Two police and crime commissioners leave the Conservative Party

Two Conservative police and crime commissioners - Marc Jones in Lincolnshire and Alison Hernandez in Cornwall and Devon - have announced that they are leaving the party and will serve out their terms as Independents.

The interesting thing is that neither of those news reports give the impression that the PCC is about to jump ship to Reform. Both are in their third term as PCC, which means they joined the Conservative Party before it abandoned Conservatism to became an English Nationalist party.

So perhaps these resignations are symptomatic of a flight of sensible people from the party (though a study of Hernandez's Wikipedia entry suggests she is not as sensible as all that).

The government has announced that PCCs will be abolished in 2028 and you can see why. The reports on Hernandez's resignation tells us she is

supported by a team of around 30 non-political staff led by a chief executive who will "continue holding the police to account" and fulfilling their statutory obligations.

The creation of PCCs was championed by those scourges of bureaucracy Daniel Hannon and Douglas Carswell.