I referred to James Hawes's The Shortest History of Ireland the other day, and I've just sent Liberator a review of the book by fast orphan. Here Hawes raises wider issues about the future of the United Kingdom, and he's well worth a listen., Among his insights are that "England", to the Conservative Party, ultimately means the South East of England and the elite institutions to which it is home. And that the Reform vote is not working class, but a vote for a more hard-line Tory party. I suspect, though, that a good chunk of it is the sort ...
Amid the concern at what this month's local elections revealed about the concentration of the Liberal Democrat vote in the prosperous South, it's worth celebrating one of the exceptions. As the Liverpool Echo reports: In Sefton's local elections last week, Labour's seat share was reduced from 51 of 66 down to 36, while other parties and Independent candidates made significant inroads. The Liberal Democrats went into the election with nine seats on the council, but almost doubled this share to 17 on May 7, taking 15.6 per cent of the vote and only losing out in four of the seats ...
Welcome to my summary of the latest national voting intention polls for the next general election, along with the latest MRP projections and party leadership ratings. If you'd like to find out more about how polls work, how reliable they are and how to make sense of them, check out my book, Polling UnPacked: the History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls, or sign up for my weekly email, The Week in Polls: General election voting intention polls PollsterConLabLDGrnRefLab leadFieldwork YouGov 17% (nc) 16% (-2) 13% (-1) 16% (+1) 28% (+3) -12% (3rd, vs Ref) 10-11/5 GB More in ...
52% of Britons don't know what the Liberal Democrats consider the most important issue facing the country. Compared against Labour, Conservative, Green and Reform, the electorate have the poorest recall on what the Liberal Democrats are focused on. I argue that this is a result of political parties moving away from values and visions and emphasising radical policy that draws attention to their cause. Where the Liberal Democrats communicate values and not policy, we risk getting lost in the noise of our evolving media landscape. Radical policy from both Reform and the Greens hint at their underlying values, drawing attention ...
Fri 15th
17:18
More improvements planned for the River Welland through Welland Park, Market Harborough
The East Mercia Rivers Trust (EMRT) is to carry out improvement work on the River Welland where it flows through Welland Park in Market Harborough. HFM News reports that the EMRT will increase water flow during the summer by clearing weeds and adding gravel and small structures to the river. It will also create better access points for education and community use and install new interpretation boards. The report quotes the EMRT as describing the Welland through the park as "a heavily modified urban watercourse, with weed growth restricting flow and causing both visual and ecological concerns". So I went ...
In 2016 the television actress Tracy Brabin was elected as Labour MP for Batley and Spen, the constituency in which I live. (It has now been re-drawn to become Spen Valley.). In 2022 M/s Brabin decided she would rather be, or the Labour Party thought she had the best chance of winning the election for, the Mayor West Yorkshire. She did win, so resigned as our MP and was replaced after a by-election by another Labour MP, Kim Leadbeater. The average public cost of a parliamentary by-election is just short of a quarter of a million ponds. (£228, 000 - ...
Since the results of the 2026 Local Elections, there has rightly been some deep analysis of where we are as a party. Colleagues have argued that we are abandoning the North of England, only focusing on leafy rural areas and are ignoring our cities. While I wholly agree with this criticism, I think it misses an even more crucial point. Even in areas which are becoming our 'new heartlands', we are stagnating or even slipping back. This brings us to West Sussex. As a local member, I do have more to celebrate than some around the country. For the first ...
Born a dissenter; fear turned my folds by steps, to order, truth and right
The recent elections confirmed what opinion polls have been saying for some time. Unless something radically changes, we are heading towards a Reform UK government, possibly with Conservative support. To illustrate what this would mean, consider just one of Reform's flagship policies: the retrospective removal of indefinite leave to remain. People who were told by the British state that they could settle here, people who have lived here for decades, people who have worked, brought up children, bought their homes, integrated into local communities - our friends, neighbours or family - would be deported, by force if they resist. Only ...
I was seven years old when I first delivered leaflets for this party on the streets of Yorkshire. Seven years old. Running door to door in communities I loved, for a party that told me, told us, that we belonged here - that this was our country too. Last Thursday's local election results were a gut punch to anyone who believes in a fair, open, and tolerant Britain. Reform UK gained more than 1,400 seats while Labour lost over 1,100 it previously held. But for me, the results that hit hardest weren't the national headlines. They were the towns I ...
I've been reflecting on the events of 7th May, the election cycle that dominated the entire country, especially Scotland. UK-wide, the political landscape is widely acknowledged to have changed forever, transforming from a traditional two-party system to one of perhaps four or five parties. Over time, this may become even more divergent. Westminster, as a political ecosystem, struggles to accommodate this increase in influential parties. In fact, this struggle may have been the root cause of the sea change itself. In all the constituent nations of the Union, the rise of Reform UK is, in my opinion, the result of ...
I read Rob Blackie's post on Tuesday. Well written, but none of this is new. The difference now is that the warning lights are flashing everywhere, especially in London. Let's tell it straight. The party has a serious problem in urban Britain, and pretending otherwise will only make it worse. We keep branding the Greens as "extreme" because they are attracting attention and energy we can currently only dream about in many inner-city areas. The Greens spoke to communities in plain English. One word summed up their offer: change. Meanwhile, too often we sound cautious, managerial, and disconnected, speaking largely ...
Okay, as headlines go, that might be a tad optimistic given the civil war that is shaping up inside the Labour Party at the moment, but if Starmer is to have any chance at all of radically resetting his administration then he needs to start revisiting the decisions that have contributed to public disillusionment with the Labour Government. There is an opportunity to make a start on this reset with the news that the Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) campaign has announced it is going ahead with a High Court challenge against the decision to deny millions of 1950s-born ...