🚨Elon Musk has boosted the public profile of Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe on X, pulling Britain’s political discourse towards extreme content and amplifying his influence ahead of a knife-edge election in Makerfield More @FT: as.ft.com/r/80f4639f-0...

'Leftwing' does not have to mean fiscally loose. "More open policies on migration and Europe and a fairer tax system would be economically “left” of the present government. But they would improve the public finances and reduce the deficit." Me in @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/7235...

Honestly, one of the funniest tweets I've ever seen.

Vile performative bullshit with a bogus rationale. A disgrace. "This week some of Britain’s most senior former military chiefs signed a joint letter to Starmer, first reported by The Times, warning that cutting foreign aid to fund defence would compromise national security."

Razorbills have the slickest design in the animal kingdom. They look like they were made by Yves Saint Laurent

Is it morally defensible? No. But is it a coherent response to a difficult situation? No. Ah, but is it effective in bringing down fuel prices? Ha, you're not going to believe this...

Great to see the Govt sinking below the moment

I’m sceptical about any analysis of Britain’s current political shitshow that doesn’t at least reference the £500bn spent on dealing with Covid and the last energy crisis, for which we are still paying

I'm sorry, but the general public is now slowly going to discover that Andy Burnham is a politician who has gone *what people want to hear is someone who sounds direct & sincere* and has made a great effort to reproduce that, without, and this is the key point, actually being that direct or sincere.

Never mess with the FT

🇬🇧 British Political Spectrum Quiz Thanks @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk , great quiz! My result: Social Democrat Economic: collectivist Social: progressive Sovereignty: strongly cosmopolitan Military: centrist Authority: leaning libertarian Constitutional: reformist Take the quiz: quiz.jmoxley.co.uk

Prejudice toward one community is prejudice towards us all.

Next time my younger colleagues and friends dub me a centrist dad…

One city. 9 million people. All of us Londoners. We will never be divided.

“We were all having an amazing time, everyone was happy.” Nothing quite like a stroll and a picnic at a National Front property for a family day out

Obviously that list is designed as bait but I’ll bite all the same. Who still reads that crusty Islamophobe Naipul?!

72 out of 100. These lists are always silly but some food for thought on what I’ve missed. www.theguardian.com/p/x4f9v5

There were people getting annoyed last week because we'd reported *the Health Secretary had resigned*. We didn't make 100 MPs come out against the PM; the local election results did. Bored of criticism of political journalists for reporting that politics is happening.

Curious to think our candidates for PM may be decided not by multimillion US style primaries but by a few thousand people in Clacton and Wigan

You know, like urgently?

Mad byelection: - I imagine Starmer’s tempted to pay plenty of constituency visits supporting his party’s candidate - Looks like he doesn’t have to stand down as Mayor unless elected. Reform pitch: “Andy’s a great Mayor; let’s keep him there.” - Tacking right for constituents and left for hustings

New research shows that more people abandoned Labour because they were too tough on immigration - and because of their support for Israel - than because they were too soft on immigration.

Polanski just cannot stop himself from silly mistruths. Doesn’t speak well of his character

WHEN WILL THE MEDIA COVER THESE STORIES? www.ft.com

NEW: Ex-Sky News editor at large, @adamboulton.bsky.social, says he thinks GB News should have its broadcasting licence revoked. Five years after bringing a partisan approach to British TV, GB News still causing a big debate. GB News/Ofcom dispute his view: www.theguardian.com/media/2026/m...

Don't forget what Reform promised the crypto industry after Farage took the cash: Farage....took an undisclosed £5mn personal gift from a crypto billionaire in 2024, months before pledging to slash tax and regulation on the digital assets industry if he becomes PM www.ft.com/content/6a56...

Genuinely impressive to have found two defences: personal security, reward for Brexit, that make it even more obvious it should have been declared.

Haec credam a deo pio? A deo iusto? A deo scito? Cruciatus in crucem! Tuus in terra servus nuntius fui officium perfeci. Cruciatus in crucem. Eas in crucem! You get Burnham!

New idea. Next time we publish a report on a politician, I’ll keep the politician’s name blanked out for a week, and let everyone take positions before they find out who it is.

I don't know how many different ways I can say this but I'm not stepping aside for Andy Burnham, and it's both very tedious for me and very demoralising for my staff to keep seeing it reported that I might be about to go when there's never even been so much as a conversation with Andy about doing so

Kemi Badenoch - a women who thinks what matters is being rude rather than being right

Full-blown by-election circus if Burnham were to stand!

Tbh, think the most insane political story of the last week remains a major party just deciding a fiction was reality and not really receiving any pushback. Like, this time next year, it is highly likely Reform will have more councillors - and thus elected representatives - than the Tories.

So Burnham allies* just picked a seat near to the one he used to have, decided the sitting MP was essentially just keeping it warm for their guy and briefed out that of course she'd stand aside for the messiah... without actually asking her?! *or, you know, Burnham

I'm not saying this because I particularly think he should stand for leader but it does feel Quite Interesting that Labour actually has this other mayor who's been successfully running a much bigger city for a longer period of time but for some reason no one's waiting for him to save the party

The cost of living crisis and our low growth are two symptoms of the same problem: an economic structure that hasn’t been working for a long time. We need to take on the root causes of those costs.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, Jess Phillips and Alex Davies Jones; so far all 3 ministerial resignations are women, 2 directly responsible for delivering on the manifesto pledge to halve violence against women and girls. There has been real simmering anger in the women's PLP about not being listened to.

Social care reform, immediately. Bon the commission, give task force 3 months to propose final recommendations building from Dilnot proposals, implement immediately with penny on basic and higher rates of income tax to pay for it. Immediately transforms local govt fortunes too…

The inexplicable excitability of political correspondents, as their nation withers and disintegrates

Lisa Nandy: “I don't think anyone in this country wants to reopen the Brexit debate” Sorry, Lisa, there is GROWING who do as they see that Brexit bears no resemblance to what was advertised, costs a fortune, holds Britain back, and leaves us isolated in the world of Putin & Trump.

Blair, 2001 to 2005, was the last PM to win a majority at a general election and serve a full Parliament.

Well, they do say that you can pander to the anti-immigration crowd but you can never satisfy them

Little bit of advice for Starmer from my personal experience. When I concluded a few years ago that I am realistically the only person who can do my job, and that my job was worth doing despite significant adversity, I began a huge effort to do my job really fucking well.

oh is Starmer banging on about steel again

Kinda weird when the warm-up act is better than the main event #JadeBotterillForPM

Said this back on Twitter, but I think you could have foreseen the way Starmer would end entirely through the lens of their most ambitious project: GB Energy, moving from a nationalised energy company, to an investment agency, to an equity grant scheme without them really noticing.

If the Labour party does not have the ability to find a leader better equipped than Keir Starmer to take on and defeat a far-right that would unleash havoc and hell on the UK, then the Labour party really is finished because it is not a serious organisation.

The Starmer government started to go wrong - economically - within weeks of taking office. Business and consumer confidence - both which had enjoyed a post election bounce - fell quite sharply over the summer and into autumn. Mostly because of a drumbeat of negative noises from the government.

Starmer appears to be doing exactly the same (false) equivalence between Reform and the Green Party that has previously utterly enraged people who have switched their vote from Labour to Green. Spectacularly counterproductive.