One principal authority by-election took place this week in Westmorland & Furness - a Conservatives defence in Hawcoat and Newbarns. Westmorland & Furness Council, Hawcoat & Newbarns This week's by-election was triggered by the resignation of the former Conservative councillor. In 2022, at the inaugural election of the new Westmorland and Furness Council, the Liberal Democrats took control of the unitary thanks to sweeping gains wins several wards in Tim Farron's constituency. However, this ward is in the industrial seaport town of Barrow-in-Furness - an electorally challenging area for us. At the last election, all three of our candidates finished ...
It's the Chase Park fair in Whickham tomorrow. We will have some of our goats there tohelp raise funds for the park. So pop in and have a goat day. 12pm to 4pm.
One of Reform's first decisions on taking control of Gateshead Council was to ban the flying of the Pride flag. This was expected. Reform council groups are known for the robotic way they take their instructions from their party HQ. Most other ruling Reform groups banned the flag. We weren't however, going to accept this lying down. If we can't have the flag flying outside the Civic Centre,
Gateshead now has a Reform administration. With 38 out of 66 seats, they are sitting on a majority of 10 in the council chamber. That may change on 9th July when a by-election is held in High Fell following the resignation of Reform Councillor Danielle Cavanagh. She managed 11 days as a councillor before throwing in the towel and sparking a by-election costing anywhere between £16K and £25K. At
Fri 5th
14:58
Thinking of standing for election or re-election next year? Helpful questions to consider
This May's council elections extended, yet again, the run of net gains for the Liberal Democrats, this time to eight rounds in a row and also saw a welcome boost in candidate numbers. But when it comes to counting councillor or council candidate numbers, we still have some way to go to being one of the top two parties. So we need more people than usual to think about standing next time, and also more people than usual to encourage others to think about standing too. Of course, saying yes to standing isn't the right answer for everyone. There's a ...
Tom Williams reports from Southampton: "The demonstration descended into rioting as protesters clashed with police. Out-of-towners, including Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox, merged with locals outside Southampton police station to form a crowd of several hundred. They marched to Belmont Road, where Nowak was killed. Riot police prevented them reaching Digwa's family home." "I had expected to meet a former MP with the usual recollections and political anecdotes. What I encountered instead was something rarer: a political thinker who remained genuinely concerned with ideas, and who was determined to dispel the myths that had accumulated around Liberal history like barnacles ...
Fair votes are essential, but they are only the first pillar of constitutional renewal. The second pillar is federalism: the redistribution of power away from Westminster and towards the nations and regions where people actually experience the consequences of government decisions. The United Kingdom is one of the most centralised democracies in the developed world. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and London possess varying degrees of devolution, yet most of England remains governed through Westminster departments, Whitehall ministries, arm's-length agencies, and overlapping administrative bodies. Decisions affecting transport, housing, infrastructure, skills, economic development, and public services are often taken hundreds of miles ...
There has been some press attention to Endometriosis recently. To me it looks like a splicing/acetylation type of disease (which requires that sort of intervention to resolve). I have put some prompts into an AI (chatGPT) to produce a more detailed argument with citations and here is the response: Could Endometriosis Result from Aberrant Splicing Caused by Reduced Nuclear Acetylation?
Only the two principal authority council by-elections this week: Hawcoat & Newbarns (Westmorland & Furness) Council By-Election Result: [IMG: ➡] RFM: 48.4% (New) [IMG: 🌹] LAB: 24.5% (-9.8) [IMG: 🌳] CON: 19.0% (-21.5) [IMG: 🌍] GRN: 5.1% (New) [IMG: 🔶] LDM: 2.9% (-2.7)No Ind (-19.6) as previous.Reform GAIN from Conservative.Changes w/ 2022. — Election Maps UK (@electionmaps.uk) 2026-06-05T01:06:35.067Z For what all this means for the running total of council by-election results since the last May elections, see my council by-elections scorecard here. These by-election results round-ups cover principal authority by-elections as it's only those for which comprehensive results are available. ...
The Times reports that government borrowing was £60 billion higher than the Office for Budget Responsibility predicted in recent forecasts, as the spending watchdog also admitted to underestimating the hit to growth from Rachel Reeves's payroll tax raid. The paper says that in its latest evaluation report on the accuracy of its economic forecasts, the OBR admitted to understating the scale of annual government borrowing by more than £60 billion in its March 2023 and March 2024 budget projections. The OBR said that persistently higher than expected inflation and interest rates, both of which pushed up debt interest and welfare ...
Cole-Hamilton presses Swinney to clean up Scottish politics At First Minister's Questions, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today called for an inquiry into the actions of former SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell and urged John Swinney to adopt key measures to clean up Scottish politics. Mr Cole-Hamilton said: The most regrettable aspect of this whole sorry saga around the SNP's finances is the erosion of public trust and faith in politics it creates. There are still big unanswered questions around all of this. This is why we need a parliamentary inquiry but the government are blocking it. Just ...
Here's the tally of seats changing hands in principal authority council by-elections held between the May 2026 and the May 2027 local elections: Con Lab Lib Dem Green Reform SNP Plaid Ind/ Other Net Con – – -1 (0/-1) – -1 (0/-1) – – +1 (+1/0) -1 Lab – – – – – – – – 0 Lib Dem +1 (+1/0) – [1] – – – – +1 (+1/0) +2 Grn – – – [1] – – – – 0 Ref +1 (+1/0) – – – – – – – +1 SNP – – – – – – – – ...
By definition, a child star is a temporary phenomenon; and making the transition to adult roles is rarely straightforward. So writes David Buckingham in an article on Hayley Mills. He discusses the way the films that she made for Disney in the US failed to recognise the social changes of the Sixties, which were by then underway. And his conclusion could apply to many more successful child actors: The contrast between Mills's experiences in low-budget British films and in the Disney Studios must have made this transition more difficult than it might otherwise have been. Tiger Bay and Whistle Down ...
Looking again at Gillian Avery's Victorian People, I find she quotes one of this blog's heroes: Richard Jefferies in Hodge and his Masters spoke of some of the changes that had come about with an energetic new vicar. His predecessor had been a man of whom it was said, "he was a very good sort of man: he never interfered with anybody or anything," The new vicar introduced a choir, doing away with the old motley collection of village instrumentalists. He brought colours into the hangings and decoration of the church, and put flowers and candlesticks on the altar. He ...
Following the Survation polling putting Andy Burnham 3 points ahead in the Makerfield Parliamentary by-election (fieldwork 18-22 May), we now have further data from Survation (fieldwork 26 May – 1 June) putting his lead in double figures: Andy Burnham – Labour 49% Robert Kenyon – Reform UK 39% Rebecca Shepherd – Restore Britain 8% Sarah Wakefield – Green Party 2% Jake Austin – Liberal Democrat 1% Michael Winstanley – Conservative 1% Another party <1% The sample size on this poll in 518, which falls to an unweighted total of 407 for the headline voting intention. That's large enough for the ...
Given how popular (and lengthy!) my list of Reform councillor departures after the May 2025 elections turned out to be, here is a new list, this time for councillors elected under the Reform banner on 7 May 2026, or in by-elections after that date, who have already departed the party for one reason or another. Glenn Gibbins, Sunderland: suspended by Reform following allegations of racism and, so far, has not signed his declaration of office in order to take up his seat (May 2026). Jay Cooper, Sefton: declared "not welcome" by Nigel Farage following reports of him calling the Holocaust ...
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: I took part in a serious and different kind of debate today. It saw cross-party concerns about the abuse and intimidation of councillors, along with calls for action from the government. One of my concerns is that the positive noises from Whitehall will not translate into action but instead be caught up in ...
There have been a number of articles in Lib Dem Voice about what the Lib Dems stand for. Tom Gordon MP asked this in what was partly a reflection on the recent local elections in the UK, and others like Peter Black have followed it up. But such discussions too often turn into a wish list of policies people would like the Lib Dems to support or perhaps campaign on harder. What the Lib Dems stand for is best seen in terms of a more general approach to politics, though it does have implications for policies. In an earlier piece ...
Michael Meadowcroft has died at the age of 84. He had been suffering from a brain tumour in recent months and died peacefully with family present in Adel, Leeds. He continued to engage with friends throughout his last months. Michael and his wife Liz Bee will be remembered for many reasons by many people. They have had rich and full lives. Michael's political and philosophical contributions will be remembered and valued by most commentators, but we also celebrate the person who was happy, kind, supportive, thoughtful, incisive, inclusive, passionate about the many things he believed and engaged with, and widely-read. ...
The death of Michael Meadowcroft on Monday marks the passing of a distinctive voice in British Liberal politics—one that prized serious thinking over comfortable platitudes, and truth over convenient mythology. I first met Michael in 2009, when I was undertaking research on Liberal history. I had expected to meet a former MP with the usual recollections and political anecdotes. What I encountered instead was something rarer: a political thinker who remained genuinely concerned with ideas, and who was determined to dispel the myths that had accumulated around Liberal history like barnacles on a ship's hull. "Intellectual rigour," he told me ...
The United Kingdom is undergoing a quiet constitutional breakdown. Not in the dramatic sense of institutional collapse, but in a slower and more corrosive way: voters increasingly feel unrepresented, power remains concentrated in Westminster to a degree unusual among modern democracies, and the link between democratic choice and real-world decision-making has weakened. These are not separate problems. They form a single constitutional question: how can a modern, diverse, multi-national state remain democratic, fair, and stable when many of its institutions were designed for a different era? The answer lies in three connected pillars: fair representation, decentralised power, and fiscal accountability. ...
Thu 4th
08:51
Morven-May MacCallum MSP: No-one in Scotland should have to fight harder to be believed than to get ...
When she was 14, new Scottish Liberal Democrat MSP for the Highlands and Islands Morven May-MacCallum contracted Lyme Disease after being bitten by a tick. Yesterday made her first speech in the Scottish Parliament in which she spoke of her experience and committed to campaign on behalf of people living with ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, endometriosis, POTS, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and other chronic illnesses. It's an incredible speech which will resonate with anyone who suffers from these and other conditions and who has had to fight to be believed. Watch here: The text is below. "It is an immense privilege to stand here ...
The Guardian reports that graduates saddled with ballooning student loan debts have told MPs that they feel they are being unfairly used as "cash cows" to finance measures benefiting older people such as the state pension triple lock. The paper says that student representatives have told an official inquiry about the "harrowing" plight of many young people, while the man who led the 2019 government review into post-18 education criticised the "almost sneaky" changes to loan terms, and appeared to compare the situation facing graduates with the car finance and payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling scandals: Pressure has been building ...