This week was a huge moment for the Campaign for Gigi. After almost two years of campaigning for safer standards, inspections, and regulation of the nursery sector, the Government has announced a huge package of measures that would make nurseries safer and put child safeguarding at the forefront of the sector. £8 million will be spent on strengthening safeguarding across early years, 3,000 more unannounced Ofsted visits will now take place to spot risks, and stronger checks on new nurseries before they open will happen. As well as this, new legislation will be introduced in September which will set out ...
Wed 24th
10:41
We have no idea what history will say about Keir Starmer and it may not be right anyway
I see a lot of people saying that history will be kind to Keir Starmer - much kinder than commentators have been in recent weeks. Three points... First, history is not a single agreed narrative but a collection of debates. History will say lots of things about Keir Starmer, some of them quite contradictory. Second, we have no idea what history will say about Keir Starmer, because his career will be seen in a wider context, much of which hasn't happened yet. Andy Burnham may be lead Labour to defeat at the next general election, or he may win that ...
Andy Burnham's role as Mayor of Greater Manchester comes with a responsibility that is often overlooked. As well as leading the city region, he also holds the powers previously exercised by the Police and Crime Commissioner. That means he is ultimately responsible for overseeing Greater Manchester Police (GMP), setting priorities and holding the force to account. As with housing, Burnham's record on policing is more complex than either supporters or critics sometimes admit. The strongest criticism of Burnham's policing record is that one of the biggest scandals in the history of GMP happened on his watch. In 2020, inspectors placed ...
The only person to profit from Brexit is Nigel Farage, who has walked away with a £5 million payout he described as his reward for Brexit, the Liberal Democrats claimed yesterday. The Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey launched a nationwide billboard campaign to mark the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum. The campaign highlights how ordinary families across the UK are facing skyrocketing household bills in the aftermath of Brexit, all while taxpayers face a £90 billion hit every year. Speaking at a rally held in front of one of the billboards in London, Davey said: "After ten years of ...
I think that history will be kinder to Kier Starmer than the media, his opponents and those within his own Party. What has happened to him reminds me very much of what happened to John Major three decades ago. As we look back on him, his behaviour, and his achievements we certainly understand more about and sympathise with Major than we did in the 90s. The basic thing that Starmer and Major have in common is that they are decent men with principles and beliefs that are close to the main stream beliefs that most of us hold. They believed ...
Much of the UK media coverage of an expected Burnham government later this year has focused on personalities and relatively trivial policy proposals. Broader strategic issues have largely been absent. However, Burnham's local transport reforms and administrative refinements in Manchester have shown a desire to 'make the state work'. Burnham has implied that a 'privatisation mentality' and an obsession with opaquely contracting everything out to the private sector, has led to the abandonment of attempts to make state institutions work properly. He's out to challenge such assumptions, he implies. This concept seems to lie behind Burnham's ideas about the nationalisation ...
Joan Littlewood directed only one film, Sparrows Can't Sing. It was based on the play Sparrers Can't Sing, which was written by Stephen Lewis (better known later as Blakey off of On the Buses) and staged by her at Stratford East. Here two cast members, Barbara Windsor and Murray Melvin, remember the making of the film and Littlewood's approach in general. Barbara Windsor is in sparkling form. As I posted this video on Liberal England about 10 years ago, I'm adding another one with Murray Melvin . It's very good, but I'll admit it's here mainly because of the still ...
Last year, David and I donated a 1950s record player to Beamish Museum, one of the biggest tourist attractions in the North East of England. Also my favourite museums on the entire planet. Last week we visited the museum to see if the record player was on display. We think we found it, in the electrical shop in the 1950s town. A bargain at 23 guineas.
Today is the 10th anniversary of the EU Referendum Ten years ago, many of our readers will have voted and would have been working hard for the previous few months to help make the argument for the United Kingdom's place in the European Union. Ultimately Britain Stronger In Europe didn't win and like many people at the time, I remember being at a count, seeing the Sunderland result come in and the scale of the win for leave and thinking we're f****d. This was not out of a sense of I told you so, more out of a growing realisation ...
Stray drips of rain from broken heat that make their way inside my head; wet trembling pearls that smell of earth and soak into her hide, her bones
The director of Trouble at Townsend wasn't the only one to have problems with a child star being too well fed. I've read accounts of both Carol Reed and Andrei Tarkovsky making the same complaint. But Alexander Mackendrick's account (from Wikpedia, with no source given) of the making of Sammy Going South suggests that Fergus McClelland didn't just get too well fed but too happy. "He was a lean, hard, little boy. Tough as old nails ... a really strong character. He had the hunted look of an abused child, which in some ways he was. He came from a ...
Content warning: This post contains material about rape and sexual assault. Some of you may remember that roughly a year ago I wrote a piece titled 'For a lot of trans people, it's hard to feel pride right now'. A year is a long time in politics, and so you'd hope that over the last year the situation for trans people would be better. Well, in some ways it is, and in some ways it's worse. We'll start with what really has got better since last year, the party's position. I am genuinely so proud of how far we have ...
Tue 23rd
10:25
Andy Burnham's housing challenge: Why his own arguments demand more than Labour's current plans
Andy Burnham is one of Labour's most popular politicians. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, he has made housing and homelessness central to his public image. Yet his record raises an important question. If Burnham were ever to become Prime Minister, would Labour's current housing policies be enough to solve the problems he says have held Greater Manchester back? The starting point is Burnham's own record. When he became Mayor in 2017, Burnham promised to end rough sleeping by 2020. That target was not met. To be fair, there was real progress. The official rough sleeping count across Greater Manchester fell ...
David Howarth reminds us that both Tony Blair and Keir Starmer said pluralist things in opposition, only to go back on them in power: "Given that history, why should Liberals believe that Andy Burnham would be any different? He has already backtracked on his previous anti-Brexit pronouncements and his only promise on electoral reform is that he might include a 'pledge' on it in Labour's next manifesto. We know what such 'pledges' from Labour are worth." A deliberate strategy to push the British right - from the Conservative Party to Nigel Farage's Reform UK - into a radicalising auction over ...
Liberal Democrat Newswire #211 came out earlier this week and you can now also read it in full below. But if you'd like to get future editions emailed direct to you as soon as they are published, sign up now: Welcome to Lib Dem Newswire #211, which takes a look at lessons from the 1930s Liberal Party and from the May 2026 elections for the Liberal Democrats. Please do hit reply and let me know your views on those lessons. Congratulations to the new Lib Dem councillors since last time – Chris McSweeny, Paddy Mooney, Beth Rowe, Phil Williams and ...
Our report on last week's by-elections is a little later than usual. There were 15 principal authority by-elections with several counting on the Friday. These 15 also included three countermanded elections, delayed from the local elections following the death of a candidate. Because of the quantity of contests, we're going to group several races together and provide an overall analysis. By-elections in Wales Half of the by-elections last week took place in Wales. This is because of rules in the Senedd which don't allow representatives to be both an Assembly Member and a local councillor. Importantly, local elections were last ...
The latest edition of the email newsletter for my podcast, Political Fictions, is out and you can also read it in full below. But if you'd like to get future editions emailed direct to you as soon as they are published, sign up now: Now, on to the proper business of this email which this time does not feature a new episode but rather has some bonus content for you about recent episodes. Take it away Cory... Leadership plotting, two fictional versions [IMG: Jim Hacker pulls a very strong expression] Jim Hacker contemplates 10 Downing Street. Our last chat on ...