Quite the scenes on Good Morning Britain as Ed Balls tells Kemi Badenoch her student loan interest plan will only help the richest ex-students. After she insists he's wrong, GMB bring on Martin Lewis to back up Balls' argument and tell her the plan makes no sense.

What happened when @peterwalker99.bsky.social challenged Nigel Farage on his way out of a press conference over how the Reform leader had spoken to a female journalist? Fascinating tale in today's episode of Politics Weekly. www.theguardian.com/politics/aud...

While it's great to see various MPs suddenly develop an interest in Chagossian self-determination, Diego Garcia was cleared 50+ years ago and unless you're Jeremy Corbyn or one of the handful of other MPs who have consistently fought this battle, then the sheer opportunism is fairly naked.

Lost my phone in London, with four credit cards and £150 cash in the case. Returned to me within 21 minutes. This hellhole of a city eh.

Realise I’m late to this but the TV adaptation of Lord of the Flies is amazing. It’s not just the performances and writing, the way it’s directed and shot is extraordinary. It’s a bit like they let Terence Malick loose on a BBC series.

** Self-promotion klaxon ** The paperback of my book on stress, now slightly re-titled as How Stress Work: Understanding the new science of stress hormones, is: a/ out in April, and b/ can be pre-ordered from Waterstones for *25% off* if you order it this week, using the code below.

To reiterate this point: during the Q&A Farage dismissed very arrogantly a perfectly fair question from the brilliant Anna Gross of the FT and then took the piss out of the paper. If you want to persuade people that you don’t have predilections towards bullying it was not ideal. It was grim.

I’m in Westminster where Nigel Farage is about to unveil his ‘shadow cabinet’ and the decor is slightly bonkers. Looks like he’s going to launch a Simon Cowell-era boyband instead.

** Self-promotion klaxon ** The paperback of my book on stress, now slightly re-titled as How Stress Work: Understanding the new science of stress hormones, is: a/ out in April, and b/ can be pre-ordered from Waterstones for *25% off* if you order it this week, using the code below.

This is a slightly curious way to frame, 'Millions of people are currently not exercising their right to vote, and this is disproportionately an issue in poorer and urban areas.'

What an amazing interview, and what an amazing woman.

!! … ah

Just went to see In The Mood For Love for the first time in ten-plus years. Still the most beautiful film ever make and perhaps the most moving. Utter brilliance.

Not the main point, but this explains the slightly odd scenes earlier in which the No 10 spokesman said there was a cabinet secretary but refused to say who it was. He'd already checked out.

He has personal poll ratings worse than anyone bar Liz Truss, the focus groups are brutal and football fans think he's a wanker. I have delved into the vexed topic of why, exactly, Keir Starmer seems so unpopular. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The long-awaited DfE guidance for schools on gender questioning students is out at 4pm. It is, officials say, based on pragmatism rather than one-size-fits-all culture war ideas. One change from 2023 is that primary children can potentially be addressed by other pronouns (though seen as v rare)

[*Ring, ring*] "Hello, is that the Telegraph comment desk? Yes, oh great. I thought you should know - one of your opinion pieces from 2009 has escaped and is passing itself off as new."

There is, one study estimated, 5.5 square miles of London used for on-street car parking. Rather than whinge about the massive popularity of a sustainable, healthy form of transport, boroughs could instead just do more to accommodate it.

** Walthamstow people/cycling types ** Can you help a friend track down his bike and that of his son which were taken from outside their house last Sunday, 8 Feb? They were, very cheekily, taken by people who thought they were being freecycled. Any clues - email in the attached text. Pls share.

I've seen enough No 10 "resets" over the years to be sceptical about how much they actually achieve, but it is interesting that the post-McSweeney/Allan operation have been quite rapid and punchy in responding to Jim Ratcliffe. www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

It was perhaps unwise for Matthew Doyle to believe his friend’s insistence of innocence so completely that he campaigned for him. But if you’re talking unsavoury and unsuitable types elevated to the Lords in recent years, I doubt he’d even be in the top 30.

Amazingly, given the mass of material she had to work with, I don't think Kemi Badenoch won that #PMQs. She had a few decent lines, but arguably Starmer's were better.

For those who followed the slightly curious take of Reform UK and the Bangor university debating society, Reform's press team told me two things: • Sarah Pchin and Anderton did approach the debating society asking to speak. • "It’s not party policy to remove funding from the whole university."

I’m at an event in Westminster where a certain Andy Burnham has said it it “time to call to an end this era where politics got too close to wealth, too seduced by the notion that deregulated markets would provide the solution, when in fact they have been the problem.”

I’m standing outside a Commons committee room where Keir Starmer has walked in to a mass of loud applause from his MPs. It was very loud. Well, that settles it. He’s 100% safe now.

Jeremy Kyle is interviewing Reform MPs at a live press conference Discussing who might take over from Keir Starmer as PM, Kyle just said: "She's had a makeover, Angela" Lee Anderson: "She's throwing her money away, isn't she, to be honest with you" *applause from the audience*

David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Darren Jones, John Healey, Heidi Alexander etc have all rallied round the prime minister - keep an eye on which cabinet ministers don't 👀

It's starting to look very end-period-Boris-Johnson for Keir Starmer, and while you can't argue with Johnson's First Law of Politics – when the herd moves, it moves – I do wonder whether whoever challenges and/or take over are prepared for quite how much voters dislike this kind of chaos.

Blimey. No 10 head of comms, Tim Allan, is also departing, saying it is to allow "a new No10 team to be built".

NEW: Reform UK’s flagship council, Kent, has been accused of telling a “blatant lie” after its claim of nearly £40m in savings on net zero were found to be based on hypothetical projects for which there was no documentation. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

NEW: Gordon Brown has said he deeply regrets bringing Peter Mandelson into his government, saying Mandelson alleged actions as business secretary were “a betrayal of everything we stand for as a country”. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

That No 10 could and should have known enough about Peter Mandelson and his post-prison links to Jeffrey Epstein to not make him Washington ambassador is of course true. But what is also true is that the Conservatives also did not point this out at the time.

Keir Starmer describes Matt Goodwin as someone "who looks at people like Rishi Sunak, Shabana Mahmood, and presumably Marcus Rashford, Shirley Bassey and Asas Sarwar, and says they can't really be English or Welsh or Scottish because they are not white."

I still do not have a clue who will win the Gorton and Denton by-election but the Greens say that in six hours today they leafleted all 40,000-plus households, done by 400 volunteers, which does show Lib Dem-style levels of dedication to campaigning (and to the printing trade).

For all the (justified) political angst about how and why Peter Mandelson got the Washington job, Kemi Badenoch's spokesman admitted that he can't recall the Tories raising the Epstein link at the time, and doesn't think they formally opposed the move either.

The Times interview with Peter Mandelson is a masterclass in lack of self-awareness, but this quote about what it is precisely that makes very rich people so appealing to him is especially revealing.

I mean, this is just such bollocks. A crime, in Knightsbridge? Really? You mean the same area as one of the world's biggest-ever robberies, the 1987 Knightsbridge security deposit theft?

BREAKING: Keir Starmer has urged House of Lords to urgently modernise disciplinary procedures so that Peter Mandelson can be stripped of his peerage and removed from upper chamber.

I have no idea who will win the Gorton & Denton by-election but one thing that does seem clear is Labour view Reform’s decision to select Matt Goodwin as an opportunity for them.

It’s fair to say that when judges do this sort of thing, you are not in a constitutionally or legally normal place.

If you’ve not seen it, v good piece by top colleague @matthewweaver.bsky.social on the suburban Ulez camera bomber, the online radicalisation of older people and the sheer toxicity of “war on the motorist” and anti-Sadiq Khan discourse. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The BBC is getting played here: if a contributor gets to flat out deny having his own words quoted to him on television (with the viewer not told the denial is untrue) then post about "dropping truth bombs". The mission to inform & counter misinformation is flailing if the editorial controls so weak

Someone from the Tories’ Lords team really needs to change Sharron Davies’ X log in. As an aside, how *would* 15 minute cities be “thrust on us overnight”?

I'm late to this but what on earth were Question Time doing putting Konstantin Kisin on the show? These are not serious people. They're controversialists-for-cash. The whole business model is to say increasingly outrageous things for the coverage and clicks. Next week: Lucy White.

This is quite odd. Even if you, personally, don't like the ideas of Ruth Davidson and Andy Street it's a simple fact that they both consistently out-performed their party in elections. There is also no polling evidence I know of that the wider electorate is in the "mood" described.

Absolutely fantastic example of multiple-metaphor government jargon-ese

NEW: The government's new national planning framework for England contains precisely zero mentions of women and girls despite urban design been seen as a key element in helping women and girls feel safer. by @lexytopping.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

It's deputies day at PMQs, with Starmer in China, so David Lammy vs Andrew Griffith. Nice opening reply from Lammy: "It’s always a pleasure to hear from the co-author of the mini budget."