As I noted in this morning's video, we had to record before we knew the true scale of Reform's gains in the local council elections in England yesterday. We had no choice. These videos take time to make and edit, especially as we also aim to produce a transcript that is accurate, unlike those that YouTube makes if you opt for their version of subtitling.
As a consequence, as the day went on, I began to wonder whether I had understated my gloom, because Reform's victories in this election have been on a quite astonishing scale.
Some of the swings almost defied logic. What happened in Durham was extraordinary. A Labour council for more than a century, it gained just 4.1% of the vote this time, with Reform taking 66%.
In Staffordshire, reform got 79% of the vote.
Reform now controls ten councils. The Tories and Labour lost all those they had controlled.
Contrary to my expectations when I made the video, the Greens and Liberal Democrats did make gains, but they were not that significant.
In contrast, the wipe out of the Conservatives makes it hard to see how that party can recover from this in decades, or maybe ever. In that sense, I got the video entirely right.
And, the rejection of Labour, although in areas where it was never strong, was also staggering. This was not the normal rejection of a party soon after securing office. There is something very clearly much deeper than this in the voter rejection of Labour at local authority level.
So, what to make of these results?
The first thing is to say is that I do wonder how long it will be before Reform implodes. Everything else that Nigel Farage has created has done so to date.
UKIP failed because Farage could not cope in the end. He could not stand his party, and they could not stand him.
The same has to be said of the Brexit Party. It, too, was a failure.
Should this time be different? There is a very good chance that it will not be. Just like UKIP and the Brexit Party, Reform is a one-man party that appears to be driven by prejudice, hate and diatribe, in all of which actual policy appears to be absent.
What happens when Farage does, once more, buckle under the pressure of having to be accountable?
And what also happens when people with nothing more than hate in common fall out with each other, as is very likely? The parliamentary party already has, after all.
In addition, what are these Reform councillors, now facing the massive obligation that running a local authority imposes, to actually do? Migration is not, after all, an issue over which they have any control, and they will not be able to refuse to deal with its consequences. The law will not allow that.
So, will they instead attempt to cut local authority expenditure when in the majority of cases, services have already been pruned to a legally permitted minimum level, or that expenditure represents commitments on past costs, such as interest in borrowing, that they will have absolutely no control over?
Will they, despite that, try to do a Musk?
Will they cut services for vulnerable adults, education and child social care (which will form the majority of their budget) without consideration for the consequences?
Will they close all libraries, parks, sports facilities, sports grounds and other services, making it clear that Reform has no interest in servicing the communities that voted for it?
Or will they, when they are responsible for them, rapidly reduce other services, even if cutting services such as public health, education, local road repairs, and other things is bound to cause considerable anxiety in their communities?
Not one new Reform councillor probably has a clue how to answer these questions as yet. I suspect that the majority of them never thought that they would win, let alone that they might now have the responsibility for actually delivering policy rather than ranting from the sidelines while singing the praises of their great leader.
I should not wish chaos, mismanagement, poor governance, and disruption of local government services on any part of this country. But, I think it is likely that these things will happen if Reform tries to carry through on those things that have been talked about. That will happen because of the likely incompetence of those councillors who have been elected, most of whom will have absolutely no experience of what is involved with the task that they are now being asked to undertake.
But it will also happen because I strongly suspect they will fall out with themselves, others they might have to work with on councils, and with the party hierarchy.
The only good news in this is that the number of councils that they will now control will, potentially, provide collective evidence of their inability when, most especially, the majority of those people who have stood for office to this party did so solely because of their hatred of migrants on whom the economy of this country is dependent.
What the Tories might do in response to this is something I really do not much care about. I suspect that Reform will replace that party before, within a matter of years, before it, too, implodes.
What Labour will do is a matter about which I have more concern, because I consider it very likely that it will now swing very much further right, instead of seeking to do what is obviously needed, which is to win the votes of all those people who are alienated by everything to do with right-of-centre politics.
I wish the Greens would get their policy act together because, as I have long suggested, they are a long way from doing so.
If the Liberal Democrats wanted to have anything useful to say, they would have to kick out of their party everyone associated with their Orange Book era. They need to leave right-wing politics far behind, and Clegg took them there.
And if none of this happens, then, to repeat what I said in the video, we are in the deepest, darkest trouble unless electoral reform allows new parties comprising people with new and open minds, and ability, to emerge into our political arena. However, I think I have little hope of seeing that. In which case, I am forced to note that I never expected to see the end of democracy in this country during the course of my lifetime, but I now think that there is a serious possibility that I will.
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I saw a letter [= was it in The Guardian from someone who had been a Councillor.
They said that it took several years to become a good one so a situation where you have a large number of inexperienced Councillors, all probably trying hard NOT to learn how to do it sounds interesting to say the least.
How can democracy be over? To the contrary what we have just seen is democracy in action. It has allowed change to happen. Whether you or anyone else likes the outcome one is absolutely irrelevant.
You do know Farage thinks we don’t have democracy, don’t you? Are you saying you disagree with your great leader?
An extract from the G’
“One Green party campaigner who knocked on doors in Runcorn and for council elections in Lancashire said they picked up unprecedented levels of dislike for Labour – for Starmer in particular.”
Last year this blog was predicting that Starmer/Reeves would be tory 2 – no change, nothing. Sure enough, there was no change (apart from a twiddle here or there that did not register with voters). Starmer’s party is populated with speak-your-weight-machines (mirroring the dear leader). Fart-rage is ghastly but is at least 3 dimensional (in the mould of Johnson). So, no change, one dimensional party & you get this result.
Obvs, the “its all the fault of immigrants” played a role & the gov could have done something about that – by going after the, mostly, media liars (me? I’d use HMRC to gainfully occupy their time with a tax hunt).
Was there a democracy? Did we ever attain it?
I am not being flippant or deliberately confrontational with our host but……………..Henry VIII powers, the The Privy Council, the rules around party funding which have never been adhered to or loosely enforced, royalty not paying its taxes………………I am not convinced.
Our ‘democracy’ it seems to me has become nothing but a some sort of rough ‘compact’ with the rich that was subject to change whenever it suited them. The rich have been rolling back the advances made by Cromwell for years, as did Lizzie Windsor.
We’ve got to remember pleonexia – or as Tolkien called it ‘Dragon Sickness’ – a disease where the victim has everything but always wants more.
That is who is in charge of our democracy, people who are philosophically ill, to the point where it cannot be one.
No democracy (I don’t think we have tried it yet) is not over.
When politicians cannot answer a simple question:
“Have you made society fairer and people’s lives better?”
with a simple “yes” (backed up with evidence) then people will vote in protest.
People didn’t vote Reform because of its outstanding and progressive policies (duhh!), nor did they vote for a gurning idiot and his chums to be in charge of anything. People (the 30%+ who bothered to turn out) voted against the complacency of the major parties – particularly Labour which no longer pretends to be the party “for the many not the few”. Today Labour is where the Tories used to be – in the pocket of the establishment, big business and City gamblers – they are as corrupt as the Tories have always been
We will get the usual “lessons will be learned”, but they won’t be. Labour has been beyond reform from the late 1970s onwards and, apart from slight gimmer of hope in the Corbyn years, it is now digging its own grave.
So, democracy might be worth a try as a replacement for what we have now!
How about this for a principle. Every electorate get’s the government it deserves. This includes for the fact that when those who hold opinions fail to vote, or those who claim to care fail to offer themselves in service, or fail to present credible arguments when they do, this is what happens.
On the positive front I have to say this is probably a good outcome. It limits the damage Reform can do at a national level while proving themselves to be totally incompetent at a local level. And this will only harm those electorates who will get what they allowed to happen and what they therefore deserve.
This is of course on the assumption that Nigel’s little gang will repeat past failures to deliver promised benefits, and fragment after winning any particular campaign.
If however the Left can’t see the possibilities offered by this outcome and have a prepared response other than Reeves and Starmer then nothing will really change.
The TV coverage of local elections is always disappointing. You get national figureheads spinning lines about policy matters at a national level that councils have no responsibility for or ability to change. Laura Kuenssberg was a particular poor chair, unable to control her panel members, and for long stretches not even bothering to steer a discussion. Some went off on long irrelevant diatribes. Some were continually interrupting others. There was a repeated pattern of shouty Tory and Reform men talking over Labour women.
It was notable from the vox pops in Tory areas lending their votes to Reform that illegal immigration was mentioned by almost everyone. As if their local council has anything to do with that, rather than schools and social care and housing and roads and rubbish collection and libraries.
The new Reform councillors are going to get very frustrated when they find out they can’t actually do anything about immigration apart from dog-whistles and performative cruelty to people who happen to be in their area.
Wait for the implosions, defections and resignations. They will happen.
The hisTORY of local government in Suffolk CC may be worth hearing about, as they already did a Suffolk DOGE exercise about a decade ago, and virtually abolished themselves, outsourcing everything.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11398678
I don’t have contacts there any more so haven’t kept up with progress, but apparently, the Tory leader later fessed up – it didn’t work. Oh dear.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-15429540
There’s a good starter question for your local Reform councillor (who won’t know anything about the failed experiment.
The BBC in Lincolnshire and Kent and Cambridge Mayoralty might want to start getting tough with the new incumbents.
Maybe even Fiona Bruce on QT could do some revision on the topic.
But my question is for my Labour Junior Health Minister MP. Does she think Labour’s (winning) 7.5% electoral support for our new WECA mayor augurs well for victory at the next GE?
Does she think there are votes to be won by tacking further right?
Does she actually believe what McTeam tell her to write to me? She’s an intelligent woman, so presumably not. I have to assume she is planning to spend her final working years back in Wes’s privatised outsourced NHS.
Thanks
And you are right re Suffolk
A point if I may – they do not exactly abolish themselves – that have instead ‘commissioners’ who create specifications for the services and then say that they manage them – at considerable expense – like that. Or the Mayor might commission them or whatever.
Service ‘commissioning’ is the new arms length management method that makes the helps the profit seeking private sector feel comfortable taking on these services.
The commissioners are seldom people who actually need the services they commission, looking at the wages on offer will clarify that.
Agreed
I wonder how Farage and his crony councillors will fare if they are threatened with judicial review? Many of these types of decision may be susceptible to legal challenge by those adversely protected. The disclosure process may be telling.
Good morning Richard, I read your blog every day and never fail to be impressed by the clearly immense amount of work that you must put into it. I am also impressed by the comments of others who know their stuff and have much life and work experience.
I am 73 years old and a retired professional. I first voted for the Labour Party in June 1970 when Labour somewhat unexpectedly lost to Ted Heath and the Conservatives. I have voted for the Labour Party in every General Election since then except for last May when I felt unable to do so.
I have been member of the Party very briefly in about 1984/85. I was thereafter a registered supporter and voted in 3 leadership elections, in the last one, for Keir Starmer, based on his 10 pledges and his promise to continue the work of his”friend” Jeremy Corbyn.
However it began to dawn upon me subsequently that this was not the Labour Party I once knew and whose good works had helped me and others from a working class background. My local Labour council paid for my university education and my post graduate studies. I was one of four children brought up in good council housing and with child benefit for all children.
Under Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan, there was always room for socialists and socialist ideas and actions – there was debate about the way forward and what could or could not be done. There were serious politicians and thinkers such as Tony Benn and Anthony Crosland, even though from opposite wings of the party – there was room for the left even if their influence did not sometimes win the day.
My doubts rushed in when the purge of left leaning politicians in the Party began under Starmer. In my mind, for example, a Party that expelled Jewish members (some Holocaust survivors) for being anti semitic had lost the plot.
The way that Mr. Corbyn was treated personally was brutish and nasty and in my view completely unnecessary – the level of orchestrated nastiness (see The Guardian whose columnists piled in) was deeply unpleasant.
The performance of the present government has been nothing short of disastrous – not just the wrong policies but the wrong policies poorly implemented. I shall not dwell on this aspect as they have been well articulated in your blog in the past and in the many comments thereon.
I am in County Durham a former Labour stronghold for over 100 years. The Labour Council made many mistakes and acted arrogantly and managed to lose power to an independent Lib Dem Conservative coalition. There were 98 seats up for election last week and Reform won 65. Labour now has 4 seats !!!
I read the many warnings on this blog about Labour by their actions/inactions allowing space for Reform to make headway. I hoped it was not true, but it was.
Here”s what we are now going to get : Farage warning civil servants in a speech in Newton Aycliffe (real people with families and homes to support) working on climate change or diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives or anyone”who thinks they can go on working from home, I think you better all be seeking alternative careers very very quickly.”
A newly elected former GB News reader Darren Grimes who says he gave up his job in television to run as a Councillor for Annfield Plain and Tanfield and is going to”get the auditors in” to make sure no money is being wasted.
And to nail it the Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire Dame(?) Andrea Jenkins saying that tents should be good enough for asylum seekers – “I say no to putting people in hotels. Tents are good enough for France, they should be good enough for here in Britain”. – 40,000 majority !!! Wake up Labour for God’s sake!
So it starts – the years from 1929 to 1939 were described by Claud Cockburn as The Devil’s Decade. We need to wake up but not so much as the Labour Party must. I despair this morning. Carry on the good work Richard.
Mny thanks Trevor
My apologies for it takimng a whole to get to reading this.
Durham is heading for trouble…
Richard, you say:
“And if none of this happens, then, to repeat what I said in the video, we are in the deepest, darkest trouble unless electoral reform allows new parties comprising people with new and open minds, and ability, to emerge into our political arena.”
And in response, I repeat my earlier post that Blair’s greatest betrayal of this country, and his biggest crime in the long run, even set against the travesty of Iraq (a crime against the global community, so I accept of greater import) was his kicking of the Jenkins Report on electoral reform into the long grass, when in his “I can walk on water” First Term he could easily have win a referendum on it.
Jenkins’s AV+ had serious drawbacks, in being too timid and tied to the past, but it would have at least tempered FPTP, and would probably have been replaced by Irish-style STV.
What is now abundantly clear is that FPTP, so far from providing stable government, has only provided wildly unbalanced governments of artificial majorities, based on paper-thin mandates – think Johnson in 2019 and Starmer in 2024, and possibly Farage in 2029? – that don’t really have sufficient ballast and experience and diversity of approach and opinions to govern.
That ballast and experience and diversity was there in the post-WW2 governments of both mainstream Parties, but began to be squeezed out by Thatcher, in her moves against the “Wets”, and in Labour by Kinnock’s first moves against the Left, only tentative until Starmer’s full-blooded purges of the Left.
As a result, both main Parties (and probably Farage’s Reform, unless they are a fissiparous opposite) are now monochrome entities, and fitting products of Herbert Marcuse’s “One-Dimensional Man”, when we desperately need the return of three-dimensional politics which only PR could even allow the possibility of happening.
Thanks
Absolutely Andrew, I’ve always considered Blair’s cynical and arrogant dropping of electoral reform to be one of his greatest failures, and one that is having a disastrous long term impact.
And now we have a labour party headed by someone who espouses the same philosophy as Blair but without Blair’s charisma and unlike Blair, has inherited a disastrous economic and political situation but has no idea how to solve it.
And wth 2 party politics dying, it’ll be all too easy for the fascists of Reform to win the next GE. Well done Blair and Starmer.
Sounds like ‘non-creative destruction’ – a desperate scenario for those living in these areas now to be run by reform. Reform have no policies as to how they will run their new fiefdoms – setting fire to migrant hotels? – and it will be fascinating to watch their multi-car crash internal fallings out as they decide whether to sack care workers or librarians.
As someone said on Radio 4 this morning – who had been running focus groups all around the country – the overwhelming feeling was utter disillusionment with the institutions, and the political system, and that they might as well ‘roll the dice’ by a vote for Reform.
Unlikely as it seems, I wouldn’t be surprised if Reform and the Tories somehow come together by the next election just as they did in 2019.
Thank you, helpful analysis of the lack of effective response of all parties, and threats to democracy.
Sadly a democratic system that just spews out neoliberalism isn’t going to work for many, so they will reject democracy and turn to Reform, and populism.
Seems the Reform vote is feedback, a communication of unmet needs The growth growths growth, jam tomorrow plan will never meet that need, and voters know it because they’ve heard it all before for decades from the ConLab neoliberals.
Karen Stenner offers useful psychological insights into the core supporters of Farage and Trump https://www.karenstenner.com/,
Would the knowledge about economics along with such psychological insights of Reform voters be useful to help find a way through this?
The Tories were clearly bigger losers this time around than Labour. There may be a significant rebound back, but perhaps not unless they drop Badenoch – voters who last picked a white male.populist rejected a black female to vote again for a white male populist. That section may be hard for Labour or Lib Dems to court, but they are not the majority.
There was also the protest vote element. This favoured Lib Dems and Greens and not just Reform.
Lib Dems coming second in seats and becoming the main party of Devon means it has strengthened it’s base. It did this with less funding or attention by far than Reform. As much as I’d originally thought they needed to jettison anyone involved with the coalition era, the improving results under Ed Davey suggest otherwise.
People’s political memories are often shorter than you might like, and there was always the message that if you look at what the Tories did with a majority you can see the moderating effect that the Lib Dems had in coalition even if they clearly gambled and lost on some key policymaking options.
On a brighter note, following Carney’s victory in Canada, Albanese and Labor have just won in the Australian federal elections – with the Australian version of Trump – Peter Dutton – losing his seat (as did the Trumpist leader of the Conservatives in Canada).
And to be honest with you, Richard, I’m not at all bothered about Reform winning so many council seats and councils. Being in control of a local authority is a poison chalice, and has been for a least a decade. Ask the Greens in Bristol and in Brighton. No money, very little freedom from central government dictat and control (which we can thank Thatcher for and all her successive Tory governments), being forced to take the blame for what are actually the failings of central government policy, and as any Labour councilor in Nottingham will tell you, it’s an utterly thankless task.
So now Reform councilors have to put their mouth where their money is and move from badmouthing and complaining to actually doing things – and just look how that’s turning out for their God across the Atlantic, Donny ‘Two Dolls’ Trump. An absolute disaster.
So now the electorate gets to see the real face of Reform well in advance of any General Election. And it won’t be a pretty one, that’s for sure.
That’s not to say that I don’t agree with you on the rest: Labour’s ever increasing tack to the right has achieved nothing. So, where to now?
And yes, the Tories are done for. Under Badenoch they had very little identify that wasn’t easily stolen by Reform and up against “mighty mouth” Farage there were just too many “shiny things” being dangled to ever be overcome by a dull and dim witted Tory leader.
And if you want to know where the “Donny two dolls” nickname for Trump comes from it’s well worth watching this from Lawrence O’Donnell: https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-defending-tariffs-donny-2-dolls-trump-says-kids-will-just-have-fewer-christmas-toys-238676037572
Thanks
And the two doll thing is good. Almost amusing.
I didn’t get ANY dolls last Christmas!
I live in Staffordshire. I’ve already noted that the man who won our area, against a local champion, did not know where the area was. Local social media reports that two local Reform winners are likely to walk away because they will lose their jobs – they were paper candidates. It will be sadly instructive as to how they will ‘withdraw all support from immigrants’, many in the area being Ukraine refugees. Will it just be the brown skinned ones? It has already been stated they’ll slash the SEND budget, thankfully my SEND teaching stepdaughter comes under Wolverhampton.
The nightmare is going to happen
The majority think woke left wing councils have been a nightmare. It’s great that the electoral system is bringing real change.
Why are people who care such a problem for you?
Is it that you just like hating people?
Please explain.
Have I missed the discussion of our ‘democratic’ support for the ongoing, slow-motion genocide in Gaza? Those of us who do not look away are observing deliberate, large scale starvation and frequent well-armed military land and air assaults on unarmed people.
I have Jewish friends who are as horrified as I am. This is emphatically not antisemitism. Nothing – absolutely no argument – could have justified the Holocaust and nothing that Hamas has done, or is doing, justifies what is happening. Of course, the security of Israel matters but the almost unimaginable cruelty in Gaza is not even enhancing the nation’s safety. In fact, the reverse. On 14 January this year, US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken said ‘we assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost … That is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war.’
It’s not only that British military support and the supply of weapons is unwavering; it is that Starmer is more or less silent about. It may also be that McSweeney might regard any criticism of Israel as ‘hate – speech’ (He once ran a website about it.) I also suspect that Corbyn’s support for ‘Palestinian Solidarity’ was anathema to him.
Around the country, there are demonstrations and abundant church statements, events and meetings condemning the genocide, but where is the political outrage?
Labour, the Tories and Reform are united by the Zionist fuelled indifference.
Peace Studies Professor Paul Rogers has a column in today’s Guardian: ‘Militarily cosying up to Trump in Yemen cannot end well for the UK’. His final two paragraphs affirm some of what I wrote above.
“Labour’s rapid decline in the polls in recent months is down to many factors, but the Starmer government’s continuing support for Israel, despite its conduct in Gaza, is directly affecting committed long-term supporters on whom it depends. Many of the members who have left the party since last July’s general election did so with Gaza being the last straw.
This week’s RAF raid in Yemen comes as part of Trump’s enlarged regional war and just as the Netanyahu government, with US support, uses increasingly brutal methods to bring Gaza under control. Just now, Starmer’s government could be using its limited influence to try to rein in Netanyahu. Instead, it is increasing its military support for Trump and getting even more embroiled in a deeply controversial conflict.”
Spot on
“Where is the outrage?”
It is actively, systematically and effectively suppressed, across the board. Pro-Israel influence in the UK is very effective and can destroy people and institutions.
There is a documentary from Platform films, currently touring the country, in private venues, called “Censoring Palestine” which will be streamed live tomorrow Sunday 4th May, 10.30am.
Glastonbury, BBC and Channel 4 won’t touch it. Venues are intimidated into not showing it as they were for its predecessors.
You can get tickets here
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thecrispinflintoffshow/1677641
The serious divisions about Gaza have now split even the Zionist diaspora in the UK. This surfaced in the Jewish Chronicle about 3 weeks ago (I read it every week), and last week, even signs of dissent (and panic) in the Board of Deputies as 36 Deputies broke cover with an open letter (and were immediately suspended and smeared).
If you want news about Israel/Palestine you need to go to Israeli dissenting press, Ha’Aretz, or Electronic Intifada. Even Times of Israel is more open than UK media.
But this is old hat to Corbyn supporters. We’ve been monitoring Israeli surveillance of and interference in UK politics (Tory and Labour) for years. Cross them and you get reputationally and politically destroyed. Ask Jeremy Corbyn (or study the evidence for yourself).
It would appear that “DEMOCRACY” has been a total charade for some time- and now no-one even bothers to try to hide its non existence. The Treasury rules it would appear – is that the non executives, or the Civil Servants who do the running?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/may/03/treasury-threatens-defra-with-4bn-bill-if-thames-water-nationalised
I expect to comment on this in the morning
If there were to be electoral reform to some form of proportional representation, at both central and local government level, do you think that, given the polarisation of our politics, the very limited understanding of the operation of consensual democracy in the electorate and the current minimal representation of minor parties in government, do you think that that would change the nature of our politics and governance at a rate that would actually meaningfully limit the race to the right?
I am strongly in favour of proportional democracy, but, given where we are now, I worry, that even were such a change made tomorrow, it would be a decade or even several decades before we saw that reflected in a saner political estate and that the erosion of what democracy we do have would have been long completed before that change was able to take any effect.
It seems to me that much more than a change in the electoral mechanism is going to be needed to stop the slide into corporate autocracy. Actually, I suspect that global resource depletion and climate change are going to bring about the termination of the political status quo, and, for that matter, the economic status quo, but it seems unlikely that that transition to whatever follows will be a smooth, or perhaps even a survivable, one for our current society.
Yes, in a word, I do.
The reaction would, I think, be very rapid.
Richard:
I am glad you have again raised the question of electoral reform. Winning it — that is to ” GET PR DONE! — is an increasingly urgent question for progressives.
It is too often forgotten that the main interest in fair elections is a PUBLIC INTEREST… and NOT a party interest.
Here are two peices I have done over the past 4 years on the need for PR…and I think they still hold up ok.
+++++++++++
A 2021 piece on how the FPTP system works:
The nearly iron laws of FPTP: Reinforcing the grip of the big two – Get PR Done!
https://getprdone.org.uk/blog-the-nearly-iron-laws-of-fptp/
+++++++++++
A piece for THE LEFT LANE in April 2024 at the time of last year’s local elections:
Remembering the election of 1885… – The Left Lane
https://theleftlane2024.substack.com/p/remembering-the-election-of-1885
++++++++++++++
I am now working on a May 2025 piece for THE LEFT LANE on the urgent need for PR.
Alan Story / Norwich / THE LEFT LANE / https://theleftlane2024.substack.com/