I've tried to argue why I think the cut to affordable housing targets in London is a really terrible idea in a considered, rather than shouty, way here. A clumsy patching up of a broken status quo: open.substack.com/pub/peteapps...

Most previous Labour leaders have had obvious contempt for Labour members. Until now, none have had obvious contempt for Labour voters.

🔴The Reform Backlash: Caerphilly By-Election Result Shows Nigel Farage’s Party Is Much Weaker Than It Looks Despite widespread media predictions of a Reform victory on Thursday, Farage’s defeat shows his party continues to be overestimated, argues @adambienkov.bsky.social

The more and bigger defeats Labour suffers at the hands of progressives in next May's locals, the more progressive voters will calculate at the next GE that a tactical anti-Farage vote in their constituency =/= a vote for Labour.

Well worth a read about what happened in Caerphilly. Also worth noting the risks that the author ran by simply reporting on Reform.

Honestly feel like Labour on immigration is a political and moral crisis with potentially scary consequences

A little bit of realism about the Green surge.

I searched in vain in this report for a single mainstream politician expressing an ounce of concern for the dignity and safety of the sizeable Muslim population in Aston and Birmingham. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I remember, many years ago now (with ny transport strategist hat on) being asked in a BBC interview if Crossrail would be Khan's biggest legacy. The thing that had the biggest impact on London. I said: "No. It'll be ULEZ." (The low emissions zone)

Greens are close to overtaking Labour.

This is a lie. There are many criticisms you might sensibly and truthfully make of the Sentencing Council and the Sentencing Guidelines. I’ve been making them for years. But this is an outright lie. Pure fabrication. A fraud on the public.

Just caught five minutes of Tory Party conference. They appear to have moved the leader’s speech to a phone box?

Excited that the Oxford Congestion Charge means that the 3/3A will now run to the station!! Amongst a whole host of other bus improvements.

All these protections for newts and bats and snails — does Reeves really not think for a second about why, ecologically, they might be in place?

This is depressing in and of itself — property developers are capitalists who only care about profit! Why are you helping them??? — but it’s also depressing because of the complete lack of curiosity it seems to betray. No sense of *why* these elements of the planning system might exist.

People are turning out in numbers week after week to protest Britain's complicity in the Gaza genocide. No amount of anti-protest laws will change this. Instead of trying to silence protesters, the government should be taking action to try and stop the genocide.

Penny Mordaunt says that people protesting yesterday took police resources away from protecting Jewish people & those resources are finite. So why wasn't the premier league asked to cancel football matches yesterday?

Wish I could say I was shocked, but here's the Labour government constraining the right to peaceful protest again... 'You can protest but only according to our rules. The rules are: you're not allowed to use any of the tactics that make protest effective.'

Labour’s response to over 100,000 fascists in the streets of London is to appease them Labour’s response to peaceful protesters demanding an end to genocide is to arrest over 1,000 people and now they are increasing police power. Starmer is continuing the Tory project.

But please TV and radio producers take a hard line: Don't book people again who come on your programmes and tell lies. Protect honest debate.

This is grim & dangerous over reach. This is a government that have lost the moral argument & are still selling arms to Israel. Now further cracking down on dissent. Absolutely the opposite of what they should be doing - so of course this is what the Labour Government choose.

Many pundits today are pushing the line that everyone who protests the genocide in Gaza is basically either antisemitic or tolerant of antisemitism. But isn't that precisely the conflation of the actions of the Israeli gov't with all Jewish people, which is at the heart of this wave of antisemitism?

We will keep marching. We will keep organising. We will keep speaking up. Until there is a permanent ceasefire. Until the siege is lifted. Until the occupation ends. Until apartheid is dismantled. Until the perpetrators of genocide are held to account. Until Palestine is free 🇵🇸

Being pro-Palestinian is not being anti-Jewish. Just as being pro-Jewish is not being anti-Palestinian. Irresponsible language and framing from the Home Secretary. It is perfectly right that people both protest the Gaza genocide and mourn the Manchester attack.

The 22 MP's who voted against the banning of Palestine Action, including all 4 Green MP's

This article manages to name her husband before it names… her.

Brilliant article by a teacher highlighting the current dire situation for teachers and kids every winter when it comes to infection risk and spread. We continue to fight for our kids to have the right to breathe clean air. stevebheadteacher.wordpress.com/2025/09/30/d...

This means that it is now Labour’s official position that Israel is committing genocide. While at the same time, the Labour government continues to arm that genocide Absolutely extraordinary!

Just fuck off with this. How about start the conversation by highlighting how much immigrants contribute to the UK - not least by propping up the NHS and social care system! Also - forced volunteering is not volunteering, it's unpaid labour.

Vichy Labour. Deliberately and repeatedly affirming and amplifying the inflammatory far right *lie* of "uncontrolled migration".

Labour deputy leadership candidate Lucy Powell says govt should axe two-child benefit cap. Why did she support it? Supported WFP cut by saying without it there would be a "run on the pound". Silence on corporate welfare. Neither candidate would end the grip of neoliberalism.

I was planning a few visits of London’s Open House Festival this weekend- disappointed to see their main sponsor is AirBnB. Not only does AirBnB actively harm architectural heritages worldwide, it also rents West Bank properties stolen from Palestinians and illegally occupied. Regretfully, boycott!

Bridget Phillipson, Labour's Deputy Leadership candidate, says two-child benefit cap is “spiteful”, “punished and pushed children into hardship”. Just a moment ... she is part of the cabinet that stuck with the Tory policy. Suspended 7 MPs for opposing it. Now she wants rank-and-file vote.

No "Forhad bump" in the Plaistow South by-election newham65.wordpress.com/2025/09/19/n...

A chat with a Cambridge professor about why tube strikes are likely to cause lasting *improvements* in Londoners' commutes. www.londoncentric.media/p/london-und...

Three pictures which won't age well. There's diplomacy, then there's cowardice. We know which this is.

I think his options now are (1) resign or (2) attempt to clear things up in an interview with Emily Maitliss Don’t think there is much mileage in (2).

Genocide. www.channel4.com/news/israel-...

I wouldn’t have thought many Labour MPs came into politics to strip the rights of torture survivors to be reunited with the spouses & children. They need to take a long hard look in the mirror & ask whether Starmer, Cooper & Reeves are really the leadership their careers should be remembered with.

It's hard to understand what Starmer was apologising for on his 'island of strangers' comments when he's now apparently perfectly happy putting out obvious racist bait like this

Imagine if the Green Party got a front page headline every day to warn that climate change is ultimately bad news or the Lib dems got one to point out the long term crisis in social care funding

1. You're not even safe from cars when you're inside a restaurant eating. 2. They weren't "involved in a crash" anymore than someone hit by a stray bullet was "involved in a shooting."

Fuel duty hasn’t risen since 2010, costing the UK £130bn. Wealthy drivers benefit most, while everyone else faces rising rail fares, cut buses, and poor walking, wheeling & cycling routes. We need fair road pricing to fund better options for us all 👇 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Just a basic fact check. The UK by its own admission exports arms (F-35 parts) capable of being used in Gaza where the IDF has, amongst other things, pursued a vast, genocidal campaign of state terror. "We" the British people may not support terrorists. But objectively the government does.

Letter of the day (in the Times)

FFS. He didn't "kick off". It's not a "jibe". He said, with dignity and restraint, what we were all thinking - that Al-Obeid didn't just "die" - he, like tens of thousand of other innocent civilians, was killed by Israel as part of its ongoing programme of ethnic cleansing.

As peaceful protestors are arrested for holding placards, starving Palestinians are being shot in the street. This will go down as one of the most shameful moments in British legal history. No amount of suppression can hide the truth: our government is complicit in genocide.

"We have a situation where Labour is now looking over its shoulder at this new left wing party... half a million sign ups in less than a week. They're thinking to themselves, if the polling is to be believed, that party is going to make a huge dent in their votership..."

"a safe & secure Israel sitting alongside a viable & peaceful Palestinian state" Note no requirement on Israel to be peaceful. We're in the middle of a genocide, & politicians like Reeves are using the issue of recognition as cover while they continue supporting Israels genocide