Weekend Box: Labour Crash Tory Party, Ecuador Elections & more
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
LABOUR CRASH TORY PARTY IN TAM & MID-BEDS
Last night the Labour Party delivered a double by-election blow to the Conservatives, overturning historic majorities in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire. With Rutherglen and Selby also under their belt, this is an extraordinary run for the party and a serious concern for the Conservatives.
Tamworth has been considered a Conservative ‘safe’ seat, with its last MP Chris Pincher, who was suspended from the Commons over groping allegations, securing a majority of nearly 20,000 in 2019. Last night was a different story.
In a straight Tory-Labour fight, Sarah Edwards triumphed over Tory candidate Andrew Cooper, making it the second biggest by-election swing to Labour at 23.9% since 1945 and the largest Conservative percentage majority overturned. Deep in Brexit territory and an area that had been moving rightwards politically, this result makes clear that nowhere is off-limits for the Labour Party. Tamworth is also considered a ‘bellwether seat’ that could be a key indicator of how the votes will turn in a general election.
It was a tighter race in Mid-Bedfordshire, which has never been held by Labour in its century-long history. The new Labour MP Alistair Strathern grasped the seat vacated by Nadine Dorries with a swing of 20.52% but secured a majority of just 1,000 votes. This was the result of a three-way battle with the Liberal Democrats, who held a fierce campaign in the region and refused to cede ground to Labour.
Alongside their performance in local elections, this result shows Labour is now reversing Tory gains not just since 2019 but since 2010. Many people will see this as evidence of Rishi Sunak’s inability to connect with voters and an electorate hungry for change, but while that may be true, perhaps the real winner here is general voter apathy – which could be a problem for both parties. In Mid-Bed turnout was 44%, down from the last general election turnout of 74%, and it was even worse in Tamworth with 35.95% turnout down from 64.3%. The scale of Conservative defeat is undeniable, but with a lack of attachment to political parties and many voters staying home, this electorate could be more volatile come election day. Labour will rightly be celebrating today, but given it needs just over half the swing it achieved in Tamworth to win a majority of seats, it has a steep hill to climb. The question is: will voter apathy be enough?
Image credit/Tony Monblat on Flickr/License
NEWS WORTH CELL-EBRATING
In a week that has seen little in the way of good news, a “major scientific advance” in the field of cancer treatment is welcome reading. A collaborative study by a team of scientists from three hospitals in Europe has found a way to reverse prostate cancer’s resistance to therapy, giving hope to patients who are running out of possibilities.
Generally speaking, prostate cancer is one of the less aggressive cancer types, with almost 80% of men diagnosed surviving their cancer for 10 years or more. Nonetheless, it kills more than 12,000 men in the UK annually, in part because some advanced forms are able to hijack a type of white blood cell known as the myeloid cell and resist treatment.
A team of scientists from the Institute of Cancer Research in London, the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, and the Institute of Oncology Research in Switzerland have found that they can block the messages sent from the cancer cells to white blood cells and reverse resistance to therapy. The experimental treatment shrunk some tumours and halted the growth of others. In five of 21 patients, tumours shrunk by over 30% and they experienced “dramatic decreases” in circulating levels of prostate specific antigen (PSA), which often signifies cancer.
Johann De Bono, a professor of experimental cancer medicine at the Institute of Cancer Research and consultant medical oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said, “This research proves for the first time that targeting myeloid cells rather than the cancer cells themselves can shrink tumours and benefit patients. This is tremendously exciting and it suggests we have an entirely new way to treat prostate cancer on the horizon.”
As myeloid cells have a role in resisting treatment in numerous other forms of cancer, this discovery potentially has huge implications across the oncology space.
Image credit/National Assembly of Ecuador on Flickr/License
ECUADOR: ‘EMPLOYMENT PRESIDENT’ GETS THE JOB
Ecuador’s elections, which began in August and have taken place against a background of economic crisis and increasing drug-related criminal violence, concluded on Sunday after run-offs and the final presidential vote. The winner was relative newcomer Daniel Noboa, 35, with just over 52% of the vote.
Noboa will only serve a 15-month ‘caretaker’ term after the election was triggered by incumbent President Guillermo Lasso. Facing impeachment, Lasso used a ‘mutual death’ to call general and presidential elections, with the winner of the latter serving for the time Lasso had remaining in office.
Calling himself ‘the employment President’, Noboa appealed to an electorate that, as in neighbouring El Salvador and Chile, is comparatively young and struggling; around a third are under 40 and only 34% say they have adequate employment. The youthful Noboa appealed as a change candidate and relative outsider. He is a novice politician, having only entered Congress in 2021, but politics is not new to him, being the son of billionaire Alvaro Noboa who ran for President 5 times between 1998-2013.
Noboa also pledged to tackle Ecuador’s drug cartels, which control cocaine exports to Europe and the US via its Pacific ports. For scale, one shipment seized in Spain weighed 9.5 tonnes. An image of Noboa voting in a bulletproof vest illustrated the real threat from cartel-related violence that saw another candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, assassinated in August. Noboa has pledged to deploy the military to control the ports, boost police resources, and build new prison ships to address growing numbers of incarcerated people.
Such plans will require a coalition effort that will prove challenging. Credit to defeated candidate Luisa Gonzalez, who has pledged to work with him.
Image credit/Stuart Rankin on Flickr/License
ELECTRIC CARS: INDUSTRY POWERLESS TO STOP TARIFFS?
UK and EU carmakers are on a collision course with a harsh reality, as time is running out to source batteries for electric cars (EVs) domestically and avoid 10% tariffs when exporting the vehicles with each other.
Car industry lobbying groups on both sides of the Channel are calling for an extension to the January 2024 deadline for sourcing batteries from within the UK or from Europe, a limit imposed by the Brexit free trade deal in 2021. Carmakers have had a three-year grace period to manufacture electric cars with batteries containing up to 70% of materials from elsewhere in the world, but from January next year, the deal’s ‘rules of origin’ dictate that this will tighten to 50%.
With only two months now until the tariffs come into effect, the industry claims that the prices of imported EVs could rise by as much as £3,400, unless the EU and UK are granted more time to get up to speed with supplying batteries.
Supplies from within Europe have so far failed to meet demand, and while factories are being built in the EU and Britain in a race to reduce reliance on foreign imports of batteries, these will not be fully ‘up and running’ before the January deadline has already passed.
The ramifications for the industry have led to a backlash against the UK Government for not doing enough to support the transition to EVs domestically, while Vauxhall’s owner Stellantis has warned that factories in Britain will close unless the Brexit deal is amended.
A solution may lie in scaling battery technologies that do not rely on extracting minerals, such as ‘biographite’: a tree-based alternative to the graphite that is essential to EV manufacturing. However, this will also rely on a government push, when time is already running out.
Image credit/Will on Flickr/License
AFGHANISTAN WIN: IT’S NOT JUST CRICKET
The 2023 Cricket World Cup produced its first upset on Sunday, with Afghanistan beating England by some margin. The result marks another significant milestone in the remarkable rise of Afghan cricket.
Like its home country, the team has faced many hardships in the last decades. Afghanistan cricket has only existed in a meaningful way since 2000, after the Taliban lifted its proscription of the sport.
Some of the team’s current members, such as veteran Mohammed Nabi, are drawn from the families fleeing the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s. Aged 10, Nabi picked up cricket whilst living in a refugee camp in Pakistan, where endless games with a tennis ball were enough to grow his skills and earn him a place at a professional academy.
20 years later, this one-time refugee was representing his country in a fully-fledged Afghanistan international cricket team at the World Cup. In that time, the team has created its first genuinely global superstar in Rashid Khan, who has lit up huge tournaments like the Indian Premier League.
Yet for all the team’s progress, it once again finds itself with a refugee-like status. The Taliban’s takeover two years ago prompted most players and coaching staff to flee Afghanistan. Thanks to money from the UAE, the team has now found a home in Dubai.
There is no such support for the fledging women’s national team, who say they have felt abandoned by the international cricket community. The Taliban has an effective ban on all women’s sport and there’s little sign of that changing.
This instability has hampered the Afghanistan cricket’s development but, for now, there’s talent and spirit enough to fell the top sides on the biggest stages.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audleyadvisors.com.
For now, that’s The Weekend Box officially closed.