Sign-up to receive Only Connect every four weeks and get notified when new articles are posted.

Disillusioned with politics? Exasperated by the tedious political mudslinging? Unsure about how to vote next time? You are not alone.   Half the voters who backed Labour at the last general election have deserted the party, and the Tories would limp home with a mere 14 seats if a general election were called, according to separate polls disclosed towards the end of 2025...

Whenever I knock on doors in the UK constituency of Frome and East Somerset (FES) to find out how the occupants are likely to vote in an upcoming election, I have my phone in my hand, ready to check that I am indeed listening to the views of, say, Linda Crabtree of 56 Tyning Road, Radstock and not those of her neighbours.* The phone app is called MiniVan. On it are the names and addresses of those on the electoral register, plus questions which aim to find out the person’s po

Are you imagining a picturesque, snow-covered, winter landscape versus the current reality of a soggy, brown and grey, English rural scene, complete with mud and water running off fields into roads and gardens? The latter may, sadly, be the state of the English countryside in February 2026, but it is not of course what the Government and its local councillors are at all concerned about at the moment.  No, what they are apparently concerned about is the fact that our rural are

One strange quirk of my childhood is that I was always fascinated by politics.  My earliest political memory – I was 8 – is the assassination of President John Kennedy; and rushing to get the newspapers next morning so I could read up what had happened, and what might happen next.  The next memory is perhaps a year later, late 1964, sitting on the floor in my grandmother’s drawing room, hidden at the back of the long sofa from which she held court.  And hold court, or at leas

On 28th Dec 2025, we heard of the death of Brigitte Bardot, perhaps one of the greatest sex symbols of the 20th century. Yet fame doesn’t always last: neither my younger wife nor my two youngest daughters had ever heard of her.  But I am glad our editor has such a good memory because he reminded me of a story that I told him more than half a century ago. The story takes me back to 1966, two years before I left school.