Inside the notebook of Josiah Mortimer, Chief Reporter

Reform U-Turns on Reform

British annexations in New Guinea. Lobby hacks seemed hostile to slavery reparations

Reform UK’s 2024 ‘Our Contract With You’ – Nigel Farage’s manifesto in all but name – couldn’t have been clearer in backing “proportional representation voting for the House of Commons”.

Progressives might disagree with it on everything else, but it meant the push for PR was genuinely non-polarised. Until now.

That’s because the Alliance for Proportional Representation – a network of parties and campaign groups committed to delivering PR “regardless of whatever other issues divide them”, has just kicked Reform out.

Curiously (or not), as the party has risen – despite a recent dip – in the polls, Farage’s clan has increasingly shifted towards supporting Westminster’s existing first past the post (FPTP) voting system. It appears to have reasoned that ‘winner takes all’ could work out quite nicely for Reform after all.

Peter Oborne ‘It Is Unforgivable That the Wretched Starmer Allowed British Democracy to Be Debauched in This Way’

One of the many pleasures of Philip Hensher’s new A History of the Novel in Britain is his advocacy for Nevil Shute, a writer who enjoyed success in the middle decades of the 20th Century but has been neglected ever since.

Peter Oborne