Roderick Lynch says the Liberal Democrats have a serious problem in urban Britain and pretending otherwise will only make it worse. "A few months after winning the 2024 general election, Keir Starmer pledged to stop 'powerful people using ... Slapps to intimidate journalists away from their pursuit of the public interest'. But in February this year, anti-Slapp measures were shelved from a civil justice and courts bill, reportedly following interventions from Downing Street." Peter Geoghegan and Jenna Corderoy on the government's abandonment of libel law reform - Slapps are "strategic lawsuits against public participation". "A child living in an illegal ...
In many ways, the 2026 Senedd election was historic. Wales is the first country in Great Britain to adopt proportional representation, utilising the D'Hondt voting system over a Mixed Member voting system. Its parliament has expanded from 60 to 96 members. For the first time in over a century, Labour is no longer the dominant party in Wales. Plaid is now the largest party, with its leader, Rhun ap Iorweth, becoming the new First Minister of Wales. Reform UK is the official opposition, and the Greens have made their Senedd debut. But for all that has changed, one thing has ...
With Josh Simons' resignation on Thursday, the starting gun on the 2026 Labour leadership election was (sort of) finally fired. There is now a theoretical, if muddy, path for Andy Burnham to re-enter parliament and become the next Prime Minister. The Greater Manchester Mayor, a vocal critic of Keir Starmer, has announced he plans to apply to stand in the by-election. Reform UK, buoyed by a second set of astonishing local election results, including across most of Greater Manchester, have responded in kind to say they plan to throw everything they can at the seat. The question being raised internally, ...
In the elections on May 7th, Salford Lib Dems suffered an unexpected setback. We lost one of our two councillors (I'm the one who remains), and we came third and fourth out of five in our two target wards. In all three cases, we lost to the Greens. The story was similar elsewhere in Greater Manchester. In only one of the three wards did we face an active Green Party campaign - the other two wards (including mine, where we lost my co-councillor) were won by pretty much paper candidates. The councillor we lost was a fantastically hard working and ...
If you happen to wander into Dylan Thomas Square in Swansea's Marina the first thing you might see is a statue of the poet himself, looking more like Max Boyce than anybody else, but turn around and there is a part of a tram displayed behind glass in a large building. Apart from a few tracks built into the square as a feature, this is all that remains of the world's first passenger railway. As Wikipedia recalls, originally built under an act of Parliament, the Oystermouth Railway or Tramroad Act 1804, to move limestone from the quarries of Mumbles to ...
