Today is the 10th anniversary of the EU Referendum Ten years ago, many of our readers will have voted and would have been working hard for the previous few months to help make the argument for the United Kingdom's place in the European Union. Ultimately Britain Stronger In Europe didn't win and like many people at the time, I remember being at a count, seeing the Sunderland result come in and the scale of the win for leave and thinking we're f****d. This was not out of a sense of I told you so, more out of a growing realisation ...
Stray drips of rain from broken heat that make their way inside my head; wet trembling pearls that smell of earth and soak into her hide, her bones
The director of Trouble at Townsend wasn't the only one to have problems with a child star being too well fed. I've read accounts of both Carol Reed and Andrei Tarkovsky making the same complaint. But Alexander Mackendrick's account (from Wikpedia, with no source given) of the making of Sammy Going South suggests that Fergus McClelland didn't just get too well fed but too happy. "He was a lean, hard, little boy. Tough as old nails ... a really strong character. He had the hunted look of an abused child, which in some ways he was. He came from a ...
Content warning: This post contains material about rape and sexual assault. Some of you may remember that roughly a year ago I wrote a piece titled 'For a lot of trans people, it's hard to feel pride right now'. A year is a long time in politics, and so you'd hope that over the last year the situation for trans people would be better. Well, in some ways it is, and in some ways it's worse. We'll start with what really has got better since last year, the party's position. I am genuinely so proud of how far we have ...
Tue 23rd
10:25
Andy Burnham's housing challenge: Why his own arguments demand more than Labour's current plans
Andy Burnham is one of Labour's most popular politicians. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, he has made housing and homelessness central to his public image. Yet his record raises an important question. If Burnham were ever to become Prime Minister, would Labour's current housing policies be enough to solve the problems he says have held Greater Manchester back? The starting point is Burnham's own record. When he became Mayor in 2017, Burnham promised to end rough sleeping by 2020. That target was not met. To be fair, there was real progress. The official rough sleeping count across Greater Manchester fell ...
David Howarth reminds us that both Tony Blair and Keir Starmer said pluralist things in opposition, only to go back on them in power: "Given that history, why should Liberals believe that Andy Burnham would be any different? He has already backtracked on his previous anti-Brexit pronouncements and his only promise on electoral reform is that he might include a 'pledge' on it in Labour's next manifesto. We know what such 'pledges' from Labour are worth." A deliberate strategy to push the British right - from the Conservative Party to Nigel Farage's Reform UK - into a radicalising auction over ...
Liberal Democrat Newswire #211 came out earlier this week and you can now 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: Welcome to Lib Dem Newswire #211, which takes a look at lessons from the 1930s Liberal Party and from the May 2026 elections for the Liberal Democrats. Please do hit reply and let me know your views on those lessons. Congratulations to the new Lib Dem councillors since last time – Chris McSweeny, Paddy Mooney, Beth Rowe, Phil Williams and ...
Our report on last week's by-elections is a little later than usual. There were 15 principal authority by-elections with several counting on the Friday. These 15 also included three countermanded elections, delayed from the local elections following the death of a candidate. Because of the quantity of contests, we're going to group several races together and provide an overall analysis. By-elections in Wales Half of the by-elections last week took place in Wales. This is because of rules in the Senedd which don't allow representatives to be both an Assembly Member and a local councillor. Importantly, local elections were last ...
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: Now, on to the proper business of this email which this time does not feature a new episode but rather has some bonus content for you about recent episodes. Take it away Cory... Leadership plotting, two fictional versions [IMG: Jim Hacker pulls a very strong expression] Jim Hacker contemplates 10 Downing Street. Our last chat on ...
Wynford Vaughan Thomas and friend travel the length of the border between England and Wales in 1963. But the tone of the commentary could come from a topographical book of 30 years before. Anything that smacks of modernity or progress is suspect and the old ways are to be supported, however silly. There's an obsession with market day, while farmers can do no wrong. Also in line with such books, there is disapproval for visitors' buses, but the writer's own car gets a free pass. Still it's lovely country and Montgomery is still a little-known treasure. And Knucklas Viaduct still ...
Keir Starmer's resignation comes as little surprise. In truth, he always appeared ill-suited to the role of Prime Minister. He entered Downing Street with no clear governing project, no driving ideology and an over reliance on advisers and political management. He often seemed more comfortable responding to events than shaping them. Yet focusing solely on Starmer risks missing the bigger picture. When (as now seems all but inevitable) Andy Burnham walks through the door of Number 10, Britain will have had seven Prime Ministers in just ten years: Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer and now, likely, Burnham. This is ...
Labour could have been honest in 2024. They claimed, (and still do: Duty Minister on Radio 4's "Today" this morning) an "extraordinary and emphatic victory" in that election, but it was nothing of the sort. Rather it was an emphatic rejection of the Tories after a decade of disasters. Labour itself had received only a third of the votes cast and, given the low turnout, this amounted to the support of only a quarter of those entitled to vote. It was in no way an endorsement of Labour's programme or confidence in their ability to implement it. Labour could have ...
Why are wealth taxes relevant in 2026? Billionaire wealth in the UK has skyrocketed since 1990. It represented 4% of GDP back then, growing to 22% of GDP in 2026. The trends of rising wealth accumulation for the super-rich and worsening living standards for working families is stark. Consecutive governments have pointed at GDP as proof of economic success and neglected the decline in living standards for the majority. Where families could once live off a single income, families can now struggle with two. Growing anger at the cost-of-living crisis is fuelled by the perception that government is not addressing ...
Monday Time for some more fluffiness. Did you miss me? Anyway, Mr Sir Kier Starmer has resigned. Great Britain will have another new Prime Monster. We are seeing a lot of people saying: "oh no, not another one," and talk of how many Prime Monsters we have had in the last decade, and is Britain UNGOVERNABLE. But it is actually a GOOD THING that a boss who is not performing can be asked to step down by people lower down the organisation. Something a LOT of British businesses might want to think about. So, Mr Andy "Crash and" Burnham - ...
John Harris's Guardian article on the resignation of Keir Starmer contains a key paragraph: So there it was: as well as a modern tendency to loathe politicians that regularly seems arbitrary, whipped-up and way over the top, a sense that Starmer's sheer blankness - his painful lack of clarity and the absence of a halfway coherent story about his own government - was making a lot of people dislike and mistrust him all the more. Harris is obviously a good judge, because that was very much what I was saying on Bluesky at about the same time. The fall of ...
And so, another Prime Minister is gone. Admittedly, it isn't entirely clear yet in terms of what will change apart from the personnel, even if we can be pretty confident who will be in 10 Downing Street at the end of the transition. The first question is, how long will this take? An effective coronation would allow the new Leader to take their place before the Summer Recess, whilst a contest might take us into, or close to, Conference season. But Government will falter whilst new ministers get a handle on their briefs and priorities adjust. From a personal perspective, ...
The Guardian wins our coveted Headline of the Day Award, but it took a concerted effort to convince the judges that the story beneath it is true. Britain in 2026, eh?