"Unlike the England cricket team," remarked one of the judges. Together with her fellows, she gave our Headline of the Day Award to Essex Live.
The House of Lords also paid tribute to Jim Wallace yesterday. Our leader in the House of Lords, Jeremy Purvis led the speeches. You can watch here. My Lords, many of us aspire to be a good politician, to do good and to be a good person. More times than not, we fall short. Jim Wallace was a good man who saw it as his role in life to do good things. He did, and they will last. With great sorrow, we have been denied the opportunity of hearing a valedictory speech in this House from Jim. He would have ...
It is part of Jim Wallace's legacy that three of our MSPs worked for him in some capacity. Willie Rennie was the Chief Executive of the Scottish Lib Dems who helped us win 17 seats in the new Scottish Parliament in 1999. He then went to Holyrood to head up our operation there for the first term. This is his tribute to Jim yesterday: The text is below: Even though it seemed that Jim Wallace had lived many lives in one, he was taken from us far too soon. I worked for Jim as the party's chief executive during the ...
Alex Cole-Hamilton also worked for Jim Wallace – in the Scottish Parliament Liberal Democrat staff pool. Here is his tribute in yesterday's Scottish Parliament session, detailing when Jim and his wife Rosie first met. The rest of the speeches can be seen here. The text is below. Presiding Officer, I start by thanking you and the First Minister for such heartfelt words. Jim's family and my party have been overwhelmed by the kindness that has been shown to us in these difficult days. We are heart-sore at his loss, but the outpouring of love and respect that has come forth ...
There have only ever been two MSPs for Orkney: Jim Wallace and his successor Liam McArthur. Liam worked for Jim as a Special Adviser when he was First Minister. You can see Jim's influence in the way that Liam works to bring people together. Yesterday the Scottish Parliament held tributes and flew flags at half mast. We start with Liam's heartfelt tribute to his old boss and mentor. The text is below: I thank colleagues for their generous comments this afternoon, and I thank those who have been in touch over recent days with wonderful messages. I have drawn huge ...
It has been said many times over the past few days that Jim Wallace was a kind man. It speaks volumes that almost everyone you might ask has an example of this kindness. Here is my own. It is a doubly useful anecdote because it is quite embarrassing for me, and very complimentary to Jim. Just a day or two into the Shetland by-election of 2019, when I was but a stripling in the world of political campaigning, I was assigned to go door knocking with Jim and another gentleman whose name, face and history I have entirely forgotten. Despite ...
I'm enjoying Alwyn Turner's new book A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars, and not just because my name turns up in the acknowledgements at the back. As Andrew Marr says in his New Statesman review, Turner builds his account on newspapers and popular magazines. This produces a bottom-up, sharp and often surprising read. And Turner's research is commendably thorough. Here he is on L. du Garde Peach, sharing far more than I knew about the author of most of Ladybird Books' Adventures from History series: If the stage and screen were tightly censored The same was not quite true ...
When Jeff Buckley drowned at the age 30, he had released just one album but was an internationally celebrated artist. His name is often yoked with that of his father Tim Buckley, who died two years younger, but they only met once.
Today is going to be a bit of a Jim Wallace Day here. There have been so many wonderful tributes to him from people in and beyond the Liberal Democrats, a testament to how loved he was and how important he was a figure in Scottish life, not just politics. But we start with his own words, a speech he gave in 2025 to Scottish Conference, three days before the election was called, marking 25 yesrs of the Scottish Parliament: Grateful for the invitation to speak. Fascination with anniversaries which end in a 5 or a 0. I once heard ...
The Mirror reports that Nigel Farage has been accused of choosing to plunge half a million children into poverty after unveiling plans to slash a vital benefit to fund 5p off a pint. The paper says that the Reform UK leader has announced a £3 billion support package for pubs, funded by restoring the two-child benefit cap: The plans would see VAT reduced to 10% for the hospitality sector, the employer national insurance increase for hospitality businesses scrapped, beer duty cut by 10%, new staggered business rate abolition for pubs and fresh regulation to support landlords. It is estimated that ...
During Covid lockdown in 2020, the actor Simon Russell Beale, who lives in the town, recorded some readings from the work of my man Richard Jefferies for the Marlborough Literary Festival. You can still find them on the festival's website. The extract below is from one of those readings. It's taken from Jefferies' essay Wild Flowers, which is included in his collection The Open Air, published in 1885. If we had never before looked upon the earth, but suddenly came to it man or woman grown, set down in the midst of a summer mead, would it not seem to ...
I review Andrew Lownie's Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York in the latest Liberator. Here he talks about what the revelations contained in the latest batch of Epstein files mean for the Royal Family - Andrew and Fergie in particular.
Peter Mandelson (Photo- CNN) The resignation of Peter Mandelson from the Labour Party and from the House of Lords, in the shadow of renewed scrutiny around Jeffrey Epstein, is significant - not because it closes a chapter, but because it underlines how unfit our political system is to deal with elite misconduct, reputational damage, and accountability. The media reaction has been as predictable as it was inevitable, with many gleefully inferring criminal guilt by association and extending that to the Prime Minister, who is of course associated with Mandelson. There should indeed be questions to be asked of Keir Starmer, ...
Timothy Snyder reports from a frightened city: "In the schools and churches of Springfield, Ohio, people are making hasty preparations for a "large deportation" promised by the president. To all appearances, and according to local sources, the city is two or three days away from a federal ethnic cleansing, grounded in a hate campaign organized by the vice-president and American Nazis. The destined victims are ten thousand or more Haitians." "I think the way he is trying to interfere with our democracy, generally our country, is quite outrageous. For the richest man to come here with his totally unfounded and ...
"A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living". These were the words of John Dewey, from his 1916 book, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. Without prior knowledge of Dewey's work, I found that he captured my belief in democracy and its purpose in just one sentence. I have never believed that democracy is simply ticking a box or a group of people simply making decisions on behalf of others. It is about individuals making a collective decision about how their country should be run, what their ...
I will be honest with you - I have never been impressed by Peter Mandelson. From the apocryphal moment when he confused mushy peas for guacamole on a fleeting visit to his North East Constituency whilst an MP there has always been, "something of the night" about him! I believe that he is one of the people that has brought politics into disrepute and that was before all the stuff that has come out about him and Epstein. Mandelson was a mover and shaker between the 10-year Government of Tony Blair, but he was always mired in controversy about the ...
Keir Starmer showed poor judgement by appointing Peter Mandelson as the ambassador to the UK, however, the new release of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein suggests that his error was just the latest in a long line of poor judgement calls going back to the early days of Tony Blair's first administration and most probably earlier than that. It has been revealed that the former cabinet minister was apparently disclosing highly sensitive government information to Epstein over a significant period of time. The Guardian says that Mandelson was business secretary during Brown's premiership, when he appears to have leaked an ...