Jake Croft

Socialist. Apparently running for NEC🌹🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[Richard Johnson @richardmarcj]

@peter_sarris @1967Rogerwade And by now you have a party that is almost entirely a middle-class liberal party, with an often misplaced, patronising charitable concern for the working-class.

This is exactly the politics that Labour was established to replace in the early 20th century.

[Stella Tsantekidou @Stsantek]

Exactly. A teenager was brutalised. How has the state failed to protect young men? Why is there no empathy for them?

[Eli 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇵🇸 @caibarhaw]

Reform's big issue with their Makerfield byelection strategy is they've actually chosen a candidate so normal he's naturally uncomfortable with their campaign to drive working conditions into the ground in this country in their drive to generate profit for general foreign capital

[The Observer @ObserverUK]

“I’m not coming here saying Labour’s great. I’m saying Labour’s not been good enough and it needs to change to get back to a party that listens to people,” says @AndyBurnhamGM

@RSylvester1 meets the Greater Manchester mayor in Makerfield to talk restoring trust in the government
https://t.co/dLOyIKQgbo

[Jake Croft @jacobfcroft]

Must echo comments about Wembley.

[Keir Mather MP @Mather_Keir]

Fantastic response on the doors today!

People here can get a first class MP in Andy Burnham… and a respectable second place at Wembley this saturday! 😉🏉 #UpTheRobins

[Union Jacked 🇬🇧 💪 🌹 @UnionJacked__]

This is a signal that Andy is on the right path:

[Jake Croft @jacobfcroft]

@Stsantek I mean the legalese is one thing. Totally disgusting response regardless of what was said elsewhere, though to be honest with the way the whips and Number 10 have been briefing and smearing I seriously doubt there's anything that could have been said that wasn't totally justified

[Restoration @leftrestoration]

Keir Starmer has not led Labour - a party with democratic traditions. He has instead ran an extension of the civil service.

No Labour member out knocking doors this past month will have heard a voter that can say what the 'five missions' are, just like every working person can't understand why their business' senior staff give meaningless PowerPoint presentations while they do all the work.

Keir was elected to lead Labour on a platform that was quickly abandoned. The idea was to bring Labour together, most of us voted on that premise.

Instead he has led the most factional and insular Labour Party of all time.

In a panic at our loss of working class voters, he turned to Denmark and tried to copy their approach without realizing we are very different nations with a different national character. Without realizing that our Danish cousins' party was led from the front by someone who had the courage of their convictions.

Keir has never made any attempt to convince Labour members and the wider left of his vision. Instead, everything was done in secretive back rooms.

In running for the NEC and in our local elections we see the effects of this: all over Britain local Labour parties are dead. Thousands have left and we are a skeleton of what we once were, asked to contribute to a project that we were never told about or given any motivation to attend to.

The collapse of the Starmer project is a collapse of the delusion that Labour can exist as fifteen cabinet members in a room and everyone else doing what they are told.

This is not our party's tradition, and the next leader must understand as much or we will truly be dead and buried.

[The Telegraph @Telegraph]

✍️ 'Burnham interviews better than Starmer, his speeches are better, and his interactions with voters are more relaxed. He can move voters in ways that Starmer can’t.

'Critically, he’d have the collective sympathetic ear of those voters Reform has come to assume are all but locked down for them: in the North West and across the wider North of England.'

Read James Frayne's full column 👇
https://t.co/K6RksXF5q0

[Aaron Bastani @AaronBastani]

Started a family, bought a house.

I’ve never been more angry that we are depriving young people of doing both because we chose to be a Ponzi scheme rather than a society.

If the right is just about the veneration of exploitation, it will die.

[Co-operative Party @CoopParty]

Proud to support @AndyBurnhamGM as the Labour and Co-operative candidate in the Makerfield by-election 🌹🐝

[Jack 🔸🏳️‍🌈 @jclib1990]

Any candidate, at the moment, will publicly commit to Reeves' fiscal rules - that is because the markets are currently sensitive.

The reason that they are so sensitive is not just due to Liz Truss, but erosion of capacity and resilience over the past ~18 years.

2/6

[Jack 🔸🏳️‍🌈 @jclib1990]

If Andy Burnham, or anybody else for that matter, is to become Prime Minister there needs to be a radical shift in Labour's economic programme.

The current programme is far too incremental and slow, and the fiscal rules are acting like an institutional throttle on delivery.

1/6

[george whitton-towl @georgebwtowl]

We need to rebuild our movement, replace the leadership and work with our trade union comrades to create a better Britain and a better world. I’m so glad Andy has been selected as the Labour candidate in Makerfield and I look forward to going to campaign for him on Saturday.(2/6)

[Jake Croft @jacobfcroft]

Excellent

[Alex Wickham @alexwickham]

EXCLUSIVE: Andy Burnham won’t commit to keeping Labour’s manifesto promises on tax and has opened the door to new tax rises if he becomes PM.

His decision to back the current fiscal rules wins him a reprieve from markets, but it limits his options to fund policies like council house-building. It raises the prospect of tax hikes.

Asked by Bloomberg if he is committed to Labour’s election manifesto pledges not to raise income tax, national insurance, VAT or corporation tax, his campaign declined to say so.

They also didn’t rule out new taxes on wealth.

Burnham’s spokesperson says he doesn’t want talk about tax policy during this by-election:

“Andy is fully focused on working hard for every vote in Makerfield so he can represent them in Parliament. Andy is not standing on a national manifesto at this election; he is standing to make a difference for the people of Makerfield and to bring the change he has delivered in Greater Manchester to the national stage.”

Burnham has recently called for the top rate of tax to be hiked to 50p and a council tax reevaluation to target the wealthy. “We have overtaxed labour and undertaxed wealth,” he said last year.

But former Jeremy Hunt SpAd Adam Smith says wealth taxes don’t raise sufficient revenue and it is inevitable Burnham will have to look at the big taxes if he is going to implement bolder policies.

[GB Politics @GBPolitcs]

🚨NEW: Oasis have granted Andy Burnham permission to use their song "Some Might Say" in his Makerfield election campaign video

[Oliver Kamm @OliverKamm]

Privately educated London lawyer believes Nottinghamshire is in the north of England.

[Jake Croft @jacobfcroft]

@MaxFRobespierre @Muskovite2 @BBCr4today What a stupid comment.

[Jake Croft @jacobfcroft]

@jakonian No you absolutely cannot. Everyone saying what a swell guy he is doesn't have to put up with what a complete wasted opportunity he's made of an already terrible mayoral deal forced on us by the Hull Lib Dems.

[Jake @jakonian]

"Stop Burnham" which translates as "Keep Starmer"