Couple tried claiming neighbour's land with gnome

"Surrey. It would be Surrey," remarked one of the judges as they made our Headline of the Day Award to BBC News.

He also suggested you seek professional legal advice before attempting to claim your neighbour's land.

A stroll along the Thames Path from Hampton Court to Shepperton

A lovely walk in autumn sunshine. John Rogers describes it thus in his YouTube blurb:

Starting at Hampton Court Station in East Molesey we walk one of the most beautiful sections of the wonderful Thames Path. 

We pass through Hurst Park, look across the river at Taggs Island, Garrick's Temple, pass by Molesey Reservoirs with its WW2 tank defences, stop for lunch at Walton Marina and cross the river at Walton Bridge. 

Our walk is guided by Donald Maxwell's 1932 book A Pilgrimage of the Thames and takes us to the ancient St Nicholas church at Shepperton. A church has stood on the site since the 7th Century. 

Our Thames path odyssey ends at the Shepperton home of author J.G Ballard.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

GUEST POST Defections Update: Lib Dem Conference Special

The Conservative and Labour Parties are continuing to lose councillors in significant numbers, finds Augustus Carp in his latest survey of political defections.

Danny Kruger, MP for East Wiltshire, may be getting the headlines in the defection newsfeeds, but he’s just the tip of the iceberg. The rate at which councillors are changing their political allegiance doesn’t seem to be slackening.

Since June, 39 councillors have defected from the Conservatives and 56 from Labour. The Lib Dems are unchanged, Nationalists have lost 1 and the Greens are up 4. Reform UK has gained 29 and the Independents (widely defined) make up the balance with 63.

The pattern over recent years has usually been for defecting councillors to become Independents and then, if so inclined, to join a new party after a respectable period in the wilderness. Straight switches from Party A to Party B are not as frequent, but they do happen – 18 of the former Conservative councillors have moved straight to Reform UK, but one has joined them from the Greens.

The Lib Dems have lost one councillor to Reform UK (in Burnley). Three Labour councillors have moved to the Lib Dems, with the same number joining the Greens and one going to Reform UK. The remainder of the departing Labour councillors have aligned themselves with a variety of Independent political mini-groups, ranging from the Broxtowe Alliance to the Potteries Party.

The net figure of departing Labour councillors would have been much higher had it not been for a large number of suspended and unwhipped councillors being readmitted to the party over the summer. One hopes that the majority of them have learned their lessons regarding the inappropriate use of social media.

Some of these defections have had a significant impact on the local councils – Labour have lost notional control of South Tyneside, and the Labour group on Reigate and Banstead has evaporated. Senior figures have been involved in recent defections – the former leader of the Conservative group on Aberdeenshire Council is now an Independent, as is the former Labour leader in Caerphilly.

As Jonathan Wallace has noted in his blog, we are now also seeing defections from Reform UK – perhaps the most curious of which is a councillor in Kent moving from them to UKIP. Jonathan has provided some useful background on the defections of Reform UK office holders in the North East of England, but only elected councillors have been included in these figures.

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

Helen Maguire backs campaign to restore cemetery where 9,000 mental hospital patients lie in unmarked graves

Helen Maguire is backing a campaign to restore a derelict cemetery in her Epsom constituency.

Horton Cemetery contains the graves of 9,000 people who died at one of the five mental health hospitals that made up the Epsom Cluster between 1899 and 1955. Today, it’s neglected and not accessible to the public.

Interviewed by the Lost Souls project, Helen Maguire said:

“I would really welcome the opportunity to have a conversation with the landowner to see if we can find ways to return this graveyard to a public location so relatives can access it.

“It's about heritage, education and people being able to learn about what Epsom used to be. This isn't just in Epsom, it's in other places as well, other locations where graveyards have even built over. This is the start of a conversation that raises the awareness of mental health.

“I think a memorial is a great idea. These individuals have been forgotten, and in many situations it’s not like Horton, where we might have the possibility of making it public one day.”

The video above, which is produced by The Friends of Horton Cemetery, tells you more.

I wrote about the Epsom Cluster in one of my columns for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy. It was so vast that it had its own railway system:

In 1896 the London County Council purchased the Horton Estate in Surrey with the intention of building a cluster of mental hospitals and other institutions there. A railway system, linked with the main line, was built to carry materials for the construction of the hospitals and then carry the coal and other goods they required for day-to-day operation. The cluster, naturally, had its own power station.

In the 1920s the volume of coal and coke delivered to the power station, and to glasshouses at one of the hospitals, reached a peak of 15,000 tonnes per year.

This railway system was little used during the second world war, when some of the hospitals were given over to wounded and recuperating soldiers, and it was scrapped not long after hostilities ceased. But before it closed, enthusiasts in sports jackets and flannels came to photograph the operations for railway magazines. It is said you can still find traces of the lines among the housing estates, private roads and golf courses that now occupy the Horton Estate.

And, as the horrific story about the home at Tuam in County Galway reminds us, it’s not only asylum inmates who lie in unmarked graves.

I write often here of Dennis O’Neill, who in death was the most famous child in the country during the opening months of 1945. His death from abuse and neglect while in foster care shocked the nation, even as the Allied forces closed on Berlin.

Yet when Dennis's brother Terry, who had been with him when he died, later went with his girlfriend to look for Dennis’s grave, this is what they found:

Pat and I had to walk up and down the row several times before we found the correct grave, because there was no headstone or marking on it, only a metal plate with a number. Long grass grew up around it and some kind of prickly bramble had twisted its way across, sinking in deep roots. I saw a cemetery attendant and ran over to confirm that this was, indeed, Dennis’s grave. 

I just stared at the spot, as if somehow I would be able to see through the soil to where he lay. Pat got down on her knees and started tearing up the bramble.

“We should come back with some shears to trim the grass, and bring some flowers next time,” Pat said.

It Newport Borough Council felt any guilt over sending Dennis away to his death, it was not deep enough to lead them to buy him a headstone. 

Priest denies Lib Dem MP Chris Coghlan holy communion over his support for assisted dying bill

Chris Coghlan, the Liberal Democrat MP for Dorking and Horley was denounced by his Roman Catholic priest before his congregation and banned from communion after voting in favour of the assisted dying bill.

The Observer reports that Chris has described his treatment as "outrageous" and complained to Richard Moth, the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton.

In a short comment piece for the paper, Chris says:

I was moved to receive messages of support from constituents. A couple wrote: “Our faith and our belief in our Church community is based on Jesus Christ and the truth within scripture showing love and compassion.”

This pressure on me and my family did not deter me from voting with my conscience. Quite the reverse, in fact. But I know I am not alone among MPs with faith who faced the same pressure. One MP who is Christian told me she was “overwhelmed” by the strain it had placed on her.

It is my fervent hope that no MP succumbed to that pressure and either voted contrary to their own conscience or, perhaps more likely, abstained from voting at all to avoid the kind of consequences I have been subjected to. I hope not, but I cannot of course be sure.

What I am clear about is that while people inside and outside parliament are absolutely entitled to their religious beliefs and have every right to take into account what their faith may or may not have to say on the subject, it is our duty as MPs to decide what is the right thing to do out of compassion and a commitment to justice and human dignity.

Well said, Chris. 

More generally, it's interesting to speculate whether such conduct towards an MP by a religious minister could constitute contempt of parliament.

Gerrard Winstanley would love this: The councillor for Weybridge & St. George’s has joined the Lib Dems

One of the key sites of political radicalism during the English Civil War is now represented by a Liberal Democrat.

As Mark Pack reports:

Cllr Pippa Graeme, who has served as the councillor for Weybridge & St. George’s ward at Elmbridge Borough Council since May 2023, has announced her decision to leave the Weybridge & St. George’s Independents and join the Liberal Democrats.

After much reflection, Pippa expressed her belief that the values and approach of the Liberal Democrats align closely with her own, reinforcing her commitment to work collaboratively and effectively for the benefit of local residents.

Her ward includes St George's Hill, which is now an exclusive gated community. But in 1649 Gerrard Winstanley and his fellow Diggers or True Levellers invaded the land there to plant vegetables, intending to pull down all enclosures and encourage the locals to come and work with them. 

Gerrard Winstanley writes exclusively for Liberal England:

Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the Earth from others, that these may beg or starve in a fruitful land; or was it made to preserve all her children?

Continuity and modernity in A Canterbury Tale

The new London Review of Books has a review by Alex Harvey of The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger. Published in 2023 - that's academic reviewing for you - this is a collected volume edited by Nathalie Morris and Claire Smith.

I looked first to see what Harvey had to say about A Canterbury Tale:

The jump-cut at the start of A Canterbury Tale moves from a soaring falcon seen by Chaucer’s medieval pilgrims to a war plane patrolling rural Kent. Time is sped up and frozen; the East End land girl Alison drives a horse-drawn cart. 

Powell grew up amid the ‘hop poles, oasts and orchards’ of the Kent countryside, as Alexandra Harris writes in her contribution to the collection. In A Canterbury Tale, he used the landscape to show an unchanging pastoral England. But since the film was scripted by Pressburger, an exile who knew the unrelenting force of modernity, it becomes ‘an act of continuation that is also a meditation on continuity’, as Peter Conrad put it. 

On this theme, it is striking that in the film's prologue (spoken by Esmond Knight in the video above), a steam locomotive serves as a symbol of modernity:

Alas, when on our pilgrimage we wend,
We modern pilgrims see no journeys end.
Gone are the ring of hooves, the creak of wheel:
Down in the valley runs our road of steel.
No genial host at sinking of the sun
Welcomes us in: our journey's just begun.

But to the modern viewer that locomotive is likely to be the object of nostalgia - nostalgia, increasingly, for a landscape that viewer never got to see.

That distant shot of the train, incidentally was not filmed in Kent but in Surry - to the west of Dorking, on the line that runs between Guildford and Redhill.

The Joy of Six 1307

'Graham', a victim of John Smyth, explains why the attitude of the Church of England means that he cannot move on: "victims have no closure. We do not yet have the truth. We do not yet have personal apology. We do not yet have justice. We do not feel that anything has changed."

"Cottesmore Hunt were about to be forensically challenged - and in real time.  Along with Chris and Megan was Fabian who, armed with a live broadcast camera, captured all the action as it happened and shared it via a live social media stream. The only veil of secrecy the Cottesmore could call upon was the thick mist which shrouded the killing fields."  Northants Hunt Saboteurs are joined for a day by Chris Packham and Chris Packham and the zoologist Megan McCubbin.

Will Tavlin on the strange economics of streaming services: "For a century, the business of running a Hollywood studio was straightforward. The more people watched films, the more money the studios made. With Netflix, however, audiences don’t pay for individual films. They pay a subscription to watch everything, and this has enabled a strange phenomenon to take root. Netflix’s movies don’t have to abide by any of the norms established over the history of cinema: they don’t have to be profitable, pretty, sexy, intelligent, funny, well-made, or anything else that pulls audiences into theatre seats."

J.J. Jackson explores East Anglia's hidden man-made and explosive dangers.

A tour of some of the grandest interwar public houses of East and South London in the company of Modernism in Metroland.

"Coming away from a light-hearted festive flick often feels like being sloshed on a cocktail of capitalism and corporate greed. Can’t connect with your children? Just buy their affection with an expensive toy, like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All the Way. Want a turkey but there’s hardly any left in stock? Fight with a rival shopper, as per Jamie Lee Curtis in Christmas with the Kranks." Sam Quarton suggests a Christmas horror flick for the anti-festive film lover: The Legend of Hell House.

GWR train service cancelled after two stowaway squirrels 'refused to leave'

ITVx wins our Headline of the Day Award with this bushy tale of life on the Reading to Gatwick line. Thanks to the reader who alerted me to this story 

The story below our winning headline informs us that:

The Great Western Railway service was cancelled at Redhill after the animals got on the train at Gomshall. 

Staff attempted to remove the animals but the squirrels "refused to leave" and the service later returned to Reading. 

A spokesperson for GWR said: "We can confirm that the 0854 Reading to Gatwick was terminated at Redhill after a couple of squirrels boarded the train at Gomshall without tickets, breaching railway byeclaws. 

"We attempted to remove them at Redhill, but one refused to leave and was returned to Reading to bring an end to this nutty tail."

In other rodent news, Cinammon, the escaped Telford capybara, has been located but not recaptured.

The Epsom Riot of 1919

Last summer Epsom & Ewell Borough Council advertised an organised walk:

A walk about the 1919 Epsom riot, the attack on Epsom Police Station and the death of Sergeant Thomas Green. Discover what happened in Epsom during WW1 with its crowded Military Hospitals, camps and large numbers of Canadian soldiers left behind in Woodcote Camp waiting to go home. 

See how events boiled over out of hand during an incident in a local pub, which led to the infamous riot of 1919, the attack on Epsom Police Station and the death of Sergeant Thomas Green. 

The walk begins outside the Rifleman pub in East Street and ends in Ashley Road at the site of the police station.

Serious criminality and public disorder recycled as heritage. I had this in mind to share the story of the Epsom Riot on 1919 with you a while before the current unpleasantness broke out, and now I wonder if they will be organising riot walks around Hartlepool and Sunderland one day.

Wikipedia has a good article on the Epsom riot and a photo of Sergeant Green:

The Canadians were from the nearby Woodcote Park Convalescent Hospital, a former temporary military base that had been converted for use as a convalescent hospital. With the First World War over, discipline at the camp was relaxed. Delays in repatriating Canadian soldiers had resulted in thirteen riots by troops in British camps between November 1918 and June 1919. 

The riot began when two Canadian servicemen were arrested following a disturbance at a local public house. Their comrades marched on the town police station to demand their release. The soldiers ripped up the railings surrounding the station to use as projectiles and clubs. In the ensuing fighting, Private Allan McMaster, a former blacksmith, picked up a metal bar and struck Green on the head. The sergeant died the following day, having never regained consciousness.

Seven men appeared at the Surrey Assizes in July 1919. They were found guilty of rioting, but were acquitted of manslaughter. They were sentenced to one year in prison, but were released after only a few months. Ten years after returning to Canada, McMaster, one of those imprisoned, confessed to the killing. As he had already been found not guilty of manslaughter, he was not returned to the UK.

Those sentences look lenient to modern eyes, but then, despite what we are always told by right-wingers, sentences have been getting longer for decades.

GUEST POST The Lib Dems achieved a wide and remarkably deep success

Alex Folkes looks at the performance of Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens in last week's general election.

The main attack line being levelled at Labour following their success on Thursday is that their majority is broad but shallow. Corbynites point to the larger number of votes the party achieved under the former leader, whilst Tories highlight the lower share of the vote that the new government won.

Both of these are to ignore the key fact that Labour won just about the largest majority it could. And it did so through rigorous targeting. In the last few days of the campaign there were complaints from non-target seats that they were being denied access to the party canvassing software unless they moved wholesale to a designated target seat. 

Such centralised planning might have been excessive - and there were a few seats which were won despite being locked out in this way - but an election campaign is not a democracy. 

To be at its most effective, it needs to be brutal at times. The aim of the Labour campaign was to ensure the biggest number of seats, even if many of them were won by small margins. Inevitably there would be surplus votes piled up in safe seats, but the party tried its best to send activists from these to more marginal areas.

So Labour may have stored up some problems for the 2029 election, but they will (rightly) be happy with the outcome.

What is interesting is the contrast with the Liberal Democrats. Like Labour, the Lib Dems won just about as many seats as they could reasonably think possible. With the exception of Godalming and Ash - where Jeremy Hunt spent both all of his time and a considerable amount of his own money - there was no seat that the party failed to win where they were tipped by at least four of the MRP polls and many others which were much more of a shock.

But, in contrast to Labour’s broad but shallow outcome, the Lib Dems have a wide but remarkably deep success. Their 72 MPs have an average majority of 8267. Of course, this figure masks some seats which were won by just a small amount. But there are only five Lib Dem MPs sitting on majorities of less than 2000. The days of there being ‘no such thing as a safe Lib Dem seat’ are behind us.

That this success was due, in part, to the huge amount of tactical voting that took place is undeniable. But the cushion given to Lib Dem MPs by such votes and a hugely effective central campaign means that, even if many voters return to their ‘natural’ party of choice in the future and turnout improves, most should be able to survive so long as they work their patch well. 

The party won’t have the problems inherent in being a junior partner in government, as they did in 2015, and under Ed Davey they seem better at articulating a policy message that resonates with the public. The test will be whether they are able to use their new Parliamentary strength to further that.

The Greens will feel they had a similar outcome. Their four MPs were elected from the four target seats and all have a majority of 5000 or more (the average being 9,046). In addition, the party came second in a further 42 seats and, whilst many of those second places are quite distant, there is a considerable amount to build on for 2029. 

Crucially for the Greens, in none of their almost 50 held or second place seats are they battling the Lib Dems. If the next election turns out to see a lot more ‘protest’ votes against a still unpopular Tory Party and a Labour government which is perceived as under-achieving, then both parties should be set fair.

Alex Folkes is an international election observer and former campaign manager for the Liberal Democrats and single-issue campaigns.

Those Lib Dem targets for the next general election in full

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Michael Mullaney, who was our candidate in Hinckley and Bosworth on Thursday, has tweeted a list of the Liberal Democrat near misses at this election. They form a handy list of targets for the next election.

The second column gives the number votes we were adrift of the winner, and the third the percentage swing needed to win it next time. It is this latter figure that determines a seat's ranking in the list.

All these seats are held by the Conservatives except Burnley, which is held by Labour.

                                                                         %

Godalming and Ash                         891         0.81

Farnham and Bordon                     1349        1.27

Hampshire East                              1275        1.27

Shropshire South                            1624        1.57

Dorset North                                   1589        1.60

Romsey and Southampton North   2191        2.19

Cotswold North                               3357        3.34

Torridge and Tavistock                    3950        3.89

Burnley                                            3420        4.31

Hamble Valley                                 4802        4.35

Hertfordshire South West                4456        4.62

Salisbury                                          5285        5.27

Buckinghamshire Mid                      5872        5.44

Sevenoaks                                       5440       5.45

Hinckley and Bosworth                    5408       5.66

When I blogged about Gordon Birtwistle, who was our candidate in Burnley having been MP for the town between 2005 and 2010, I wondered about his claim that the contest was between him and Labour, But he turned out to be quite right.

The London Necropolis Railway's station at Waterloo is for sale

The London Necropolis Railway carried the deceased and their mourners from Waterloo to Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.

Its original station at Waterloo was demolished when the number of lines into the mainline station was increased. The second station opened in 1900 and operated until it was damaged by wartime bombinig in 1941.

Its platforms and railway sidings were demolished long ago, but the company's headquarters o the site remain, and this is the building you can bid for.

The company also had two stations at Brookwood - one for Church of England customers and one for Nonconformists. According to Wikipedia, they have had an interesting afterlife:

The site of North station has significantly changed. The ornate mausoleum of Sharif Al-Hussein Ben Ali (d. 1998) stands directly opposite the remains of the platform. The operators of the Shia Islamic section have planted Leylandii along its boundary, which includes the platform of North station. Unless the trees are removed, the remains of the station will ultimately become hidden and destroyed by overgrowth. 

The land surrounding the site of South station and the station's two Anglican chapels was redundant following the closure of the railway. As part of the London Necropolis Act 1956 the LNC obtained parliamentary consent to convert the disused original Anglican chapel into a crematorium, using the newer chapel for funeral services and the station building for coffin storage and as a refreshment room for those attending cremations. Suffering cash flow problems and distracted by a succession of hostile takeover bids, the LNC management never proceeded with the scheme and the buildings fell into disuse. The station building was demolished after being damaged by a fire in 1972, although the platform remained intact.

Since 1982 the site of South station has been owned by the St. Edward Brotherhood, and forms part of a Russian Orthodox monastery. The original Anglican chapel is used as a visitor's centre and living quarters for the monastery, while the larger Anglican chapel built in 1908–09 immediately north of the station is now the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Edward the Martyr, and houses the relics and shrine of Edward the Martyr, king of England from 975 to 978 AD. The site of the former station buildings is now the main monastery building, while the platform itself remains intact and now marks the boundary of the monastic enclosure.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page.

Jeremy Hunt's voters know the Lib Dems are his main challengers but haven't heard of Ed Davey

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News from the Blue Wall. Luke Tryl from More in Common writes in the Guardian about the findings from a focus group of voters in the in the new Godalming and Ash seat, which Jeremy Hunt will be fighting at the next election.

His conclusion?

Our focus group last night suggests the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has his work cut out – not just to bolster vulnerable colleagues but even to win back voters in his own back yard.

And the findings on the Liberal Democrats, the challengers to the Tories in this constituency, are encouraging in a rather backhanded way:

Nor was there any love for his opposite number, with the group saying Keir Starmer wasn’t the man for the moment. 

But that lack of enthusiasm might not matter - the group were well aware that Labour were not the main opposition locally, and many were tempted instead to vote Liberal Democrat. 

Indeed, it was striking that even though fewer than half knew Ed Davey’s name, they still thought there was a good chance the Lib Dems would topple Hunt.

This finding is of a piece with those opinion polls that show the Lib Dems struggling to get into double figures even when the Tories have fallen to below 20 per cent.

Given our plan to fight the next general election as though it were a series of by-elections, some would argue that it does not matter. 

Or they would say that Davey's profile is bound to rise during that campaign. After all, one reason for the brief outbreak of Cleggmania in 2010 was that few voters had noticed him before then.

But I think it does matter. Local elections show that, in areas where the Lib Dems are not active, our core vote is tiny. We are back to being a leaflet-delivering cult.

Davey, because of his own experiences, is passionate about the need to improve social care. And that passion has led to a policy we can shout about. For a Fair Deal, the document we adopted at this autumn's conference, say we will:

Ensure no one has to sell their home to pay for care by introducing free personal care based on the model introduced by the Liberal Democrats in government in Scotland in 2002.

That is a policy that would lift an enormous burden from those who are caring for elderly relatives. As well as all the work and emotional strain of caring, you face a financial lottery.

So if we are convinced that this policy is affordable, let's hear Ed talk about it. I think the voters would take notice.

Mirror publishes list of 14 seats where Labour supporters can help defeat the Tories by voting Lib Dem

From today's Mirror:

The Compass campaign group has published details of 14 constituencies where the Lib Dems are best placed to topple the Conservatives - and urged Labour supporters to switch allegiance

Tactical voting campaigners have revealed how Labour supporters switching their loyalty in 14 'unwinnable' seats could help oust the Tories.

So the Mirror isn't yet backing such tactical voting, just putting the idea out there, you understand.

The Mirror is remembered as having influenced Labour supporters to vote tactically in the 1997 general election, but its readership was higher then and there were fewer sources of information and 'alternative facts'. 

Still it's good to see the paper is making moves in that direction again, though I can't find anything about this on the Compass website.

But you want to know the list of 14 seats, don't you?

• Carshalton and Wallington
• Cheadle
• Cheltenham
• Esher and Walton
• Guildford
• Hazel Grove
• Lewes
• St Ives
• South Cambridgeshire
• Sutton and Cheam
• Wimbledon
• Winchester
• Woking
• Wokingham

Surrey Conservatives have the blue wall blues

The Observer sent its policy editor - Michael Savage - to Darkest Surrey and discovered that the natives are no longer friendly to the Conservatives:

The fortress of Godalming is being besieged. The nearby village greens of Bramley and Brook are in the crosshairs. The gravelled drives of Hascombe and Chiddingfold are no longer safe. Suddenly, no Tory stronghold in the area is deemed out of bounds.

"If you didn’t know any of the politics, you would probably assume this was a hardcore Tory place," concedes Paul Follows, the beaming Liberal Democrat candidate, as he takes his latest tour of Godalming high street. "But almost all of these really clichéd Conservative places have not been so Conservative for a little while."

And some Conservatives fear the worst:

The talk among some Tories in parliament has become apocalyptic. "I’m more worried about the blue wall than anything," one former cabinet minister said in the Observer recently. 

"I really think there’s a chance that what happened to Labour in Scotland in 2015 could happen to us in the blue wall at the next election. What are we offering these voters now?"

Guardian finds Surrey voters unrepentant for backing the Lib Dems

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Good news from Surrey. A focus group convened for the Guardian by UK More in Common suggests that:

Blue wall Conservative voters in Surrey are far from impressed with the government’s obsession with culture wars, and remain unrepentant for tactically backing the Liberal Democrats at last week’s local elections.

The prime minister still looks "out of his depth", uninspiring and unable to set out a straightforward vision six months in the job, according to a panel of Surrey residents who backed the Conservatives at the 2019 election. They believe "the country needs change now", and the Tories need some time in opposition to sort themselves out.

Though we should note the observation that the group

appeared to want to vote for the Conservatives again, but thought the party had "made fools of themselves despite having so many chances" to restart.

This morning Luke Tryl from More in Common tweeted a thread of findings from the group, including one that did not make the Guardian.

And they thought badly of the last coalition "When we had the coalition, oh what's his face? I can't remember his name now. Mr. Facebook, he was walking around puffed out chest and like, oh let's do this with these little tiny wins and was just, I found it just irritating"

— Luke Tryl (@LukeTryl) May 13, 2023