Melissa Lawford
Melissa Lawford covers the politics of economics, showing how decisions in Westminster and Washington reshape housing, energy and the wider economy for ordinary people. She is The Telegraph’s US economics correspondent and part of its economics team, after three and a half years as property correspondent. Her beat combines economics and politics, with recent work focused on housing, planning, the cost of living and the wider impact of policy on households and businesses.
Britain’s housing wealth is in danger of collapsing
Housing and household wealth are a constant thread in her coverage, with repeated stories on the fragility of Britain’s property riches and who stands to lose when prices stagnate or fall.
She writes about the risks to housing wealth and the social fallout, including pieces on Britain’s housing wealth “in danger of collapsing”, the rise of pensioner renters, and the strain on state welfare as fewer retirees can fund their own care. Her work tracks how housing policy and economic pressures filter down to council tenants and private renters, such as reporting on council house renters saving significant sums through taxpayer support and the uneven access to affordable homes.
She links structural shortages to everyday coping mechanisms, for example using London’s spread of self-storage units as a lens on families struggling to move in a worsening housing shortage. Her property-era archive is heavy with explainers on mortgage shocks, falling house prices, landlord arrears, leasehold problems and collapsing demand, reflecting a long-standing focus on how market swings translate into practical dilemmas for homeowners and landlords.
Housebuilding plunges to lowest in a year
Lawford’s housing work now sits squarely inside a political frame, tracking how planning decisions and housebuilding targets shape the fortunes of the current government and opposition. She reports on setbacks to flagship agendas, including coverage of housebuilding plunging to its lowest level in a year as a setback for Angela Rayner and Labour’s ambitions. Her stories follow political figures as they grapple with housing shortages, such as pieces on Angela Rayner’s impact on the countryside and Prince William’s plan to help solve Britain’s housebuilding crisis.
Across these articles she focuses less on rhetoric and more on bottlenecks in the planning system, chronic delays in approvals and the knock-on effects for social housing, prisons capacity and local services. That approach is clear in her reporting on Nimbyism fuelling Britain’s prisons crisis, where she connects local opposition to infrastructure to overcrowding and early releases, and on London being “worse than any other city” for planning delays. She also follows Labour’s economic agenda beyond housing, covering industrial policy debates such as Rachel Reeves’s push for ministers to “buy British” and exploring what those demands mean for domestic manufacturing, procurement and trade.
The era of cheap oil is over
Her role as US economics correspondent broadens her beat to global shocks, energy markets and the economic costs of war. She writes on the end of cheap oil and the way conflict reshapes commodity flows, including pieces on the era of cheap oil being over and Putin making hundreds of millions of dollars a day from oil as war in Iran drives demand for Russian exports.
In coverage of the Iran war’s impact on Turkey’s tottering economy, she frames foreign policy developments in terms of currency stability, inflation risks and the ability of vulnerable states to absorb external shocks. Earlier work and recent features connect US politics directly to economic outcomes, with articles on Trump-era tariffs hammering small businesses, threats to Medicaid funding, the burden of drug prices and the squeeze on homeowners via higher mortgage rates. She extends that political-financial link into newer subjects such as UAE money flowing into Trump-linked cryptocurrency ventures and Wall Street’s “crypto messiah” facing pushback from sceptics.
Across these pieces she blends policy analysis with market detail, typically anchoring stories in concrete figures and tracing who gains and who loses from each decision.
London swamped by self-storage units as housing shortage grows
Lawford’s reporting format combines news-driven stories with longer essays and practical explainers, often built around vivid case studies. She writes narrative-led pieces that start from a striking image or headline - such as London swamped by self-storage units, or Britain’s youth jobs crisis - and then use data, expert interviews and individual experiences to show how policy choices filter into everyday life. Her housing and labour market stories frequently highlight groups at risk of being overlooked, from young people falling through the jobs net to landlords struggling to exit the market in a downturn, a focus reflected in her call for buy-to-let landlords to share their experiences for an essay on a potential housing market downturn and its effect on the wider UK economy. Recent work on pensions and climate risk, including warnings that heatwaves could ruin savings and that housing wealth may not be the safe asset many expect, shows a recurring interest in long-term financial security rather than short-term political wins. Across politics, housing and global economics, her coverage distinguishes itself by treating policy as an economic force that reshapes real lives, not just as a daily contest between parties.
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Abbi Garton-Crosbie
Abbi Garton-Crosbie is a multimedia political reporter who treats independence as a live process shaped by Holyrood power struggles, party manoeuvres and grassroots pressure. She works at The National, a pro-independence newspaper, covering how political power is contested and exercised in contemporary Scotland, with a core focus on parties, parliament and the mechanics of constitutional change. She reports on parliamentary votes, government strategy around future independence referendums, and elections across Scotland in the wider context of devolution in Wales and Northern Ireland. Her work centres on party leadership, resignations and internal conflict, including long-form interviews with senior politicians and coverage of emerging and smaller parties. She examines far-right activity, protest politics and movement organisation, and runs policy-driven reporting on rent caps, AI data centres, health boards and public services, across written, video and podcast formats.
Abubakar Ahmadu Maishanu
Abubakar Ahmadu Maishanu is a politics reporter with Premium Times who treats politics as a system of rules, contests and consequences rather than personalities. He focuses on power struggles, security shocks and governance disputes shaping party competition in northern Nigeria, especially how violence, corruption investigations and economic strain intersect with political authority. He reports on Bauchi’s 2027 governorship race, APC primaries and PRP realignment, tracking defections, party constitutions and factional manoeuvring. His coverage of Jigawa and Yobe follows power-sharing fights, candidate substitutions and Tinubu reelection mobilisation efforts. He links banditry and local security crises in Kano and Zamfara to political structures, using precise locations and casualty figures. His investigative work on alleged shady dealings around the Dala Inland Dry Port and reporting on soaring cooking gas prices add a corruption and economic hardship lens.
Aisha Iqbal
Aisha Iqbal covers local and regional politics for the BBC, with a distinct focus on grassroots power and how local decisions shape trust, representation and public services. She reports on Bradford Council decisions, waste services, cultural funding, regeneration grants and the use of public money. She also covers grooming gangs, community safety, political trust, elections, Muslim voters, Gaza, ceasefire campaigns and the links between faith, foreign policy and representation. Her work includes culture and public figures when they intersect with civic identity, including a feature on David Hockney. She connects committee-room votes, neighbourhood disputes and national debates, showing who gains, who loses and how communities respond. She reports across broadcast and online platforms in a clear, explanatory style. Earlier, she covered politics, culture and consumer issues for regional newspapers.
Alessia Simona Maratta
Alessia Simona Maratta stands out for showing how political decisions, regulations and conflicts ripple through communities, pairing national and global stories with on-the-ground voices and clear policy explanations. She is a digital reporter, producer and editor with Global News’ network news desk, covering breaking news, crime, politics, public health, housing, labour, immigration, environment and climate, social issues and features. Her recent work spans politics, public health regulation, labour and technology, and human-interest features that ground complex issues in everyday experience. She reports on politics, policy and community impact, public health and social debates, and labour and regulation at the intersection of technology, globalization and worker rights. Alongside hard news, she produces features that use individual stories, straightforward narrative arcs and accessible explanations to connect history, science and policy to everyday life.