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Politicians should "feel empowered" to leave platforms like X - formerly Twitter - if they believe it presents a greater risk than benefit to their work, according to a damning new report from the House of Commons' speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle.

The report includes the strongest nudge yet for politicians to consider leaving X or Facebook altogether.

The official House of Commons report from the Speaker's Conference on abuse of politicians is damning about X, formerly Twitter, where toxic content appears to have got far worse since far-right billionaire Elon Musk took over in 2022.

While a spokesperson for X told the inquiry: "It is very important that people who use the platform are not victims of abuse" and that they take the issue seriously, the Speaker-led probe found that X was failing in its legal duties to remove threats of violence against politicians.

And the special conference from Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said X's written evidence was "often more evasive than it was informative". For example it noted that "when asked for the percentage of requests for information from the police they had denied due to insufficient evidence to support the request, X declined to say."

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But the Commons body did extract important information from the social media platform, long seen as a "public square" for political debate in the UK and beyond.

X has "only 1,486 human reviewers working in English" despite receiving "more than 85,000 posts that breach their terms of service every day" according to the platform's own data.

It also found that X "shared information with the police in less than half of the instances when it was requested formally, and in only 30% of instances when it was requested informally" - compared to Meta's 85% compliance rate.

Both Meta - which owns Facebook and Instagram - and X had a higher bar for removing abuse when it concerned politicians.

The report notes that Meta only removes "violent threats against public figures, such as MPs and candidates if they are found to be 'credible'" - using a "high bar" including looking for "specific locations and timing of a potential attack". Meanwhile, X's enforcement considers whether content "may be a topic of legitimate public interest" - in other words, attacks on politicians are viewed as more acceptable than ordinary members of the public.

The critical assessment from the Speaker's Conference concluded: "We have no faith that Meta and X will resolve these issues unless they are legally obliged to do so. There is therefore no point in us recommending wholesale change of policies or modus operandi."

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Key concerns from the report found a general "unwillingness to remove abuse against MPs, candidates and other public figures", and indications that X and Meta's algorithmic recommendation systems actually give preference to incendiary and threatening content - because it boosts engagement on the platform.

Meta and X were also condemned for choosing to send "relatively junior witnesses" to the inquiry, suggesting a lack of respect for the process.

The report went on to question "their sincerity" - adding that the platforms do not appear to "understand the damaging impact they are having on democracy in the UK."

The Commons inquiry noted that having higher bars for removing threats against politicians than other individuals "normalises the idea that MPs...

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Byline Times first reported on Russia's "human safari" attacks on Ukrainians back in July 2024. At the time, Putin's drones attacks on civilians in Kherson City seemed to be a series of isolated atrocities, too brutal to form a pattern. However, more than a year later, the "human safari" has been officially recognised not only as a war crime and a crime against humanity but also as part of a coordinated strategy to drive Ukrainians from their homes.

On 27 October 2025, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine presented new findings to the 80th United Nations General Assembly, documenting a systematic campaign to depopulate southern Ukraine. This is the third report by the Commission and it builds upon previous findings. A conference room paper in May 2025 first documented drone attacks along a hundred-kilometre stretch around Kherson.

The new report expands the investigation to 300 kilometres, from Dnipropetrovsk through Kherson to Mykolaiv, and incorporates deportations and transfers into a broader picture of Russia's state-directed policy against civilians.

Drones as Instruments of Forced Displacement

The Commission confirmed that Russian forces committed the crimes against humanity of murder and forcible transfer of population through recurrent drone strikes across southern Ukraine. These attacks were coordinated and directed at civilians, homes, humanitarian distribution points, and critical energy infrastructure. First responders such as ambulances and fire brigades were also targeted, in defiance of their protected status under international law. The strikes rendered entire areas uninhabitable.

The Commission concluded that the use of drones was not random but part of a deliberate policy to depopulate Ukrainian territories, spreading terror and coercing civilians into flight. In Kherson, this pattern is clear. According to local authorities, since July 2024, over 200 civilians have been killed and over 2,000 civilians were injured in such attacks in the three oblasts. Almost 3,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed, also by drones.

Is Russia Losing the Great Game in Central Asia?

Iain Overton travelled to Tashkent, where cranes rise over Soviet relics and Chinese cars fill the streets, to see how Uzbekistan has become the lodestar of Central Asia's quiet pivot away from Moscow

Iain Overton

The Road of Death

Elvina Osmanova, a municipal services staffer in her early twenties, forgot her purse at home in Kherson as she set out on a business trip to Mykolaiv, a city 67 miles away. Before the Russian invasion, the drive took about an hour along a flat road lined with sunflower fields and southern steppes.

In August 2025, the road had turned into a surreal landscape. Elvina drove at a mad speed under fishing nets stretched high over wooden poles, forming a long, transparent tunnel. Her car twisted and turned around charred cars; black-and-red flames raged right next to her. The stench of burning fields and gasoline became suffocating. The fire was so close, and the heat so intense, that her windows began to crack. Was she trapped inside the anti-drone tunnel? Would a Russian FPV drone target her next? She saw the fishing nets melting and pressed harder on the gas. At a checkpoint, though, all traffic was stopped: swarms of Russian drones of different sizes and types attacked the M14 highway. Ukrainian electronic warfare (EW) units fought back, but the wait took what seemed to be forever.

Elvina made it back home only after curfew and had to stay and catch some sleep to the sounds of nonstop artillery fire. Before sunrise, now with her purse, she set out again - and soon a Russian drone dropped explosives 30 feet from her car. She saw people jumping out of burning vehicles and heard another explosion, but kept driving. She didn't know if she ...

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A whole heap of important legislation will become law this week. But with most of the media focusing on rows over Chinese espionage and one asylum seeker's release, they're likely to be largely missed.

Away from the newspaper front pages, the Labour Government has been busy with some pretty major reforms, as well as some smaller initiatives that could significantly affect people's lives.

So here's a collection of some recent news from Westminster and Whitehall you may have missed, as part of an occasional series looking at what the Government is really getting up to.

Here's our usual caveat: This list is by no means conclusive, and it is up to you whether you think the news is either good or bad. Mostly, as you'd imagine, they are things the Government sees as positive developments - as we've picked out announcements which haven't been extensively reported on.

However, the examples do offer a flavour of some of the things that we could, but aren't, talking about thanks largely to the priorities of the British press, or if you prefer, due to a maddening failure of communication by No 10.

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1. London-Style Buses

The boringly-named Bus Services (No. 2) Bill became law on Monday night (27th October), enabling local transport authorities to implement franchising schemes for bus services in England - potentially reversing the decades-old deregulation of buses which opponents say has contributed to spiralling prices and worsening, reduced services while transport firms pay millions to shareholders.

But it will also end the (surprisingly recent) Conservative ban on councils setting up their own bus companies to directly compete with private firms.

Buses are the most frequently used form of public transport and are relied on by millions of people - disproportionately lower-income workers, young people, retirees and more.

Greater Manchester took up the opportunity of regulating buses by setting up the 'Bee Network', but the legal framework mayor Andy Burnham had to use to do it took years to utilise, and faced relentless challenge from transport firms. The new process is set to massively streamline it.

This bill won't make the front pages, but if councils take up the opportunity, it could revolutionise this vital form of transport in England.

Cat Hobbs, director of pro-public ownership campaign We Own It, told Byline Times: "After 40 years of bus deregulation and privatisation, it's fantastic that this government is making it easier to take back control of our buses," though she also called for the ambition to be matched with extra funding to help make this a success.

Hobbs added: "It's excellent news that the absurd ideological ban on new publicly owned bus companies, introduced under the last government, has now been reversed. Publicly owned bus companies like Lothian Buses and Reading Buses consistently win awards for their brilliant services."

Transport for London-style transport in Cornwall, Leeds, and Newcastle, here we come?

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2. Awaab's Law

Millions of social housing tenants in England are set to benefit from safer homes due to new rules coming into force in England this week, the Government says.

The first phase of 'Awaab's Law' will force social landlords (including councils and housing associations) to take urgent action to fix dangerous homes or face the full force of the law.

New legal duties w...

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Nigel Farage's Reform UK claims to represent a people's revolt against the political elite. But documents reviewed by Byline Times, alongside corporate and regulatory filings in London and the United States, reveal that the party's own Treasurer was recently invested with the same Silicon Valley donor bloc - including Elon Musk - that powered Donald Trump's return.

The relationship highlights how the party's finances have been linked to the fortunes of America's pro-Trump elite, as Reform mirrors their pro-fossil fuel agenda and attacks on Net Zero.

Reform UK's Treasurer and property billionaire Nick Candy, is now the single biggest donor to the party, having given a total of £1 million. But until January 2024, Candy was also limited-partner investor in ACME Capital - a California venture fund specialising in early-stage technology companies. Its star portfolio contains SpaceX, the most valuable private startup in the world. SpaceX's eponymous founder and owner is Elon Musk, by far the biggest funder of Trump's return to power - who is now also funding the criminal defence of far-right convicted fraudster Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who calls himself 'Tommy Robinson'.

Musk's is not the only company linked to ACME Capital in Trump's donor network. Other major ventures which were kickstarted with support from ACME include Uber, Airbnb, Robinhood and OpenGov - companies whose founders and executives have collectively poured millions of dollars into Trump's super PACs, inaugural committees and Republican politicians.

Byline Times can reveal that Nick Candy's investment in this Silicon Valley venture fund, from which he exited in 2024, was made through an offshore entity based in Guernsey.

As Reform UK pledges to scrap Britain's net zero targets and "unlock" new oil and gas drilling, its policies mirror the fossil fuel revival now unfolding under Trump's second-term agenda - an agenda financed by the same tech billionaires linked to Candy.

Nick Candy's Silicon Valley Connection

When Candy poured money into the venture firm ACME Capital, he wasn't simply buying into start-ups. He was buying into Silicon Valley's most powerful new political constituency - what would soon become a billion-dollar network helping bankroll Donald Trump's return to the White House.

Candy Ventures Ltd was first set up by Nick Candy in 2015. By the end of 2023, the firm had a gross book value of £145 million and a net value of £60 million, with 17 portfolio companies. However, the total 'mark-to-market' value of its investments was reportedly around £350 million. Today, its website says that it has funded some 25 companies in total. One of the companies listed as part of the Candy Ventures portfolio on its website is ACME Capital.

ACME Capital's story begins in Silicon Valley's boom years, when its predecessor Sherpa Capital made some of the most lucrative early bets of the 2010s. In 2011, Sherpa's co-founders invested in Uber, helping turn a fledgling ride-share startup into a global disruptor. Around the same time, Sherpa took early stakes in Airbnb, then a scrappy home-letting platform, and Robinhood, a commission-free trading app pitched as "finance for the people." By mid-decade, the firm had added SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, to its late-stage portfolio - a mark of its growing clout among elite venture investors - and joined the 2015 funding round for OpenGov, a civic-data company promising transparency in public finance.

When Sherpa's operations re-emerged as ACME Capital in 2018, those holdings formed the backbone of its first funds. It is not clear when or how much Nick Candy first invested in ACME Capital. In 2020, Candy Ventures first listed ACME Capital on its website, with the description "investing in breakthrough technologies including Cue, Airbnb and Uber." That was the year outg...

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History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. We look back to make sense of complex and bewildering moments. As we face exactly such a time now, my mind keeps drifting back to the late 1970s and the foreboding gloom that something still opaque, still nascent was starting to cast its dark shadow over our lives and our country. Back then, what was to become known as Thatcherism, was still ill-formed, the old was not yet dead but was dying, the new had not been born but was gestating. And all around were morbid symptoms, not least Labour's Winter of Discontent.

Today it is Labour's Autumn of Discontent. It isn't just that they languish in the polls even slipping behind the Greens in fourth place in one, that the Prime Minister is the most unpopular on record, that tens of thousands have left the party, or that they face wipeout in their heartland of Wales following the Caerphilly by-election last week. It's that they have no plan to change any of this, no inspiring vision for the country, no alternative economic model, no way of running public services, no culture that creates the necessary alliances and networks for big change. The tragedy is that they actively reject the very ideas and the culture that will get them out of the dead end that they have decided to drive themselves into.

Instead, what we get is a Government on its knees to the shrine of growth, a goal over which they have little if any short or medium term influence and end up not with a mantra of long term investment in people and places, but desperate attempts to kick start an economy with tried, tested and failed remedies like "cutting business red tape", while repeating the economically illiterate mantra of the right that governments can't spend more or it will 'max out on its credit card'. We have been here before. We know where all this ends.

Having tried to blame the Conservatives for the doom and gloom, which was valid because of the economic inheritance they bestowed on Labour, but without any real narrative of hope, the Government is now starting to blame Brexit for its woes. And of course, Brexit was and is economically damaging. But we left the European Union before Keir Starmer became Prime Minister and they therefore knew about its economic consequences before they were elected. The case for rejoining the EU will grow stronger, but that will only be achieved on the basis of a consistent approach, not as a mere excuse for why this government is failing to lift people's living standards.

The Reform Backlash: Caerphilly By-Election Result Shows Nigel Farage's Party Is Much Weaker Than It Looks

Despite widespread media predictions of a Reform victory on Thursday, Farage's defeat shows his party continues to be overestimated, argues Adam Bienkov

Adam Bienkov

After little more than a year and with a huge majority, this is a Government that is now in survive the day mode and they will be shameless in pulling any rabbit, like the sudden announcement on ID cards, from any hat, to get them through the next 24 hours. Virtually none of it will be thought through or strategic and will reinforce the same self-defeating behaviour. The Government is in a nosedive of its own making.

Whether the Deputy Leadership election changes any of this remains to be seen. Lucy Powell now has her own independent mandate from the membership which she can use as radically as she decides. Given the existential crisis of the party, as the new Deputy Leader the onus is on her to push not just for reforms of the party but policies that first stop the haemorrhaging of support which has seen membership fall from over 500,000 to reportedly little more than 200,000, before credibility can be rebuilt. If she doesn't push sufficiently then what currently feels ominous can become inevitable and history will start to rhyme once mo...

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From the top floor of Tashkent's Hotel Uzbekistan, one of the most striking Soviet Modernist buildings in Central Asia, twenty-seven cranes can be seen stretching out against the skyline, still busy even as the sun sets on the city below. They are busy building not the Madrassas and Mosques that draw countless tourists to this country, but new glass towers of commerce - and they are funded by Chinese, Gulf and Turkish money. Below, on the city's streets, the Russian Ladas of old have been displaced by the Chinese electric cars, with the electric "Build Your Dreams" a firm, shiny favourite.

Meanwhile, in the country's second city, Bukhara, a new art biennale is in full flow and with stars such as the British artist Antony Gormley and the German Carsten Höller on its rostra, its cultural lodestar is clearly pointing westward.

It's all part of a broader cultural shift away from Moscow's shadow. These cranes, cars and canvases tell a larger story: Central Asia, perhaps most epitomised in what is unfolding here in Uzbekistan, is fast rebalancing its loyalties in the Great Game of the twenty-first century. And Russia is not the only one at the gaming table.

Colonial Drift

Tashkent's notable neutrality over Russia's invasion of Ukraine conceals a pragmatic recalibration. Like its neighbours, Uzbekistan has neither endorsed nor condemned the invasion, but it has quietly asserted sovereignty.

In April 2025, it hosted the first EU-Central Asia summit in Samarkand, a meeting that infuriated Moscow. When the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, complained that a new World War II memorial bore inscriptions only in Uzbek and English, a high-profile Uzbek academic responded that Uzbekistan "is not a colony." The terse responses to Lavrov symbolised a region redefining its identity. It was no longer deferential, no longer silent.

The country's economic transformation under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has strengthened this autonomy. Since 2016, Mirziyoyev has liberalised the currency, trimmed subsidies, privatised state firms and courted foreign investment. Growth has averaged around 6 per cent annually. Construction booms at an even faster clip: 129 trillion soums (about $11 billion) of work was reported completed between January and August 2025, up nearly 8 per cent on the previous year. The state plans a new "City of the Future" east of Tashkent to house two million people across 20,000 hectares.

Elsewhere in the region, the shift is equally as clear. Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev not only refused to endorse Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but went so far as to meet Volodymyr Zelensky at the United Nations, backing international guarantees for Ukraine's sovereignty.

Closer to Europe, Armenia has suspended its defence alliance with Moscow after being left exposed in its conflict with Azerbaijan and is now seeking closer ties with Europe. Azerbaijan, for its part, has turned westward too, strengthening trade links with Turkey and welcoming Western investment in the South Caucasus corridor.

This month, the UK government lifted its long-standing arms embargo on Armenia and Azerbaijan, upgrading both countries to "strategic partners" and allowing arms exports for the first time since 1992. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are laying a trans-Caspian fibre-optic cable to link with Azerbaijan by 2026, in yet another move where Central Asia quietly decouples from Russian digital networks and it turns its technological gaze westward.

In this way, Uzbekistan's approach exemplifies a wider pattern - something that Annette Bohr of the think-tank Chatham House calls Central Asia's "multi-vectoring." Regional leaders, she notes, have refined the art of telling each side what it wants to hear. With Moscow, they emphasise their fear of Western sec...

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Three Conservative Home Secretaries wasted billions of pounds on a chaotic, costly and mismanaged asylum accommodation system, a new highly critical report from MPs reveals.

Priti Patel, Suella Braverman and James Cleverly presided over a surge in the cost of providing accommodation for asylum seekers, which means the cost of ten year contracts, estimated at £4.5 billion in 2019, is set to rise to £15.3 billion by 2029 when Labour has pledged to end the use of hotel accommodation.

Many of the contracts signed by the Home Office to provide accommodation were flawed, clauses to claim back excess profits by providers were rarely used and no penalties were issued by the Home Office for poor performance. No attempt was made to claw back any excess profits until last year.

As a result tens of millions of pounds are still in private providers' bank accounts which, could have been collected by the Home Office to use for other public services. The report also has a warning for the current Labour Government that it needs to urgently address these shortcomings or risk further public disillusionment over a system which has led to public protest in places like Epping.

The Reform Backlash: Caerphilly By-Election Result Shows Nigel Farage's Party Is Much Weaker Than It Looks

Despite widespread media predictions of a Reform victory on Thursday, Farage's defeat shows his party continues to be overestimated, argues Adam Bienkov

Adam Bienkov

Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, Dame Karen Bradley MP said: "The Home Office has presided over a failing asylum accommodation system that has cost taxpayers billions of pounds. Its response to increasing demand has been rushed and chaotic, and the department has neglected the day-to-day management of these contracts. The Government needs to get a grip on the asylum accommodation system in order to bring costs down and hold providers to account for poor performance.

"Urgent action is needed to lower the cost of asylum accommodation and address the concerns of local communities. While reducing hotel use is rightly a Government priority, there will always be a need for flexibility within the system, and the Home Office risks boxing itself in by making undeliverable promises to appeal to popular sentiment. It shouldn't set itself up for more failure.

"The Home Office has not proved able to develop a long term strategy for the delivery of asylum accommodation. It has instead focused on short term, reactive responses. There is now an opportunity to draw a line under the current failed, chaotic and expensive system, but the Home Office must finally learn from its previous mistakes or it is doomed to repeat them."

The number of asylum seekers in accommodation reached a peak under the last Conservative Government when Priti Patel proposed the now aborted scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. This led to the Home Office ending the processing of asylum seekers. This led to the rushed use of hotels where costs are much higher. Hotels cost an average of £144 per person per night and the Home Office spent £4 billion last year on support for asylum seekers, with £2.1 billion spent on hotels.

Only one large site housing asylum seekers is left. Wethersfield,a former RAF airfield in Essex which can house 800 single males and a further 445 on a contingency basis. This costs £132 per person per night but this did not include the £105 million spent on acquiring the site and making it suitable for asylum seekers.

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On Saturday 18th October, as one does, I dressed up in a giant inflatable frog costume, and joined a local #NoKings protest, part of a nationwide series of demonstrations, against the Trump administration's cruel and increasingly authoritarian policies. The #NoKings aim is to call out Trump's imperial behaviour and remind Americans that America's democracy was founded in opposition to monarchy.

My frog costume was in honour of the protestors in Portland, who have been mocking Trump's decision to send National Guard troops to that city by dressing up in absurd costumes, such as inflatable frogs, unicorns, and pink ponies, and prancing around to music in front of an ICE detention facility, to disprove Trump's allegations that the city is rocked with violence. My costume was a hit. Dozens of other protestors lined up to take selfies with me; people cheered as I walked by; and cars hooted as they drove past.

Everyone was on their best behaviour - to avoid giving any pretext to Trump officials to accuse the participants of disorderly, unpatriotic or hateful conduct. There were lots of American flags on display. The overall atmosphere was good-humoured, and fun. A couple of policemen were on standby, but at a discreet distance. They told me they were just there to make sure no-one got hurt.

The turnout for the event, in the middle of the day when many families are busy driving their kids to events, or doing household errands, was also pretty good. I estimate there were almost two thousand attendees during the period I was there. I eventually had to retreat after - like the proverbial frog in boiling water - I became increasingly over-heated in my airless garb. According to the organisers, almost seven million Americans took part in over 2,700 similar protests across the country - with particularly large turn-outs in major cities such as Chicago, New York, and Washington DC.

The Reform Backlash: Caerphilly By-Election Result Shows Nigel Farage's Party Is Much Weaker Than It Looks

Despite widespread media predictions of a Reform victory on Thursday, Farage's defeat shows his party continues to be overestimated, argues Adam Bienkov

Adam Bienkov

This is a meaningful increase on the estimated five million people who participated in the first NoKings protest in June. The deliberate ridiculing of the administration with witty slogans, funny costumes and satirical memes is also a highly effective way to get under Trump's skin. The organisers are trying to sustain momentum by circulating guidance on new ways to challenge the administration, such as lobbying members of Congress, canvassing in upcoming elections, and helping register new voters.

And yet, I can't help feeling that this is not yet enough to make a difference. Seven million is barely two per cent of America's roughly 347 million population. Even in my neighbourhood, a highly educated, professional suburb just outside Washington DC, filled with federal workers, many of them working unpaid or on furlough during the current government shutdown, I came across people who literally had no idea the protests were taking place. One extremely well educated acquaintance of mine, whose business will potentially be seriously affected by Trump's ongoing trade wars, told me she simply had "no idea" who to believe these days, and felt "both sides" were equally to blame for America's current dysfunction.

At our event, it looked like almost everyone there was over 50 years old, many of them perhaps veterans of the civil rights movements of the 1960s, or of the anti-Vietnam war protests and women's rights movements of the 1970s. I saw very few young people, or people of colour, though the latter is perhaps understandable given the fear of ICE harassment. One participant told me she felt younger generations simply didn't understand what wa...

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In the run up to Thursday's Caerphilly by-election there was acres of media coverage suggesting that the Welsh constituency was about to be taken by Reform.

"Reform could make massive Welsh breakthrough TODAY" shouted the Daily Mail as it insisted that "Nigel Farage's party is leading the race" for the seat.

Reporters, who previously couldn't even point to Caerphilly on a map, were dispatched to the seat to conduct vox pops in which Welsh voters explained why they would soon be electing a new Reform representative.

"Caerphilly is crumbling to Reform" reported the website Unherd, while the Independent found that Reform was "turning a red heartland light blue". Similar missives were filed by outlets including the Telegraph and Times.

There was only one problem. The actual voters had other ideas.

Indeed, when the final result came, far from "crumbling" to Reform's nativist politics, the people of Caerphilly instead handed a decisive victory to the centre left Plaid Cymru, with Nigel Farage's party coming in a distant second.

This was obviously not the result that many of the media organisations dispatched to report on Reform's supposedly inevitable victory had expected.

"I was amazed at how many journalists were at the count," reported Will Hayward, whose newsletter on Welsh politics most closely covered the race.

EXCLUSIVE

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Exclusive: Nigel Farage's struggling flagship Kent administration is now reaching out to other parties, after failing to identify the millions of pounds in savings they promised

Josiah Mortimer

"GB News were there in force, clearly desperate to herald the success of their presenter's party. Their disappointment was palpable as the results became clear."

Yet even once it became clear that Reform had actually lost, the script barely changed. Footage from the result showed the visiting caravan of Westminster-based journalists crowded around the losing Reform candidate, with Plaid's newly-elected representative stuck talking to local reporters instead.

Later write-ups of the result also focused almost entirely on Labour's collapse in the seat, while downplaying Reform's failure to win the seat, which these same outlets had suggested they would just hours before.

However, soon the reality of what had happened began to settle in for some.

"Nigel Farage should conclude that his party did not just fall short what it hoped for yesterday" wrote the respected pollster and commentator Peter Kellner.

"It fell short of what he needed to be on course to become Prime Minister."

Even some at GB News spotted the significance of the result.

"Nigel Farage's biggest electoral fear REVEALED as Reform's path to power narrows" conceded GB News editor Jack Walters, who wrote that the result showed that the level of dislike for Farage's party could lead to widespread and successful anti-Reform tactical voting in future.

"While Reform's support is strong, dislike for Mr Farage permeates around the country with equal fervour," wrote Walters.

"And one statistic more than any other proves that. Turnout in yesterday's by-election was 50 per cent, making it higher than the overall turnout across Wales in 2021.

"Some of those will be new voters giving Reform UK a chance, others will be people desperate to stave off another momentum-building victory for Mr Farage."

The result has a particular significance given it followed Reform's former Welsh leader Nathan Gill pleading guilty to taking bribes to spread pro-Russian propaganda.

The revelation, investigated extensively here at Byline Times, was used by Farage's opponents during the by-election campaign to highlight the dangers of putting a party like Reform in power.

'Stunned?' Farage's Admission He Knew Nathan Gill but Not His Kremli...

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The British public are opposed to politicians presenting current affairs programmes, newly-released YouGov polling suggests.

The findings suggest broadcast regulator Ofcom's decision this week - to allow the likes of Reform UK's Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson to continue presenting their own political GB News shows - is out of step with public opinion.

A majority (51%) of voters surveyed by YouGov said they think politicians should not be allowed to present current affairs shows, while 29% agreed they should and 19% said they didn't know.

Once those who don't know are excluded, almost two thirds (64%) did not agree with Ofcom's rules that allow serving politicians to present current affairs programming on TV and radio, while 36% said they should, according to the YouGov polling for the University of Cardiff's School of Journalism.

Reform UK supporters are the only group of party voters who appear to support (44%) more than oppose (39%) politicians presenting current affairs programming in broadcast media, the research reveals.

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, support rises to 58% for frequent or very frequent GB News consumers - the highest level of backing for politician-presenters among audiences - though 29% said they should not.

Following consultation, Ofcom made changes this week to its guidance on politicians presenting news and curent affairs programmes, amid growing concern about conflicts of interest.

Ofcom said its amendments now "make explicit" that if an MP presented news in a non-news programme, then their elected status would likely be a relevant factor in considering whether that news was presented with "due impartiality."

Existing guidance states that "no politician may be used as a newsreader, interviewer or reporter in any news programmes unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified."

The updated code now clarifies "exceptional" circumstances are "those which cannot be controlled or foreseen by the broadcaster."

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"We also make clear that we would expect such situations to be rare, and for licensees who use politicians as presenters to put appropriate contingency arrangements in place to avoid these situations," Ofcom said in a statement.

However, politicians have traditionally side-stepped this rule by hosting what are deemed "current affairs" programmes, such as political panel shows, rather than straight-forward news presenting. These, such as Nigel Farage's four-times-a-week GB News show, are likely to continue as before.

Moreover, Ofcom consulted on a proposal bar politicians from being used as "a newsreader, news interviewer or news reporter in any type of programmes unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified," but decided against it.

In a statement on the changes, Ofcom said: "There is no Ofcom rule that prevents a politician from presenting or appearing on a TV or radio programme - providing they aren't standing in an election taking place, or about to take place, and that the programme otherwise complies with the Broadcasting Code."

The regulator noted that some respondents "wanted us to extend our rules to prevent politicians from presenting non-news, including current affairs programmes" but it fell outside the scope of their consultation.

The broadcasting body asserted that its Broadcasting Code contains "robust rules" requiring broadcasters to preserve "due imp...