I went to university with Bev, where she played an important role in helping to defeat the Hard Left on campus. Obviously, we have very different politics but she’s a good person and Labour could certainly have made a worse selection!
Burnham is obviously a more engaging figure than Starmer. But the Government & the country’s problems won’t be solved by better comms. Our problems are systemic, rooted in 30 years of policy failures.
The obsession with personality & rigmarole is a distraction from hard reality
In an all my years covering politics I have never met anyone so lacking in interest in the skills a leader needs - the ability to tell a story; to listen to colleagues; to woo, persuade & chivvy. Keir Starmer isn’t just uninterested in these requirements of the job. He is dismissive & contemptuous of them. @AndrewMarr9 sums this up in the @NewStatesman rather more memorably than I could …
The UK borrowed almost as much in May 2026 alone (£23.3bn), as it did during the entire 2018/19 fiscal year (£23.5bn).
This is a slow motion disaster and almost no one is talking about it.
I loathe this “isn’t it all silly & funny” approach to covering government. Trivialising everything. Ignoring policy decisions & their impact. Treating the whole thing like a game at a time when the country is drifting into dangerous waters. We should expect more from the BBC.
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts. And I looked, and behold a pale horse. And his name that sat on him was death, and hell followed with him…
Your steam engine is British.
Your Industrial Revolution is British.
Your railway is British.
Your underground railway is British.
Your modern railway timetable is British.
Your suspension bridge is British.
Your iron bridge is British.
Your modern lighthouse is British.
Your marine chronometer is British.
Your global time standard is British.
Your time zone starts at Greenwich.
Your telephone is Scottish.
Your television is Scottish.
Your radar is British.
Your jet engine is British.
Your tank is British.
Your programmable computer is British.
Your World Wide Web is British.
Your fibre-optic communications were pioneered by a Briton.
Your modern telecommunications network was transformed by British inventors.
Your antibiotics are Scottish.
Your vaccination programme was pioneered by an Englishman.
Your modern nursing profession is British.
Your public sanitation system is British.
Your modern sewerage system is British.
Your clean drinking water infrastructure was pioneered by Victorian Britain.
Your weather forecast is British.
Your life boat service is British.
Your modern fire service was pioneered in Britain.
Your parliamentary democracy is British.
Your constitutional monarchy is British.
Your common law is British.
Your independent judiciary is British.
Your trial by jury is British.
Your presumption of innocence is British.
Your habeas corpus is British.
Your rule of law is British.
Your modern police force is British.
Your modern civil service is British.
Your modern banking system was shaped in Britain.
Your central banking model was shaped by the Bank of England.
Your stock exchange model was pioneered in London.
Your global insurance market was built at Lloyd's of London.
Your international maritime law was shaped by Britain.
Your global trade routes were mapped by Britain.
Your anti-slavery patrols were British.
Your modern university model was influenced by Oxford and Cambridge.
Your scientific societies were pioneered by Britain.
Your peer-reviewed science was advanced by British institutions.
Your laws of motion are English.
Your theory of evolution is English.
Your economics is Scottish.
Your electromagnetism was transformed by a Scot.
Your geology was pioneered by Scots.
Your thermodynamics was advanced by Britons.
Your stainless steel is British.
Your carbon fibre is British.
Your steam turbine is British.
Your hovercraft is British.
Your ATM is British.
Your cash machine is Scottish.
Your postage stamp is British.
Your modern postal system is British.
Your football is English.
Your rugby is British.
Your golf is Scottish.
Your tennis was codified in Britain.
Your badminton was codified in Britain.
Your cricket is English.
Your worldwide language is English.
Your newspapers were shaped by Britain.
Your global news agencies were pioneered by Britain.
Your public broadcasting model is British.
Your music charts are British.
Your modern popular music owes a great deal to Britain.
Your neighbour may be an immigrant.
But a fair chunk of the modern world is British.
Pull yourself together.
Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore, famously commented on a London newspaper stand as a sign of the highly-civilised society of Great Britain in the 1940s.
His words came to mind when I saw the state of this newspaper stand in a London tube station this afternoon.
It’s remarkable how far we’ve fallen in such a short amount of time.
His words:
“Perhaps the most impressive sight I came upon was when I emerged from the tube station at Piccadilly Circus. I found a little table with a pile of newspapers and a box of coins and notes with nobody in attendance. You take your newspaper, toss in your coin or put in your 10-shilling note and take your change. I took a deep breath - this was a truly civilised people.”
NEW: Andy Burnham has hinted at a new multibillion-pound spending commitment if he becomes PM, saying that more than 3.5mn women “deserve” compensation over what he regards as a pension scandal
Earlier I attended a Makerfield hustings event hosted by @MENnewsdesk, in which Burnham said: “I stick by campaigners that I support. I stuck by the Hillsborough families, I’ll stick by the Waspi women because they deserve some recompense for the unfairness.”
Stressing he wouldn’t ditch his longterm support for Waspi women, he said he felt “uncomfortable” that some politicians threw their support behind a cause but then went into government and “didn’t do anything”
https://t.co/vQkuikv3aG
Rachel Reeves will reimburse British firms £5,000 per foreign worker in a bid to make the country more attractive despite the UK’s growing youth unemployment crisis
🖇️ https://t.co/J0uxGTrnyr
Many unmarried, cohabiting couples have limited legal protections if their relationship ends or a partner dies, even after long-term relationships or raising children together.
Labour is consulting on reforms to strengthen the legal protections available to these couples.