If you had to explain the Reform phenomena to anyone out of the loop, you could distill it to “10 years ago some people conned lots of voters to vote against their own interests and now they are doing it again”. Reform are filling the gaping chasm left by Starmer’s bad choices, but it is this simple

ITV News just vox-popped an older northern woman who said that she had switched from Labour to Reform because she was angry that illegal migrants were “getting hotels when British people can’t get hotels”. At some point Labour surely just has to say these people are completely politically illiterate

More likely to vote Reform if; - older - earn less - lower social grade - lower education level - pay less attention Largely people who have already done damage (Brexit voters) or who stand to lose the most from a Reform govt. To an extent, I’m honestly beyond caring yougov.com/en-gb/articl...

The end of two party politics in the UK is a good thing. The end of it whilst retaining FPTP is very bad

Members of the last government, Nadine Dorries and Nadhim Zahawi, are going on telly to tell us how mainstream politics have failed. Expect former home secretary Suella Braverman to pop up at any moment to tell us how the immigration policy of the last government failed.

Top tip: demonstrate how excellent your judgment is by voting for the Conservatives and Brexit for the last 16 years, but now switch to Reform 👍🏻

I think it might be time to consign ‘contempt for the conmen, compassion for the conned’ to the dustbin of history. But none of the alternatives are very attractive…

I’m sure I’ll wake up to the news of loads of new Reform councillors tomorrow. Well good luck to them. You get what you vote for. Last year Worcestershire voted for a Reform council & a lot of new councillors either didn’t show up, seemed incompetent or were too interested in in-fighting. Its a mess

Forest shouldn’t be disappointed. Beaten by a better team and had a good run in a competition they didn’t qualify for.

Trump brags that he's the "only president to take a cognitive test." Any guess as to why that is?

Politician who personally earns over £1M a year, claims “non-political”, unconditional £5M person gift is the “only way” he can pay for his security…..pull the other one. Such obvious nonsense

This can't, or shouldn't, be even remotely good enough, and surely wouldn't be accepted as such for any other party leader. Amongst many, many other things, it can't have been both 'unconditional' *and* 'to pay for my security'. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

One of the long-term strategic failures of Labour is not having indelibly tied the disappointments of Brexit to Nigel Farage. He has incurred virtually no political cost for its failure to deliver the change and agency people were promised.

Farage has assessed - perhaps correctly - that nativism and NIMBYism are the ideological core of the British right. The strategy that logically follows - "concentration camps, but not where you live" - would be comical if it didn't entail concentration camps.

A brilliant first 25-30 minutes today, but since then, and especially the whole of the second half, we’ve been utterly pathetic. It shouldn’t overshadow what’s been a great season, but that today was terrible #dcfc #dcfcfans

So Farage “technically” didn’t break any rules. Cool. Let’s not worry about him being bought and paid for, let’s just focus on those technicalities. A personal donation of £5M?! Seriously

Imagine how much his education cost

omg the zoom in is brutal

Even when admitting to receiving a £5M personal gift, it’s true to form that Farage still tries to present himself as a victim

It should not be forgotten that Nigel Farage planned to skip the General Election in 2024, because it was more important to get Donald Trump elected in the United States. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

we are told that it’s Europe that has a problem with free speech

It’s entirely believable that Trump has stopped all US government wind projects, due to protracted planning disputes around wind power off the shore of his Scottish golf courses. Just mad someone can avenge their own personal grievances in this way youtube.com/shorts/iTyVw...

We live in the most juvenile of times www.thetimes.com/uk/law/artic...

Iranian defies odds to defeat Trump.

Something undeniably hilarious about seeing a hedge fund shut down due to the fact they’ve failed to fully understand the markets in which they operate. Good riddance

There are deranged lunatics on all platforms. The difference is X is owned by one.

How many times I’ve watched that Banel goal replay #dcfc #dcfcfans

The rewriting of history carries on. It was the 2016 Brexit referendum that has crowded out more important issues from British political life. The single biggest cost of Brexit is its opportunity cost: all the things that could’ve happened between 2016-24. But sure, let’s talk about “SW1 pathology”.

Brexit benefits Income per capita in Poland forecast to overtake the UK

Such a strange hill to die on this. Very telling of the culture of the White House. If I interviewed someone who said this, they’d be rejected on the spot. And yet, some of the most powerful men in the world just say it like it’s inconsequential and everyone should just nod along

Turns out I was giving Polanski too much credit on Ukraine. What the fuck is he talking about here? Putin has an ICC warrant for the industrial kidnapping of tens of thousands of Ukrainian kids & rewarded the soldiers who massacred civillians Bucha with medals for their ‘bravery’

And that's enough Twitter for now

Leicester City going from the Premier League (03/04) to League 1 (08/09) then back up to the Premier League (14/15), winning the league (15/16), winning the FA Cup (20/21) then going back to League 1 (26/27) again all in just over 20 years is pretty mad

While I am firm in my belief Starmer should go, and soon, isn’t it weird we’ve got sucked into a side argument over the process for a security clearance for Mandelson, the turning down of which had nothing to do with Epstein? It’s the British political class at its worst, I think.

This morning I’ve seen Olly Robbins’s appearance before the select committee described as ‘box office’, while a commentator flagged up another key political moment with the words ‘bring the popcorn’. That’s one of our main problems right there.

Resolution has applied my model to data up to 2025. As the chart shows, we can be less confident as time goes on. But firm-level evidence from Bloom et al shows a 6% loss. I think it's time to retire the OBR's 4%, which was a simple average of pre-Brexit forecasts.

When the story takes on this tone and momentum, it’s all over. For God’s sake just get it over with and give someone else a chance to do a better job

We really are back to grubby tittle tattle stuff with this whole Mandelson debacle. I’ve got no sympathy for Starmer - this was surely all quite predictable - but this is all very frustrating, so much time, energy and capital wasted on things that don’t impact normal people’s lives in the slightest

Does he think there’s a war scoreboard where they tally up how much war was done that day?

Think this will be the end of Starmer, it’s way too far gone now. But useful to remember, no one in power in the US has faced any consequences over their relationship with Epstein & many are implicated in documents. Here it will do for a Royal and a PM. The US is a morality free bin-fire of a place

If ever you wanted an example of a politician using the legitimate, serious and growing grievance of antisemitism for a cynical pre-election political win, it it this. "Antisemitism is at odds with British values but the rot is spreading with Keir Starmer’s Labour asleep at the wheel" hmm

If you look at the EFL Championship Team of the Season, it does sort of show how average the league is this year. It’s still hugely enjoyable and competitive from a fans POV, but it feels like the quality gap vs the Premier League is huge now and is growing faster than ever

Explanation and apology for anyone who follows me for like anything normal people would care about.

Reform is a party full of ex-Conservative councillors, MPs, members, voters and donors - yet without a hint of irony they are going to spend the next 2-3 years telling us about how awful the Conservatives have been since 2010

Absolutely brilliant for Coventry fans, they’ve really been through it the last 20+ years. Happy for Lampard as well, a bit of redemption for him

"The most important charecteristic a leader needs is judgement. On an unrelated note, I needed the FCDO to tell me Peter Mendelson was a bit dodgy and when they allegedly only did so 27 times and without recourse to an explanatory puppet show, I asked no follow up questions whatsoever."

Does anyone in this government know anything anymore

The 1979 to 1997 Conservative government had Norman Fowler, who succeeded in every department he was at in implementing successful and enduring rightwing policies. The 2010 to 2024 one had Chris Grayling, who failed at every department, but whose legacy is sadly, also enduring.

Every reference to 'welfare' ever should have 'including pensions' or 'excluding pensions' in parentheses next to the word. All interviewers/articles should clarify at first use whether the word includes or excludes. Interviews should be stopped if unclear. Because frankly it's getting tedious.

So Trump either knew the image is depicting him as Jesus and now he’s lying. Or he genuinely thought it showed him as a Doctor, which makes him a total idiot. Cool. Both utterly absurd, so I don’t think it really matters which is actually true