Jane Dodds is standing down as leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats. Earlier today she said:

I have decided to stand down as Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats.

Leading this party has been the honour of my life. When I was elected leader in 2017, I said I wanted to bring like-minded people together and make the Welsh Liberal Democrats a radical, progressive force in Welsh politics again. Nearly nine years on, I hope we’ve done that together.

We’ve won councillors in every corner of Wales. With just one voice in the Senedd, we used our budget deal to win real money for childcare for families who desperately needed it. We’ve fought for children growing up in poverty. And when others wanted Wales to turn its back on refugees, we stood up, loudly and proudly, for Wales as a Nation of Sanctuary.

None of that happened because of me. It happened because of our members and volunteers: the leaflets, the doorsteps, the phone banks, the wet Saturday mornings. Thank you.

May’s election wasn’t the result we worked so hard for. Wales needs a team of liberal voices in the Senedd, and that means building now, with new candidates, new councillors and new leaders. I believe that work should be led by a new generation, and that the right time to hand over is now.

When I became leader, Theresa May was Prime Minister and Carwyn Jones was First Minister. Six Prime Ministers and five First Ministers later, I hope I’ve given our party something steady to build on.

I am not going anywhere. I will carry on as the Member of the Senedd for Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd, and I’ll carry on doing what brought me into politics in the first place. I spent 27 years as a child protection social worker. I saw what poverty does to children, and I have never been able to accept it. Today, almost one in three children in Wales is growing up poor. The new Plaid Cymru Government has promised to put child poverty at the heart of everything it does. I will hold them to that promise every single day.

Finally, thank you to our brilliant staff and volunteers, and above all to my husband Patrick. I could not have done any of this without his love, patience and support.

Diolch o galon. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Ed Davey responded:

I’m so grateful to Jane for her 9 years’ service as Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats.

She secured big wins on social care, childcare, bus services and protecting rivers.

I know she’ll continue to be a tireless champion for Liberalism and the people of Wales. Diolch Jane!

Sign up to get the latest news and analysis

I am ruling out our party entering into a national partnership with any party that is committed to a dangerous and antisemitic policy like the Green Party’s.

Here is my letter to the Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies of British Jews

Here is the letter:

Sign up to get the latest news and analysis

If you’d like to find out more about how polls work, how reliable they are and how to make sense of them, check out my book, Polling UnPacked: the History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls, or sign up for my weekly email, The Week in Polls:

General election voting intention polls

– indicates that party didn’t feature in the polling questions separate from ‘Others’ or that the data is not yet available.
nc = no change from previous comparable poll.

The Find Out Now Polls using their standard methodology (only) are included in this table.
Numbers in brackets show change since the previous comparable poll (i.e. by the same pollster with the same methodology). Note that natural random variation between samples means a change of a couple of points may well be just statistical noise rather than a real change in support. Very occasionally, a large change will also be noise rather than real change.
For all the voting intention polls and not just the latest ones, see PollBase, the largest collection of UK voting intention polls, which is updated quarterly.

MRP seat projections

Poll ratings for party leaders

The net figure is given for each leader, i.e. their positive score minus their negative score.
The net figure may appear to be slightly different from the difference between the positive and negative scores due to rounding (e.g. +2.7 and -1.6 would be rounded to +3 and -2 but the net difference would appear as 4.3, rounded to 4).
Where a pollster appears more than once, that is because they use more than one leadership wording question.
Some pollsters have other wording that they use only rarely and/or only for a small set of names, the results of which are therefore not included.

Frequently Asked Questions

Get the books

As well as covering some books in the podcast, we also mention others in the newsletter’s bonus content. You can browse all the books mentioned and get them for yourself via my Bookshop.org page (affiliate link). That includes the excellent book, Failed State, from this time’s guest, Sam Freedman.

Nutters, spinners and losers: it’s back to The Thick of It

It’s back to one of the all-time classic political TV dramas this time, and with a very special guest, the co-author of Britain’s most popular political Substack newsletter, Sam Freedman:

Top author and newsletter writer Sam Freedman joins us this week to talk about The Thick of It special episodes ‘Rise of the Nutters’ and ‘Spinners and Losers’.

We talk about how prescient the episodes are about both the rise of Gordon Brown and the Conservative rebranding under David Cameron, top political advice about how you can ensure you get a good desk in an office, Cory gets massively distracted by the cricket, and we end by wondering whether the show has been misunderstood.

Sam’s newsletter is Comment Is Freed, and you can listen to Mark’s previous chats with Sam about his writing here and here.

If you are in the UK, you can watch these episodes on BBC iPlayer.

Next time, we’re talking about The Manchurian Candidate.

Cory’s email newsletter is Paperback Rioter and Mark has a family of email newsletters.

Subscribe to our newsletter for some additional bonus content and to get alerted whenever a new episode comes out.

Our theme tune is “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod/incompetech.com and licensed under the Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

You can also listen to our episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the web or YouTube.

We love to hear from our listeners

Whether you are a new or long-standing listener to the podcast, feedback on each episode is always very welcome. Just pop up a comment on the web version of this newsletter:

Leave a comment

Or, if you have any suggestions for what we should cover in future episodes, just hit reply and let us know. Thank you!

Why The Thick of It has aged so well

Cory once again brings some bonus content for readers of our newsletter:

I’ve had an idea for an article about The Thick of It which referenced Sam’s Freedman’s book Failed State ever since Mark and I recorded our podcast on the first three episodes of The Thick Of It back in April. Now that Sam has come on Political Fictions to talk about the show, it made sense to finally get a draft out of my notebooks and onto Substack.

In that episode, we talked about how the first series is still remarkably relevant twenty years on. There are reasons for that which are rooted in the structure of UK politics and which are quite apart from the fact that the script is sharp and kept fresh by the cast’s improvisations.

First, there’s the fact that we’ve had such a growth in the power of the Treasury. The opening episode focuses on tensions between Number Ten and the Treasury that will not surprise anyone who has a passing familiarisation with the New Labour era. It still feels relevant because, as Sam argues in Failed State, the growth in the power of the Treasury which Gordon Brown undertook was kept intact by George Osborne and his successors.

Second, the parallels are so striking because in many ways Sir Keir Starmer’s tenure as Leader of the Opposition was a direct imitation of many aspects of New Labour. One of these is the obsession with focus groups, the subject of the third episode of series one. Another way is with the need for properly-costed spending plans. In episode one Terri Coverley [the secret Machiavellian genius behind the government – Mark] asks Hugh Abbott if anyone has flagged up to the Treasury that a policy is being announced with cost implications. Ensuring fiscal credibility by showing you could pay for particular policies is something that Brown was obsessed with as Shadow Chancellor, which in turn was massively influential on Rachel Reeves.

As Freedman argues in Failed State, the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility by George Osborne is an extension of the cross-party consensus on economic credibility, a consensus that believes in sticking rigidly to fiscal rules and costing everything down to the nearest penny. Given the only government that has diverted from this recently was run by Liz Truss, it’s fair to say that this isn’t going to change anytime soon. Certainly, in that respect at least, John Healey’s first budget in a couple of weeks will be more of the same approach.

Previously on Political Fictions…

State of Play: the classic BBC drama, part 2

State of Play: a classic BBC political drama revisited

Elsewhere from us…

Making waves or treading water?

Holborn and St Pancras: what the polling says about Labour’s win

Happy listening

Thank you for reading and hope you enjoy the episode. Feedback is always very welcome!

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark

Welcome to my latest update on work in the House of Lords. This time long-term readers will be glad to know, cattle-grids get a mention again. Much more importantly, so does the maiden speech of new Liberal Democrat peer, Dave McCobb and the valedictory speech of soon to depart Liberal Democrat peer, John Shipley. Plus news about remote participation at council meetings.

Local government, maiden speech and cattle-grids

First, here is a snippet of John Shipley’s opening speech in the debate. As he’s retiring from the House of Lords shortly, it was also his valedictory speech after many decades of service, first in local government and then also in the House of Lords.

You can read his speech in full here.

There were many other Liberal Democrat contributors in the debate, including the maiden speech of Dave McCobb:

My Lords, it is a privilege to address this House for the first time. I have been touched by the welcome that I have received from noble Lords on all sides of the House. I am particularly grateful to my noble friends who introduced me: my noble friend Lady Pinnock, of Cleckheaton—a fellow citizen of Yorkshire, whose decades of local government experience we will hear of later in this debate—and my noble friend Lady Leaman, of Chipping Sodbury. She has been a friend and comrade through at least four general elections and is one of Britain’s sharpest political minds.

I am grateful too to Black Rod’s team, the doorkeepers, the clerks and the attendants. However, I must warn them that despite over 24 years as a city councillor in Hull, I never quite learned to tell one side of the ground floor of Hull’s Guildhall from the other, so I ask for their patience if they occasionally find me lost in the even more labyrinthine layout of this place.

I give thanks to the Liberal Democrat Whips’ Office, whose support and advice I have relied on since coming here and in my working life. To declare one interest, I remain the Liberal Democrats’ campaigns and elections director and, to declare another, I recently became a trustee of the Kingston upon Hull William Wilberforce Lecture Trust, a small charity that seeks to keep alive the legacy of one of my home city’s most famous representatives.

I particularly welcome today’s debate, tabled by my noble friend Lord Shipley—partly because, like me, he is a citizen of a proud northern port city, but mostly because it is on the power of local government and of my home city and its East Yorkshire surroundings that I wish to speak today. I ask for forgiveness in advance from noble Lords if these are themes to which I return with predictable frequency. My family finds itself in East Yorkshire because nearly 60 years ago, my parents came to Hull University as students, where my father became the head of the German department. As I was growing up, he served on the councils for the borough of Beverley and the East Riding. I feel today a particular sense of sadness that he missed my arrival here by just six months even though, as a good Liberal, he would probably have strongly disapproved of the lack of any election involved in getting me here.

I was born in Beverley and grew up nearby in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It was near Beverley that my wife Elspeth and I got married, but for the last 26 years I have lived in Hull, where our son was born. Like many others who live in this part of the world, my family’s lives run backwards and forwards across the border between Hull and the East Riding. The Yorkshire coast, from Filey to Spurn Point and the Holderness plains, shares a distinctive beauty:

“Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach”,

as Philip Larkin described it.

Hull and East Yorkshire people have a warmth and wit all of their own, with a quirky and occasionally rebellious sense of independence. It is a corner of Britain with a rich and fascinating history. Hull Fair, Europe’s largest travelling funfair, is one of the oldest events of its kind, dating back to 1279 via a royal charter granted by King Edward I. As an aside, the 732nd Hull Fair is taking place this very week, so I would be delighted to offer any noble Lords with a few hours to spare this coming weekend the guided tour.

Speaking of Hull’s history, in 1642 Hull’s governor, Sir John Hotham, turned King Charles I away from the city’s gates, an act of defiance many historians count among the sparks for the civil war. William Wilberforce, to whom I alluded earlier, born in 1759 in Hull and elected as its Member of Parliament in 1780, spent 20 years pursuing the abolition of the slave trade. At the peak of Britain’s maritime power, Hull was its third port. Its shipping line was, for a time, the largest privately owned one in the world and its distant-water trawler fleet remained among the biggest on earth until the 1970s.

Hull has also had its fair share of challenges—some of the heaviest bombing of any British city in the Second World War, with the majority of homes damaged and thousands destroyed. The fishing industry that sustained it for a century collapsed in the 1970s, with a fraction of the national attention and funding that followed similar economic challenges in other parts of the country.

For a city so geographically isolated, connectivity is everything, and here there is much work to be done. Our motorway, the M62, simply ends 15 or so miles short of Hull. Our airport is in Lincolnshire and has no rail link and no bus on a Sunday. Unlike other comparable cities of its size, Hull has no tram or metro system. Noble Lords may be surprised to learn that it is faster to travel by train from London to Paris—twice the distance—than from Hull to Liverpool via so many great cities of the north.

On this evidence, Hull city region is a strong contender for being one of the worst-connected places of its size in Britain. The devolution deal confirmed in September 2024 committed to integrating Hull into the Northern Powerhouse Rail network; I am determined to see that delivered, because Hull has shown what it can do when given the chance.

In 2017, Hull was the UK City of Culture. Over 5 million visits to Hull and east Yorkshire helped generate a new sense of pride and belonging in the area. As a local councillor, I wholeheartedly backed the sadly unsuccessful first bid for City of Culture status and the subsequent, second, successful one. This helped put this part of Britain on the map for the right reasons. A year ago, National Geographic ranked Hull as one of the top 20 global destinations to visit in its prestigious “best of the world” list. This transformation shows the difference that strong local government leadership with proper backing from national government can make.

For 24 years, I represented the Beverley Road and Newland Avenue areas on Hull City Council, helping constituents on a daily basis. I bring to this House a strong conviction that good local government can enrich people’s lives in ways that Westminster sometimes finds too easy to overlook.

I look forward to making the case for Hull and east Yorkshire in this House, as well as the positive case for the impact of that strong and effective local government with good national government backing to which I referred, and many more worthwhile causes besides. I hope to learn along the way from the wide range of wisdom and experience on offer from noble Lords on all sides of this Chamber, who continue to champion their chosen causes with passion and commitment.

I spoke next, kicking off with praise for that excellent speech from a highly talented person, before moving on to talk about local government – including, of course, cattle-grids.

Here’s what I said:

My Lords, it is a delight and privilege to follow my noble friend Lord McCobb’s eloquent maiden speech—the first of what I am sure will be many thoughtful contributions to our House and certainly the first of many times that we will hear him talking up the wonders of Hull. Those who know us both will perhaps not be surprised that his first email to me many years ago, after starting work for our party, was to seek some very detailed electoral statistics that he thought I might have; but that interest in using evidence and rigorously scrutinising assumptions will, I am sure, be of great benefit to this House in our scrutiny work.

Although the noble Lord is perhaps best known to many for his formidable campaigning experience, he also, as we have heard, brings considerable historical knowledge and local government experience to our deliberations: years of dealing, on the front line, with the practical realities and consequences of decisions we make here in Parliament. The breadth of that expertise, accumulated in roles that have been very challenging and time-consuming at times, has—as for so many—been possible only due to the support and forbearance of the noble Lord’s wife and son. It was therefore such a pleasure to see them wearing two of the broadest smiles I have ever seen on the day of the noble Lord’s introduction.

One of the reasons why our decisions here are so relevant to local government is that so much power has been and continues to be centralised in Westminster. That undermines local democratic accountability and puts people off local participation. When we considered the recent devolution Bill, for example, I particularly highlighted the continued central control over cattle-grids—a small but telling example of just how deep-set that centralising micromanagement culture can be at times. Aficionados of cattle-grid regulation had our hopes raised when the Government’s White Paper promised devolution of these powers; alas, by the time we got to legislation, the centralisers had won out, deciding that not even strategic authority mayors can be trusted with full bovine autonomy.

That Bill was my first experience of working with my noble friend Lord Shipley, and I greatly valued the support, advice and mentoring he provided—just one of his many attributes that will be so missed later this year.

To give a different example, the explanatory text that councils in England and Wales put out to explain the business rates system is not written by councils; nor is it a shared text produced for convenience by the LGA or a similar body for different councils to use; nor is it even a helpful draft provided by a civil servant in Whitehall. No: it is specifically controlled and legislated for in detail by, once again, that culture of saying, “We cannot really trust councils to do this themselves”. For all the talk, on other topics, that legislative time is such a precious resource that this thing the Government really want to do, sadly, cannot quite be done yet, in this case, that centralising micromanagement culture runs so deep that time has been found in Parliament every other year, on average, for the last quarter of a century, to legislate time and again on how councils are allowed to describe that business rates system.

We do not set such requirements for other taxes, people or organisations. It is a reflection of how, at times, Whitehall unfortunately seems to treat local government as an untrustworthy or wayward young child. Then there is the problem of legislative time so often not being found for other local government matters that really need it. I will give the House two examples where good ideas have been proposed, consultations carried out and clear and strong consensus found for action, but then action has not followed.

The first example was highlighted by the Ethics and Integrity Commission in its annual letter to the Prime Minister earlier this year. In 2024, there was a consultation and then, in 2025, proposals for a stronger and more accountable standards system for local government—something that the Committee on Standards in Public Life had first called for in 2019, a full seven years ago. Seven years on, we have no legislation and no slot promised in a King’s Speech for future legislation. We have no substantive progress in seven years to secure the benefits that a proper accountable standards system would bring for improving councillor and staff well-being, of public trust in local government, and of more effective local government. Instead, it has just stalled for seven years.

There is a similar tale with remote or proxy participation at council meetings. Both this House and the House of Commons, in our own different ways, allow some degree of remote or proxy participation, as we have seen in this debate. It is a sensible way to deal with illness that does not impair the brain but precludes mobility, for example. It is something that was successfully done during Covid and, since then, in different ways by local government in the UK outside England. But in England, that centralising, controlling, micromanagement hand is at work again, banning councils from daring to decide for themselves how they wish to arrange their affairs. I wonder how we would feel in this House if someone in Whitehall was to say that we cannot decide how we will allow remote participation but have to have someone in Whitehall tell us instead.

To be fair to the Government, there was an extensive consultation in 2025 on changing the rules and it found overwhelming support for change—not a free-for-all abolishing in-person meetings, but for the sort of sensible changes that we have now long since adopted in this House or in the House of Commons. But was legislative time found to implement the results of that consultation? No, it was not. Was the devolution Bill used as an opportunity to implement the results of that consultation? Once again, no it was not. That is the problem: Whitehall is just too busy to find the time to relax that centralising grip, but that is exactly why it needs to step back and trust local government more.

I very much hope, when we hear from the Minister later, that we will hear not just the usual albeit very sincere words about the importance of supporting local government but maybe even a hint of progress on allowing councils to decide for themselves how councillors participate in their business, on putting in place a proper standards regime for local government, and maybe, as Christmas is not that far away now, on finally devolving power over cattle-grids.

Cattle-grid breakthrough!

As well as many other important and substantive points, in her concluding speech the minister had this to say:

To the noble Lord, Lord Pack, I say that I am absolutely on a mission now to devolve cattle grids.

And also, on an issue I know dear to many councillors’ hearts:

We are working on enabling councils to develop modern, accessible and locally appropriate remote and hybrid attendance policies. We are on the case with that.

In news from other Lib Dem peers…

Previously on this newsletter…

How Home Secretaries change immigration rules without telling Parliament

How to fix the problem of money in our politics

Elsewhere from me…

The same but also different: the picture from five MRPs

State of Play: a classic BBC political drama revisited

Thank you

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and if you did please do encourage others to have a read too: Share

Best wishes,

Mark

Thank you to George James for getting the Liberal Democrats on the ballot here for the first time since 2016.

Then, on the traditional Thursday, we had four contests, starting with two successful Liberal Democrat defences:

Congratulations to Mary Ryan and the team for winning here.

Not only did Mac Brown win here, his win maintains the slim hold on power for the Lib Dem/independent coalition. Losing would have meant a combined Conservative/Reform effort could have ousted it on the chair’s casting vote.

Plus what used to be a rarity is now becoming a regular occurrence, a Labour gain from Reform:

Thank you to Katy Brookes-Duncan for flying the flag for the Liberal Democrats here.

(For my statistics, this counts as an Independent/Other hold.)

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.

But this week, my eye was caught at the town/parish/community council level by:

Lawrence Gillies was elected to Salisbury City Council … For the Salisbury City Council seat, there were also 4,149 votes cast with the same turnout of 41.19 per cent. The Lib Dems received 138 more votes than the Conservatives. Following the vote declaration, city council winner Lawrence Gillies said: “I feel relieved, excited, happy, and proud because this is my first time standing, never mind being elected to anything, so I’m really looking forward to getting my teeth stuck into it.” [Salisbury Journal]

What do the polls say?

The results above may tell us what voters are deciding on ballot papers, but not everywhere voted. So what’s the overall picture in the polls? Find out each week with my newsletter, The Week in Polls.

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

Sign up to my monthly newsletter, Lib Dem Newswire, to find out:

The net totals in the right hand column give the overall political lay of the land, as shown by local council by-election results.

But it is the details in each row of how a party’s performance varies against its different rivals that is the most useful in my book. That shows us what’s happening below in the surface in a way that national voting intention polls often struggle to do because they give total support levels rather than vote switching figures.

Contests counted include delayed elections from the the usual May round of local elections (usually delayed due to the death of a candidate). Contests held on the same day as the main May local elections are excluded. The figures are for seats rather than wards, e.g. a double vacancy in a ward will count as two in the table.

The Lib Dem win in Chelmsford Springfield (June 2026) has been counted as a Lib Dem hold although it was a deferred contest on new boundaries.

Much of the source data for this table comes via Election Maps UK or ALDC. Thank you to them both.

What do the polls say?

The results above may tell us what voters are deciding on ballot papers, but not everywhere voted. So what’s the overall picture in the polls? Find out each week with my newsletter, The Week in Polls.

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

Sign up to my monthly newsletter, Lib Dem Newswire, to find out:

Council by-election scorecards for previous years

The local by-election scorecards for previous years are also available: 2025-26, 2024-25, 2023-24, 2022-23 and 2021-22.

1. Jay Cooper, Sefton: declared “not welcome” by Nigel Farage following reports of him calling the Holocaust a hoax and then resigned from the party (May 2026).
2. Stuart Prior, Essex: expelled by Reform and resigned as a councillor after “he was accused the week before the elections of creating racist and Islamophobic posts on social media” (May 2026).
3. Stuart Prior, Rochford: as above; he had been a councillor on two different councils.
4. Ashley Monk, Redditch: resigned to sit as an independent following a dispute on Worcestershire Council, to which he’d been elected in 2025 and for more on which, see the other list below (May 2026).
5. Nathaniel Menday, Sheffield: suspended by Reform as he had “shared pictures of swastikas, Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf and other far right iconography like the Sonnenrad, or ‘sun wheel’.”
6. Stephen Mousdell, St Helens Council: “A newly elected Merseyside Reform UK councillor has resigned just a day after the ECHO reported on his separate life appearing in porn videos online” (May 2026).
7. Daniel Devaney, Bradford: “One of Reform UK’s councillors elected in Bradford last week is no longer a representative of the party, the group’s leader on the council has said” (May 2026).
8. Danielle Cavanagh, Gateshead: resigned as a councillor (May 2026).
9. Nick Farmer, Wakefield: no longer listed as a Reform councillor (May 2026).
10. Robin Perry, Walsall: suspended by Reform (May 2026).
11. Mick Lee, Sheffield: “Mick Lee left the Reform UK party earlier this week over alleged arguments during the Sheffield branch’s leadership elections” (May 2026).
12. Joseph Soper, Thurrock: resigned as a councillor citing family illness (May 2026).
13. Marc Stanley, Thurrock: resigned as a councillor citing “a change in personal circumstances” (May 2026).
14. Mark Tucker, Norfolk: “Just 25 days after he was elected and having attended just one meeting” (June 2026).
15. Billy Burke, Trafford: suspended after being charged with possessing an offensive weapon (June 2026).
16. Rhys Carr, Wakefield: left Reform to become an independent (June 2026), later joined the SDP (August 2026)
17. Rebecca Waters, Birmingham: suspended by Reform “for breaking rank and voting for a Lib Dem [council] leader” (June 2026). She was later expelled.
18. Alex Clarke, South Tyneside: “resignation comes after a Hope not Hate investigation found he had made what appear to be sexist comments on his own podcast Clarke Out Loud” (June 2026).
19. Steve Lewis, Wakefield: left Reform to become an independent (June 2026).
20. Craig Wiles, Kirklees: resigned as a councillor (June 2026).
21. Tony Nelson, Huntingdonshire: resigned as a councillor (June 2026).
22. Susan Maxfield, Kirklees: left Reform to become an independent (June 2026).
23. Jennifer Gerrard, St Helens: “A Reform UK councillor – who held a cabinet position – has resigned from St Helens Borough Council, less than two months after the local elections” (July 2026).
24. Steven Deakin, Cannock Chase: now listed as an independent (July 2026).
25. Amy Hunter, Newcastle: resigned as a councillor (July 2026).
26. Kay Hughes, Barnsley: resigned as a councillor (July 2026).
27. David Hoey, Solihull: joined the Conservatives (July 2026).
28. Bella Simon, Walsall: now listed as an independent (July 2026).
29. James Fletcher, Luton: elected for Reform in an April 2026 by-election but now an independent (July 2026).
30. Glenn Gibbins, Sunderland: suspended by Reform following allegations of racism making him the first councillor from the May 2026 cohort who Reform lost (May 2026) but then reinstated after apologising (June 2026). However, back to an independent after being charged by the police (July 2026).
31. Matthew Elder, Hillingdon: now listed as an independent (August 2026).
32. Alex Barr, South Tyneside: left Reform to become an independent (August 2026).
33. David Rowan, Kirklees: suspended by Reform because he “said John Bercow should be hanged … [and he] also praised Tommy Robinson and said gay people should not have children” (August 2026).
34. Robert Hanson, Sheffield: “A Reform UK councillor is now serving as an independent after he said he would not renew his membership of the party … A Reform spokesman said that ‘despite being given repeated opportunities to join the party by email and telephone, he refused to do so'” (August 2026).
35. Christine Duffy, Newcastle-under-Lyme: who intended to resign, sent her resignation to the wrong council, apparently changed her mind but then successfully resigned from the correct council (August 2026).
36. Lawrence Davies, Swindon: “I cannot with clear conscience continue to fight for Reform UK in Swindon when members are told how to vote and what to say by their officers and whip and every question and every speech is rewritten with AI,” although it is also reported that he was “suspended from the party after he was charged with a series of driving offences”. He was later reported to have been charged with “assault by beating … [and] …. perverting the course of justice” (August 2026).
37. Peter Reeve, Peterborough: suspended by Reform after being charged with drink-driving (August 2026). He was subsequently found guilty.
38. Tanya Brasted, North East Lincolnshire: “Reform row erupts over allegations of fund misappropriation … A North East Lincolnshire councillor has left the local Reform UK group following her removal from the council’s Cabinet” (September 2026).
39. Andrew Crumplin, Plymouth: left Reform for Restore (September 2026).
40. Mark Hadfield, Plymouth: left Reform for Restore (September 2026).
41. Grace Stickland, Plymouth: left Reform to become an independent (September 2026).
42. Mark Hill, Chorley: now independent (September 2026).
43. Daniel Rollinson, Walsall: now independent (September 2026).
44. Daniel Astley, Newcastle upon Tyne: “expelled by the Reform UK party shortly after apologising for a series of social media posts in which he made offensive comments about Muslims … Astley had been expelled because of his prior membership of the far-right Homeland Party” (September 2026).
45. Christopher Perera, Essex: suspended by Reform (September 2026).
46. Andrew Southall, Dudley: left Reform to join Restore (September 2026).
47. Ivor Robinson, Dudley: resigned as a councillor (September 2026).
48. Bradley Thompson, Essex: suspended by Reform; also in the list below as was on two councils (September 2026).
49. Gary Keogh, Suffolk: resigned as a councillor (September 2026).
50. Daniel Bradley, East Sussex: left Reform to become an independent (October 2026).
51. Jim McIlroy, West Surrey: stood down as leader and left the Reform group (October 2026).
52. Alan Feeney, Solihull: left Reform to become an independent – “have mutually agreed with Reform UK that, for personal reasons, I will be leaving the party” but subsequently revealed to be featuring in an ITV expose making offensive comments. He then also resigned as a councillor (October 2026).
53. Alan Feeney, Birmingham: same as above; he was elected to two councils on the same day (October 2026).
54. Chris Whelan, Solihull: same ward as Alan Feeney above and also left Reform to become an independent. He cited “personal and health grounds” but was subsequently revealed to be featuring in an ITV expose and then resigned as a councillor (October 2026).
55. William Shaw, Doncaster: “Being independent gives a better feeling of being politically neutral now and going forward” (October 2026).
56. David Dresser, Leeds: suspended by Reform (October 2026).
57. Paula-Jane Thackray, Leeds: suspended by Reform (October 2026).
58. Dean Miller, Bromley: switched to independent on the council and was subsequently revealed to be featuring in an ITV expose (October 2026).
59. Jon Barras, Bradford: elected as Reform but now an independent (October 2026).
60. Raymond Dunning, Tameside: resigned after feature in an ITV expose (October 2026).
61. Jamie Campbell, Solihull: “Jamie Campbell was recorded in the ITV documentary Undercover: A Year in Reform making a racist remark” (October 2026).
62. Danny Carr, Tameside: “The Correspondent understands the decision has been made over concerns at the way the party is being run locally and the leadership of Cllr Allan Hopwood” (October 2026).

Not included in this list is the case of Jacob Padget, Wakefield, as there was some dispute over whether he had been suspended by Reform and continued to be listed on the council website as a Reform councillor (August 2026).

Thank you to all the readers who have contributed to the list.

Gone, but back again

1. Ben Rowe, Plymouth: suspended by Reform after he had been “called out on multiple occasions for his offensive posts” (May 2026) but reinstated subsequently (June 2026).

Other Reform councillors who have gone

Turning to councillors on principal authorities who became Reform councillors before May 2026 but who have also been shed since the May 2026 elections, here is a list of them, but note the reason for the first entries on the list, which makes them rather different from the rest of the list:

1. Carmelo Colasanto, Carmarthenshire: resigned as a councillor on being elected to the Senedd (May 2026).
2. David Hughes, Merthyr Tydfil: resigned as a councillor on being elected to the Senedd (May 2026).
3. Jo Monk, Worcestershire: “A former Reform UK council leader has been suspended by her party … for ‘refusing to accept the democratic decision of the Reform UK group'” (May 2026).
4. Ashley Monk, Worcestershire: alongside Jo Monk’s departure, “Her son and fellow councillor, Ashley, has also been suspended for reportedly bringing the party into disrepute” (May 2026). He also left Reform on Redditch Council, to which he was elected to in May 2026; see the main list above.
5. Barry Martin, Staffordshire: “Two formal complaints against Mr Martin, both relating to his social media activity, were upheld by the council last year … Council leader Martin Murray said that Mr Martin had taken the decision to resign due to health reasons and a recent family bereavement” (May 2026).
6. Andrew Harrison, County Durham: suspended by Reform and then quit to become an independent (May 2026).
7. Kenny Hope, County Durham: suspended by Reform and then quit to become an independent (May 2026).
8. Matthew Jones, Worcestershire: left to become an independent councillor (May 2026).
9. Andy Osborn, Cambridgeshire: convicted of breaking the law and disqualified as a councillor (May 2026). Also in my previous list as the story spans the May local election date.
10. Kate Rowland, County Durham: resigned to become an independent (May 2026).
11. Trevor Bridgwood, Lincolnshire: in the news last year over his social media posts, he has now become an independent after a ultimatum from Reform (May 2026).
12. Trevor Bridgwood, West Lindsey: same story as above, but included twice as he has left Reform on two councils (May 2026).
13. Jamie Hanlon, Cornwall: “A Reform UK Cornwall councillor has left the party, just a month after two other councillors” (May 2026).
14. James (Jim) Sidlow, Cambridgeshire: resigned as a councillor (May 2026).
15. Jasmine Fox, County Durham: now listed as an independent (June 2026)
16. Charlotte Kelly, Staffordshire: joined Conservatives “citing as reasons for her move her experience of bullying and sexism within Reform” (June 2026).
17. Dan Glover, Warwickshire: defected to Restore Britain (June 2026).
18. Rob Aitkenhead, Warwickshire: defected to Restore Britain (June 2026).
19. Leon Graham, Lancashire: joined Reform from the Conservatives and then elected as a Reform councillor in 2025. Now back with the Conservatives (June 2026).
20. Robbie Lammas, Medway: “A councillor who quit the Conservatives [in October 2025] to join Reform UK has now left the party, calling his decision to defect ‘the biggest mistake of my life'” (June 2026).
21. Cameron Emery, West Northamptonshire: defected to Restore Britain (July 2026).
22. Karl Perks, Worcestershire: defected to the Conservatives, among other reasons “because nobody was prosecuted for painting roundabouts with the cross of St George” (July 2026).
23. Joe Garner, North Northamptonshire: now an independent councillor (July 2026).
24. Steven Deakin, Cannock Chase: now an independent councillor (July 2026).
25. Bruce Craze, Cornwall: defected to Restore Britain (July 2026).
26. Carol Ney, Plymouth: joined Reform from Labour in April 2026 but then left Reform to become an independent (August 2026).
27. Helen Butler, Leicestershire: resigned as a councillor (August 2026).
28. Ian Catchpole, County Durham: left Reform to become an independent “after accusing council leaders of treating mental health with ‘“’blatant disregard’ … However, Reform said Cllr Catchpole resigned while the party was investigating the unauthorised disclosure of private group material” (August 2026).
29. Jonathan Millard, Blaenau Gwent: joined Reform in 2025 but has now switched to independent (August 2026).
30. Robbie Withey, Aberdeenshire: having previously been a Conservative councillor he joined Reform in 2025 but has now left Reform too (September 2026). (Note: as the local press explains, he had continued to sit in the independent group while he was with Reform.)
31. Eleonora Gough, Solihull: “Reform UK councillor quits Solihull group with scathing ‘toxic’ attack” (September 2026).
32. Nigel Swales, Lancashire: joined Labour after “growing concerns about Reform’s ability to deliver at a local level”(September 2026).
33. Nicole Brown, County Durham: “Three Reform UK councillors resign from party amid bullying allegations” (September 2026).
34. Lyndsey Fox, County Durham: “Three Reform UK councillors resign from party amid bullying allegations” (September 2026).
35. Paul Sexton, County Durham: “Three Reform UK councillors resign from party amid bullying allegations” (September 2026).
36. Marcus Barr, Somerset: elected as a Conservative and then joined Reform, but now listed as not being a member of any political group (September 2026).
37. Bradley Thompson, Tendring: elected as an independent, later joined Reform, and now suspended by Reform; also in the first list on this page as was elected as Reform councillor on another council in May 2026 (September 2026).
38. Dean Robertson, Lichfield: elected at a by-election in 2025 but now suspended by Reform (September 2026).
39. Matthew Wallens, Lichfield: elected at a by-election in 2025 but now suspended by Reform (September 2026).
40. Matthew Wallens, Staffordshire: same as above and listed twice as also elected to this county council in May 2025 (September 2026).
41. Mark Wilkinson, Oldham: resigned due to ill health (September 2026).
42. Michael Rees, Gloucestershire: defected to Restore (September 2026).
43. Aaron Hillam, Country Durham: resigned (September 2026).
44. Brian Smith, North Tyneside: previously leader of the Reform group, he left to become an independent (October 2026).

In addition, John Allen, Northumberland, had his seat declared vacant after he didn’t attend council meetings for six months (August 2026). He had been suspended by Reform last year (and so was included in last year’s list of departures).

Note: Harry Hancock-Davies resigned from Shrewsbury Town Council, but not from Shropshire Council (October 2026).

Further Reform troubles

Alan Dennison, who was elected as an independent in Pembrokeshire but then joined Reform, was in May 2026 suspended for four months for breaking the rules over a planning application.

Town councillor Daniel Bleeze left Reform in June 2026 while Stacy Bolton resigned from Scarborough Town Council during her term as Mayoress. Parish councillor John Bell in Cornwall resigned from both the council and from Reform over its plans to cut welfare benefits (August 2026).

A Reform parish council by-election candidate, Paul Heyward (Winterbourne Parish Council) was also suspended in May 2026. He went on to lose the by-election.

In addition it was revealed that, “A Reform UK councillor who vowed to try and address anti-social behaviour and ‘people feeling unsafe’ during her campaign was convicted of assault four months before the local elections” (BBC).

NN Journal reports that, “North Northamptonshire Council chairman Maurice Eglin has announced his resignation today after our investigation uncovers offensive historic tweets”. Note – the resignation is from his role as council chairman, and he remains a councillor (June 2026).

Taylor Smith (a Reform candidate but not a councillor, despite some social media reports) “unsuccessfully ran to represent South Oxhey on Three Rivers District Council on May 7, shared a video last week stating that he had officially become a member of Restore Britain” and has been suspended by Reform (June 2026).

Town councillor Olivia Westcott failed to sign her paperwork in time, triggering a by-election in which she stood again – and lost.

Rob Kenyon, Reform’s unsuccessful candidate for the Makerfield Parliamentary by-election, has a track record of unsavoury comments.

Although not a councillor or candidate Tim Montgomerie was a prominent defector to Reform from the Conservatives. However:

Reform UK has suspended a high-profile supporter and one-time Farage ally after he criticised the party’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf for not being a “team player”. [The Independent, August 2026]

Amanda Bland MSP has left Reform to become an independent (October 2026).

Finally, the story about a Reform councillor being an AI-generated fake is not true.

For Reform councillors who were shed before May 2026, see my previous list.

Sign up to get the latest news and analysis

Cllr Samantha Williamson, of Horwich South and Blackrod, who had previously sat as an independent and part of the Communities First alliance, has joined the Liberal Democrats.

She says she aims to continue advocating for the concerns of residents and in particular for the wellbeing of children and young people across the borough…

Cllr Williamson said: “I am happy to be joining the Liberal Democrats because I can see they are the party that cares about honesty, integrity, and respect, and also they are committed to putting people first.”

Sign up to get the latest news and analysis

It includes the first PM approval ratings from 1938 and first national voting intention scores from 1939.

Download the new version here.

As well as another three months of data, changes this time include:

• Additional Gallup data from the 1951 Parliament from the Bodleian Library’s set of Gallup/BIPO reports in the Conservative Central Office archives. Thank you to Marcus Collins for sharing his copies of this data with me.

P.S. For the very latest polls, see my polling scorecard and for the history of polls, how to spot the good from the bad and what the future holds for opinion polling, see my book, Polling UnPacked: the history, uses and abuses of political opinion polls. You can also sign up for my weekly email newsletter about polling:

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:

Get the books

As well as covering some books in the podcast, we also mention others in the newsletter’s bonus content. You can browse all the books mentioned and get them for yourself via my Bookshop.org page (affiliate link).

Cory sees the light over State of Play

This time we’re returning to the classic BBC political drama, State of Play, as Cory finally sees the wisdom in Mark’s praise for the show:

Mark and Cory conclude their discussion of the classic TV series State of Play. Mark reports back on his correspondence with a cast member and also auditions for a role as a defence counsel, whilst they also talk about which elements of the plot remain realistic today and which are complete MacGuffins.

The Guardian article Cory refers to can be read here and the previous podcast episode, covering State of Play episode 1, is here.

Cory’s email newsletter is Paperback Rioter and Mark has a family of email newsletters.

Subscribe to our newsletter for some additional bonus content and to get alerted whenever a new episode comes out.

Our theme tune is “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod/incompetech.com and licensed under the Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

You can also listen to our episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the web or YouTube.

Next time, Sam Freedman joins us to talk about The Thick Of It specials The Rise of the Nutters and Spinners and Losers, both of which you can watch on BBC iPlayer.

We love to hear from our listeners

Whether you are a new or long-standing listener to the podcast, feedback on each episode is always very welcome. Just pop up a comment on the web version of this newsletter:

Leave a comment

Or, if you have any suggestions for what we should cover in future episodes, just hit reply and let us know. Thank you!

Similarities to Ludwig

Cory once again brings some bonus content for readers of our newsletter:

In this episode we compare the ending of State of Play to the first episode of Ludwig. I don’t think it’s not a spoiler to say that Joanne Kemper, the ongoing villain for the whole of the second season of Ludwig, is a Member of Parliament [series, NOT season – Mark]. This isn’t enough to make Ludwig the sort of sort of show we can add to our list of things to talk about, but something about Kemper’s election poster struck me:

It reminds me of the chat we had with John Cotton in our episode on The Absence of War, in which he made the point that none of the fonts and designs really seem to work in political leaflets on TV. The colour also doesn’t quite work. I suppose purple is meant to be a neutral colour, being a mix of Labour red and Conservative blue, but it just makes me think that Joanne Kemper is running for UKIP in 2015.

Finally, our condolences to the friends and family of Jeffrey Archer, who passed away this week. Our episode talking about his First Among Equals with Shane Whaley is here.

Previously on Political Fictions…

State of Play: a classic BBC political drama revisited

The Lives of Others: a powerful film about art and the Stasi

Elsewhere from us…

Dealing with the twentieth century

Is Kemi Badenoch in trouble in her own constituency?

Happy listening

Thank you for reading and hope you enjoy the episode. Feedback is always very welcome!

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark

The Liberal Democrat here was Morgan Inwood – thank you.

And also:

Thank you to Christopher French for being the Liberal Democrat candidate here.

Meanwhile in Scotland:

Thanks here go to Sandy Stephen for being the Liberal Democrat candidate.

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.

As for the Parliamentary by-election:

Big thanks to Patrick Stillman for waving the flag for us in this by-election, and to everyone who supported him. If my canvassing was anything to go by, there were a lot of people who were sure to be voting Labour in order to stop Zack Polanski, but will be open to voting for us in the local elections – and Patrick’s campaign impressed them, making it easier to win them over next time.

What do the polls say?

The results above may tell us what voters are deciding on ballot papers, but not everywhere voted. So what’s the overall picture in the polls? Find out each week with my newsletter, The Week in Polls.

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

Sign up to my monthly newsletter, Lib Dem Newswire, to find out:

If you’d like to help them, a great way to start is by joining the party or by pledging to vote Liberal Democrat.

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

Sign up to my monthly newsletter, Lib Dem Newswire, to find out, including regular updates on selections:

Selected PPCs

You can jump to the constituency you want:
A-D / E-H / I-L / M-P / Q-T / U-Z

Liberal Democrat PPCs A-D

• Altrincham and Sale West: Jane Brophy
• Beaconsfield: Anna Crabtree
• Bracknell: Jo Hawley
• Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe: David Chadwick
• Brentwood and Ongar: Edward Sainsbury
• Bridgwater: Graham Oakes
• Broxbourne: Freddie Jewitt
• Cambridge: Cheney Payne
• Cardiff East: Rodney Berman
• Cardiff North: Joseph Carter
• Central Devon: Ed Tyldesley
• Cheadle: Tom Morrison
• Chelmsford: Marie Goldman
• Chester North and Neston: Carol Braithwaite
• Chippenham: Sarah Gibson
• Daventry: Jonathan Harris
• Derbyshire Dales: Barry Holliday

Liberal Democrat PPCs E-H

• Earley and Woodley: Mike Giles
• East Hampshire: Dominic Martin
• Eastleigh: Liz Jarvis
• Ely and East Cambridgeshire: Charlotte Cane
• Epsom and Ewell: Helen Maguire
• Exeter: Jonnie Beddall
• Exmouth and Exeter East: Charlotte FitzGerald
• Farnham and Bordon: Khalil Yousuf
• Filton and Bradley Stoke: Eden Lunt
• Guildford: Zöe Franklin
• Hampstead and Highgate: Katie Mansfield
• Harpenden and Berkhamsted: Victoria Collins
• Harrogate and Knaresborough: Tom Gordon
• Hazel Grove: Lisa Smart
• Hinckley and Bosworth: Michael Mullaney
• Honiton and Sidmouth: Richard Foord

Liberal Democrat PPCs I-L

• Kenilworth and Southam: Louis Adam

Liberal Democrat PPCs M-P

• Maidenhead: Joshua Reynolds
• Maidstone and Malling: Michael Stephens
• Melksham and Devizes: Brian Mathew
• Mid Buckinghamshire: Anja Shaefer
• Mid Dorset and North Poole: Vikki Slade
• Newbury: Lee Dillon
• Newton Abbot: Martin Wrigley
• North Cornwall: Ben Maguire
• North Cotswolds: Paul Hodgkinson
• North Devon: Ian Roome
• North Dorset: Gary Jackson
• North East Hampshire: Alex Brewer
• North Norfolk: Steffan Aquarone
• North Somerset: Janey Little
• Portsmouth South: Charlie Murphy

Liberal Democrat PPCs Q-T

• Richmond Park: Sarah Olney
• Romsey and Southampton North: Thomas Gravatt
• Runnymede and Weybridge: Chelsea Whyte
• St Albans: Daisy Cooper
• St Ives: Andrew George
• St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire: Ian Sollom
• Salisbury: Victoria Charleston
• Sevenoaks: Tara Matthews
• Sheffield Hallam: Sophie Crossthorn
• South Cambridgeshire: Pippa Heylings
• South Cotswolds: Roz Savage
• South Devon: Caroline Voaden
• South Northamptonshire: Stewart Tolley
• South Shropshire: Matthew Green
• South West Hertfordshire: Matt Sanders
• Spelthorne: Harry Boparai
• Stockport: Alice Delemare Tangpuori
• Surrey Heath: Al Pinkerton
• Taunton and Wellington: Gideon Amos
• Thornbury & Yate: Claire Young
• Tiverton & Minehead: Rachel Gilmour
• Torbay: Steve Darling
• Torridge and Tavistock: Phil Hutty
• Truro and Falmouth: Ruth Gripper

Liberal Democrat PPCs U-Z

• Watford: Peter Taylor
• Westmorland and Lonsdale: Tim Farron
• West Worcestershire: Dan Boatright-Greene
• Wokingham: Clive Jones
• Worcester: Mel Alcott
• Yeovil: Adam Dance
• York Outer: Andrew Hollyer

Related candidate information

After a list of current Liberal Democrat MPs? That’s here.

What is a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC)?

Way back, the law around election expenses made it very advantageous to avoid officially declaring someone to be your candidate until a few weeks out from polling day. Doing so delayed the point at which campaigning costs had to count against the fixed constituency election expense limit. The later the limit started, the more campaigning you could get in beforehand and then the more campaigning per day you could do during the controlled period as the limit had to stretch over fewer days of campaigning.

As a result, all parties took to using the phrase “Prospective Parliamentary Candidate” or PPC to describe the people they had selected who were going to become their candidate but had been selected sufficiently far in advance that they didn’t want to be called candidates yet. There was then usually an official adoption meeting much closer to the election at which the PPC would be adopted from a field of one and transformed into an official candidate.

These days, there is much less benefit from going through these legal hoops. That’s partly because the variation in time period which your constituency expense limit has to cover depending on when you start calling yourself a candidate has been greatly reduced. It’s also because there is now so much that can be legally excluded from constituency expense limits.

The PPC phrase, however, hangs on both out of habit and because in some very close contests it can still bring some value. It also helps distinguish between someone who has been through the party’s approval process and so is eligible to apply to be a PPC (often called ‘approved candidates’) and someone who is actually a PPC.

Get the books

As well as covering some books in the podcast, we also mention others in the newsletter’s bonus content. You can browse all the books mentioned and get them for yourself via my Bookshop.org page (affiliate link).

State of Play, episode 1

We’re heading back to the early 2000s this time, for a classic BBC political drama:

Mark and Cory begin their two-part series on the classic TV series State of Play by discussing episode one. It begins with Mark recoiling in horror at the low score Cory intends to give it, almost causing an irreparable rift in Political Fictions Towers. Thankfully, they manage to repair the relationship by talking about what the show tells us about politics in the early 2000s, praise the excellent cast (especially those who are able to stand awkwardly in the background very effectively) and undertake some seriously impressive letterbox-based investigative work.

You can view more about State of Play, including details of where it’s currently streaming, here.

Cory’s email newsletter is Paperback Rioter and Mark has a family of email newsletters.

Subscribe to our newsletter for some additional bonus content and to get alerted whenever a new episode comes out.

Our theme tune is “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod/incompetech.com and licensed under the Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

You can also listen to our episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the web or YouTube.

Next week, we’ll be returning to talk about the rest of the series – and we’ll return at some point also to do the US film remake of the same name.

We love to hear from our listeners

Whether you are a new or long-standing listener to the podcast, feedback on each episode is always very welcome. Just pop up a comment on the web version of this newsletter:

Leave a comment

Or, if you have any suggestions for what we should cover in future episodes, just hit reply and let us know. Thank you!

Previously on Political Fictions…

The Lives of Others: a powerful film about art and the Stasi

Is “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet” good advice or not?

Elsewhere from us…

The perils of “jam lust”

How Home Secretaries change immigration rules without telling Parliament

Happy listening

Thank you for reading and hope you enjoy the episode. Feedback is always very welcome!

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark

Congratulations to new councillor Julie Calder and the team.

This ward is in the constituency of Jamie Stone (Westminster) and David Green (Holyrood).

Elsewhere, the pickup in Labour performance continued with a hold in Blackpool. Labour’s majority may have been slashed, but not long ago this would have been a Reform gain:

Thank you to Kevan Benfold for being the Liberal Democrat here.

What’s more:

Extra thanks to Calvin Clark for getting the Lib Dems on the ballot paper here are the previous absence.

There were also successful defences for the Conservatives:

The thanks here go to Ian Bradley for being the Lib Dem candidate.

The Liberal Democrat here was James Maclaren – thank you.

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. But this week my eye was also caught by:

Neil Fowler topped the four-way contest in Ross-on-Wye West, which arose following the resignation of another independent, Saskia Harrison …

With a turnout of 28 per cent, the October 1 result in full was:

Michael Connolly (Reform UK): 185 votes
Peter Stanley Evans (Independent): 57
Neil Allan Fowler (Independent): 284 (elected)
Andrew Mark Steele (Liberal Democrats): 234

The result leaves the town with a majority of Lib Dem councillors. [Hereford Times]

What do the polls say?

The results above may tell us what voters are deciding on ballot papers, but not everywhere voted. So what’s the overall picture in the polls? Find out each week with my newsletter, The Week in Polls.

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

Sign up to my monthly newsletter, Lib Dem Newswire, to find out:

Welcome to Lib Dem Newswire #214, which takes a look at the geography of Lib Dem support, includes advice on how to react to stories about hung Parliaments, explains why “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet” is bad political advice, and more.

First, though, congratulations to the new Lib Dem councillors since last time – Tim Murray, Fred Hulls, James Hartley, Mark Stephenson, Harry Wormington and Nazmeen Akhtar – along with their campaign teams, especially their agents.

The net changes in council by-elections since the last edition of LDN as a result were Reform +3, Lib Dem +1, Labour +/-0, Green +/-0, Plaid +/-0, Conservative -1, SNP -1 and Independent/Other -2.

For more details on that, read on.

Best wishes,

Mark

P.S. If you haven’t yet had time to read it, last time’s edition is available online: A polling advantage for the Lib Dems (LDN#213).

How to fix the problem of money in our politics

Recent news has focused minds on the role of money in our democracy. But the issues are not new, and even without the last few days, we need to see much stronger regulation to tackle both how money comes into parties and candidates, and how it then gets spent. Better donor controls and better spending caps, in other words.

So those issues were at the heart of my speech in the House of Lords for the second reading of the Representation of the People Bill, explaining the Lib Dem approach to fixing the problem of money in our politics. Read about the solution here:

How to fix the problem of money in our politics

The geography of Liberal Democrat potential

People often rightly focus on the need to increase the spread of Liberal Democrat electoral success across the country. What strikes me about this recent Ipsos data is that, despite the headline the pollster put on the graphic, the Liberal Democrat potential is pretty evenly spread, and much more evenly spread than the party’s current MPs. The challenge is much more one about how to continue to spread the strength of our infrastructure and local credibility in order to realise more of that potential.

Why “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet” is bad advice

That scene from The West Wing. But it has some problems…

The latest episode of my podcast with Cory Hazlehurst heads across the Atlantic for a dip into one of the political TV classics and why one of its most popular sayings is both often misunderstood and bad advice:

Mark and Cory talk about a giant of American political drama for the first time this week, as they tackle The West Wing. They talk about Let Bartlet Be Bartlet, the nineteenth episode of series one. In it, Mark wonders if The West Wing is actually the epitome of the “Boris Johnson school of politics”, Cory outmanoeuvres Mark into confirming we will record a Christmas Special about Love, Actually and they debate whether the central message of this episode has been misunderstood.

Cory’s email newsletter is Paperback Rioter and Mark has a family of email newsletters.

Subscribe to our newsletter for some additional bonus content and to get alerted whenever a new episode comes out.

Our theme tune is “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod/incompetech.com and licensed under the Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

You can also listen to our episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the web or YouTube.

Sign up to the Political Fictions email list

If you follow politics and love political drama – on screen, on the page, or on stage – Political Fictions is the podcast for you. Each episode, I join Cory Hazlehurst to explore the portrayals of politics in fiction. Subscribe to our email list and we’ll let you know when each new episode drops:

Subscribe to Political Fictions

You don’t have to play the right-wing media’s game

Good news: the media once again thinks the Liberal Democrats are very relevant to the future course of British politics. Bad news: that means ‘what would you do in a hung Parliament?’ questions are back in season. And that also means complaints about how a Lib Dem leader has answered such a question are back in season.

There’s a simple reason for this, with the big clue being that whenever the question is in season such complaints follow. It is that there is no answer to that question – including avoiding it! – that doesn’t give one media title or another whose editorial line is to act as a booster for another party the chance to cause mischief with such stories.

Don’t rule out deals with any party and you are accused of plotting a secret deal with one of those other parties. Rule out deals with one or more parties and – aha! – that means the stories are about secret deals being plotted with those you didn’t rule out. And rule out deals with all parties, proudly claiming you want to be PM yourself? Hello accusations of hubris and deployment of ridicule.

The simple truth is that if several media outlets are trigger-happy in wanting to run a negative story about the Liberal Democrats then there isn’t an answer that will keep them all at bay. (The only way to do that is to be so deeply unsuccessful as not to be relevant to them at all. That comes with its own issues.)

So if your reaction to a story such as this is to get angry or worried about the party, you’re most likely going to have a really tough last few years of this Parliament, as they’ll most likely appear regularly – and the closer we get to the possibility of a hung Parliament arriving, the more intense such stories become.

Moreover, remember that as well as such stories showing the political leanings of the editorial line of the outlet, they are also often deliberately written to provoke people, as that’s what gets attention, clicks and ad revenue.

Which is why I think it’s best to get a little chilled about such stories. Try not to rise to the bait. (I don’t always succeed myself!) Remember that the story is often deliberately trying to provoke you, and you don’t have to play the media outlet’s game by going along with that.

They might want you to be angry to serve their editorial line or their audience attention desires. But we don’t have to agree to play that game for them.

Want to understand polling better?

Polling UnPacked is available from Bookshop.org (independent bookshops), Waterstones, Amazon (including Kindle version) or direct from the publisher.

The fight of our lives: Lib Dems in the news

The key stories

1. We are in the fight of our lives: Ed Davey’s conference speech.
2. Liberal Democrats propose legal target of 150,000 new social homes per year.
3. Cross-party talks needed to tackle climate crisis, say Lib Dems.
4. Max Wilkinson: “How is it that far-right thugs in balaclavas were able to close Britain’s busiest port without the police receiving any prior intelligence? And how is it that then an apparently separate group with some commonalities were then able to blockade another site the next evening?”
5. Josh Babarinde condemns abuse of RNLI volunteers.
6. Marie Goldman: restoring trans rights.
7. Demand for action over 100,000 sewage spills in Scotland.
8. Change politics to change lives: Ed Davey launches new Liberal Democrats newsletter.

Local government action

1. More house-building by Lib Dems in local government.
2. Sutton Council wins green award …
3. … while Richmond Council wins green council of the year.
4. Liverpool Liberal Democrats come top in door-knocking across the country ahead of next May’s elections.

Other people and party news

1. Tom Morrison MP will chair the Manifesto Working Group for the next Westminster general election.
2. The Lib Dem group in the House of Lords is now on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
3. Sneak peek: there’s a new party podcast on the way, and it was soft-launched over conference with short pieces about the event. Take a listen and subscribe here.
4. Teen’s standing ovation at Lib Dem conference.
5. Jane Dodds wins animal welfare award.
6. Reinventing Liberalism: launch statement from new think tank.
7. Former MP Norman Lamb has a new book out about mental health, Be More Human: Bookshop.org / Amazon.

In news about a long-since former Liberal Democrat, Jason Zadrozny has been found guilty of fraud and tax evasion.

You can get more updates like the above in real time through my WhatsApp updates three to five times a week. Sign up here.

A new Lib Dem council leader

In case you missed them first time around, here are some of my blog posts and assorted pieces since the last LDN:

• Lib Dem replaces Labour as leader of Luton Council.
• Lib Dems most liked by political rivals, study finds.
• Lisa Smart calls for police to investigate Reform’s James Orr.
• Nigel Farage’s ratings hit record low with YouGov.
• The Hecklers: a great documentary about the 1966 election.

And one from the archives:

• Perhaps this approach could be used for training telephone canvassers?

What the polls are saying

Issues

Votes

Leaders

For more details on both voting intention and party leader ratings, and for updates in-between editions of LDN, take a look on my website.

Bad news for the right in the latest MRPs

Four (four!) MRPs have been released in recent days. Given how coverage of political polling usually goes, though, while the MRPs have collectively had a good chunk of coverage, nearly all of it has been about one or another rather than looking at the full set. Yet of course pollsters and polling pundits repeatedly remind us not to pay attention to just the one poll. So let’s put that right, and look at all four.

Or rather, let’s look at five, because the fieldwork dates for the four new ones also straddle the release, a few weeks back, of a fifth from Stonehaven:

The same but also different: the picture from five MRPs

And as a bit of bonus Lib Dem analysis, here is what the seat tallies in MRPs showed for the party in the last Parliament.

Phone box blight

The Critic has news of an interesting initiative to help get removed those unused phone boxes which have turned into graffiti and litter hotspots blighting high streets. (Not to be confused, of course, with other phone boxes which still have a vital role, especially in rural areas with poor mobile phone coverage.)

Selections news

Selections since last time have included Jo Hawley in Bracknell, Graham Oakes in Bridgwater, Ed Tyldesley in Central Devon, Jonathan Harris in Daventry and Stewart Tolley in South Northamptonshire, along with the re-selections of Gideon Amos, Victoria Collins, Daisy Cooper, Liz Jarvis, Sarah Olney and Josh Reynolds.

In other selection news, Christine Jardine will not be re-standing for Parliament and Patrick Stillman was picked as the Liberal Democrat candidate for the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. Meanwhile, both MP Sarah Olney and previous runner Rob Blackie have said they would like to be the next Lib Dem candidate for Mayor of London.

The Westminster constituencies currently advertising to select a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate include Birmingham Yardley, East Wiltshire, Godalming & Ash and South Dorset.

See all the Liberal Democrat Westminster PPCs selected and publicly announced so far here. (There’s often a little backlog of selections which have taken place but not yet been press released etc., so do let me know if you spot any which I have missed. Thank you.)

Council by-elections round-up

Council by-elections since last time have included a leap for the Lib Dems from fifth to second in Newcastle, coming from no candidate to second place in North Somerset, from third to nearly winning in Windsor & Maidenhead and from third to winning in Katie Lam’s seat, along with the party taking majority control of Oxfordshire. The Greens have also lost a clutch of seats.

The net changes in seats since the last edition of LDN as a result were Reform +3, Lib Dem +1, Labour +/-0, Green +/-0, Plaid +/-0, Conservative -1, SNP -1 and Independent/Other -2. Overall, the net changes in seats since the May elections are therefore now Reform +11, Lib Dem +4, Green +2, SNP +1, Plaid -1, Conservative -4, Labour -6 and Independent/Others -7.

That’s two editions in a row now where Labour has scored a net zero change in seats; that looks like a turning of the corner on their former regular losses. Reform’s pause in their progress last time, however, has come to an end and they are back making gains.

For more details, including the breakdown of the cumulative change since May, see my table of net seat changes since the last May local elections.

Other changes

Councillors have joined the Liberal Democrats in Cannock Chase (from Conservatives), Shropshire (with a former Lib Dem councillor returning to the party) and West Northamptonshire (a Reform-turned-independent).

Councillors have left the Lib Dems in Chelmsford, Cherwell (1, 2), Horsham, Hull, Luton and West Oxfordshire.

Can you help?

Liberal Democrat Newswire is provided for free but isn’t free to run. Thank you so much to all the kind readers who donate to help cover its costs. It is quick and easy to sign up for a small regular donation with your debit card using GoCardless:

£10 per month / £5 per month / £2.50 per month / £1 per month

Thank you! (Other donation options, including by PayPal or cheque, are here.)

And finally…

This dog symbolises the Liberal Democrat approach to first-past-the-post.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to a friend or share it online: Share

Thank you and best wishes,

Mark

Note: Links to books in the newsletter are usually affiliate links that generate a commission on sales made.

No records, no notice: the Home Office’s hidden way of changing immigration rules

The Home Secretary has the power to alter rules over who is allowed into the country, and can exercise this power without Parliamentary oversight, without even telling Parliament and – we now know – without even the Home Office keeping complete records of what they’ve done.

The latest report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (SLSC) in the House of Lords – of which I’m a member – sets out the story in detail.

It starts with the Immigration Act 1971, which, in Section 3(1)(b), grants the Home Secretary important discretion over who should be let into the country. That discretion was confirmed in 2012 by the Supreme Court and means that, above and beyond any published immigration rules, the Home Secretary can decide that someone who would not meet the rules for being allowed into the UK should nonetheless be allowed to be here.

I can imagine circumstances in which letting someone into the country as a special exception, even in secret, makes sense. For example, imagine if an Iranian spy (or back in the 1970s, a Soviet spy) defected to the UK. The Home Secretary having a special power to allow them into the country would serve a wider public good, and if that power was only used to allow the occasional extra person into the country in special cases, that could all be fine.

However, as the SLSC discovered, this power has been used more widely. Changes to immigration rules are usually published to Parliament, as happened in March this year. However, that set of changes turned out to contain an error (detailed in the SLSC report), which would have inadvertently removed the rights of some people to enter the country in a particular set of circumstances. But rather than fix this problem by publishing to Parliament a new set of immigration rules, the Home Office instead used that discretionary power to, in effect, say ‘the rules we reported to Parliament are wrong so the Home Secretary is going to override them in cases affected by the error’.

But Parliament was not told of this change; rather, it was side-stepped and not informed. Nor was it just an urgent, temporary action until Parliament could be properly informed. Rather, the Home Office took it as the solution to the error, end of story.

In this case, perhaps you may take a lenient view: the Home Office messed up and used a power to quickly rectify the problem. Sure, it did so in a way that kept its mistake lower profile than if it had reported a proper fix to Parliament, but the end result was that people who should be able to enter the country continued to be able to do so.

I have some sympathy with that. But we should always be cautious about where temptation may take people if they have a power such as this, which in effect means changing what Parliament has been told without telling Parliament – especially as the power has spread from being just about individual cases now and again to permanent changes in the rules.

And all the more so because the Home Office also said, in answer to a request from the committee for a list of the changes made this way in the last five years:

Due to the nature of their usage, we do not keep records of every concession.

Again, some generosity can apply here. Perhaps that defecting Iranian agent’s name needs keeping secret. Yet all these concessions require ministerial agreement. To have these decisions all go to ministers for sign-off and yet then say you can’t provide a list of such decisions, even those about general rules rather than named individuals, is… unusual.

Perhaps records are kept therefore in many cases? We don’t know because, so far at least, the Home Office hasn’t provided any records at all. “Every” is open to many meanings in this context. Hence the SLSC report saying:

We accept that it may not be appropriate to make Parliament aware of each such individual case. It may nevertheless be beneficial, for the sake of transparency, to publish periodically the overall number of uses of the power in this way; for example, in the Home Office’s Annual Report and Accounts or in a separate annual update to Parliament.

The [other] apparent use of the power is to make generalised changes to the immigration assessment process, applicable to anyone who meets the relevant criteria, of the sort that might usually be made through Statements of Changes. As well as the TWOV example, the Home Office described to us how immigration schemes for those fleeing the war in Ukraine were initially implemented through published concessions because of their urgency. We consider that this type of use of the power is fundamentally different to its exercise in individual cases, because generalised changes would ordinarily go through the parliamentary process designed for Statements of Changes.

We therefore suggest that when the power in Section 3(1)(b) is used to make generalised changes, such as for the Ukraine crisis or in the TWOV example, the handling should be distinct from when the power is used in individual cases. In particular, the Home Office should ensure that Parliament is always formally notified when any such generalised change is made. The Home Office should also keep records of all such uses of the power.

And also:

It is not clear why a power for the Secretary of State to counteract the effects of legislative errors, effectively by decree, exists in this area, while it does not (presumably for sound constitutional reasons) across the statute book more widely. While this power is undoubtedly convenient for governments, the House and the Home Office may wish to consider whether it remains appropriate as currently defined.

Quite.

In news from other Lib Dem peers…

Lynne was speaking at the launch of a new pamphlet, Women for Liberty.

Previously on this newsletter…

How to fix the problem of money in our politics

Why Ofcom and the government need to up their game on parcel deliveries

Elsewhere from me…

Is “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet” good advice or not?

Why politicians should pay more attention to the polls (reprise)

Thank you

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and if you did please do encourage others to have a read too: Share

Best wishes,

Mark

Ms Jardine, who won the seat back from the SNP in 2017 and has a majority of 16,470, said that it had been a challenging few weeks and a difficult decision, but that she felt it was the best thing to do for the party.

She said to The Edinburgh Reporter: “I’ve got my staff to think about. I think it’s important that they know what I’m thinking and what the future potentially holds. What I would have hated was to go into a general election in a few years’ time and not have warned them of this.”

She continued: “I have had tremendous support at all times from the Scottish Party, from the federal Party – Ed Davey has been incredibly good this week, and my colleagues at Westminster have all been excellent. The councillors have been supportive. I don’t have any grouse at all with the local party, but sometimes you have to make a decision that you think is in the best interests of everybody – and that’s what I’ve done.” …

Christine said: “I have written to my local party to let them know I shall not be standing as the Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate for Edinburgh West at the next election, following the recent decision by some of the local party.

“I have informed them that although I am able to request a ballot of the membership, it is with a heavy heart I have decided not to pursue this. I do not wish to expose anyone to more tension and division.

“I shall continue to represent my constituents with the care I have always sought to bring over the last nine years.

“It has been, and remains, an honour and a privilege to represent this part of the city, and to work with our fantastic communities.”

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP, said: “I would like to thank Christine for all her hard work as an MP.

“She has been excellent to work alongside, representing the west of Edinburgh together for the past nine years.

“Her work on childhood bereavement, in supporting Ukrainian refugees and in supporting our constituents in the capital means she will have a long legacy too.”

Sir Ed Davey, Liberal Democrats leader, said: “Christine is a fantastic champion for Liberalism, Scotland and the people of Edinburgh. For me, her work on the Domestic Abuse Act stands out. She has improved things for survivors and children in ways many will never know. I know there’s a lot more to come in this parliament too.”

Christine and I contested the 2019 Liberal Democrat President contest and I was, and remain, grateful to her for the good spirit in which the contest was fought, with us each setting our different visions for the role but without it becoming personal. Thank you, Christine.

Sign up to get the latest news and analysis

The Lib Dems are the party most liked by their political rivals, according to a new study published ahead of the party’s annual conference in Brighton.

The research, by the Policy Institute at King’s College London, finds rival parties’ supporters rate their warmth towards Lib Dem voters at 39 out of 100 – four points higher than Labour voters, who rank second, with 35.1

Reform UK supporters are viewed most coldly by their rivals, with a rating of 20.

The Lib Dems are also seen by their opponents as the least uncaring party: 33% of rival supporters think Lib Dem voters don’t care about people like them, and 36% say the same of the party’s leaders – the lowest figures of any party, with the Greens next best on both counts (voters, 43%; leaders, 42%).

The Greens have a particularly favourable view of the Lib Dems: 43% of the party’s supporters say Lib Dem voters are driven mostly by concern and care for people like them – a higher proportion than the share of Lib Dem supporters themselves who say the same (36%).

By contrast, nearly three in 10 (28%) Reform supporters feel Lib Dem voters are instead driven mostly by dislike of people like them – the highest of any political group who feel this way.

But the positivity from other parties translates into the Lib Dems being the most popular overall choice for tactical votes from supporters of their rivals. Labour supporters name the Lib Dems (35%) as their joint top alternative pick with the Greens (33%), while the Lib Dems are also second choice for Green and Conservative supporters.

However, the party is seen as virtually last resort for those who back Reform, just 5% of whom say they’d consider voting tactically for the Lib Dems – on a par with Labour (7%) and Greens (7%).

Meanwhile, Lib Dem supporters themselves are more likely to say they’d vote tactically for Labour (32%), ahead of the Green party (27%).

The study, based on a nationally representative survey of 3,750 UK adults carried out between 7 and 13 August with Opinium, also finds that, while the public have an accurate view of Lib Dem support on issues like rejoining the EU and giving private companies a bigger role in the NHS, they misperceive how Lib Dem supporters feel about several key policy issues:

• Just 11% of Lib Dems agree the number of immigrants coming to Britain should be increased, yet the public’s median guess is that more than double this proportion of Lib Dem supporters – 25% – hold this view. Lib Dem supporters themselves also overestimate how much support exists for this among their own party’s base, guessing that 24% agree.
• The public overestimate the share of Lib Dem supporters who think the UK should send far fewer people to prison than it does today, guessing 36% against a reality of 21%. Green party supporters (41%) have the most inflated view of Lib Dem supporters backing for this.
• The public guess 36% of Lib Dem supporters would agree Britain should spend more on defence, even if it means less money for other public services – but in reality, 46% do. Green supporters in particular assume Lib Dem supporters are much less supportive of greater defence spending than they actually are, guessing 27% would agree.
• 11% of Lib Dem supporters agree the UK should keep taxes on wealthy people as low as possible, yet the public guess double this share (22%) would feel this way.

Professor Bobby Duffy, Director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London, said:

Supporters of rival parties tend to view the Lib Dems and their leadership with more warmth, as more caring, and as more viable tactical voting option than other parties – except Reform supporters, just 5% of whom say they’d consider voting Lib Dem. This positive external image is based on a relatively accurate picture of what Lib Dem voters actually think on key policy areas – although people tend to think they are more in favour of increased migration and sending fewer people to prison than they really are, while they underestimate just how many Lib Dems are actually in favour of increased defence spending.

Here is the full report.

What do the polls say?

Keep up with the latest poll results and exclusive analysis with my newsletter, The Week in Polls.

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

Sign up to my monthly newsletter, Lib Dem Newswire, to find out:

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:

Get the books

As well as covering some books in the podcast, we also mention others in the newsletter’s bonus content. You can browse all the books mentioned and get them for yourself – including The File, as discussed in this edition of the podcast – via my Bookshop.org page (affiliate link).

The Lives of Others

We’re headed to East Germany for this episode:

Mark and Cory discuss The Lives of Others, a modern classic about Stasi surveillance in 1980s East Germany. They start off talking about how to cope with a terrible dictatorship and how the film is about the power of art. However, they quickly get sidetracked with some suspicious behaviour of the Stasi officers including keeping bottles of tomato sauce in the sink and drawing floorplans of flats a little too quickly.

(A note of caution: this episode does contain discussion of themes including suicide and sexual assault where this is relevant to the film’s plot.)

Anna Funder’s article on the film which Cory references can be found here, and the more academic article on suicide can be found here. Timothy Garton Ash’s The File is highly praised by both Cory and Mark in the episode, whilst you can also buy tickets for the play here.

Cory’s email newsletter is Paperback Rioter and Mark has a family of email newsletters.

Subscribe to our newsletter for some additional bonus content and to get alerted whenever a new episode comes out.

Our theme tune is “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod/incompetech.com and licensed under the Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

You can also listen to our episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the web or YouTube.

Or to get a little more flavour of the film first, here is its official trailer:

This episode kicks off a special miniseries in which we will be putting out weekly episodes for the next month or so. Next Thursday, we’re starting a two-part series on the classic TV serial State of Play.

We love to hear from our listeners

Whether you are a new or long-standing listener to the podcast, feedback on each episode is always very welcome. Just pop up a comment on the web version of this newsletter:

Leave a comment

Or, if you have any suggestions for what we should cover in future episodes, just hit reply and let us know. Thank you!

News about the theatrical adaptation of The Lives of Others

Cory once again flaunts his reading appetite with talk of more books he has devoured.

Since we recorded this episode, more information has been released about the stage version of The Lives Of Others which is coming to theatres in a fortnight’s time. The most notable new cast announcement for listeners of this podcast is that of Paul Higgins as Grubitz. Higgins is perhaps best known for playing Jamie in The Thick of It and In the Loop, so we can only hope that none of the Stasi officers denigrate the life and works of Al Jolson in this new version of the script.

As discussed on the episode, we may record a bonus episode once Mark and I have both seen the play, and the next play that will feature on Political Fictions should be the absolutely splendid Nye. Assuming that’s still available on National Theatre at Home, we’re hoping to record something on this in the first part of next year.

A slight digression to finish: in this episode I joke that Florian Henckel van Donnersmarck is the Robert Caro of film directors. Fans of Caro’s biographies of Lyndon Johnson will be painfully aware that volume four, The Passage of Power, was released in 2012. In 2011, Caro told an interviewer that volume five would take “two to three years” to write. Fifteen years later, Caro has written 1,100 pages of a final volume but has yet to undertake a planned research trip to Vietnam that was delayed because of the pandemic. I’m sure this happens with many author’s promises about their proposed book deadlines. [I can neither confirm nor deny this – Mark].

The struggle of Caro to finish his literary project this week came to my mind because of the recent publication of a book in another magisterial series: David Kynaston’s chronicling of postwar Britain between 1945 and 1979. The the first three volumes published between 2007 and 2014 covered 17 years, taking the story up to 1962. After hitting the sixties, the pace has slowed down somewhat. The latest volume, Deep into the Sixties, has a title humming with dual meanings. It is 704 pages but covers just eighteen months: from the death of Winston Churchill to World Cup glory. If the other books are anything to go by I will read this volume, and devour it over Christmas like it’s a selection box of the finest chocolates, but do wonder if Kynaston will have reached the 1970s by the end of this decade.

Previously on Political Fictions…

Is “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet” good advice or not?

The Death of Stalin: Armando Iannucci’s 2017 black comedy

Elsewhere from us…

The perils of “jam lust”

Why politicians should pay more attention to the polls (reprise)

Happy listening

Thank you for reading and hope you enjoy the episode. Feedback is always very welcome!

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark

Thank you to Joanna Korczak for getting so close to winning – congratulations and commiserations for getting so close after the Lib Dems had twice in a row finished third in this ward, which is in Josh Reynolds’s constituency.

Thank you to Danny Loveridge for standing and getting the Lib Dems on the ballot paper after the previous no show – and putting the Lib Dems back into contention as one of the top two parties in the ward.

The thanks here for being a Lib Dem candidate go to Rudy Dikty-Daudiyan.

The Lib Dem here was Michael Jones – thank you.

Thank you to Martin Clarke for being the Lib Dem here.

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.

But this week, my eye was caught at the town/parish/community council level by:

Vale Ward, Chesham Town Council
Lib Dem (Nazmeen Akhtar): 245 (54%)
Conservative: 156 (34%)
Green: 33 (7%)
Independent: 22 (5%)

Lib Dem gain from Independent

What do the polls say?

The results above may tell us what voters are deciding on ballot papers, but not everywhere voted. So what’s the overall picture in the polls? Find out each week with my newsletter, The Week in Polls.

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

Sign up to my monthly newsletter, Lib Dem Newswire, to find out:

Not any more though:

Congratulations to new councillor Harry Wormington and the team.

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.

What do the polls say?

The results above may tell us what voters are deciding on ballot papers, but not everywhere voted. So what’s the overall picture in the polls? Find out each week with my newsletter, The Week in Polls.

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

Sign up to my monthly newsletter, Lib Dem Newswire, to find out:

Oscar-winning American director Joseph Strick also made his mark on British politics with a film for the BBC about the 1966 general election, focusing just on the heckling of politicians. An American unused to culture of heckling at public election meetings, he toured the country with his own film crew to capture what was a major part of election campaigning in a political era that had only started adjusting to the impact of TV. Mass public meetings were still a central part of a politician’s campaign diary – as was the need to be able to deal with hecklers.

The resulting film broadcast after the election, The Hecklers, is a fascinating watch and is available in full on YouTube thanks to the BBC. Search for “The Hecklers in full – Newsnight”.

It was not without its controversies, as some suspected that the presence of his cameras was encouraging hecklers hoping to be caught on film and some even suspected him of paying people to heckle.

But it is also a great piece of documentary making, using a careful selection of clips and editing to produce a pacy 45 minutes that has no narrator, no cutaways to talking heads, just an introduction from the director and then no intrusions at all except one piece of heckling after another.

We see both how society and politicians have changed. The repeated clips of large crowds show an era of different employment patterns, different clothing fashions and different ways of audiences getting bored. Here there are no mobile phones to stare at, but there are cards to play instead.

The politicians too are different, not only in their necessary greater ability to deal with heckling but also in what they could get away with. The hecklers frequently sound rather polite compared with the haranguing current politicians often suffer. In speaking back, however, politicians have became far more respectful and polite. Many of the phrases used then to shut up a heckler would now provoke much of the crowd instead, and Jim Callaghan’s patronising sexist comments which secured warm applause from the audience then would not be advisable at all to retry now. And an MP wouldn’t now get away with a V-sign to voters.

It is all well worth a watch.

Sign up to get the latest news and analysis

Here is the full text of Ed Davey’s closing speech at the 2026 Liberal Democrat autumn conference in Brighton:

Something big and dangerous is happening in our country.

Hundreds of thugs, in black shirts and balaclavas, are marching on our streets.

First Dover. Then Portsmouth.

Their aim? To intimidate. To spread fear. To stoke racism.

They may call themselves patriots, but they would tear our country apart.

We must not let them.

Conference, we have seen this before.

Racism on Britain’s streets is sadly nothing new.

Even though the vast majority of our fellow citizens share our values of decency, tolerance and respect – the values that make our country great –

There has always been a small minority hellbent on destroying them.

Mosley’s fascists in the thirties. The National Front in the seventies. Nick Griffin and the BNP just two decades ago.

Each time, they tried to turn neighbour against neighbour, tried to pit community against community, tried to turn our streets into battlegrounds.

But we didn’t let them. The British people said no.

The East End stood firm on Cable Street. Lewisham and Wood Green turned them back. Voters shut the BNP out.

Every generation, we have these men, who pretend to be patriots. Who claim to speak for “real Britain”.

And every generation, the real Britain refuses to accept it.

But something feels different this time, doesn’t it Conference?

Because the blackshirts marching today aren’t doing it in isolation.

They are just the most visible part of a far-right threat that is extremely well-funded.

That extends well beyond the shores of our United Kingdom.

That is promoted by the world’s richest man – Elon Musk – with all the might of his social media platform.

And yes Conference, we have to say it.

This is a far-right movement that is given oxygen, and heat, and fuel by politicians and parties who claim to be serious contenders to lead our country.

Cynical politicians like Nigel Farage.

Not just willing, but eager to fan the flames of hatred and intolerance to make himself richer. To get himself into power.

Trying to create a nation of division and fear – because that’s what keeps him going.

Well Conference, that is not our country. That is not who we are.

It is the worst of Trump’s America.

We must not let it become Farage’s Britain.

And that rhetoric – it goes beyond words. It has real consequences, on our streets and in our communities.

From the shameful attacks on volunteers of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution –

To the friend of mine – a young British woman of Indian descent –

Who was told by Reform activists that, if they got into power, she and her family would have their passports taken away.

And now, those same activists are backed by £72 million from two crypto billionaires.

Conference, if there was any doubt before, there can’t be now.

We are in the fight of our lives. And it is a fight we must win.

No pressure, friends!

But the good news is this: we’re already winning.

I look around this hall and I see so many councillors, so many council leaders, so many Members of Parliament – in Westminster, Holyrood and Cardiff Bay.

And all of you who’ve helped get them elected.

We’re even winning in Devon – whatever you might have heard!

More and more of you every year.

All of us, dedicated to building a United Kingdom of fairness, decency, and community.

We are utterly united in condemning racism in all its forms.

But condemnation alone is not enough. We have to understand why it’s happening – so we can defeat it.

People are fed up.

They see a politics that promises change and fails to deliver.

Their bills keep rising. Their kids still can’t afford a home of their own. Their loved ones still wait too long for a GP appointment.

When people stop believing politics can change their lives, they get cynical. Angry. And they’re not wrong.

When our young people can’t see a future for themselves in our communities, they stop looking. And they turn to their screens instead.

Screens that offer the illusion of excitement. The illusion of connection. The illusion of belonging.

But screens that only deepen the sense of emptiness and loneliness that no amount of scrolling can ever fill.

Is it any wonder the populists have found something to exploit?

Their whole agenda is to tear everything down. And when people are desperate for change, “tear it all down” starts to sound like the only honest thing left.

People feel powerless, and they’re looking for anyone who seems willing to tell the truth about how broken things feel.

We have to understand that, Conference.

Because the fight against those forces really is the fight of our lives.

It will take more than a manifesto. It will take a movement, rooted in decency, fairness and community. British values. Liberal values.

And that movement can’t just talk to itself.

We won’t win the fight of our lives by retreating into our own bubble, talking only to people who already agree with us.

Just look at today’s Conservative Party.

Kemi Badenoch is now blocking anyone from standing for the Conservatives who cares about human rights or climate action.

Millions of decent, moderate Conservative voters are getting her message, and they’re turning away – increasingly, to us.

That’s what happens when you talk only to yourselves. You don’t just keep people out. You drive your own people away.

Real Liberalism is rooted in seeing the value of every human being – not just the ones who share our appearance or our beliefs.

A free society is messy. It’s full of disagreement.

And as Liberals, we don’t erase our differences. We confront them.

The way people across our country overcome their differences every day.

Not by shouting past each other, but by building real human connections.

Person to person. Neighbour to neighbour. Street by street.

Because when that person you disagree with stops being just another little box on your social media feed, and becomes a human being with a face, a home and a life –

That’s when we make progress.

And Conference, if this all sounds eerily familiar – it should!

Because this is exactly what our party has always been about.

The community politics we practise day-in, day-out. Real community politics. That’s the answer.

Because community politics is not some cunning tactic to win a few more votes at election time.

It’s a year-round commitment to form those human connections. To be truly a part of the communities we serve.

Going from doorstep to doorstep. High street to village hall. Train station to school gate.

Showing people that democracy can actually work for them. That it can change their lives and their communities for the better.

Not doing things to people. Not even doing things for people.

But doing things with them. And giving them the power to do more for themselves.

Friends, I’ve seen the life-changing power of community politics very close to home.

We have a lot of brilliant Liberal Democrat councillors in Kingston.

But there’s one who I think is especially brilliant. Some of you might know her…

My wonderful wife Emily.

Emily is leading Kingston’s biggest council house building programme in half a century.

But what makes her a brilliant Liberal isn’t just the number of homes she’s building. It’s how she’s doing it.

When Emily took over, there was already a plan to regenerate the borough’s biggest council estate.

But it was a plan drawn up by the old Conservative council – who’d given no say at all to the people who actually live there.

It was something being done to them, not with them.

So Emily said no. It’s their home. They should have a say.

And she insisted on an estate-wide ballot.

That decision was transformative.

It forced council officers and the developer to visit the estate. It forced them to actually talk to the tenants – and listen to them.

And guess what? It resulted in better homes, better designed.

And the residents voted for them in big numbers. But just as important – they felt good about it.

They could hardly believe someone had asked their opinion. Gave them a say. Took power and put it in their hands.

Families have started moving into the first new homes, and Emily’s been to see some of them.

One told her something that still chokes both of us up.

They said about their new flat, “We don’t deserve this.”

“We don’t deserve this.”

That’s how hopeless the old system had made them feel.

But now they’re hopeful again.

That, my friends, is real community politics. Real Liberalism.

And I am so proud to be married to someone who puts Liberalism into practice – for some of the most vulnerable and deprived people in my constituency.

Emily, I’m so proud of you.

I think about this every time I hear people say that politics can’t change anything.

It can. It does.

Every single day, in council chambers and surgeries and parliaments up and down this country, Liberal Democrats are proving that votes can make a difference.

That your voice can change things.

That with liberal community politics, we can answer people’s hopelessness and powerlessness.

Not with a slogan, not with a scapegoat, but with hard work.

With the fight of our lives.

As I’ve said to you Conference before, if you want one sentence that sums up what Liberalism means to me, it’s this:

Being a Liberal is about empowering the powerless, and holding the already powerful to account.

And it’s not just councils or developers we need to hold to account, is it Conference?

It’s the water companies – polluting our rivers while paying vast sums in dividends and bonuses.

The social media barons – poisoning the minds of our children while stirring up division and hatred.

The corrupt politicians – enriching themselves while taking everyone else for granted.

And there’s a new power we can’t afford to ignore. That needs to be held to account now. Urgently.

Artificial intelligence is already changing our lives – in ways we notice, and ways we don’t.

Handled well, it could cure diseases, make work easier, unlock discoveries we can barely imagine.

But handled badly, it concentrates more power in fewer hands than at any point in human history.

And that is a threat not only to our country and our communities, but to the future of our whole species.

Some of the very scientists and engineers building this technology are warning that super-intelligent AI could – and this is a direct quote – “kill us all”.

That is not science fiction. That is a live warning, from the people who know.

Not just the fight of our lives. The fight for life itself.

And yet right now, the future of this technology is being decided by a tiny number of the richest and most powerful men in California and in Beijing.

Racing each other with no guard rails and no one to slow them down.

Conference, we would never accept that with any other existential threat. And we must not accept it when it comes to AI.

Take nuclear weapons.

We didn’t leave the atom bomb to a few billionaires to police themselves.

We built the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nations working together to control a technology that could destroy us all.

And on climate change, our party has always been at the forefront of pushing for international action. Global action.

We led the work in Europe, forging a historic deal that laid the ground for the Paris Agreement.

We did those things because – as Liberals – we know that something as existential as nuclear weapons or climate change cannot be left in the hands of a powerful few.

And so it must be with AI.

Now, I’m not the only person to compare AI to climate change. Donald Trump has done it too. He says they’re both “hoaxes”.

But Trump also says the only thing we need to protect us against AI is a “smart President”.

I don’t know about you Conference, but I feel safer already!

Can we leave it to Trump to save us all? No!

Can we leave it to Mark Zuckerberg? To Sam Altman? To Elon Musk? No!

But I’m afraid the plan Andy Burnham has set out – a partnership with Trump’s Department of War – doesn’t come close to meeting the scale of this threat.

It only risks making us more dependent on a Trump administration in the pocket of the tech bros.

So it’s up to us to rise to this challenge, friends.

We need a global treaty to press pause on super-intelligent AI now, before it’s too late.

We need a new International AI Safety Agency – like we have for nuclear – to stop anyone from developing this technology recklessly.

A liberal solution – because the problem is fundamentally one about power. It’s too concentrated, and we must break it up.

But we must also pay attention to the other half of our liberal equation.

Giving people more power.

Not just doing things for them, because “the state knows best”, as I fear Andy Burnham may be inclined to do.

Or leaving them to sink or swim – as Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage are already promising to do.

But empowering people by helping everyone to be the best they can be – for themselves.

That is the liberal mission.

Again, it doesn’t start with policies. It starts with a mindset.

And I think about it most when I think about our son, John.

Emily and I were told, when John was small, that he would spend his life in a wheelchair, permanently.

We were told we needed to accept it. But we didn’t.

We sought out therapy that helps his muscles. We learnt exercises to help him control his own body.

Emily spent two years painstakingly teaching him to crawl.

I’ve just talked about the lengths Emily goes to for her housing tenants, so you can imagine the lengths she’ll go to for our son.

Slowly but surely – and with a lot of help – we’ve empowered John to hold his own weight, and to walk if aided.

When we go on family walks, he rides a tricycle – and he loves it.

Let me tell you this, Conference. Too many of our social service systems don’t empower people like John. They don’t have that culture.

They think care is something you do to people.

But Emily and I have been incredibly fortunate.

We were lucky to find therapists for John who did believe in empowering him.

I’m an MP. Emily is a councillor and a lawyer. We’ve had a lot of support from family and friends.

But even so, we have had to fight for John, every step of the way.

And I know that, for most people who aren’t so lucky, the fight is much harder.

I see them every week in my constituency surgery. Like the parents fighting for their kids with special educational needs.

Battling a system that’s supposed to be there for them and their child. But instead it beats them down and makes them feel hopeless. Trapped. Powerless.

Ask any parent in that position – and I know there are lots of you here in this hall – and they’ll tell you.

We don’t want charity. We don’t want a system that does everything for us.

We know our children best, and we love them like no one else can ever love them.

What we want is a system that empowers us and our children, so we can help them thrive.

That’s what real care is all about. It doesn’t just manage people – it unlocks their potential.

That’s what I’m fighting for. A liberal country. A caring country.

That is the fight of our lives.

And it all starts right at the very beginning.

At birth.

That precious, miraculous moment when everything changes.

It should be a time of unblemished joy.

But right now, here in one of the richest countries on Earth, giving birth is not always safe.

Inquiry after inquiry has found the same horrifying pattern.

Mothers and babies left with life-changing injuries – or worse – because of a maternity system stretched far beyond its limits.

Midwives doing their best, but exhausted, and in buildings that aren’t fit for purpose.

That shames our country. And we won’t accept it.

We will give mothers the one-to-one care they need, make every maternity unit safe, and end this scandal once and for all.

Conference, I believe Britain should be the safest place in the world to give birth.

And it should be the best country in the world to raise a family too.

But that promise cannot be realised while families are being crushed by rising bills and an economy that feels rigged against them.

They cannot be powerful or free while a cost-of-living crisis grinds them down every day.

The young couple who did everything they were told to do – worked hard, saved what they could – and still can’t get near a mortgage.

Still renting a flat that eats up their income. Watching the dream of owning a home drift further out of reach.

The pensioner who was scared to turn on a fan this summer, now scared to turn on the heating this winter.

The people who say “I’m working harder than ever. I managed to get a promotion and a pay rise. But somehow I’m struggling more than I was before.”

And we know what has brought us to this point, don’t we Conference?

The terrible economic damage of the Conservatives’ Brexit deal – backed, let’s never forget, by Nigel Farage.

A deal that put up barriers to trade, that tied up British businesses in costs and red tape, that pushed up prices on our supermarket shelves.

A deal that took opportunities away from our young people.

The botched Brexit deal. All the Conservative chaos that followed.

And then Labour – instead of fixing it – have only added to the pain with damaging tax hikes and their own chaos and their own infighting.

And even now, Andy Burnham refuses to open the door to the European single market.

We are the only ones with the courage to say it, aren’t we Conference?

Fixing our relationship with Europe is the only way to get our economy back on track.

And we are fighting to do just that.

To put Britain back where it belongs. Back at the heart of Europe.

This, too, is the fight of our lives.

Last year, I set out our plan for a new customs union, to slash the Brexit red tape.

Now I’m going further, because this moment demands it.

Not just a customs union, but joining the single market too.

Bringing down those barriers to trade. Breathing new life into our economy. And bolstering our collective security too.

Not just a growth plan. A defence plan.

To defeat Putin. To protect our continent and our country.

Truly the fight of our lives.

And growing our economy like this will mean we can tackle the cost of living too.

That starts with income tax.

Look what’s happened over the last few years – because of the lack of growth.

Desperate for another source of money, governments – both Conservative and Labour – have taken it out of people’s pockets.

How? By freezing the tax-free personal allowance.

Raising income tax by stealth.

Taking hundreds of pounds more out of the payslips of ordinary people, every year.

A stealth tax to pay the cost of the economic vandalism of Johnson and Farage.

When we were in government, our party did the opposite.

We raised the personal allowance by £4,000.

Taking more than 3 million people out of paying income tax altogether.

It was a profoundly liberal thing to do.

Rewarding hard work and aspiration. Helping the lowest paid the most.

Trusting people to spend their own money, not telling them the state knows best.

And our liberal approach is what is needed again today.

So I’m announcing our plan to raise the tax-free personal allowance to £15,000.

Taking 2 million more people out of paying tax altogether, and giving most taxpayers a £680 tax cut.

Real money, back in people’s pockets.

Now – you might have heard Robert Jenrick say something similar at Reform’s conference. In between trying to defend Farage’s latest funding scandal.

But here’s the big difference.

Jenrick didn’t say this, but Reform’s figures show they’d pay for it by ripping £22 billion of crucial support away from disabled people.

Think about that. Reform say you can have a tax cut, but only if they get to punish disabled people at the same time.

We say no. We can cut taxes and support the most vulnerable people in our country.

Because we will pay for our tax cut fairly and honestly.

Not with more borrowing. Not with fantasy spending cuts that never materialise. Not by hiking your taxes by stealth elsewhere.

We will pay for it from the dividends of growth. The growth that comes from our bold new partnership with Europe.

Closer trade brings growth. Growth brings tax revenue.

And we will give that revenue back to the people who created it in the first place – the British people, through their work, every single day.

That is the difference between us and Reform.

Their tax cut is paid for through cruelty.

Ours is paid for by the growth of a stronger economy.

We did it before. We can do it again.

And we can go further, to tackle a second unfairness – one we didn’t deal with when we were in government.

Back then, we rightly focused on raising the personal allowance – but let more people fall into the 40p income tax band.

And the post-Brexit stealth taxes have pulled more and more people into paying that higher rate tax.

Thirty years ago, just 2 million people paid it. Now it’s 9 million.

A tax band designed for stockbrokers is now holding back teachers and nurses.

That’s not fair. It’s not right.

And tellingly, Reform have said they will do nothing about it.

But we will. Because our growth plan will mean we can raise the 40p threshold to £56,000.

Taking hundreds of thousands of ordinary people out of paying higher rate tax.

Growing our economy with Europe. Backing our great British businesses. Putting money back into people’s pockets.

That is our vision for a better economy. A liberal vision where everyone feels the benefits.

But Conference, there is a bigger, more fundamental change we need to talk about.

A change to the nature of politics itself.

Because the things that have gone wrong in our country, the crises we face – the maternity crisis, the housing shortage, the sewage scandal, the cost of living, the sense that nothing quite works the way it should –

These are not the failings of the British people. Not for one second.

These are the failings of governments. Labour governments. Conservative governments. SNP governments in Holyrood.

They are the failings of governments that don’t listen, that take people for granted, and let them down.

But here’s the good news. There is no failing of British governments that cannot be put right by the talents of the British people. Not one.

We have the engineers and entrepreneurs, the teachers and carers, the scientists, the small business owners who open up at six in the morning and lock up at ten at night.

It isn’t hard work our country’s short of. It isn’t talent we’re lacking.

What we are lacking is a system that empowers people to make the most of their talents.

Our United Kingdom is a great country. A truly great country.

But it’s a country being held back.

Held back by governments that failed it, and by a system that is broken.

And it is us who will give the British people the power and the freedom to take our country forward.

Not Reform with their politics of grievance and blame.

Not a tired Conservative Party that has learnt nothing from its failure.

Not a Labour Party that just doesn’t understand so many parts of the country.

But us. Liberals. That is our task.

To change our broken politics so we can fix our country.

To win the fight of our lives.

I won’t pretend to you that it will be easy.

This is a fight against hopelessness and cynicism

Against populists who profit from division.

Against the forces that would tear our country apart.

And those forces have now got £72 million behind them.

They are going to throw everything they’ve got at us – and at the values that we hold dear.

But Conference, we will not back down.

We will stand and fight for the country we love.

Because this fight isn’t just about the next election.

It’s about the future of our country. What kind of Britain our children grow up in – and whether they can be proud of it.

It’s not just a choice between policy platforms. It’s a choice between tearing our great country down and looking for someone to blame, or lifting it up by trusting the British people.

Between a politics of grievance and a politics of empowerment.

That is the choice. And it is ours to win.

So when we leave this hall, let’s remember why.

For the family doing the sums at the kitchen table, who need it to be just a little bit easier.

For the mother holding her newborn baby, who should be able to look forward with hope.

For John, and everyone like him, who deserve care that empowers them to thrive.

For that young woman on her doorstep, whose Britishness should not be up for debate.

Let’s build a country that works for them.

Let’s put more money in people’s pockets and more power in people’s hands.

Let’s change our politics so we can build a country that is richer. Safer. More liberal in the truest sense of that word – not a label, but a promise:

That who you are, where you’re from, and what you look like will never determine whether you belong here or how far you can go.

Friends, this is a fight for the future of our country.

A fight for liberty, equality and community.

A fight for the values we hold dear.

This is the fight of our lives.

And we are going to win it.

Sign up to get the latest news and analysis

Get the books

As well as covering some books in the podcast, we also mention others in the newsletter’s bonus content. You can browse all the books mentioned and get them for yourself via my Bookshop.org page (affiliate link).

The West Wing: Let Bartlet Be Bartlet

Our latest podcast heads across the Atlantic for a dip into one of the political TV classics:

Mark and Cory talk about a giant of American political drama for the first time this week, as they tackle The West Wing. They talk about Let Bartlet Be Bartlet, the nineteenth episode of series one. In it, Mark wonders if The West Wing is actually the epitome of the “Boris Johnson school of politics”, Cory outmanoeuvres Mark into confirming we will record a Christmas Special about Love, Actually and they debate whether the central message of this episode has been misunderstood.

Cory’s email newsletter is Paperback Rioter and Mark has a family of email newsletters.

Subscribe to our newsletter for some additional bonus content and to get alerted whenever a new episode comes out.

Our theme tune is “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod/incompetech.com and licensed under the Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

You can also listen to our episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the web or YouTube.

Next time, we’re discussing The Lives of Others.

We love to hear from our listeners

Whether you are a new or long-standing listener to the podcast, feedback on each episode is always very welcome. Just pop up a comment on the web version of this newsletter:

Leave a comment

Or, if you have any suggestions for what we should cover in future episodes, just hit reply and let us know. Thank you!

Gloria Steinhem

Cory brings some bonus content for our newsletter readers this week, including yet another attempt to slip more material into Mark’s ‘must watch’ pile.

Hope you enjoy this episode on The West Wing, which is one of my favourites that we’ve recorded so far. I’m particularly interested at the fact that the central message of the episode has been so misunderstood and ignored, which is something I plan to return to soon in my own newsletter.

We also mention that we wish to return to The West Wing in a later episode, so are looking for examples of episodes we can dip into which would be fruitful for us to talk about. In particular, we’re interested in episodes that might provide teachable political moments or insights into political strategy. If you have an example of one you’d like us to talk about, or a classic West Wing clip that might be a good springboard for an episode, please do let us know in the comments to the online version of this post.

The news over the last couple of weeks have also reminded me of a couple of political fictions which we will hopefully cover at some point.

Earlier this month the journalist and campaigner for women’s rights Gloria Steinhem died at the age of 92. She was a massively influential figure in the 1970s, and if you’re interested in American Politics in this period I can highly recommend Mrs America. Steinhem is played by Rose Byrne as the drama follows the efforts of a number of campaigners to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Cate Blanchett stars as Phyllis Schlafly, who leads opposition to this campaign from the conservative right. The series is currently streaming online and we will hopefully discuss the show if it returns to BBC iPlayer.

This week, the news has been dominated [are you sure this is the right verb? – Mark] by a referendum in Piddington. It certainly makes me think that we should push Passport to Pimlico further up our list, as the Ealing Comedies are definitely quite political films. Someone on BlueSky also made me aware of the existence of the 1998 comedy series A Perfect State, which seems to essentially have the same plot as Passport to Pimlico. To ensure I don’t drive Mark completely mad by adding more and more things to the list, maybe I’ll leave that TV show off our master spreadsheet for now and instead begin the Passport to Pimlico lobbying campaign.

Finally, I’m a bit disturbed that real life is beginning to intrude into our podcasts. Those of you who follow Mark’s other newsletters may know that he is leading work for the Lib Dems in the debates on the Representation of the People Bill that is currently being debated in the House of Lords. Bearing that in mind, I was intrigued to read the following paragraphs in Politico’s Playbook this week:

Side quest: A Labour peer meanwhile used the elections bill debate to threaten amendments to all government bills at second reading, in protest at ministers adding tweaks to legislation without Commons votes. Following the debate on the Representation of the People Bill last night, Jeffrey Rooker told peers 15 new clauses had been added without debates, speeches or votes in the Commons — an increasingly regular occurrence. He said Lords were being treated as “Charlies” and being blamed for adding the amendments themselves.

Worth noting: Conservative and Lib Dem peers backed his comments, so there could be an upper chamber revolt against the government coming down the track.

Now this is very intriguing, because Jeff Rooker is one of the Labour backbenchers in the 1974-9 Parliament who attempted to insert a rebel amendment into the Budget, as featured in This House which we discussed in one of our earliest episodes.

That amendment became the Rooker-Wise amendment and changed the basics of budget debates all the way through to the present day. A fame that perhaps explains why Lord Rooker was named in that Politico story about his latest amendment, but Mark (who also spoke in favour of it) was reduced to a nameless “Lib Dem peer”.

Previously on Political Fictions…

The Death of Stalin: Armando Iannucci’s 2017 black comedy

The Absence of War: David Hare’s fictionalised version of the 1992 general election

Elsewhere from us…

Andy Burnham’s in-tray of doom

How to fix the problem of money in our politics

Happy listening

Thank you for reading and hope you enjoy the episode. Feedback is always very welcome!

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark