No sooner than Starmer announces his resignation than Farage demands a general election and the BBC highlights Burnham’s lack of a mandate. Can anyone see a pattern here?

We can be grateful for Keir Starmer’s leadership and the work his government has done to put Britain back on a path to a brighter future. We wish Keir and his family all the best for what comes next, and remain forever grateful for what he has done for my party and for our country.

Cool story. Now, is Polanski going to put his big boy pants on at any point and run for a seat, or is this incessant trapping off all he's got? Currently, his opinion and words carry as much weight as Dave's do down the local pub.

I know a lot of people have a lot of opinions on Starmer. Some hate him, some love him. Much speculation on his future is framed as "picking a team". One thing's for sure, all that aside, if I was Starmer I'd definitely bow out from having to deal with this twat for even a single second longer! 👇

Makerfield By-Election Voting Intention: LAB: 49% (+6) RFM: 39% (-1) RES: 8% (+1) GRN: 2% (-1) LDM: 1% (-3) CON: 1% (-1) Via @survation.bsky.social, 26 May - 1 Jun. Changes w/ 18-22 May.

My favourite and most comedic moment of #QuestionTime was Kenyon saying Reform will "ban knives completely" Sure, it's that easy. Don't worry, we'll all just earn a Michelin star to prove our credentials so we can chop an onion at home. That's definitely the way forward. Absolute fuckwit.

#QuestionTime: Burnham (Labour): Tough gig. Running for local seat, wants to be PM, can't say he wants to be PM. Kenyon (Reform): Out of his depth, nothing new to say, standard Reform nonsense. Wakefield (Greens): Posh word soup. Winstanley (Con): Nervous word soup. Austin (LD): Why am I here?

Seriously. Fuck Nigel Farage.

So not even a week since this Burnham saga erupted fully All of them were riding high telling us the PM has to go,they were the only ones to save us. Blah blah Starmer is getting on with it and Streeting is a dead duck now,no one is backing him and Burnham is floundering under the weight of his lies

Brexit increasingly resembles a form of necropolitics through which the will of the living is outweighed by the will of the dead

I sincerely hope, since he seems to be so popular, that Burnham grows into the person the country needs. I remain, as ever, open and hopeful. But my initial impression is of a very talented local politician, out of his depth, employing the same political handbook that has ruined Labour. Sorry. 7/7

Has anyone actually tried to win this sort of area by being honest? Wouldn't that be real leadership? To say: "I know why you voted for this, but it's turned out badly and I think you know that. You now have a choice. Trust the next easy solution the same conmen offer you, or fix the damage." 4/

I really wanted this Burnham speech to leave me hopeful and was actively rooting for it. I found it deflating - to put it mildly. Where it needed to be brave and expansive, it was small and meek. Let me give one example that I found quite instructive, since Andy used it as a framing device. 1/

Those bold moves suddenly not quite so easy when you've got to put your money where your mouth is www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

"What went wrong"? This is many, many, many, many, many, many, many words to avoid saying "Brexit" Quite literally, a word that doesn't appear in the entire essay

Between this and “councils shouldn’t fly the Ukraine flag” the next election is IMV begging to be won by the Conservatives, but who instead want to kid themselves that “a fluke in Wandsworth” means that Kemi Badenoch is a good leader with a good strategy.

This is the step many miss in this debate. It doesn't have to be no-free-speech vs anything-goes. There are many activities that we regulate more strictly when commercial. Rules are mostly different between doing-X and doing-X-for-money. Remove financial incentives and grifters will soon peel away.

Reform are targeting individual journalists now it seems

Polanski is wholly contemptuous as a figure in public life. He should have resigned the instant the hypnosis misogyny emerged, but by now we are on, what, the fifth, tenth, hundredth serious lie. Too lazy to vote, too dishonest to tell the truth.

Who has the cards…

BREAKING: Reform UK leader Nigel Farage bought a £1.4 million property in cash shortly after receiving a £5m personal gift from billionaire donor Christopher Harborne, according to property records seen by Sky News.

Poor Wes Streeting. All that scheming and plotting, but alas, his 1% chance of winning a leadership challenge with Labour member votes is now a 0% chance. Angela Rayner says she has been cleared by HMRC over tax affairs www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Starmer dropkicks Badenough in the commons. Humour in adversity. And he has quite the way with a punchline.

This I think has a lot to it, not just in terms of UK politics, but in how a fixation on defeating the Far Right can lead to such a panicking overcorrection that it starts to undermine an ability to calmly develop policy strategies for all aspects of state and society bsky.app/profile/shuf...

Don't understand why the debate isn't focused on who can best use the massive majority to push through Labour policies and create change that people can feel. Why always having to couch policy on what's best to stop Reform, why not what's best for the country, Labour and the people...

😂 Sam Coates makes an ABSOLUTE TIT of himself. Calls PM photos "fake news" then finds out they're from the Press Association. If you make a spurious, inflammatory point you never made about any official photograph before, to pitch yourself as the only reliable source, at a minimum check your facts.

If there is one essential quality for any Labour PM - actually any global leader - in the current environment, it is courage. Both leadership challengers are currently hiding behind a battalion of unknowns, sent out to inflict hourly papercuts on their own PM. This seems to me to disqualify them.

Again ... one of the most bizarre stories of the local elections is how the Tories seem to think they're heading in the right direction under Kemi.

More than 100 Labour MPs have signed a statement saying this is “no time for a leadership contest” – as Keir Starmer told his cabinet he would not stand down while a formal leadership contest had not been triggered. The letter which was coordinated by backbenchers has been signed by 105 MPs so far.

Outside No.10, the ridiculous hog that is our media is rolling in its favourite muck. And it's hard for such apparent enjoyment of this setting not to add to a suspicion that it is now a default and deliberate destination. That in this clip we see Patient Zero in the UK's chronic contagion of chaos.

I know there’s a lot going on with the Labour Party, but it is all in the bounds of democratic politics. This however, paid collusion between the leaders of two political parties in the run up to election, if true, is a scandal of staggering propositions

I don't see anyone proposing any big changes. More tinkering around while ignoring the really difficult stuff - immigration, social care, local government funding, EU relations, share of government spending, the entire regulatory state...

The entire second world war, the Troubles and Covid have entered the chat

And when asked whether each potential Labour replacement to Starmer would actually be a good PM in their own right, the figures decline further Burnham: 26% say would be great/good Rayner: 13% Miliband: 10% Streeting: 8% Cooper: 8% Mahmood: 4% Lammy: 2% yougov.com/en-gb/articl...

Congrats to the Parliamentary Labour Party. Yet another strategic masterstroke from all involved.

To be clear, the Labour left only have themselves to blame here with their sycophancy over Andy Burnham

Blue Labour ministers and MPs have some front telling Starmer to go when their fingerprints are all over this Government's failures.

Two weeks is a long time in US politics. Seems I was two years and one presidency too late.

one immediate dramatic consequence of the Hungarian result: Magyar has promised to repair relations with the EU and unblock a €90bn EU loan for Ukraine

Péter Magyar victory speech: "We want to make a country where no one is persecuted because they think differently or because someone loves in a different way to others." He may not have campaigned as a liberal. But this is a huge change of direction and rhetoric from Orbán’s anti-LGBTQ+ crusade.

Uk government to cancel/review debts of unpaid carers www.gov.uk/government/n...

In absolutely chef’s kiss timing, Matthew Goodwin is due to speak at Orbán’s in-house propaganda group MCC *today* Badloss strikes again.

Hungarians celebrated the landslide defeat of Orban by singing "We Are the Champions" out in the streets

One way that Orbán sought to entrench power was adopting a new Hungarian constitution in 2011 that classified many policy areas as 'cardinal laws' that require a two-thirds majority vote to change. With almost 100% of votes counted, the Hungarian opposition has just achieved what seemed impossible.

How did Hungary's biggest cities vote? Budapest - Tisza+33 Debrecen - Tisza+23 Szeged - Tisza+39 Miskolc - Tisza+29 Pécs - Tisza+31 Győr - Tisza+25 Nyíregyháza - Tisza+31 Kecskemét - Tisza+25 Székesfehérvár - Tisza+22 Szombathely - Tisza+19 Érd - Tisza+26 Szolnok - Tisza+29 Tatabánya - Tisza+24

Hungary opposition delivers ‘regime change’ as Orbán suffers big defeat ft.trib.al/SkqTSwm

Iran state media: Iran says it will withdraw from the US ceasefire agreement if Israel continues to violate it by attacking Lebanon.