Given the BBC have a largely sensible set of guidelines on the use of quant polling in news stories, including a ban on a poll being a story in itself, it's always so baffling they have next-to-no similar rules on what is ultimately rudimentary qual polling. It's an insane double-standard.

As the circus moves on from Makerfield to Clacton, all decent political parties who respect the law should think about uniting behind a single candidate to beat Reform. They did this with Martin Bell against Neil Hamilton (who later backed Farage) in 1997. www.theguardian.com/politics/199...

Very strong “fraudulent timeshare salesman who pocketed millions tracked down in his Costa Del Sol hideaway by Roger Cook” vibes here

@wallaceme.bsky.social Reading your @theipaper.com piece on #Brexit, its fascinating to see you conclude that the major gain has been "democratic self-determination" when, manifestly, the last 10 years have been engulfed by perpetuating political crisis. The price of freedom being anarchy it seems.

Happy Brexit anniversary

10 years on from #Brexit referendum, what can we learn? That top down, technocratic arguments didn’t work then & won’t work in any campaign to rejoin. It’s about picking a side - in an increasingly insecure world, with US ever more insular & unreliable, it’s clear our future lies with EU neighbours

Labour won by 20 points and net immigration is down by over 80% in two years. But sure write your column again.

I don’t understand why the dislike of Keir Starmer is so visceral. He’s a good man, with a pretty good track record, made mistakes, but he’s hardly in the Truss/johnson corrupt and incompetent league.

Starmer’s leadership had plenty of problems. Unforced errors and epically failing to communicate the really good work that his govt has done. But the “worst PM ever” and fury he’s faced is insanely disproportionate and shows how vulnerable Labour PMs are to disinfo campaigns if they don’t ace govt.

One highlight of this excellent guest post: “Badenoch and Farage want to build a typewriter economy five years after the launch of the PC. They want to turn UK industry into a heritage railway.”

More generally, it's starting to feel a bit as if Reform actually *want* rioting this summer.

It has now been 10 weeks and three days since Nigel Farage last turned up to vote in the House of Commons

Discussions on preventing water shortages in Kent delayed until July as Reform-led council prioritises debate on introducing reciting the Lord's Prayer at Council meetings: bylinetimes.com/2026/05/26/r...

Asked how it would be possible to sack more planners than existed, a Reform spokesperson said, "Our number stands." I shit you not.

Reform's plan: sack 450 planning officers to make planning more efficient. Small problem: there are only 445 planning officers in the whole country. So they're going to employ 5 more, just to sack them? Or maybe they're just idiots. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

If you're still trying to figure it out after a decade that might be a clue....

As someone else said, replace Starmer with someone with a Northern accent who supports Everton instead of Arsenal. Same old same old. And ask anyone whose loved ones died unnecessarily in Stafford Hospital under Burnham's watch about his capacity to empathise. Ruthless. Calculating. Careerist.

First Brexit, then immigration and now this. What, if anything, does Andy Burnham actually disagree with Keir Starmer about?

Exclusive: Nigel Farage has court judgment for debt of almost £10K www.channel4.com/news/exclusi...

A voting intention that will last right up until the moment PM Burnham has to make his first difficult decision, or it becomes obvious he doesn't have a magic economy-fixing wand.

The price of fish has gone up in no small part because of Brexit. We import the fish we eat and export the fish we catch here. Extra costs around logistics. Some of us did say this would happen but it's not getting mentioned at all in articles like this. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Exclusive: The UK Statistics Authority has rapped Kemi Badenoch over claims she made at PMQs last month about the number of people claiming Universal Credit. Asked to comment, a spokesman for Badenoch replied with a “yawning” emoji. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/exclus...

It was kind of Robert Jenrick to set me up for an obvious joke at his expense.

Personally, what I reject most are arguments that the EU would seek to make it difficult for the UK to rejoin. Yes, there might be some discussions on previous opt-outs, but ultimately a UK rejoin would be the biggest symbolic triumph of European integration in a long long time.

Wes Streeting isn't daft. He knew that bringing up reversing Brexit would be deeply uncomfortable for his Labour leadership rival Andy Burnham, who also wants to rejoin but doesn't want to talk about it in a by-election campaign in Leave-voting Makerfield. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/street...

The government isn't forcing churches and community centres and town halls across the country to fly the Ukrainian flag. People are doing it themselves because we see a battle and we know which side we are on. There are lots of ways in which Reform is wildly out of touch with Britain.

Spot on assessment by @tombaldwin66.bsky.social in @theobserveruk.bsky.social today 👇🏼

Sneaking a giant screen into the flagshagger march is one of the funniest things @ledbydonkeys.org have ever done. "STAY HYDRATED" 😂🤣😂

Immigration make Britain brilliant

The Political and Media Myopia That Has Paralysed Keir Starmer’s Government Distorted and biased media coverage and short-sighted politics in Westminster have both prevented Starmer's Government from reaching its potential, argues Professor Chris Painter

"...For those wannabe challengers, the challenge is trying to set out a distinctive and attractive alternative Labour agenda..." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Has the BBC's Chris Mason completely missed the reports from within Labour circles being promoted today that set out the policy alternatives?

This leadership shit, even now, is still not as important as the fact that FIVE MILLION QUID HAS BEEN PAID TO THE LEADER OF ONE OF OUR BIGGEST POLITICAL PARTIES

The right-wing media’s relentless touting of the name of Wes Streeting as a potential successor to Starmer – while omitting to mention his connection with Mandelson – tells me that it wants Streeting as PM because it knows Streeting will be unpopular with the electorate and bad for Labour.

Im not sure if the UK still wants Kier Starmer as prime minister - but for the life of me im struggling to think of any sector of society who wants Wes Streeting.

Starmer’s woes are a symptom of Britain’s deeper malaise- my latest on why a change of prime minister won’t extricate Labour or the country from its decade-long rolling crisis www.euractiv.com/opinion/star...

I know there’s a lot going on with the Labour Party, but it is all in the bounds of democratic politics. This however, paid collusion between the leaders of two political parties in the run up to election, if true, is a scandal of staggering propositions

Thoughts from a Labour MP: “We have to face up to the fact every single one of them is fucking useless. Andy’s strategy has been a disaster. Angela has bottled it. Ed clearly a hiding to nothing. Wes is AWOL. God knows what Catherine West is doing. I am not quite sure how we ended up here.”

Or, to look at it another way, I don't think it's a coicidence that the prevailing consensus is that there is no Labour MP who could possibly be popular enough, meaning they need to bring in an outsider. Maybe it's the being in Westminster bit which makes them unpopular? Good luck to the outsider

I wasn’t impressed at all with the BBC News election special coverage - framing everything in national politics when they could have asked *every single local BBC reporter what voters & candidates said were the local issues* - and using the patterns spotted for studio debate.

Reform UK’s battle bus was in Kirby this weekend. You’d think that with all those massive foreign cash bungs, they could at least afford an MOT.

Why let him “brush off” his deeply shameful, anti-Semitic remarks of the past? He’s there in Golders Green like some hideous ambulance-chasing lawyer, hoping to exploit this tragedy for his own ends. You know that. We know that. Can’t anyone just say it?

When the hell will people wake up & realise he only wants their votes to keep him in the spotlight which will then maintain his lifestyle. He taps into people’s feelings of anger & poverty, has a chummy fag in a pub to pretend he’s on their side but, once elected, fucks off to grift his arse off.

Pippa, I think it’s best just to move on now, the majority have done so long ago. The hit job did not work. The fact that the media keeps plugging away at this matter switches everyone further off the media - especially when it comes from once trusted sources. Disappointing.

Interesting sign of a 'rally round the flag' effect for *not* fully participating in a US-led military action - and more evidence of the discordance between the RW media and the public on this issue

Article by @rcolvile.bsky.social in Times today makes interesting reading on the need for "cutting red tape", particularly in small businesses. Editorial article in same edition "for many small firms the post-Brexit era has brought a blizzard of red rape". Colvile is a Brexit advocate, strangely. 🤔

Carney's incredible secret sauce seems to be - say what the problem is, whose fault it is, what you will have to do about it and what it will cost.

This part of the article sums up where I think my opinion resides: David Aaronovitch wrote of the journalists who had been looking forward to the end of Starmer, “the problem is that once you’ve both confidently predicted something and advocated it, you have a real interest in it coming true”.

I’m standing outside a Commons committee room where Keir Starmer has walked in to a mass of loud applause from his MPs. It was very loud. Well, that settles it. He’s 100% safe now.

No, we didn’t. Nobody BUT the chaos-loving journalists and self declared journalists and/or punters across the airwaves really wants this sort of instability😡

With Streeting, Rayner pledging support, it looks like Starmer will struggle on. All rests on a massive gear change and some supportive Cabinet members may have to find their focus substantially change. Failing Domestic or successful Foreign, McSweeney or Powell….time to choose differently.