I think like a lot of women - and a lot of men as well - I’ve found the last week pretty emotional.
Famous and powerful men - who abused that fame and power - finally not getting away with it. And behaviour and culture that we were all supposed to just laugh along with - well now we can actually say - this is not ok. It was never ok.
It felt like a watershed moment.

But what is a watershed moment? It’s a moment that is critical turning point or decisive event that permanently changes things.

So what IS actually going to change?
Well - there is one thing I would suggest could change - and it would be controversial - not everyone would agree with it.

Right now - if you’re a 16 year old girl having sex with another 16 year old - or the boy from the year above at school - that’s treated exactly the same as if you have sex with a 45 year old not in a position of trust.
Should it be?

Here's the thing - there’s a cliff edge on how you’re treated when you turn 16 - but not the other way round.
In England and Wales, if you’re a child, and someone has sex with you - the law treats you completely differently if you’re under 13 or if you’re between 13 and 16.

If you’re under 13 - it’s rape - consent is legally impossible. But if you’re 14 or 15 - it can be prosecuted as “sexual activity with a child” rather than rape which of course carries a lower sentence.

This was a massive issue during the grooming gang scandal - and the Gvt is looking to change it.

But right now - the law staggers the age of consent the wrong way.

It tapers the cliff edge for people who have sex with children - people that you and I would call rapists, but the law doesn’t treat as such.

But it DOESN’T taper the cliff edge when you turn 16. And maybe it should.

How about a staggered law of consent the other way instead - so you can have sex with a 16 year old - but only if you’re under 18 yourself?

Then the events of the last week really WOULD be a watershed.

This was an unusually beautiful watch ahead of 11am today. It is good to be reminded of beauty and nature.

An unfortunate choice of words from her team. It is not weakness to wait until you are ready to face extreme scrutiny….

It’s fascinating to see Reform UK politicians burning bridges with @LordAshcroft , someone they’ve been cordial with, over an unfavorable poll. Unnecessary and foolish.

The right response, of course, is to see what you can learn from a poll. If the poll is wrong you don’t need to worry too much and if it’s right you are ignoring truth. Whenever in my political life people have started denying what research is telling them, it always ends badly.

Plus his polls are good. Trump’s people thought the polls were an establishment fiction, but they ended up underestimating the Democrats.

Chimes with my thought this week that the 2026 US election shares parallels with Labour’s in 2024. And Dem victories are now fragile. So much hangs now on party choices, and presidential nominees.

I’ve been gathering my thoughts the last few days, and I think I’m ready to say a few things. Obviously this election went really well for Democrats, but I think there’s warnings for both parties moving forward in the data.

🧵Ahead of the Budget, our research with @electrifygb finds bringing down energy bills is the public's top priority for the budget: picked by 58% of Britons, ahead of public services (33%) & tax cuts (32%). It is number one for Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem and Reform voters alike.

Is there a way back for the Tories? @ProfJaneGreen v interesting on this when I chatted to her on @itvpeston this week 👇

Kemi Badenoch: “To those who say unite the right, we are not uniting with that. People deserve better” 💬

So how hard will it be for the Tories to beat Reform? And are there any signs they will?

Watch @ProfJaneGreen discuss with @PippaCrerar + @Peston👇

youtu.be/zme88PK-0ks?is…

Conservative members and MPs are happier than I have seen them for a very long time. Because they have stopped sinking, as they had been doing both before the general election and for a couple of years since.

The risk that they would drown, that Reform would replace them as the only serious party of the right, is now low.

There are two reasons. First, the perennial chaos in Reform - the constant controversies around funding and money, the endless gaffes by councillors, aides and members - means it is a long way from showing the kind of competence that a party pretending to government must demonstrate.

Second, the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has found a voice, a set of simple ideas and poise.

The question is whether she can turn “we’re still here” into “ignore Reform, we are again the main party of opposition.”

The point, which I assume Badenoch grasps though not many of her slightly euphoric members here at the Tory conference in Birmingham appear to do, is that the polls show voters are prepared to listen to the Tories again, but they still see Reform as their main vehicle to challenge both Labour and a Westminster status quo which many of them hate.

Burnham gets this. His devolution and anti-privatisation agendas, and his Livercunian accent, are conscious appeals to those who feel ignored and hurt by the British way of governing since around 1979.

Badenoch will today attack him as a throwback to the political and economic mayhem of the 1970s. And if he cannot soon demonstrate he has a credible modern answer to the only question that matters - how to make the economy grow again for the benefit of the vast majority in this AI era - he will soon have a problem or many.

But she is also a throwback, and deliberately so. She is trying to regain her party’s reputation for economic competence, after 14 years of Tory led governments when the economy stagnated except for the near heart attack under Liz Truss.

With businesses, she is doing this by promising to shrink the state and allocate half the savings to reducing the government’s increasingly unaffordable debts - and also by halving the national insurance cost for them of employing 21-to-24 year olds.

Badenoch is also trying to woo richer voters, old and young, who would traditionally have voted Tory, but have despaired and gone to the LibDems, Reform and even Labour.

For them there are pretty transparent bribes - though I should say Badenoch passionately denied this to me, claiming hers were rational growth inducing tax reforms.

Whatever.

In practice, her proposed abolition of all child-care means testing and of stamp duty disproportionately helps those with well-above average incomes in their first round and direct impact. Though she is correct that they should stimulate economic activity that is of wider benefit.

But her expected cut in inheritance tax would be a huge boon to the children of the 5% of British households with most assets- and in its case, I cannot see an argument that it stimulates economic growth.

Per contra, it seems awkwardly timed both from a social justice point of view and for the imperative of shrinking the government’s deficit. As the OBR points out, by 2030 the number of estates paying any inheritance tax would double to 10% and very useful billions would surge to the Treasury.

Here is the important demographic backdrop. For those born at any point from around 1930 to 1975, it was super easy to buy a home when they were in their 20s or early 30s, because there were more houses available for fewer people.

This was their good luck, not their wealth-creating genius. The corollary has been a massive relative shift of wealth from young to old. 1/2

“People are seeing Reform as the main party of opposition”

Elections Expert @ProfJaneGreen joins @PippaCrerar to discuss the fight on the right between the Conservatives and Reform

#Peston

Are the Tories still relevant? 🤔

EXCLUSIVE research on the show tonight shows voters unhappy with the economy are opting for Reform, not the Conservatives. This is a first for a party that isn't the official opposition.

Tune in at 9pm on YouTube 📺

#Peston

We are 🅻🅸🆅🅴 at 9PM on YouTube👇

Joining @Peston and @PippaCrerar tonight:

⚽ Former FA Chairman Greg Dyke
🔵 Shadow Foreign Secretary @TomTugendhat
🌹 Labour’s @johnmcdonnellMP
💼 Elections Expert @ProfJaneGreen

youtube.com/live/4A17AHNSs…

#Peston

Imagine the ‘Burnham bounce’ having to lift off against a pressing load of economic hardship. I think this is the right way to think of his appeal and also the counterweight to it. He’s fighting against a tide of rising prices and economic negatives.

In this episode @edballs and @George_Osborne reflect on findings from our new research, details coming out soon!

Andy Burnham's speech to Labour conference in *2010* after losing the leadership election

At the 1-minute 30-second mark:

“The way older people have to pay for care today is as great an injustice as healthcare before the NHS…

“A cruel dementia tax where vulnerable people empty their bank accounts and surrender their homes, not the British way but as brutal as American Healthcare…

“Ending this injustice is a great cause for Labour as any that has gone before.”

He calls for a “national care service free at the point of use”
youtube.com/watch?v=EkNFxI…

Agree. Looking at the post-election BES from 2024, (different question so not strictly comparable), views are very much split, and split on party lines.

Well done to @Survation. This is exactly what I’d have expected. We need to move beyond over-simplified takes on public consent. The answer is so often: It depends!

It will massively depend on whether people think it will deliver the outcome they prefer!

It’s a funny line when the politics of nostalgia has been underpinning the rise of the radical right, here and elsewhere.