Quite. We have lost more than 1% GDP in fuel duty over last 20 years. Every chancellor for 15 years has promised at least to maintain real value of duty. Not one has done so. And now this govt backs down at first sign of trouble. Expensive & poorly targeted

Channel 4 News also led with this, and then played it again in the longer report. I think it's less a party bias than a kind of cultural bias towards framing such stories as "ordinary voter bravely speaks truth to elite politician", rather than "rude and arrogant man shouts over woman".

Horse, meet stable door.

Choose your fighter. www.ft.com/content/1a3d... economist.com/leaders/2026...

You may call it “not mincing his words” but Stuart Rose was getting a tad hysterical

ZELENSKYY: Our team was in communication with Britain today. Issue of sanctions is always very sensitive. We've conveyed our signals regarding this to London. Sanctions are what most effectively impact Russia, both our long-range capabilities and restrictions from our partners.

What a complicated world.

“However, the party would not confirm if it would take into account posts shared on Pierce’s Instagram account, found by The Times, when making its final decision” www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

Romance, bromance and the realities of geo-politics. My take on Vladimir Putin's visit to China.

Bastards www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

Lisa Nandy is on a successful campaign to make Nadine Dorries look like a thoughtful and hard working minister.

On Russian oil licenses, Chris Bryant is manfully explaining in the Commons that everyone has got it wrong. "We are not suspending any sanctions." He says *new* sanctions announced yesterday are being phased in, which is why there are now licenses on products that were previously unsanctioned.

To put it another. We already had a big problem in 2016 and then Brexit meant we had two big problems.

ZELENSKIY STATES UKRAINE HAS ALERTED BRITAIN ABOUT SANCTIONS AND HOPES TO TALK ABOUT IT THIS WEEK.

We are going to invade other countries to drive out foreign encroachment. Sir, um …

And on that people are much more likely to say that the job of Prime Minister is a very hard job compared to the Mayor of Greater Manchester, though a majority think that is at least quite difficult. I'm keen to meet the 5% who think being PM is quite or very easy.

Bit more on Burnham polling, here's the word cloud on how people would describe Burnham. Ambitious is in the middle (and i suspect how that ambition is received in Makerfield will determine a lot), but also good, hopeful, northern, popular Not bad compared to other's word clouds

Trump: "I'm right now at 99% in Israel. I could run for prime minister, so maybe after I do this, I'll go to Israel and run for prime minister."

Where does a Burnham led Labour gain votes from, the biggest group who switch are those currently voting Green, but also those who have moved from Labour to Don't know - also disillusioned progressives.

New hypothetical polling with Burnham as leader turns a 7 point lead for Reform UK into a 3 point lead for Labour. Obviously hypotheticals are just that and things change when they become reality (see Your Party), but the size of the shift is striking.

Is Tommy Robinson the most influential British political figure in the minds of MAGA? “It remains extraordinary how pickled the brains of the Republican Party have become.”

This show needs to be shut down right now - it shouldn't be able to survive this. And more broadly, I hope it signals the beginning of the end of shows where people are thrown together in the hope that they'll shag each other and then have dramas. It's a shit, exploitative model that needs to die

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

A lot of commentary on here and indeed in the press is a bit like 'doesn't the Labour party understand their options for getting out of this burning building all carry risks?' No kidding, but have you seen that the building is on fire?

(NB when I say it's a "good question" I mean purely in a PMQs sense. Badenoch's north sea nonsense remains nonsense in policy terms.)

"We had a plan to close the loopholes in the sanctions regime which Putin has been exploiting. Now we've decided to leave those loopholes open for longer, but we promise we definitely will close them eventually. Slava Ukraini!"

The UK government has apologised for its handling of the Russian oil products sanctions, Bloomberg reports. Trade minister Chris Bryant says it was clumsily handled and suggests it was a cock-up. He promises that the UK will implement sanctions on Russian oil product “as soon as possible”.

Asked if Kemi Badenoch had changed her view on last weekend’s Tommy Robinson-led far right march and whether it was OK in the light of some of the racist/antisemitic banners on it, her spokesperson described the march as being “pro British” rather than explicitly seeking to generate hate.

Given 73% support being in the EU or single market they also, by definition, support a different immigration policy.

You saw this when the US did the same thing after the Strait of Hormuz, there are still Russian entities that you don't want to pay and also if you mix Russian oil in with your wider stocks then the EU will behave as if it's all potentially Russian oil. It ends up staying unused.

Just as a note, if the UK does relax sanctions at the same time as the EU upholds them, the nature of the oil market and how transit is done does mean that Russian oil will largely remain inaccessible but we have still shown a lack of courage.

I definitely lean towards the interpretation that a lot of members don’t actually realise what the current immigration policy is, given the other responses say that they want a more left-wing leadership and to rejoin the EU

Funny moment here in Leeds when the chair asks everyone in the room to put their hands up if they are optimistic about their future, and Reeves does so only belatedly

The UK’s reputation for transactionalism, lack of solidarity, unwillingness to coordinate, and opportunistic self-interest continues unabated.

"get a pan of gravy on I'll be back in an hour"

There is, in fairness, a difference. Still not a great look especially when the experts in the article argue that it won’t work anyway.

If you read this closely, it seems to me as if the British Government is not *easing existing sanctions on Russia* but that they are *bringing in less stringent new sanctions than previously decided*. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Unhappy, eagle wings and beak, chicken brain, Weep (it is frequent in human affairs), weep for the terrible magnificence of the means. The ridiculous incompetence of the reasons, the bloody and shabby Pathos of the result.

Robinson Jeffers: Unhappy country, what wings you have! Even here, Nothing important to protect, and ocean-far from the nearest enemy, what a cloud Of bombers amazes the coast mountain, what a hornet-swarm of fighters, And day and night the guns practicing.

"Manchesterism" should only by said by those who would also say "Brumification" with a straight face.

My 82 year old aunt regularly asks for the name of the band her grandson fronts. I need to remember the collective white lie we all say, that the name is "The Flowerpots". (it's actually "Rectal Haemorrhage")

God, Keir is going to be furious about Russian oil when he sobers up from Arsenal's win.

SIGN OF THE DAY…

I honestly think that someone with a university education who claims to respect the voters is trying to say that if it wasn't for Ed Miliband not giving drilling licenses last week we would be swimming in jet fuel right now.

The easing of sanctions is turning quite into a public image disaster for the UK government. Others will have to judge the technicalities, but this looks like the FCDO is already trying to row back.

This is what failing to govern looks like. An effective government would have been talking from early March about possible consequences; leading a public conversation that isn’t sensationalist about risks and trade offs and possible phased measures at certain signposts. Instead crickets then panic.

I don't really understand the passing the buck here - the decision was formally made by the Secretary of State for Business and Trade and if it wasn't just a departmental decision then it falls to the PM. Trying to blame DESNZ or the Foreign Office is just pathetic.

I've always been pretty sympathetic to the current government, despite everything, but between subsidising Putin and floating rent controls and supermarket price controls, it really feels like it has lost its mind.

Now we're going into random Kemi rant mode. It's let Starmer off the hook entirely.