The UK Prime Minister may have the regal touch in northern England, but he’s been wrong-footed on the constitutional challenges posed by the Celtic Alliance of first ministers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, argues KENNY MacASKILL
THE tributes have for have been pouring for political heavyweight and man of the people, John Prescott (aka Baron Prescott of Kingston upon Hull), who passed away last week aged 84.
His reputation was of a man singularly able to cut through the usual Westminster crap using the unvarnished spade of mangled syntax and the blunt shovel of malapropisms as his tools.
Homeless seamen were forced to live in “hostiles,” industrial disputes could be sorted through “meditation,” and the New Labour mission was to “go back now, forwards, back to full employment.” Absolute gibberish, of course, but we knew what he was on about, at least most of the time.
CHARLEY ALLAN reports from Clacton on Farage’s fears his by-election stunt has backfired
David Nicholson spoke to BETH WINTER about her bid to become a Senedd member as an independent running on a community grassroots campaign
Ben Chacko pays tribute to the author of our much-missed Frosty’s Ramblings column, a champion of the countryside and working-class culture


