Peter Black

The BBC reports that First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth has promised to tackle congestion along the M4 motorway and said it needs a "roads-based solution".

They say that the Plaid Cymru leader has classed the Brynglas Tunnels in Newport as an "economic problem for Wales", which is most probably true, but so is the M4 around Port Talbot, but as most of the journalists live in the south east of Wales, it doesn't get the same attention.

Of course, ap Iorwerth did not commit to a specific scheme to address the traffic black spot, which is not surprising as the cost of the black route across the Gwent Levels is astronomical.

Of course, Welsh Labour have accused the First Minister of making an "unfunded transport promise", while Reform UK and the Welsh Conservatives are calling for the relief road to be built:

Plaid had been opposed to a proposed M4 relief road, a controversial project to build a new motorway across the Gwent levels south of Newport, when the former Labour government last ditched the scheme.

The road, also known as the black route, would have bypassed the Brynglas Tunnels, which struggle to cope with the volume of traffic the M4 attracts at peak times.

Old proposals for a relief road included colour-coded black, blue, red and purple routes, with the yellow line marking the railway

Speaking at the Urdd Eisteddfod on Anglesey on Wednesday, ap Iorwerth said it had been Plaid policy for "many, many years" that something needed to be done to "unclog that Brynglas bottleneck".

"We remain against that black route as it was called, which was unnecessary," he said, adding that a "road-based solution" was still needed alongside new railway stations proposed between Cardiff and the Severn Tunnel.

Ap Iorwerth said options could include the so-called blue route, which would involve upgrading an existing dual carriageway through the south of Newport.

"What we need to do is do the work, and we will, to find the solutions," he said.

The question of course is whether the blue route is even viable. I had a briefing on this option when I was an Assembly Member and discovered that after spending a lot of money, it would actually make little difference to the congestion, offering some relief for a short time before filling up with traffic.

The fact is that whatever road the Welsh Government builds will be inundated with traffic very quickly, as happens with every similar project, not to mention the environmental damage.

It was Robin Cook who announced that Chicken Tikka Masala is the new national dish of Britain, but as David Olusoga told a session at the Hay Literary Festival the idea that the so-called previous favourite, fish and chips, is an exclusively British dish is misplaced.

As Wikipedia recounts Fish-and-chip shops first appeared in the UK in the 1860s, and by 1910 there were over 25,000 of them across the UK. This increased to over 35,000 by the 1930s, but eventually decreased to approximately 10,000 by 2009.

They add that the British government safeguarded the supply of fish and chips during the First World War and again in the Second World War. It was one of the few foods in the UK not subject to rationing during the wars, which further contributed to its popularity. However, the tradition did not originate here:

The British tradition of eating fish battered and fried in oil was introduced to the country by the Chuts and Spanish and Portuguese Jews who lived in the Netherlands before settling in the UK. These immigrants arrived as early as the 16th century, the main immigration to London being during the 1850s. They prepared fried fish in a manner similar to pescado frito, which is coated in flour then fried in oil.

Fish fried for Shabbat for dinner on Friday evenings could be eaten cold the following afternoon for shalosh seudot, palatable this way as liquid vegetable oil was used rather than a hard fat, such as butter. Charles Dickens mentions "fried fish warehouses" in Oliver Twist and in 1845 Alexis Soyer in his first edition of A Shilling Cookery for the People, gives a recipe for "fried fish, Jewish fashion", which is dipped in a batter mix of flour and water before frying However, "fish the Jews' way" in most English cookery books usually refer not to plain fried fish, but to escabeche, fish fried, then pickled in vinegar.

The location of the first fish and chip shop is unclear. The earliest known shops were opened in London during the 1860s by Eastern European Jewish immigrant Joseph Malin, and by John Lees in Mossley, Lancashire. Fried fish and chips had existed separately for at least 50 years prior to this, so the possibility that they had been combined at an earlier time cannot be ruled out. Fish and chips became a stock meal among the working class in England as a consequence of the rapid development of trawl fishing in the North Sea,[15] and the development of railways which connected the ports to major industrial cities during the second half of the 19th century, so that fresh fish could be rapidly transported to the cities.

Deep-fried chips (slices or pieces of potato) as a dish may have first appeared in England in about the same period: the Oxford English Dictionary notes as its earliest usage of "chips" in this sense the mention in Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1859): "husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil".

The modern fish-and-chip shop ("chippy" in modern British slang) originated in the UK, although outlets selling fried food occurred commonly throughout Europe. Early fish-and-chip shops had only very basic facilities. Usually these consisted principally of a large cauldron of cooking fat, heated by a coal fire. The fish-and-chip shop later evolved into a fairly standard format, with the food served, in paper wrappings, to queuing customers, over a counter in front of the fryers.

The point of this post is that we live in a multi-cultural society, but that is not a new development. Our country has a long history of migration over many centuries and our culture incorporates many traditions. The idea that the UK is somehow special and can exist in splendid isolation as portrayed by certain parties is nonsense.

Labels: lochist

The Independent reports that Labour has challenged Nigel Farage to disclose which authorities are investigating an alleged Russian hack linked to a £5 million gift he reportedly received.

The paper says that Anna Turley, Labour’s chairwoman, has written to the Clacton MP, urging him to publicly confirm whether he has reported the suspected cyber-attack to either the police or the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). She has said that if Farage fails to respond, then the Labour Party intends to make a report itself "in the public and national interest":

Farage received £5 million from Thailand-based crypto-entrepreneur Christopher Harborne in 2024, before he stood in the general election that year.

He has previously said the money was for non-political purposes, to pay for his safety and security, and later told The Sun it was a “reward for campaigning for Brexit for 27 years”.

A party source reportedly told the Mail On Sunday that forensic analysis of Mr Farage’s phone by “counter-espionage experts” indicated that “hostile state actors, almost certainly linked to Moscow, had used ‘spear phishing’ tactics to compromise his phone, email and bank accounts”.

Mr Farage told the newspaper: “These actions by Russia are deeply concerning and highlight the threat they pose to British security.”

Former NCSC boss Professor Ciaran Martin on Monday appeared to cast doubt over Mr Farage’s analysis, saying it was “without any merit”.

According to The Guardian newspaper, he said: “An aspiring prime minister has essentially claimed that Russia has launched an unprecedentedly aggressive intervention – a malicious intervention – in British politics, and he’s not produced a shred of evidence to support that claim.”

Ms Turley said she was “very concerned to read” that Mr Farage was allegedly hacked.

“If your suspicions are correct, this would constitute a serious cybercrime and a potential hostile-state operation directed at the leader of a British political party,” she told the party leader.

“I note that public reporting does not appear to confirm that this matter has been reported either to the police or to the National Cyber Security Centre.

“Instead, the reports state that you privately commissioned analysis from unnamed ‘counter-espionage experts’, who concluded that ‘hostile state actors, almost certainly linked to Moscow, had used spear phishing tactics’ to compromise your phone email and bank accounts.

“Quite apart from the implications for you personally, the alleged crime is an incredibly serious one with potential wider implications for Britain’s national security, the integrity of our politics and public confidence in our democratic system.”

As serious as a possible hack is, in many ways it detracts from the main issue - the funding of a UK politician and his political party by an overseas businessman to the tune of millions of pounds and the failure by Farage to report the £5m gift to the Parliamentary authorities.

The more Farage changes or adds to the story behind this gift, the less credible it seems. We need to establish the facts.

The Independent reports that Andy Burnham has hit out at Sir Tony Blair suggesting the former Labour prime minister is out of touch and partly to blame for the rise of politicians like Nigel Farage.

The paper says that Burnham's rebuke comes after Sir Tony warned that Labour was “playing with fire” on the future of the country, as he urged the party not to move further to the left, saying it should instead occupy the “radical centre”:

In an interview with the Observer, Mr Burnham, who is fighting to win a parliamentary by-election to return to Westminster, a prerequisite for challenging Sir Keir Starmer for the top job, criticised the former PM, who he said did not “mention inequality once”.

“If you don’t get how that’s driving politics now, if you are not rooting your analysis in the fact that people are unable to live and that things that were taken for granted are no longer affordable, then you are not understanding what’s going on,” he said.

Mr Burnham also insisted it was centrists, like Sir Tony, who had failed voters and fuelled the rise of Mr Farage’s Reform UK.
The Greater Manchester mayor said his former party leader “criticises my phrase about 40 years of neoliberalism but the last 40 years has given us wide inequality – that’s what’s responsible for the abandonment of the centre”.

“People don’t think the centre has delivered for them in terms of their lives, therefore they’ve gone further to the extremes,” he added.

Mr Burnham also attacked what he described as Sir Tony’s “obsession” with universities.

When he was in office the ex-PM famously set a target for 50 per cent of young people to go on to higher education. Mr Burnham said there should be a greater focus on technical education, such as apprenticeships.

“The prioritisation of universities is a significant part of the problem that has left out too many people and has impacted on the welfare system,” he said.

Sir Tony’s scathing attack on Labour, in the form of a 5,600 essay, said the party had no clear plan for the future and warned it risked doing long-term damage to both itself and the country unless the government underwent a fundamental reset.

In a damning indictment of nearly two years of a Starmer government, he said: “We don’t have a worked-out, coherent plan for the country in a fast-changing world, and are in the wrong political position from which to devise one and win a second term.”

But he warned trying to force the prime minister out without a clear policy direction “is not a serious way of conducting ourselves”.

He called on Labour to occupy the “best political space” which he described as “the radical centre”.

As unwelcome as Tony Blair's intervention may be to those within Labour, I think John Crace in the Guardian sums it up best in his parody version:

I led the Labour party for 13 years and won three general elections. Never forget that. No other Labour politician has done that. And if I play my cards right, no other Labour politician ever will. Right now, the Labour party is in the grip of self-delusion. Which makes me the perfect person to critique it. Because no one is more self-deluded than me. ‘Tis very heaven to imagine you are being constructive when your real goal is to switch off the life support.

A 7,500 word essay from Tony Blair on the future of the UK should be nobody's idea of what we need right now.

Having just spent four days in sweltering heat in the Hay Literature Festival, I was not amused to see this article in the Guardian that predicts that it can only get worse.

Bill McGuire takes us to the last day of July 2052:

From the air, London resembles a colossal refugee camp. Streets, gardens and parks are teeming with tents and cobbled-together shelters, within which the city’s residents have spent another uncomfortable night away from the heat traps that their houses and flats have become. After six days when the temperature peaked at about 40C, another scorcher is on the way.

Half-hearted attempts to upgrade insulation across the country’s housing stock ran out of steam and cash decades earlier, and most homes still have few barriers to the infiltrating heat. Almost all the country’s electricity is now from renewables, which has brought the cost down, but the relentless onslaught of extreme weather has driven an ever-deepening economic depression across the world. Many now have air conditioning, but can’t afford to run it.

Early risers yawn and stretch as they queue at standpipes for water. A succession of dry winters and a spring drought have brought water rationing across the south-east of England, adding to the woes of those waking from another sticky, broken sleep. Ironically, there is plenty of rain now, and every day ends with an electric storm and torrential rain. Most of this, however, cascades directly into storm drains that can no longer cope, bringing surface flooding to lower-lying parts of the capital, but no end to the dearth of potable water.

Growing crowds cluster around state-run grocery stores that provide the basics at affordable prices. Failed harvests at home in the previous two years, and massively reduced food imports, as other nations stricken by extreme weather hold on to what they have, has meant the rationing of bread and other staples. Supermarkets still exist, but they are struggling to keep prices down, and so cater almost entirely to the wealthy.

The power is out again, as it has been intermittently since the start of the heatwave. The problem isn’t generation but transmission; the extreme temperatures making cables sag and break and causing transformers to overheat. The doors of houses are open to let in the relatively cool air of the night, although the temperature hasn’t fallen below 29C. Trailing cables lead to televisions that some have shifted outside to watch, when the power is on, and to laptops over which crouch office workers marooned at home by widespread transport problems. A combination of the heat and extended power outages has brought chaos to rail and tube networks, while damage to road surfaces and malfunctioning traffic lights means that getting to work by car is a lottery.

Every hospital is overwhelmed as the incessant heat and humidity take their toll on vulnerable people, the old and the very young, and the final death toll across the country once the heat has abated is likely to be in the tens of thousands.

McGuire says that this future has every chance of coming to life if we continue to blunder unprepared into a climatically challenging future. Rather disturbingly, he says that we can’t stop what’s coming, but we can do plenty to help us cope better:

At the top of any to-do list is the critical importance of properly insulating our entire housing stock, so that homes can become refuges from the heat rather than potential death traps. At the same time, the large-scale roll out of generously subsidised rooftop solar power, combined with battery storage, will do much to make homes at least partly independent of the grid, and able to run air conditioning during peak heat, even when the power is out. Personal rainfall harvesting, which is already big in Germany and other countries, will also help to address the predicted water deficit. While we need to seriously rethink the country’s food strategy as a whole, encouragement and incentives for as many people as possible to grow at home their own fruit and vegetables can also help to ease the burden of inevitable shortages.

While such measures will help to mitigate the worst, casting a shadow over our efforts will be the impact of a failing climate on the global economy, and the consequences for the UK – with a number of analyses forecasting significant reductions in global GDP by mid-century. Inevitably, this will translate into increased hardship for many UK citizens, compromising their ability to cope with the new conditions. At the same time, a seriously weakened national economy will leave government with less money to build the resilience the country needs to successfully prevail in a hotter world.

Bearing in mind that we continue to pump out CO2 equivalent to the weight of 800,000 Titanics every year, and fossil fuel corporations are actively planning to expand operations, it is practically impossible for emissions reductions to happen fast enough to reduce the rate at which our world is heating. Consequently, 40C-plus mid-century heat in the UK is now baked in. We need, then, to face the fact that life in the 2050s is going to be very different from today, and act now. The sooner we recognise this and begin – as a nation – to prepare and adapt accordingly, the better we will be able to meet these enormous challenges to our everyday lives.

It looks like future Hay Festivals will be just as unbearably hot even if the government does take action to mitigate th impact/

This is an article I wrote for Liberator about the Senedd elections:

It all started to go wrong for the smaller parties at the Caerphilly by-election, a first-past-the-post contest that saw Plaid Cymru hold off Reform to take the Welsh Senedd seat from Labour.

In that election, Plaid was seen as the best choice to stop the Welsh branch of Farage’s limited company from taking the seat, and from that moment all the opinion polls had the subsequent Senedd election as a two-horse race.

The only problem was that the elections on 7th May were not being conducted on the same basis. We had a new system – sixteen constituencies each electing six MSs using the closed list d’hondt method.

It was a change designed to help the two larger parties. It gave control of the lists to party apparatchiks rather than ordinary members and set a threshold of around 11-12% of the vote to even have a chance of getting elected.

The irony was that having designed the voting system, Labour plummeted in the polls and found themselves victims, rather than benefactors. The other parties suffered as well, because by this time Plaid Cymru were hammering the message that they were the only choice to stop Reform, despite the fact that even this PR system does not work that way.

The election campaign was frenetic. I have never had so many pieces of paper through the door, all promising the earth, none of them, including the Welsh Liberal Democrats, properly costed, or taking account of the projected tightening in public expenditure over the next four years.

From that perspective it was a resource-intensive election, which meant that the Welsh Liberal Democrats had to target their campaigning to what was winnable. This started off as working five of the new constituencies, but by the end we were focussing on three – Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd (incorporating Brecon and Radnorshire and Swansea East and Neath), Gŵyr Abertawe (incorporating Swansea West and Gower) and Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf (incorporating Cardiff North and Cardiff West).

Throughout the campaign, the polls had the Welsh Liberal Democrats on between 4% and 6% and projected to win between zero and three seats. Our only hope lay in intensive campaigning and getting our vote out.

One question that is consistently posed to our representatives by the Welsh media is why we are not doing as well in Wales as in England? This is a complex question, but essentially our support has never really recovered following the coalition.

One reason for that much of the output of our party is so English-focused, aimed at soft Tories in the home counties, which does not help those of us in a six-party system in a left of centre country.

I would argue as well that despite being a federal party, most of those in charge do not understand what that means, or how they should deal with policy and issues in the new landscape, and often they do not understand devolution. I have lost count of the number of statements from spokespeople that imply they are speaking for all of the UK, when in fact the issue is devolved. I do not except the leadership in that judgement.

The difficulty caused by Ed Davey was over a controversy that arose about our Welsh leader’s previous work as a social worker. Jane Dodds was accused of committing a “grave error of judgement” while working as a senior manager in the Church of England, because she failed for months to arrange a crucial meeting involving the sexual abuse of a young man by a Bishop.

Jane worked for the Church of England for a year from 2015 as part of a central team advising and supporting case managers throughout the country. At the time of the error, the bishop in question was already deceased.

Jane apologised for her error, but unfortunately, Ed Davey jumped in with both feet and, instead of leaving the matter to be dealt with by the Welsh Party, as should have been the case, he called for Jane’s resignation.

For too long Ed Davey's default position in any crisis has been to call for his opponent to resign. This is not a position he, himself, ever took over the Post Office scandal, and quite rightly, as he was one of a dozen ministers duped by the post office management into supporting their position.

It was not Davey's place to tell the Welsh Party what to do, nor to insist that Jane resign. His highly performative foot-in-mouth moment galvanised even sceptics to back the Welsh leader, with the result that Jane didn't go, and it put the party in an almost impossible position during the Senedd election campaign.

It was quite clear that if Ed Davey came to Wales, the entire visit would have been dominated by questions over his relationship with Jane Dodds. As a result, the federal leader’s involvement in our campaign was limited to a private meeting with activists. No media were invited and Jane Dodds found other campaigning work to do.

To be fair to the federal party they did provide substantial funding for the Welsh campaign, however it was not enough for us to get over the line as we would have wished to. In all 16 seats, our support was squeezed by the incessant two-horse race argument being promoted by Plaid and Reform.

Many long-standing Welsh Liberal Democrat voters in held wards went over to the Welsh nationalists to stop Reform. As a result, although our vote in the two target areas we missed out on was twice that of our national average, we failed to win a seat.

This left Jane Dodds in Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd. She secured the fifth seat with 11.8% of the vote and remains the only Welsh Liberal Democrat in the Senedd.

The new Senedd now has 43 Plaid Cymru members (35.4% of the national vote), 34 Reform MSs (29.3% of the vote), 9 Labour members (11.1% of the vote), 7 Conservatives (10.7%), 2 Greens (6.7%) and one Liberal Democrat (4.5%).

Forty-nine seats are required for a majority, so it is likely that Plaid Cymru will form a minority administration. This means that they will be looking to make deals to get every piece of legislation and every budget passed.

Meanwhile, Labour in a particular face an existential crisis. They have dominated Welsh politics for over a century, have never secured fewer that 26 seats in the former 60 seat Senedd, and have led the Welsh Government for 27 years.

Their appalling record in managing public services, especially the health service, and the economy has caught up with them, as has the massive unpopularity of Keir Starmer and his government.

In many ways things could have been much worse for the Welsh Liberal Democrats. We have taken a small step back from the precipice but remain in jeopardy. The need to rebuild organisation and support remains, but there are upsides.

Despite a small membership and activist base, the level of activity and enthusiasm the party managed to generate for this campaign was extraordinary. Even in the most hopeless of seats, members were out delivering leaflets, speaking to voters, attending debates and recruiting new workers.

Activity was mostly focused on key wards, providing a good base for tackling next year’s council elections. If we can maintain that work rate over the next 12 months, then there is a real chance that we can grow our local government base.

For now, however, there are by-elections to fight. Of the 96 people elected to the Senedd, some are already councillors and need to resign from the council to take up their place in Cardiff Bay. The campaigning goes on.

With all the controversy over Reform's alleged links with Russia, with Nigel Farage saying he admires Vladmir Putin, and the party's opposition to the support offered by the Welsh Government to Ukrainian refugees, now is not the best time for the party's leader in Wales to reinforce people's perceptions about Reform's sympathy towards Putin over his invasion of Ukraine.

And yet, as the BBC report, Dan Thomas has backed calls from one of his Senedd members for the Ukrainian flag outside the Welsh Parliament to be removed.

For once the Welsh Tories are on the side of common sense, with Welsh Conservative Senedd leader Darren Millar saying the flag was a "visible sign of the Senedd's resolute opposition to Russia's illegal invasion".

Still it is less than a month since the Senedd elections and already,Reform are promoting an agenda that would make Putin proud.

It is a sure sign that the government is getting too obsessed with social media when the Speaker of the House of Commons scolds Labour ministers for making major announcements on TikTok before Parliament.

The Guardian reports that, speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, ahead of Rachel Reeves' cost of living plan announcement, Lindsay Hoyle criticised ministers for announcing policies on social media before updating MPs:

The chancellor received a dressing down from deputy speaker Judith Cummins as she prepared to set out measures to mitigate the economic impact of the Iran war, several of which had already been briefed to the media.

The Ministerial Code, which governs how ministers should behave, states that policy announcements should be made first in Parliament.

After stressing the importance of the code, Sir Lindsay said: “ We've had the last three days of this announcement being drip-fed to the media. That is not in line with the government's own rules, and it is unacceptable.”

“ These backbenchers of either side are elected to this House to hear it first, not to be outside a Morrisons petrol station, not to be on a bus, not doing it to TikTok.”

At least Ministers arent showing off their dance moves on Tik Tok,

The Mirror reports that Dame Emily Thornberry, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, has voiced her frustration about the amount of information being redacted about Peter Mandelson's appointment, accusing Ministers of putting "obstacles" in the way of the truth over the former Ambassador's appointment.

The paper says that one of Keir Starmer's top aides was confronted by senior MPs who accused the Government of changing the goalposts over which documents it plans to release. This is despite the fact that the PM has committed to releasing all relevant files and messages around the decision to name Mandelson as ambassador to the US:

Thousands of pages of documents will be published after the next Parliamentary recess, which ends on June 1. But ministers face calls to explain why some files have been redacted or withheld.

Darren Jones, the PM's chief secretary, told the Commons that details such as junior officials' names, emails, and phone numbers - and data about third parties - were rightly being removed. And he said raw data around vetting, such as bank account and relationship details, would never be released as this would undermine the process.

But Tory Sir Jeremy Wright, a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) - which is overseeing the release of documents - accused the Government of finding new reasons for withholding information. He said that while ministers agreed documents would be redacted to avoid compromising national security or international relations, other reasons are now being used to do so.

He said: "We cannot accept that the government is entitled to ignore or to unilaterally alter the terms of the humble address (the Parliamentary motion demanding the documents are released)."

The Government is under intense pressure after it emerged UK Security Vetting (UKSV) had not recommended giving Mandelson security clearance before he was sent to Washington. This was overruled by the Foreign Office without the PM or his team being told.

Mandelson was sacked as the UK's 'Trump whisperer' in September last year as new details emerged about his relationship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. He was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office following claims he shared senstive information with Epstein. This is alleged to have included details of an EU bailout following the 2008 economic crash. He denies wrongdoing.

Dame Emily Thornberry, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, told MPs: "I am disappointed at the answers that the Government has given.

"It seems to me that one of the questions in relation to the Mandelson appointment is why it is that when the UKSV document had two red boxes ticked - which included this man should not be appointed - that somehow or other that was translated into he should be appointed.

"And it is very important that the public know and understand that we are learning from the mistakes that were clearly made, and we cannot know that those lessons have been learned unless they are checked.

"And the committees in this House, my committee and the ISC are trying our best to get to the truth of this, and we are having obstacles put in our way."

This is not a good look for Keir Starmer's government nor will it help to win back public confidence.

As if the controversies around HS2 weren't bad enough, the Guardian reports that the high-speed railway will now cost up to £102.7bn and trains will not start running between London and Birmingham until as late as 2039, £70bn more and 13 years later than originally promised.

The paper adds that the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, said the truncated railway would not be entirely completed until as late as 2043:

The figure is the first official estimate of HS2’s budget in 2026 prices. Alexander said the total cost would range between £87.7bn and £102.7bn, with only a third of the rise resulting from inflation. 

The Guardian reports that Nigel Farage is facing fresh scrutiny over his claim that he paid for his £1.4m house from a reality show fee rather than the millions gifted to him by a crypto billionaire.

The paper says that accounts for the Reform leader’s personal media company, Thorn in the Side Ltd, suggest that money was not withdrawn from the firm at the time of the house purchase:

The apparent discrepancy raises fresh questions about Farage’s transparency with regard to his finances. He is currently being investigated by the parliamentary standards commissioner over his failure to declare a £5m gift from Christopher Harborne, as revealed by the Guardian.

He claims that the gift was made to fund his security. But Farage bought his house in Surrey on 10 May 2024, only weeks after receiving the money from Harborne, a billionaire who has lived in Thailand for two decades.

Farage’s spokesperson had told the BBC last week that he paid for the Surrey property purchase with his £1.5m fee for participating in I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! in late 2023.

An analysis by the Financial Times raises questions about that claim.

Farage has previously said that his earnings from the reality show were paid to Thorn in the Side Ltd.

Accounts for the company show its cash position increased from £300,000 on 31 May 2023 to £1.7m on 31 May 2024.

The accounts suggest that no dividend was paid out in the period and its cash position increased from £1.7m to £2m between May 2024 and May 2025.

Farage, rather than Thorn in the Side, bought the Surrey home and there is no mortgage on the property.

A Reform spokesperson said the house was not bought with Harborne’s gift.

The spokesperson suggested that this was proved by the fact that anti-money laundering checks relating to the purchase were carried out before the gift was made.

The spokesperson said: “Nigel has multiple sources of income, as you can see from his parliamentary register.”

He did not respond to the question of whether the Reform leader stood by his claim that the money from the reality show was used to buy his home.

Farage did not register Harborne’s gift, which was made within 12 months of his election as the MP for Clacton, in his register of interests. He claims that this was not necessary as it was a personal donation.

The parliamentary standards commissioner has announced an investigation into the Reform UK leader’s failure to declare the gift.

Nimesh Shah, a tax expert at accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg, reviewed the company accounts for the FT and said they suggested money from Farage’s reality TV show appearance was not used to purchase the house.

There needs to be a lot more scrutiny on Farage's finances, so it is refreshing to that somebody has made a start.

The Guardian reports that a row has broken out at the top of the Labour party over whether Britain should try to rejoin the EU after Wes Streeting said the country should eventually seek to regain membership.

The paper says that Streeting, who resigned as health secretary last week in protest at Keir Starmer’s leadership, kicked off a war of words after he argued on Saturday that Britain’s future lay back in the EU:

After the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, dismissed his comments as odd, Streeting’s allies hit back, saying the government’s lack of willingness to discuss the issue was symptomatic of why it is so unpopular.

The row is an indication of the divisions within Labour as the party heads into a byelection in Makerfield that could determine the fate of the entire government.

It began when Streeting said: “In 2026, the British people increasingly see that in a dangerous world we must club together, both to rebuild our economy and trade, and improve our defence against the shared threats from Russian aggression and America First.

“The biggest economic opportunity we have is on our doorstep. We need a new special relationship with the EU, because Britain’s future lies with Europe – and one day back in the European Union.”

He also said he intended to stand in a leadership contest if one was triggered, as is likely if the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, wins in Makerfield and then challenges the prime minister.

Nandy, however, criticised Streeting’s comments on Sunday. She told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “I actually think this is just a bit odd. I listened to what Wes had to say very carefully yesterday, and I know that he’s got a strong view about this, and always has had, that we shouldn’t have left the European Union.

“Frankly, that’s one that I share. I campaigned for remain, I think it [Brexit] was a mistake, and I think the Brexit deal has been a real problem for us. But I don’t really understand why the sudden focus on Europe.

“We’re already, as a government, trying to repair in a pragmatic way the needless damage that was done by that poor Brexit deal to people’s living standards in towns like mine, without reopening the circular arguments that we ended up in as a country.”

Streeting allies promptly hit back, saying Nandy’s unwillingness to talk about EU membership was a symptom of a wider reluctance to take political risks, which they argue is one of the reasons Starmer is so unpopular and may face a leadership battle within weeks.

“There is no point in trying not to upset anybody, that’s what got us into this problem,” said one. “Sometimes you have to be willing to upset people to get things done.”

The timing of this row is interesting. With Andy Burnham set to contest the Makerfield by-election, an area that voted overwhelmingly for Reform, anything that suggests leading Labour figures want to unravel Brexit could well impact on his campaign. I'm sure Wes Streeting had no intention of that happening.

The BBC reports on a promise by one of Plaid Cymru's new ministers that the arts in Wales can expect "increased funding year-on-year", after years of being "in crisis".

They add that Plaid Cymru's Heledd Fychan told them that the arts, culture and heritage sector did not get adequate support from the previous Labour Welsh government.She is promising to reverse that trend and that this is "clearly a priority" for new First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth, with her being given a seat around the cabinet table to represent it:

"We can't promise huge investment overnight, but I will clearly put together a plan where we can see that increased investment year-on-year," she told Radio Wales Breakfast.

Fychan said she would put together a plan, over the next 100 days, to support a sector which she said had been "siloed and under-funded" by Labour.

She said her portfolio, which also includes sport, had a significant role to play in the well-being of people.

Heledd Fychan had a senior job at Museum Wales before becoming a Senedd member in 2021

Last year, a Senedd report, external found Wales had the second lowest spending per person on cultural services in Europe and the third lowest on recreation and sports.

The Labour Welsh government's budget for 2025-26 saw funding for culture, the arts and sport restored to 2023-24 levels.

However, that follows a period of cuts to the sector as the government prioritised frontline services including the NHS.

This is highly commendable and fully in line with what I would expect. If Fychan can achieve this ambition then she has my full support. The cynic in me, however, says that year-on-year increases in fundings for the arts is not going to be as simple as she suggests.

Plaid has only been in government for a matter of days, they haven't had time to get to grips with the nation's finances, and we are aware that things are going to be tight over the next few years. With other promises to fulfil around childcare, health and many other issues, they really are going to have to find a magic money tree.

If you happen to wander into Dylan Thomas Square in Swansea's Marina the first thing you might see is a statue of the poet himself, looking more like Max Boyce than anybody else, but turn around and there is a part of a tram displayed behind glass in a large building. Apart from a few tracks built into the square as a feature, this is all that remains of the world's first passenger railway.

As Wikipedia recalls, originally built under an act of Parliament, the Oystermouth Railway or Tramroad Act 1804, to move limestone from the quarries of Mumbles to Swansea and to the markets beyond, it carried the world's first fare-paying railway passengers under an agreement effective from 25 March 1807.

They add that the train later moved from horse power to steam locomotion, and was finally converted to electric power, using the largest tram cars ever built for service in Britain, before closing in January 1960, in favour of motor buses:

In 1958, the South Wales Transport Company (the principal operator of motor bus services in the Swansea town area and predecessor of the modern-day First Cymru company) purchased the railway from the old owning companies (the Swansea and Mumbles Railway Limited, and the Mumbles Railway and Pier Company), having previously been the lessee in succession to the Swansea Improvements and Tramways Company since the 1930s, and the following year went to Parliament with an abandonment bill. Despite vociferous local opposition, the bill became law as the South Wales Transport Act 1959.

The railway was closed in two stages. The section from Southend to the pier was closed on 11 October 1959 to facilitate the construction of a special road to the Pier for the buses that were to replace the trains. Then, at 11.52 on Tuesday 5 January 1960, the last train (a ceremonial special, carrying local dignitaries) left Swansea for Mumbles driven by Frank Dunkin, who had worked on the railway since 1907. Within a very short time of the train returning to the Rutland Street depot, work began on dismantling the track and cars.

One car (no. 2) was saved for preservation by members of Leeds University in Yorkshire and stored for a while at the Middleton Railway in that city, but it was heavily vandalised and eventually destroyed by fire. The front end of car no. 7 was also saved for preservation at Swansea Museum; following many years of neglect it was initially restored in the early 1970s by members of the Railway Club of Wales and is now on display in the Tram Shed alongside the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea's Maritime Quarter.

A Mumbles Railway Society was formed in 1975 to formally archive material and to maintain the hope that one day the line would re-open. The Story of Mumbles website reports that the largest trams seated 106 passengers, and ran on the Swansea & Mumbles Railway from 1929 to 1960. Unusual in having no doors on one side (facing seawards), the 13 cars in the fleet were all built by Brush at Loughborough.

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Okay, as headlines go, that might be a tad optimistic given the civil war that is shaping up inside the Labour Party at the moment, but if Starmer is to have any chance at all of radically resetting his administration then he needs to start revisiting the decisions that have contributed to public disillusionment with the Labour Government.

There is an opportunity to make a start on this reset with the news that the Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) campaign has announced it is going ahead with a High Court challenge against the decision to deny millions of 1950s-born women compensation.

The Mirror says that new analysis for the campaign found WASPI women outnumber the majorities of sitting MPs in 302 constituencies - including 142 Labour-held seats:

Neither the Tories nor Reform have pledged to overrule the decision not to award compensation. Angela Madden, chair of the WASPI campaign, said: “The Government has had every opportunity to do the right thing for WASPI women.

"Instead, they have made a political choice that risks alienating voters in hundreds of marginal seats across the country. Labour MPs have seen the electoral data.

"They know WASPI women have the numbers to unseat them. Yet ministers continue to ignore the independent Ombudsman, their own backbenchers, and millions of voters.”

And she added: "We will not be ignored, and we will not give up this fight." In 2024 the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) found the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was guilty of maladministration for failing to properly communicate changes to the state pension age.

This meant they were unable to plan for their future, the watchdog said, urging compensation of £1,000 to £2,950. This would cost up to £10billion, a bill the Government said it was not prepared to pay.

In January, affected women were told for a second time they would not receive compensation. The WASPI campaign is now seeking a fresh High Court challenge, and is in the early stages of preparing it.

Between April 2010 and November 2018 the State Pension age for women gradually increased from 60 to 65. It went up again to 66 in October 2020, and is due to go up to 67 by 2028.

A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said in March: "The Secretary of State set out the Government's position in his oral statement to Parliament, including acceptance of maladministration and apology to the women affected.

"Our focus now is on delivering an action plan to implement lessons learned in how DWP communicates state pension matters going forward."

This was an issue that Labour MPs, including Keir Starmer campaigned on prior to the general election, only to jettison it as soon as they got in power. It is one od several broken promises that has led to Labour's appalling poll ratings and election losses.

If the Prime Minister carries out another u-turn and agrees to the compensation now, then that will show that his speech about putting things right had some substance to it after all. I won't hold my breath.

The Guardian reports that Nigel Farage is facing a formal investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog over a £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

The paper says that Farage, who received the money weeks before announcing he would stand as a candidate in the 2024 general election, has said the gift was intended to cover his personal security costs and therefore did not need to be declared.

As I write, Keir Starmer's demise as Prime Minister is looking more and more inevitable. Over 90 Labour MPs have called for him to go, junior ministers are jumping ship and Wes Streeting is no doubt putting the fundamentals of his leadership campaign into place. But would a new leader make such a difference to Labour's fortunes?

The Independent reports on the views of one Labour MP, who believes that replacing Starmer as prime minister will solve none of the country’s problems:

Southport Labour MP Patrick Hurley issued a powerful appeal to his party to “stick with Starmer”.

Far from making things better, removing Sir Keir could result in “destabilising” the government and lead to even greater economic difficulties.

Labour was in danger of making the same mistake as the last Conservative administration, which “did no good for the country” by replacing one prime minister after another.

In an interview with the BBC, the MP said: “The fundamentals will not change no matter who the prime minister is.

“We have got two globally significant wars raging that are impacting defence spending, public services… energy security and climate change.

“We have got levels of economic growth that have not been sufficiently high for well over 15 years. None of this is going to change if we change the person at the top of the tree. None of this is going to change just by having a new leader and prime minister.

“In fact, it is probably going to get worse because destabilising your own government tends to drive bond yields even higher. No prime minister is going to be able to change that. We should stick with Keir Starmer.”

He also issued a warning to fellow Labour MPs plotting to replace him.

“These leadership people touting names around should be careful what they wish for.

“The domestic problems this country has got right now are more challenging than in the last 100 years – and things may only get worse if there is a change at the top.”

He continued: “The [financial] markets are going to look at the stability of the government... the ability to repay borrowing we have already incurred, excessive amounts of borrowing under the previous government due to Covid and other issues.

“If we start making changes now, the rates those markets charge us will be even higher. There will be even less room to manoeuvre to improve our public services.

“The one challenge we have got as a government is to get our economic performance back up to a decent standard in order to better fund our public services and do all the good Labour things we want to do.

“And we won’t be able to do that if we continue with the destabilisation we saw with Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak and a whole litany of Conservative prime ministers who came and went and did no good for the country.

“The last thing we should do is tear a leaf out of their book.”

Hurley has a point. Do any of those seeking to succed Starmer have an alternative that can deal with these issues, can they offer an economic miracle?

They say that the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance and it seems that the Secretary of State for Wales is still at stage one.

Nation Cymru reports that Jo Stevens has been strongly criticised for refusing to admit that the unpopularity of Keir Starmer was a major factor in Welsh Labour’s Senedd election defeat.

Instead, she used an article published in WalesOnline to put the blame for the defeat on the outgoing Welsh Labour government:

Echoing campaign positions taken by Reform UK, Ms Stevens criticised policies like the 20mph default speed limit in urban areas, which is saving lives, and the planting of trees in Africa as part of a modest aid programme.

In her article, Ms Stevens stated: “We have a long list of proud achievements – protecting public services, introducing breakfast clubs, building new schools, and making prescriptions free. These are tangible changes that made real differences to the lives of people across Wales.

“Frustration about Welsh Government’s delivery has, though, been growing for many years. Before the pandemic, it was clear that people were running out of patience with our record on health. It felt like we were about to reach a tipping point. Mark Drakeford and Vaughan Gething’s mature handling of the pandemic, in contrast to Boris Johnson’s partygate scandals, afforded Welsh Labour the benefit of the doubt.

“But goodwill has a sell-by date if it isn’t backed up by delivery – and we cannot simply rely on the achievements of the past to carry us through.

“Ultimately, despite record investment, standards in our schools and the performance of our NHS just aren’t good enough. We could not convince voters that we had a credible plan to improve public services.

There is no doubt that the failure of Welsh Labour to deliver was a major complaint, but as one party source said, the number one issue on the doorstep during the Senedd election campaign was Starmer himself. By not acknowledging that, Jo Stevens becomes part of the problem.

The Observer reports that the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate (HNH) has warned that a dozen new Reform councillors, including one was elected to both a district and county council, who have allegedly expressed white supremacist, antisemitic or anti-Muslim views have been elected to councils across the country.

The paper says that social media posts logged by the campaign organisation ranged from the use of neo-Nazi symbols to antisemitic conspiracy tropes and references to Muslims as “rats”:

Among them was Stuart Prior, who won two seats; one on Rochford district council and one on Essex county council. He won despite media coverage exposing extremist activity on a social media account that posted pictures from his home. Prior allegedly described white people as “the master race”, said black people should be “segregated” and called Muslims “rats” who could never suffer a genocide. Confronted by the Daily Mirror recently, Prior initially denied the account was his before saying: “I don’t recall that at all, blimey.”

In Bolton, Derek Bullock was elected to the seat for Hulton. Bullock was twice expelled from the Conservative party for allegedly posting anti-Muslim hatred, including reacting to the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 with the words: “Shoot the Pakis on the spot.” Last week, he said he believed a screenshot of the post was fake.

Trevor Jones of Reform won in the ward of Tonge with the Haulgh in Bolton from the Labour council leader, Nick Peel. Jones once posted that, if you vote Labour, you “get sharia”, referring to Islamic law.

Another newly elected councillor, Andrew Mahon in Blackburn South East, once posted on Facebook that the British blackshirt leader Oswald Mosley “was 100% right” and calling for an “educational correction” in the UK. He also said that racist firebrand Enoch Powell was “correct”.

Caley Ashman, who won the seat for Cradley North and Wollescote ward in Dudley, once referred to “goyslop” in a post – a reference to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy to distract non-Jewish people using fake news.

Ben Rowe, who was elected in the Ham ward in Plymouth, has posted that Keir Starmer is under the control of a “Globalist zion [sic] cult”. Rowe, who has accused “the Jews” of “creating division by forcing other races on our societies” and said immigrants are "breeding like rats", has said that his posts were “taken out of context”.

A dossier alleging antisemitism against more than 30 Green party candidates emerged last week and about a dozen were either withdrawn or suspended by the party. Two were arrested by the Metropolitan police on suspicion of stirring racial hatred over posts on social media, but none appear to have won their seats.

There were indications that a number of “paper candidates”, who had no intention of winning, were elected. Among them was Daniel Devaney, a Reform candidate in Bradford’s Clayton and Fairweather Green ward, who posted “blast them all off the face of the earth” about Muslims. Devaney, who apologised for the post, said he had withdrawn prior to polling day but appeared on the ballot and won. A byelection will be triggered if he does not take up the seat.

The Islington Tribune reported that two candidates in Finsbury Park, north London, had to be consoled after accidentally winning election to the council. Local party members promised to support the women.

Reform has said it is investigating a number of candidates, including those named by HNH, almost all of whom were reported for their extremist activities prior to the local elections last Thursday.

Is this just the start of the revelations?

The Independent reports that a new poll has found that the Green Party is not viewed as being the party with the biggest problem with antisemitism despite increasing pressure on Zack Polanski over his response to the Golders Green stabbing.

The paper says that when asked which of the main five parties has an antisemitism problem, Labour and Reform were identified most frequently in a new YouGov poll, with both at 33 per cent, a quarter said the same of the Greens, while the Conservatives and Lib Dems registered 16 per cent and 13 per cent respectively.:

The survey, conducted in the aftermath of the attack, showed almost two-thirds (63 per cent) of Britons believe prejudice against Jews is a major or significant concern, with the views of Green voters broadly in line with supporters of other parties and voters overall.

The findings come after Mr Polanski – who is the only current Jewish leader of a major political party in the UK – sparked outrage for sharing criticism of the police on social media after footage showed two officers repeatedly kicking the alleged Golders Green attacker in the head after he had been tasered.

Mr Polanski apologised for sharing the post in haste, but he insisted the police should not be above scrutiny.

The Greens are also facing accusations of antisemitism after Labour said it would release a document which they say exposes 25 Green Party local election candidates for having “disturbing views”.

The candidates have been accused of “a raft of harrowing antisemitism, dangerous conspiracy theories and appalling comments supporting Hamas and Russia”.

Two people identified have been arrested on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred towards Jews, according to Labour.

The polling also found Green Party supporters are as likely as Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters to view antisemitism as a substantial problem, with about 70 per cent of all these voters taking that view.

Reform UK voters are the least likely to say so, at 63 per cent, but this is in line with the views of the wider public.

These results are disturbing and have provoked a political war of accusation and counter-accusation.

I have mentioned in a previous local history post that Oystermouth in Mumbles is not named after the oyster trade that briefly flourished in that area, and once attracted Gladstone to sample its wares, but from the Welsh name for the area, Ystumllwynarth, which appears in early Medieval Welsh literature and derives from Ystum Lluarth, meaning a "place of entrenchment on a hill".

The story of Mumbles website picks up on the history of the now defuunct oyster trade there. They say that the Horsepool was a natural harbour encompassed on most of its seaward side by a sandbank, bordered by the roadside on the other and stretching from near the White Rose Public House, as far along as The George Hotel:

On a normal high tide, the sea would rise up over the sand-bank, across the Horsepool and reach as far as the side of the road. From this haven the Oyster Men and their skiffs would set sail to dredge for oysters, way out in Swansea Bay and down the Bristol Channel.

The Mumbles oyster trade had been in existence for many hundreds of years and was indeed, one of the mainstays of the village. The Romans are believed to have made use of the local supply, during their stay. In the 17 C, Isaac Harmon, while in Oystermouth assisting Edward Lhuyd in his ‘View of Gower, 1690,’ found that with a population of approximately 500, ‘here are boates imployed in & about ye takeing of oysters every year . . .’

In the early days, they used open rowing boats, but around the mid nineteenth century, they began to use vessels rigged with a mast, a mainsail, a forestaysail and a jib, which were known as Skiffs.

Over the years, the Oyster Beds were given colourful names which include: The Hen and Chickens, Musselly Haul, Itchy Poll, Trashy Ground, Robin’s Patch, Middle Drift and Duck Haul. California, Red Hole and East India, which were sited in Swansea Bay, with others further afield. The Oystermen navigated by using conspicuous objects ashore and between Port Eynon and Mumbles there were some eleven of these markers. However, since they were often closely guarded secrets, their locations were sometimes lost when their users died.

'''

The season was from September until May and in Victorian times, would be commenced with an Oyster fair, when at the skiff‑owners’ expense; the oyster dredgers would be given a meal of bread, cheese and beer followed by sports such as donkey‑racing, climbing the greasy pole and sack‑racing.

In the later years of the nineteenth century and in Edwardian times, it became the custom for the wives of those remaining in the trade, to sell the oysters from stalls set up on the Promenade or from ‘saloons’ situated along the roadside. The children made use of the discarded shells, by constructing beautiful little oyster‑shell houses, some even lit from within by candles, for visitors to admire and, perhaps, to reward with a penny or two.

Undoubtedly, the hey-day of the industry was from 1850 until 1873. By 1863, there were 70‑80 local craft, with 250 men employed during the season. The oyster’s price was by now 9 shillings per 1000 to the wholesalers who then sold on for 6d‑8d per score.

20,000 oysters was not an uncommon catch for a single boat and each boat could make two journeys a day. At its height, around 560 men were employed in 188 skiffs, three in each one, with a quarter of the proceeds going to the boat and a quarter to each man. Each man could earn as much as £6 a week and consequently, oysters were an everyday food for the locals, often eaten in an omelette, or coated in bread-crumbs or in a ‘carpet-bag’— a grilled steak filled with oysters.

Unfortunately, there was a rapid decline in the numbers of Oysters dredged due to pollution of the sea from the River Tawe, the primitive sewerage system at Southend and over-fishing. In 1920, a deadly virus finished the industry in Mumbles completely.

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The Guardian reports that candidates and political parties have described a climate of abuse in this year’s local and devolved elections, including death threats and intimidation while campaigning.

The paper says that politicians from a range of parties have reported abuse and harassment in the lead-up to the elections in England, Scotland and Wales, with the Green party describing this year’s campaign as the worst in memory:

Labour’s Dan Jarvis, the security minister, condemned “the rising tide of vile abuse, harassment and intimidation aimed towards elected officials and candidates” online and in person. “Anyone engaging in this sort of behaviour is directly attacking our democracy and we all must do more to stop it becoming normalised,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Green party said some candidates had received death threats or been “yelled at or chased down the street”, and some had withdrawn from campaigning in certain areas due to harassment.

“Anecdotally, this has been the worst year in memory,” the spokesperson said. They said the party had been “a focus at this election more than ever before”, with “some wildly false claims being made about the party and its representatives, which some members of the public have accepted on face value”.

It is unknown how widespread abuse and harassment has been on the campaign trail this year. The Electoral Commission will publish its report on the 2026 elections, including its findings on abuse and intimidation, in the autumn.

Before the elections, the Electoral Commission said: “Candidates at elections have been subject to unacceptable abuse while campaigning in recent years.”

Its most recent candidate research found that 61% of respondents, who were candidates in the 2025 local elections in England, experienced harassment or security threats during the campaign and 71% said they avoided some campaign activity because of fear of abuse.

The abuse has occurred across political divides. The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, criticised Elon Musk in April after detailing how his party’s candidates from minority ethnic backgrounds were being subjected to “utterly appalling abuse” on X, which Musk owns.

This week the Labour mayor of the West Midlands, Richard Parker, told the BBC he had been threatened and followed while campaigning in Coventry.

The Scottish Trades Union Congress released a statement on Tuesday condemning “reports of increased racial and Islamophobic harassment of candidates in the run-up to the Scottish parliament elections”, while a spokesperson for Plaid Cymru said online discourse had “become increasingly toxic”.

In two separate incidents in April in Birmingham, a Green party candidate said he was accosted by campaigners supporting an independent group of candidates.

Hanooshi Hassan, who was leafleting at a mosque at the time, said he was threatened by one individual and was repeatedly told by the group that the Green party was the “gay party”. “There was homophobia immediately,” he said. “They were being very loud and boisterous, calling us the gay party and saying that we want to turn their kids gay.”

He added: “One of the men … threatened to beat me up.” West Midlands police confirmed they had received two reports of alleged harassment on 17 and 24 April on Dudley Road and said inquiries were continuing.

Bishop Desmond Jaddoo, who is running as an independent candidate in Birmingham and is not aligned with the group involved in the incident with Hassan, said he had received sustained racial abuse, mainly online, during the campaign.

In one incident after Jaddoo distributed leaflets on Monday, he said he was told by an unknown caller: “Listen you black bastard, do not put anything else through my letterbox. I’m voting Reform.”

Jaddoo said much of the abuse he received online was “fuelled by rightwing rhetoric”. “I think the way political parties are speaking, they are stoking racial discrimination and they are damaging race relations in this country,” he said.

Democracy cannot survive a toxic atmosphere like this for long. much of it originating from the sort of vile and racist language coming from Reform.

The Guardian reports on warnings by green campaigners that the defining issue of today’s local elections will be the UK’s soaring cost of living, and in particular the links between inflation and the effects of fossil fuels and the climate crisis.

The paper quotes Ami McCarthy, the head of politics at Greenpeace UK, who says: “With people’s bills and prices soaring from yet another fossil fuel crisis, these local elections have a global context – driven by the Iran war. Getting the UK out of the fossil fuel doom loop and on to renewables would secure a stable and affordable supply of energy. Voters face a choice between parties that want to keep us hooked on expensive, imported oil and gas, and those that offer a way out of this cycle of insecurity.”

The stakes are high with Reform taking an anti-climate stance, vowing to encourage fracking, impose punitive taxes on renewable energy generation, and block solar and windfarms, while the Conservatives have also embraced more drilling in the North Sea and played down the climate crisis, without explicitly denying it:

Yet the world’s leading energy economist and the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, said new oil and gasfields would do little to improve the UK’s energy security or ease high prices.

Instead, opting to boost renewable energy generation offers a better way out of the crisis, as solar and wind energy are cheaper than oil, more secure, and are not subject to stranglehold by hostile forces, argues Mike Childs, the head of science, policy and research at Friends of the Earth. “Most people in Britain back strong climate action. When the same solutions will bring down bills, restore nature, boost the economy and make our local areas nicer places to live, voters deserve candidates who will act in their interests – not on behalf of polluters or the super-rich.”

Energy is not the only issue. “The need for cheaper bills, better quality housing, access to green space and more frequent bus services are among the top concerns voters care about,” said Childs, after listening exercises carried out by Friends of the Earth groups around the UK.

Water and air pollution were also big concerns, said Ed Matthew, the UK director for the E3G thinktank. “Local people want the pollution blighting their lives to end.”

We need to make the case to voters about the dangers of climate change and the need to bring in policiies to deal with it. The results today, will show how effective that argument is.

The Guardian reports that Nigel Farage’s partner, Laure Ferrari, has refused to confirm how she paid for a house in the Reform leader and MP’s constituency of Clacton, adding “there’s more than one way to pay for a house”.

The paper says that in an interview with French publication Le Monde, Ferrari was questioned over revelations in the Guardian that she had purchased a house in her name in Clacton after Farage had claimed to be the buyer.

They add that Farage initially said the arrangement was for “security” reasons but some months later, he told reporters that Ferrari came from “a very wealthy French family and can afford it” – although a subsequent BBC investigation raised further questions about the size of her family’s alleged wealth:

Quizzed by Le Monde on the issue, the publication said she “dodged” the question. When asked if she bought the property thanks to a family inheritance, she said: “Yes and no, that would be a very large inheritance … There’s more than one way to pay for a house.”

“I can’t say how much my grandmother gave, that’s my business,” Ferrari added. “The main thing is that I paid all the taxes, there was no tax evasion, and the house is in my name.”

Following the interview, Labour called on Farage to clarify how the purchase of the property he uses is Clacton was funded.

“Last week we discovered that Nigel Farage failed to declare a £5 million donation from a crypto-billionaire and this week we discover that Farage’s partner might not have paid for all of his house in Clacton after all,” they said.

“The leader of Reform needs to stop dodging scrutiny and urgently answer questions about this purchase … Farage has failed to be straight with the public over the full facts.”

The Guardian first reported last year that the house in Clacton, which Farage initially said he had bought himself, was in fact wholly owned by Ferrari.

While Farage said the ownership structure was for security reasons, Ferrari purchasing the house would have saved the Reform UK leader an estimated £44,000 in the higher rate of stamp duty to which he would have been liable, given he already owns other properties.

He also denied lending or giving his partner money towards the £885,000 price of the property in Frinton-on-Sea, saying last September: “I haven’t lent money to anybody. I didn’t give her money. She comes from a very successful French family and she can afford it herself. It’s convenient, it works, and she loves it there.”

The BBC investigation found Ferrari’s father’s haulage business in Strasbourg was liquidated in 2020, and her parents were living in a flat in a suburb of the French city worth about £300,000, co-owned by the couple and their two daughters.

The BBC team said the family also owned the former premises of the haulage company, which is rented out for an estimated €8,000-€9,000 (£7,000-£7,800) a month.

THe mystery continues.