It had to happen… I asked a question about letterboxes in Parliament today. They are a great British invention, later patented by an American and more recently sullied by decades of poor design. (Though I have a soft spot for those that come with music.)

But there is a safety issue too.

The serious side of letterboxes

While we all like to joke about the design of letterboxes (vertical is best, obviously, AND WHY ON EARTH IS THERE AN OPTICAL ILLUSION LETTERBOX THAT MISLEADS YOU IN HOW TO USE IT SPREADING ACROSS THE DOORS OF THE UK?), their poor design raises a serious issue too.

It’s about the safety of those delivering post and leaflets through letterboxes:

The minister has promised to write to me as the topic wasn’t covered in his prep for the question slot.

In other news from the Lords…

In case you missed previously…

A perpetual pirouette of prevarication?

Will Labour close the ‘Trump loophole’ in its political reform plans?

Elsewhere from me…

How the MRPs did in the London council elections

Thank you

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

Share

Best wishes,

Mark

A press release from the local party brings the news of the selection of Matt Sanders:

Liberal Democrats in the battleground seat of South West Hertfordshire have chosen local campaigner and education champion Matt Sanders to contest at the next general election.

Matt has already been campaigning across the constituency. He is proud to return to the county where his Mum went to school, and will be a strong voice for our towns and villages. Matt’s local priorities include:

• Fighting for better health provision including a new hospital at Watford;
• Protecting our local environment and green belt, from Abbots Langley to Chorleywood, from top down government targets;
• Securing opportunities for our children and young people, backing Hertfordshire’s reforms for children with special educational needs; and
• Challenging rail companies for more reliable transport services, after uncovering data showing that almost one in four trains from Kings Langley are late or cancelled.

Matt is an education policy expert and has spent his career fighting to give every child a fair start in life. He grew up on free school meals at his local state comprehensive, before winning a place to study architecture at Cambridge University – leaving Matt determined to give back. Through his work as a government adviser, he drove the introduction of Universal School Meals for Infants and the Pupil Premium. These policies have meant extra money to support children in South West Hertfordshire schools, and have helped thousands of local families with the cost of living. 

The Blue Wall seat of South West Hertfordshire is one of the party’s top targets, and will be a direct two-way fight with the Conservatives. At the last General Election, the Conservatives held the seat with the Liberal Democrats in second place. The Liberal Democrats received 12,002 votes, just 4,456 behind the Conservatives. Labour came third with 9,637 votes. With thousands of Labour voters set to vote tactically next time, Liberal Democrats can win the seat.

Liberal Democrats have run Three Rivers District Council, which covers the majority of the constituency, continuously since 1994. In 2025 Liberal Democrats also became the largest party on Hertfordshire County Council. Liberal Democrats hold the neighbouring parliamentary seats of St Albans, Chesham and Amersham and Harpenden and Berkhamstead.

Only Matt Sanders and the Liberal Democrats can beat the Conservatives in South West Hertfordshire.

Matt Sanders said:

It’s a huge honour to be selected by local Liberal Democrat members to contest South West Hertfordshire at the next general election. My friends are here, my Mum went to school here, and I will do everything I can to stand up for our towns and villages.

From the Tour de Ricky, the Abbots Langley Festival or Croxley Revels – people here roll up their sleeves to strengthen our community and, if elected at the next general election, I will be an MP who does the same.

Campaigning across the constituency, it’s clear that the Conservative party have taken South West Hertfordshire for granted. Whether it’s the desperate need for better health, education and transport services, or the pollution in our rivers and threat to our local environment, the Conservatives have let us down and Labour have brought only more disappointment.

Liberal Democrats have a strong record locally, and I am proud to have already helped deliver policies that have meant more investment in our local schools and support for local families with the cost of living. At the next general election, I’m ready to be the strong, local MP that South West Hertfordshire deserves.

St Albans MP and Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper said:

I’m delighted that Matt has been selected. He’s a passionate community campaigner and has a truly impressive background in helping to change the law to improve children’s lives through the introduction of the Pupil Premium and free school meals for infants.

In South West Hertfordshire, it’s clear that only Matt Sanders and the Liberal Democrats can beat the Conservatives, with Labour a clear third last time. Meanwhile Reform and the Conservatives increasingly look like the same party, with both Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage dancing to Trump’s tune.

Liberal Democrats will be fighting hard to elect Hertfordshire’s third Liberal Democrat MP in Matt Sanders at the next General Election.

About Matt Sanders

Matt Sanders grew up in Suffolk, Essex and the North West, and has family roots in Hertfordshire, where his Mum went to school. He lives with his husband, Sam, and is an established local campaigner across South West Hertfordshire.

Matt has spent his career in education and is passionate about ensuring every child gets a fair start in life. From 2011 to 2015 he served as a Special Adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister, covering the Department for Education, the Department for Culture Media and Sport and the Cabinet Office. Matt played a key role in delivering the Pupil Premium and Universal Free School Meals for Infants. These policies have delivered millions of pounds of additional funding to schools in South West Hertfordshire, as well as support with the cost of living for young families.

Matt also served as Chief Education Adviser to New Zealand’s Minister of Education. Today he works in the technology sector focussing on how new technologies can support educators and people with disabilities, and is a Trustee of a national homelessness charity.

Long-time readers may recall Matt from the video I did of his local campaigning back in 2010.

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

Keep up with news about Lib Dem selections

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

But when it comes to counting councillor or council candidate numbers, we still have some way to go to being one of the top two parties. So we need more people than usual to think about standing next time, and also more people than usual to encourage others to think about standing too.

Of course, saying yes to standing isn’t the right answer for everyone. There’s a whole bundle of factors that go into making the right decision, from the electoral through to the personal.

But for many people it is the right answer – and opens up an opportunity to do something special for their community and to make real differences to people’s lives. Often, those who make the very best councillors didn’t think it was something for them – until someone suggested it and encouraged them.

So here’s an update of my eight questions to ask yourself if you are thinking of standing in the elections next May or helping someone else think about it:

What will you do differently from a councillor of another party?

There are decent people who will be conscientious and work hard in (just about) every party, and even in the most rural of wards, there is more than one person who is local to the ward. So what will you bring to it that makes you more than just a good councillor from any old party? What makes you a Liberal Democrat in how you go about the role?

What do you want to achieve for the ward?

Winning elections is a means to an end. What will you do with the power and publicity opportunities that even the humblest of backbenchers in the most ostracised of opposition groups get?

How long is it since you went to the least visited part of the ward?

In a rural ward, it may be a clutch of farms flung out on a track a long way away from the rest of civilisation. In an urban ward, it may be a block of flats hidden away behind a locked gate with an intercom. But wherever it is – your job as a councillor requires you to really know your patch, probably better than anyone else alive (save for any ward colleagues if you have them!). If even you are neglecting an area, then chances are there are people there who feel left out and also issues there that aren’t being tackled.

How well do you really know which issues concern people in your ward?

Do you know the name of the MP? Bingo – you’re already more politically informed that the majority of voters.

Yes, really. Most people spend very little time thinking about the council and even less time thinking about politics.

That doesn’t mean neither matter to them. But it means their priorities are driven by their lives, their families and their concerns, not by the strategic integrated framework for holistic service delivery.

What’s your one sentence answer to “Why should I vote for you?”

All the above should give you a good idea of the answer, but it’s surprising how many people don’t really know the answer.

Muddling through without a message might get your through. But to survive a tough contest or to do a good job once elected, you do really need to know what you are doing and why.

What are your political and personal weaknesses?

Answer this question honestly – and then ask yourself how much they matter to doing the job of a councillor (almost certainly more than you’d like to admit) and what you can do about them.

Let me give one example: I’ve come across councillors from all parties who, fundamentally, don’t really like talking to strangers. They come up with all sorts of excuses to not go canvassing and to stick with leaflets and doing stuff on the computer.

The best admit these mistakes to themselves, and step by step remedy them. The worst? They never really talk to the public, sometimes wing it in a good year and get re-elected – but even when they do, they fail to shine as councillors because they carry on dodging talking to people.

How would being a councillor fit with the rest of your life?

The time and financial implications of being a councillor are a big deal.

Some of these are positive. You get to spend time helping making people’s lives better. Most councils these days pay more than a pittance in allowances for councillors.

But the pay per hour of your time is frequently low, less than the minimum wage. And the time is often great, eating particularly into time that would otherwise be spent with family or furthering a career. Being a councillor can however boost a career too for the extra skills and experience it brings.

So it is a mixed, nuanced picture – and one therefore all the more important to think about in advance.

How many votes do you need to win?

If you don’t know how many votes you need, how can your campaign be run efficiently? It’d be like trying to run a business without knowing what the overall profit and loss is.

Don’t fret if you don’t have good answers to all these questions yet: there is still plenty of time for you to sort that. Not many people will score a perfect set of answers to these questions – but good, talented people will recognise what needs doing and get to work. The tough part isn’t having the right answers to all the questions – the tough part is being willing to admit to yourself that you might not have all the answers, and then to start doing something about that.

Once you do, it gets easier and easier from there. So good luck – and have fun!

One final thought: if you want to find out more generally about what winning an election involves, there is 101 Ways To Win An Election.

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Thank you to Stephen Pickthall for ensuring the Lib Dems were on the ballot paper here.

The other election was for the City of London Corportation:

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.

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.

• Andy Burnham – Labour 49%
• Robert Kenyon – Reform UK 39%
• Rebecca Shepherd – Restore Britain 8%
• Sarah Wakefield – Green Party 2%
• Jake Austin – Liberal Democrat 1%
• Michael Winstanley – Conservative 1%
• Another party <1%

The sample size on this poll in 518, which falls to an unweighted total of 407 for the headline voting intention. That’s large enough for the significant risks involved in this by-election poll being wrong to come from issues other than the sample size being too low.

More details from Survation here.

Note: there was a brief online rumour of a JL Partners poll too. But as the polling firm said: “JL Partners has not ran a voting intention poll in Makerfield. The poll numbers [claimed] are unweighted past vote numbers from a large-scale focus group exercise.“

What do the polls say?

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

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

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

1. Glenn Gibbins, Sunderland: suspended by Reform following allegations of racism and, so far, has not signed his declaration of office in order to take up his seat (May 2026).
2. 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).
3. 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).
4. Stuart Prior, Rochford: as above; he had been a councillor on two different councils.
5. Ben Rowe, Plymouth: suspended by Reform after he had been “called out on multiple occasions for his offensive posts” (May 2026).
6. 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).
7. 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’.”
8. 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).
9. 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).
10. Danielle Cavanagh, Gateshead: resigned as a councillor (May 2026).
11. Nick Farmer, Wakefield: no longer listed as a Reform councillor (May 2026).
12. Robin Perry, Walsall: suspended by Reform (May 2026).
13. 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).
14. Joseph Soper, Thurrock: resigned as a councillor citing family illness (May 2026).
15. Marc Stanley, Thurrock: resigned as a councillor citing “a change in personal circumstances” (May 2026).
16. Mark Tucker, Norfolk: “Just 25 days after he was elected and having attended just one meeting” (June 2026).
17. Billy Burke, Trafford: suspended after being charged with possessing an offensive weapon (June 2026).
18. Rhys Carr, Wakefield: now listed as independent (June 2026).
19. Rebecca Waters, Birmingham: suspended by Reform “for breaking rank and voting for a Lib Dem [council] leader” (June 2026).

Note: Daniel Devaney (Bradford) said he was pulling out before polling day but got elected anyway. It is not yet clear if he is or is not now formally resigning as a councillor. Although I’ve seen social media posts saying he has, none of them has pointed to a substantive source. Please let me know, of course, if you know otherwise.

See also Paul Webster’s tracker here and I also have a list of Green councillor losses.

Other Reform troubles

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

Turning to councillors who were elected before May 2026 but who have also been shed since the May 2026 elections:

1. 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).
2. 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.
3. 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).
4. Andrew Harrison, County Durham: suspended by Reform and then quit to become an independent (May 2026).
5. Kenny Hope, County Durham: suspended by Reform and then quit to become an independent (May 2026).
6. Matthew Jones, Worcestershire: left to become an independent councillor (May 2026).
7. 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.
8. Kate Rowland, County Durham: resigned to become an independent (May 2026).
9. 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).
10. Trevor Bridgwood, West Lindsey: same story as above, but included twice as he has left Reform on two councils (May 2026).
11. Jamie Hanlon, Cornwall: “A Reform UK Cornwall councillor has left the party, just a month after two other councillors” (May 2026).
12. James (Jim) Sidlow, Cambridgeshire: resigned as a councillor (May 2026).
13. Jasmine Fox, County Durham: now listed as an independent (June 2026)
14. Charlotte Kelly, Staffordshire: joined Conservatives “citing as reasons for her move her experience of bullying and sexism within Reform” (June 2026).

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.

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, “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).

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

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

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I took part in a serious and different kind of debate today. It saw cross-party concerns about the abuse and intimidation of councillors, along with calls for action from the government. One of my concerns is that the positive noises from Whitehall will not translate into action but instead be caught up in the perpetual pirouette of prevarication. What is that pirouette? Read on to find out more…

Tackling the abuse and intimidation of councillors

The full debate is well worth a read, including the powerful opening speech from Lord Forbes and the account from Lord Sahota about racist messages on ballot papers.

Here’s what I had to say alongside that:

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, for bringing this important topic to our attention and putting it on the agenda today. We have heard many powerful and moving contributions from all parts of the Room, which reflects how this is a genuine cross-party issue that should concern us all.

The Local Government Association survey of councillors, although not UK-wide, provides a helpful benchmark. It is shocking that just under 70% of councillors who took part in the last set of elections reported receiving abuse or intimidation. As we have heard from several speakers, not only is it a shocking figure in totality but it tends to affect particular portions of our society, which hugely hinders what should be a common desire for us all to have democratically elected politicians who represent all corners of society. Shockingly, according to the LGA survey, more than one in five councillors have had to report one or more issues to the police. To bring that number to life: that would be the equivalent of 174 Peers among us in the House of Lords having to report something to the police. That is a shocking number.

It is fair to say that, so far, we have not always seen a brilliant set of responses to these problems. Operation Ford has a rather mixed reputation among those who have sadly had recourse to it. Indeed, in the LGA survey, under half of councillors who have reported an issue to the police say that their response has helped either greatly or even just moderately. But there is also a need for action from the Government, including on the legislative front. We have already heard today that there is a wide mix of solutions available out there to pick from. That includes, for example, from the Speaker’s Conference; although it focuses predominantly on MPs, it obviously has wider applicability. There is also the Government’s own previous consultation on a new standards framework for English local government, for example. The LGA itself has made recommendations, and we have heard other proposals such as those put forward by the Jo Cox Foundation.

I worry that this issue will once again be caught up in that perpetual pirouette of prevarication that we sometimes have in Whitehall. We have promises of action, consultations, recommendations and promises of legislation, but then an absence from a King’s Speech, a ministerial reshuffle, an election and maybe even a change of Prime Minister. Round and round we go in that cycle, while the misery for councillors continues and the action fails to happen. I know the Minister has a strong commitment on these issues, and I hope we will hear from her a clear timetable for the action the Government will take so that we do not simply go round and round yet again.

References were made in the debate to the possibility of making amendments to the Representation of the People Bill, currently going through Parliament. Moreover, improving the police’s handling of such issues does not require legislation in itself.

So hopefully some progress can be secured this year, particularly given the genuine commitment of the Minister, Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, to the issue. Let’s see.

In other news from the Lords…

In case you missed previously…

Will Labour close the ‘Trump loophole’ in its political reform plans?

End-of-session reports shows the problems with secondary legislation

Elsewhere from me…

Thank you

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

Best wishes,

Mark

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

• Beaconsfield: Anna Crabtree
• Cambridge: Cheney Payne
• Cheadle: Tom Morrison
• Chester North and Neston: Carol Braithwaite

Liberal Democrat PPCs E-H

• East Hampshire: Dominic Martin
• Exmouth and Exeter East: Charlotte FitzGerald
• Farnham and Bordon: Khalil Yousuf
• Guildford: Zöe Franklin
• Hamble Valley: Prad Bains
• Hampstead and Highgate: Katie Mansfield
• Harrogate and Knaresborough: Tom Gordon
• Hazel Grove: Lisa Smart
• Hinckley and Bosworth: Michael Mullaney

Liberal Democrat PPCs I-L

• Kenilworth and Southam: Louis Adam

Liberal Democrat PPCs M-P

• Mid Buckinghamshire: Anja Shaefer
• North Cotswolds: Paul Hodgkinson
• North Dorset: Gary Jackson
• Portsmouth South: Charlie Murphy

Liberal Democrat PPCs Q-T

• Romsey and Southampton North: Thomas Gravatt
• Runnymede and Weybridge: Chelsea Whyte
• St Ives: Andrew George
• Salisbury: Victoria Charleston
• Sevenoaks: Tara Matthews
• Sheffield Hallam: Sophie Crossthorn
• South Shropshire: Matthew Green
• South West Hertfordshire: Matt Sanders
• Spelthorne: Harry Boparai
• Stockport: Alice Delemare Tangpuori
• Thornbury & Yate: Claire Young
• Torridge and Tavistock: Phil Hutty

Liberal Democrat PPCs U-Z

• Westmorland and Lonsdale: Tim Farron
• Wokingham: Clive Jones
• 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.

The government is right to want to protect our democracy from being flooded by dodgy foreign money. But as I’ve highlighted before, their plans leave far too many loopholes. So I took the chance today to raise this topic again, this time using Donald Trump as an example.

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How Donald Trump could easily side-step controls on foreign donations

This is what I asked in the House of Lords:

My Lords, under the Government’s current plans, Donald Trump could split ownership of a UK company between himself and his family members, keeping each individual share below the threshold that would trigger the significant control test in the Representation of the People Bill that is coming our way. That would then enable the company to legally donate to UK politicians or political parties, and indeed any foreign dictator or billionaire with family members could do exactly the same. Does the Minister agree that that is a dangerous and unwelcome loophole that needs to be closed?

I left out two additional aspects of the problem for reasons of brevity. (Questions are meant to be questions, not essays.) One is that the planned cap on corporate donations is very porous. It’s a revenue cap. But we all know how ingenious companies are at reducing their apparent profits in a country in order to reduce their tax liabilities. A revenue cap is open to the same manipulation, applied more simply – inflating apparent revenue rather than deflating profits.

What’s worse, as the Electoral Commission has pointed out:

[The proposed cap] applies separately to each recipient. This means a company could donate an amount equal to their revenue to a party and then donate the same amount to each of the party’s MPs, councillors and candidates. This would allow companies to make legitimate donations many times their revenue, with no guarantee of the source of these funds.

In other words, Donald Trump – or Xi Jinping, Elon Musk, or Vladimir Putin – can, with the help of a little bit of accountancy, pump millions and millions into UK politics even after the proposed controls come into force.

The minister said in response:

I do not want to comment on such donations, particularly from the President of the United States’s family. However, we are taking immediate steps to implement Philip Rycroft’s recommendation for a cap on donations made by overseas electors. We will implement that through the Representation of the People Bill which is currently before Parliament—it is at Report stage in the Commons at the moment. We are committed to upholding and strengthening our democracy by protecting against this kind of foreign interference, improving political transparency and adding tougher checks for donations. However, it is the responsibility of receiving parties as well to carry out the necessary checks involved. I hope that all responsible parties will take their part in doing so.

That wasn’t quite agreement with my point… but hopefully the door is open to securing improvements to the Bill as it continues through Parliament.

In other news from the Lords…

In case you missed previously…

End-of-session reports shows the problems with secondary legislation

The government backlog nobody is talking about

Elsewhere from me…

The latest episode of Political Fictions is out:

In a scheduling choice completely unconnected to any contemporary political events, Mark and Cory talk about the 2004 Danish film full of leadership plotting, King’s Game. This is a proper conspiracy thriller, where even the children are Machiavellian geniuses. They question whether it really makes sense for plotters to document their evil schemes in such meticulous detail, bemoan the bad use of political polling in the film and debate how useful this film is as a how-to guide for potential leadership candidates.

You can view the IMDb page for King’s Game here.

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

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

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

Mark’s previous brief review of the film is here and as it explains, it’s a film you need to listen to right until the very end. Don’t turn off when you think it’s all over. It isn’t.

Thank you

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

Best wishes,

Mark

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.

Understanding different polling firms

You may find these posts useful:

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

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Why isn’t polling company X in the table?

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

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

Are MRP polls any good?

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

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

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

Margins of error

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

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

How can I see the longer-term trends?

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

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

What about the SNP and Plaid?

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

What about Northern Ireland?

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

Has the choice of parties biased the poll?

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

Aren’t polls just wildly inaccurate these days?

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

Are the opinion pollsters regulated?

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

The regulation could, though, be improved.

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

You do now.

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

How can I find out more about understanding polls?

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

Only the one principal authority council by-elections this week but it extends the Liberal Democrat winning start to this new cycle of by-elections. It came in Fairwood ward on Swansea Council:

Many congratulations to Beth Rowe and the Swansea Liberal Democrat team on coming from fourth to win.

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

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

Congratulations to Phil Williams and the Lib Dem team.

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:

King’s Game: the 2004 Danish movie

The latest episode of Political Fictions is out:

In a scheduling choice completely unconnected to any contemporary political events, Mark and Cory talk about the 2004 Danish film full of leadership plotting, King’s Game. This is a proper conspiracy thriller, where even the children are Machiavellian geniuses. They question whether it really makes sense for plotters to document their evil schemes in such meticulous detail, bemoan the bad use of political polling in the film and debate how useful this film is as a how-to guide for potential leadership candidates.

You can view the IMDB page for King’s Game here.

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

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

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

Mark’s previous brief review of the film is here and as it explains, it’s a film you need to listen to right until the very end. Don’t turn off when you think it’s all over. It isn’t.

You can also watch a trailer here:

Next time we’re talking about the Yes, Minister special “Party Games”. If you’re in the UK then you can watch this on BBC iplayer.

Bonus James Bond content

Take it away Cory…

On Bank Holiday Monday I rewatched The Man With The Golden Gun. Whilst, sadly, there isn’t enough political content in that film to persuade Mark that we should add that film to our recording list, there’s a nice piece of political detail which I hadn’t spotted before.

It comes from Sheriff Pepper, a character reprising his role from Live And Let Die for some unfortunate comic relief. In true 1970s sitcom style Pepper is now on holiday in Thailand whilst Roger Moore is over there doing his thing, and Pepper’s wife asks if she can buy a wooden elephant figure. In response, Pepper spits and pours cold water on the idea: “We’re Democrats!”

The elephants get their revenge – one of them pushes Pepper into the river. American psephologists may wish to write in and correct me, but it strikes me that if the scene were made today, Pepper would change party allegiance. Rather than being a blue collar Democrat, I wonder if now this particular cop would now be a Republican.

Previously on Political Fictions…

A podcast about a controversial, country-changing referendum (but it’s not Brexit)

The Greenland episode from Borgen

Elsewhere from us…

My six least-read pieces of 2026

End-of-session reports shows the problems with secondary legislation

Happy listening

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

Best wishes,

Cory & Mark

A local Liberal Democrat press release brings the news:

Bristol Liberal Democrats have announced that councillor for Avonmouth & Lawrence Weston, Zoë Peat, has resigned from the Labour Party and joined the Liberal Democrats in City Hall.

Cllr Peat attributed the move to the Liberal Democrats as a result of the party’s ‘desire to build bridges across political divides’, citing the cross-party arrangements in Bristol and around the West of England. The party currently chairs two of the eight key policy committees in the council, and has safeguarded the future of the city’s libraries, secured more money for fixing potholes, and ensured additional capacity for street cleaning.

A second defection from the Labour group, the move has been described as a condemnation of Bristol Labour’s failure to stand up for its residents in Bristol as it continues not to fully partake in the committee system that sees its elected members work cross-party for the benefit of the city. Instead of taking up leading roles in the Council, Labour continues to let its residents down by ‘playing games’ and looking to score political points.

Cllr Peat will work with her new Liberal Democrat colleagues to deliver for Bristol, pushing for more affordable housing and cleaner streets, while serving the residents of Avonmouth & Lawrence Weston.

Cllr Jos Clark (Brislington West), Leader of Bristol Liberal Democrat Council Group, said:

We warmly welcome Cllr Peat to the Liberal Democrats. Her energy and enthusiasm for delivering meaningful change for her residents will make her a good fit among our team of hard-working, dedicated local councillors.

I know this is not a decision that Zoë has taken lightly. This just goes to show that Bristol Labour’s unconstructive and oppositional approach in City Hall is failing their residents, and their strategy is wearing thin for their own councillors. Labour need to put aside party politics, stop playing games, and engage properly with the other political groups to deliver the changes that Bristolians are crying out for.

With the rise of populism polarising our politics, it is the Liberal Democrats who are the antidote to these political extremes. People want, and rightly deserve, the people who represent them to work together to deliver change. As costs continue to rise and more stress is put on public services, we will be working together collaboratively and pragmatically to improve the lives of Bristolians.

Cllr Zoë Peat (Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston) published the following statement:

I am extremely thankful to the Labour Party, of which I have been a dedicated campaigner, activist and supporter for over ten years. I am deeply grateful to have been given the opportunity to stand during Bristol’s 2024 local elections, where I have proudly served half of my term as Councillor for Lawrence Weston & Avonmouth.

However, after a great deal of thought and reflection, I have made the difficult decision to step away from the Labour Party for personal and political reasons.

There have been decisions made by the national party that I have disagreed with, including the removal of the Winter Fuel Payment, the initial whipping against abolishing the two-child benefit cap, and aspects of the government’s proposed welfare reforms. However, I also recognise that no political party or leadership will ever perfectly align with one person’s views, and I remain proud of many achievements delivered by the current Labour government, including the expansion of free school meals, increased funded childcare provision, the Workers’ Rights Act, and the Renters’ Rights Act. I sincerely hope to see this government continue improving the lives of working people across the country.

Ultimately, my decision comes down to the kind of politics I want to practise. At a time when the cost of living crisis and wider political instability are driving division across our country, I have found hope in the Liberal Democrats’ willingness to work collaboratively, pragmatically and constructively with others in pursuit of positive change.

The Liberal Democrats have consistently demonstrated a desire to build bridges across political divides, whether through coalition administrations in places such as Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire, or through cross-party working arrangements here in Bristol. While my own politics remain centre-left, I strongly believe that people with differing political traditions can still come together to deliver meaningful outcomes for residents.

I believe politics works best when it is rooted in cooperation, community and practical solutions rather than tribalism. The Liberal Democrats’ emphasis on localism, community politics and constructive cross-party working reflects the approach I want to bring to public service moving forward.

My work as a councillor will continue with a renewed focus on bringing forward good ideas regardless of where they come from politically, and above all else, putting Bristol and its residents before party interests.

Leaving the Labour Party has not been an easy decision, and it is one I have made carefully and independently after considerable reflection. I do not want my departure to be used to inflame internal political divisions locally or nationally. My priority remains serving residents during what continues to be an incredibly difficult period for many households.

With continued pressures on food prices, energy bills and household finances driven by ongoing global instability and conflict, I believe the focus of politics must now be on stability, cooperation and ensuring that government at every level is able to respond effectively to the challenges facing ordinary people.

I look forward to continuing to serve the residents of Lawrence Weston & Avonmouth as a Liberal Democrat councillor, and to working with colleagues across the political spectrum to deliver the best possible future for Bristol.

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The first big Parliamentary report I’ve been involved with is now out, a review of how the government did at secondary legislation in the last Parliamentary session. Read on to find out what the report says.

Scrutinising a session’s worth of secondary legislation

I don’t just write about secondary legislation in this newsletter, I also scrutinise it as part of my work in Parliament through being a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (SLSC).

At the end of each Parliamentary session, a report is published about the committee’s work. One of the traditional areas of concern for the SLSC is the quality of the material the government puts out explaining what it is doing:

Our [earlier] Interim Report concluded that there are still too many examples where the explanatory material accompanying secondary legislation does not meet the required standard. We noted with concern that the replacement rate for deficient Explanatory Memorandums (EMs) in Year 1 was 13.4%, the highest since we began monitoring this figure in 2014–15. There was a welcome reduction in the replacement rate in Year 2, to 9.0%, resulting in an overall rate of 11.7% for the session. However, the rates remain well above the 5% threshold we regard as the maximum acceptable level to allow for human error. High levels of replacement indicate ongoing weaknesses in departmental quality assurance processes, particularly where EMs omit key policy rationales, contain basic inaccuracies, or lack clarity about implementation. 

I was very glad to see – and I hope I have contributed to – the report also looking at a broader range of concerns about secondary legislation:

We also noted several new areas of departmental underperformance in Year 1, such as: corrections of unlawful practices; a loss of departmental corporate memory leading to inadequacies in the making of secondary legislation; and a sharp increase in basic errors. We regret that these persisted in Year 2. In addition, we gave new focus to other areas of concern in Year 2, including: delays in bringing forward secondary legislation; irregular reviews and updates of amounts set in legislation, including in relation to fees where full cost recovery should be the aim; and gaps in the available powers to make secondary legislation to amend assimilated (formerly retained EU) law. 

Regular readers of this newsletter will recognise those concerns from individual examples I’ve highlighted. The language is, of course, appropriately Parliamentary. So, for example, “a loss of departmental corporate memory” refers in part to the baffling pair of occasions on which the government messed up something, explained that the problem happened because people didn’t know what they were meant to do and promised to remedy things by introducing handover notes when staff change. You may well wonder at what was going on if handover notes are a novelty…

Those concerns also fill out an earlier oddity I noticed after joining the committee. The usual concerns expressed over secondary legislation are about the government having too much power to do things quickly, on the quiet and with too little Parliamentary scrutiny. Those concerns have much merit. But they overlook that, across huge swathes of secondary legislation, the problem isn’t the government sneaking things through without people noticing, it’s the government moving extremely slowly to get even basic things done and even after a consultation has shown strong support for the action,

To reuse a couple of examples I’ve previously mentioned:

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

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

The Extradition Act 2003 (Amendment to Designations) Order 2025

• The change in this related to Zimbabwe was triggered by its departure from the Commonwealth in 2003, twenty-two years (!) previously.

Slow government, not just sneaky government, should concern us more when it comes to secondary legislation.

And if you’ve read this far, I’m pretty sure you will find the full SLSC report of interest. You can read it here.

And for all my criticisms of the system, it is worth in particular echoing these thanks from the report:

We could not complete our scrutiny work without the cooperation of civil servants who respond to our queries, often within short timeframes. We would like to thank all officials who have supported the Committee’s scrutiny work in the session 2024–26.

Similarly, I would not be able to do my work on the committee without the excellent support from our staff team and the expert way my committee colleagues approach their work. Thank you to them as well.

One area which falls outside the committee’s remit is how well (or not) the government does at delivering on commitments it makes when being scrutinised about secondary legislation, for example when uprating a financial figure that has not changed in decades there may be a commitment made to do this more regularly in future. But does that happen?

That concern will keep me and my calendar of written questions busy in this new Parliamentary session. Long enough has now elapsed since I joined the committee for it now to be a sensible time to start chasing up progress on such commitments.

So keep reading this newsletter to see what I find over the next few months.

In other news from the Lords…

Given the weather, these words from John Russell are particularly apposite:

In case you missed previously…

The government backlog nobody is talking about

Two cracking maiden speeches from Lib Dems

Elsewhere from me…

What do the polls tell us so far about the Makerfield by-election and the Labour leadership? Take a read of The Week in Polls to find out…

Burnham, Makerfield and Labour: the latest polls

Thank you

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

Best wishes,

Mark

Arbroath and Broughty Ferry: Tanvir Ahmad

Tanvir Ahmad commented after his selection for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry:

Westminster politics often felt dominated by constitutional arguments and political ambition rather than long-term local economic recovery.

People voted for representation for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry. Not a temporary stop on the way to somewhere else…

Arbroath and Broughty Ferry deserves long-term commitment and practical leadership focused on improving people’s lives. Not politicians constantly looking toward the next political move.

Aberdeen South: Mel Sullivan

As Lib Dem Voice reports, on being selected for Aberdeen South, Cllr Mel Sullivan said:

I am delighted to have been selected to contest the Aberdeen South by-election.

At the recent election Scottish Liberal Democrats increased our vote share across the North East and elected a new regional MSP who will give people strong and liberal representation across the region.

People have been let down by the SNP, the Conservatives and the Labour party.

Just this week, Labour voted against Liberal Democrat proposals for a customs union with the European Union and relaxed sanctions on Russia while blocking new drilling in the North Sea.

People across the constituency feel like things aren’t working. Even as the North East produces much of Scotland’s energy, our household bills are soaring, while under the SNP waits to see a GP are far too long. People deserve a change with fairness at its heart and that is what I will be campaigning to deliver.

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

Keep up with news about Lib Dem selections

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

Long-term readers will be familiar with my explorations of how slowly central government moves, especially when it comes to secondary legislation. The lessons from that exploration, and some of the best examples, are wrapped up in a recent podcast episode I appeared on. Read on to find out more.

The problem with secondary legislation

James O’Malley from YIMBY Pod has been quizzing me about secondary legislation, why it matters and what’s wrong with it.

Our conversation is stuffed full of fun examples, such as how ministerial pay was worked wrongly for years and how the Treasury kept Martin Lewis waiting for years.

Take a listen here:

The podcast is also available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and on the web.

In other news from the Lords…

In case you missed previously…

Two cracking maiden speeches from Lib Dems

When will the government get to grips with WhatsApp?

Elsewhere from me…

A little taster from my own latest podcast, about General Pinochet’s referendum:

You can listen to the full podcast episode here.

Thank you

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

Best wishes,

Mark

That sample size is a little on the low side but constituency polling is tough and it’s large enough to give reasonable confidence that if there is something off with the poll, it isn’t due to the sample being too small.

Survation’s press release about the poll adds that:

On a generic Westminster ballot, with no candidate names attached, Reform UK leads

Labour by eleven points in Makerfield. The eleven-point Reform lead in a generic ballot, set against a three-point Labour lead in the named-candidate by-election ballot, is the size of the Burnham effect in this poll: enough to put Labour narrowly in front of Reform, not enough to put the seat beyond reach.

On that showing for Restore Britain:

More about the Lib Dem candidate, Jake Austin, here.

UPDATE: More from Survation about their poll here.

UPDATE 2: A new Survation poll extends Andy Burnham’s lead to 10 points.

What do the polls say?

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

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

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

Fun side note: when it comes to their own internal elections for posts in Parliament, both the Commons and the Lords use the alternative vote and even STV. What’s good enough for us Parliamentarians apparently isn’t good enough for the public.

But at least the general timidity is now being implemented at some speed in one respect: the legislation for the Supplementary Vote will be commenced in time for it to be used in any by-election for the Greater Manchester Mayor should Andy Burnham be elected an MP.

To quote the ministerial statement:

I have today laid the legislation necessary to support the implementation of these measures for Combined Authority Mayors and Combined County Authority Mayors. The Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (Amendment) Order 2026, which makes the required changes to conduct rules, ballot papers, postal voting statements, and guidance and instructions to voters, will now be considered by Parliament under the affirmative procedure. Relevant changes to the secondary legislation governing conduct of elections for local authority mayors, the Mayor of London and Police and Crime Commissioners will be brought forward as soon as possible later this year.

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Cllr Joe Barratt has now joined the Lib Dem team running Stockport Council, after leaving the Labour party last September, when he criticised Keir Starmer for “sleepwalking into a Reform government”.

In the latest elections, Cllr Barratt campaigned for the Liberal Democrat candidate, Cllr Niki Meerman in his ward in the local election, which saw the Labour party crash to just 5% of the vote down from 47% in 2024.

He has formally joined the Liberal Democrats, as the best antidote to “divisive and simplistic politics”, whilst also criticising the failure of the Labour party and the Conservative governments to protect residents from rising costs. The two parties received around just 10% of the vote in Stockport, and won 2 and 0 seats respectively in May. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats stormed to taking over all control of the council, making history as the first group to do that in 15 years.

Leader of Stockport Council, Cllr Mark Roberts, said:

Joe is a fantastic community politician, I’ve worked with him closely as a fellow Werneth councillor for some time and he sees the Lib Dems as the best antidote to the political extremes that are taking over so much of our culture.

There are stark challenges that residents and the council alike feel. There is a political landscape where people are bombarded with false narratives and simplistic solutions to complicated problems, with a polarised politics of protest and populism the easy option that many choose to peddle. With Labour and the Conservatives languishing at 10% of the vote in Stockport, it’s clear that the old 2 party system is being rejected by the voters and the Lib Dems are the solution to the problem that the people across Stockport back.

We’re incredibly proud of the progress Stockport has made so far, and it’s a testament to the work we’re doing of shunning populist politics and taking difficult decisions that are for the best for Stockport.

Cllr Joe Barratt said

I have increasingly come to feel that my values and beliefs are better reflected in the Liberal Democrats than anywhere else, and that the most effective way to serve the people of Bredbury and Woodley is as part of a team that shares them.

I personally champion the core values of fairness, equality and opportunity that define the party. What has struck me most, is the way that Liberal Democrats have consistently delivered for residents locally in Stockport. They have been protecting important frontline services in the face of an incredibly challenging local government funding landscape and ensuring that the council continues to be a beacon of inclusion, tolerance and respect for all.

It was clear on the doorsteps in the last election that people are tired of the Labour & Conservative parties taking them for granted, having failed to protect people from rising costs and failing public services. It’s the Liberal Democrats’ that provide the alternative to divisive politics that only make the problems worse.

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Four men and a woman aged between 23 and 47 were arrested this morning in the Ashton-under-Lyne area, as a result of what the police are calling ‘illegality and criminality’ in the run up to the St Peter’s ward election on May 7th. The arrests were made on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud, and police investigations are ongoing.

Our investigation heard that internal messages had been circulated in Labour WhatsApp groups leading to the election, discussing the tactic of planting stooge Independents in order to split the vote of opposition candidates who could benefit from defecting Labour supporters.

The importance of email newsletters for ensuring local politics gets properly covered by the media is something I touched on in my maiden speech in the House of Lords.

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Four principal authority council by-elections this week to kick off the new cycle. Good to see a full slate of Lib Dem candidates, up one on the last time these seats were contested.

Those candidates also scored two important wins for the Liberal Democrats:

Many congratulations to new councillor Chris McSweeny and the team.

This successful Lib Dem defence by Paddy Mooney is particularly important as it restores the Liberal Democrat majority on Dorset Council.

Elsewhere:

Thank you to Philip Morgan for getting the Lib Dems on the ballot paper here after the previous absence.

Thank you to Malcolm Martin for being the Liberal Democrat here.

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

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

What do the polls say?

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

What’s happening in the Lib Dems?

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

A Liberal Democrat press release brings the news:

Jake Austin has been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Makerfield in the upcoming by-election, pledging to champion local issues that matter most to residents. Jake is passionate about revitalising our high streets, ⁠improving public transport across the North West, and providing affordable homes for the next generation.

Jake was born and raised in Hindley, and has lived in Greater Manchester his whole life. Working in fundraising, Jake is also a Liberal Democrat Councillor.

In 2024, Jake was the Liberal Democrat candidate in the Greater Manchester Mayorality election, increasing the Liberal Democrat vote share against Andy Burnham from the 2021 election.

Labour party infighting has undermined trust in politics at a time when the British public have been utterly squeezed by the cost of living crisis and Trump’s illegal war in Iran. Jake is standing in Makerfield to show voters what a committed local champion looks like – one who isn’t caught up in national leadership ambitions.

Making progress on the change that was promised in 2024 has been sidelined by this protracted psychodrama, whilst Liberal Democrats like Jake continue serving their residents on the real issues.

People in Makerfield and across the country deserve so much better than this.

Commenting on his selection, Jake Austin said:

I’m thrilled to have been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Makerfield. Voters in Makerfield deserve so much more than the failing Labour government or the divisive politics of Reform UK.

We have a real opportunity to champion the issues that matter most to people: the cost of living, protecting our natural environment and supporting our local high streets and businesses.

Meanwhile, both Reform and the Greens are having a spot of candidate bother.

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

Keep up with news about Lib Dem selections

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

Reform often boasts about how good its candidate vetting is. But even with plenty of examples of its failure already widely known, this is a shocking failure of vetting for their Makerfield Parliamentary by-election candidate:

On a deleted social media account, Reform UK’s candidate in the upcoming Makerfield parliamentary by-election, Rob Kenyon, made creepy comments about women, peddled baseless conspiracy theories, and called for a method of torture prohibited by international human rights law.

After Rob Kenyon was announced as Reform UK’s Makerfield candidate earlier this week, it was swiftly revealed that a [different] Twitter account of his had been suspended. On it, he expressed support for Donald Trump, referred to an “invasion” of asylum seekers (who he described as “illegal enemies”), and criticised government funding to protect Mosques…

As well as promoting conspiracy theories and making derogatory comments about women, Kenyon has called for violence. [Hope Not Hate]

In addition, as was previously reported:

The campaigning organisation Searchlight claims Robert Kenyon was friends with fascist campaigner Gary Raikes on a now deleted Facebook page, a claim that is not disputed by Reform UK. [BBC]

UPDATE – The Observer adds:

Reform candidate for Makerfield by-election calls abortion ‘cowardly murder’
Robert Kenyon, who is standing against Andy Burnham, suggested on social media that women falsely claim rape to terminate pregnancies and has links to far-right figures

Meanwhile the Daily Mirror reports:

Carol Vorderman demands apology from Reform by-election candidate over lewd comments … “I want an apology from Rob Kenyon, to me, and to all the other people he’s abused online.”

The Independent also reports:

‘Women can’t ref, drive or give directions’: Reform candidate sexism row deepens as more ‘degrading’ posts resurface… [He] declared: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.”

The Times also has some further, rather more amusing, information:

Unearthed posts suggest Reform candidate didn’t vote for Brexit … and praised European freedom of movement on social media.

The Daily Telegraph meanwhile has support for Vladimir Putin:

Reform UK’s candidate in the Makerfield by-election said Russia was “within their rights” to invade Crimea in 2014. In an online forum, Robert Kenyon agreed with a post that described the annexation of Crimea as “democracy in action”.

Green Party problems

Meanwhile, the original Green Party candidate in the Makerfield Parliamentary by-election, Chris Kennedy, has already dropped out:

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There was a treat in the House of Lords this week – two maiden speeches from Liberal Democrat peers, Rhiannon Leaman and Mike Dixon. I know many readers enjoyed Sarah Teather’s maiden speech, so here now are Rhiannon’s and Mike’s too. And even if you think you know them already, I think you’ll find much new to learn in their speeches.

Rhiannon Leaman: I think of the children whose distress is quiet

My Lords, for the past seven years, I have served as chief of staff to my right honourable friend Sir Ed Davey. While I declare this interest, I must say that it has not all been wet suits and splash parks. I am not sure that my new leader, my noble friend Lord Purvis, is up for bungee jumping between votes on College Green either.

Together with an extraordinary team of colleagues, including my noble friend Lord Dixon, whose own maiden speech I am very excited to hear later in this debate, Ed and I had the task of rebuilding our party. At the last election, the Liberal Democrats returned our largest number of MPs in a century. I say this because it matters. With populism on the rise across the world, it matters that we have a thriving liberal force in this country: one committed to holding Governments to account when they fall short, and, crucially, prepared to stand firm against those who would drag our politics and our communities to the extremes of left or right. Division and demagoguery are not inevitable, but they must be resisted, and I intend to play my part in that resistance from these Benches.

In joining this House I follow in the footsteps of many former political staffers across all Benches. I would like to acknowledge two of them in particular today: my sponsors and friends, my noble friends Lady Grender and Lady Suttie. They have been generous mentors to me over many years, providing wise counsel, encouragement, wine and, on occasion, the perfectly timed piece of rather blunt advice. While I thank them, I also thank Black Rod, our doorkeepers and attendants and staff across this House for their support and good humour in helping me find my way at this end of the Palace, as well as our wonderful team in the Liberal Democrat Whips’ Office. I would like to add my congratulations to the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater, on their maiden speeches, both of which gave a real sense of the contribution they will make to this place.

It is a huge privilege to speak in this debate on His Majesty’s gracious Speech. It certainly feels a very long way from Chipping Sodbury where, along with my brother and sister, I was raised by my lovely mum. Mum spent more than 40 years as a nurse in the NHS, promoting the health and protection of children and those who look after them. I was fortunate to be able to draw on the values mum instilled in me to support Ed Davey to tell his story of care, and to place the millions of unpaid carers across our country at the front and centre of our general election campaign to help make the case for those who form the invisible backbone of our communities – those who constitute an economy within the economy: uncosted, too often uncounted and still, overwhelmingly, women.

I am going to focus my remaining remarks on the families who are often part of that same story of care: children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, and the parents and carers who spend months, often years, fighting for support. The SEND system is broken. That is the lived reality of families across the country. Children are failed every day. Parents are forced into exhausting battles simply to secure what their child should have been entitled to from the start. Teachers and school leaders are doing their best in a system stretched beyond capacity. Meanwhile, local authorities are being driven to the brink by costs they cannot meet.

That is why reform is urgent, and why I welcome the education for all Bill as a step in the right direction. But reform will succeed only if children and families are placed at its heart. If reform means removing rights from parents who already feel powerless, weakening routes of appeal or disrupting settled placements, it will fail. This is particularly true for neurodivergent children. Understanding of autism, ADHD and other forms of neurodiversity has grown enormously, but support has not kept pace. Too many children wait years for assessment. Too many families are told to come back when things are worse. Too many children learn far too young that school is a place where they are misunderstood.

I know this not only as a matter of policy, but as a parent. My son and daughter each waited three years for their diagnoses. In my daughter’s case, I am not sure she would have been referred at all had it not been for one teacher, Miss Holmes. She saw my daughter clearly when the systems around her did not, and advocated for her when she could not yet advocate for herself. But I think of the children who do not have a Miss Holmes: the children whose distress is quiet; the girls who mask until they break; the young people whose underlying neurodivergence is missed, as my own was.

The challenges within the SEND system are complex and fixing them will not be cost-free, but failure is not cost-free either. We pay for delay in crisis placements, parental exhaustion, children’s mental health and lost potential. I look forward to working with colleagues across this House, of all parties and none, to make the case for children who cannot wait, for the families who should not have to fight, and for a country that is at its best when it sees, hears and values every child.

Mike Dixon: the best decisions come from truly understanding what matters to people

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to make my maiden speech during this debate. It is an honour to follow the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater. I am not sure whether protocol also requires me to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, on the delayed moments of her earlier speech, as she did part of her maiden speech today.

Making sure that people have a fair chance in life has been the core of my work: at Victim Support, in government, at Citizens Advice, and at the drug, alcohol and mental health charity I was privileged to lead with the support of my noble friend Lord Carlile as chair of trustees.

I want to start my speech today by congratulating another noble friend, my noble friend Lady Leaman, on her maiden speech. There are few people with deeper and truer instincts about what is right and what is wrong, and with the courage to say so. It is good to see her step into the light.

I want to thank all noble Lords for their welcome here. This is a daunting place, and the warmth I have experienced from right across the House has been quite something. To all of those who have smiled, inquired or pulled me on to the Benches when I was sitting in the wrong place: thank you. This is a culture that is fragile; it is a hard and rare and precious thing, and I will do my very best to sustain it and foster it. I want to add my thanks to the staff team here: the doorkeepers, the attendants, the clerks and the wider teams right across the estate. They are always reasonable and always kind, and there is often a twinkle in the eyes.

I want to thank my supporters: my noble friend Lady Grender, who has been both impish and wise counsel to me, as only a true friend can be, as she has been for the past six years; and my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed, sat here in front of me, who has been a kind and astute interpreter of this place, its customs, its history and particularly its architecture. If anyone ever wants to ask a question on that, I highly recommend his advice. Of course, I thank the staff in our Whips’ Office, who have guided me through this strangest of experiences with care, expertise and real attention. Most of all, I thank my mum, who brought me up by herself, in Jericho in Oxford – not the other Jericho – to believe you should be kind and that you should try.

Before I move to the matter of the gracious Speech, I need to declare an interest as the current chief executive of the Liberal Democrats.

I have always believed that the best policy, the best legislation and the best decisions come from truly understanding what matters to people, and what people actually do. That sounds obvious, but in my experience in lots of organisations it is all too rare. It is so easy to make assumptions from our own lives about how people will respond, and so easy to miss the nuances in what people say. One of the things I have most valued about the debate today has been the care and attention with which people have both listened to what others have said and tried to hear the meaning and motivation behind the words. It can be hard to get the words right, but the meaning and the motivation have been approached today in a spirit of generosity.

Since January, volunteers across the Liberal Democrats have held more than a million conversations with people across England, Scotland and Wales, asking them what matters in their lives. I mention this not because it lies behind my party’s success. Volunteers in other parties have also worked hard, but sadly that data on how hard they have worked is less accessible to me than I would like it to be. I mention it because I truly believe that that is how politics should work: by starting with, listening to and serving people as you find them.

A decade ago, I was at Citizens Advice, and the website there was written in very precise and technical language that got the law absolutely right and was completely impossible for most people to understand. With a brilliant team, including many people who worked on the prototype of GOV.UK with the noble Lord, Lord Maude, we took it from being used by 4 million people a year to 38 million people a year. That one change has probably helped more people than anything else I have done in my entire life. We did that by listening to the language people used, understanding the way people approached problems in their own lives, and designing our tools and giving our advice in a way that was simple and clear. If government needed to bend to how people thought about a problem, we made sure that it did so.

I have also spent countless hours in drug and alcohol services, where one simple change we made had a huge impact. The regulations used to require charities such as mine to ask an astonishing number of, frankly, pretty impertinent questions to people who had just walked through the door of a drug and alcohol service, which is one of the hardest things to do in life. Too many people would never come back, and our country has lost too many people as a result of the way it was regulated. Our front-line workers did not feel they had permission to do what they knew was right; but we backed them, and they proved the obvious, which is that, if you make people feel welcome and show them they are safe and that you care, they will come back, and you can ask the questions later. I am pleased that, some years ago, the regulator followed our lead and changed its requirements, so more people now get help and more people are alive because of that regulatory change.

In this Session, we will debate in Bills on modernising how citizens interact with public services and how we use technology to do so. I hope the examples I have given today give a sense of what I want to bring to this House in discussions with all noble Lords: a curiosity and a focus on what actually matters in people’s lives; the importance of emotion and dignity in our decision-making, as my noble friend Lady Leaman said in her speech; the opportunities technology provides if we start with people and put them before machines; and the need for public services to serve people as they are, not as we may assume them to be. As I start my work in this House, I look forward to many conversations on these issues, and to working with – and, in particular, learning from – as many people across the Chamber as I can.

In other news from the Lords…

In case you missed previously…

When will the government get to grips with WhatsApp?

Government both sacks Capita and gives it a new contract

Elsewhere from me…

How did the local election predictions do? A first look

Thank you

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Best wishes,

Mark