Adam Jones

Former No10 co-director of comms and Foreign Office special adviser. Sometime speechwriter. United fan

[Adam Jones @ADJones_88]

On a human level it’s very hard not to feel for the Starmer loyalists in No10 and across government. I’ve been there. It’s horrible and painful. These are people’s careers and, more than that, often their professional and personal hopes and dreams.

[Adam Jones @ADJones_88]

@SW_Help I’m going to claim taxi costs back from Waterloo to Farncombe, Surrey. You’ve said it’s possible to claim from Woking, but you aren’t running trains from Waterloo to Woking. You’ve also prevented me voting in the local elections.

[Sebastian Payne @SebastianEPayne]

Absolute peak Starmerism to be unable to decide on a new cabinet secretary. Instead he's split the job up for a little while to dither on who to go for.

[Adam Jones @ADJones_88]

Fabulous read from a peerless journalist. A nugget that resonated with me: “policy is at the heart of political communication”. Ain’t that the truth …

[Tim Shipman @ShippersUnbound]

The biggest piece I’ve written for the Spectator - 3,500 words on how Starmer blew it. Packed with new details, telling quotes and analysis - every last bit of it from a Labour source https://t.co/VvlzmzHNJQ

[Adam Jones @ADJones_88]

@SW_Help I pay an extortionate amount of money to commute five days a week Farncombe to Waterloo. In a sample size of the past nine months it’s been abysmal. 3.45 hours to get home last night from Waterloo to Farncombe. Delays this morning. Delays this evening. So bad

[James Cleverly🇬🇧 @JamesCleverly]

I’ve been Foreign Secretary, I’ve done senior ambassadorial appointments. Let me explain why the Mandelson situation is even worse than it first appears.

The Foreign Secretary has a huge amount of power when it comes to appointing Heads of Missions. Head of Mission is the general term for Ambassadors, High Commissioners, and Permanent Representatives to international bodies like the UN. Basically the choice of who the top diplomat is in an overseas post is down to the Foreign Secretary.

In almost all cases the choice is from a list of career diplomats, who have years (often decades) of experience, have been vetted, and tested by experience, and have previously held junior diplomatic positions around the world.

But the Foreign Secretary can choose someone else. Someone without those attributes. Clearly the Foreign Office system doesn’t like it when the FS does this and almost always advises against it. That’s not to say that choosing an outsider is wrong, just that that the FCDO will make it clear that doing so carries additional risks. And those risks sit with the Minister rather than the Department.

Obviously I wasn’t involved with any of the conversations about Peter Mandelson but I know the FCDO well and I know the personalities of the people who would have advised David Lammy about this appointment.

They would have reminded Lammy that Mandelson had resigned in disgrace twice before. They would have reminded Lammy that Mandelson had a longstanding relationship with Epstein. They would have reminded Lammy that Mandelson had widespread, complicated, and opaque commercial interests.

I have no doubt that they would have reminded Lammy that he and the PM were importing significant reputational risk if they appointed Mandelson. I have no doubt they would have unambiguously advised Lammy against appointing Mandelson to the post.

And it is now clear that Lammy and Starmer ignored that advice and appointed him anyway.

And now we have no ambassador to the USA, a new Foreign Secretary, an imminent state visit, a damaged relationship with the White House, and humiliation for British diplomacy.

But most of all we have a number of unanswered questions about what Starmer and Lammy knew, when did they know it, and why they went ahead with Mandelson’s appointment.

[ALASTAIR CAMPBELL @campbellclaret]

Terrific interview Yass re Trusted Adult Guarantee, and also Paul Barber, chair of Lost Boys Taskforce, of which I am very pleased to be a member. And thank you @amolrajan for such a sensitive approach to the subject. But ps what are current @BBCr4today dress standards!!!???

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

Not the Bloomberg headline any Chancellor wants to see.

[Tim Shipman @ShippersUnbound]

The thing that baffles me is that good and serious people have seen versions of what happened tonight in the US for eight years and are still surprised that people don’t see the world as they do.
1) Voters think “the economy” is “can I afford to live” NOT “we are doing better nationally than others”. Inflation is politically more important than GDP
2) Immigration matters, both the sense of control/uncontrolled and the raw numbers, particularly when money is tight. See 1
3) Don’t take voters for fools: in this case don’t insist a clearly gaga leader is up to the job
4) Don’t try to fight a charismatic opponent with someone who can’t answer basic questions about why they want to be in charge. The ability to communicate is not an optional extra for politicians, it is a core part of the job description
5) Go woke, go politically broke
6) What the metro elites regard as an illogical vote is not necessarily illogical for people who are struggling and angry - see 1,2,3,4,5
Personally I think democracy matters very much and some/much of what Trump says is appalling but until his opponents learn the lessons above, voters will keep voting for someone who manages to encapsulate what they feel

[Robert Peston @Peston]

This from the OBR is potentially a serious problem for Reeves and Starmer. It says that real household disposable income will be 1.25% lower at the start of 2029 than it expected in March, before the election, with 85% of this fall "explained by policies announced in this budget"

Here is the relevant extract.

"Real household disposable income (RHDI) per person, a measure of living standards, grows by an average of just over ½ a per cent a year over the forecast. But the profile is uneven, with strong real wage increases resulting in growth of 1¼ per cent this fiscal year and next before RHDI per person stalls for two years in the middle of the forecast as real wage growth slows and taxes increase. Compared to our March forecast, the level of RHDI per person is just over 2 per cent higher at the start of the forecast due to data revisions, but 1¼ per cent lower by the start of 2029. The bulk of this difference (around 85 per cent) is explained by policies announced in this Budget."

[Alex Wickham @alexwickham]

Labour manifesto vs the budget

Labour said their core mission was growth, OBR says it’ll be anaemic

Said they’d not raise tax on working people, OBR says most of the tax rises will fall on them

Said they’d crowd in private investment… OBR says it’ll be crowded out…

[Harry Cole @MrHarryCole]

Oh please

This is just BS.

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

Darren expects you to believe that £45 billion in tax cuts (and tax freezes) crashed the economy.

Yet £50bn in unfunded extra spending is absolutely fine.

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

"There has been a fall in the country ranking across all three domains" - maths, science and reading.

So said the DfE on the PISA ranking of English schools - under Labour in 2010. Since then, under the Tories, there has been a huge improvement (1/5). https://t.co/99wFW0ANES

[Lee Cain @MrLeeCain]

Pundits always too keen to blame comms professionals as it’s the lens through which they view politics. In reality the problem is rarely comms. It is nearly always the *decision making* of senior leaders & policy makers (issue here is poor judgements from PM & SG) #CommsProblem

[Henry Moeran @henrymoeranBBC]

This is absolute art.

The field, the fading light, the celebrations…

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

Because it’s a work of political fiction.

[Adam Jones @ADJones_88]

@MrHarryCole Doesn’t make any sense

[Harry Cole @MrHarryCole]

NEW: It’s as if Tory chiefs are trying to give their new leader as big a duff start as possible…

No Budget response, now it can be revealed they are trying to limit final four’s speeches at conference to just 10 minutes.

Enough with the kid gloves…

https://t.co/903bwUJtwL