It wasn't a long judges' meeting: the Manchester Evening News has won our Headline of the Day Award.
Incidentally, when I worked at Golden Wonder many years ago I was a member of the Pot Noodle tasting panel. I'd rather have been on a flapjack tasting panel.
Patrick Radden Keefe’s new book, London Falling, is the buzziest read of the summer so far.
(In case you've missed all the column inches, it’s the one about the mysterious death of a 19-year-old whose pretence of being the son of an oligarch entangled him in a dangerous underworld.)
Akbar Shamji, the baddie on the run who might know what happened to Zac Brettler, has another claim to fame, we're told.
He starred in panto at Cambridge Footlights with Mel and Sue, of Great British Bake Off fame.
My advice to the police, if they want a Footlights alumnus to help them with their enquiries, is to keep a close watch on conventions of TV quiz hosts and celebrity children's authors. He's bound to turn up at one or the other before long.
This video has received a lot of attention today, but don't mock Councillor Kieran Lay too hard. Because he's not the only Reform politician to believe in aliens and their UFOs.
Regular readers will be familiar with Rupert Matthews, the police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire. He was elected as a Conservative but later joined Reform UK.
And Matthews once told an American interviewer:
"The evidence for UFOs and for the humanoid creatures linked to them is pretty compelling."
Less amusing are Matthews' current plans for Market Harborough town centre. Rather than spend the money on more properly trained police offices or PCSOs, he's giving £2m to private security firms to provide street wardens.
This approach reminds me of an earlier post of mine about Matthews:
Rupert Matthews, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland, has paid £250 to put up a Victorian-style police station blue lamp in Uppingham.
"The blue lamp is an iconic piece of British policing history and symbolises not only law, order and justice, but safety and sanctuary," he told BBC News.
Trouble is, there is no police station in Uppingham, and the inhabitants of Rutland's second city are far from impressed.
I'm afraid I couldn't resist the headline... Rupert Matthews: The lights are on but no one's at home.
Another video from barrister-at-law Alan Robertshaw. One interesting point he makes is that the common courtroom assumption that a statement given immediately after an event provides the best evidence is mistaken.
I also like his favourite line: "cross-examination does not mean examining someone crossly". And there's a useful tip on how to dress if you're planning a robbery.
Body-worn video of a woman's "degrading" arrest, which police falsely told a court did not exist, has been shared exclusively with the BBC.
It shows officers in Northamptonshire throw metal spikes in front of Nadine Buzzard-Quashie's car and force her to the ground after responding to a concern for her welfare, whereupon she says her face was pushed into stinging nettles.
The Chief Constable of Northamptonshire, Ivan Balhatchet, was found guilty of contempt of court in November and fined £50,000 for failing to release the body-worn videos to her.
The police watchdog has started a criminal investigation into a Northants senior police officer and two staff over perverting the course of justice allegations.
The matter is in relation to a legal case, which last autumn saw Northants Chief Constable Ivan Balhatchet found to have been in contempt of court and fined £50,000. The civil case had been brought by Londonder Nadine Buzzard Quashie, who had been fighting the force for bodyworn footage of her arrest in Northamptonshire in September 2021, that she claims was unlawful.
Alan Rusbridger asks if Britain has stopped believing the freedom to protest: "The police burst in, broke up the gathering and arrested everyone involved. They carted them off to the cells, confiscated their phones and, in at least one case, raided their home and took away all the family laptops and hard drives. The crime? Er, well, there may not have been one. Welcome to Britain in 2026 and the increasingly harsh way we handle not even protest, but the very thought of protest."
"Two centuries ago, [Thomas] Spence and his followers fought for universal cash payments because enclosure had made ordinary people too dependent on landowners for their livelihoods. They did not emphasise that money would be good for people, as proponents do now. They argued that money was owed to people." Will Glovinsky explores the historical roots of the idea of a universal basic income.
Kate Moore on the major hedgerow restoration programme at the National Trust’s Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire.
Municipal Dreams says Lincoln offers an interesting case study of the early drive to build affordable housing for working people: "Back then this was almost universally understood to be, of necessity, council housing, and the drive to build came – admittedly with political flavouring and different degrees of intensity – from all parties. There was also significant influence from local pressure groups, generally not radical in politics but sharing a common belief in the duty of the local state to house those in need."
"The character of Raffles looks forward to Bulldog Drummond, the Saint and, even more so, James Bond: the unflappable elegance, the insouciant brutality and the brand names (Raffles’s Sullivans, Bond’s Chesterfields and Morlands), the insistence on the best champagne and on the shaken-not-stirred martinis. The escapades of both heroes deploy the latest miracles of technology." Ferdinand Mount considers E.W. Hornung and his anti-hero Raffles.
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| Summerisle Young Liberals, 1973 |
A great deal has been written about The Wicker Man (1973). Often heralded as Britain's greatest horror film, its shocking climax has obscured other salient features – most notably, the political alignment of Lord Summerisle (portrayed by Christopher Lee) and the impact of that on the socioeconomic construction of the island.
For those unfamiliar with the setting, Summerisle lies off the west coast of Scotland – in the 'Celtic Fringe' that constituted the post-war Liberal electoral bastions. In 1868, the grandfather of the present lord (at the time of filming) purchased the island and established it as a spot for the cultivation of new strains of apple he had developed. (There are some parallels – although not in every particular – with the purchase of Eigg by the wealthy Liberal Runciman family in the 1920s.)
The first Lord Summerisle was a characteristic Liberal of his generation: a scientist, a religious nonconformist, a freethinker, and an entrepreneur. Surely his grandson continued to take the Liberal Whip in the House of Lords.
On Summerisle, he reintroduced a form of paganism, which flourished alongside his orchards; although not openly acknowledged, the age and style of the architecture of the island's public infrastructure, such as the school and the library, also imply they were the work of this Victorian innovator.
A century later, Summerisle is renowned for its apples, remains pagan, and offers audiences a model of an integrated community that has overcome many of the issues being addressed by contemporary Liberal politics; through the narrative of the film, however, Summerisle acquires other connotations.
Although never before acknowledged, The Wicker Man has a great deal of connection to 1970s Liberal politics (setting aside a charismatic leader allegedly involved in a conspiracy to murder). First, community politics lies at the heart of the film. The entire island works together, setting aside questions of class to achieve common goals – a horizontal rather than vertical organisation of society.
This is the antithesis of the class confrontation that characterised the era’s political imagination, and the Conservative/Labour duopoly. Community politics was adopted by the party at the 1970 Liberal Assembly, although its antecedents include New Liberalism and Distributionism.
While there are questions about the authenticity of the (re)introduction of 'the old ways' in 1868, the society built on these foundations seems authentic, perhaps more so than elsewhere given the open acknowledgement of its invented traditions.
While heathen, Summerisle is hopefully not unenlightened. In contrast to the islanders, who are harmonious, it is the visiting Sergeant Howie who adopts an adversarial and intolerant tone – a representation of the adversarial politics 1970s liberals sought to move beyond.
Summerisle, like so many places, could not escape the discourse of apocalyptic 'declinism' that pervaded much of 1970s politics. The failure of the apple harvest resonates through the film. However, Lord Summerisle once again aligns himself with Liberal politics by adopting a solution-based approach informed by the best evidence to hand.
Summerisle’s attitude might not be as technocratic as that offered on the mainland, but equally, the skill in constructing the narrative that ensnares Howie cannot be dismissed. The establishment of a research facility to address issues with the apple trees might have yielded better results, perhaps, but certainly not a better cinematic spectacle.
Given the nature of Summerisle life, it must also be seen as part of the 'permissive society' approach championed by Liberals. This certainly originates with Lord Summerisle, who presides over (directly and indirectly) a lifestyle that is remarkably sexually uninhibited in both word and deed. This is underlined by Summerisle's cosmopolitan (mis)quotation of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, a poem generally seen as indicative of sexual experimentation and egalitarianism.
That egalitarianism on Summerisle extends beyond sexuality to a degree of pro-immigration sentiment, again engaging with 1970s Liberal politics: Ingrid Pitt's obviously Polish accent marks her as an outsider on the remote Scottish island, yet her character is the island’s librarian and key to the ritual's conclusion. The alliance of an intense local network with a metropolitan (even cosmopolitan) leadership encapsulates much of the post-war Liberal Party.
The Wicker Man, then, is steeped in the debates of 1970s Liberalism. Lord Summerisle presides over a society that has overcome some of the challenges of contemporary life, particularly around issues of social unity balanced with the need for local autonomy. Rather than a backward-looking, isolated, paganism, Summerisle is integrated into the local and national economy, showing how tradition can be incorporated with the demands of modern life: the old ways performed in Levis.
Summerisle's socially and economically liberal order works for the benefit of the whole community – audiences see no poverty or antagonism between different classes on the island, largely because there are no different groups.
It would be inaccurate to say that challenges do not remain, and it is impossible to know whether the remedies attempted in the film were successful – though a brief cameo by Christopher Lee as a mentor to a more modern pagan Scottish lord in Robin Hardy’s 2011 sequel, The Wicker Tree, suggest that, just perhaps…
Anselm Anon and Wighard of Canterbury are both members of the Liberal Democrats.
Opponents of traffic-reduction measures in cities sometimes claim that such policies discriminate against people with disabilities because they need cars to get about. In reality, Julia Métraux finds, walkable communities are good for them too.
Jim Waterson, Sophie Wilkinson and Polly Smythe dissect the panic in London over 'school wars': "On Monday night the Metropolitan police confirmed to London Centric that there have been no reported incidents that the force has linked to the supposedly all-pervasive ;school wars'. Despite this, it said it would continue to provide reassurance in the form of a 'strong, visible presence around schools', issuing dispersal orders, and asking social media sites to remove videos."
Is there a Christian revival underway among young adults in the UK? Conrad Hackett thinks the recent surveys suggesting there is may be misleading.
"Research in the humanities is not confined to academic institutions. Particularly in history and archaeology there are many communities focused on the study and interpretation of the past that engage in different ways with academic research." Ben Earley challenges the simplistic view of research impact flowing from institutions to public users.
Leah Broad on the rediscovery of Dame Ethel Smyth and other women classical composers.
This, in full, was Ed Davey's reply:
The speech we just heard totally misrepresents the European convention, and the failure of the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) to mention the huge benefits and rights that the European convention has brought to millions of British people says it all. Let me give those attracted by the argument we have just heard one strong reason to think again. Russia under Vladimir Putin is the only country to have withdrawn from the European convention on human rights. Maybe that is what attracts the hon. Member—after all, he said that Putin is the world leader he most admires.
Russia: a country where those who oppose the regime are mysteriously pushed off balconies, and where, if it is not enough to murder a political opponent like Alexei Navalny, Putin has even jailed lawyers who dared to represent him—things not allowed under the European convention. As we have seen Nathan Gill, a leading political ally of the hon. Member for Clacton, imprisoned for taking Russian bribes, perhaps we should not be surprised that the Reform party is so keen to follow Russia.
Besides Russia, where else are people’s hard-fought-for rights under attack? Trump’s America. Of course, the US is not part of the European convention, yet its citizens have benefited from something similar: the US constitution, which was designed to check the power of tyrants and protect the individual from the state. Just as the hon. Member for Clacton desires to remove people’s rights here, his hero Donald Trump is doing the same in America, attacking the courts and the rule of law, and even inciting a violent mob against the US Congress to overturn an election. But of course, the hon. Member has called President Trump “an inspiration”. If we want to know the hon. Member’s intentions for British people’s basic rights and freedoms, we only need to look at Putin’s Russia or Trump’s America. That is not patriotic. It is deeply un-British, and he should be ashamed.
Unlike the hon. Member for Clacton, I am proud of our country; I love our country. I am proud that Britain helped to create the European convention on human rights, championed by Winston Churchill himself. The convention protects the very people who need it most: our elderly and most vulnerable, so that they may live and grow old with dignity; and our children, so that those facing horrific abuse have better protection. It also upholds our freedom of speech so that the press and public can criticise those in power without fear, and it protects our right to peaceful protest.
Seventy years ago, Britain became the first country to ratify the convention, as a leading voice on the global stage for human rights and the rule of law. That is our history. That is who we are. That is Britain at our best. Yet the hon. Member for Clacton wants us to forget our history, dump British values, undermine the rule of law and row back on people’s hard-won rights. I say no.
To help get across how wrong the hon. Member, the Reform party and the Conservatives are on this, let me give some examples. When people died because of poor care at Stafford hospital, their families secured change—because of these laws. When British troops died in Iraq because of poor equipment, the Supreme Court ruled that the Government were accountable—because of these laws. After 96 people were killed in the Hillsborough disaster and the victims themselves were blamed, their families finally got to the truth—because of these laws. When the Metropolitan police failed to properly investigate the horrific assaults of John Worboys, his victims were able to take the police to court—because of these laws.
Time and again, the European convention and its British twin, the Human Rights Act, have brought justice for our people, and protected them from gross misconduct and unfair treatment. These laws help individuals hold the powerful to account—to hold Governments to account. These laws can get justice when the elite and powerful cover up and abuse their power. So it is clear, is it not, that the hon. Member for Clacton is not about standing up for the individual—for the ordinary person, for the people with no voice—but that he is the friend of the elite and the powerful?
If we do not defend our human rights here at home, how can we possibly persuade other countries of the importance of human rights for their own people? If we do what Reform wants, the biggest cheers will come from the Kremlin, from Beijing, from Tehran, from Pyongyang, and from dictators and authoritarian regimes the world over. That would be a betrayal of everything our country stands for. The hon. Member’s plan would damage our country’s ability to shape our world.
Leaving the convention would be another nail in the coffin of Britain’s unique soft power. We have so often influenced world events for the better by being part of international agreements, by upholding international law and by leading. Of course, the hon. Member for Clacton has made his career by damaging our country and our influence. Remember how he led the campaign for Brexit with his Conservative friends? We know what a total mess that has turned out to be. He and his friends argued that Brexit would cut immigration, but immigration has gone up. Just look at how badly he has betrayed the people he claims to speak for. Brexit made the small boats crisis possible.
Before Brexit, we effectively had a returns agreement with every EU country: the Dublin system—a deterrent that worked. Now, undocumented migrants are trying to reach the UK because they know they cannot be returned. Thanks to the hon. Member, his Brexit ripped up Britain’s rights to return people with no right to be here and people who should have claimed asylum elsewhere in Europe. [Interruption.] Conservative Members may shout—they caused it!
Let us look at one of our closest allies, the Republic of Ireland, and a vital part of our country, Northern Ireland. The Good Friday agreement references the European convention seven times. The guarantee of basic rights and freedoms in the convention was fundamental to securing the Good Friday agreement, to ending the conflict, to stopping the bombs and to getting peace, yet the hon. Member for Clacton stands here today prepared to risk peace in our country—how utterly shameful.
As we approach Remembrance Sunday, let us never forget the sacrifices made for our freedoms today, and let us never forget the lessons that that greatest generation of British people learned and passed on to us— Interruption.] I think the veterans will notice this barracking. Our greatest generation showed us that we needed these laws to protect people from state abuse, to stop authoritarian Governments and tyrants, and to defend people’s rights. The post-war generation knew how costly far right-wing populism had been for our country and our people, so for our greatest generation, for British people today and for our democracy, I urge Members to vote against this Bill.
If the Liberal Democrats could talk about the economy with the same clarity and passion we display when talking about foreign policy and civil liberties, we would sweep the country.
The format is simple, level-headed and unmelodramatic. On one level, Barlow and Watt move around a contemporary investigation room, surrounded by books, copies of newspapers, such documentary evidence as there is, and reconstruct the five canonical murders in chronological order.
They don’t dramatise things, they talk like senior Detectives sifting evidence, looking for similarities and anomalies, testing the weight of the evidence against their professional experience, building up a picture of the time, the place, the people and the events, as fairly and neutrally as they can. Naturally, they talk as the characters they are playing, indulging in a never belaboured degree of the banter and cynicism of the veterans they are.
Interspersed with this is the reconstruction. Intelligently, and in keeping with the series’ aim to be as factual and complete as possible, these eschew any reconstruction of the killings themselves and lapse into drama only once, showing fourth victim Catherine Eddowes being released from police cells after sobering up, only to be murdered within thirty minutes. She’s the only one of the five victims to actually be depicted in persona.
Between 1962, when he first appeared as Charlie Barlow in Z-Cars, and 1976, when he played the character for the last time in Second Verdict, Britain's most famous television policeman was Stratford Johns.
That baton was then taken on by John Thaw, who had begun playing Jack Regan in The Sweeney in 1975. He continued in that role until 1978 and then played Inspector Morse between 1987 and 2000. (I don't remember their being any clear holder of the crown during that interregnum.)
And here they are together in a Z-Cars episode from 1964.
Trivia fans will be pleased that Sheila Hancock, who was married to John Thaw, played Miss Hannigan opposite Stratford Johns' Daddy Warbucks in the original London production of Annie.
The stories are as gritty as anything you would find in The Bill, and happy outcomes are rare. In the little monologues that top and tail each programme, Dixon is likely to tell you the suspect was never convicted due to a lack of evidence, or that a wife-beater escaped punishment because the police were powerless to intervene.
It's not jolly – in fact it's unremittingly grim. Bodies turn up in slag heaps. Depressed coppers kill themselves, and no one dares say so. "The coroner's verdict was death by misadventure," says Dixon, "and none of us would quarrel with that."
These allegations are incredibly serious, it is now only right that the police investigate Peter Mandelson for potential misconduct in public office.
— Ed Davey (@eddavey.libdems.org.uk) 2 February 2026 at 15:00
[image or embed]
Ed Davey is right:
These allegations are incredibly serious, it is now only right that the police investigate Peter Mandelson for potential misconduct in public office.
Mental Health Cop is not impressed by the new white paper on police reform: "It’s rather spectacular in all the wrong kinds of way because it misses rather a lot of important points, it plays undergraduate essay games with what policing actually is and what the public want it to be, and yes: it touches upon mental health as it’s primary example of the police doing non-police things which need to be cleared out of the way so they can 'fight crime and catch criminals'."
Miranda Sheild Johansson on how abolishing its wealth tax changed Sweden for the worse.
"Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, MOOCs (“Massive Open Online Courses”) were the exciting new technology that would revolutionize education – and perhaps even kill off the university as we knew it. With a MOOC, a single star lecturer would give the definitive course on topic X, and students everywhere would learn from the MOOC. Why replicate thousands of near-identical versions of Biology 101, each taught by a local lesser light, when students could all tune in to a masterpiece by the best instructor in the world?" Stephen Heard asks what happened to MOOCs.
James Kenney examines a favourite film in depth: "Breaking Away – a film that runs well under two hours and yet feels fuller than most contemporary movies – doesn’t linger, nor does it inflate moments to announce their importance. Themes aren’t announced in heavy-handed speeches. It moves generously and with grace through characters in motion and leaves them alive in our minds long after it ends."
"The chancel glows in green and gold, its walls painted with stylised flowers and leaves. The decoration, if overwhelming, also does an excellent job of defining the chancel as the most sacred space." Philip Wilkinson visit Wilmcote and its 19th-century Gothic Revival church.
Rupert Matthews, the Conservative turned Reform police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland, faced a police and crime panel meeting at Leicestershire County Council on today to answer questions about a complaint.
BBC News says the complaint was made after Matthews sent an "unsolicited" email to a serving officer. It was referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which found no evidence to indicate a criminal offence had been committed.
And the exciting news is that BBC News has been leaked a copy of the report the panel was considering:
The report states the complaint was referred to the IOPC on 4 September 2025.
It said Matthews "sent an unsolicited email to a police officer within Leicestershire Police, asking her to organise for him to have a photo taken with a horse for his next election leaflet, referencing a photograph of Russian president Vladimir Putin posing shirtless on horseback".
Rupert Matthews's office told BBC News that he had lodged a complaint about the leak of the report and that he is
extremely frightened of horses and ... would never seek to work with them out of choice.
The interesting thing is that neither of those news reports give the impression that the PCC is about to jump ship to Reform. Both are in their third term as PCC, which means they joined the Conservative Party before it abandoned Conservatism to became an English Nationalist party.
So perhaps these resignations are symptomatic of a flight of sensible people from the party (though a study of Hernandez's Wikipedia entry suggests she is not as sensible as all that).
The government has announced that PCCs will be abolished in 2028 and you can see why. The reports on Hernandez's resignation tells us she is
supported by a team of around 30 non-political staff led by a chief executive who will "continue holding the police to account" and fulfilling their statutory obligations.
The creation of PCCs was championed by those scourges of bureaucracy Daniel Hannon and Douglas Carswell.
The judges were also impressed by the photograph provided by Lincolnshire Police.
Yesterday there was an election in the Lib Dem held Quinton ward of Stratford-upon-Avon District Council. (Don't worry: we held it.) I wondered if Andrew would know about a notorious murder that took place there.
I needn't have worried. Andrew wrote in this week's preview:
The Quinton ward extends north-east from here to take in the village of Lower Quinton. This was the scene for the 1945 murder of Charles Walton, with local rumour having it that he had been ritually killed and that witchcraft was involved.
Despite the involvement of the Metropolitan Police officer DS Robert Fabian of the Yard as chief investigating officer, no-one was ever prosecuted for Walton’s death and Warwickshire Constabulary class it as their oldest unsolved murder case.
My suspicion is that – as in many an Agatha Christie plot – what appeared to be an extraordinary killing was in fact an ordinary one with mundane financial motives. But, like poor Bella in the Wych Elm, this murder has gone down in West Midlands history.
For a short introduction of the case, you can try the relevant episode of Punt PI. But what I really recommend is the three-part investigation of it by Hypnogoria. I like its observation that it's common to come across, when researching your family history, to come across people who have left no mark on official records.
The case also inspired a new film called The Last Sacrifice. I've not seen it, but the trailer below plays up the idea that the murder of Charles Walton inspired the folk horror cinema that flourished two or three decades later.
I found the press cutting above in my folder of newspaper stories about Dennis O'Neill. The juxtaposition of the two stories is positively spooky, but that was the West Midlands in 1945.
The Daily Star wins our Headline of the Day Award.
As the judges remark, it's come to something when a naked Englishman can't go for a bicycle ride without being punched by a mistaken binman.
Thanks to a reader for alerting me to this story.
A home office press release says:
Since 2012, PCCs have been elected to hold forces to account, but turnout at the polls and public knowledge of who their local PCC is has been incredibly low.
Public understanding of, and engagement with, PCCs remains low despite efforts to raise their profile. Two in five people are unaware PCCs even exist.
Their roles will be absorbed by regional mayors wherever possible, meaning measures to cut crime will be considered as part of wider public services such as education and healthcare.
In areas not covered by a mayor, this role will be taken on by elected council leaders.
I'm pleased to see this move, having called for it 18 months ago.
Yesterday saw the third round of PCC elections, and I believe we can now say that the experiment has failed. It has not delivered any of what Cameron and the Home Office promised.
Not only that, it has proved an expensive experiment. PCCs have discovered the need to appoint a deputy on a generous public salary as well as the need to employ researchers.
Here in Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, there was no visible campaign - on the doorstep or online - for the PCC election. And the Labour and Conservative candidates were both party hacks who have never made it to Westminster.
Though to be fair to Labour's Rory Palmer, he has, unlike his Conservative opponent Rupert Matthews, never been a lecturer on the paranormal for the International Metaphysical University or expressed the view that "the evidence for UFOs and for the humanoid creatures linked to them is pretty compelling".
You can still see a short clip of Rupert Matthews, who recently joined Reform UK, introducing his university course online.
As to the turnout for PCC elections, here in Leicestershire, at least, that was a function of the other elections being held at the same time. I said of the contest here:
In 2016 it took place at the same time as Leicester City Council elections, so the Labour vote came out there and we got a Labour PCC. Five years later it coincided with county council elections, so the Tory vote came out and we got a Tory PCC.
The Guardian report on this story claims:
The abolition is a victory for chief constables and a sign of how influential they are in the Labour government’s thinking about policing.
It also makes the merger and abolition of local forces, which chiefs want and government is considering, potentially easier.
This doesn't cheer me, as something of a centralisation sceptic, but the PCC experiment has certainly failed.
