Category Archives: Local politics

It’s no teddy bear’s picnic: the football mascot showing how local politics works

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Giant teddy bear Bordesley is put in charge of Birmingham city council’s £3bn budget in Stan’s Cafe’s fun new production All Our Money

“It came from a place of … what is the worst idea you could possibly have for a theatre show?” says director James Yarker, as he flicks through a heavily annotated 90-page copy of Birmingham city council’s three-year financial plan.

His latest production, All Our Money, is a 50-minute exploration of the complexities of council budgets, told with the help of 6,000 gold blocks and a football mascot.

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Wednesday briefing: The (un)intended consequences of voter ID

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In today’s newsletter: Why a purported solution to concerns about voter fraud may create a whole set of new problems instead. An electoral systems expert explains how

Good morning. It’s a simple enough proposition: ask people to show photo ID if they want to vote. The government says that a new law coming into effect next year will ensure the integrity of elections, and reinforce public trust in British democracy. But others say the reality is a lot more complicated than that.

The strongest critics of the Elections Act argue that, far from being an attempt to secure the voting system, it is a “shameless voter-suppression bill” – and, given there was only one conviction for voter impersonation at the 2017 election, totally unnecessary in any case.

Health | Researchers have hailed a new era of Alzheimer’s therapies after a clinical trial confirmed that a drug slows cognitive decline in patients with early stages of the disease. Read Ian Sample’s recent feature on why lecanemab could lead to drugs that offer better and better control of Alzheimer’s.

Census | Census results revealing that England is no longer a majority-Christian country have sparked calls for an end to the church’s role in parliament and schools, while Leicester and Birmingham became the first UK cities with “minority majorities”.

Local government | A Tory-led council has admitted a series of disastrous investments caused it to run up an unprecedented deficit of nearly £500m and brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. Thurrock has appealed to the government for an emergency bailout and warned that it will have to push through a drastic programme of cuts.

Channel crossings | A man has been arrested in the UK in connection with the deaths of at least 27 people who drowned while trying to cross the Channel in a dinghy a year ago. Harem Ahmed Abwbaker, 32, is accused of being a member of an organised crime gang behind the disastrous crossing in November 2021.

China | China has sent university students home as part of an attempt to disperse protesters angry at zero-Covid policies, as the country’s top security body called for a crackdown on “hostile forces”. Authorities also announced plans to step up vaccination of older people.

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English councils warn of ‘existential crisis’ caused by funding shortfall

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Local Government Association says any attempt to patch up budgets by raising council tax is doomed to fail

Local authorities have warned they face an “existential crisis” caused by massive funding shortfalls and any attempt by ministers to patch up budgets by allowing increased council tax is doomed to failure.

The multibillion “black hole” in England’s municipal finances – which has pushed a number of councils to the brink of bankruptcy – could not be fixed by local ratepayers alone, who would face unrealistic council tax increases of up to 20%, the Local Government Association (LGA) said.

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Ethics rules for London mayor must be strengthened, review finds

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Boris Johnson may have failed to meet standard of public life when mayor over links to Jennifer Arcuri, GLA finds

Ethics rules for the London mayor must be strengthened as Boris Johnson may have failed to meet the standard expected of public figures over his failure to declare personal links to the US businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri, an inquiry into the affair has found.

An investigation by the Greater London Authority’s oversight committee said Johnson had opened himself up to “a perception of lack of due process and favouritism” over Arcuri’s inclusion on trade missions in an unofficial capacity.

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York and North Yorkshire to get mayor under £540m devolution deal

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Elected leader would take office in 2024 alongside return of powers from Westminster as part of levelling-up agenda

York and North Yorkshire are to elect a mayor and receive £540m of government investment over 30 years in a landmark devolution deal to be signed on Monday.

The agreement will create a new combined authority across the region led by a directly elected mayor, who will have the power to spend the money on local priorities such as transport, education and housing.

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Slough could raise council tax by 20% and be forced to sell off thousands of assets

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Local government minister describes scale of financial challenge as ‘unprecedented’

A bankrupt local authority could have to raise council tax by 20% a year and will be forced to sell off thousands of homes and other assets under “unprecedented” plans imposed on it after it ran up catastrophic debts amid overspending running into hundreds of millions of pounds.

The scale of the financial and management chaos at Labour-run Slough council is revealed in a stark report by a team of government commissioners sent in to run the authority after it declared effective bankruptcy a year ago.

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Boris Johnson insists he will keep going despite byelection defeats

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Prime minister promises to listen to voters and says he will take responsibility for results

Boris Johnson has promised to keep going in the face of pressure over his leadership following a double byelection defeat and the resignation of a cabinet minister.

The prime minister said on Friday that losing the former Tory stronghold of Tiverton and Honiton to the Liberal Democrats as well as surrendering Wakefield to Labour was tough, but insisted he would listen to voters.

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Tories lose two key byelections on same night in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton

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Labour takes Wakefield and Lib Dems snatch Tiverton and Honiton, piling pressure on Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson has faced a double hammer blow to his authority after the Conservatives lost the Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton byelections on the same night, prompting the party co-chair Oliver Dowden to resign.

Labour took Wakefield, while the Liberal Democrats overturned a 24,000-plus majority to snatch Tiverton and Honiton.

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Boris Johnson’s future in the frame as polls close in byelections

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Loss of Wakefield, and Tiverton and Honiton could push backbench Tories towards restarting efforts to oust PM

Voting has closed for two crucial byelections, in Wakefield and in Tiverton and Honiton, the results of which could play a pivotal role in Boris Johnson’s political future.

Defeat in both of what were previously Tory-held seats could reignite a challenge to the prime minister from disgruntled Conservative MPs, particularly if the Liberal Democrats overturn a 24,000-plus majority in Tiverton and Honiton.

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Boris Johnson visits Rwanda as voting gets under way in crucial byelections – UK politics live

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Latest updates: PM in Kigali amid heavy criticism of deportation policy to east African country; ballots open in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton

Boris Johnson visited the Rwandan president this morning while voting got under way in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton where the Conservatives face two vital byelections.

The prime minister is in Kigali where he visited Paul Kagame at his office following heavy criticism about his deportation policy to the east African country.

They then went next door to the president’s meeting room where they sat in white armchairs in front of a Union flag and a Rwandan flag.

Mr Johnson said: “How are you? Very good to see you. What an exciting time to be here in Rwanda. Congratulations on taking over as chair of office. This will be absolutely superb.”

The byelections were called after the respective MPs resigned in disgrace. Imran Ahmad Khan stepped down in Wakefield having been convicted of sexually assaulting a teenage boy, while Neil Parish quit in Tiverton and Honiton after watching pornography in the Commons.

The West Yorkshire seat had been safely Labour before Khan took it for the Conservatives in 2019, and Labour is the clear favourite to win on Thursday. The Devon constituency, in contrast, is seen as neck-and-neck between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, despite the seat in its various forms having been strongly Tory for more than a century.

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‘Boris Johnson thinks he’s honest’: Devon candidate declines to say if PM trustworthy

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Helen Hurford, Tory candidate in Tiverton and Honiton, blames media for stopping public from moving on from Partygate

The Conservative candidate in Tiverton and Honiton has blamed the media for preventing the public from “moving on” from Partygate and twice declined to say that Boris Johnson was honest.

In an interview with the Guardian, Helen Hurford acknowledged the party faced a very tight battle to retain the previously ultra-safe seat and criticised what she called the media’s “persistent regurgitating of Partygate”. Asked if she believed Boris Johnson was fundamentally honest, Hurford twice refused to say.

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New Commons partygate inquiry poised to derail Tory conference

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Privileges committee looks set to report in October, when Boris Johnson will be aiming to win back members’ trust

A House of Commons inquiry over whether Boris Johnson misled MPs over Partygate is on course to coincide with a Tory party conference already seen as crucial in resetting his leadership.

The prime minister appeared to have survived any immediate threat to his leadership in the wake of last week’s Sue Gray report on Downing Street parties, which revealed damning details of rule-breaking, drunkenness and abuse of No 10 staff during Covid lockdowns.

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Scottish Labour seizes Edinburgh council with Lib Dem and Tory help

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Labour installed as minority administration in capital with Lib Dem and Tory help, to the outrage of SNP

The Scottish National party has failed to take all Scotland’s largest cities after Labour won control of Edinburgh with Liberal Democrat and Tory help.

The SNP had hoped to retain power in the Scottish capital after winning the most seats and brokering a coalition deal with the Scottish Greens which left them three seats short of overall control.

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Sinn Féin becomes largest party in Northern Ireland assembly – as it happened

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With Sinn Féin set to become the biggest party at Stormont for the first time, O’Neill says the results mark a ‘new era’ for ‘our politics and for our people’

The elections to the Northern Ireland assembly are quite different to most UK elections. Members of the assembly are elected to 18 multi-member constituencies by single transferable vote.

Each constituency has five representatives, totalling 90 overall. Voters assign preferences to candidates on a ballot slip. If a candidate gets enough first-preference votes, they win a seat, and if not, second and then third preferences – and so on – are counted until all seats are filled.

Because of this, multiple counts are needed in each constituency, which means results can take a while to compile. It is possible for the first count not to result in the award of a seat. Another consequence is that it is not clear whether a party has increased or decreased its total seats in a constituency or overall, until all seats have been awarded.

By the terms of the Good Friday agreement the government of Northern Ireland is shared between the two main communities: nationalists, who favour closer ties with the Republic of Ireland, and unionists, for whom Northern Ireland’s position in the UK is more important. The largest party in the assembly appoints the first minister, and the largest party from the other community appoints the deputy first minister.

Some parties with cross-community support or whose supporters do not identify strongly with either community think this arrangement perpetuates divisions, but in practice since 1998 the largest party has always been from the unionist community and the second-largest from the nationalist.

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Minister urges Tory MPs not to act against Boris Johnson after election results

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Nadhim Zahawi calls for party unity as colleagues speak out, and insists the prime minister is ‘a man of integrity’

A cabinet minister has urged Tory MPs not to act against Boris Johnson after the party’s bruising local election results, as a critic of the prime minister said questions over his leadership “had to be brought to a head”.

After the Conservatives lost almost 500 seats and the control of 11 councils, the education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, called on Saturday for party unity, arguing that Johnson remained a vote-winner.

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Sinn Féin celebrates victory but DUP warns over Northern Ireland protocol

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DUP will refuse to join new administration until UK government addresses post-Brexit trade border deal

Sinn Féin was celebrating a historic victory in the Stormont assembly election on Saturday despite warnings from the Democratic Unionist party that it would block the formation of a new power-sharing executive until the Northern Ireland protocol was changed.

As counting resumed ahead of the allocation of final seats, it was clear that Sinn Féin, with 29% first preference votes, had overtaken the DUP, which won 21.3%. It meant the all-Ireland republican party would be entitled to nominate its deputy leader, Michelle O’Neill, as the Northern Ireland’s first nationalist first minister.

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Michelle O’Neill: centre stage for Sinn Féin’s prospective first minister

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After leading party to victory in Stormont, former Dungannon mayor is set to make history

In May 1993, as the IRA edged towards the end of its armed campaign, Michelle O’Neill was beginning her own struggle. She was a 16-year-old working-class schoolgirl from Clonoe, a small village in County Tyrone, with a newborn baby.

The road ahead looked rocky. She had not finished school and perhaps never would, because that was the fate of many unmarried teenage mothers in Northern Ireland. Some teachers at her Catholic grammar school were not supportive.

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Labour takes second place in Scottish elections as Tory vote plummets

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Party becomes closest challenger to SNP after gains including West Dunbartonshire and near-upset in Glasgow

Scottish Labour has become the closest challenger to Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP after the Scottish Conservatives plunged to their worst electoral result in a decade.

Labour enjoyed an unexpected win in West Dunbartonshire, taking overall control of the council, and won a swathe of seats elsewhere as it took the second largest share of the vote overall.

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Local elections 2022: Tories lose hundreds of seats to Labour and Lib Dems; Sinn Féin set to become largest party in NI elections – live

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PM insists ‘mixed’ results also included some ‘remarkable gains’ for Conservatives; Labour, Lib Dems and Greens celebrate key wins

One of the trickiest contests for Labour is in Sunderland, where it risks losing control of the council for the first time since it was founded in 1974, says the Guardian’s North Of England correspondent Josh Halliday.

Labour has a majority of only six councillors on the 75-seat authority, meaning it could easily fall into no overall control when ballots are counted.

There are enough clues on the doorstep and judging by the scale of the postal vote, that’s gone extremely well and we’re getting a big turnout. That said, neither party can be overly confident about which way many seats will go.

Partygate doesn’t come up as much as you’d think and for those who have brought it up they’ve said things like ‘You’re all as bad as each other’ or ‘that’s politics’.

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Elections 2022: live council results for England, Scotland and Wales

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As the final votes are counted, heavy Conservative losses are tempered by a mixed picture for Labour while Lib Dems and the Greens perform well. The SNP continues to dominate in Scotland and Plaid Cymru gain seats in their heartlands and beyond

Local elections: live coverage
Northern Ireland election: live results

On 5 May all councils in Scotland and Wales held elections for all of their councillors. In England, the picture is more complex. Many parts of England held no election at all. Others held elections for a third of seats as part of a four-yearly cycle in which a third of lower-tier seats are elected each year, with the upper-tier being chosen in the fourth year. In other areas there is a “unitary” council, being elected in its entirety.

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