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 Dean Burns to Restore Britain. 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, ...
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 ...
Jago Hazzard sets out the history of Golders Green station, and tells us about the history of the London Underground and of London suburbia in the process. You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. And why not subscribe to his YouTube channel?
I was on Sky News soon after news broke about Labour abandoning its plans to cancel council elections: Prior to the u-turn, I wrote about the issue over on my newsletter about work in Parliament, A Lord's Eye View: We discussed in the House of Lords the latest round of election cancellations announced by the government, cancellations that mean in some cases councillors elected for four years will get three unelected years on top, serving seven years in post. To make matters worse, the Secretary of State suggested that it is a choice between democracy or getting potholes fixed, "They ...
Mon 16th
18:30
All aboard the status quo: We don't need a department for growth; we need a department for beyond gr...
Let me make this clear: GDP is not an accurate measure of prosperity. Nor is it an adequate measure of wealth. As Robert U. Ayres argues in "The Economic Growth Engine", it is a measure of economic activity. It only accounts for capital that is generated as a result of the depletion of "natural capital" (i.e the environment). It does not account for societal wellbeing; nor does it account for the losses of wealth (i.e pollution) resulting from the depletion of "natural capital" resulting from economic activity. So with all of these limitations, why on earth are policymakers, politicians, and ...
Chris Dillow argues that if government wants to foster economic growth, it will have to fight for it: "Right now, the social transformation needed to raise growth requires the government to face down the powerful interests of, if not capital in general, then at least the more regressive elements of it such as rentiers, monopolists and media barons." Virginia Heffernan investigates Jeffrey Epstein's favourite intellectual salon, Edge. She finds that it infiltrated Harvard, muzzled the humanities and preached master-race science. "'Free School Meals' and 'Free School Clothing' were an absolute lifeline for us ... That support meant I could walk ...
On NATO, the extremes are a risk Britain cannot afford For once, Keir Starmer is right. When he says that Reform UK on the Hard Right and the Greens on the Hard Left pose risks to NATO and, by extension, Britain's national security, he is identifying something serious. From opposite ideological poles, both parties advance instincts that would weaken the alliance that has underpinned European security for over seventy years. That should concern all of us. Reform's worldview is, from what I can tell, rooted in a kind of muscular unilateralism. Alliances are treated with suspicion. Multilateral commitments are portrayed ...
By any measure, opening a bank account in the United Kingdom is a serious business. You prove who you are, where you live, and pass security checks designed to stop fraud and protect the public. Yet on social media—platforms that shape elections, fuel abuse, and influence our children—anyone can appear with a fake name, no identity, and no accountability. It's an absurd imbalance, and rather than ban people from social media, it's time we corrected it. If we were to apply the same identity-verification rules used by UK banks to the creation of social media accounts it would be a ...
Gateshead Lib Dems had yet another action day on Sunday. The aim was to deliver the latest Focus newsletters across a fair chunk of Bridges ward. This was achieved. I had only 2 conversations with residents while I was out delivering. The first was with someone who had voted Labour at the last general election, is not interested in Reform and was thinking of voting Lib Dem. Our task is to
Gateshead Lib Dems recently held what could be called an envelope stuffing event. We had 25,000 letters to stuff into envelopes and then label them. We never expected to complete the task on the day so we arranged for our Gateshead West branch meeting last week in Winlaton to stuff another ward's envelopes. So Ryton had 3500 envelopes stuffed and labelled at the meeting. The task was not finished
In our latest Focus newsletter we put forward a suggestion that we apply for village green status for the grassed area next to Sun Hill on Sunniside Front Street. The areas was home to the Sunniside Christmas tree in November and December. Go back further in time to the 1970s and there were plans for a library on the site. It never happened as austerity (under the Labour government) put an end to
The Liberal Democrats have proposed a network of "Hobby Hubs" to combat what they call a "silent epidemic of loneliness", as a lack of community spaces is forcing people to find human interaction online. These hubs could libraries, community centres and pubs where groups could meet for activities. The network would be integrated the into NHS social prescribing programmes, giving GPs additional options when recommending activities for their patients. The BBC News report on this plan says the party estimates that £42m of funding per year could help hobby hubs in England stay open for an additional 300,000 hours. It ...
The Guardian reports that Keir Starmer is facing calls by MPs for an inquiry into the commissioning of a report that made "baseless claims" about journalists who were investigating a thinktank linked to the prime minister. The paper says that the calls add to pressure on the Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons, who commissioned a report in 2023 on journalists investigating Labour Together, the thinktank that would help propel Starmer to power: The research was paid for and subsequently reviewed by Simons when he was director of Labour Together, according to sources and documents seen by the Guardian. In an ...