A momentous day
Elections, birthdays and something very special
Dear lovely people,
There are election results coming in. It looks pretty bad for Labour, but not nearly as bad as it could have been. Right now, they’re 250 or so councillors down - and predictions sasid they might be 300 down by this point.
This afternoon and into the evening, we’ll get a fuller picture.
It’s noticeable that the winner in Wales will probably be Plaid Cymru - a party who want independence from England. In Scotland it’ll almost certainly be the SNP - a party who want independence from England. The biggest party in Northern Ireland (according to polling)? Well, that’ll be Sinn Fein - a party who want to leave the UK.
Someone have a word with England, yeah? Not smashing it.
Peace and love,
Tatton x
Simple Animals is here!
We first played with the idea in 2021, with Simple Creatures.
We briefly brought it back in 2022.
Now it’s here for real.
An opportunity to escape the misery of UK politics (and the cost of living crisis over on Simple Money) and bask in the glory of the animal world.
It’s a space for joy, positivity and animals.
It launches today to celebrate the 100th birthday (100!!!!) of the wonderful David Attenborough. Get involved, lovely people.
It’s on Instagram and Facebook. Join us!!
Lying in my bed, I hear the clock tick and think of you
Caught up in circles
Confusion is nothing new
Flashback, warm nights
Almost left behind
Suitcase of memoriesCyndi Lauper
Eleven years
In May 2014, I went to my head teacher and asked to go part time to set up this new project. It was to be called Simple Politics and it was going to help people by tracking the progress of legislation and keeping nurses up to date with health policy and teachers up to date with education policy etc etc etc.
That wasn’t really true. I wanted to go part time because I was struggling with a kind of mental collapse. A breakdown. My mind was full of scorpions.
Anyway, SP was the lie I told others and myself.
I’m not sure what I did for a year. I know that I asked the wonderful Sam Grady to make me a website. I must have done more than just ask someone to make a website, but maybe I just sat in my brand new shed in the garden and cried.
Certainly, in that period I received my first diagnosis - depression. I was given a certificate for sertraline, which I took to a Boots out of town because I thought they’d laugh.
The 2015 General Election took place on 7th May. David Cameron (along with everyone else) was expecting another hung Parliament. Apparently he included a Brexit referendum in the Conservative manifesto so that the Lib Dems could negotiate it out when forming the next government.
He won.
On 8th May 2015, I took to twitter and wrote ‘soft launch’.
I was a littler detached from reality at the time and somehow expected that tweet to go very far indeed. It didn’t.
Still, that was it. Launch day for SP. 11 years ago today.
I handed in a request to go even further part time - no fixed hours, running whole school Politics and Citizenship. I also started visiting other schools to fund things.
The first of these emails went on 10th November 2015. It was opened by 10 people. Since then I’ve sent well over 500 weekly emails.
The world has moved on since 8th May 2015. The Brexit vote did indeed go ahead.
Cameron quit. Andrea Leadsom suggested that she would be a better PM than Theresa May because she was a mother. She stepped aside and we had The Mayster in charge.
She couldn’t control the Commons with all the Brexity bits.
I moved out of the family home around then, to a tiny little flat on the High Street. I know when it was, because the first morning I woke up in my new bed (18th April, 2017), Theresa May called a General Election.
I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.
It didn’t go brilliantly. Corbyn-mania was a thing at the time. She lost her majority and had to do a deal with the DUP to stay in power. The whole thing limped on for a bit.
I found a nice little house walking distance from where my children were with their mother. I wrote my first book, The Breakdown, and popped up on TV and radio for the first time, too. Oh, and we launched on Instagram because my colleague Hattie said we had to. I wasn’t keen.
In June 2018, I got chatting to a beautiful woman in a pub. Reader, I married her.
By 2019, the whole coalition thing was falling apart. Change UK were a thing. There was chaos.
I was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder.
What did we need to end the chaos??? Boris Johnson of course. Nothing could go wrong there. He called a Christmas election and won by miles and miles .
Between Christmas and New Year’s I was messaging my colleague Diane suggesting that we wrap up SP. We’d told the story of Brexit and maybe that’s enough. She persuaded me that wasn’t the best course of action. She’s had to persuade me of that a few times, tbh.
Then Covid happened. Lockdown. Save the NHS. Barnard Castle. Eat out to help out. Rules on smooching. Outdoor, table service only drinks. Sleazebag Matt Hancock. Hand washing. Zoom drinks. Home school.
We got through it. Somehow. Bloodied, battered and scarred as we were, we got through it.
In the four years since then, we’ve got through a lot. Russia invading Ukraine (they had their annual Victory Day parade yesterday and there weren’t any tanks because Putin has used them all). The cost of living crisis. Liz Truss. Rishi Sunak. The rise of Reform. The rise and fall of Your Party. The 10 promises of Keir Starmer’s leadership bid. The breaking of 10 promises from Keir Starmer’s leadership bid. My second book Politics But Better.
In 2024, Labour swept to victory. The adults were back in charge, they said. Sunlit uplands awaited. We’d all feel the benefit.
In 2025, we launched Simple Money, our TikTok and YouTube channels got a refurb and our podcast won its first award.
It’s now 2026. A deeply unpopular government, but still in charge. A not massively popular SP podcast, but still winning the People’s Choice award at the Politics Podcast Awards.
All of which has bought us to today. Election results pouring in. 11 years of SP. 1 year of Simple Money. About 11 hours of Simple Animals. 1.4m followers across all platforms.
I couldn’t have predicted much of the last 11 years. Maybe that Boris Johnson would be PM at some point and that it wouldn’t end well. The rest has been a little surprising.
I’m not going to try to predict where we’ll be in a year’s time. Or even a week’s time.
Flashback, warm nights
Almost left behind …
Time after time
King’s Speech on Wednesday
This is where the government lay down the big new bills to go through Parliament in the next year. Their programme to make life better.
His Majesty will pop along and get his chat on at around 11.30. Yawn.
Around 3pm, we’ll get to the serious bit with a debate in the Commons in which the Prime Minister will defend his measures and everyone else will say they’re terrible.
The debate will continue on Thursday.
Did I mention Simple Animals yet?
We’re up and running now on Instagram and Facebook. It’s all very exciting.
Be well x