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It's hard in modern politics not to think constantly about leadership. It's little wonder. Traditional politics feels incapable of dealing with the complexities and the sheer scale of the challenges we face. So, we look to roll the dice, again and again, to find a leader capable of leading us. What we don't do is stop and reconceptualise the nature of leadership in the 21st century.

I was reminded of this while reading Tom McTague's recent profile of Keir Starmer, in his first outing as editor of the New Statesman.

I came away feeling slightly more sympathetic to Starmer but not really in a good way, more sorrow and sadness than warmth or regard. Starmer, as his handling of the welfare rebellion inside Labour has shown, is simply out of his depth, trying to fix our fiendishly complex problems for us.

An Island of Neighbours: Rebuilding Labour from the Ground-Up

Clementine Boucher and Luke Hurst, of the cross-party think tank Compass, share practical insights from its conference in London in May, focusing on how a 'decade of radical renewal' can become a reality

Clementine Boucher and Luke Hurst

In the interviews for the profile, Starmer talks about the responsibility he feels to always step up and organise those around him. At one level such a trait is admirable, the sense of public service in Starmer feels almost profound.

But it's the sense of his own uniqueness to lead, the duty and responsibility on him and him alone which is the worry. This is a common trait in old school leadership. Leaders who believe too much in themselves and not enough in others. People who believe it is uniquely them who were 'born to rule'.

In an older, more linear and predictable world, a world that was more machine like, this kind of all-seeing and all-knowing leadership was at least feasible. But in a more fragmented and chaotic world a different style of leadership is needed.

We're still between the old and the new and morbid symptoms are obviously appearing. As leaders inevitably fail to fix the complex chaotic and fast-moving world around them, trust in politics diminishes. Traditional political leaders respond by promising to deliver even more onerous targets. It is a doom-loop.

But instead of going forward to more plural and open forms of leadership, we seem to be going backwards from paternalistic politicians to more authoritarian ones.

Labour Apart: How Morgan McSweeney Levered the Left Out of Power

The story of how Keir Starmer's chief adviser hoodwinked Labour party members tells us a lot about how power really works, argues Neal Lawson

Neal Lawson

Instead of an adult-to-adult relationship, we are reverting to the relationship we know and understand best, that of the parent and child. This is the battle to come, between the strongman, the heroic CEO, the warrior leader and a more humble, relational and realistic form of leadership. As such this is a battle for our souls, to retreat into a false comfort that someone will run our lives for us or to step up and grow up?

In this convulsive moment I've been reading The Accountability Machine: why big systems make terrible decisions by Dan Davies. It's a book about bureaucracy and accountability and reacquainted me with the work of the cyberneticist William Ross Ashby.

Ashby devised the rather wonderful Law of Requisite Variety, which simply states that any regulator of a system, such as a government, needs to have at least as much variety as that system.

Davis explains the law in terms of how you might steer various kinds of vehicles, writing: "A train can really only go forward and backwards, so only needs a single handle. A car can make turns, so its control system requires a steering wheel to represent the added dimension. And an aeroplane needs a joystick rather than a steering wheel, because it can make two kinds of turns". Yo...

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The National Centre for Social Research has today published findings that should give pause to anyone concerned with the health of British democracy. Their latest British Social Attitudes survey, based on responses from over 3,000 UK adults, reveals a political system struggling to maintain public confidence and legitimacy in an era of fragmented voting and declining institutional trust.

The data presents a stark picture with just 12% of respondents saying they trust the Government to put national interest before party interest "just about always" or "most of the time". That's the lowest figure recorded in the survey's history. This represents not merely dissatisfaction with particular policies or politicians, but a fundamental erosion of faith in the democratic process.

When nine out of ten citizens believe their Government prioritises partisan advantage over national welfare, it's clear we have a crisis of legitimacy that transcends normal political discourse.

Labour MPs Pile Pressure on Keir Starmer to Reform the UK's 'Unfair' Voting System

Record low turnout and skewed results fuel calls for reform as polling suggests a collapse in support for the current system

Josiah Mortimer

This collapse in trust coincides with electoral outcomes that raise serious questions about democratic representation.

Labour's victory last year came with just 33.7% of the popular vote, the lowest share ever recorded for a majority Government in British history. The Conservative Party managed only 23.7%, meaning that together, our two traditionally dominant parties secured the support of barely half the electorate.

Such results would be unremarkable in a proportional system designed to encourage coalition-building and compromise. But under first-past-the-post they produce Governments with overwhelming parliamentary power based on minority public support, a sure-fire recipe for more public distrust.

Today's report shows that the public has noticed this disconnect. A record 60% of respondents now favour replacing the current electoral system with one that gives smaller parties fairer representation in parliament.

'We Are Witnessing the Slow Death of Two Party Politics'

UK politics is approaching a tipping point where the failing duopoly that has governed Britain for many decades finally comes to an end, argues Neal Lawson

Neal Lawson

This sentiment crosses traditional party lines, with a majority of Conservative supporters backing electoral reform for the first time in the survey's history. The appetite for change is no longer confined to traditional advocates of proportional representation but has become a mainstream concern spanning the political spectrum.

The consequences of continued inaction are predictable. Countries with low institutional trust and weak democratic legitimacy typically experience declining civic engagement, increasing political volatility, and growing susceptibility to authoritarian government.

While Britain isn't there quite yet, the trajectory is concerning enough to warrant urgent attention from policymakers across party lines.

The report underscores the importance of the work currently being done by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections inside parliament and by Open Britain, Make Votes Matter and others in the democracy sector outside.

At the core of that work, are three key objectives: replacing first-past-the-post with a proportional voting system, eliminating 'dark money' from politics, and combating disinformation in public debate. These three reforms would go a long way towards revitalising our democracy and rebuilding public trust in politics.

An Island of Neighbours: Rebuilding Labour from the Ground-Up

Clementine Boucher and Luke Hurst, of the cross-party think tank Compass, share practical insights from its conference in London in May, fo...

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A senior Reform figure, leading the party's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) unit, set up to mirror billionaire ex-Trump adviser Elon Musk's US initiative, has been accused of politicising non-political staff, after sharing images of his team posing with a council chief executive.

Un-resigned Reform bigwig Zia Yusuf, now back in the upper echelons of the party, was part of the team which visited West Northamptonshire council earlier this month where they met with Reform councillors - and apolitical council officials, as part of their supposed audit of council 'waste'.

Senior council staff - public servants who remain regardless of which party is in power - are typically instructed to steer clear of party politics.

So eyebrows were raised locally following a post from Zia Yusuf on 13th June saying: "Great DOGE trip to Reform-controlled West Northamptonshire council. We have an outstanding leadership team there, who have already started saving taxpayers big money."

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What savings he was referring to are very much unclear - so far Reform councils can point to very few given that successive Government cuts have left them often with budgets 40% smaller in real terms than a decade ago, and the fact that legally-required adult and children's care services account for over 70% of many of their budgets.

But the really odd part was who was in the photo attached to it: Anna Earnshaw, who serves as both the Chief Executive of the council, and who was the Returning Officer for the May elections that brought Reform to power. And here she is, in what looks like a party-political propaganda shot.

The Local Government Association, in its advice for Chief Executives, puts it like this: "You - and your officers - need to be politically astute, but not political."

This photo was used in a political context.

Just a few posts later Yusuf was claiming: "Rachel Reeves is destroying the British economy" and: "It's incredible how little of a council's time and money is being spent on doing things working people expect it to do."

Another in the same week, another hyper-political post: "The Westminster elite sends taxpayer money in foreign aid to Vietnam and Turkey" despite their relatively good education systems, calling it a: "Total betrayal."

Byline Times asked the council if it was appropriate for non-political officials - particularly election staff - to pose with Reform politicians, given the potential conflicts of interest and the risk for voters' trust in the process.

This is where it gets interesting. A council spokesperson told Byline Times the photo was "spontaneous" following a meeting between council officials and DOGE partisans.

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The spokesperson said: "It was not clear that this photo would be used by Reform HQ and when we were alerted to it, we asked they stop using the photos with the chief executive."

The photo, of course, remains live on various social media channels.

The spokesperson added: "The meeting with the reform HQ representatives took place on 13 June when they were guests of the Leader. The Leader and his cabinet spent time together. The Chief Executive and some directors later joined the discussion to hear more about the efficiency review and its aims, as well as discuss the legal and other limitations of any such review.

"At the end of the meeting, cabinet asked for a photo...

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Since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022, domestic repression in Russia has reached unprecedented levels.

However, few realise that behind these internal crackdowns lies another front - transnational persecution targeting exiled opposition figures, journalists, human rights defenders, and activists.

This new form of pressure - hybrid, multilayered, and psychologically exhausting - has become one of the Kremlin's key instruments in combating political dissent beyond its own borders.

Over the past two years, dozens, if not hundreds, of activists have faced attempts at physical, legal, digital, and moral intimidation far outside Russian territory. A term has emerged - "repression without borders" - to describe this unique phenomenon of the Putin era: the export of the state's repressive machinery into the global sphere.

The Concept of the 'External Enemy' as the Foundation of New Policy

The Russian political system, as the successor of the Soviet model, has historically relied on the image of an enemy. In the early 2000s, these were Chechen terrorists; later, Ukrainian "nationalists" and so-called "internal enemies" - members of civil society and independent media.

As Putin has repeatedly said, they "constantly rock the boat." But with the wave of mass emigration after 2022, a fundamental shift occurred: the threat became "exportable," and these so-called "enemies" - geographically elusive.

Inside the Collapse: How Putin's Russia Turned Its Opponents into Exiles

There is a deliberate policy by the Kremlin to exile, neutralise, and effectively erase alternative political life within the country, reports Denis Mikhailov

Denis Mikhailov

"They left - but continue to harm the country." This formula is now actively promoted by Russian state propaganda. It is a constructed narrative aimed at demonising those who fled Russia: opposition politicians, journalists, human rights defenders, and even ordinary critics of the regime.

The narrative gained particular traction after the invasion of Ukraine, when tens of thousands of Russians left the country for political reasons. This framing lays the groundwork for the moral and political justification of using state resources to persecute its own citizens - even when they are now under the legal protection of other jurisdictions.

Key Instruments of Transnational Repression

Legal Tools and Interpol

The Russian authorities continue to actively exploit international legal mechanisms - particularly Interpol - despite official claims of their political neutrality.

Well before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it was already evident that Russia had been abusing Interpol's 'Red Notice' system to pursue political opponents and restrict freedom of expression. Red Notices, arrest warrants, and extradition requests have increasingly become tools of pressure and control.

Examples:

Artur Zaripov, an activist from Bashkortostan, was detained in Poland at Russia's request through Interpol. He was later released after it became clear that the charges against him were politically motivated and lacked legal substance.

Bill Browder, a well-known critic of the Kremlin and advocate for the Magnitsky Act, has been subject to repeated attempts by Russia to detain him through Interpol. On several occasions, he was briefly detained in various countries until the Secretary General of Interpol in Lyon intervened, confirming that "no Red Notice exists, nor has ever existed" against him.

Bi-2, a prominent Russian rock band that has openly criticised the war in Ukraine, faced a politically charged incident in January 2024. Band members were detained in Thailand after a concert, officially due to visa violations. However, the situation quickly took a political turn. Russian diplomats reportedly pushed for their deportation to Russia - raising ...

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MPs on the Commons Public Accounts Committee have severely criticised the UK Government for its "dangerously flatfooted approach" in failing to recover nearly £2 billion in suspected fraudulent business loans lent by the last Conservative government five years ago.

The money handed out at the height of the Covid pandemic was aimed to keep businesses afloat during lockdown.

Now five years later only £130 million of £1.9 billion suspected fraud has been recovered and the ministry is unable to explain how much of this was fraudulently claimed. Banks who lent the money have no incentive to press firms to hand it back because the last government indemnified them from having to pay them back if the money was never returned.

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Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown, Conservative chair of the committee, said "We found a passivity in Government's approach to recovering the almost £2bn of pounds in taxpayers' money lost to Bounce Back loan fraud during the pandemic. DBT were unable to tell us if even the tiny fraction of that sum recovered was in fact even related to fraud. Indeed, relying on government-backed lenders to recover losses, who thus lack any incentive to pursue lost funds, has been a dangerously flatfooted approach. Now that the Insolvency Service has taken over responsibility for viable cases, we look forward to hearing how it fares where others have failed."

The report says "The Bounce Back Loan Scheme was open for applications from 4 May 2020 to 31 March 2021, and in that time 1.5 million loans were issued, to a total value of £47.4 billion.

"The BBLS was designed to reduce the time taken to pay out the loans, in part by reducing the checks which lenders were required to do. This included removing credit and affordability checks, and accepting self-certification by borrowers, rather than requiring any verification of application information. This resulted in increased risk to the taxpayer, which was acknowledged at the time.

"As at 31 March 2024, there remained 1.03 million loans outstanding, to a value of £17.8 billion. The Department estimates that total losses to the taxpayer due to fraud in the scheme will be at least £1.9 billion over its lifetime. "

The highest risk fraud cases were being passed to the National Investigation Service (NATIS) to investigate, but recoveries by NATIS have totalled just £8.6m.

Post Office Compensation

The report is also critical of the ministry and the Post Office's handling of compensation cases due to sub postmasters following the Horizon computer scandal. This year the Post Office sent out 18,500 letters to people they suspected were still unaware they could claim compensation. Only 21 per cent replied and the ministry has decided not to pursue this any further beyond sending another 5000 letters.

The report says not all compensation for people who had their jail sentences quashed has been paid. So far 339 people have accepted a fixed £600,000 payment but people who wanted a detailed analysis of their losses are still waiting for a final agreement which is not expected unbtil next year. They have been given interim payments.

The uncertainty over the compensation payments led the National Audit Office to qualify the ministry's accounts for last year.

UPDATE

Company That Supplied Hundreds of Millions of Pounds of Unusable COVID Tests Saw Profits Skyrocket to £178 Million After Lobbying Conservative Peer for Contract

Primer Design's turnover jumped by 4,800% after supplying tests that were later deemed "unfit for public use"

Russell Scott

Sir Geoffrey Clifton B...

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1. Has the Iranian nuclear programme been destroyed?

President Trump announced that the Iranian nuclear programme had been "obliterated". Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that it had been "devastated". But the evidence suggests otherwise. Just two days after America's strikes, Israeli planes were pounding the Fordo nuclear site, buried under an Iranian mountain, suggesting that the devastation was not complete. The Iranians had several days of knowing that the US was considering using bunker busters, giving it time to move key personnel and possibly equipment.

2. Can Iran still make a bomb?

Iran has around 400 kilograms of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU), the fuel it needs to make a nuclear bomb - although it would need to enrich it further to get it to the required level. It seems clear that neither Israel nor the United States knows where this fuel is. It's worth noting that before the Israeli and US strikes the intelligence assessment coming out of Washington had Iran still needing a couple of years to make a bomb.

3. Is the objective regime change?

For Israel it seems clear that is now the objective: both Prime Minister Netanyahu and members of his cabinet have said that they want the downfall of the Islamic Republic. Donald Trump has toyed with this idea, posting "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" and "Make Iran Great Again". However, he is now rowing back from that, probably in the face of severe pushback from some of his MAGA allies who dislike Middle Eastern wars.

'Israel's Strikes on Iran Will Have Consequences for Decades and Threaten the Entire Middle East'

Chris Doyle of the Council for Arab-British Understanding on the 'escalating fears' experienced by people across the region

Chris Doyle

4. Is there an 'existential threat' to Israel?

With the fall of the Assads in Syria, the Iranian regime may be the most barbaric in the region. Its repression of its own people and its baleful influence further afield (including supplying Russia with Shahed drones used to kill Ukrainians) means that it deserves none of our sympathy. But there is a logical flaw at the heart of Israeli rhetoric around Iran: Israel talks of an existential threat from an Iranian nuclear programme. That assumes two things: one, that Iran has nuclear weapons; two, that it would use them against another nuclear armed state (Israel has had them for over fifty years). If Israel had no nukes of its own, its actions against Iran would make sense from a self-defence perspective. Given that it has the capacity to destroy Iran, is it the Islamic Republic which is responding to an existential threat, not Israel?

5. Is there now a ceasefire in place?

On social media overnight on 23 June, Donald Trump announced a ceasefire. At the same time, Israeli missiles continued to pound targets in Iran, few if any of which could be said to be connected to its nuclear programme. Announcing a "ceasefire" is not the same as a ceasefire: until both sides agree to terms on which they will stop fighting, there is no ceasefire, whatever Trump says. Israel might welcome a short pause in hostilities as it plans its next move, but it's hard to imagine Netanyahu not wanting to press home his advantage at this stage.

6. What does this mean for Russia?

Russia's Middle Eastern allies have had a rough time: the Assads fled to Moscow, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis are all degraded to a significant extent, and Iran is now on the ropes. The wider lesson might be that having an alliance with Moscow isn't the best bet. But with oil prices shooting up and attention diverted from Ukraine, this isn't all bad news for President Putin. He can offer to mediate, looking statesmanlike, whilst continuing, largely unmolested, war crimes against Ukrainian civilians.

7. What does this mean for China?

China is the main buyer of Iranian oil, so it...

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It was meant to write itself. The tanks. The planes. The marching soldiers. The Dear Leader on the podium, the roar of the cheering crowds.

President Donald Trump's military parade in Washington DC on June 14, which just happened to coincide with his 79th birthday - was expected to confirm people's worst fears; a North Korea-style display of military power, all to the greater glory of a would-be dictator. It was meant to show America and the world who's boss.

On the ground in Washington, I found a different story. First, the plans had to be moved up a half hour to avoid reports of thunderstorms. It almost literally rained on Trump's parade.

Meanwhile, the nationwide anti-Trump protests, organised under the slogan 'No Kings', made the DC weather look positively MAGA-friendly by comparison. They also dwarfed the modest turnout for the event on the Mall, where TV cameras caught the president looking bored as he watched the troops and tanks.

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All of this was happening at what felt like a hinge moment for the United States. Just days before, President Trump had sent the National Guard to California to put down protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Los Angeles.

Then, in the early hours of Saturday morning, Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were assassinated in their Minnesota home. Vance Boelter, 57, has since been charged with murder.

The Fog of Boredom

This political weather was neatly mirrored by conditions in Washington. The nation's capital was overcast for most of the day. As the start time for the parade approached, a thick cloud of white-grey fog descended on the Mall.

Watching from a rooftop bar next to the US Treasury building, the steady creep of the fog had an eerie quality, moving over the memorial buildings of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, and towards the great obelisk of the Washington Monument.

Country club types in the hotel bar, drink in hand, watched as the black cars of the presidential motorcade snaked their way from the White House to the specially-erected stage on the Ellipse, resembling a funeral procession. Cannon fire signalled the start of the festivities and sent a light thrill across the room.

But these weren't hardcore Trump supporters. True, there were a few loyalists around town, like the family I saw on the street with a toddler wearing a 'Trump 2024' t-shirt.

But much like the people queuing up on the Mall, (who will have applied for tickets on the US army's official website), the parade watchers resembled the type of people who would attend an RAF fly-by or a Royal Wedding in the UK. Many were military families, (I saw at least one amputee). Some were actually in town for Father's Day, and were hoping to catch a glimpse of the parade as a bonus.

The military parade was apparently inspired by Trump seeing a Bastille Day event in France. It also happened to coincide with King Charles III attending the 'Trooping of the Colour' outside Buckingham Palace.

These British events are the sort Wendy Cope poked fun at in 'All-Purpose Poem for State Occassions', where onlookers can "feel patriotic and proud". While conservative in nature, they survive as rituals of harmless kitsch precisely to the extent that they have been rescued from their links with absolutism and foreign conquest. Meanwhile, France's Bastille Day celebrations are explicitly republican, and mark the 1789 revolution which declared universal human rights.

This is some distance from the blood-and-soil nationalism Trump hopes to revive. After the display of soldiers, tanks, and aircr...

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The University of Cambridge has been accused of stifling protest in a game of "cat and mouse politics" by one of its own academics who is facing legal action from one of its colleges for participating in pro-Palestine protests.

Hank Gonzalez, an Associate Professor in Caribbean History, was served with an interim injunction by St John's College earlier this month, banning him from protesting on College grounds after participating in a two-day encampment on land in front of the college on June 2-3.

St John's is one of two Cambridge Colleges pursuing injunctions against Pro-Palestine protests following occupations. The other, Trinity College, saw a three day encampment on its grounds from May 30 to June 2, before evicting students in a move which Gonzalez said was carried out with "deftness and determination".

Both Colleges were targeted for their investments in arms companies protesters claim are "complicit in Israeli genocide," including Boeing, BAE systems, and Elbit Systems.

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Joe Creffield, Murray Jones and Jake Tacchi

Interim injunctions were issued by the High Court on May 31 and June 1. Rulings on both cases are expected in the coming weeks, but until then the temporary orders remain in place and further protests could result in activists being found in contempt of court.

At a hearing on 5 June, Kester Lees KC, for the colleges, asked for the injunctions to be made final and to last for 12 months, arguing that the protests are disruptive to students taking exams, ITV reported.

In written submissions, he said the university was "concerned about the environment of fear and intimidation created by masked protesters", adding that "some chanting was directly aimed at disrupting the examination season".

The court action followed a ruling in March where the university was granted a High Court order blocking Israel-Palestine protests on parts of its campus until the end of July. In February, a judge dismissed a request for a five-year injunction blocking direct action relating to the conflict on several sites without the university's consent.

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Gonzalez, who spent three nights sleeping at the Trinity encampment but only spent time at the St John's encampment during the day, told Byline Times: "I'd entered no mask, faculty face card, purposefully so, to basically push the argument that one of the things the students are troubled by is that there's a lot of activity to try and punish them."

He added that students are concerned by the possibility that the University might be able to "delay their degrees, or kick them out, or give them any kind of trouble".

On 3 June, court documents were served to "persons unknown" at the St John's encampment. Protesters were asked to identify themselves, which Gonzalez complied with.

"I gave them the face and name on purpose," he said, adding that he was filmed by an unknown individual who was "gleeful" about having identified him.

That afternoon, Gonzalez was served with court documents addressed to him.

'The Culture War is Dead: Long Live the Culture War'

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Julian Petley

Gonzalez said he was driven to enter the encampments due to a "sense of horror over the war industry," and the "obvious complicity of the so-called higher-ed" in these wars.

The central University currently holds an injunction aga...

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A week is a long time in politics and never has that been more the case than with Reform UK.

In recent weeks we've been closely following the party's dozen councils they took control of back in May and detailing the many scandals, resignations, cancelled meetings and culture wars they have been getting themselves involved in.

After each piece we publish, we've been inundated with yet more examples of what's been happening as Nigel Farage's fledgling party meets the reality of actually managing local government, as well as holding ministers to account nationally.

Here's a roundup of just some of what we've seen over the past week.

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1. Reform's anti-home working policy 'will cost millions'

Reform's hardline anti-home working policy is already crashing into the reality of modern Britain.

At Durham County Council, where the party took control in May, it has emerged that they would need to find an additional 13,500 square meters of office space to accommodate all council staff working full-time in the office - as the party seems to be demanding - according to analysis of council data.

Durham would face between £3-5 million in extra annual costs, including £1.3 million in running costs and £2-4 million in financing costs for new accommodation, all on top of an existing £23 million budget deficit, digging by writer Paul Ilett has found.

When you factor in having to replace staff who would quit over the policy, Reform's anti-WFH policy looks very expensive indeed. One for their Department of Local Government Efficiency?

2. Flexible on flexible working?

Mind you, Reform councils may be starting to have doubts about scrapping flexible working policies, as they start to realise the reality of working life in 2025.

In Reform-run North Northamptonshire, which would require 9,700 square meters more office space to implement the policy, adding approximately £328,000 annually to their costs, the council's new Reform leader, Cllr Martin Griffiths, appears to already be backtracking, reversing previous pledges to insist all staff come into the office.

A mole working for the council tells Byline Times that Griffiths either realised the cost and impracticality of the policy or never intended to implement it and was simply "playing to the gallery."

The council staffer, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their job, said: "The more rational approach [to Working from Home] has been fed back to staff from senior officers. My concern is that the damage is done anyway and people will be spooked and work elsewhere."

There are concerns that the damage has already been done and staff members may seek employment elsewhere due to the anti-working-from-home stance.

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Adam Bienkov

3. Reform councillor in expenses probe

A Reform UK councillor in the Crediton area of Devon has been reported to police - by his own Reform colleagues - for potentially breaching election campaign spending limits.

The local Crediton Courier reports: "Neil Stevens, who won the Alphington and Cowick seat in May's Devon County Council elections by just 72 votes, has been reported by a fellow Reform UK councillor for the alleged overspend, and for a suspected false election expenses return submission.

Reform councillor Ed Hill told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that he had told Mr Stevens the cost of podcast equipment had to be included in his expenses return, and warned this would take him over his spending limit. He claims this advice was ignored.

Neil Stevens' brother Tony Stevens was also reported to police as part of...

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Not so very long ago, our capital stood as a model for all that was great and good about Britain.

Sitting at the heart of an Empire upon which the sun never set, it moved at its own inimitable pace as men in bowler hats, pearly kings and queens, flying nannies and Antipodean chimney sweeps went about their business. Gaiety hung in the air, and despite the occasional outbreak of plague, the lovable London cockney could always be relied upon to drop everything in a trice and break out in song.

Crime, if it existed at all, was quickly solved by little old ladies in cardigans, or retired Belgian detectives, or men in deer stalker hats, on account of all the criminals being fairly obvious from the start.

Which is not to say that things were perfect. From my research on YouTube, I have discovered that for much of the early 20th century, people walked very quickly everywhere and could neither speak nor afford Technicolour. And while World War Two was largely a joyous enterprise, the Blitz was not all fun, fun, fun, as on one occasion Buckingham Palace got hit by a bomb.

But for the most part, people knew their place and were happy because London worked, largely because it still had coal-fired power stations. Indeed, before 'wokies' turned it into an art museum, Bankside provided people with all the jobs and cheap electricity they needed, and more to the point, ensured that London pea soupers were 'real fog' and not like the 'Gen Z' mists you get today.

An Audio Tour of the Fantastic 2022 Festival of Brexit

Otto English has advance copies of the plans for the coming attractions - A Nostalgia Zone, Gallery of Brexit Heroes and much more…

Otto English

Despite what snobs might tell you, the food was splendid too. Most restaurants offered a choice of two types of bread - white or brown - and an array of well-cooked food that more exotic diners could spice up with condiments that might include 'salad cream', 'tomato ketchup' or a splash of malt vinegar.

How times have changed. I can't remember the last time I heard of an old spinster solving a major murder case in the capital, and despite having lived in London since the 1990s, I have not once seen a chimney sweep break out into an elaborate song and dance routine with a flying nanny in a proper pea souper.

Those on the woke left will claim that this is because 'I'm at best deluded and possibly a bit racist' but my research, funded by the "Institute of Tax-haters", proves, beyond all possible doubt, that every single ill in London is down to 'Sadiq Khan' and immigrants.

Data, rigorously assembled by myself and X user @WhiteFlite9628292, shows that London is in danger of becoming different to how it was in Oswald Mosley's day when race and immigration simply were not an issue for anyone.

The shocking figures speak for themselves. Since Sadiq Khan was first elected mayor in May 2016, not one statue has been erected to Winston Churchill. Wimpy restaurants, once so prevalent in the capital, have all but disappeared from our streets.

Whole swathes of the city have been pedestrianised and while laughing, happy young people drink mocha lattes in the sun, or enjoy a disturbing 'continental' al fresco evening dining experience in the no go areas of Camden, Soho and Islington, London's black cab drivers have to go 'the long way round' to the GB News studio in Paddington.

Meanwhile, many of the city's best carparks now double as farmers' markets, while the streets fill up with people protesting the mass slaughter of children in wars, making it almost impossible for Paul Marshall to park his Bentley in the capital at the weekends.

But it is the demographic shift that shocks most of all. As evidenced by the electoral rolls, once common British surnames like Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Brunel, Disraeli, and Harthacnut have all but disappeared from the...