Reform UK’s housing spokesperson has been sacked from his role after he described the Grenfell Tower fire as a “tragedy” but said that “everyone dies in the end”.The NHS is bracing for the longest strike yet by resident doctors after last-ditch talks failed, prompting Wes Streeting to accuse the medics of suffering from “delusion”.Nick Candy, the honorary treasurer of Reform UK and a major donor, has sold his mansion in the Chelsea district of London for a reported £275m.Thank you for the questions everone.Happy Easter.

I’m onto quickfire now before wrapping up.double quotation markQ&A: @Andrew, do you think there might be a leadership challenge if the results in May are as dire for Labour as many are predicting?My colleagues who spend time talking to Labour MPs are not expecting a leadership challenge after the May elections.Although many/most of them would like a new leader before the next election, there is no agreement on who it should be, no agreement on an alternative platform and no real evidence that anyone (apart from Andy Burnham, who isn’t in parliament) would be a lot more popular.double quotation markQ&A: Has any newspaper ever been sued for libel (successfully or not) because of below-the-line comments?Not that I’m aware of, as I have pointed out to the lawyers, but they say there is a first time for everything.double quotation markThe expectation is that Labour will take a drubbing at the May elections.

But they will still be the Government with an unassailable Parliamentary majoriity,Whatever they do or don’t do with it and however badly they do they remain the Party in Power,What does that say about democratic accountability?Local elections don’t over-ride parliamentary elections in that sense,Your approach implies any governing party should have to give up power if it loses local elections,double quotation markDo you think that politicians in the UK are actually having less and less influence over the direction of the country? It seems that the transport minister can not positively effect our transport for instance - maybe as a result of denationalisation but it seems to be a general trend.

That is probably true because of factors like devolution, the rise in judicial review (which has empowered the courts) and the power of the regulatory state.But a minister with nous and initiative can still achieve a lot.double quotation markWith no USP coming forth, how can Badenoch’s Tories continue to plough a path independent of Reform, that will be sufficiently right wing to distinguish them from Farage’s party ?There seems to be little room for them to grow back into the space they have acacted to both reform and Labour on either side without some new thinking.But that is not coming through.Do they simply sweat it out and wait/hope for Reform to implode and the voters lost to that party return to their fold ?Yes, that seems to be the plan.

double quotation markAndrew do you think we’ll see a return of Boris Johnson to front line politics like he threatened?Subject to what I said earlier (see 4.10pm – “no outcome should be viewed as too impossible to actually happen”), the answer is no.double quotation markQ&A: what is the long term prognosis for Greens given the massive surge in membership.Will it translate to votes at the ballot box and if so what would that mean in a new parliament?It will definitely be translated into votes.Lots of seats – that’s harder, but not impossible.

What would that mean in a new parliament? A wealth tax and PR if the progressives are in charge.(Zack Polanski, unlike Keir Starmer, is passionate about PR.) A Reform UK government if the rise in the Green splits the progressive vote.double quotation markDo you believe Starmer actually wants the UK to rejoin the EU or are he’s closer ties speeches just trying to win back people who have switched to the LibDems and Green who do actually want to rejoin.I don’t think Starmer thinks rejoining is realistic.

He might be right.But until about 2013 you would have said leaving wasn’t realistic either.BeaconHill71 asks:double quotation markQ&A - Is the Guardian making any efforts to archive the liveblogs, and make them accessible/searchable in future? A minute-by-minute account of some of the events from the past decade or so would be an invaluable resource for future historians, but as with all digital media, there’s a risk of all this insight being lost if it’s not actively preserved.Yes.You can find more than more than 3,500 of them here.

This is from Manchemec,double quotation markDo you and you colleagues have the slightest indication that there will be a general election before 2029? Labour still has a stonking parliamentary majority - splits or no - and is likely to appoint a new leader and PM without an election if Starmer goes,Today’s polls won’t decide an election three years hence,If not, the coverage of Farage and Reform is vastly disproportionate,Despite this blanket coverage of his every pronouncement, he is not leader of the opposition and his party has just eight MPs.

Its poor performance in local government gets far less coverage than his “news” conferences.Nigel Farage is repeatedly talking up the prospect of an early election, as he was doing today (see 12.27pm), but I think that is mainly to keep his party on their toes and persuade journalists to take him seriously.Governments with huge majorities almost never call early elections (although anything after the summer of 2028 would not really count as an early election).If Starmer were replaced, a new leader might want an election to get a mandate for something not in the manifesto (joining an EU customs union), or to take advantage of a poll bounce.

But it is also quite likely the much-talked-about leadership challenge won’t happen this year.As for, does this mean we should therefore go back to ignoring Reform UK? No, I disagree.Another questioner asked:double quotation markHi Andy.How do you think that the established British parties – and the Guardian for that matter – could have best countered the rise of Reform when they first arose? Why wasn’t that successful, and how should that approach change over time to address this?I don’t have time to answer that fully, but I am sure ignoring them and hoping they would go away was not the right solution.For more on why it can be a mistake to ignore politicians who aren’t mainstream, see 4.

10pm.Two questions on the state visit.This is from BeOpenBeKind.double quotation markDo you think the government is correct in sending Charles to the USA? I recently saw David Dimbleby on Newsnight strongly opposing it.And this is from irreverentnurse.

double quotation markQ&A What are the advantages of sending Charles to USA? What is hoped to be achieved with trump?The PM, like most of his predecessors, has long taken the view that it is worth using UK soft power, especially the royals, to curry favour with the US president of the day because that is helpful in other areas of the relationship.Given that Trump loves royals more than most presidents (because he would like to be one?), Keir Stamer’s decision to deploy the king is understandable, however gruesome.There is some evidence the last state visit, and all the toadying, worked a bit with tariffs.It is much harder to make the case for it now.But we don’t have the counter-factual.

Had the UK, and other European nations, been more critical from January 2025, it it quite possible that Trump would have by now fully left Nato and abandoned Ukraine.Should the visit go ahead? I believe, as a nation, we would all feel better and prouder and stronger if we called it off (preferably at very short notice).But being congenitally inclined to try to see all sides to any argument, I can appreciate why that might not be such a wise idea.Here are two questions on PR.This is from Boadas10.

double quotation markQ: Why are Labour risking political oblivion through 2nd and 3rd FPTP finishes in constituencies up and down the land at the next GE rather than supporting electoral reform and proportional representation? The latter would at least preserve a continued and fair level of political representation,Why bet the farm on once again gaming FPTP?And this is from ibatch40,double quotation markQ: Hi Andrew, appreciate you taking time to do this,My question is about FPTP,Now we have multiple parties in a way we never have done in British politics, how sustainable is the FPTP system when we could end up with a PM whereby the vast majority of voters have voted against them? By keeping it are we not in danger of undermining democracy itself? What would be your suggestion as an alternative? *apologies, more than one question.

Many thanks.FPTP (first past the post) was defendable in what was a largely two-party system, but is a dangerous anachronism in the world of five or six-party politics.We are now in a situation where Reform UK is the most popular party in the UK (if you look at FPTP voting intention), but also the least popular.As this YouGov research showed, if you offer people a choice of Reform v one of the other main parties, Reform loses against all of them.Even academic psephologists – who are normally quite neutral, politically – have spoken out against this.

So why is Labour so committed to FPTP? Before becoming an MP, Keir Starmer did once express some interest in PR, I think (I seem to remember from the Baldwin biography that he backed a policy document supporting the idea), but it has never been something he has shown much enthusiasm for, and he is not pushing for change.There is also a lot of opposition to PR in the PLP, and in the union movement generally.Partly its tribalism.And partly it is motivated by the fear that, under PR, Labour would never run a majority government again.Personally, I think I would not have a problem with permanent, coalition politics and I think the case for PR is compelling on democratic and fairness grounds.

As for what Labour should do? They could put a bill for AV (the alternative vote – not strictly a PR system, but one that would normally produce a proprotionate result) in the king’s speech.One reason why they won’t is because the nation rejected this in a referendum in AV.A lot of people would argue that another referendum would be needed.A bold PM could just ignore that, and bulldoze it through the House of Lords with the Parliament Act.(An even bolder PM would bulldoze the House of Lords, but that’s another story.

)This is from Sonet66.double quotation markQ: Q&A Andrew, to what extent do you think Farage will tolerate other would-be ‘leaders’ within Reform, given the number of ‘personalities’ who have been defecting in that direction?Nigel Farage has a long history of falling out with political colleagues who have challenged him in public, or threatened his popularity.I think that will continue, and I would expect at least one of the high-profile Tories who have joined recently to have fallen out with him by the time of the next election.That said, Farage does seem to be taking the prospect of being PM quite seriously, and he must realise that you can’t run a government without a bit more delegation than he allowed when he was leader of Ukip.He talks a lot now about wanting to show that Reform UK is not a one-man band.

(He did it again today – see 11,24am,) That does not mean his temperament will change,But it does seem likely that he is learning to become a bit more accommodating of his colleagues,This is from adogsatonmypizza.

double quotation markQ: Dear Andrew - How much dancing with The Guardian’s legal department do you have to do? Both yourself and regarding comments? Does it impact your output and does it ever frustrate you?Getting copy approved by lawywers takes time, and that does not really work if you are writing a minute-by-minute live blog.And so, if a subject is legally contentious, I tend to avoid it and restrict myself to posting links to articles by colleagues on the topic that have been legalled.And, on comments, we do turn them off if we think there is a risk of people posting material that might get us into trouble with libel or contempt laws.I don’t like having comments turned off but understand why it has to happen.This is from Perspectiverox.

double quotation markQ: Hi Andrew, my question is - are the UK government’s current policies genuinely helping citizens, or are they leaving many behind?Some do, some don’t.Trying to answer that question involves asking what they trying to do, whether they are achieving what they are trying to do, whether they or someone else is to blame if they’re not, and what else they should be doing?These sorts of issues are being thrashed – in my blog and elsewhere – every day.The answers are not simple.But that’s why politics is interesting.It’s time to speed things up.

This is from Brumbaer.double quotation markQ:Accepting that Farage is a good seller of snake oil, and the G does some job of countering those claims, what about the Greens’ policies? And Lib Dems? Badenoch does a pretty good job of destroying credibility on her own.At least the G explains the lack of realism behind some Labour/government claims.Also, in this digital age with AI, how easy is factchecking?I’ll just address the AI bit.And the short answer is – no.

I occasionally use AI for research, rather than Google, but not very often.And it does not help much with factchecking because you have to factcheck AI.Also, increasingly Google is AI – which can be a problem.The other day I used it to try to find out how tall Kemi Badenoch is (because she had said she would tackle a shoplifter herself, but not a big one).The Google AI told me she is 6ft.

She isn’t.She’s 5ft 4in.This is from Mattipus.double quotation markQ: Hi @andrew, thanks for doing the Q&A.I wanted to ask, looking back over your time overseeing the Guardian politics liveblog, are there any stories you wish you could have covered differently, or that you regret the Guardian could not cover?Being slow to realise that Labour might elect Jeremy Corbyn a leader is what comes to mind most