There are two big and related stories that emerge from these election results. The first is that Reform UK is having a very good time of it. Victory in the Runcorn & Helsby by-election was widely expected and, to some extent, the surprise is that its majority was not greater. (I, for one, had assumed a comfortable Reform victory.) But it would be churlish to deny that even coming close in a seat that was not particularly fertile territory for Reform (or, previously, Ukip and the Brexit Party) is a significant achievement. Where Reform has exceeded even the high expectations that existed has been the local elections. At the time of writing, it is on course to win around 900 council seats, ...

“I’m just sightseeing, I don’t want an interview, love,” the middle-aged man in the Kangol baseball cap and hard leather shoes (no socks) tells me. His lonely screams – no less than two minutes earlier – of “Innocent! Innocent!” made me question the sightseeing defence. I am outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court for the first hearing of Russell Brand. There are more press than fans; this man had travelled alone. “Are you here for Brand?” I ask another man behind me in the queue for security. He sighs, “Oh is that’s what is going on?” I get the sense that big media tussles don’t happen here that frequently, but that they are an enormous pain for everyone when they do. Brand’s mystical ...

We wake in early May to find the political world entirely upended, and yet exactly the same. The great triumph of Reform – and it is a triumph, no lesser word will do – probably sets the scene for British politics between now and the next general election. Nigel Farage has, at long last, an effective, professional, well-organised political machine behind him, one able to take on the ruthless professionalism of Keir Starmer’s Labour and beat it, even if by the narrowest whisker, in what should have been a safe parliamentary seat. It is a machine also able to lay waste to the Tories in right-wing, Brexity heartlands such as Lincolnshire and Staffordshire. “Fruit cakes, loonies and closet racists”, as David Cameron ...

This time, the hype was justified. For over a decade, Nigel Farage has boasted of parking his tanks on Labour’s lawn. But until today none of his various outfits had succeeded in winning a seat from the party. That has finally changed. After a full recount, Reform won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by six votes – the closest result for more than a century – overturning a 14,696 majority. This, against an experienced Labour electoral machine, is a dramatic advance for Farage’s party, one that signals its strengthening ground operation.  Labour has responded by noting that “by-elections are always difficult for the party in government” and that “the events which led to this one being called made it even harder”. Former ...

The day before the local elections really isn’t the time for the leader of the opposition to fade into the background. Yet somehow, this is exactly what Kemi Badenoch managed to do in today’s PMQs. Last week, Badenoch got to lead on her favourite political topic thanks to the Supreme Court ruling on single-sex spaces and the legal definition of a woman. This week, she appeared to have been handed more killer ammunition by none other than Tony Blair, whose institute released a report yesterday which suggested the government’s net zero efforts are doomed. This should be catnip for a Tory leader who has made breaking the cross-party consensus on net zero one of her few policies. Her arguments have been turbocharged ...

In the River Chess, dressed in fishing waders, Ed Davey is planting flag iris. The species grows aggressively, disrupting ecosystems by outcompeting native plants – a pattern the Liberal Democrats have replicated. At the general election the party toppled Tory fortresses once held by the likes of David Cameron (Witney), Boris Johnson (Henley and Thame) and Michael Gove (Surrey Heath). A recent YouGov poll put the Lib Dems first in the south outside of London. After winning 72 seats – more than any third party since 1923 – they now aim to supplant the Conservatives as the second largest force in local government (Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire are key targets). Only a decade has passed since the Lib Dems suffered a near-extinction ...

They were all there – the First Minister, the leaders of Holyrood’s opposition parties (the Tories aside), religious leaders, the great and good of civic Scotland. The summit called in Glasgow this week by John Swinney was, he said, to show “strength of unity” against the rise of the far right in Scotland. What he meant, of course, was Reform UK, which has surged in the opinion polls and looks likely to have a haul of MSPs numbering in the teens after next year’s Holyrood election. Swinney had made clear that he was targeting Reform when he announced the summit in February, warning that “our values are under threat from Farage”. On Wednesday, though, he seemed reluctant to let the party’s name pass ...

This was always going to be Kemi Badenoch’s week for PMQs. The Conservative leader often struggles to make the headline topics of the new agenda work for her in her head-to-head matches with Keir Starmer  – not least because so many of them (a stalling economy, NHS waiting lists, the breakdown in public services) say just as much about the record of the Conservative government she was part of as they do about Labour. But after the Supreme Court ruled last week that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex – an issue on which Badenoch has been more passionate and vocal than any other over her political career – nothing was going to stand in her ...