I don't know about you, but the news that the Government had announced four pilot schemes to make voting "easier and more convenient" during this year's local elections had rather passed me by. To quote the release from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government; In Milton Keynes, voters can have their say in the city's main shopping centre – Midsummer Place – rather than being restricted to a single designated polling station. This could eventually be rolled out across the country in future elections along high streets and in town centres. People in Cambridge, Tunbridge Wells and North ...
As it happens, I really did have tea at Betty's and then go to Evensong in the Minster when I arrived in York for the conference. I used to listen to Choral Evensong on Radio 3 while I was washing up after cooking for my mother on Sundays, and formed the opinion that no vicar ever got sacked for choosing something from Isaiah and Paul for the two readings. So I was pleased that the Old Testament reading I heard in the Minster came from Numbers, though it made no mention of badgers. Friday Much as I love York, the ...
I know that I'm not alone in contemplating what our next steps as a party are. We see the Greens and Reforms cut through on the media circuit and their memberships have seen stark rises as a result. Whilst each of these parties have almost diametrically opposed platforms, they do have one thing in common: having a vision for the country they want to see. Reform is selling a "return" to a rose-tinted view of the past, where Britain stood alone and strong and where their interpretation of traditional values made the world less confusing. As Liberals, we understand that ...
Four principal authority council by-elections this week, all with a Lib Dem candidate. That full slate is up one on the last time these seats were up (and here is why that is good news). However, after a Lib Dem gain in the Vale of White Horse two weeks ago, this week brings: Stanford (Vale of White Horse) Council By-Election Result: [IMG: 🌳] CON: 45.9% (+2.5) [IMG: 🔶] LDM: 27.2% (-17.0) [IMG: ➡] RFM: 18.0% (New) [IMG: 🌍] GRN: 7.9% (-4.5) [IMG: 🌹] LAB: 1.0% (New)Conservative GAIN from Liberal Democrat.Changes w/ 2023. — Election Maps UK (@electionmaps.uk) 2026-03-27T00:32:25.173Z The Lib ...
Nation Cymru reports that members of Reform UK have warned of growing "chaos" behind the scenes in Wales as infighting erupts over candidate selections for the Senedd election. Farage's party has just announced all its candidates for the election on 7th May, but the process appears to have thrown up the usual problems of insufficient vetting and infighting, a problem that also haunted the UKIP group in the 2016-2021 Welsh Assembly: One senior Reform UK source said: "The selections have been disastrous from the moment they began - all of the promises Zia Yusuf made when Farage put him in ...
At Retford the line from Sheffield to Gainsborough and beyond used to cross the King's Cross main line to Scotland on the level. In 1965 a dive-under was constructed so this crossing could be removed. Our History Underfoot has been to Retford to tell this story and look for traces of the earlier arrangement. If you're interested in Midland railways this is a good account to subscribe to. Eighteen miles to the south of Retford, the King's Cross main line still crosses another line on the level. This is at Newark, where it meets the Nottingham to Lincoln line. The ...
Scottish Liberal Democrats launch election campaign in seat they will take from SNP Greene comments on Reform's Scottish campaign collapse Greene comments on latest wave of ferry chaos Labour missing golden opportunity to set up Port Talbot industrial supply chain EU-US Turnberry deal: Renew Europe backs Parliament's firm mandate Scottish Liberal Democrats launch election campaign in seat they will take from SNP Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today launched his party's campaign, setting out how his party can win ten constituencies to deprive the SNP of a majority and win big on the peach regional ballot in order ...
Here's the tally of seats changing hands in principal authority council by-elections held between the May 2025 and the May 2026 local elections: Con Lab Lib Dem Green Reform SNP Plaid Ind/ Other Net Con [17] +2 (+2/0) -9 (+3/-12) +2 (+2/0) -20 (+2/-22) -1 (0/-1) – +2 (+3/-1) -24 Lab -2 (0/-2) [16] -5 (0/-5) -7 (0/-7) -30 (+1/-31) – -2 (0/-2) -7 (0/-7) -53 Lib Dem +9 (+12/-3) +5 (+5/0) [35] +2 (+4/-2) -1 (+2/-3) +2 (+2/0) – +3 (+3/0) +20 Grn -2 (0/-2) +7 (+7/0) -2 (+2/-4) [8] +1 (+1/0) – – -1 (0/-1) +3 Ref +20 ...
Christopher M. Cruz says US Democrats have failed to offer a vision of a liberal education: "This is not just bad for Democrats, but bad for the world as we have seen the country slip into chaos. If liberals want to see things change in 2028, they (and everyone else) should concern themselves more forcefully with the role of the liberal arts in educational institutions and invest to become the primary champion of books in the public square." "This is not what I wanted to write. I wanted to write about how I'm about to go on book tour for ...
Thu 26th
14:05
Recycled words of criticism are not enough: marine mammals must be protected beyond our shores
The hunting of cetaceans in the Faroe Islands has brought into sharp focus what many of us already understand – the health of our oceans matters to us all. The hunts, known as the grindadráp, see dolphins driven into shallow bays and killed in a practice that has drawn widespread concern for animal welfare. Images of these brutally killed animals sit uneasily with our ambitions for a more sustainable, humane, and internationally engaged future. And these ambitions do not have borders. Although some choose to defend the grind as tradition, all the evidence shows most Faroese people do not participate ...
Earlier on this week, ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer emergency medical service were deliberately attacked outside a synagogue in Golders Green, one of London's most established Jewish neighbourhoods. These were not military vehicles. They were not symbols of any state or government. They were ambulances. Vehicles whose sole purpose is to save lives, staffed by volunteers who respond to emergencies. They were targeted because they serve the Jewish community and this should shake every one of us to the core. This was not an isolated incident. It sits within a deeply troubling pattern. The Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 ...
The Conservatives at the County Council having thrown a large chunk of public money at trying to persuade us that what Suffolk really needed was a Unitary County, the Secretary of State, Steve Reed, has concluded that the three Unitary solution proposed by the Districts and Ipswich Borough Council was his preferred choice. I have to admit that I'd rather have seen a rebirth of East and West Suffolk, as I was of the view that two councils, each serving around 400,000 residents, was probably more faithful to the criteria laid down by the Government and would offer two vaguely ...
This review appears in the latest issue of Liberator - no. 434. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website. George Orwell: Life and LegacyRobert Colls Oxford University Press, 2026, £14.99 I read Nineteen Eighty-Four as a teenager because it felt like a moral duty and as a student regarded the four paperback volumes of George Orwell's Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters as a sort of bible. So I wonder if Rob Colls (who taught me on my MA Victorian Studies course long ago) is right to say we are now living at peak Orwell. The imperative ...
If you heard jeering on you way into the spring conference at York, it appears from that it probably came from militant young badgers. And good luck to them, I say. Thursday I am summoned to the residence of the King of the Badgers, which is to be found on the Bonkers Hall Estate, beneath the triumphal arch I had erected to celebrate the victory of Wallace Lawler in the 1969 Birmingham Ladywood by-election. He tells me that the younger badgers have seen Ed Davey's video opposing the replacement of Winston Churchill by a badger (or other form of wildlife) ...
The Guardian reports that political donations from British citizens living abroad are to be capped at £100,000 a year from Wednesday, in a move that is likely to limit further funding from Reform UK's Thailand-based mega-donor, Christopher Harborne. They add that the new representation of the people bill will also include a temporary ban on donations in cryptocurrency: Steve Reed, the communities secretary, said the legislation would be applied retrospectively from Wednesday subject to parliamentary approval, as the move was urgently needed to protect UK democracy. He said he was "not prepared to allow any window of opportunity for malign ...