Helen Lewis

I don't think that's not unfair, is it?

You can tell me if you were canvassed.

I live in Lewisham.

We were canvassed by some very nice Greens who were former Labour people.

And one of the things they said is we want to end austerity.

And I was like, sounds good.

But with what money?

Like, I don't think the Lewisham council is secretly sitting on a smorgasbord pot of gold that they've just been cruelly refusing to disperse up until now.

Well, take down the progress flag from over the town hall and that's £100 million.

That's it.

One of my biggest groans during this campaigning season was Ed Davey, leader of the Lib Dems, saying that he wants to impose a duty on every new housing development to have a GP surgery.

And he was just like, yes, what we should do is just put one more restriction on house building.

a problem as well in the health sector with gp's uh supply and hours and and also one of the things is that every new development is often subject to like judicial review and then planning appeals so if you're building that jeep if you're a gp do you want to move into somewhere that in three years time there might be some houses there or depending whether or not the residents have taken it all the way to the high court no in fact there won't be or that you know they found a newt yes or something like that the resident's blood pressure will have gone up so much that you will have quite a few kind of patients coming in as a result that's true

On the no overall control thing, so there are currently 32 councils outside London that are no overall control.

Sam Friedman, in a very good substack about the local elections, said he thinks there's probably going to be another 32 outside London at the end of this.

So that's really the story of these elections, isn't it?

It's like we hate the mainstream.

If you've still got a Tory council, you're going to register that you hate them.

But mostly if you've got a Labour council, you're going to register that you hate them.

That's tragic, because Donald Trump is hoping for gold statues, and Britain being Britain, we've got... Cost of living crisis touches even reform.