Victor Flange. 🥦

Don’t be believe half what you see, none of what you hear.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Great news. The Labour Party has finally found a woman they fancy as leader. It's a man who'll be 'a female PM in all but sex.'

A senior figure in the party actually thought that was a good thing to say out loud.

✍️ @ShippersUnbound

[Hedgehog Cabin @HedgehogCabin]

Lovely weather, isn't it?🌞
Unless you're a nocturnal animal who has to sleep all through the hot day, and wake at night to find no water. No puddles.
No kind dishes.
Unseen.
Unthought of.
Just the tantalising smell of water from a pond you may drown in, or a drain you may get trapped in.
Or a stagnant, dirty old birdbath you may get fatal fluke from.
Hedgehogs need to drink a lot of water to stay healthy.
Please provide clean, fresh, safe, ground level water each evening for our precious nocturnal wildlife.
Tap water is best.
Pop a dish or two out tonight.
Front and back.
Keep it clean.
Keep it full.
Keep it saving lives.❤️‍🩹

[Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky]

Message from James Purnell to Flint Global staff

Hi eveyone / sorry for late text but just wanted to send you this email I’m about to send to staff

Sorry to those I have not been able to catch but am about to send this out to staff;

I wanted to let you know that The Times will be running a story tomorrow saying that I am being considered to be Chief of Staff to Andy Burnham.  

I had wanted to talk to you all about this first, but they have made that impossible. 

I am still finalising details with the Flint Board but the story is basically correct and I am likely to be leaving shortly.  

In the interim before my successor is found, Ed will interim CEO and Simon acting Chair.

We will make sure there is plenty of time for handover over the next few days and we will hold a Team meeting as soon as possible.

Flint is a wonderful organisation and culture. I've learned a huge amount and look forward to keeping in touch.   I will miss you all and look forward to watching you continue to flourish.

Take care,

James

[Bernie @Artemisfornow]

They hate us!

Keep being British! We are brilliant 🤣

[The Farmer's Dog @FamersDog]

An update and a message from Jeremy.

“Thank you so much for all the kind messages I've had but now, an announcement.”

[Cllr Rob Kenyon @RobKenyonReform]

This election is on a knife edge and every vote will matter.

I understand the pressures facing local families in Makerfield... because my family faces them too.

Vote Reform UK today. 🇬🇧

[Cllr Rob Kenyon @RobKenyonReform]

Local people deserve a local champion.

Go out and make your voice heard tomorrow.

[Carole Malone @thecarolemalone]

A Plea to the good people of Makerfield - you may feel an affinity with the Restore Party but if you vote for it you get the polar opposite of everything it is in Government. You get Andy Burnham.Please think
long and hard about that for the sake of our country!

[ReformUKFH&RM @ReformUKFHRM]

It’s too close to call, so every single vote is going to count! Please if you have a vote in Makerfield on Thursday, don’t leave it to chance get out & vote. Vote for local man Rob Kenyon because Makerfield should not be a stepping stone to Downing Street! 🩵 #VoteReform #VoteRob #Makerfield

[Claire Fox @Fox_Claire]

My brief take on @GBNEWS re Labour's 2-tier social media ban for u 16s. Somehow Starmer forgot to ban Bluesky. They're such numpties: so keen to contol how plebs communicate, they forget to control their own comms & make their biases blatantly obvious.
https://t.co/1Ib319yG8H

[Cllr Rob Kenyon @RobKenyonReform]

New polling for The Times confirms that only Reform or Labour can win in Makerfield.

A vote for anyone else is a vote to put Andy Burnham into Number 10.

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: Pamela Nash has resigned as a PPS in the Ministry of Defence

[Jess Caine 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @jessalinecaine]

If Rebecca Shepherd will not even turn up to the hustings why should Makerfield voters turn up for her?

A vote for Restore risks helping Andy Burnham back into Parliament and one step closer to No 10.

Vote REFORM on 18th of June!

[Cllr Rob Kenyon @RobKenyonReform]

Peter, this is complete misinformation. I've never refused a DBS check. I actually have an enhanced DBS check for work and sports coaching.

I have already provided Wigan Council with a copy of my DBS certificate. Check your facts before spreading lies.

[Liam Halligan @LiamHalligan]

Labour risks being forced to seek emergency help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as Britain lurches toward a debt crisis, leading economists are now warning.

Former IMF chief economist Ken Rogoff says, in a new interview, that there is “more than 50:50 chance” of a major UK debt crisis before the end of this decade.

He is joined by Sir Charlie Bean, a former senior official at both the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility, who says the need for an IMF bail-out is now a “material risk” for the British economy.

I not only firmly agree with Ken Rogoff and Sir Charlie Bean – but have been repeatedly issuing the very same warnings for a very long time.

Because the grave risk of a major fiscal meltdown has been apparent for at least the last two years – to anyone who combines serious knowledge of UK economics and politics and global debt markets with an open mind.

The UK's public finances were already fragile when Labour took office back in July 2024.

But this government's misguided, ideologically-driven statist policies have made a bad situation much worse, seriously increasing the danger of a deep fiscal crisis - which would cause a disastrous state funding shortfall and a very nasty inflation spike.

That would result in Downing Street being forced to follow the orders of unelected technocrats flown in from Washington and elsewhere.

It would be a very major national humiliation combined with a deep economic slump and an even more intense cost-of-living crisis – in which low-income households, as ever, would suffer the most.

Yet those of us that have shown the brains and courage to point out these inconvenient truths over recent months and years have long been dismissed and derided for our trouble - not only by ignorant politicians and approval-seeking journalists but also the overwhelming majority of "leading economists".

Ahead of the general election in mid-2024, with Labour on course to win, the conventional wisdom among the great sages of broadsheet journalism and the economics establishment was that "the adults would soon be back in charge" ... Labour would "get lucky with the economy" ... and "Britain would now enjoy an extended period of political and fiscal stability".

I thought that was total nonsense – not least as I was well aware Labour's plans irresponsibly to increase borrowing and spending would be met with deep scepticism by the global pensions funds, insurance companies and other institutional investors that lend governments serious money.

My weekly @Telegraph "Economic Agenda" column of 23rd June 2024, a fortnight ahead of the general election, was a total outlier. I recounted the disaster of 1976 – when Britain was forced to go "cap in hand" to the IMF for a bailout – and warned that "The Ghosts of the 1970s" would haunt Labour's (so-called) economic resurrection".

Six months later, after the October 2024 "Hallowen" budget in which Chancellor Rachel Reeves did indeed sharply hike borrowing and spending, I assessed the market reaction then doubled-down – warning more assertively in my column of 12th January 2025 that "The UK risks a return to 1976 unless Reeves changes course".

And then again on 20th July 2025, as Labour's policies raised the costs of doing business, translating into price pressures which pushed up government borrowing costs even more, I again cautioned that "Inflation risks are taking Britain to the debt-crisis cliff edge".

"It’s now screamingly obvious that Labour’s crude Keynesianism – “pump priming” the economy by upping state borrowing and spending – isn’t working," I wrote in that column last July.

"Worse than that, this Government’s actions are pushing Britain towards a budgetary crisis every bit as serious as that in 1976 – when the UK was forced to go “cap in hand” to the IMF for a bail-out".

It's been a lonely task issuing these warnings. I've been hounded in public debates, slagged off by senior civil servants and often dismissed by "leading economists" as "alarmist".

So what do these same "leading economists" now say to Rogoff (Harvard Professor, Former IMF Chief Economist) and Bean (LSE Professor and Former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England)?

The "economics establishment" – with very few honourable exceptions, the brilliant @jagjit_chadha among them – has been and remains extremely reluctant to point out the deeply unsustainable nature of this government's addiction to ever more borrowing.

The systemic fiscal dangers of evermore "tax and spend" – and the prospect of a serious spike in gilt yields and related fiscal meltdown – are now so real and present as to be completely undeniable.

Yet the UK government is about to shift even further to the left, pushing up borrowing and spending even more under a new leader, in a bid to appease the massed ranks of economic illiterates among Labour's Parliamentary party and activist base – making those dangers even more acute.

Yet, still, the silence among "public intellectual" economists is deafening.

I'm glad the likes of Ken Rogoff and Charlie Bean are now issuing clear warnings. So where is the rest of the "economics establishment" - those who purport to understand fiscal management and financial markets, and often funded by taxpayers' money?

Britain is now clearly in the crosshairs of a very serious danger. The government's creditors are increasingly fickle and based overseas – with no regulatory or cultural obligations to lend money to the UK government.

Those holding UK gilts are increasingly "speculative" rather than "strategic" long-term investors – looking for quick returns, financing their government bond purchases with "leverage" (money borrowed from elsewhere), which will quickly be withdrawn when senitment decisively shifts, causing a plunge in gilt prices and a sharp additional surge in government borrowing costs, setting up a vicious circle.

The UK government is very heavily indebted – and the global investors we rely on to bankroll a huge slice of our state spending are alarmed that of the £132bn the government borrowed last year, no less than £110bn was spent on debt interest – as I wrote in a column on 17th May 2026, "As Labour lurches further left, the markets are calling time".

Global investors are alarmed the UK has consistently had the highest inflation in the G7 (which pushes up borrowing costs) and has easily the highest share of index-linked debt (which magnifies the burden of inflation on the state's balance sheet).

And they are deeply, deeply alarmed that when Labour came to power in mid-2024, the Office for Budget Responsibility was forecasting additional state borrowing of £323bn by 2029, the scheduled end of this Parliament.

But Labour’s runaway spending and growth-crushing tax rises mean that the same five-year borrowing forecast is now £583bn – 80pc higher. And still, the trade unions, MPs and Labour activists who will choose Starmer’s successor now want even more.

It is not too late to pull the UK back from the fiscal brink, to avoid the extremely painful and deep, lingering damage of being forced to go to the IMF and perhaps other multi-lateral creditors for a bailout.

It is not too late to avoid the inflation surge, the currency crash, the shocking blow to consumer and business confidence alongside the sky-high interest rates that will seriously whack our economy – or the perhaps even deeper damage of yet more of the British electorate losing faith in the ability of our establishment to manage the country in a manner that avoids imposing serious hardship on so many hard-working people simply trying to make their way.

But our political and media class needs to start acknowledging the economic and financial truth – that the UK government is borrowing and spending too much, taxation is now so high that it's hammering growth and employment, and that trying to finally get the economy moving by "moving further left", borrowing and spending even more, will result in a fiscal collapse.

Smart, experienced, high-profile economists need to start speaking out – as Rogoff and Bean just have – raising the alarm in a bid to force the broader establishment to face reality. Before it's too late.

If you've read this far, you clearly think this analysis is worthwhile and important. So please like and share.

And for more, read my "Economic Agenda" column in The Sunday Telegraph each week – and subscribe to "When The Facts Change: Economics and Politics in a fast-moving world, with Liam Halligan"

[Will Kingston @WillKingston]

I’m stunned. The Sunday Times is reporting Hampshire police wanted to portray Henry Nowak as the aggressor in an official statement three days after his death, but changed their wording following outrage from his family.

I’ll be covering this shocking and contemptible revelation from the hosting chair on The Late Show Live. @GBNEWS 12am.

[Agent P @AgentP22]

He's going to have to resign.

His position is now clearly untenable.

We can't have a First Minister implicated in a massive fraud scandal.

[Jason | 🇬🇧 🇿🇦 🇮🇱🇺🇲 @Ajaon_of_All]

Let me categorically Debunk this utter rot. @sainsburys.

I am a poultry Breeder. The hens that lay white eggs (Amberline/White Star) DO NOT have a lower carbon footprint.

Yes they eat a bit less and produce roughly the same amount of eggs as the Brown egg layers (Bovan/Lowman/ISA Brown) but they live shorter lives, are prone to dying suddenly when startled, a flighty and nervous and because they live shorter productive lives (12 -18mnths) vs brown 18/24mnths (both commercial farmed), you have to incubate more which is increased (Electricity/gas costs) and their eggs are not the same quality.

I breed and keep 20+ different breeds, including: ISA Brown hens and White Stars. All my hens are 100% free range, Not a single barn kept bird, I have ISA browns that are 5yrs old and still laying beautiful Brown eggs, I have not seen a White star live beyond 3yrs and certainly none have laid eggs past 18-24mnths.
White stars Lay themselves to death. They are slender birds and because they dont eat a lot, it drains their personal vitality to keep up laying the eggs you want to sell because of the nonsensical lie that they are "More Carbon Neutral"

You want to know about eggs, come talk to someone like me, Don't rely on some hairbrained imagination of a buyer who's trying to squeeze the profit margin for a few extra pennies at our expense and to the poor hens detriment.

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

Was it wrong to “politicise” the Stephen Lawrence murder? Or that of George Floyd? What does the word “politicise” even mean in that context? Don’t tell me that it is right to “rage against the machine” when state authorities fail black murder victims for reasons connected with race, but that we are obliged not to “stir up tensions” when the victim happens to be white. It is this two-tier approach that is fuelling tensions and division. Can the establishment not see it?

[Victor Flange. 🥦 @GassSlim]

@rickygervais I swear ours has human genes in him somewhere.