TheChek News Flow

Survey will alarm ruling party and the Tories ahead of local elections in May

Reform UK has taken the lead in a British opinion poll for the first time, in a move that will alarm Labour and the Conservatives ahead of local elections in May.

Public support for Reform UK, the rightwing populist party led by Nigel Farage, was up 2 percentage points to 25 per cent, according to the YouGov survey.

Sir Keir Starmer’s ruling Labour party was down 3 points to 24 per cent, while the Conservatives slipped 1 point to 21 per cent.

YouGov said it was the first time its survey for The Times had shown Reform UK in front, although with a lead of just 1 point over Labour this was “within the margin of error”.

Opinion polls less than 12 months into a five-year parliament are rarely an accurate predictor of how people will vote at the next general election.

But Reform UK’s strong showing will ring alarm bells in Downing Street ahead of May’s local elections in England, with Starmer struggling to neutralise the populist party’s messages.

Farage’s party would introduce tougher immigration controls and is opposed to Britain’s climate targets, including reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Anthony Wells, head of European political and social research at YouGov, said the poll suggested three parties were vying for the lead.

“While it remains within the margins of error it reinforces the fact that Reform is roughly equal in support with Labour, with the Conservatives slipping back again,” he added.

Senior ministers believe they can win back public support if they can show progress on priorities such as cutting NHS hospital waiting lists and increasing housebuilding.

But Farage’s party, which has five MPs, appears to be benefiting from a growing anti-establishment mood across many western nations.

Reform UK has been praised by Elon Musk, the technology billionaire and close confidant of US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly criticised Starmer.

Farage said in December that Musk was considering making a donation to Reform UK, but the two men have since clashed over the entrepreneur’s support for far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

On Tuesday, Farage told the BBC: “Elon Musk has an awful lot of opinions, some of which I agree with, some of which I don’t.”

Last week a “mega-poll” of almost 18,000 voters commissioned by campaign group Hope Not Hate, and carried out by Focaldata, suggested Reform UK would win 76 seats if a general election was held immediately, including 60 currently held by Labour.

The same survey indicated a 3 percentage point swing towards Reform UK from both Labour and the Tories which could result in it securing 169 seats.

The YouGov poll suggested Farage’s party was more popular among men, those of working-class backgrounds, and Brexit supporting voters.

The survey found Reform UK enjoyed its strongest support in the Midlands and northern England, with the party on just 13 per cent in London.

The poll recorded that backing for the Liberal Democrats and Greens was unchanged at 14 per cent and 9 per cent respectively.

Separately on Tuesday, YouGov brought back co-founder and former boss Stephan Shakespeare to replace chief executive Steve Hatch on an interim basis while it kicked off a search for a permanent replacement. 

The research and data analytics group said that Hatch’s departure was “mutually agreed”, although he has only served 18 months in the role and has faced calls to stand down by activist investor Gatemore Capital after shares dropped 70 per cent over the past year.

Shakespeare is non-executive chair of the board and still a major shareholder.

Manufacturers face the prospect of higher costs for steel and aluminum despite Trump’s delay of tariff order

Steel prices started rising for some U.S. companies even before President Trump announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Executives said they are bracing for more to come.

Trump on Saturday announced 25% tariffs on all imports from Mexico and Canada starting Tuesday. On Monday, he said he would hold off for a month as talks got under way between the U.S. and its neighbors.

If implemented, the duties are expected to strengthen U.S. steelmakers’ pricing power by effectively raising prices for foreign steel. It could also enable domestic companies to raise their prices, too.

At Riverdale Mills, a Massachusetts-based manufacturer of wire fencing and welded mesh used in lobster and crab traps, Chief Executive James Knott said his domestic suppliers of steel wire rod notified him two weeks ago that they are raising prices.

Knott said he has been buying about 80% of Riverdale’s wire rod from Canada because shipping costs are lower to the East Coast than buying from mills in South Carolina, Texas and Illinois. Steel represents two-thirds of Riverdale’s production costs, and he said higher prices would put his company at a disadvantage versus foreign competitors.

“We like to use U.S. steel, but if you can’t buy the steel at the right price, you can’t compete,” Knott said. “The U.S. has the highest-priced steel.”

Canada and Mexico are two of the largest suppliers of imported steel to the U.S., accounting for 35% of all imported steel in 2024, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute and the Census Bureau. The two countries were included in steel and aluminum tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term in 2018, but they were later exempted in exchange for negotiating a new free-trade agreement with the U.S.

Executives from U.S. steel companies were enthusiastic backers of the tariffs and have urged Trump to deploy them again in his second term. They have called for eliminating tariff exemptions and duty-free import quotas, saying those carve-outs allow unfairly low-price steel to enter the U.S. and undermine the steel market.

Trump’s Saturday announcement of the duties included a 10% tariff on imports from China. The Trump administration has said the tariffs would help prod Mexico, Canada and China to crack down on illegal immigration and illicit fentanyl shipments into the U.S. Canada and Mexico have vowed to retaliate with their own tariffs, setting the stage for a North American trade war.

For consumers already reeling from rising retail prices and inflation, pricier steel and aluminum could further lift costs for durable goods like appliances and automobiles, as well as consumer products with aluminum packaging, such as canned beverages.

“We’re all going to get a price increase,” said Ralph Hardt, owner of Belleville International, a Pennsylvania-based manufacturer of valves and components used in the energy and defense industries. Steel and aluminum are Belleville’s largest expenses.

U.S. Steel announced a $50-a-ton price increase for flat-rolled steel this week, and Nucor NUE 2.23%increase; green up pointing triangle has raised its price by $25 a ton over the past two weeks, according to steel customers.

Trump administration tariffs on aluminum from Canada and Mexico would get absorbed in the U.S. through a delivery surcharge attached to all aluminum transactions. The higher charge could be a windfall for U.S. aluminum companies that don’t have to pay the tariff but get to collect a higher delivery premium from customers as if they did.

Beverage companies strongly opposed the Trump administration’s 10% tariff on imported aluminum in 2018. The industry complained that beer and soda makers paid delivery premiums above what was warranted to cover the tariff.

Canada is the U.S.’s largest supplier of aluminum made in smelters, sending 2.8 million metric tons to the U.S. in 2023, according to industry data.

Canada is home to about 40% of aluminum maker Alcoa’s AA -3.43%decrease; red down pointing triangle production capacity. The company said it would likely divert shipments from Canada to other countries to avoid paying a U.S. tariff.

The U.S. steel industry is coming off its weakest year since 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic temporarily idled production. Spot market prices for coiled sheet steel have been mostly stuck below $700 for months.

Several attempts by steel companies to raise prices failed last year because of weak demand from buyers, including the automotive, construction, appliance and machinery industries.

“Manufacturing right now isn’t very robust, but the supply is certainly there because of all the mill capacity that has been built,” said Jim Barnett, CEO of Grand Steel Products, a Michigan-based steel distributor.

Over the past four years, nearly 12 million tons of additional annual capacity to make flat-rolled steel has been completed or is under construction in the U.S., according to commodity-markets research firm Argus Media. Steel executives trace the buildout’s origins to the first Trump administration’s tariffs, which boosted steelmakers’ profits and provided confidence to invest in more U.S. production.

Now they are counting on additional tariffs to squeeze more imports out of the U.S. steel market.

“You’re going to see those bad actors that are distorting how they price goods penalized,” said Leon Topalian, CEO of U.S. steel industry leader Nucor, on a late January conference call.

Politics has created choppy waters for the sector

Subsea cables, the backbone of our communications and energy, are enormous: nose to tail, they’d wrap round the globe 37 times. But even that is nowhere near enough. The green transition — which for many places means relying on far-off sun and wind — has stuffed some cablemakers’ order books, and lifted their shares.

There are still knots to untangle. Cables are vulnerable to everything from sabotage to the shifting seabed. Investor sentiment is shifting too, after November’s elections installed Donald Trump, no friend of renewable energy, as US president.

Since then, shares in French cablemaker Nexans and Danish peer NKT have fallen. Italy’s Prysmian, the biggest, fell sharply last week, caught up in the energy sell-off triggered by a Chinese start-up’s strides in creating less power-intensive AI. More quietly, Prysmian ditched planned, and long-stalled, projects in the US.

Europe remains gung-ho on renewables like wind, which are powering demand. Cables bring offshore wind power on to land, or allow countries to pass on — or receive — surplus energy, such as the Nemo link connecting Belgium and the UK. The European Commission wants members to have interconnectors in place to enable transport of at least 15 per cent of their capacity by 2030.

More ambitious still, come 2030, start-up Xlinks aims to pump solar energy from sunny Morocco through 4,000km of subsea cable, ultimately meeting 8 per cent of the UK’s electricity needs and keeping lights on when the home winds drop. The required £20bn investment sounds like a pipe dream, but then so does the UK’s bid to have 50MW of offshore wind power by 2030, a more than threefold increase.

That points to the second big cable snag. Can Europe actually deliver its green ambitions, and over what timescale? The power industry is an unhelpful mish-mash of public and private sectors with different aims. The UK’s 2023 contract for differences auction, in effect setting prices, drew precisely zero bids from offshore wind farm developers: none could make the maths stack up.

Politics, too, creates choppy waters. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which exposed Europe’s reliance on Russian gas, prompted the need to diversify energy supplies — including from renewables. But much of the technical cable expertise, and some capital, is coming from China, a potentially hostile actor.

Still, cablemakers are not in a bad spot. They are big. They are vital to the long-term trajectory of the energy system. And they have a lot of work already in the pipeline. While investors may be reluctant to dive in, this is a sector that will be hard to ignore.

Mexican drug cartels are ordering their members to attack US Border Patrol agents with kamikaze drones and other explosives in a desperate bid to thwart the crackdown at the border, according to an internal memo obtained by The Post.

The alert, which cites social media posts and other sources, cautions federal agents “to remain cognizant of their surroundings at all times” in the face of the new threat.

“On February 1, 2025, the El Paso Sector Intelligence and Operations Center (EPT-IOC) received information advising that Mexican cartel leaders have authorized the deployment of drones equipped with explosives to be used against US Border Patrol agents and US military personal currently working along the border with Mexico,” the internal memo titled “Officer Safety Alert” said.

“It is recommended that all US Border Patrol agents and DoD personnel working along the border report any sighting of drones to their respective leadership staff and the EPT-IOC.”

Federal agents working the border are also advised to “carry proper equipment” at all times, including first aid kids, tourniquets and body armor. The memo also notes that rifles “should be readily available.”

News Nation, which first revealed the memo, also reported that posts on TikTok and other social media sites by the cartels have advised illegal migrants to “spit and urinate” in ICE agents’ food and defecate in their vehicles.

Other posts have encouraged assassins to target agents.

The new threat from narcotraffickers south of the border comes amid a major crackdown on illegal immigrants crossing into the US under President Trump.

Just days after taking office, Trump vowed to send 10,000 US troops to help secure the border, while his border czar Tom Homan has launched deportation raids across the country targeting migrant criminals.

Mexican cartel bosses, who recognize the stepped-up US presence at the border will cut deep into their drug and human trafficking operations, have turned things up a notch, the leaked memo showed.