United Kingdom

Farage will NOT be PM- or at least I bloody hope not. He has 5 MPs at the moment out of 650. And they hate each other almost as much as they hate everyone else.

The majority of people don't bother to vote at local elections and by-elections. Those who do vote consist disproportionately of protest voters.

Labour do need to treat this as a wake-up call to stop imitating the Tories and punishing disabled people and pensioners. If people wanted cuts and austerity, they'd have voted Tory. I've taken to calling Rachel Reeves 'Georgina Osborne'.

Rather than running scared of Reform, Labour might take a look at the very successful recent campaigns- rather against the odds- of left-of-centre parties in Canada and Australia, and see if there's anything that could be imitated.

But let's not get *too* panicky,