Yesterday, Ed Davey came up to Edinburgh to celebrate our very good election results He and Alex Cole-Hamilton filmed a video and had an unexpected guest. Enjoy.
In a fit of pique Donald Trump announced that he was withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany. He also said that he was considering pulling soldiers out of Italy and Spain. Why these three countries? Because their leaders had the temerity to criticise the US president. Trump is cutting off Uncle Sam's face to spite his nose while shooting him in the foot. In short, it is a stupid move. America needs Europe. For a start. Europe is the largest financial pillar outside the United States supporting the US defense industry—it spends more than $100 billion a year. And the US ...
In my last blog I gave a candid view of yesterday's local elections and made some generalised predictions about what might happened and what it would mean for the Parties. I am not a psephologist (that's a posh name for pollster) so I take no real credit for saying that both the Labour Party and Tory Parties would be hammered. The Tories have lost 563 seats and the Labour Party have lost 1,496 seats. But remember there is a truth beneath these changes which need to be looked at carefully. Last year the Tories lost more seats than Labour. This ...
The Independent reports that a new poll has found that the Green Party is not viewed as being the party with the biggest problem with antisemitism despite increasing pressure on Zack Polanski over his response to the Golders Green stabbing. The paper says that when asked which of the main five parties has an antisemitism problem, Labour and Reform were identified most frequently in a new YouGov poll, with both at 33 per cent, a quarter said the same of the Greens, while the Conservatives and Lib Dems registered 16 per cent and 13 per cent respectively.: The survey, conducted ...
This is The Old White Cottage in Desford, a village west of Leicester that I visited today. Having found myself agreeing to do so at a heritage fair held at the University of Leicester a few weeks ago, I went on a guided walk of the place. I'm glad I did, because there were several exceptional buildings to see and a lot of interesting history to hear. Visit the Desford Heritage website to see more.
Way back in 2002 Conservative politician Theresa May warned hge Tories that they should be careful not to be seen as "the nasty party," Sadly , eleven years later, as Home Secretary, she was the one to hire lorries to tour areas of high immigration with posters threatening people who might not be legally here to "Go Home of Face Arrest." Under May the Home Office deliberately tied to create a Hostile Environment. " It was officially intended to deter those whose legal presence might be questionable, but in practice tends to create hostility towards and uncertainty within all those ...
Now that I have had some sleep, and before I have some more, I'm going to just quickly jot down a few thoughts about yesterday's elections, what happens next and what I think our party needs to do going forward. Scotland Going up from 4 MSPs elected in 2021 to 10 in 2026 is undeniably a good result. The journey uphill is always slower and more laborious than the rapid descent downhill that we experienced in 2011. We are on our way back, though, and the Highlands are coloured gold again in their entirety. Not so the islands, though. The ...
Many of us are imagining what it might be like to experience a major surge in support like that being enjoyed by Reform UK at the moment, and to a lesser extent by the Greens. However I have always argued that slow steady growth is much more sustainable, especially for a centrist party based on strong values rather than populism, and there are some good examples from this week. I am looking at East Surrey and West Surrey, where the councillors have been elected to set up the new unitaries in 2027 to replace Surrey County Council. The last full ...
The Gulf region is on the cusp of peace. That is according to President Donald Trump who issues more lies and obfuscations than my dog Bear barks in any given day. Having said that, both Axios and Reuters report that there is now a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which indicates Iranian willingness to discuss suspending uranium enrichment, a partial lifting of US sanctions against Iran and unfreezing of assets and some sort of return to normality in the Strait of Hormuz. It should be stressed, however, that an MOU is not a peace deal. It is merely an agreement on ...
[IMG: Morven-May MacCallum MSP on a highland beach] Well, my last post last night has not aged well. That first sentence: There's just the Highlands and Islands list left to count now but the Liberal Democrats will not win anything on that because we won 3 constituency seats. was, not to be overly dramatic, bollocks. And I have never been more delighted to have egg on my face. In the middle of the night, when they finally finished counting in Inverness, our Morven-May MacCallum took the fifth of seven seats. She is currently the Councillor for my favourite place on ...
I have mentioned in a previous local history post that Oystermouth in Mumbles is not named after the oyster trade that briefly flourished in that area, and once attracted Gladstone to sample its wares, but from the Welsh name for the area, Ystumllwynarth, which appears in early Medieval Welsh literature and derives from Ystum Lluarth, meaning a "place of entrenchment on a hill". The story of Mumbles website picks up on the history of the now defuunct oyster trade there. They say that the Horsepool was a natural harbour encompassed on most of its seaward side by a sandbank, bordered ...