They’re just perpetuating this myth that “someone else will pay” which is just as toxic and dishonest as the “it’s all someone else’s fault” that Reform trots out…

How much are they expecting this wealth tax to raise to pay for all this?

This guy is definitely qualified to tell the proles that their assigned place is the factory assembly line and nowhere else.

The murder rate in London is now the lowest in decades, perhaps centuries. (The Times)

Any political system that asserts what humans should do without ever engaging with how humans are is a recipe for tyranny and brutality.

"The government are now doing what I want them to do. Disgraceful! let's vote them out of office and bring in someone who will do NONE of the things I want them to do ".

There's doubtless other stuff I've missed/forgotten (and other areas, such as SEND, which need attention outside the Budget process). All this would require substantial tax rises. But it would at least cut across the most fatal dynamic for the government *and social democracy* - "pay more, get less"

Politicians can get away with lying to people for quite a while about a lot of different subjects, but they have never been able to get away with lying to them about how much things cost.

So many people complain about Starmer saying "working people" but Mamdani and AOC do it a lot.

It's bizarre the government doesn't take this really obvious, incredibly easy and entirely pain free option that comes with absolutely no downsides whatsoever. Or something.

And people say Bluesky is a kinder, gentler place.

Why doesn't the government focus on delivery say Bluesky bods ignoring the widely praised curriculum review just released by Philipson's dept to complain about her not commenting on US politics?

Feel like I'm going insane. Mamdani is charismatic and a good performer, including on social media, but there aren't many more deeper lessons that can be learned from his campaign that can be applied to (a) broader US politics (b) UK politics!

Reform UK put out this graphic during the local elections. Over 5 years = 25% according to their own graphic. They have announced they will raise it by this over 5 years: Kent: 25% Durham: 25% Warwickshire: 25% Worcestershire: 25% Leicestershire: 25% Lincolnshire: 25% Average: ⬆️ 25%

Announcing your ambitions to replace the Leader isn't exactly the best way to influence that Leader.....

Interesting.

I don't resent poor people who use food stamps to buy another soft drink. I resent rich people who take away the funds for food stamps to buy another yacht.

The last 24 hours have shown us what Britain is truly up against: a small phalanx of hatemongers who despise Britain so much they want to drag it down into the same filth they live in.

I mean all of them - Johnson, Gove, Hannan, Carswell, Farage etc etc - are genuinely disgusting people. Their claim I might share any cultural, political, social or moral values with them just because I am white and British revolts me. I do not.

The fundamental problem: 58% of voters want public spending maintained or increased. 67% want taxes to stay at their current level or be cut. In reality, it’s a binary choice. Taxes go up, or spending is cut. That’s it.

I honestly can't believe I read a piece from a left leaning columnist/journalist on here suggesting part of the answer is sacking civil servants and cutting benefits. Oh and the wealth tax, obvs. What the actual? How much is that netting, you lad? It's ridiculous

Pass it on.

I keep being told spending cuts are easy. Honest proposals such as those recently outlined by Policy Exchange show they are not My column www.ft.com/content/f086...

Positive reaction to the Govt's new Carbon Budget / net zero plan from green groups so far Green Alliance think tank: "[It] shows real leadership. It rightly positions Britain at the forefront of the clean technology revolution that will lower bills, create new jobs and protect UK energy security."

Can't say it better than this.

What I hate about this glib unanalysis is people like Sultana and Corbyn think they deserve a medal for saying “on the whole, peace is better than war” as if that’s anything other than avoiding the question. And as if we woke up on that morning in February, heard the news from Kyiv and went “hurray”

Replacing my office chair with a broken toilet from a skip, to own the libs

There is a serious, principled case for a codified constitution, for some of the reasons George sets out. But botching together a constitution to stop Farage - a constitution that could not command widespread support and that was widely seen as rigged - would deepen our problems, not resolve them.🧵

... as annoying as that dichotomy is however - it provided Farage ample space in this case to dodge on the thorny question of exactly how you do ICE without being monstrous. He chose not to use that space because he thinks you crave to unleash the monsters on your neighbors. Fuck that guy.

Katie Lam’s comments stink of desperation. This crass racism used to mean she’d be kicked out of the Tories but not now. The Conservative Party seem to be falling all over themselves to chase the tail of Tommy - two names - Robinson. It’s becoming like the BNP in a twin set & pearls.

We are living through one of the costs of Brexit; lack of institutional restraint leaves your laws prey to lunatic far right populism, in the form of both Reform and Tory policies on mass deportation of legal residents.

The idea that the left will be able to get absolutely everything it wants *and* stop fascism at the next GE is completely childish and puerile. The latter is more important, and compromise with reality and the electorate isn’t a failure when the stakes are so high

@portraitinflesh.bsky.social One for your collection of how the Left does activism badly. Everything is here in this post. The condescension off the scale.....

People have lost all understanding of the word performative. MLK Jr was performing. Gandhi was performing. The Black Panthers were performing. The suffragettes as well. Did those movements include other things, yes, but a lot of that was performative as well.

Yes, let's encourage people to take action by sneering at them.

In 1985 Thatcher set up a group of senior cabinet ministers to respond to the problem of football hooliganism and chaired the first meeting herself. She was not of the view it was "good-natured fun."

Gent in salmon, "All the public services are struggling, we all want them to work, we need them to work, and nobody wants to pay for them" "That debate has to get real"

The ultimate aim of almost everyone is managing their own image: trying to ensure they are publicly perceived as being on the correct side, siding against the right people and with the right people, and facts and language just become a tool in that performance.

Pretty obvious who you should vote for if your priority is (as it should be) to keep out Refuk.

Fantasy politics for a fantasy age, like pretending 100k is a breadline wage. I think that now the war time generation have died off there's no 'reality' in our politics anymore. People don't know what they want, but they want it now and a lot of it, everyone wants to be an 'influencer'

The appeal of Polanski is that he just agrees with all those left-liberal priors. He doesn't have the burden of having to implement policy, nor does he have to hold together a broad coalition of voters. He can just tell his bit of the electorate that they're right about everything.

We just went through that where I live. We had a white Christian nationalist take over of city government. Beside the corruption they did a horrible job of running things. They lost in a landslide to a guy who said “I will fix what these idiots broke.”

This strikes me as a pretty major Brexit shift from Starmer. Perhaps the beginning of 'Brexit is sh1t and has caused real economic damage'.

Everything Trump is doing now is a preamble for his regime's real goal: to invoke the Insurrection Act. I don’t want to unduly alarm you, but you need to be aware of this imminent danger. Let me explain what’s going on.

Coverage of Badenoch's speech was one of the worst examples ever of Westminster Brain and Lobbythink. A litany of nonsense applauded by a policy elite that can't even think three moves ahead. (1/3)

If the government really wants to scrap degrees which deliver no value to the UK and indeed have led to £ billions in damage to the economy and culture of the UK then it just needs to scrap the Oxford PPE degree and arrest everyone who has taken it.

100% this.

Says it all.

All the flak Starmer has had about his approach to Trump and basically every Western leader who has not had a direct falling out with him has ended up doing exactly the same.