Today we reveal how three-quarters of councils are dimming their street lights at night or switching them off altogether, despite evidence it increases the chances of crime or a fatal road accident.

Overall, 1.36million lights are affected, predominantly in the Tory shires, which have already lost a string of services from home helps to weekly bin collections.

Predictably, Labour blames the Coalition for putting councils under pressure to save money. The Tories say Labour’s ‘climate change zealotry’ has bullied Town Halls into turning off the lights to cut emissions.

Three-quarters of councils are dimming their street lights at night or switching them off altogether, despite evidence it increases the chances of crime or a fatal road accident

What is certain is that, while the politicians squabble, the losers are the public who are plunged into potentially lethal darkness.

Bins and street lights might not be causing sleepless nights inside the Westminster bubble. In the real world, however, there are few things more infuriating than forking out thousands in council tax for a third-rate service.

Losing faith in GPs

What a sorry mess the political class has made of Britain’s GP service – with 37.4million failed attempts to book an appointment last year, affecting 4.7million patients.

Indeed, today we report that the under-35s no longer believe family doctors can help them, so head straight to increasingly chaotic A&E departments instead.

Of course, much of the blame lies with the disastrous contract negotiated by Labour which, while increasing GPs’ pay, no longer required them to work in the evenings or at weekends.

What a sorry mess the political class has made of Britain’s GP service – with 37.4million failed attempts to book an appointment last year, affecting 4.7million patients (picture posed by models)

But the Tories have not delivered on their repeated promises to fix this mess – making only minor changes for fear of upsetting the aggressive GP unions.

We remind Jeremy Hunt that improving out-of-hours access to family doctors would not only be hugely popular with the electorate. It would also go a long way to easing the pressure on casualty departments which last week recorded their worst-ever waiting times.

What is there to hide?

In a letter signed by Britain’s nine leading human rights groups, the Prime Minister is today urged to honour his 2010 promise to hold a judge-led inquiry into whether the Blair government and our security services were complicit in barbaric acts of torture by the US.

As we have repeatedly argued, the questions raised by this month’s gruesome Senate Intelligence Committee report demand urgent answers.

The longer David Cameron delays, the more it looks as if the Establishment has something terrible to hide.

The long election

With abuse of the immigration system still rampant, Theresa May yesterday unveiled manifesto plans to force all non-EU students to leave Britain as soon as their course has finished.

Within minutes, however, allies of the posturing Vince Cable responded that there was ‘not a chance in hell’ of the policy being implemented by any Coalition involving the LibDems.

The truth is that, despite there being four months to the election, the business of government is over – with all sides now focused solely on petty point-scoring and writing their manifestos.

Indeed, owing to terms dictated by the preposterous Fixed Term Parliaments Act, the so-called ‘long’ election campaign – which forces candidates to add up how much they are spending on canvassing and pamphlets – has officially begun.

One question: who will run the country and sort out the mess of Britain’s borders while MPs desert the zombie Parliament and spend their days electioneering?