Labour’s persistent failure to address its electorate’s salient concerns is behind the protest vote, asserts DIANE ABBOTT
STANDING as a Labour candidate in the local council elections has been an enlightening experience.
There has been the regular knocking on doors, canvassing people’s opinions. The reception varies from those that shut the door in your face to others who ask you in for a chat and a cup of tea.
There are many problems, like the couple stuck on the top floor of a block of flats, one with cancer, the other blood clots. They want to move to a ground floor flat where getting up and down is less difficult.
Labour councillor PAUL DONOVAN wonders why the right-wing party gets so much more media attention than it seems to merit
With turnout plummeting and faith in Parliament collapsing, BERT SCHOUWENBURG explains how radical local government reform — including devolved taxation and removal of party politics from town halls — could restore power to communities currently ignored by profit-obsessed MPs



