It’s obviously premature to begin to assess how Andy Burnham is doing as the new Labour Prime Minister. He has only been in office – literally – for ten days. But I’ve been impressed by some of the things he has announced or done over these days and I want to share my initial reactions with my constituents.

Firstly, I’ve been struck by Andy’s willingness to advance from the very outset an argument about what he thinks has gone wrong in Britain over a period of years and what he thinks needs to be done to put the country back on track. It’s not just that he believes he would ‘make a good prime minister’, as David Cameron once put it when asked about his motives for high office. In marked contrast, Burnham began by offering his own diagnosis of Britain’s problems and suggested that he had their measure.

Listen again to what he said in his speech in Downing Street last week. “In the 1980s, Britain took some wrong turns. Political power was centralised, economic power privatised, large parts of the country de-industrialised, and they still haven’t recovered.” On the back of that broad analysis, he promised to build a ‘new political model’, grounded in the devolution of power, and a ‘new economic model’, committed to putting “life’s essentials” back under “stronger public control”.

These are big arguments that necessarily generate big ambitions. But, in my judgement, his words were spot on and badly needed to be said.

Secondly, Andy announced that he was establishing with immediate effect a new Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, tasked with driving all branches of government in radical directions. I think this innovation has been underplayed in last week’s flurry of media commentary. I see it as hugely significant. Much recent analysis of the failings of the last few British governments has identified as a big problem that 10 Downing Street, as a bureaucracy, has been too underpowered to cope with the complexity and detail of all the policies that necessarily flow through it.

The OPMC, as we must learn now to call it, will not only be bigger and better staffed than previous Prime Ministerial offices, but, in a striking symbolic move, will also include a new ‘No. 10 North’ unit located in Manchester which will focus explicitly on devolution and the economy. Moreover, Andy has said he will work there one day a week most weeks.

I also think that the most interesting appointment made to the new Cabinet last week was that of Lou Haigh as First Secretary of State, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister to the Cabinet Office. Lou was one of the people who led Labour’s Makerfield campaign and is now in effect the Deputy Prime Minister, although she hasn’t formally been given that title.

From this powerful new position she is tasked with driving the Prime Minister’s wishes and his plans for building a new politics through the whole of the Whitehall administrative machine. Never before has a senior minister been given both that job and the necessary infrastructure to do it successfully.

Thirdly, I note, and also like, the way that the new government has already begun to pursue a communications strategy that is clear and coherent. Simple phraseology has been put to good use. For example, the need for some ‘breathing space now’ on the cost of living has been identified and articulated. A new ’10-year plan for Britain’ will be worked up and presented to the country before the end of the year. Burnham himself will tour the country during August, focusing his visits on forgotten places located all over the country, not just in the north of England.

In sum, I believe all the things I’ve highlighted in this post interact and collectively constitute what is now, genuinely, a programme for governing. Andy has given his diagnosis of the key problems; set up a new agency to address them; and begun to explain to everyone in easily understandable terms what he and his government are up to.

Not bad for ten days in office, I would say.

I called more than a month ago after the local election results for Labour from then on self-consciously to be ‘Bigger’, ‘Bolder’ and ‘Braver’ and I identified three such policies as my own top priorities in this menu of radical change. Two of them relate to the country’s current and severe housing crisis and I want today to explain in more detail my position on this key issue.

Everybody who looks at housing as an issue knows when and how the problems began. They started in 1980 when the Thatcher government introduced Right to Buy (RTB). Over the years since that fateful move nearly 2 million council houses have been sold. Councils were required to sell their houses at below market value, with the bulk of receipts diverted to central government, and nearly all still have historic debt on their housing revenue accounts.

In the aftermath, councils have struggled to rebuild a sufficient housing stock. They still have big waiting lists for council houses and spend huge sums on emergency temporary housing. But the overall picture that has emerged is stark. The proportion of people living in council housing in the UK has decreased from 30% in 1980 to a mere 6% today. In effect, would-be council house residents have been driven into the private rented sector.

Coming into office in 2024, the Labour government knew all of this. It tightened up the RTB selling rules, allocated £39 billion to a Social and Affordable Homes Programme and committed publicly to getting 1.5 million homes built before the end of this parliament. However, I have to be honest and admit that this policy has already veered off track.

What has gone wrong? First, the government sought to free up many of the cumbersome planning rules that still largely date back to the 1947 Town and Planning Act. This was sensible and necessary because it had become too easy to obstruct planning applications. Real progress has been made, but it has been slow, and was always going to be slow, because the appeal of ‘not building in my backyard’ is inevitably strong.

Second, the government relied too greatly on private-sector developers to lead its housing programme. Their business model requires them to drip-feed homes on to the market to maintain prices and limits the number of homes they can build at social rents. A recent study by a property agency suggests that, as a result, only 840,000 houses are expected to be under construction by mid-2029. It sounds a lot, but it’s not 1.5 million, and it’s nowhere even close to the average 300,000 houses per year that were being built through the 1950s.

In my view, the government made a further mistake in how it framed its housing policies. The talk was principally of how to increase the number of ‘social’ or ‘affordable’ houses, which had the effect of placing the debate wholly within the framework of the market-place. Now, I know, of course, that houses are assets that owners like to see inflate in value. But we must, nevertheless, remember that they are not cars or paintings or jewellery: they are also homes – and homes are where people live and bring up families and from where they go to work.

In my book, council housing is different and is what we should now be talking about. As a concept, it recognises the responsibility of government, via its local government agencies, to provide housing in a local area in a way that enables the economy to function in that area. It is a key part surely of what a government owes its people and what the people can reasonably expect of their government.

That is why I was delighted to see that in his recent speech in Manchester Andy Burnham announced that he wanted to preside over ‘the biggest council-house building programme since the post-war period’.

That is a big, brave and bold statement, but I believe it can be done and I will give my full support to Andy in bringing this about. Councils need first to be unburdened of their historic housing debts and thereby freed again to borrow to build. New agencies then need to be created at national and regional levels that can provide councils with loans over long terms. Councils also need to be given more legal support in purchasing land compulsorily when that is advantageous.

I repeat: it can be done.

It’s been a long few weeks for us all waiting for the result of the Makerfield by-election. Like so many others in the wider Labour family across the north of England and indeed the country, I went over to campaign in Makerfield. It’s not easy to judge the state of public opinion on brief visits to a constituency that isn’t your own and I waited for the result nervously.

In the end, it wasn’t even close. In fact, each time I look at the voting figures they look better and better! Labour’s share of the vote, estimated at 27% in the recent local elections, rose to 55%, fully 10% more than was achieved in the July 2024 general election. This means that Labour actually increased its total number of voters despite being in government – from just over 18,000 to almost 25,000. According to experienced pollster Peter Kellner, no Labour candidate has done that since 1966!

In short, Andy Burnham blew the doors off. His campaign strategy didn’t focus undue attention on Reform and it certainly didn’t present Labour as somehow Reform-lite. Indeed, one of the many happy consequences of his victory is that any idea of trying to out-Reform Reform is now dead! No, what Burnham did brilliantly was to position Labour as the natural and only leader of left-of-centre politics in this country.

He built up not just the Labour vote, but a new and exciting Labour-led coalition that, in my view, has the capacity to win a 2029 election and decisively defeat the forces of hatred and division that presently drive Reform’s challenge. Note here the tiny percentages of the vote won in Makerfield by the Green and Liberal Democrat candidates – respectively 0.7% and 0.4%. Even the Conservative candidate only won 2% of the vote. Many of the natural supporters of these parties will have ‘lent’ their votes to Andy Burnham, as he acknowledged in his victory speech.

This shows us the way forward politically. As I argued in my last post, it is for Labour now to think big, be brave and act boldly. A ferment of ideas is needed to bring about a complete revitalisation of the government. I mentioned in that post some of the big issues that I want to see addressed, but there are others too and we need a big national debate to drive us forward under new leadership.

I was one of the first Labour MPs to say after the local election results that Sir Keir Starmer was no longer capable of rebuilding the trust with the country that will be needed to sustain such a radical recharge of the government. It is therefore with gratitude to him that I welcome the dignified announcement of his resignation of leader of the Labour Party that he made today. He has done a lot for the country, but the reality is that we need to do more, much more.

There will now be an election of a new leader of our party who will become Prime Minister and take us forward into the next two or three years. Andy Burnham has shown what kind of political appeal he can make to the country. That is what we now need and he will have my support.

One last point. In 1937 George Orwell published a small book that has justly become famous. It was called The Road to Wigan Pier. In essence, it was an investigation of the bleak living conditions experienced at that time by the working classes of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The reference to Wigan’s ‘pier’ picked up on the local joke that, unlike fashionable sea-side resorts, Wigan had no pier, only a battered, old wooden jetty where coal was loaded into waiting barges. Orwell cleverly used the vision of a pier as a sign of what Wigan could become with social and political regeneration.

The modern constituency of Makerfield sits on the southern border of Wigan. It has been a forgotten place of late, but it now has a new Labour MP who I expect to become Prime Minister. Truly, we must now set out with renewed determination on what we might think of as ‘The Road from Wigan Pier’.

To put it mildly, it’s been an interesting couple of weeks since the local elections of May 7^th. As you might imagine, I have been doing quite a bit of thinking since the moment the results started coming in. The voice of the country was tough for me to hear, but don’t be in any doubt that I’ve heard what it was saying loud and clear.

That is why I felt I had no option last week but to state on my Facebook page that, in my judgement, the Prime Minister was no longer capable of rebuilding trust with our citizens and leading the Labour party and the country towards the bolder progressive measures that are still badly needed and desperately desired by so many of our people.

I want the government to focus on policies and not personalities, that’s for sure. But, from this moment onwards, I want it to address the major, once-in-a-generation, issues that shape and ultimately define a government’s historical record. These issues are complex and difficult, but, rather than shy away from them, we need to run enthusiastically towards them, confronting opponents and seeking to persuade them of the merits of what we want to do.

I was brought up amidst an ‘Old Labour’ tradition and I applauded much of the domestic record of the ‘New Labour’ era. But times move on and eras end. The problems facing governments all over the Western democratic world are deeper and more intractable than ever. I argue therefore that, today, we need what I describe variously as ‘Big Labour’, ‘Bold Labour’ and ‘Brave Labour’.

This isn’t to say that I have no time for modest measures that sort out and improve a whole range of things. These must continue. In fact, the government doesn’t have a bad record on this level. I’m thinking here of measures to improve the rights of workers and renters, increase the minimum wage and reform SEND provision, about which I wrote recently.

But, as a government, we have yet to go up the gears to the point where we are willing to grapple with the big stuff. All Labour MPs, members, supporters and potential voters will have their own particular list of priorities they would like to push. Here are my top three, all of them related to areas of our national life where we still have time to make history by embarking on big, radical solutions.

The first is to move to public ownership of our privately-owned water companies, recognising the failure of OFWAT and the whole privatisation agenda in this vital area of human need.

The second is to start an urgent programme requiring and enabling councils to build a significant number of council homes as a key tool to tackling the cost-of-living crisis.

The third is to introduce further renters rights, such as a cap on the size of rent rises, linking them to inflation or wages, to ensure renters have a fair deal.

I will conclude here with an observation about the EU, which again I’ve discussed in previous posts. The only sensible policy that can be enacted by this government is to continue to take piecemeal moves to align our economy with the EU as closely as possible outside of EU membership. We do not have a democratic mandate to do anything more.

But we will have to write a new Labour manifesto at some point in 2028 or 2029 and now is not too soon to begin an open discussion within the party and indeed across the country about what kind of big, bold, brave offer we can put to voters at the next election that at last takes us all beyond the botched and damaging Brexit of the last several years.

Subscribe now

Since launching my Substack in January, we’ve explored a wide range of issues – from libraries and prisons to the European Union and the Chagos Islands.

Following my more recent post unmasking Nigel Farage, Sarah Whitelaw highlighted Hope Not Hate’s research into Reform members. I believe this research needs addressing, and I’m grateful to Sarah for raising it. Hope Not Hate found that most Reform members believe non-white UK citizens born abroad should be forced to leave. Their work also identifies repeated use of racist tropes and motivations within the party’s membership. They warn of a form of ethnic nationalism that is “bigger, bolder, and more confrontational”, defining British identity in terms of “blood and ancestry”. As Sarah puts it, the rise of this kind of nationalism, both within Reform and more broadly, is “ghastly and dangerous”. I agree.

It is important to recognise how this rise in ethnic nationalism and xenophobia intersects with debates such as those around halal and kosher slaughter, as we have discussed previously. Of course, many people raise sincere animal welfare concerns about non-stun practices. Sarah, for example, suggests that adopting a vegetarian diet could address the issue altogether, while safeguarding animal rights. We must clearly distinguish between those motivated by genuine concern for animal welfare and those on the far-right who exploit the issue to foster fear and hostility towards minority communities.

As I’ve said before, when rights or interests come into conflict, we must pursue practical and collaborative solutions. In this context, I appreciated Hazel Seidal’s point that banning non-stun slaughter outright would likely force many British Muslims and Jews to import meat at greater cost and inconvenience. This would not only disadvantage those communities, but also reduce our regulatory oversight, increase costs, and deepen our reliance on global food supply chains.

It is precisely this sense of practicality that figures like Nigel Farage often fail to engage with. Alongside the work of Hope Not Hate in exposing the ideological direction of Reform, this raises serious questions about his leadership.

I recently received a comment from Gavin Stewart, who argued that “personal attacks on Farage will neither change anybody’s mind, nor get you re-elected”. I have responded to this already but wish to restate my position here.

My criticism of Farage and Reform is not about scoring political points. It is not a Machiavellian attempt to elevate myself by attacking others. Rather, it is grounded in a genuine concern about the direction of our political discourse and the growing influence of ethnic nationalism. These are trends that must be challenged directly.

At the same time, we must continue to advocate for practical and respectful solutions on complex issues like non-stun slaughter, while rejecting the division promoted by the far-right. Unity and a shared sense of belonging are essential to national renewal, and these can only be built through collaboration, not division.

I will end with a quote shared by Will Roebuck: “While religious and non-religious views may differ, representative democracy should always champion respectful and considered debate. Intolerance, bullying, and entrenchment are unacceptable, breed contempt, and get us nowhere”.

Whether addressing double standards in debates on halal meat and non-stun slaughter or confronting the xenophobic narratives highlighted by Hope Not Hate, I remain committed to challenging ideas that seek to divide our society.

Subscribe now

Often in politics, we must confront issues that involve a clash of rights or freedoms. One example is the debate on stunned vs. non-stunned slaughter, and the apparent dispute between religious freedom and animal rights that stems from it.

Currently, the law in England requires all animals to be stunned before slaughter to minimise pain and suffering. However, exemptions exist, allowing slaughter without stunning to meet Jewish and Muslim dietary preferences for Kosher and Halal meat. This is because both faiths prohibit consumption of animals that die before ritual slaughter.

Animal rights activists, while acknowledging the need to respect religious traditions and practices, argue the current law does not adequately protect animal rights. They highlight that pre-stunned meat reduces pain, suffering, and distress during the slaughter process.

Much of the public agrees. In recent months, petitions calling for the full banning, and mandatory labelling of non-stunned meat have received over 100,000 signatures each.

So, how do we reconcile this clash between religious freedom and animal rights?

Firstly, we must be clear on the facts.

Currently, around 88% of animals slaughtered for Halal meat in the UK are stunned beforehand using reversible stunning methods, and all animals slaughtered for Kosher are non-stunned. There is plenty of opportunity to continue constructive engagement with religious certification bodies to increase the current rate of pre-stunning.

Secondly, we must ensure that our focus is firmly on animal rights.

While many organisations, including the RSPCA and the British Veterinary Association, raise legitimate concerns about animal welfare, others exploit this issue to unfairly target or marginalise British Muslim and Jewish communities. It is therefore essential that the debate on this matter is conducted in an inclusive and constructive way, showing the utmost respect and sensitivity towards religious traditions.

To this end, I raise my third point, that we must be practical in our approach.

While the long-term goal may be to phase out non-stun slaughter, our immediate focus should be on strengthening its regulation. I share the RSPCA’s view that animal welfare must be improved while non-stun practices remain legal. This includes introducing a permit system to monitor the number of animals slaughtered to ensure it doesn’t exceed demand, clear labelling of meat products, and measures to reduce suffering during slaughter wherever possible.

Politics should always offer the space for respectful and constructive discussion, focused on developing practical solutions to move us forward, and this issue should be no different.

As always, I welcome your thoughts, so please get in touch, and let’s discuss.

I’m going to begin with some questions, quiz questions really! Here’s the context. In talking about his Iran war the other day, President Trump referred to ‘that stupid island that they have’ in complaining about Keir Starmer’s decision to protect British national interests by not granting permission for him to use it to launch US attacks on Tehran. So, what’s the name of the island? Where is it? And why has it become so important politically?

The first two questions can be easily answered. The island is called Diego Garcia and it’s one of the Chagos Islands, an archipelago comprising some sixty islands located in the Indian Ocean about 1250 miles north-east of Mauritius and 300 miles south of The Maldives. Despite this location, the Chagos Islands are definitely not exotic holiday destinations visited by thousands of tourists. In fact, almost the reverse has happened: they have been forcibly emptied of their people, the Chagossians.

So what’s been going on? It’s complicated and we have to dig back in time. We also have to acknowledge a murky bit of British colonial history involving a previous Labour government led by Harold Wilson.

In essence, when Mauritius eventually gained its independence from Britain in 1968, it did so in truncated form. Its Chagos Islands were detached and re-established as a new British colony called the ‘British Indian Ocean Territory’. One of the islands, Diego Garcia, was then given over to the United States to set up a joint strategic military base with Britain. All the 1500 or so persons living on the Chagos Islands were deported from their homes over a six-year period before and after Mauritian independence.

There was no outcry. Indeed, little of this was reported or debated in Britain at the time. In Wilson’s defence it has to be said that, having bravely resisted intense US pressure to commit British troops to the Vietnam War, he probably felt he needed to counterbalance that decision with a significant positive gesture towards the US.

As and when subsequently challenged, successive British governments argued that the Chagos issue pertained only to bilateral relations between Britain and Mauritius and had no status in international fora or courts of international law. However, over time and as more ex-colonial states emerged on the world stage, the argument moved inexorably against Britain.

The two key moments came together suddenly. In 2017, the UN General Assembly voted by 94 to 15 in favour of referring the dispute to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Then, in 2019, the Court ruled by no less than 13 to 1 that Britain was henceforth obliged by international law to end its illegal administration of the Chagos Islands as soon as possible. It was a stunning judgement. Only the US judge supported the British case. In this post-Brexit moment, all the judges from EU states voted against. I mean, who would have imagined it?!

To bring the story right up-to-date, the incoming Starmer government followed the Truss and Sunak governments in accepting the Court’s judgement, but more vigorously set about the negotiation of an agreement with Mauritius whereby the Chagos Islands would be returned to its sovereignty, allowing the Chagossians to return, if they wished, to their home-islands. The controversial exception was Diego Garcia which would be leased back by Britain for 99 years for continued usage as a joint military base with the US.

I’m fully aware that aspects of this deal have generated criticism, notably from Trump’s leading British acolytes, and that this will only increase now that Diego Garcia has been drawn into the Iran conflict. The relevant legislation has already been held up in the House of Lords and I hope that, as a matter of honour, it will soon be pushed through and come into effect.

I say that because I see the bigger picture, which is, at heart, about justice. As a Labour MP, I’m proud that the Labour government has recognised the hurt caused to the people of the Chagos Islands by past British colonial decisions and is now moving, albeit within limits, to put right this particular historical wrong.

Subscribe now

I ended my last post by highlighting the way that Nigel Farage still somehow sits astride the government’s best endeavours to re-set Britain’s relationship with the rest of Europe. It has made me realise that I actually want to say quite a bit more about Mr Farage, seemingly so relatable and trustworthy as he poses again and again outside pubs.

Let’s start at the beginning, with a boy attending Dulwich College, one of the most prestigious private educational institutions in the country. Here, according to numerous reports, young Nigel would frequently imitate the hissing sound of gas at Jewish students, and claim that “Hitler was right”. While some may dismiss these acts as youthful mistakes, Farage’s refusal to apologise and face up to his abusive actions today surely says a lot about the character of this man.

After leaving school, Farage went on to build up enormous wealth as a commodities trader in the City of London before he moved into politics to found the UKIP party and advocate Brexit. We know now what we could only argue then, which is that Brexit has hit our economy hard, setting back the economic growth we so badly need and which the government is now working strenuously to promote from a standing start.

What more, Farage’s Brexit (for that is what it really was, notwithstanding the subsequent support given to the campaign by the likes of Gove and Johnson) did not just hurt our pockets; it also cost lives. According to a study from the University of Surrey, the resulting loss of EU nurses after Brexit has led to approximately 1,500 avoidable deaths a year. In this connection, of course, we cannot but remember the Leave Campaign’s promise that Brexit would bring an extra £350 million a week into the NHS! Farage today accepts no responsibility for Brexit and expresses neither remorse nor regret. I think we need to remind him of what he started.

Farage now operates ‘Thorn in the Side Ltd’ as a shell company through which he avoids full taxation. He processes all his income from his appearances on GB News – amounting to £400,000 per annum, or £2,000 an hour - through his company, thereby paying 25% corporation tax rather than 40% income tax. For someone who names tax dodgers as a ‘common enemy’, this would be laughable if it was not so insulting to other ordinary British taxpayers.

In Farage, then, we see a politician who claims to be an ordinary guy leading a new ‘party of the people’, no longer UKIP but rather Reform. The key question I want to ask is this: how does damaging our economy, avoiding tax and threatening our already struggling welfare systems add up to the making of a true patriot?

I don’t cower from asking this. When faced with an existential threat to decency and consensus in our society, there is no choice between fight or flight. We must establish a better understanding of Farage and his Reform colleagues. We must show who they really are and we must focus attention again and again on the things they wish us to forget from their past and conceal from us about their plans for our future.

As always, I would love to hear your own thoughts on this. So please, get in touch, and let’s discuss.

I promised in an earlier post that I would return in due course to the issue of our future relationship with the EU post-Brexit. I hadn’t expected to do so quite so soon, but I’ve been doing the political equivalent of bird-spotting and I have some interesting ‘sightings’ worth reporting and discussing!

What I spotted were two speeches recently given by the two most senior members of the government – the Prime Minister and the Chancellor – both of which addressed this situation and moved this vital debate forward.

First (on 11^th February) was the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who spoke at an event in London organised by the Brussels-based Bruegel think-tank. In her remarks she expressed confidence that Labour could win the political argument for closer economic ties with the EU, calling it the ‘biggest prize’ amongst the available trade deals. She acknowledged openly that further integration would require further alignment, saying she was ‘up for that’ and ‘keen’ to work this through ‘at sectoral level’.

Next (on 14^th February) was the PM, Keir Starmer, who addressed the Munich Security Conference in Germany. He said he fully recognised that ‘there is no British security without Europe’ and asserted that Britain was not ‘the Britain of the Brexit years anymore’. He then itemised a range of areas across the security field where specific measures of cooperation with European partners could be negotiated.

All of this was very revealing. I think we can see here what the government’s policy on Europe has now become, even if it has not been announced with much fanfare. It is to proceed towards a web of closer ties on both the economic and security fronts – drip by drip, step by step, deal by deal – until we are again closely aligned with the EU and other agencies of European integration.

I’m personally all for this and actually would probably like to see more done more quickly to repair the huge damage of Brexit. It’s important, therefore, to understand why the government is moving so carefully and cautiously in this critical sphere of policy.

That can be explained in two words: Nigel Farage. As we all know, Farage succeeded in spooking David Cameron into calling that divisive referendum on Britain’s EU membership. He wants now to spook the Starmer government in a similar way and cause it to retreat from its emerging plan to re-set to our advantage our country’s relationship with Europe.

Indeed, it’s already been reported that in ongoing talks about agricultural trade EU diplomats are seeking to insert into the draft agreement what they’ve apparently nicknamed a ‘Farage clause’ whereby Britain would be required to pay compensation to the EU if a future Reform government reneged on this or other forthcoming deals.

We can’t blame the EU for seeing us as an unreliable ‘third country’ that is now trying to make up for Brexit. The reality is that we are unreliable as long as it is possible that Farage could form a government in this country. It’s time surely to call him out on these issues as loudly as we can.

Subscribe now

I imagine my constituents will be pleased to hear that before I was elected as your MP in July 2024 I had never been inside a prison. A year or more later, I’ve been to five prisons, each of them several times!

If you’ve ever taken a quick look at my website you will have guessed that what I’m talking about is the Prisons Literacy Project that I’ve been running since last summer with the author, Lee Childs. In essence, we believe that levels of reoffending amongst prisoners can be reduced by improving literacy.

Last summer Lee and I put this notion to Lord Timpson, the Minister of State for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending in the Labour government, and secured his backing to work with the governors of five prisons in Yorkshire on a six-month pilot project.

We’ve since made a number of visits to prisons. Lee talks about his writing, of course, but mainly he encourages prisoners to begin again to read books. Amazingly, he also encourages some to write a page or so of a story which is then sent to him to read and critique. He gives so much of his time to this project and I am really grateful.

It’s all gone hugely well, so much so that the other day Lee and I and the prison governors involved met again with Lord Timpson to review progress. I’m absolutely delighted to report that he agreed that the pilot project should now be extended to 25 prisons!

James Timpson, by the way, is a remarkable man. Before being appointed to the government from outside politics, he was chief executive of his family’s well-known shoe business within which he employed and thus helped to rehabilitate many ex-prisoners. He knows what he is doing as Prisons Minister.

Anyway, I will say more in due course about how the Prisons Literacy Project now unfolds. I want to finish off today by telling you about something that has spun off the original idea. Starting with HMP Doncaster, I’ve also been running what we call ‘democracy sessions’ in prisons.

What do I mean? Well, basically, I led a non-party-political House of Commons debate with six prisoners speaking for and six against a motion about votes for 16-year-olds. We even had one prisoner acting as Speaker, with a Speaker’s chair made of cardboard!

Beforehand, I don’t mind telling you I was nervous. Perhaps the number of prisoners attending would in the end be small? Perhaps they would jeer and sneer at the whole idea? After all, wasn’t the prison full of ‘hardened criminals’? Even if that was true in some cases, I can tell you that they still took the event seriously, participated properly and in many cases seemed to have been inspired by it.

I reflected at length about this reaction afterwards. I think what especially appealed to those Doncaster prisoners was that they were again being taken seriously, listened to and, above all, respected for their opinions. Prisoners are no more, but no less, than citizens who have had their citizenship suspended by the state for a fixed period of time. Nearly all will leave prison and live amongst us again. We want and need them to behave thereafter as good citizens of a strong democracy.

In previous posts, we explored libraries and the European Union. Since then, many of you have written in to share your thoughtful comments and questions on these two important matters, and I wanted to reflect on these in today’s discussion.

I was interested to hear from David Parker about libraries. As I mentioned before, I believe libraries are the mark of a civilised society and play a vital role in our communities. David shared with me a Storyville documentary titled ‘The Librarians’, which explores the courageous resistance of American librarians to the pressure of the far-right to remove books from school libraries. It offers a stark reminder about the importance of libraries for the free flow of information, and the danger there is in their restriction. I’d encourage everyone to give this compelling documentary a watch as well.

Turning to the European Union, we previously discussed our evolving relationship with it and what this means for the country. Many of you have shared concerns about Brexit’s impact on the economy and business, including here in Colne Valley.

Tom Fleming writes that leaving the EU has harmed the economy – cutting productivity, deterring investment, and increasing costs. Many now feel worse off, and Brexit hasn’t delivered on its promises. Indeed, the Office of Budget Responsibility estimates our new trading arrangements will leave the UK about 4% less productive in the long run, while other analysis shows that rising import costs, especially for food, have hit Britain harder than the rest of Europe, and placed the greatest strain on the poorest families.

Ken Ralphs adds to this with an article from Private Eye outlining the ‘harsh realities of post-Brexit exporting’. One example really puts things into perspective – a lorry leaving Dover now needs 26 authorisation stamps, compared to just one before Brexit. It’s a vivid reminder of how additional barriers have complicated and weighed on British industry.

Perhaps a closer relationship with the EU might help ease some of these challenges. Gavin Stewart asks, can we consider this locally? Here in Colne Valley, we boast a strong manufacturing sector which could certainly benefit from fewer trade barriers with Europe, while also helping to address the cost-of-living crisis, through reduced prices on food and other imports.

Some of you have also written about the importance of standing together with Europe as we face the uncertainty and instability of the Trump administration in the United States. If the threats towards Greenland show us anything, it’s that our partnership with Europe is crucial to our security, and it must remain a national priority.

We face big challenges in the next few years, and closer ties with Europe may offer an opportunity to help tackle these. As a country, we need to decide what our relationship with the EU should look like and consider the benefits and potential costs. Perhaps we should take a cue from Rainbow Roxy, who likens our relationship with the EU to Pilates: finding the right alignment may be challenging, but it is full of potential.

Thanks to those of you who shared with me your questions and comments from the previous posts. This is, of course, a space for us to discuss together the issues that matter to you, and so if you have any further queries about libraries, the European Union, or anything else, I would love to here from you!

I watched the Prime Minister’s interview with Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC on 4^th January. This is what you do on a Sunday morning if you are a Labour MP and we have a Labour prime minister!

I thought the longer format suited both interviewee and viewers. It enabled Keir to show his command of the full range of issues that a prime minister necessarily deals with all the time and gave viewers a much more nuanced sense of the complexity and scale of the project of national renewal to which his government has committed itself.

But that’s not the main point I want to make in this reflection. At one point in the interview Keir was asked what he would say to those of his cabinet colleagues who have suggested that, nearly six years after leaving the EU on 31^st January 2020, the UK should now seek to form a customs union with the Union.

Keir said unequivocally that was not the answer. But he then went on to say something of great potential significance, which I will quote exactly. ‘We are better looking to the single market’ he said, ‘rather than the customs union for our further alignment’, adding that, ‘if it’s in our national interest … then we should consider that, we should go that far’.

In my experience of working with him, Keir does not often misspeak. He is very considered in his public statements. So I take this to be a deliberate intervention in the debate about the country’s future relationship with the EU that seeks to take us beyond the ‘re-set’ already announced.

Personally, I very much welcome the broad thrust of his remarks, but I do also have to admit that I don’t quite know what they mean. Rejoining the European Single Market is still clearly ruled out as one of the government’s ‘red lines’ to which it remains committed courtesy of the manifesto on which it was elected.

In such a context, what could ‘our further alignment’ with the Single Market mean? How far could and should it meaningfully go? What would be the gains? And would there be losses?

The terrain on which you have to tread to get a handle on these questions is complicated, highly technical and riddled with economic jargon. I am quite prepared to admit that I am learning a lot myself as I explore the issue further. It involves potential deals with the EU on food standards and animal welfare, on energy trading and on establishing mutual recognition of standards across all industrial sectors. It could also, perhaps sensibly, embrace defence co-operation.

I’m very keen, however, to push this agenda politically and I promise to return to it in more detail in a future reflection. In the meantime, if you have views on whether the agenda that Keir has opened up in his interview is, or isn’t, the right way forward, I would love to hear from you.

In early December I found myself in Golcar Library on a Saturday morning. It’s located on Town End, right in the centre of Golcar, tucked unostentatiously between a butcher’s and a baker’s shop. The memory of my visit has stayed with me and I’ve been thinking quite a bit about libraries since then.

I was there to listen to a talk by Lee Childs, the world-famous author of all the Jack Reacher books. He was a guest of Kirklees Library Services and he spoke engagingly about how he started to write, how he comes up with plots and how he feels about the films that have subsequently been made of some of the books.

The audience wasn’t huge (the library isn’t huge), but they were completely charmed by Lee and asked him lots of questions after he finished speaking. Coffee and biscuits were provided without charge. It all added up, quite simply, to a lovely morning in my constituency.

So what is it about libraries that I so like? The answer is many things. They are free at the point of access, just as the NHS is free at the point of delivery. All sorts of people are members and they come and go routinely. They are full of books which you can borrow for free. And they are full of kind, enthusiastic staff who know and love books and are happy to offer advice if you’re not quite sure what you want to read. The staff will also order for you any book that is available in other libraries in their local authority system.

After my visit to Golcar I made a point of dropping by the library in Holmfirth, which is my town. It was wonderfully busy with all sorts of people, young and old. I wondered how best to characterise who these people were and what they were doing in a library. They weren’t customers, since there was no buying or selling going on; and they weren’t exactly what you would think of as clients either.

Then it dawned on me: they were citizens behaving as citizens. They were exercising their right to access a service paid for by their taxes and they were asserting their responsibility to develop their knowledge and education. What’s more, they were having fun and enjoying the pleasure of life that is reading.

I thought of the words made famous by the former United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes when he wrote in one of his judgements that ‘taxes are what you pay for a civilized society’. He penned that phrase that as long ago as 1927, very nearly a hundred years ago, and it remains every bit as true today.

So that’s my reflection. Public libraries are surely one of the marks of a civilized society.

If you love libraries too, or want to join one, or have constructive suggestions to make about how to keep our libraries going, I would love to hear from you.

I will cut straight to the chase: we live in polarised times with misinformation and vitriol shaping much of our political discourse.

Sitting down and discussing topics that are dear to us in a considered and rational manner is not quite the same as it once was. Robust debate seems to have been replaced in many instances by personal attack and smear, causing many people to simply drop out of such discussions completely. This means that their voices are being lost, leaving the political arena in some instances in the control of those who in reality seek to quash debate and instead impose their views.

This is not just something that holds back connection with one another, but also it limits our ability to learn and is in my view detrimental to democracy in our country and beyond.

As a Member of Parliament, every day is different, full of challenges, and deeply interesting. Be it bumping into a constituent at work, visiting a local school, or sitting down with the Prime Minister, each day brings with it a myriad of experiences. But a key part of all of this is understanding how those around me see the world as it is today.

That is exactly what this Substack is for, as a space for discussion, for open conversation, and for learning from one another. Each post will include a recording of my thoughts on any given topic, from the hyper-local, to international relations. I welcome you to share your own thoughts in the comments section, or via email if you prefer at paul.davies.mp@parliament.uk. These will inform future discussions, engaging an ongoing, two-way, open conversation.

So, let’s discuss the issues that matter to you.