Christopher Rains

Passionate about life. Love watching and participating in motor sport, photography, music, travel, life, living abroad, Brussels...

[Andy Burnham @andyburnham]

We can't carry on as we are.

Politics as usual has taken Britain backwards, and more of the same won't get us where we need to be.

Today, I'll set out a different path for our country.

That means having an honest conversation about the things we've ignored for too long, from fixing social care and tackling youth unemployment to giving people more control over energy, water and housing.

Hope comes from honesty.

It comes from saying the things politicians usually avoid, being straight about the challenges we face, and having the courage to fix them.

That's exactly what I will do.

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

BBC News spent Sunday referring to Jim Ratcliffe as one of Britain's richest men, except, he's an immigrant in Monaco, having moved there to avoid paying £4 billion in tax.

They screen him complaining about those on benefits, even though he grew up in a council house, went to state school, had free university education, and has taken hundreds of millions in public state support from the UK, French and German governments.

They screen him talking about broken Britain which is poor, but don't mention that he is a Brexiter, and Brexit has made the country poorer.

Our national broadcaster should have spent the day providing context to his criticisms, instead they wrapped it in a bow, pushed it out, to stoke further division in society.

I remember when the BBC was so much better than this, and I hope one day it will return to having better standards, than to simply churn out divisive nonsense masquerading as news and analysis.

[John Sweeney @johnsweeneyroar]

Watch this.

[Christopher Rains @C_M_Rains]

@ronmanagernottm Me too 🫣

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Imagine if the Iranians were doing this to the US military on Biden or Obama’s watch. Republicans would be screaming in the streets and Fox would have these images on air on a loop, 24/7

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

Since 2025, Americans in and close to the administration have worked to weaken and break up Canada; to use money to influence the loyalties of Greenlanders; to shape elections in Germany, Poland, Argentina, Brazil.
No longer seeing themselves as the leaders of the democratic world, the new American elite are looking instead to enrich themselves, using the federal government.
Read more here:
https://t.co/Vusz3X4YiA

[Paul Mason @paulmasonnews]

What just defeated the far right in Sweden 👇🏽

[Mike Galsworthy @mikegalsworthy]

Our BBC is an absurdity these days.

No character of its own, vapid analysis, just a blob of appeasement to everything desperate to secure its own survival.

It’s abandoned any purpose of deep education, any moral compass - fretting along hoping its heritage is taken for class.

[Mike Galsworthy @mikegalsworthy]

This is so important in the context of the AfD and their support for Putin/ anti-Ukraine stance. 👏👏👏

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🚨 Patrick Minford’s Brexit prophecy is coming true

The Times warns that “the end of the road may be nigh” for mass-market car manufacturing in Britain.

Before Brexit, Britain produced around 1.7 million cars annually.

In 2025, it produced just 717,371.

Factories capable of making hundreds of thousands of vehicles are running far below capacity. Jaguar Land Rover is cutting 4,000 jobs. The three bestselling cars in Britain are now manufactured in Romania, Slovakia and China.

The article identifies three major pressures:

⚠️ British industrial energy costs are higher than those faced by competitors.

⚠️ Brexit made access to our largest export market more difficult and introduced uncertainty over tariffs and components.

⚠️ Chinese manufacturers are dominating the transition to cheaper electric vehicles.

But this outcome was not unforeseen.

Patrick Minford, the leading economist behind the Leave campaign said Brexit would “mostly eliminate manufacturing”. He argued that Britain should run down its car industry as it had coal and steel, remove trade barriers and import cheaper vehicles instead.

In his model, destroying British manufacturing was not a Brexit failure. It was the mechanism through which Brexit supposedly delivered cheaper goods.

The Brexit salesmen promised that leaving the EU would revive British industry, even as its economic architects were planning its clearance.

They sold people hope that immigration would fall. Their post-Brexit immigration system instead produced record net migration.

Now the same politicians point to the industrial decline, economic insecurity and loss of control their project helped create and use that anger to sell themselves all over again.

The pattern is always the same:

Identify a genuine public anxiety.
Promise restoration and control.
Implement a programme delivering the reverse.
Blame somebody else.
Then harvest the resulting anger.

This wasn’t Project Fear.

It was the project and they are still selling it.

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

🚨BACKFIRE: James Talarico’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! has now surpassed 4.5 MILLION views on YouTube after Trump’s FCC pressured Kimmel not to air it on broadcast television.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

I lay out why Elon Musk, Katie Miller, Mike Lee and others on the right are lying about the AfD, the far right, the far left, and more, in just 60 seconds.

Time for a debunking - and a 60-second rant!

[Mike Galsworthy @mikegalsworthy]

This is why it's so important for the UK and other European countries to have strong guards against US govt interference in our democracies.

The Trump governement is diving directly into throwing cash at a political takeover of Europe. And they are very serious about it.

[Nick Reeves #RejoinEU #NAFO #FBPE @nickreeves9876]

Farage and Reform UK are in deep trouble. However, after 3 days, @Verbatim_Media's 37 minute video of their extraordinary year-long undercover investigation into Reform UK's illegal foreign donations has only got 161k views. It should have several million.

So please repost this and then share the video.
https://t.co/aUHQimmSm6

[DG MEME 🇪🇺 @meme_ec]

If you think your life sucks, remember that for Witkoff talking to Putin has been "one of the best and most memorable experiences" in his life.

[Pippa Crerar @PippaCrerar]

Wednesday’s @guardian front page: Brexit and Thatcher to blame for UK’s era of low growth, says PM https://t.co/me0IyLrqUn

[Richard Corbett @RichardGCorbett]

Indeed!
Britain is held back by the Brexit barriers to our largest market (both for exports and for our supply chains).
Time for more ambition than Starmer ‘s slow and partial “re-set” with the EU!
Give the country a genuine growth strategy…

[Alberto Alemanno 🇪🇺 @alemannoEU]

No, Iceland’s referendum result does not reject European integration.

It shows that the country’s present arrangement within the European Economic Area (EEA) — single-market access, free movement and participation in EU programmes without EU membership, and without a vote on EU rules — is attractive enough to maintain the status quo.

Read my latest @Substack https://t.co/u8g6413fnb

[Richard Corbett @RichardGCorbett]

They told us Brexit would save lots of money (that would all go to the NHS). In fact it’s costing us a fortune (and constraining our ability to fund everything).

[Mike Galsworthy @mikegalsworthy]

Brexit is costing the UK £11.7bn a year in lost exports - findings by Logistics UK.

And a business survey by the European Movement UK has revealed that 73% of firms say that Brexit has had a negative impact on their businesses.

https://t.co/l7aZaj2O17