@pollytoynbee.bsky.social argues that PM Keir Starmer especially needed to leave No. 10 because he seemed unable to halt or reverse Farage’s quick scary rise in recent elections, and keep him from becoming an unusually hateful and incompetent Prime Minister. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This is remarkable.

Thank you @pollytoynbee.bsky.social for your positive piece about the possible new government. You are surely right about being radical as the only way to restore the country and keep Farage from power. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Today's Briefing: Polly Toynbee @pollytoynbee.bsky.social | Karen Greenberg | Timi Iwayemi soundcloud.com/user-8304426...

For Fathers' Day, Keir Starmer posts a photo of his own father, who died in 2018, and a non-political message. The replies are a torrent of vitriol & cruelty, all with hundreds of Likes. We complain a lot about the quality of leadership, but there's a huge problem with the way we treat politicians

This is the perfect Kemi Badenoch line: obviously crazy, coarsens our politics and the kind of thing that collapses if she ever put herself somewhere she might face a gentle follow-up question. What does she think the Gestapo *did*?

Puzzling: the right who want "freedom" to subject kids to extremist danger online of all kinds, esp pornography, don't object to film classifications by age, and get outraged at any gay books in school libraries, Section 28 etc "Free" from regulation to give babies arsenic and lead infused toys?

In the weapons V welfare debate @pollytoynbee.bsky.social wonders why the right never ask about the pension triple lock (the big DWP💰escalator) or defence procurement waste, just cuts which will push children & the poor deeper into poverty #Defence #G7 #r4today www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

'Even those doubting Andy Burnham as PM have no choice but to pray that his unique popularity, warmth and principled clarity will triumph against Faragism' @pollytoynbee.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

He’s been wanting boots on the ground in Iran since the Hostage Crisis was ongoing—there’s a 1980 interview on YT—but he specifically named Kharg Island when speaking with @pollytoynbee.bsky.social in 1988—he believes in the Short Victorious War bc Manliness www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... Quite a lot of blue sky here from @pollytoynbee.bsky.social

These days Blair's opinions just seem to reflect those of his paymasters, especially Larry Ellison 🤮 Talking policy is great in opposition, but shouldn't governments be judged on delivery? 🤷 fullfact.org/government-t...

For me it was Alan Milburn and not Tony Blair who cleared the air for serious debate of policies to tackle the mountain of problems facing the country. He talk about something really important. @pollytoynbee.bsky.social your article has left me exhilarated www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Sorry—no one tricked him, Trump has been jonesing for this war since the Hostage Crisis, as he has stated in interviews since Oct 1980. In 1988 he even stated explicitly to @pollytoynbee.bsky.social he would conquer them to take the oil at Kharg Island if POTUS: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

And then in 1988, he went into even more detail about why he would invade Iran if he were president, to take the oil at Kharg Island & make the world respect us again—a prescient interview with @pollytoynbee.bsky.social republished before his first inauguration: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Note this: Farage wins local elections, real danger of him becoming next PM - Bond markets seemed cool with that. Slight suggestion Labour might move a bit leftwards after Starmer and bond markets shoot up to worst since 1998. Who are they, exactly?

So much good has been done by this government and no one has noticed. Farage is seen as the best potential Prime Minister with zero evidence. I fail to understand! @pollytoynbee.bsky.social your article sets out what else must be done and I agree.

'Labour has to confront what voters said deafeningly in the local elections: not Labour and, crushingly, not Keir Starmer' @pollytoynbee.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

'Astounding and terrifying story' @pollytoynbee.bsky.social It's publication day for #GhostsOfIronMountain by @philtinline.bsky.social#GhostsOfIronMountainon how America ended up trapped in a nightmare of conspiracy theories. Out now: https://geni.us/GOIMPBorgsoc

Note this: Farage wins local elections, real danger of him becoming next PM - Bond markets seemed cool with that. Slight suggestion Labour might move a bit leftwards after Starmer and bond markets shoot up to worst since 1998. Who are they, exactly?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... Never a truer word said. In this occasion it’s @pollytoynbee.bsky.social in @theguardian.com

She's right. 'The UK’s non-constitution with vast Henry VIII powers would give Farage fewer checks & balances than Trump. His attempt to justify a £5m personal gift suggests this could lead to kleptocracy. There are no guardrails.' via @pollytoynbee.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The conclusion "Reform won the seat from Lab therefore biggest vote swing is Lab to Reform" does not follow from this pattern. There are multiple vote flows here: Lab to Grn, Lab to abstain, Lab to Ref, Con to Ref, abstain to Ref...Lab to Ref is only one part of this, not typically the largest

"Of the editorials and opinion pieces we flagged at the Telegraph, Mail, Express and Sun, between 39% and 60% included at least three misleading statements."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... Do great good for minimal effort: join the latest great medical research cohort, Our Future Health, as I urge today. Great that UKBiobank lost virtually no participants after its data was briefly breached. Sign up today, good people.

A pity @pollytoynbee.bsky.social doesn’t still work for BBC News - they really need to give more energy to policy & strategy, less to battles between political personalities & Westminster gossip, her focus in today’s column below⬇️ #bbcnews #r4today #bbclaurak #ChrisMason #bbcqt

Kinnock: “Growing numbers want greater closeness with Europe: not out of sentiment, but out of hard-headed self-interest." Read the piece in The Observer here: https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/the-british-people-know-brexit-has-failed-them-they-also-know-how-to-fix-it-clone-1

‘They’re all the same!’ Has angry anti-politics made leadership impossible? It’s a good question posed here by @pollytoynbee.bsky.social.

My only sadness is that not enough people will read your common sense appraisal of the welfare/defence debate. @pollytoynbee.bsky.social I have argued before that from the Attlee government onwards our attachment to a nuclear deterrent was and is beyond our means www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Enjoy this perceptive Telegraph prediction! www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04...

This 1988 interview by @pollytoynbee.bsky.social is shockingly prophetic—not just the Iran & specifically Kharg Island bits, but her closing question www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

💷"What’s needed is a ceiling on donations, such as other countries impose." Insightful analysis from @pollytoynbee.bsky.social in the @theguardian.com last week on why bolder action is needed to clean up politics and end big money corrupting our democracy. More below⤵

This ⬇️ Paul Nowak @tuc.org.uk: “This anti-worker agenda is massively out of step with the British public... “Farage likes to claim he’s taking on the elites. But the reality is he wants to hand more power to vested interests and his wealthy corporate backers."

GB News must be held accountable. "In our 'What’s-wrong-with-this-country?' soul-searching, we ignore our distorting media ownership as if it were just British weather. Living forever in its shadow, we have shrugged at this democracy-warp, even after it inflicted Brexit’s lethal harm."

Humanists UK called out the fable that christianity is quietly reviving in the UK: now YouGov and the Bible Society confess their error. As all evidence shows, the church continures its decline in all age groups. humanists.uk/2026/03/26/b...

The Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, Washington DC

@pollytoynbee.bsky.social thank you for yet again shining a light into darkness, this time the trap that the most deprived infants fall into through no fault of their own. This damages them, their parents but also society as a whole. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I really hope @pollytoynbee.bsky.social is right on this one. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... See next post for why I fear she might not be. 1/2

In her letter to the health secretary, Casey says dementia should be regarded not as “an inevitable part of ageing” but as “a clinical matter”, a disease – its sufferers treated as patients “with neurological, health conditions” @pollytoynbee.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

‘A decent care service needs to pay care staff NHS rates with NHS-style careers.’ This would help solve recruitment and offer meaningful jobs to some of the many NEET. @pollytoynbee.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... All friends of public broadcasting: Before March 10th, hurry to answer the DCMS questionaire on the future of the BBC, as it comes up for Charter renewal. Find it here:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... All friends of public broadcasting: Before March 10th, hurry to answer the DCMS questionaire on the future of the BBC, as it comes up for Charter renewal. Find it here:

Inequality in Britain is rampant, writes @pollytoynbee.bsky.social, and has become so with the help of our electoral system. Our new research paper, 'Lifting the Lid', links our fragmenting voting system to mass regional deprivation, and regional deprivation to the all-powerful nature of FPTP.

🇪🇺 “The truth is that the public have just sort of shrugged their shoulders and said, well, yeah, get on with it,” Emily Thornberry MP said. 👏 Thornberry is right. The public are hugely supportive of the government negotiating closer ties with the EU.

Good article by @pollytoynbee.bsky.social It used to be said that the one major advantage of the UK's First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system was that it keeps the extremists out. That's clearly no longer true. We need proportional representation (preferably STV) for the next General Election!

I have seen the scale of the mountain Labour has to climb in Gorton and Denton – but also the way it can do it | Polly Toynbee

Abandon pointless+expensive council re-disorganisation. Towns like Reading, Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter, Ipswich etc swallowed into counties, losing their identity. Councillors are backbone of fragile civic life:75,000 in 1965, only 14,000 after this. Wasn't in manifesto, doesn't save money, so why?

We’re super excited to announce a new Editorial Board for @newhumanist.bsky.social, bringing together some of the UK’s most prominent thinkers in science, politics, the arts, and philosophy. A bright future for humanist publishing 🧵 humanists.uk/2026/02/11/l...