I think also, which speaks to points @robfordmancs.bsky.social has made, don’t mistake volumes of Reform votes for depth of feeling or loyalty. A lot of people feel Reform as the current fuck you vehicle, but aren’t in love with it. The allegiance is shallow

Starmer's strongest defence was the division of his opponents. But Streetings letter showed the right and the left of the party are now coalescing around a process. That suggests it's basically game over. inews.co.uk/opinion/star...

This story is becoming absolutely devastating for Farage.

Ooop, there goes another one. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Maybe Brummie bias, but that Jess Phillips resignation letter is a cracking piece of prose.

My suspicion has always been that the caveats were much more like standard solicitor backside covering than a steer.

if he becomes Prime Minister and governs *really* well, David Bowie and Victoria Wood actually come back to life

The last month with Ben Stiller still over there tweeting about the Knicks while Nancy Mace calls him a terrorist shows that the only public figures still on there have some sort of kink for sustaining deep moral injuries. All of the celebrities left because being on there is an unwinnable game.

Danny Dyer, Brexiter apostate. Every time Farage mentions Brexit, Dyer just shouts "TWAT".

BAN THE PERVERT GLASSES

Everyone is rightly interested in Harborne’s monetary support for Nigel Farage. But GB News provides him with an annualised salary of over a million pounds a year, 500,000 shares and unaccounted for millions in terms of free political advertising for Farage’s Party

This is absolutely wonderful news, so many congratulations Sunder! The precipitous decline in effectiveness of the EHRC in recent years continues to reverse under its excellent new chair and with this appointment

I am among 6 new commissioners appointed to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I look forward to contributing to the board's strategic role overseeing the EHRC's work to enforce equality laws + protect human rights, and to helping to renew its relationships www.gov.uk/government/n...

Great appointment

They also apologise for being even vaguely interested in detail or politics, rather than earnestly being excited about it, which I find particularly grating.

Red Ed Redemption

"Coronation Streeting" was RIGHT THERE

Make social media companies publishers and therefore, yes, liable for user comments.

DECLARE A WAR OF INDEPENDENCE TO FREE US FROM THE TYRANNY OF AMERICA

One of my many metropolitan elite opinions is it is actually fine and good for people to go 'I don't know enough to judge but I would rather the PLP looked within itself and found a different candidate from a field of 400'. More people should, in fact.

Important announcement: a staycation is where you have time off and stay at home. It is not a holiday away from home in the UK. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

"Of course I avoid tax; NOBODY should be paying tax! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH"

Labour is so disliked right now, that policy positions are in a sense second-order problems. The critical issue is to land on someone that can connect to people, and charm (or intrigue) them to the extent of AT LEAST getting a hearing, and then has the hinterland and depth to inspire people. 10/

MILLIBAND Positives: name recognition, effective, experienced, strong on economics and foreign policy, battle hardy. Negatives: The framing that, despite voters rejecting him, Labour decided to impose him on the country, is so wounding it makes an early GE very likely. In my view this is fatal. 7/

Let nobody say there isn't a plan in place

Meanwhile face to face customer service is a job that cannot be done by a computer and is a sector that should be supported by government. Make in-person service affordable. Young people want to go in cool, interesting shops. So do tourists.

The argument for freedom of movement really needs to be made daily/hourly – long before we even get onto Rejoin. Because the entirety of British politics is still tiptoeing around it (see the Libdems proposing a customs union).

We need to have the courage to have the hard conversations. To go further in our boldness. And to then embolden our conversations with the voters. That is the change I was elected to deliver.

Reform mobilising non-voters looks to be a big story from this year’s locals. As so often, non-voters are the “dark matter” of politics - rarely discussed but so numerous they even mobilising a small slice can have big effects. Particularly in low turnout local elections.

Laughing like a drain at Starmer’s Last Stand being a slightly different set of the same words he has been reorganising fitfully for months like a broken thesaurus.

my dears, the local elections were last week. For the sake of our collective sanity, could we perhaps dial down the quantity and cadence of complicated graphics and emergency blogposts and podcasts?

people are making fun of this but what if he pulled out the most badass speech out of his ass, huh? he looks at the speech on the podium and RIPS it up, and his advisors are like "Mr Starmer what are you DOING" and he's like "something I should have done a LONG TIME AGO" then he gets out a guitar

At least three and maybe four years of the past decade have been spent with a PM grimly hanging to power having lost authority with their party. The opportunity cost is so high. We really need to find better ways to manage these transitions.

Walter Titty strikes again

The tale of every single last Reform-led council so far is them discovering that there is no secret Net Zero Department for Pronouns that accounts for 45% of council budgets, panicking, ordering an entire budget surplus worth of flags, and then falling apart in acrimony.

Keir Starmer has told @theobserveruk.bsky.social: “There’s a reason that [Farage] is walking away from interviews where questions are being put to him. He doesn’t want to answer the questions because he knows that those answers are not going to be very good for him.” observer.co.uk/news/politic...

The issue with these elections, which I suspect may build into a big one, is that as well as there being no spending limits for national advertising in locals, there's also no reporting mechanism. Which means we will never find out exactly how much was spent

Stay + vacation = taking holiday and not going anywhere. I find the idea I didn't have a holiday until I was 17 when I went on my first flight, quite insulting really. Class privilege through and through.

Modest proposal: People who use "staycation" to mean "going on holiday" to be placed under indefinite house arrest.

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:

this really does make me despair. this is a woman who has just got elected as a Reform councillor. she works for the NHS and wants to know “where the money is going”. it’s going on social care, babe

You cannot accept millions for "personal security" needed as a direct result of your political activities and then claim it has nothing to do with politics! It's a blatant lie from a slippery grifter.

The cold light of day thought on UK election results is the near impossibility of sensible democratic politics in the social media age. A global phenomenon which is systematically under played by nearly everyone but because every more obvious.

And while I respect those that say public discontent is all about cost of living, I increasingly reject the view. There is a generalised howl of pain about the modern world which demands far more effective emotional engagement from leaders.

Blue Labour will say “better to turn Camden into a marginal in order to win Barnsley” and then get absolutely destroyed in Barnsley.

Even before this….let’s accept for a moment that Labour do have more to fear from Reform. Labour have done essentially everything that Luke and Morgan wanted and it hasn’t worked. It’s like saying the fact you have to win football matches validates Igor Tudor!

People say there is no goodness in the world any more, but it turns out that crypto-billionaire in Thailand really did care about improving our bin collections.

There needs to be a drastic appraisal of the voting system. A party winning power with 75% opposed is not a recipe for a peaceful country.

The elections in the UK yesterday are so far showing Two Englands with a gulf between them - and maybe by the end Four Britains. A Disunited Kingdom. In areas that voted heavily for Brexit, Reform got 41%. Everywhere else they got an average of 10%.