Charlotte Henry

The Liberal Democrats went into yesterday’s elections in positive spirits, confident they could make meaningful gains. That was despite much of the attention being on the progress expected by Reform and the Green party. As I write this, that confidence is generally being justified. The Lib Dems have a net gain of more than 80 new councillors in England. They are ahead of the Tories and snapping at the heels of Labour in terms of the total number of local representatives won at these elections. Given they were not coming from the negligible baseline that Reform and the Greens were, that is an impressive return. Crucially, the Lib Dems are winning control of councils, too. They are set to run at least 13 local authorities going forward.

It is a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning in south-west London, and Sir Ed Davey is rallying the troops. The Lib Dem leader is hoping his party can dislodge Labour and take over Merton council next week. Having got a few snaps alongside activists and Wimbledon MP Paul Kohler, (Sir Ed had to ask for a “senior woman” to make sure the picture was not too male and pale,) he told Coffee House: “We're going to make gains across the country from both Labour and the Conservatives. So, in a funny sort of way, Merton is a sort of symbol of that, of our progress.” “In three years, Tunbridge Wells has gone from a safe Tory seat to being Lib Dem vs Reform,” local MP Mike Martin explains Davey is right that we are in an interesting bit of the capital for those waving orange diamonds.

In the years when the Greens cared more about hedgehogs than Hamas, those opposed to military action made the Lib Dems their political home. The height of this came under the leadership of Charles Kennedy when he bravely led his party in opposition to the disastrous Iraq war. Ed Davey – the current Lib Dem leader – is no Charles Kennedy, though. Iran in 2026 is not Iraq in 2003. Davey is taking increasingly absurd and tokenistic positions when it comes to the Middle East, the US and its president, Donald Trump. This has included pathetic social media offerings, such as sharing a picture of Winston Churchill making a V-sign above a post of Trump criticising the UK’s approach to the current conflict. Very statesmanlike from the knighted former cabinet minister.

Nadhim Zahawi has become the most senior Conservative to defect to Reform. Nigel Farage looked delighted as he welcomed the former Chancellor into the fold at a Westminster press conference this morning. However, the Reform leader should be careful what he wishes for. In fact, he should not have permitted Zahawi to join at all. Zahawi may have a point, but is he entirely free of blame for the mess we're in? Since the upstart party’s founding, there has been a steady stream of politicians leaving the Tories to join Reform. Some, no doubt, are doing so out of genuine conviction and despair at the state of the organisation they are abandoning. Others resemble rats leaving a sinking ship. But even their admittance can still make sense if it delivers a blow to Tory morale.

Whatever the weather, there will be sandals and socks aplenty in Bournemouth this weekend, as the Lib Dems descend on the coastal town for their party conference. It’s a chance for them to get their voice heard and make an impact, something that has not happened much in the 14 months since a hugely successful General Election that resulted in a record 72 MPs heading to the House of Commons. A Lib Dem Peer feels that because the party is “reasonable,” they are simply not getting coverage The Lib Dems are polling at 15 per cent, according to the latest YouGov data, just above half of what Reform are on (29 per cent). Yet it doesn’t seem like they are landing a blow. Frustration boiled over recently, with one MP warning leader Sir Ed Davey to drop his “bullshit” stunts.

When the story of how the British media responded to the October 7 atrocities is told, there will be a number of villains. High up on the list will be James O’Brien. The LBC host is smugness personified most of the time, but gets even higher on his horse whenever Israel is the topic, which it is frequently. Obviously. James O'Brien is smugness personified, but gets even higher on his horse whenever Israel is the topic Things reached a new low this week. On Tuesday, O’Brien read out a text from someone called ‘Chris’. This person said his Jewish wife had, as a child, attended something called ‘Shabbat School’. There she was taught that one Jewish life was worth thousands of Arab lives and other racist, dehumanising concepts.

The BBC has not had a ‘good war’ since 7 October. Whether it is the smug anti-Israel tone of its reporters, or its use of casualty numbers and narratives dished out by a terror group, it has been pretty shameful stuff. And I say that as someone who generally has a lot of time for the corporation. After this latest fiasco, the BBC needs to take a good hard look at itself Today, things reached a new low. We finally got the full report into the documentary ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’. The show was broadcast on BBC Two and iPlayer in February before being pulled.

I’ve never been to Glastonbury. As more of a heavy metal girl, it’s not really my music scene and, frankly, I don’t believe in camping. Did it once. Not happening again. That said, I do quite enjoy watching the festival from the comfort of my own home. There are always some bands I already like performing and you can discover some exciting news artists too. Frankly, it’s hard to avoid. The coverage tends to dominate almost every aspect of the BBC and it is well underway for this year. Almost every Jewish music lover I know has been dreading this weekend for weeks Unfortunately, but entirely predictably, Glastonbury is set to be an anti-Jewish, anti-Israel hatefest, with Palestinian flags and bile-filled rants galore.

On Tuesday, Nigel Farage challenged Keir Starmer to a head-to-head debate. More specifically, the Reform leader wants to take on the Prime Minister in a northern working men’s club.  Obviously, that is not going to happen. The PM might have declared in his speech today that ‘the choice at the moment is between the choice of a Labour government… or Nigel Farage and Reform,’ but there is zero chance of him risking all to take on Farage directly in a setting of the Reform leader’s choosing. There is, however, another man who should play Farage at his own game and challenge him to a debate: Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey.

There’s no doubt that Friday’s local election results belonged to Reform. Nigel Farage’s party has picked up hordes of councils, councillors and mayoralties at the expense of the two major parties. However, it won’t only be Farage and co. who are heading into the bank holiday on a high. The Lib Dems have made meaningful gains, and these should worry the Tories as much as anything Reform have done. They hint at an almost total collapse of the moderate, “one-nation” voter base that used to be so crucial Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, whose elections day stunt was to hand out ice creams in Shrewsbury (his party is hoping to scoop control of Shropshire County Council…) has declared the Lib Dems ‘the new party of middle England’. It is hard to argue with that.

The Lib Dems are on to a vote winner with their plan to crack down on yobs who blare out music on public transport. The party wants to change the law to explicitly ban playing music and videos out loud on trains and buses in England. As an almost daily user of London’s public transport network, there is little that enrages me more than those who decide we all need to hear the music they’re listening to, the video they’re watching or the phone conversation they’re having. Ed Davey’s party says it will hit these headphone dodgers with a £1,000 fine. It’s the perfect attention-grabbing Lib Dem gimmick – one that will strike a chord with voters and get out the vote in this year’s local elections.

Sir Ed Davey has released a Christmas single. No, really. Called ‘Love is Enough’, it is, of course, all in aid of a good cause. The Lib Dem leader has joined forces with the Bath Philharmonia’s Young Carers’ Choir to raise awareness of the difficulties encountered by young carers – something Sir Ed has personal experience of. You’ll forgive me for not reviewing the track itself because, as a heavy metal fan, I barely made it through the first 90 seconds. The issue, though, is not the lack of shredding guitar riffs but the ongoing lack of seriousness from a man who now leads the third-biggest party in the House of Commons.

In a wetsuit and atop a jet ski, Sir Ed Davey hurtled towards the Brighton shore, descending on the Liberal Democrat conference this week with yet another eye-catching stunt. One can only hope it is the final one in what has been months (years?) of such exploits. No doubt the party and its press officers would point to the coverage this dramatic arrival generated and say it was a job well done. Would you even know there had been a Lib Dem conference if the jet ski moment hadn’t been broadcast on TV screens and splashed across newspaper pages? Unlikely.

'They tried to stop us and look what it did. The thing I love most is being a yid.' So chanted the Tottenham Hotspur fans 44 seconds into their side’s 4-0 thrashing of Everton last weekend. That often-repeated song refers to previous, unsuccessful, attempts to try and stop Spurs fans using the 'Y-word'. The bile underneath the social media posts announcing the deal was as depressing as it was predictable Ask any Spurs fan singing that and similar tunes why they do so, and they will likely say that it started as a response to antisemitism from opposing fans because of Tottenham’s connection to the Jewish community. Chanters would undoubtedly insist that there is no malice or antisemitism involved. This is generally my view too.