Indeed, here's the vote share for North Yorkshire in general elections since 1900 and yesterday's Mayoral election.

16% swing against Houchen. All the Tory Westminster seats in the area would be lost on that swing.

Preemptive post: There doesn't need to be enthusiasm for Labour (or indeed Reform UK) when there is this much antipathy to the Conservatives.

We joined a men only club by mistake

This race has flown under the radar.lot of votes in York which is pretty Lab leaning and Labour has won by-election in N Yorks on a huge swing. Sunak losing new Mayoralty in his own backyard would be a big story

Yes, and I'd argue N Yorkshire is the easiest good/bad shorthand. Looking at the GE MRPs, Labour should win East Mids comfortably, but N Yorks is a tossup when making reasonable adjustments for no Reform candidate. To be doing better than those MRPs, Tories need clear win there.

Thanks to Trades Union Congress for this compilation - people have always reckoned that others are workshy. (Tip, if you can't find enough workers, raise wages, or mechanise. There is no third option). 1/2

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More depressing news from Slovakia where Fico’s government proposes scrapping the national broadcaster RTVS and replacing it with a new one named STVR. An act of media politicisation straight out of Orbán’s playbook and at odds with current EU legislation.

Latest in the union recognition battle at Amazon Coventry - managers have been sticking up QR codes around the building. Scan them, and they generate an email cancelling your GMB membership...
theguardian.com/technology/202…

I've been incessantly making the case that the electoral tide currently raises all boats.

Even this one (and GB News viewers, it also seems).

BREAKING: Scottish Greens to vote in favour of Tory no confidence motion against Humza Yousaf next week - a mark of how angry Scottish Greens is about Yousaf scrapping #ButeHouse agreement

A revealing podcast exchange between the former editor of the Sun David Yelland and top PR man (+ former Murdoch son in law) Matthew Freud about why Keir Starmer should keep his distance from Rupert. From

Ben is 100% right.
Numbers used in describing increase in defence spending are impenetrable, misleading & internally inconsistent.
Committing to 2.5% of GDP on defence is big and important. There is no need for this profusion of overblown and inconsistent numerical claims.

.Andrew Neil is in front of the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, currently running through how GB News would have gone differently if he'd been in charge. 'It wouldn't have looked like it was being broadcast from the president of North Korea's bunker'

Erm, the goverment already set up a UK agency modelled on Darpa, as championed by Dominic Cummings - it's called ARIA (though admittedly not focused on defence...) aria.org.uk/about-aria/

Second time ever at European Parliament and it's absolute maze... but they do memorialise previous leaders. Even British. And she supported single market

Seems familiar? Boris Johnson pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5% by 2030 at the NATO summit in Madrid in June 2022.

Interesting as the latest news on the public finances is (deficit higher than exp in Mar) I find these kinds of charts far more interesting👇
Just LOOK at how much WW1 & WW2 cost the UK.
Nothing, even Covid, got anywhere close. Well done Office for National Statistics (ONS) for posting historic charts like this