DfE pupil data is out today and shows that the number of private school pupils has dropped 5.6% since VAT was introduced. Not 25% like the independent schools council predicted. Or the 50% we saw in some right-wing papers. 5.6%.

A key stat- which shows that Government Ministers were right to push ahead with this policy & that politicians should be brave, rely on proper data and ignore the noise. It was always clear that ideological opponents of the Government were using selective data.

Since our political leaders and media have decided that the only reason Henry Nowak died was because the police are too woke, here are my two cents, based on what I've read of the public information 🧵

If you read one thing today, make it @stephenkb.bsky.social's admirably clear and rational analysis of the police's actions following Henry Nowak's murder, from the @financialtimes.com Inside Politics newsletter www.ft.com/content/aa94...

When the father of a murdered son makes a public statement saying "we do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension", then I believe it's incumbent on any news outlet reporting on Farage's comments to ensure people know he has chosen to disregard the family's wishes.

If you'll pardon the profanity but: Oh bugger.

Burnham on "grip" on immigration: rightly notes hotels terrible inheritance & asylum dispersal not done fairly or with communities. These points are compatible with sensible pragmatic approaches to fuse control with contribution & compassion & cohesion www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater...

Displaying a shrewdness and subtlety of political thinking we’ve not seen before.

This looks as inept as the Conservative government that Starmer replaced

This is a really good, sensible policy. I would give my right leg for the Labour leadership fight to be composed of ideas like this.

Well, there goes that dream

Labour members, per the polling, look at all of Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper, and Wes Streeting and go 'nah, you can't win an election'. They look at Andy Burnham and they go 'maybe you could'. And let's be blunt here, polling-wise they have a lot of collateral for that view!

I’ve this second finished taking an MP on a tour of London’s candy shops. If you’re reading work for an MP (or are an MP!) I’m running regular tours with policy suggestions. 30mins from PCH and back to your desk, explaining all the tax dodges and you can buy some overpriced sweets for tour staff.

NEW - Andy Burnaham is the candidate for Makerfield. After all that, the NEC didn't shortlist anyone else. It's done.

Playbook: "Westminster is hotly anticipating some real data from the seat to show how a Burnham vs. Reform race is looking." PolSci people and Pollsters: "There is no, nor can there ever be, any 'real data' worth the name - both constituency polls and canvass returns are notoriously unreliable.

Henry Crab?! Undercover?

So far we have been saved by being lucky and the reality that people in the far right are often pretty inept, but one day one of these attacks will succeed and we'll have the usual rigmarole of raking over how we missed what was a pretty obviously building threat.

Oh man they are making this too entertaining. You HAVE to click on this one to see the story... refukked.lovable.app

Reform says Farage started buying this £1.4m pad (paid for *in cash*) before he received £5m from a crypto billionaire. He claims that gift was for his personal security. Thing is, if he was that concerned, this new revelation shows he had the money to do something about it himself

BREAKING: Reform UK leader Nigel Farage bought a £1.4 million property in cash shortly after receiving a £5m personal gift from billionaire donor Christopher Harborne, according to property records seen by Sky News.

I know we like to joke about how every faction in the Labour Party will eventually adopt every position. I wasn't expecting them to manage it in one leadership contest

Starmer batters Streeting in a head to head says @labourlist.bsky.social / @survation.bsky.social polling of Labour party members

There was also a big failure after the Southport riots to convey the real truth that they were mostly your local thugs up to no good.

The NHS has churned through 47 ministers in 11 years, and that number could rise before too long! www.hsj.co.uk/policy-and-r...

My phone just reminded me of this screengrab from 9 years ago, how timely

Can someone do photoshop with Miliband as Frodo at the Council of Elrond saying he will take the ring? And Rayner as Gandalf?

Not sure it's the best idea to channel some Thanos vibes when talking about technology and its impact on the NHS workforce, an already-tech wary group. www.hsj.co.uk/workforce/ex...

... each one someone's child, are dying every month. All because of the vanity and brutality and ego of one man. Grateful that the war is not going Russia's way. But the cost to all of us in winning is more than fuel prices.

"Tell Keir. I want him to know that it was me."

Doctors say that fluoride helps build strong teeth. A guy who snorts cocaine off toilet seats and takes raccoon penises home for “further study” says it causes autism. For busy parents, it can be hard to know who to trust.

Poor wee thing.

It was wrong when the media did this to Ed Miliband when he was leader and it is wrong to do this to Polanski. Genuinely have no idea how awfulness like this gets past editors… It’s really not that hard to criticise policies or politicians without being antisemitic.

Shameful though utterly unsurprising. Would love to see the same analysis for London.

Cloud A-Z.

Whatever you're expecting... it's not that

Politicians are addicted to regulation. And this in aggregate is changing our economies to benefit larger companies who can afford compliance teams, and reinforcing at least a societal move towards government seeking impossibly to remove risk from life.

"Bluesky will never be Twitter." Then how come I look at it every morning and it makes me sad, hmm? Explain that.

"What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong ... a tragedy for the bereaved and the wounded and a catastrophe for the people of Northern Ireland." UK Prime Minister David Cameron, June 2010. How dare Badenoch so casually throw those words away. It's sickening

A by no means exhaustive example of Reform candidates from just the last seven days

something I wish was better understood by a lot of people is that the UK's anti racism organisations are literally one guy (@sundersays.bsky.social) and sometimes he takes a day off

The illegal dumping at Eastchurch may have been stopped by the fairly drastic expedient of blocking the road & it was worsened by the houses that fell off the cliffs Now though medical sample containers are being exposed in the waste, it needs urgently looking at again by the Environment Agency

That is a scandalous error

Not taking the Greens seriously as a cultural and political force is a quick pathway to being defeated by them

Well balanced and secure, rather than oscillating alarmingly because there’s a screw loose and it’s a tossup whether everything will continue to be cool or I get hurt?

If I were a German airline, busy asking people to remember my long history in a special anniversary year, then there is probably one company I would very definitely avoid getting to design my new cabin uniforms. That would be Hugo Boss. I probably wouldn't go for black either.

When a lot of failed politicians and officials start angling for jobs in what they think is the next big thing that is a datapoint for how that thing is going to trigger the next economic crash

I think this is misleadingly presented. It is legal for a 16-year-old girl and a 30-year-old man to have sex in the UK. He is using this to sell his 'redemption' arc to US conservatives, it is not something he is on trial for; he's on trial for rape and assault of several adult women.