The Joy of Six 1569

Matt Gallagher reports that "the UK quietly sent one of its most senior security officials to a Trump administration summit which proposed to turn global counter-terrorism infrastructure against the political left."

"The values that translate to a modern Liberal success in terms of voting demographics are not simply responsible economics, but a commitment to individualism, social justice and equality; values that when communicated clearly can drive the support of those they affect most, alongside the conscientious urban populations, all of whom now flock to the Greens for these same reasons." Rose Runswick argues that the Liberal Democrats should stand for more than "business".

Josiah Mortimer on the problems with the government announcement that domestic plug-in solar panels are now allowed in the UK.

Samir Jeraj says cuts to council spending, including on adventure playgrounds, are jeopardising Leicester's recovery from the riots of 2022: "Staff, supporters and the local community are campaigning against the cuts and there are city-wide elections next year, which could reverse decades of Labour domination in the city. Opposition parties ranging from the Conservatives to the Greens are opposing the cuts to the adventure playgrounds and they could become a symbolic issue in the campaign."

"The digital sources barely scratch the surface of what exists in big archives, in tiny archives, in people’s attics. So save yourself the bother, save the planet, save the erosion of your cognitive faculties and learn to do it properly." Sophie Michell sees no role for AI in family history.

"There are six publicly known positive DNA results that match the leopard (Panthera pardus), two from recent years: from Gloucestershire in 2022, from a hair snagged on a barbed-wire fence in the vicinity of a sheep kill; and from Cumbria in 2023, when DNA was found on a carcass – again, of a sheep." Rick Minter makes the case that there are big cats living in the British countryside.

Inside Southwark's Green/Lib Dem coalition council

BBC News has posted a positive write up by Susana Mendonca of the Green/Lib Dem administration that has run the London Borough of Southwark since May's local elections.

At those elections, the Green Party won 22 seats and the Lib Dems 12, then used their combined majority to take control. Southwark is the only London borough currently being run by such a coalition.

The Lib Dems secured three posts in the leadership team, including that of deputy council leader which is filled by their group leader Victor Chamberlain.

Chamberlain told BBC News: 

"The more we started talking, the more we realised that we had a lot in common, that we shared similar values and aspirations for our borough, and actually we wanted to build a borough that is more affordable, that is safer and that is greener.

"I think we found it really very constructive to work as two parties that both bring great ideas to the table."

The article also quotes the deputy leader of the opposition Labour group, who seems rather fixated on process:

"Apart from a number of meetings being cancelled, we've had two proposed cuts, one being the Nest which is a free mental health support for young people and a dementia service being cut, but it's been reversed because the Labour group, along with residents have pushed back.

"It's quite clear that they don't know what they're doing and actually this [coalition] was done in a rush."

Under the Influence? A new report on alcohol at Westminster

When the newly elected Hannah Spencer – the Green victor in this year's Gorton and Denton by-election – voiced her shock at the role alcohol played at Westminster, other MPs and social media users queued up to patronise her and assure us that everything was fine there.

But perhaps they will pay more attention to a new report from the Institute of Alcohol Studies entitled Under the influence? Perspectives of alcohol in the parliamentary workplace among UK MPs and staff. 

You can read a media release on the institute's website and download the report from there too.

The release says:

Westminster is a unique workplace where alcohol is woven into the working environment. Staff members based in constituency offices were far less likely to report being offered alcohol at work meetings or events compared to staff based in Westminster and MPs, and participants also drew stark comparisons with the presence of alcohol in other workplaces.

The foreword is written by Beccy Cooper, who was a public health consultant before she won Worthing West for Labour in 2024. She says:

Two findings stood out to me. Almost one in ten respondents reported a negative experience because of someone else’s drinking at work, and 70 per cent either didn’t know, or weren’t sure, how to raise a concern about a colleague’s drinking. 

That combination – real, measurable harm, and no clear route to address it – is exactly the kind of gap we need to address. While social and networking elements are important in a healthy workplace, colleagues describing how the drinking culture plays a distinct role in career progression raises significant concerns about wellbeing, inclusion, and professionalism. 

The Guardian story on Under the Influence? emphasises its tales of excess and the claim by one MP that other members have had their stomachs pumped after consuming so much alcohol that they ended up in hospital.

I am reminded of another British institution that has seen better days: cricket.

This is from a blog post I wrote in 2017:

In the course of my day job I went to an event on the psychology and wellbeing of military personnel.

A session on mental health saw general agreement that the biggest issue facing the Forces in that field was alcohol misuse. ...

Cricket shares many features with military life – slightly awkward male camaraderie, periods of boredom followed by periods of nerve-shredding excitement, public school officers – and alcohol seems to play the same central role in it.

Alcohol is used as a reward and a consolation, to oil the wheels of socialisation and quite possibly to ease the nerves of the battle-scarred too.

One of the attractions of political activism for me, I will admit, was that after delivering, canvassing or committee meetings generally ended in the pub. In fact, there was a theory that political meetings all ended an hour before "Last orders", no matter when they began.

These days pubs are open later but no one can afford the beer prices, so I suppose everything has changed. By the sound of it, the only place where nothing has changed is Westminster.

You don't have to be a Puritan to think it has the wrong attitude to alcohol.

My Liberator article on the Yorkists' New Deal

This article appears in the new Liberator – you can download the whole issue from the magazine's website. Following the best traditions of academic reviewing, I spend a lot of time stating my own views before I get on to the publication I'm meant to be writing about.

You can find The New Deal online.

Lib Dem Narrative – The Search Goes On

The 2024 general election saw 72 Liberal Democrat MPs elected, the most for a third party since the Liberals’ brief revival in 1923. It was a result that exceeded all expectations, yet, two years on, there is a feeling of deflation among many Lib Dems. May’s local elections, whose outcome was in some ways very good for the party, were followed by a series of posts on Lib Dem Voice expressing dissatisfaction with the party’s direction or at least arguing that its current approach had been exhausted and a new one was needed.

This dissatisfaction arises from a sense of disappointment. If we have so many MPs, why aren’t we more central to the political debate? You can blame the media all you like, and they certainly do us no favours, but maybe the problem lies deeper than that. If we were allowed to write out own newspaper headlines, do we know what they would be? The approach with which we fought the last election – three bullet points and a reminder that Labour can’t win here – and its continuation after that election have left us with a limited number of headline policies.

Massive failures

Where we do have them, they aren’t necessarily as strong as we try to make them sound. We won support at the last election by campaigning on the massive failures of the water companies, but what would we do about them? The answer is that we would appoint a new, tougher regulator. The trouble with this is that the model promised at privatisation – businesses that displayed market-driven efficiency and went in fear of powerful regulators – has never looked like working. There are two reasons for this, the first of which is that the water industry is a natural monopoly. The second is regulatory capture, the process by which public institutions that are set up to keep an industry in check are subverted so they come to act in its interests. Nothing about the Lib Dems’ proposals for the water industry suggests they have found the answer to either of these problems.

Then there is the party’s performance in opinion polls and local elections. When it comes to the polls, despite the collapse of the Labour vote, we are happy if we see one where we match the 12 per cent of the vote we achieved at the last general election. We may remember Zack Polanski as an ambitious Liberal Democrat who was keener on austerity than most of us, but as James Butler wrote in the London Review of Books: 

Polanski’s political journey … is sometimes framed as opportunism but in fact reflects the often radicalising economic experience of millennials now approaching middle age.

We need to have more to offer such voters than we do at present.

Our vote is now heavily concentrated in the parliamentary constituencies that we won in 2024. We gained dozens upon dozens of councillors there in May, but I saw debate as to whether we had gained or lost councillors across all the other constituencies. What is certain is that our vote in seats where we have not been active in recent years is as low as one or two per cent, as is demonstrated weekly in local by-elections. And while we are being worried, the party’s membership is generally estimated to be 60,000, which is barely half what it was in 2022.

Many of the areas we now represent are prosperous, which means we must beware of simply representing their interests. Our opposition to inheritance tax on land, for instance, is hard to defend. As far as farmers have a grievance, it’s that the price of land has lost its relationship with the income that can be derived from farming it. But if you allow land to be used as a tax shelter, that problem will not be solved, it will get worse.

In the end, the Liberal Democrat hold on the seats they gained in 2024 may be out of their hands. In order for disillusioned Conservatives to come over to the Lib Dems, it is necessary for them not to be too scared by the possibility of a Labour government. If Andy Burnham turns out to be more Socialist than anyone expects, or at least if the press succeeds in getting the public to see him that way, then there is a danger that those voters will flock back to the Tories, however sensible or moderate we have been.

Against the background of this complicated political landscape comes The New Deal: How the Liberal Democrats Should Go into the 2029 General Election. It’s billed as “a pre-manifesto strategy document from the Yorkist group of Liberal Democrat activists” and, in his foreword, William Wallace explains its purpose:

This paper aims to start a conversation within the party on the narrative we need to construct. We have at most three years until the next election. Too many voters have come to despair of any political party’s ability to overcome the country’s economic stagnation and social divides. Liberal Democrats must find a way to offer them hope that national renewal – economic, social and political – is possible and attainable.”

To that end, The New Deal offers an analysis of the electoral position of the Liberal Democrats, a narrative they should develop before the next election and the policies it says flow from that narrative.

When The New Deal was published in May, it seemed that both the Greens and Reform UK were in line to make sweeping gains at the next election and that the Liberal Democrats would have to change their strategy to take account of this. Since then, both parties have faltered. The Greens appear to have hit their ceiling in the opinion polls and the media have at last started to ask hard questions about how Reform and its leader are funded. This position may change again, of course, but at the moment it seems the 2029 election may be more like the 2024 election than we expected.

Usefully, The New Deal considers the parties along two axes. There is the conventional one of Progressive/Centre Left vs Authoritarian/Orthodox, which sees the Liberal Democrats lined up with Labour, the Nationalists and the Greens against the Conservatives and Reform. From their history, their members and their voters, the Liberal Democrats are inescapably an anti-Conservative party, though that doesn’t mean that, deep down, we are the same as Labour or that ‘Progressive’ is a meaningful political identity rather than just a more impressive way of saying you are against the Tories.

The second axis is System vs Anti System, which sees the Lib Dems (and we still just about deserve this) placed in the Anti-System camp along with the Greens, the Nationalists and Reform, while Labour and the Tories share the System end. 

Anti-system

This ‘anti-system’ concept is a useful one and helps explain why, to the bafflement of the simplicities of social media, there are many voters who choose between Reform and the Liberal Democrats. It’s an identity that I suspect has something to do with being a long way from the centres of power, as voters are in Cornwall or Lincolnshire, and perhaps with the area being a historical stronghold of religious Nonconformity. As academics always say, more research is needed.

The New Deal emphasises the importance of developing a narrative, identifying Keir Starmer’s failure to do this as a key reason for his premiership foundering, but I’m not sure that what they’ve come up with quite fits the bill:

We are a better country than this! We are a kind, welcoming people, proud of our traditions, keen not to be taken for fools, but happy to be a modern, compassionate civic nation. We believe in a helping-hand role for a benign state, but one that doesn’t encroach any more into private lives than is strictly necessary. We believe in giving power back to the people, and in making all votes of equal value. 

This is a collection of four sentences, two of which are immediately qualified with a “but…”, that fails to tell a story. Stories involve movement through time or space, but these words just sit there. And they are statements about the Liberal Democrats when what is needed is a story about Britain today that will make voters nod in assent.

So an effective Liberal Democrat narrative might look more like:

In recent years politicians have looked to party interest rather than what’s good for Britain, the gap between rich and poor has grown too wide, and young people are finding it too hard to get a start in life. We need to rebuild our democracy, make it easier for people from all homes to make the most of their talents, and revive social housing.

That’s what’s on the back of my envelope, anyway.

When it comes to the paper’s policy offer, the cover leads you to expect great things because it has a mock-up of FDR wearing a Lib Dem rosette. In fact, it’s not always clear how different this New Deal would be. There are places where it talks about “success and progress being about more than GDP, including measures of social wellbeing and the environment” and “markets working for society rather than society being there to support markets”, but it’s not clear what these encouraging sentiments would mean in practice. Nor is it clear what the “unashamedly Keynesian” policy it wants to see at the next election would be. It seems to envisage more government intervention in the economy, which is welcome, but Keynes’s great theoretical innovation was the idea of demand management to avoid the cycle of economic booms and slumps. I’m not sure that’s on offer here.

But there are some very good ideas in The New Deal, and not only rejoining the European Union either. There’s a welcome emphasis on localism, and the inevitable support for electoral reform is strengthened by a call for it to be “linked to some form of bottom-up democracy to allow citizens to generate legislation, and to take more control over their local affairs”. There’s a call for the provision of rented accommodation (though it doesn’t say in which sector) and for an emphasis on “doing up the housing at the bottom of the ladder which is a health hazard for many of those living in it”. Education is there too, with a thoroughly Liberal emphasis on the importance of teaching critical thinking.

Above all, it’s great to see Liberal Democrat members publishing their ideas in a long form. Since the demise of Lib Dem News and then political blogging, communication within the party has tended to be very short (hello social media) or very top down. I hope The New Deal will be the first of many such publications.

The Joy of Six 1531

A network of Russian far-right extremists steeped in neo-Nazi antisemitism – created under the umbrella of a sanctioned oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, and now openly promoted by Tommy Robinson – has been driving White Lives Matter propaganda over the murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, reports Nafeez Ahmed.

"In a decisive summer for government, you can view the 'doubling' agenda as microcosm of the wider story. Some big decisions have been made and some vital groundwork put in place. Ministers now need to build on this with bolder, faster action if the impact is to be visible by the next election." James Wright on the government's commitment to doubling the size of the co-operative and mutual sector.

Alex Marshall is keeping an eye on the new Green administration in Waltham Forest.

Eli Davies questions a culinary shibboleth: "The idea that we should sit down for three meals at roughly the same time every day has become such an essential part of how we organise our lives – even when we’re failing to do it – that we forget it isn’t the natural order of things. Instead, it is a regime that was created not to serve the needs of our bodies or to give us pleasure, however much we may have managed to adapt it for these purposes – but to fit in with a day of labour."

"The police are on the trail throughout. Led by a grimly invigilating inspector they seem an odd bunch, varying from the para-military – pistols and rifles firmly clasped – to the quaintly Victorian, with constables wrapped in immense belted gaberdines and sporting cloche style helmets. A reminder, if any were needed, that Northern Ireland was a decidedly different part of the UK." Simon Matthews celebrates Carol Reed's 1947 film Odd Man Out.

Chris Dyson explores the streets and alleyways of Hull's historic Old Town.

Green and Lib Dem Southwark brings government closer to voters

Community councils, which last operated in Southwark in 2016, are to be restored by the Green and Liberal Democrat coalition that took control of the borough from Labour at last month's elections.

Victor Chamberlain is the Lib Dem deputy leader of the council and holder of the neighbourhoods, strategic planning and wellbeing portfolio. He told Southwark News:

"This is something that both parties are very passionate about and making sure that we are supporting and empowering our diverse communities.

"That’s best done by bringing the council back into their neighbourhoods and making sure the council is visible and responding to different challenges.

"We have different challenges but by looking at those issues at a community level, we can create change in a more effective way and spend money more efficiently than presuming that everything is the same, which the previous administration did by being so top down and having everything run from this glass Town Hall on Tooley Street.

"But actually if we talk to communities, if we empower them again, we’ll be able to deliver better change and more long-term change for the communities."

Bringing councils closer to the people is an authentically Liberal agenda. Labour by contrast, has embarked on another round of centralisation in local government.

What do we Lib Dems offer the voters Zack Polanski has won over?

Embed from Getty Images

It's easy for a Liberal Democrat with a good memory to find Zack Polanski irritating. His story that he stood for his local council as Lib Dem because he cared about proportional representation, but then joined the Greens because he found he agreed with them more, doesn't square with what we recall of him.

He didn't just stand for his borough council, he also stood for the London Assembly and was dead keen to be our candidate in the 2016 Richmond Park by-election. His complaints when he wasn't selected filled Lib Dem social media for ages afterwards.

In fairness to him, my best researches have found no trace of any democratic process behind that selection: Sarah Olney seems to have been simply announced as the candidate. If this was the case, it was understandable, as the party had found itself without a single woman MP after the carnage of the previous year's general election.

There was little sign of Polanski the eco-populist in those days. Here he is writing on Lib Dem Voice right after that election:

I want a leader who is proud of our Government record, who doesn't have blinkers about where we failed to communicate effectively with the electorate whilst still being immensely proud of what Nick and our colleagues achieved in office.

Well, we can all change our minds – in fact, politics would be better if more people changed their minds – but maybe the thread of continuity between old Zack and new Zack is that both are very good at judging what his audience wants to hear.

Again courtesy of Lib Dem Voice, you can also watch Polanski's performance at the conference rally from 2015 – his speech starts at 24:55 and then, you've been warned, there's music.

The media's attempted gotchas against Polanski – his council tax, his failure to vote and, most worrying if justified, his claimed professional qualifications – don't seem to have deterred voters, but they do suggest a rather disorganised individual.

What they should spend more time asking Polanski, of course, is where the substantial policies to support his rhetoric are and why he so rarely talks about the environment.

But however irritated we Lib Dems feel, a significant section of the electorate feels sympathy with his views. And they are voters – young, urban and radical, but without ancestral loyalty to Labour – that a Liberal party should be winning over.

Writing in the London Review of Books, James Butler gives a kinder account of Polanski's progress, suggesting that his journey is typical of that also taken by many of his new voters:

Polanski’s political journey – he started out as a Liberal Democrat – is sometimes framed as opportunism but in fact reflects the often radicalising economic experience of millennials now approaching middle age. 

Many of the instinctive policy positions of Green supporters are the common sense of a decade ago: opposition to austerity, borrowing for infrastructure, rent control and social housebuilding. 

But the environment has changed: borrowing is harder, energy supply unstable, inflation a drag, wages miserable; the world is less stable, chaos and conflict are inevitable. There is an opportunity to frame a coherent Green politics in response to this moment – an egalitarian politics of public affluence and energy sovereignty – but it cannot be a cargo-cult Corbynism.

What do we Lib Dems have to say to people radicalised by their economic experience over the last 10 or 20 years? Providing a good answer to that question will be key if we are again to be able to win seats outside the affluent South of England.

GUEST POST Councillor defection scores on the eve of polling day

Augustus Carp offers something to whet your appetite – a curtain-raiser, a short not-too-dramatic offering before the Grand-Guignol horror show that awaits us as the results start to trickle in from late on Thursday night until the following evening.

In the first four months of 2026, the procession of councillors resigning from the political parties that helped them to get elected has continued apace. So far, 299 "events" have occurred; not just defections, but also a few expulsions and suspensions. "Double-hatted" councillors who change their affiliation have been counted twice, as have councillors who resigned and then re-joined (48 hours later, in one celebrated case in North Northamptonshire.)

That’s an average of nearly 18 a week, or 2.5 every day. I doubt if most political pundits realise that the figure is quite so high, which might explain why the subject does not get the attention given to the half-a-dozen local council by elections held every week. An exception is Mark Pack’s regular update of Reform UK defections, but those resignations are indeed worthy of serious inspection because of the novelty value, fuss and general hoop-la associated with the new insurgent populist party.

From an objective perspective, defecting councillors are a significant indicator of a change in local party morale. When they go, they take valuable resources with them, such as knowledge of their wards, help with campaigning and general goodwill towards their former party. Worse still, they might be taking their families and friends with them – perhaps into a rival organisation. They may only constitute a handful of votes, but they could represent hundreds of hours of solid campaigning at a future election, against the former party’s new candidate.

Big parties, big losers

Reasons for defections can be many and various, and can range from the principled to the ridiculous, but the damage can still be significant, regardless of the circumstances which cause it. 

The main losers so far this year have been the Labour party (down 59 councillors) and the Conservatives (down 52). The Labour figure seems to have been exacerbated by the impending London Borough elections, where reselection processes have put some noses and egos out of joint. As one might expect, excluding councillors who have opted for Independent status, most Labour councillors have gone to the Greens, with Conservatives tending towards Reform UK.

The Greens have acquired an additional 21 councillors via defections, with the Reform UK tally rising by 32. On balance, the Lib Dems have lost 13 and the Nationalists are down 2. The balancing figure in the equation is 73, representing various "Independents" (loosely described).

Straight swaps

Three Reform UK councillors have moved to the Conservatives – but 33 have gone the other way. One Tory has joined the Lib Dems, whilst one Lib Dem has travelled in the opposite direction. Four Lib Dems have joined the Greens, with one going against the tide. Eight Labour councillors left for the Greens, two for the Lib Dems, and one (in Hartlepool) for Reform UK.

Although not (yet) counted as a separate party in my system, it is worth noting that Restore Britain has attracted 21 councillors, from the independents and Reform UK. This includes a bulk membership event on Kent County Council in February. Similarly, there has been a handful of moves to Advance UK, mainly from Independents but also one from the Workers Party. (No, I don’t understand it either.)

If the local elections on Thursday pan out according to the pundits, with a large number of Reform UK and Green Party successes, then I confidently forecast that there will be many more resignations and defections over the summer, once the new councillors realise that theirs is a thankless task, with lots of work but little chance of changing anything to do with small boats or Gaza.

Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.

Tories seize control of Harborough District Council as their £800k loss is revealed

HFM News reports that the Conservatives have seized control of Harborough District Council this evening:

A motion to remove Liberal Democrat leader Phil Knowles and replace him with Tory group leader Simon Whelband was approved by 17 votes to 16 at an extraordinary council meeting tonight.

Councillor Knowles had led a 16-strong coalition of Liberal Democrat, Labour, Green and independent councillors since 2023, although that number fell to 15 last week following the death of Labour councillor David Gair, who represented Lutterworth.

As Phil Knowles has been saying in recent weeks, with investment in leisure centres and a community grant scheme, this coalition has achieved more than the Tories did in 20 years before it.

And HFM News has another story today that shows what Tory control can mean:

A company owned by Harborough District Council is set to be shut down after making losses of more than £800,000 over two years.

Harborough District Commercial Services was set up in 2019 and purchased two retail units in Market Harborough town centre, currently occupied by  Sports Direct and Tesco, along with flats above.

The intention was for the arms-length company to invest in further property to generate income for the authority, but no further purchases were made.

The ruling coalition group at the council says the company, established before it took control of the authority, has been a "complete white elephant."

Am I being wise after the event? No this is what I wrote when the company was set up:

I am all in favour of municipal enterprise and councils having their own income streams. But they are being rather driven to these sort of speculations because of the savage cuts in central government funding.

Some councils are going to come a cropper doing this, and I hope Harborough isn't one of them.

Compared to some councils we got off lightly, but this episode doesn't make me feel any happier about the return of Harborough Tories.

Labour embraces rewilding in an attempt to stymie the Greens

We have another illustration of the truth that governments are much nicer when they are afraid of losing. 

White-tailed eagles, pine martens and beavers will be released across England before the May elections as the Labour government attempts to staunch the flow of nature-loving voters to the Green party.

Plans to reintroduce these lost species to the country have been mooted for years, but the previous Conservative government failed to get them over the line after opposition from landowners and its own MPs. 

Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, is understood to have told the regulator Natural England to dust off these plans and expedite them so there is a flood of good nature news before the polls open.

I don't know which polls the writer has in mind, but if she's thinking of the Gorton and Denton by-election, Labour are cutting it rather fine.

Still, this is welcome news. It was only October that Steve Reed, the housing, communities and local government secretary, refused to support an amendment that would have mandated the installation of a swift brick in every new home. Apparently swifts are anti-growth. Yet Reed assured campaigners they were "pushing at an open door" when he was in opposition.

Whether the move will win back Labour voters from the Greens, however, remains to be seen. What has been notable about Zack Polanski since he became the Greens' leader is how rarely he mentions the environment. His talk is of taxing billionaires: pine martens and beavers hardly get a look in.

GUEST POST Lib Dems must be "Tough on billionaires, tough on the causes of billionaires"

Anselm Anon says Liberal Democrats should be concerned about concentrations of economic power as well as about concentrations of political power.

It is axiomatic for liberals that power ought to be dispersed and accountable. The Liberal Democrats tends to be fairly good at articulating this when it comes to political structures – supporting an elected House of Lords, empowering local government, opposing mayors and PCCs who have "dubious democratic mandates and little scrutiny".

In contrast, the party’s approach to concentrated and unaccountable power that derives from wealth, as distinct from politics, is much more patchy. Ed Davey should be credited for his response to the Epstein scandal, and for standing up to Elon Musk on a range of issues. But he has been unwilling to move much beyond a critique of bad individual American billionaires, to the illiberal concentration of power which great wealth inevitably entails.

With reference to tech oligarchs, he writes:

I see it as the fundamental purpose of liberals … to hold the powerful to account and put real power in the hands of ordinary people. That means breaking up concentrations of power wherever we find them.

This is an excellent starting point, but needs to be supported by tangible and far-reaching policies.

The existence of all billionaires* is a structural problem. There are perhaps three broad reasons why the Liberal Democrats have not sufficiently acknowledged this, but each can be challenged. 

First, some billionaires fund worthy causes, from the Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery, to Sir Chris Hohn’s support for action on climate change. Joseph Rowntree died in 1925, but his philanthropy continues to do a great deal of good, inspired by liberal values. Yet even if they are sympathetic characters, that doesn’t negate the systemic problem that billionaires are inherently over-mighty.

Liberal Democrats rightly reject the ‘good chap’ approach to Britain’s political institutions, which assumes the benign personal qualities of political actors. They are right to insist on robust formal structures, based on a written constitution. We wouldn’t want hereditary peers in the House of Lords, even if they all had the sensibilities of successive Earls Russell. And the same should go for billionaires: however well-meaning, they shouldn’t be allowed to wield unaccountable power, or pass it on to their children, which means that they shouldn’t be allowed to amass wealth beyond a certain point.

Secondly, there may be electoral calculation at play. Liberal Democrat voters, and constituencies represented by the party’s MPs, tend to be wealthier than average. It is sensible to be hesitant about alienating people who earn comfortable salaries and own detached houses. But hostility to the existence of billionaires need not entail this.

The sort of affluent citizen in her fifties in Tunbridge Wells, who now votes Liberal Democrat, but previously supported Blair and Cameron, knows all about the malign effects of the concentration of wealth. She knows about her daughter's experience in the rental market, about her father's experience in a care home owned by private equity, and her own experience of a water company which exists solely to amass capital for its investors. 

The party is well able to make it clear to her that hostility to the existence of billionaires is not an attack on her bourgeois lifestyle. And it is an electoral imperative, too, because we want her daughter, and the staff of her father’s care home (and her father!) to vote for the Liberal Democrats, and to become involved in the party.

The third obstacle is perhaps the most deeply rooted within Liberal Democrat thinking. There is a very sound liberal instinct to let people get on with their own personal and collective projects, without impediment or judgementalism. The distinction between public and private spheres of life is essential to liberalism. If someone wants to devote her energies to climbing the very highest Himalayas, or being the greatest ever tennis player, or winning at chess, or studying hard and becoming an eminent professor, then she is welcome to get on with it. 

But being a billionaire is never a private choice: it is inherently public, because decisions about how to invest and spend so much money have an enormous effect, even if the billionaire doesn’t make overt political interventions, such as donating to a political party, or underwriting a newspaper.

And the existence of billionaires inevitably induces some politicians to serve their interests, even if less cravenly than Peter Mandelson. Great wealth is inherently different in kind, not just in scale, from the resources of the bulk of the population, and this is inherently political.

So, one of the central aims of the Liberal Democrats’ economic policy should be to inhibit the creation and continuation of billionaires. I won’t go into the details of this, but starting points would include different approaches to taxing wealth (especially land), to inheritance, to regulating monopolies and oligopolies, and to the offshore tax havens controlled by Britain. 

At the moment, it seems that the Liberal Democrats are willing to be tough on (some) billionaires, but not on the causes of billionaires. This isn’t a call for the class warfare of the far left, or the inchoate left-populism of Zack Polanski’s Green Party, but to work through the implications of liberal insights when applied to economic power, as well as to political structures.

Anselm Anon has been a member of the Liberal Democrats since the 1990s.

* I use "billionaire" as a shorthand for "an individual or family possessing so much wealth that it would distort a liberal society". I suspect the relevant amount is much less than one billion pounds, but won’t pursue that here.

GUEST POST Local councillors changing party: Augustus Carp’s review of 2025

Augustus Carp finds the Conservatives are losing local councillors, but not as fast as Labour are losing them, and Reform UK are gaining.

Back in January we were solemnly assured by the nation’s leading political commentators that 2025 was going to be a tough year for the Conservatives, and a good one for Reform UK. 

That’s pretty much how it panned out, but why didn’t anyone predict that, when it comes to political defections, the biggest losers were going to be the Labour Party?

The figures are stark. The Conservatives lost a net 212 councillors in 2025, but the Labour Party lost a net 275. For the others, the figures are Reform +138, Greens +32, Lib Dems -14 and the Nationalists -5. The balancing figure is Independents on 336.

To be clear, my methodology treats every single change in status as a recordable event. So a councillor leaving Party A to sit as an Independent in January, and then joining Party B in August is regarded as two separate data points. Suspensions, expulsions and readmissions are all included in the tally.

By my reckoning there were defections in 271 local authorities during the year. Councils where eight or more councillors have changed their allegiance are 

Tameside                      20

Kent                       16

Dudley                      13

Durham                      10

Sevenoaks              10

Wakefield              10

Bolsover                        9

Buckinghamshire        9

Hounslow                9

Oldham                        9

South Kesteven              9

Tamworth                        9

Cornwall                       8

Dumfries & Galloway      8

Portsmouth                     8

Solihull                            8

The figure for Tameside is perhaps a bit misleading – seven Labour councillors had their status changed for them when they were suspended and subsequently reinstated after being caught up in the Shiver Me Timbers WhatsApp fiasco/scandal. Nevertheless there were other goings on there to ensure that Tameside would still rank highly in the table.

Kent and Durham have trouble retaining councillors within their Reform UK groups, and Dudley has seen movements from Labour to Independent and from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Wakefield saw councillors move from Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives to Independents, and a few suspensions and readmissions in the Labour Group added to the complexity there. Bulk defections have occurred in Sevenoaks (from the Conservatives) and in Buckinghamshire (from the Lib Dems).

Labour defections in the London boroughs increased towards the end of the year, once the reselection season started. Councillor defections in areas which still have two levels of local government (for example Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire) might deserve more attention, as some councillors there wear two hats. 

Watch out in 2026 for problems with party discipline if local government reform is pushed through against local opposition, as has already happened in Suffolk.

It is very difficult to identify how many defections arise out of personality clashes rather than ideology.  There have been 92 defections straight from the Conservative Party to Reform UK, which would seem to be driven by ideology or the survival instinct.

There have also been 28 straight swaps from Labour to Greens in 2025, with another 14 councillors making the slow-burning transition from Labour to Independent to Greens. This, together with the number of ex-Labour councillors forming their own Independent groups, would seem to indicate that politics is more significant than personalities at the moment. That matters when it comes to fielding troops in a general election ground war.

As ever, these figures are provided on a best endeavours basis, so E&OE and DYOR. Perhaps if readers have any simple questions on the goings on in any particular authority, they could put them in the comments below and I will answer them if I can.

Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.

GUEST POST Understanding the views and worries of the City of Oxford Lib Dem

William Lane has discovered a new political category: the Oxford Liberal Democrat. Who is she and what does she want from us?

It was with great interest that I read the latest piece from Rose Runswick over at the New Model Liberal blog, as it made an excellent case that the Lib Dems have exhausted their potential pool of Tory–Lib crossover voters. This is a point I have also made in the past, but I refrained then from recommending a subsequent shift in the party’s approach as I am not a Lib Dem member. 

Things have changed, however, and it’s clear from rumblings online that many Lib Dem members are not happy with being stuck on 15 per cent of the vote, and are looking with slightly jealous eyes at the Greens' current poll surge. There seems to be an appetite among Britain’s liberals for a change in direction. 

So how do I suggest the Lib Dems expand their appeal? Well, to be clear I don;t think that lies in a populist turn à la Polanski. For one thing the existing Lib Dem voter base would hate it, and for another I’m unconvinced this new populist direction will actually benefit the Greens in the long term.

Personally, I think the answer to that question lies in analysing their existing voter base. It was @Amrk on Bluesky who introduced me the concepts of "Devon Lib Dems" and "Twickenham Lib Dems", terms which immediately gelled with me as someone who grew up in the liberalising South East from 1996–2014, and has met liberal voters in both camps. For those unfamiliar with these terms, I will loosely define them now:

Devon Lib Dems: Independently minded small l liberal voters, of the type that used to be called "nonconformist". They usually live in villages or rural towns, and work in small, domestic-facing businesses or agriculture. These liberals tend towards localism, often take an interest in local history and folklore, and tend to identify heavily with their region.

These voters were the backbone of the 20th-century Liberal Party. They are often found in rural areas of the UK, including the South West of England, the Scottish Highlands and the Welsh countryside (although there they tend to vote for Plaid Cymru).

Twickenham Lib Dems: Successful, liberally minded voters who 40 years ago would have been liberal Tories. Instinctively liberal and internationalist, but focused on economic issues, these voters are often current or former business owners or well-paid private sector workers. They tend towards being well-off homeowners, although this category is increasingly including middle-income, frustrated private renters.

These voters are the spiritual successors to the prosperous middle class that made the 19th century Liberal Party such a dominant force, and whose move to the Tories in the 1920s sealed its fate as a major party. Their move back towards liberalism has been a major (and underdiscussed) feature of British politics since the early 1990s.

So, if these are the two main types of existing Lib Dem voter, how can the party move beyond them? The clue is in the increasing numbers of frustrated middle-income voters turning to the Lib Dems.

Here I will introduce my own concept, the "Oxford Lib Dem".

The Oxford Lib Dem is a white-collar private sector worker, living in a prosperous area of the country but struggling with stagnant wages and high rent. She may have a background in the upper working/lower middle class, but through education has gained a place in the solidly middle classes, either through traditional service industries (law, consulting) or Britain’s new growth industries (biosciences, tech). 

Probably somewhere between 27 and 45, she is staunchly anti-Conservative but either suspicious of or despondent with Labour, while being too business-minded to be tempted by the Greens. She shares the internationalist focus of the Twickenham Lib Dem, but lacks their wealth and background. Similarly, she agrees with the Devon Lib Dem on the importance of place and local area, but values her life in a prosperous urban town or small city.

As you may have guessed reading this, this voter is an amalgamation of people I know personally from my experiences living and travelling in prosperous parts of the country like York, Surrey, Clapham and Oxford. Although lovely places to live in, these areas combine a high cost of living with often stagnant wages for early-to-middle white-collar workers, leading to a constant drumbeat of anxiety around inflation and the prospect of job loss. 

This quite possibly led our voter to opt for Labour in 2024, but she will have been disappointed since then. Given that she will never vote Conservative or Reform, and will be put off by the overtly left politics of Polanski, she is a prime target  for Lib Dem strategists. Winning her over could be the key to finally breaking out of the 15 per cent vote ceiling the Lib Dems seem stuck under, and finally getting up to 20 per cent of the vote.

However, I must inject a note of caution here. One of the greatest desires of our Oxford Lib Dem is to get out of the hated private renting market, and into her own home. This sets her apart from our other two kinds of Lib Dem, for whom housing is less of a concern. While our Oxford Lib Dem is probably not a YIMBY in the political sense, she does support housebuilding, bringing down house prices and greater infrastructure development. 

Appealing to this voter would mean taking the Young Liberal approach to development, which could anger some existing Lib Dem voters. To be clear, this wouldn’t mean totally abandoning existing Lib Dem policy or outsourcing it to housing developers, but it would require a rethink of the national Lib Dem approach to development. 

William Lane is an independent political analyst, who writes at the Party Animal Substack. You can also find him on Bluesky.

GUEST POST Reform are still gaining councillors and Labour and the Tories are still losing them

The latest Defections Update from Augustus Carp provides a corrective to the view that Reform are falling apart in local government.

Now it is autumn, and the falling fruit,
And the long journey to oblivion….
D.H. Lawrence

The Seer of Eastwood probably didn’t have local government defections in mind when he wrote The Ship of Death, so it falls to us to consider these mysteries on his behalf. 

The toll continues, mercilessly. Since early September, a further 227 elected councillors have decided that they will be better able to serve their wards, or advance their careers, or sleep more easily in their beds, if they leave the party that supported them when they were elected. Their reasons for doing so may be many and various, but the consequences are similarly disturbing.

As has been noted before, defections by sitting councillors probably tell us more about local politics, and the health of local parties, than council by elections. Of course, personalities play a large part in this, and some people seem to be impossible to accommodate within any of the existing party disciplines. Nevertheless, when these people resign, defect, or flounce out, it is indicative of problems in the local party that may run deeper than appears on the surface.

For example, a number of Labour defections – particularly in London – are occurring now, in the run-up to candidate selection for the all-up Borough elections next year. Serving councillors are not being reselected, for whatever reason, and so are serving out their time as Independent councillors. 

Whether they decide to seek re-election has yet to be determined, but in any event they have deprived the party of canvassing time, campaigning ability and local knowledge. Their friends and family might also stop delivering leaflets and sitting outside polling stations – time will tell. 

If they do stand for re-election as Independents, they might take a significant number of personal votes with them, and can probably be guaranteed to slag off their old party, much to the mirth and merriment of the local press and the other candidates.

The little coverage this topic receives in the mainstream media tends to be used to reinforce today’s bigger political narrative, i.e. that lots of Conservative councillors are leaving, and as a consequence Reform UK is on the rise. As ever with political analysis, it seems to be a bit more complicated than that. For one thing, the Conservatives have not lost as many councillors as Labour recently.

Since September, a net total of 57 councillors have left the Conservative party, compared with 75 from the Labour Party. The Lib Dems are unchanged, the Greens have gained 13, and the Nationalists have lost 3. Reform UK have gained 34 councillors, and the balance have become Independent, non-aligned etc.

As usual, there are very few straight swaps between Party A and Party B. The process seems to be to leave Party A, become non-aligned or independent, and then see the light and join Party B. The duration of these moves can be extensive.

Clearly, in the current political climate, most direct party-to-party defections involve Reform UK - of the direct changes between parties, 32 Conservatives have moved to Reform UK, with one going in the opposite direction. One Lib Dem and one Labour councillor have both made the same move. 

Nine Labour Councillors have become Greens, and one has gone to Reform UK. Other Labour defections (included in the Independent category for now) have expressed their intention to join Your Party in due course – the Labour defectors seem to be going in many more different directions than Tory defectors.

Activists are (or at least should be) getting ready for the May 2027 elections now – the selection, reselection and deselection processes in all parties might persuade many more councillors to defect before then.

Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.

The Joy of Six 1434

GB News's new show broadcast live from the US features non-stop praise for Donald Trump and the channel’s co-owner Paul Marshall begging MAGA politicians to "save the UK", reports Josiah Mortimer.

Mills Dyer, who spent several years working in the Liberal Democrats' membership department, gives three reasons why they membership surges like the one the Greens are currently experiencing matter – and three why they're completely irrelevant.

Tayo Bero is worried by the explosion in online content promoting the use of antidepressants: "Antidepressant use can be messy, stressful, confusing and seemingly interminable (don’t even get me started on my experience with withdrawal symptoms). It is not the kind of experience that vulnerable young people should be socially coerced into, especially via the machinations of capitalist vultures. Young people need way more than a two-minute TikTok to figure out what they should do to get better."

"Before socialism even had a name, the poet and painter William Blake saw how the Industrial Revolution’s 'dark Satanic mills' harmed humanity. His visionary work condemned the forces of commodification and cold calculation in emergent capitalism." Jonathan Agin argues that William Blake was a prescient critic of capitalist alienation.

"When Pebble Mill opened in 1971 ... it was the most sophisticated in the country, the largest outside London, and the first to combine TV and radio operations under one roof. It was conceived as the regional counterpart to the Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush." Jon Neale remembers Pebble Mill Studios and the golden age of Birmingham television.

Andy Murray explores the Manx folklore that inspired Nigel Kneale, including his Halloween III script that never saw the light of day.

The Joy of Six 1432

Rose Runswick argues against building Liberal Democrat strategy on an attempt to win over one-nations Conservatives. They are not natural Liberals and our advance at the last general election came through tactical anti-Conservative voting.

"Our polling suggests that a clear divide exists in local government along overlapping economic and cultural lines. Reform councillors typically take the most right-wing positions (except on the NHS), followed by the Conservatives, including on the tax and spend question. There is often little difference between Labour and the Liberal Democrats on the centre left/left, and then the Greens take the most left-wing position." David Jeffrey and Mitya Pearson report the results of their survey of local councillors' political views.

Cambridge Town Owl tells the story of an early electoral defeat for Henry Fawcett, who went on to become an influential Liberal politician. Fawcett was blind from the age of 25.

"Ancient Greek and Roman writings reveal ancient concerns about our negative impact on the environment. They show that places once rich and fertile later became desolate and barren. Although the Greeks and Romans linked environmental harm with climate change to a more limited extent than we do today, they nevertheless knew harming the environment could change the climate." Konstantine Panegyres on concern for the environment in the Classical era.

Animals in children’s stories are often depicted as living in neat mum, dad and children family units, but in reality there's a huge diversity in what family looks like within the animal kingdom, says Louise Gentle.

Ian Mansfield goes to see the National Gallery exhibition of the paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby: "With the aim of opening knowledge to the masses, many of Wright’s paintings are philosophical and scientific in nature, yet executed in a style that is also incredibly atmospheric. It’s worth remembering that while exaggerated to a degree, the lighting was reasonably authentic for a time when people's homes were lit with rush lights or candles, and the varying availability of moonlight affected working hours."

The Joy of Six 1424

"By learning from Farage, the Greens risk becoming more like him in form, even if utterly different in content. And in politics, form matters. A democracy shaped by perpetual outrage and binary framing cannot easily sustain pluralism, however noble the cause. If we pick fights and make enemies now we will build a future full of fights and enemies." Mike Chitty worries that Zack Polanski has learnt too much from the populist playbook.

Caspar Hobhouse argues that Ukraine needs support from the European Union to transition towards a long-term energy system that is resilient, flexible and secure.

Rachel Sylvester on William's plans for a downsized monarchy.

"Kate Murphy’s work has changed how we think about the history of women’s roles in radio and television production forever. Had she not had the opportunity to make the transition from maker to scholar of BBC programming, and to do the serious detective work of tracking down these women’s stories via the archive, our understanding of women’s roles in the BBC would still be partial and centred on the stories of 'great men; that Asa Briggs and others have told us." Helen Wheatley joins the campaign against the BBC's decision to effectively close its Written Archives Centre to independent researchers.

Owen Hatherley reviews two books on the postwar architecture of South-East London: "It is stark, unpretentious modernism, but James and Audrey Callaghan were very unhappy to leave it for Downing Street when he became chancellor in 1964; it had, Audrey said, become 'like a second skin' – designed wholly around their needs and wants."

"Watkins based his thesis on three decades of legwork, on his interest in archaeology, history and architecture, and on his research into etymology, folklore and legends. And it’s hard for the non-expert not to be affected by his enthusiasm and sheer piling-up of what he sees as supporting evidence from these different disciplines." Chris Lovegrove looks at Alfred Watkins' The Old Straight Track, the book that gave birth to "ley lines" on the centenary of its publication.

Rewilding Harborough project attracts interest from government and national organisations

Representatives from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Natural England, the Environment Agency, Anglian Water, Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust and the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts were in Market Harborough today to hear about Harborough District Council's Rewilding Harborough project. 

They attended a briefing at the council offices before visiting the rewilding site, which lies to the north and east of Great Bowden.

The Harborough Mail quotes Cal Hatley, Harborough DC's director of communities and wellbeing:

"Establishing effective partnerships is going to be the key to making this rewilding project successful. I am looking forward to welcoming these organisations and showing them that we are taking action to address the nature crisis in the region with the engagement of local communities."

And Mat Carter, chief executive of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, said:

"This project is an opportunity to restore nature and create a landscape where people and wildlife can thrive. We work best together and are delighted to welcome our partners to see this project."

Harborough DC is run by a Liberal Democrat, Labour and Green administration - my old Liberal and Lib Dem council colleague Phil Knowles is its leader.

The wildlife trust owns land adjacent to the council's land at Great Bowden and I've walked that land with one of their team. I intend to write something about Rewilding Harborough when I've got my head round the project properly.

Zack Polanksi: The Hollywood years

Before Zack Polanski was keen to fight a plum seat for the Liberal Democrats – before even he was a hypnotherapist who claimed exceptional abilities – he was an actor. He has an IMDb entry to prove it.

PopBitch recently included a link to this video, which is the trailer for the last film he made.

Zack Polanski: More left-wing populist than Green?

Embed from Getty Images

Simon McGrath makes an interesting observation on Liberal Democrat Voice:

Looking at his statement when he was elected, climate and environment barely feature and his Twitter feed tells the same story: the Green Party has chosen a leader who doesn’t seem especially interested in green issues.

And a glance at Polanski's Bluesky feed does little to change this impression. There is lots of left populism, but rather less about the environment.

Going after the old Corbyn vote - young, urban, left wing - is a perfectly valid strategy for the Greens, particularly as Corbyn's new party is not guaranteed to fly. But you do wonder how it will play in Herefordshire and Suffolk.

If Corbyn or Polanski or both do make serious progress in the cities, that will make it harder for the Liberal Democrats to break out of their redoubts in suburban and Southern England.