
Lucy Nethsingha to lead Cambridgeshire County Council for second term
She said: "Over the past four years we worked with councillors from other parties in running the council."We will continue to work with anyone we can and value good ideas from staff, from communities across Cambridgeshire and from successful councils across the country."The Lib Dems have 31 seats out of 61 seats in Cambridgeshire.Prior to the 2025 elections, no party had overall control of the council, and the Lib Dems were in a coalition with Labour and independent councillors.The Liberal Democrats gained 11 seats since the last election in 2021, while the Green Party gained three and Reform UK 10 seats.Dupre lost her bid to be the next Cambridgeshire and Peterborough combined authority mayor but was re-elected to her county council seat in Sutton.
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The Independent
19 minutes ago
- The Independent
Reform's 19-year-old council leader risks contempt of court over rape case comments
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The Independent
19 minutes ago
- The Independent
Why has Kemi Badenoch fallen out with Liz Truss?
Dearie me, they're at it again. Former Tory leader Liz Truss and current Tory leader Kemi Badenoch are involved in another nasty spat, mainly about the infamous mini-Budget introduced by then Prime Minister Truss in September 2022. Badenoch has invoked that calamitous – and deeply Conservative – fiscal event in an otherwise routine attack on the government. Truss, ever ready to defend her record, because no one else will, has hit back and told Badenoch she's wrong and needs to do some more thinking, a particularly hurtful jibe when Badenoch thinks herself one of the brainier kids in the Westminster playground. Amusing and mildly diverting as it may be, this minor row also tells us some much bigger things about the Tory dilemma. What did Badenoch say? That Labour is even more incompetent than Truss was: 'For all their mocking of Liz Truss, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have not learnt the lessons of the mini-Budget and are making even bigger mistakes. They continue to borrow more and more, unable and unwilling to make the spending cuts needed to balance the books.' Is that new? Not really. Only a few weeks ago, the shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, evicted from ministerial office by Liz Truss when she formed her short-lived government, laid into the mini-Budget and apologised for it. Badenoch, meanwhile, has said she doesn't know whether Truss is still in the Conservative Party, and implied she doesn't really care either way. She's long let it be known she'd prefer Truss to just go quiet for a while. Badenoch has also been disobliging about the Sunak administration 'talking right but acting left'. But Sunak, like Johnson, May and Cameron, has, so far, preferred to ignore the present controversies and policy shifts, such as Badenoch's 'net-zero sceptic' stance. What's the Truss defence? The usual – her supposedly brilliant plan to turbocharge the British economy was thwarted by a terrible econo-bureaucratic blob and those, to the visionary Truss, idiots at the Bank of England. But increasingly she is having to adapt her line because of attacks from her own party (if she is indeed still in it), which means slagging off the administrations that came before her – Cameron, May, Johnson – and after, Sunak and now Badenoch's performance as leader of the opposition: 'It is disappointing that instead of serious thinking like this, Kemi Badenoch is instead repeating spurious narratives. I suspect she is doing this to divert from the real failures of 14 years of Conservative government in which her supporters are particularly implicated.' Er... weren't they both members of these dreadful governments? Yes. Truss continuously from 2012 to her ousting in 2022, and Badenoch from 2019 to 2024. Indeed, it was Truss who promoted Badenoch to the cabinet as international trade secretary. Neither showed much dissent, publicly or privately. Why are they scrapping? Neither wants to take responsibility for their own failures as a party leader, and that can inevitably lead to blame throwing for their disastrous showing at the election, and subsequently. But all politicians in all parties who find themselves thrashed by the voters are faced with this excruciating dilemma as they enter the wilderness of life in opposition: Do they denounce the record and policies of the government they were apparently happy to be a part of? Or do they defend their record instead? Do they agree with the voters' verdict or not? And if they want to, or have to, admit 'mistakes', are they going to be big or smaller ones? How to play it? By ear – there are no hard rules. Back in the 1970s, Margaret Thatcher, as leader of the opposition, did well out of renouncing most of what the Heath government had done because it ended in such chaos, and Thatcher was (like Badenoch today) a relatively junior cabinet member who could claim some innocence. In due course, because public opinion had shifted during the Blair years, David Cameron found that he'd have to criticise Thatcher herself, so he declared that 'there is such a thing as society' and told his fractious party to 'stop banging on about Europe'. Ed Miliband, after Labour's defeat in 2010, never seemed able to make up his mind about whether the Brown administration (in which he served) had failed, and, if so, how and why. Try as he might, Nick Clegg could never grovel sufficiently for what he did on tuition fees in the coalition government, and the Lib Dems were so punished at the 2015 general election that they were left with eight MPs compared to the 56 elected in 2010. At the moment, the Conservative-led government of 2010 to 2024 has few friends and many critics, the most vociferous being some of its leading lights. In this respect, the party is behaving more like Labour traditionally does after a defeat. Thus, after the 1974-79 Labour government fell from power, it was attacked by the Bennites on the Labour left for being too right-wing, and by the social democrats on the right for being too left-wing. Eventually, the long passage of time made arguments about pay policy, union power and unilateralism irrelevant. One day, when people have forgotten who Truss and Badenoch were, they may be ready to give the Tories a hearing. But, with Farage on their right flank, with no qualms about slagging off the last government, the Conservatives may not have the luxury of time to settle their differences and focus their attacks on him.


The Guardian
20 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Spotlight on Keir Starmer's recognition of Palestine
I'm puzzled by the conditions Keir Starmer has set for Israel to meet, failing which he'll recognise Palestine as a state (UK to recognise state of Palestine in September unless Israel holds to a ceasefire, 29 July). Why does recognition depend on Israel's actions? Surely it should depend on Palestine's: commitments to abjure terrorism, disarm Hamas, hold democratic elections and, of course, to release the hostages. As for Israel, UK policy should be to impose draconian sanctions: if Israel continues to act like a pariah state, let it be treated as one. Without sanctions, there would probably still be an apartheid regime in South Africa. The UK must act now, not half-heartedly in September; thousands of children in Gaza can't wait until MaughanDunblane, Perthshire Like so many people in the UK, I thought that my despair and shame over the situation in Gaza could not be deepened. Keir Starmer achieved that. How like this prime minister to obfuscate further and kick any sense of decisiveness into the long grass of contingency. One might think that Britain has some special responsibility for recognising the state of Palestine, whose population it abandoned to the predations of its neighbour in 1948. What will be left of Gaza, the West Bank and its people by September? A genocide? A diaspora? The UK doesn't negotiate with terrorists, just with war Prof Graham MortLancaster University Soon after the atrocities of 7 October 2023 I heard someone on the radio say, with respect to Israel's imminent invasion of Gaza, 'Beware of being goaded by your enemy into doing what your enemy wants you to do.' Nearly two years on, the Israeli government seems hell-bent on creating a moral equivalence between itself and Hamas. If you become like your enemy, then your enemy has won. Thus, despite what it says about recent moves to recognise a Palestinian state, the Israeli government, more than any other, is 'rewarding' Hamas for its terrorist actions. The Rev Rob KelseyBerwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland It is impossible for us to know the depth of despair Palestinians must feel to hear western nations pontificating that we will not recognise them as a nation if their oppressors stop killing them. It seems this is the ultimate acknowledgment that they have no rights except those we deem to give them. We have expelled them from the land in which they lived to ensure that Europe didn't have the problem of resettling the thousands displaced by a European war. They are being attacked in Gaza and the West Bank with weapons supplied by western governments. They are being starved in Gaza to keep their oppressor-in-chief in office. And now our governments are praised for condescending to recognise the fact that they are a nation (that has existed for more than 1,000 years). How can we think we have any integrity left in our dealings with the oppressed?Michael McLoughlinWallington, London What will give greater weight to the call for a two-state solution is outlining the building blocks for establishment of a Palestinian state: for example, Gaza would be placed under UN control to allow for demilitarisation, the physical reconstruction and drawing up a basic law to guide the development of a constitutional WeirCape Town, South Africa Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.