I wonder how many Gorton & Denton by-election leaflets some of these quotes will appear on, now that he's kindly offered them up this side of polling day... It's almost as if he doesn't mind if Labour loses 😉

New Lib Dem councillor is former Labour council leader

"Today" ... Hmm.

No.10 certainly needs a new team, but as @pollymackenzie.bsky.social has perceptively pointed out, Starmer seems to always think that getting just one key person right is going to fix things rather than being a good team builder.

Re-upping this for the Monday crowd... I think my favourite, most revealing detail is that the guy seems to not realise he's in trouble because London Centric's reporting didn't hit anything like his view counts, so therefore it can't really matter.

My Parliamentary Question on Tuesday should be interesting.

If I wanted to know whether Al Carns has been impressive or underwhelming as a minister, what should I read/listen to?

How Keir Starmer's polling encourages both change and paralysis buff.ly/OzjooYz

No clearer sign of the directionless floundering in Labour that at the same time as McSweeney is saying he takes responsibility for what went wrong over Mandelson, his friends are busy telling the media that no, he wasn't responsible.

Polling, February 1966 style.

About time.

PING! Another day, another Reform councillor goes: buff.ly/g8nhFd8 Ever-lengthening list of all the departures now also updated: buff.ly/SBmkIz0

Agenda published for Lib Dem Spring Conference 2026

Set myself a tricky writing challenge with the opening lines for tomorrow's The Week in Polls. Sign up here to see if I managed to meet it: theweekinpolls.substack.com

Green councillor Manu Singh joins the Lib Dems

I think "the prime minister's allies" may have missed that the way to help the PM is to float sensible ideas, not risible ones.

Magic, at the Twist Museum.

Simpler times.

Three council by-elections this week

Capita, the Cabinet Office and the civil service pensions fiasco

A Reform UK cabinet member in charge of purging Kent County Council (KCC) of waste and inefficiency has resigned

A double-dose of former Labour Mayors voting Lib Dem

so a month ago I was reading @markpackuk.bsky.social’s speech on Twitter in the lords and there were obviously fake stats the government used to justify Twitter’s UK reach and its continued importance to British audiences Rob has now found the source of the data was… Twitter

Howard Sykes retiring as a councillor

Capita, the Cabinet Office and the civil service pensions fiasco

Davey clashes with Starmer over Mandelson-Epstein Links

My back-up cattle-grid plan: if I can't loosen the grip of Whitehall, perhaps I can at least get Hansard standardised.

This is spot on. The absence so far of a consistent, coherent policy agenda that is understood and followed across government is not the fault of a staffer, and won't be fixed by sacking a staffer.

Updated, yet again

It’s the Fifth of February!

Never been to #LDConf? Now's your chance! Reduced rate of £35 for a weekend of jam packed action in York, 13-15 March! Meet fellow @libdems.org.uk, MPs & peers, plus loads of training and specialist talks, a packed auditorium programme AND special first timers' itinerary! What're you waiting for?

A reminder of the limitations of data about which news story people have paid the most attention to: plenty of attention gets paid to other stories too. From the paid-for bonus section of the latest The Week in Polls: buff.ly/2qeegDu

Cost of UK’s drug price with US will come out of NHS budget

Breaking: the head of DOGE in Kent has resigned. My impression of Matthew was that he was a decent man leading a fundamentally ill-conceived project.

New logo application with the Electoral Commission.

Lib Dems call for national inquiry into Epstein’s links with Mandelson

Reality 1 - 0 Reform UK

Great titbit exposing the latest in non-devolution: bsky.app/profile/mark...

Big Cow has clearly scared off Whitehall...

Labour u-turns on devolving powers over cattle-grids: even on such a small issue, the grip of Whitehall is intense lordseyeview.substack.com/p/labour-u-t...

The steady slip in his rating with most pollsters has gone largely unnoticed so far.

Britain Doesn’t Need Trump's Politics | Ed Davey

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey: 'I ain't going to surrender to Elon Musk'

It's time now for the Government to put forward legislation to strip Peter Mandelson of his peerage. It's the very least they can do for the victims and survivors of his friend Jeffrey Epstein. If Mandelson has any shame left, he'll retire from the House of Lords today.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness obituary

The latest Scottish and Welsh election polling buff.ly/2qeegDu

Catching up on some of the media coverage of the Assisted Dying Bill and it's striking how little coverage is able to get beyond 'some people say good scrutiny is happening, other people say it is filibustering', i.e. I've yet to find a political journalist who is into the detail enough to...

More reassuring electoral news from the US.

Grok is almost poetic.

James is, I think, right - but even on that premise, it's still a poor newsletter for the PM as it's so dull. If this was the debut of a newspaper columnist we wouldn't be rushing to say 'they're a new must-read'. Surely the PM can find - and empower - a high-quality writer to do better for him?