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).

Bonus content: tactical voting in Celebrity Traitors, when the Downing Street door was green and more

Welcome to the latest email for our podcast, Political Fictions: political drama on screen and on the page. Please do spread the word about the podcast to your friends, colleagues and even dastardly rivals who you want to distract from doing something else.

Now, on to the proper business of this email which this time is a trio of bonus content related to previous episodes.

We’ve got a bounty of bonus content for you today: the absence of smart tactical voting in Celebrity Traitors, the full story of when the 10 Downing Street door went green and a great podcast about Watergate.

The voting process in Celebrity Traitors

Cory has been watching TV again.

Now that a couple of weeks have passed, it’s hopefully alright to write about the latest series of Celebrity Traitors without spoilers. [Wrong, there is never a right time to write about it – Mark] There’s lots of interesting talk online about the show’s format and its personalities, which are the things that make the show most watchable. There’s less said about the voting, which is odd when this aspect of the show is arguably the most important. [Voting processes? OK, now is the right time to write about the show – Mark]

In the penultimate episode of this series, there were three Traitors among the final eight contestants, and two in the final six. This is a pretty substantial voting bloc, and the Traitor faction only needed to convert one or two others to their side to vote out key enemies and win.

Leaving aside the circumstances in which James Acaster left the show, the other key turning point was the roundtable discussion of the final six candidates. From watching the edit of that roundtable discussion, it was clear that votes were going to be split between Traitor Maya and Faithful Romesh. Leigh-Anne had told Kenny, the other Traitor, that Romesh was her number one suspected Traitor. Knowing this, it would surely make sense for Kenny and Maya to both vote for Romesh, assuming Leigh-Anne would also do so. That would guarantee at least a 3-3 split between Romesh and Maya, meaning that there would be a 50/50 chance of a key Faithful player being banished and there being two Traitors in the final five.

Instead, Kenny felt that he had to vote for Maya, which meant that she exited as a result of a 4-2 vote. Now Kenny said he had reasons to do this in order to look like a credible Faithful, and it feels unreasonable to criticise someone who had demonstrated an aptitude for the game, especially considering that my efforts at playing Werewolf/Mafia-type games are decidedly mixed. Kenny’s reading of the psychology of the situation may be right.

However, I wonder whether it would have been better to risk voting for Romesh and try to keep Maya in the game for as long as possible. For me, it felt like a move that destroyed the Traitors’ voting coalition in Starmer-esque fashion.

Maybe next time, the Celebrity Traitors just need a Chief Whip who knows how to count?

When the 10 Downing Street door went green

Mark has been thinking about doors again.

In one of our previous episodes, I mentioned that the 10 Downing Street door has not always been black. The conventional story, which I recounted, is that it went green for a while in the early twentieth century, due to colour preferences of then Prime Minister Asquith’s wife.

However, Ian Mansfield has been digging into what really happened and when. As so often, rummaging in the archives turns up a different story from the one we all thought was true. As he explains: “There’s an account from 1864 that suggests there was a green door at 10 Downing Street even then … [and] there’s a reference to it being green as late as 1945.”

Read the full story of how the door was green for much longer than we thought over on his blog.

A great Watergate podcast

When not thinking about doors, Mark has been listening to podcasts.

One of the episodes of our podcast I most enjoyed recording was the one about All the President’s Men (the short extras at the back to make the newsroom look bigger!) and it is proving a very popular choice with listeners too.

So there’s a good chance you may also be interested in a new podcast series from The Rest is Classified, taking a look at the real story behind the Watergate scandal. The first episode is here.

Our latest episode

The Manchurian Candidate (the 1962 version)

From the archives

The Thick of It with Sam Freedman

All The President’s Men, and the myth it sells you

Elsewhere from us…

A proportional response

Brexit, ten years on: what the polls say about Europe now

And finally…

Thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed this bonus content. Feedback is always very welcome!

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark

The Art Of Faking Exhibition Poultry, which I discovered courtesy of my niche book collection, is appositely dedicated to “All poultry judges and exhibitors in the interests of the poultry fancy”. Much as I have a soft spot for the title used by another Mark Pack, this one is the winner in the best book title ever stakes.

The admiring quotes at the front of the book tell us that its author is, at least according to The Poultry World, “the most arresting and provocative writer on poultry”. It went into at least a second edition.

George Scott also wrote a preface to The Ceylon Poultry Club Year Book, 1934. Quite the expert it would seem.

He was also a man who was not modest about the role of poultry detection in the happiness of mankind. Hence he selected this Huxley quote to appear at the start of the book:

There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off”

The various chapters are titled:

• What faking is
• The psychology of faking
• Modern tendencies in faking
• The detection of faking
• Darkening the plumage of buff and red varieties
• Dyeing the plumage
• Bleaching the plumage of white varieties
• Faking leg colour
• Other forms of faking
• Notes on the chemicals used in faking
  

But best of all is Scott’s foreword. Socrates, Galileo, Voltaire, Neitzsche and DH Lawrence (who was, Scott says, “harassed and persecuted by a flock of moronic smuthounds”) are all cited in it. Impressive. Though not quite as impressive as Scott’s line in insults such as when he complains of “the pseudo-scientific Hogan cult, with all its blowsy jargon; its crapulous fundament of snide anatomy; its noisy and prolific drool of whim-wham”.

A good read.

Welcome to my latest update on work in the House of Lords, which returns to the question of House of Lords reform. The 1911 Parliament Act was meant to be an interim solution pending the introduction of democracy, but we are still waiting for that to happen.

Will Labour make the Lords democratic?

This week has been mostly taken up for me with the committee stage of the Representation of the People Bill, which I’ll cover in future editions of this newsletter. So instead here is my question to a government minister this week about House of Lords Reform, something which I still support even after becoming the beneficiary of its current appointed nature:

You can also read the exchange in Hansard here.

In news from other Lib Dem peers…

Previously on this newsletter…

How slowness at the Treasury cost taxpayers millions

Yes, I’m still in favour of making the House of Lords democratic

Elsewhere from me…

The Manchurian Candidate (the 1962 version)

Do 58% of people think Sherlock Holmes was real?

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

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

A Parliamentary murder mystery

Ellen Wilkinson was the first female Minister of Education and also wrote a murder mystery set in the worlds of politics and in the Palace of Westminster. The place being what it is, those familiar with the Palace will recognise many of the detailed locations and are likely to have noticed what turns out to be a key architectural detail. But no spoilers here as to what that is.

You can get the book from Amazon, Bookshop.org and Waterstones.

There’s also an episode of my podcast, Political Fictions, about the book. Take a listen here.

Give the gift of knowledge

Polling knowledge, that is, with a gift subscription to The Week in Polls. Read by pollsters, journalists, politicians and thousands of voters, my weekly newsletter gives you all you need to know about political polling in Britain each and every week. Buy a gift for you relative, friend or enemy here.

To the doorsteps!

MiniVAN has many virtues as the party’s canvassing app. But it can eat battery power, and when you are on the doorsteps with MiniVAN, calling leaflets, posters and more to juggle, a bulky power bank to top up your phone is not terribly convenient. So check out this very compact offering, the Anker Nano Power Bank.

To the letterboxes!

A quartet of delivery spatulas – also usable for cooking, but frankly we all know how the dedicated Lib Dem campaigner is going to use a spatula, don’t we? These are wooden rather than plastic and from sustainably managed forests. Plus they come with superior rounded (rather than square) corners: Amazon.

What doesn’t government work better?

Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It by Sam Freedman – one of the best political books of recent years, full of wisdom on why our government does not work better, and how it could. Get a copy here: Amazon, UK Bookshop or Waterstones.

Links to buy items above are affiliate links and more book suggestions from earlier years are here.

Sign up to get the latest news and analysis

Many congratulations to new councillor Amanda Jellicoe and the team.

The result was rather different from what the Conservatives had been saying:

On being elected Amanda Jellicoe said:

Thank you to everyone in the Penn Hill ward who voted for me and put their trust in me.

I’m looking forward to getting stuck into the hard work of representing residents, listening to their concerns and making sure their voices are heard.

I’d also particularly like to thank the Labour and Green voters who lent me their support.

This result shows what we can achieve when people come together to stand against divisive politics and elect someone who will put their community first.

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:

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.

Waterloo Councillor Kieran Dams has joined the Liberal Democrats following his resignation from the Green Party last month…

Explaining his decision, Kieran said: “What attracted me to the Liberal Democrats is the party’s driving principle that everybody is equal and should be able to succeed no matter their background.

“The party’s heritage is grounded in community politics and locally it is clear to see that the Lib Dems work hard in Southport and understand residents needs. In the Council chamber I have seen them hold the Labour run Council to account over many issues including the closure of the Aviary, the overspend on Southport’s conference centre, the Pier and how to rejuvenate the town centre.” [QLocal Southport].

Sign up to get the latest news and analysis

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

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

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

Selected PPCs

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

Liberal Democrat PPCs A-D

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

Liberal Democrat PPCs E-H

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

Liberal Democrat PPCs I-L

• Kenilworth and Southam: Louis Adam

Liberal Democrat PPCs M-P

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

Liberal Democrat PPCs Q-T

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

Liberal Democrat PPCs U-Z

• Watford: Peter Taylor
• Westmorland and Lonsdale: Tim Farron
• West Worcestershire: Dan Boatright-Greene
• Winchester: Danny Chambers
• 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.

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

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

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

Gone, but back again

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

Other Reform councillors who have gone

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

1. Carmelo Colasanto, Carmarthenshire: resigned as a councillor on being elected to the Senedd (May 2026).
2. David Hughes, Merthyr Tydfil: resigned as a councillor on being elected to the Senedd (May 2026).
3. Jo Monk, Worcestershire: “A former Reform UK council leader has been suspended by her party … for ‘refusing to accept the democratic decision of the Reform UK group'” (May 2026).
4. Ashley Monk, Worcestershire: alongside Jo Monk’s departure, “Her son and fellow councillor, Ashley, has also been suspended for reportedly bringing the party into disrepute” (May 2026). He also left Reform on Redditch Council, to which he was elected to in May 2026; see the main list above.
5. Barry Martin, Staffordshire: “Two formal complaints against Mr Martin, both relating to his social media activity, were upheld by the council last year … Council leader Martin Murray said that Mr Martin had taken the decision to resign due to health reasons and a recent family bereavement” (May 2026).
6. Andrew Harrison, County Durham: suspended by Reform and then quit to become an independent (May 2026).
7. Kenny Hope, County Durham: suspended by Reform and then quit to become an independent (May 2026).
8. Matthew Jones, Worcestershire: left to become an independent councillor (May 2026).
9. Andy Osborn, Cambridgeshire: convicted of breaking the law and disqualified as a councillor (May 2026). Also in my previous list as the story spans the May local election date.
10. Kate Rowland, County Durham: resigned to become an independent (May 2026).
11. Trevor Bridgwood, Lincolnshire: in the news last year over his social media posts, he has now become an independent after a ultimatum from Reform (May 2026).
12. Trevor Bridgwood, West Lindsey: same story as above, but included twice as he has left Reform on two councils (May 2026).
13. Jamie Hanlon, Cornwall: “A Reform UK Cornwall councillor has left the party, just a month after two other councillors” (May 2026).
14. James (Jim) Sidlow, Cambridgeshire: resigned as a councillor (May 2026).
15. Jasmine Fox, County Durham: now listed as an independent (June 2026)
16. Charlotte Kelly, Staffordshire: joined Conservatives “citing as reasons for her move her experience of bullying and sexism within Reform” (June 2026).
17. Dan Glover, Warwickshire: defected to Restore Britain (June 2026).
18. Rob Aitkenhead, Warwickshire: defected to Restore Britain (June 2026).
19. Leon Graham, Lancashire: joined Reform from the Conservatives and then elected as a Reform councillor in 2025. Now back with the Conservatives (June 2026).
20. Robbie Lammas, Medway: “A councillor who quit the Conservatives [in October 2025] to join Reform UK has now left the party, calling his decision to defect ‘the biggest mistake of my life'” (June 2026).
21. Cameron Emery, West Northamptonshire: defected to Restore Britain (July 2026).
22. Karl Perks, Worcestershire: defected to the Conservatives, among other reasons “because nobody was prosecuted for painting roundabouts with the cross of St George” (July 2026).
23. Joe Garner, North Northamptonshire: now an independent councillor (July 2026).
24. Steven Deakin, Cannock Chase: now an independent councillor (July 2026).
25. Bruce Craze, Cornwall: defected to Restore Britain (July 2026).
26. Carol Ney, Plymouth: joined Reform from Labour in April 2026 but then left Reform to become an independent (August 2026).
27. Helen Butler, Leicestershire: resigned as a councillor (August 2026).
28. Ian Catchpole, County Durham: left Reform to become an independent “after accusing council leaders of treating mental health with ‘“’blatant disregard’ … However, Reform said Cllr Catchpole resigned while the party was investigating the unauthorised disclosure of private group material” (August 2026).
29. Jonathan Millard, Blaenau Gwent: joined Reform in 2025 but has now switched to independent (August 2026).
30. Robbie Withey, Aberdeenshire: having previously been a Conservative councillor he joined Reform in 2025 but has now left Reform too (September 2026). (Note: as the local press explains, he had continued to sit in the independent group while he was with Reform.)
31. Eleonora Gough, Solihull: “Reform UK councillor quits Solihull group with scathing ‘toxic’ attack” (September 2026).
32. Nigel Swales, Lancashire: joined Labour after “growing concerns about Reform’s ability to deliver at a local level”(September 2026).
33. Nicole Brown, County Durham: “Three Reform UK councillors resign from party amid bullying allegations” (September 2026).
34. Lyndsey Fox, County Durham: “Three Reform UK councillors resign from party amid bullying allegations” (September 2026).
35. Paul Sexton, County Durham: “Three Reform UK councillors resign from party amid bullying allegations” (September 2026).
36. Marcus Barr, Somerset: elected as a Conservative and then joined Reform, but now listed as not being a member of any political group (September 2026).
37. Bradley Thompson, Tendring: elected as an independent, later joined Reform, and now suspended by Reform; also in the first list on this page as was elected as Reform councillor on another council in May 2026 (September 2026).
38. Dean Robertson, Lichfield: elected at a by-election in 2025 but now suspended by Reform (September 2026).
39. Matthew Wallens, Lichfield: elected at a by-election in 2025 but now suspended by Reform (September 2026).
40. Matthew Wallens, Staffordshire: same as above and listed twice as also elected to this county council in May 2025 (September 2026).
41. Mark Wilkinson, Oldham: resigned due to ill health (September 2026).
42. Michael Rees, Gloucestershire: defected to Restore (September 2026).
43. Aaron Hillam, Country Durham: resigned (September 2026).
44. Brian Smith, North Tyneside: previously leader of the Reform group, he left to become an independent (October 2026).
45. Caren Diamond, Havant: left Reform UK to become an independent (October 2026).
46. Lewis Quigg, Oldham: first became an independent after he “resigned mid-investigation” and then later resigned as a councillor (October 2026).
47. Chris Large, Staffordshire: “The former leader of Staffordshire’s Reform UK group has resigned as a councillor. [He] said he had stepped down following a close family bereavement” (November 2026).
48. Trevor Bence, Arun: as in the first list, listed twice because he was a Reform councillor on two councils, elected in 2023 and 2026 (November 2026).
49. Matthew Cordy, Portsmouth: “Following the charges brought against Cllr George Madgwick, I decided to that the right thing for me was to leave Reform UK” (November 2026).

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

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

Further Reform troubles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Reform UK Leicestershire County Council leader Dan Harrison stepping down after controversial comments” (November 2026).

“A woman who promoted a notorious cryptocurrency scam has been elected as a Reform UK councillor and now sits on the audit and risk committee of a major city council” (November 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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Liberal Democrats on North Yorkshire Council say they are aiming to take control of the authority in next May’s elections as they welcomed a former Green Party mayor into their ranks.

Ian Conlan, who served as Mayor of Malton for three years, has defected to the Liberal Democrats and announced plans to stand as a candidate in the May 2027 local elections. [Richmondshire Today]

Liberal Democrat councillor Steve Mason welcomed the decision, saying:

I have known Ian since working together on the anti-fracking campaign here in Ryedale, and know from experience that his values match ours. His diligence and commitment to the community are unquestionable, and Ian is a great asset in helping us defend liberal values, support residents and communities, and protect the environment.

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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) including the original novel version of The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon.

The (original) Manchurian Candidate

It is time for a classic – perhaps the classic – of political paranoia this time: the original 1962 film version of The Manchurian Candidate:

Cory has gone rogue and changed the running order of the episode! Is that because he was kidnapped and brainwashed while out fighting in Korea? Or because we’re talking about that classic of Cold War paranoia, The Manchurian Candidate?

Mark and Cory talk about why it’s important for Communist front companies to make a profit, highlight how the film skewers both left and right, and debate whether the dastardly conspiracy at the heart of the plot actually makes any sense.

The Roger Ebert reviews which are referenced in the episode can be read here and here.

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

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

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

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

Next time, we’re talking about Charlie Wilson’s War.

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!

More horror, both political and non-political

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

We’re discussing The Manchurian Candidate at this time because it’s a political horror film. If you are spending Saturday night in and need another suitably political horror film, I can heartily recommend Sinners. This fuses the legend of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil and the very real history of racism in the Deep South to produce a truly original film.

More recently, I watched The Bride. It’s political to the extent that it’s a feminist take on old-fashioned 50s B-movies such as The Bride of Frankenstein. Director Maggie Gyllenhaal obviously loves films, and there are many references along the way to horror films such as Young Frankenstein as well as classics such as Bonnie and Clyde. I suppose the question is whether you should watch The Bride or just watch one of the films which serve as its inspirational source material. The Bride is pretty fun, but the real reason to watch it is Jessie Buckley’s performance, who carries the film single-handedly on her shoulders.

A novel which shares a very similar plot to The Manchurian Candidate is The Twentieth Day of January. This Ted Allbeury novel is a spy thriller recommended to me by a friend who is a great fan of such works.

A slight word of warning: there is quite a bit of sex in it, and not really in a good way. I listened to the audiobook version of this novel and literally facepalmed at a description of one female character whilst walking up the platform of Longbridge Station. Thankfully I didn’t walk into any fellow commuters at the time.

Having said that, the setup is eerily prescient: an American and British Secret Service Agent are investigating evidence that the Soviet Union conspired to put a candidate in the White House.

Without wishing to go into too many spoilers, there are some similarities with events in 2016: the presidential candidate isn’t necessarily aware of the help, he’s an outsider to Washington whose spouse is reluctant for him to enter politics, and there are many conversations about how if the news of the Russian interference was made public it could destroy the public’s faith in American democracy. One of the agents says that it feels like their investigation is like actively trying to prove you have cancer.

The novel was written in the late 1970s and there is much talk of the decline in trust in American politics since Watergate.

The policies of the Soviet-backed candidate in the novel included America withdrawing troops from Europe. Now Donald Trump is actively carrying out some of this agenda, but as I say in the episode, Trump isn’t really The Manchurian Candidate. He’s not in the White House because of plot from rogue foreign agents, but mainly because of the price of eggs in 2024. And maybe he’s making deals with Russia not because he’s a Russian agent, but because he genuinely believes in what he’s doing. Perhaps that’s the most frightening thing of all.

Happy Halloween!

Previously on Political Fictions…

The Thick of It with Sam Freedman

State of Play: the classic BBC drama, part 2

Elsewhere from us…

Did AI really help someone become a chess grandmaster?

Brexit, ten years on: what the polls say about Europe now

Happy listening

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

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark

Commiserations to Diane Inch on not manging to win this time. As Andrew Teale explains the context:

The Halton Lib Dems have big shoes to fill here after their group leader died in August. Margaret Ratcliffe was a long-serving councillor who had been on Halton council for all but four years since it became a unitary council in 1997: she represented Heath ward from 1997 until 2015 when she lost her seat to Labour, but returned in 2019 and then transferred to Beechwood and Heath following boundary changes in 2021. Ratcliffe was mayor of Halton in 2013-14.

Reform also exchanged seat gains with Labour:

This was the fourteenth contest in this ward this century and just the one of those had a Lib Dem candidate.

That Labour win was by a margin of two votes.

Also:

The thanks here for being the Liberal Democrat candidate go to Stephen Andersen, especially as the party was not on the ballot paper the time before.

Keith Melton was the Lib Dem candidate here – thank you.

Thank you to Douglas Macdonald for being the Lib Dem here, and scoring that promising first preferences increase.

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:

Following the news earlier this week from West Berkshire of a councillor joining the Liberal Democrats, now there is also news of Christina Coleman in Sussex doing the same thing.

Here is the local Liberal Democrat press release explaining her switch:

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Welcome to Lib Dem Newswire #215, which takes a look at when the next general election might take place, the problem with fake number plates, what Lib Dems want to do to the House of Lords, and more.

First, though, congratulations to the new Lib Dem councillors since last time – Mac Brown, Julie Calder, Lawrence Gillies and Mary Ryan – along with their campaign teams, especially their agents.

The net changes in council by-elections since the last edition of LDN as a result were Labour +2, Conservative +2, Lib Dem +1, Plaid +1, Green +/-0, Independent -2 and Reform -4.

A reminder too that I run a WhatsApp broadcast service for people to typically receive three to five batches of messages a week with the latest news about the party, by-election results, and the like. You can sign up for it here.

It’s a free service and all members and supporters are very welcome to join.

Best wishes,

Mark

P.S. If you haven’t yet had time to read it, last time’s edition is available online: The geography of Liberal Democrat potential (LDN#214)

Yes, I’m still in favour of making the House of Lords democratic

Last week the House of Lords debated reform of the place, and yes I am still in favour of making it democratic. My experience since joining it last year has certainly refined, expanded and improved my views on how the second chamber of our Parliament should be reformed – but it hasn’t changed my commitment to making it democratic.

Also speaking in that debate was my colleague Paul Scriven, who particularly highlighted the role of the bishops in the current Lords.

You can watch my speech above or read more about it all in the latest edition of my special Parliamentary newsletter, A Lord’s Eye View:

Yes, I’m still in favour of making the House of Lords democratic

Perhaps the most pointless question PMs are asked

Liberal Democrat members were sent one of our long explainer emails last week, this one from me explaining the party’s thinking on the chances of an early general election, and in particular the chances of one before Christmas. (If you are a member and didn’t receive the email, drop a line to help@libdems.org.uk so the team can check your email address and opt in/out status.)

As ever, it’s both useful and interesting to see people’s responses; thank you! The resulting discussions have highlighted three particular points.

First, Labour polled 35% in Great Britain at the last general election, the one where they won a huge landslide. (I use the GB figure as that’s the one that most opinion polls mirror.) So seeing several recent polls putting Labour on or above 30% means they are closing in on what was landslide territory. That may seem an obvious bit of counting but I think it is easy to overlook, at least if you have been around in politics for a while, as we used to have an instinct that 30% for Labour or the Conservatives is a horribly low poll rating. Not so in the politics of these times.

Second, ‘are you going to call an early election?’ is perhaps the most useless question that Prime Ministers get asked. Whether they are going to, aren’t going to, haven’t made up their mind or haven’t started thinking about it, they all give the same answer – ‘no’. Even when they are working up to doing so, the answer is ‘no’ until the moment it is ‘yes’.

There is no predictive value, no insight, no information to be gleaned from the answers to this question. (Which may make you sympathise with political journalists trapped in a world where they feel they have to ask such questions, or make you despair that they don’t do more to try to escape that world.)

Third, information can sometimes be gleaned from whether or not the governing party is getting itself ready. True, this isn’t a sure sign. Remember 2024 when the Conservative PM caught most of his own party organisation by surprise? Remarkably, in many of the key Lib Dem/Conservative battles, it was the Lib Dem campaign that was better prepared and got going sooner. And back in 2007, the Labour Party were making preparations – but then Gordon Brown changed his mind and the plans were cancelled.

But it would be foolish to ignore completely whether the governing party is preparing. So we should be aware of things such as this:

Last week a Lib Dem councillor told HQ that he had tried to order some new Correx boards – the plastic placards used in election campaigns – only to be told the company could not fulfil the order for another month because it would be using all of November to complete a large order for the Labour Party. [The i]

And we should be aware of how many difficult decisions the 10 Downing Street operation is putting off until the second half of next year and beyond, opening up a gap between now and the really tough stuff hitting. As The Economist’s political editor put it a few days ago, “An early election is the only way the current strategy makes sense.”

None of this adds up to a sure thing, of course. It is, however, a good reason to be prepared – particularly because if we don’t have a snap election in the immediate future, there is still the gap in the first half of next year. Even then if there is no early election, getting prepared, getting some practice in and getting focused on what is needed – those are all useful, whenever the election comes.

Discussing the party’s plan for all this was a major part of the most recent meeting of our Federal Communications and Elections Committee (FCEC), which I chair. We also discussed with James Holt, the party’s new Political Director, his plans for developing our message and communications, as well as the new work being done to refine our national campaigns, the successors to sewage in the last Parliament (though I suspect sewage may end up featuring again!).

With the summer by-election in Clacton behind us, we reviewed our rules for how to handle such situations in the light of that experience, and also agreed to co-opt Kamran Hussain to FCEC and to take over my previous role as our representative on Federal Conference Committee (FCC).

Nutters, spinners and losers: The Thick of It with Sam Freedman

It was back to one of the all-time classic political TV dramas on my podcast, Political Fictions, with a very special guest, the co-author of Britain’s most popular political Substack newsletter, Sam Freedman:

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

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

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

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

Sam is the author of the excellent book Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It which you can get from Amazon, Waterstones or UK Bookshop.

Sign up to the Political Fictions email list

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

Subscribe to Political Fictions

Want to understand polling better?

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

An alternative budget plan: Lib Dems in the news

The key stories

1. Lib Dems unveil £14 billion breathing space package to cut energy, transport and hospitality costs.
2. At Prime Minister’s Questions, Ed Davey made the case for joining the Single Market as part of Britain’s longer-term return to the EU.
3. Daisy Cooper: “Without freedom of movement, businesses face red tape while losing skilled workers.”
4. Lib Dem MPs write to EHRC over Green Party’s ‘Zionism is racism’ motion.
5. Martin Wrigley: “Palantir are great sales people but they over-promise and under-deliver”.
6. Alex Cole-Hamilton: “Lib Dems have mapped out our vision – it’s time to get there.”

Local government action

1. RNLI given the Freedom of the City by Portsmouth City Council after Liberal Democrat councillors passed a motion. Reform councillors all voted against the motion.
2. Lib Dem Winchester Council win national award for innovative approach to helping older people.
3. Lib Dem Watford Council win “Best Efficiency and Transformation Initiative” award.

Other people and party news

1. Jane Dodds stands down as Welsh Lib Dem leader.
2. Members of the Liberal Democrat (Westminster) General Election Manifesto Working Group announced.
3. The Autumn Federal Conference 2027 will be on 18-21 September 2027 in Bournemouth. Accommodation details here.
4. Miriam González Durántez becomes leader of the new Democracia21 party in Spain.

In news about someone who left the Liberal Democrats long ago, Jason Zadrozny has been found guilty of fraud and tax evasion.

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

Reform fined for illegal publicity

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

• Reform fined for illegal publicity. Remember your imprints, folks!
• Ex-Conservative campaign director sentenced over election bets.
• Ed Davey on working with Greens after Zionism conference motion.
• A brilliant maiden speech from Dave McCobb.
• Latest PollBase is out, with all the British voting intention polls since the 1930s.

And one from the archives:

• What is the point of books about British general elections?

What the polls are saying

Issues

Votes

As you can see from the graph, there has been a change in the relative positions of the Greens and Liberal Democrats. Or to look at it another way:

Leaders

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

Is Kemi Badenoch in trouble in her own constituency?

Over the summer, Political Betting ran a piece titled “Kemi Badenoch’s little local difficulty”. It pointed out how small her majority had been at the 2024 general election and how the combined Labour/Lib Dem/Green vote was well ahead of hers, leading to speculation about how at risk her own seat might be at the next general election.

Now that we’ve had a batch of five recent MRPs, how does the picture look in her seat? Find out by reading my newsletter dedicated to polling, The Week in Polls:

Is Kemi Badenoch in trouble in her own constituency?

Fake number plates, real problem

I have been asking questions in Parliament…

Selections news

Selections since last time have included Rob Herd in Chester South & Eddisbury and Peter Taylor in Watford, along with the re-selections of Alex Brewer, David Chadwick, Lee Dillon, Rachel Gilmour, Helen Maguire, Al Pinkerton, Vikki Slade, Caroline Voaden and Munira Wilson.

The Westminster constituencies currently advertising to select a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate include Bermondsey & Old Southwark, Dunfermline & Dollar, Islington North, Newcastle upon Tyne North, Penistone & Stocksbridge, Sheffield South East and Stretford & Urmston.

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

Council by-elections round-up

Council by-elections since last time have included a Lib Dem gain in the Highlands, signs of a recovery in Labour’s fortunes, a Lib Dem-led administration retaining its slim majority and a burst of wins for the Conservatives.

The net changes in seats since the last edition of LDN as a result were Labour +2, Conservative +2, Lib Dem +1, Plaid +1, Green +/-0, Independent -2 and Reform -4. Note the continuing recovery in Labour’s fortunes and likewise that Reform’s previous regular large gains continue to be in the past (and in fact these last few weeks were even worse than that for Nigel Farage’s party).

Overall, the net changes in seats since the May elections are now Reform +7, Lib Dem +5, Green +2, SNP +1, Plaid +/-0, Conservative -2, Labour -4 and Independent/Others -9.

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

Other changes

A councillor has joined the Liberal Democrats in Bolton. However, councillors have left the Lib Dems or been suspended by them in Barnsley, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, Gateshead, Somerset, and two have switched to the Conservatives in Pendle along with one in North Kesteven.

Can you help?

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

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

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

And finally…

Danny Chambers introduces a new member of his team.

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

Thank you and best wishes,

Mark

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

Welcome to my latest update on work in the House of Lords, which this time takes a look at how HM Treasury have been costing us money by moving slowly to agree a simple increase in fees for vehicle manufacturers.

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Three years to fix one simple financial problem

I have written often about how slowly much of Whitehall moves, as illustrated by the number of pieces of secondary legislation that have stories behind them stretching back years, or even decades.

It’s a particular puzzle because this lethargy even encompasses things which you think might move quickly – such as a zero-cost measure to change one line of legislation which would make one of the most popular people in Britain happy. How did that not happen sooner, even if only because a minister’s aide was at one point scrabbling around for an initiative to drop into a speech and they had run out of ones to crib from The Thick of It?

It’s even more of a puzzle when money is involved. A policy moving excessively slowly because it will cost money? Understandable. But a policy moving excessively slowly even though it will bring in money and we’re in a run of two decades of governments being short of cash? Baffling.

Even more baffling, HM Treasury are at it too, moving so slowly that they cost the government cash.

The latest report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (SLSC), of which I’m a member, sets out the situation regarding the Motor Vehicles (Type Approval and Approval Marks) (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/992).

The Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) charge vehicle manufacturers for testing vehicles against international and domestic environmental and safety standards. But for many years, the amounts charged have not covered the actual costs of doing the tests. Nobody objects to the costs being covered. It is just that the government has been charging too little.

The costs to the government of this undercharging have been:

2017-18: £539,000
2018-19: £345,000
2019-20: figures not supplied
2020-21: £2.3 million
2021-22: £845,000
2022-23: £3.5 million
2023-24: £6.1 million
2024-25: £8.7 million

That all adds up to over £20 million.

Covering the testing costs isn’t quite free money as someone – vehicle manufacturers – has to pay. But it’s a very easy source of money, saving taxpayers having to stump up to cover these deficits, as vehicle manufacturers know about these tests, accept these tests, benefit from these tests and are used to paying for them.

In 2023, to be fair, the problem was spotted and work started to increase the fees. But legislation has only now come to Parliament with new figures to come into force in November.

A significant chunk of that delay came from the Treasury taking their time. It took seven months to sign off the business case, which also meant that there was very little time ahead of the planned introduction of the new higher fees at the start of this financial year. Hence the further delay to November.

The Treasury’s defence, of course, is that they were busy with other, more important, stuff. But the time they took will have ended up costing the government several million pounds. Compare that with the costs of employing staff to handle such business cases and it doesn’t look like the Treasury have got their own business case for the department’s capacity right.

Nor is this a one-off. In fact, the Public Accounts Committee did a whole report on this last year. Progress, however, is slow.

PS For a different example of the government moving slowly, with different sorts of consequences, see this other recent statutory instrument:

In news from other Lib Dem peers…

Previously on this newsletter…

Yes, I’m still in favour of making the House of Lords democratic

A brilliant maiden speech from Dave McCobb

Elsewhere from me…

Brexit, ten years on: what the polls say about Europe now

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

A West Berkshire Conservative councillor has defected to the Liberal Democrats.

Paul Dick OBE – the ward member for Chieveley and Cold Ash and former long-standing headteacher of Kennet School in Thatcham … [said]: “I have come to admire the dedication and positivity in the Liberal Democrat administration and am keen to join their forward-thinking team.

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Welcome to my latest update on work in the House of Lords which this time looks at reforming the place. My experience since joining the Lords last year has refined, expanded and improved my views on how the second chamber of our Parliament should be reformed – but it hasn’t changed my commitment to making it democratic.

The Lords needs democracy

We had a debate on reforming the House of Lords this week, triggered by a Private Member’s Bill from the Plaid peer, Baroness Smith of Llanfaes.

Despite now benefitting from the absence of democracy in the Lords, I am still very much in favour of remedying its absence.

An earlier speech had made a negative reference to people campaigning for democratic reforms from their bedrooms; hence my reference to a bedroom early on in my own comments.

Here is what I said:

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and express my envy of her luck in coming out of the ballot. I hope she might perhaps be tempted to buy me some lottery tickets this weekend. This is an important issue and, as both the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, have noted, this debate today forms a fortuitous pair with yesterday’s debate about written constitutions. It is a particularly enjoyable pair for those of us enthusiastically speaking in both debates.

There is an important commonality about how we best ensure our constitutional arrangements are well suited for the challenges that our country faces. Yesterday, we heard from many noble Lords the virtues of flexibility and the ability to evolve our constitutional arrangements. That is something that this Bill is very much in tune with, as it proposes—to pick up on the points of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, and others—setting out a route that would lead potentially to an improved and different Chamber rather than its simple abolition.

I am not sure how many of the categories of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, I fall into, but I should at least plead guilty to having a bedroom and occasionally dwelling in it. I often think about reform of this place on a Sunday morning—this may make the noble Lord feel that I definitely fit some of his other categories—because that is when I usually do my work preparing for a meeting of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and go through the paperwork. That committee’s work is a good example of the sort of scrutiny that we often rightly pride ourselves on this House having a key part in. I often reflect that I am only able to spend the time working through the paperwork on a Sunday morning in part because I am not an MP. If I were an MP, I would either be rushing around various fêtes and other community events—no doubt acquiring many raffle tickets along the way—or I would be spending some precious time with my family ahead of doing exactly that in the afternoon. It is important to acknowledge that there are some benefits in the difference in the structures that we have.

There is also a very significant downside, because if I chose to stop doing that work diligently—I reassure noble Lords that I have no intention of doing so—what could anyone do about it? As a member of a political party, I could be sacked from my current role or even be threatened with the withdrawal of the party Whip. But for anyone who is less diligent, threatening them with those things is threatening them with having less work to do and having fewer WhatsApp groups to be in. It is, even in the hands of the most persuasive leaders or Whips, not the most effective of threats.

That is a real problem, because there are undoubtedly some changes to how this House operates—in due course, we will debate participation rates and retirement ages—that can get a bit close to the edge of that fundamental lack of accountability for anyone who does not do their job properly. Likewise, standards codes, such as the Members’ Code of Conduct and related documents, can address that. But for all that it is important to have a Members’ Code of Conduct that properly protects staff in this place from bullying, even the most enthusiastic supporter of such processes will not argue that how well you read page 32 of a PDF document is going to be subject to such processes.

We should always be cautious about any process that allows a Member of this House or the House of Commons to be removed in some way. It is why we have such a complicated—one might even say tortuous—process in the House of Commons by which somebody can be removed for misbehaviour. But one of the key safeguards and one of the reasons it has now become a well-established system and an acceptable process to have a ruling against an MP, a recall petition or a subsequent by-election is because, in the end, it places power with the public. It allows voters to decide, not party bosses. As a former party boss, I am very keen on the public having the power in those cases.

However, we do not have the equivalent in the House of Lords. We do not have the accountability to the public that should be at the heart of a democracy. There are many important details to work out—for example, on the roles of the Bishops in this place, as my noble friend Lord Scriven touched on—but the Bill wisely sets out a route by which we can address some of those issues.

Another area, quite rightly mentioned by several noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor and Lady Bennett, is the relations between the House of Commons and a reformed House of Lords. I mentioned yesterday the risk sometimes in debates outside this place of a certain myopic insularity, as if problems such as that are somehow insuperable. We forget to look, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, wisely pointed out, at the many other countries which have faced an equivalent problem and found solutions to it. We should have self-confidence that, if other people can find solutions to it, it should not be beyond us.

There are already ways in which the different roles of the House of Commons and this House are embedded in our approaches. There are the Parliament Acts and the rules about money Bills. There are many ways that those sorts of differences could be further embedded, such as making it much more than just a constitutional convention, perhaps with the requirement for the Prime Minister to be in the House of Commons. One can be pretty sure that wherever the Prime Minister is, that place will get more attention than the other. Many other countries managed to sort out those problems, and we should not put ourselves off with the thought that we would struggle to find solutions ourselves.

There is one issue, touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, where I think the solution that we need to reach is having more power for this place and less subservience—if I might put it like that—to the House of Commons, and that is to do with secondary legislation. Statutory instruments often get precious little scrutiny, sadly, in the House of Commons. We have these different processes of negative, affirmative and super-affirmative processes, but even the super affirmative process for secondary legislation is not really that super. Fundamentally, for reasons that I politely disagree with but acknowledge, and for key points of principle that both Labour and Conservative Peers have consistently expressed, neither party when in opposition will vote down a piece of secondary legislation, except in the most exceptional and unusual of circumstances.

However good our scrutiny of a piece of secondary legislation, however pertinent the criticisms of its drafting by, say, the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and however pertinent the questions raised about whether the statutory instrument is really right, statutory instruments will all but always go through unamended, exactly as the Government wished. Therefore, in a way, having some more democratic legitimacy for our House that might make us feel more empowered to be a bit difficult now and again on secondary legislation would be a good thing, and it would end up in enhancing the work of the House of Commons rather than undermining it.

As several noble Lords have touched on, this is obviously a very long-running issue. As a good Liberal Democrat, I do of course have the preamble to the 1911 Parliament Act engraved on my heart:

“And whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis”.

I think it is fair to say that Parliament agreeing that in 1911 and not yet having managed to act on it is fairly slow-moving, even by the standards of restoration and renewal.

As I know colleagues on the Conservative Benches often like historical precedents and quotes to bolster arguments, I cannot help but observe that the Conservative manifesto from the December 1918 general election included:

“it will be one of the objects of the Government to create a Second Chamber which will be based upon direct contract with the people”.

I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, and others may be tempted to rediscover the spirit of December 1918.

More fundamentally, however, as several noble Peers have touched on, form should follow function. There is an important function for a second Chamber, but it is one that requires legitimacy, and legitimacy in a democracy fundamentally comes from the public. I therefore commend this Bill because it sets out a route for applying that; it rightly acknowledges that there are many areas of detail to be worked out and gives us a chance of finally moving on from that commitment in 1911 to actually taking effective action.

My colleague Paul Scriven gave an excellent speech in the debate, particularly talking about the role of bishops in the upper chamber. You can (and should!) read his speech in full here.

The whole debate is here and the bill itself is here.

In news from other Lib Dem peers…

Previously on this newsletter…

A brilliant maiden speech from Dave McCobb

How Home Secretaries change immigration rules without telling Parliament

Elsewhere from me…

The Thick of It with Sam Freedman

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 Conservatives’ former director of campaigning and his wife [Anthony and Laura Lee] have received suspended prison sentences after they admitted to cheating at gambling by placing bets on the date of the 2024 general election … Amy Hind, a former Tory party employee who was working as an NHS business support manager, was also sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, suspended for a year, after previously pleading guilty …

The trials of other defendants will take place next year and in 2028.

Former Conservative MP Craig Williams, who was Sunak’s closest parliamentary aide at the time, pleaded guilty in June. [BBC]

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The thanks for being a Lib Dem candidate here go to Stuart McLeod.

The Lib Dem here was Elif Lewis; thank you.

Plus also:

Thank you to Caryl Tandy for being the Liberal Democrat candidate.

Although this was a good week for the Conservatives, the overall picture is a little different:

For what all this means in more detail 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:

Reform UK has been fined more than £2,000 for failing to declare it was the publisher of campaign material seen by voters – including an additional penalty for failing to pay on time.

Remember your imprints folks!

It also reports:

A former Conservative election candidate has been suspended from the party after he was seemingly filmed discussing the cost of hiring contract killers and offering to “broker” the services of a far-right activist with alleged paramilitary links.

It is tempting to ask what it is about parties that talk tough on law and order…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Davey responded:

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the letter:

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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). That includes the excellent book, Failed State, from this time’s guest, Sam Freedman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We love to hear from our listeners

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

Leave a comment

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

Why The Thick of It has aged so well

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously on Political Fictions…

State of Play: the classic BBC drama, part 2

State of Play: a classic BBC political drama revisited

Elsewhere from us…

Making waves or treading water?

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

Happy listening

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

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark

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

Local government, maiden speech and cattle-grids

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

You can read his speech in full here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

as Philip Larkin described it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what I said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cattle-grid breakthrough!

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

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

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

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

In news from other Lib Dem peers…

Previously on this newsletter…

How Home Secretaries change immigration rules without telling Parliament

How to fix the problem of money in our politics

Elsewhere from me…

The same but also different: the picture from five MRPs

State of Play: a classic BBC political drama revisited

Thank you

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

Best wishes,

Mark