Martin Parr looks at successful and unsuccessful attempts to depose a prime minister: "Labour, significantly, has never toppled a prime minister. It's not in the culture of so cooperativist a party: there's no equivalent of the 1922 Committee. And whenever it might have happened, the challenger blinked: Herbert Morrison with Attlee; Roy Jenkins with Wilson; David Miliband with Brown; Wes Streeting may have just joined the roster of the rueful." Sumaiya Motara on the brutal contest for low-paid work: "It's like The Hunger Games, but you're all trying to get a job in a shop where you're going to be ...
Matthew Spender's book A House in St John's Wood is a portrait of his father, the poet Stephen Spender. Stephen's father was Harold Spender and the Michael mentioned below is Stephen's brother Michael Spender. The third brother was Humphrey Spender- they were very much a family of Wikipedia entries. Early in his book, Matthew Spender writes: When Stephen was twelve, Harold stood as a Liberal candidate in a general election. My father remembered being hauled around Bath in a pony-carriage with his two brothers, each with a placard round his neck saying "Vote for Daddy". Harold lost and the effect ...
I am sure that I cannot be the only person to notice that this week marks the start of two major religious festivals. In fact, it is more than that - it is the celebration of two festivals which have many similarities. Christian will have enjoyed Pancake Tuesday yesterday. It is a day when you brought all your food together and ate it to mark the start today of Lent. Today is Ash Wednesday. During Lent it is customary for true believers to 'sacrifice' a luxury or pleasure typically food. At the end of Lent, they celebrate Easter and do ...
Liberal Democrats along with the SNP, the Green Party and several Independent MPs have recognised that Israel has committed genocide as defined by the Genocide Convention. So far so good. The bad news is that the failure to act by the British and other governments frankly amounts to complicity in war crimes. The UK Government still hasn't announced how it plans to follow up the 2024 ICJ judgements which warned of the plausible risk of genocide, confirmed that Israeli settlements are illegal and stated that other countries should not have any dealings with those settlements. The Trump 'Peace Plan' has ...
It can be argued that the Labour Government's decision last year to postpone the local elections due next next May was sensible. The councils concerned are to be reorganised and their new councillors would be in office for only a year. Then the councils i would be abolished. Why waste money on elections when it could be better used for mending the potholes, as Labour's current response argues now that "legal advice" obtained as a result of protests by Farage's Refom Party indicates that the move is illegal and will probably be reversed if it goes to court. Such an ...
Recorded at the Marquee Club in February 1965, so Steve Winwood (on vocals and piano) is 16 here.
Last week, Rupert Lowe launched his new "Restore" party. Restore what, exactly? Strip away the branding and the flag-waving and what you're left with isn't renewal. It's resentment. It's grievance politics dressed up as patriotism. To me, it looks like a diet BNP the same division, repackaged for the social media age. And I'm tired of pretending it isn't dangerous. Circling this movement are voices openly advocating "re-migration" the idea that British citizens like me should be sent "back" somewhere else. Steve Laws has pushed exactly that kind of rhetoric. According to this worldview, my place in this country is ...
The Independent reports that Reform UK has been accused of "pitching for the votes of misogynists, homophobes, racists and antisemites" after Suella Braverman, the party's new equalities chief, announced plans to scrap the Equality Act. The paper says that at a press conference in London on Tuesday, Nigel Farage unveiled his party's top team, appointing Ms Braverman as the party's education, skills and equalities spokesperson: Addressing the conference, she said Reform would repeal the Equality Act on day one if it wins the next election, claiming that Britain is being "ripped apart by diversity, equality and inclusion" policies. The Equality ...
Embed from Getty ImagesIn 1992 the journalist Edward Pearce published a diary of that year's general election campaign. It was reviewed for the London Review of Books by Peter Clarke. Here is Clarke on Lloyd George: Lloyd George, too, did his bit to lower the tone of politics once secularisation had made the pulpit an obsolescent model. As A.J.P. Taylor liked to point out, Lloyd George's platform oratory owed a heavy debt to the music hall. He could control an audience with the inspired timing of a stand-up comic. His one-liner about the House of Lords - "five hundred men, ...
Here is a list of the councillors which Reform has shed from the May 2025 local elections and from those elections in by-elections since. The latest update is the departure of two North Northamptonshire councillors. Donna Edmunds (Shropshire, suspended by Reform UK and then quit the party) Luke Shingler (Warwickshire, now an independent) Desmond Clarke (Nottinghamshire, resigned as councillor) Andrew Kilburn (Durham, resigned as a councillor) Wayne Titley (Staffordshire, resigned as a councillor) Mark Broadhurst (Doncaster, expelled by Reform) Adam Smith (West Northamptonshire, suspended by Reform and then expelled) John Bailey (Durham, resigned as a councillor) Daniel Taylor (Kent, suspended ...
This tale of everyday life in Telford wins BBC News our Headline of the Day Award.
She'd left life behind Frail flesh turned against itself Slowly wound by fate
[IMG: Potholes on Stroud Green Road] Potholes in the repairs to potholes in the repairs to potholes on Stroud Green Road. Stroud Green Road in north London, on the border between the boroughs of Haringey and Islington, is the scene of potholes. Many potholes. Many many potholes. So I've put in another Freedom of Information request to find out how many pothole repairs there have been in the last five years. There have been a massive 164 pothole repairs in 2020/21 to 2024/25 along a road that is only about 1 kilometre long, not counting the three occasions on which ...
I was chopping firewood yesterday when my phone pinged. I checked the message and initially came to the conclusion that someone had sent me a spoof. Apparently, the government have now carried out U-turn no 15: the cancelled elections were no longer cancelled. And Reform were £100K better off, paid for by the taxpayer. I thought someone had sent me by mistake a copy of a very bad script for a
In 1900, the wealthiest one per cent of people in Britain controlled an estimated 70 per cent of all personal wealth. By 1990, that share had fallen to under 20 per cent. It was the most sustained redistribution of wealth in British history, and it was not inevitable. It was the product of deliberate policy choices: progressive taxation, labour rights, universal public services, and democratic reform. That settlement is now being unmade. The wealthiest one per cent of UK households again hold the same share of wealth as the entire bottom half combined. The 50 wealthiest families hold more combined ...
Sir Ed Davey's recent Defence proposal to start selling war bonds so that we can "move far faster" on UK defence spending, was welcome. The state of our armed forces is far poorer than these dangerous times call for. The UK's ability to project its defensive capabilities within our own neighbourhood would be severely tested and likely found wanting if it were to be needed any time soon. Whilst I was pleased to see that there were the beginnings of a party plan on funding the defence investment needed. I was left wondering how ready we are as a party ...
The Independent reports that Keir Starmer has argued for closer links with the EU, saying Britain is "turning its back" on the Brexit years and warning that the split with the EU has left the UK unable to use its influence internationally: In an interview after the worst week of his tenure in No 10, he added: "We are not reversing Brexit but we are turning our back on the Britain of the Brexit years that we've had for the last decade. "That has seen a Britain that has turned inward, a Britain that has not been able to assert ...