Politics
The Nottingham killings have exposed a broken Britain
On 13 June 2023, Valdo Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenic, fatally stabbed three people in the centre of Nottingham. Over the past four weeks, I have been closely following the Nottingham Inquiry – a public investigation into how Calocane, a violent psychotic and known risk to the public, was ever in a position to roam the streets freely. The inquiry has also looked at the response to Calocane’s murders – including the terrible treatment of the victim’s families by our institutions, from the police to the local authority. If ever there was a case that encapsulated a truly broken Britain, it is the story of Valdo Calocane.
Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, two 19-year-old students at the University of Nottingham, were Calocane’s first victims. It was 4am and the two friends were walking back to their student accommodation, having been out celebrating the end of term. They were nearly home when Calocane, who had been hiding in a nearby alleyway, attacked them on the street. Both were fatally stabbed before, according to a judicial summary, the killer ‘calmly’ left the scene.
Calocane’s next victim was Ian Coates, a 65-year-old school caretaker. He was stabbed 15 times. Calocane left Coates’s body on the street before stealing his van and driving into the centre of Nottingham, where he attempted to mow down three members of the public in two separate incidents. Miraculously, all three survived, but not without significant injuries. In 2024, Calocane was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order, having had his charges downgraded to manslaughter on the grounds of his mental illness.
A month into the inquiry, one thing is crystal clear: Coates, Webber and O’Malley-Kumar were killed by Calocane, but they were failed by the British state. Calocane had been dangerously unwell for many years: in 2020, when he began to experience his first bouts of violent psychosis, health officials declined to section him because of the ‘over-representation of young black men in prison’. The Nottingham NHS Mental Health Care Trust, who became primarily responsible for Calocane’s care, did not administer anti-psychotic medication because of his fear of needles.
Despite his increasingly aggressive behaviour, which included forcing a neighbour to jump from her first-floor balcony after he broke in the door, Calocane remained at large. Prior to his fatal attacks, he assaulted police officers, emergency workers, flatmates and colleagues. He stalked strangers and repeatedly tried to break into neighbouring properties. At the time of the attack, he was the subject of an outstanding arrest warrant.
Even without these frightening outbursts, the very nature of Calocane’s thoughts should have been enough to suggest that he posed a grave risk to society. He believed that he was being spied on by MI6. He ‘heard voices’ that told him his family was going to die – voices that he believed were the ‘creation of mental-health services’. In 2021, Calocane even travelled to Thames House in London, the headquarters of MI5, asking to be arrested. How was this man ever allowed to roam the streets?
The negligence and incompetence of the responsible authorities does not end there. Over the past few days, we have learnt harrowing details of how the victims’ families were treated by Nottinghamshire Police and Nottingham City Council. Coates’s body, we heard, was left on the road for 15 hours. His son was notified of his death on Instagram after receiving a message from a family friend. Inexplicably, the inquiry has also heard that Coates’s three sons were excluded from a vigil organised by the council – a memorial they had only been made aware of after receiving an inquiry from a journalist.
The conduct of the police has been exposed as truly scandalous. Multiple officers involved in the case were found to have spent an inappropriate amount of time looking at pictures and footage related to the crimes. The consequent misconduct hearing was concealed from the families. Bizarrely, the families were kept apart by the police throughout Calocane’s trial. Each family was told that the other preferred privacy when, in fact, the opposite was true – they were desperate to connect with one another, and have since formed incredibly close bonds.
Nottingham is not the same place after Calocane’s crimes. Each victim represented something unique about the city I grew up in and where I continue to live. Coates was an avid fisherman and Nottingham Forest supporter – a classic Nottingham bloke. He was a loving father and grandfather. The school he was travelling to on the morning of his death, where he worked as a janitor, was the same school my son attended. Webber and O’Malley-Kumar were doing what all Nottingham students do – enjoying the nightlife that has become part of the city’s character.
Walking through Nottingham on any day of the week you will encounter people with serious drug and alcohol problems. This once-proud metropolis, a former centre of British industry, is now littered with the tents and sleeping bags of its many homeless residents. At times, it feels as though, everywhere you look, all you see are people with serious mental-health issues – whether they are asking you for money, or merely shouting into the ether. Nottingham, like so many towns and cities now feels abandoned and unsafe. I no longer feel proud of Nottingham, the city I grew up in and where I continue to live.
Nottingham City Council has, perhaps wisely, said nothing throughout the inquiry. A few weeks ago, however, it saw fit to share the fact that it has been awarded the ‘Purple Flag’ award for safe cities on its Facebook account. This was on the same day the inquiry uncovered the extent of Calocane’s violence during a previous arrest. Its lack of sensitivity and awareness was sadly symbolic of the state’s failures that have been reinforced over the past four weeks.
Either through neglect or design, UK institutions are failing to keep people safe. This has been one of the most glaring facts exposed throughout the last four weeks. And, when tragedy does occur, it is families that carry the load in getting justice – whether it is Hillsborough, Grenfell or Nottingham, the state’s first response is always to protect itself.
We must never forget Valdo Calocane’s victims. But it is also our duty not to let the authorities who enabled his crimes off the hook. We must not tolerate Broken Britain any longer.
Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic.
Two things seem certain after last week’s local elections in England and parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales. The first is that the historically incompetent and unpopular prime ministership of Keir Starmer is beyond salvation. The second is that, if the quality of the candidates elected locally and nationally is anything to go by, so too is Britain.
For proof that nothing you say or do in modern times can get in the way of your political dreams, we need look no further than Eden Hills. ‘Cock is one of my favourite tastes’, the newly elected Green councillor said in a social-media post last year. ‘Not only that, but balls smell amazing.’ In a separate post, he said: ‘OKAY [I’m] bored of being woke now, [I] should get back to talking about COCK.’
Hills was one of many trans or nonbinary candidates successfully fielded by the Green Party of England and Wales. The Scottish Greens managed to get two transgender candidates elected to the Scottish parliament, both of whom have some rather questionable views.
Q Manivannan – a self-described ‘queer Tamil immigrant’ – was elected to the Scottish parliament as a member for Edinburgh and Lothians, despite only having lived in Scotland since 2021, the year he arrived in Edinburgh from India on a student visa. It is by no means certain that Manivannan will be able to remain in the country long enough to complete his five-year term.
‘I cannot wait [until] big lizard Lizzie kicks the bucket’, Iris Duane, another of the Greens’ new trans MSPs, said in a social-media post in 2022, referring to the late Queen Elizabeth II. ‘Not because she’s dead but because of the absolute meltdown it will cause [in] the British consciousness.’
Heading south, the interests of Greens’ politicians undergo something of a transformation. The London borough of Lambeth elected Saiqa Ali, who was arrested last month on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred against Jews. Ali is alleged to have posted pictures on social media of a blue-and-white serpent with a Star of David on its skin coiled around the Earth and to have said that ‘England has a government that is overrepresented with Zionist Jews’. Ifhat Shaheen, who was elected to the Hackney council, came under the spotlight for wondering if ‘Zionists’ might be ‘harvesting’ the organs of dead Palestinians.
Not that the Green Party had any kind of monopoly on dodgy candidates. Glenn Gibbins, who was elected as a Reform councillor in Sunderland, seems to be the incarnation of every fear that the liberal establishment has projected on to the populist right-wing party. His novel suggestion for, er, dealing with the ‘amount of Nigerians in town’ was to ‘melt them all down and fill in the potholes’.
There is much more that can be said about the quality of England’s local councillors. Abdul Monsur, elected to Tower Hamlets, publicly denied the Holocaust in a Facebook post in 2025. The mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, was returned to serve yet another term at the helm of the east London borough, despite a well-documented history) of vote-rigging and religious intimidation.
Once, there might have been a darkly funny side to this local-elections freakshow. But with the seriousness of the problems Britain is facing, from economic stagnation to societal Balkanisation, we surely have to ask: is this really the calibre of candidate we deserve?
Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.
For many households, the “cost of living crisis” has felt inescapable and never-ending.
And now, a PwC report has found that people seem to be bracing for yet another financial shock.
It said that UK consumer confidence has seen its lowest quarterly decline in four years (in 2022, or four years ago, inflation reached a then-41-year high of 11.1%; PwC point out this is the “sharpest quarterly decline in sentiment since the onset of the Ukraine war”).
It’s the lowest overall score since 2023.
“All age groups are concerned about the rising cost of living, with most people planning short-term cutbacks and sentiment among the under-35s the hardest hit.”
What are the most common concerns?
90% of respondents said they were most worried about the cost of living.
80% said they plan to cut household spending in the coming months (food price surges are reportedly expected by some in November 2026).
Twice as many respondents (12% vs 24%) said they planned to drive less to save on fuel costs in the April survey than they did in the January survey. And a majority of under-45s – 65% – said they were worried about their job security and/or prospects.
The 2,000-person-strong survey, conducted after the Easter bank holidays, also found that members of every age group felt less financially healthy than they did in the previous quarter.
“In contrast to previous cost of living shocks, the gap between more and less affluent households has narrowed, while the gap between the young and old has widened,” the accountancy firm said.
What has caused these concerns?
PwC said that “Food prices, which are already on the rise, typically have the biggest influence on cost of living perceptions, and are expected to climb further” later on in the year.
They also pointed out that pay rises are usually given in April. They speculated that if households haven’t been given those by now, they might have begun to budget for a leaner-than-anticipated financial year.
Then, there’s the fact that the energy price cap will be removed in July. Many are expecting price hikes post the closure of the crucial shipping channel, the Strait of Hormuz.
Politics
The Union is weaker after the Welsh Senedd, Scottish Parliament and English local election results. Starmer’s myopic speech ignores the danger.
Sir Kier Starmer’s speech on Monday morning painted an almost apocalyptic picture of the future of his country, were he to be ousted from the Prime Ministership. He said “our country will go down a dark path”. Referencing the gains by Reform UK and the Greens, he stated that Labour is “battling the despair upon which they prey”. “Change cannot come quick enough”. “People need hope”. “Incremental change won’t cut it”.
Starmer described “a battle for the soul of our nation”. There’s the rub. He is Prime Minister of a multi-national country. There was no focus on Scotland, Wales nor Northern Ireland. Indeed, England wasn’t referenced. It didn’t need to be: for Keir Starmer and the Labour bigwigs, Englishness and Britishness appear interchangeable. This was a speech by a decent Englishman which had no resonance for the non-English UK nations.
The election results have seen the annihilation of the old British unionist parties in Wales and Scotland. Together, the Labour and Conservative parties won 22% of Scottish seats, and 17% of Welsh seats. (Remember that, unlike the English-local or Westminster elections, the Scottish and Welsh electoral systems are proportional.) Nothing like this has been seen before, electorally.
These two old parties are sclerotic. They cannot imagine a British government that doesn’t include one of them. They are majoritarian by nature. They won’t trust the people of the UK with a proportional electoral system, believing themselves above the people. They see nothing wrong with a party that gains one-third of the vote winning two-thirds of the seats, as happened in 2024. Their hubris will result in a farrago of Faragistas running the UK into the ground and the departure of Scotland and, possibly, Wales. (Politico poll of polls currently has Scottish independence running at 51% – 46% in favour of independence, the second-highest margin since the 2014 referendum.)
What happens to NI/NoI if the hubris of Labour and Conservatives results in a Reform UK government that antagonizes Scotland sufficiently to lead to its secession and the end of British identity? Reunificationists urgently need to craft a vision for the future of this island that truly cherishes all identities. The failure of separatist violence to achieve unity – and the immense suffering it has caused – must be addressed and acknowledged in a way that is genuinely cathartic for unity-desirous, unity-agnostic and unity-hostile voters. Is that possible? If it is not tried, what will we sleepwalk into?
Philip McGuinness taught at Dundalk Institute of Technology, plays mandolin with the Oriel Traditional Orchestra and loves to walk around and over the wee perfect hills of the Ring Of Gullion.
Discover more from Slugger O’Toole
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
We are reader supported. Donate to keep Slugger lit!
For over 20 years, Slugger has been an independent place for debate and new ideas. We have published over 40,000 posts and over one and a half million comments on the site. Each month we have over 70,000 readers. All this we have accomplished with only volunteers we have never had any paid staff.
Slugger does not receive any funding, and we respect our readers, so we will never run intrusive ads or sponsored posts. Instead, we are reader-supported. Help us keep Slugger independent by becoming a friend of Slugger. While we run a tight ship and no one gets paid to write, we need money to help us cover our costs.
If you like what we do, we are asking you to consider giving a monthly donation of any amount, or you can give a one-off donation. Any amount is appreciated.
spiked is funded by readers like you. Only 0.1% of regular readers currently support us. If just 1% did, we could grow our team and step up the fight for free speech and democracy.
Become a spiked supporter and enjoy unlimited, ad-free access, bonus content and exclusive events – while helping to keep independent journalism alive.
Monthly support makes the biggest difference. Thank you.
Labour MPs can’t decide if Keir Starmer is coming or going even as his premiership hangs in the balance.
Despite the party’s horrendous performance in the local elections, the prime minister has made it clear he has no intention of stepping down.
That means it is up to the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) to try and unite behind an alternative candidate to oust the PM.
But MPs cannot decide what course of action they want to take, and so the party seems to be falling apart – in public.
1. ‘Wholly Unserious’
Backbencher Catherine West threatened to pose a leadership challenge to Starmer if she got the required backing of 20% of the parliamentary party.
However, after Starmer’s make-or-break speech on Monday, West changed tactics and sent a letter to fellow Labour MPs.
She asked them to back her letter calling on the PM to step down in September.
Fellow Labour MP Sean Woodcock then shared his email response to her on X, writing: “I think this is a wholly unserious way of going about this.”
He added: “Please stop.”
2. ‘By September’ Or ‘With September’?
West’s demand for Starmer to step down caused major confusion over a significant technicality: what was the deadline?
The backbencher’s initial email said she wanted the PM to resign “in September”, but she has since claimed she meant “by September”.
That sparked one of the signatories to withdraw immediately.
3. Who Will Stand Aside For Burnham?
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is considered to be one of the main rivals to Starmer.
However, he needs a seat in parliament to successfully challenge Starmer.
That has fuelled speculation that a Labour MP could stand aside, giving Burnham a chance of winning the subsequent by-election.
The so-called “King of the North” is rapidly accumulating support – but not many people are willing to actually give up their jobs, it seems.
As Paula Barker, MP for Liverpool Wavertree, told the BBC: “I would be delighted if a seat could be identified for Andy Burnham.”
But, when asked if she would give up her seat for him, Barker said firmly: “No.”
After an awkward pause, she was asked if that meant she was hoping someone else would give Burnham their seat. Barker said: “Yes.”
‘Some thoughts on the election results’, began Missan Harriman, the chairman of the Southbank Centre, in a video posted to X on Saturday. ‘The first thing that really comes to mind for me… is when [Kurt Vonnegut] asked Susan Sontag on her thoughts on the Holocaust’:
‘She said 10 per cent of people in any population are cruel no matter what. And 10 per cent is merciful no matter what… The other remaining 80 per cent could be moved in either direction… In the context of yesterday’s election results, it’s something that I feel is really topical.’
Topical? Sontag, a prominent Jewish American essayist, was reflecting on why a population went along with the systematic extermination of Jews. Harriman is reflecting on a population voting for Reform UK. ‘The surge of Reform is real… and it should be a warning’, the arts official said darkly.
He has since clarified that he did not intend to liken Reform voters to Nazis – though, if he had, he would not be without company. The idea that anyone who voted for a party to the right of Labour is at best incredibly thick, and at worst a rabid fascist, has been commonplace since Brexit and during every election since. And these feverish sentiments have been given a renewed airing after local-election results began emerging last week.
‘Yay, Reform have won’, says one TikTok user. ‘That’s us G-A-Ys going to prison and having everything taken away.’ Another mouths along to Taylor Swift as the text flashes up: ‘Reform winning the most in the UK shows how uneducated people are… they’ll never learn.’ ‘Hate this stupid fucking racist miserable fascist island’, another critic writes on X.
Among the most amusing – and the most telling – reactions was a post congratulating Reform voters on their success. This was accompanied by an AI-generated image of several overweight white Brits in teal wifebeaters, smoking and drinking in line at the polling station. ‘BREXIT’ one pot-bellied man has tattooed on his arm – a forever-reminder that the gammon cannot be trusted to know what’s good for them.
Accompanying the snobbish disdain for the voters has been the familiar accusation of racism. ‘Reform voters don’t even know what they’re voting for’, claims an X post viewed by two million: ‘They just don’t like brown people.’
While there will undoubtedly be some people with unpleasant or bigoted views both voting and standing for Reform (just as there are in even the most ‘anti-racist’ of parties, it seems), to insist that swathes of Brits are desperate to quell illegal immigration because they simply cannot stand to live among non-whites is palpable nonsense. Two-thirds of Brits believe the number of people currently entering the country is too high. To dismiss the concerns of the overwhelming majority as racist, to cast the desire to control a nation’s borders as fascist, is as ignorant as it is insulting.
Naturally, those deriding Reform as racist struggle with the cognitive dissonance arising from the fact that a non-negligible amount of the pro-Reform set are actually immigrants – or descendants of immigrants – themselves. ‘The fact that some of these winning Reform candidates are BROWN PEOPLE is genuinely beyond me’, reads a disgruntled TikTok post. The anti-Reform crew are similarly bewildered by the views of gay and bisexual men, among whom Reform is the leading party.
Some seem genuinely convinced that Reform’s rise heralds a dystopian future. ‘Watching the election scared for my daughter’s future’, says one young mother, sorrowful music playing as she poses with her infant. Another woman simply videos herself crying against the backdrop of a results graph. ‘What’s happening?’, she croaks tearfully. In such instances, I can only hope these people find respite from their anguish. I imagine taking a break from the algorithm, heading outside, and recognising that the majority of their compatriots do not, in fact, want them humiliated, locked up, or dead would go a long way.
Georgina Mumford is a content producer at spiked.
Even though they were held last Thursday, the local, Scottish and Welsh elections seem an age ago. Their reverberations are shaking the very foundations of British politics, and also undermining the future of the prime minister.
Mid term elections are always difficult for an incumbent government, so in that sense these were no different. But they really were. This was arguably the worst set of elections for a government ever. They lost just under 1500 seats, which admittedly was fewer than the 1850 some pollsters were predicting, but awful nonetheless. Combine that with coming third in Wales and a very poor second in Scotland, and the loss of several councils and mayoralties to the Greens and it is obvious that it cannot be business as usual. Something has to change. But what?
Keir Starmer is not a politician of the normal sort. He doesn’t have any ideological grounding. He doesn’t really know his own party. When he talks about it, there’s no passion of the sort you’d get from Neil Kinnock. That’s a real problem.
What is also a problem is that he doesn’t seem to have anyone left in Number 10 who can write him a decent speech or point out the obvious. For anyone to think that bringing back Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman was the first measure you should take to reenforce a message of change is just risible.
The speech this morning was more of the same. It had echoes of Harold Wilson’s famous proclamation back in the late 1960s when he was facing cabinet plotting. “I know what’s going on. I’m going on!” To say over the weekend that he wanted to be in Downing Street for ten years, was not just tin-eared, but had echoes of Margaret Thatcher’s equally tin-eared comment in 1989 of “going on and on and on”.
He mouthed the words of taking responsibility for the election results, but then offered more of the same. He said he would renationalise British Steel, which prompts the natural question: why did you not do that earlier, when you could have saved Port Talbot? He banged on again at Britain’s place is at the heart of Europe, yet could not articulate how that can possibly happen without crossing his red lines on the Single Market and Customs Union. He droned on about offering young people more opportunities in Europe, fully aware that his Europe Minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, has failed to negotiate such a deal through no fault of his own. The demands the EU is making render it impossible.
This obsession with Europe isn’t surprising, but all over the country, Labour lost thousands of votes to Reform UK. OK, promoting closer ties with the EU may go down well with Green or LibDem voters, but it’s Reform UK that poses the biggest challenge to Labour. And yet again Starmer dismissed Reform as bigoted racists, and by doing so implicitly smeared those who voted for them. Another example of his tin earedness.
So what happens now? Catherine West’s challenge is unlikely to provoke an immediate leadership election. Angela Rayner can’t challenge until her tax affairs are resolved with HMRC. Andy Burnham has yet to find a seat where he could fight what would be a very tasty by-election. Ed Miliband protests he has no interest in becoming leader. And then there’s Wes Streeting. Many believe that he is best placed to replace Starmer, but that window may well close if he doesn’t act now. But if he does, there is no guarantee he would prevail, and a failed move could signal the end of his career. What to do…
So given the lack of a clear alternative, Starmer may live to fight another day, but he knows that he’s only ever one crisis away from further leadership speculation. The next crisis may well come very soon possibly next week, when the next batch of Mandelson documents are released.
I’ve spent the last couple of hours texting Labour MPs. Not all of them, but a fairly chunky representative sample. I’ve asked them whether the prime minister did enough in his speech to convince them and their colleagues that he should stay.
I will be talking about their replies on my LBC show at 7pm this evening.
Going back to the election results, I have found it amusing to read the delusional comments from some people who try to minimise the scale of the victory for Reform UK. Ah, they say, their vote share was down on last year, ignoring the fact that they gained more seats than any party ever has in a single local election in the past. They came from nothing to reach second place in Wales, and joint second in Scotland. Their vote share was down on last year because of the demographics of the seats that were up for grabs. The Left have always underestimated the appeal of Reform, and failed to even try to understand it. So long as that remains the case, they will never be able to combat Farage’s appeal. It was the same with Boris Johnson.
The LibDems and the Greens did roughly as well as expected, while the Conservatives did better than expected in London and one or two parts of the south, and they didn’t lose quite as many seats as many pundits had predicted. But in East Anglia, they were more or less wiped out, with Reform sweeping the board in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. Kemi Badenoch may be polling well personally, but there are few signs that the popularity of her party is moving quickly enough in the right direction. Her challenge now is to ensure that by this time next year, the Conservative Party vote share is markedly up on its current showing of 17-20 per cent.
Catherine West will canvass MPs for support this afternoon (Alamy)
3 min read
Labour MP Catherine West will no longer launch a bid for her leadership on Monday afternoon and will instead canvass support for a timetable for Keir Starmer’s resignation and the election of a new leader in September.
She insists to PoliticsHome that she does not have a particular successor in mind.
West said on Saturday that she would challenge the Prime Minister if a cabinet minister did not put themselves forward.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4, she said: “My preferred option is for the cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there’s plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role.”
West was understood to be waiting to make her final decision until after Starmer had finished giving his speech on Monday morning setting out a reset after Labour faced a devastating set of local elections.
Speaking to PoliticsHome about the decision to not launch her leadership bid and instead canvass for a timetable for Starmer’s resignation, West said: “A lot of people might not have envisaged yours truly as walking into No 10 and I’m therefore happy to do something more vague.”
Asked if she had a particular leader in mind to take over from Starmer, West said: “No I genuinely want to keep it as open as possible. That’s why I have said by September [referring to her email], but that’s really not my job. My job was to get the ball rolling and test the temperature of the PLP. And so that is where we have got to. “
In an email to MPs seen by PoliticsHome sent after the speech concluded, West said: “I am hereby giving notice to No 10 that I am collecting names of Labour MPs to call on the Prime Minister to set a timetable for the election of a new leader in September.”
West said that while she welcomed “the renewed energy and ideas” in Starmer’s speech, she felt that it was “too little too late”.
“The results last Thursday show that the PM has failed to inspire hope. What is best for the party and country now is for an orderly transition.”
On the letter, West said there was no deadline for MPs to respond as such and while she had originally wanted to say by 10am on Tuesday, she felt that for some MPs who might be “a bit nervous that might be a bit pushy”.
West said that it would also allow MPs time to speak to their Constituency Labour Party.
She added that while she did not think anybody “dislikes” Starmer, “we are just in a different era now [from 2024] with Reform being like this.
“We need more of a street fighter, and I think people have stopped listening to us, and I think that is dangerous in politics.”
The Green Party outperformed its best ever results in the 2026 local elections. As a result, there are many more Green councillors now, and with that comes interesting new ideas you won’t hear from status quo politicians:
Based. https://t.co/RvrJljCufx
— Curtis Daly (@CurtisDaly_) May 10, 2026
Oh, and when we say the Greens outperformed their best ever result, they actually more than doubled it:
The Green Party got 1.95 million votes at the local elections (excluding mayoral!)
Approx 1 million more people (!!!) than best record in 2023.https://t.co/0qbagSvIYp — Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) May 10, 2026
Pretty remarkable stat!
Green Party surge: Dylan Law
Dylan Law is now Hackney’s 19-year-old deputy mayor. His bio reads:
Dylan Law is a Hackney-born organiser, youth leader and campaigner standing to be Deputy Mayor alongside Zoë Garbett. At just 19, Dylan brings a rare mix of lived experience, local knowledge and political courage.
Dylan spent five years on Hackney Youth Parliament, where he championed excluded young people and helped lead campaigns on education, housing and safety. As Head Boy at City Academy Hackney, he secured welfare reforms and built cross-community youth initiatives. He’s also volunteered with Hackney Quest, Booth House, and Outrunners, supporting residents facing hardship and crisis.
He knows first-hand how badly council services can fail families, and it’s this experience that drives him. From housing issues to school exclusions, Dylan has seen the gaps in the system and is determined to fix them.
He also founded his own small business, showing the initiative, creativity and leadership Hackney’s future demands.
Like many in Britain, Law’s experience has given him the impression that we pay too much on rent. And his solution to that problem is really boiling the piss of Britain’s landlord class.
Piss boiling
In the video at the top, Law says:
I don’t see why any landlord is making profit off rent or off housing, right? If I pay rent to my house, it’s for a human right. I’m paying just to maintain a home. I think that should be the basis. So if it has to be a thing where a two bedroom flat is literally £600 maximum, then it is what it has to be. And for all the landlords who complain about that, tough luck.
In the system we live under, there is one key reason why we couldn’t suddenly implement this system, and it’s that owners would immediately start selling off their properties. This would be chaos, with house prices crashing as a result of the sudden influx of stock, and renters at risk of having their homes sold out from under them.
Such a situation would potentially necessitate the government seizing properties to prevent total bedlam. While we’re not opposed to the government acquiring several million more council homes, we do acknowledge that all this happening overnight could potentially destabilise the country and strain our international relationships.
All that said, this isn’t necessarily a criticism of Law. Firstly, we should all want to get to a place in which shelter isn’t a commodity for the wealthy to exploit. Secondly, it’s crucial that politicians say things which scare the shit out of landlords.
The situation right now is that the wealthy assume they’re always going to get their own way; the reason they think this is because they almost always do. Ideally, we want to push the balance of power in the favour of ordinary people. And to get there, we need the rich to understand they’re a minority in this country, and that they don’t get to enforce a situation in which the majority of us live in relative poverty.
Oh, and thirdly, we want politicians to operate by thinking: ‘this is what we want – how do we get as close to that as possible‘. The alternative is what Labour offers, which is: ‘nothing can change – how do we sell endless decline to the public?‘
Before we move away from this, however, we should note it is official Green Party policy to “Abolish Landlords”.
Abolish Landlords
Firstly, as the Green Party have freely admitted, the ‘Abolish Landlords‘ policy isn’t exactly what it seems. After they passed the motion in 2025, the party’s housing spokesperson Carla Denyer said:
While the motion to conference had an eye-catching name, it does not actually ‘abolish’ landlords’
It does, however, address the housing crisis, empowers tenants and improves their wellbeing. It contains a range of policies which, over time, would reduce the proportion of the housing market that is privately rented, and increase the proportion of socially rented homes.
Councillor Paul Ainscough wrote:
the “Abolish Landlords” title is deliberately provocative. We want to get people talking about this issue and question why having somewhere to live is seen as an opportunity to make money instead of a basic human right?
We can all see that the housing situation in this country is a mess. People with spare money are being advised to buy up properties as an investment, while people who are struggling to get by are seeing their rent go up faster than their wages. The number of empty properties is going up at the same time as the number of homeless people is going up. London Councils have lost half of their council houses, and the rent they used to bring in, and are now paying a fortune for temporary accommodation for families with nowhere to live. We do need drastic change.
Ainscough also went into further detail, writing:
We would start by ending the right-to-buy scam. We would also end the financial incentives and tax-breaks that were set up to encourage private landlords. We would end buy-to-let mortgages and bring back rent controls to stop landlords exploiting renters. We would introduce a land value tax to shift tax from tenants to landlords; increase taxes on empty properties to incentivise bringing them back into use; and introduce national insurance on rental income so landlords pay the same tax on their earnings as everyone else.
When it comes to housing supply, instead of just building more and more houses, the sensible thing is to start by making better use of the properties we already have. A Green Government would finance the purchase of empty properties; properties being sold by landlords; and those properties that aren’t being maintained properly by landlords. All of this would increase the supply of healthy, affordable homes without having to build so many more.
When we do build new housing, the Green Party wouldn’t follow the Labour and Conservative model of just letting private developers do whatever they want. We don’t want more of the luxury investment properties that make the biggest profits for developers. We should be building the types of properties we really need in the places where they are really needed. We would not only tighten up planning regulations, we would also create a Government run national housebuilding programme.
Greens rising
Law will serve under the new mayor Zoë Garbett, who has considerable experience in London. Her bio reads:
At City Hall, Zoë leads for the Greens on Policing, Housing, and Planning – three of the most urgent areas affecting Londoners today. She has taken on the Met over racist and unethical policing practices, pushed for investment in harm reduction and action to reduce drug-related deaths, and fought estate demolitions that displace communities without delivering the housing we actually need. She is also a leading voice for renters’ rights, calling for stronger protections, rent controls, and enforcement. She has championed the rights of disabled Londoners to accessible homes, and defended street markets and community spaces across the capital from destructive development. From challenging power to putting forward tangible recommendations to the Mayor of London, Zoë has worked hard to help build a London that works for the many, not just the wealthy few.
In Hackney, Zoë has built deep roots through years of local organising and activism. Elected as a Green Councillor in Dalston in 2022 with the highest Green vote in London, she helped organise the Save Ridley Road Market campaign, has supported Dalston’s independent night-time economy, fought school closures, and stood shoulder to shoulder with trade unionists and tenants.
Clearly, Garbett is someone with a track record of fighting for London’s everyday residents, workers, and businesses. Going forwards, we’re sure it won’t hurt for landlords and developers to be a little terrified of Garbett and her team.
You can see more of Garbett in this video from Novara:
Featured image via Politics Joe
By Willem Moore
Vernon Key began the latest edition of his Radio 2 show by addressing the recent news that he and his wife Tess Daly have called time on their marriage.
On Monday morning, Vernon decided to tackle the elephant in the room immediately, kicked things off on his show by telling his listeners: “I just want to say on behalf of me and Tess, thank you for all your well wishes.”
“tt has been greatly, greatly appreciated,” he added.
Days earlier, the former couple had shared a joint statement on social media which read: “After much consideration, and with a deep sense of care and respect for one another, we have made the decision to separate amicably.
“This has not been an easy choice, but it comes from a place of mutual understanding and a shared desire for what is best for both of us. We remain great friends and most importantly, fully committed to our roles as loving and supportive parents, which will always be our priority.”
Vernon and Tess concluded: “There are no other parties involved in this decision. We kindly ask for privacy during this time as we navigate this transition together. We will not be making any further public comments.”
The two met in the early 2000s when they were both in the early years of their presenting careers, eventually getting married in 2003.
During a 2013 interview with The Sun, the former Strictly Come Dancing host recalled: “It was all quite immediate, really, because we instantly had such a blast together. I couldn’t imagine having more fun with anyone else. It was pretty explosive, I tell you.”
The year after they tied the knot, Tess and Vernon welcomed their first daughter, Phoebe, with their second, Amber, following in 2009.
Although they’re both prolific presenters on British TV, Tess and Vernon have only worked together professionally on a handful of occasions, most recently in February 2026, when they co-hosted an episode of The One Show.
Don’t Lose Everything: Tips to Restart Trading #trading #stockmarket #finance
Ukrainian refugee speaks about her experience in York
Leading Change in Higher Education
Manchester United reach agreement with Casemiro over contract clause amid transfer speculation
US brings back mandatory military draft registration
Steven Gerrard disagrees with Gary Neville over ‘shock’ Chelsea and Arsenal claim | Football
-
Crypto World3 days agoHarrisX Poll Found 52% of Registered Voters Support the CLARITY Act
-
Fashion3 days agoWeekend Open Thread: Marianne Dress
-
Crypto World4 days agoUpbit adds B3 Korean won pair as Base token gains Korea access
-
Tech7 days agoImage AI models now drive app growth, beating chatbot upgrades
-
NewsBeat4 days agoNCP car park operator enters administration putting 340 UK sites at risk of closure
-
Tech1 day agoAuto Enthusiast Carves Functional Two-Stroke Engine from Solid Metal
-
Politics2 days agoPolitics Home Article | Starmer Enters The Danger Zone
-
Business2 days agoIgnore market noise, India’s long-term story intact, say D-Street bulls Ramesh Damani and Sunil Singhania
-
Crypto World6 days agoUAE Free Zone Deploys Blockchain IDs to Verify Registered Firms
-
Tech10 hours agoGM Agrees To Pay $12.75 Million To Settle California Lawsuit Over Misuse Of Customers’ Driving Data
-
Crypto World5 days agoBlackRock CEO Larry Fink Discusses a New Asset Class
-
Crypto World5 days agoRobinhood says Wall Street is building onchain
-
Entertainment7 days ago
Serena Williams hits Met Gala in metallic dress after GLP-1 reveal
-
Tech6 days agoApple and Samsung are dominating smartphone sales so thoroughly that only one other company makes the top 10
-
Tech6 days agoI tested the Xiaomi 17 Ultra’s camera and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to an iPhone
-
Fashion5 days agoThe Best Work Pants for Women in 2026
-
Sports7 days agoEverton v Man City LIVE: Haaland’s two-word response as visitors collapse to hand Arsenal advantage in Premier League title race
-
Politics6 days agoMet Gala 2026: Madonna’s Dramatic Red Carpet Look Steals The Show
-
Tech4 days agoAI agents are missing all the discussions your team is having. SageOX has an answer: agentic context infrastructure
-
Crypto World4 days ago
The FOMO Is Back: Why Bitcoin’s Latest Rally Has Analysts Flashing Warning Signs
You must be logged in to post a comment Login