Author Archives: Caron Lindsay
Heartbreak
I’m feeling pretty heartbroken at the moment. Like Charles Kennedy, I’m a highlander, a Scot, a Brit and a European, with the first and the last most important. Now my rights as a European citizen (though I will be one no matter what) and a British citizen are under threat.
As I write, the Labour Party, the so-called opposition, is about to crumble and let the Government have its way on the Bill that will pave the way for our exit from the European Union. It beggars belief that the Government has been able to get this through without any serious opposition. It’s the greatest issue of our time, and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party might as well have been part of the most right-wing, isolationist, dangerous government we have had in my lifetime.
I’ve been fairly sure that the country has been headed to hell in a handcart before. There was the 80s, for a start, when Thatcher destroyed the industrial fabric of our country and championed selfishness over community. You thought things could only get better with a Blair Government but he ended up ruining the country’s standing with the folly of Iraq.
I thought I had felt heartbreak in 2011 when I saw so many of my friends lose in the Holyrood election, when we lost our MEPs and the turmoil that followed, in 2015 when the General Election result was the worst we could have anticipated. None of that, tough that it was, comes close to my sadness and fear for the future. I feel like we’re throwing away our safety net in so many ways. What will be left of workers’ rights and human rights in ten years’ time?
Labour crumbles into farce but Lib Dems stand firm in opposition to Article 50 Bill
It’s time to report the Labour Party to Advertising Standards or something. They certainly shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves an opposition after they have spectacularly failed to provide any on the most crucial issue of our time.
The amazing Lib Dem Press Office has been providing some rather entertaining commentary as the country falls apart.
While they are on the exploratory, fact finding mission to god knows where, we will actually serve the function of being an opposition. https://t.co/QkavYYfkJS
— Lib Dem Press Office (@LibDemPress) March 13, 2017
.@UKLabour decide that far from being content with not being fit for government, they have to prove they are not fit for opposition either.
— Lib Dem Press Office (@LibDemPress) March 13, 2017
Rennie and Farron react to Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement on the second independence referendum
It looks like either a second referendum on Scottish Independence in 5 years is on its way. Either that or an indefinite stalemate between the Tory Government in London (who must give permission for the vote) and Nicola Sturgeon’s nationalist government in Edinburgh.
This was inevitable ever since the Brexit vote. That a large majority of Scots voted to remain in the EU was always going to lead us to this place. Nicola Sturgeon built a very big tent in the hours after the result was declared but she and her ministers spent the rest of the Summer dismantling it piece by piece. They talked about independence incessantly. Now, they’re a nationalist government. They are not going to give up on independence because they lost a vote any more than I’m going to give up on the EU.
You have to govern for all of your people, though and, at the moment, there is no sign that anything like a majority of the Scottish people want an independence referendum. For many, relationships from the division and polarisation of the last one are only just healing over.
Willie Rennie and Tim Farron have both been reacting to today’s announcement. Willie said:
Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #472
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 472nd weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (5 – 11 March, 2017), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
Rennie’s independence referendum risk: why it may well be a good thing
There’s a phrase that goes “Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.” I have sometimes said to Willie Rennie that I think he’s being too safe and that he needs to take more risks. He’s taken a pretty big one this morning by saying in no uncertain terms that Liberal Democrat MPs at Westminster will vote against a Section 3o order, the mechanism that would allow the SNP to hold another Scottish independence referendum. Certainly, the Tories will no longer be able to say, as they have been falsely alleging for the past year or so, that we have gone soft on independence. Showing Scots that they have a progressive pro UK party prepared to stick by its word is a good thing.
So why is this a risk? Well, there’s nothing more likely to get Scottish backs up than being told by Westminster that they can’t do something. If that actually happened, it might drive people to support having another referendum, even if they didn’t want to leave the UK. At the moment, though, every poll suggests an increasing number of Scots who don’t want to go through the divisive trauma of 2014 all over again. Willie’s announcement is very much in keeping with both our principles and public opinion. That’s actually a point that the didn’t make in his Sunday Politics Scotland interview, but worth pointing out.
Our party is and always has been a pro UK and pro EU party. We are against leaving the UK for all the same reasons that we are against leaving the EU – we believe in partnership and collaboration and see nationalism and isolationism as a recipe for disaster. We explicitly ruled out supporting another referendum on independence in our Holyrood manifesto last year and there is no way we could go back on that. Reneging on key manifesto promises has not gone so well for us before. It’s therefore entirely logical and consistent that we would oppose independence at every opportunity to do so.
Today at Scottish Conference -“Turning back the tide of division”
Scottish Liberal Democrats gather in Perth today for our Spring Conference. Some of us gathered last night and enjoyed a delicious meal in a French restaurant. Sorry if I breathe garlic fumes on everybody I meet today.
We meet just seven weeks before every council seat in Scotland is up for election. A better than expected result in last year’s Holyrood elections, with solid parliamentary work on mental health, education and justice since has heartened the party but the national opinion polls are yet to show any significant movement in our favour. The political environment up here is very different from south of the border where we have the advantage of being the only party standing up against the Tory and Labour compete with each other to get to the Brexit cliff first.
Up here, the SNP are making a great deal out of the fact that Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain. Of course they are going to use it to call for independence although even a former nationalist leader said this week that they were being forced into it at the worst possible time.
Yet another Lib Dem GAIN from the Conservatives
Good news – coming to you a little later than usual due to me drinking wine with my friends in the bar at the Scottish Conference hotel – from Oxfordshire.
Hailey, Minster Lovell & Leafield (W. Oxfordshire):
LD: 46.7% (+34.0)
CON: 41.5% (+3.8)
LAB: 5.8% (-4.5)
GRN: 3.1% (-2.8)
UKIP: 2.9% (+2.9)— Britain Elects (@britainelects) March 9, 2017
Well done to Kieran Mullins and his team for that amazing swing.
The rest of the by-elections were a clean sweep for the Tories – but there were some healthy vote share increases for us.
Red Horse (Stratford on Avon) result:
CON: 53.4% (-9.0)
LDEM: 29.8% (+20.3)
UKIP: 10.3% (-4.8)
GRN: 6.5% (+6.5)
No Labour as previous.— Britain Elects (@britainelects) March 9, 2017
Philip Vial was our candidate here.
Joanna Burrows fought the Exton Ward in Rutland:
Exton (Rutland) result:
CON: 59.5% (+6.5)
LDEM: 30.8% (+11.6)
UKIP: 9.8% (-5.0)
No Ind as previous.— Britain Elects (@britainelects) March 9, 2017
Derwent ward in Derby was a Conservative gain from UKIP so I suspect that tactical voting was in play here, affecting our Simon Ferrigno’s vote.
Real women
One of the things I really wanted to say on this International Women’s Day is that it’s a day to celebrate all women, to think about the various barriers that women face across the world. Women have all sorts of different experiences and it’s important that they are listened to because it’s by understanding what needs to change that we make the world a better place. Quite a simple concept. It’s also, for me, a simple concept that International Women’s Day is for everyone who identifies as a woman. No exceptions.
I say that because Women’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray wrote one of those “I’m not transphobic but” articles in the Sunday Times this week. She questioned the right of transgender women to identify as “real women.” She justified her argument by talking about transgender women saying things she didn’t agree with. One was a vicar who had talked about clothes and the other had said that women should wear high heels and shave their body hair. Apparently they were “playing into the stereotype – a man’s idea of what a woman should be.”
I would suggest that this was nothing to do with being transgender. I’ve heard cis women express similar views. It was only in the last decade of her working life that my mother felt able to wear trousers to work. I might utterly disagree with their opinion, but I’m not going to question anyone’s identity.
Inspiring Lib Dem Women: Jennie Rigg
Jennie Rigg is one of my favourite people on the planet. The former Chair of Calderdale Lib Dems is a plain-speaking, hilarious Yorkshire woman who has lit up the Lib Dem end of the blogosphere for getting on for a decade. She is one of these people who can express really complicated concepts that tie some up in knots in a way that the reader can really relate to. She comments regularly on here and is very good at explaining the barriers that women and people of colour and other marginalised groups face.
She made a brilliant speech at Conference in the social security debate last year blowing apart the arguments for the maintenance of some sort of sanctions regime.
I really have to think about it when I disagree with her because her instincts are liberal to her core. We have had some fairly robust arguments on these comparatively few issues but can go down the pub for a pint afterwards. Apart from lib demmy stuff, we both share a passion for our doggies, Doctor Who and gin.
Inspiring Lib Dem women: Elaine Bagshaw
Today on International Women’s Day, we are celebrating some fantastic Lib Dem Women.
Remember back in 2015 after that devastating General Election when we all just wanted to hide under our duvets and make the next five years go away? Well, Elaine Bagshaw didn’t have time to do that, because she had to fly the Lib Dem flag in the Tower Hamlets mayoral by-election caused by the disqualification of the previous incumbent.
She made progress in that election and since then she has led her local party from strength to strength. As the candidate for Poplar and Limehouse, she is out there campaigning most days. Her local party membership is over 550 and she is working hard for her community. Late one recent Saturday night, she featured on local Bengali channel NTV talking about the Lib Dem perspective on Brexit and Trump and did such a good job of explaining our position.
Making women’s work visible
As Kirsten pointed out earlier, women do the lion’s share of unpaid caring work.
In Scotland, Engender, an organisation dedicated to advancing the cause of gender equality, is concentrating this International Wonen’s Day and throughout 2017, on that work that women do that often doesn’t get credited or appreciated. Today they have been asking women to tell others about that unrecognised work using the hashtag #MakingWorkVisible. Why not join in? I thought today was going to be a quiet day until I filled in their survey and realised how much of my day was going to be spent looking after the other members, human and canine, of my household,
Here’s a video they originally published a few years ago which shows how women’s work is marginalised:
Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #471
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 471st weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (26 February – 4 March , 2017), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
++++Breaking: Jackie Pearcey will fight Manchester Gorton by-election for the Lib Dems
News from the land of Twitter:
Jackie Pearcey selected as @LibDems candidate for Manchester Gorton
— Cllr. John Leech (@johnleechmcr) March 4, 2017
Jackie is a fabulous candidate. She has 20 years’ experience as a Gorton councillor. She’s brilliant. I first met her in a queue at the Torquay conference in 1993 and I just love her plain-speaking manner and sense of humour. There couldn’t be a better person to fly the Lib Dem flag. She’s in the centre of the photo in between Mamchester mayoral candidate Jane Brophy and the one-man opposition to Labour Cllr John Leech. That man gives Labour in Manchester a million times more trouble than Corbyn’s Labour gives to Theresa May’s Brexit Government.
Two months to go: What will you be doing on polling day?
It’s just two months to go until every seat in Scotland and Wales and the English County Councils are up for election. Also being elected are the metro mayors. Jane Brophy in Manchester, Stephen Williams in West of England, Rod Cantrill in Cambridge, Beverley Nielsen in West Midlands, Chris Foote-Wood in Teeside, Carl Cashman in Liverpool are all flying the Liberal Democrat flag.
Now is a good time to work out what you can do on polling day to help your local campaign team plan their effort. Polling day is incredibly important. Elections can be lost on the day if we …
Why I was furious to get an email from Liz Leffman
Before I even start this, let me just say that Liz Leffman, the Chair of the English Party and our wonderful candidate in the Witney by-election is one of my favourite Liberal Democrats and that none of this is her fault.
She is one of the most constructive and practical people I have come across in the party and I’m delighted that she is leading the English Party on its journey to reform.
However, I got an email from her the other day, sent out by party HQ, that made me furious. Here’s what it said:
Great result for Alliance as majority of Northern Ireland votes against Brexit
The Northern Ireland election results are now in and they show some very encouraging trends for those of us with a liberal outlook. Our sister party, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, won 8 seats and got its highest vote share in 28 years. Although their number of seats stays the same at 8, in an Assembly that is 18 seats smaller, that is a major achievement. It also increased its first preference vote share by over 2%.
Voters also sent a message that they were opposed to Brexit with the biggest losers being the unionist parties, who lost 16 of the 18 seats. The DUP famously gave more than £400,000 to the Leave campaign. The impact of Brexit on Northern Ireland, particularly on the border with the Irish Republic, would be devastating as Nick Clegg wrote recently.
On her Facebook page, Alliance leader Naomi Long summed up a good night for the party:
Friday fun: Tom Brake and Sarah Olney in Twitter video controversy
I don’t think Tom Brake, Sarah Olney or Simone van Beek, the staffer from LDHQ who directed the video, actually meant to amuse Twitter in quite the way that they did with this campaign video for Fairtrade Fortnight.
The message was good, although it may not have had quite the chemistry of the old Gold Blend ads of the 1990s.
For those readers who are too young to remember them, this was a series of twelve ads over six years advertising Gold Blend coffee. The romantic tension between stars Anthony Head and Sharon Maugham built up over time and everyone was on tenterhooks waiting for the final instalment. It made the fuss over Christmas department store ads we see today seem very small.
As a long-time boycotter of Nestle products, I had the pleasure of watching them knowing that I would never give the company a single penny in return for the entertainment.
Anyway, back to Sarah and Tom and the reaction on Twitter. This comparison seemed a little strange:
does anyone know the name of this porn film pic.twitter.com/m4XmEJonPh
— ryan (@ryxnf) March 1, 2017
Lib Dems GAIN a council seat and have a strong hold in Redcar
It’s that time on Thursday night again and I can tell you that we have gained a council seat – this time, on Wells City Council, from the Independent. Congratulations to Rob Ayres and his team.
Liberal Democrats gain St Cuthbert's ward, Wells City Council from Independent. Great work! Full results to follow. pic.twitter.com/3lxZ4yOD2J
— ALDC (@ALDC) March 2, 2017
Wow – a Liberal Democrat on Question Time tonight
Good news. We have a Lib Dem on Question Time tonight.
Completing this week's #bbcqt panel is former Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell pic.twitter.com/MoGWUsLTQS
— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) March 1, 2017
It may actually be worth watching.
Although there is a downside.
Remember when all we had to worry about was Ed Miliband forgetting to mention the deficit?
Remember when Ed Miliband made his last leader’s speech before the 2015 election and he forgot the bit that had the deficit in it? To be honest, it was quite incredible that he managed to memorise an entire speech and deliver it without an autocue. It was just a shame that the bit he missed out was about something so politically important.
At least it was there, though.
Today, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell made a speech ahead of the budget that barely mentioned Brexit or the single market. There is an argument, I suppose, that they don’t need to. I mean, why …
Lib Dems react to Government defeat over #righttostay
Tim Farron and Dick Newby responded quickly to the excellent news that the Lords have done the decent thing and defeats the Government over EU Nationals’ right to stay.
The Government now needs to think again over how it treats the millions of EU citizens living in this country.
Theresa May has been stubbornly determined to use EU citizens in the UK as bargaining chips. Today the Lords have told her this is not acceptable. The Government must now secure the future of the millions who are currently being held in limbo by its drive for a hard Brexit.
The Liberal Democrats will stand up to this government
…
Giving EU nationals the right to stay benefits us all
I’m feeling quite nervous this afternoon. The House of Lords is debating an amendment which would give EU nationals who have made their homes here the right to stay. The Government is expected to be defeated and I hope very much that this will be the case and that we won’t have the disgraceful scenes we saw on Monday when the so called opposition were whipped to reject an amendment on the single market.
For me, this is something very personal – and also a bit selfish. Like virtually everyone else, I have friends who are EU nationals. They live here. This is their home. I don’t want to see them used as bargaining chips. My neighbours are from Poland. I don’t want them to have any worries about whether they will be forced to uproot their lives and disrupt their daughter’s education.
Those things are important, but as many of you will know, my husband was seriously ill at the end of last year. He is making a good recovery thanks to the excellent specialist medical care he received. The surgeon who saved his life and who sped back into the hospital at dead of night when there was a problem to operate again is Italian. He’s the same surgeon, actually, who saved the life of Nicola Sturgeon’s father-in-law. His registrar is from Greece. The nurse who looked after him in ITU so skilfully was also Italian. I want them to have the right to live here unimpeded for two reasons. First of all, it’s the right thing to do. Secondly, I don’t want to lose their skills which make Edinburgh one of the best places for cardio-thoracic surgery in the UK.
Sarah Olney holds first Westminster Hall debate on Heathrow expansion
There’s a lot of firsts when you are a new MP. Your first Early Day Motion (like a House of Commons petition), your first speech, your first question, and your first Westminster Hall debate. These debates, held outside the main chamber, concentrate on one subject and allow an MP to raise an issue directly with the Minister.
It will be of no surprise that Sarah’s first Westminster Hall debate was on the subject of Heathrow expansion and the effects in terms of road congestion and pollution of a bigger airport.
You can read the full debate – including the Deputy Speaker’s rebukes to both Sarah and a colleague for breaking the rules and a fairly patronising response from the Minister – here. Below is Sarah’s speech in full.
And she shouldn’t worry about a minor rebuke from the Speaker. Others have done worse and survived. Willie Rennie forgot to turn his phone off before one debate in 2007 and got a right telling off when one of his staff (not me) rang him during a Westminster Hall debate.
This is what Sarah said yesterday:
£1 million donation for Lib Dems helps party oppose Brexit
As a member of the Party’s Federal Board and Federal Finance and Resources Committee, I knew that the party were to receive a £1 million donation. We were not told who had donated it. We were told that we would only find out along with everyone else when it was published by the Electoral Commission – which it will be on Thursday. However, the FT has the inside track and has this story today:
The donation from Greg Nasmyth, whose family made its fortune from Argus Media, the energy information business, will be reported on Thursday when Electoral Commission figures are published. It comes as the Lib Dems gain momentum as an anti-Brexit party, committed to advocating a referendum on the terms of Britain’s departure from the EU. Mr Nasmyth is understood to have been motivated by the party’s position on the EU and also on green issues. He agreed the donation in July, soon after the Brexit vote. It was finally made in October in the run-up to the December by-election in Richmond Park, where the Lib Dem candidate ousted the Brexit-backing millionaire Zac Goldsmith.
Securing this donation is an excellent achievement by the Fundraising team at party HQ. They will need to bring in substantially more than this very generous donation if the party is to properly oppose Brexit. Labour are clearly not interested in standing in the Government’s way. The Liberal Democrats are unique in British politics – a UK wide party which opposes brexit in general and Theresa May’s Brexit Max in particular with every fibre of its being. We have a great message and talented and innovative campaigners. What we need are the resources to deliver that message to the people on an unprecedented scale for us. That is the challenge for party Treasurer Mike German and the fundraising team at HQ.
Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #470
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 470th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (19-25 February, 2017), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
Lib Dem Lords vs the Article 50 Bill: Dick Taverne: Dictatorships don’t allow people to change their mind
The Lib Dem Lords have made some cracking contributions to the debate on the Article 50 Bill. Ahead of its next Lords stages, we’re bringing you all the Lib Dem contributions over the course of this weekend. That’s no mean feat. There were 32 of them and cover more than 30,000 words. You are not expected to read every single one of them as they appear. Nobody’s going to be testing you or anything. However, they will be there to refer to in the future.
Our Lords excelled themselves. Their contributions were thoughtful, individual, well-researched and wide-ranging and it’s right that we present them in full on this site to help the historian of the future.
Dick Taverne looked at the nature of democracy and concluded that the people must be allowed to change their mind. He also spoke about parliamentarians having a duty to speak out against the country taking a disastrous course of action.
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Low, who is not in his place at the moment, I want to talk about democracy. I never thought that, one day, speaker after speaker in a Commons debate, on an issue of immense significance for Britain’s future, would announce that, although they believed that Brexit would gravely damage our national interests, they would nevertheless vote to leave because the will of the people must be obeyed. They did not say, “Of course, we have to take the decision of the people very seriously, but in the end we have to make up our own minds”; they declared, in effect, that they were not in Parliament to exercise their own judgment but were delegates who had to vote the ticket of populist correctness.
Out goes the tradition of parliamentary democracy, with its checks and balances; out go Locke, John Stuart Mill and others, who created liberal democracy, which has been much admired; and out goes Edmund Burke, who argued that MPs were representatives, not delegates. The doctrine of Rousseau now rules in Westminster, that the will of the people must always prevail, a doctrine much admired by autocrats ever since the days of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. With great respect to my noble friend Lord Ashdown, the idea that the will of the people equals democracy or the national interest is a fallacy. Before the Second World War, Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin all commanded overwhelming public support and represented the will of the people. That hardly made them democrats or left their countries better off. Today Putin and Erdogan are among the most popular populists. They boast about their majority support. Are they democrats, even though they suppress dissent and trample on the rule of law?
Lib Dem Lords vs Article 50 Bill: Dick Newby: Government plans ” horrifying mixture of pious aspiration and complacent illusion”
The Lib Dem Lords have made some cracking contributions to the debate on the Article 50 Bill. Ahead of its next Lords stages, we’re reminding you of some of the best over the course of this weekend.
Their contributions were thoughtful, individual, well-researched and wide-ranging – unlike the stream of Tories who got up to repeat what seemed to have been a script handed down from the Whips which basically said “The Lib Dems said they wanted an in-out referendum and now they aren’t accepting the result. Na na na na na.”
We kick off with Leader Dick Newby’s cracking speech. He addressed the issue of …
Stoke and Copeland results show how far Lib Dems have come in two years
If the Stoke and Copeland by-elections had happened at any point in the last Parliament, the Liberal Democrats would have been squeezed until our pips squeaked. We’d certainly have lost our deposit as we did in both seats in the 2015 General Election in both seats.
The results showed how far we have come. Our vote more than doubled in both seats and we did well to avoid a squeeze into oblivion. In Copeland we pushed UKIP into fourth as that party’s voters clearly felt comfortable enough voting for Theresa May’s Brexit Britain Party.
In Stoke, you have to wonder how much …
Another Thursday another TWO Lib Dem GAINS from the Conservatives
There were only three Council by-elections tonight, all Conservative defences.
The Lib Dems have two new councillors as we gained in Devon and Northamptonshire.
Charterlands (South Hams) result:
LDEM: 46.1% (+46.1)
CON: 39.3% (-25.0)
LAB: 10.7% (+10.7)
GRN: 3.9% (-15.6)
No Ind unlike previous.— Britain Elects (@britainelects) February 23, 2017
A ward we didn’t even stand in last time is now represented by Lib Dem Cllr Elizabeth Huntley.
Just like in Kettering.
Barton (Kettering) result:
LDEM: 57.0% (+57.0)
CON: 29.8% (-19.3)
UKIP: 9.4% (-14.1)
GRN: 3.7% (-3.5)
No Labour unlike previous.— Britain Elects (@britainelects) February 23, 2017
Op-eds
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The government’s £1bn school sports revamp talks a good game on SEND inclusion. So why are disabled children being benched? (Jean-François Burford)
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Don’t slam the brakes on Britain’s EV revolution (Mark Hofman)
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“How will you pay for it?” – The reply I’d love to hear Ed Davey give (Jamie Dalzell)
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The Lib Dems created the triple lock – we should be the ones to set the terms for its end (Adam Shaw)
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We are being held hostage by the Tory voters who have lent us their vote (Theo Rodwell)
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In which my great great grandmother's brother stuffs a ptarmigan
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Liberal Democrat MP suspended from party after arrest
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Joseph Wright of Derby: From the Shadows exhibition comes home
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Replacement?
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Reform inadvertently lose their majority
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The Major Oak is dead and Phil Harding has discovered another ancient site near Stonehenge
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Reform own goals
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