Party President Josh Babarinde wrote to all members and on this site this week inviting us to share our views on the development of the party strategy which will be debated at our Brighton Conference in September. The consultation process involves a Typeform which has to be completed by this Thursday and 3 online consultation sessions over this weekend. The final one is tomorrow night at 5:30pm and I can promise you that if you go to it, you will retain your will to live and will feel that your time has been well spent. This is not usually the ...
G.K. Chesterton was a brilliant literary critic and there's an observation of his on Dickens that I've quoted more than once in print:It seems almost as if these grisly figures, Mrs. Chadband and Mrs. Clennam, Miss Havisham, and Miss Flite, Nemo and Sally Brass, were keeping something back from the author as well as from the reader. When the book closes we do not know their real secret. They soothed the optimistic Dickens with something less terrible than the truth.I have an uneasy feeling that Lord Bonkers sometimes soothes me with something less terrible than the truth.
It's 2070 and at a Royal Mail sorting depot in London, staff gather to wish a very special person a Happy 100th Birthday. Mark Pack (no longer a Lord since he helped ensure the abolition of the House of Lords in the late 2040s during the first majority Lib Dem administration in 140 years led by Eleanor Kelly) had become something of a hero to the Royal Mail workers over the years. Back in June 2026, Mark Pack had asked the most Lib Dem of questions in the House of Lords, on one of the party's key obsessions: When the ...
I loved the Outer Hebrides and this music - Mangersta Beach is on the west coast of Lewis - captures the feel of a landscape that somehow feels half Scottish and half Irish. So it's no surprise to find Aidan O'Rourke saying in an interview:My dad plays banjo - he had immersed himself in the Glasgow folk scene of the late 1960s, which was a hotbed of political fervour as well as music. When he left Glasgow and moved to Oban, he brought with him that interest in Irish and Scottish music, and a lot of the political affiliation within ...
Israel's increasingly brazen conduct in Lebanon and the wider region should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. A government that has faced few meaningful consequences for its conduct in Gaza was never likely to become more restrained elsewhere. From repeatedly violating US-brokered ceasefires to advancing the 'doomsday' E1 settlement project despite near-universal international opposition, recent Israeli actions all point to the same conclusion: its leaders have become convinced they can violate international law with impunity. The uncomfortable truth is that, to a large extent, the international community has taught them exactly that. For two and ...
So far we've had polls giving Andy Burnham a three, ten and five point lead, all from established pollsters. We now also have a new poll from a newer polling firm, Convergent, who are a member of the British Polling Council. It has been published in The Sunday Times: [IMG: Convergent poll for the Makerfield by-election] I have not yet seen the data tables for this poll, but other polls from Convergent were carried out online. Convergent was founded by Fintan Smith and Dylan Spielman, and describe themselves as: We both started by working at leading traditional polling agencies. We ...
The Independent reports that eight out of ten of the most flood-prone constituencies are projected to vote in a Reform MP at the next general election, but the party remains sceptical about the climate crisis and net zero policies. The paper says that since its conception in 2021, Reform UK has established itself as the anti-climate change party, with its leader Nigel Farage consistently vowing to scrap net zero targets, describing wind energy as "economic insanity" and calling for renewed drilling in the North Sea oil and gas fields. But that coulc be a major problem for them: Experts have ...
In less than 6 hours' time, Scotland will play their first World Cup match against Haiti in Boston. I'll be honest. I struggle to care about football unless it involves Inverness Caledonian Thistle or Ross County, and even then I don't actually have to watch it. I knew so little about this World Cup that it was only last night that I realised that the Scotland game was in the middle of tonight. I'd previously assumed that because the Scottish Government had made Monday a bank holiday (which only 6 of the 32 Scottish local authorities are taking) that the ...
About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds are not in employment, education or training - and the obstacles they face are bigger than ever. Sammy Gecsoyler talks to some who have been unemployed for a year or more about how they are coping. Kitty Melrose interviews Nova Reid about the creeping spread of book censorship in the UK. Reid says: "Non-fiction books about racism written to help readers learn about the topic and explore approaches to reducing racial injustice are labelled 'racist' as the reason for their removal. By closing discussion of racial injustice, one perpetuates the systemic harms of racism. ...
It's time to post another of the Sighcology columns I write for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy. It used to be called Changes, which must have saved a lot of typing. You can watch Out of True for free on the British Film Institute Site, and The Snake Pit is not hard to find online. The Snake Pit, Out of True and Nellie Bly Olivia de Havilland is sitting on a bench in the sun. We hear a man asking her questions, de Havilland's thoughts and then her replies. The camera pans a little, but we still ...
The latest episode of Never Mind The Bar Charts is not really an episode of the podcast but rather a rerun of an interview I did for the YIMBY Pod with James O'Malley, talking about the problems with secondary legislation – and why they are problems we all should be interested in. Feedback very welcome, and do share this podcast with others who you think may enjoy it. Show notes The YIMBY Pod. (It used to be called The Abundance Podcast.) One of my pieces about secondary legislation: Why does so much of Whitehall move so slowly? A reminder about ...
I've had a look at the King's Birthday Honours list this morning, searching under "political service" and "local government". I've only found two Lib Dems so far. That doesn't mean that I've found everyone, so please, hive mind, let me kmow who I've missed. Lib Dems may be honoured for things that aren't politics. And indeed, this was barely published when I discovered a third, honoured for non Lib Dem reasons. And the Noble Lord Packula found another I didn't know about. So the two I have found and the one our Charley Hasted told me about are: Ruth Williams ...
Congratulations to the following Liberal Democrats spotted in the 2026 King's Birthday honours: Clare Apel: "Chair, Chichester District Council. For services to the Voluntary Sector, to Local Government and to Holocaust Education" Elizabeth Plummer: "Chief of Staff to the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, House of Lords. For services to Parliament" Terry Stacy: "For services to the LGBTQ+ Community" Ruth Williams: "For Political and Voluntary Service" Ed Davey has said: Congratulations to all those recognised in The King's Birthday Honours List. In particular, these great Liberal Democrats – Clare Apel, Elizabeth Plummer, Terry Stacy and Ruth Williams. Clare Apel has ...
The latest edition of the email newsletter for my podcast, Political Fictions, is out and you can also read it in full below. But if you'd like to get future editions emailed direct to you as soon as they are published, sign up now: [IMG: Party Games - Yes Minsiter episode] Happy Leadership Plotting, er... Christmas! The latest episode of Political Fictions is out. It's about a Christmas special featuring plotting to become Prime Minister. So we'll let you decide if our scheduling is way off or spot on. Here are the details: Mark and Cory talk about the O.G. ...
Swansea is starting to get its act together in repurposing old and listed buildings and one of the best examples of that is the former Carlton Cinema in Oxford Street. A website called Cinema Treasures has more information on this building: Situated on Swansea's Oxford Sreet, next door to the now demolished Empire Theatre, the theatre opened as the Carlton Cinema de Luxe on 31st January 1914. The Carlton Cinema has a very beautiful facade with bay glass windows on the first and second floors. There are decorative freizes in Doultonware featuring dancing cherubs. Inside the foyer was a very ...