Party poopers
‘Your party’ holds its inaugural conference this weekend in a state of internal wrangling. Could it become the shortest-lived political party in British history? It was registered on 30 September, meaning it will have to survive until 6 June next year to outlive Change UK – the anti-Brexit party launched in February 2019. It was formally registered on 15 April that year and dissolved on 19 December after flopping in the general election. Other failed political start-ups lasted a surprising length of time:
— Veritas, a Eurosceptic party founded by former Labour MP Robert Kilroy-Silk in 2005, was eventually merged with the English Democrats in 2015.
— The Referendum party, James Goldsmith’s Eurosceptic party, lasted from 1994 until shortly after his death in 1997.
—The Liberal Unionist party, founded in 1886 by Lord Hartington to oppose Irish home rule, was wound into the Conservative party in 1912.
Upwardly mobile
257,000 UK nationals left Britain last year, according to the ONS. Have UK nationals become more mobile over the past decade?
LEAVING RETURNING
2015 151,000 78,000
2016 163,000 70,000
2017 164,000 84,000
2018 147,000 74,000
2019 153,000 71,000
2020 130,000 52,000
2021 233,000 164,000
2022 247,000 166,000
2023 255,000 150,000
2024 257,000 143,000
Hard times
How good are children in England at their multiplication tables?
— 37% of eligible Year 4 pupils scored maximum marks of 25 in 2024/25 tests.
— The mean score was 21. The top-scoring region was London (21.7) and lowest were the east and south-east (20.7).
Source: Department for Education
Force field
How often do the police use force against the public?
— Police reported using force on 812,449 occasions in the year to March, a 9% increase on the previous year. In 719,361 cases the force used was ‘restraint’ – 80% of which was handcuffing.
— There were 274,738 cases where ‘unarmed skills’ were involved – including striking hands and feet. ‘Other tactics’, which includes the use of dogs, were deployed on 69,658 occasions.
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