GrahamJonesxMP

Former Member of Parliament for Haslingden & Hyndburn. Worked hard for all. Part of a Labour team that brought in record investment.

[GrahamJonesxMP @GrahamJonesxMP]

@NewStatesman @OliDugmore What about my family when he unfairly suspended me and sacked me. Going on TV to shame me for nothing, for false accusations. Does my family not count?

[GrahamJonesxMP @GrahamJonesxMP]

@ThomasEvansAdur @GBNEWS Not we’re breaking the law, should be breaking the law, and the law has changed to make that now a fact. It was Labour Party policy from 2014.

The sinner in my case was Keir Starmer. He persecuted someone innocent and who had had asked to go out and defend the Party.

[GrahamJonesxMP @GrahamJonesxMP]

@fritch68 @GBNEWS That’s not a good thing right now is it?

[GrahamJonesxMP @GrahamJonesxMP]

Never forget. It was the right of British politics that has taken Britain to a financial cliff edge.

It wasn’t the left or Labour.

14 yrs of the Tories followed by Reform taking on board the same Tories that ruined Britain.

Voting Reform simply takes bad to bad old Tory days.

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

Smith: "The reason we've got a Labour govt is because Starmer cleared antisemitism out of our party, he put our party back into the service of the British people when it had lost its way, that's why we were able to win a landslide"

Fewer people voted for Lab in 2024 than in 2019

[Ayesha Hazarika @ayeshahazarika]

Despite the goalposts moving, team Burnham smashed it with a wholesome, optimistic campaign. They should bask in the glory. Some thoughts on Makerfield & what comes next for @DailyMirror. Sadly, it’s time for Starmer to step aside with grace. Country first
https://t.co/lOX76Q4ypM

[GrahamJonesxMP @GrahamJonesxMP]

@AbdiDuale_ You were a cheerleader for the infighting.

[Maxi @AllForProgress_]

Hundreds of English councils are heading for a financial cliff-edge, the Public Accounts Committee warned this month; and they are spending vast sums for the sake of getting there. Children's social care alone now costs £12.1bn a year, and almost all of it is at the crisis end, because the cheaper work that stops a problem becoming a crisis was stripped out years ago to save money.

The British state has a signature manoeuvre, and it is performed now at every level of government. Cut the inexpensive thing that works - the early help, the maintenance, the prevention - to book a saving this year. Pay for it many times over at the dear end, when the neglected problem arrives as an emergency that cannot be turned away. Then enter the resulting collapse as proof that there is no money, and cut again. The McNamara principle. It is a machine for turning small economies into enormous bills, and it runs in social care, in the NHS, in prisons, in the courts, in the roads: everywhere things don't work; everywhere the state has decided the future can be raided to flatter the present.

The people who pay for this are never the ones who booked the saving. A child who could have been helped early is taken into care late, at vast cost and far greater damage. A road left unmended wrecks the axles of people who cannot afford the repair. A court starved of sitting days leaves a victim waiting three years for a trial. The economy supposedly being protected is, in every instance, left poorer, slower and crueller by the very thrift that claims to defend it.

Progress starts from the opposite instinct, because it is the only one that adds up. You spend on the cheap thing that works - the prevention, the maintenance, the early help - precisely so that you never have to spend ten times as much on the catastrophe. It is plain arithmetic, not generosity, and any household that has ever fixed the roof before the ceiling came down already understands it.

A council going bankrupt is the sound of a country that has been eating its own foundations to pay this month's bills, and has begun to notice the floor giving way. The money was always there to do the cheap thing properly. What was missing was a state with the wit to do today what stops the disaster arriving tomorrow - and the honesty to call the bankruptcies what they are: the bill, forty years overdue, for doing the precise opposite.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

He Spent Two Years Telling Half The Country They Didn't Matter. Now There's Nobody Left To Save Him.

Andy Burnham can apparently take the leadership without a contest. That single detail tells you more about the state of Keir Starmer's government than anything else in this story. The Labour Party isn't choosing its next leader through a vote of its members. It is quietly coronating one, because a contest would expose just how little is left to defend.

A senior government figure says Starmer has realised the game is up and is now thinking about how to shore up his legacy. One of his own loyalists says support among MPs is down to "friends and family," people whose relatives work in No 10 or who have known him personally for years. Five senior Cabinet ministers, Heidi Alexander, Yvette Cooper, Shabana Mahmood, Ed Miliband and others, have told him to set a departure date rather than fight on. His own chief whip has told him the same.

This did not happen by accident, and it did not happen because of one bad week. It happened because for two years this government made a consistent choice, over and over, about whose interests came first, and it was rarely the people who didn't vote Labour.

Pensioners lost their winter fuel payments while the asylum hotel bill ran past £10 billion. Farmers were hit with inheritance tax changes that threatened family land held for generations, while billions in defence funding could not be found. The Chief of the Defence Staff wrote directly to Downing Street warning the country was at risk, and John Healey resigned as Defence Secretary because Rachel Reeves would not fund the armed forces properly, while Ed Miliband's net zero budget stayed untouched. Al Carns, a decorated combat veteran, resigned as Veterans Minister because he could no longer ask soldiers to trust a covenant the government wasn't honouring.

And running underneath all of it was the language. Anyone who raised concerns about uncontrolled migration, two-tier policing, grooming gangs or the erosion of British institutions was met with the same word, deployed by ministers, by activists, and increasingly by Labour MPs themselves: far right. Concerned pensioners. Family farmers. Serving and former military personnel. Ordinary voters asking why a teenager could be handcuffed by police while dying in the street because his attacker shouted racism. All filed under the same label, again and again, by a government that built its entire posture around managing dissent rather than answering it.

That is not a coalition. That is a list of grievances waiting for an outlet. Burnham's win in Makerfield was simply the moment that outlet appeared, and once it did, the loyalty evaporated in days because there was nothing underneath it holding people in place. You cannot spend two years telling the majority of the country it is the problem and then expect that majority, or your own backbenchers, to stand and defend you when the numbers turn.

Starmer's allies are now talking about legacy. That is the most revealing word in the whole story. Not about fixing what's broken. Not about answering the people who lost faith. About managing the exit so the record looks better than the reality. It is the same instinct that produced "reports get reviewed" at counter-terror police and "still reviewing" at the institutions documented this week: protect the process, manage the optics, and hope nobody asks the harder question.

The harder question is simple. If a Prime Minister with a landslide majority can be reduced to friends and family within two years, the issue was never really about Starmer personally. It was about what, and who, he chose to defend, and who he didn't.

"Burnham's win in Makerfield was simply the moment that outlet appeared, and once it did, the loyalty evaporated in days because there was nothing underneath it holding people in place."

[Kimberley Whitehead @kimjwhitehead]

Nearly spat my breakfast out this morning @GrahamJonesxMP 🤣

#bbclaurak

[GrahamJonesxMP @GrahamJonesxMP]

@SkyNews @SamanthaNiblet4 @BarbaraGSerra I was always told to listen and learn in your first term. Clearly they don’t give out good advice any more.

[GrahamJonesxMP @GrahamJonesxMP]

@MikeTappTweets Starmer betrayed me. No sympathy or lessons needed.

Whilst he was hawking around war crimes on LBC, I was carrying no10s direct instructions (whilst sticking to Labour Party policy). And I was sacked on trumped up allegations by him despite doing everything to support him.

[GrahamJonesxMP @GrahamJonesxMP]

@PolitlcsUK I was betrayed by Starmer. I was innocent, worked by backside off loyally for him. Half his leadership video is in Hyndburn. He sent me and my family to hell.

[Karl Turner MP @KarlTurnerMP]

1/ @KeirStarmer never really managed the PLP. He outsourced it.

The politics. The relationships. The difficult conversations.

He left others to do the heavy lifting while he played the role of chief executive.

[GrahamJonesxMP @GrahamJonesxMP]

To take note of.

And in response, Burnham is one of the few politicians who isn’t complacent about the force that odds ReformUK.

[Lindsey Sharratt @LindseySharratt]

The online contingent saying the Makerfield defeat is a sign that Reform is on the way down are missing multiple factors in this by-election.

1) The Lib Dem and Green vote was almost non-existent, way lower than usual polling. This suggests a so-called 'progressive' alliance to keep Reform out. These votes could not be counted on in a general election.

2) Burnham ran his campaign on Vote Andy, not Vote Labour. There are two elements to this. One, Burnham has a big following in the North. Two, he essentially campaigned against the Starmer government, with slogans like "Keep the faith. Things will get better if we stick together." That's definitely shots fired at the establishment, which he is distancing himself from. Unfortunately, Burnham is very much part of the establishment, and once he comes under scrutiny, potentially as party leader/prime minister, more people will see that.

3) Reform is a new party. With every by-election, it's gaining experience. Campaigning relationships are being built up between activists, and in the background more people with relevant experience are being recruited to help make the operation more slick. Reform will keep getting better. Labour has had 121 years and this is about as good as it's going to get for them.

4) As Reform tightens up its messaging and policy, I believe more people will get behind them. We suffer from ridiculous accusations - racist, fascist - and we don't have the full policy platform on view yet to refute those accusations. But they are untrue, and as policy and communications develop, that will improve.

Ironically, it is the Right and the traditionalists who need to keep the faith. We've had a demoralising thirty years or so, with successive governments failing to deliver what the electorate is asking for. People are tired, frustrated and demoralised. We need to believe that things can change.

I do believe that. If traditionalists can come together as the progressive camp has done and fight for our country and its working people, I believe we can win. And I still believe Reform is the best vehicle to do it.

Keep the faith.
#ReformUK

[GrahamJonesxMP @GrahamJonesxMP]

And that’s the problem. Starmer will take the divisive road for weeks on end.

His legacy if he has any - is being trashed by the minute.

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: A leaked No 10 document shows how Keir Starmer plans to stop Andy Burnham becoming PM

“Andy Burnham hasn’t faced any real scrutiny yet. A true contest would likely see his support wane”

[@Guardian]

[Karl Turner MP @KarlTurnerMP]

Pathetic.