I also just fundamentally do not buy the thesis that one electoral rejection means you’re obligated to leave frontline politics and the voters will never see your face again in an election he’s going to fight against Nigel Farage, John Swinney and Ed Davey lol

If Angela Raynor's looking to personally save her job after Tameside went Reform, she's probably right that Burnham's the best bet for that. He has drawing power particularly in Greater Manchester, & will probably be less "never left London" than Starmer, Streeting & Miliband.

I'm fairly sure the only time I ever met Catherine West was at a party where I was rescued from the most socially awkward moments of my life by someone saying "Hi, I'm Kevin" and it was former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

okay fair play this is class www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0lr...

Excellent analysis from my BBC elections team colleague and YouGov data guru @patrick-pme.bsky.social on what the local elections data tells us about whether Labour is losing more to Greens or Reform. Spoiler alert: its the Greens open.substack.com/pub/patricke...

"Ah but Catherine West does not understand the rules of a Labour leadership election!" Sure, but Keir Starmer doesn't understand what being Prime Minister is. One of these is pressing.

I’m putting the chances she The Producers her way into actually being prime minister at, minimum, 20%

This 1952 memo from the Pentagon UFO files is superb There is no point preparing for aliens ‘because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.’ 🤣 www.war.gov/medialink/uf...

At some point on my lifetime we might get a government which recognises that having an entire tier of elected institutions which are just powerless complaints departments for a failing social care system is not a healthy or sensible state of affairs.

In 2024 Labour won by being just acceptable enough to just enough people. Now they are unacceptable, for different reasons, to just enough people almost everywhere. The electoral valley of death.

Keir: I got your political mum and dad here with me Ed and they are saying you can't organise a coup against me

The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals. Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:

Why does it look like Rachel Reeves is officiating a wedding between Keir Starmer and Gordon Brown

20 seconds long thunderclap here in Manchester. Guess I'm not leaving the house today!

labour mps are basically just saying that they dont think saving their party or *the country from fascism* is worth the bother of going through a bit of social embarassment to coup starmer, and they are not even gonna try to do better than this shambles

Hampshire, of course, an area where at least elements of the local party were running an anti-Reform campaign. Heard some suggestions this was the case in Bexley too, anyone kept tabs on which local Tory groups were going in on this message?

A) Anyone. B) It would remove the paralysis at the top of government which has prevented coherent policy making for the last 2 years.

Fun fact: Iain Duncan Smith was deemed a failure for only gaining 550 or so seats in his second set of locals as leader.

I have been rewatching Game of Thrones and it’s pretty striking how the most famous plot point of the early seasons is about how you shouldn’t break deals with/needlessly antagonize irrational actors that control essential chokepoints

I think the evidence for this from today's results is thin - Reform's county administrations in Lancashire and Staffordshire have run into trouble, but Reform nevertheless made sweeping gains in yesterday's district elections in those two counties Kent - their biggest binfire - has yet to be tested

Is anyone live mapping the ward results? I don't have the patience to scroll through lists looking for the ones I have connections to.

We're taking FPTP to bold new exciting places.

"You don't change pilot in the middle of a flight" right, unless the current pilot has pointed the nose of the plane at the ground, then you very much do change pilots, as a matter of some serious fucking urgency

Labour has done a great deal of damage to itself and the country by making “win over a caricature of Reform voters” and “panicked stakeholder management” its only governing priority. Time to make “win over a caricature of Green voters” and “panicked stakeholder management” the aim instead.

How do other people use the like button? I find I'm often liking responses to just say "I'm happy you've taken onboard some criticism, & seen it's not black & white, but there's still a gulf there",

Being completely isolated effects judging social situations. Can I ask a popular politician if he's ok because he looks like he's lost a lot of weight? It's clearly overstepping the mark, but caring concern would be better than all the hideous abuse in most of the rest of the comments? Would it?

The plain plains where the planes land on a plane. Don't mind me, I made a spelling mistake & will now focus on it for 3 hours.

'The Left' doesn't demonise Trump. Trump demonises himself daily, even hourly, and the Left comment on it.

A load of airlines are going to go bust. Hauliers, retailers, independent contractors. It's going to be bad, the effects will resonate for years, I'm glad we prepared by making it cheaper to drive for everyone. But there's one party that recognises the problem. Just checking which party... Oh.

Are "mentally challenged" & "handicapped" still valid ways to talk about people outside the UK (or at least my bubble of it)? I don't want to lecture people on their language like I'm American or something, but it's really offensive when I read it, but the comments are all "you're the best".

And a very good morning to the train driver who, seemingly unaware that he had activated the intercom, has begun our journey with some concerning huffing and wheezing, followed by a drawn-out ”Ohhhh shit” and a panicked “Jesus Christ”.

The American use of the word liberal is confusing. It doesn't seem to mean socially liberal or economically liberal (libertarian). It doesn't seem to mean the opposite of authoritarian, progressive, generally left or centrist (honestly or derogatory). Is there a generally understood definition?

Why is the NHS app so useless? It keeps getting me to log in to be told my GP has a training session. Stop wasting my time. It keeps sending me appointment reminders for unknown appointments & the link won't show you what the appointment is or why it's happening, just 4 different cancel options.

This is insane. This is the government’s “independent” advisor on antisemitism. He sees four antisemitic cartoons targeting Zack Polanski. His response? To demand an end to the antisemitic targeting of Polanski? No. It’s to attack the Green Party.

COLBERT: How dumb do you think it is for people to say that I should run for president? OBAMA: Well, you know, the bar has changed. I think you would perform significantly better than some folks we've seen. COLBERT: Is that an endorsement? OBAMA: It was not

Polanski's mass sharing social media technique now becoming a national punchline.

I've not got over my Aunt turning on me in rage for not laughing at a "joke" referring to her grandchildren with a horrific racial slur, nor for in rage lecturing me with the classic homophobe's "I don't care what people do in their own lives, but they've got to stop rubbing it in our faces".

I'm absolutely furious about my ADHD consultant's behaviour. I'd forgotten it was a bank holiday, so he won't have a chance to retract his gaslighting after he missed 2 appointments in a row, failing to respond for weeks after the first one & ignoring all complaints & contemptuously blaming me.

Apparently eating 5000+ calories of chocolate a couple of hours before you go to bed doesn't help you sleep. Listening to music & starting to feel a bit better, whoever had Animals' House of the Rising Sun in your listicle, thank you for the reminder, I love that type of deep & gravelly voice.

Still binge eating from Dr failing to turn up for 2nd time without bothering to tell me, then blanked my complaint, blaming me for not responding to "their booking system" before 2-3 days, that hadn't contacted me until 24 hours before. It's bonkers, & deja vu, being gaslighted by psychiatrists.

Loreen - Euphoria Avicii - Broken Arrows Aha - Take On Me Jonathan Groff/Hamilton - I'll Be Back Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees The Calling - Our Lives Mama Cass - Make your own kind of Music The Communards - Don't Leave Me This Way Bonnie T/Nikki F - Total Eclipse Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time

I'm furious after wasting the day waiting for an appointment that didn't happen, rearranged from an appointment that didn't happen, & got blamed for their failure again. F*ing furious. I've just gorged on chocolate. Worst binge in a while.

Bluesky loves giving me Americans posting banal statements with a picture of unsourced fake-authoritative text (even more than Trump social media posts with banal comments). Trump faked his assassination attempt particularly strong in this genre. Doesn't matter how much you click less like this.

A Starmer shaped hole where the PM should be. Great line and piece by @stephenkb.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/03a6...

I want more green infrastructure, just as I wanted more houses and HS2, and the Greens have declined to support those things. Why on Earth would I not criticise that? I'm not a party member, and the GPEW is in any case a proper grown up political party that can handle being criticised

The excuses Starmer has boil down to negligence or misconduct. Negligent because he didn’t ask questions he should have and didn’t know what was going on. Misconduct because he knew and pressed on regardless. Either are resignation matters in of themselves.

On that logic, what exactly is the point of it? We’re expected to believe there was a scenario where Robbins cancelled the high profile appointment by the PM but without telling the PM why?

I don't understand what's in it for Robbins to independently conceal negative vetting from foreign secretary & PM. I can only see wilful ignorance, particularly from Starmer's choice of wording; a decision was made through innuendo that Starmer would be better not knowing content of the vetting.

ME: [wincing, covering up Starmer's ears] sorry, do you mind not talking about politics around Keir? He doesn't know about scary things like nuclear war or poverty or Peter Mandelson and we'd like to maintain his innocence for a bit longer KEIR: my father was a drill bit ME: that's right Keir!