The Joy of Six 1537

David Howarth reminds us that both Tony Blair and Keir Starmer said pluralist things in opposition, only to go back on them in power: "Given that history, why should Liberals believe that Andy Burnham would be any different? He has already backtracked on his previous anti-Brexit pronouncements and his only promise on electoral reform is that he might include a 'pledge' on it in Labour’s next manifesto. We know what such 'pledges' from Labour are worth."

A deliberate strategy to push the British right – from the Conservative Party to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – into a radicalising auction over the mass deportations of ethnic minority British citizens is being underwritten by the owner of 55 Tufton Street, the Westminster townhouse that houses a cluster of opaquely funded right-wing lobby groups, reports Nafeez Ahmed.

"The party holds one seat in a chamber that has grown from 60 to 96 members, meaning their proportional presence is smaller now than at any point since devolution began." Elsie Jones asks why the Welsh Liberal Democrats underperformed in last month's Senedd elections.

Andy Bull looks back on Brendon McCullum's career in New Zealand: "All of which may, or may not, be a timely reminder that McCullum's dressing rooms have not always been the sort of free-and-easy open-to-all environments they seem to be when the team are winning. That, expert as he is handling his players, he is also a pretty ruthless dressing-room politician, a man who knows how to instruct a media team and even deploy his lawyers during a crisis."

Wayne Gooderham explores the influence of Hubert Selby Jr's Last Exit to Brooklyn on popular music and on the gender sensibilities of The Smiths, Van Morrison and The Velvet Underground in particular. 

"I had never been so far below sea level, it was difficult to comprehend, the layers of rock, millions of years old above us." Neala shows that being an archives volunteer at Manchester Central Library is more exciting that you might expect.

Personality matters in politics: Starmer's lack of one did for him

John Harris's Guardian article on the resignation of Keir Starmer contains a key paragraph:

So there it was: as well as a modern tendency to loathe politicians that regularly seems arbitrary, whipped-up and way over the top, a sense that Starmer's sheer blankness – his painful lack of clarity and the absence of a halfway coherent story about his own government – was making a lot of people dislike and mistrust him all the more.

Harris is obviously a good judge, because that was very much what I was saying on Bluesky at about the same time.

The fall of Starmer is a reminder that personality matters in politics. He never gave the public the impression that he had much of one. The result was that not only did he fail to inspire or enthuse anyone, but also that the public invented an unflattering personality for him. 1/3

— Jonathan Calder (@lordbonkers.bsky.social) 22 June 2026 at 10:29

World events gave him almost weekly opportunities to address the nation and sound prime-ministerial, yet he rarely took them. But then he didn't even talk to the junior ministers he sacked. 2/3

— Jonathan Calder (@lordbonkers.bsky.social) 22 June 2026 at 10:29

I'd also say that not being the Tories, which was Labour's strong selling point in the election, does not of itself generate a coherent programme for government. Perhaps Sunak's early election caught them on the hop, but you do get the impression that they came to power underprepared. 3/3

— Jonathan Calder (@lordbonkers.bsky.social) 22 June 2026 at 10:29

The Joy of Six 1536

"Wes Streeting was always meant to be their Labour prime minister. The plan, hatched by a tiny clique of right-wing faction fighters, was this: find a candidate on whom they could fake a continuation Corbynism project to win the leadership. Then kick the ladder away from the people who backed them and the promises they made. At the next general election, given the scale of the Tory majority after 2019, get Labour back in the ring with more MPs and then hand over to Streeting. The real grown ups would then be in charge and the subsequent election would be secured." This seems a good day to air again this Neal Lawson theory.

Prem Sikka on the curse of the finance industry: "Private equity takes over existing businesses with finance from banks, insurance companies, pension funds and wealthy individuals seeking higher returns. It acquires control but injects little share capital. Takeover targets are loaded with the secured debt, often routed through opaque offshore entities, and are expected to pay it off."

Matt Gallagher says the Online Safety Act is forcing us to hand over personal data to unregulated overseas corporations with questionable privacy records.

"Behind every great director ... is a great editor – and as the tributes paid earlier this month to the late Marcia Lucas, Oscar-winning editor of Star Wars: Episodes IV to VI, and former wife of creator George Lucas, reminded us, that editor is often a woman." Bethany Elliott investigates a familiar dynamic in male-dominated Hollywood.

Carrie Marshall goes to see the B52s.

"She grows smaller. Was she approximately human-sized in her wearing-a-pinny-and-doing-the-laundry phase, but then hedgehog-sized at the end? In the final image, she is a completely naturalistic hedgehog4. She looks like a little brown aubergine. So it's possible that at the end of his story – shudder – Samuel Whiskers has grown bigger." Sam Leith is worried: how big are Beatrix Potter's animals?

The Joy of Six 1534

Keir Starmer should set a timetable for his departure from Number 10 and give his successor the opportunity to prepare for becoming prime minister, argue Hannah White and Alex Thomas.

"Digital spaces should be safe for people of all ages. But I don’t believe bans are the answer. Technology companies need to be held to account and required to block harmful content and build safety into their designs." Lisa M. Given on what Britain can learn from Australia's attempt to ban under-16s from social media.

Ben Mayfield has seen a new film on the countryside access debate in England and Wales: "Our Land is a title with two meanings – private land ownership for the landowners v the campaign for shared rights in land. The film explores different attitudes to ownership as well as the physical borders between landowners and, in the words of access campaigner and contributor Guy Shrubsole, 'the peasants'."

John Drury names six mistaken ideas in crowd psychology that refuse to die: de-individuation, groupthink, mass panic, contagion, the hooligan, mob mentality.

"Almost by chance, they ran across the uncanny, disorienting and inexhaustibly strange works that would help define the culture of the century, and fought against stiff odds to make them common coinage in every Anglophone domain." Boyd Tonkin pays tribute to Edwin and Willa Muir, whose translations made the work of Franz Kafka available to the English-speaking world.

David Hewitt looks back to Oxfam Walk '69 and Wembley Stadium's first concert: "Four-fifths of those who started the walk managed to complete it, and their total mileage was said to be equivalent to three trips to the Moon and back. The first of them arrived at Wembley at 3pm, where they were met by yet more celebrities. Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party, told them they were 'the nation’s conscience' and 'one of the finest armies that has taken the field for many years'."

Al Carns portrays Labour politics as a form of ancestor worship

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Writing about Blue Labour in Liberator at the start of year, I suggested that:

Maurice Glasman’s target voter is a white working-class man in a manual job in the North of England in 1957.

That makes him a modernist when set against Al Carns, judging by the defence minister's resignation statement in the Commons today.

Here's how Carns began:

As honourable members know, I came into politics for one reason. That was to enact change.

But to be able to work out where you’re going, we must realise where we have come from. The Labour party I joined is one that was chiselled out of the mines of the north-east. It was hammered out of the shipyards of Govan, Liverpool and Belfast. And it was forged in the factories of the industrial revolution.

Calloused hands, sore backs, people who did a hard day’s graft and asked for one thing in return – a government that has their back.

That’s the tradition I serve in this house, and it’s a tradition that shaped that decision I took last week.

Commercial shipbuilding had largely disappeared from Britain before Carns was born in 1980 – what remains is almost all in the defence sector. Brian Potter has mapped its demise:

Despite taking virtually any order that it could get, even at loss-making prices, the UK’s shipbuilding industry continued its inexorable decline. Between 1975 and 1985, the UK’s shipbuilding output declined by nearly 90 per cent, and its share of the world market fell from 3.6 per cent to less than 1 per cent. 

British Shipbuilders began re-privatization in 1983 with the passage of the British Shipbuilders Act, and over the next several years most of those newly privatised yards would close. In 2024, the UK produced just 0.01 per cent of the commercial ship tonnage built worldwide that year. In 2022 and 2023, the percentage was 0.

Potter's whole article is worth reading. It provides evidence for the view that many of Britain's economic problems stem from the fact that our managers aren't very good.

Returning to Carns's speech, coal mining in the North East of England reached its peak in 1923, with the last deep mine in the region closing in 2005. And the Industrial Revolution is generally reckoned to have begun in the middle of the 18th century.

If these are really Carns's politics, then they have nothing to do with Labour's voters and members or with the British working class today. That class, forced to exist on temporary work and zero-hours contracts, are the very people who would be hurt by his enthusiasm for yet more welfare cuts.

So when Carns went on to talk about modernising defence, you feared he was going to demand that eight Dreadnoughts be built or call for an improved flintlock for the infantry. 

In fact he had sensible things about the need to grasp how warfare is changing, which means we can give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he didn't believe the first part of his statement either. 

But he's not the only Labour politician who, when asked to explain it, makes their attachment to the party sound like a form of ancestor worship.

The Joy of Six 1533

James Ball argues that Labour's social media ban for teenagers is an admission of total and utter failure to govern online spaces: "The UK government has lots of powers to govern the internet that it simply isn’t using. Hosting images of child abuse is a strict liability offence, one that Elon Musk’s X platform blatantly breached with its Grok chatbot. The government gave itself extensive powers to regulate social platforms under the Online Safety Act, which it has never even made an attempt to enforce."

"This week contained two stories, which dominated the headlines. One took place on the streets of Belfast, the other in the hallways of Whitehall. One concerned race riots and the other a defence funding plan. But they were in fact the same story. They both concerned security – one at home, the other abroad. And they were both the result of a prime minister who refuses to lead." Ian Dunt says Keir Starmer's inertia threatens national security.

Anja Krstic and Ivona Hideg find that men's careers benefit when they take parental leave but women’s do not.

"Ten years on from the referendum, the tired stereotype of the 'Northern Brexit voter' is one we should retire." J.P. Spencer has the figures that explode a widespread myth.

"Undoubtedly the most important members of the audience were a group of families from formerly occupied territories affected by the abductions: mothers with teenagers they had recovered from Crimea or elsewhere; families who were still trying to get their children back." Charlotte Higgins and Mariana Matveichuk on the Kyiv premiere of Mothers of Kherson, an opera about the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russian occupiers.

Kenneth George Godwin finds innocence and corruption in the films of Alexander Mackendrick: "The clearest expression of Mackendrick’s worldview is perhaps apparent in the three films he made which centred on children: Mandy (1952), Sammy Going South (1963), and A High Wind In Jamaica (1965). Unsentimental, unafraid of the darkness kids face in a harsh world, unafraid to see the potential for darkness in the kids themselves … these are three of the most adult films about children ever made."

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.

The Joy of Six 1529

Chris Dillow on Labour's mistaken strategy: "All good businesspeople know that it’s easier to keep a customer than to win a new one; that you can’t always choose your customers; and that one must never 'do a Ratner' and insult your customers. In ignoring all this Labour has been simply grossly amateurish.

Keyvan Hosseini and Dawn-Marie Walker say their research shows that the electric SUV boom is a problem for climate, health and equity: "Larger vehicles can also make streets more dangerous, especially for children. A study using Great Britain crash data found that children aged 0-18 hit by SUVs, rather than passenger cars, had 77 per cent higher odds of fatal injury. For children under nine, the odds were more than three times higher."

"Too many inspections end up evaluating whether schools are good at being inspected. That is not the same thing as being good at educating. We mistake performance for learning." David Didau argues that systems designed to raise standards too often teach schools to look good rather than get better.

"Boudicca and co surprised the Reserve staff by digging canals. Because there are plenty of trees on the edge of the lake, the presumption had been that they would not require canals. The beavers knew otherwise, and the ditches are altering the way water flows around the site. They’ve built two lodges and, as well as stripping bark and eating foliage, have begun to fell some larger trees. In one area, they have cut down most of the young saplings." Isabella Clarke reports on the remarkable success of the Nene Valley beavers.

Discontinued Notes has been to Somerset House to see the the M.C. Escher exhibition.

"The Station Hotel, the original home of the Crawdaddy Club where the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds played some of their earliest gigs, is now a gastro-pub. L'Auberge, the coffee bar at the bottom of Richmond Hill where beatniks and then hippies gathered to trade gossip and other substances, has become a branch of Nando’s. A little further up the hill, there is no trace of Sandover Hall (another early venue for the Stones), Potter’s Music Shop, or the Hanging Lamp, one of the key sixties folk clubs." David Buckingham goes in search of the South West London venues that fostered British rhythm and blues.

The Joy of Six 1527

"In the Wigan constituency, which has always been Labour-held but where Reform picked up 24 out of 25 seats in last month’s local elections, the governing party’s by-election message is focused squarely on Burnham. It is a cartoon of his face emblazoned across leaflets and Correx boards, along with the words “ANDY FOR US”. Labour branding is limited, pretty much, to what is legally required." Sienna Rodgers takes us inside the Labour campaign in the Makerfield by-election.

Lucia Osborne-Crowley interviews Gisèle Pelicot, whose courage transformed the debate around abuse, about survival, reclaiming confidence – and shutting down the tools of sexual exploitation.

Flip Chart Fairy Tales notes the end of the right's state-shrinking dream: "Far from Brexit being the cue for the Thatcher revolution’s last phase, it may mark the end of it altogether. ... It’s no wonder the small-staters are so exercised. They have now realised that tomorrow belongs to someone else."

"When you launch a product that's designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn't that you haven't told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them." Brian Phillips nominates the 40 most rage-inducing problems in tech.

JacquiWine praises Rumer Godden's novel The Battle of the Villa Fiorita: "I loved this evocative, immersive read, a psychologically astute exploration of the impact of a woman’s adulterous affair and subsequent divorce on her two adolescent children, fourteen-year-old Hugh Clavering and his younger sister Caddie, who is almost twelve."

"Born in 1918, Denys Fisher was raised in a railway carriage in a field in Leeds in a family full of inventors, free thinkers, and social reformists with connections to women's suffrage." Eleanor Tait talks to Duncan Fisher about his father, the man who invented Spirograph.

The fault, dear Mandy, is not in your stars, but in yourself

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Someone once  asked Max Clifford: "Max, if you're so brilliant at public relations, why does everyone think you're a cunt?"

Similarly, I would like to ask Peter Mandelson why, if he's such a master of the dark arts, he's always being found out.

Perhaps the answer is to be found in this character sketch by John Crace:

Betrayal is Mandelson’s lifeblood. It’s there in his treatment of Wes Streeting. Poor trusting Wes. A man more used to stabbing others in the back. Wes looked up to Mandy. Treated him as a mentor. How did Peter repay him? By bitching about him being "pathetic" and going through an "early mid-life crisis". 

Then there’s Pat McFadden. Peter encourages Pat to confide in him. Gets him to say the government is directionless. That Keir is weak. That Labour MPs just go on about what taxes to raise so they can give welfare payments to others. Pat’s reward? To be dismissed in an email to Patrick Vallance as an insignificant lightweight.

Nor is Keir Starmer spared. There’s no sense of gratitude for the prime minister having taken a punt on him for the Washington job. For Peter that was no more than he had rightly deserved. The culmination of a lifetime’s brown-nosing the rich, the corrupt and the powerful. So Mandelson happily trash talks Keir to anyone willing to listen. "Rubbish in, rubbish out."

He doesn’t even bother to conceal what he's doing. He’s never happier than when he’s promoting discontent and division. Turns out he hates Labour every bit as much as the Tories do.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: A nation holds its breath

It's been an eventful week with Lord Bonkers, but let me recover my breath and acknowledge a couple of debts.

The idea of Andy Burnham employing a sealed tram came from Andrew Crowther on Bluesky. The list of Labour grandees recalled by Starmer also comes from Bluesky. It was involuntarily contributed by Brynley Heaven, who once wrote a guest post here. I had intended to use the idea but substitute my own choice of names. When it came to it I couldn't improve on his list.

Bad writers borrow, darling, but good writers steal.

Sunday

News reaches me that Labour is taking its rout in the local elections badly. Starmer has drafted Hazel Blears, Nick Raynsford, Ruth Kelly and Ernest Bevin to freshen things up, but there are rumours that Andy Burnham is approaching Euston in a sealed tram. 

Will whichever of the Millipede brothers it is who is left throw his hat into the ring? Will Starmer face them down? A nation holds its breath.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• A cloud passes over the sun
• In return for a chunky donation
• Drinking gin with Matron
• Bouncing through custard on a Spacehopper
• Too close to the wicker hare
• The Procurator Fiscal at Dingwall

The Joy of Six 1523

Niamh McIntyre had been investigating the spike in racist AI videos aimed at British surfers: "It is often young, entrepreneurial men from south Asia. They tend to have zero interest in UK politics, but the content they create often boosts far-right talking points in Britain and contributes to the increasingly hostile atmosphere for immigrants and British Muslims. They’re part of a booming cottage industry producing commercial AI slop."

Joshi Hermann advises us to stop looking for "Burnhamism". He's bee reporting the mayor of Greater Manchester for six years and has never been able to locate it.

"The culls were not only cruel: they were ineffective. Thousands of badgers died, yet bTB [bovine tuberculosis] rates in cattle remained high. But rather than end the cull or re-evaluate the policy, the government decided to roll it out to even more parts of the country." The Hunt Saboteurs Association welcomes the end of England's badger cull, which has seen nearly 250,000 animals, shot or trapped.

"It is not often I get angry, but a recent encounter with a standing stone has really annoyed – and shocked me." The Urban Prehistorian condemns the treatment of the Bogleys Stone of Fife.

Melanie Williams has been researching Muriel Box, Muriel Sly and British women scriptwriters in general. "Medical comedy was all the rage in the fifties – from Doctor in the House to Carry On Nurse – but it seems an honest comedic look at pregnancy and childbirth may have been a little too far beyond British cinema’s comfort zone at the time."

The long career of E.J. "Tiger" Smith as Warwickshire and England's wicketkeeper, test umpire and batting guru is considered by Giles Wilcock.

The Joy of Six 1520

"I saw a man wearing what seemed to be a hybrid of Hell’s Angels and Crusader outfit, with horns protruding from his shoulders, but I can’t be sure whether this was a political identity or Game Of Thrones fancy dress. Those two are very close together in the imagination of 'Western crusaders', judging from some of their on-line output." Discontinued Notes was in London on Saturday, the day of the Unite the Kingdom march.

James Graham suggests Andy Burnham's attempt at a political heist may turn out more Fargo than Ocean's Eleven: "He’s already watered down his commitment on rejoining the EU, something Wes Streeting is having fun undermining. This follows the 'Red Wall' seat logic of not challenging Reform on their favourite topic. We should not be at all surprised therefore if he waters down his criticisms of Labour’s hostile policies on immigration."

John Lanchester is our guide to the extraordinary world of money laundering. He explains why, when we're all using cash less and less, there is more of it in circulation than ever.

"The government has kept tight controls on the research into cannabis-based medicines, making it prohibitively expensive and a bureaucratic nightmare for scientists to build up the evidence base that would be needed for a wide rollout of the treatment on the NHS." Kojo Koram explains why the legalisation of medical cannabis has had so little effect on the patients who might benefit from it.

Amy Boucher explores the Devil's immanence in Shropshire: "Throughout Shropshire, the Devil is referred to in familiar terms, with epithets such as 'Uncle Joseph', 'Owd Nick', 'Owd Scratch' and 'Owd Mon' used to describe him. These appellations portray a stark familiarity and provide a sense of personhood to the forces that the Devil may represent."

"Beyond his unusual appearance and miraculous shots, there was further mystique because everyone thought they were watching an Indian prince. His skills were clearly a product of the East: mystical, unusual, magical. To many, he was a conjurer. And Ranjitsinhji played on the association, knowing that it helped to paint the picture he wanted. Because nothing was quite as it appeared." Giles Wilcock on the Edwardian conjurer of runs and myths.

The Joy of Six 1519

Roderick Lynch says the Liberal Democrats have a serious problem in urban Britain and pretending otherwise will only make it worse.

"A few months after winning the 2024 general election, Keir Starmer pledged to stop 'powerful people using ... Slapps to intimidate journalists away from their pursuit of the public interest'. But in February this year, anti-Slapp measures were shelved from a civil justice and courts bill, reportedly following interventions from Downing Street." Peter Geoghegan and Jenna Corderoy on the government's abandonment of libel law reform – Slapps are "strategic lawsuits against public participation".

"A child living in an illegal care home is being used by an organised crime gang. He may be moving drugs around the country, transporting weapons or laundering money through his bank account. He reaches out for help but the home he’s living in has been infiltrated by the same gang. They refer him to a counsellor – who feeds their conversation back to the criminals controlling his life." Tom Wall has read a new report that sets out the acute dangers faced by children living in unregistered settings.

David Howarth explains what the investigation of Nigel Farage's £5m gift will consider.

"Gianni Infantino arrived at Fifa masquerading as a reformer. Instead, he has gone to great lengths to concentrate and consolidate his power. And yet, despite all the skulduggery, hardly any of the people to whom he ultimately owes his position are holding the Fifa president and his cabal to account." Josimar condemns the Fifa president's attempts to avoid press scrutiny.

Tom Service pays tribute to incomparable Kathleen Ferrier: "Ferrier's voice is still an inspiration, not least because she ought to inspire singers to properly inhabit the contralto register rather than push upwards into mezzo-soprano-dom, as so many singers today think they have to do. But most of all, it's that voice that seems to resonate inside you when you hear it, as if you're physically connected with Ferrier's voice, and which makes everything she sings so direct, so powerful, and so contemporary."

The Joy of Six 1518

Alexandra Hall Hall writes the big reset speech she wishes Keir Starmer had made after Labour’s local elections defeats: "I know that much of what I have said today will be controversial or unpopular. But good leadership requires the courage to say the hard things. What I took from last week’s election results is that I – we all – need to raise our game. We need to be more honest, more forthright, and more willing to take the hard choices."

"Lowe was educated at Radley. He built a career in financial services. He owns substantial agricultural land. He was chairman of Southampton Football Club. He speaks in the measured cadences of a man who has chaired many meetings and expects to chair many more. When he stands on a stage and talks about mass deportation, he sounds like he is presenting a business case. That is the innovation. Not the policy. The presentation." Simon Pearson warns of the threat posed by Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain.

"The real danger that artificial intelligence poses to work is not just job loss – it is the growing divide between people who use AI to extend their skills and those whose working lives are increasingly shaped by opaque, AI-powered systems of surveillance and control." Nazrul Islam on real threat that AI poses to workers.

Jon Rainford and Alex Blower set out their research on what working-class boys need to succeed at school.

Helen Kingstone says the 19th-century novelist Margaret Oliphant has much to teach us about our attitude to ageing: "Her novels (100 of them!) were largely forgotten in the twentieth century, but are now being celebrated by scholars and fellow-novelists. She wrote astutely and sometimes bitterly about society’s failure to recognise women’s capabilities. And she had surprisingly prescient views on ageing, which can offer valuable tools for contemporary campaigners."

"Flowing with an engaging warmth throughout, this wholesome evening not only showcases evidence of Tikaram's timeless talent as a songwriter and sound ability to orchestrate a band of incredible musicians, but it also seems to offer a beautifully open celebration of her queer identity; each song bringing with it its own unique sense of joy and pride." Mari Lane celebrates the music of Tanita Tikaram.

Zack Polanski in a Yes to AV campaign video

I remember very little of the Alternative Vote referendum campaign except that it turned out to be a referendum on Nick Clegg instead. The only party that much liked AV was the Labour Party, and it campaigned against it.

So thanks to Josiah Mortimer for posting this video from the Yes side, which turns out to feature a young Zack Polanski in the days before he joined the Liberal Democrats. Presumably he turned up here because he was still working as an actor.

I don't imagine this video converted many people. Though it sets out to show that AV is simple, it risks making it seem rather complicated. Worse than that, I just don't care whether Zack and his friends go for a coffee, go to the pub or fall down an unmarked mine shaft. It's dull.

Perhaps it looks forward to the Bluesky assumption that anyone who does not share our politics must be stupid. But at least it sets out to educate them, rather than blocking them and then boasting that it has done so to its friends.

Another mercy is that it doesn't feature Stephen Fry, which it might well have done. Dan Snow, as fans of Liberal trivia will know, is Lloyd George's great great grandson.

Later. I'm told this video wasn't issued by the official Yes campaign but by an independent group of activists. They made it because they thought the official campaign material was so poor.

For an informed view of the Yes campaign, see this post by James Graham.

The Joy of Six 1517

"In 2026 our vote share in inner London boroughs was the worst since 1978. We aren’t running any inner London boroughs. We are only even the main opposition party in one, Brent. This isn’t just a London, or a city, problem though. Our 2026 local election vote share of 14 per cent is worse than in the coalition year of 2011 – and our lowest in 8 years." Rob Blackie argues that if the Lib Dems are again to appeal to young voters we must march towards the sound of gunfire.

Jason Cobb says the Starmer project was born in Lambeth and foundered just as Labour lost its grip on that borough.

Sadiq Khan talks to Byline Times: "I think what we have now is an outrage economy. And this outrage economy is built on a division dividend. You can call it 'decline porn', and you have people and companies profiting from poison and division. So I recognise I'm clickbait. I recognise that I’m being monetised. But also London is being monetised in this outrage economy."

"In England and its colonies, no one was burnt at the stake during witch hunts: not at Pendle, not at Salem and not under the campaigns of the 'witchfinder general', Matthew Hopkins. The image of the burning witch is powerful, but in this context, it is largely a myth." But, reveals Stephanie Brown, women were burnt for defying their husbands.

Daniela Rosenow on the efforts to recover the stories of the Egyptians who helped discover the tomb of Tutankhamun.

"Strip away the film’s showy excess, and this is why The Omen is such a compelling tale. A man who lost his only son must choose whether to kill his only son? It’s positively fiendish." Ruth Bushi marks the 50th anniversary of the film's release.

The Joy of Six 1516

"The scale of the beating handed to Labour in these local elections is difficult to convey just in words. You need to see numbers and maps, showing seas of red replaced by turquoise and green and yellow; you perhaps need to see the tears and feel the desolation longtime servants of the party are feeling this evening. That this defeat has been suffered in the heartland of the modern Labour Party – the stronghold atop which names like Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner, Lisa Nandy and Lucy Powell have built their reputations – is all the more harrowing." Lucy McLaughlin and Joshi Herrmann witness the fall of Labour Manchester.

Jonathan M. Winer warns us that Donald Trump is planning to use emergency powers to take control of this year's midterm elections.

Emily Enns on the campaign to deny the abuse of native Canadian children in residential schools. "Even now... there’s not a Facebook post that goes out about Indigenous events in Kamloops where there’s not at least one person in a comment section on a shared post saying something about how our experiences as Indigenous people are fabricated."

"The latest ChatGPT model, released last week, included the instructions: 'Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query.'" Alex Nguyen explains why.

"History, in Mad Men, shapes the air around the characters, occasionally intrudes to seize control of the story, and nevertheless slowly changes each person. History is also experienced as something beyond the characters’ control and understanding. Like real human beings, they respond with a mix of bewilderment, accommodation, grumpiness, opportunism, and, occasionally, a full embrace of change." Joseph Stieb looks at the way Mad Men shows history reshaping people’s lives, perspectives and interactions, often without them fully realising that things have changed.

James Warren considers the unexpected evolution of the progressive band Stackridge into the poptastic The Korgis.

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.

Gentrification and the rise of the pro-bedtime left in the Nineties

The term "the anti-bedtime left" is in vogue as a way of disparaging people in the Labour Party who still have ambitions to set the people free rather than police them more closely.

But I am old enough to remember the days when there was a pro-bedtime left. And this press cutting from The Scotsman (18 November 1996) is a relic of it:

Bedtime Stories 

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise, says New Labour. The shadow home secretary Jack Straw has called for firmer discipline at home, including set bedtimes to stop today’s children becoming tomorrow's juvenile delinquents.

That framing is very New Labour. Today we would be worrying about children's wellbeing or mental health, but back in the Nineties it was all about preventing crime. If they were in bed and drugged with Ovaltine, they wouldn't be out causing trouble.

Even Labour's education agenda then, with its support for homework even in primary schools, seemed us much about keeping children off the streets as about their learning.

Why was New Labour so authoritarian? One reason is gentrification. Imagine If you had moved into an up-and coming but still edgy part of London in the mid Nineties and wanted to entertain a senior member of your chambers and their partner to dinner in your garden on a summer evening to show off that amazingly good value Bulgarian red you had found. 

You would be looking forward to scheming with them to remove some left-wing Labour council candidates. And if the opportunity arose, you might broach the subject of your being selected for a safe Labour seat in the North of England. You wouldn't want kids kicking their football against your back fence, would you?