Six principal council by-elections were held across the UK this week with Labour losing two of their three seats, one to the SNP and one to the Conservative, successfully defending only one. The Tories additionally gained a seat from an independent, while the Liberal Democrats held comfortably held their seat. In South Oxfordshire DC, Cllr Crispin Topping won the seat in the Cholsey ward, increasing the already impressive vote share further to 62.2% this time around! Congratulations to Crispin and the team in South Oxfordshire on the stellar win. South Oxfordshire DC, Cholsey Liberal Democrat (Crispin Topping): 949 (62.2%, +16.1%) ...
Welcome to my summary of the latest national voting intention polls for the next general election, along with party leadership ratings. If you'd like to find out more about how polls work, how reliable they are and how to make sense of them, check out my book, Polling UnPacked: the History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls, or sign up for my weekly email, The Week in Polls: General election voting intention polls PollsterConLabLDGrnRefLab leadFieldwork Find Out Now 26% (-1) 23% (-2) 11% (-1) 9% (nc) 24% (+2) -3% 4/12 GB More in Common 28% (-2) 26% (-1) 13% ...
William Wallace opposes the abolition of district councils on the grounds of efficiency and cost-cutting: "But there is a countervailing cost in local democracy and representation which Liberal Democrats - I would argue - should fight against. Most people see political issues through local experience and daily life. Now that so many decisions have been removed to Whitehall, with service delivery transferred to private providers or autonomous agencies regulated by central government, it's not surprising that so many voters see politics as a distant game played in Westminster over which they have no influence at all." "When Morgan McSweeney replaced ...
Federal Spring Conference will be held next year from 21st to 23rd March in beautiful Harrogate. and Early Bird registration is now open. The Conference Hotel will be the Crowne Plaza which is very close to the Harrogate Convention Centre where we will be meeting. Full information here. You can see all the registration options here, but the key points are that the Early Bird registration rate is £85 now, rising to £125 on 10th January. Of course, there are concessions: full-time students and recipients of various benefits pay £15 rising to £30 on 10th January In addition, first time ...
I have seen a surprisingly upbeat post from Sonia Poulton about Sam Smith's appeal against her. In fact, like so much of what she says, she is misleading her followers. To explain briefly, earlier this year Sam and I applied to strike out parts of Sonia's case in the ongoing lawsuit between Sonia on one side, myself Sam and Darren Laverty on the other. Sam helped with both applications along
A longstanding and committed Liberal for sixty-five years, Barbara Lindsay died on 21 November aged 83. She was someone I greatly admired and whose company I enjoyed. Once she had decided intellectually and by personality at the age of 18 that she was a Liberal that was it for Barbara and she became a consistent campaigner and feminist activist. Life was not easy for Barbara and the cost of politics bore heavily on her, particularly when her car needed repairing – seemingly all too often! She was also passionate to be a writer and regularly wrote articles and comments which ...
The Caithness Courier has the news: In what is one of the most compelling minor trends in Highland politics, yet another Conservative has joined the Liberal Democrats - this time it is Thurso and Northwest Caithness councillor Struan Mackie. Patrick Logue had been a Tory councillor but moved to the Lib Dems and more recently Andrew Baxter was elected as the Lib Dem candidate for Fort William and Ardnamurchan having previously had close ties with the Conservatives. It is another significant blow for the Scottish Conservatives as Cllr Mackie had been one of the party's most respected members in the ...
The Liberal Democrats held the Cholsey ward of South Oxfordshire DC last night, polling 949 votes to the second-placed Conservative's 362. You can see the result expressed in percentages at the bottom of this post. I take particular pleasure in this victory because Cholsey ward takes in Aston Tirrold - and near that village is the cottage where Traffic famously "got it together in the country" in 1967. Until 1974, Aston Tirrold and the cottage were in Berkshire, which explains the title of this Traffic song from their first album, Mr Fantasy. If the backing singers sound familiar, they're Steve ...
Yesterday I headed back to Birtley. My aim was to deliver the remaining patch of Focus newsletters I had which didn't get delivered in November. Just as I finished, it started to rain. Good timing!
Six principal authority council by-elections this week and, hooray, a full set of Liberal Democrat candidates. That is one up on the last time these seats were up. Cholsey (South Oxfordshire) Council By-Election Result: [IMG: 🔶] LDM: 62.2% (+16.1) [IMG: 🌳] CON: 23.7% (+0.9) [IMG: 🔴] SDP: 7.6% (+2.3) [IMG: 🌹] LAB: 4.7% (New) [IMG: 🙋] IND: 1.8% (New)No IND (-25.7) as previous.Liberal Democrat HOLD.Chnages w/ 2023. — Election Maps UK (@electionmaps.uk) 2024-12-06T00:11:27.555Z
Tomorrow afternoon - Saturday 7th December - all are welcome at the West End Christmas Fortnight Afternoon Concert - from 2pm to 3.45pm. Taking place at Logie & St John's (Cross) Church - entrance via Shaftesbury Terrace, it features Dundee Community Youth Orchestra, "The Dundee choir that doesn't have a name yet" and the Louisiana Fairytale Riverboat Jazz Band. All welcome - free of charge and no booking required!
An investigation by the Good Law Project has suggested that Tom Hayhoe, the new covid corruption commissioner, could start his work by looking at the firms who supplied unusable PPE during the pandemic and who are still raking it in from big contracts with the NHS. They say that 17 companies which supplied £119m of PPE marked "do not supply" during the pandemic are still making vast profits supplying equipment to the NHS, landing work for the supply of goods worth some £83.6m since January 2024: Analysis of official spend records shows that many of these have bagged long-term contracts ...
