I've written another post for Lion & Unicorn. To celebrate its 10th year, the blog asked me to write about what the last decade has been like for the Liberal Democrats: Swinson saw her party's vote increase from 7.4 per cent of 2017 to 11.5 per cent, but its number of seats dropped from twelve to eleven, with none of the recent star recruits from Labour and the Conservatives (such as Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger and Sam Gyimah) managing to get re-elected in Lib Dem colours. And Swinson's own East Dunbartonshire seat was one of the ones that were lost. ...
Mon 29th
10:39
My prediction for 2016? The good people of the world will begin to prevail against racism, greed, an...
As Jimmy Kimmel said in his alternative Christmas address, 2025 has been a good year for fascism in America. It has been in the UK as well with a Reform surge at the May elections and subsequently in a range of local council by elections. However, all the signs are that people are waking up to the threats and are fighting back not only in the USA and UK but in countries across the world. The problems for Farage and Trump and all their mini-me copy cats around the world is that being angry and finding scapegoats only takes you ...
The Guardian contains a detailed account of a letter sent by Chloë Deakin, a young English teacher, in 1981 to Farage's headteacher objecting to the future Reform leader being made a prefect. Ms Deakin raised her concerns after hearing reports of him bullying other pupils. She says that she conferred with colleagues in the staff room who corroborated accounts of harassment of fellow pupils and of Farage's apparent fascination with the far right, including claims that he had been "goose-stepping" on combined cadet force marches: Despite the chatter in the playground and staffroom, Farage was put on a draft list ...
I spotted the following council by-election results on Election Maps (https://electionmaps.uk/): contests since the local elections in May up to the end of the year. Pity Labour and Conservative by-election candidates. They are getting hammered. But the shares of the vote give us a good indication of how the parties are faring generally. There have been plenty of contests (nearly 200) so the
The image above was posted in the large few days of 2024. It shows one of the less visited locations in the Bonkersverse: The Jack Straw Memorial Reform School, Dungeness. Think of it as Les Quatre Cent Coups with added shingle. But let's see what Rutland's most popular fictional peer has been up to this year. February Shocked by the number of Tory placement at the top of the BBC, Lord Bonkers called for a traditional arse-booting at Broadcasting House: The Chief Commissionaire, traditionally a former RSM from one of the Guards regiments, boots the miscreant the length of the ...
The Cascades were a clean-cut American vocal group who had an international hit in 1962 with Rhythm of the Rain and were later influenced by the Beach Boys. I Bet You Won't Stay is a Ray Davies song that, as far as I can tell, The Kinks never recorded. It turned up on the B-side of an unsuccessful Cascades single in 1965. It's easy to imagine Davies singing this himself. The poster on Bluesky who alerted me to the song described it as a "fantastic link between See My Friends and Tired of Waiting". It's the best Kinks single that ...
Andrew George MP frames his recent article on Lib Dem Voice ("Israel/Palestine: Complicity") around laudable principles—respect for law, opposition to hatred, and concern for civilian life. However, those principles are undermined when language departs from legal definitions, evidence is selectively presented, and allegations of the gravest crimes in international law are asserted as settled fact when they are not. This matters not only for accuracy, but because such rhetoric risks feeding narratives that blur into antisemitism under the guise of moral critique. The most serious flaw in the article is the repeated assertion that Israel is committing "genocide." Genocide is ...
A Conservative leaflet from the 1951 general election, housed at the People's History Museum in Manchester: [IMG: 1951 general election Conservative leaflet looking like the football pools] Information about the leaflet from the museum (see number 5 in the list): [IMG: 1951 general election Conservative leaflet looking like the football pools - museum explanation] Football-themed leaflets were quite the thing in 1951 and you can watch a short video about that election here. For more gems from past election leaflets, see my collection How leaflets used to look.
The £9 million donation that Reform received from a Thailand-based cryptocurrency investor and aviation entrepreneur is continuing to make waves with nineteen civil organisations calling on ministers to legislate to cap political donations in an effort to "rebuild voter confidence" in democracy. The Guardian reports that these organisations have urged the government to show more ambition as it prepares to publish legislation early next year that will extend the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds: In a letter sent this week to Steve Reed, the communities secretary, and Samantha Dixon, the democracy minister, 19 civil organisations said "a donations cap is ...