The Conservatives lost two seats to Reform UK in King’s Lynn & West Norfolk and a seat to the Green Party in Reigate and Banstead.
Hospices deserve a government that recognises their value, works with them as genuine partners and ensures that public policy strengthens – rather than weakens – one of our country’s greatest charitable institutions.
Kemi Badenoch is right to keep those who share this warped worldview well away from the Conservative Party. Should they wish to pursue the folly of net zero, Ed Davey’s circus is always looking for new performers.
My perceptions from afar leave me feeling we could do with less performative politics and try and actually get detail and delivery – hard I know for any party not in government, but still possible. The overall subliminal message I got for two weeks is ‘we are saying stuff that to make you feel better’ and I didn’t.
There is a wilful naivety which insists that all illegal small boat people are desperate refugees fleeing warzones. It is matched by successive British governments’ touching faith that France will help them solve the migrant problem.
Successful transition to civilian life at the end of military service helps recruitment, overcomes the perception of being damaged and dumped, and investment pays dividends but we have not really got there yet. But the Ukrainians, in the middle of a brutal war recognise its importance and have outrun us.
The Crewkerne episode is not an argument for weakening the candidate approval process. It is an argument for making it more intelligent, transparent and accountable.
A serious Prime Minister would level with the public that the true unfairness in the current system lies not in asking those with significant housing windfalls to contribute, but in pretending that ever‑rising care costs can be met forever by taxing everyone else.
The Conservatives gained a seat from a residents group in Uttlesford. Reform UK gained a seat from an independent in South Holland. Labour lost a seat to an independent in Bolton.
Sin taxes don’t work; they don’t positively or significantly reduce consumption of goods, they don’t raise government revenue by much, they cause negative industry reform, and they hurt those on lower incomes the most.
The next election will be the first arguably since the 1980s where our security and engagement with the world will be a major mainstream election issue.
Burnham can take the familiar Labour path of higher taxes, higher spending and ever higher levels of dependency on the state. Or he can confront the problem: reform welfare, back businesses and create the conditions for more people to earn a living through work.
The Conservatives can make a crucial difference to their communities in this chapter by actively, positively and constructively engaging with property owners to prevent sales to less sympathetic third parties.
The British public have stood in pubs for so long that it has become an archetypal feature of our social scene. To throw this tradition in the growing pile of fun things banned by government would be a catastrophic assault on British culture.