Recently in England and Wales Category

The leftish blogosphere is roiling with misplaced sympathy for Ian Blair. For example, Douglas Johnson, whose writings I usually like, says: "when a politician clearly edges a public servant out of their job, we should worry."

Our sister party in England and Wales just elected their leader, and duly chose the magnificent Caroline Lucas MEP. She's smart, passionate, engaging, radical, and absolutely the right choice. If I were a member and if I had as many votes as Jack McConnell apparently does up here, I'd have voted for her seven times.

The Tories held Henley, with the Liberals in second. No surprise on either count.

But Greens in third? In some pretty unpromising territory? Wonderful work, despite the usual flurry of "Only the Liberal Democrats can win here" (prime spurious example) and other similarly misleading leaflets.

But if I were a Labour supporter, I'd be in utter despair, having been beaten by us to the left and the BNP to the right. Labour's vote is less than the sum total of votes for UKIP plus the Monster Raving Loonies. You don't even need to add in Harry Bear from the Fur Play Party.

Gordon and Wendy are increasingly looking like New Labour's pall-bearers.

I do hate spurious polls, so shouldn't link to one. Apologies. 

Others have speculated that Paddick's policies, especially those on trashing the planet, aren't consistent with the rest of the Liberals' platform. However, he proved he's One Of Them on the PM programme today.

When asked how he voted with his second preference he refused, saying "It'd be ridiculous for me to have come down on one side or the other because I'd have lost half my votes". So no principled position on what's best for London, then..

Oh, and there's a rumour the Greens have beaten the Liberals on the GLA list, according to one of our candidates Aled Fisher. That would be magic.

I take my hat off to the Norwich Greens. Extraordinary results. Let me list the ways they've done well.