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

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

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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

• Altrincham and Sale West: Jane Brophy
• Beaconsfield: Anna Crabtree
• Bracknell: Jo Hawley
• Brentwood and Ongar: Edward Sainsbury
• Bridgwater: Graham Oakes
• Cambridge: Cheney Payne
• Cardiff North: Joseph Carter
• Central Devon: Ed Tyldesley
• Cheadle: Tom Morrison
• Chester North and Neston: Carol Braithwaite
• Chippenham: Sarah Gibson
• Daventry: Jonathan Harris
• Derbyshire Dales: Barry Holliday

Liberal Democrat PPCs E-H

• Earley and Woodley: Mike Giles
• East Hampshire: Dominic Martin
• Eastleigh: Liz Jarvis
• Exeter: Jonnie Beddall
• Exmouth and Exeter East: Charlotte FitzGerald
• Farnham and Bordon: Khalil Yousuf
• Guildford: Zöe Franklin
• Hamble Valley: Prad Bains
• Hampstead and Highgate: Katie Mansfield
• Harpenden and Berkhamsted: Victoria Collins
• Harrogate and Knaresborough: Tom Gordon
• Hazel Grove: Lisa Smart
• Hinckley and Bosworth: Michael Mullaney

Liberal Democrat PPCs I-L

• Kenilworth and Southam: Louis Adam

Liberal Democrat PPCs M-P

• Maidenhead: Joshua Reynolds
• Maidstone and Malling: Michael Stephens
• Melksham and Devizes: Brian Mathew
• Mid Buckinghamshire: Anja Shaefer
• Newton Abbot: Martin Wrigley
• North Cornwall: Ben Maguire
• North Cotswolds: Paul Hodgkinson
• North Devon: Ian Roome
• North Dorset: Gary Jackson
• North Somerset: Janey Little
• Portsmouth South: Charlie Murphy

Liberal Democrat PPCs Q-T

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

Liberal Democrat PPCs U-Z

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

Related candidate information

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

What is a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC)?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And also:

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

Quite.

In news from other Lib Dem peers…

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

Previously on this newsletter…

How to fix the problem of money in our politics

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

Elsewhere from me…

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

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

Thank you

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

Best wishes,

Mark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the full report.

What do the polls say?

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

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

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

The latest edition of the email newsletter for my podcast, Political Fictions, is out and you can also read it in full below. But if you’d like to get future editions emailed direct to you as soon as they are published, sign up now:

Get the books

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

The Lives of Others

We’re headed to East Germany for this episode:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We love to hear from our listeners

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

Leave a comment

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

News about the theatrical adaptation of The Lives of Others

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

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

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

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

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

Previously on Political Fictions…

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

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

Elsewhere from us…

The perils of “jam lust”

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

Happy listening

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

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark

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

General election voting intention polls

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

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

MRP seat projections

Poll ratings for party leaders

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

Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

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

The Lib Dem here was Michael Jones – thank you.

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

For what all this means for the running total of council by-election results since the last May elections, see my council by-elections scorecard here.

These by-election results round-ups cover principal authority by-elections as it’s only those for which comprehensive results are available.

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

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

Lib Dem gain from Independent

What do the polls say?

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

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do the polls say?

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

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

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

Council by-election scorecards for previous years

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

Not any more though:

Congratulations to new councillor Harry Wormington and the team.

For what all this means for the running total of council by-election results since the last May elections, see my council by-elections scorecard here.

These by-election results round-ups cover principal authority by-elections as it’s only those for which comprehensive results are available.

What do the polls say?

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

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is all well worth a watch.

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

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

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

Gone, but back again

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

Other Reform councillors who have gone

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

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

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

Further Reform troubles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something big and dangerous is happening in our country.

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

First Dover. Then Portsmouth.

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

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

We must not let them.

Conference, we have seen this before.

Racism on Britain’s streets is sadly nothing new.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That extends well beyond the shores of our United Kingdom.

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

And yes Conference, we have to say it.

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

Cynical politicians like Nigel Farage.

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

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

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

It is the worst of Trump’s America.

We must not let it become Farage’s Britain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No pressure, friends!

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

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

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

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

More and more of you every year.

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

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

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

People are fed up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have to understand that, Conference.

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

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

And that movement can’t just talk to itself.

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

Just look at today’s Conservative Party.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s when we make progress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My wonderful wife Emily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And she insisted on an estate-wide ballot.

That decision was transformative.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We don’t deserve this.”

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

But now they’re hopeful again.

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

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

Emily, I’m so proud of you.

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

It can. It does.

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

That your voice can change things.

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

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

With the fight of our lives.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take nuclear weapons.

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

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

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

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

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

And so it must be with AI.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Giving people more power.

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

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

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

That is the liberal mission.

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

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

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

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

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

Emily spent two years painstakingly teaching him to crawl.

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

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

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

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

They think care is something you do to people.

But Emily and I have been incredibly fortunate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is the fight of our lives.

And it all starts right at the very beginning.

At birth.

That precious, miraculous moment when everything changes.

It should be a time of unblemished joy.

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

Inquiry after inquiry has found the same horrifying pattern.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A deal that took opportunities away from our young people.

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

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

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

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

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

And we are fighting to do just that.

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

This, too, is the fight of our lives.

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

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

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

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

Not just a growth plan. A defence plan.

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

Truly the fight of our lives.

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

That starts with income tax.

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

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

How? By freezing the tax-free personal allowance.

Raising income tax by stealth.

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

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

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

We raised the personal allowance by £4,000.

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

It was a profoundly liberal thing to do.

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

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

And our liberal approach is what is needed again today.

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

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

Real money, back in people’s pockets.

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

But here’s the big difference.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Closer trade brings growth. Growth brings tax revenue.

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

That is the difference between us and Reform.

Their tax cut is paid for through cruelty.

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

We did it before. We can do it again.

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

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

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

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

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

That’s not fair. It’s not right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A change to the nature of politics itself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it’s a country being held back.

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

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

Not Reform with their politics of grievance and blame.

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

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

But us. Liberals. That is our task.

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

To win the fight of our lives.

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

This is a fight against hopelessness and cynicism

Against populists who profit from division.

Against the forces that would tear our country apart.

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

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

But Conference, we will not back down.

We will stand and fight for the country we love.

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

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

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

Between a politics of grievance and a politics of empowerment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s build a country that works for them.

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

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

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

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

A fight for liberty, equality and community.

A fight for the values we hold dear.

This is the fight of our lives.

And we are going to win it.

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Get the books

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

The West Wing: Let Bartlet Be Bartlet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We love to hear from our listeners

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

Leave a comment

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

Gloria Steinhem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously on Political Fictions…

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

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

Elsewhere from us…

Andy Burnham’s in-tray of doom

How to fix the problem of money in our politics

Happy listening

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

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark

Although there had been a Lib Dem candidate last time, there was none the previous four times the ward was up.

This was followed by three contests on Thursday, all of which saw seats change hands and which also saw two wards have a Lib Dem candidate after the party previously being absent from ballot papers.

Thanks here go to Alex Purvis for being the Lib Dem candidate.

This was an SNP gain from independents.

Thank you to David Glennie for getting the Liberal Democrats on the ballot paper here after the party’s previous absence.

This contest also had a Lib Dem after the party previously not being on the ballot. Here it was due to Murray Sinclair – thank you.

For what all this means for the running total of council by-election results since the last May elections, see my council by-elections scorecard here.

These by-election results round-ups cover principal authority by-elections as it’s only those for which comprehensive results are available. But my eye was also caught by:

Gainsborough Town Council, Trent ward
Lib Dem (Mark Stephenson) 53%
Conservatives 30%
Labour 17%

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:

With the latest Liberal Democrat conference coming up soon, here are some tips for would-be new, and indeed, experienced, speakers at party conference.

Doubtless, others will have good advice to add to what’s in this list, so do comment away at the end, or indeed ask any questions.

1. Time your speech and aim to undershoot

The conference paperwork details how long the speeches can be for each part of conference. Getting your planned comments down to comfortably less than the time limit is doubly beneficial.

First, it means you can relax and force yourself to slow down rather than getting into the sort of rushed gallop to finish every-last-word-you-wanted-to-say which ends up making for a badly delivered speech.

Second, the risk is all one-way. Finish under your time and no-one really notices (save for a grateful debate chair and aide, who may well remember your ability to keep to time when deciding who to call in the future). Over-run, lots of people notice and you get cut off.

2. Prepare your first and last sentences

Some people work best off full scripts, others off brief notes. Whatever works for you, ensure you have the exact wording memorised of your first and last sentences.

Why? Because the first sets the mood of the audience and the last is what sets their memories. Deliver those two well and you buy yourself a lot of scope for variability without damage in-between.

3. Don’t rush to the podium

You will know at least one speech in advance that you are going to be called to speak. That is the time to head down to the front. You will find there are seats reserved for waiting speakers near the steps up to the podium.

This means that when you are called to speak you only have a few steps forward to take, so you can also take them in a slow, relaxed manner to calm yourself down before speaking, rather than running from the back of the hall and doing the opposite.

There are also conference stewards on hand to help anyone with mobility issues, such as if you need to use the lift to get up to the platform in a wheelchair or have impaired vision.

Conference audiences are good at being patient about someone getting to the speaking location so if you have to take a few extra moments to get there, don’t worry and don’t rush.

4. Don’t touch the microphones

They are set-up to catch the voices of people from all sorts of heights. You don’t need to adjust them.

All you will do is make yukky noises for everyone in the hall, risk putting them out of position for yourself and take a punt on messing things up for the next person who has your botched handiwork to live with.

Just don’t touch them. You don’t need to adjust them.

5. Start with ‘thank you <name of chair>’

Again, a simple little device which gives the sound engineers the change to ensure they have got the microphones up and working at the right levels. It also gives you a moment to collect yourself, look around and in particular…

6. Check where the amber/red lights are

These warning lights are used to indicate that you have one minute left and then that you are out of time.

Until you have been up there and missed the lights it can seem bizarre that anyone would fail to notice where they are. But even though there are usually slap bang in front of you on the podium and also in comfortable eye-line in the hall if you look up, with everything else going on it’s quite easy to miss where they are.

I’ve been up to podium, spoken and back down again without ever noticing where the lights on the podium were. (They were there: I checked afterwards.)

7. Decide what to do with your legs

The podium can seem quite substantial when you are stood at it, but almost always it is pretty thin, leaving much of the hall with a fairly decent view of most of you. That means nervous tapping of feet and shifting of legs gets noticed and can easily be distracting.

Of course, moving your upper body around a little, especially the head and the hands makes for a better delivery. But the further you go down, the stiller you should stay, whatever posture you pick.

8. Watch yourself back

The more someone hates the idea of watching themselves speak, the more beneficial they usually find it if they eventually do.

You can watch the clip in private, hiding behind the sofa if you want. And oh my, there’s one speech I gave it makes me flinch even now just thinking about watching. Thank goodness records of that one are buried even more securely that that Nick Clegg song video.

But watching yourself back is a quite brilliant way to learn how to be better, and everyone can be better at speaking than they are currently.

You can either get a friend to film you on their phone, or the full camera feed from Conference is usually put on the party’s YouTube channel.

9. Get someone to give you honest feedback

Speaking of which, supportive but honest feedback from a trusted colleague is also a must. I’ve often noticed, both at Liberal Democrat conference and elsewhere, how the friends of someone who has given a mediocre speech often are all positive about it. That’s a good side to being a friend immediately after a speech. In the long run, however, it’s not all of what being a friend is about. Failing to help steer someone towards getting better at what they do isn’t a true act of friendship. It’s a failure of friendship.

And with that… good luck!

P. S. Do remember not to use someone else’s speech notes.

For more on how to give a great speech, whether at conference or not, see this classic TV documentary.

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Welcome to my latest update on work in the House of Lords. This time I am taking a look at how our political system is regulated, and the protections we need to keep democracy safe from becoming simply a contest to see who has the biggest bank account.

Campaigning is all year round, so spending controls need to be all year round too

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

So those issues were at the heart of my speech in the House of Lords for the second reading of the Representation of the People Bill.

Here is what I said:

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for opening such a long and detailed debate, one that has shown the broad range of expertise in this House, including that of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield, whose presence we will certainly miss. Even if it is not quite a one-for-one swap, it was very welcome to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Macintosh, and I am sure he will contribute much to the Bill and other topics in the future.

As someone with a PhD in the Great Reform Act, I am tempted by the reference made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, to digress deep into the 19th century but, mindful of the time, I should perhaps rather concentrate on some of the common themes we have heard in the debate: the need to strengthen and protect our democracy, so that it is the voice of the ordinary citizen that is dominant, not that of the billionaire or the foreign Government and so that the necessary bureaucracy of elections serves the citizen and helps them exercise their democratic say, rather than obstructs or frustrates them.

There are important measures to welcome in the Bill, such as the introduction of votes at 16, the progress on automatic voter registration and the strengthened independence for the Electoral Commission. But there are other areas where the Bill as it currently stands falls short, where it leaves too many loopholes or even creates some new ones, and where there will therefore be much to test out in Committee—when, let us hope, the Government will be open to persuasion.

The Government themselves have acknowledged the need to do more. They tabled a very large number of amendments late in the House of Commons process for the Bill—a subject to which I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, may return shortly. The Government have also talked of the need for further amendments to help implement the Rycroft review, as well as requesting that the Electoral Commission review spending limits, and made that late commitment given by the Minister in the House of Commons to a new task and finish group looking at mega donors. Clearly, there is much more still to do.

So often, reviews, proposals and good intentions run into the sand of “when legislative time will allow”, but we have a primary legislation vehicle available here and now, so it will be crucial that we make full use of Committee and Report to polish, fix and improve the Bill. There is a certain urgency about it as well, given the dangers and strains that our existing systems face.

There are dangers from abroad, as set out by the new chief of MI6 in her first public speech just before Christmas, and those set out by the director-general of MI5 when briefing political parties earlier this year. There is also the unprecedented concentration of donations to political parties from just a handful of the super-rich, a trend accelerated in the last few days but present before then too. For example, more than 80% of all the declared donations ever received by Nigel Farage’s party have come from just two people.

It goes wider than that. For example, as the noble Lord, Lord Wills, mentioned earlier, Transparency International has shown that the proportion of donations coming from those giving £1 million or more has surged thirtyfivefold in under a decade—and those figures are even before last week. We are moving rapidly from a broad-based, democratic system of financing parties to one of unprecedented sums coming from a tiny number of people.

There is no one magic solution to solve that. Action on multiple fronts is required, which is why we need this Bill but also an improved version of it. For example, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Goudie, and others have mentioned, there is a question about the breadth of donations that need capturing by rules covering transparency.

There are also some important loopholes in what the Bill proposes. I have mentioned before the Donald Trump loophole, as one could call it: the ability for him to split ownership of one of his firms with several members of his family, thus bringing each of them individually underneath the threshold at which the protections in the Bill in terms of foreign ownership of firms would kick in. The threshold set in the Bill is a much more generous one than the threshold set for controlling foreign ownership in our newspaper sector. I am not clear why our democracy should deserve lower protection than our media landscape. Although the measure to add transparency to donations direct to candidates is very welcome, it also creates a new loophole as the Government are not planning aggregation rules—so one large donation could be, completely legally, split into multiple small donations to candidates and kept secret.

We will have to explore these and other examples further in Committee, along with toughening up the proposed corporate donation limits, where in particular the Electoral Commission has quite rightly warned that there is again scope to split multiple donations among multiple people and therefore have them become acceptable because they are not aggregated. But such closing of loopholes can get us only so far, and that is why we on these Benches welcome the many suggestions in the Commons, including from the Labour Benches, for progress towards a donor cap so that a small number of very rich people cannot drown out the democratic voices of millions of ordinary citizens.

I hope the principle of protecting our democracy as one in which every individual gets their fair voice—but also, perhaps, the strong support we have heard from so many in the Labour Party in this debate today, as well as the support from many other parts of this House, including from the noble Lords, Lord Evans and Lord Carter, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, as well as many on the Labour Benches—will encourage the Government to have a very open mind on this topic as the Bill progresses.

That, though, is just the “money in” part. We also need to do much better at regulating the “money out” part, as there are significant gaps in the controls on campaigning expenditure. The Government’s letter to the Electoral Commission asking it to review certain cap levels is certainly welcome, but we also need to move away from the Government being in the driving seat on setting the limits that will apply for their own re-election bid. It should be an independent regulator that is in the driving seat.

We need to recognise that political campaigning is not a part-time activity. As we all know very well, it happens all year round, year after year. Yet expense limits are part-time. They do not apply all year round, year after year. That leaves a huge gap in our democratic defences, one that needs closing with year-round spending controls. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, mentioned, we also need to close that gap because we are now in a world where national mailshots at local election time, unless it is near to a general election when the general election limits apply, are in fact a completely uncapped, unlimited form of campaigning that can completely drown out the campaigning that takes place at a local level.

I would not want to disappoint noble Lords by not mentioning the merits of electoral reform. First past the post is designed for a two-party system, yet we now have five and six-party systems around the country. While I commend the modesty of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, in feeling that an election system that results in his own election is flawed, it is possible to take a different view of that. So often, supporters of first past the post have talked about the stability and the clear mandates that it provides. I humbly suggest that the evidence of the last few years suggests that perhaps now is the time to look again, so I very much hope that talk of a national commission to draw up proposals to change our electoral system will turn into action.

I turn to an area of much greater cross-party agreement: the need to tackle abuse and intimidation of those taking part in a democratic system. It is a topic that I know the Minister is committed to and that has rightly been mentioned as an important issue in this debate by the noble Baronesses, Lady Leaman, Lady Morgan and Lady Smith, and others. There are undoubtedly some welcome moves in the Bill on that topic, but they are pretty limited compared with the number of excellent reports and recommendations such as from the recent Speaker’s Conference or those set out by the Jo Cox Foundation or the Online Safety Network. There has been very little movement, in particular, in the online aspects of those problems, so I very much hope that is an area where we can make progress in Committee.

I have one final area to mention. There is of course that question of electoral consolidation, as mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Hayward, Lord Norton and Lord Shamash, and indeed by many other Peers in the other recent debate that the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, held in this House. The statute book is an overcomplicated mess; reviews and experts have consistently concluded that for decades, but the situation keeps on getting worse. That is a problem for returning officers and for the public sector staff working at the front line to try to make our elections function. It is a problem because of the risks of foreign influence that it opens us up to, as the Rycroft review has set out. It is bad for the ordinary citizen and for civil society because, far too often, to work out how you can use your democratic rights, you need to call on a lawyer. Lawyers are wonderful people in many ways, but the need to call on them should be safely limited.

To give just one illustration of the complexity of election law, the Explanatory Notes to the Bill point out that it refers to and amends 20 Acts and 19 statutory instruments. To be fair, there is a very welcome piece of what one could call mini-consolidation in the heart of the Bill on the rules to do with election forms, and those would certainly help us avoid situations such as the ludicrously long 72-page statutory instrument that was required simply to add the veteran card as an acceptable form of ID. Having tempted the Government to one step of tidying up election law in this Bill, I hope that in Committee we may be able to tempt the Government to a little more. Why, for example, are the Parliamentary Elections Act 1695 and the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1993 not fully repealed? I give those as two simple examples of how there is tidying up that could be done that would make things clearer and would clear the road to full consolidation in due course.

Our democracy is a precious thing. We have warnings from other countries of how quickly democracy can decay if it is not properly nurtured and protected. Much of the Bill is welcome, but much of it needs improvement to go further. There is an urgency about those improvements, because in legislative time the next general election is already near. What we do not fix in the Bill, we may well not be able to fix before the next election. I look forward to the Government continuing to engage with other parties and outside experts, and to Peers working collaboratively across the House so that the Bill ends up being a major milestone to improve our democracy rather than a missed opportunity that we all regret.

In other news from other Lib Dem peers…

Previously on this newsletter…

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

Government says it won’t tackle election turnout blindspot

Elsewhere from me…

A crisis point for political polling

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

Thank you

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

Best wishes,

Mark

The Labour leader of Luton Borough Council has lost a no-confidence vote after being in the role less than four months.

Tahmina Saleem was appointed in May to replace long-serving Hazel Simmons, but has faced a leadership challenge which puts Liberal Democrat Amjid Ali in charge of a coalition-led authority.

Luton Liberal Democrats add:

Congratulations to Cllr Amjid Ali on becoming the new Leader of Luton Borough Council. A significant moment for Luton, with its first Kashmiri Leader who is proudly Luton-raised.

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A party press release brings the news:

Patrick Stillman, a Liberal Democrat councillor for West Hampstead and outgoing Chair of Camden Liberal Democrats, has been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate for the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.

Patrick has lived in Camden for the past five years, moving to the area after graduating from the University of Kent. He works in compliance for a financial payments company based in Holborn.

Earlier this year, Patrick was elected as a Liberal Democrat councillor for West Hampstead ward, taking the seat from Labour. Since then, Patrick has been helping to hold Labour to account on crime, anti-social behaviour and tackling rough sleeping.

He first stood for the party in the 2023 South Hampstead by-election, where he secured an 8.3% swing to the Liberal Democrats. Patrick is also the outgoing chairperson of Camden Liberal Democrats and saw the local party through a campaign that saw a 150% increase in the party’s representation on the council: from four councillors to ten.

Patrick says the by-election will be fought on the issues that matter most to residents: the cost of living and chronic housing insecurity across the constituency; the future of the Euston and HS2 regeneration scheme; safety on the borough’s streets and in its nightlife areas, including the long-running rough sleeping and antisocial behaviour around Warren Street; and trust in politicians after a turbulent few months for the constituency.

Patrick and the Liberal Democrats will show the voters of Holborn and St Pancras what a committed local champion really looks like – Keir Starmer walked away after being dethroned from power by Labour, while Zack Polanski is standing to cement his own leadership of the Green Party. The people of Holborn and St Pancras, and the country, deserve better than politicians treating the constituency as a personal platform. Liberal Democrats like Patrick will keep serving residents on the issues that matter, not their own ambitions.

Commenting on his selection, Patrick Stillman said:

I’m proud to have been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Holborn and St Pancras. Voters here deserve better than a Labour government in chaos, or a Green Party using this seat to prop up its leader’s ambitions.

We have a distinct, confident liberal message – on housing, on safety, on giving young Londoners like me a fair shot at building a life here – and I’m going to make that case on every doorstep between now and October 8th.

Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for London, Luke Taylor MP, said:

The people of Holborn and St Pancras deserve someone who will put them first, not treat their constituency like Farage treats Clacton.“Patrick has already shown he is the local champion the area deserves. Under his leadership the Camden Lib Dems have helped thousands of people and stood up for the liberal values that make the borough great, all whilst more than doubling our number of councillors.

Holborn & St Pancras deserves better than a voiceless backbench Labour MP who won’t stand up for London to the new Prime Minister, or a Green MP who just wants more media coverage.

Patrick has my full backing: London needs more Liberal Democrats standing up for it.

See here for all the Liberal Democrat PPCs for the next general election selected and publicly announced so far.

Keep up with news about Lib Dem selections

If you’d like to hear about future selections, just sign up for my monthly newsletter, Liberal Democrat Newswire, with its regular selections round-up:

The latter has had much less attention in the last few days than the former, but is an important part of the picture, as I explained on Times Radio at the weekend:

I’ll do another edition of my email newsletter about work in Parliament, A Lord’s Eye View, later this week with more on what I and others say in the debate. To make sure you don ‘t miss out, you can sign up now:

Nigel Farage’s unfavourability stretches to those who voted Leave in the 2016 referendum. No surprise that Remain supporters split 88%-9% in viewing him unfavourably rather than favourably, but Leavers also split 48%-45%.

What do the polls say?

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

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

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

Let’s start though with another ward which has become a Reform versus Lib Dem tussle as a result of a by-election:

Congratulations on that large vote share increase go to Georgina Barry and the team. This is a two-member ward in a constituency with a Labour MP and where, after not standing at all twice in a row, the Lib Dems finished behind both a Conservative candidate and the independent slate. That is welcome sustained progress.

Turning to the other results:

James Porter gets the thanks here for getting the Lib Dems on the ballot paper after two previous no-shows.

That Reform vote share change should be a minus, not a plus.

Thank you to Abdullah Vavdiwala for standing for the Liberal Democrats 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:

A councillor has quit the Conservatives to join the Liberal Democrats, voicing concerns that the party is drifting too far to the right.

Councillor Josh Bancroft represents Cannock Park and Old Fallow ward on Cannock Chase Council…

Chairman of West Midlands Liberal Democrats Lee Dargue said: “I’m very pleased to welcome Josh into a strong team. He brings real experience in community politics, which is an ideal fit for the Liberal Democrats.”

The Liberal Democrats previously had no councillors on the council.

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Welcome to my latest update on work in the House of Lords. This time it’s back to parcel delivery services, as well as a quick update on a political finance loophole.

The regulation of parcel delivery firms is not up to scratch

I never did get to debate my motion earlier this year about the state of parcel delivery services. But I came out lucky in a recent ballot to get to debate the topic in a ‘question for short debate’.

So here is what I said earlier today with the minister responding, Anas Sarwar, being very fresh in post having only been introduced to the Lords earlier in the day:

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In so doing, I particularly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Sarwar, whose maiden speech I look forward to hearing in this debate. I hope that a short Lib Dem-initiated debate about parcels, if not perhaps the realisation of a long-standing dream item on the noble Lord’s bucket list, will at least provide a congenial forum for his debut. I am sure he will rise admirably to the challenge of the very rapid turnaround between his introduction and maiden speech.

Parcel deliveries are a central part of modern life. They can bring fun and joy to our lives, such as with a well-timed gift. But they are also essential for our economy, both for sales and for supply chains. They are essential for health too, with many being dependent on parcel deliveries to receive medicines and other health assistance. They give a vital lifeline to the wider world for those who are greatly restricted in their mobility. Yet, the state of the parcel delivery sector is, in some key respects, far from happy. Citizens Advice estimates that 15 million people suffered a problem with their most recent parcel delivery.

The 2025 Parcel Theft Report estimates that nearly five million homes were affected in a year by parcel theft, with over £650 million-worth of goods being stolen. I recently found one such stolen package dumped near my own home, presumably because the thieves had discovered that it contained a very large bottle of vinegar and nothing else. I was able to reunite the vinegar with its owner, but of course most victims of theft are not nearly so lucky. What is more, these problems have all the greater impact on those who are less mobile, who are therefore all the more dependent on parcels arriving on time and in the right place.

So up against all this, what is Ofcom, the regulator, doing? Not enough. What have the Government done in their recently signed-off statement of strategic priorities for Ofcom? Again, not enough. Unfortunately, prior to the summer, the Government did not find time to debate my regret Motion on that Ofcom strategy. I hope today’s debate will re-focus attention on it, particularly as Ofcom’s own data shows that, of those who contacted a delivery company about an issue, only 45%—less than half—were satisfied with the outcome. Of course, not everyone will be happy in such cases, but the Institute of Customer Service finds that, on average, 63% of people are satisfied with complaint-handling. So, with all due caution about definitions in each case not being exactly the same, it is fair to say that not only do you have less than a 50:50 chance of coming out satisfied if you raise an issue with a delivery firm, but the sector’s overall performance is well below that of other sectors.

Ofcom’s data does show that the 45% figure is up one percentage point on the previous year, but that pace of improvement means it would take 18 years for the sector merely to get to the average. Despite being 18 years off merely getting to average, Ofcom’s own commentary, published alongside this data, imparts no real sense of concern or urgency. The Government’s strategy statement merely gives a “welcome” to Ofcom’s approach, along with the suggestion that Ofcom

“should take enforcement action where it considers it appropriate”.

Given that we are never going to call for inappropriate enforcement, that is about as tepid a form of words as we can get.

There is a further reason why Ofcom’s approach is problematic: its requirements for complaints processes are poorly specified and, judging by people’s experiences, not properly followed by parcel delivery firms themselves. The specification problem is that Ofcom requires complaints processes for the sender and the addressee, yet you are neither if you have someone else’s parcel dumped on you. You are neither if you see bad driving or atrocious parking from one of the parcel delivery firms. In fact, these problems will get worse. The Government’s strategy for Ofcom rightly encourages experiments with drones and robot delivery of parcels. But what if a robot heading to someone else’s home crashes into you on the pavement? What if a drone, flying to deliver a parcel somewhere else, crashes into your garden? You are neither the sender nor the addressee, so Ofcom says that there is no need for an adequate complaints process that you can have recourse to.

Now, you might think that delivery firms are happy to accept complaints anyway in such circumstances, but outside of Royal Mail, which has its own regulatory structure, that is not my experience, nor that of many people I have spoken to. Worse, there is also the widespread experience that, even if you are the addressee, but you have, say, bought something from an online shop and are therefore not the parcel delivery firm’s customer—the online shop is the customer—the parcel delivery firms will say, “No, you can’t complain to us”, even though Ofcom’s rules say you should be able to.

Perhaps most strikingly, the website for InPost—one of the largest delivery firms—which I checked again last night, explicitly says:

“Where you have ordered our Services through a retailer or other third party, all queries and complaints should be raised with them directly. Their complaints process will apply.”

But that is not what Ofcom’s rules say it is allowed to do. So the complaints process is broken: the regulators’ rules are too narrow and do not appear to be being properly enforced. Moreover, when the Government signed off the strategy for Ofcom—admittedly, before the Minister took up his post—they did not say that things need to get better.

Nor are market forces the remedy here, unfortunately, because the operation of market forces is hindered by obscurity. You may have a delivery firm that you particularly wish to avoid—I certainly have my own shortlist. You may have one that you are particularly keen to reward with your business; perhaps you are a great fan of Royal Mail, for example. However, there are no transparency requirements—there is no transparency good practice—for the firm you order from to tell you who it will use to deliver your goods to you. The potential of consumer power is deliberately hindered by obscurity. Again, the reaction from both Ofcom and the Government in their strategy statement has been to say, in effect, “We are happy with the status quo”, rather than to push for transparency and change.

In conclusion, we have the problems for the victims of widespread crime; the problems for businesses having to shoulder the costs of those crimes; the problems of a complaints system 18 years away from even getting to average; and the problems of a complaints system that is flawed by design and implementation. It is fair to say that the Ofcom strategy statement was a missed opportunity for the Government to be tough on crime, to promote growth and to help people. Perhaps, however, the cavalry has arrived. A new Minister certainly has arrived, and a maiden speech is about to arrive. Of course, I acknowledge that some of the detail I have raised may best be addressed in a follow-up meeting or correspondence. I hope too, perhaps, that we will hear from the Minister a commitment to have a renewed look at these issues, because they certainly need looking at again.

As the minister’s response was also his maiden speech, understandably it didn’t get into all the detail of the issue this time – but he did say that he will follow up on them. So watch this space for more parcel news.

The loophole that stops political finance allegations being properly investigated

This week I also had a go again at the loophole that protects those accused of many political finance offences from full investigation. But the government stonewalled, again:

Lord Pack: My Lords, successful investigations require the right powers to be available, yet both the National Crime Agency and the Met Police have warned that they cannot use their full sweep of powers because the maximum sentences for many political finance offences are too low and do not trigger them. Both the Rycroft review and the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy have highlighted this loophole. Can the Minister reassure us that the Government will be using the Representation of the People Bill to table amendments to close this loophole so that the full power of law enforcement can be used against politicians who might or might not be breaking the law?

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage: We want to see all the loopholes around this issue closed, and we are taking very strong and clear action. We have accepted all of Philip Rycroft’s recommendations, and we are taking forward a comprehensive package of reforms to strengthen the safeguards against foreign political influence and interference in our politics. I look forward to debating this Bill with Members of your Lordships’ House – we start on 14 September.

For all the minister’s words, the reality is that the government has not tabled amendments to the Representation of the People Bill to tackle this issue. The government taking action in this case means kicking the issue into the long grass.

In other news from other Lib Dem peers…

Previously on this newsletter…

Government says it won’t tackle election turnout blindspot

The two skills politics forgets to teach

Elsewhere from me…

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

Market Research Society upholds complaint against pollster

Thank you

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

Best wishes,

Mark

Get the books

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

The Death of Stalin

Our latest podcast heads east for a film about Russian politics:

Mark and Cory talk about Armando Iannucci’s 2017 black comedy The Death of Stalin. You can watch the film for its exploration of the nature of evil, think about whether the license that is taken with the truth is completely appropriate, or just wait for the amazing memes to appear on screen.

The Guardian article on the film’s accuracy which Cory mentions can be found here, whilst the academic critique that Mark was looking forward to reading so he could disagree with it can be found here.

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

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

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

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

After last week’s emergency episode on The Absence of War, we’re returning to fortnightly episodes. In two weeks’ time we are talking about The West Wing episode “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet”, which is the 19th episode of series one.

We love to hear from our listeners

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

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

Two snippets on the the 1992 election

We’ve got bonus content from both of us in this week’s newsletter. First, Mark has been rummaging around in the archives…

As we discussed in our podcast about David Hare’s The Absence of War, in the immediate aftermath of Labour’s defeat the debate was whether the Labour Party had changed too much or not enough ahead of that election.

Tony Blair of course very much took the ‘not enough’ line, but that wasn’t what Ken Livingstone had said on TV on election night as Labour’s defeat become clear:

Peter Sissons: Where does the blame [for Labour’s defeat] lie? Put your finger on it.

Ken Livingstone: The whole party has moved too far to the right. Been too frightened to challenge vested interests … We didn’t say we were going to cut defence spending. We didn’t say we were going to have any constraints on the export of capital abroad.

We also mentioned how Neil Kinnock’s failure to win has looked better with age because the fact that Labour did then go on to win three times in a row makes his efforts look like a successful preliminary, saving his party and putting it on the right track before Tony Blair came along to finish the job.

The Spectator has just run a piece which cites Neil Kinnock’s own reflections on this point in a letter to one of its journalists. He said he had “enabled the party to rebuild and thrive and laid the basis for Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997.”

What other people think

Now over to Cory with news of on past, present and future Political Fictions episodes…

Looking to the future, we were both intrigued by The Guardian’s list of 50 TV shows which are heading to our screens this winter. In particular Steven Moffat’s ‘ludicrously anticipated comedy drama’ Number 10, which stars Rafe Spall and Jenna Coleman and apparently ‘could well be the British West Wing’. Is there higher praise? [yes there is – Mark]. We’ve added this show to the list to discuss when it’s broadcast on Channel 4.

Speaking of things which are ludicrously anticipated, we’ve just finished recording a two-parter on the classic mini-series State of Play. That’s coming out in October, in which we’re going to break with our normal fortnightly schedule and put out an episode a week in a special mini-series. We’ll also be covering The Lives of Others ahead of the stage version appearing in London, as well as hopefully an episode on The Thick of It with a special guest. Look out for details of that in future newsletters.

Finally, The Times recently put out a listicle of Five brilliant films you probably missed which included Election. This Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick high school comedy was the topic of the second episode we ever recorded. Listen to that episode here before you catch up on the film.

Previously on Political Fictions…

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

Jeffrey Archer’s ‘First Among Equals’, with Shane Whaley (part 1)

Elsewhere from us…

The politics of the climate crisis

Market Research Society upholds complaint against pollster

Happy listening

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

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark

Congratulations to new councillor Fred Hulls and the team.

Turning to the further five contests held on Thursday, we had another successful Lib Dem defence, one which gives the party majority control of Oxfordshire County Council:

Congratulations to the new Lib Dem councillor James Hartley and their team.

The ward is in Calum Miller’s constituency, again extending the run of good Lib Dem results in the key general election battlegrounds.

Thanks here go to Artie Khovanov for being the Liberal Democrat candidate.

The Liberal Democrat here was Liss Owen; thank you.

The Liberal Democrat here was Drew Gardner – thank you.

Note also the continuation of two patterns we’ve seen in recent weeks: Reform’s progress in by-elections stalling, and Labour’s tide of defeats in by-elections being stemmed.

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: