Unwritten Lives

With heavy losses for the governing Labour party, and huge gains for the rightwing populist party, Reform UK, the results of last week's local elections on 7 May have reverberated through the UK like an earthquake. Here is what will happen next

The Labour MP, Catherine West, has challenged the leadership of Keir Starmer. West, my local MP in the north London constituency of Hornsey and Friern Barnet, has much to answer for the genocide in Gaza.

During dark times, we must stand by our Jewish neighbours as generations of Londoners have done before us

Dear Home Secretary, We are writing on behalf of constituents in Crouch End, Haringey, who have asked us to raise concerns about remarks you made at a public event recently.

On Monday 20 April Shabana Mahmood told “white liberal” hecklers to “f**k right off”. Under no circumstances is this acceptable. With standards in public life in the UK slipping, community cohesion disintegrating, and democratic procedures eroding, Mahmood must be held to account for her abusive language. I have written to my local north London MP, Catherine West, and local councillors, calling for an apology from the home secretary, because everybody has the right to feel safe.

Richard Hewett, who was forced to sleep in his car when his relationship broke down, is one of many in the UK hit by rising costs and a lack of social housing

Trying to make ends meet is an impossible effort, and things are rapidly getting worse. It’s time the government listened to people like us

For a snapshot of the authoritarian era to which today’s launch of Unwritten Lives is a response, we don’t have to rewind too far, just to the recent past, to moments that still reside fresh in recent memory.