Coffee ✅ Lemsip ✅ Berocca ✅ Infinite supply of council agendas ✅ 2026 let’s goooooo

Denmark tells Trump to stop threatening to seize Greenland ft.trib.al/Gzzizn9

Forgot to put “the confidence of the former No 10 adviser” on my Christmas list again

Neatly proving McTernan’s point there

I find the half arsed podcast video conversions on Spotify actually quite mesmerising, just not in the way I imagine they were intended

Just watched the Holdovers for the first time. After this year of politics I knew I needed a salve, but hadn’t realised it was mainly that I needed to watch people being kind to each other. Merry Christmas 🎄🙂‍↕️

Christmas chutney, ready to be dispatched to unwitting friends

Ah it’s that moment of the year where I get inexplicably emotional about the hark the herald angels sing descant

Tesco put these next to the fruit and veg and I’m on my second pack in little more than 12 hours. The red at the bottom is red for healthy

Some signs of progress on NPR, which was meant to be unveiled at the spending review, then conference, then the budget. But when it does surface, suspect it may be light on detail as.ft.com/r/bdec77e4-3...

This candle is going to be a hard secret Santa to beat

Auditors and new officials have been turning over stones at the body in charge of Teesworks. Turns out the Tees Valley Combined Authority has been lending hundreds of millions of £ to connected orgs, without loan agreements, and those orgs are now struggling to repay as.ft.com/r/ac457745-4...

that’s more like it

I’m watching The Holiday and it is precisely as awful as I’ve repeatedly been warned yet somehow it’s still on

There are many things I could say but I do think one thing that’s underpriced in all the noise is how it looks to the electorate, and how the opposition (Reform) will attack, when a backroom deal is done for someone who has always always given it all that about having the best job in the world

V interesting this - really a classic pavement politics strategy, combined with two big lessons learned from the first six months: a) “leave the social media to us” b) conspicuously no mention of council tax open.substack.com/pub/londonce...

Reform UK strips council leader of membership over undisclosed X account on.ft.com/4oyJky1

As a journalist you’re always looking for ways to sum up the now, but the story is really often more incremental. This is from a Derbyshire county council paper. I was, inevitably, looking for “library to close” or “doge identified £Xm”, but the starting point is at least as important

“All I can say is it doesn’t look very good,” says Farage of Staffordshire’s leader and his social media history. Yet to be suspended, but let’s see

I hadn’t seen this argument until yday, when I saw it being made by an X account now being investigated by Reform as an undisclosed personal account of Staffordshire council’s leader. Spent a lot of yday mulling how far and fast the window has moved

This. And it’s a pattern, which is a problem. Other striking thing, certainly from @rachelsylvester.bsky.social’s fascinating write up this morning, is the absence of the PM’s voice or thoughts in the process. If it was there, it doesn’t seem particularly explicit

This OBR/Treasury row on who said what, when... is very muddy and complicated. A few points: • idea that the OBR said on Oct 31 Reeves was already meeting her target by £4b isn't really the full picture - fcast excluded the welfare u-turns since March (some media have pointed that out, others not)

after weeks of trying to get properly shut of this covid bout I have settled on a suitably low intensity Saturday activity: I am going to bake a cake thoughts and prayers please, pics to follow

I don’t know how many ways there are to say “Manchester’s economy is growing, so if we’re not going to do much proactive on infrastructure, can we at least not do stuff that’s actively damaging” www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Longstanding ask from mayors. Possible revenue stream for a bus franchising model that costs money to implement properly

I meant to do a thread on this but got sidetracked. So a couple of thoughts…

Nice bit of snark from the Northern Agenda

You can just see from walking around regional cities how un-dense they are. Even Manchester, which remains busy with a mega building spree, has a city centre that stops dead and turns into a series of sparsely developed gaps.

I often struggle to come up with tangible examples of English devolution but this is one. Greater Manchester is doing its own £1bn regeneration investment fund on.ft.com/43InqRk

A good eg of the financial reality facing Reform in local govt Durham is looking at hiking parking charges and permits, litter picking/weed killing/summer planting reductions and the “rationalisation” of libraries, leisure centres and tips, as it tries to hold down council tax on.ft.com/4oPaVvI

They need to switch off the “welcome on board this Avanti train” bing bong on this train, which has not moved at all so far with no explanation, before I hunt down the bing bong myself

Excl: the Electoral Commission is examining whether the Labour Party failed to declare sponsorship donations from drinks receptions with business on.ft.com/47JtHyv

Excl: the Electoral Commission is examining whether the Labour Party failed to declare sponsorship donations from drinks receptions with business on.ft.com/47JtHyv

Good thread this. I think people are much smarter than they are given credit for, and they intuit that the government’s actual view is “what can we say to make these people shut up about immigration?”

Asylum seekers with the right to work account for less than 8pc of those in accommodation, unless I’ve misunderstood something (8,500 currently have work visas, according to the Home Office)

This stuff is honestly so far gone now, it would take a political generation to rebuild. And none of the incentives in British politics are taking us that way.

Have been struggling to get over a bout of Covid this week, not entirely helped by sitting in a railway arch for three hours watching robert de niro being ennui about Manchester’s latest skyscraper. So to celebrate feeling normal again, Nigella crab mac n cheese plus classic Hollywood

fixed it for you Rachel

There’s several stories likely to come out of next years locals but for me, two key ones: all-outs in Labour mets that could switch to Reform control in one go, as happened in counties this year; and the fragmentation of its vote in cities, where Labour is fighting on both flanks

Like the true self parody I am, I wrote a travel feature from Manchester and spent most of it going on about rail investment on.ft.com/4otjcoL

Ok but what is that picture www.cityam.com/booming-manc...

A brief interjection from sofa-bound Covid malaise (boo, so boring) to bring you some thoughts on Reform, six months on

Cambridgeshire train stabbings: ‘heroic’ LNER staff member suffered ‘life threatening injuries’

Next time someone tells you that train drivers "just push buttons" show them this from the BBC

Should have posted this sooner but didn’t Birmingham and HS2. Both hopeless, supposedly. And yet they’re both obviously not on.ft.com/47wTRmD

Government has published one of those quiet but important documents that might get overlooked as it is not 'newsy'. The headline finding is that £1 of public R&D investment generates £8 in net economic benefits for the UK over the long term www.gov.uk/government/p...

To add: waste is not cuts. Waste is stuff you didn’t need to be doing. Local govt has taken that out

Doge has not been in anywhere to do any auditing work, and has no agreements to do so, nearly six months after the May elections on.ft.com/48MzODg

Oh god I love the Diplomat. Especially the female writing