Balance of Power

Welcome to a special edition of Balance of Power with the best from this week’s UK Labour Party conference in Liverpool. Each weekday we bring you the latest in global politics. sign up here.

It’s highly unusual for such a new party to be the political conversation at the annual conference of Keir Starmer’s Labour. But these are not normal times, and the 125-year-old ruling party is fighting to maintain its identity as the true representative of the working people.

In his efforts to vanquish Nigel Farage, the prime minister painted Reform UK as a party that’s unpatriotic and whose immigration policies are racist.

Here’s a fun pub quiz factoid that should give the Labour leader pause: Donald Trump ran as an independent for Reform USA in 2000 and was dismissed as a joke.

A quarter of a century on, who’s laughing now?

Farage laughing at his own party conference last month. Photographer: Darren Staples/Bloomberg

Trump and Farage both came of political age in 2016 under a populist wave. One became American president, the other helped achieve Brexit, but still struggled to get taken seriously.

That has changed as Farage adopted Reform as his latest political incarnation. Opinion polls now show him as the most likely candidate to be the next prime minister.

His party’s name is not the only thing Farage has borrowed from the Trumpian playbook — Reform has slowly but surely Americanized British politics.

Just as Trump was once ridiculed, so Farage was derided as an also-ran who perennially tried and failed to win a seat in the House of Commons. Until he did in 2024.

Now, Reform has superseded the mainstream-right Conservatives, which are fading fast. Vice-President JD Vance didn’t bother to meet Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch this summer, but made time for Farage.

The Reform chief has forced Starmer’s party to adopt anti-immigration policies that even a decade ago were unthinkable. The waving of Union Jacks and invocations of patriotism constitute unusual territory for Labour, a party which traditionally closed its conference with a rendition of The Red Flag.

That is, until Farage pushed them there.

Now he’s framing local elections in May 2026 as midterms, a key test of the incumbent party.

He is also introducing Antifa — anti-fascist — into the parlance. It’s a loosely defined, far-left movement that Trump has designated a terrorist group in the US.

He’s refused to dispute Trump’s anti-science warnings about Tylenol — paracetamol to Brits — use by pregnant women.

Starmer may be in “a fight for the soul” of the UK, as he told conference. But it’s the insurgent choosing the terms of the battle ahead. — Ellen Milligan

Global Must Reads

Remember when Boris Johnson as London mayor used to constantly try and cause mischief at Tory party conference when his university rival David Cameron was leading Britain? He was reincarnated as the (much more moderate) Manchester mayor Andy Burnham at Labour conference this year. He spent the previous week criticizing Starmer and challenging his authority, but it ended up falling flat. As one MP quipped, Burnham doesn't have a strategic bone in his body.

Burnham on the opening day of the conference. Photographer: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Starmer bought himself time — quelling any challenge to his standing for now — in his speech to conference. In pitching directly to working classes he decided to distinguish between himself and Farage in his most articulate form yet: progressive patriotism, decency and hard work to reform public services versus someone who is more concerned about culture wars than the country. Think of it as ‘Keir unleashed.’ The barnstorming speech displayed an unusual level of passion from Starmer and left his internal rivals humbled and the party unified behind him.

The UK is expected to lift a cap on state benefits handouts to parents with more than two children, a move that campaigners say will help at least 500,000 children out of poverty. It's a policy move that many in the Labour Party, including former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have wanted for years but Chancellor Rachel Reeves has always maintained that she will only do so once she can find the funding. That’s likely to come in the form of a significantly higher tax on gambling firms, she hinted this week.

Just 24 hours after Starmer attempted to inject some hope into the UK’s business community, hosting executives at a day of private events, one indicator showed confidence hitting a record low. Those in the room — there were fewer of them, as Labour doubled the price of tickets for the day to £6,000 — said Starmer and his allies were receptive to their concerns around taxes and regulation, but with Reeves’s budget just around the corner, many are holding back their praise until they see what she has in store.

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Chart of the Day

Back in London, Bank of England rate setter Catherine Mann told Bloomberg she thinks that UK interest rates need to remain on hold for now, describing the UK's monetary policy as “relatively loose.” Even though she’s one of the most hawkish rate-setters at the central bank and opposed the previous two quarter-point reductions in borrowing costs, she did rule out voting for a fresh rise in rates, saying that the Monetary Policy Committee needs to avoid a “policy boogie.” UK inflation has risen well above levels seen in the US and eurozone.

And Finally

Farage isn’t the only one cribbing from Trump's playbook — or his wardrobe. Steve Reed, Angela Rayner’s successor as secretary of state for housing, spent the conference handing out red baseball caps emblazoned with the words “Build Baby Build.” The conference buzz was less about his plans to meet Labour’s ambitious homes targets as whether he’s trying to hype himself up for a potential future run at the leadership.

Reed donning the cap he’s been handing out. Photographer: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Global Must Reads

Chart of the Day

And Finally

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