From the latest Popbitch email: Patrick Radden Keefe's new book, London Falling, is the buzziest read of the summer so far. (In case you've missed all the column inches, it's the one about the mysterious death of a 19-year-old whose pretence of being the son of an oligarch entangled him in a dangerous underworld.) Akbar Shamji, the baddie on the run who might know what happened to Zac Brettler, has another claim to fame, we're told. He starred in panto at Cambridge Footlights with Mel and Sue, of Great British Bake Off fame. My advice to the police, if they ...
Thu 28th
14:25
Sting is right when he talks about employment issues causing male toxicity. We need dirty and danger...
Thirty five years ago, I spent a lot of time working as a regeneration adviser in Hull, Barnsley, and Doncaster. At the time, all three areas were experiencing elevated levels of male unemployment and particularly young male unemployment. Now Sting has suggested that the lack of manual jobs is one of the causes of disaffected young men becoming toxic for the rest society. I think he has the nail on the head. Of course, there are a lot of causes of toxic young and, to a lesser extent, young girls but the lack of suitable employment, which is hard, physical, ...
Every election, millions of people in Britain vote knowing their ballot probably will not matter. If you live in a "safe seat", your vote can feel irrelevant before you even enter the polling station. If you support a smaller party, you are constantly told you are "wasting" your vote. And if you back the winning party nationally, there is a good chance they will gain enormous power without anything close to majority public support. This is not healthy democracy. It is managed frustration. Britain's First Past the Post voting system was designed for a different era — an era before ...
The Lib Dems in Newcastle have reached agreement with the Green Party to run the council as a minority administration. Lib Dem Leader Colin Ferguson was sworn in as the new Council Leader yesterday. The Greens will serve as a "co-operative opposition", thereby ensuring all cabinet members are Lib Dems.No single party was close to a majority in Newcastle after the local elections on 7th May. The
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: King's Game: the 2004 Danish movie The latest episode of Political Fictions is out: In a scheduling choice completely unconnected to any contemporary political events, Mark and Cory talk about the 2004 Danish film full of leadership plotting, King's Game. This is a proper conspiracy thriller, where even the children are Machiavellian geniuses. They question whether ...
Three new policy working groups have been set up by the Federal Policy Committee, and they are seeking members. The working groups will take evidence and prepare policy proposals to submit to Autumn Conference 2027. The deadline for applications to join one of the groups is 8th June. Click here for more information about how policy is developed in the Liberal Democrats. The new groups are: Victims of Crime Victims of crime have been let down for too long. Many wait hours for a police response; many never see their crime investigated or the perpetrator charged; many wait years for ...
This review appears in the new Liberator - issue 435. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website. Searching for Normal: A New Approach to Understanding Mental Health, Distress and Neurodiversity Sami Timimi Vintage, 2026, £12.99 Many years ago, through my then day job, I encountered the ideas of professionals who challenged the dominant account of serious mental health problems. It was wrong, they argued, to see these problems as caused by one or more of a collection of discrete mental illnesses. The term "schizophrenia", for instance, now describes a quite different set of symptoms from those ...
It was a very opportune telegram for the old boy. I'll say no more than that. When I was on holiday in Scotland years ago there was a story on the local TV news about a man who had gone for a walk in the hills and dropped dead. It ended with the words "... and the Procurator Fiscal at Dingwall has been informed." I have always remembered what an august personage he sounded. Saturday Two weeks have passed since that Friday's Unfortunate Events. It happened that I received a telegram the next morning that begged me to lend my ...
The Independent reports that Andy Burnham has hit out at Sir Tony Blair suggesting the former Labour prime minister is out of touch and partly to blame for the rise of politicians like Nigel Farage. The paper says that Burnham's rebuke comes after Sir Tony warned that Labour was "playing with fire" on the future of the country, as he urged the party not to move further to the left, saying it should instead occupy the "radical centre": In an interview with the Observer, Mr Burnham, who is fighting to win a parliamentary by-election to return to Westminster, a prerequisite ...
Here's a video of the Liberal leader Jo Grimond voting in the 1964 general election. It's unused footage shot by British Pathé, so there's no commentary, and the little boy with Grimond is his son Magnus (not Michael, as YouTube says). Magnus Grimond recently wrote an article about his memories of Orkney elections in the Sixties and Seventies for Frontiers: My father would ... go around all the islands to hold meetings, which were mostly in rather draughty parish halls, with the odd Calor Gas heater if you were lucky. A few committed souls would generally show up, but I ...
[IMG: Zoe Peat and Bristol Lib Dems] Zoë Peat (front left) is welcomed into Bristol Liberal Democrats. A local Liberal Democrat press release brings the news: Bristol Liberal Democrats have announced that councillor for Avonmouth & Lawrence Weston, Zoë Peat, has resigned from the Labour Party and joined the Liberal Democrats in City Hall. Cllr Peat attributed the move to the Liberal Democrats as a result of the party's 'desire to build bridges across political divides', citing the cross-party arrangements in Bristol and around the West of England. The party currently chairs two of the eight key policy committees in ...
Wed 27th
20:05
Yi-Pei Chou Turvey highlights importance of properly funded childcare tailored to rural communities ...
So, another day, another episode of dissolving into tears as a Lib Dem MSP makes their first speech in Holyrood. Yi-Pei Chou Turvey is my friend and I cannot describe how thrilled I am to have her at Holyrood. Her first speech today, on childcare, is one she currently lives. She has three children and so completely understands the complexities of finding good childcare. She was well placed to pull the SNP down to earth a bit from its self congratulatory parliamentary motion, pointing out that someone who was a baby when they came to power could have their own ...
"You will know them. They are in every policy working group, every conference fringe, every strategy call. They are the people who hear a proposal for genuine economic reform and say 'that's outside the Overton window' as if they have ended the argument rather than ducked it. They treat the boundaries of current political acceptability as load-bearing walls, when in fact they are furniture, and we are allowed to move them." Liberal Democrat Tom Reeve introduces us to the Overtons. "Since 2021, Ellison's personal foundation - the Larry Ellison Foundation - has donated or pledged at least £257m to the ...
The latest edition of my email newsletter about work in Parliament, A Lord's Eye View, 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: The first big Parliamentary report I've been involved with is now out, a review of how the government did at secondary legislation in the last Parliamentary session. Read on to find out what the report says. Scrutinising a session's worth of secondary legislation [IMG: Lord Hanson speaking in the House of Lords] A ...
Wed 27th
15:39Duncan Dunlop MSP's first speech: a compelling commitment to improving things for children in care.
Yesterday, our new MSP for the South of Scotland, Duncan Dunlop, made his first speech in the Holyrood Parliament and it had me simultaneously in bits, furious and relieved that vulnerable children in our care system now have a champion they can look to in Parliament to fight their corner. He was withering in his criticism of the Scottish Government's flailing reform of the care system. He described a horrible incident experienced by a young man who had just been rejected by his mum. He read out the first names and children of care-experienced children he had known who had ...
I'm delighted to report that Jonathan Aibi has been selected as the Lib Dem candidate for the High Fell by-election in Gateshead. No date has yet been fixed for the by-election, caused by the decision of a Reform councillor to throw in the towel after just 11 days into the job. There will be lots of campaigning coming up, just as we thought elections were over for the residents of Gateshead.
The SNP's former chief executive Peter Murrell has pleaded guilty to embezzling £400,000 of SNP campaign cash. He's now behind bars awaiting sentencing. The case raises questions about what his estranged wife and former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon knew of Murrell's criminal activities. To say the least, she must surely have asked questions when a luxury campervan was parked on her front drive. And
Nearly a year ago the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) set out its understanding of the transformed international environment this country now faces, and called for the government to lead 'a national conversation' on how we should respond. Yet since then there has been silence from the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, and only muffled warnings about Russian activities from the Defence Secretary – to the intense frustration of Lord Robertson and General Barrons, two of its authors. Robertson has accused the government of 'corrosive complacency' in its passive response. We desperately need a number of intense national conversations on a ...
Produced by Tony Visconti, this was released as a single in 1973 and should have been huge. It wasn't. I didn't hear the song again until they invented the internet. If I hadn't had such a strong memory of the line "the men from Mars in their Japanese cars" I might have feared I'd imagined the whole thing.
Two-thirds of the British public believe that ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation's wealth. That figure has risen ten percentage points since 2019. Trust in government is at record lows. Dissatisfaction with the NHS, with social care, with housing, with the basic functioning of the state, is at or near levels never previously recorded in four decades of the British Social Attitudes survey. And yet support for more welfare spending has fallen to its lowest point since the survey began. Read those two facts together. The public is not saying the system is fine. ...
When I had the idea of Freddie and Fiona buying a cottage in the village, I couldn't resist it even though I sensed things might not go well for them. But never did I dream it would end like this. Friday To the village green for the lighting of the Beltane bonfire. As the kindling catches and dusk falls, I survey the crowd of excited villagers. Why are there so many elves amongst them? No one listened to me! The bonfire is too close to the wicker hare. Oh, the voices of the children! "Sumer is icumen in, loudly sing, ...
Well done to the Guardian for winning our Headline of the Day Award with this story of everyday life in the United States. The judges rejected the argument that the only thing that will stop a bad boy with a gun is a good boy with a gun.
Wed 27th
08:55From selling donuts to being "chained", and why this is not about the "Mayoral jewellery"
[IMG: Michal Siewnak as mayor of Welyn Hatfield] It was 21 years ago next month, when I landed at Stansted. I remember, as it almost happened yesterday. I didn't think too much about it. My wife and I had a plan, stay a few months and go back to Croatia, where I had a job waiting for me. We came not for any employment reasons, but initially to visit our friend, who is a Catholic Priest. 21 years later, we are still here! We packed 26 years of our lives in a rucksack and we tried, like many, to build ...
Having just spent four days in sweltering heat in the Hay Literature Festival, I was not amused to see this article in the Guardian that predicts that it can only get worse. Bill McGuire takes us to the last day of July 2052: From the air, London resembles a colossal refugee camp. Streets, gardens and parks are teeming with tents and cobbled-together shelters, within which the city's residents have spent another uncomfortable night away from the heat traps that their houses and flats have become. After six days when the temperature peaked at about 40C, another scorcher is on the ...