Clearly this was a big night for Reform, a bad night for Labour, and a mixed night for everyone else. Labour lost seats to the Greens, to a lesser extent Reform, and to Plaid Cymru and the SNP. The Conservatives lost seats heavily to Reform. But for the Government to lose seats at this point … Read more
Over the last few weeks I’ve been travelling up and down the East Coast, visiting places that already have Reform MPs, and places they are targeting in the upcoming local elections. You can find the other pieces below. I’ve saved the most interesting for last: Sunderland. I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m a Sunderland … Read more
Starmer has survived a key vote in the House over the Mandelson affair. This isn’t a shock. Contrary to the popular press and the internet, he was never likely to lose. I don’t normally comment on people or events. Normally I stick to rather policies, but this affair does reveal some important things about how … Read more
UK ministers are reportedly considering triggering a break clause in Palantir’s £330 million contract for the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP). The clause, available from February 2027, would allow the government to exit the seven-year deal early. The review follows mounting pressure from the British Medical Association, MPs and campaign groups, who have raised concerns … Read more
One of the daftest things I read on line is the assertion that “you can’t rewrite history” This, of course, is nonsense, history is rewritten all the time, that is how history works. Each generation writes it’s own history, attitudes change, new facts emerge, documents are found in the archives, things are dug up from … Read more
After the Gorton by-election, a number of stories circulated about so-called “family voting” — Muslim families voting together, with the husband supposedly directing how others should vote. This narrative was quickly seized on as an explanation for Reform’s failure to win the seat and for the collapse of the Conservative vote. The Conservatives, in particular, … Read more
Brexit has damaged the UK’s exports. I know this from first-hand experience. Before the vote, we exported to Ireland, Spain and Japan. After the vote, nothing. Japan might seem an odd market to lose. But like many small exporters, we sold through a distributor that bundled together drinks products for Asian markets. Mixing UK and … Read more
Great Yarmouth was described by Dickens as a kind of paradise. David Copperfield lived there in an upturned boat with Peggoty. Proof, if it were needed, that the town has not only seen better days, but better centuries. Now it is something else entirely. The archetypal decayed seaside town: slot machines, one-armed bandits, and not … Read more
If you wanted to design a policy that looks like it fixes the NHS workforce crisis without actually fixing it, you might end up with something very like the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act 2026. The Act requires the NHS to prioritise UK-trained doctors when allocating foundation and specialty training posts. In plain English: British graduates … Read more
Last week, YouGov retracted a poll suggesting church attendance was rising in the UK. The results, it turned out, had been distorted by bots or AI. This is disappointing given that the research was published last year, and got a lot more attention than the retraction did. To understand why that matters, it helps to … Read more