In 2016 I blogged about leaving the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn had just won his second leadership election, and I didn’t – and still don’t – believe him to be a fit and proper person to be Prime Minister of this country. If it was obvious then that Corbyn and the toxic mix of people he surrounded himself were more interested in ideological purity than electoral success, it’s even more obvious now. Corbyn led the Labour Party to two electoral…
It is widely-reported that Thursday’s Queen’s Speech will include provision to abolish no-fault evictions in England by abolishing Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988: which enable a landlord to evict a renter after giving just two months’ notice once the fixed term has expired, and without having to prove any fault by the tenant. Predictably, this has led to the usual predictions of doom from landlords’ groups, claiming that scrapping no-fault evictions will lead to terrible unintended consequences for…
Last year I reported on prospective Police and Crime Commissioner Candidate Fergus Wilson, and alleged that he was disqualified from standing due to his 2014 conviction for common assault. Subsequently, after Mr Wilson submitted nomination papers, I reported him to Kent Police for making a false declaration in his nomination papers. Last week I was told by Kent Police that their investigation into Mr Wilson has been completed. I’m informed that Mr Wilson was interviewed as part of that investigation,…
I’ve left the Labour Party today, the Party I first joined in 1989 and I’ve supported ever since. When Jeremy was elected Leader last year, I thought the right thing to do was to stay and fight for the kind of Party I wanted: open, moderate, internationalist, pro-EU. I’ve nothing but respect for those of my colleagues who’ve decided to stay in the Party this time, too: but for me, the end of the road has been reached. This isn’t…
I have collated all the first-preference results from the 2016 Police & Crime Commissioner Elections which are set out below. [googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1BaoDpmT7B243BFofr0aboyMbNO6Thdy_Iu_ZtCQNSRc/pubhtml” query=”gid=0&single=true&widget=true&headers=false” width=”3000″ height=”950″ /] I have collated these from a variety of news sources so while I have been as careful as I can I cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions.
This post is strictly for politics nerds. Yesterday we looked at the result of the Police and Crime Commissioner and today I want to look at the results in some more detail. First: a health warning. Direct comparisons between this result and the 2012 election are problematic to say the least. Firstly and most obviously, the winning candidate from 2012 didn’t seek re-election and, as an independent, there’s no party we can use as a basis for comparison. Secondly, the…
Putting other people’s work on your website seems to be a feature of the no-hope candidates in this election. First, we had Fergus Wilson and the curious case of those photographs. Now, it appears, English Democrat Steve Uncles has also been indulging in a little cutting-and-pasting. One of these is quite funny, but the other really isn’t funny at all. First, a little light relief. On April 16th an article appeared on Uncles’ official website: The wasted years of Anne Barnes…
Fergus Wilson’s bid to be elected Kent Police and Crime Commissioner finally came to an end in Court 18 of the Royal Courts of Justice today when his application for Judicial Review of the Returning Officer’s decision to exclude him from the ballot paper was dismissed. Wilson was also ordered to pay £20,000 towards the Returning Officer’s costs in defending the action which, as we have seen, always seemed doomed to failure. Good. Our faith in British Justice is restored.
English Democrat candidate Steve Uncles as been in touch on Twitter, in his inimitable style, to take issue with a couple of things I said about him in my previous post. Let’s have a look at his defence in full: https://twitter.com/SteveUncles/status/721858086168825856 How to win friends and influence people, eh? Presumably ‘clown’ is meant to be a compliment, since they are funny, culturally iconic and highly entertaining, a bit like me. Indeed Uncles does have two awards for bravery (apparently for…
And then there were six 18th April is the deadline to vote in the Kent PCC elections: you can register here. Six candidates remain for the post: Matthew Scott (Conservative). Must regard himself as one of the front-runners for the post, given the electoral dominance of the Tories in Kent. The Tories will be looking to gain the Commissioner’s post now that Ann Barnes has decided not to stand. But dear God, save us from another Tory running things into the…