Voting… child’s play? 15-year-old Izzy Barrett on lowering the voting age
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This month, dogs were all the rage at your local polling station. Are teenagers next? The new prime minister promises to lower the voting age to 16; however, 51 per cent of Britons oppose such a move, with just 24 per cent in support – that’s all Britons whose opinion is relevant (those over 18 […]
Putting Reform UK Ltd out of business – letter to the editor
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Dear Editor, In the July 2024 UK General Election, the limited company known as Reform UK ended up with five MPs, having received 14 per cent of the votes cast, some 4 million votes. Under proportional representation they would have gained about 94 MPs. This is a problem, because Reform UK has a political ideology […]
We need electoral reform and Europe. A letter to a new MP
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Dear Sadik First of all, congratulations on a historic election result. You and your team have invested huge effort in capturing one of the more firmly entrenched Conservative seats and enabled Sir Liam Fox to spend more time with his family. Winning an election is, of course, just the beginning of the story. Sir Keir […]
Reform UK 2024 is so UKIP 2015: the press should stop treating the result as something it is not
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I was shocked to see that Nigel Farage’s ‘Reform UK’ party came second in 120 constituencies. They got the third-highest vote share on 12.6 per cent of the votes, and even got an MP. All of this against a backdrop of the winning party gaining a vote-share only in the 30’s. Oh no, wait a […]
Letter to a friend in America about the UK General Election
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Dear —, I can’t tell you how grateful I am for a seamless transition of power after the general election here in the UK. Outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak gave the best, most statesmanlike speech of his life when he resigned. If only he’d governed in that tone! Over the past 6 weeks, the Tories […]
Potholed society
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It’s not just our roads which are potholed… the whole country shows similar symptoms of neglect. My article on the disgraceful state of so many British roads, riddled with potholes and crumbling surfaces, leads us to use the pothole theme to evaluate some aspects of our neglected services and faltering social cohesion. From crumbing surfaces […]
Unmissable panel sessions at Byline Festival on what Labour need to do and how to save the NHS
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It’s hard to focus on anything beyond July 4 and the results on July 5, but if you can get to Dartington Hall on Saturday 6 or Sunday 7, or both, you can still get tickets to attend the sessions that West Country Voices are hosting – and they are absolute bangers and wholly in […]
Why Lib Dems as HM Opposition to a Labour government would be much better for the UK: an interview with Phil Moorhouse
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With some polls suggesting that the Lib Dems could push the Conservatives out if (a distant) second place, I asked Phil Moorhouse of popular YouTube channel ‘A Different Bias’ for his views on the matter. Could the Tories come third? PM: “Current polling suggests it’s unlikely…but only just. They are predicted to retain about 100 […]
A desperate Johnny Mercer resorts to dubious tactics against Plymouth Moor View’s likely next MP, Fred Thomas
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No doubt there are many Conservative MPs who were complacently confident about the safety of their seats only a few months ago. And no doubt many of those are now realising that that complacency was misplaced. The growing Conservative fury and desperation manifests itself in many ways, from the tetchy belligerence of Sunak, to the […]
“I cried today in hospital. I did not cry for me.”
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Award-winning film-maker David Wilkinson discovered very recently that he had stage 4 bowel cancer. He has been sharing his experience on Facebook with his friends and admirers, of whom there are very many, including the team here at WCV. We asked if we could publish this post. We believe it’s especially important as we approach […]
The war after the battle
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How the far-right may lose the battle, but still hope to win the war As many centre-right politicians and commentators have warned us, what used to be the Conservative Party has become a vehicle for the far-right. Philip Hammond wrote: “the Conservative party has been taken over by unelected advisers, entryists and usurpers who are trying to turn […]
A Maslow manifesto
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Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who created a model of the hierarchy of human needs, from the most basic upwards. It is always represented as a pyramid and has been adapted several times, but the basics are unchanged. What if Maslow were alive today, what if he were to be our next prime minister? […]
Kevin Foster needs reminding: “Charity envieth not”
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There has never been a general election like this one. The Conservative and Unionist (Tory) Party has made gaffe after blunder after miscalculation after error after outrage. Keir Starmer could sit at home and do nothing for the next three weeks and still find himself prime minister on Friday, July 5th, so amateur and awful […]
This is a challenge that all Conservative parliamentary candidates should be happy to meet
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The Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for South Devon, Caroline Voaden, has thrown down the gauntlet to her Conservative rival, Anthony Mangnall, asking him whether he condemns the lying and the breaches of the ministerial code by Sunak, Coutinho and others. We think that all Conservative candidates should be prepared to answer this same question: Are […]
Interestingly-worded survey, Sir Liam Fox. Excuse me if I answer it my own way…
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An open letter to Sir Liam Fox MP Dear Sir Liam, Thank you for the North Somerset Residents Survey form, which you kindly sent me. It is a rather tasteful shade of green – an interesting change in Conservative branding. The party has, I think, traditionally used blue ever since my grandfather was a Conservative […]
Voting together, cross-party, to defeat the Conservatives: South Devon Primary update
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We are aware that Labour has announced a candidate for South Devon. Some are implying on social media that he intends to run a serious campaign. But we would be very surprised if that’s his plan, after being dropped in by national HQ just weeks from the election. It would be a tragedy if a […]
Is Rishi Sunak trying to lose the general election?
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Nobody who was serious about winning the general election and forming the next government could possibly campaign like Rishi Sunak and the Tories have done in these first few days of the general election… could they? It was called on Wednesday, May 22, 2024: the day the government launched its resilience initiative and told us […]
Your go-to reminder of 14 years of Conservative ‘achievements’. Part 2: environment, housing, public services plus scandals, resignations and suspensions
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A continuation of the list of horrors perpetrated on this country by the Conservatives. Environment Human effluent flowing merrily through our waterways. Failure to regulate and curb energy price rises, leading to massive provider profits and pressure on consumers. Multiple failures to meet climate targets and backtracking on environmental commitments. The loss of EU funding […]
Are we in for the dirtiest general election campaign so far?
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On May 22, 2024, Sunak finally announced the date of the next General Election: July 4. As the polls show, he has quite a challenge to win – or even to prevent Labour from securing an outright majority. But the Conservative Party is traditionally one of the world’s most effective election-winning machines, and it would be complacent not to assume […]
Operation Save Little Dog
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When it was clear Johnson was on the way out, his allies launched Operation Save Big Dog. This article explores what we might call Operation Save Little Dog – the equivalent for Sunak, in the wake of the worse-than-expected results in the Council elections. The factions on the right are now quite complex: there are the extreme-right backers of the […]
What the extreme-right may be planning
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The wealthy market fundamentalists who fund the right-wing think tanks have different objectives from the UK population as a whole. These think tanks propose such policies as abolishing the NHS, allowing slums with substandard housing to ‘solve’ the housing crisis, slashing benefits to pensioners in order to reduce taxes and letting the climate crisis go unchecked. The UK population as […]
Hands up if this government makes YOU proud to be British!
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The Lords issued Parliament with a list of amendments to the Rwanda bill. The government rejected every one and the bill was put to the vote on 16 April. It passed. These were the amendments: An amendment to make sure the legislation has “due regard” for international law. Rejected. An amendment that states it is […]
Conservative 2019 manifesto: what they promised vs what they’ve done
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With so many leadership changes and policy U-turns, it is hard to keep track of the promises on which the Conservatives were elected to government in 2019. I have had a detailed look back at their 2019 manifesto; it’s hard for voters to have a clear line of accountability, with weekly “rebrands”, “resets”, and “relaunches”. […]
Campaigning chicanery: Simon Jupp goes lower. Letter to the editor
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Dear Editor, ‘Disgusted’ doesn’t come close. Although even now I am still sometimes surprised by how badly these Tories behave, I am genuinely shocked at what Simon Jupp is up to. Jupp, the Conservative elected as East Devon’s MP in 2019, is attempting to deceive voters by purloining – for his own purposes – the […]
Stop lying to us, Sunak et al! The stats speak for themselves. Letter to the editor
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The statistics keep coming. 14 years of Tory rule leaves us with eight per cent of pensioners failing to eat regularly because of heating costs and other bills. Nine kids in any state school class of 30 are living in poverty (defined as family income below 60 percent of the national average). The Government has allocated […]
Communities determined to shake up the status quo: the political primary process evolves…
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People’s primary organisers side-step party HQs’ attempt to block their new grassroots movement to unite the progressive vote. South Devon Primary is a community initiative to unite the progressive vote around a single opposition candidate at the general election, healing the division which time after time hands victory to the Conservatives. The primary took place […]
A democratic revolt from below is bubbling up
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No-one outside of a diminishing band of party bureaucrats believes our political and democratic system is working. Of course, the charade continues; of PMQ’s, of who’s up and who’s down, of polls and predictions. But this, in the phrase of Colin Crouch, is a post-democracy, a democracy in name only in which the game is played […]
Ugly language, ugly outcomes – this government is a danger to us all
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When I look back over the last eight years, one image dominates: September 2019, and Paula Sherriff ‘s pleas to Johnson to tone down his language – language being quoted back to her colleagues in death threats – is dismissed as ‘humbug’ It wasn’t the day the ugliness started – heaven knows there’d been enough […]
The budget we SHOULD have had…
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Getting the Budget right is a critically important part of governing well. If the Budget is well-formulated, it gives space to address the real issues; if it is not, then whatever promises politicians make, they will not be able to keep. Frequently, Budget analysis in the media does not look at it this way and […]