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The most relaxing holiday I remember was Taormina in Sicily. We sat on our hotel balcony in the sun for a week, reading. It was great, though a very unusual holiday for us. Mind you, in the second week we packed up and hired a car. Driving a car round Sicily, and especially Palermo was the least...

It’s one of those expressions like "he gets plenty of chalk on his boots" to describe what wingers do. It wasn’t pejorative, I don’t think.

After Pascal reappeared on Sunday I amused myself by going back on NSC and checking out some of the stuff that was said about him here before he became Herr Reliable. And Welbeck too. Honestly, it was painful and embarrassing to read. I'd forgotten just how much negativity there was at the early...

Fair enough, yes, I just looked it up - you’re right. I apologise. She won 57% of the Tory membership votes against Sunak's 43%. But I do think this thing about the 'shire Tories' hating black people, gays, and women blah blah is like some weird outmoded Little Britain caricature. Same with...

It’s a bit unsettling, agreed, but it happens on both sides. Wasn’t Sir Keir named after Keir Hardie? And Jeremy Corbyn used to wear that Lenin cap before he was told to smarten up his image.

Well they’ve already voted in one, Rishi Sunak — not just as leader but as PM. And Badenoch apparently had a 20% leader when Conservative Home conducted a survey at their party conference (according to a headline in the Telegraph a few days ago). So perhaps we should revisit our own prejudices?

My better half is obsessed by it. I usually head off to the pub for a couple of hours to leave her in peace. Suits us both.

Finally got round to watching this. Utterly preposterous plot with more holes in it than a cheese grater. You have to ‘go with it’ and accept it on its own terms or you’ll end up shouting at the TV about one about one ludicrous twist after another.

It doesn’t matter if the LDs are different from Reform. If they both disagree with government policy they’re entitled to vote against it. What’s worse IMO is a huge government majority able to do whatever it likes, despite only 30% of the voters supporting them. And only 20% of the entire...

Yep, democracy can be a bitch. If these parties’ seats represent the same ratio of voters in the country, why shouldn’t they be able to obstruct bills that are unwanted by that proportion of voters?

The Greens would do very well with PR which is why they’re so vehemently in favour of it. PR isn’t designed to give seats to any particular party. It’s designed to implement representative democracy, warts and all.

There’s no way the Tories will want to fragment themselves yet further. As for the idea of a new ‘common sense’ middle-ground party it was tried before. I can barely even remember what they were called. Change? Anna Soubry et al. Got absolutely nowhere without any boots-on-the-ground local...

I’d agree that "Football is panto. It's intrinsically silly" if I was smoking some weed or doing acid. Everything used to seem, hey, kinda intrinsically absurd, when I was out of my head. Which, funnily enough, was also around 40 years ago. But no, when I have my normal straight head on, I think...

I didn’t "abuse" FPTP, unless there's some set of voting rules I’m unaware of, and that I unwittingly contravened. Without some form of PR, many of us are forced into tactical voting. The alternative, sadly followed by millions of would-be voters, is to stay at home on election day because their...

Their missteps and pessimism is no “strategy”. It’s a total cock-up. This is Alastair Campbell’s view, not just mine. You’re right that the 4-5 years until the next election is a very long time. Who knows what will happen before then. But to be one percentage point ahead of the Tories in the...

It wasn’t intended to offer some big new angle. It’s a documentary about something that happened 40 years ago. The majority of the population will have no recollection of the event. Airey Neave was very high profile at the time. I’d seen him interviewed on TV about his exploits at Colditz. He...

I voted LibDem (in Eastbourne) to defeat the Tory. Not sure about the 'warm hug' but if Reform's voteshare equated to 50 seats then yes, absolutely, they should have 50 seats. That's democracy. The fact that I don't like Farage doesn't come into it. It's not up to you or me what the...

I know it's the age-old sterotype that Tory voters are racist and sexist but let's face ithe awkward truth -- they've had 3 women PMs, and more top female ministers than Labour. As for non-white ministers and shadows, the number seems significantly greater than other parties. And they have...

Agreed, it's been an amazing transformation. Applies to class as well as location. Nowadays, it seems more likely that the average middle class, middle income person will vote Labour, despite being historically Tory fodder. And your average working class bloke more likely to vote Tory or Reform.

I'm a massive advocate of some form of PR. FPTP is a terrible betrayal of democratic values, as seen in this year's general election. If 20% of the population are revolutionary communists and 20% are fascists, then I think we should have the same proportion of MPs representing those 40%. I...