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I had a very smart and earnest American today tell me they thought Trump was going to use the military to crush voting in democrat leaning districts in the mid terms. They didn’t mean it in a “that mad trump, it wouldn’t surprise me” way. They really sincerely believe that it is going to happen and that we are living through the death of American democracy.

Meanwhile, in the UK we have the Tories and Labour colluding to cancel our own midterms and they don’t even have to brandish a baton, yet alone an assault rifle.

Anyway back to that fascist autocrat in waiting Nigel Farage… if Katie Lam defects, it will no doubt be quickly characterised here as good riddance to a careerist wrongun that will say and do anything to retain her seat. Maybe. But it would also be pretty hard to convince that the Tory’s remain a credible national party.

You do know [ maybe you don't] that the Lib Dems AND Conservatives have joined together in the HOL to get the decision reversed ?

The following Tory run councils all formally requested that the national govt allow them to cancel of elections in their area: East Sussex, Harlow, Norfolk, Suffolk, West Sussex.

Unless you can inform me otherwise, none of those councillors have had the Tory whip removed for this affront to democracy. Odd given the gusto that Badenoch showed for removing the whip from her main opponent, apparently on the grounds of “dishonesty, disloyalty and for undermining trust in politics”.

I can only conclude the applications made by those councils were made with the acquiescence of CCHQ.

All those councils are reorganising to organise unitary elections next year, Kemi believes in localism and has left each council to make its own decision even if she personally would hold elections even if at taxpayer cost for 1 year post councillors who are heading for redundancy next year

Are the elections being postponed not for the actual authorities but for the Shadow authorites which will replace them in 2027? Surrey are holding elections for the new East and West Surrey Councils in May which will exist in Shadow form until taking over when the County Council and eleven District/Borough Councils are abolished at the end of March 2027.

The last County Council elections in Surrey, Norfolk, Suffolk and the two Sussexes were in 2021 - that means if a further delay of a year occurs, the County Councillors elected then will still be in post in March 2028 which is absurd.

I do think Government indecision, not helped by the clear out of Ministers at DCLOG following the exit of Angela Rayner, hasn't helped.

No for the actual authorities.

Shadow authority elections are the new unitary council elections with those authorities taking full office the following year when the new Mayor of the authority is elected

I'm not sure that's true - Norfolk, Suffolk, East and West Sussex were on the original Devolution Priority List from early 2025 and as a result the elections scheduled for May 2025 were postponed. Surrey did its consultation last summer and presented two submissions (one for a two Unitary solution and another for a three Unitary solution) last August but, and as I said before, this may well have been connected to the departure of Angela Rayner and the entire Ministerial team from DCLOG, a decision from Government as to which option was to be implemented wasn't forthcoming until November.

For Norfolk, the statutory consultation wasn't launched until 20 November last year - why did it take so long? I can understand postponing the 2026 elections, what I can't understand is why the 2025 elections were postponed if the consultation wasn't due to start for another six months?

My understanding on the Shadow authorities is they become legal entities on 1st April 2027 as they will then take over the financial and legal duties and accountabilities of the County and District/Borough Councils all of which will cease to exist.

I think it was a surprise (but it really shouldn't have been) how many councils thought they were special snowflakes. Either large counties claiming they could work as unitaries, or small districts wanting to take responsibility for everything. Last time I looked, Kent CC was persuing a One Kent model, and Huntingdonshire (last independent in 1965, population 190k) was also after unitary status for itself.

Given the question asked ("come up with a map, based on cities/large towns and their hinterlands, with populations of about 500k per district"), it really ought to have been pretty easy. Hampshire, for example, gets four districts. Two of those are centred on Portsmouth and Southampton, leaving two for the rest of the county, so you get Winchester and Basingstoke. Cambridgeshire gets two, so Cambridge and Peterborough. And so on. I maintain that, had you locked all the council leaders in a room at 11 am and told them they could have lunch once they had agreed a compliant map, you wouldn't have needed a chafing dish to keep the food warm. There are some tricky marginal bits, but not many, and they are marginal.

You and I both know it's much more complex than that.

Some of the Counties have made an overt bid to "take over" all the functions of the Districts and Boroughs based on the Cornwall experience (among others) and I can tell you in Surrey the state of political relations between the Conservative County and the Districts/Boroughs (mostly run by either LDs or coalitions none of which include the Conservatives) made the relations between the USSR and USA in late October 1962 look positively friendly.

With the Government ruling "County" authorities a non-starter for being too large, the various councils have had to work together but it's not been easy and while in Surrey there were really only two options, in other authorities more possibilities existed and of course there has to be a consultation process to see what the public think rather than locking Councillors in a room and depriving them of sustenance.

I regard the whole process as deeply wasteful and unnecessary - there's nothing wrong with two-tier and it works fine in some places.

I had a very smart and earnest American today tell me they thought Trump was going to use the military to crush voting in democrat leaning districts in the mid terms. They didn’t mean it in a “that mad trump, it wouldn’t surprise me” way. They really sincerely believe that it is going to happen and that we are living through the death of American democracy.

Meanwhile, in the UK we have the Tories and Labour colluding to cancel our own midterms and they don’t even have to brandish a baton, yet alone an assault rifle.

Anyway back to that fascist autocrat in waiting Nigel Farage… if Katie Lam defects, it will no doubt be quickly characterised here as good riddance to a careerist wrongun that will say and do anything to retain her seat. Maybe. But it would also be pretty hard to convince that the Tory’s remain a credible national party.

You do know [ maybe you don't] that the Lib Dems AND Conservatives have joined together in the HOL to get the decision reversed ?

The following Tory run councils all formally requested that the national govt allow them to cancel of elections in their area: East Sussex, Harlow, Norfolk, Suffolk, West Sussex.

Unless you can inform me otherwise, none of those councillors have had the Tory whip removed for this affront to democracy. Odd given the gusto that Badenoch showed for removing the whip from her main opponent, apparently on the grounds of “dishonesty, disloyalty and for undermining trust in politics”.

I can only conclude the applications made by those councils were made with the acquiescence of CCHQ.

All those councils are reorganising to organise unitary elections next year, Kemi believes in localism and has left each council to make its own decision even if she personally would hold elections even if at taxpayer cost for 1 year post councillors who are heading for redundancy next year

Are the elections being postponed not for the actual authorities but for the Shadow authorites which will replace them in 2027? Surrey are holding elections for the new East and West Surrey Councils in May which will exist in Shadow form until taking over when the County Council and eleven District/Borough Councils are abolished at the end of March 2027.

The last County Council elections in Surrey, Norfolk, Suffolk and the two Sussexes were in 2021 - that means if a further delay of a year occurs, the County Councillors elected then will still be in post in March 2028 which is absurd.

I do think Government indecision, not helped by the clear out of Ministers at DCLOG following the exit of Angela Rayner, hasn't helped.

No for the actual authorities.

Shadow authority elections are the new unitary council elections with those authorities taking full office the following year when the new Mayor of the authority is elected

I'm not sure that's true - Norfolk, Suffolk, East and West Sussex were on the original Devolution Priority List from early 2025 and as a result the elections scheduled for May 2025 were postponed. Surrey did its consultation last summer and presented two submissions (one for a two Unitary solution and another for a three Unitary solution) last August but, and as I said before, this may well have been connected to the departure of Angela Rayner and the entire Ministerial team from DCLOG, a decision from Government as to which option was to be implemented wasn't forthcoming until November.

For Norfolk, the statutory consultation wasn't launched until 20 November last year - why did it take so long? I can understand postponing the 2026 elections, what I can't understand is why the 2025 elections were postponed if the consultation wasn't due to start for another six months?

My understanding on the Shadow authorities is they become legal entities on 1st April 2027 as they will then take over the financial and legal duties and accountabilities of the County and District/Borough Councils all of which will cease to exist.

Exactly, so in Spring 2027 every district and county councillor elected this May in those new unitary areas is made redundant, unless they have been elected to the new unitary councils next year

Not quite.

Are there Shadow elections taking place this year in Norfolk and Suffolk? I believe not, so these elections would take place in May 2027 meaning the new Unitaries wouldn't take over until April 2028 meaning County Councillors elected in May 2021 would only end their term at the end of March 2028 so nearly seven years instead of four.

The problem has been how slow the consultation process has been and how long it has taken the Government to reach a decision on future structures. I see no reason why the 2025 elections shouldn't have taken place but County Councillors elected this May would still have a tenure of two years (nearly).

There’s a Tory Party I’d vote for somewhere in the people that are left, especially if Labour get rid of Starmer and go to the left with Burnham “who cares about the bond markets anyway”.

Taking Braverman was a big strategic error in my view for Reform.

She's obviously a flake given her record of sackings and resignations, with a very high opinion of her own abilities not sured by anyone else.
Zahawi, Jenrick and Braverman. Jeez, what a shower. These were always the sort of people who made you slightly embarrassed to be a Tory.

Luckily, there are only 5 of you Tory voters left in the entire UK. So the sum total of human embarrassment is modest

Mebbes.
But the polling analysis from the new Tory ginger group ProsperUK (Andy Street, Ruth Davidson et al) shows a LOT of potential for a centre-right party. There are a few of us around, even now.
And, let's face it, have you ever seen a more unprepossessing bunch of bampots than the Tory defectors (Danny Kruger possibly excepted). A bunch of entitled narcissists who would be at each others throats 5 minutes into govt.

Jenrick is good. Talented. Ambitious. Clever. Like it or not - presumably not in your case - he understands social media and he knows how to use it and he is literally the only Tory to have made the political weather at any point (Badenoch excepted, but she’s the leader) since the election

And they’ve lost him. The Tory party is not in any position to lose raw political talent. About the only other one they possess is Katie Lam. And now she’s going too?

I do think this could be terminal

Katie Lam is probably too posh for Reform.

She dresses posh and codes posh and has Lottie as a middle name, but is she actually posh?

She went to a comprehensive.

Poshness is in the eye of the beholder - it is a purely relative concept. I went to comprehensive and I don't think of myself as posh. But I am self aware enough to know that most people would think of me as posh.

PB is going to be offline for the next hour or so as I delete every thread I've written saying Andy Burnham won't succeed Sir Keir Starmer.

At least you had the prescience to include the question in the PB Competition: 9. Will Andy Burnham will be an MP on 31st December 2026?

As a recap for those who missed it, to enter the competition this year: post your answers the the following questions with the tag #competition or PM me you answers before the end of January 2026:

The questions:
1. Number of net gains (or losses -ve) for the Dems in the House?
2. Number of net gains (or losses -ve) for the Dems in the Senate?
3. Number of MSPs won by the SNP at the Holyrood election?
4. Number of AMs won by Plaid Cymru at the Senedd election?
5. UK Party recording the largest poll lead during 2026 and by what percentage? (British Polling Council registered pollsters only.)
6. Labour’s Projected National Share of the vote based on the 2026 local elections according to the BBC?
7. Number of Reform MPs on the 31st December 2026?
8. The name of the UK Prime Minister on 31st December 2026?
9. Will Andy Burnham will be an MP on 31st December 2026?
10. UK borrowing in the financial year to November 2026 (£132.3bn to November 2025)?
11. UK GDP growth in the 12 months to October 2026 (1.1% to October 2025)?
12. Winners of the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup?

Thanks for the reminder. My guesses:
1. +10
2. +2
3. 54
4. 15
5. Reform 18%
6. 18%
7. 14
8. Sir Keir Starmer
9. No
10. £144b
11. 1.6%
12. Argentina