I responded on behalf of the Liberal Democrats to two government statements in the House of Lords this week. I’ll write more about the one on Capita in the next few days, but here first is the one about Peter Mandelson.

A daisy-chain of verbal briefings is no way to do vetting

Responding to a government statement in Parliament, I raised the daisy-chain of verbal briefings that took place over the vetting results for Peter Mandelson.

The more senior the person, the more their crucial role, the more removed they were from seeing the relevant paperwork. That’s wrong. We need a complete overhaul of how vetting is done for key posts:

It wasn’t though the only problem I raised, as you can read in my full speech in response to the government’s latest statement on the affair:

My Lords, at the heart of this issue is the bravery of the women and girls who spoke up to reveal the truth about Jeffrey Epstein. Following his evil and criminal behaviour, there have been multiple failures of our political systems – failures that are now rightly seeing the end of various political careers. The events also raise questions about how we fix our broken systems so that we can deal much better with whatever future crises or scandals occur.

So I very much welcome the positive noises now being made about new legislation – for example, to allow peerages to be revoked in the case of scandal. However, it is fair to say that the track record of reform in this place is somewhat slow, so I hope that the Minister can confirm both that such legislation is imminent and that it will be given priority in the legislative queue, so that there is an opportunity for Parliament to debate and, if it so decides, pass such legislation promptly in the new Session.

It is also very welcome to have heard of the plans for the review into the vetting processes by Adrian Fulford, particularly because the more we hear details of what happened with the vetting, the more questions are thrown up. I will give just two examples. One is the sequence: make an appointment, announce the appointment, then carry out vetting after the announcement. Leaving aside questions of how well established that process and sequencing is and who knew about it, it is clearly a sequence of events that invites disaster. Vetting should surely come before an announcement, not after, because that is the way to minimise any pressure to come up with a politically convenient answer and to be fair to everyone involved, including somebody who fails the vetting process.

Also inviting disaster is the daisy chain of oral briefings that we now know took place without key decision-makers seeing the relevant summary of the vetting verdict paperwork. As we now know, the official who saw the paperwork orally briefed the FCDO official, Ian Collard, who did not see the paperwork

himself. He, in turn, orally briefed Olly Robbins, who also did not see the paperwork. He, in turn, had oral discussions with the Prime Minister, who again did not see the paperwork so was, in fact, having matters described to him third hand. In other words, the more senior the person and the more crucial their personal decision-making in the process, the more removed they were from seeing the core paperwork involved.

There is obviously a political question in this about why the Prime Minister proceeded with such a process, but there is also a crucial issue for the future. Such a daisy chain of decision-making – with one person speaking to another person, who then speaks to another person, who then speaks to another person, without the authoritative written verdict of the vetting system being in front of everyone – is a process that invites disaster.

I hope the Minister can, as well as addressing my question about legislation to remove peerages, also confirm that these issues relating to vetting processes are within the scope of the Fulford review, that the review will be published soon – maybe even at pace – and that this House will have an opportunity to discuss that review promptly.

The response from the minister, Baroness Anderson, on those sequencing and legislation points showed some welcome progress:

In terms of the legislation on removal of peerages, obviously, it is not for me to pre-empt the King’s Speech, but noble Lords will be aware that we have discussed this many times from this Dispatch Box and I expect to see such legislation forthcoming. I look forward, as the policy Minister, to discussing it in great detail with the noble Lord when we get to that point.

The noble Lord raised a very important point about vetting before an appointment. That process has now been explicitly changed, both for political appointees and for political appointees in the diplomatic space: vetting would need to be done before an announcement.

As she said, more discussion on the details – and more emails! – to come.

From other Lib Dem peers…

In case you missed previously…

The Home Office tackles an apostrophe but not Elon Musk

Two steps forward but also two missed opportunities to improve our democracy

Elsewhere from me…

Beware a key fact about the local election MRPs

Thank you

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

Best wishes,

Mark

Taken from Behind the Gallup Poll by Henry Durant, 1951 (intermittently available from second-hand booksellers).

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 and similar 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.

Understanding different polling firms

You may find these posts useful:

• ‘Waiting for Survation’: a reminder of the value of checking the evidence.
• YouGov: is it biased to the Conservatives?

Frequently Asked Questions

• Why isn’t polling company X in the table?
• Are MRP polls any good?
• How can a poll of just 1,000 people tell us the views of millions of people?
• Margins of error
• How can I see the longer-term trends?
• What about the SNP and Plaid?
• What about Northern Ireland?
• Has the choice of parties biased the poll?
• Aren’t polls just wildly inaccurate these days?
• Are the opinion pollsters regulated?
• How come I don’t know anyone who has been polled?

Why isn’t polling company X in the table?

The table above includes the latest UK or British voting intention poll from each of the currently active reputable pollsters.

If a company isn’t listed this is because it has not carried out a recent poll, it isn’t reputable or I’ve made an error. Please get in touch if you suspect it’s the latter. ‘Reputable’ usually means being a member of the polling industry regulatory body, the British Polling Council (BPC). I occasionally make exceptions, such as for a new polling firm with a good pedigree which hasn’t yet had its BPC membership approved.

Are MRP polls any good?

MRP polls are a way of getting give individual constituency results without having to do a full poll in each constituency. I’ve written a guide to how MRP polls work and whether they’re likely to be right here.

How can a poll of just 1,000 people tell us the views of millions of people?

It can appear baffling that a poll of only 1,000 people is meant to be enough to reveal the mood of a nation of tens of millions of people. But 1,000 or so is indeed enough, as I explain here.

Margins of error

A rough idea of the likely margin of error in any one opinion poll is to think that it’s pretty likely to be within 3 percentage points of the correct result. Anthony Wells explains here in more detail what this margin of error calculation means, and why it does not strictly apply to modern polls. Based on the historic record of polls, the British Polling Council requires its members to use this explanation of the margin of error:

All polls are subject to a wide range of potential sources of error. On the basis of the historical record of the polls at recent general elections, there is a 9 in 10 chance that the true value of a party’s support lies within 4 points of the estimates provided by this poll, and a 2 in 3 chance that they lie within 2 points.

How can I see the longer-term trends?

When looking through the polling figures, remember the much ignored but still very relevant warning about individual polls.

To put the voting intention numbers above into longer context, take a look at PollBase, my database of general election voting intention figures from opinion polls going back to 1945. It is updated quarterly.

What about the SNP and Plaid?

Separate figures are not given for the SNP and Plaid because the relative size of Scotland and Wales means that the percentage vote share for each of the across Great Britain is too low for variations to mean much. (For example, at the 2017 general election, the SNP scored 3% of the total vote across Great Britain. A fall to 2% would be a move that is well within the margin of errors on polls yet also, if accurate, would be a massive hammering in the constituencies it contests.)

What about Northern Ireland?

Most of these polls are for Great Britain, i.e. excluding Northern Ireland but including both Scotland and Wales. General election voting intention polls conducted over a smaller area, such as London only, are excluded.

Has the choice of parties biased the poll?

A plausible-sounding critique of voting intention opinion polls is over the choice of parties to ask about. These polls list some parties up front and then give an ‘other’ option, behind which sits other, much smaller parties. Labour, for example, will be in the first category but the Women’s Equality Party in the second. Which often leads people to complain that a poll is biased against party X because it is listed in the other section rather than in the main party listing. That sounds plausible, but the evidence is that this doesn’t unfairly depress the support for other parties.

Aren’t polls just wildly inaccurate these days?

Not so: the evidence is that they are still pretty good – and haven’t got worse. Here’s the data that does that myth-busting. Here too is how the polls did in the 2024 general election.

Are the opinion pollsters regulated?

Yes, by the Market Research Society and also by the British Polling Council, which all the reputable political polling firms are members of. The BPC’s rules include requiring pollsters to publish in full the exact questions asked for their polls, protecting against leading questions being secretly asked.

The regulation could, though, be improved.

How come I don’t know anyone who has been polled?

You do now.

And for an explanation of why it’s common for people not to have been polled, see this.

How can I find out more about understanding polls?

There’s a chapter on the subject in my book, Bad News, or for a whole book about polls, see Polling UnPacked.

Wednesday brought this:

Thank you to Antony Duke for being the Liberal Democrat here.

And on Thursday:

The thanks here go to Sandy Carter.

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.

A bonus quirky bit of news about the local elections:

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:

The progress of County Durham’s Liberal Democrats is something the wider party can learn from.

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).

Much of the source data for this table comes via Britain Elects, Election Maps UK or ALDC. Thank you to all three.

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: 2024-25, 2023-24, 2022-23 and 2021-22.

Welcome to Lib Dem Newswire #208, which takes a look at that favourite election season topic: are we doing too many leaflets? The rest of this edition includes my first report back from my new role in the party, new polling on what local issues matter most to people, a policy idea for England’s cities and more.

First, however, congratulations to the Lib Dem councillor newly elected since last time, Jayne Mackie, and her team.

One other preliminary: I have recently switched to using the online Keeper password manager, which makes it easy to create secure, unique passwords for all your logins, while also keeping them easy to use. You can get a free trial and then 30% off your first year with this affiliate link.

Best wishes,

Mark

P.S. If you haven’t yet had time to read it, last time’s edition is available online: Why the Lib Dems need more candidates.

The great news is that we were successful at this, once again. This time the proportion of seats contested by a Lib Dem is 78%, up from 70% at the same point in the previous cycle. More work to do, but we continue to improve.

Why does so much of Whitehall move so slowly?

Regular readers will know that there are many examples of secondary legislation moving slowly. What, though, is the bigger picture tying together the nerdy examples?

Read on to find out what my first attempt at answering that looks like – and because it is a first attempt, feedback is especially welcome:

Why does so much of Whitehall move so slowly?

‘When not if’: why the Lib Dems are aiming for second

Last week I appeared on The Spectator‘s podcast, Coffee House Shots, alongside Lib Dem MP Al Pinkerton and discussing the party’s prospects and ambitions in the local elections. Somehow we got into talking about the merits of broccoli in politics:

All The President’s Men: what the famous movie doesn’t tell you

The latest episode of Political Fictions is out, taking a look at the classic US political conspiracy drama about Richard Nixon’s shenanigans, All The President’s Men:

Mark and Cory talk about All The President’s Men, which was released 50 years ago this month.

Mark gets to do his rant about how this film is basically Raiders of the Lost Ark, we ponder whether it’s got the most realistic rubbish of any movie, get very excited about a door and explain why the film presents Queen Elizabeth as launching a bid for absolute rule.

You can listen to Slate’s Slow Burn series on Watergate which Cory recommends here.

Mark talks about Jane Alexander’s Oscar-nominated role as Best Supporting Actress despite her only being on screen for less than seven minutes. (Apologies for the mistake about saying she won that year.) There is an interview with her in The Guardian to mark the film’s 50th anniversary here.

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

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

As well as listening here, you can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or in your favourite podcast app.

You can sign up to the podcast’s email list here.

The previous episode took a look at The Thick of It, Series 1.

The Lib Dem challenge

Q. Are we delivering too many leaflets? A. No, and here’s why…

With campaigning for the May elections well under way, now is a good time for an update to my long-standing piece about leaflets, and why the Lib Dems deliver so many of them.

Q. Do leaflets work?

A. Yes.

Q. Really?

A. Yup. There’s plenty of evidence, both internal party evidence (e.g. tracking changes in canvass data in the aftermath of leaflets) and also academic research. Examples of the latter are here and here, and there’s also polling evidence of voters remembering getting leaflets and being influenced by them. Plus there’s the evidence of what other parties have done when they’ve walloped us in elections.

Q. OK, one leaflet I understand. But why so many?

A. The typical leaflet gets only a few seconds consideration from a member of the public – so you need to do a lot of leaflets to get anything more than the merest sliver of information over. Most of the time for most people it’ll take several leaflets to get as much attention and information over as I hope you are getting from sitting down and reading just this one blog post.

Q. But what about digital campaigning?

A. No prizes for guessing that I’ll answer by saying that it is a crucial part of modern campaigning. It’s not a choice between online and offline though. It’s a bit like asking if we should put vowels or consonants in the next press release. The answer is both.

One big starting advantage that leaflets have, however, is that we can find out where pretty much every letterbox in the constituency or ward is – and we’re legally allowed to push something through it. (Except that one letterbox in a marginal ward near me which, even with the help of satellite imagery and a special Sunday morning exploration trip, I STILL cannot find.)

Online campaigning has many strengths, but it doesn’t have that same immediate and extensive reach.

Q. Come on, don’t you see how old fashioned leaflets are? Get with the 21st century!

A. Look at what the most digitally savvy and successful companies do, even those whose whole business is based on the internet. Both Google and Apple, for example, do extensive publicity and marketing activities offline alongside their super-smart online activities.

What’s more, here’s the data from the Electoral Commission’s research after the 2019 general election:

Over half the people who took part in our survey after the election said they saw campaign materials from parties and candidates, around a third said they got information from the televised leader debates or online sources.

• 55% of people who took part in our research after the election said that they got information from leaflets/flyers
• 32% from a party leader debate on television
• 29% from newspapers or news websites
• 24% from social media posts and adverts by campaigners

Their similar report for the 2024 election had an even higher number for leaflets:

The most common ways people reported seeing information were:

• A leaflet or flyer from a candidate or political party (63%)
• TV news (48%)
• Social media (39%)
• A news website (35%)
• TV debates (35%)
• Word of mouth (24%)

Q. Yeah, but do people actually like those leaflets?

Here’s what Professor Phil Cowley had to say about research into this:

Drawing on data from the 2016 Welsh Senedd elections, it initially asked people what they had noticed receiving from the parties – and, once again, leaflets were top, by a long way.

Then they asked what form of communication they wanted from the parties, the first time I have ever seen this question asked.

Turns out about a third said that they didn’t want to be contacted at all. Not so much ‘we never see you around here apart from at elections’, more ‘we never see you around here and that’s the way we like it’.

But of those who said they did want to hear from the parties, top came leaflets – the preferred choice of just under a third of respondents. There was then a sizeable gap before any of the other methods of contact: email and home visits (both 11%), or personal letters (9%), with e-campaigning methods coming in at 3%.

Q. That’s all very well, but what about all these complaints from people?

It’s a comment that often comes up during successful campaigns. The reason why it’s not the problem it may first appear is that people vary greatly in their interest in leaflets and toleration of them, which means that if nobody is complaining then you are doing less than the most intolerant person likes to receive – and far less than the average person is happy to receive.

Complaints shouldn’t be ignored (and if lots of people are complaining about too many leaflets, that may mean the leaflets and the message aren’t interesting enough to them). They do, though, need to be judged carefully, and the occasional complaint isn’t a cause for doing less – just as the occasional complaint when canvassing from someone who doesn’t like being called on doesn’t mean that we’re doing too much door-knocking.

Q. But surely sometimes those complaints have a point?

Aside from politeness, another good reason not to dismiss such complaints out of hand is that ‘you’re doing too many’ often subtly means something different.

Complaints about quantity often mask problems with quality – people think there are too many leaflets because they find them boring, irrelevant or both. When people are interested in something, they are willing to read huge amounts about it. But they need to find it interesting.

Or they may reveal a bit of a mix-up with our logistical arrangements, with leaflets not being spaced out in the way we planned. That’s useful to know.

Q. OK, but surely there must be some limit beyond which too many leaflets really is too many?

A. Yes, it is possible to do too many just as it is (in theory, so people tell me) possible to eat too much chocolate.

Looking at the evidence, though, that limit looks to be well beyond our delivery capacity in all but the most exceptional of circumstances. If we get the quality right (see above), the issue is our capacity to deliver not the limit of efficacy.

Q. Well ok… but why am I, a party member, getting so many, even letters addressed to me?

A. For unaddressed leaflets, picking out a few properties to skip can be a lot of hassle for not very much reward, which is why unaddressed leaflets tend to go to everyone.

As for addressed mail, which is frequently carefully targeted, there are a trio of reasons for including members.

First, the mailshots often urge people to do things, such as put up a poster, sign up for a postal vote or make a donation, all of which apply to members too.

Second, members usually want to know what the party is up to and excluding them from lots of information about the campaign can leave them in the dark. Even hardcore activists often like receiving all this literature – because they then know what other people are talking about when they get into conversations about the campaign.

Third, not all members always vote Lib Dem. A member might, for example, be unhappy with the party and thinking of leaving. Even if they are happy about voting Lib Dem, members are – like other voters – prone sometimes to forgetting to vote or getting distracted from voting.

Q. Is there anything else I should know about leafleting?

A. There’s more to delivering leaflets than meets the eye, as explained in my leafleting tips video.

Or to hear about the findings from research into political leaflets, take a listen to my podcast interview with Caitlin Milazzo.

Q. What’s your favourite leaflet from this year’s elections?

A. This one.

Good luck, and how to build on our successes

Welcome to the first of my reports back to party members as chair of the Federal Elections and Communications Committee (FCEC). These reports also appear on the party website.

A few weeks ago the Federal Board appointed me as chair, succeeding Kath Pinnock. The committee’s role is to “oversee the implementation of the Party’s strategy in relation to elections, campaigns and communications”.

Good luck

Thank you and good luck to everyone playing a role in the May elections across England, Scotland and Wales – and especially to those standing as a candidate or serving as an agent for the first time.

Last year, for the first time ever, we simultaneously beat both Labour and the Conservatives in the May local elections. We also overtook the Conservatives in the number of councils run, and extended our run of gains in local elections to seven sets of May elections in a row.

We have never had such a long winning streak in the party’s history – and in a few weeks, we have an excellent chance to extend it, and to add to that good news from the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd elections too.

More importantly than such statistics, the elections are a chance to stand up for our values and to elect hardworking, committed champions who will make a difference to people’s lives. From tackling a local pothole in your street to standing up to Donald Trump on the international stage, electing Liberal Democrats makes a difference.

Good luck with your campaigning!

Spreading the breadth of our success

The most spectacular parts of our electoral progress have come from careful targeting – most notably at the 2024 general election, but also with impressive results such as the majorities secured by our MSPs in the constituency ballots at the last Scottish Parliament elections.

Alongside that, often overlooked, has been the spread of our success outside the high-profile target seats.

We’ve seen that in candidate numbers, with the steady progress we have made in fielding more candidates in council elections.

We’ve seen it in council by-elections, for instance, winning more of them than any other party in 2025.

We’ve seen it organisationally too, such as with the creation, in the last Parliament, of a properly national network of campaign support officers, helping not just target seats and wards but broader development too.

And we’ve seen it with local government growth too. In 2015, the proportion of principal authority councillors who were Liberal Democrat sank to its lowest level since 1983. Since then, we have recovered sharply, with consistent gains taking us up from 8% to 17% of councillors being Lib Dem. We are now within sight of the previous post-1973 high for our party or its predecessors (21% reached in 1996).

This growth has not only come from our stronger areas. It has been across the board, not universal, sadly, but overall our weaker areas have grown too. They have made progress less quickly than our stronger areas, but they have still grown. Crucially, the proportion of council areas with no Lib Dem councillors at all has fallen by 13%. That still leaves too many areas without a Lib Dem councillor. But it is progress.

Next steps

What comes next in building on this progress?

Part of that needs to be supporting local party officers. A few of these roles – such as treasurers – already receive significant training and support. But for most roles, training and support have been far more limited, especially for chairs – even though we know, from both inside and outside politics, that how a body or organisation is chaired makes a big difference to its success. That is now changing, with a national programme of training having started earlier this year.

It is also a good example of how we can combine helping target seats with growing more broadly. Both have local party officers who deserve access to high-quality training and support. But if you are doing that for target seats then, courtesy of tools such as Zoom, it is often very little extra effort to expand it more broadly too.

Part of that also needs to be Parliamentary candidate selection. The data show there is a consistent pattern of candidate selections boosting local party activity such as canvassing. Yet at too many elections, across different levels, we leave candidate selection until very late, with the result that smaller local parties, which most need such a boost, often miss out.

The big opportunity to put that right in this Parliament follows the reforms to our Westminster Parliamentary candidate system, voted for by Federal Conference last spring and then by all three State Parties, with the English Council, being the final one to do so, a few weeks ago, by 85%-15%.

Of course, we mustn’t expect non-target seat candidates to be in place for as long as target seat candidates. But getting more selections sooner will help more of our less strong areas get the full benefits from such post-selection boosts. That will also give non-target seat candidates more time for training and support too, again something that is too often curtailed by short gaps between selections and elections.

And the very next steps are here

We saw at the 2024 general election another way to hit the double jackpot of supporting target seats while also helping to broaden our presence: providing common campaigning services that both can buy into. The extra volume achieved by opening such services to everyone reduces the prices for target seats, helping them, while opening up such services to other seats helps them step up their campaigning too.

We’ve done this before with the option to buy into centrally organised online advertising. Emails were recently sent to local parties with details of the latest round of this.

There is also something new, launched so far in England with Scotland and Wales to follow: an online campaign shop.

It gives every Lib Dem member instant access to a range of competitively priced, ready-made leaflets. All materials are produced by the same experts who support our top target seat campaigns.

So whether you’re new to campaigning and want a ready-made leaflet, or running a big campaign and want something extra, the new campaign shop can help you.

It is starting with a few key items but will be expanding steadily over time – based on your requests and feedback.

Visit www.libdems.org.uk/shop and start benefiting.

FCEC cooptions and appointments

At our March meeting, we agreed to co-opt Jeremy Hargreaves so that he can then serve as the FCEC representative on our Federal Policy Committee (FPC), helping to join up our policy and campaign processes.

In a similar vein, a big theme of the candidate reforms mentioned above is to better join up our candidate and campaign planning. We therefore agreed to co-opt Alison Suttie, chair of the Joint Candidates Sub-Committee (JCSC), and also to make me our representative on that body.

Our third co-option was of former FCEC chair Tim Razzall to bring experience of previous Parliaments to our work and the final appointment was of myself as the FCEC representative on the Federal Conference Committee (FCC).

What local issues matter most to voters?

YouGov has new data out about the most important local issues. The pattern of answers is similar across different parties, save that Reform voters are very much more likely to pick immigration:

Another variation of note is that women are significantly more likely than men to pick the NHS option, putting it as their second top issue, ahead of the economy and just behind roads.

The big takeaway of course, is to keep pointing at those potholes.

How to boost growth in northern England

Liberal Democrat Tim Leunig writes a newsletter stuffed full of interesting policy ideas. One of the latest editions returns to a topic he first wrote about years ago:

Almost 20 years ago I wrote a report that was extremely pessimistic about the prospects for regeneration in the North of England. I was wrong in my pessimism. Cities such as Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds have become prosperous in a way I never expected. The main reason, as far as I can tell, is good locally-led planning policies that have created what economists call “agglomeration economies”. For example, in 2001 only 2,800 people per square kilometre lived in the centre of Manchester, today it is 8,300, with massive rises in both Liverpool and Leeds. (In contrast nothing similar has happened in London).

The challenge today is to find policies that the UK government – or Mayors where they have relevant powers – could adopt to make these areas walk even taller.

Read the full piece for his ideas on that and to sign up to his newsletter.

Action on cost of living: Lib Dems in the news

The key stories

1. Lib Dem action plan over cost of living. More details here.
2. Lib Dems calls for NHS services to be guaranteed to expand to cover new housing developments. More details here.
3. Lib Dem local council elections film, featuring a church roof and that quote from Kemi Badenoch.
4. Scottish Lib Dems manifesto with a big emphasis on voting Lib Dem on the peach ballot papers. A point that Alex Cole-Hamilton has emphasised in a very Alex Cole-Hamilton way.
5. Welsh Lib Dems manifesto.
6. Lib Dems call for inquiry into Farage Bitcoin deal.

Congratulations to…

1. Lib Dem councillor and PPC Sophie Crossthorn is in The Times’s Young Power List 2026.
2. Lib Dem councils come out top again: the Liberal Democrats lead 8 of the 10 best local authorities for recycling across England.

Other people and party news

1. Lib Dem President Josh Babarinde’s report back to members.
2. A lovely award at Lib Dem conference.
3. Baroness Sue Miller is profiled in The Guardian, talking about nuclear weapons.
4. I’ve spotted three Lib Dem MPs are running the London Marathon for charity: Wendy Chamberlain, Tom Gordon and Helen Morgan. I feel a bar chart of finishing times may be in order…

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

The importance of posters

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

• The importance of posters for political campaigns.
• Meet some Reform UK local council candidates.
• MPs are turning away from using X/Twitter.
• How declining public services boost the populist right.
• I really hope they didn’t actually try to deliver a parcel to this pothole.
• A brilliantly baffling Labour bar chart.

And one from the archives:

• Great footage from the 1969 Islington North Parliamentary by-election.

What the polls are saying

Issues

Note the continuing slippage in the numbers for immigration, and the sharp rise in concern over defence.

Votes

Leaders

The ratings for both Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski have slipped again:

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.

Zack Polanski’s ratings are slipping

Media coverage hasn’t caught up on it yet, but Zack Polanski’s net ratings in the polls are now steadily slipping. Here’s the full story:

The good, the bad and the unknown of Zack Polanski’s poll ratings

Selections news

The Westminster constituencies currently advertising to select a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate are Derbyshire Dales, Filton and Bradley Stoke, Leicester East, Oxford East.

See all the Liberal Democrat Westminster PPCs selected and publicly announced so far here.

Council by-elections round-up

We’ve had four more rounds of council by-elections since last time (here, here, here and here), including a Lib Dem winning a by-election in the same ward for the second time.

The seat changes across those contests are Green +2, Conservative +1, Reform +1, Lib Dem -1, Independent/Other -1 and Labour -2.

This brings the total net seat changes since the last May local elections to Reform +69, Lib Dem +20, Green +5, Plaid +1, SNP -2, Independent/Others -15, Conservatives -24 and Labour -54.

Worthy of note are each party’s retention rates since the last May local elections:

• Lib Dem: 35/44 (80%)
• Green: 8/15 (53%)
• Reform: 7/15 (47%)
• Conservative: 16/51 (31%)
• Labour: 16/70 (23%)

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

Quarterly by-elections summary

Continuing the theme of the changing nature of party competition shown by council by-elections, in the first quarter of 2026, there were 11 by-elections held in wards which had previously seen Labour and Conservative in the top two but in the results, only one ward came out with Labour and the Conservatives as the top two.

Other changes

A former Labour councillor has joined the Lib Dems in Ealing.

However, a Lib Dem has joined the Greens in Cambridge and Lib Dem councillors have become independents in Chichester, East Cambridgeshire, St Albans, South Norfolk and Westmorland and Furness. A Lib Dem councillor has been suspended from the party in Bath.

An update too on a councillor who left the Lib Dems for Reform. She has now had a complaint against her upheld on the grounds of aggressive behaviour.

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:

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

And finally…

Some political analysis to enjoy: a deep dive by a chess player into the chess game that featured in Ed Davey’s recent photo op.

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.

Remember, earlier this year Reform’s Zia Yusuf boasted of how good their candidate vetting is: “I would argue we’ve got the best vetting in the country.”

Let’s see some of those who made it through that vetting to be Reform candidates this time around, mainly for council elections but include some other contests too.

Theresa Arnold, Wombwell ward, Barnsley

Reform’s Barnsley candidate Theresa Arnold said people supporting Ukraine’s war efforts should feel like “mugs” and compared Volodymyr Zelenskyy to a Nazi – which is a Kremlin talking point. [Huffington Post]

James Bembridge, West End ward, Westminster

More on James Bembridge’s views here.

John Black, Little Harwood and Whitebirk ward, Blackburn

Our probe shows one-time BNP supporters have made their way into the ranks of Farage’s party. When the BNP leak emerged in late 2008, it was reported it was thought the list may also include lapsed members, as well as details of those who had expressed an interest in joining but not signed up… Another whose name and address is on the BNP database is John Black, 55, standing in Blackburn, Lancashire, for Reform. [Daily Mirror]

David Booth, Kenley ward, Croydon

Byline Times reports:

A Reform UK candidate is listed as the author of a conspiracy theory article which suggests the Covid pandemic was actually a conspiracy led by the US-military and global elites … He claims the harm from Covid was actually caused “by the policies” including vaccinations, “not by any observable impacts of the virus.” The publication [in which the article appeared] was founded by 9/11 ‘Truthers’ who believe the 2001 terror attacks in New York were an inside job.

Peter Bucklitsch, Meads ward, East Sussex

He said the three-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi “died because his parents were greedy for the good life in Europe”. A picture of Kurdi’s body washed up on a beach in Turkey had come to symbolise deaths at sea during the migrant crisis. “The little Syrian boy was well clothed and well fed,” Bucklitsch commented. “Queue jumping costs.”

Bucklitsch apologised for his comment at the time but Ukip said he was nonetheless unlikely to pass any future candidate vetting. [The Times]

However, Reform has now vetted and nominated him as a candidate.

Derek Bullock, Hulton ward, Bolton

Derek Bullock [is] a former Conservative who was suspended by the party over allegations he posted a racist comment about people of Pakistani heritage on Facebook. Bullock said screenshots showing the comment were faked.

Bullock was a Tory candidate for the council in 2023 when images emerged of a post sent at the time of the 2017 Manchester Arena terrorist attack in which he allegedly used a racial slur to call for people of Pakistani heritage to be shot.

The Conservatives disowned his candidacy … Earlier, in 2020, Bullock had faced internal disciplinary action by the Conservatives after allegedly sharing an anti-Islam article on Facebook.

A Reform spokesperson said: “Mr Bullock has always strongly maintained that this image is fake and has reported this resurfaced material to the police.” [The Guardian]

Karl Catchpole, Long Stratton ward, Norfolk

He has, for instance, called Enoch Powell – most well-known today for his racist 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech – “one of the greatest visionaries of the last 50yrs”, praised Tommy Robinson as “a caring family man”, and shared a post by the far-right influencer Carl Benjamin (aka Sargon of Akkad) which said of David Lammy: “Like some corrupt African official, he’s looting us for his own tribe, in broad daylight. It’s insane.” [Hope Not Hate]

Mike Collier, Clackmannanshire and Dunblane, Scottish Parliament

Reform UK candidate lost employment tribunal after ‘unfairly’ sacking care worker who raised safety fears … The tribunal found the businessman had on the balance of probabilities dismissed his employee for raising reasonable concerns over the safety and safeguarding of Collier’s elderly and vulnerable service users at his Ayr-based care business.

The carer had come forward to raise concerns that included theft, illegal drug use, and poor hygiene only to find themselves dismissed. [Daily Record]

Jay Cooper, Bootle West ward, Sefton

A candidate for Sefton council, Jay Cooper. shared social media posts alleging “ultimate” proof the 9/11 terror attacks were fake. [Huffington Post]

Martin Costello, Badbury Park, Eldene and Liden ward, Swindon

Martin Costello, who is standing as a council candidate for Nigel Farage’s right-wing party in Swindon, has endorsed a string of conspiracy theories on the subject of Covid, including antisemitic claims that the pandemic was “planned” by “the Rothschilds”.

Costello has also regularly shared pro-Russian propaganda in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. [The i Paper]

Janine Crook, Darwen West ward, Blackburn with Darwen

She has said Blackburn is “the biggest shithole in the UK”; responded to a post by Sam Melia – a leading member of the fascist group Patriotic Alternative, who spent two years behind bars after being found guilty of race hate offences – announcing his return to X, by commenting “Welcome back x”; and declared that “Lee Anderson is saying what many moderate people think but dare not say” when the MP claimed that “Islamists” have “got control of London” and Sadiq Khan. [Hope not Hate]

Angus Dalgleish, North Cheam ward, Sutton

A speaker at the Reform conference in 2025 said:

Angus Dalgleish said to me to share with you today that he thinks it’s highly likely that the Covid vaccines have been a significant factor in the cancers in the Royal family.

David Davies, Wanstead Village ward, Redbridge

Often using coded language – like swapping “blaque” or “blaq” for Black – Davies has expressed deep hostility to and made sweeping generalisations about ethnic minority Brits, saying that Black people who “bang on about slavery” should “shut the f** up” … He has repeatedly stated that he regards Muslims as “pathological liars” who are “always trouble” and who will soon “reap the whirlwind”, and even goes as far as to say that he would outlaw Islam if given a chance. [Hope Not Hate]

Stephanie Dearden, Tooting Broadway ward, Wandsworth

A Reform UK candidate standing in next week’s local elections has said Islam should be banned, and called Muslims “scum that goes to mosk [sic], mass funerals, and rape young kids.”

Stephanie Dearden, who is hoping to be elected in south west London’s Tooting Broadway ward, posted a number of tweets on a now-suspended X account in 2020 … Dearden’s posts were considered severe enough to earn the account a suspension from Elon Musk’s X, which has largely adopted a policy of not removing racist comments or inflammatory language. [London Centric]

Daniel Devaney, Clayton & Fairweather Green ward, Bradford

Daniel Devaney, who is Reform’s candidate in the Bradford ward of Clayton & Fairweather Green, said he wanted to “blast [Muslims] all of the face of the earth [sic]”.

Writing on Facebook in September 2024, he further described Muslims as “pure scum” …

Devaney, despite competing in an election, has called for “civil unrest if it means riots and marches so be it” to remove the current government. [Hope Not Hate]

Richard Eminson, Lakenham ward, both Norwich and Norfolk

Reform candidate posed naked and hailed far-right ‘icons’. [Eastern Daily Press]

Also:

In a Facebook post on 14 February, he described Robinson – as well as Donald Trump and Lucy Connolly, who was jailed in the aftermath of the 2024 summer riots after calling for arson on asylum-seeker hotels – as “icons”, questioning why they’re called “far right extremists”. [Hope Not Hate]

Jonathan James Fox, Bristnall ward, Sandwell

Jonathan James Fox, standing for Reform in Sandwell, posted an image of bacon on Facebook in 2019, along with the caption: “People who eat bacon are less likely to blow themselves up.” [Huffington Post]

Leo Fruham, Mill Hill ward, Barnet

He has, in his own words, got a “problem with Muslims” … Under his pseudonym, Fruhman has certainly not held back on his antipathy for Labour politicians. calling Keir Starmer a “proper cunt” and “Muslim loving abhorrent man”, and saying “this is beyond incredible” in response to an anti-Muslim rant by US activist Valentina Gomez in which she called Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood a “dirty Pakistani” … Fruhman also appears to be disgusted at the fact that Israel hosts a Gay Pride festival, leaving the comment “disgraceful” under a post pointing it out. [Hope Not Hate]

Glenda Hall, Tunstall and Humbledon ward, Sunderland

Among [Reform’s] candidates for Sunderland council is Glenda Hall, whose Facebook page includes posting a video setting out Covid conspiracy theories, and appearing to recommend a blogpost describing Afghan men as “sexual predators”. In 2020, Hall shared what she called an “interesting video” about whether Covid was the “hoax of the century” by a renowned conspiracy theorist called Vernon Coleman. He has described the pandemic as the “greatest fraud in human history”, calling it an exaggerated scare created by “the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Bilderbergers and the Jesuits”. [The Guardian]

Paul Hewson, Chadwell Heath ward, Barking and Dagenham

[He] has repeatedly expressed his support for Enoch Powell. His posts include “free Tommy” and “listen to Tommy” in support of Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Despite the far-right agitator having been barred from Reform by Farage over his extreme views, Hewson said Robinson was “not far right .just right [sic]”. [The Times]

Paul Heyward, Winterbourne Parish Council by-election

Reform UK candidate Paul Heyward is facing questions over his suitability to stand in the Winterbourne parish council by-election after a social media account in his name called for the Prime Minister to be shot. The account also used derogatory language about Ed Miliband and shared posts from Tommy Robinson and the now-defunct Bristol Patriots group. [Bristol Live]

Ricky Hodges, Tressell ward, Hastings

Reform UK says it is investigating social media posts made by one of its candidates standing in next month’s local elections in East Sussex…

In Facebook posts over a period of years, Hodges claimed Muslims “milk our benefits system” to fund mosques, called for the Mayor of London to be “put into a coma”, and said he would punch a “squirming little leftie” in the throat … and that he would “love to come up against” a group of Labour activists to “take their… limbs off” … Hodges said in response to an article discussing former prime minister Theresa May’s handling of Brexit: “She needs to be hung”. [BBC]

Also:

Ricky Hodges, who is standing for Reform in Hastings, joked about shooting outside No.10 and claimed “Islam is a cancer”. [Huffington Post]

Bob Jones, Charlemont and Grove Vale ward, Sandwell

Reform’s candidate for Sandwell, Bob Jones, is part of an anti-Nato Facebook group which claims the UK and the US opened the gates for “radical Islam”. [Huffington Post]

Trevor Jones, Tonge with the Haulgh ward, Bolton

A Reform candidate in Bolton, Trevor Jones, has come under scrutiny for a Facebook post in which he appears to suggest the pandemic was fake … [In] a 2021 social media post in which Mr Jones shared a roughly drawn digital image of a Covid virus with the words ‘ITS BS [sic]’ in the middle. Mr Jones captioned the post: “1st image just released of the new Omicron Virus”. [Manchester Evening News]

Kabeer Kher, Yare and Necton ward, Norfolk

Kabeer Kher is another climate change conspiracy theorist standing for Reform in Norfolk.

On X, he has pronounced that the “truth about the climate scam is emerging” and written: “You mean to tell me that global climate financing is a corruption scam? Well I am shocked. Truly shocked” … and that “CO2 is GOOD for the environment we need MORE of it not less.” [Hope Not Hate]

Julian Kirk, Marshland North ward, Norfolk

Julian Kirk, Reform’s candidate for the Marshland North ward on Norfolk County Council, is another who appears to have a positive view of Tommy Robinson. In January 2025, for instance, he shared a post by Elon Musk which read: “Free Tommy Robinson!” Kirk also promoted a post in March this year, which declared, “There is no negotiation with Islam. You either resist or submit.” [Hope Not Hate]

Sheung-yuen Lee, Southall Broadway, Ealing

A Reform UK candidate in next month’s local elections was a “de facto senior diplomat” for the government of Hong Kong until two-and-a-half years ago and praised China’s repressive national security law … He remained in post after Beijing imposed a requirement that all civil servants formally declare their loyalty to the Hong Kong government as part of the People’s Republic of China – a demand that prompted thousands of other civil servants to resign or retire. [Financial Times]

Steven Lewis, Normanton ward, Wakefield

Take, for example, his one-man campaign against the celebration of Christmas, Easter and New Year’s Eve, all of which he appears to believe are “demonic” and/or pagan … Repeatedly referring to himself as the “Lion of Judah”, Lewis appears to hold the belief that he is himself an angel of God, and has been given power to distribute divine retribution against his enemies. [Hope Not Hate]

David McCullough, Sharston ward, Manchester

Meanwhile, Dave McCullough – who is standing for Reform in Sharston – posted an image on Facebook of a woman appearing to wear a suicide vest with the caption: “You think I’m a terrorist but I identify as a firework.” [Huffington Post]

Linda McFarlane, Chopwell and Rowlands Gill ward, Gateshead

A social media account in her name tweeted “you should all be shot” at accounts used by Starmer and the justice secretary, David Lammy … Of immigrants, the account said, “Let them all drown” and called for a “white Britain” and a parliament with only white MPs. [The Guardian]

More also from Hope Not Hate.

Andy Mahon, Blackburn South East ward, Blackburn with Darwen

Andrew Mahon, standing in Blackburn, reportedly made homophobic remarks about politicians, a racist comment, and a remark about Angela Rayner’s weight. [The Independent]

And also:

Andrew Mahon, standing for Reform in the Blackburn South East ward, is a fan of Oswald Mosley, who founded and led the British Union of Fascists. [Hope Not Hate]

Nathaniel Menday, Woodhouse ward, Sheffield

Nathaniel Menday, standing for Reform in Woodhouse, Sheffield, has called himself an “ethno-nationalist” and encouraged the use of white supremacist symbols. Last October, he asked a fellow Sheffield United fan to add a sonnenrad “sun wheel” emblem to a flag — a symbol widely used by neo-Nazis.

In January 2024, he shared a picture of Berlin’s Olympiastadion and wrote: “Whichever group of people built this must have been real visionaries!” The stadium was built by Nazi Germany to host the 1936 Olympics. [The Times]

Ben Miles, Cromer ward, Norfolk

Ben Miles, standing for Reform in Cromer, appears to be a fan of the violent misogynist Andrew Tate, having shared his content on numerous occasions. [Hope Not Hate]

Brett Muscroft, Castleford Central and Glasshoughton ward, Wakefield

Brett Muscroft, a Wakefield candidate, allegedly expressed support for far-right activist Tommy Robinson and shared an image equating Islam to cancer. [The Independent]

Caroline Panetta, Erith ward, Bexley

Caroline Panetta, who is standing in the outer London borough of Bexley, retweeted anti-Islam comments, including one saying Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, wanted to turn the city into “Londonstan” where women would be unsafe. [The Guardian]

George Parnell, Fleet Central ward, Hart and Fleet Town ward, Hampshire

Our probe shows one-time BNP supporters have made their way into the ranks of Farage’s party. When the BNP leak emerged in late 2008, it was reported it was thought the list may also include lapsed members, as well as details of those who had expressed an interest in joining but not signed up.

One of those on the leaked list is George Parnell, from Hampshire, standing as a county candidate for Fleet Town as well as for Hart District Council. [Daily Mirror]

Chris Parry, Mayor candidate for Hampshire and the Solent

Suspended by Reform after offensive comments about a Jewish community group.

Jason Patchett, Hoveton ward, Norfolk

A YouTube account in the name of Jason Patchett, Reform’s candidate in Hoveton and the chair of the party’s North Norfolk branch, said in 2022: “Constant kowtowing to the black community is not doing us any favours. It is predominantly that demographic which is causing the issues but we’re frightened to do anything.” [The Guardian]

Mike Porritt, Whickham South and Sunniside ward, Gateshead

Hope not hate can reveal that Robert Michael Porritt is the man behind Carshock, a car supermarket business that went into liquidation owing an estimated £4.4m to creditors, including customers who had placed deposits on cars. Over 50 employees lost their jobs …

Mike Porritt also featured in the Channel 4 reality TV show ‘Boss Swap’ which aired in 2004 … It was claimed that instead of looking after his counterpart’s business, he spent a lot of time in the pub …

In 2008, Santander petitioned to have Porritt declared bankrupt over personal guarantees he made to the bank of over £8m. He was later formally made bankrupt. [Hope Not Hate]

David Prior, Saltwell ward, Gateshead

Reform UK has expelled a local election candidate after he failed to declare his former membership in the extreme far-right British National Party (BNP) … [One] source described Prior’s BNP membership as an “open secret” in his village, and questioned how Reform UK’s vetting process had failed to uncover his background. [Jewish News]

He will, however, still be on the ballot paper, listed as a Reform candidate, in the May elections as the expulsion has come too late to change that.

(Terrence) David Reynolds, Queen’s Park ward, Swindon

Reform UK candidate stands by anti-Islamic social media posts … He then made unsubstantiated allegations that Muslims in the UK are attempting to have dogs and bacon banned … Other posts made by Mr Reynolds mock female Labour MPs for their looks. [Swindon Advertiser]

Ben Rowe, Ham ward, Plymouth

[His posts] fantasise about impaling Muslims, enjoy crude anti-black stereotypes and believe that Keir Starmer is beholden to a “Globalist zion cult” … During the riot outside a mosque in Southport in 2024, in which he urged the rioters to “get rid of that filthy building” … He puts forward the antisemitic conspiracy that Jews are “forcing other races on our societies” and “flooding the west with Islamists”. [Hope not Hate]

Also:

Commenting beneath a YouTube video in February, Rowe accused “the Jews” of “creating division by forcing other races on our societies”. He elsewhere described immigrants to the UK “breeding like rats”, posted blackface memes and labelled Islam “a cancer”. [The Times]

Alan Stay, Parkhurst & Hunnyhill ward, Isle of Wight

Reform UK probe Isle of Wight Council election candidate’s posts … Alan Stay, who is vying to become councillor for Hunnyhill and Parkhurst on May 7, is accused of alleged “racism and misogyny” over a series of Facebook posts, made between 2014 and 2025. [Isle of Wight County Press]

Arnold Tabor, South Elmsall and South Kirkby ward, Wakefield

An investigation by anti-extremist campaign group Hope not Hate has revealed that Arnold Tabor, the party’s candidate for South Elmsall and South Kirkby on Wakefield Borough Council, has expressed admiration for Oswald Mosley and wants to keep migrants in slave labour camps.

He has also said that he wants to ‘crush birthrates in Africa’. [Left Foot Forward]

The Independent has also reported that he “is accused of suggesting migrants in the English Channel should be shot and forced into unpaid labour.”

He is now listed as “candidate has withdrawn” on the notice of poll.

Paul Taylor, Waterhead ward, Oldham

Paul Taylor who is standing for Reform for Waterhead in Oldham, has liked a number of Islamophobic posts.

On his Facebook account, Hope not Hate says that it found evidence of Taylor liking pictures of Mayor Andy Burnham with brown skin as well as liking comments saying “This is Great Britain not an Islamic colony for them scums”. [Left Foot Forward]

Tommy Temperley, Roe Lee ward, Blackburn with Darwen

Tommy Temperley is a conspiracy theorist, who believes that the World Economic Forum (WEF), a common target for conspiratorial cranks, is “orchestrating” international and domestic politics and has criticised “the globalist traitors in Westminster” for being “obsessed with funding” Ukraine’s military as it fights Russia. [Hope Not Hate]

Mark Tucker, Mancroft ward, Norwich and Old Catton ward, Norfolk

Mark Tucker has promoted and voiced conspiracy theories regarding climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic on X. [Hope Not Hate]

Axel Tye, Penshaw and Shiney Row ward, Sunderland

Reform candidates have also shared conspiracy theories about the Covid pandemic … Axel Tye, standing for Reform in Penshaw & Shiney Row, Sunderland, said: “Stop covid in it’s [sic] tracks in two simple steps. 1. Delete the app. 2. Stop getting tested.” [The Times]

Bev Watkins, Crofton, Ryhill and Walton ward, Wakefield

Bev Watkins, standing in Wakefield for Reform, shared hoax content which warned against taking a “new” paracetamol which “contains ‘Machupo’ virus, considered one of the most dangerous viruses in the world, with a high mortality rate”. [The Times]

John Worsley, Clayton & Fairweather Green ward, Bradford

John Worsley … shared a comment on Facebook calling for Stephen Lennon, the serial criminal also known as Tommy Robinson, to be knighted. [Hope Not Hate]

And in other trouble for Reform…

See how many candidates Reform has shed in Scotland and in Wales.

Welsh Senedd candidate Emma Clatworthy has “peddled a Covid conspiracy and called the late Queen a ‘fraud’ who should be overthrown”.

Cllr Andy Osborn has been convicted of breaking the law and so will lose office as a councillor.

Reform councillor James Grainger has “some disturbing policy proposals that he’d like to see enacted, including the deportation of up to 10 million people and a bizarre new voting system that grants multiple votes to individuals based on their ancestry. A running theme in Grainger’s commentary – besides Islamophobia – is contempt for the British public. He’d rather fight for Vladimir Putin than our elected government; he wants Reform to “win power and then turn against Islam”; he likes the idea of seeking votes as a Reform MP and then promptly defecting to another party.”

A Reform activist who was suspended over racist and antisemitic comments is nonetheless being the election agent for three of the party’s candidates.

A former Reform by-election candidate is also so fed up with the local party that he is standing this time as an independent while a Reform councillor who was removed as a candidate for the party is now standing as independent too.

There is an alternative

If you think repairing church roofs is a good thing rather than something to be mocked, join the Lib Dems here.

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All AI amounts to is plausible nonsense.
Former senior GCHQ official, Ciaran Martin, 2025

However, and ironically given the subject of the post, Ciaran Martin himself says that he didn’t say that. On his Bluesky account he posted that:

The phrase “plausible nonsense” – an excellent one used in proper context – is not mine. It’s
@meredithmeredith.bsky.social‘s

I can’t claim credit for it

IIRC she used it entirely accurately in the context of LLM hallucinations a while back

It wasn’t presaged with “All AI is”

She said it on stage somewhere but I’m travelling & don’t have time to find it

I’ve cited it with appropriate attribution to Meredith a few times in its proper context

But basically it’s not my phrase, it’s about LLM over-confidence & hallucinations, & he’s added words to the start of it

Another little example of how wise it is to carefully check quotes you’re using given how common it is for the story behind the quote to be that different words were used, the words came from different people or even that there’s simply hardly any evidence for it ever having been said.

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A quick update about the Home Office’s social media use policy, which encourages people to use Elon Musk’s X. I got excited about an update to it… but the update was, let’s say, niche.

The Home Office and X

It shouldn’t be controversial to say that using Elon Musk’s X is controversial.

It’s run by someone who actively seeks to undermine democracy in Britain and it’s become a breeding ground for easily generated non-consensual fake nudes. We’ve had a cycle of claims of action followed by news reports showing how the nudes kept on being available. And that’s just to pick two of the issues.

For some, the right move therefore is to avoid X altogether. For others, the right move is to downplay it and over time build up using other social networks. Some people hold strong views about the merits of one or the other of those. But what we all should be able to agree on is that specifically prioritising X, actively encouraging people to use it, is the wrong call.

And yet, for all the government’s talk of being committed to tackling violence against women and girls, for all its talk of that requiring a whole-of-government effort, the Home Office’s own published social media use policy specifically prioritises X.

As I’ve written about the Home Office’s policy before when raising the issue in Parliament:

This makes a commitment to read all messages received via X, but does not make the same commitment for any other social media platform. That is a direct encouragement to people to use X as that way you get preferential treatment by the Home Office.

It also specially says of X but of no other social media network:

If you follow our Twitter feed, you will be among the first to learn about Home Office announcements and information.

So having raised this without success so far I was quite excited to see an email alert arrive telling me that the website page holding the Home Office’s social media use policy had changed.

But alas, the change was… to change “Don’t” to “Do not” in the text which appears if you click on “Report a problem with this page”.

Ah well, perhaps next time…

From other Lib Dem peers…

In case you missed previously…

Two steps forward but also two missed opportunities to improve our democracy

Why does so much of Whitehall move so slowly?

Elsewhere from me…

The latest episode of Political Fictions is out, taking a look at the classic US political conspiracy drama about Richard Nixon’s shenanigans, All The President’s Men:

Mark and Cory talk about All The President’s Men, which was released 50 years ago this month.

Mark gets to do his rant about how this film is basically Raiders of the Lost Ark, we ponder whether it’s got the most realistic rubbish of any movie, get very excited about a door and explain why the film presents Queen Elizabeth as launching a bid for absolute rule.

You can listen to Slate’s Slow Burn series on Watergate which Cory recommends here.

Mark talks about Jane Alexander’s Oscar-nominated role as Best Supporting Actress despite her only being on screen for less than seven minutes. (Apologies for the mistake about saying she won that year.) There is an interview with her in The Guardian to mark the film’s 50th anniversary here.

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

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

As well as listening here, you can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or in your favourite podcast app.

You can sign up to the podcast’s email list here.

Thank you

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

Best wishes,

Mark

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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

• Cambridge: Cheney Payne
• Cheadle: Tom Morrison

Liberal Democrat PPCs E-H

• East Hampshire: Dominic Martin
• Hamble Valley: Prad Bains
• Hampstead and Highgate: Katie Mansfield
• Hazel Grove: Lisa Smart
• Hinckley and Bosworth: Michael Mullaney

Liberal Democrat PPCs I-L

• Kenilworth and Southam: Louis Adam

Liberal Democrat PPCs M-P

• North Cotswolds: Paul Hodgkinson
• Portsmouth South: Charlie Murphy

Liberal Democrat PPCs Q-T

• Romsey and Southampton North: Thomas Gravatt
• Runnymede and Weybridge: Chelsea Whyte
• Salisbury: Victoria Charleston
• Sheffield Hallam: Sophie Crossthorn
• South Shropshire: Matthew Green
• Spelthorne: Harry Boparai
• Stockport: Alice Delemare Tangpuori
• Thornbury & Yate: Claire Young
• Torridge and Tavistock: Phil Hutty

Liberal Democrat PPCs U-Z

• Westmorland and Lonsdale: Tim Farron
• 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.

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If only it didn’t also feel like the forerunner of military procurement problems in the succeeding centuries too.

UPDATE: For a more positive account of Healy’s Mortar, see this account from the government of Gibraltar.

1. Donna Edmunds (Shropshire, suspended by Reform UK and then quit the party; later joined Advance UK)
2. Luke Shingler (Warwickshire, now an independent)
3. Desmond Clarke (Nottinghamshire, resigned as councillor)
4. Andrew Kilburn (Durham, resigned as a councillor)
5. Wayne Titley (Staffordshire, resigned as a councillor)
6. Mark Broadhurst (Doncaster, expelled by Reform)
7. Adam Smith (West Northamptonshire, suspended by Reform, then expelled and later resigned as a councillor)
8. John Bailey (Durham, resigned as a councillor)
9. Daniel Taylor (Kent, suspended by Reform UK and later sentenced to 12 months in prison)
10. Sam Booth (Doncaster, resigned as a councillor)
11. Ed Hill (Devon, expelled by Reform, later joined Advance UK)
12. David Maclean (Isle of Wight, resigned as a councillor)
13. Robert Bloom (North Northamptonshire, resigned as a councillor, later charged with harassment)
14. Paul Bean (Durham, suspended by Reform UK, later joined Advance UK)
15. Amelia Randall (Kent, switched to Ukip, later founded her own party)
16. Gaynor Jean-Louis (Worcestershire, resigned as a councillor)
17. Angela Nash (Devon, became an independent, later joined Advance UK)
18. John Allen (Northumberland, suspended by Reform UK, later expelled)
19. Jack McGlenen (Durham, expelled by Reform UK)
20. David Knight (Doncaster, expelled from the Reform UK council group but whip then restored pending a further review)
21. Nicole Brooke (Northumberland, suspended by Reform UK, later expelled)
22. Patrick Lambert (Northumberland, suspended by Reform UK, later expelled)
23. Christopher Marriott (Doncaster, resigned from Reform to sit as an independent)
24. Rowland O’Connor (Cornwall, now an independent)
25. Robert Ford (Kent, suspended by Reform UK, later expelled and then joined Restore Britain)
26. Jack Bradley (Derbyshire, resigned as a councillor)
27. Des Watt (Cambridgeshire, first became a ‘non-aligned independent’ and then joined Advance UK, which he later left)
28. Bill Barrett (Kent and Ashford, suspended by Reform UK, later expelled)
29. Oliver Bradshaw (Kent, suspended by Reform UK, later expelled and then joined Restore Britain)
30. Maxine Fothergill (Kent, suspended by Reform UK and then joined Restore Britain)
31. Paul Thomas (Kent, suspended by Reform UK, later expelled and then joined Restore Britain)
32. Karen Knight (Cornwall, now an independent)
33. Rob Parsonage (Cornwall, first became an independent and then joined the Conservatives)
34. Christine Parsonage (Cornwall, became an independent and then later resigned as a councillor)
35. Anna Thomason-Kenyon (Cornwall, now an independent)
36. Brian Black (Kent, expelled by Reform UK and then joined Restore Britain)
37. Richard Morgan (Derbyshire, resigned as a councillor)
38. Isabella Kemp (Kent, suspended by Reform UK and then joined Restore Britain)
39. Nicola Brown (Doncaster, became an independent briefly and then joined Advance UK)
40. Ian Cooper (Staffordshire, was council leader but then expelled by Reform UK)
41. David Cumming (Durham, left for a job overseas)
42. Kathy Gibbon (Buckinghamshire, joined Conservatives)
43. Richard Litchfield (South Kesteven, elected in by-election in December, removed from Reform UK council group; he may have since rejoined)
44. Edward Harris (Warwickshire, now an independent)
45. Caroline Gladwin (Isle of Wight, suspended by Reform UK, then reinstated but now standing as an independent candidate)
46. David Taylor (Worcestershire, now an independent)
47. Michael Ramage (Durham, now an independent)
48. Stuart Graham (Gloucestershire and Forest of Dean, now an independent)
49. Ian McKinley (Sunderland, elected in a by-election in November, now an independent)
50. Nick Brown (Durham, resigned as a councillor)
51. John Roddy (Warrington, elected in a by-election August, joined Conservatives)
52. Peter Colley (Hertfordshire, joined Restore Britain)
53. Dean Burns (Kent, departed his deputy cabinet role in November 2025 and then joined Restore Britain)
54. Darren Rance (North Northamptonshire, joined Restore Britain but now wants to rejoin Reform)
55. Jack Goncalvez (North Northamptonshire, joined Restore Britain)
56. Scott Cameron (Warwickshire, whip removed by Reform UK over claims thinking about defecting and then joined Restore Britain)
57. Luke Cooper (Warwickshire, whip removed by Reform UK over claims thinking about defecting and then joined Restore Britain)
58. Charles Whitford (Leicestershire, joined Restore Britain)
59. Andrew Thorp (Leicestershire, resigned as a councillor, later coverage here)
60. Chris Large (Staffordshire, was due to become council leader but resigned from his leadership roles and now an independent)
61. Kieran Mishchuk (Swale, joined Restore Britain)
62. Kathryn Shaw (West Northamptonshire, now an independent)
63. Joanne Blythe (West Northamptonshire, now an independent)
64. Graham Eardley (Walsall, suspended by Reform UK)
65. Tony Hill (Hertfordshire, resigned as a councillor)
66. Lynn Dean (Staffordshire and Newcastle-under-Lyme, suspended by Reform UK and resigned as a councillor from one of them)
67. Owain Clatworthy (Bridgend, left Reform, alongside resigning as a Welsh Senedd candidate, and later joined Restore Britain)
68. Dawn Saunders (Durham, now an independent)
69. Cain Parkinson (Lincolnshire, joined the Conservatives)
70. Sarah-Jane Shields (Basildon, removed as a Reform candidate and now standing as an independent)
71. Andy Osborn (Cambridgeshire, convicted of breaking election law and so disqualified)
72. Brandon Dodd (Vale of Glamorgan, elected in a by-election in September, joined Restore Britain)
73. Roger Tarrant (Cornwall, joined Restore Britain)
74. Susanne Desmonde (Cornwall, now an independent)

Gone, but back again

1. Tom Pickup (Lancashire) was suspended by Reform UK but subsequently allowed back.
2. Paul Cutts (Doncaster) was suspended by Reform UK but subsequently allowed back.

Other Reform councillors who have gone

Looking beyond those elected in May, there are further cases of councillors departing from Reform.

Most strikingly, Mark Whittington (South Kesteven District Council) quit Reform just 20 days after joining and James Buchan, winner of a by-election in July 2025 for Dartford Council, then joined the Conservatives.

Maria Bowtell was elected as a Conservative councillor in 2023, then joined Reform but has now left Reform for Restore Britain.

Richard Everett was elected as a Conservative to Tendring District Council in 2023, later joining Reform and also nominating Nigel Farage in Clacton constituency at the 2024 general election. He has now also departed Reform, being listed as “Not In A Political Group”.

Alistair Hendry (Somerset) quit the Conservatives for Reform but changed his mind four days later.

Todd Ferguson (North Ayrshire) left the Conservatives in July last year, joined Reform in November and then in March 2026 left Reform to become an independent.

Andrew Barry (Merthyr Tydfil) was elected as an independent, joined Reform but then quit after a row about candidate selection.

In addition, Martin Sarfas stood unsuccessfully for Reform in May 2025 for Leicestershire. He was also already a councillor at another level of local government (Harborough), but now sits as an independent there.

But these have not left….

Although Amanda (Mandy) Clare has been charged with assault and criminal damage she currently is still listed as a Reform councillor on Cheshire West and Chester Council, and indeed leader of their group on her council. She has however been suspended from her job working for a Reform UK MP. (UPDATE: The charges against her were dropped just before the trial was due to start.)

Peter Mason is still a Reform councillor, but a parish council has asked him to stay away from their meetings due to offensive comments that he had previously made online.

Michael Ramage was listed as having left the Reform group on his council (Durham), but is now listed as being back with them.

Laura Anne Jones, a Reform member of the Welsh Senedd, was “banned from the Senedd chamber for 14 days after using a racial slur to describe Chinese people … and [had also] not taken action when one of her staff members had made separate offensive comments.”

Town and parish councillors who have left Reform UK

James Regan (a town councillor in Epping) has also been suspended by Reform UK (that linked news report originally had a mistake over which council he was elected to).

Finally, another town councillor, Tony Hewitt on Ferryhill Town Council, resigned over a garden competition.

Note: for by-election results where Reform was defending a seat but then lost it, see my council scorecard. The causes of those vacancies are included in the list above.

How many Reform MPs have resigned?

In related news, Reform UK has also shed two of its MPs:

1. Rupert Lowe
2. James McMurdock

How many Scottish Parliament candidates has Reform lost?

A full list of Reform UK candidates for the Scottish Parliament elections who have fallen by the wayside is here.

How many Welsh Senedd candidates has Reform lost?

A full list of Reform UK candidates for the Welsh Senedd elections who have fallen by the wayside is here.

Other sorts of departures of Reform councillors

These folk remained as Reform councillors but departed council posts:

1. “Reform UK county councillors have ousted their own leader Jo Monk in Worcestershire.” (BBC, April 2026)
2. “A Reform UK cabinet member in charge of purging Kent County Council (KCC) of waste and inefficiency has resigned .” (Kent Online, February 2026)
3. “Reform UK Councillor Guy Aston has stepped down as group leader on the City of Doncaster Council, claiming he has received “vitriolic texts that border on abuse” from members of his own party.” (Doncaster Free Press, November 2025)
4. “Reform group leader in Cornwall quits role.” (BBC, October 2025)
5. “Two Derbyshire Reform councillors have been demoted from committee positions after they “didn’t realise the time commitment”. Cllr Richard Morgan and Cllr Charlotte Gates, both Reform councillors on Derbyshire County Council, have been dropped from the committees they sit on due to attendance issues.” (Derbyshire Live, October 2025)
6. See previous item in the list, as two councillors were involved.
7. “The deputy leader of Worcestershire County Council has resigned, three months into the role.” (BBC, August 2025) (The councillor – David Taylor – has since left Reform. See main list above.)
8. “Joseph Boam sacked as deputy leader of Leicestershire County Council.” (Leicester Gazette, August 2025)
9. “The recently elected leader of Warwickshire County Council has resigned, leaving his 18-year-old deputy in charge. Reform UK councillor Rob Howard, who was in power for 41 days, said he had made the decision with ‘much regret’, citing health reasons were behind his departure.” (BBC, June 2025)

In addition to the above, Reform has also lost a council leader – Ian Cooper – who is in the main list above as he’s also been expelled from the party. Similarly Chris Large, who was set to become council leader in Staffordshire to succeed Ian Cooper, resigned from his leadership roles and then later left Reform, and hence is in the main list.

Note: this final list I only recently started collating in response to requests from readers. So it may not yet be complete. Do let me know of anyone I have missed.

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Here’s what the voters decided:

Thank you to Nick Cott for getting the Lib Dems on the ballot here for the first time.

Ande Savage was the Lib Dem here; thank you.

Why does the headline to this post start with “Another”? Here’s why:

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 though this chart is also useful:

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:

1. Cory Edwards: quit as candidate after Nazi salute controversy.
2. Patrick Benham-Crosswell: quit as candidate saying Reform UK has “sunk deep into the sewer”.
3. Derek Roberts: quit as candidate “for personal reasons”.
4. Owain Clatworthy: quit as candidate over unhappiness with selection process.
5. Caroline Jones: will run as an independent instead.
6. Robert Ian Williams: quit as a candidate after questioning selection process.

Still a candidate at time of typing is Emma Clatworthy who has “peddled a Covid conspiracy and called the late Queen a ‘fraud’ who should be overthrown”.

Meanwhile, Reform candidates in Scotland have also gone and Reform UK councillors keep on going too.

Note: Andrew Barry is described in some media reports (e.g. here) as also having quit as a candidate, but while he applied to be a candidate he was not in the list published by Reform and so has not been included in the list above.

Reform is also having problems with some of its council candidates for the May 2026 local elections.

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The latest episode of Political Fictions is out, taking a look at the classic US political conspiracy drama about Richard Nixon’s shenanigans, All The President’s Men:

Mark and Cory talk about All The President’s Men, which was released 50 years ago this month.

Mark gets to do his rant about how this film is basically Raiders of the Lost Ark, we ponder whether it’s got the most realistic rubbish of any movie, get very excited about a door and explain why the film presents Queen Elizabeth as launching a bid for absolute rule.

You can listen to Slate’s Slow Burn series on Watergate which Cory recommends here.

Mark talks about Jane Alexander’s Oscar-nominated role as Best Supporting Actress despite her only being on screen for less than seven minutes. (Apologies for the mistake about saying she won that year.) There is an interview with her in The Guardian to mark the film’s 50th anniversary here.

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

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

As well as listening here, you can also listen to the All The President’s Men episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or in your favourite podcast app.

Previously on Political Fictions…

Was Malcolm Tucker a bad influence on people in British politics?

Elsewhere from us…

What can we learn from Ed Davey’s chess game?

Why does so much of Whitehall move so slowly?

Happy listening

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

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark

A Reform UK councillor is set to be disqualified from office after being found guilty of breaking election law by publishing a damning lie about a Conservative candidate in the run-up to a local election.

Andy Osborn, 74, was chairman of the North East Cambridgeshire Reform Party in April 2025 when he made Samantha Hoy a “target with anger”…

District judge Nina Tempia, sitting at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, dismissed Osborn’s claim that his account been hacked and found him guilty of making or publishing a false statement, in a case brought under the Representation of the People Act 1983.

The conviction means he will be disqualified as a councillor and a by-election held, adding to the list of councillors Reform has shed.

The Representation of the People Act’s provisions over false statements are relatively rarely invoked successfully in legal actions, with perhaps the most famous modern case being the disqualification from office of then Labour MP Phil Woolas for claims made about the Lib Dem candidate running against him. Rarely invoked, but an important safeguard.

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There were two steps forward but also two missed opportunities in Parliament last night to improve how our democracy works, one on voting systems and one on holding elections in the first place. Read on for details.

Helpful but insufficient: the government’s moves to improve our democracy

On voting systems, Labour is going for the Supplementary Vote for Mayor elections. That’s better than first-past-the-post but it still results in large numbers of votes being wasted. As I pointed out in my speech:

I referred at an earlier stage of the Bill’s passage to research by the Make Votes Matter coalition carried out a couple of years ago covering 217 elections conducted under the supplementary vote in the UK. It found that more than half – 54% – of people’s second preferences that were due to come into play after the first round had to be discarded because they were not for a candidate who made it into the top two…

We are in a political world of more candidates, more parties and more confusion over who is going to end up in the top two, and that is why the alternative vote, not the supplementary vote, is the right voting system.

I also made the case for STV for council elections in England, as used successfully for nearly two decades in Scotland.

Although Labour insisted on sticking with the Supplementary Vote, at least we were all able to vote down the Conservative plans to revert to first-past-the-post. So a step forward but also an opportunity missed.

(Before you get too excited about the two Conservative peers shown in Hansard as voting for the alternative vote, I think they made a mistake rather than having become converts.)

It was the same story on the power of governments to cancel elections, a much-debated issue recently with the planned cancellations for this May that were then called off.

Again, credit to the government for moving somewhat on the issue and tabling an amendment, agreed last night, to curb government powers a little.

But as I told the Daily Telegraph:

There are still too many ways in which elections could be delayed for too long, too easily, even after this amendment, as it only covers some of the circumstances in which elections can be delayed, it still allows for a year’s delay and it still means delays can be sped through Parliament without the full scrutiny of primary legislation.

The point about primary legislation I expanded on in another of my speeches yesterday:

With such secondary legislation we run into the difficulty that on a point of principle, which we can leave to debate another time, whichever of Labour or the Conservatives is in opposition in this House, those parties are committed not to support fatal Motions on secondary legislation. Any Government therefore know that however controversial their proposal on a piece of secondary legislation is, this House will almost never oppose it. That is a fundamental problem: if the idea of the safeguard is a piece of secondary legislation and that safeguard is also one that the two largest groups in this House are essentially committed never to using, it is not much of a safeguard at all.

I did also take the opportunity to raise an example of my general complaint about the state of the statute book:

Lastly, and I readily admit that this is very much the least of my three points, the proposals in government Amendment 218A are worded in a less than clear way. When we read the amendment, we are told the circumstances in which election orders are invalid before what election orders even are. Whatever else happens today, if this wording progresses, I hope the Government will look again at it and the sequencing in their amendment, bearing in mind that it is useful to have law about elections that is clear to everyone, not just the specialists.

Alas, for all their rhetorical fury over the government’s plans to cancel elections, the Conservatives backed Labour’s modest plans to better protect our elections rather than supporting full protection.

So we ended up with only a modest step forward.

Two modest steps forward in total, at least, and on to the Representation of the People Bill…

In case you missed previously…

Why does so much of Whitehall move so slowly?

Election law: the tidy-up that might, finally, begin

Elsewhere from me

The problem with polling averages

Thank you

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

Best wishes,

Mark

With campaigning for the May elections well under way, now is a good time for an update to my long-standing piece about leaflets, and why the Lib Dems deliver so many of them.

Q. Do leaflets work?

A. Yes.

Q. Really?

A. Yup. There’s plenty of evidence, both internal party evidence (e.g. tracking changes in canvass data in the aftermath of leaflets) and also academic research. Examples of the latter are here and here, and there’s also polling evidence of voters remembering getting leaflets and being influenced by them. Plus there’s the evidence of what other parties have done when they’ve walloped us in elections.

Q. OK, one leaflet I understand. But why so many?

A. The typical leaflet gets only a few seconds consideration from a member of the public – so you need to do a lot of leaflets to get anything more than the merest sliver of information over. Most of the time for most people it’ll take several leaflets to get as much attention and information over as I hope you are getting from sitting down and reading just this one blog post.

Q. But what about digital campaigning?

A. No prizes for guessing that I’ll answer by saying that it is a crucial part of modern campaigning. It’s not a choice between online and offline though. It’s a bit like asking if we should put vowels or consonants in the next press release. The answer is both.

One big starting advantage that leaflets have, however, is that we can find out where pretty much every letterbox in the constituency or ward is – and we’re legally allowed to push something through it. (Except that one letterbox in a marginal ward near me which, even with the help of satellite imagery and a special Sunday morning exploration trip, I STILL cannot find.)

Online campaigning has many strengths, but it doesn’t have that same immediate and extensive reach.

Q. Come on, don’t you see how old fashioned leaflets are? Get with the 21st century!

A. Look at what the most digitally savvy and successful companies do, even those whose whole business is based on the internet. Both Google and Apple, for example, do extensive publicity and marketing activities offline alongside their super-smart online activities.

What’s more, here’s the data from the Electoral Commission’s research after the 2019 general election:

Over half the people who took part in our survey after the election said they saw campaign materials from parties and candidates, around a third said they got information from the televised leader debates or online sources.

• 55% of people who took part in our research after the election said that they got information from leaflets/flyers
• 32% from a party leader debate on television
• 29% from newspapers or news websites
• 24% from social media posts and adverts by campaigners

Their similar report for the 2024 election had an even higher number for leaflets:

The most common ways people reported seeing information were:

• A leaflet or flyer from a candidate or political party (63%)
• TV news (48%)
• Social media (39%)
• A news website (35%)
• TV debates (35%)
• Word of mouth (24%)

Q. Yeah, but do people actually like those leaflets?

Here’s what Professor Phil Cowley had to say about research into this:

Drawing on data from the 2016 Welsh Senedd elections, it initially asked people what they had noticed receiving from the parties – and, once again, leaflets were top, by a long way.

Then they asked what form of communication they wanted from the parties, the first time I have ever seen this question asked.

Turns out about a third said that they didn’t want to be contacted at all. Not so much ‘we never see you around here apart from at elections’, more ‘we never see you around here and that’s the way we like it’.

But of those who said they did want to hear from the parties, top came leaflets – the preferred choice of just under a third of respondents. There was then a sizeable gap before any of the other methods of contact: email and home visits (both 11%), or personal letters (9%), with e-campaigning methods coming in at 3%.

Q. That’s all very well, but what about all these complaints from people?

It’s a comment that often comes up during successful campaigns. The reason why it’s not the problem it may first appear is that people vary greatly in their interest in leaflets and toleration of them, which means that if nobody is complaining then you are doing less than the most intolerant person likes to receive – and far less than the average person is happy to receive.

Complaints shouldn’t be ignored (and if lots of people are complaining about too many leaflets, that may mean the leaflets and the message aren’t interesting enough to them). They do, though, need to be judged carefully, and the occasional complaint isn’t a cause for doing less – just as the occasional complaint when canvassing from someone who doesn’t like being called on doesn’t mean that we’re doing too much door-knocking.

Q. But surely sometimes those complaints have a point?

Aside from politeness, another good reason not to dismiss such complaints out of hand is that ‘you’re doing too many’ often subtly means something different.

Complaints about quantity often mask problems with quality – people think there are too many leaflets because they find them boring, irrelevant or both. When people are interested in something, they are willing to read huge amounts about it. But they need to find it interesting.

Or they may reveal a bit of a mix-up with our logistical arrangements, with leaflets not being spaced out in the way we planned. That’s useful to know.

Q. OK, but surely there must be some limit beyond which too many leaflets really is too many?

A. Yes, it is possible to do too many just as it is (in theory, so people tell me) possible to eat too much chocolate.

Looking at the evidence, though, that limit looks to be well beyond our delivery capacity in all but the most exceptional of circumstances. If we get the quality right (see above), the issue is our capacity to deliver not the limit of efficacy.

Q. Well ok… but why am I, a party member, getting so many, even letters addressed to me?

A. For unaddressed leaflets, picking out a few properties to skip can be a lot of hassle for not very much reward, which is why unaddressed leaflets tend to go to everyone.

As for addressed mail, which is frequently carefully targeted, there are a trio of reasons for including members.

First, the mailshots often urge people to do things, such as put up a poster, sign up for a postal vote or make a donation, all of which apply to members too.

Second, members usually want to know what the party is up to and excluding them from lots of information about the campaign can leave them in the dark. Even hardcore activists often like receiving all this literature – because they then know what other people are talking about when they get into conversations about the campaign.

Third, not all members always vote Lib Dem. A member might, for example, be unhappy with the party and thinking of leaving. Even if they are happy about voting Lib Dem, members are – like other voters – prone sometimes to forgetting to vote or getting distracted from voting.

Q. Is there anything else I should know about leafleting?

A. There’s more to delivering leaflets than meets the eye, as explained in my leafleting tips video.

Or to hear about the findings from research into political leaflets, take a listen to my podcast interview with Caitlin Milazzo.

The leaflet comes from ElectionLeaflets.org and hat-tip to Phil Rodgers for spotting it.

You can add to the site any leaflets that come through your door with a simple upload.

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And more:

This is surely a dead cert for the next Olympics.

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:

• Correction to information about Techne polls, which are of the UK rather than GB.
• Additional Gallup data from the 1951, 1955, 1964, 1966 and both 1974 Parliaments. Some of this information has come 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:

A longer read this time, as I try to flesh out the bigger picture from some of the details I’ve shared in previous editions of A Lord’s Eye View and on social media. Regular readers will know that there are many examples of secondary legislation moving slowly. What, though, is the bigger picture tying together the nerdy examples?

Read on to find out what my first attempt at answering that looks like – and because it is a first attempt, feedback is especially welcome.

I’ve highlighted other examples of Whitehall moving slowly (such as the absurdly long time taken to settle some election bills), but in this piece I concentrate on secondary legislation specifically.

The problems with secondary legislation

Since I joined the House of Lords in February last year, the thing that has most struck me about seeing policymaking in Whitehall up close is how slowly so much of it moves, particularly secondary legislation. What’s more, the clutch of standard explanations does not add up.

So what’s going on, and why?

What the standard story about secondary legislation misses

The normal story told about secondary legislation, that is legislation which has a speedier passage through Parliament, that can even avoid votes or debates and which cannot be amended, is to be suspicious of how much the government can slip through quickly, and with little scrutiny. That is the story you get, and I got, from reading up on the topic.

So when I joined the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (SLSC) in the House of Lords last year, I thought I knew what to watch out for.

I did, to be fair, see some traces of those conventional concerns, such as on one topic I’ve repeatedly raised, namely the scope for the government to make fundamental changes to the operation of our elections simply through secondary legislation.

I’ve also been struck by how deeply rooted the tradition is in the House of Lords that whichever one of Labour or the Conservatives is in opposition, they are committed not to voting down any secondary legislation (i.e., they won’t vote for a ‘fatal motion’). I’ll leave the debate over the principle of that for another time: is it wise deference to the democratic Commons or is it foolish hobbling of proper scrutiny?

What it means, however, is that in some respects the conventional story undersells the problem. Because it’s not only that secondary legislation gets a fast-track process through Parliament with reduced scrutiny and attention, and no scope for amendment. It’s also that the government – as long as it has a majority in the Commons – will, thanks to that self-denying ordinance in the Lords, nearly always get exactly what it wants in full regardless of how unhappy Parliamentarians are or how wise any thoughts are on how the plans could be amended.

It makes some of the debates over primary legislation, about whether a particular power should be subject to a negative, affirmative or super-affirmative procedure for secondary legislation, rather redundant. Because the bottom line of political power is that, even with a super-affirmative process, a government with a Commons majority can still do what it wants without amendment.

Yet even so, the problem with the conventional perspective is that it is a sideshow. An important sideshow, yes. A sideshow, however, because for the vast bulk of secondary legislation the problem we need to worry about is a different one: how slowly it all moves.

Slowness here, slowness there, slowness everywhere

Back last October, I gave five examples of this sort of slowness:

The Extradition Act 2003 (Amendment to Designations) Order 2025

• The change in this related to Hong Kong was triggered by a treaty being suspended in 2020, five years previously.
• The change in this related to Zimbabwe was triggered by its departure from the Commonwealth in 2003, twenty-two years (!) previously.

Gangmasters (Licensing Conditions) (Amendment) (Fees) Rules 2025

• These fees are meant to be increased annually, but this was the first time that had been done for sixteen (!) years.

The Sheep Carcase (Classification and Price Reporting) (England) Regulations 2025

• This follows a positive consultation on the proposals… which was carried out in 2018, seven years before the legislation came through.

Merchant Shipping (Maritime Labour Convention and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2025

• Implements international agreements made in June 2022 which had a grace period of not coming into force until December 2024. But it was the best part of another year before the legislation came to Parliament, and indeed the government consultation only kicked off twelve days before the expiry of that grace period, even though it had lasted more than two years.

The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (Definition of Relevant Land) (Amendment) Order 2025

• The consultation that gave the green light to doing this took place five whole years ago. And that positive media hit? ‘Government cracks down on rogue traffic wardens at train station car parks’. A bit of a simplification of exactly what the measure does but easy to sell with a good conscience as being on both the side of the motorist and on the side of public transport.

There are plenty more I can add to the list. I’ll stick to just five more examples:

Merchant Shipping (Vessels in Commercial Use for Sport or Pleasure) Regulations 2025

• Part of this implemented a safety recommendation following an accident investigation which had been outstanding, despite being a safety issue, for a decade.

Merchant Shipping (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

• The fees involved had been set in 2006 but were then not uprated for years to cover inflation. In 2017 the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, and in 2018 a minister too, committed to reviewing the fees regularly. But they were updated once in 2018, after a 12 year gap, and now have not been since, eight years on. In other words, what should be a regular and straightforward process has happened only once in 20 years.

Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975 (Amendment) Order 2026

• The pay of government ministers has been worked out wrongly since 1997. When the problem was discovered, it then took three years for this SI to be put to Parliament to fix the problem.

Code of Practice on litter and refuse

• This is a slightly different example as it is an official Code rather than a Statutory Instrument. But the same problem. In this case, it took a year and a half from Tidy Britain concluding its work on revising the Code to the government publishing a new version.

Financial Services (Designated Consumer Body and Designated Representative Body) Order 2026

• This one is such a daft example, I’ve done a whole previous newsletter about it.

It’s not just one-offs

I hope the length of the list above starts to persuade you that these are not just rare problems, but rather a systematic problem across government.

A great piece of supporting evidence for this came from the Public Accounts Committee earlier this year, in a report on the fees and charges the government sets.

This pointed out how the process of reviewing such financial figures is slow, inconsistent and inefficient. In fact, it is impossible to do the obvious – simply review figures against costs and inflation once a year – because it takes an average of 63 weeks (!) to make any such changes.

The idea that annual reviews take more than a year belongs in Yes, Minister, not reality. Nor is this because reviews are complex or controversial matters. Even the simple stuff moves slowly, as with the Supreme Court Fees (Amendment) Order 2026 which this April implements an increase in fees based on the inflation figure from last April.

The usual excuses

When I have heard people acknowledge such slowness and try to explain it (often after I’ve asked them ‘how on earth did that take so many years to do?’), there are four reasons that come up regularly:

1. Blame the previous government, either Rishi Sunak’s term specifically or the Johnson/Truss/Sunak combo.
2. Blame events, particularly COVID-19. Sometimes Brexit. Occasionally the (second) invasion of Ukraine.
3. Blame other organisations, as former Downing Street staffer Paul Ovenden did in his piece about what he called the Stakeholder State: “the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations.”
4. Blame the lack of effective levers available to a Prime Minister. Keir Starmer most recently, and Tony Blair most famously, have blamed a lack of connection between the PM making a decision and things happening. (It’s not really related to my main point in this piece, but Polly Mackenzie has an excellent piece on the issue of levers.)

However, look closely at the examples I’ve given, and other similar ones I’ve come across, and none of these really stand up as explanations.

That does not mean they are wrong. Personally, I’d give varying amounts of credit to each. But even if you are a full believer in all of them, they don’t explain the examples I have given. As the examples I’ve given have shown, many of the delays are either so long-running or occur so repeatedly, that they were a problem before any of the people or events in #1 and #2. My examples also show how often slowness hits even when it is very much something that sits with the government to decide and with a minister having clear powers, undermining the validity of #3 and #4.

We don’t take plumbing seriously

The most straightforward explanation is that having administrative systems that can churn through high volumes of low-profile decisions reliably and quickly is not something that gets much attention or credit.

As Geoff Mulgan put it, talking about the “plumbing”, that is, “the tools and methods that turn promises into results and are how government actually works in practice”:

I’m increasingly struck by the absence of much interest in the plumbing either amongst politicians or in the media in the UK. You might say that’s just because plumbing is boring. But I don’t think that’s quite it.

In the case of ministers the avoidance of plumbing probably reflects the fact that so few have ever run anything. Backgrounds in law and politics mean that they have rarely had to worry about anything more than small teams (there are a few good exceptions, but not many). The result is lots of rhetoric about rewiring the state, or AI, but a glaring absence of plausible plans.

While he talks about the problems that then occur when trying to deliver on big promises, his point applies also to the pervasive slowness in delivery on the small things I’ve given examples of above.

I think there’s something in this.

Things are not made easier by the churn rate in people. Even if you have people, ministers and civil servants, with an interest and aptitude for making that secondary legislation machine tick over smoothly and at pace, they are unlikely to be in post for long. Civil servants usually get promoted up and sideways, and ministerial churn is a long-commented on problem. Although people may take skills from one role to another, the churn impedes understanding what needs fixing in the system, and it takes people’s minds away from thinking long-term.

Linked to that is a question of relevant skills, which Geoff Mulgan’s piece touches on. Being good at working through secondary legislation at pace requires an operational mindset rather than purely a legal or political one. You need smart politics and even smarter legislative drafting skills to get the operation right, but a combination of policy, political and legal skills could still leave you bogged down with a broken system. Operational expertise is something different. (Perhaps it shouldn’t be, but we are where we are.)

Relentless incrementalism

It also requires a belief in the power of relentless incrementalism, the steady accumulation of small improvements at each and every opportunity. Sure, sometimes it’s the big dramatic gesture that’s needed. But often you can get a big outcome by accumulating small progress. It’s the bureaucratic equivalent of marginal gains or the iteration of digital services.

It’s not just about slowness

The lack of an operational focus and the neglect of relentless incrementalism, causes problems more widely than simply slowness of secondary legislation. Perhaps the best adjacent example is how messy our statute book is.

Bits of legislation get passed by Parliament but then never go live as law, even decades after they were given Royal Assent.

Legislation is written with the opposite mindset from good computer coding. Far from the idea that you code something once and then refer back to that code whenever you need it, our legislation is often done on the basis of new bespoke wording every time. The ‘super-affirmative’ procedure for secondary legislation, for example, is not something defined once. It is defined separately each time it is required, set out slightly differently and so contributing to a fragile, confusing complexity in our law.

The argument in favour is that bespoke wording each time is the best. There is some merit in that, of course. The bigger issue, however, is the fragile, confusing complexity – one that even the Rycroft Review into foreign interference in our politics highlighted when talking about the mess that is the state of election law.

Without an appreciation for the benefits of tidiness and clarity, the mess builds up because tidying up is almost never something that is going to make it onto the political agenda. If you’re not interested in the plumbing, then having robust, neat plumbing which is easy to maintain is going to interest you even less.

(That’s also why that although there are good things in new Cabinet Secretary Antonia Romeo’s published objectives about doing things quickly in general, I fear they will leave these problems untouched as they do not address the problem I’ve set out here. Martin Stanley has a good piece on what to make of her objectives.)

Some grounds for hope, perhaps

One of the reasons why plumbing gets neglected is that few people spend much time thinking about it, until something starts smelling or leaking.

Similarly, not that many people think about the process of secondary legislation. The mere act of reading batches of secondary legislation from different government departments at regular intervals is not normal for ministers or civil servants.

So perhaps, a bit like how most people don’t notice that watches are nearly always set to 10:08 or 1:51 in adverts until they spot it once, and then they see it everywhere, perhaps with legislative slowness it is the case that after you’ve spotted it once, you see it everywhere.

After all, as I mentioned, the usual discourse around secondary legislation involves a mix of (a) there’s too much of it, (b) it doesn’t get enough scrutiny, and (c) the government slips things through this way. Those are all relevant concerns. But they all lead you in the opposite direction from ‘we need to speed things up’.

What’s worse, if your introduction to thinking about this area at all is some of the very good commentary and analysis based on that trio, you risk ending up falling into the wrong half of James Clear’s advice:

To simplify before you understand the details is ignorance.

To simplify after you understand the details is genius.

So if you first learn that strong, well-established paradigm for thinking about secondary legislation that omits the question of speed, you then end up never giving it much attention.

The paradigm says look at the volume. My experience says look at the speed.

So I will keep on looking.

In case you missed previously…

Election law: the tidy-up that might, finally, begin

Are parcel firms getting away with poor service?

Elsewhere from me

Was Malcolm Tucker a bad influence on people in British politics?

Thank you

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

Best wishes,

Mark

Here are all the predictions so far as to what is going to happen in the May 2026 local elections:

I will update this table if and when new predictions are published. Do let me know if you have spotted any that are missing from this table.

May local election prediction shows Lib Dems overtaking Conservatives

Stephen Fisher’s latest annual predictions for how the parties will do in the May local elections are out, and they predict that the Liberal Democrats will overtake the Conservatives as the second party of local government.

Stephen Fisher is an elections expert who is one of the brains behind the BBC exit poll and the annual projected national vote share calculations done for each set of local elections.

Taking as a starting point the latest councillor number totals from Open Council Data (which will change slightly between now and the first Thursday in May), then the result after Stephen Fisher’s predictions is that the total number of principal authority councillors for each party will be:

• Labour: 3,951
• Liberal Democrat: 3,395
• Reform: 3,246
• Conservative: 3,186
• Green: 1,393

The Liberal Democrats have only been in the top two once before, briefly in the mid-1990s. The Conservatives then were still in the third place, so falling to fourth would be a record low for the party.

Note: for all sorts of reasons, including the likely margins of error on predictions, do not read too much into the exact figures even though I have given them to the nearest councillor. Stephen Fisher also points out that his predictions are based on the notional seat numbers up for election in May (i.e. adjusting for boundary changes) while the Open Council Data does not include these. That adds some extra uncertainty though other calculations, such as looking at what proportion of their own seats up for election each party won last year, also point towards the Lib Dems being in with a real chance of replacing the Conservatives in second spot.

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Thank you to Mo Shafaei for being the Lib Dem candidate 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.

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: