I don't know if Nick Clegg does have a Dutch uncle, but there must be every chance. Tuesday Who should I meet in Westminster but Count Binface? Having long wished to talk to him like a Dutch uncle - Nick Clegg, incidentally, has a literal Dutch uncle - I invite him to lunch at my club. There I tell him I have been through the Almanach de Gotha twice and can find no mention of a Binface family. I realise that inventing an aristocratic title for yourself makes it easier to cash a cheque, but if an Oxbridge comedian's career ...
This week's principal authority council by-elections kicked off with a rare Tuesday contest: East Markham (Bassetlaw) Council By-Election Result: [IMG: ➡] RFM: 49.6% (New) [IMG: 🌳] CON: 28.4% (-37.6) [IMG: 🌹] LAB: 17.2% (-4.1) [IMG: 🌍] GRN: 4.8% (New)No LDM (-12.8) as previous.Reform UK GAIN from Conservative.Changes w/ 2023. — Election Maps UK (@electionmaps.uk) 2026-09-15T22:32:53.359Z This contest also had a Lib Dem after the party previously not being on the ballot. Here it was due to Murray Sinclair – thank you. For what all this means for the running total of council by-election results since the last May elections, see ...
The Independent reports that more than half of all candidates standing in this year's local elections suffered abuse and harassment, triggering growing alarm over the safety of democratic representatives. The paper says that following the findings, the Electoral Commission cautioned that escalating hostility risks discouraging individuals from seeking public office, while calling on social media platforms to speed up the removal of offensive posts: According to a watchdog report analysing England's local contests, 55 per cent of candidates encountered intimidation or abuse during their campaigns, marking an increase from 47 per cent in the previous year. Online harassment was the ...
Connie Converse provided my music choice on Sunday. YouTube being YouTube, there are any number of videos about her disappearance in 1974 and what may have become of her afterwards. I've chosen one of the gentler ones, which has been made by a contemporary woman musician, Victoria Shell, and is in part a response to her music. She has included some links to other resources on Connie Converse.
BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award for this tale from Yorkshire, where a Sheffield City Council reports claims there is "confusion around what qualifies as a pothole"
The author, Charles Stephenson, has kindly agreed that we can publish a recent article that he has written. Although far from conventionally religious, Churchill had long considered himself under the protection of Providence. He was certainly physically fearless and sought to put himself 'in harm's way', as the phrase has it. Whilst campaigning in northern India in 1897 he had written to his mother, telling her: "Bullets . . . are not worth considering. Besides I am so conceited I do not believe the Gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending." Indeed, his ...
Liberator 437 is out for conference and can be downloaded free here. You can sign up to be emailed when each new issue comes out here. What's in this issue? There's Commentary, Lord Bonkers' Diary and find out in Radical Bulletin, among lots more, about an attempt to scrap spring conference, a panic over corporate donations and a row concerning one internal election. BEYOND THE HEARTLANDS. The Social Liberal Forum is relaunching with a strategy to get the party out of its comfort zone. John Shreeve and Roger Hayes explain CORPORATE DONATIONS: HOW TO PUT THIS RIGHT The party establishment ...
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 ...
The brutal killing of Ann Widdecombe earlier this year has given us all cause to pause about the state of our politics. We do not yet know why she was killed, and it would be wrong to speculate. But Britain already knows where political violence can lead: Jo Cox. David Amess. Still others whose plots were mercifully foiled by the police. In a previous era of political murder and intimidation, Margaret Thatcher said after the Brighton bombing: "We must never never never be stopped; never be stopped from going among the people by a few men of violence, because that ...
Thu 17th
12:57
London needs more social homes - and Liberal Democrat boroughs are determined to deliver
The housing crisis in London needs little introduction. One in 50 Londoners are homeless and living in temporary accommodation organised by their local borough. More than 336,000 households languish on waiting lists for social housing in the capital. Many of London's 2.7 million private renters face spiralling rents they can barely afford. Young people in our communities find themselves priced out of the places they call home. London is struggling - but Liberal Democrat boroughs are determined to tackle this crisis. Housing is about creating sustainable communities, improving lives, and ensuring that local people can continue to live in the ...
None of us who remember the terrible time local government endured in the 1980s as budgets were sliced and powers reduced can be unhappy to see greater powers given to local government now. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher's government looked across the Thames at the unemployment figures draped over the side of the Greater London Council building, and to her it might as well have been the flag of a foreign power raised over her homeland (reminding her after the Falklands episode that there were 'enemies within'). Away went the GLC and the metropolitan county councils. In practice it was ...
The new issue of Liberator has dropped. Download it free of charge from the magazine's website. And that, whether we like it or not, means it's time to set out on another week with Rutland's most popular fictional peer. Monday A productive morning at PieTown studios in Melton Mowbray. Having heard rumours (I do miss Freddie and Fiona giving me the inside track on the party) that Ed Davey is determined to spend the next election campaign as he spent the last - falling off paddle boards and wrestling gorillas in custard - I hit upon the idea of providing ...
Here's the tally of seats changing hands in principal authority council by-elections held between the May 2026 and the May 2027 local elections: Con Lab Lib Dem Green Reform SNP Plaid Ind/ Other Net Con [11] +1 (+1/0) +1 (+3/-2) -2 (+1/-3) -6 (+3/-9) -1 (0/-1) – +2 (+3/-1) -5 Lab -1 (0/-1) [11] -1 (0/-1) 0 (+3/-3) -4 (+4/-8) +1 (+1/0) – 0 (+1/-1) -5 Lib Dem -1 (+2/-3) +1 (+1/0) [17] +1 (+1/0) +2 (+2/0) -1 (0/-1) – +1 (+1/0) +3 Grn +2 (+3/-1) 0 (+3/-3) -1 (0/-1) [7] – +1 (+1/0) – – +2 Ref +6 (+9/-3) ...
Elvis on the beach, and we're not talking Blue Hawaii here.
With Labour Ministers all but admitting that their ambitious house-building target will not be met, the need for a more varied approach to the housing crisis has become urgent. This article in the Guardian therefore, is not just timely, but illustrates what can be done when politicians think outside the box. The paper reports on the outcome of a government review, which concluded that George Osborne's scheme to reduce costs for first-time buyers represented "very high value for money". They say that an official audit of the help-to-buy programme has calculated it provided £25bn of social value to the UK ...