The Greens' London Labour defection unit

Spring is on the way and political campaigners are getting ready for May’s London-wide local elections. There’s been a lot of coverage in recent weeks of former Conservative politicians defecting to Reform UK. There’s been less attention paid to how the Green Party has been attempting to do the same to Labour at a local level in London.

Today London Centric reports on the Greens’ efforts to bring seasoned candidates over from Labour, who it rejects, and Labour’s claims that some of those jumping ship were already on their way out of the door.

Scroll down to read that story – or first read some updates on other stories we’ve been covering.

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Waymo: We’ll add more cars to London’s streets

Self-driving car company Waymo had a launch event at the London Transport Museum on Wednesday night, attended by journalists, government ministers, and many of the staff who have worked on the project.

We had a deep dive into how the self-driving taxis are being tested in London earlier this week (read it here, along with the punchy comments section) but the most interesting thing on Wednesday night was the confidence of Waymo executives on two fronts.

First, that, pending government approval, they are on track to carry paying customers in fully-automated vehicles around the streets of London by “Q4”. (To put it in normal language, that means at some point between October and December this year.)

And secondly, that people will love the robotaxis as soon as they get to try one.

The rollout is expected to be staggered at first, with a relatively small number of vehicles put on the streets at the end of the year and demand managed by allowing customers in on an invite-only basis. If you want to get ahead of the queue it might be worth signing up to Waymo’s app in advance.

Waymo’s market research said the places Londoners most want to go are central London and the capital’s airports – although airport journeys won’t be in the initial launch plans. The Waymo executives also made it clear they’re initially pitching it as a premium product, where