MANCHESTER, England — On the day in June that Andy Burnham ended his nine-year term as mayor, Manchester’s authorities sent him off with a parting gift: a wingback chair whose shiny fabric was printed with the city’s trademark worker-bee symbol and its rallying cry “we do things differently here.”

One month later, Burnham moved to 10 Downing Street, the sprawling Georgian terrace in London replete with mice, net curtains, cranky heating and patchy phone signal from which six other prime ministers have struggled to run Britain in the last decade. But the worker-bee chair did not accompany him on the trip south. It moved just a half-mile, through a city that was once the engine of the industrial revolution but for more than a century has struggled for balance against the political, economic and military power consolidated in the capital.

The chair now sits beside a 10-seat conference table in what Burnham calls “No. 10 North,” a refurbished 1980s office block he has chosen as his auxiliary seat of power. What remains of the largest empire the world has known is now governed most Fridays from above a discount cocktail bar, where Burnham has replaced Downing Street’s concentric rooms of gatekeepers with clinically lit floors of open-plan desks. Staffed by several political allies from his time in Greater Manchester and decorated with a gold record of The Queen Is Dead, the 1986 album by Manchester band The Smiths, it is Burnham’s “comfort zone,” a person who has worked with him said — “an homage to his time” as mayor.

No. 10 North is more than Burnham’s own Manc-a-Lago, where he retreats ahead of weekends at his family home nearby. The prime minister, who succeeded Keir Starmer as the benefactor of a Labour Party putsch on July 20, has made it a central aim of his premiership to move power and money out from limestone buildings on Whitehall, the old heart of London’s civil service — by centralizing some of Whitehall’s power further in No. 10 North, and handing other parts of it to local leaders outside government. He is banking Labour’s political future, and that of the British center-left, on being able to reverse a decades-long decline of England’s former industrial heartlands, one that fueled a political polarization and drove the 2016 vote for Brexit.

“What we’re bringing is a different type of energy,” Caroline Simpson, the mayoral authority’s former chief executive whom Burnham has tasked with heading up his new northern outpost as deputy chief of staff, told POLITICO Magazine in her first interview since assuming the role. “That’s really the point about No. 10 North — to connect our places, connect devolution back into the heart of governing.”

Burnham’s political opponents — and, privately, some civil servants, who have seen past prime ministers try to move power out of London — have derided the Manchester office as a gimmick, a soundstage for a politician attuned more to optics than policy detail. (No. 10 North is “absolutely not” a gimmick, insists Simpson.) The office is already up and running, but some of the basic details of how it will geographically redistribute power — such as how funding or boundaries will be configured — have not been worked out. An early test of Burnham’s commitment to redistributing his government’s sparse finances will come on Oct. 28, the day of his first budget, and in a cross-government spending review in 2027.

POLITICO Magazine spoke to 28 current or former civil servants, political officials, regional officials, advisers and politicians to illuminate what life is like inside No. 10 North and the broader policy vision it reflects. Many were granted anonymity to speak frankly about the workings of Burnham’s government. Downing Street declined to comment on the specifics of this article, beyond making Simpson available for interview.

Burnham took office on a pledge to “rewire Britain.” He has to rewire the house first.

Moving to Heron House

The incoming prime minister discussed the idea of setting up No. 10 North with his closest aides ahead of the June special election that sent him back to Westminster, a person with knowledge of the conversations said.

But the idea was kept secret from all but his innermost team until Burnham announced it in late June. He did not even tell Simpson about it in advance. “It all happened very, very quickly,” she said.

After winning the June special election, Burnham scrambled to make No. 10 North a reality. He wanted to put it in Manchester — but where, exactly, wasn’t clear. He told an interviewer in early July that his preferred site was the planned Manchester Digital Campus in the Ancoats area of the city, but the site he named will only open fully in 2032. Burnham’s team looked at options for other government buildings in Manchester during a few frantic weeks of transition talks with the civil service.

A few days before he took power, Burnham and the civil service agreed on a temporary solution: Heron House, a red-brick office block that was renovated in 2019. No. 10 North occupies a floor that had been prepared for use by GCHQ, the U.K.’s intelligence and cyber-security agency. GCHQ was happy to vacate the floor; one senior government official said the agency was “bending over backwards to be helpful,” since it still has senior figures in other parts of the building who will find it useful to be near the PM. Less happy about the arrangement: Greater Manchester Police, which has been under more strain thanks to the burden of protecting the PM and building. It had an initial back-and-forth with London’s Metropolitan Police about when each force should be responsible for Burnham’s security, a person with knowledge of the talks said, and has raised concerns about who will pay the long-term bill. A Greater Manchester Police spokesperson said the force was still working with government departments on security arrangements and “the cost of this is yet to be determined.”

There was a recent model for moving a core government function from Westminster to the north, and Burnham’s team is relying on some of that expertise. Former PM Boris Johnson opened government offices outside London including the Treasury, which launched a campus in the north-eastern railway town of Darlington, conveniently near then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s large family home in North Yorkshire.

Beth Russell, the senior official who leads the Darlington campus, has been advising on the setup of No. 10 North. But the projects are not the same; Darlington has around 350 Treasury civil servants across all ranks (plus more from eight other departments) while No. 10 North currently has only 50 or so, many of them necessarily senior. That means Darlington’s boasts to have recruited 80 percent of its staff locally, including from nearby schools, are unlikely to be repeated in No. 10 North.

Heather Scott, the veteran Conservative who was leader of Darlington Council at the time, argued local recruitment had made the project a success; some young people “never thought that they would have an opportunity to work for a government office.” Local staff may also think (and therefore make policy) differently, because they live outside London. “They’re not in £5 Gail’s coffee world,” said one Labour official, referring to a high-end chain bakery.

Burnham has, though, poached many members of his old mayoral team to No. 10 North — some of them based fully in Manchester and others splitting their time between there and London. Simpson will be a political special adviser while others will be non-partisan civil servants including John Wrathmell, who influenced thinking on “Manchesterism,” Burnham’s vision of putting the needs of a place above political ideology by combining private investment with state intervention. They were joined in recent weeks by Amy Davies, who ran Burnham’s calendar as mayor; she has been given the job of executive assistant to the PM, according to two people with knowledge of the appointment. (No. 10 does not routinely comment on staffing matters.) Other civil servants who join No. 10 North will already have been based outside London or want to return to where they grew up.

But in the meantime, civil servants have descended on Manchester from afar. No. 10 North’s Director General Sam Lister — its most senior civil servant — was only appointed on the Friday before Heron House opened to staff the following Monday, July 20 — the day Burnham took power, two people with knowledge of the process said. Lister declined to comment for this article (civil servants are ordinarily barred from speaking in public). Department heads were asked to suggest staff who might transfer to No. 10 North less than a week before it opened. One senior Whitehall official described the process as a “tap on the shoulder” and said the method for choosing people had been “unclear.”

Many of the 50 or so civil servants currently in No. 10 North are still based outside Manchester — which is 180 miles from London — and living in hotels for part of the week. That includes Lister, whose commute from his north London home was photographed covertly by the Mail on Sunday. After the story broke, officials were advised to stay across a variety of hotels to keep a lower profile, an official with knowledge of the process said.

Civil servants assigned to work at No. 10 North have been turning up before 8 a.m. on Fridays to secure desks that Burnham will walk past. Some ministers hot-desk. Simpson has her own office, there is a suite for ministerial use and officials are “buying the nicer furniture that comes with being the center of government,” the same official with knowledge of the process said.

Cheerleaders for the No. 10 North agenda argue this rush to action shows the team is trying to do something that British governments seldom manage — behave like a start-up. Lister wrote on LinkedIn that the unit “must maintain an agile, scale-up, non-hierarchical mindset” to work, “solving problems in real time rather than waiting for perfect answers.”

Therefore officials are anxious not to appoint too many civil servants; a person with knowledge of the planning said the total number of civil servants in No. 10 North is likely not to exceed 150, a tiny number compared to the thousands who already work in government offices outside London.

Those who do move permanently will each be able to claim up to £14,000 in relocation costs under existing rules, said the same official with knowledge of the process quoted above. They would not be expected to take a pay cut.

And then it may all churn again. Putting No. 10 North in Heron House is still only a medium-term arrangement and is unlikely to last until the nearby digital campus is open in 2032, said the same person with knowledge of the planning quoted earlier. That means Burnham’s team is looking at whether it can move somewhere else — neither Heron House nor the digital campus — in the coming years.

Burnham has pledged to work from the office every week, mostly on Fridays. (Burnham’s advisers say he will have visited five times in the month since becoming prime minister.) Despite his love of casual clothes, some of the trappings of his office follow him around. Downing Street sent its front-of-house staff up north with Burnham during his visits; aides suddenly found themselves being waited on with cups of tea.

In recent weeks the Manchester base has become such a focus of conversation that Burnham insiders have begun referring to London’s most famous street address as “No. 10 South.” Those who work there now find themselves on the receiving end of the north-south insecurity. One Labour official retorted: “No, we are No. 10!”

Downing Street and the surrounding streets still hoard the vast bulk of state power; the old Georgian building is the one with the famous black door and Larry the Cat, the feline who has lived at No. 10 longer than several prime ministers. No. 10 North has no real cat, said Simpson — but it does boast a cardboard cutout of Larry.

“Our building at the moment is tricky,” Simpson explained. Unlike Downing Street, where Larry can come and go as he pleases, Heron House has security keypads that cannot be operated by paws.

All roads lead from London

Burnham is far from the first British PM to try to break London’s hold on Britain — the result of a highly centralized government, based in a city of global finance and tourism that is more than three times the size of its nearest U.K. rival.

London was always the seat of Britain’s establishment, but northern cities — as the seat of the industrial revolution — once held a power of their own. The first steam train ran through Darlington; Manchester has a statue of Abraham Lincoln in honor of mill workers who refused to touch slave-picked cotton. (It is next to the back door of No. 10 North.)

“There was a time during which people in the north had a load of control, agency and power by virtue of being part of the industries that powered this country — by having powerful MPs, councils that were well-funded, community institutions and organizations that were coherent and well-embedded in their in their place,” said Oliver Coppard, the Labour mayor of South Yorkshire, a county west of Manchester that includes Sheffield. “Those things have all gone, or largely gone, and communities are fractured. So people don’t have agency; they don’t know who to reach out to get things to change.”

Thirty years ago the U.K. had ceremonial mayors instead of empowered municipal ones, and no true parliaments for the nations outside England. Since then there has been an endless ratchet of pledges to move power outside Westminster. Labour’s Tony Blair set up democratic bodies for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London, but kept centrally-run agencies for England’s regional development (Simpson worked in one of them). Conservative David Cameron followed with his “northern powerhouse,” which gave some English cities mayors and funding deals. Boris Johnson, who built his profile as London’s mayor, extended the model to rural areas, seizing on the regional divides that drove the 2016 Brexit vote with his promise to “level up” Britain.

Yet England is still “very centralized” compared to the U.S. and its system of federalism, argues Simpson: “We are one of the most centralized countries in the Western Hemisphere. We have very little true devolution.” Henri Murison, director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, a business lobby group, added: “Our country is basically designed so we only have a federal government, we have no state government.”

And so Burnham, who decided in 2016 in a pub in Westminster that he would quit London, where he was serving in parliament and had previously been in cabinet, and run for mayoral office, now pledges to go further still. His plan is shaped by those nine years as mayor, when he was infuriated by how the system worked in practice — or didn’t.

He has vowed to extend devolution to more areas of England and go beyond the traditional focus on economic investment, looking also at public services such as bus networks. He is planning to tidy up the messy patchwork of boundaries for police, health and fire services that he confronted in the role. He says he will give mayors more true economic freedom; they will be allowed to spend an allotment of national income tax, and commit to more expensive projects without national approval, giving them a predictable income stream rather than forcing them to chase new grants each year. Regional officials will have less frenzied oversight from Whitehall. (One senior Labour figure in a mayoral authority joked that they had to tell the central government how many thumb tacks they had bought.)

“The conversation is completely different from what it was,” said Greg Clark, the Conservative minister for decentralization under Cameron in the early 2010s. In the early 2010s, he explained, “the direction was very much centralization. There was no real debate about devolution from the city deals onwards. These things have now become irreversible.”

Burnham’s policy vision is contained in a rare joint statement of his Cabinet on July 31, less than two weeks after he came to office. Thrashed out over pre-handover “access talks” between Burnham’s top aides and Antonia Romeo, Britain’s most senior civil servant, it said ministers had agreed to “the full shape” of how the government’s structure will shift power away from London before the next election. The seven-page PDF is “what people in No. 10 are excited about,” said Murison. Burnham deliberately imposed his end point without a detailed plan instead of letting Whitehall pore over drafts; one ally said it was to avoid his plans being “sanitized.” Romeo sees it as a foundational document too; she believes she could become the cabinet secretary who presided over the greatest change to the state in decades. Officials are now in what they privately call a 100-day sprint to produce a detailed policy paper in the fall that will set out more about how Burnham intends to actually implement the vision.

In their old jobs in the mayoral authority or elsewhere in Whitehall, No. 10 North aides had already looked to Germany and France for inspiration, including on the countries’ regional approaches to industrial strategy. Senior officials have also asked the BBC for advice after the national broadcaster relocated several operations to Salford — a district of Greater Manchester — in 2011. “The BBC didn’t just land as an island,” said Simpson. “The BBC created a whole creative sector around it.”

They may need the advice. The Cabinet document promises a “major transfer of powers, resources and functions” from central government to mayors and councils; that signals that Burnham intends to shrink Britain’s national civil service, which has billowed by 100,000 people in six years to around 550,000 after the Covid pandemic and Brexit. That will be “uncomfortable,” admitted the person with knowledge of the planning quoted earlier.

Burnham and his team have given no clue of how many civil servants they plan to cut. (“I don’t think they know,” said the official with knowledge of the process quoted earlier in this article.) Simpson said it will mean moving “significant resource from Whitehall” and into local areas, but added: “I am not going to put a figure on what that is going to look like.”

Nervous civil servants will be kept waiting. While Burnham’s October budget will set out much of the detail, the trade-offs may only appear in their starkest form in next year’s Treasury spending review. The small print of that will likely show that money is being held back from some Whitehall departments, especially outside the most politically contentious areas such as defense and health, to spend more on local and regional government. Burnham’s choices are even more difficult because Labour’s last spending review, under Starmer, frontloaded spending early on but tightened it after 2027.

One of the toughest decisions, on where to define the boundaries of police forces, could put Burnham in potential conflict with his home secretary, Shabana Mahmood. Mahmood had already been working on a plan to reduce the number of police forces and consolidate some of their functions. One person with knowledge of her thinking said she is generally skeptical of how well devolution can work in practice, though another said she is not ideologically against it. (The Home Office declined to comment on these specifics.)

There could be tension too with the Treasury, whose responsibility for local economic growth has already been handed to No. 10 North. Clark — who negotiated early city deals alongside Miatta Fahnbulleh, a former civil servant who is now a key Burnham ally in his Cabinet — recalled the finance ministry being “hostile” to his “subversive” push for devolution. “There’s a Whitehall preference for tidiness and for everything to be identical,” he added.

Another tricky and expensive decision will be around what to do with England’s private water firms, which have provoked public outcry by paying dividends while presiding over a creaking Victorian infrastructure. Burnham has promised greater “public control” of utilities but stopped short of promising full nationalization, and aides are still working through multiple options, including a mutual form of ownership and whether debt-ridden Thames Water could be split into two entities, one for London and the other for the surrounding region. On many issues, Burnham has identified problems without yet knowing the solutions.

Thus far there are many quiet skeptics of Burnham’s approach but few vocal critics. The skeptics tend to focus on two separate dilemmas: how do you meaningfully move money out of Whitehall and meet demands to raise spending on healthcare and defense? And after all the devolution promises that came before it, will No. 10 North prompt meaningful change?

One senior trade union figure said devolution in itself — which ties up the government in machinery changes and takes years to have an impact — does not “float the boat” of voters who are more concerned about the cost of living now. They voiced concern that the varying quality of leadership in each area could reinforce inequality, which would be ironic for a PM promising “good growth in every postcode.” Some MPs are already nervous that Burnham is running his devolution agenda from Manchester — a prospering city that has little in common with left-behind towns, or communities in England’s rural south west.

Then there is the existential question hanging over Burnham’s Labour — can empowering left-behind communities persuade voters to desert opposition parties, including Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform UK or the hard-right Restore Britain?

“This is the last bulwark against a fucking Farage-led government,” said one former Conservative government official. “I suspect it will be somewhat of a gimmick. But if it’s a gimmick that people respond to and vote for, is it all that bad?”

Some believe Burnham’s relentless focus on England’s individual regions misses the wider picture. “England as a constitutional and political entity does not figure,” said Jonathan Rutherford, who co-founded the socially conservative Blue Labour movement in the party. “And yet England is the place where the populist revolt is strongest. It’s where it originated. It was the strength behind the Brexit vote. It’s the source of the strongest form of nationalism — English, which is expressed through Reform and Restore.”

Others in Burnham’s own party worry that his plan could be too effective. After a series of strong electoral performances nationwide, Reform now controls many local councils, using its limited powers to scrap climate schemes, take down Pride flags and declare war on financial waste. A Labour government in London returning more authority to those councils would end up just empowering the opposition.

“I do worry about it,” said the senior Labour figure in a mayoral body quoted earlier in this story. They pointed out that mayors will soon have more say over police budgets and priorities. “You are putting quite a lot of power in the hands of people who could be quite malign in their intentions,” the senior Labour figure said.

Opposition parties sense an opportunity from Burnham’s extra funding; Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley in the north east, wants to hand money back to voters as a rebate. Burnham shut down the idea but Houchen told POLITICO Magazine he has spoken to Treasury officials and believes it will be possible, unless the government specifically blocks it. Simpson did not completely rule out such rebates, saying: “There’s going to be no ability to sit outside of the tax framework at a local level. That’s not what fiscal devolution is about. But flexibility about how that money is spent in a local area is going to be there.”

None of those concerns are deterring Burnham, whose allies say he can succeed because he will drive the devolution agenda personally from No. 10 North in a way no prime minister has done — and that he genuinely trusts the councils and mayors he’s empowering to serve their areas. “It is already changing things,” said Simpson.

Burnham’s team has met chief executives of mayoral authorities and hosted mayors for a meeting of a revived national economic council, set up by Gordon Brown in response to the 2008 financial crisis. There was potent symbolism in the way Burnham ran the meeting, forcing Cabinet ministers to listen and take note of the mayors rather than the other way round. Those at the table included the prime minister’s business adviser Varun Chandra, who is more used to talking to U.S. trade negotiators than regional leaders.

The prime minister told mayors he wanted to meet every two weeks.

‘It’s like Fort Knox in there’

Burnham has spent the last two weeks on a tour of the country he now leads, focusing on areas where Labour has fallen behind — a trial run for a general election the PM must call no later than 2029 to earn his own mandate for governing. It stands to be a five-way contest for power, pitting Labour against Reform and the Conservatives, Greens and Liberal Democrats, alongside Restore.

Almost no one in the Labour Party believes Burnham will be able to repeat the 172-seat majority that Starmer won at the last general election in 2024, leaving him a narrow window to do something radical while he commands the sway of parliament.

Burnham is already trying to connect his technical reforms to real change on the ground. The PM crisscrossed England this week with stops at the Wolverhampton Bus Terminal, where he announced the local mayoral authority would take control of the bus network, and to a homelessness charity in Newcastle where he asked local leaders to help his pledge to end rough sleeping. Newspaper front pages this summer have splashed repeatedly on a long-running plan to release some prisoners early because England’s Victorian jails don’t have enough room; one interview this week was dominated by questions about messages that Burnham traded with a person impersonating White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

All those issues are already crowding out his focus on reengineering the machinery of government. “I wish people might just engage with the seriousness of the proposition,” Burnham told The Times this week.

The vibes in Burnham’s inner circle remain good. “I’m not saying there aren’t going to be difficulties, but sometimes you’ve just got to get up and do it,” said one current government minister. “That was part of the problem under [Starmer’s] administration. There were always roadblocks; there was always a reason not to do something.”

And if Burnham is seeking to show he is among his people, the building itself does some of the work for him. Unlike Downing Street, imposing and behind iron security gates since 1989, Heron House sits on top of ordinary life in the city.

It faces a busy public square above a Slug & Lettuce chain cocktail bar, a branch of the ubiquitous pie store Greggs and trendy cafes serving Vietnamese drip coffee and matcha from Kyoto. Shoppers sit on a bench next opposite the low metal barriers and police guards on the door. The Ferris wheel at the square’s Christmas market is so tall that last year riders could see down onto the six-storey building’s roof. The local marriage registration office is on the ground floor. “You don’t really notice it,” shrugged a groom, Max Harris-Green, while his bride posed for photos a few meters from the new heart of government.

Put simply, it looks boring. The entrance goes unnoticed by many of those walking past, save for the occasional passer-by taking a selfie by the door.

Getting into the building itself is harder than Downing Street, whose custodians swing open the black front door for guests who have cleared the perimeter. Visitors to No. 10 North go through one of several discreet entrances — one of them next to a Chinese restaurant favored by the former Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney — and successive doors. A Labour official said: “It’s like Fort Knox in there.” (No. 10 declined to give POLITICO Magazine a tour.)

Recent visitors speak of elevators with unmarked buttons, a bombproof room and special doors for agents who still work on other floors. Nearby during the lunch rush, one man in a shirt was overheard joking to three others: “Is this going on the MI6 credit card?”

But the success or failure of Burnham’s power shift will rest not on the building but the prime minister himself. Ironically for a man preparing to give up authority, Burnham will have to wield it firmly from the center to make his plan work. That even extends to where he sits.

No. 10 North will mean nothing without Burnham being there in person, said the official with knowledge of the process quoted earlier: “In the civil service, power always gravitates to the most senior people. You need the senior decision-making people there in person.” Former Chancellor Rachel Reeves was criticized for spending only five days working from the Treasury’s Darlington campus in almost two years after Labour took power. (Treasury officials insist she visited other places nearby.)

Burnham’s pledge to work from Manchester each week “can’t slip,” said one senior Labour aide, even as he faces more demands to travel abroad. “The whole center of power has to move there at the end of the week.”

Esther Webber contributed reporting from London.

LONDON — Nigel Farage’s victory in the Clacton by-election is emphatic — but it won’t let him off the hook.

Winning back his seaside House of Commons seat by an increased margin allows the Reform UK leader to claim victory in the “people vs the establishment” contest he triggered in response to intense scrutiny of his finances.

Farage won the backing of 22,239 constituents, or 63 percent of the vote. That’s 1,014 more votes in this by-election than at the U.K. general election two years ago, and a 17-point swing in his favor.

But second-placed this time was Count Binface, a comedian with a trash can on his head who secured — by many thousands — his highest ever vote count in a palpable protest against Farage. None of Britain’s mainstream parties took part in the contest, branding it a circus.

The Reform UK leader’s refusal to turn up at the count to hear the result Friday — a move that would have seen him pictured alongside a cast of comedy characters — underlined the struggle for him to get back on the front foot he is used to contesting politics from. 

More significantly, Farage’s triumph means that parliamentary investigations into his financial affairs will now resume. That could lead to another by-election — one in which serious rivals are far less likely to stand aside to allow Farage to face-off against a long list of no-hopers.

Labour MPs switched out their own leader in part because of Farage’s storming success at local elections in May, but the focus on this contest has also made it harder for Farage to land blows on Britain’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

This week, Labour overtook Reform in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls after months on the back-foot for the governing party.

Snubbing the count

Clacton is Farage’s fiefdom. It was one of the most Brexit-voting constituencies in the country and was the place that first sent him to the Commons on his eighth time of trying.

But Binface, a proud proponent of the British tradition of satirical candidates contesting elections, had never won more than 308 votes in a parliamentary election before. Against Farage, he secured 9,455 votes. That means 28 percent plumped for the comedy candidate with a bin on his head.

Farage on Friday snubbed the leisure center count and the mild embarrassment of accepting victory alongside Binface that three prime ministers — Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Andy Burnham — have endured before him. 

He told his own “Farage Fest” jamboree organized in secret away from the results venue that he’d been advised by Essex Police of an “organized campaign to disrupt and degrade the result.”

“I’m not scared of these people, far from it,” he told fans. “But I’m damned if I’m going to stand on a stage, having won a resounding victory, a ringing endorsement of all that I’ve tried to fight for, and you’ve tried to fight for, and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies, and I will not sadly be attending the count.”

That meant, according to reports, Farage became the first winning candidate not to turn up for a result since jailed Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands won Fermanagh and South Tyrone in 1981.

Instead, Farage railed against the media and the “establishment” in his own event fit with branded pint cups, a ferris wheel and yurts for overnight stays. It was yet another demonstration of his attempt to bend the norms that accompany mainstream politics to his will.

Essex Police assured a “proportionate and robust policing operation” was in place at the count — while it was made clear that Farage was not advised to avoid the event. He cancelled a scheduled speech in Clacton, too.

Farage had gambled that a strong victory would inhibit the chances of parliamentary watchdogs imposing a severe enough sentence to set up a recall, should he be found to have breached the rules. “The bigger the vote, the bigger the message. Let’s tell the establishment where to go,” Farage said as polls opened on Thursday.

In the event, the turnout — at 44 percent — was not astonishing. That it’s less than the general election may not be surprising, but it was lower than another high-profile by-election held in this seat a decade earlier.

In 2014 Douglas Carswell resigned as the Conservative MP for the area to run for Ukip, Farage’s Eurosceptic party that helped drive Brexit. 

Clacton returned Carswell in his new guise, making him the first MP elected under the Ukip banner. He won 60 percent of the vote, on a 51 percent turnout.

That day was described as a “mini-earthquake in British politics” — but Friday’s result is producing less stable ground for Reform. “Farage’s distraction by-election doesn’t clear his name – it just shows he likely has so much more to hide,” argued Labour Party Chair Bridget Phillipson Friday morning.

Probes continue

So now the uphill battle. The parliamentary standards commissioner will resume two investigations into Farage — one centering on a £5 million donation from a crypto-entrepreneur, the other into support provided by a convicted fraudster.

The MP denies wrongdoing in both instances, arguing he didn’t need to declare the donations because they were given in a personal capacity before he was elected. 

But if there’s a finding of a serious rule breach then the Commons could vote to suspend Farage and trigger a recall petition.

The signatures of just 10 percent of registered voters in Clacton would then be needed to expel Farage from parliament — and trigger another by-election in which he could stand. Farage has expressed hopes that there isn’t such an appetite in his constituency — but the support for Binface throws that into doubt.

Clacton’s electorate is 79,785 — the 9,455 votes that Binface secured represents around 12 percent of those eligible voters, a comfortable margin for recall to be successful. 

Tactical errors?

That is all potential peril for the future. Right now, the August by-election has even some supporters questioning whether this was a rare miscalculation from a veteran campaigner.

Farage has in recent years dominated the summer break when many MPs vacate the political playing field.

But broadcasting rules on election periods stymied this year’s effort. Media invites to the press conferences Farage did throw had to assure broadcasters he would not be mentioning Clacton. And every mention of Clacton meant presenters were obliged to read the full 34-candidate list — namedropping Nick the Incredible Flying Brick and Baron Von Thunderclap in the process. 

Reform has also been struggling to grapple with a squeeze on its right from Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain splinter party. Farage’s one-time Reform comrade touted the possibility of a pact to unite the right — but deeply held grievances on both sides mean the distraction has dragged on.

A row over one of Reform’s most senior officials, Zia Yusuf, calling a Conservative former defense secretary a “traitor to Britain” has also been generating unwanted headlines and exposing rifts inside Reform.

If that second by-election does emerge in the coming months then the Conservatives have already vowed to fight it. Farage, should he choose to stand again, would face a far tougher contest against the backdrop of parliament having ruled against him, and many voters in Clacton had been unimpressed by the “laughing stock” caused by the first election.

The Reform hardcore may be buoyed by Farage’s railing against the “establishment” — but what this saga does to his reputation with the wider electorate he needs to propel him into Downing Street remains the biggest unanswered question.

CLACTON-ON-SEA — Voters seeking to re-elect Nigel Farage Thursday will have to scan past an array of comedy characters and oddballs on the longest ballot paper in British history.

The man who hopes to be the U.K.’s next prime minister is all but certain to retain his seaside fiefdom of Clacton — but his self-styled “people versus the establishment” electoral gambit is sowing some seeds of discontent even among loyal supporters.

Fear of Clacton becoming a “laughing stock” is a common refrain during a pair of focus groups POLITICO attended in the run-up to this week’s election.

The feeling that the town has been made to look daft was apparent even among those preparing to vote once again to return the Reform UK leader to parliament. And it’s not the rival candidate wearing a trash can on his head that they’re holding responsible for the “farce.”

Thursday may not be the end of the matter, either. A parliamentary investigation into Farage’s alleged failure to declare millions of pounds of donations in the run-up to his 2024 election could mean yet another by-election — and a tougher battle for the right-wing populist next time around.

Bid for absolution

This self-inflicted campaign is taking place because of Farage’s decision to resign his parliamentary seat and put his fate in the hands of Clacton’s residents.

Ordinary punters, he argued, should be the ones to have their say as he faced mounting questions over undeclared donations. The gamble was that such a vote would absolve him of wrongdoing in the eyes of the public, regardless of the findings in two parliamentary probes — one over a £5 million donation from a crypto-entrepreneur, and the other into support from a convicted fraudster. Farage has denied wrongdoing in both instances, arguing that help was given in a personal capacity.

But Britain’s main political parties took one look at this ploy and opted out. That’s how Count Binface, one of the most enthusiastic inheritors of a rich British tradition of standing as a satirical candidate in elections, ended up as Farage’s most high-profile rival. 

Others risking their £500 deposit to get their names on the 90-cm-long ballot paper include rival jokesters with names ranging from Howling Laud Hope, Nick the Incredible Flying Brick and Baron Von Thunderclap. Broadcast rules mean the 34-strong candidate list needs to be read in full at every mention of Farage’s by-election on TV.

A seaside town back on the map — in ways unwanted

The first focus group arranged by the More in Common think tank that POLITICO observed was made up of nine constituents who all voted for Farage in the 2024 general election, and are minded to do so again in the by-election. (Their names were withheld so they could speak candidly).

It was a retiree who was first to volunteer regret at Farage’s decision, blaming him for provoking an “influx of idiots” into the constituency. “Unfortunately, the action of causing a by-election has,” the former shopkeeper offered, “really made Clacton, in my opinion, a bit of a laughing stock.”

Two others repeated that same phrase, with one dog groomer-by-trade adding: “I think it was all a bit of a farce. I think he should have admitted that he was given this £5 million.”

“I guess it makes it very hard to trust him,” a delivery driver chimed in. “Most of my friends have gone towards Count Binface as opposed to Farage.”

Farage has since given varying explanations for some of the money he’s received, including as a “reward” for Brexit, or to cover lifelong security in the perilous world of modern politics. The veteran campaigner has been tetchy about the “unconditional gift” during media appearances, telling a radio interviewer he could spend it on Ferraris or bet on the horses, adding: “What’s it got to do with you?”

The dog groomer was among those lamenting the cost of running the by-election too. Reform had offered to pay for it, but in reality there is no mechanism to do this. The sheer number of candidates running has some extraordinary consequences.

Tendring Council, which is presiding over the vote, said even the cost of printing the ballot papers is four times that of a typical election because of their sheer length. Additional planning has had to go into every stage, from how the ballot is printed, folded and actually cast at polling stations — and counting will go on through the night and possibly past breakfast.

Then there are the Reform voters who have now been forced to choose whether to cast a vote for a comedy candidate or for Farage.

“From what I can tell about Binface, he seems like an okay guy from the research I’ve done,” said one local businessman. “And I do think there would be some tourism involved because of the absurdity of having that candidate as the MP of Clacton.”

That influx could already be observed, to some extent, on Tuesday this week. Even though it’s a school holiday, the pier and the amusement arcades in town weren’t exactly heaving with holiday-makers. 

But there was a steady stream of journalists — so many that they even tried to vox pop each other at times. Then there was an obscure mobile phone network that set up an ice cream van selling “99s for 99p” — in a publicity stunt echoing one of Binface’s manifesto pledges. A vintage Jaguar painted all over with the Union Jack (and used in the Austin Powers franchise) is touring the streets all day in support of Binface.

Farage’s social media has done a good job of showing how much support he still commands from the diehards — at times at messiah-like levels. And it’s not hard to find his “I’m with Nigel” placards outside homes, a picture of the candidate ringed with a halo-like ferris wheel.

But supporters in the first focus group suggested that the sheen could be coming off a man who has, just this year, been enough of a campaigning force to send the governing Labour Party searching for a new leader.

Old-school Tories’ views harden

The second focus group, held in a community garden overlooking the town, featured right-wing voters, and comprised largely of former Conservative supporters who, though discontented with their old party, aren’t eager to back Farage any time soon.

They roundly agreed with the “farce” analysis of the by-election. “People see this by-election as a total joke. If you talk to anyone, then that is their view,” said a retired printer.

They all lamented having no proper choice, though they generally backed the decision by Farage’s mainstream rivals not to contest the vote.

One bridge player with a firm grasp on politics described playing “eeny, meeny, miny, moe” with her postal vote to randomly pick a candidate who wasn’t Farage. Another spoke of spoiling her postal ballot and writing that the whole affair is a waste of time and money.

These were all the kind of right-wingers who Farage would want to win over to elevate himself from an insurgent outsider to true contender for high office — but their stances only seemed to have hardened in response to the by-election.

Anything but a crushing Farage victory would be a major upset. Constituency polling has him on course to win 73 percent of the vote to Binface’s 20 percent. Turnout in this bizarre by-election will also be closely looked at, as will spoiled ballots.

Reform aides have already been planning a victory speech to take place after the votes have finally been counted on Friday. But first their candidate will have to undergo that British ritual of standing next to an array of comedy characters on a stage in a leisure center to hear the results.

Should Farage make it back to parliament as expected, then the standards commissioner’s investigation into the donations resumes. That means yet more scrutiny at a time when Labour is riding a polling bounce after Andy Burnham took over as prime minister.

For the first time since March last year, Labour has topped POLITICO’s poll of polls ahead of Reform. The government’s apparent rehabilitation — combined with Reform being squeezed on the right by the splinter Restore Britain party — is adding to a worsening picture for Farage.

If the Reform UK leader is found to have committed wrongdoing and ends up being suspended from parliament, the next by-election — should he choose to fight it — could pose a far greater challenge. Not only would he come up against real opposition, but voters will have read yet more headlines about mega-bucks donations as they’re forced to the polls once again.

“It’ll be bad for us and it’ll make us look even more stupid,” said a Reform-minded instrument salesman when asked about the prospect of another by-election. “But then he [Farage] was the one that called it.”

CORRECTION: This article was updated to amend the number of constituents taking part in the first focus group.

MIRROR, ALBERTA — Nestled within a sleepy community campground and roadside cafe, hundreds of Canadians are gathered to imagine a new country of their own.

It’s July 1, and they’re hosting a family-friendly event that looks like a typical Canada Day celebration. Live music, a farmers’ market, hamburgers on the grill. Except there isn’t a Maple Leaf in sight.

Instead, people have wrapped themselves in Alberta’s flag, wave “we’re done” banners and wear “Trump 2024” and MAGA — Make Alberta Great Again — ball caps. This is an “Albertans’ Day” gathering at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which gained notoriety for bucking pandemic-era rules and which former Alberta premier Jason Kenney calls “ground zero” for the province’s fast-growing separatist movement.

Instead, people have wrapped themselves in Alberta’s flag, wave “we’re done” banners and wear “Trump 2024” and MAGA — Make Alberta Great Again — ball caps. This is an “Albertans’ Day” gathering at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which gained notoriety for bucking pandemic-era rules and which former Alberta premier Jason Kenney calls “ground zero” for the province’s fast-growing separatist movement.

And until Alberta separates, Moore places her faith not in Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — whom she views as part of a Davos “cabal” — but in U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I kept thinking this: Trump is the only one that can save us.”

Moore’s affinity for conspiracy theories is shared by many, though certainly not all, of the separatists. Resentment toward the federal government in Ottawa is longstanding in Alberta. But a surprising new ingredient has turbocharged the separatist push: Trump and the increasingly toxic U.S.-Canada relationship. The separatists are furious about Carney’s friction with Trump and the fraying ties to their southern neighbor. Some even hope the Trump administration might help their cause.

Many separatists believe Trump’s presidency makes Alberta’s independence possible, with the United States a ready customer for its oil and gas should they split from Canada. One group, the Alberta Prosperity Project, is trying to seek a C$500-billion U.S. government loan to fund the province’s “seamless departure” from Canada.

“This isn’t your grandfather’s independence movement,” says Jeffrey Rath, a co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project and a longtime separatist activist who has sought to court the Trump administration.

Many separatists see a cultural kinship with the United States. They proudly share fake newspaper clippings that highlight the province’s history of early American settlers allegedly helping to shape a self-reliant, frontier culture that remains in Alberta today. They argue the Eastern provinces are more associated with European traditions than American ones.

While some object to Trump’s idea of making Canada the 51st American state, others embrace the idea.

“I like freedom and less taxes,” says Casey Phillips from Edmonton, Alberta.

Carney and his government are now working hard to convince skeptical Albertans their best prospects lie with a united Canada. He and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who called the Oct. 19 vote, are touting a new pipeline agreement to send western oil abroad. The effort may work with some swing voters, but the hard-core separatists aren’t likely to buy it.

“It will never happen because Canada’s a communist country and there will be 24 years of paperwork,” Phillips says of the pipeline project. “It’s all lies.”

The separatists have good reason to think the Trump administration could be an ally. In January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Alberta a “natural partner for the U.S.” while referencing the province’s “great resources.”

“People are talking,” Bessent told conservative podcaster Jack Posobiec, nodding to the separatist movement. “People want sovereignty. They want what the U.S. has got.”

Rath says he has requested introductions to the U.S. Treasury Department and major financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to build a day one feasibility plan for Albertan independence, though it’s unclear if he has had any such conversations.

The Alberta Prosperity Project, however, has taken three trips to Washington, D.C., and Rath insists the group has met with “very senior level” officials, who he says have taken their information directly to the White House.

A State Department spokesperson said the department “regularly meets with a wide range of representatives. We do not anticipate any future meetings, and all department engagements are at our sole discretion.”

“As Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has said, the vote is a decision for the people of Alberta,” the spokesperson added.

Bessent made his comments amid heightened U.S.-Canada tensions; days earlier Carney had argued at Davos that middle powers needed to form new coalitions after the Trump-fueled “rupture” in the global order.

That episode inflamed the pro-America separatists, as did Carney’s subsequent use of the phrase “new world order” during a January trip to China to sign new energy and trade agreements. That phrase is catnip to those who fear the creation of a global government, and more conspiracy theories quickly seeped into Alberta’s separatist movement through Facebook groups and YouTube videos claiming Carney is steering the country toward communism and against the U.S.

But it’s also true that Alberta’s grievances with Ottawa began long before Carney jostled with Trump. They have been passed down for generations, rooted in a belief that the federal government has ignored, exploited or misunderstood the province since its founding.

Today, that resentment has become deeply personal. Separatists point to what they see as federal overreach and clean energy policies that have made life more expensive and undermined their economy.

Federalists, meanwhile, are alarmed that neighbors, friends, family, and sometimes even spouses, are “willing to betray their country,” in Kenney’s words.

Former Conservative MP Damien Kurek cautions against dismissing separatists as traitors. Instead, he argues, politicians should ask why so many Albertans feel abandoned by the federation.

For Kurek, one of the defining moments of Albertan anger came in 2021, when U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office by revoking its cross-border permit.

The ripple effects spread throughout Kurek’s riding. He says mechanics had fewer oilfield trucks to repair and restaurants served fewer meals, while roadside motels sat empty and young families put off buying homes.

But what many Albertans remember most isn’t Biden’s decision. It’s the belief that Ottawa, under then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, failed to fight it.

“I was very frustrated with the Liberals, including many Liberals that told me that I just needed to accept it, that are still on the Liberal Cabinet benches today,” says Kurek, whose riding included Hardisty, Canada’s largest oil pipeline hub.

That moment reinforced a deeper belief among many of his constituents, he says: If our national leader won’t stand up for us when we need him most, the very “promise of Canada” was in question.

Many in rural Alberta feel like their communities live or die by decisions made thousands of miles away in Ottawa. But this was just another chapter in a much longer story.

Kenney, the former Alberta premier, traces Western alienation back to the province’s creation in 1905. He says Ottawa initially treated Alberta more like a colony than an equal partner, including delaying provincial control over its natural resources.

The modern separatist movement then took shape in the 1980s after former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau introduced the National Energy Program, which raised taxes on oil companies and oil exports and shifted more of the industry’s profits from Alberta to Ottawa. The unpopular program was dismantled five years later, but Albertans didn’t forget.

When Trudeau’s son, Justin, became prime minister in 2015, his government introduced environmental policies that Alberta’s oil industry argued made it more difficult and expensive to build pipelines, expand production and attract investment.

Albertans’ sense of alienation also extends beyond energy policy. Many feel their votes carry less weight than those cast in vote-rich Ontario and Quebec, since that’s where federal elections are often decided. After repeatedly electing Conservative MPs only to see Liberal governments take power in Ottawa, some have concluded federal elections have little effect on Alberta’s fortunes.

That frustration is compounded by Canada’s equalization program, enshrined in the Constitution, which redistributes federal tax revenue to help less wealthy provinces fund public services. Because Alberta’s oil-rich economy is one of the country’s wealthiest, it has never qualified for those payments. At the same time, Ottawa collects more in federal taxes from Albertans than it spends in the province, which reinforces a decades-old belief that Alberta bankrolls the rest of the country while getting too little in return.

“It’s very scary to see what they’re trying to take from us, what they’re trying to control,” says Trina, a Red Deer resident who volunteers with a separatist group and who did not give her last name. “It leaves us with a lot of uncertainty. Nothing feels secure.”

Carney is aware of the challenge ahead. Even as he has warned Alberta against stumbling into its own Brexit disaster, he has sought to address the province’s most tangible concerns.

Last November, Carney signed an agreement with Alberta to work toward a new oil pipeline and soon after, delivered a sobering wake-up call to his Liberal caucus behind closed doors.

To the surprise of MPs in the room, Carney opened his remarks by addressing the specter of Alberta separatism, framing the pipeline deal not just as an economic win, but as a strategic necessity to keep the country together.

“He was emotional,” a Liberal MP, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal party matters, told POLITICO at the time. “You could hear a pin drop.”

It was a clear sign from the prime minister that the separatist movement was shaping his thinking — and federal policy.

“This was a no-BS kind of thing,” the Liberal lawmaker said. “This was coming from someone who grew up in that province, who understands that province, and who was very worried about the feelings of alienation.”

The speech also marked Carney’s first step in persuading Liberal supporters — many of whom had embraced Justin Trudeau’s aggressive climate agenda — that pipelines, increased oil production and energy exports were essential to Canada’s economic and geopolitical future.

Carney has made a similar pitch to the broader public.

“In Canada, we are strongest when we are united — when we look out for each other and ensure that no child, no family, no one is left behind,” Carney said in a speech to Canadians and his Cabinet in January. “This spirit of solidarity and generosity helps define us as a nation.”

Nine months later, Carney has backed up that message with action. Since taking office, he has rolled back several Trudeau-era environmental policies despite pushback from some Liberal MPs, including former environment minister Steven Guilbeault, who is leaving politics after accusing his party of “backsliding” on climate action. Last month, the West Coast oil pipeline got closer to fruition, after Carney’s government announced its partnership with Alberta would amount to a C$35 billion project in a bid to boost the province’s energy sector.

The policy shift is part of Ottawa’s effort to encourage federalists to send a strong message on Oct. 19, that they want to remain in Canada. In July, Carney made three trips to Alberta, two of which included photo-ops with Smith, Alberta’s premier. Both have been framing their pipeline pact as proof that Canada still works, for all its people, even as many separatists argue it comes a decade too late.

Federalists say the biggest risk in the vote isn’t necessarily that Alberta endorses moving toward separation; polls show about 30 percent of Albertans want independence. It’s that federalists don’t show up to vote since they assume victory. If turnout is low, a highly motivated separatist base could post an unexpectedly strong result, giving the movement new legitimacy and driving away private investment in the province.

“We can all think that the worst isn’t going to happen. We could put signs on our lawn and write poetry about Canadian unity. But honestly, unless people show up at the polls on Oct. 19, we could lose this referendum question,” says Eleanor Olszewski, a federal Liberal cabinet minister from Alberta.

Back outside the Whistle Stop Cafe, the conversations at Albertans’ Day drift from claims Carney wasn’t democratically elected, to beliefs the pandemic was orchestrated by global elites, to how a federal ban on assault-style firearms is meant to stop Canadians from rising up against the federal government.

One vendor sells knives, stun batons, tactical shovels, night-vision glasses and body shields, encouraging Albertans to protect themselves. Pickup trucks and SUVs are modified to look like sheriff’s vehicles with “Republic of Alberta” decals. Some separatists show off homemade T-shirts that read “skid mark Carney” or “pure-blood warriors” showcasing a white baby in the paws of a lion.

The antipathy toward Carney and enthusiasm for Trump even has some separatists ready to defend Trump’s wave of tariffs against Canadian goods.

Keith Walker, who is from a small farming community in southern Alberta, believes the only thing preventing Canada from becoming a communist country under Carney is Trump’s trade war.

Canada, in his view, is part of a group of governments that Trump is trying to dismantle alongside Venezuela, Cuba and Iran. “That’s why that’s happening,” Walker says of Trump’s tariffs; he and a friend are both wearing Trump 2024 hats.

The separatists’ longstanding grievances with Ottawa aren’t occurring in a vacuum. Populist forces have reshaped the globe over the last decade, amid Brexit and Trump and the pandemic, and they are now converging in Alberta.

Separatism has become a right-wing uni-cause.

“It is a perfect umbrella,” Kenney says, “for every obsession, paranoia and anxiety on the right.”

BRUSSELS — The EU’s new biometric border-check system is causing such long delays for summer travelers that some airports are turning to a simple solution: switching it off when they’re overwhelmed by arriving travelers.

The quick fix, which is allowed under EU regulations, wasn’t what was envisioned when the Entry/Exit System was gradually introduced in October and went fully into force on April 10.

And yet, many airports are doing just that.

“When lines form during the busy summer months, the system is shut off to ensure smooth transit at our hubs in Paris and Amsterdam,” Air France-KLM told POLITICO. 

Airline CEOs, border authorities, and airport officials said biometric checks are suspended when border crossings become congested at other hubs, including in Frankfurt, Brussels and Milan.

The EES applies to non-EU citizens entering the 29-country Schengen zone. Instead of heading to a border agent to get passports stamped, passengers have to use an EES kiosk to provide their fingerprints and be photographed — which will be kept on file for three years — but if those aren’t working then the information has to be taken manually.

They then head either to electronic passport gates or to border agents to enter. The goal is to keep track of visa overstays.

“The advantages of the new system for the EU are evident,” said Guillaume Mercier, a Commission spokesperson. “It increases the security of EU citizens and replaces paper stamping with a modern system of registration and checks.”

The Commission said earlier this year that biometric checks allowed authorities to detect identity frauds that would otherwise “likely have gone undetected.”

Many airports, ports, road border crossings and rail terminals have adapted to the new demands, but tourist-heavy locations have seen hours-long waits.

“Connecting flights were missed due to the EU entry system,” Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said on Tuesday.

Under pressure from the travel industry, the Commission granted a waiver for the peak summer season lasting until Sept. 6. The EES regulation “includes the possibility to temporarily suspend the registration of biometrics in case of exceptional circumstances during the summer,” said Mercier.

“We’ve been able to achieve this with German authorities and with Frankfurt Airport because delays were getting too long,” Spohr told reporters. 

This exception applies to all entry points, not just airports.

A British traveler, Rene Colandog, said on Friday he only had to present his passport before boarding a Eurostar train at London St. Pancras last month. Facial scans and fingerprints were not required. 

“I’m OK with this biometric system … as long as it’s for security,” Colandog said before boarding the train from Brussels back to London. 

Teething troubles

The EES was adopted in 2017, but it was delayed for years because border authorities were not ready to handle the additional workload. 

Even now, getting travelers properly registered in the new system still requires significant staffing. Another problem is that the EES is still new, so almost all travelers are registering for the first time — creating additional delays.

“At Milan Malpensa Airport, border control teams currently consist of about 35 people,” said Cristian Sternativo, a border control officer at the Italian airport and local representative of Italy’s Autonomous Police Union. 

To carry out all the checks required by the EES without creating long lines, “at least 10 to 15 more people would be needed during the busiest times,” he added.  

It is “unthinkable” to expect the EES to operate at full capacity with the current level of staffing because the new system “requires more time,” he said.

Even at Brussels Airport — barely 10 kilometers from the EU institutions — the technology is still not fully operational; biometric data collection suspensions started well before the summer under a derogation issued in late March after 600 passengers missed their flights over just 21 hours.

“The Federal Police Border Control may decide to apply this derogation when necessary,” Belgium’s police confirmed this week.

Now, eight EU countries and Switzerland want the summer derogations extended beyond Sept. 6. 

A strict application of the full procedure “would lead to public order issues” because “there are certain peak periods when the current infrastructure isn’t sufficient to accommodate everyone,” Sternativo said.

Security vs. speed

Despite suspending biometric checks, border authorities insist that security isn’t undermined.

“The traveler is always registered in the EES and the required travel document data are entered into the system,” the Belgian federal police said in a written reply, adding that “the security of border checks and compliance with European regulations remain our absolute priority.”

Passenger experiences vary depending on where they enter the EU.

Kathleen Glass, who regularly travels from the U.K. to the EU, waited only about 15 minutes to complete biometric checks at London St. Pancras on Friday morning before boarding a Eurostar train to Brussels.

William, from Edinburgh, who asked not to have his surname published, said biometric checks at a German airport during Christmas took between 40 and 50 minutes.

The ability to suspend biometric collection appears to be keeping the system functioning this summer.

“Although we are early into the summer season, we are not receiving reports of excessive queues,” said Luke Petherbridge, director of public affairs for the Association of British Travel Agents.

The stress over the EES is only a precursor to the next border technology change being planned by Brussels. The bloc’s next goal is the online European Travel Information and Authorization System, which will require travelers from 59 visa-exempt countries to preregister, undergo a security check and pay a small fee before entering Schengen.

ETIAS — similar to systems already in use in the U.K., and the U.S. — was originally supposed to launch in 2021, and then later this year, but is now delayed until 2027.

Brussels is bracing for an unusual fight between the EU’s smallest country and a British ex-footballing legend.

Peter Shilton, the England goalkeeper who conceded the “Hand of God” goal from Diego Armando Maradona in 1986, has started a new life as an anti-gambling advocate after overcoming a decades-long addiction.

Despite being a diehard Brexit supporter, he’s become the poster boy of the European Parliament’s push to tax online betting in a bid to raise some much-needed funds to finance the bloc’s next €2 trillion budget.

But the campaign has run into strong opposition from Malta. The tiny island in the Mediterranean Sea, with a population of just over half a million people, is home to a burgeoning betting sector. It says that higher taxes will cripple its gambling industry, boost illegal operators and drive firms outside the bloc.

“[Malta] will not accept the introduction of any EU-level taxes designed to sustain the bloc’s spending,” the country’s Prime Minister, Robert Abela, told the Maltese Parliament in June.

But Shilton, who lost more than £1 million in betting on horse racing over 45 years and now runs his own gambling addiction charity, dismisses the arguments by Malta and the gambling lobbies as “window dressing.” He’s in favor of higher taxes as he wants to shrink advertising revenue that is used to lure in new gamblers.

“Deep down they’re after everybody’s money. Simple as that,” he told POLITICO during a visit to Brussels in June.

The topic has split the EU’s 27 governments, pitting gambling-heavy Southern European countries against their more supportive Western European peers, led by France. Capitals are already fighting even though the Commission hasn’t yet issued a formal proposal for the possible tax, which would ultimately need to be unanimously approved by governments.

It’s one of numerous budget battle lines being drawn, with Ireland — which is steering the talks as chair of the rotating Council presidency — set to restart negotiations to facilitate an overall deal on the EU budget before the end of the year.

That’s no mean feat given Dublin’s task to mesh competing spending priorities into a single budget — financing everything from farmers’ subsidies to foreign aid — that is acceptable for each of the EU’s 27 governments.

National capitals will have to unanimously approve new EU-wide taxes — known as own resources — to pay for soaring defense spending and post-Covid debt repayments if they want to avoid drastically increasing national contributions to Brussels.

Supporters of the gambling levy point to the fact that it would rake in over €13 billion throughout the next budget cycle and — for some, more importantly — address a serious public health issue. An estimated 80 million adults globally have experienced a gambling addiction, according to experts.

“We look on it [gambling] as an illness. It’s something that’s inborn in you and that can be ignited,” Shilton said.

Malta’s game plan

Malta has invested heavily in the gambling industry — including lotteries, betting and casinos increasingly operating online — which now accounts for around 12 percent of its gross domestic product.

These firms have relocated to Malta because of its light-touch licensing regime, business-friendly tax regime and balmy weather.

The country is “as dependent on the online gambling industry as Germany is on cars,” said an EU diplomat, granted anonymity to speak freely.

While gambling firms need local authorization to operate in most other European countries, securing the Maltese license is crucial to access banking services and gain a foothold in the EU market.

Malta-based firms dominated the German and Austrian online gambling markets before national regulators cracked down. This has prompted the Maltese government to refuse to recognize some court rulings and sanctions issued by other EU countries against its gambling firms.

Given its influence, it is hardly surprising that the gambling industry has found a friendly ear among Malta’s politicians in Brussels.

The Maltese president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, last year gave the opening speech at an international gambling conference in Rome that also featured Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Antonio Tajani.

“I’m more than a little proud that it started in my island home of Malta,” she said, referring to SiGMA, a Maltese events company that focuses on online gambling founded by Eman Pulis, a university friend of Metsola.

Betting lobbies say they oppose higher gambling rates on the grounds that they will fuel appetite for the illegal market, away from the grasp of EU rules.

“A higher tax would lead to worse odds for the customers … and it is relevant because access to the illegal markets in Europe is, obviously, one click away,” said secretary general of the European Gaming and Betting Association, Maarten Haijer.

Nicola Matteucci, an economist at the Università Politecnica delle Marche in Italy who has undertaken extensive research on the gambling sector, argued there is a “point where prices exceed a certain level and the demand [for gambling] diminishes. But it’s not as immediate as suggested by the industry.”

Matteucci said that most gamblers will be undeterred by slightly higher taxes and worse odds as they are not fully rational consumers.

Anti-gambling groups reason instead that higher taxes will reduce the sector’s spending on commercials, preventing would-be punters from getting sucked in to gambling in the first place.

“Higher taxes will therefore mean less gambling advertising overall and many people would regard that as a public benefit,” said Derek Webb, the founder of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling advocacy group.

Club Med joins Malta

Malta has joined forces with fellow Mediterranean countries — Italy, Portugal and Spain — to challenge the mooted tax which was first proposed by the Parliament’s socialist lawmaker Victor Negrescu, said four diplomats with knowledge of the discussions.

According to the European Commission’s estimates, seen by POLITICO, a 3 percent tax on the net turnover of the online gambling sector would generate an estimated €1.9 billion per year.

With its big online gambling market, Spain is expected to be among the biggest financial losers, should the tax go ahead. It is estimated to be on the hook for €414 million per year, almost a quarter of the total amount. That compares to a projected bill of €165 million per year for Malta— a disproportionality high amount for such a small country.

Portugal is also reluctant to back the levy. It fears that higher taxes would eat into revenue brought in by state-run betting and lotteries that is currently channeled to the charity Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa‘s healthcare and youth support programs, said a Portuguese official.

Meanwhile, given the relatively low uptake of online gambling, Italy’s misgivings have surprised anti-betting advocates. Rome is expected to pay a mere 7 percent of the proposed new levy — a significantly lower proportion than its regular EU budget contributions.

However, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party has previously been receptive to the gambling industry. Last year its MPs passed a resolution encouraging the reversal of a ban on professional football clubs advertising gambling firms.