Category Archives: Liberal Democrats

Labour to use tactic that finished off Truss to force Tories into sewage vote

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If Tory MPs vote down opposition day motion, Labour can accuse them of thwarting attempts to clean up rivers, beaches and chalk streams

Labour is planing to use the same Commons procedure that helped remove Liz Truss from Downing Street to force Conservative MPs into a politically embarrassing vote about whether to toughen up rules on sewage discharges.

The party plans to use its regular opposition day motion on Tuesday to push a binding motion, which would oblige the government to set aside Commons time next week for a debate and vote on a Labour bill to impose tougher penalties for sewage spills.

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Tory ‘neglect’ blamed for 3.6m abandoned calls to NHS 111 in England

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Callers wait so long that nearly one in five hang up, finds Liberal Democrat commissioned analysis

Patients contacting NHS 111 in England are having to wait so long for medical help that they are abandoning millions of calls, with 3.6m ditched in the past 12 months, official figures reveal.

The national helpline service is supposed to make it quicker and easier for patients to get the right advice or treatment they need, either for their physical or mental health. It is billed as being open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

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England’s top beaches faced 8,500 hours of sewage dumping last year, study says

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Many blue flag beaches were covered in waste, and Brighton was among the worst-hit, Lib Dem report shows

England’s most celebrated beaches faced 8,500 hours of sewage dumping last year, new figures show.

Many beaches with blue flag status– an international mark of recognition that a beach is deemed safe and has good water quality – were found to have been covered in waste over the last 12 months.

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Lord Sainsbury returns to the Labour fold with £2m donation

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The former chair of the supermarket chain was a big donor to Blair and Brown but cut off his support under Corbyn

Keir Starmer’s election war chest has been given an extraordinary boost after one of the biggest New Labour-era donors returned to the party fold with a £2m donation, the Observer can reveal.

David Sainsbury, who was consistently one of the largest donors under the last Labour government before withdrawing his support, has now renewed his backing with his first multimillion-pound donation since 2016.

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Ambulance waiting times in England three times longer in some rural areas

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Disparity between rural and urban areas uncovered by Lib Dem FoI requests to 10 ambulance trusts

Patients in some rural areas wait almost three times longer for emergency ambulances than those in towns and cities, while people with potential heart attacks or strokes now face a one hour 40-minute average wait in one area, statistics have shown.

The disparities were uncovered by freedom of information requests by the Liberal Democrats to England’s 10 ambulance trusts, which in turn covered waiting times for 227 areas across the country.

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Lib Dems get ready for possible byelection if Michael Gove quits

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Party officials prepare for contest as speculation grows former levelling up minister is set to step down

The Liberal Democrats are rushing through plans to confirm a candidate for Michael Gove’s Surrey seat amid speculation that the former levelling up secretary is considering quitting parliament, which would spark a byelection.

The party’s application window for selection for the seat, held by Gove since 2005, closes on Wednesday evening and the selection process is expected to take two weeks. Lib Dem officials are planning for a possibly imminent campaign in which the party would fight on issues including the state of local hospitals and plans to drill for gas locally.

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Truss and Sunak accused of ‘living in parallel universe’ on bills crisis – UK politics live

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Latest updates: Lib Dem leader says Tory leadership hopefuls have no plan to help millions of families struggling with price rises

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a leading poverty charity, says, in the light of the latest forecast about how energy bills will rise (see 10.54am), the government needs to at least double the help already provided to help people through the cost of living crisis. This is from Peter Matejic, its chief analyst.

The latest projections of annual energy bills exceeding £4,200 from January is the latest in a series of terrifying warnings over the past week, from the Bank of England and others. Families on low incomes cannot afford these eye watering sums and as a nation we can’t afford to ignore an impending disaster.

Both candidates to be prime minister must now recognise the extraordinarily fast-changing situation and act to protect the hardest hit from the coming emergency.

Unite said the 4% increase for staff in middle pay bands announced by the government last month is a “massive pay cut” because of soaring inflation.

The union will now consult with its 100,000 health members across the NHS in both England and Wales on whether they accept the “imposed deal” or want to challenge it through industrial action, which could mean strikes this winter.

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Ed Davey calls for halt to energy price cap increase to avoid ‘catastrophe’

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Exclusive: Lib Dem leader says new PM should let government pay £36bn cost in new ‘energy furlough scheme’

Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak should cancel the £1,400 energy price cap increase in October in a new “energy furlough scheme” and government should absorb the £36bn cost of the hike, the leader of the Liberal Democrats has said.

Ed Davey said neither candidate appeared to have any policies that grasped the magnitude of what could happen this autumn. “We are facing a catastrophe this winter, a drop in living standards unlike anything we have seen in my lifetime,” he said.

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Electoral reform group seeks £1m to back MPs who can beat Tories

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Win as One hopes to raise money to support candidates from progressive parties who are in favour of change

A grassroots campaign is hoping to raise £1m to bring more supporters of electoral reform to the Commons at the next general election.

The group, called Win as One, will work with candidates from progressive parties who are well-placed to beat the Tories and are in support of proportional representation (PR).

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Boris Johnson admits byelection defeats ‘not brilliant’ as ex-Tory leader calls for resignation – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed, you can find our latest UK political coverage here

This is from James Johnson, a Tory pollster (who worked for Theresa May in No 10) whose firm JL Partners carried out polling in Wakefield, on who ought to be taking the blame for the byelection defeats.

PM Media has just snapped this.

Boris Johnson has said he will “listen” to voters but will “keep going” after the Tories suffered a double by-election defeat.

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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 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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Boris Johnson faces rural fury over post-Brexit food strategy

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Anger grows before West Country byelection as farmers say they will be left poorer and unable to compete with foreign producers

Boris Johnson’s hopes of surviving as prime minister have been dealt a serious blow after farmers and environmentalists condemned his government’s post-Brexit food strategy as a disaster for people in the countryside – with less than two weeks to go before a key rural byelection.

In an interview with the Observer, the president of the National Farmers Union, Minette Batters, said ambitious proposals to help farmers increase food production, first put forward last year by the government’s food tsar, Henry Dimbleby, had been “stripped to the bone” in a new policy document, and meant farmers would not be able to produce affordable food.

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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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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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Conservatives brace for losses as votes counted in local elections

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Labour and Lib Dem sources say turnout appears to be low in possible sign of Tory voters staying away

The Conservatives are braced for a nerve-shredding 24 hours after voting closed in local elections across the UK, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats expecting to make gains.

Taking place against the backdrop of the cost of living crisis, the first nationwide polls since Partygate will be widely read as a test of whether Boris Johnson has become an electoral liability.

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Boris Johnson is an asset in the local elections – but on rival parties’ leaflets

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The prime minister fails to feature on a number of Tory flyers for the 5 May polls, but his opponents are putting him front and centre

After his ratings plunged in the wake of “partygate” and as his government faces demands to act over the cost of living, it may be a surprise to discover that Boris Johnson’s face can be found on leaflets for the forthcoming local elections. Unfortunately for the prime minister, it is not his own party’s literature that features his image.

The Observer has seen Conservative leaflets circulated in London, the Midlands and the north of England in recent weeks. None of them shows Johnson, once regarded as the Tory politician able to reach voters that no one else in his party could.

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PM facing calls to ensure all evidence is published in No 10 parties inquiry

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Labour and Lib Dems call for full transparency as it emerges Sue Gray’s report may just summarise findings

Boris Johnson is facing calls to ensure all evidence on the Downing Street parties is published with the Sue Gray inquiry, as it emerged the pivotal report is likely to amount to a concise summary of findings.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats called on Friday for the report to be published along with its accompanying evidence – including emails and witness accounts – to give full transparency around more than 15 alleged parties under investigation by Gray, a senior civil servant.

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