The same employers who witter on about young people lacking the basic social skills, see nothing wrong with not bothering to tell job applicants that they have not been successful. www.ft.com/content/2af1...

Just finished Tip Toe I think that ending may just haunt me forever

Really Kemi? Because he’d deport you

Bumped into my local MP - Labour - the other day. We’ve met several times so I stopped and said hi and we got chatting. On the subject of changing leader he said “It can work - look at Boris. But you can only do it once.”

Important to recognise why Farage is saying the things he’s saying this week. Restore is doing to him what he’s been doing to the Conservatives for over a decade; outflanking him on the right so that he’s forced to adopt a more extreme position to try to stem the flow of lost voters

Really, really excellent article by @stephenkb.bsky.social that exposes the falsehood at the heart of the right-wing narrative

The state should not have the right to take life. It is also not a vehicle for revenge Lowe’s comments are barbaric, and unfit for a civilised society in the 21st century

Who the hell does Farage think he is “addressing the nation”? And why the hell does he think he has the right to trample over a family’s grief and turn their tragedy into the Farage show? What a truly despicable, deeply racist little man. There can be no pride in a country where he has power.

Nigel Farage is trying to start a race war. No other way of putting it

I have a student son Henry Nowak’s age & I can’t imagine what it took for his family to respond outside court with the grace they did, asking that their son’s death not be used for division and hate. That Reform & Restore chose to throw that back in their faces makes me feel sick.

Mamdani is incredibly good at this sort of thing

“Now it’s getting ridiculous, maybe we should pretend to care about scrutiny and honest politics” says The Times, having singularly failed to hold Farage to account on anything for the last decade. In a saner, less corrupt and racist world, Reform would have no hope of governing at all.

Fight.

I remember a Tory confidently telling me "In a decade, everyone will say they voted Leave even if they didn't".

THE POPE IS QUOTING GANDALF!!!

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

Restore is on 7% in that Makerfield constituency poll. I wrote this week why they're a threat that needs to be taken seriously. And why splitting the Reform vote isn't worth the normalisation of what is, in effect, a neo-Nazi party. samf.substack.com/p/is-andy-bu...

I'm sure this event will have lots of varied opinions and won't just be a moanfest about how it's all the EU's and Remainers' fault. Morning.

I’m genuinely baffled by the idea that electoral reform can only follow a referendum approving it No, Parliament can just do it. Parliament is sovereign, it can do anything

Burnham’s fucked

I was 18 when HS2 was announced I’ll be 42 before a single train runs (Always assuming it’s not delayed again)

Why can this country not fucking build anything

A *lot* of shock and not a little horror at the government’s pressuring supermarkets to cap food prices. But this is exactly the sort of massive government intervention that A) voters actually really want and B) the pandemic taught them they could have

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

The local Green Party organisation in Makerfield is holding a meeting to decide whether or not to stand a candidate in the by-election There seems to be a pretty strong feeling that they shouldn’t, in order to give Burnham a clear run against Reform (and now also Restore)

“Wes, are they booing me?” “No, they’re saying … Boo-urnham, Boo-urnham.”

Social Democrat. Left-wing on the economy, liberal on social issues, centrist on civil liberties, strongly globalist, high trust in institutions No wonder none of the main prties feel like they’re for me findmypolitics.com?e=-60&so=-35...

Hopeful that Streeting’s forthrightness om Brexit is a taboo breaker. Even if he doesn’t become PM (and that looks more unlikely than ever rn) he’s said what no one in government has said for half a decade and that people like me have been DYING to hear - Rejoin EU!

Nigel “I can’t be bought” Farage praised the IRA for £75 on Cameo

I once met Andy Burnham, quite by chance. Ran into him on Oxford Road in Manchester, just after his first mayoral win. Timidly introduced myself, shook his hand, told him I’d voted for him, and wished him luck Strange to think that I might soon have met a British Prime Minister

The Fixed-Term Parliaments Act feels like it comes from another reality now It was repealed just 4 years ago

Absolutely terrified about the Manchester mayoralty in the event of a by-election. Part of the reason we’ve done so well in the past decade has been because we’ve had one mayor with one policy agenda. If the Greens win - or, Christ help us, Reform - I fear for Manchester’s future

Makerfield … tough fight for Burnham. The Labour majority is only about 5,000. Very feasible that Reform win, especially if the Greens follow through on their promise to “Throw the kitchen sink” at beating Burnham

Must we keep holding our politicians to such impossible standards?

Streeting has missed the bus. Resigning on Monday would have been a power move. Resigning tomorrow looks nakedly ambitious

The current position of the Labour left appears to be: We’ll back Keir in a contest against Wes so that Keir hangs on long enough for Andy to find a seat and then when Andy’s back we’re going to oust Keir

BREAKING - Parliamentary Standards Commissioner will launch an investigation into Farage's £5m donation.

It is entirely possible to both sympathise with Starmer’s position and think he’s been treated frankly appallingly by the media and, let’s be honest, the voters who always seemed determined to hate him, AND to think that he’s simply not up to the job of being Prime Minister and should resign

Labour's processes for changing leader are hopelessly, catastrophically unsuited to government. More than half of all prime ministers since 1945 have taken over between general elections. This is not an unusual procedure. So it really matters when parties screw this system up... 🧵

Starmer adamant that he’s going nowhere. Corbyn 2016 all over again - Corbyn managed to hold on of course, but the party never recovered while he was leader (and arguably never since)

Speaking as a Manchester resident I’d rather we kept Andy Burnham for ourselves

Can't prove this but maybe the reason for Attenborough's longevity is that whenever Paddington arrives to shepherd his soul on, he fends him off with his powers of nature narration. "The perplexed ursine psychopomp withdraws, his hunt unsuccessful. Perhaps a 1970s bass player will make easier prey."

Starmer can’t lead Labour into the next election. That seems to be a pretty widely held view And given that Starmer can’t lead Labour into the next election, there’s really no point him hanging around now He needs to go, and if he won’t go he needs to be directly challenged

Can a Scottish politics expert tell me who the Leader of the Opposition is going to be now? With Labour and Reform both in second, how does that work for things like First Minister’s Questions?

New Welsh government surely some sort of coalition or deal between Plaid Cymru and Labour (with Labour very much the junior partner). No other maths works

Bury Council (my own little patch) Labour - 7 Reform - 5 Radcliffe First - 2 Workers Party - 1 Independent - 1

FPTP is very clearly unfit for purpose in an era of 5, 6, 7 party politics. We need electoral reform and we need it urgently

In my ward Reform came a distant 2nd, with the hyperlocalist party winning comfortably as they have done at every set of local elections since 2019

Labour has spent two years trying to win back white working-class voters from Reform It doesn’t appear to have made the blindest bit of difference Maybe now they’ll consider giving those of us on the anti-Reform wing of politics a bit of attention?

British politics makes a lot more sense once you understand that a pretty sizeable proportion of the population wants to live in a police state, where the state pays for absolutely everything, and the cost is always borne by someone else