64 seats," she says. "They're currently polling at about 50 to 52 seats."
\nAll Netanyahu's challengers advocate for ending the ultra-Orthodox exemption and cutting funds to institutions or individuals who refuse the draft. On the left, Yair Golan has called for an immediate mobilisation of those who are eligible.
\nSo, despite statements from Shas and UTJ that they would switch allegiance from Netanyahu if he were to dilute his support, there seems for now nowhere else for them to go.
\nAnshel Pfeffer has been a leading commentator on the Israeli political scene for years - now mainly as the Economist's correspondent in Israel. He says Netanyahu's position looks shaky. "There are two things that are bringing together the current opposition bloc," he says. "One is obviously they want to replace Netanyahu and the other is they are capitalising on this really hostile environment nowadays towards the ultra-Orthodox, mainly over the issue of the draft to the army.
\n"Netanyahu has been willing for many years, to basically give the ultra-Orthodox whatever they want. They're not going to get that from the opposition."
\nInto this arena of resentment and intransigence, a new Haredi party has emerged this year, presenting itself as a break with the traditional mindset of Shas and UTJ.
\nEssentially, the Haredi Public Party is offering a compromise in which the ultra-Orthodox would contribute more to Israel as a whole while maintaining the core of their identity.
\nFor the first time in the ultra-Orthodox community, it is also fielding two female candidates.
\nOne of them, Ziva Ginz, explained to the BBC her party's position on the military draft. Key to it is men serving being allowed to remain culturally Haredi. "Anyone whose life is genuinely devoted to full-time Torah study should be able to continue learning. Everyone who isn't sitting and studying for a full day should serve alongside the rest of Israeli youth, in frameworks where a young man can enter as a Haredi and finish as a Haredi," she says.
\nBut it may be too soon for such efforts at compromise to make an impact this election.
\nAnshel Pfeffer says that it's difficult to sway the base vote in the ultra-Orthodox community, where most still essentially follow what their rabbi says they should do.
\n"And once people are voting for other parties, they won't necessarily do so for another Haredi party," Pfeffer explains. "That's why we're seeing people like [far-right leader and National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir making inroads in the Haredi community, because he's the only non-Haredi party leader who actually talks to young Haredi. Basically, every other party in Israel doesn't even try."
\nNo alliance appears close to achieving a majority, however, so there is bound to be a lot of horse trading to secure a workable coalition after the vote.
\nNetanyahu will naturally apply his exceptional political skills to trying to find one way or another to stay in power.
\nAs ever, that leaves the smaller parties with the ability to play the role of kingmaker. That's a role that the ultra-Orthodox parties have been known for in the past. But this time they may not be the decisive factor.
\n"The truth is, any small party can become a kingmaker," Dahlia Scheindlin says. "I don't think it would take too much to lure the Haredi parties away from Netanyahu... The thing is, though, I don't think the opposition parties will want to lure them in unless they have some promise that they're really prepared to make serious concessions on the draft. The opposition parties are absolutely staking their platforms and their promise to the voters on that issue."
\nThis time, rather than being the kingmakers, it may turn out that the ultra-Orthodox parties help bring down the king.
\nLead image: AFP via Getty
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-24T15:03:21Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-24T15:03:21Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwq6n09qpy90o#1", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwq6n09qpy90o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "Between quick wins and big dreams lies Burnham's biggest test", "content_text": "", "content_html": "Giving the north of England a crack at hosting the globe's biggest sports event might seem about as Brand Burnham as it gets.
\nSeven million pounds of taxpayers' cash is a teeny drop in the context of the overall Budget, to pay for the government to take a closer look at possible plans. But the idea is sure to get tongues wagging - and headline writers scribbling.
\nA "Northern Games" in 2040 or beyond just might create a massive sense of national feel-good, jobs and development, as the Olympics in east London did more than a decade ago.
\nBut it's a promise of a possibility at least a decade away. And what could be more in tune with the Manchester-loving prime minister and his proud Yorkshireman chancellor than a sporting plan fixed firmly on the top geographical chunk of the country?
\nIt's an echo, deliberate or not, of another Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, who sent memos to his cabinet in 1974 demanding "little things that mean a lot".
\nHe ended up with a list of plans including nationalising small breweries to stop them being gulped up by big firms (paging Andy Burnham), freezing phone installation charges for pensioners, and plans for empty office blocks.
\nBut the next few days could bring an end to that "politics of trying" phase, with one senior official describing the coming Budget as "the first proper moment for the government, which will then be in the pipeline for the 10-year plan, then a very difficult spending review".
\nAn influential Labour MP told me: "The Budget has to be the beginning of the future story."
\nA fancy way of saying, beyond the short-term announcements and clear long-term aspirations, what is this government actually going to do?
\n"Steady as she goes," is what one well-connected senior MP predicts, and how expectations of the Budget are being managed across Westminster. They tell me: "Not doing a lot might be more reassuring to people than promising the earth with whose money?"
\nThe boss of one well-known high street business told me they are even hoping there won't be any big bazookas. "Just do no harm," they implored the Chancellor John Healey.
\n"The hole is too big that they are trying to fill, so my view is don't try and do anything big to help because you don't have the money, but don't do anything to harm us either."
\nAfter all, the chancellor is bound by Labour's manifesto promises not to fiddle with the main taxes \u2013 income tax, VAT, National Insurance for workers. And you don't need me to remind you that public spending, borrowing and tax are all at historic highs.
\nChuck in prices jacking up again because of war in the Middle East and there isn't much money to spray around. In fact, some big cuts to public spending are already pencilled in for the later years of this parliament.
\nBut the widespread suggestion that you'll be able to blink and miss the Budget has got some hackles up in the Treasury. A budget, by its very nature, can never be a small event - it sets billions upon billions of taxes and spending decisions.
\nAnd there are likely to be extra taxes on banks, vows to sweep away some business regulation, particularly for small business, more powers passing to local leaders under the guise of devolution and more action on energy bills which are heading back up again.
\nJohn Healey has made it clear publicly and to staff, that he wants to encourage people with the guts and drive to start a business. One source said: "If you are taking on John's mantra about talking up Britain then you can't say, 'Nothing to see here'."
\nWhatever else the chancellor brings to Parliament in his red box, do not expect him to arrive with all the solutions to the country's very well-documented problems, whether that's getting the economy growing more convincingly, sorting out gaps in defence cash, welfare, social care, or new ways to pay off the country's groaning debts more quickly.
\nOne former minister suggests even if Healey and Burnham had stumbled upon all the answers in a few months, it's just not possible to fix everything at the same time because of the constraints on the economy.
\nThey wondered: "Is he going to invest in growth? Is he going to put everything he has into the challenges people will face this winter? Is he going to throw it at defence? There is just not enough to tackle all these problems simultaneously - ministers are going to be exposed to the cold light of day."
\nBurnham and Healey have to find a way of maintaining the balance in an unusually happy Labour Party.
\nMPs talk of ministers and Burnham himself being more visible and approachable in Parliament, knocking around with colleagues in the evening, fewer "golden slips" doled out when ministers were excused from voting alongside colleagues so they could get on with their important jobs.
\nOne minister told me they'd had to tell their private office not to arrange for them to be "slipped" , from going to the Commons in the evening to see backbenchers.
\nIt's paying off in the mood among MPs. One told me: "You're not feeling like the only way you can ever have a chat with a minister is by arranging an appointment for three months down the line \u2013 the soft touches really matter."
\nA party that feels the boss has their back is more likely to be receptive to hard decisions, that's simple psychology, and guess what? Politicians are humans too.
\nBut the equilibrium is fragile. One source involved in the Budget prep told me the government "is like a seesaw".
\n"It's John and James on the right (Healey and Purnell, Burnham's chief of staff), Lou (Haigh) on the left, and Andy balancing it in the middle," adding that "Andy is not as on the left as many of his supporters want to believe".
\nThat balance could be more strained in the coming weeks as choices over immigration and welfare reform loom after the Budget. And how the numbers stack up on Wednesday matters intensely too.
\nThe Labour left will be looking keenly to see if people who are really struggling financially receive meaningful support.
\nThose on the right will be scouring the statement for measures that display a tight control on spending and help businesses grow. Even small moves could upset the seesaw.
\nOne former minister doubts there will be anything major enough to upset the delicate balance, not because of an abundance of caution but they suggest, "John has been struggling a bit - he hasn't gone into this with a philosophical direction".
\nThere is also a risk that by deferring big decisions until the Spending Review next year - which sets out longer-term spending than an annual budget - it looks like the government is just putting off the hard stuff.
\nAnother acknowledges the danger of looking like it's a budget on the never-never, delaying decisions on "welfare, defence and social care \u2013 Andy goes in with political stock quite high \u2013 he needs to spend it on difficult stuff and there isn't much sign of it yet".
\nIn an interview with The Times, Andy Haldane, a former chief economist at the Bank of England and an ally of Burnham, said he feared the government would deliver a "ma\u00f1ana budget" that deferred difficult decisions on public spending and "doesn't speak to the urgency of now".
\nWith friends like these\u2026
\nIt's a good bet that the opposition parties will pile in on this angle, accusing Healey and Burnham of ignoring the long-term pressures next week. One prominent opposition politician said: "This Budget can only be postponing, you have to assume that's cynical because you are going to have an early election, or you are storing up a car crash for next year (the Spending Review)."
\nDowning Street sources counter that argument with Burnham's decision to unpick the expensive triple lock to pay, at least in part, for future social care. Or his bolder approach to potentially ask to re-enter the EU, or certainly pursue much closer ties.
\nAnd remember that list of small things that could make a big difference? They have made political decisions that the polls suggest voters have noticed.
\nEven some of Burnham's backers admit quietly that he is aware his first job in office was clear: to show action, to cheer up his party, and that seems to have had a positive effect in the polls.
\nHis long-term view of the UK he wants is well known \u2013 with devolution, a national care service, and greater public involvement in the economy.
\nBut the middle bit?
\nOne official says: "Unless the prime minister has said something quite specific about something everyone is scrambling around trying to work out what he wants to do."
\nAnother well-connected source says: "The challenge has always been with this project, how do people feel in the medium term \u2013 it's huge."
\n\u200b\u200bBurnham and his chancellor's start in office has been broadly successful if you look at the polling, or read the mood inside the Labour party.
\nTheir dreams of future glories, long-term plans and policies, and gold medals on UK soil could point ahead to many years time.
\nBut neither deal with the issues that need to be confronted in the middle.
\nThe chancellor was working late in his Downing Street flat last night, finishing off his plans after having fish pie for tea, conscious his first Budget starts the between times - and they're almost here.
\nLead image: Future Publishing via Getty
", "summary": "Giving the north of England a crack at hosting the globe's biggest sports event might seem about as Brand Burnham as it gets.
\nSeven million pounds of taxpayers' cash is a teeny drop in the context of the overall Budget, to pay for the government to take a closer look at possible plans. But the idea is sure to get tongues wagging - and headline writers scribbling.
\nA "Northern Games" in 2040 or beyond just might create a massive sense of national feel-good, jobs and development, as the Olympics in east London did more than a decade ago.
\nBut it's a promise of a possibility at least a decade away. And what could be more in tune with the Manchester-loving prime minister and his proud Yorkshireman chancellor than a sporting plan fixed firmly on the top geographical chunk of the country?
\nIt's an echo, deliberate or not, of another Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, who sent memos to his cabinet in 1974 demanding "little things that mean a lot".
\nHe ended up with a list of plans including nationalising small breweries to stop them being gulped up by big firms (paging Andy Burnham), freezing phone installation charges for pensioners, and plans for empty office blocks.
\nBut the next few days could bring an end to that "politics of trying" phase, with one senior official describing the coming Budget as "the first proper moment for the government, which will then be in the pipeline for the 10-year plan, then a very difficult spending review".
\nAn influential Labour MP told me: "The Budget has to be the beginning of the future story."
\nA fancy way of saying, beyond the short-term announcements and clear long-term aspirations, what is this government actually going to do?
\n"Steady as she goes," is what one well-connected senior MP predicts, and how expectations of the Budget are being managed across Westminster. They tell me: "Not doing a lot might be more reassuring to people than promising the earth with whose money?"
\nThe boss of one well-known high street business told me they are even hoping there won't be any big bazookas. "Just do no harm," they implored the Chancellor John Healey.
\n"The hole is too big that they are trying to fill, so my view is don't try and do anything big to help because you don't have the money, but don't do anything to harm us either."
\nAfter all, the chancellor is bound by Labour's manifesto promises not to fiddle with the main taxes \u2013 income tax, VAT, National Insurance for workers. And you don't need me to remind you that public spending, borrowing and tax are all at historic highs.
\nChuck in prices jacking up again because of war in the Middle East and there isn't much money to spray around. In fact, some big cuts to public spending are already pencilled in for the later years of this parliament.
\nBut the widespread suggestion that you'll be able to blink and miss the Budget has got some hackles up in the Treasury. A budget, by its very nature, can never be a small event - it sets billions upon billions of taxes and spending decisions.
\nAnd there are likely to be extra taxes on banks, vows to sweep away some business regulation, particularly for small business, more powers passing to local leaders under the guise of devolution and more action on energy bills which are heading back up again.
\nJohn Healey has made it clear publicly and to staff, that he wants to encourage people with the guts and drive to start a business. One source said: "If you are taking on John's mantra about talking up Britain then you can't say, 'Nothing to see here'."
\nWhatever else the chancellor brings to Parliament in his red box, do not expect him to arrive with all the solutions to the country's very well-documented problems, whether that's getting the economy growing more convincingly, sorting out gaps in defence cash, welfare, social care, or new ways to pay off the country's groaning debts more quickly.
\nOne former minister suggests even if Healey and Burnham had stumbled upon all the answers in a few months, it's just not possible to fix everything at the same time because of the constraints on the economy.
\nThey wondered: "Is he going to invest in growth? Is he going to put everything he has into the challenges people will face this winter? Is he going to throw it at defence? There is just not enough to tackle all these problems simultaneously - ministers are going to be exposed to the cold light of day."
\nBurnham and Healey have to find a way of maintaining the balance in an unusually happy Labour Party.
\nMPs talk of ministers and Burnham himself being more visible and approachable in Parliament, knocking around with colleagues in the evening, fewer "golden slips" doled out when ministers were excused from voting alongside colleagues so they could get on with their important jobs.
\nOne minister told me they'd had to tell their private office not to arrange for them to be "slipped" , from going to the Commons in the evening to see backbenchers.
\nIt's paying off in the mood among MPs. One told me: "You're not feeling like the only way you can ever have a chat with a minister is by arranging an appointment for three months down the line \u2013 the soft touches really matter."
\nA party that feels the boss has their back is more likely to be receptive to hard decisions, that's simple psychology, and guess what? Politicians are humans too.
\nBut the equilibrium is fragile. One source involved in the Budget prep told me the government "is like a seesaw".
\n"It's John and James on the right (Healey and Purnell, Burnham's chief of staff), Lou (Haigh) on the left, and Andy balancing it in the middle," adding that "Andy is not as on the left as many of his supporters want to believe".
\nThat balance could be more strained in the coming weeks as choices over immigration and welfare reform loom after the Budget. And how the numbers stack up on Wednesday matters intensely too.
\nThe Labour left will be looking keenly to see if people who are really struggling financially receive meaningful support.
\nThose on the right will be scouring the statement for measures that display a tight control on spending and help businesses grow. Even small moves could upset the seesaw.
\nOne former minister doubts there will be anything major enough to upset the delicate balance, not because of an abundance of caution but they suggest, "John has been struggling a bit - he hasn't gone into this with a philosophical direction".
\nThere is also a risk that by deferring big decisions until the Spending Review next year - which sets out longer-term spending than an annual budget - it looks like the government is just putting off the hard stuff.
\nAnother acknowledges the danger of looking like it's a budget on the never-never, delaying decisions on "welfare, defence and social care \u2013 Andy goes in with political stock quite high \u2013 he needs to spend it on difficult stuff and there isn't much sign of it yet".
\nIn an interview with The Times, Andy Haldane, a former chief economist at the Bank of England and an ally of Burnham, said he feared the government would deliver a "ma\u00f1ana budget" that deferred difficult decisions on public spending and "doesn't speak to the urgency of now".
\nWith friends like these\u2026
\nIt's a good bet that the opposition parties will pile in on this angle, accusing Healey and Burnham of ignoring the long-term pressures next week. One prominent opposition politician said: "This Budget can only be postponing, you have to assume that's cynical because you are going to have an early election, or you are storing up a car crash for next year (the Spending Review)."
\nDowning Street sources counter that argument with Burnham's decision to unpick the expensive triple lock to pay, at least in part, for future social care. Or his bolder approach to potentially ask to re-enter the EU, or certainly pursue much closer ties.
\nAnd remember that list of small things that could make a big difference? They have made political decisions that the polls suggest voters have noticed.
\nEven some of Burnham's backers admit quietly that he is aware his first job in office was clear: to show action, to cheer up his party, and that seems to have had a positive effect in the polls.
\nHis long-term view of the UK he wants is well known \u2013 with devolution, a national care service, and greater public involvement in the economy.
\nBut the middle bit?
\nOne official says: "Unless the prime minister has said something quite specific about something everyone is scrambling around trying to work out what he wants to do."
\nAnother well-connected source says: "The challenge has always been with this project, how do people feel in the medium term \u2013 it's huge."
\n\u200b\u200bBurnham and his chancellor's start in office has been broadly successful if you look at the polling, or read the mood inside the Labour party.
\nTheir dreams of future glories, long-term plans and policies, and gold medals on UK soil could point ahead to many years time.
\nBut neither deal with the issues that need to be confronted in the middle.
\nThe chancellor was working late in his Downing Street flat last night, finishing off his plans after having fish pie for tea, conscious his first Budget starts the between times - and they're almost here.
\nLead image: Future Publishing via Getty
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-24T03:03:57Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-24T03:03:57Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmde8rr2d6eno#1", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmde8rr2d6eno?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "The real reasons there so few young politicians in the US", "content_text": "", "content_html": "Not many US politicians have endured for as long as Hal Rogers, who will go into November's midterm elections seeking his 24th term in the House of Representatives.
\nThe 88-year-old Republican has represented Kentucky's 5th congressional district since 1981, making him the longest serving member of the House of Representatives. He was elected on the same night Ronald Reagan won his first presidential term under the slogan "Let's make America great again", a phrase later revived by Donald Trump.
\nAmong the challengers Rogers beat to win the nomination this year was one 60 years his junior. But Rogers, born in the 1930s, is far from the only senior US politician to have stuck at the job into their 80s.
\nOthers to have done so include US President Donald Trump, 80; Trump's predecessor Joe Biden, who left office at 82; and Nancy Pelosi, who stepped down as the Democratic leader in the House at the same age. Chuck Grassley, 93, is still a senator. He entered politics in 1958, before Alaska and Hawaii were even US states.
\nThe age and health of some politicians has raised widespread concern within both Republican and Democratic circles, however, reigniting questions about whether age limits or health checks should be imposed.
\nThe US is well known for its "gerontocracy", a government ruled by people who are significantly older than most of the adult population.
\nAt the other end of the age spectrum, the US has one of the lowest proportions of lawmakers under the age of 45 among comparable democracies, according to research from the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
\nSo why are so few young people becoming politicians? And for those who do enter politics, can they make a success of it?
\nTwenty-seven-year-old Republican Riley Owen is one of the few candidates from Gen Z - aged in their early teens to late 20s - from either party running for Congress on 3 November.
\nOwen is running in a newly created district in Utah that experts say may lean towards the Democrats. He has championed issues including paid maternity leave, restrictions on congressional stock trading and environmental action - all issues that may appeal to Democratic supporters.
\nWhen he was confirmed as his party's candidate in the state's 1st congressional district, he walked on stage to Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire, and argued that his generation needed to help renew the American Dream.
\nThe gerontocracy is "a bipartisan issue", he says. "We've got people who have become career politicians, and they spend their lives in Congress." He says this is indicative of a system that is not delivering for Americans.
\nOwen says the big challenge he faces is the fact that money really talks in US politics. Research suggests campaign donors tend to prefer incumbent candidates.
\nIndeed, the campaign of his rival Ben McAdams - a 51-year-old Democrat who has previously served in Congress - has so far raised much more cash than Owen's. By mid-October, McAdams had raised over $2.6m (\u00a31.9m), compared with $150,000 raised by Owen, according to records on the Federal Election Commission website.
\nOwen argues that his generation is uniquely well-placed to understand contemporary political issues, such as the challenges posed by tech. He also disputes any suggestion that a younger candidate necessarily lacks relevant experience - pointing to his own background as a military officer and a White House policy analyst. "I think in politics, just like in industry, we need what's called disruptive innovation," he says.
\nThe age of America's top politicians has long been a talking point. In 1984 Reagan - who was then America's oldest president at age 73 - deflected scrutiny with a quip about the "youth and inexperience" of his opponent Walter Mondale, who was a sprightly 56.
\nIn the US, individual states also have their own legislatures, with a Senate and a House, where many politicians make their start. Many current members of Congress spent years in state politics before running for a seat in Washington.
\nBut the median age of Congress members has ticked upwards over time. Congressional records show that the lowest median ages in the House and Senate were both recorded in the early 1980s - at 48 and 52 respectively.
\nThe average ages of a House member and a senator at the start of the current Congress were 58 and 65 respectively, according to analysis by the Pew Research Center. The median age of a US citizen is 39.
\nThere is now also a sharper focus on the health and acuity of some of the nation's oldest politicians. Joe Biden's age became a major issue while he was in office. To a lesser extent Trump has faced questions too.
\nSo too has Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, 84, with increasing regularity, after a months-long absence from Congress to undergo medical treatment. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Maxine Waters, 88, faces a leadership challenge as the lead Democrat on the powerful House Financial Services Committee, with her age considered by some to be a factor counting against her.
\nSome of the most vocal critics of this so-called gerontocracy have been candidates who identify as democratic socialists, meaning that their political views are further to the left than those of the Democratic Party mainstream. These candidates tend to campaign heavily on the cost of living and other issues that cut through to Millennials and Gen Z, and their supporters skew younger too.
\nThe demographic profile of people who vote tends to skew older, like the elected officials themselves. Pew research highlights that the proportion of non-voters who are young (aged 18 to 29) has been increasing. In the 2020 US election, 25% of non-voters belonged to that age category, according to Pew. Four years later, it had risen to 30%.
\nPew adds that voters under 30 were underrepresented in 2024. Voters in that age category made up 20% of the voting-eligible population, though accounted for only 15% of all the votes that were actually cast.
\nCampaigners argue that these demographic trends matter because they leave some issues underrepresented.
\n"Yes, that might result in older people being elected, but I think it really skews, too, what issues are important; what issues politicians are incentivised to talk about and to take care of," says Grace Mausser, the co-chair of the New York City wing of the Democratic Socialists of America.
\nMausser campaigned for Zohran Mamdani in his winning bid last year to become, at age 34, New York City's youngest mayor since 1892. Mamdani was held up as an example of a rare youthful success story, but his ally Mausser is less concerned with a politician's age than with their outlook.
\nMausser says it is not necessarily a problem if someone has been in politics for a long time. Rather, the problem can be what may result from that: "You become so used to the language and the ideas of the political establishment that anything else - any new ideas, whether they come from young people or old people - seem crazy."
\nShe invokes left-wing Democratic senator Bernie Sanders, 85, as an example of an older politician with a long tenure on Capitol Hill who has embraced change and had ideas that have resonated across generations.
\nIn the US, older people hold politicians in far higher esteem than younger people - even more so than in many other countries, according to a Pew survey from spring 2025. Some 62% of 18-34-year-olds were likely to say few or none of their elected officials are honest, compared with 45% of people aged over 50. Of the 25 countries surveyed by Pew, only Greece's young adults had a more pessimistic view of the honesty of politicians.
\nFor one expert who studies political engagement on both sides of the Atlantic, disaffection among young people helps to explain their unwillingness to participate in politics. The issue is not helped by the fact Congress has minimum age requirements for members, he says. Candidates must be 30 to serve as a senator, and 25 to be a representative.
\n"The one leads to another," remarks James Sloam from Royal Holloway, University of London. "If you don't have enough young people engaged in politics generally, then they won't become representatives."
\nWhat is more, Sloam says, young people in the US and the UK alike are alert to the fact that power does not just lie in politics. They are aware there are many other areas of work in which they can wield influence - including over elected officials.
\nFor those young people who do end up in high-profile political positions, the next question is whether they can make a success of it, especially when it comes to parenthood. Over the summer, the stories of two high-profile young women working in Washington raised fresh questions around compatibility of the job with motherhood.
\nAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 37, a Democratic congresswoman who took office aged 29, announced that she had started the process of freezing her eggs.
\nLater the same week in August, Karoline Leavitt, 29, who was appointed the youngest ever White House press secretary almost two years earlier, said she would leave the Trump administration to spend more time with her family, including her newborn baby. She explained: "I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy and attention required of [being] the White House press secretary."
\nOnly a handful of women have given birth while elected to Congress, while a few dozen lawmakers are mothers to children under the age of 18. The federal government, like many US employers, does not offer paid parental leave.
\nJD Vance, 42, one of the youngest vice-presidents in US history, recently acknowledged that having young children might impact on his own decision to run for the White House in 2028, saying: "We've got four little kids."
\nAmerica's two-party system is cited as another barrier to young people getting involved with politics.
\nSloam, the London academic, says this is because only a relatively narrow range of views are represented. He highlights research that indicates young people are more energised by social movements or issue-based campaigns than by party politics.
\nAnd within party politics, he notes the example of Mamdani and others on the political left who appear to be galvanising youth support outside the Democratic Party mainstream. But he cautions that "it's a little bit sporadic at the moment".
\nThe Republican Party has been through its own splintering over the last decade with the advent of Trump's MAGA movement, which appealed to a swathe of young men in the 2024 presidential election.
\nSome European democracies show a more pluralistic political environment can increase youth engagement, Sloam says. Scandinavian countries, for example, which are more likely to be multi-party, provide a clear counter example because the parties of government in those countries "work with those social movements to try and bring them into the political systems". Citing countries such as Norway, Sloam suggests there is a cycle whereby stronger youth turnout and youth trust in the political system leads to more involvement in politics.
\nOwen, the Republican, fancies his chances in Utah, despite his opponent's much larger war chest.
\nDiscussing what energises him as a Gen Z candidate, he identifies issues including the role of tech in public life, immigration and cost-of-living concerns. "I'm on the front end of starting my own family and looking at the costs and [asking] how am I going to make it work?" he says.
\nAsked if he sees any similarities between his campaign and the campaigns of young political candidates on the opposite side of the political spectrum, he says: "I'd break down the 'us versus them' framework, and maybe discard that a little bit\u2026 [there is] a bipartisan message that a lot of Americans on both sides of the aisle are feeling: that Washington isn't working for them."
\nHe takes a similar view to Mausser, the democratic socialist in New York, that voters should not necessarily pick a candidate because they are young: what matters is their ideas.
\n"For me, it's much more about what you support, what you're who you're fighting for, than what year you were born," she says.
\nLead image: Getty
", "summary": "Not many US politicians have endured for as long as Hal Rogers, who will go into November's midterm elections seeking his 24th term in the House of Representatives.
\nThe 88-year-old Republican has represented Kentucky's 5th congressional district since 1981, making him the longest serving member of the House of Representatives. He was elected on the same night Ronald Reagan won his first presidential term under the slogan "Let's make America great again", a phrase later revived by Donald Trump.
\nAmong the challengers Rogers beat to win the nomination this year was one 60 years his junior. But Rogers, born in the 1930s, is far from the only senior US politician to have stuck at the job into their 80s.
\nOthers to have done so include US President Donald Trump, 80; Trump's predecessor Joe Biden, who left office at 82; and Nancy Pelosi, who stepped down as the Democratic leader in the House at the same age. Chuck Grassley, 93, is still a senator. He entered politics in 1958, before Alaska and Hawaii were even US states.
\nThe age and health of some politicians has raised widespread concern within both Republican and Democratic circles, however, reigniting questions about whether age limits or health checks should be imposed.
\nThe US is well known for its "gerontocracy", a government ruled by people who are significantly older than most of the adult population.
\nAt the other end of the age spectrum, the US has one of the lowest proportions of lawmakers under the age of 45 among comparable democracies, according to research from the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
\nSo why are so few young people becoming politicians? And for those who do enter politics, can they make a success of it?
\nTwenty-seven-year-old Republican Riley Owen is one of the few candidates from Gen Z - aged in their early teens to late 20s - from either party running for Congress on 3 November.
\nOwen is running in a newly created district in Utah that experts say may lean towards the Democrats. He has championed issues including paid maternity leave, restrictions on congressional stock trading and environmental action - all issues that may appeal to Democratic supporters.
\nWhen he was confirmed as his party's candidate in the state's 1st congressional district, he walked on stage to Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire, and argued that his generation needed to help renew the American Dream.
\nThe gerontocracy is "a bipartisan issue", he says. "We've got people who have become career politicians, and they spend their lives in Congress." He says this is indicative of a system that is not delivering for Americans.
\nOwen says the big challenge he faces is the fact that money really talks in US politics. Research suggests campaign donors tend to prefer incumbent candidates.
\nIndeed, the campaign of his rival Ben McAdams - a 51-year-old Democrat who has previously served in Congress - has so far raised much more cash than Owen's. By mid-October, McAdams had raised over $2.6m (\u00a31.9m), compared with $150,000 raised by Owen, according to records on the Federal Election Commission website.
\nOwen argues that his generation is uniquely well-placed to understand contemporary political issues, such as the challenges posed by tech. He also disputes any suggestion that a younger candidate necessarily lacks relevant experience - pointing to his own background as a military officer and a White House policy analyst. "I think in politics, just like in industry, we need what's called disruptive innovation," he says.
\nThe age of America's top politicians has long been a talking point. In 1984 Reagan - who was then America's oldest president at age 73 - deflected scrutiny with a quip about the "youth and inexperience" of his opponent Walter Mondale, who was a sprightly 56.
\nIn the US, individual states also have their own legislatures, with a Senate and a House, where many politicians make their start. Many current members of Congress spent years in state politics before running for a seat in Washington.
\nBut the median age of Congress members has ticked upwards over time. Congressional records show that the lowest median ages in the House and Senate were both recorded in the early 1980s - at 48 and 52 respectively.
\nThe average ages of a House member and a senator at the start of the current Congress were 58 and 65 respectively, according to analysis by the Pew Research Center. The median age of a US citizen is 39.
\nThere is now also a sharper focus on the health and acuity of some of the nation's oldest politicians. Joe Biden's age became a major issue while he was in office. To a lesser extent Trump has faced questions too.
\nSo too has Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, 84, with increasing regularity, after a months-long absence from Congress to undergo medical treatment. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Maxine Waters, 88, faces a leadership challenge as the lead Democrat on the powerful House Financial Services Committee, with her age considered by some to be a factor counting against her.
\nSome of the most vocal critics of this so-called gerontocracy have been candidates who identify as democratic socialists, meaning that their political views are further to the left than those of the Democratic Party mainstream. These candidates tend to campaign heavily on the cost of living and other issues that cut through to Millennials and Gen Z, and their supporters skew younger too.
\nThe demographic profile of people who vote tends to skew older, like the elected officials themselves. Pew research highlights that the proportion of non-voters who are young (aged 18 to 29) has been increasing. In the 2020 US election, 25% of non-voters belonged to that age category, according to Pew. Four years later, it had risen to 30%.
\nPew adds that voters under 30 were underrepresented in 2024. Voters in that age category made up 20% of the voting-eligible population, though accounted for only 15% of all the votes that were actually cast.
\nCampaigners argue that these demographic trends matter because they leave some issues underrepresented.
\n"Yes, that might result in older people being elected, but I think it really skews, too, what issues are important; what issues politicians are incentivised to talk about and to take care of," says Grace Mausser, the co-chair of the New York City wing of the Democratic Socialists of America.
\nMausser campaigned for Zohran Mamdani in his winning bid last year to become, at age 34, New York City's youngest mayor since 1892. Mamdani was held up as an example of a rare youthful success story, but his ally Mausser is less concerned with a politician's age than with their outlook.
\nMausser says it is not necessarily a problem if someone has been in politics for a long time. Rather, the problem can be what may result from that: "You become so used to the language and the ideas of the political establishment that anything else - any new ideas, whether they come from young people or old people - seem crazy."
\nShe invokes left-wing Democratic senator Bernie Sanders, 85, as an example of an older politician with a long tenure on Capitol Hill who has embraced change and had ideas that have resonated across generations.
\nIn the US, older people hold politicians in far higher esteem than younger people - even more so than in many other countries, according to a Pew survey from spring 2025. Some 62% of 18-34-year-olds were likely to say few or none of their elected officials are honest, compared with 45% of people aged over 50. Of the 25 countries surveyed by Pew, only Greece's young adults had a more pessimistic view of the honesty of politicians.
\nFor one expert who studies political engagement on both sides of the Atlantic, disaffection among young people helps to explain their unwillingness to participate in politics. The issue is not helped by the fact Congress has minimum age requirements for members, he says. Candidates must be 30 to serve as a senator, and 25 to be a representative.
\n"The one leads to another," remarks James Sloam from Royal Holloway, University of London. "If you don't have enough young people engaged in politics generally, then they won't become representatives."
\nWhat is more, Sloam says, young people in the US and the UK alike are alert to the fact that power does not just lie in politics. They are aware there are many other areas of work in which they can wield influence - including over elected officials.
\nFor those young people who do end up in high-profile political positions, the next question is whether they can make a success of it, especially when it comes to parenthood. Over the summer, the stories of two high-profile young women working in Washington raised fresh questions around compatibility of the job with motherhood.
\nAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 37, a Democratic congresswoman who took office aged 29, announced that she had started the process of freezing her eggs.
\nLater the same week in August, Karoline Leavitt, 29, who was appointed the youngest ever White House press secretary almost two years earlier, said she would leave the Trump administration to spend more time with her family, including her newborn baby. She explained: "I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy and attention required of [being] the White House press secretary."
\nOnly a handful of women have given birth while elected to Congress, while a few dozen lawmakers are mothers to children under the age of 18. The federal government, like many US employers, does not offer paid parental leave.
\nJD Vance, 42, one of the youngest vice-presidents in US history, recently acknowledged that having young children might impact on his own decision to run for the White House in 2028, saying: "We've got four little kids."
\nAmerica's two-party system is cited as another barrier to young people getting involved with politics.
\nSloam, the London academic, says this is because only a relatively narrow range of views are represented. He highlights research that indicates young people are more energised by social movements or issue-based campaigns than by party politics.
\nAnd within party politics, he notes the example of Mamdani and others on the political left who appear to be galvanising youth support outside the Democratic Party mainstream. But he cautions that "it's a little bit sporadic at the moment".
\nThe Republican Party has been through its own splintering over the last decade with the advent of Trump's MAGA movement, which appealed to a swathe of young men in the 2024 presidential election.
\nSome European democracies show a more pluralistic political environment can increase youth engagement, Sloam says. Scandinavian countries, for example, which are more likely to be multi-party, provide a clear counter example because the parties of government in those countries "work with those social movements to try and bring them into the political systems". Citing countries such as Norway, Sloam suggests there is a cycle whereby stronger youth turnout and youth trust in the political system leads to more involvement in politics.
\nOwen, the Republican, fancies his chances in Utah, despite his opponent's much larger war chest.
\nDiscussing what energises him as a Gen Z candidate, he identifies issues including the role of tech in public life, immigration and cost-of-living concerns. "I'm on the front end of starting my own family and looking at the costs and [asking] how am I going to make it work?" he says.
\nAsked if he sees any similarities between his campaign and the campaigns of young political candidates on the opposite side of the political spectrum, he says: "I'd break down the 'us versus them' framework, and maybe discard that a little bit\u2026 [there is] a bipartisan message that a lot of Americans on both sides of the aisle are feeling: that Washington isn't working for them."
\nHe takes a similar view to Mausser, the democratic socialist in New York, that voters should not necessarily pick a candidate because they are young: what matters is their ideas.
\n"For me, it's much more about what you support, what you're who you're fighting for, than what year you were born," she says.
\nLead image: Getty
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-21T15:52:12Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-21T15:52:12Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmx2375zqwwwo#1", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmx2375zqwwwo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "There's a crackdown on sports piracy - but is it already out of control?", "content_text": "", "content_html": ""Football's Gone Round the Spend!" screamed The People newspaper one Sunday in July 1995. It reported breathlessly that three clubs between them were set to pay out more than \u00a320m on new players.
\nThe highlight that summer was the transfer of Stan Collymore from Nottingham Forest to Liverpool for a British record fee of \u00a38.5m.
\nThat number might not seem too impressive today, in an age when \u00a3100m transfers are almost commonplace. But at the time it was seismic stuff, and it symbolised the conversion of football from sport into big business.
\nAll of this had been made possible in the early 1990s by the creation of the Premier League, and its initial TV deal with the broadcaster Sky, which paid more than \u00a3300m for five years of rights. The agreement put live top-tier football behind a TV paywall for the first time.
\nIt was a lucrative model, one that other leading championships in motorsport, rugby, golf and cricket would later seek to replicate.
\nBut now, that model is coming under pressure. Piracy has become endemic in British sports: around half of sports fans now admit to using what they might euphemistically call "alternative" means to watch paywalled material, according to the consultancy Ampere Analysis.
\nAnd this summer saw signs of a clampdown.
\nIn August, a man in Lancashire was jailed for six and a half years for running an illegal streaming service that police said had generated almost \u00a31m in illicit profits. In June, a postman from Pembrokeshire was jailed for over three years for selling illegal subscriptions and supplying pirate software to nearly 2,000 people.
\nA third man, from Merseyside, received a suspended 32-month sentence in August for similar offences. Several pubs have been fined thousands of pounds for screening matches illegally.
\nTV companies that have paid huge sums for exclusive rights to high-profile sports are having to work harder than ever to protect their investments. To some extent, broadcasters used to see copyright theft as a cost of doing business: irritating and expensive, but not an existential threat. But now, as advertising revenues fall, and viewers move away from long-term subscription services like Sky or TNT Sports, the industry is getting seriously worried.
\nThere is a great deal at stake. The Premier League alone is a sporting monster. In its most recent deal, it sold its viewing rights to domestic audiences for \u00a36.7bn over four years, with almost as much coming from foreign rights. Armed with bundles of TV cash, clubs have been able to attract the finest players in the world. That in turn has given the league a major international profile.
\nAlthough football has been the main beneficiary of paid-for TV in the UK, other competitions such as Formula One, Six Nations rugby and the Wimbledon tennis championships have also commanded very high fees for selling exclusive rights. Live sport on free-to-air television has become increasingly rare.
\nYet that wealth could be threatened by a surge in piracy and illegal viewing. The practice is most common among younger, digital-native audiences, who each year become a larger and larger share of sports fans. But many older viewers also seem comfortable with it.
\n"For 18 to 34-year-olds, it's over 70% who admit to doing this regularly," says Daniel Monaghan, a researcher at Ampere Analysis. "Over half of 35 to 44s admit to doing it, and about a third of those aged 45 to 64."
\nThis year's Champions League final went behind a paywall in the UK for the first time in more than 30 years. Viewers were asked to pay at least \u00a34.99 to watch it, prompting a backlash, including from the then-prime minister, Arsenal fan Sir Keir Starmer.
\n"Hardworking people shouldn't have to fork out for a subscription to watch this match," he wrote on X.
\nMany simply refused to pay: 3.7 million IP addresses accessed illegal streams of the match in the UK, according to research carried out by the Gaming Compliance International consultancy, on behalf of the Guardian newspaper. That compared to around seven million people who watched it legally in the UK.
\nOne prolific user of pirate streams is "Kiran", a tech sector worker in his 30s, who prefers not to give his real name. A keen Arsenal fan, he likes to watch Premier League and Champions League games, as well as big matches in Spain's La Liga. He has a paid subscription to TNT Sports, but uses streaming websites to see games that are not available there.
\n"What it comes down to is the financial side - that's the big one - and ease of access as well," he says. "Getting every single game will cost you hundreds of pounds a year."
\nMeanwhile the streams he uses are free, with links readily obtainable on social media.
\nBut there's another issue, he says: the famous blackout. Games taking place between 14:45 and 17:15 on a Saturday are not usually screened live in the UK, a decades-old policy designed to protect crowds at lower league matches. But broadcasters outside the UK can and do show those matches, fuelling pirated streams.
\n"I pretty much got into streaming stuff due to [the blackout]," Kiran says, "and I'd say I sort of did it a bit more as subscriptions got more expensive."
\nThose searching for pirated material have plenty of options. Streaming links, along with advice on how to avoid their pitfalls, are freely available in online discussion groups. These links, used by Kiran and his friends, have practical downsides \u2013 such as frequent buffering or poor quality, or platforms that disappear without warning. In some cases, they can also be used to bombard viewers with explicit ads for porn sites.
\nMany people prefer to access illegal content with a streaming device, such as an Amazon Fire Stick, a pocket-sized gadget that plugs into a TV. The sticks are legitimate products, but they can also be "sideloaded" with unauthorised software, allowing pirates to mimic the output of legitimate outlets by offering packages of selected channels.
\nA third option for illicit viewing is to use a virtual private network, or VPN, which effectively allows your computer to pretend it's in a different country, one in which access to sports programming is cheaper than it is in the UK (or totally free).
\nEarlier this year, the Sports Industry Group found that 58% of fans surveyed considered illegal streaming to be socially acceptable.
\nThat may be because viewers have simply come to resent the amount of money they are expected to pay.
\nAs the government's Intellectual Property Office puts it, "a main driver of illegal content access is the perception of unfair or high pricing for legal services".
\nA British person wanting to access all live Premier League games, for example, would need subscriptions to both Sky Sports and TNT Sports. Throw in some matches from Spain, or European Champions Cup rugby, and Premier Sports has to be added to the list. Many boxing matches and NFL games are on DAZN. A keen fan could easily end up paying \u00a380 to \u00a3100 a month.
\nUntil relatively recently, clamping down on piracy was not seen as a priority by the broadcasters themselves. They were focused on audience growth, and copyright infringement was simply a cost of doing business.
\nIn some parts of the industry, it was even seen as a benefit. In 2013, the then-chief executive of Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes, notoriously welcomed the drama series Game of Thrones becoming the most pirated show in the world. He suggested that the attention generated by illegal viewing was "better than an Emmy" because it helped create buzz and ultimately attract new subscribers.
\nNow, however, the mood has shifted. Conventional broadcasting is under pressure as advertising revenues fall and viewers move away from long-term subscription services, towards more flexible offers from streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV. Both Sky and TNT Sports have reported losses.
\nAccording to a recent report by WPI Economics, illegal sports streaming costs the broadcasting industry about \u00a3700m each year.
\nAnd piracy is already having impacts on the pitch.
\nAt a conference last year, Tom Burrows, the head of global rights at the sports streaming platform DAZN, described piracy as a "huge problem" for his company, and "almost a crisis for the sports rights industry".
\nJust months after he made those comments, DAZN agreed to end its deal with the French football league, under which it was allowed to screen the top tier of French football matches within France. The agreement followed a bitter dispute, which focused in part on the streamer's claims the league had not done enough to combat piracy \u2013 although subscriber numbers were also understood to be an issue.
\nEven though DAZN paid a reported \u20ac100m (\u00a385m) to end the contract (along with outstanding rights fees worth another \u20ac140m), its departure created a hole in the French league's finances. It was left to set up its own streaming service, and the amount of broadcast income fell from roughly \u20ac700m per year to \u20ac412m this season, according to figures compiled by football-finance.com.
\nFor a European powerhouse like Paris St Germain, with plenty of other revenue sources, this probably matters little. But for smaller teams it has been a serious problem. Angers SCO, a club in the west of France, said last year the affair had cost it \u20ac30m over two seasons, and forced it to sell its striker Est\u00e9ban Lepaul.
\nIt's unlikely that a competition on the scale of the Premier League would lose its broadcaster. But piracy could ultimately limit how much they will be willing to pay in future.
\n"If you look at the finances of some of the broadcasters, they're losing money," says Kieran Maguire, associate professor of football finance at the University of Liverpool. "Piracy\u2026 is taking up a larger and larger share of the revenues that they would anticipate being able to generate through their subscription models. So yes, it is a worry for them."
\nDaniel Monaghan of Ampere thinks piracy "is at the very least a significant constraint on the sports rights models that have been highly lucrative for broadcasters and rights holders over the last 30 years".
\nIf left unchecked, he thinks this will make it harder for rights holders to generate a return on their investments.
\nAt best this could hamper future growth. At worst it could lead to falling revenues over time, hitting the sports that have benefitted most from the wave of TV money.
\nIn the case of the Premier League, this might just mean fewer blockbuster transfers - but it could also reduce the sum the League gives to the wider football game, from grassroots upwards, which amounted to \u00a31.6bn over the three years to 2025.
\nNick Sumner of Fact says the current priority is to educate people about the risks of piracy - but he conspicuously stops short of ruling out a more punitive future policy.
\n"There are crimes being committed here," he says.
\nSo it is possible that viewers of illicit material just might one day find themselves in expensive legal trouble.
\nHowever, the sheer scale of a major clampdown would present a formidable challenge, and could generate resentment. There would be no guarantees that those watching illegally today would take out legitimate subscriptions tomorrow.
\nTop image credit: Getty.
", "summary": ""Football's Gone Round the Spend!" screamed The People newspaper one Sunday in July 1995. It reported breathlessly that three clubs between them were set to pay out more than \u00a320m on new players.
\nThe highlight that summer was the transfer of Stan Collymore from Nottingham Forest to Liverpool for a British record fee of \u00a38.5m.
\nThat number might not seem too impressive today, in an age when \u00a3100m transfers are almost commonplace. But at the time it was seismic stuff, and it symbolised the conversion of football from sport into big business.
\nAll of this had been made possible in the early 1990s by the creation of the Premier League, and its initial TV deal with the broadcaster Sky, which paid more than \u00a3300m for five years of rights. The agreement put live top-tier football behind a TV paywall for the first time.
\nIt was a lucrative model, one that other leading championships in motorsport, rugby, golf and cricket would later seek to replicate.
\nBut now, that model is coming under pressure. Piracy has become endemic in British sports: around half of sports fans now admit to using what they might euphemistically call "alternative" means to watch paywalled material, according to the consultancy Ampere Analysis.
\nAnd this summer saw signs of a clampdown.
\nIn August, a man in Lancashire was jailed for six and a half years for running an illegal streaming service that police said had generated almost \u00a31m in illicit profits. In June, a postman from Pembrokeshire was jailed for over three years for selling illegal subscriptions and supplying pirate software to nearly 2,000 people.
\nA third man, from Merseyside, received a suspended 32-month sentence in August for similar offences. Several pubs have been fined thousands of pounds for screening matches illegally.
\nTV companies that have paid huge sums for exclusive rights to high-profile sports are having to work harder than ever to protect their investments. To some extent, broadcasters used to see copyright theft as a cost of doing business: irritating and expensive, but not an existential threat. But now, as advertising revenues fall, and viewers move away from long-term subscription services like Sky or TNT Sports, the industry is getting seriously worried.
\nThere is a great deal at stake. The Premier League alone is a sporting monster. In its most recent deal, it sold its viewing rights to domestic audiences for \u00a36.7bn over four years, with almost as much coming from foreign rights. Armed with bundles of TV cash, clubs have been able to attract the finest players in the world. That in turn has given the league a major international profile.
\nAlthough football has been the main beneficiary of paid-for TV in the UK, other competitions such as Formula One, Six Nations rugby and the Wimbledon tennis championships have also commanded very high fees for selling exclusive rights. Live sport on free-to-air television has become increasingly rare.
\nYet that wealth could be threatened by a surge in piracy and illegal viewing. The practice is most common among younger, digital-native audiences, who each year become a larger and larger share of sports fans. But many older viewers also seem comfortable with it.
\n"For 18 to 34-year-olds, it's over 70% who admit to doing this regularly," says Daniel Monaghan, a researcher at Ampere Analysis. "Over half of 35 to 44s admit to doing it, and about a third of those aged 45 to 64."
\nThis year's Champions League final went behind a paywall in the UK for the first time in more than 30 years. Viewers were asked to pay at least \u00a34.99 to watch it, prompting a backlash, including from the then-prime minister, Arsenal fan Sir Keir Starmer.
\n"Hardworking people shouldn't have to fork out for a subscription to watch this match," he wrote on X.
\nMany simply refused to pay: 3.7 million IP addresses accessed illegal streams of the match in the UK, according to research carried out by the Gaming Compliance International consultancy, on behalf of the Guardian newspaper. That compared to around seven million people who watched it legally in the UK.
\nOne prolific user of pirate streams is "Kiran", a tech sector worker in his 30s, who prefers not to give his real name. A keen Arsenal fan, he likes to watch Premier League and Champions League games, as well as big matches in Spain's La Liga. He has a paid subscription to TNT Sports, but uses streaming websites to see games that are not available there.
\n"What it comes down to is the financial side - that's the big one - and ease of access as well," he says. "Getting every single game will cost you hundreds of pounds a year."
\nMeanwhile the streams he uses are free, with links readily obtainable on social media.
\nBut there's another issue, he says: the famous blackout. Games taking place between 14:45 and 17:15 on a Saturday are not usually screened live in the UK, a decades-old policy designed to protect crowds at lower league matches. But broadcasters outside the UK can and do show those matches, fuelling pirated streams.
\n"I pretty much got into streaming stuff due to [the blackout]," Kiran says, "and I'd say I sort of did it a bit more as subscriptions got more expensive."
\nThose searching for pirated material have plenty of options. Streaming links, along with advice on how to avoid their pitfalls, are freely available in online discussion groups. These links, used by Kiran and his friends, have practical downsides \u2013 such as frequent buffering or poor quality, or platforms that disappear without warning. In some cases, they can also be used to bombard viewers with explicit ads for porn sites.
\nMany people prefer to access illegal content with a streaming device, such as an Amazon Fire Stick, a pocket-sized gadget that plugs into a TV. The sticks are legitimate products, but they can also be "sideloaded" with unauthorised software, allowing pirates to mimic the output of legitimate outlets by offering packages of selected channels.
\nA third option for illicit viewing is to use a virtual private network, or VPN, which effectively allows your computer to pretend it's in a different country, one in which access to sports programming is cheaper than it is in the UK (or totally free).
\nEarlier this year, the Sports Industry Group found that 58% of fans surveyed considered illegal streaming to be socially acceptable.
\nThat may be because viewers have simply come to resent the amount of money they are expected to pay.
\nAs the government's Intellectual Property Office puts it, "a main driver of illegal content access is the perception of unfair or high pricing for legal services".
\nA British person wanting to access all live Premier League games, for example, would need subscriptions to both Sky Sports and TNT Sports. Throw in some matches from Spain, or European Champions Cup rugby, and Premier Sports has to be added to the list. Many boxing matches and NFL games are on DAZN. A keen fan could easily end up paying \u00a380 to \u00a3100 a month.
\nUntil relatively recently, clamping down on piracy was not seen as a priority by the broadcasters themselves. They were focused on audience growth, and copyright infringement was simply a cost of doing business.
\nIn some parts of the industry, it was even seen as a benefit. In 2013, the then-chief executive of Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes, notoriously welcomed the drama series Game of Thrones becoming the most pirated show in the world. He suggested that the attention generated by illegal viewing was "better than an Emmy" because it helped create buzz and ultimately attract new subscribers.
\nNow, however, the mood has shifted. Conventional broadcasting is under pressure as advertising revenues fall and viewers move away from long-term subscription services, towards more flexible offers from streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV. Both Sky and TNT Sports have reported losses.
\nAccording to a recent report by WPI Economics, illegal sports streaming costs the broadcasting industry about \u00a3700m each year.
\nAnd piracy is already having impacts on the pitch.
\nAt a conference last year, Tom Burrows, the head of global rights at the sports streaming platform DAZN, described piracy as a "huge problem" for his company, and "almost a crisis for the sports rights industry".
\nJust months after he made those comments, DAZN agreed to end its deal with the French football league, under which it was allowed to screen the top tier of French football matches within France. The agreement followed a bitter dispute, which focused in part on the streamer's claims the league had not done enough to combat piracy \u2013 although subscriber numbers were also understood to be an issue.
\nEven though DAZN paid a reported \u20ac100m (\u00a385m) to end the contract (along with outstanding rights fees worth another \u20ac140m), its departure created a hole in the French league's finances. It was left to set up its own streaming service, and the amount of broadcast income fell from roughly \u20ac700m per year to \u20ac412m this season, according to figures compiled by football-finance.com.
\nFor a European powerhouse like Paris St Germain, with plenty of other revenue sources, this probably matters little. But for smaller teams it has been a serious problem. Angers SCO, a club in the west of France, said last year the affair had cost it \u20ac30m over two seasons, and forced it to sell its striker Est\u00e9ban Lepaul.
\nIt's unlikely that a competition on the scale of the Premier League would lose its broadcaster. But piracy could ultimately limit how much they will be willing to pay in future.
\n"If you look at the finances of some of the broadcasters, they're losing money," says Kieran Maguire, associate professor of football finance at the University of Liverpool. "Piracy\u2026 is taking up a larger and larger share of the revenues that they would anticipate being able to generate through their subscription models. So yes, it is a worry for them."
\nDaniel Monaghan of Ampere thinks piracy "is at the very least a significant constraint on the sports rights models that have been highly lucrative for broadcasters and rights holders over the last 30 years".
\nIf left unchecked, he thinks this will make it harder for rights holders to generate a return on their investments.
\nAt best this could hamper future growth. At worst it could lead to falling revenues over time, hitting the sports that have benefitted most from the wave of TV money.
\nIn the case of the Premier League, this might just mean fewer blockbuster transfers - but it could also reduce the sum the League gives to the wider football game, from grassroots upwards, which amounted to \u00a31.6bn over the three years to 2025.
\nNick Sumner of Fact says the current priority is to educate people about the risks of piracy - but he conspicuously stops short of ruling out a more punitive future policy.
\n"There are crimes being committed here," he says.
\nSo it is possible that viewers of illicit material just might one day find themselves in expensive legal trouble.
\nHowever, the sheer scale of a major clampdown would present a formidable challenge, and could generate resentment. There would be no guarantees that those watching illegally today would take out legitimate subscriptions tomorrow.
\nTop image credit: Getty.
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-17T16:11:09Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-17T16:11:09Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw240qv4ygzmo#1", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw240qv4ygzmo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "Wales has a school standards crisis. Will plans to fix it actually work?", "content_text": "", "content_html": "As you dip into the valley on the way into Merthyr Tydfil, a new earthy-toned building dominates the view.
\nIt's the new site of Saint Carlo Acutis Catholic School. With its rooftop science garden, solar panels and floor-to-ceiling windows, it's an impressive sight.
\nExcited staff and 940 pupils moved into the \u00a350m complex at the start of September. But they did so just as the Welsh education system was being painted in a less positive light, with Wales once again ranking the worst of UK nations in global tests.
\n"It casts doubt over a system we're proud of and children that we're proud of," says Sarah Hopkins, who's been a headteacher here for eight years. She says it doesn't tell the full story but admits "it is disappointing".
\nWelsh parents are currently thinking about the next steps for their children, with application deadlines for secondary school places at the end of this month. That comes at a time when the test results pose difficult questions about why Wales has so clearly underperformed relative to its closest neighbours. And with Wales's devolved government now run by a party other than Labour for the first time ever, can the new Plaid Cymru administration do what it's promised and improve standards?
\nSarah Hopkins started teaching in 1998 - a year before the Welsh Assembly, now the Senedd, took over responsibility for education in Wales from Westminster.
\nIn that time she's had to navigate many system-wide and school changes.
\nThe latest challenge has been managing the big move from the old mishmash of 1960s-built classrooms to the vast new building.
\nBut buildings alone do not drive excellence, and the gap between Wales and the other UK countries is getting wider.
\nPisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) measures teenagers' skills in reading, maths and science. Sat by a sample of 15-year-olds \u2013 3,406 in Wales in 2025, including some in Sarah Hopkins' school - it provides a snapshot of how education systems are performing.
\nOn the day results were published, Wales' education Minister, Anna Brychan, euphemistically said they were "not where we want them to be". Others called them catastrophic.
\nThe graphs are stark.
\nWales first took part in the tests in 2006. There have been upticks along the way. But when the pandemic affected scores across the board in 2022, Wales fell back furthest. And the gulf grew in the latest results.
\nThe OECD, the global economic development body which runs Pisa, says that 20 points equates to roughly a year of learning. That would mean Welsh 15-year-olds are about two years behind England's in reading, science and maths. In reading, they also trail teenagers in Scotland and Northern Ireland by a year.
\nSoon after the devolved administration was established, the Welsh Labour government of the early 2000s used its powers over education and other public services to go off on a different course to Tony Blair's Labour government at Westminster - creating what the then Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan called "clear, red water".
\nSecondary school league tables and standardised tests at seven, 11 and 14 (SATs) were scrapped. A new learning-through-play approach for the youngest pupils was an early flagship policy.
\nPoor Pisa results in 2010 brought about a drastic reappraisal. Plain speaking Education Minister Leighton Andrews called the results a "wake-up call" for a "complacent" system and introduced a new raft of reforms.
\nAlongside a literacy and numeracy drive, Andrews re-introduced accountability measures with annual reading and maths tests for seven-to-14 year olds, and a new school performance regime, called banding.
\nThere were some parallels between the political styles of Andrews and the man in charge of England's schools system at the time, Conservative Michael Gove, who was on his own controversial education mission with an emphasis on high-stakes accountability. The two seemed to relish their occasional public spats over policy.
\nBut policies introduced by Andrews lost their bite over time. The school banding system was changed and eventually dropped altogether during the pandemic. Tests later evolved into personalised assessments. And the focus moved to developing a new curriculum in Wales, something which Andrews recently said was a "distraction" from efforts to drive up standards.
\nSir Nick Gibb, a former schools minister at Westminster who worked under Michael Gove, believes the main reason for Wales' Pisa woes is weak accountability.
\nHe says "schools are spending billions of pounds of public money and they're not being held to account for the results that they produce".
\nHe argues that focusing on the "science of learning" paid dividends with England's move up international education rankings. Primary schools in England were told they had to use a structured form of phonics to teach young children to read. This was reinforced with a phonics screening check for six-year-olds.
\nSir Nick claims education standards in Wales and Scotland suffered because they didn't do the same.
\nIn general, education ministers in England have been more likely to set direction for teachers, highlighted by the approach to phonics. In Wales, for the most part, the mantra has been to trust the profession. And though that freedom sounds good in theory, it has pitfalls.
\nIt's the thinking at the heart of the new curriculum for Wales - dubbed the biggest reform to Welsh education in a generation.
\nThere's widespread support for the core purposes of the curriculum which aim to create well-rounded young people with the skills to contribute to the economy and to society. But there's less confidence in the way it tries to go about achieving that.
\nThe curriculum, which started being developed in 2014 and is only being fully rolled out this academic year, gives schools freedom to design their own curricula. In fact it's now "left almost completely up to schools what they should teach," says Lucy Crehan, an associate advisor on curriculum at Swansea University and education consultant.
\nExperts such as Crehan argue it's unlikely to improve standards and may make the situation worse by exacerbating inconsistency across schools.
\nAnd many teachers, already overstretched and overwhelmed, have struggled.
\n"I think there does need to be more clarity for teachers, for schools on what actually it is they should be teaching and where it is they should be getting students to and by what point," Crehan says. She warns that it is the most disadvantaged pupils who could come off worst.
\n"This is categorically not teachers' fault. They have been let down by a system that has said, you're the professionals, off you go and sort out everything", says Crehan.
\nThere has been a growing consensus about the need to provide teachers with extra support, which was acknowledged by the previous Labour government. Teaching unions warn the profession is being asked to introduce the biggest reform to Welsh education in a generation while still dealing with the fallout of the pandemic, including poor attendance and behaviour, as well as squeezed budgets.
\nIn the meantime, the real test of the curriculum's impact on standards is yet to come. The next Pisa tests, planned for 2029, will be the first with the new curriculum fully in place.
\nApart from what's taught and how, there are other factors that could influence standards.
\n"There's nothing in the water in Wales that's different," says Nick Gibb. But, could the way the education system is structured play a part?
\nUnlike in England, in Wales there are no academies or free schools. Comprehensives, run by local authorities, are the norm. Former First Minister Lord Carwyn Jones believes that 22 councils is too many to run education effectively. He says failing to cut that number is his biggest regret in government.
\nJones believes there is a "structural problem in Wales where the Welsh government sets policy\u2026but doesn't deliver education", which is the job of local authorities.
\nSome councils oversee a handful of schools \u2013 including only four secondaries in some cases. "I just don't think you can have the right level of challenge or the right level of guidance if the local authority itself is very, very small," he says. Unless that's addressed, it's impossible "to provide the right level of support to improve our Pisa scores".
\nWhen Wales-based education economist Luke Sibieta compared GCSE results in areas such as Wrexham and Blaenau Gwent in Wales with the likes of similarly disadvantaged Gateshead and Salford in England, he found "disadvantaged pupils just perform worse in Wales than they do in England". The latest Pisa data showed the most disadvantaged pupils in England performed above the overall Welsh average in reading.
\nTaking the stage at Plaid Cymru's first conference in government, cabinet minister for Education Anna Brychan's assessment was more blunt than a month earlier, when the Pisa results came out. Speaking in Welsh, she called them "brawychus" - roughly translated as "terrible" or "shocking".
\nBut so far she hasn't proposed wholesale changes to education. The minister has been at pains to emphasise that she's committed to the new curriculum. Even if it was practical to unpick it all, she's acknowledged there's little appetite for major upheaval. Instead, she's promising to review aspects of it and to set clearer steps for measuring how pupils are progressing.
\nBrychan's view is that a focus on literacy and numeracy has been "lost in the noise" of reforms. She's promised more clarity.
\nPhonics are more central to the plan and there will be more tracking of children's progress in primary school.
\nWales' education system needs to be better at measuring itself, says Luke Sibieta, who is a research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. And without consistent benchmarks, it's not surprising that so much weight has been placed on Pisa's verdict. Sibieta makes the point that, looked at through a different lens, the downward trend in Wales' results is in line with "places like France, Germany, Italy, Spain" while England has been bucking the trend. That's little consolation for those involved in Welsh education.
\nSarah Hopkins says her school has strived to build an effective curriculum due to professional pride and determination to make sure the "children get what they deserve", but she admits "there's no checks you're doing it properly".
\nOverall, she is optimistic that the new curriculum and efforts in schools to improve standards will bear fruit in better Pisa scores in future. "I think that there will be a time where Wales will lead the way," she says.
\nBut some fear a generation of young people have been let down.
\n"It's not the be all and end all, how you do in Pisa," says Sibieta, "but if it means that young people are less highly skilled and less able to get good quality jobs later on in life, that has implications for all of us."
\nGraphic design: Jess Carr
\nTop image credit: Getty Images
", "summary": "As you dip into the valley on the way into Merthyr Tydfil, a new earthy-toned building dominates the view.
\nIt's the new site of Saint Carlo Acutis Catholic School. With its rooftop science garden, solar panels and floor-to-ceiling windows, it's an impressive sight.
\nExcited staff and 940 pupils moved into the \u00a350m complex at the start of September. But they did so just as the Welsh education system was being painted in a less positive light, with Wales once again ranking the worst of UK nations in global tests.
\n"It casts doubt over a system we're proud of and children that we're proud of," says Sarah Hopkins, who's been a headteacher here for eight years. She says it doesn't tell the full story but admits "it is disappointing".
\nWelsh parents are currently thinking about the next steps for their children, with application deadlines for secondary school places at the end of this month. That comes at a time when the test results pose difficult questions about why Wales has so clearly underperformed relative to its closest neighbours. And with Wales's devolved government now run by a party other than Labour for the first time ever, can the new Plaid Cymru administration do what it's promised and improve standards?
\nSarah Hopkins started teaching in 1998 - a year before the Welsh Assembly, now the Senedd, took over responsibility for education in Wales from Westminster.
\nIn that time she's had to navigate many system-wide and school changes.
\nThe latest challenge has been managing the big move from the old mishmash of 1960s-built classrooms to the vast new building.
\nBut buildings alone do not drive excellence, and the gap between Wales and the other UK countries is getting wider.
\nPisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) measures teenagers' skills in reading, maths and science. Sat by a sample of 15-year-olds \u2013 3,406 in Wales in 2025, including some in Sarah Hopkins' school - it provides a snapshot of how education systems are performing.
\nOn the day results were published, Wales' education Minister, Anna Brychan, euphemistically said they were "not where we want them to be". Others called them catastrophic.
\nThe graphs are stark.
\nWales first took part in the tests in 2006. There have been upticks along the way. But when the pandemic affected scores across the board in 2022, Wales fell back furthest. And the gulf grew in the latest results.
\nThe OECD, the global economic development body which runs Pisa, says that 20 points equates to roughly a year of learning. That would mean Welsh 15-year-olds are about two years behind England's in reading, science and maths. In reading, they also trail teenagers in Scotland and Northern Ireland by a year.
\nSoon after the devolved administration was established, the Welsh Labour government of the early 2000s used its powers over education and other public services to go off on a different course to Tony Blair's Labour government at Westminster - creating what the then Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan called "clear, red water".
\nSecondary school league tables and standardised tests at seven, 11 and 14 (SATs) were scrapped. A new learning-through-play approach for the youngest pupils was an early flagship policy.
\nPoor Pisa results in 2010 brought about a drastic reappraisal. Plain speaking Education Minister Leighton Andrews called the results a "wake-up call" for a "complacent" system and introduced a new raft of reforms.
\nAlongside a literacy and numeracy drive, Andrews re-introduced accountability measures with annual reading and maths tests for seven-to-14 year olds, and a new school performance regime, called banding.
\nThere were some parallels between the political styles of Andrews and the man in charge of England's schools system at the time, Conservative Michael Gove, who was on his own controversial education mission with an emphasis on high-stakes accountability. The two seemed to relish their occasional public spats over policy.
\nBut policies introduced by Andrews lost their bite over time. The school banding system was changed and eventually dropped altogether during the pandemic. Tests later evolved into personalised assessments. And the focus moved to developing a new curriculum in Wales, something which Andrews recently said was a "distraction" from efforts to drive up standards.
\nSir Nick Gibb, a former schools minister at Westminster who worked under Michael Gove, believes the main reason for Wales' Pisa woes is weak accountability.
\nHe says "schools are spending billions of pounds of public money and they're not being held to account for the results that they produce".
\nHe argues that focusing on the "science of learning" paid dividends with England's move up international education rankings. Primary schools in England were told they had to use a structured form of phonics to teach young children to read. This was reinforced with a phonics screening check for six-year-olds.
\nSir Nick claims education standards in Wales and Scotland suffered because they didn't do the same.
\nIn general, education ministers in England have been more likely to set direction for teachers, highlighted by the approach to phonics. In Wales, for the most part, the mantra has been to trust the profession. And though that freedom sounds good in theory, it has pitfalls.
\nIt's the thinking at the heart of the new curriculum for Wales - dubbed the biggest reform to Welsh education in a generation.
\nThere's widespread support for the core purposes of the curriculum which aim to create well-rounded young people with the skills to contribute to the economy and to society. But there's less confidence in the way it tries to go about achieving that.
\nThe curriculum, which started being developed in 2014 and is only being fully rolled out this academic year, gives schools freedom to design their own curricula. In fact it's now "left almost completely up to schools what they should teach," says Lucy Crehan, an associate advisor on curriculum at Swansea University and education consultant.
\nExperts such as Crehan argue it's unlikely to improve standards and may make the situation worse by exacerbating inconsistency across schools.
\nAnd many teachers, already overstretched and overwhelmed, have struggled.
\n"I think there does need to be more clarity for teachers, for schools on what actually it is they should be teaching and where it is they should be getting students to and by what point," Crehan says. She warns that it is the most disadvantaged pupils who could come off worst.
\n"This is categorically not teachers' fault. They have been let down by a system that has said, you're the professionals, off you go and sort out everything", says Crehan.
\nThere has been a growing consensus about the need to provide teachers with extra support, which was acknowledged by the previous Labour government. Teaching unions warn the profession is being asked to introduce the biggest reform to Welsh education in a generation while still dealing with the fallout of the pandemic, including poor attendance and behaviour, as well as squeezed budgets.
\nIn the meantime, the real test of the curriculum's impact on standards is yet to come. The next Pisa tests, planned for 2029, will be the first with the new curriculum fully in place.
\nApart from what's taught and how, there are other factors that could influence standards.
\n"There's nothing in the water in Wales that's different," says Nick Gibb. But, could the way the education system is structured play a part?
\nUnlike in England, in Wales there are no academies or free schools. Comprehensives, run by local authorities, are the norm. Former First Minister Lord Carwyn Jones believes that 22 councils is too many to run education effectively. He says failing to cut that number is his biggest regret in government.
\nJones believes there is a "structural problem in Wales where the Welsh government sets policy\u2026but doesn't deliver education", which is the job of local authorities.
\nSome councils oversee a handful of schools \u2013 including only four secondaries in some cases. "I just don't think you can have the right level of challenge or the right level of guidance if the local authority itself is very, very small," he says. Unless that's addressed, it's impossible "to provide the right level of support to improve our Pisa scores".
\nWhen Wales-based education economist Luke Sibieta compared GCSE results in areas such as Wrexham and Blaenau Gwent in Wales with the likes of similarly disadvantaged Gateshead and Salford in England, he found "disadvantaged pupils just perform worse in Wales than they do in England". The latest Pisa data showed the most disadvantaged pupils in England performed above the overall Welsh average in reading.
\nTaking the stage at Plaid Cymru's first conference in government, cabinet minister for Education Anna Brychan's assessment was more blunt than a month earlier, when the Pisa results came out. Speaking in Welsh, she called them "brawychus" - roughly translated as "terrible" or "shocking".
\nBut so far she hasn't proposed wholesale changes to education. The minister has been at pains to emphasise that she's committed to the new curriculum. Even if it was practical to unpick it all, she's acknowledged there's little appetite for major upheaval. Instead, she's promising to review aspects of it and to set clearer steps for measuring how pupils are progressing.
\nBrychan's view is that a focus on literacy and numeracy has been "lost in the noise" of reforms. She's promised more clarity.
\nPhonics are more central to the plan and there will be more tracking of children's progress in primary school.
\nWales' education system needs to be better at measuring itself, says Luke Sibieta, who is a research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. And without consistent benchmarks, it's not surprising that so much weight has been placed on Pisa's verdict. Sibieta makes the point that, looked at through a different lens, the downward trend in Wales' results is in line with "places like France, Germany, Italy, Spain" while England has been bucking the trend. That's little consolation for those involved in Welsh education.
\nSarah Hopkins says her school has strived to build an effective curriculum due to professional pride and determination to make sure the "children get what they deserve", but she admits "there's no checks you're doing it properly".
\nOverall, she is optimistic that the new curriculum and efforts in schools to improve standards will bear fruit in better Pisa scores in future. "I think that there will be a time where Wales will lead the way," she says.
\nBut some fear a generation of young people have been let down.
\n"It's not the be all and end all, how you do in Pisa," says Sibieta, "but if it means that young people are less highly skilled and less able to get good quality jobs later on in life, that has implications for all of us."
\nGraphic design: Jess Carr
\nTop image credit: Getty Images
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-14T16:01:46Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-14T16:01:46Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck5yn0n14r8do#1", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck5yn0n14r8do?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "Publicly owned rail is popular. But is it making the trains run on time?", "content_text": "", "content_html": "The early afternoon of Wednesday 6 August was an unremarkable one on the rail network. Then suddenly, shortly before 14:00, a power failure brought trains across the north-west of England to a halt.
\nChaos ensued: passengers told the BBC they were stranded on platforms for hours, with some having to book hotels for the night.
\nThis incident, stemming from a short power cut that affected Network Rail's operating centre in Manchester, was, in itself, unusual. But it added to a difficult summer for train passengers.
\nRepeated heatwaves required risk control measures like speed reductions to avoid tracks being damaged in the heat, leading to delays and cancellations. There was a serious derailment near Lewes, East Sussex, and another smaller-scale incident near Wickford in Essex soon after.
\nAgainst a backdrop of relatively high cancellation rates and steep fares compared with previous decades, rail users could be forgiven for forming the impression that things are not working.
\nSomething is changing, though: Labour is steadily bringing nearly all passenger rail services into public hands. Nationalisation is a popular idea - a YouGov tracker poll suggests almost two thirds of the public support public ownership.
\nBut how much of this was due to nationalisation?
\nThe Conservatives have cited SWR as an example of how public control does not necessarily mean improvements or fix key problems.
\nBut the government argues SWR's early period in public hands was affected by high summer temperatures, signal failures and trespass incidents.
\nLord Hendy, the rail minister, says work to turn the operator around has included introducing long-delayed new trains on suburban routes and recruiting more drivers, resulting in a drop in those cancellations that are due to staff shortages.
\nTransPennine Express was nationalised in May 2023, under the Conservative government. Many passengers had been at their wits' end as the operator struggled to fulfil its timetable and suffered from poor industrial relations.
\nA plan to improve reliability was put in place, which included cutting some services and even removing one type of train as a way of sorting out staffing problems. A new deal with the drivers' union also helped - something an insider at the former private sector operator claimed to me their company had not been permitted to do.
\nSo has it worked? Cancellations have fallen noticeably. But they were still above the Great Britain average in the year to August.
\nIt's really important to say the data can only tell us so much. There are so many different factors that might affect the performance of each service: for example, the state of the infrastructure it relies on, weather events or simply how well it was working before the government took over.
\nPlus, of the operators nationalised since Labour came to power, only SWR and c2c have completed a whole year in public hands. Even for those nationalised years earlier, the picture is clouded by the impact of the pandemic, when passenger numbers fell off a cliff.
\nBut according to Alex Hynes, chief executive of DfT Operator Limited (DfTO), the government company that currently owns publicly-run operators, it has been possible to make some short-term changes. Notably, these include making one team jointly responsible for managing infrastructure and passenger train services in some areas including the south-west of England.
\n"The railway is a system: track, train, people," he says. "So by putting one person in charge, they can fix all elements of the system to deliver a better service to customers."
\nHynes also gives examples of changes on the recently nationalised Thameslink; investment in better cleaning, improving toilets and replacing unpopular upright "ironing-board" seats.
\nBut when it comes to the pure performance data of operators nationalised in the past few years - delays, cancellations - can we really draw any conclusions yet to tell us whether the policy is working?
\n"I think it's completely hopeless to try and do that assessment over such a short period," Stephen Glaister, a former chair of regulator the Office of Rail and Road who is now emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London. He thinks a decade is needed to assess the impact of nationalisation.
\nThe government argues that official data suggests publicly owned train operators are performing better on punctuality and cancellations overall than those still under DfT contracts to private operators.
\nExperts point out that whoever is running the passenger trains, some limitations remain. Many delays happen because infrastructure, like signals, fails. There's only so much capacity on the existing network. And getting better trains or more staff can take years.
\nThe view that privatisation ultimately failed, leaving unreliable services and high fares, may be widespread. However, Prof Glaister argues that for a few years in the 1990s, the old privatised system actually worked well. Operating costs and subsidies were falling while the number of train services and passengers went up, he says.
\nAnd in the current context, it's important to be clear about what nationalisation really means.
\nThe railways Labour inherited weren't, in truth, completely privatised, and nationalisation doesn't mean a return to British Rail.
\nFor example, the infrastructure manager Network Rail has been fully under public control for over two decades. A number of train companies including LNER and Northern had already been nationalised under the Conservatives. Scotrail, Transport for Wales and Caledonian Sleeper are controlled by devolved national governments.
\nAnd even those operators still on contracts issued by the DfT at Westminster have been heavily controlled by the government for years. During Covid, private operators started being paid a fixed fee to run services, while the taxpayer took on the financial risk. The terms of the contracts meant train companies had to "ask government for permission to blow their nose", according to one senior industry executive, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely.
\nHighly profitable rolling stock companies ("ROSCOS") still own the actual trains. Freight companies operate privately too, and there are a handful of fully commercial "open access operators" on the rails like Lumo, Hull Trains and Grand Central - although there are concerns within the industry that these could end up squeezed.
\nSo what is often referred to as the nationalisation of the railways, in fact amounts to gradually returning passenger train operators run by private companies to public hands as their contracts expire - and making this the default.
\nThis is not all that's happening, though. The government hopes that re-organising the railways under a new publicly run body, Great British Railways (GBR), will make a big difference. This will bring together the running of trains and tracks, ending the current fragmented system.
\nA botched rail timetable introduction in 2018 was the spark for the then-Conservative government to eventually propose GBR as a new overarching body - although the Tories believe private competition should not be excluded from the system.
\nSome trains are already covered in distinctive GBR branding, but the organisation still doesn't exist. A new law to create it is making its way through parliament. Unknowns remain, like exactly how GBR will interact with devolved governments, and who its senior leaders will be.
\nTransport expert and author Prof Jon Shaw, of the University of Plymouth, says the idea of a "single guiding mind" should create "a better planned railway that's more aligned to the customer".
\nProf Shaw thinks potential benefits include better long-term planning around rolling-stock and timetables, and the removal of "the compensation merry-go-round", where train companies and Network Rail argue about whose fault a delay was.
\nHynes says: "The way you get the railway to work is you get the infrastructure and the trains and the people working in harmony because it's a system. And we can do that in a publicly owned GBR railway in a way that we haven't been able to do for a generation."
\nBut Prof Shaw cautions of potential pitfalls. For example, "there remains very little money", and "a massive issue is whether or not the rail minister or DfT more generally - or the Treasury - will be able to butt out" and leave rail leaders to run the railway.
\nProf Glaister also fears politically sensitive aspects such as fares and levels of service could lead to politicians trying to run the railways themselves, because of the amount of public money involved.
\n"Actually, governments are not very good at running railways," he says. "So you want management who are somewhat independent and able to run it."
\nLord Hendy insists that despite the Transport Secretary having ultimate sign-off on GBR's strategy, the body will be genuinely arms-length from government.
\n"The point of this is to get a cadre of people who are committed to the outcomes that the secretary of state and I want for it, who can go off and run it on their own," he says, adding: "They'll have a lot more chance in the future than they've had in the last 20 years."
\nThe railways are currently subsidised to the tune of around \u00a312bn a year - not including spending on major projects like HS2.
\nThe Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander says that she wants to see subsidy levels fall. Meanwhile, Network Rail has acknowledged a squeezed budget means difficult choices, and shoring up the network against the effects of more extreme weather requires investment.
\nProf Glaister says: "When the public is hoping for a better level of service, more reliability, fewer breakdowns and lower fares, what they're really asking for is more money to be put into the railway.
\n"I don't think it's likely the government is going to be able to find more money, probably [it will have] less, actually. And so I think there's a real problem with ministers raising expectations from this policy."
\nBut Hynes doesn't see a contradiction between reducing taxpayer subsidy and making train services better.
\n"My two north stars are performance up and subsidy down," he says. "If the service is better, we get more customers, we get more revenue."
\nLord Hendy and Hynes also push back on the idea that the answer to improving reliability might be running fewer trains.
\nHynes says: "In an industry with high fixed costs, the best way of getting the subsidy down is to go for growth."
\nQuestions also remain about how GBR will manage industrial relations. Terms and conditions currently vary across operators. What will cost-conscious ministers do if unions seek to standardise these at the most generous level across the network?
\nWhile ministers argue they are getting on with improvements that people will notice, there's acknowledgement that the speed of improvement will vary between operators.
\nLord Hendy says some changes "ought to be dead boring\u2026 to make sure tomorrow is a little better than today if you can do it".
\nBut he says "more than 30 years worth of behaviors" will need altering to make the railway run solely in the interests of the customer.
\nAt Woking, is there optimism that things will improve in the long run?
\n"I really hope so," says Leo, "it would be amazing - as it's not the best service now."
\nGraphics by Rob England, Verify data team
", "summary": "The early afternoon of Wednesday 6 August was an unremarkable one on the rail network. Then suddenly, shortly before 14:00, a power failure brought trains across the north-west of England to a halt.
\nChaos ensued: passengers told the BBC they were stranded on platforms for hours, with some having to book hotels for the night.
\nThis incident, stemming from a short power cut that affected Network Rail's operating centre in Manchester, was, in itself, unusual. But it added to a difficult summer for train passengers.
\nRepeated heatwaves required risk control measures like speed reductions to avoid tracks being damaged in the heat, leading to delays and cancellations. There was a serious derailment near Lewes, East Sussex, and another smaller-scale incident near Wickford in Essex soon after.
\nAgainst a backdrop of relatively high cancellation rates and steep fares compared with previous decades, rail users could be forgiven for forming the impression that things are not working.
\nSomething is changing, though: Labour is steadily bringing nearly all passenger rail services into public hands. Nationalisation is a popular idea - a YouGov tracker poll suggests almost two thirds of the public support public ownership.
\nBut how much of this was due to nationalisation?
\nThe Conservatives have cited SWR as an example of how public control does not necessarily mean improvements or fix key problems.
\nBut the government argues SWR's early period in public hands was affected by high summer temperatures, signal failures and trespass incidents.
\nLord Hendy, the rail minister, says work to turn the operator around has included introducing long-delayed new trains on suburban routes and recruiting more drivers, resulting in a drop in those cancellations that are due to staff shortages.
\nTransPennine Express was nationalised in May 2023, under the Conservative government. Many passengers had been at their wits' end as the operator struggled to fulfil its timetable and suffered from poor industrial relations.
\nA plan to improve reliability was put in place, which included cutting some services and even removing one type of train as a way of sorting out staffing problems. A new deal with the drivers' union also helped - something an insider at the former private sector operator claimed to me their company had not been permitted to do.
\nSo has it worked? Cancellations have fallen noticeably. But they were still above the Great Britain average in the year to August.
\nIt's really important to say the data can only tell us so much. There are so many different factors that might affect the performance of each service: for example, the state of the infrastructure it relies on, weather events or simply how well it was working before the government took over.
\nPlus, of the operators nationalised since Labour came to power, only SWR and c2c have completed a whole year in public hands. Even for those nationalised years earlier, the picture is clouded by the impact of the pandemic, when passenger numbers fell off a cliff.
\nBut according to Alex Hynes, chief executive of DfT Operator Limited (DfTO), the government company that currently owns publicly-run operators, it has been possible to make some short-term changes. Notably, these include making one team jointly responsible for managing infrastructure and passenger train services in some areas including the south-west of England.
\n"The railway is a system: track, train, people," he says. "So by putting one person in charge, they can fix all elements of the system to deliver a better service to customers."
\nHynes also gives examples of changes on the recently nationalised Thameslink; investment in better cleaning, improving toilets and replacing unpopular upright "ironing-board" seats.
\nBut when it comes to the pure performance data of operators nationalised in the past few years - delays, cancellations - can we really draw any conclusions yet to tell us whether the policy is working?
\n"I think it's completely hopeless to try and do that assessment over such a short period," Stephen Glaister, a former chair of regulator the Office of Rail and Road who is now emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London. He thinks a decade is needed to assess the impact of nationalisation.
\nThe government argues that official data suggests publicly owned train operators are performing better on punctuality and cancellations overall than those still under DfT contracts to private operators.
\nExperts point out that whoever is running the passenger trains, some limitations remain. Many delays happen because infrastructure, like signals, fails. There's only so much capacity on the existing network. And getting better trains or more staff can take years.
\nThe view that privatisation ultimately failed, leaving unreliable services and high fares, may be widespread. However, Prof Glaister argues that for a few years in the 1990s, the old privatised system actually worked well. Operating costs and subsidies were falling while the number of train services and passengers went up, he says.
\nAnd in the current context, it's important to be clear about what nationalisation really means.
\nThe railways Labour inherited weren't, in truth, completely privatised, and nationalisation doesn't mean a return to British Rail.
\nFor example, the infrastructure manager Network Rail has been fully under public control for over two decades. A number of train companies including LNER and Northern had already been nationalised under the Conservatives. Scotrail, Transport for Wales and Caledonian Sleeper are controlled by devolved national governments.
\nAnd even those operators still on contracts issued by the DfT at Westminster have been heavily controlled by the government for years. During Covid, private operators started being paid a fixed fee to run services, while the taxpayer took on the financial risk. The terms of the contracts meant train companies had to "ask government for permission to blow their nose", according to one senior industry executive, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely.
\nHighly profitable rolling stock companies ("ROSCOS") still own the actual trains. Freight companies operate privately too, and there are a handful of fully commercial "open access operators" on the rails like Lumo, Hull Trains and Grand Central - although there are concerns within the industry that these could end up squeezed.
\nSo what is often referred to as the nationalisation of the railways, in fact amounts to gradually returning passenger train operators run by private companies to public hands as their contracts expire - and making this the default.
\nThis is not all that's happening, though. The government hopes that re-organising the railways under a new publicly run body, Great British Railways (GBR), will make a big difference. This will bring together the running of trains and tracks, ending the current fragmented system.
\nA botched rail timetable introduction in 2018 was the spark for the then-Conservative government to eventually propose GBR as a new overarching body - although the Tories believe private competition should not be excluded from the system.
\nSome trains are already covered in distinctive GBR branding, but the organisation still doesn't exist. A new law to create it is making its way through parliament. Unknowns remain, like exactly how GBR will interact with devolved governments, and who its senior leaders will be.
\nTransport expert and author Prof Jon Shaw, of the University of Plymouth, says the idea of a "single guiding mind" should create "a better planned railway that's more aligned to the customer".
\nProf Shaw thinks potential benefits include better long-term planning around rolling-stock and timetables, and the removal of "the compensation merry-go-round", where train companies and Network Rail argue about whose fault a delay was.
\nHynes says: "The way you get the railway to work is you get the infrastructure and the trains and the people working in harmony because it's a system. And we can do that in a publicly owned GBR railway in a way that we haven't been able to do for a generation."
\nBut Prof Shaw cautions of potential pitfalls. For example, "there remains very little money", and "a massive issue is whether or not the rail minister or DfT more generally - or the Treasury - will be able to butt out" and leave rail leaders to run the railway.
\nProf Glaister also fears politically sensitive aspects such as fares and levels of service could lead to politicians trying to run the railways themselves, because of the amount of public money involved.
\n"Actually, governments are not very good at running railways," he says. "So you want management who are somewhat independent and able to run it."
\nLord Hendy insists that despite the Transport Secretary having ultimate sign-off on GBR's strategy, the body will be genuinely arms-length from government.
\n"The point of this is to get a cadre of people who are committed to the outcomes that the secretary of state and I want for it, who can go off and run it on their own," he says, adding: "They'll have a lot more chance in the future than they've had in the last 20 years."
\nThe railways are currently subsidised to the tune of around \u00a312bn a year - not including spending on major projects like HS2.
\nThe Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander says that she wants to see subsidy levels fall. Meanwhile, Network Rail has acknowledged a squeezed budget means difficult choices, and shoring up the network against the effects of more extreme weather requires investment.
\nProf Glaister says: "When the public is hoping for a better level of service, more reliability, fewer breakdowns and lower fares, what they're really asking for is more money to be put into the railway.
\n"I don't think it's likely the government is going to be able to find more money, probably [it will have] less, actually. And so I think there's a real problem with ministers raising expectations from this policy."
\nBut Hynes doesn't see a contradiction between reducing taxpayer subsidy and making train services better.
\n"My two north stars are performance up and subsidy down," he says. "If the service is better, we get more customers, we get more revenue."
\nLord Hendy and Hynes also push back on the idea that the answer to improving reliability might be running fewer trains.
\nHynes says: "In an industry with high fixed costs, the best way of getting the subsidy down is to go for growth."
\nQuestions also remain about how GBR will manage industrial relations. Terms and conditions currently vary across operators. What will cost-conscious ministers do if unions seek to standardise these at the most generous level across the network?
\nWhile ministers argue they are getting on with improvements that people will notice, there's acknowledgement that the speed of improvement will vary between operators.
\nLord Hendy says some changes "ought to be dead boring\u2026 to make sure tomorrow is a little better than today if you can do it".
\nBut he says "more than 30 years worth of behaviors" will need altering to make the railway run solely in the interests of the customer.
\nAt Woking, is there optimism that things will improve in the long run?
\n"I really hope so," says Leo, "it would be amazing - as it's not the best service now."
\nGraphics by Rob England, Verify data team
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-12T15:37:00Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-12T15:37:00Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck5yn0n14r8do#2", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck5yn0n14r8do?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "Publicly owned rail is popular. But is it making the trains run on time?", "content_text": "", "content_html": "The early afternoon of Wednesday 6 August was an unremarkable one on the rail network. Then suddenly, shortly before 14:00, a power failure brought trains across the north-west of England to a halt.
\nChaos ensued: passengers told the BBC they were stranded on platforms for hours, with some having to book hotels for the night.
\nThis incident, stemming from a short power cut that affected Network Rail's operating centre in Manchester, was, in itself, unusual. But it added to a difficult summer for train passengers.
\nRepeated heatwaves required risk control measures like speed reductions to avoid tracks being damaged in the heat, leading to delays and cancellations. There was a serious derailment near Lewes, East Sussex, and another smaller-scale incident near Wickford in Essex soon after.
\nAgainst a backdrop of relatively high cancellation rates and steep fares compared with previous decades, rail users could be forgiven for forming the impression that things are not working.
\nSomething is changing, though: Labour is steadily bringing nearly all passenger rail services into public hands. Nationalisation is a popular idea - a YouGov tracker poll suggests almost two thirds of the public support public ownership.
\nBut how much of this was due to nationalisation?
\nThe Conservatives have cited SWR as an example of how public control does not necessarily mean improvements or fix key problems.
\nBut the government argues SWR's early period in public hands was affected by high summer temperatures, signal failures and trespass incidents.
\nLord Hendy, the rail minister, says work to turn the operator around has included introducing long-delayed new trains on suburban routes and recruiting more drivers, resulting in a drop in those cancellations that are due to staff shortages.
\nTransPennine Express was nationalised in May 2023, under the Conservative government. Many passengers had been at their wits' end as the operator struggled to fulfil its timetable and suffered from poor industrial relations.
\nA plan to improve reliability was put in place, which included cutting some services and even removing one type of train as a way of sorting out staffing problems. A new deal with the drivers' union also helped - something an insider at the former private sector operator claimed to me their company had not been permitted to do.
\nSo has it worked? Cancellations have fallen noticeably. But they were still above the Great Britain average in the year to August.
\nIt's really important to say the data can only tell us so much. There are so many different factors that might affect the performance of each service: for example, the state of the infrastructure it relies on, weather events or simply how well it was working before the government took over.
\nPlus, of the operators nationalised since Labour came to power, only SWR and c2c have completed a whole year in public hands. Even for those nationalised years earlier, the picture is clouded by the impact of the pandemic, when passenger numbers fell off a cliff.
\nBut according to Alex Hynes, chief executive of DfT Operator Limited (DfTO), the government company that currently owns publicly-run operators, it has been possible to make some short-term changes. Notably, these include making one team jointly responsible for managing infrastructure and passenger train services in some areas including the south-west of England.
\n"The railway is a system: track, train, people," he says. "So by putting one person in charge, they can fix all elements of the system to deliver a better service to customers."
\nHynes also gives examples of changes on the recently nationalised Thameslink; investment in better cleaning, improving toilets and replacing unpopular upright "ironing-board" seats.
\nBut when it comes to the pure performance data of operators nationalised in the past few years - delays, cancellations - can we really draw any conclusions yet to tell us whether the policy is working?
\n"I think it's completely hopeless to try and do that assessment over such a short period," Stephen Glaister, a former chair of regulator the Office of Rail and Road who is now emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London. He thinks a decade is needed to assess the impact of nationalisation.
\nThe government argues that official data suggests publicly owned train operators are performing better on punctuality and cancellations overall than those still under DfT contracts to private operators.
\nExperts point out that whoever is running the passenger trains, some limitations remain. Many delays happen because infrastructure, like signals, fails. There's only so much capacity on the existing network. And getting better trains or more staff can take years.
\nThe view that privatisation ultimately failed, leaving unreliable services and high fares, may be widespread. However, Prof Glaister argues that for a few years in the 1990s, the old privatised system actually worked well. Operating costs and subsidies were falling while the number of train services and passengers went up, he says.
\nAnd in the current context, it's important to be clear about what nationalisation really means.
\nThe railways Labour inherited weren't, in truth, completely privatised, and nationalisation doesn't mean a return to British Rail.
\nFor example, the infrastructure manager Network Rail has been fully under public control for over two decades. A number of train companies including LNER and Northern had already been nationalised under the Conservatives. Scotrail, Transport for Wales and Caledonian Sleeper are controlled by devolved national governments.
\nAnd even those operators still on contracts issued by the DfT at Westminster have been heavily controlled by the government for years. During Covid, private operators started being paid a fixed fee to run services, while the taxpayer took on the financial risk. The terms of the contracts meant train companies had to "ask government for permission to blow their nose", according to one senior industry executive, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely.
\nHighly profitable rolling stock companies ("ROSCOS") still own the actual trains. Freight companies operate privately too, and there are a handful of fully commercial "open access operators" on the rails like Lumo, Hull Trains and Grand Central - although there are concerns within the industry that these could end up squeezed.
\nSo what is often referred to as the nationalisation of the railways, in fact amounts to gradually returning passenger train operators run by private companies to public hands as their contracts expire - and making this the default.
\nThis is not all that's happening, though. The government hopes that re-organising the railways under a new publicly run body, Great British Railways (GBR), will make a big difference. This will bring together the running of trains and tracks, ending the current fragmented system.
\nA botched rail timetable introduction in 2018 was the spark for the then-Conservative government to eventually propose GBR as a new overarching body - although the Tories believe private competition should not be excluded from the system.
\nSome trains are already covered in distinctive GBR branding, but the organisation still doesn't exist. A new law to create it is making its way through parliament. Unknowns remain, like exactly how GBR will interact with devolved governments, and who its senior leaders will be.
\nTransport expert and author Prof Jon Shaw, of the University of Plymouth, says the idea of a "single guiding mind" should create "a better planned railway that's more aligned to the customer".
\nProf Shaw thinks potential benefits include better long-term planning around rolling-stock and timetables, and the removal of "the compensation merry-go-round", where train companies and Network Rail argue about whose fault a delay was.
\nHynes says: "The way you get the railway to work is you get the infrastructure and the trains and the people working in harmony because it's a system. And we can do that in a publicly owned GBR railway in a way that we haven't been able to do for a generation."
\nBut Prof Shaw cautions of potential pitfalls. For example, "there remains very little money", and "a massive issue is whether or not the rail minister or DfT more generally - or the Treasury - will be able to butt out" and leave rail leaders to run the railway.
\nProf Glaister also fears politically sensitive aspects such as fares and levels of service could lead to politicians trying to run the railways themselves, because of the amount of public money involved.
\n"Actually, governments are not very good at running railways," he says. "So you want management who are somewhat independent and able to run it."
\nLord Hendy insists that despite the Transport Secretary having ultimate sign-off on GBR's strategy, the body will be genuinely arms-length from government.
\n"The point of this is to get a cadre of people who are committed to the outcomes that the secretary of state and I want for it, who can go off and run it on their own," he says, adding: "They'll have a lot more chance in the future than they've had in the last 20 years."
\nThe railways are currently subsidised to the tune of around \u00a312bn a year - not including spending on major projects like HS2.
\nThe Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander says that she wants to see subsidy levels fall. Meanwhile, Network Rail has acknowledged a squeezed budget means difficult choices, and shoring up the network against the effects of more extreme weather requires investment.
\nProf Glaister says: "When the public is hoping for a better level of service, more reliability, fewer breakdowns and lower fares, what they're really asking for is more money to be put into the railway.
\n"I don't think it's likely the government is going to be able to find more money, probably [it will have] less, actually. And so I think there's a real problem with ministers raising expectations from this policy."
\nBut Hynes doesn't see a contradiction between reducing taxpayer subsidy and making train services better.
\n"My two north stars are performance up and subsidy down," he says. "If the service is better, we get more customers, we get more revenue."
\nLord Hendy and Hynes also push back on the idea that the answer to improving reliability might be running fewer trains.
\nHynes says: "In an industry with high fixed costs, the best way of getting the subsidy down is to go for growth."
\nQuestions also remain about how GBR will manage industrial relations. Terms and conditions currently vary across operators. What will cost-conscious ministers do if unions seek to standardise these at the most generous level across the network?
\nWhile ministers argue they are getting on with improvements that people will notice, there's acknowledgement that the speed of improvement will vary between operators.
\nLord Hendy says some changes "ought to be dead boring\u2026 to make sure tomorrow is a little better than today if you can do it".
\nBut he says "more than 30 years worth of behaviors" will need altering to make the railway run solely in the interests of the customer.
\nAt Woking, is there optimism that things will improve in the long run?
\n"I really hope so," says Leo, "it would be amazing - as it's not the best service now."
\nGraphics by Rob England, Verify data team
", "summary": "The early afternoon of Wednesday 6 August was an unremarkable one on the rail network. Then suddenly, shortly before 14:00, a power failure brought trains across the north-west of England to a halt.
\nChaos ensued: passengers told the BBC they were stranded on platforms for hours, with some having to book hotels for the night.
\nThis incident, stemming from a short power cut that affected Network Rail's operating centre in Manchester, was, in itself, unusual. But it added to a difficult summer for train passengers.
\nRepeated heatwaves required risk control measures like speed reductions to avoid tracks being damaged in the heat, leading to delays and cancellations. There was a serious derailment near Lewes, East Sussex, and another smaller-scale incident near Wickford in Essex soon after.
\nAgainst a backdrop of relatively high cancellation rates and steep fares compared with previous decades, rail users could be forgiven for forming the impression that things are not working.
\nSomething is changing, though: Labour is steadily bringing nearly all passenger rail services into public hands. Nationalisation is a popular idea - a YouGov tracker poll suggests almost two thirds of the public support public ownership.
\nBut how much of this was due to nationalisation?
\nThe Conservatives have cited SWR as an example of how public control does not necessarily mean improvements or fix key problems.
\nBut the government argues SWR's early period in public hands was affected by high summer temperatures, signal failures and trespass incidents.
\nLord Hendy, the rail minister, says work to turn the operator around has included introducing long-delayed new trains on suburban routes and recruiting more drivers, resulting in a drop in those cancellations that are due to staff shortages.
\nTransPennine Express was nationalised in May 2023, under the Conservative government. Many passengers had been at their wits' end as the operator struggled to fulfil its timetable and suffered from poor industrial relations.
\nA plan to improve reliability was put in place, which included cutting some services and even removing one type of train as a way of sorting out staffing problems. A new deal with the drivers' union also helped - something an insider at the former private sector operator claimed to me their company had not been permitted to do.
\nSo has it worked? Cancellations have fallen noticeably. But they were still above the Great Britain average in the year to August.
\nIt's really important to say the data can only tell us so much. There are so many different factors that might affect the performance of each service: for example, the state of the infrastructure it relies on, weather events or simply how well it was working before the government took over.
\nPlus, of the operators nationalised since Labour came to power, only SWR and c2c have completed a whole year in public hands. Even for those nationalised years earlier, the picture is clouded by the impact of the pandemic, when passenger numbers fell off a cliff.
\nBut according to Alex Hynes, chief executive of DfT Operator Limited (DfTO), the government company that currently owns publicly-run operators, it has been possible to make some short-term changes. Notably, these include making one team jointly responsible for managing infrastructure and passenger train services in some areas including the south-west of England.
\n"The railway is a system: track, train, people," he says. "So by putting one person in charge, they can fix all elements of the system to deliver a better service to customers."
\nHynes also gives examples of changes on the recently nationalised Thameslink; investment in better cleaning, improving toilets and replacing unpopular upright "ironing-board" seats.
\nBut when it comes to the pure performance data of operators nationalised in the past few years - delays, cancellations - can we really draw any conclusions yet to tell us whether the policy is working?
\n"I think it's completely hopeless to try and do that assessment over such a short period," Stephen Glaister, a former chair of regulator the Office of Rail and Road who is now emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London. He thinks a decade is needed to assess the impact of nationalisation.
\nThe government argues that official data suggests publicly owned train operators are performing better on punctuality and cancellations overall than those still under DfT contracts to private operators.
\nExperts point out that whoever is running the passenger trains, some limitations remain. Many delays happen because infrastructure, like signals, fails. There's only so much capacity on the existing network. And getting better trains or more staff can take years.
\nThe view that privatisation ultimately failed, leaving unreliable services and high fares, may be widespread. However, Prof Glaister argues that for a few years in the 1990s, the old privatised system actually worked well. Operating costs and subsidies were falling while the number of train services and passengers went up, he says.
\nAnd in the current context, it's important to be clear about what nationalisation really means.
\nThe railways Labour inherited weren't, in truth, completely privatised, and nationalisation doesn't mean a return to British Rail.
\nFor example, the infrastructure manager Network Rail has been fully under public control for over two decades. A number of train companies including LNER and Northern had already been nationalised under the Conservatives. Scotrail, Transport for Wales and Caledonian Sleeper are controlled by devolved national governments.
\nAnd even those operators still on contracts issued by the DfT at Westminster have been heavily controlled by the government for years. During Covid, private operators started being paid a fixed fee to run services, while the taxpayer took on the financial risk. The terms of the contracts meant train companies had to "ask government for permission to blow their nose", according to one senior industry executive, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely.
\nHighly profitable rolling stock companies ("ROSCOS") still own the actual trains. Freight companies operate privately too, and there are a handful of fully commercial "open access operators" on the rails like Lumo, Hull Trains and Grand Central - although there are concerns within the industry that these could end up squeezed.
\nSo what is often referred to as the nationalisation of the railways, in fact amounts to gradually returning passenger train operators run by private companies to public hands as their contracts expire - and making this the default.
\nThis is not all that's happening, though. The government hopes that re-organising the railways under a new publicly run body, Great British Railways (GBR), will make a big difference. This will bring together the running of trains and tracks, ending the current fragmented system.
\nA botched rail timetable introduction in 2018 was the spark for the then-Conservative government to eventually propose GBR as a new overarching body - although the Tories believe private competition should not be excluded from the system.
\nSome trains are already covered in distinctive GBR branding, but the organisation still doesn't exist. A new law to create it is making its way through parliament. Unknowns remain, like exactly how GBR will interact with devolved governments, and who its senior leaders will be.
\nTransport expert and author Prof Jon Shaw, of the University of Plymouth, says the idea of a "single guiding mind" should create "a better planned railway that's more aligned to the customer".
\nProf Shaw thinks potential benefits include better long-term planning around rolling-stock and timetables, and the removal of "the compensation merry-go-round", where train companies and Network Rail argue about whose fault a delay was.
\nHynes says: "The way you get the railway to work is you get the infrastructure and the trains and the people working in harmony because it's a system. And we can do that in a publicly owned GBR railway in a way that we haven't been able to do for a generation."
\nBut Prof Shaw cautions of potential pitfalls. For example, "there remains very little money", and "a massive issue is whether or not the rail minister or DfT more generally - or the Treasury - will be able to butt out" and leave rail leaders to run the railway.
\nProf Glaister also fears politically sensitive aspects such as fares and levels of service could lead to politicians trying to run the railways themselves, because of the amount of public money involved.
\n"Actually, governments are not very good at running railways," he says. "So you want management who are somewhat independent and able to run it."
\nLord Hendy insists that despite the Transport Secretary having ultimate sign-off on GBR's strategy, the body will be genuinely arms-length from government.
\n"The point of this is to get a cadre of people who are committed to the outcomes that the secretary of state and I want for it, who can go off and run it on their own," he says, adding: "They'll have a lot more chance in the future than they've had in the last 20 years."
\nThe railways are currently subsidised to the tune of around \u00a312bn a year - not including spending on major projects like HS2.
\nThe Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander says that she wants to see subsidy levels fall. Meanwhile, Network Rail has acknowledged a squeezed budget means difficult choices, and shoring up the network against the effects of more extreme weather requires investment.
\nProf Glaister says: "When the public is hoping for a better level of service, more reliability, fewer breakdowns and lower fares, what they're really asking for is more money to be put into the railway.
\n"I don't think it's likely the government is going to be able to find more money, probably [it will have] less, actually. And so I think there's a real problem with ministers raising expectations from this policy."
\nBut Hynes doesn't see a contradiction between reducing taxpayer subsidy and making train services better.
\n"My two north stars are performance up and subsidy down," he says. "If the service is better, we get more customers, we get more revenue."
\nLord Hendy and Hynes also push back on the idea that the answer to improving reliability might be running fewer trains.
\nHynes says: "In an industry with high fixed costs, the best way of getting the subsidy down is to go for growth."
\nQuestions also remain about how GBR will manage industrial relations. Terms and conditions currently vary across operators. What will cost-conscious ministers do if unions seek to standardise these at the most generous level across the network?
\nWhile ministers argue they are getting on with improvements that people will notice, there's acknowledgement that the speed of improvement will vary between operators.
\nLord Hendy says some changes "ought to be dead boring\u2026 to make sure tomorrow is a little better than today if you can do it".
\nBut he says "more than 30 years worth of behaviors" will need altering to make the railway run solely in the interests of the customer.
\nAt Woking, is there optimism that things will improve in the long run?
\n"I really hope so," says Leo, "it would be amazing - as it's not the best service now."
\nGraphics by Rob England, Verify data team
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-12T15:37:00Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-12T15:37:00Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5vgjm3gk7rzo#1", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5vgjm3gk7rzo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "AI is creating a 'human premium' for art made by people. But will it hold?", "content_text": "", "content_html": "A few weeks back, in a former bank building that's now a music venue in Falmouth, Cornwall, I was DJ-ing at a night I run called Rave Machine. It was a noisy, high-energy, sweaty affair, just as a night's dancing should be.
\nAll of the elements - the crowd, performers, staff, music, the journey home - connected to create something special, a one-off. It was also completely human.
\nSomething, in theory, well out of reach of what technology could possibly offer.
\nIn the DJ world, though, technology has already changed the equation. In the 1990s, a DJ had to not only pick the tracks, but also thread them together armed only with vinyl records, a pair of turntables and a mixer. Now, much more assistance is on offer, including software that will sync beats on different tracks should you ask it to (I don't). Apple Music and Spotify have an AI tune-mixing option too.
\nIf you were out dancing, would it matter to you if a DJ was, well, not really DJing? If you loved the music being played, would you care if technology was doing the work?
\nIt's a question that generative AI - the type of AI that creates content - is asking of us all. One of the thrills of that night in Falmouth was seeing our special guest, Andy Cato from Groove Armada, artfully weaving an array of tracks. How would I feel if a DJ was just pressing play? (And that does happen).
\nI mention all of this because that experience in Falmouth connects to a far broader question: whether we actually care if a piece of art has been created by a human, be that a painting, song, book, poem, or any other type of art.
\nThe music platform Deezer says 44% of tracks uploaded to it are AI-generated. Its research also found that 97% of listeners couldn't tell what was AI-generated and what wasn't. But here's a third statistic: more than half of those surveyed said they did care if it was made by AI. They want humans to be involved.
\nDaniel Susskind, an economics professor at King's College London, says many of us place huge value on the human role in making art. It's what makes the creative process different from more functional, practical tasks, he thinks.
\n"I was once in a room of accountants, and one of them stood up and said, 'My clients come to me for the personal touch, the human process'," he remembers. "And I said, 'That isn't why they come to you, they come because they want their taxes done properly'."
\nBut it's different with art, he says. "If I walk into the Sistine Chapel and look at the ceiling, I think not only is that extraordinarily beautiful, but isn't it amazing that a human hand, flesh and blood like my own, came up with that. A mind like mine dreamt that up," he says.
\nAs Susskind describes it, what we value isn't just the destination, it's the knowledge that a human - one of us - got us there. We can wonder at that achievement.
\nOf course, it could be argued that computers and AI software were themselves created by humans. If Susskind feels awe walking into the Sistine Chapel, others might experience awe of a different type using a chatbot like ChatGPT.
\nSusskind points to another example, this time a chess match in 1997, when a world champion, Garry Kasparov, lost for the first time to a computer, Deep Blue. At the time, there were fears the computer's success would mean our interest in chess would wane. In fact, chess is more popular than ever, played by millions.
\n"It wasn't simply the moves on the board that people care about. It's the fact that it's a human being sitting behind them, moving those pieces along that matters," Susskind argues.
\nAnd some think that the advent of AI has actually placed extra value on things created by people. You might call that a human premium.
\nKyle Chayka, a journalist at The New Yorker focused on technology, says AI writing is now widely considered to be "generic, obsequious and banal". As a result, he says, "I think readers are coming to value very obviously personal writing, and maybe even writing that's messier, less structurally sound or composed or perfected, than they maybe once would've desired."
\nChayka goes on: "I think illustration and graphic design is going in the same direction, where the average is too easily accessible, and so designers are leaning into being weirder and more eye-catching and more unusual, trying to find things that AI can't generate so easily."
\nIn response to the surge in AI-created content, academics are racing to develop a universally recognised symbol to denote something that is "human made" (similar to the "Fairtrade" label that emerged in the 1980s). Labels like "AI-free" are already appearing on covers of some books, films, and albums.
\nFor C Thi Nguyen, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, it's a question of our underlying values.
\nHe says you can often work out your values by following what he calls a "why chain". If you like something or want to do something, ask "why?". If the answer is to make money or be successful, keep asking 'why?' When the process ends, that will be what you really value, he explains.
\nThe question, he says, is whether human involvement and shared human experience will keep its place at the end of the "why chain".
\nAuthor John Lanchester is optimistic. He thinks the value of what only humans can do will prevail. In fact, he sympathises with the idea of a 'human premium'.
\n"If you commodify one kind of thing, the things you can't commodify start to seem more important," he tells me.
\nAll of that might sound heartening for people hoping that humans will remain central to the creation of culture.
\nBut I'm not so sure. The amount of AI-generated content is increasing so quickly that we may soon struggle to distinguish what has or hasn't involved AI.
\nYou may well have seen coverage of the AI 'actor' Tilly Norwood, made last year by a company that bills itself as the world's "first AI talent studio". The Screen Actors Guild in the US was not impressed. "It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion, and, from what we've seen, audiences aren't interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience," they wrote.
\nI'm not saying AI will replace actors - of course not. But what feels untethered and strange now, may not, in some situations, feel so strange in time.
\nIt's also worth remembering that long before Large Language Models went mainstream, we'd already allowed technology to shape our cultural tastes.
\nAs recently as the 2000s, we still sought out lots of the culture we consumed. We'd buy a book, a cinema ticket, an album. Sometimes we still do.
\nBut increasingly, culture just arrives - in an endless stream, sorted and served by an algorithm that is constantly predicting our tastes.
\nAt first glance, this sounds convenient. The work's being done for us. But as the role of the algorithm goes up, so the role of humans goes down.
\n"There's the mythical figure of your big brother's friend or something, who passes on good music taste to you," says Chayka, whose book Filterworld explores the impacts of algorithms on culture. "And now we rely on algorithmic recommendations to do that same thing for us. To introduce us to new things."
\nI recognise this from my own habits. Back in the 1990s, when I started collecting dance music, I'd find new music through record shops and recommendations from people I trusted. I can still do that, and do. But these days the algorithm's doing a lot of that work for me - and it can be really helpful. I'll find tunes I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.
\nTo an extent, I am letting technology guide me.
\nChayka thinks algorithms have made us lazy, and "prevent us from going deeper" in our cultural taste. Sometimes we might find a piece of art that requires work - a long, difficult book, perhaps, or a weird-seeming movie. "It might alienate us initially, but eventually it inspires us," Chayka says.
\n"I think that kind of culture has fallen by the wayside in favour of culture as content to consume that's not going to change your life, it's just going to turn your brain off for a few hours."
\n"People want to go to more live things," she says. "They want to have things that are unforeseeable\u2026 unpredictable. The special moment is live. The excitement, the discovery is hearing it in person with others."
\nIn the case of culture, when is it OK to outsource to technology, and when is it not? The more I look at this, the less I'm sure we can assume what choices we'll make.
\nEach of us will have to decide when it matters if something is made by a human.
\nTop image credit: Getty.
", "summary": "A few weeks back, in a former bank building that's now a music venue in Falmouth, Cornwall, I was DJ-ing at a night I run called Rave Machine. It was a noisy, high-energy, sweaty affair, just as a night's dancing should be.
\nAll of the elements - the crowd, performers, staff, music, the journey home - connected to create something special, a one-off. It was also completely human.
\nSomething, in theory, well out of reach of what technology could possibly offer.
\nIn the DJ world, though, technology has already changed the equation. In the 1990s, a DJ had to not only pick the tracks, but also thread them together armed only with vinyl records, a pair of turntables and a mixer. Now, much more assistance is on offer, including software that will sync beats on different tracks should you ask it to (I don't). Apple Music and Spotify have an AI tune-mixing option too.
\nIf you were out dancing, would it matter to you if a DJ was, well, not really DJing? If you loved the music being played, would you care if technology was doing the work?
\nIt's a question that generative AI - the type of AI that creates content - is asking of us all. One of the thrills of that night in Falmouth was seeing our special guest, Andy Cato from Groove Armada, artfully weaving an array of tracks. How would I feel if a DJ was just pressing play? (And that does happen).
\nI mention all of this because that experience in Falmouth connects to a far broader question: whether we actually care if a piece of art has been created by a human, be that a painting, song, book, poem, or any other type of art.
\nThe music platform Deezer says 44% of tracks uploaded to it are AI-generated. Its research also found that 97% of listeners couldn't tell what was AI-generated and what wasn't. But here's a third statistic: more than half of those surveyed said they did care if it was made by AI. They want humans to be involved.
\nDaniel Susskind, an economics professor at King's College London, says many of us place huge value on the human role in making art. It's what makes the creative process different from more functional, practical tasks, he thinks.
\n"I was once in a room of accountants, and one of them stood up and said, 'My clients come to me for the personal touch, the human process'," he remembers. "And I said, 'That isn't why they come to you, they come because they want their taxes done properly'."
\nBut it's different with art, he says. "If I walk into the Sistine Chapel and look at the ceiling, I think not only is that extraordinarily beautiful, but isn't it amazing that a human hand, flesh and blood like my own, came up with that. A mind like mine dreamt that up," he says.
\nAs Susskind describes it, what we value isn't just the destination, it's the knowledge that a human - one of us - got us there. We can wonder at that achievement.
\nOf course, it could be argued that computers and AI software were themselves created by humans. If Susskind feels awe walking into the Sistine Chapel, others might experience awe of a different type using a chatbot like ChatGPT.
\nSusskind points to another example, this time a chess match in 1997, when a world champion, Garry Kasparov, lost for the first time to a computer, Deep Blue. At the time, there were fears the computer's success would mean our interest in chess would wane. In fact, chess is more popular than ever, played by millions.
\n"It wasn't simply the moves on the board that people care about. It's the fact that it's a human being sitting behind them, moving those pieces along that matters," Susskind argues.
\nAnd some think that the advent of AI has actually placed extra value on things created by people. You might call that a human premium.
\nKyle Chayka, a journalist at The New Yorker focused on technology, says AI writing is now widely considered to be "generic, obsequious and banal". As a result, he says, "I think readers are coming to value very obviously personal writing, and maybe even writing that's messier, less structurally sound or composed or perfected, than they maybe once would've desired."
\nChayka goes on: "I think illustration and graphic design is going in the same direction, where the average is too easily accessible, and so designers are leaning into being weirder and more eye-catching and more unusual, trying to find things that AI can't generate so easily."
\nIn response to the surge in AI-created content, academics are racing to develop a universally recognised symbol to denote something that is "human made" (similar to the "Fairtrade" label that emerged in the 1980s). Labels like "AI-free" are already appearing on covers of some books, films, and albums.
\nFor C Thi Nguyen, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, it's a question of our underlying values.
\nHe says you can often work out your values by following what he calls a "why chain". If you like something or want to do something, ask "why?". If the answer is to make money or be successful, keep asking 'why?' When the process ends, that will be what you really value, he explains.
\nThe question, he says, is whether human involvement and shared human experience will keep its place at the end of the "why chain".
\nAuthor John Lanchester is optimistic. He thinks the value of what only humans can do will prevail. In fact, he sympathises with the idea of a 'human premium'.
\n"If you commodify one kind of thing, the things you can't commodify start to seem more important," he tells me.
\nAll of that might sound heartening for people hoping that humans will remain central to the creation of culture.
\nBut I'm not so sure. The amount of AI-generated content is increasing so quickly that we may soon struggle to distinguish what has or hasn't involved AI.
\nYou may well have seen coverage of the AI 'actor' Tilly Norwood, made last year by a company that bills itself as the world's "first AI talent studio". The Screen Actors Guild in the US was not impressed. "It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion, and, from what we've seen, audiences aren't interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience," they wrote.
\nI'm not saying AI will replace actors - of course not. But what feels untethered and strange now, may not, in some situations, feel so strange in time.
\nIt's also worth remembering that long before Large Language Models went mainstream, we'd already allowed technology to shape our cultural tastes.
\nAs recently as the 2000s, we still sought out lots of the culture we consumed. We'd buy a book, a cinema ticket, an album. Sometimes we still do.
\nBut increasingly, culture just arrives - in an endless stream, sorted and served by an algorithm that is constantly predicting our tastes.
\nAt first glance, this sounds convenient. The work's being done for us. But as the role of the algorithm goes up, so the role of humans goes down.
\n"There's the mythical figure of your big brother's friend or something, who passes on good music taste to you," says Chayka, whose book Filterworld explores the impacts of algorithms on culture. "And now we rely on algorithmic recommendations to do that same thing for us. To introduce us to new things."
\nI recognise this from my own habits. Back in the 1990s, when I started collecting dance music, I'd find new music through record shops and recommendations from people I trusted. I can still do that, and do. But these days the algorithm's doing a lot of that work for me - and it can be really helpful. I'll find tunes I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.
\nTo an extent, I am letting technology guide me.
\nChayka thinks algorithms have made us lazy, and "prevent us from going deeper" in our cultural taste. Sometimes we might find a piece of art that requires work - a long, difficult book, perhaps, or a weird-seeming movie. "It might alienate us initially, but eventually it inspires us," Chayka says.
\n"I think that kind of culture has fallen by the wayside in favour of culture as content to consume that's not going to change your life, it's just going to turn your brain off for a few hours."
\n"People want to go to more live things," she says. "They want to have things that are unforeseeable\u2026 unpredictable. The special moment is live. The excitement, the discovery is hearing it in person with others."
\nIn the case of culture, when is it OK to outsource to technology, and when is it not? The more I look at this, the less I'm sure we can assume what choices we'll make.
\nEach of us will have to decide when it matters if something is made by a human.
\nTop image credit: Getty.
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-10T15:18:16Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-10T15:18:16Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5vgjm3gk7rzo#2", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5vgjm3gk7rzo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "AI is creating a 'human premium' for art made by people. But will it hold?", "content_text": "", "content_html": "A few weeks back, in a former bank building that's now a music venue in Falmouth, Cornwall, I was DJ-ing at a night I run called Rave Machine. It was a noisy, high-energy, sweaty affair, just as a night's dancing should be.
\nAll of the elements - the crowd, performers, staff, music, the journey home - connected to create something special, a one-off. It was also completely human.
\nSomething, in theory, well out of reach of what technology could possibly offer.
\nIn the DJ world, though, technology has already changed the equation. In the 1990s, a DJ had to not only pick the tracks, but also thread them together armed only with vinyl records, a pair of turntables and a mixer. Now, much more assistance is on offer, including software that will sync beats on different tracks should you ask it to (I don't). Apple Music and Spotify have an AI tune-mixing option too.
\nIf you were out dancing, would it matter to you if a DJ was, well, not really DJing? If you loved the music being played, would you care if technology was doing the work?
\nIt's a question that generative AI - the type of AI that creates content - is asking of us all. One of the thrills of that night in Falmouth was seeing our special guest, Andy Cato from Groove Armada, artfully weaving an array of tracks. How would I feel if a DJ was just pressing play? (And that does happen).
\nI mention all of this because that experience in Falmouth connects to a far broader question: whether we actually care if a piece of art has been created by a human, be that a painting, song, book, poem, or any other type of art.
\nThe music platform Deezer says 44% of tracks uploaded to it are AI-generated. Its research also found that 97% of listeners couldn't tell what was AI-generated and what wasn't. But here's a third statistic: more than half of those surveyed said they did care if it was made by AI. They want humans to be involved.
\nDaniel Susskind, an economics professor at King's College London, says many of us place huge value on the human role in making art. It's what makes the creative process different from more functional, practical tasks, he thinks.
\n"I was once in a room of accountants, and one of them stood up and said, 'My clients come to me for the personal touch, the human process'," he remembers. "And I said, 'That isn't why they come to you, they come because they want their taxes done properly'."
\nBut it's different with art, he says. "If I walk into the Sistine Chapel and look at the ceiling, I think not only is that extraordinarily beautiful, but isn't it amazing that a human hand, flesh and blood like my own, came up with that. A mind like mine dreamt that up," he says.
\nAs Susskind describes it, what we value isn't just the destination, it's the knowledge that a human - one of us - got us there. We can wonder at that achievement.
\nOf course, it could be argued that computers and AI software were themselves created by humans. If Susskind feels awe walking into the Sistine Chapel, others might experience awe of a different type using a chatbot like ChatGPT.
\nSusskind points to another example, this time a chess match in 1997, when a world champion, Garry Kasparov, lost for the first time to a computer, Deep Blue. At the time, there were fears the computer's success would mean our interest in chess would wane. In fact, chess is more popular than ever, played by millions.
\n"It wasn't simply the moves on the board that people care about. It's the fact that it's a human being sitting behind them, moving those pieces along that matters," Susskind argues.
\nAnd some think that the advent of AI has actually placed extra value on things created by people. You might call that a human premium.
\nKyle Chayka, a journalist at The New Yorker focused on technology, says AI writing is now widely considered to be "generic, obsequious and banal". As a result, he says, "I think readers are coming to value very obviously personal writing, and maybe even writing that's messier, less structurally sound or composed or perfected, than they maybe once would've desired."
\nChayka goes on: "I think illustration and graphic design is going in the same direction, where the average is too easily accessible, and so designers are leaning into being weirder and more eye-catching and more unusual, trying to find things that AI can't generate so easily."
\nIn response to the surge in AI-created content, academics are racing to develop a universally recognised symbol to denote something that is "human made" (similar to the "Fairtrade" label that emerged in the 1980s). Labels like "AI-free" are already appearing on covers of some books, films, and albums.
\nFor C Thi Nguyen, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, it's a question of our underlying values.
\nHe says you can often work out your values by following what he calls a "why chain". If you like something or want to do something, ask "why?". If the answer is to make money or be successful, keep asking 'why?' When the process ends, that will be what you really value, he explains.
\nThe question, he says, is whether human involvement and shared human experience will keep its place at the end of the "why chain".
\nAuthor John Lanchester is optimistic. He thinks the value of what only humans can do will prevail. In fact, he sympathises with the idea of a 'human premium'.
\n"If you commodify one kind of thing, the things you can't commodify start to seem more important," he tells me.
\nAll of that might sound heartening for people hoping that humans will remain central to the creation of culture.
\nBut I'm not so sure. The amount of AI-generated content is increasing so quickly that we may soon struggle to distinguish what has or hasn't involved AI.
\nYou may well have seen coverage of the AI 'actor' Tilly Norwood, made last year by a company that bills itself as the world's "first AI talent studio". The Screen Actors Guild in the US was not impressed. "It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion, and, from what we've seen, audiences aren't interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience," they wrote.
\nI'm not saying AI will replace actors - of course not. But what feels untethered and strange now, may not, in some situations, feel so strange in time.
\nIt's also worth remembering that long before Large Language Models went mainstream, we'd already allowed technology to shape our cultural tastes.
\nAs recently as the 2000s, we still sought out lots of the culture we consumed. We'd buy a book, a cinema ticket, an album. Sometimes we still do.
\nBut increasingly, culture just arrives - in an endless stream, sorted and served by an algorithm that is constantly predicting our tastes.
\nAt first glance, this sounds convenient. The work's being done for us. But as the role of the algorithm goes up, so the role of humans goes down.
\n"There's the mythical figure of your big brother's friend or something, who passes on good music taste to you," says Chayka, whose book Filterworld explores the impacts of algorithms on culture. "And now we rely on algorithmic recommendations to do that same thing for us. To introduce us to new things."
\nI recognise this from my own habits. Back in the 1990s, when I started collecting dance music, I'd find new music through record shops and recommendations from people I trusted. I can still do that, and do. But these days the algorithm's doing a lot of that work for me - and it can be really helpful. I'll find tunes I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.
\nTo an extent, I am letting technology guide me.
\nChayka thinks algorithms have made us lazy, and "prevent us from going deeper" in our cultural taste. Sometimes we might find a piece of art that requires work - a long, difficult book, perhaps, or a weird-seeming movie. "It might alienate us initially, but eventually it inspires us," Chayka says.
\n"I think that kind of culture has fallen by the wayside in favour of culture as content to consume that's not going to change your life, it's just going to turn your brain off for a few hours."
\n"People want to go to more live things," she says. "They want to have things that are unforeseeable\u2026 unpredictable. The special moment is live. The excitement, the discovery is hearing it in person with others."
\nIn the case of culture, when is it OK to outsource to technology, and when is it not? The more I look at this, the less I'm sure we can assume what choices we'll make.
\nEach of us will have to decide when it matters if something is made by a human.
\nTop image credit: Getty.
", "summary": "A few weeks back, in a former bank building that's now a music venue in Falmouth, Cornwall, I was DJ-ing at a night I run called Rave Machine. It was a noisy, high-energy, sweaty affair, just as a night's dancing should be.
\nAll of the elements - the crowd, performers, staff, music, the journey home - connected to create something special, a one-off. It was also completely human.
\nSomething, in theory, well out of reach of what technology could possibly offer.
\nIn the DJ world, though, technology has already changed the equation. In the 1990s, a DJ had to not only pick the tracks, but also thread them together armed only with vinyl records, a pair of turntables and a mixer. Now, much more assistance is on offer, including software that will sync beats on different tracks should you ask it to (I don't). Apple Music and Spotify have an AI tune-mixing option too.
\nIf you were out dancing, would it matter to you if a DJ was, well, not really DJing? If you loved the music being played, would you care if technology was doing the work?
\nIt's a question that generative AI - the type of AI that creates content - is asking of us all. One of the thrills of that night in Falmouth was seeing our special guest, Andy Cato from Groove Armada, artfully weaving an array of tracks. How would I feel if a DJ was just pressing play? (And that does happen).
\nI mention all of this because that experience in Falmouth connects to a far broader question: whether we actually care if a piece of art has been created by a human, be that a painting, song, book, poem, or any other type of art.
\nThe music platform Deezer says 44% of tracks uploaded to it are AI-generated. Its research also found that 97% of listeners couldn't tell what was AI-generated and what wasn't. But here's a third statistic: more than half of those surveyed said they did care if it was made by AI. They want humans to be involved.
\nDaniel Susskind, an economics professor at King's College London, says many of us place huge value on the human role in making art. It's what makes the creative process different from more functional, practical tasks, he thinks.
\n"I was once in a room of accountants, and one of them stood up and said, 'My clients come to me for the personal touch, the human process'," he remembers. "And I said, 'That isn't why they come to you, they come because they want their taxes done properly'."
\nBut it's different with art, he says. "If I walk into the Sistine Chapel and look at the ceiling, I think not only is that extraordinarily beautiful, but isn't it amazing that a human hand, flesh and blood like my own, came up with that. A mind like mine dreamt that up," he says.
\nAs Susskind describes it, what we value isn't just the destination, it's the knowledge that a human - one of us - got us there. We can wonder at that achievement.
\nOf course, it could be argued that computers and AI software were themselves created by humans. If Susskind feels awe walking into the Sistine Chapel, others might experience awe of a different type using a chatbot like ChatGPT.
\nSusskind points to another example, this time a chess match in 1997, when a world champion, Garry Kasparov, lost for the first time to a computer, Deep Blue. At the time, there were fears the computer's success would mean our interest in chess would wane. In fact, chess is more popular than ever, played by millions.
\n"It wasn't simply the moves on the board that people care about. It's the fact that it's a human being sitting behind them, moving those pieces along that matters," Susskind argues.
\nAnd some think that the advent of AI has actually placed extra value on things created by people. You might call that a human premium.
\nKyle Chayka, a journalist at The New Yorker focused on technology, says AI writing is now widely considered to be "generic, obsequious and banal". As a result, he says, "I think readers are coming to value very obviously personal writing, and maybe even writing that's messier, less structurally sound or composed or perfected, than they maybe once would've desired."
\nChayka goes on: "I think illustration and graphic design is going in the same direction, where the average is too easily accessible, and so designers are leaning into being weirder and more eye-catching and more unusual, trying to find things that AI can't generate so easily."
\nIn response to the surge in AI-created content, academics are racing to develop a universally recognised symbol to denote something that is "human made" (similar to the "Fairtrade" label that emerged in the 1980s). Labels like "AI-free" are already appearing on covers of some books, films, and albums.
\nFor C Thi Nguyen, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, it's a question of our underlying values.
\nHe says you can often work out your values by following what he calls a "why chain". If you like something or want to do something, ask "why?". If the answer is to make money or be successful, keep asking 'why?' When the process ends, that will be what you really value, he explains.
\nThe question, he says, is whether human involvement and shared human experience will keep its place at the end of the "why chain".
\nAuthor John Lanchester is optimistic. He thinks the value of what only humans can do will prevail. In fact, he sympathises with the idea of a 'human premium'.
\n"If you commodify one kind of thing, the things you can't commodify start to seem more important," he tells me.
\nAll of that might sound heartening for people hoping that humans will remain central to the creation of culture.
\nBut I'm not so sure. The amount of AI-generated content is increasing so quickly that we may soon struggle to distinguish what has or hasn't involved AI.
\nYou may well have seen coverage of the AI 'actor' Tilly Norwood, made last year by a company that bills itself as the world's "first AI talent studio". The Screen Actors Guild in the US was not impressed. "It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion, and, from what we've seen, audiences aren't interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience," they wrote.
\nI'm not saying AI will replace actors - of course not. But what feels untethered and strange now, may not, in some situations, feel so strange in time.
\nIt's also worth remembering that long before Large Language Models went mainstream, we'd already allowed technology to shape our cultural tastes.
\nAs recently as the 2000s, we still sought out lots of the culture we consumed. We'd buy a book, a cinema ticket, an album. Sometimes we still do.
\nBut increasingly, culture just arrives - in an endless stream, sorted and served by an algorithm that is constantly predicting our tastes.
\nAt first glance, this sounds convenient. The work's being done for us. But as the role of the algorithm goes up, so the role of humans goes down.
\n"There's the mythical figure of your big brother's friend or something, who passes on good music taste to you," says Chayka, whose book Filterworld explores the impacts of algorithms on culture. "And now we rely on algorithmic recommendations to do that same thing for us. To introduce us to new things."
\nI recognise this from my own habits. Back in the 1990s, when I started collecting dance music, I'd find new music through record shops and recommendations from people I trusted. I can still do that, and do. But these days the algorithm's doing a lot of that work for me - and it can be really helpful. I'll find tunes I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.
\nTo an extent, I am letting technology guide me.
\nChayka thinks algorithms have made us lazy, and "prevent us from going deeper" in our cultural taste. Sometimes we might find a piece of art that requires work - a long, difficult book, perhaps, or a weird-seeming movie. "It might alienate us initially, but eventually it inspires us," Chayka says.
\n"I think that kind of culture has fallen by the wayside in favour of culture as content to consume that's not going to change your life, it's just going to turn your brain off for a few hours."
\n"People want to go to more live things," she says. "They want to have things that are unforeseeable\u2026 unpredictable. The special moment is live. The excitement, the discovery is hearing it in person with others."
\nIn the case of culture, when is it OK to outsource to technology, and when is it not? The more I look at this, the less I'm sure we can assume what choices we'll make.
\nEach of us will have to decide when it matters if something is made by a human.
\nTop image credit: Getty.
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-10T15:18:16Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-10T15:18:16Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00335kl#3", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00335kl?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "Fame Under Fire", "content_text": "", "content_html": "Available for over a year
\nRussell Brand\u2019s trial begins at Southwark Crown Court on 12 October. He faces three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and denies the allegations against him. Before the trial begins, Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty is joined by criminal defence lawyers Matthew Claughton and Stephen Davies to break down the charges, and discuss how an English criminal trial differs from trials in the US. From 12 October for Fame Under Fire: Russell Brand on Trial, Anoushka will be at Southwark Crown Court bringing you daily updates. Lock in so you never miss an episode. Host: Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty Series Producer: Louise Clarke Digital Journalist: Jem Westgate Production coordinator: Ellie Dover Junior Production Manager: Tom Dunster Technical Producer: Nicky Edwards Editor: Clare Fordham Commissioning Producer: Adam Eland Assistant Commissioner: Chris Walsh-Heron Commissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts
\nProgramme Website
", "summary": "Available for over a year
\nRussell Brand\u2019s trial begins at Southwark Crown Court on 12 October. He faces three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and denies the allegations against him. Before the trial begins, Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty is joined by criminal defence lawyers Matthew Claughton and Stephen Davies to break down the charges, and discuss how an English criminal trial differs from trials in the US. From 12 October for Fame Under Fire: Russell Brand on Trial, Anoushka will be at Southwark Crown Court bringing you daily updates. Lock in so you never miss an episode. Host: Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty Series Producer: Louise Clarke Digital Journalist: Jem Westgate Production coordinator: Ellie Dover Junior Production Manager: Tom Dunster Technical Producer: Nicky Edwards Editor: Clare Fordham Commissioning Producer: Adam Eland Assistant Commissioner: Chris Walsh-Heron Commissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts
\nProgramme Website
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-07T21:00:00Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-07T21:00:00Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0033144#3", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0033144?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "I'm Not A Monster Presents...", "content_text": "", "content_html": "Available for over a year
\nJosh and Sara hunt the men who know what really happened to Austin. When the Assad regime fell, they went into hiding. As the team close in, competing accounts begin to emerge: stories of detention, secret deals, survival and betrayal. Some may be telling the truth, others may be trying to bury it. Archive: CNN; BBC; NBC; PBS; Al Jazeera. Writer and showrunner: Josh Baker Investigative producer: Sara Obeidat Series producer: Simon Maybin Field producing: Ouday Al Hussein Additional producing: Lucy Burns Open source intelligence: Thomas Bordeaux & Gabor Friesen Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Series editor: Clare Fordham Head of BBC News Long Form Audio: Emma Rippon BBC Radio 4 commissioning editor: Dan Clarke NPR producer: Monika Evstatieva NPR editors: Robert Little & Katie Simon NPR executive producer for Embedded: Irene Noguchi BBC World Service commissioning editor: Jon Manel Composer: Firas Abou Fakher Additional music: Karim Chehoury Theme music: Sam Slater Mix and sound design: Tom Brignell
\nProgramme Website
", "summary": "Available for over a year
\nJosh and Sara hunt the men who know what really happened to Austin. When the Assad regime fell, they went into hiding. As the team close in, competing accounts begin to emerge: stories of detention, secret deals, survival and betrayal. Some may be telling the truth, others may be trying to bury it. Archive: CNN; BBC; NBC; PBS; Al Jazeera. Writer and showrunner: Josh Baker Investigative producer: Sara Obeidat Series producer: Simon Maybin Field producing: Ouday Al Hussein Additional producing: Lucy Burns Open source intelligence: Thomas Bordeaux & Gabor Friesen Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Series editor: Clare Fordham Head of BBC News Long Form Audio: Emma Rippon BBC Radio 4 commissioning editor: Dan Clarke NPR producer: Monika Evstatieva NPR editors: Robert Little & Katie Simon NPR executive producer for Embedded: Irene Noguchi BBC World Service commissioning editor: Jon Manel Composer: Firas Abou Fakher Additional music: Karim Chehoury Theme music: Sam Slater Mix and sound design: Tom Brignell
\nProgramme Website
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-07T20:55:00Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-07T20:55:00Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm93z74e0n9zo#1", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm93z74e0n9zo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "The Republican candidates walking a Trump tightrope", "content_text": "", "content_html": "As US President Donald Trump hits the campaign trail in the final sprint to the midterm elections, he is launching an emphatic defence of America's economic performance, trying - as he often does - to bend reality to his will.
\n"We have the best economic numbers of any president in the history of our country, and yet people don't know about it because the press won't talk about it," he said last week.
\nWhile some economic indicators, including roaring stock market indexes and low US poverty rates, are indeed historic, the overall picture is not nearly as rosy.
\nTrump is often dismissive of concerns about a\ufb00ordability and the high cost of living in the US, describing them as "fake" and a Democrat-inspired "hoax".
\nThe American public, however, sees it differently - and some key economic indicators provide ample evidence for their discontent. Inflation remains high at 3.4%, outpacing wage growth. The average cost of petrol has soared to $4.37 (\u00a33.30) a US gallon and beef prices are at a record high.
\nAccording to a YouGov survey, 63% of respondents believe the economy is "getting worse". An AP/NORC poll released last week found just 17% of adult Americans approve of the president's handling of cost-of-living issues, while 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall.
\nThose polls also suggest that many of Trump's policies, including tariffs, aggressive immigration enforcement and the ongoing conflict with Iran, are widely unpopular.
\n"We ask our voters their motivation to turn out, and what we find is cost of living, cost of living, cost of living," said Avery James, the director of communications at the Republican-aligned polling company Echelon Insights. "That's the top issue."
\nThere are few Republican politicians as loyal to the president as Floridian House Congressman Byron Donalds. And there are few US states as traditionally hospitable to Republicans as Florida.
\nBut even in the president's adopted home, which he carried in each of his three elections and which hasn't had a Democratic governor since 1999, candidates like Donalds are finding themselves having to adapt their pro-Republican messaging to acknowledge economic concerns.
\nDonalds - who stood by Trump as he fought his way back to power after his 2020 election defeat and took a prominent role in his 2024 election campaign - is now running for governor of Florida, with Trump's encouragement and enthusiastic endorsement.
\nWhen I saw him at a Hispanic church in Kissimmee, he was preaching to the proverbial choir - but pitching his message with a nod to the fact that for many money is currently tight.
\n"We're the best state in America," he said before acknowledging: "But success has gotten expensive."
\nHe ticked through a laundry list of Florida constituents \u2013 retirees, teachers, emergency workers, restaurant staff and local government employees, flagging that they need to be able to "make ends meet".
\nIn his stump speech, Donalds didn't mention Trump at all. He leaned heavily into stories of his own financial hardship during his younger years, of living paycheque to paycheque and waiting tables at the traditional southern style restaurant chain Cracker Barrel.
\nWhen he invited audience questions, there were the usual cultural hot-button topics, like the perceived threat of Sharia law in America, transgender athletes in women's sports and youth crime in public spaces.
\nBut his supporters also wanted to talk about the high cost of housing - insurance, taxes, mortgage rates and home-owner fees - and healthcare worker shortages.
\nTrump may have mocked the term affordability, but Donalds \u2013 who is criss-crossing the state on an "affordability tour" \u2013 isn't the only Republican candidate talking about high prices.
\nIt was a similar track at a campaign event in a Tampa seafood market the next day, when Bryan Avila, who is running for lieutenant governor on the same ticket as Donalds, took questions on energy prices and data centre construction.
\n"Everything is going up in prices, from food to even books for people going to college," said John Carroll, who serves on a Florida county housing commission. "It's a challenge no matter which party is in power, but here in Florida it's been Republican for so long."
\nEven Donalds has faced allegations that he is trying to open daylight between himself and Trump. The media was awash in reports recently that he had removed most prominent mentions of Trump from his campaign website.
\nIt was a story Donalds quickly denied \u2013 and one that prompted an angry response from the president himself.
\n"Another Fake Story is that a very close friend of mine, a man I endorsed very early, Byron Donalds, is taking me off his website and campaign materials," Trump posted on his Truth Social website. "If Florida thought the story that Byron 'dropped' me was true, he would lose the election, and that would be a terrible thing because he's going to be a fantastic governor!"
\nDonalds did say, however, that when it comes to addressing how to tackle high prices, Trump shouldn't be a factor.
\n"That's not even about President Trump," he told reporters after the website story broke. "I'm the one asking for the votes for the people of Florida to be their governor."
\nWhile Donalds and Trump remain tight, the same cannot be said for Republican candidates who have gone farther in their criticism.
\nCongresswoman Maria Salazar aired a television spot in which she bluntly said Trump's immigration crackdown had "gone too far". Trump reposted a handful of messages on Truth Social accusing the Cuban-American Salazar of betrayal and calling for her to drop out, while other potential candidates had been on the receiving end of his anger during the primaries.
\nAccording to Marc Short, a Republican strategist and former chief of staff to Donald Trump's first vice-president, Mike Pence, it's hard not to see Trump's move as a warning directed at any other Republicans who might consider a public break with him. But he adds that Trump's ire isn't the only reason Republican candidates should approach this strategy with caution.
\n"It's almost disingenuous now to try to create separation," he says. "I think for voters it looks opportunistic."
\nCandidates like Salazar, who have stuck with Trump for years, have little choice but to rise and fall with the president's fortunes, he said. Republicans who have built their own brand and identities \u2013 like Senator Susan Collins in Maine \u2013 can more convincingly draw distinctions between themselves and the president.
\nThe fact that so many people are downbeat about the economy, combined with the fact that the Republicans have been in power in Washington suggests that Republican candidates are facing difficult headwinds in November's elections. "I think they're hurricane force right now," said Short.
\nIt is, however, far from a lost cause for Republicans going into these midterms. Many polls show battleground congressional and state races in a dead heat. And while Democratic candidates' hopes are buoyed by so many people feeling the economy is not working for them, a majority of voters still have a negative view of the Democratic Party as a whole.
\n"I think Republicans are closing out on the fact that they've delivered on a bunch of things, but we need to do more," said Alex DeGrasse, a Republican campaign consultant with close ties to the party's congressional leadership. His recommendation for the Republican electoral message was simple and pointed: "If you elect the Democrats, they'll destroy everything. Democrats had a chance to run the country, and by every objective economic metric, they did a worse job."
\nHe added that right now in the White House, Republicans aren't panicking, they're focusing on executing their strategy.
\nIn Florida's governor race, the Republican messaging contrasts the "Florida dream" of economic growth that Republicans say they delivered versus what they say is the hardship and depravity of Democratic-run states like Illinois, California and New York. Florida's population is booming, and many of the new arrivals are conservatives who lived in - and grew tired of - more liberal states in the north and west. But even this pitch often came with a nod to the current economic difficulties.
\n"For the past 26 years, we have been living in a Florida dream, and a lot of people don't realise the amount of work that has been done in this state," Avila said in Kissimmee last week.
\nAccording to James, from the Republican-aligned polling firm, the key for conservative candidates is to take subjects on which they are relatively strong, like crime, taxes and immigration, and link them to affordability issues that Americans say they care about most.
\n"Republicans are certainly looking to tell those independents that you might not be happy with everything, but we have delivered on these issues," he said.
\nWith Republicans pouring money into advertising in battleground states, often outpacing their Democratic opponents by significant margins, there's still the possibility that the situation will improve in the final month of the midterm campaign.
\nThat hasn't stopped the Republican faithful from being nervous about their side's chances, though \u2013 and what some see as a lack of enthusiasm on the right.
\n"Campaigns are won at the end by momentum," said Joseph Robinson, an engineer who attended the Avila fish-market event in Tampa. "But the momentum has been slow. It's not really like, 'Hey, I'm going to go run out there and vote right now.'"
\nTrump, for his part, is inevitably upbeat. Last month, he travelled to Tennessee for a college football game, where the crowd of more than 100,000 greeted him with cheers. The next day, it was a golf tournament in Illinois and another welcoming crowd. This weekend, he's going to another football game - in Alabama.
\nHe is hitting the campaign trail, but frequently in states that mostly return Republican candidates \u2013 Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
\nHowever, in classic Trump style, he is saying and doing things that could complicate the careful balancing act many Republicans are trying to strike.
\nHe has repeatedly dismissed claims that high costs are a problem for many voters, with his latest explanation being that their discomfort is due to a "very bad job" on the part of his administration in explaining how good things really are.
\n"The only thing we're doing badly at is public relations," he said in Texas last week. "In other words, we're doing a phenomenal job."
\nSeveral times over the past few months he's insisted that voters imagine his name is "on the ballot", but at other times he has said he doesn't care about the midterms and that this isn't his election to fight.
\nIf Republicans struggle, he said, it is not a reflection on how Americans view him.
\n"A lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you," Trump said in August. "They're angry at Republicans, but they're not angry at me."
\nBut if Republicans get punished at the ballot box in November, whether they run with the president or away from him, Trump will bear the brunt of the consequences - in the form of a hostile Congress with legislative and oversight powers - for the last two years of his presidency.
\nTop picture credit: BBC / Getty Images
", "summary": "As US President Donald Trump hits the campaign trail in the final sprint to the midterm elections, he is launching an emphatic defence of America's economic performance, trying - as he often does - to bend reality to his will.
\n"We have the best economic numbers of any president in the history of our country, and yet people don't know about it because the press won't talk about it," he said last week.
\nWhile some economic indicators, including roaring stock market indexes and low US poverty rates, are indeed historic, the overall picture is not nearly as rosy.
\nTrump is often dismissive of concerns about a\ufb00ordability and the high cost of living in the US, describing them as "fake" and a Democrat-inspired "hoax".
\nThe American public, however, sees it differently - and some key economic indicators provide ample evidence for their discontent. Inflation remains high at 3.4%, outpacing wage growth. The average cost of petrol has soared to $4.37 (\u00a33.30) a US gallon and beef prices are at a record high.
\nAccording to a YouGov survey, 63% of respondents believe the economy is "getting worse". An AP/NORC poll released last week found just 17% of adult Americans approve of the president's handling of cost-of-living issues, while 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall.
\nThose polls also suggest that many of Trump's policies, including tariffs, aggressive immigration enforcement and the ongoing conflict with Iran, are widely unpopular.
\n"We ask our voters their motivation to turn out, and what we find is cost of living, cost of living, cost of living," said Avery James, the director of communications at the Republican-aligned polling company Echelon Insights. "That's the top issue."
\nThere are few Republican politicians as loyal to the president as Floridian House Congressman Byron Donalds. And there are few US states as traditionally hospitable to Republicans as Florida.
\nBut even in the president's adopted home, which he carried in each of his three elections and which hasn't had a Democratic governor since 1999, candidates like Donalds are finding themselves having to adapt their pro-Republican messaging to acknowledge economic concerns.
\nDonalds - who stood by Trump as he fought his way back to power after his 2020 election defeat and took a prominent role in his 2024 election campaign - is now running for governor of Florida, with Trump's encouragement and enthusiastic endorsement.
\nWhen I saw him at a Hispanic church in Kissimmee, he was preaching to the proverbial choir - but pitching his message with a nod to the fact that for many money is currently tight.
\n"We're the best state in America," he said before acknowledging: "But success has gotten expensive."
\nHe ticked through a laundry list of Florida constituents \u2013 retirees, teachers, emergency workers, restaurant staff and local government employees, flagging that they need to be able to "make ends meet".
\nIn his stump speech, Donalds didn't mention Trump at all. He leaned heavily into stories of his own financial hardship during his younger years, of living paycheque to paycheque and waiting tables at the traditional southern style restaurant chain Cracker Barrel.
\nWhen he invited audience questions, there were the usual cultural hot-button topics, like the perceived threat of Sharia law in America, transgender athletes in women's sports and youth crime in public spaces.
\nBut his supporters also wanted to talk about the high cost of housing - insurance, taxes, mortgage rates and home-owner fees - and healthcare worker shortages.
\nTrump may have mocked the term affordability, but Donalds \u2013 who is criss-crossing the state on an "affordability tour" \u2013 isn't the only Republican candidate talking about high prices.
\nIt was a similar track at a campaign event in a Tampa seafood market the next day, when Bryan Avila, who is running for lieutenant governor on the same ticket as Donalds, took questions on energy prices and data centre construction.
\n"Everything is going up in prices, from food to even books for people going to college," said John Carroll, who serves on a Florida county housing commission. "It's a challenge no matter which party is in power, but here in Florida it's been Republican for so long."
\nEven Donalds has faced allegations that he is trying to open daylight between himself and Trump. The media was awash in reports recently that he had removed most prominent mentions of Trump from his campaign website.
\nIt was a story Donalds quickly denied \u2013 and one that prompted an angry response from the president himself.
\n"Another Fake Story is that a very close friend of mine, a man I endorsed very early, Byron Donalds, is taking me off his website and campaign materials," Trump posted on his Truth Social website. "If Florida thought the story that Byron 'dropped' me was true, he would lose the election, and that would be a terrible thing because he's going to be a fantastic governor!"
\nDonalds did say, however, that when it comes to addressing how to tackle high prices, Trump shouldn't be a factor.
\n"That's not even about President Trump," he told reporters after the website story broke. "I'm the one asking for the votes for the people of Florida to be their governor."
\nWhile Donalds and Trump remain tight, the same cannot be said for Republican candidates who have gone farther in their criticism.
\nCongresswoman Maria Salazar aired a television spot in which she bluntly said Trump's immigration crackdown had "gone too far". Trump reposted a handful of messages on Truth Social accusing the Cuban-American Salazar of betrayal and calling for her to drop out, while other potential candidates had been on the receiving end of his anger during the primaries.
\nAccording to Marc Short, a Republican strategist and former chief of staff to Donald Trump's first vice-president, Mike Pence, it's hard not to see Trump's move as a warning directed at any other Republicans who might consider a public break with him. But he adds that Trump's ire isn't the only reason Republican candidates should approach this strategy with caution.
\n"It's almost disingenuous now to try to create separation," he says. "I think for voters it looks opportunistic."
\nCandidates like Salazar, who have stuck with Trump for years, have little choice but to rise and fall with the president's fortunes, he said. Republicans who have built their own brand and identities \u2013 like Senator Susan Collins in Maine \u2013 can more convincingly draw distinctions between themselves and the president.
\nThe fact that so many people are downbeat about the economy, combined with the fact that the Republicans have been in power in Washington suggests that Republican candidates are facing difficult headwinds in November's elections. "I think they're hurricane force right now," said Short.
\nIt is, however, far from a lost cause for Republicans going into these midterms. Many polls show battleground congressional and state races in a dead heat. And while Democratic candidates' hopes are buoyed by so many people feeling the economy is not working for them, a majority of voters still have a negative view of the Democratic Party as a whole.
\n"I think Republicans are closing out on the fact that they've delivered on a bunch of things, but we need to do more," said Alex DeGrasse, a Republican campaign consultant with close ties to the party's congressional leadership. His recommendation for the Republican electoral message was simple and pointed: "If you elect the Democrats, they'll destroy everything. Democrats had a chance to run the country, and by every objective economic metric, they did a worse job."
\nHe added that right now in the White House, Republicans aren't panicking, they're focusing on executing their strategy.
\nIn Florida's governor race, the Republican messaging contrasts the "Florida dream" of economic growth that Republicans say they delivered versus what they say is the hardship and depravity of Democratic-run states like Illinois, California and New York. Florida's population is booming, and many of the new arrivals are conservatives who lived in - and grew tired of - more liberal states in the north and west. But even this pitch often came with a nod to the current economic difficulties.
\n"For the past 26 years, we have been living in a Florida dream, and a lot of people don't realise the amount of work that has been done in this state," Avila said in Kissimmee last week.
\nAccording to James, from the Republican-aligned polling firm, the key for conservative candidates is to take subjects on which they are relatively strong, like crime, taxes and immigration, and link them to affordability issues that Americans say they care about most.
\n"Republicans are certainly looking to tell those independents that you might not be happy with everything, but we have delivered on these issues," he said.
\nWith Republicans pouring money into advertising in battleground states, often outpacing their Democratic opponents by significant margins, there's still the possibility that the situation will improve in the final month of the midterm campaign.
\nThat hasn't stopped the Republican faithful from being nervous about their side's chances, though \u2013 and what some see as a lack of enthusiasm on the right.
\n"Campaigns are won at the end by momentum," said Joseph Robinson, an engineer who attended the Avila fish-market event in Tampa. "But the momentum has been slow. It's not really like, 'Hey, I'm going to go run out there and vote right now.'"
\nTrump, for his part, is inevitably upbeat. Last month, he travelled to Tennessee for a college football game, where the crowd of more than 100,000 greeted him with cheers. The next day, it was a golf tournament in Illinois and another welcoming crowd. This weekend, he's going to another football game - in Alabama.
\nHe is hitting the campaign trail, but frequently in states that mostly return Republican candidates \u2013 Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
\nHowever, in classic Trump style, he is saying and doing things that could complicate the careful balancing act many Republicans are trying to strike.
\nHe has repeatedly dismissed claims that high costs are a problem for many voters, with his latest explanation being that their discomfort is due to a "very bad job" on the part of his administration in explaining how good things really are.
\n"The only thing we're doing badly at is public relations," he said in Texas last week. "In other words, we're doing a phenomenal job."
\nSeveral times over the past few months he's insisted that voters imagine his name is "on the ballot", but at other times he has said he doesn't care about the midterms and that this isn't his election to fight.
\nIf Republicans struggle, he said, it is not a reflection on how Americans view him.
\n"A lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you," Trump said in August. "They're angry at Republicans, but they're not angry at me."
\nBut if Republicans get punished at the ballot box in November, whether they run with the president or away from him, Trump will bear the brunt of the consequences - in the form of a hostile Congress with legislative and oversight powers - for the last two years of his presidency.
\nTop picture credit: BBC / Getty Images
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-06T21:00:21Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-06T21:00:21Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm93z74e0n9zo#2", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm93z74e0n9zo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "The Republican candidates walking a Trump tightrope", "content_text": "", "content_html": "As US President Donald Trump hits the campaign trail in the final sprint to the midterm elections, he is launching an emphatic defence of America's economic performance, trying - as he often does - to bend reality to his will.
\n"We have the best economic numbers of any president in the history of our country, and yet people don't know about it because the press won't talk about it," he said last week.
\nWhile some economic indicators, including roaring stock market indexes and low US poverty rates, are indeed historic, the overall picture is not nearly as rosy.
\nTrump is often dismissive of concerns about a\ufb00ordability and the high cost of living in the US, describing them as "fake" and a Democrat-inspired "hoax".
\nThe American public, however, sees it differently - and some key economic indicators provide ample evidence for their discontent. Inflation remains high at 3.4%, outpacing wage growth. The average cost of petrol has soared to $4.37 (\u00a33.30) a US gallon and beef prices are at a record high.
\nAccording to a YouGov survey, 63% of respondents believe the economy is "getting worse". An AP/NORC poll released last week found just 17% of adult Americans approve of the president's handling of cost-of-living issues, while 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall.
\nThose polls also suggest that many of Trump's policies, including tariffs, aggressive immigration enforcement and the ongoing conflict with Iran, are widely unpopular.
\n"We ask our voters their motivation to turn out, and what we find is cost of living, cost of living, cost of living," said Avery James, the director of communications at the Republican-aligned polling company Echelon Insights. "That's the top issue."
\nThere are few Republican politicians as loyal to the president as Floridian House Congressman Byron Donalds. And there are few US states as traditionally hospitable to Republicans as Florida.
\nBut even in the president's adopted home, which he carried in each of his three elections and which hasn't had a Democratic governor since 1999, candidates like Donalds are finding themselves having to adapt their pro-Republican messaging to acknowledge economic concerns.
\nDonalds - who stood by Trump as he fought his way back to power after his 2020 election defeat and took a prominent role in his 2024 election campaign - is now running for governor of Florida, with Trump's encouragement and enthusiastic endorsement.
\nWhen I saw him at a Hispanic church in Kissimmee, he was preaching to the proverbial choir - but pitching his message with a nod to the fact that for many money is currently tight.
\n"We're the best state in America," he said before acknowledging: "But success has gotten expensive."
\nHe ticked through a laundry list of Florida constituents \u2013 retirees, teachers, emergency workers, restaurant staff and local government employees, flagging that they need to be able to "make ends meet".
\nIn his stump speech, Donalds didn't mention Trump at all. He leaned heavily into stories of his own financial hardship during his younger years, of living paycheque to paycheque and waiting tables at the traditional southern style restaurant chain Cracker Barrel.
\nWhen he invited audience questions, there were the usual cultural hot-button topics, like the perceived threat of Sharia law in America, transgender athletes in women's sports and youth crime in public spaces.
\nBut his supporters also wanted to talk about the high cost of housing - insurance, taxes, mortgage rates and home-owner fees - and healthcare worker shortages.
\nTrump may have mocked the term affordability, but Donalds \u2013 who is criss-crossing the state on an "affordability tour" \u2013 isn't the only Republican candidate talking about high prices.
\nIt was a similar track at a campaign event in a Tampa seafood market the next day, when Bryan Avila, who is running for lieutenant governor on the same ticket as Donalds, took questions on energy prices and data centre construction.
\n"Everything is going up in prices, from food to even books for people going to college," said John Carroll, who serves on a Florida county housing commission. "It's a challenge no matter which party is in power, but here in Florida it's been Republican for so long."
\nEven Donalds has faced allegations that he is trying to open daylight between himself and Trump. The media was awash in reports recently that he had removed most prominent mentions of Trump from his campaign website.
\nIt was a story Donalds quickly denied \u2013 and one that prompted an angry response from the president himself.
\n"Another Fake Story is that a very close friend of mine, a man I endorsed very early, Byron Donalds, is taking me off his website and campaign materials," Trump posted on his Truth Social website. "If Florida thought the story that Byron 'dropped' me was true, he would lose the election, and that would be a terrible thing because he's going to be a fantastic governor!"
\nDonalds did say, however, that when it comes to addressing how to tackle high prices, Trump shouldn't be a factor.
\n"That's not even about President Trump," he told reporters after the website story broke. "I'm the one asking for the votes for the people of Florida to be their governor."
\nWhile Donalds and Trump remain tight, the same cannot be said for Republican candidates who have gone farther in their criticism.
\nCongresswoman Maria Salazar aired a television spot in which she bluntly said Trump's immigration crackdown had "gone too far". Trump reposted a handful of messages on Truth Social accusing the Cuban-American Salazar of betrayal and calling for her to drop out, while other potential candidates had been on the receiving end of his anger during the primaries.
\nAccording to Marc Short, a Republican strategist and former chief of staff to Donald Trump's first vice-president, Mike Pence, it's hard not to see Trump's move as a warning directed at any other Republicans who might consider a public break with him. But he adds that Trump's ire isn't the only reason Republican candidates should approach this strategy with caution.
\n"It's almost disingenuous now to try to create separation," he says. "I think for voters it looks opportunistic."
\nCandidates like Salazar, who have stuck with Trump for years, have little choice but to rise and fall with the president's fortunes, he said. Republicans who have built their own brand and identities \u2013 like Senator Susan Collins in Maine \u2013 can more convincingly draw distinctions between themselves and the president.
\nThe fact that so many people are downbeat about the economy, combined with the fact that the Republicans have been in power in Washington suggests that Republican candidates are facing difficult headwinds in November's elections. "I think they're hurricane force right now," said Short.
\nIt is, however, far from a lost cause for Republicans going into these midterms. Many polls show battleground congressional and state races in a dead heat. And while Democratic candidates' hopes are buoyed by so many people feeling the economy is not working for them, a majority of voters still have a negative view of the Democratic Party as a whole.
\n"I think Republicans are closing out on the fact that they've delivered on a bunch of things, but we need to do more," said Alex DeGrasse, a Republican campaign consultant with close ties to the party's congressional leadership. His recommendation for the Republican electoral message was simple and pointed: "If you elect the Democrats, they'll destroy everything. Democrats had a chance to run the country, and by every objective economic metric, they did a worse job."
\nHe added that right now in the White House, Republicans aren't panicking, they're focusing on executing their strategy.
\nIn Florida's governor race, the Republican messaging contrasts the "Florida dream" of economic growth that Republicans say they delivered versus what they say is the hardship and depravity of Democratic-run states like Illinois, California and New York. Florida's population is booming, and many of the new arrivals are conservatives who lived in - and grew tired of - more liberal states in the north and west. But even this pitch often came with a nod to the current economic difficulties.
\n"For the past 26 years, we have been living in a Florida dream, and a lot of people don't realise the amount of work that has been done in this state," Avila said in Kissimmee last week.
\nAccording to James, from the Republican-aligned polling firm, the key for conservative candidates is to take subjects on which they are relatively strong, like crime, taxes and immigration, and link them to affordability issues that Americans say they care about most.
\n"Republicans are certainly looking to tell those independents that you might not be happy with everything, but we have delivered on these issues," he said.
\nWith Republicans pouring money into advertising in battleground states, often outpacing their Democratic opponents by significant margins, there's still the possibility that the situation will improve in the final month of the midterm campaign.
\nThat hasn't stopped the Republican faithful from being nervous about their side's chances, though \u2013 and what some see as a lack of enthusiasm on the right.
\n"Campaigns are won at the end by momentum," said Joseph Robinson, an engineer who attended the Avila fish-market event in Tampa. "But the momentum has been slow. It's not really like, 'Hey, I'm going to go run out there and vote right now.'"
\nTrump, for his part, is inevitably upbeat. Last month, he travelled to Tennessee for a college football game, where the crowd of more than 100,000 greeted him with cheers. The next day, it was a golf tournament in Illinois and another welcoming crowd. This weekend, he's going to another football game - in Alabama.
\nHe is hitting the campaign trail, but frequently in states that mostly return Republican candidates \u2013 Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
\nHowever, in classic Trump style, he is saying and doing things that could complicate the careful balancing act many Republicans are trying to strike.
\nHe has repeatedly dismissed claims that high costs are a problem for many voters, with his latest explanation being that their discomfort is due to a "very bad job" on the part of his administration in explaining how good things really are.
\n"The only thing we're doing badly at is public relations," he said in Texas last week. "In other words, we're doing a phenomenal job."
\nSeveral times over the past few months he's insisted that voters imagine his name is "on the ballot", but at other times he has said he doesn't care about the midterms and that this isn't his election to fight.
\nIf Republicans struggle, he said, it is not a reflection on how Americans view him.
\n"A lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you," Trump said in August. "They're angry at Republicans, but they're not angry at me."
\nBut if Republicans get punished at the ballot box in November, whether they run with the president or away from him, Trump will bear the brunt of the consequences - in the form of a hostile Congress with legislative and oversight powers - for the last two years of his presidency.
\nTop picture credit: BBC / Getty Images
", "summary": "As US President Donald Trump hits the campaign trail in the final sprint to the midterm elections, he is launching an emphatic defence of America's economic performance, trying - as he often does - to bend reality to his will.
\n"We have the best economic numbers of any president in the history of our country, and yet people don't know about it because the press won't talk about it," he said last week.
\nWhile some economic indicators, including roaring stock market indexes and low US poverty rates, are indeed historic, the overall picture is not nearly as rosy.
\nTrump is often dismissive of concerns about a\ufb00ordability and the high cost of living in the US, describing them as "fake" and a Democrat-inspired "hoax".
\nThe American public, however, sees it differently - and some key economic indicators provide ample evidence for their discontent. Inflation remains high at 3.4%, outpacing wage growth. The average cost of petrol has soared to $4.37 (\u00a33.30) a US gallon and beef prices are at a record high.
\nAccording to a YouGov survey, 63% of respondents believe the economy is "getting worse". An AP/NORC poll released last week found just 17% of adult Americans approve of the president's handling of cost-of-living issues, while 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall.
\nThose polls also suggest that many of Trump's policies, including tariffs, aggressive immigration enforcement and the ongoing conflict with Iran, are widely unpopular.
\n"We ask our voters their motivation to turn out, and what we find is cost of living, cost of living, cost of living," said Avery James, the director of communications at the Republican-aligned polling company Echelon Insights. "That's the top issue."
\nThere are few Republican politicians as loyal to the president as Floridian House Congressman Byron Donalds. And there are few US states as traditionally hospitable to Republicans as Florida.
\nBut even in the president's adopted home, which he carried in each of his three elections and which hasn't had a Democratic governor since 1999, candidates like Donalds are finding themselves having to adapt their pro-Republican messaging to acknowledge economic concerns.
\nDonalds - who stood by Trump as he fought his way back to power after his 2020 election defeat and took a prominent role in his 2024 election campaign - is now running for governor of Florida, with Trump's encouragement and enthusiastic endorsement.
\nWhen I saw him at a Hispanic church in Kissimmee, he was preaching to the proverbial choir - but pitching his message with a nod to the fact that for many money is currently tight.
\n"We're the best state in America," he said before acknowledging: "But success has gotten expensive."
\nHe ticked through a laundry list of Florida constituents \u2013 retirees, teachers, emergency workers, restaurant staff and local government employees, flagging that they need to be able to "make ends meet".
\nIn his stump speech, Donalds didn't mention Trump at all. He leaned heavily into stories of his own financial hardship during his younger years, of living paycheque to paycheque and waiting tables at the traditional southern style restaurant chain Cracker Barrel.
\nWhen he invited audience questions, there were the usual cultural hot-button topics, like the perceived threat of Sharia law in America, transgender athletes in women's sports and youth crime in public spaces.
\nBut his supporters also wanted to talk about the high cost of housing - insurance, taxes, mortgage rates and home-owner fees - and healthcare worker shortages.
\nTrump may have mocked the term affordability, but Donalds \u2013 who is criss-crossing the state on an "affordability tour" \u2013 isn't the only Republican candidate talking about high prices.
\nIt was a similar track at a campaign event in a Tampa seafood market the next day, when Bryan Avila, who is running for lieutenant governor on the same ticket as Donalds, took questions on energy prices and data centre construction.
\n"Everything is going up in prices, from food to even books for people going to college," said John Carroll, who serves on a Florida county housing commission. "It's a challenge no matter which party is in power, but here in Florida it's been Republican for so long."
\nEven Donalds has faced allegations that he is trying to open daylight between himself and Trump. The media was awash in reports recently that he had removed most prominent mentions of Trump from his campaign website.
\nIt was a story Donalds quickly denied \u2013 and one that prompted an angry response from the president himself.
\n"Another Fake Story is that a very close friend of mine, a man I endorsed very early, Byron Donalds, is taking me off his website and campaign materials," Trump posted on his Truth Social website. "If Florida thought the story that Byron 'dropped' me was true, he would lose the election, and that would be a terrible thing because he's going to be a fantastic governor!"
\nDonalds did say, however, that when it comes to addressing how to tackle high prices, Trump shouldn't be a factor.
\n"That's not even about President Trump," he told reporters after the website story broke. "I'm the one asking for the votes for the people of Florida to be their governor."
\nWhile Donalds and Trump remain tight, the same cannot be said for Republican candidates who have gone farther in their criticism.
\nCongresswoman Maria Salazar aired a television spot in which she bluntly said Trump's immigration crackdown had "gone too far". Trump reposted a handful of messages on Truth Social accusing the Cuban-American Salazar of betrayal and calling for her to drop out, while other potential candidates had been on the receiving end of his anger during the primaries.
\nAccording to Marc Short, a Republican strategist and former chief of staff to Donald Trump's first vice-president, Mike Pence, it's hard not to see Trump's move as a warning directed at any other Republicans who might consider a public break with him. But he adds that Trump's ire isn't the only reason Republican candidates should approach this strategy with caution.
\n"It's almost disingenuous now to try to create separation," he says. "I think for voters it looks opportunistic."
\nCandidates like Salazar, who have stuck with Trump for years, have little choice but to rise and fall with the president's fortunes, he said. Republicans who have built their own brand and identities \u2013 like Senator Susan Collins in Maine \u2013 can more convincingly draw distinctions between themselves and the president.
\nThe fact that so many people are downbeat about the economy, combined with the fact that the Republicans have been in power in Washington suggests that Republican candidates are facing difficult headwinds in November's elections. "I think they're hurricane force right now," said Short.
\nIt is, however, far from a lost cause for Republicans going into these midterms. Many polls show battleground congressional and state races in a dead heat. And while Democratic candidates' hopes are buoyed by so many people feeling the economy is not working for them, a majority of voters still have a negative view of the Democratic Party as a whole.
\n"I think Republicans are closing out on the fact that they've delivered on a bunch of things, but we need to do more," said Alex DeGrasse, a Republican campaign consultant with close ties to the party's congressional leadership. His recommendation for the Republican electoral message was simple and pointed: "If you elect the Democrats, they'll destroy everything. Democrats had a chance to run the country, and by every objective economic metric, they did a worse job."
\nHe added that right now in the White House, Republicans aren't panicking, they're focusing on executing their strategy.
\nIn Florida's governor race, the Republican messaging contrasts the "Florida dream" of economic growth that Republicans say they delivered versus what they say is the hardship and depravity of Democratic-run states like Illinois, California and New York. Florida's population is booming, and many of the new arrivals are conservatives who lived in - and grew tired of - more liberal states in the north and west. But even this pitch often came with a nod to the current economic difficulties.
\n"For the past 26 years, we have been living in a Florida dream, and a lot of people don't realise the amount of work that has been done in this state," Avila said in Kissimmee last week.
\nAccording to James, from the Republican-aligned polling firm, the key for conservative candidates is to take subjects on which they are relatively strong, like crime, taxes and immigration, and link them to affordability issues that Americans say they care about most.
\n"Republicans are certainly looking to tell those independents that you might not be happy with everything, but we have delivered on these issues," he said.
\nWith Republicans pouring money into advertising in battleground states, often outpacing their Democratic opponents by significant margins, there's still the possibility that the situation will improve in the final month of the midterm campaign.
\nThat hasn't stopped the Republican faithful from being nervous about their side's chances, though \u2013 and what some see as a lack of enthusiasm on the right.
\n"Campaigns are won at the end by momentum," said Joseph Robinson, an engineer who attended the Avila fish-market event in Tampa. "But the momentum has been slow. It's not really like, 'Hey, I'm going to go run out there and vote right now.'"
\nTrump, for his part, is inevitably upbeat. Last month, he travelled to Tennessee for a college football game, where the crowd of more than 100,000 greeted him with cheers. The next day, it was a golf tournament in Illinois and another welcoming crowd. This weekend, he's going to another football game - in Alabama.
\nHe is hitting the campaign trail, but frequently in states that mostly return Republican candidates \u2013 Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
\nHowever, in classic Trump style, he is saying and doing things that could complicate the careful balancing act many Republicans are trying to strike.
\nHe has repeatedly dismissed claims that high costs are a problem for many voters, with his latest explanation being that their discomfort is due to a "very bad job" on the part of his administration in explaining how good things really are.
\n"The only thing we're doing badly at is public relations," he said in Texas last week. "In other words, we're doing a phenomenal job."
\nSeveral times over the past few months he's insisted that voters imagine his name is "on the ballot", but at other times he has said he doesn't care about the midterms and that this isn't his election to fight.
\nIf Republicans struggle, he said, it is not a reflection on how Americans view him.
\n"A lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you," Trump said in August. "They're angry at Republicans, but they're not angry at me."
\nBut if Republicans get punished at the ballot box in November, whether they run with the president or away from him, Trump will bear the brunt of the consequences - in the form of a hostile Congress with legislative and oversight powers - for the last two years of his presidency.
\nTop picture credit: BBC / Getty Images
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-06T21:00:21Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-06T21:00:21Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0032gpg#3", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0032gpg?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "File on 4 Investigates", "content_text": "", "content_html": "Available for over a year
\nThe number of children taken into care before they reach their first birthday is at a worryingly and persistently high level, according to new figures. In many of those cases it is unsafe for parents to look after their children - but experts believe that a significant number of those babies might not have gone into care, if the right support was in place. This programme investigates the support birth families receive and how much of a voice they are given once care proceedings begin. Figures suggest that most children who go on to be adopted are taken into care as babies. Ninety percent of adoptions happen without the written consent of birth parents. It\u2019s led to some using the term \u2018modern day forced adoption\u2019 and to calls for a debate about the system. File on 4 Investigates hears about one project in Salford which has been praised for the support it gives to birth families, cutting the number of children going into care and being adopted. In response to our findings Adoption England say that the process provides "children with a permanent, stable and loving family" adding that "Without adoption, the vast majority of these children will remain in care throughout their childhood and, as extensive research shows" they experience "significantly worse outcomes". The government says it is putting \u00a32.4bn into \u201ctransforming the children\u2019s social care system\u201d in England and say they want to increase support for children to stay with their family wherever possible. Presenter: Judith Moritz Senior Producers: Claire Kendall & Ashley Kennedy Production Co-ordinators: Tim Fernley & Tom Dunster Technical Producer: Nicky Edwards Editor: Tara McDermott For details of organisations which offer advice and information with adoption and fostering, go online to bbc.co.uk/actionline. Image: Jean and Tye, who is now an adult, are back in contact.
\nProgramme Website
", "summary": "Available for over a year
\nThe number of children taken into care before they reach their first birthday is at a worryingly and persistently high level, according to new figures. In many of those cases it is unsafe for parents to look after their children - but experts believe that a significant number of those babies might not have gone into care, if the right support was in place. This programme investigates the support birth families receive and how much of a voice they are given once care proceedings begin. Figures suggest that most children who go on to be adopted are taken into care as babies. Ninety percent of adoptions happen without the written consent of birth parents. It\u2019s led to some using the term \u2018modern day forced adoption\u2019 and to calls for a debate about the system. File on 4 Investigates hears about one project in Salford which has been praised for the support it gives to birth families, cutting the number of children going into care and being adopted. In response to our findings Adoption England say that the process provides "children with a permanent, stable and loving family" adding that "Without adoption, the vast majority of these children will remain in care throughout their childhood and, as extensive research shows" they experience "significantly worse outcomes". The government says it is putting \u00a32.4bn into \u201ctransforming the children\u2019s social care system\u201d in England and say they want to increase support for children to stay with their family wherever possible. Presenter: Judith Moritz Senior Producers: Claire Kendall & Ashley Kennedy Production Co-ordinators: Tim Fernley & Tom Dunster Technical Producer: Nicky Edwards Editor: Tara McDermott For details of organisations which offer advice and information with adoption and fostering, go online to bbc.co.uk/actionline. Image: Jean and Tye, who is now an adult, are back in contact.
\nProgramme Website
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-05T21:00:00Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-05T21:00:00Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2kedyp348lo#1", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2kedyp348lo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "Europe is pouring billions into space. Can Glasgow's satellite industry keep up?", "content_text": "", "content_html": "In 2005, a young space engineer called Craig Clark moved back to his home city of Glasgow. He'd graduated from university just over a decade before, but the only jobs he could find were south of the border. Now Craig wanted to start a company of his own. He called it Clyde Space.
\nI went to school not far from the River Clyde, where Glasgow's shipbuilding industry earned a global reputation for craftsmanship and engineering excellence. There was a saying that I grew up with: "The Clyde made Glasgow and Glasgow made the Clyde."
\nWhat I hadn't realised until recently was that, in a different guise, that tradition is still alive. Two decades later, Glasgow is a European leader in building small satellites.
\nMany of those built here are known as CubeSats. Their basic building block measures just 10cm by 10cm by 10cm - think of something about the size of a Rubik's Cube. They are much smaller, cheaper and quicker to develop than the huge contraptions that you might picture when you think of satellites.
\nBut crucially, they are modular and can be stacked together, then packed with cameras, sensors, communications equipment or other technology depending on their purpose.
\nAnd their size belies their significance. The data collected by satellites of all kinds is increasingly woven into everyday life. It helps us communicate and navigate, track ships and transport goods, monitor forests and crops, manage energy networks and understand changes to our climate.
\nFor governments, that information can help inform decisions and respond to emergencies. As satellites have become more capable, space has become increasingly important.
\nMore than two decades after the first satellite company was established there, the Scottish government says more small satellites are built in Glasgow than anywhere else in Europe.
\nAcross Scotland, the wider space industry generated \u00a3335m in income in 2022-23 - up 69% in five years. Excluding traditional satellite television broadcasting, it employed 2,811 people, an increase of 81% over the same period.
\nBut elsewhere in Europe, governments are committing big money to their own satellite industries.
\nCould this take investment and jobs away from Glasgow? And if so, what - if anything - should the Scottish and UK governments do about it?
\nPerhaps the most surprising thing about Glasgow's success in the space industry is that it wasn't planned.
\nOne of the catalysts was Craig Clark's Clyde Space. The company specialised in CubeSats at just the right moment, a few years after it launched, as smaller and cheaper spacecraft were taking off, and would go on to build Scotland's first satellite, the UKube-1.
\nCrucially, the tech was built in partnership with the University of Strathclyde - which provided skills and research, as well as a ready supply of engineers.
\nOther companies followed, including Craft Prospect and Alba Orbital. Expertise grew and a new space cluster began to form. American satellite company Spire chose Glasgow for its European base in 2015. Smaller businesses developed, while established engineering and technology firms became part of the supply chain.
\n"Companies started moving to Glasgow because they could see that it was possible to do it here, and there was an ecosystem that was starting to grow," says Andrew Strain, chief technology officer at AAC Clyde Space - the company formed after Clyde Space was acquired by Swedish firm AAC Microtec, although Glasgow remains the group's main satellite manufacturing site.
\nSoon Glasgow was host to an "entire small satellite value chain", from components and satellite manufacturing, through to launch, spaceports and ground stations, according to Daniel Smith, founder of space marketing firm AstroAgency and the Scottish government's trade and investment envoy for space.
\nThere are wider benefits too. According to a review commissioned by Space Scotland, space manufacturing alone accounted for more than 1,000 Scottish jobs in 2022-23. The wider industry generated \u00a3202m for the Scottish economy.
\nAnd as the industry grew, so did the pool of knowledge. There are now more than 100 people working across space-related activity at the University of Strathclyde, with the subject now one of the institution's strategic priorities, according to Prof Malcolm Macdonald, its chair of applied space technology. The university works directly with commercial space companies on research and tech development.
\nMacdonald recalls that when he graduated, there was basically no local space industry for him to join. Now, "when our graduates leave the university, they will go and work in the local space sector because it is now here in Glasgow for them", he says.
\nBut what's significant, Macdonald says, is that Glasgow's satellite industry wasn't something the government set out to establish. Instead, the process was "largely organic", says Smith.
\nBy any measure it's a success story. But there are warnings about competition from overseas.
\n"It's not necessarily that we're going backwards," Macdonald tells me. "But other people are catching up."
\nBavaria is emerging as a significant European hub for aerospace and defence technology. Germany's Defence Ministry says it plans to invest around \u20ac35bn (\u00a330bn) in military space capabilities in the coming years, including more than 100 encrypted communications satellites.
\nFor Macdonald, that kind of spending is changing Europe's space industry. Against a backdrop of the war in Ukraine and wider geopolitical uncertainty, governments are no longer simply supporting research and innovation. Increasingly, they are becoming major customers rather than just investors.
\nWill Lecky, co-founder and director of know.space, the space economics consultancy, says that matters because the global playing field is not level. He says UK public space funding falls well behind countries such as France and Germany.
\n"It's certainly a risk to Glasgow and the wider UK space sector that investment will follow the money and lead to longer term competitive disadvantage as activity flows elsewhere," he says.
\nMeanwhile, Finland's aerospace firm ICEYE specialises in synthetic aperture radar (SAR), satellites, which can produce images of the Earth's surface through cloud and darkness. Macdonald says these have been used in the war in Ukraine, where satellite imagery can provide intelligence - for example, spotting a Russian vessel in a Crimean port - when conventional optical cameras cannot.
\nIn June, ICEYE announced a funding round worth more than \u20ac1bn, valuing the company at more than \u20ac10bn. The Finnish state has also increased its stake and now owns around 12% of the company.
\nFinland's Minister for European Affairs, Joakim Strand, said the geopolitical situation had highlighted the importance of domestic ownership in what he called a "key strategic sector".
\nGovernments want guaranteed access to satellite communications, especially when their country is facing a crisis. Some want the satellites - and the ability to build them - within their own borders.
\nThat can have consequences for Glasgow.
\n"The recent increases in space spending elsewhere in Europe matter," says Gabriele Piazza, an economist at the London School of Economics who researches government procurement of advanced technology.
\nSpace is not a normal market. Where the contracts go can help determine where companies invest, where engineers work and where expertise builds.
\n"Since capabilities build on themselves, firms with a large customer at home gain an advantage that lasts," Piazza adds.
\nMeanwhile, as well as Clyde Space's 2018 acquisition by AAC Microtec, Glasgow-founded Alba Orbital has moved its headquarters to the US, while retaining a Scottish base and team. Spire has expanded its manufacturing operation into Munich.
\nThe Scottish government maintains that Glasgow still builds more small satellites than anywhere else in Europe. So, this is not an industry in decline.
\nBut the bigger challenge, Smith says, is helping companies that start in Scotland to scale here.
\n"I wouldn't want it to be overly negative," says Macdonald. "It's more just like there are warning lights flashing that other parts of Europe are investing much more aggressively, and moving much more quickly, than we have."
\nSatellite camera manufacturer Simera Sense announced this year that it was opening a new production facility in the city, creating 20 highly skilled jobs. The firm, which has premises in South Africa, Belgium and France, will open a high-value electronics assembly lab and office at EastWorks in Dalmarnock.
\nThat suggests something more nuanced than an exodus. Glasgow's concentration of universities, engineers and specialist suppliers, built up over two decades, would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
\nPlus, some comparisons with overseas competitors are not exact. ICEYE is just one specialist company focused on radar satellites, while Glasgow is an entire manufacturing cluster producing different kinds of small satellites. Spire expanding in Munich does not necessarily mean it is retreating from Glasgow.
\nSmith doesn't think the answer is simply trying to outspend competitors: "We can grow alongside them," he says.
\nInstead, he argues Scotland should focus on what the industry actually needs \u2013 filling gaps and helping space companies find customers in areas such as energy, transport and healthcare.
\nWith a successful domestic industry facing competition from abroad, you might anticipate calls for the government to provide financial support.
\nBut Lecky cautions against that. He argues Glasgow's small satellite industry originally grew partly because of a lack of government support, as part of the commercially-focused "newspace" revolution.
\n"We shouldn't jump to government support as being the answer - it's critical to keep this commercial-minded attitude," he says.
\n"If you offered most entrepreneurs a choice between a grant, with significant paperwork, milestone payments and continuous scrutiny, or a paying customer, I suspect they would always choose the customer," he says.
\nAnd increasingly, governments are becoming that customer anyway.
\nFor Smith, government contracts can do something grants cannot - give young companies revenue, a customer and a track record they can use to win business overseas.
\nPiazza says there is an economic case for thinking about procurement too. Building satellites creates knowledge that can spread far beyond the company itself. Engineers move between employers. Suppliers acquire new skills. Ideas become new products - sometimes in entirely different industries.
\n"Often, tomorrow's industries grow out of today's," he says. "The teams and suppliers building satellites now are the ones able to develop the next generation of a related technology, and once they disperse, they are very hard to reassemble."
\nBut there is a cost.
\nPiazza points out that money spent supporting one industry cannot be spent on hospitals or schools. Governments can be poor at picking industries. And if everyone subsidises, nobody necessarily gains ground.
\nThat is one reason procurement can make sense. The government buys something it needs anyway. The company gets a customer. Not just a grant.
\nBut that raises a bigger question, made more important by the Ukraine war: what does the UK actually need to be able to do for itself?
\nSatellites provide communications, navigation and intelligence during conflict. Beyond defence, satellite services underpin parts of transport, energy, telecommunications and emergency response. Governments therefore have to decide which capabilities they are comfortable buying from overseas providers or allies.
\nPiazza says there can be a strategic case for keeping capabilities that are critical and difficult to replace. He describes it as a form of insurance. But keeping capability at home can mean higher costs, smaller production runs and duplicating what allies already do.
\nThere is evidence that some public investment in space produces significant economic returns. Every \u00a31 of UK investment through the European Space Agency generated \u00a37.49 in direct economic benefit, an independent evaluation commissioned by the UK Space Agency estimated.
\nThe UK Space Agency also says its work helped catalyse \u00a32.2bn in investment and revenue for the UK space sector in 2024-25. But these figures relate to the whole of the UK, not Glasgow specifically.
\nThe more important question may be where the valuable parts of the industry - its people, intellectual property, research and manufacturing - ultimately end up.
\n"The risk is not closure," says Piazza. "It is that the next phase of growth follows the contracts elsewhere."
\nScotland also has another potential addition on the horizon: SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland.
\nThe vision of a fully integrated, "end-to-end" space sector is moving closer to reality. Although the infrastructure is ready, actual launch campaigns have experienced technical delays.
\nSo, success is not guaranteed.
\n"We are in a great position right now," says Strain. "But if we get complacent, then we can fall behind again because it's moving very, very fast."
\nGlasgow's shipyards once made the city synonymous with building things for the world. Its space industry has done something similar - almost by accident.
\nThe question now is not whether Glasgow can build a successful satellite industry. It already has.
\nIt is whether the next phase of that success is built here too.
", "summary": "In 2005, a young space engineer called Craig Clark moved back to his home city of Glasgow. He'd graduated from university just over a decade before, but the only jobs he could find were south of the border. Now Craig wanted to start a company of his own. He called it Clyde Space.
\nI went to school not far from the River Clyde, where Glasgow's shipbuilding industry earned a global reputation for craftsmanship and engineering excellence. There was a saying that I grew up with: "The Clyde made Glasgow and Glasgow made the Clyde."
\nWhat I hadn't realised until recently was that, in a different guise, that tradition is still alive. Two decades later, Glasgow is a European leader in building small satellites.
\nMany of those built here are known as CubeSats. Their basic building block measures just 10cm by 10cm by 10cm - think of something about the size of a Rubik's Cube. They are much smaller, cheaper and quicker to develop than the huge contraptions that you might picture when you think of satellites.
\nBut crucially, they are modular and can be stacked together, then packed with cameras, sensors, communications equipment or other technology depending on their purpose.
\nAnd their size belies their significance. The data collected by satellites of all kinds is increasingly woven into everyday life. It helps us communicate and navigate, track ships and transport goods, monitor forests and crops, manage energy networks and understand changes to our climate.
\nFor governments, that information can help inform decisions and respond to emergencies. As satellites have become more capable, space has become increasingly important.
\nMore than two decades after the first satellite company was established there, the Scottish government says more small satellites are built in Glasgow than anywhere else in Europe.
\nAcross Scotland, the wider space industry generated \u00a3335m in income in 2022-23 - up 69% in five years. Excluding traditional satellite television broadcasting, it employed 2,811 people, an increase of 81% over the same period.
\nBut elsewhere in Europe, governments are committing big money to their own satellite industries.
\nCould this take investment and jobs away from Glasgow? And if so, what - if anything - should the Scottish and UK governments do about it?
\nPerhaps the most surprising thing about Glasgow's success in the space industry is that it wasn't planned.
\nOne of the catalysts was Craig Clark's Clyde Space. The company specialised in CubeSats at just the right moment, a few years after it launched, as smaller and cheaper spacecraft were taking off, and would go on to build Scotland's first satellite, the UKube-1.
\nCrucially, the tech was built in partnership with the University of Strathclyde - which provided skills and research, as well as a ready supply of engineers.
\nOther companies followed, including Craft Prospect and Alba Orbital. Expertise grew and a new space cluster began to form. American satellite company Spire chose Glasgow for its European base in 2015. Smaller businesses developed, while established engineering and technology firms became part of the supply chain.
\n"Companies started moving to Glasgow because they could see that it was possible to do it here, and there was an ecosystem that was starting to grow," says Andrew Strain, chief technology officer at AAC Clyde Space - the company formed after Clyde Space was acquired by Swedish firm AAC Microtec, although Glasgow remains the group's main satellite manufacturing site.
\nSoon Glasgow was host to an "entire small satellite value chain", from components and satellite manufacturing, through to launch, spaceports and ground stations, according to Daniel Smith, founder of space marketing firm AstroAgency and the Scottish government's trade and investment envoy for space.
\nThere are wider benefits too. According to a review commissioned by Space Scotland, space manufacturing alone accounted for more than 1,000 Scottish jobs in 2022-23. The wider industry generated \u00a3202m for the Scottish economy.
\nAnd as the industry grew, so did the pool of knowledge. There are now more than 100 people working across space-related activity at the University of Strathclyde, with the subject now one of the institution's strategic priorities, according to Prof Malcolm Macdonald, its chair of applied space technology. The university works directly with commercial space companies on research and tech development.
\nMacdonald recalls that when he graduated, there was basically no local space industry for him to join. Now, "when our graduates leave the university, they will go and work in the local space sector because it is now here in Glasgow for them", he says.
\nBut what's significant, Macdonald says, is that Glasgow's satellite industry wasn't something the government set out to establish. Instead, the process was "largely organic", says Smith.
\nBy any measure it's a success story. But there are warnings about competition from overseas.
\n"It's not necessarily that we're going backwards," Macdonald tells me. "But other people are catching up."
\nBavaria is emerging as a significant European hub for aerospace and defence technology. Germany's Defence Ministry says it plans to invest around \u20ac35bn (\u00a330bn) in military space capabilities in the coming years, including more than 100 encrypted communications satellites.
\nFor Macdonald, that kind of spending is changing Europe's space industry. Against a backdrop of the war in Ukraine and wider geopolitical uncertainty, governments are no longer simply supporting research and innovation. Increasingly, they are becoming major customers rather than just investors.
\nWill Lecky, co-founder and director of know.space, the space economics consultancy, says that matters because the global playing field is not level. He says UK public space funding falls well behind countries such as France and Germany.
\n"It's certainly a risk to Glasgow and the wider UK space sector that investment will follow the money and lead to longer term competitive disadvantage as activity flows elsewhere," he says.
\nMeanwhile, Finland's aerospace firm ICEYE specialises in synthetic aperture radar (SAR), satellites, which can produce images of the Earth's surface through cloud and darkness. Macdonald says these have been used in the war in Ukraine, where satellite imagery can provide intelligence - for example, spotting a Russian vessel in a Crimean port - when conventional optical cameras cannot.
\nIn June, ICEYE announced a funding round worth more than \u20ac1bn, valuing the company at more than \u20ac10bn. The Finnish state has also increased its stake and now owns around 12% of the company.
\nFinland's Minister for European Affairs, Joakim Strand, said the geopolitical situation had highlighted the importance of domestic ownership in what he called a "key strategic sector".
\nGovernments want guaranteed access to satellite communications, especially when their country is facing a crisis. Some want the satellites - and the ability to build them - within their own borders.
\nThat can have consequences for Glasgow.
\n"The recent increases in space spending elsewhere in Europe matter," says Gabriele Piazza, an economist at the London School of Economics who researches government procurement of advanced technology.
\nSpace is not a normal market. Where the contracts go can help determine where companies invest, where engineers work and where expertise builds.
\n"Since capabilities build on themselves, firms with a large customer at home gain an advantage that lasts," Piazza adds.
\nMeanwhile, as well as Clyde Space's 2018 acquisition by AAC Microtec, Glasgow-founded Alba Orbital has moved its headquarters to the US, while retaining a Scottish base and team. Spire has expanded its manufacturing operation into Munich.
\nThe Scottish government maintains that Glasgow still builds more small satellites than anywhere else in Europe. So, this is not an industry in decline.
\nBut the bigger challenge, Smith says, is helping companies that start in Scotland to scale here.
\n"I wouldn't want it to be overly negative," says Macdonald. "It's more just like there are warning lights flashing that other parts of Europe are investing much more aggressively, and moving much more quickly, than we have."
\nSatellite camera manufacturer Simera Sense announced this year that it was opening a new production facility in the city, creating 20 highly skilled jobs. The firm, which has premises in South Africa, Belgium and France, will open a high-value electronics assembly lab and office at EastWorks in Dalmarnock.
\nThat suggests something more nuanced than an exodus. Glasgow's concentration of universities, engineers and specialist suppliers, built up over two decades, would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
\nPlus, some comparisons with overseas competitors are not exact. ICEYE is just one specialist company focused on radar satellites, while Glasgow is an entire manufacturing cluster producing different kinds of small satellites. Spire expanding in Munich does not necessarily mean it is retreating from Glasgow.
\nSmith doesn't think the answer is simply trying to outspend competitors: "We can grow alongside them," he says.
\nInstead, he argues Scotland should focus on what the industry actually needs \u2013 filling gaps and helping space companies find customers in areas such as energy, transport and healthcare.
\nWith a successful domestic industry facing competition from abroad, you might anticipate calls for the government to provide financial support.
\nBut Lecky cautions against that. He argues Glasgow's small satellite industry originally grew partly because of a lack of government support, as part of the commercially-focused "newspace" revolution.
\n"We shouldn't jump to government support as being the answer - it's critical to keep this commercial-minded attitude," he says.
\n"If you offered most entrepreneurs a choice between a grant, with significant paperwork, milestone payments and continuous scrutiny, or a paying customer, I suspect they would always choose the customer," he says.
\nAnd increasingly, governments are becoming that customer anyway.
\nFor Smith, government contracts can do something grants cannot - give young companies revenue, a customer and a track record they can use to win business overseas.
\nPiazza says there is an economic case for thinking about procurement too. Building satellites creates knowledge that can spread far beyond the company itself. Engineers move between employers. Suppliers acquire new skills. Ideas become new products - sometimes in entirely different industries.
\n"Often, tomorrow's industries grow out of today's," he says. "The teams and suppliers building satellites now are the ones able to develop the next generation of a related technology, and once they disperse, they are very hard to reassemble."
\nBut there is a cost.
\nPiazza points out that money spent supporting one industry cannot be spent on hospitals or schools. Governments can be poor at picking industries. And if everyone subsidises, nobody necessarily gains ground.
\nThat is one reason procurement can make sense. The government buys something it needs anyway. The company gets a customer. Not just a grant.
\nBut that raises a bigger question, made more important by the Ukraine war: what does the UK actually need to be able to do for itself?
\nSatellites provide communications, navigation and intelligence during conflict. Beyond defence, satellite services underpin parts of transport, energy, telecommunications and emergency response. Governments therefore have to decide which capabilities they are comfortable buying from overseas providers or allies.
\nPiazza says there can be a strategic case for keeping capabilities that are critical and difficult to replace. He describes it as a form of insurance. But keeping capability at home can mean higher costs, smaller production runs and duplicating what allies already do.
\nThere is evidence that some public investment in space produces significant economic returns. Every \u00a31 of UK investment through the European Space Agency generated \u00a37.49 in direct economic benefit, an independent evaluation commissioned by the UK Space Agency estimated.
\nThe UK Space Agency also says its work helped catalyse \u00a32.2bn in investment and revenue for the UK space sector in 2024-25. But these figures relate to the whole of the UK, not Glasgow specifically.
\nThe more important question may be where the valuable parts of the industry - its people, intellectual property, research and manufacturing - ultimately end up.
\n"The risk is not closure," says Piazza. "It is that the next phase of growth follows the contracts elsewhere."
\nScotland also has another potential addition on the horizon: SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland.
\nThe vision of a fully integrated, "end-to-end" space sector is moving closer to reality. Although the infrastructure is ready, actual launch campaigns have experienced technical delays.
\nSo, success is not guaranteed.
\n"We are in a great position right now," says Strain. "But if we get complacent, then we can fall behind again because it's moving very, very fast."
\nGlasgow's shipyards once made the city synonymous with building things for the world. Its space industry has done something similar - almost by accident.
\nThe question now is not whether Glasgow can build a successful satellite industry. It already has.
\nIt is whether the next phase of that success is built here too.
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-05T15:07:08Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-05T15:07:08Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2kedyp348lo#2", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2kedyp348lo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "Europe is pouring billions into space. Can Glasgow's satellite industry keep up?", "content_text": "", "content_html": "In 2005, a young space engineer called Craig Clark moved back to his home city of Glasgow. He'd graduated from university just over a decade before, but the only jobs he could find were south of the border. Now Craig wanted to start a company of his own. He called it Clyde Space.
\nI went to school not far from the River Clyde, where Glasgow's shipbuilding industry earned a global reputation for craftsmanship and engineering excellence. There was a saying that I grew up with: "The Clyde made Glasgow and Glasgow made the Clyde."
\nWhat I hadn't realised until recently was that, in a different guise, that tradition is still alive. Two decades later, Glasgow is a European leader in building small satellites.
\nMany of those built here are known as CubeSats. Their basic building block measures just 10cm by 10cm by 10cm - think of something about the size of a Rubik's Cube. They are much smaller, cheaper and quicker to develop than the huge contraptions that you might picture when you think of satellites.
\nBut crucially, they are modular and can be stacked together, then packed with cameras, sensors, communications equipment or other technology depending on their purpose.
\nAnd their size belies their significance. The data collected by satellites of all kinds is increasingly woven into everyday life. It helps us communicate and navigate, track ships and transport goods, monitor forests and crops, manage energy networks and understand changes to our climate.
\nFor governments, that information can help inform decisions and respond to emergencies. As satellites have become more capable, space has become increasingly important.
\nMore than two decades after the first satellite company was established there, the Scottish government says more small satellites are built in Glasgow than anywhere else in Europe.
\nAcross Scotland, the wider space industry generated \u00a3335m in income in 2022-23 - up 69% in five years. Excluding traditional satellite television broadcasting, it employed 2,811 people, an increase of 81% over the same period.
\nBut elsewhere in Europe, governments are committing big money to their own satellite industries.
\nCould this take investment and jobs away from Glasgow? And if so, what - if anything - should the Scottish and UK governments do about it?
\nPerhaps the most surprising thing about Glasgow's success in the space industry is that it wasn't planned.
\nOne of the catalysts was Craig Clark's Clyde Space. The company specialised in CubeSats at just the right moment, a few years after it launched, as smaller and cheaper spacecraft were taking off, and would go on to build Scotland's first satellite, the UKube-1.
\nCrucially, the tech was built in partnership with the University of Strathclyde - which provided skills and research, as well as a ready supply of engineers.
\nOther companies followed, including Craft Prospect and Alba Orbital. Expertise grew and a new space cluster began to form. American satellite company Spire chose Glasgow for its European base in 2015. Smaller businesses developed, while established engineering and technology firms became part of the supply chain.
\n"Companies started moving to Glasgow because they could see that it was possible to do it here, and there was an ecosystem that was starting to grow," says Andrew Strain, chief technology officer at AAC Clyde Space - the company formed after Clyde Space was acquired by Swedish firm AAC Microtec, although Glasgow remains the group's main satellite manufacturing site.
\nSoon Glasgow was host to an "entire small satellite value chain", from components and satellite manufacturing, through to launch, spaceports and ground stations, according to Daniel Smith, founder of space marketing firm AstroAgency and the Scottish government's trade and investment envoy for space.
\nThere are wider benefits too. According to a review commissioned by Space Scotland, space manufacturing alone accounted for more than 1,000 Scottish jobs in 2022-23. The wider industry generated \u00a3202m for the Scottish economy.
\nAnd as the industry grew, so did the pool of knowledge. There are now more than 100 people working across space-related activity at the University of Strathclyde, with the subject now one of the institution's strategic priorities, according to Prof Malcolm Macdonald, its chair of applied space technology. The university works directly with commercial space companies on research and tech development.
\nMacdonald recalls that when he graduated, there was basically no local space industry for him to join. Now, "when our graduates leave the university, they will go and work in the local space sector because it is now here in Glasgow for them", he says.
\nBut what's significant, Macdonald says, is that Glasgow's satellite industry wasn't something the government set out to establish. Instead, the process was "largely organic", says Smith.
\nBy any measure it's a success story. But there are warnings about competition from overseas.
\n"It's not necessarily that we're going backwards," Macdonald tells me. "But other people are catching up."
\nBavaria is emerging as a significant European hub for aerospace and defence technology. Germany's Defence Ministry says it plans to invest around \u20ac35bn (\u00a330bn) in military space capabilities in the coming years, including more than 100 encrypted communications satellites.
\nFor Macdonald, that kind of spending is changing Europe's space industry. Against a backdrop of the war in Ukraine and wider geopolitical uncertainty, governments are no longer simply supporting research and innovation. Increasingly, they are becoming major customers rather than just investors.
\nWill Lecky, co-founder and director of know.space, the space economics consultancy, says that matters because the global playing field is not level. He says UK public space funding falls well behind countries such as France and Germany.
\n"It's certainly a risk to Glasgow and the wider UK space sector that investment will follow the money and lead to longer term competitive disadvantage as activity flows elsewhere," he says.
\nMeanwhile, Finland's aerospace firm ICEYE specialises in synthetic aperture radar (SAR), satellites, which can produce images of the Earth's surface through cloud and darkness. Macdonald says these have been used in the war in Ukraine, where satellite imagery can provide intelligence - for example, spotting a Russian vessel in a Crimean port - when conventional optical cameras cannot.
\nIn June, ICEYE announced a funding round worth more than \u20ac1bn, valuing the company at more than \u20ac10bn. The Finnish state has also increased its stake and now owns around 12% of the company.
\nFinland's Minister for European Affairs, Joakim Strand, said the geopolitical situation had highlighted the importance of domestic ownership in what he called a "key strategic sector".
\nGovernments want guaranteed access to satellite communications, especially when their country is facing a crisis. Some want the satellites - and the ability to build them - within their own borders.
\nThat can have consequences for Glasgow.
\n"The recent increases in space spending elsewhere in Europe matter," says Gabriele Piazza, an economist at the London School of Economics who researches government procurement of advanced technology.
\nSpace is not a normal market. Where the contracts go can help determine where companies invest, where engineers work and where expertise builds.
\n"Since capabilities build on themselves, firms with a large customer at home gain an advantage that lasts," Piazza adds.
\nMeanwhile, as well as Clyde Space's 2018 acquisition by AAC Microtec, Glasgow-founded Alba Orbital has moved its headquarters to the US, while retaining a Scottish base and team. Spire has expanded its manufacturing operation into Munich.
\nThe Scottish government maintains that Glasgow still builds more small satellites than anywhere else in Europe. So, this is not an industry in decline.
\nBut the bigger challenge, Smith says, is helping companies that start in Scotland to scale here.
\n"I wouldn't want it to be overly negative," says Macdonald. "It's more just like there are warning lights flashing that other parts of Europe are investing much more aggressively, and moving much more quickly, than we have."
\nSatellite camera manufacturer Simera Sense announced this year that it was opening a new production facility in the city, creating 20 highly skilled jobs. The firm, which has premises in South Africa, Belgium and France, will open a high-value electronics assembly lab and office at EastWorks in Dalmarnock.
\nThat suggests something more nuanced than an exodus. Glasgow's concentration of universities, engineers and specialist suppliers, built up over two decades, would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
\nPlus, some comparisons with overseas competitors are not exact. ICEYE is just one specialist company focused on radar satellites, while Glasgow is an entire manufacturing cluster producing different kinds of small satellites. Spire expanding in Munich does not necessarily mean it is retreating from Glasgow.
\nSmith doesn't think the answer is simply trying to outspend competitors: "We can grow alongside them," he says.
\nInstead, he argues Scotland should focus on what the industry actually needs \u2013 filling gaps and helping space companies find customers in areas such as energy, transport and healthcare.
\nWith a successful domestic industry facing competition from abroad, you might anticipate calls for the government to provide financial support.
\nBut Lecky cautions against that. He argues Glasgow's small satellite industry originally grew partly because of a lack of government support, as part of the commercially-focused "newspace" revolution.
\n"We shouldn't jump to government support as being the answer - it's critical to keep this commercial-minded attitude," he says.
\n"If you offered most entrepreneurs a choice between a grant, with significant paperwork, milestone payments and continuous scrutiny, or a paying customer, I suspect they would always choose the customer," he says.
\nAnd increasingly, governments are becoming that customer anyway.
\nFor Smith, government contracts can do something grants cannot - give young companies revenue, a customer and a track record they can use to win business overseas.
\nPiazza says there is an economic case for thinking about procurement too. Building satellites creates knowledge that can spread far beyond the company itself. Engineers move between employers. Suppliers acquire new skills. Ideas become new products - sometimes in entirely different industries.
\n"Often, tomorrow's industries grow out of today's," he says. "The teams and suppliers building satellites now are the ones able to develop the next generation of a related technology, and once they disperse, they are very hard to reassemble."
\nBut there is a cost.
\nPiazza points out that money spent supporting one industry cannot be spent on hospitals or schools. Governments can be poor at picking industries. And if everyone subsidises, nobody necessarily gains ground.
\nThat is one reason procurement can make sense. The government buys something it needs anyway. The company gets a customer. Not just a grant.
\nBut that raises a bigger question, made more important by the Ukraine war: what does the UK actually need to be able to do for itself?
\nSatellites provide communications, navigation and intelligence during conflict. Beyond defence, satellite services underpin parts of transport, energy, telecommunications and emergency response. Governments therefore have to decide which capabilities they are comfortable buying from overseas providers or allies.
\nPiazza says there can be a strategic case for keeping capabilities that are critical and difficult to replace. He describes it as a form of insurance. But keeping capability at home can mean higher costs, smaller production runs and duplicating what allies already do.
\nThere is evidence that some public investment in space produces significant economic returns. Every \u00a31 of UK investment through the European Space Agency generated \u00a37.49 in direct economic benefit, an independent evaluation commissioned by the UK Space Agency estimated.
\nThe UK Space Agency also says its work helped catalyse \u00a32.2bn in investment and revenue for the UK space sector in 2024-25. But these figures relate to the whole of the UK, not Glasgow specifically.
\nThe more important question may be where the valuable parts of the industry - its people, intellectual property, research and manufacturing - ultimately end up.
\n"The risk is not closure," says Piazza. "It is that the next phase of growth follows the contracts elsewhere."
\nScotland also has another potential addition on the horizon: SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland.
\nThe vision of a fully integrated, "end-to-end" space sector is moving closer to reality. Although the infrastructure is ready, actual launch campaigns have experienced technical delays.
\nSo, success is not guaranteed.
\n"We are in a great position right now," says Strain. "But if we get complacent, then we can fall behind again because it's moving very, very fast."
\nGlasgow's shipyards once made the city synonymous with building things for the world. Its space industry has done something similar - almost by accident.
\nThe question now is not whether Glasgow can build a successful satellite industry. It already has.
\nIt is whether the next phase of that success is built here too.
", "summary": "In 2005, a young space engineer called Craig Clark moved back to his home city of Glasgow. He'd graduated from university just over a decade before, but the only jobs he could find were south of the border. Now Craig wanted to start a company of his own. He called it Clyde Space.
\nI went to school not far from the River Clyde, where Glasgow's shipbuilding industry earned a global reputation for craftsmanship and engineering excellence. There was a saying that I grew up with: "The Clyde made Glasgow and Glasgow made the Clyde."
\nWhat I hadn't realised until recently was that, in a different guise, that tradition is still alive. Two decades later, Glasgow is a European leader in building small satellites.
\nMany of those built here are known as CubeSats. Their basic building block measures just 10cm by 10cm by 10cm - think of something about the size of a Rubik's Cube. They are much smaller, cheaper and quicker to develop than the huge contraptions that you might picture when you think of satellites.
\nBut crucially, they are modular and can be stacked together, then packed with cameras, sensors, communications equipment or other technology depending on their purpose.
\nAnd their size belies their significance. The data collected by satellites of all kinds is increasingly woven into everyday life. It helps us communicate and navigate, track ships and transport goods, monitor forests and crops, manage energy networks and understand changes to our climate.
\nFor governments, that information can help inform decisions and respond to emergencies. As satellites have become more capable, space has become increasingly important.
\nMore than two decades after the first satellite company was established there, the Scottish government says more small satellites are built in Glasgow than anywhere else in Europe.
\nAcross Scotland, the wider space industry generated \u00a3335m in income in 2022-23 - up 69% in five years. Excluding traditional satellite television broadcasting, it employed 2,811 people, an increase of 81% over the same period.
\nBut elsewhere in Europe, governments are committing big money to their own satellite industries.
\nCould this take investment and jobs away from Glasgow? And if so, what - if anything - should the Scottish and UK governments do about it?
\nPerhaps the most surprising thing about Glasgow's success in the space industry is that it wasn't planned.
\nOne of the catalysts was Craig Clark's Clyde Space. The company specialised in CubeSats at just the right moment, a few years after it launched, as smaller and cheaper spacecraft were taking off, and would go on to build Scotland's first satellite, the UKube-1.
\nCrucially, the tech was built in partnership with the University of Strathclyde - which provided skills and research, as well as a ready supply of engineers.
\nOther companies followed, including Craft Prospect and Alba Orbital. Expertise grew and a new space cluster began to form. American satellite company Spire chose Glasgow for its European base in 2015. Smaller businesses developed, while established engineering and technology firms became part of the supply chain.
\n"Companies started moving to Glasgow because they could see that it was possible to do it here, and there was an ecosystem that was starting to grow," says Andrew Strain, chief technology officer at AAC Clyde Space - the company formed after Clyde Space was acquired by Swedish firm AAC Microtec, although Glasgow remains the group's main satellite manufacturing site.
\nSoon Glasgow was host to an "entire small satellite value chain", from components and satellite manufacturing, through to launch, spaceports and ground stations, according to Daniel Smith, founder of space marketing firm AstroAgency and the Scottish government's trade and investment envoy for space.
\nThere are wider benefits too. According to a review commissioned by Space Scotland, space manufacturing alone accounted for more than 1,000 Scottish jobs in 2022-23. The wider industry generated \u00a3202m for the Scottish economy.
\nAnd as the industry grew, so did the pool of knowledge. There are now more than 100 people working across space-related activity at the University of Strathclyde, with the subject now one of the institution's strategic priorities, according to Prof Malcolm Macdonald, its chair of applied space technology. The university works directly with commercial space companies on research and tech development.
\nMacdonald recalls that when he graduated, there was basically no local space industry for him to join. Now, "when our graduates leave the university, they will go and work in the local space sector because it is now here in Glasgow for them", he says.
\nBut what's significant, Macdonald says, is that Glasgow's satellite industry wasn't something the government set out to establish. Instead, the process was "largely organic", says Smith.
\nBy any measure it's a success story. But there are warnings about competition from overseas.
\n"It's not necessarily that we're going backwards," Macdonald tells me. "But other people are catching up."
\nBavaria is emerging as a significant European hub for aerospace and defence technology. Germany's Defence Ministry says it plans to invest around \u20ac35bn (\u00a330bn) in military space capabilities in the coming years, including more than 100 encrypted communications satellites.
\nFor Macdonald, that kind of spending is changing Europe's space industry. Against a backdrop of the war in Ukraine and wider geopolitical uncertainty, governments are no longer simply supporting research and innovation. Increasingly, they are becoming major customers rather than just investors.
\nWill Lecky, co-founder and director of know.space, the space economics consultancy, says that matters because the global playing field is not level. He says UK public space funding falls well behind countries such as France and Germany.
\n"It's certainly a risk to Glasgow and the wider UK space sector that investment will follow the money and lead to longer term competitive disadvantage as activity flows elsewhere," he says.
\nMeanwhile, Finland's aerospace firm ICEYE specialises in synthetic aperture radar (SAR), satellites, which can produce images of the Earth's surface through cloud and darkness. Macdonald says these have been used in the war in Ukraine, where satellite imagery can provide intelligence - for example, spotting a Russian vessel in a Crimean port - when conventional optical cameras cannot.
\nIn June, ICEYE announced a funding round worth more than \u20ac1bn, valuing the company at more than \u20ac10bn. The Finnish state has also increased its stake and now owns around 12% of the company.
\nFinland's Minister for European Affairs, Joakim Strand, said the geopolitical situation had highlighted the importance of domestic ownership in what he called a "key strategic sector".
\nGovernments want guaranteed access to satellite communications, especially when their country is facing a crisis. Some want the satellites - and the ability to build them - within their own borders.
\nThat can have consequences for Glasgow.
\n"The recent increases in space spending elsewhere in Europe matter," says Gabriele Piazza, an economist at the London School of Economics who researches government procurement of advanced technology.
\nSpace is not a normal market. Where the contracts go can help determine where companies invest, where engineers work and where expertise builds.
\n"Since capabilities build on themselves, firms with a large customer at home gain an advantage that lasts," Piazza adds.
\nMeanwhile, as well as Clyde Space's 2018 acquisition by AAC Microtec, Glasgow-founded Alba Orbital has moved its headquarters to the US, while retaining a Scottish base and team. Spire has expanded its manufacturing operation into Munich.
\nThe Scottish government maintains that Glasgow still builds more small satellites than anywhere else in Europe. So, this is not an industry in decline.
\nBut the bigger challenge, Smith says, is helping companies that start in Scotland to scale here.
\n"I wouldn't want it to be overly negative," says Macdonald. "It's more just like there are warning lights flashing that other parts of Europe are investing much more aggressively, and moving much more quickly, than we have."
\nSatellite camera manufacturer Simera Sense announced this year that it was opening a new production facility in the city, creating 20 highly skilled jobs. The firm, which has premises in South Africa, Belgium and France, will open a high-value electronics assembly lab and office at EastWorks in Dalmarnock.
\nThat suggests something more nuanced than an exodus. Glasgow's concentration of universities, engineers and specialist suppliers, built up over two decades, would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
\nPlus, some comparisons with overseas competitors are not exact. ICEYE is just one specialist company focused on radar satellites, while Glasgow is an entire manufacturing cluster producing different kinds of small satellites. Spire expanding in Munich does not necessarily mean it is retreating from Glasgow.
\nSmith doesn't think the answer is simply trying to outspend competitors: "We can grow alongside them," he says.
\nInstead, he argues Scotland should focus on what the industry actually needs \u2013 filling gaps and helping space companies find customers in areas such as energy, transport and healthcare.
\nWith a successful domestic industry facing competition from abroad, you might anticipate calls for the government to provide financial support.
\nBut Lecky cautions against that. He argues Glasgow's small satellite industry originally grew partly because of a lack of government support, as part of the commercially-focused "newspace" revolution.
\n"We shouldn't jump to government support as being the answer - it's critical to keep this commercial-minded attitude," he says.
\n"If you offered most entrepreneurs a choice between a grant, with significant paperwork, milestone payments and continuous scrutiny, or a paying customer, I suspect they would always choose the customer," he says.
\nAnd increasingly, governments are becoming that customer anyway.
\nFor Smith, government contracts can do something grants cannot - give young companies revenue, a customer and a track record they can use to win business overseas.
\nPiazza says there is an economic case for thinking about procurement too. Building satellites creates knowledge that can spread far beyond the company itself. Engineers move between employers. Suppliers acquire new skills. Ideas become new products - sometimes in entirely different industries.
\n"Often, tomorrow's industries grow out of today's," he says. "The teams and suppliers building satellites now are the ones able to develop the next generation of a related technology, and once they disperse, they are very hard to reassemble."
\nBut there is a cost.
\nPiazza points out that money spent supporting one industry cannot be spent on hospitals or schools. Governments can be poor at picking industries. And if everyone subsidises, nobody necessarily gains ground.
\nThat is one reason procurement can make sense. The government buys something it needs anyway. The company gets a customer. Not just a grant.
\nBut that raises a bigger question, made more important by the Ukraine war: what does the UK actually need to be able to do for itself?
\nSatellites provide communications, navigation and intelligence during conflict. Beyond defence, satellite services underpin parts of transport, energy, telecommunications and emergency response. Governments therefore have to decide which capabilities they are comfortable buying from overseas providers or allies.
\nPiazza says there can be a strategic case for keeping capabilities that are critical and difficult to replace. He describes it as a form of insurance. But keeping capability at home can mean higher costs, smaller production runs and duplicating what allies already do.
\nThere is evidence that some public investment in space produces significant economic returns. Every \u00a31 of UK investment through the European Space Agency generated \u00a37.49 in direct economic benefit, an independent evaluation commissioned by the UK Space Agency estimated.
\nThe UK Space Agency also says its work helped catalyse \u00a32.2bn in investment and revenue for the UK space sector in 2024-25. But these figures relate to the whole of the UK, not Glasgow specifically.
\nThe more important question may be where the valuable parts of the industry - its people, intellectual property, research and manufacturing - ultimately end up.
\n"The risk is not closure," says Piazza. "It is that the next phase of growth follows the contracts elsewhere."
\nScotland also has another potential addition on the horizon: SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland.
\nThe vision of a fully integrated, "end-to-end" space sector is moving closer to reality. Although the infrastructure is ready, actual launch campaigns have experienced technical delays.
\nSo, success is not guaranteed.
\n"We are in a great position right now," says Strain. "But if we get complacent, then we can fall behind again because it's moving very, very fast."
\nGlasgow's shipyards once made the city synonymous with building things for the world. Its space industry has done something similar - almost by accident.
\nThe question now is not whether Glasgow can build a successful satellite industry. It already has.
\nIt is whether the next phase of that success is built here too.
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-05T15:07:08Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-05T15:07:08Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0032j07#4", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0032j07?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "It Happened to Me", "content_text": "", "content_html": "The onset of sudden, intrusive thoughts led a young woman to falsely fear she was a paedophile. Molly stayed silent for years until she found it could be a symptom of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
", "summary": "The onset of sudden, intrusive thoughts led a young woman to falsely fear she was a paedophile. Molly stayed silent for years until she found it could be a symptom of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-05T15:01:00Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-05T15:01:00Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}, {"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0032lg7#4", "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0032lg7?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss", "external_url": null, "title": "Damilola: The Untold Story", "content_text": "", "content_html": "Who Do You Think You Are?
\nBarbara Windsor traces her maternal grandfather to the east London docks.
\n59 mins
", "summary": "Who Do You Think You Are?
\nBarbara Windsor traces her maternal grandfather to the east London docks.
\n59 mins
", "image": null, "banner_image": null, "date_published": "2026-10-04T21:00:00Z", "date_modified": "2026-10-04T21:00:00Z", "authors": ["Unknown"], "tags": [], "language": null, "attachments": ["\n {\"url\": string, \n 'mime_type': string, \n 'title': strinrg,\n 'size_in_bytes': int,\n 'duration_in_seconds': int\n "]}]}