I remember Trevor Bailey talking about Ken Farnes, but I don't think I've ever seen film of him before today. Farnes stood 6 feet, five inches tall, which made him a giant in the 1930s. In that decade he took 690 wickets at 21.45 for Essex and Cambridge University. He also played 15 tests for England between 1934 and 1939, taking 60 wickets at 28.64. Cricket Web has a good article about him, and describes his last days: Farnes joined the RAF and trained as a pilot, largely in Canada, and returned to the UK in 1941 where he was ...
A Shropshire campaigner says the River Teme should be granted legal rights because it has become "unwell". Inspired by the way the River Wye has become the first river in the UK to be given cross-border rights covering it from source to sea, Sam Jones has started a petition which has so far been signed by more than a thousand people. Sam Jones told BBC News: "Over the years I've seen decline. I've been a swimmer, kayaked in the past, I'm an angler... you notice things around you. "It's 30 years since it's been designated a Site of Special Scientific ...
Creep glasses and jokes at Robert Jenrick's expense were high on the agenda for Max Wilkinson in his speech to Conference. I am used to being disappointed by Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesperson's speeches. I'd rather a more positive message on immigration but this was better than we have had in recent times. I was glad to see him prioritise tackling violence against women and girls. While I had been worried about the packaging of the campaign about smart glasses,it's an important issue to tackle. Anna Sabine and Wera Hobhouse's amendment at Conference called for it to be very clear ...
In 2025, a think-tank director pressed several volumes on Ted Heath, along with Ian Gilmour and Mark Garnett's Whatever Happened to the Tories?, into my hands. That led to a lethal intellectual falling-out with the Conservatives, and then to a thesis: the centre ought to unite. I heeded the call and joined the Liberal Democrats. But such a project cannot live on tactical votes. It requires a serious occupation of the Tonbridge Tory. To do that, you need representatives. Voters can be spoken to in public. Ground is held by people. That means a garrison. Some will want to slot ...
Ahead of Ed Davey's conference speech, the Liberal Democrats launched their cost-of-transport campaign. With households facing higher costs from the conflict in Iran, the party wants an emergency three-month package: a 10p cut in fuel duty, cheaper rail and bus fares, and lower EV charging costs. The bill is around £2 billion, funded from the extra revenue higher fuel prices generate. There is a clear case for helping people through a sudden shock. But a party that has long argued for tackling climate change should ask a bigger question: are fuel-duty cuts really the best way to help people in ...
Suella Braverman's recent statement on making hymn singing mandatory in English schools shows just how out of touch Reform is with modern British society. Reform UK's proposed "patriotic curriculum," explicitly rooted in Christianity, raises a basic question: what does it mean to be British today? Christianity is central to Britain's history and cultural inheritance, shaping its institutions, architecture, literature, music and traditions. Children should learn about that heritage. But teaching Christianity's role in national life is different from requiring children to take part in Christian practice. That is what the proposal would do: every school would have to make pupils ...
This letter from me appears in the latest Journal of Liberal History. Oscar-winning American director Joseph Strick also made his mark on British politics with a film for the BBC about the 1966 general election, focusing just on the heckling of politicians. An American unused to culture of heckling at public election meetings, he toured the country with his own film crew to capture what was a major part of election campaigning in a political era that had only started adjusting to the impact of TV. Mass public meetings were still a central part of a politician's campaign diary – ...
I have already commented here on the summit of nationalist leaders nine days ago in Cardiff and the mixed messages it sent about Plaid Cymru's prioritites in government. In doing so, I quoted Wales-on-Line's political editor, Ruth Mosalski, who said that throughout the Senedd campaign the First Minister claimed that his first goal was to show people what a Plaid government can do but, she continued, with the jury still out on what his government has actually achieved on the key issues of health, education, and the cost of living, he was now putting the divisive topic of independence front ...
On Monday, Conference debated our motion "Restoring Trans Rights", and the motion passed overwhelmingly. As Chair of LGBT+ Liberal Democrats, I'm proud of that – proud of everyone who put the work in, proud of the people who got up and spoke, and proud that our party said clearly, again, that it stands with trans people. But there is one thing I want us to carry forward from that debate. We win the argument by making it. We win the vote by voting for it. We do not need to win it by shouting anyone down. There will always be ...
I am surprised to see Lord B. inviting a Labour peer to lunch at the Hall. Time was, he would have hunted him with hounds over the hills of High Leicestershire. With this entry, our week at Bonkers Hall comes to a close. Don't forget to download the latest issue of Liberator from the magazine's website. Sunday Cook is pleased I am being "economical - like they are in the church sometimes" by inviting a Labour peer over for lunch. "You must be worried about that Burnham fellow," I remark to him as he fields the gravy boat. "Starmer always ...
I always find it odd that, when we have had hundreds of Lib Dems discussing policy for days, we then have the leader announcing a major new policy in his speech, just as everyone's about to go out the door. In Spring it was a new British nuke, which we've mercifully not heard much about since. However the tax cut policy announced yesterday might have more longevity. Basically we are going back to one of the really popular ideas from the coalition years, and raising the threshold at which you pay tax to £15,000. This is the idea initially brought ...
Let's travel far from Brighton and the Liberal Democrats's autumn conference to an hour-long discussion of Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, a book published in 1972. I read it just after I had taken A-level History and found it more interesting than anything I had read about the 17th century while studying for that. Somehow it fitted together with Jethro Tull's album Songs From the Wood to form a ruralist, traditionalist strand in my politics that I have never quite been able to expunge. If Hill was a revisionist historian then Ann ...
Given how popular (and lengthy!) my list of Reform councillor departures after the May 2025 elections turned out to be, here is a new list, this time for councillors on principal authorities elected under the Reform banner on 7 May 2026, or in by-elections after that date, who have already departed the party for one reason or another. Jay Cooper, Sefton: declared "not welcome" by Nigel Farage following reports of him calling the Holocaust a hoax and then resigned from the party (May 2026). Stuart Prior, Essex: expelled by Reform and resigned as a councillor after "he was accused the ...
Here is the full text of Ed Davey's closing speech at the 2026 Liberal Democrat autumn conference in Brighton: Something big and dangerous is happening in our country. Hundreds of thugs, in black shirts and balaclavas, are marching on our streets. First Dover. Then Portsmouth. Their aim? To intimidate. To spread fear. To stoke racism. They may call themselves patriots, but they would tear our country apart. We must not let them. Conference, we have seen this before. Racism on Britain's streets is sadly nothing new. Even though the vast majority of our fellow citizens share our values of decency, ...
BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award. The councillor is Christian Vassie, a Liberal Democrat member of City of York Council, and the sign has gone up in the village of Wheldrake. Britain's hedgehogs salute him.
"Later he announced that the party are now in favour of cutting fuel duty by 10p, a policy that has not been agreed by conference and one that flies in the face of our commitment to tackling climate change. The Deputy Leader, Daisy Cooper also launched a new economic policy in her speech, which, once I had got hold of it, appears to be largely sensible, however, that too has not been approved by conference and it also talks about tax cuts."Peter Black reports from the Liberal Democrats' autumn conference in Brighton. George Monbiot asks why lawbreaking on our roads ...
Yesterday afternoon, Lib Dem Conference passed a motion calling for the EHRC's Code of Practice to be withdrawn and for work to be done on a cross party basis to work out what changes in the law were necessary to ensure that everyone, women, trans people, everyone can go about their lives in dignity and safety. It is not beyond the wit of people to find a way of doing that, and it is something that can be relatively easy given the political will. The motion was passed overwhelmingly, as these things usually are. In fact, it looked to me ...
I tried telling the old boy that the Port of Dover has its own police force, whose relations with the Kent force has at times been opaque, but he was determined to give it both barrels this time. Saturday I am disgusted at the events in Dover. We used to know how to deal with these Blackshirt types - come to think of it, I believe there's still a Wellington bomber in an outbuilding of some farm or other on my estate. I shall have it serviced, repainted and put at the disposal of the Chief Constable of Kent, who ...
My last day before I disappear on five buses. I had a run along the promenade and noticed a police operation. I take my hat off to the police. We should remember that they spend an awful lot of time and care following up "concerns for safety". Often they are like emergency social workers. Full marks to them. Hove Plinth is a thing. At the moment it has a beautiful sculpture called "Flight of the Langoustine" on it (pictured). While having breakfast I watched the debate on A Liberal Vision for primary health care. It was good to see our ...
It maybe that I have been spoilt by nearly 40 years of attending Liberal and Liberal Democrats conferences.. I was in Llandudno in 1981, when conference voted by 1,600 to 112 to form an electoral alliance with the SDP and David Steel told us to go back to our constituencies and prepare for government. I was one of the 112. I was present in Eastbourne in 1986 for the defence debate when the representatives defied the party leadership and unconditionally rejected the compromise on defence agreed with David Owen. I saw the electrifying speech by Simon Hughes MP for the ...