Good night, and good luck
PLUS: How long will our MP be the PM?, more cash for a baron, a Lib Dem goes independent and a farewell to our intrepid politics reporter
NORTH LONDON BUBBLE
The NLB is our politics column on New Journal+ for Camden and Islington. It’s written by Richard Osley (Camden) and Isabel Loubser (Islington). You can control which of our emails you receive in your Substack settings.
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OUR ISABEL
THERE’S a lot to catch up on, but first a little announcement for those who are not aware already. After an exciting two-year+ stint smashing the politics beat in Islington, Isabel is off to pastures new next week.
We will be very sorry to see her go, but we’re always proud of the platform we can give young journalists at the start of their careers and of what they go on to achieve. We’ll leave it to Isabel to tell people what the next stop for her is, but let’s just say the councillors in Islington might want to give their national counterparts at Westminster a little warning that she’s heading that way.
Here’s a recap on her time doing films for our Peeps channel on YouTube the Labour Party conference last year
Her last paper with us will be out on Friday.
HOME COMFORTS
Since we last bubbled, it will have escaped nobody’s attention that Andy Burnham has won the Makerfield by-election. We are where we are, but supporters of the Greens say it’s rich that they have been accused of wasting money with council by-elections such as the one coming up in Regent’s Park when Labour figures have now caused the costs of both Makerfield and an election to find a new Mayor for Manchester – simply due to Labour psychodrama. That’s the civil war psychodrama, of course, the country was promised it would not see once the Conservatives left power.
The question we get asked a lot, being a local paper, is whether local Labour figures are still fully behind their local MP, the prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, as all this goes on.
There are thousands of members in Camden, so it would be dangerous to pretend they all feel the same. He has always enjoyed a strong relationship with the organisational base in Camden and you never hear a Labour councillor criticise his leadership or the government, in public at least.
But in recent weeks, there have been more emerging on the WhatsApp messages and in the corridor chats who say they worry that a leadership contest will cut deep across the party, that they feel for the man personally and that they find it hard to imagine things will ever really get sunnier at Downing Street for Mr Starmer now, however long he stays in the job.
LAST TRAIN TO WINDSOR
WITH uncertainty buzzing around Mr Starmer’s future at No. 10, there was some gallows humour in the Labour ranks about last week’s King’s Birthday Honours list being a potential last chance for those in north London who have been dutifully loyal to the PM to bag a gong. Like peerages, back-scratch nominations here and there have meant familiar faces from our parts have enjoyed days out at Windsor in recent years.
As it happened, we did not see half of the Town Hall get honoured in what may or may not be the final list which Mr Starmer’s office will have a big steer over.
There was some good news, however, for a former Camden councillor so esteemed he’s both a Baron and an MBE. Our former reporter Harry Taylor, now at PA, noticed this little note right at the bottom of a recent parliamentary bulletin about the Lord of Fortune Green…
The North London Bubble continues below
