And to reiterate, Labour voters who have gone to Reform are very different from rest of Labour AND are only 8% of 2024 Lab voters. 20% have gone to DK, 20% to LDs and Greens. The choice seems obvious to me. Though I am transgressing on Blue Labour orthodoxy. 19/n

The arrogance of Seppos opining on which they do not know is unrivalled.

For fuck‘s sake.

Which is ironic given they purport to be the patriotic party of defence. They should *never* be allowed to forget how badly they’ve hollowed out the UK‘s interests - both in hard- and soft-power terms.

Might want a word with the Home Sec who‘s pushing a watered-down version.

I’ve now read this excellent piece and am even more baffled by Labour’s strategy. Not only have a very large amount of the currently lost voters not gone to Reform, they are highly unlikely to go to Reform in the future! Furthermore, previously lost voters to Reform etc (pre 2025) are long gone.

Alas Starmer‘s too scared of Reform and lacks the ability to do anything else.

Only six days after they announced the policy. Too little, too late.

Will Starmer stop shifting to the right and abandoning Labour values, members, and voters in his attempt to appease the far-right?

At least income tax, VAT, and NI* haven’t been raised. That’s what the electorate *really* care about and not crumbling public services. Starmer and Reeves‘ original sin was and is their utterly stupid and unrealistic tax pledges.

ID cards are a means to enable a standardised form of identity verification between citizens and the state. It's not an existential fight. The existential fight is over regulation and control of databases that exist whether ID cards are around or not.

“He prefers to be elected on our ideas, rather than fight for his own. In general, people prefer the original to the copy."* *Jean-Marie Le Pen, 1990 re. former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

"it is as if more than three years after invading Iraq in 2003, the US had only managed to capture 20 per cent of the country while sustaining 1 million casualties in the process. Would anyone view this as an American victory?" Why Ukraine is winning the war - on.ft.com/3VCYndW @financialtimes.com

Funny that after Starmer attempts to appease the far-right, takes far too long to challenge them, and takes the base and membership for granted.

Ironic given his policy of attempting to appease Reform voters …

Ian flirts with the conspiratorial nonsense that prevents reasonable debate about ID cards in the UK. Said, with might I add, the confidence of a middle-aged white man that’s not experienced life as a migrant in the UK, or indeed elsewhere. Rob puts it well here: bsky.app/profile/robf...

As ever, we’re far behind because our national debate seems incapable of moving on from a combination of the Blair neuroses of the mid-2000s and some absurd conceptions of unique English liberties from the mid 1640s.

This is such an under explored argument. A contributing factor to the Windrush scandal was a lack of free way to establish a persons identity and legal status. Voter ID was so bad because of a lack of a universal free way to establish ID. Universal ID can be a protection.

“A Farage government will use it against immigrants and marginalised groups.” They might, yes, but they might also exploit the *lack* of universal id to persecute such groups (as has already happened in US). Having a universal credential to prove your rights can be a * protectjon* against this.

On Saturday the far-right marched in London. Starmer said nothing. On Monday, Farage called for all permanent residents to be stripped of their ILR and either forced onto temporary visas or deported. Starmer said nothing. Today, Starmer says this. A morally-bankrupt egoist bot fit for power.

“Much of the technical infrastructure to actually build such a system already exists. We just need to use it for this new purpose.” Liberal concerns about a digital ID system ushering in new centralised databases completely misunderstands modern governance and are about 50 years too late.

If a misrepresented comment by Burnham, like Reeves showing emotion in the Commons, can* have an affect on govt borrowing costs, maybe he's got a point...

Sir Keir: -glitches in red lines-

Another one of the coalition’s follies bites the dust.

Burnham has a point, though. It’s unacceptable that a democratically-elected government can hide behind the bond markets instead of implementing policy. It’s much like the OBR: a recipe for stasis, austerity, and decline.

The Treasury simply aren’t serious about growth outside the South East. An unserious department in need of being split.

Nailed.

“People will see how useless he is” … his mayoral record may disagree. Shitting on a popular Labour figure who has delivered in local government is an odd choice for No 10 to make.

"You don’t fight the politics of violence by quibbling with the details. You stamp it into a million pieces! You draw a f*cking line!" If Keir Starmer won’t even make a moral case against deporting our friends and neighbours, then what is the point of him?

Farage is leaving goal after goal for Labour to exploit ... alas, not.

Just watch Starmer make the same mistake.

Labour - led by a human rights lawyer - should be tearing this apart. Alas, Starmer says nothing until Thursday at the earliest.

This is the consequence of Starmer’s hitherto reluctance to challenge Reform and their morally-abhorrent nonsense. His cowardice and political stupidity has contributed to Reform thinking they can propose a policy as ghastly as abolishing ILR for those who already possess it.

While it’s good that Starmer is *finally* going to say something, it’s ridiculous that it’s taking him - at best - four days to meaningfully challenge Farage’s policy to deprive hundreds of thousands of their immigration status and break up communities and families with deportations. Do better.

It would just wrong, indecent + unBritish to break promises made to people about their permanent right to feel at home. Govts could change future rules for the newest arrivals. Its just not fair to threaten families that they could now be deported just because a new govt has no sense of what's fair

Sir Keir: *glitches in anti-politics* So long as Starmer refuses to engage with retail politics, he simply isn’t going to be able to deal with Reform other than trying to appease them.

Reform's ‘plan’ to revoke the legal status of millions of UK residents is morally abhorrent & economic madness The public believe in fairness & mutual respect, not this cruel Trumpian policy that would leave us all poorer. We are not America - we must resist this dangerous turn in British politics.

This should be an easy “policy” to reject on moral grounds alone. Yet, Starmer *still* fails. There’s no appeasing this extreme nonsense, yet Starmer and McSweeney still try.

My new piece in @the-independent.com on the UK's tech prosperity deal: The deal does not only leave the UK even more dependent on US tech companies, it also once again shows how out of step the country is with tech sovereignty debates in the rest of Europe. www.independent.co.uk/voices/starm...

That requires Starmer to have a backbone and get involved in raw politics … which he proudly says he doesn’t do. The wrong leader at the worst possible time.

Retrospectively removing indefinite leave to remain would be immoral and economically damaging. It would tear families apart. Attacking it as ‘potentially illegal’ is completely beside the point. Argue with the (awful) idea. Don’t try ’well, actually you can’t do that’.

Sie Keir: *glitches*

I wrote about the most frightening and dangerous trend in Britain www.newstatesman.com/comment/2025...

The policy of appeasing the far-right has been a roaring success. Well done Starmer. Well done.

Yet more shameful spinelessness from Starmer.

The bond markets are twitchy because of Starmer and Reeves’ Gordon knot. New leadership without the baggage, self-imposed policy mistakes, *and an actual vision for the country beyond “delivery”* would be far better than Starmer and his failed strategy. “It’s a distraction” is risible nonsense.

The majority will save him!

The task required of Starmer to turn this around is well beyond his ability. Can this be turned around in 4 years? Yes. Can Starmer do it? No.

Well done, Starmer.

Seems like something he should have said on Saturday, not Tuesday…