Samuel Kalanovic

The Tories aren't your mates x

[G @Gideoomatic]

PGMOL sacrificing David Coote

[DailyAFC @DailyAFC]

Arsenal star, Declan Rice, is joined by current and former England players in thanking Gareth Southgate for his managerial services. 🙏🫂

The midfielder especially thanked Southgate for giving him his debut and captaining him in his 50th game.

[Daniel Hussey @DanielHussey2]

If somehow you missed the hurling today, sit back and watch this 7-min package.

82k in Croke Park. Incredible drama.

[Joey Kresl @JJ_Kresl]

My Dad in full Dad mode during the last 15 mins of TOP GUN: MAVERICK

[Carol Vorderman @carolvorders]

BREAKING
Final poll before election

@YouGov

Labour: 431
Con: 102 (Range 72-129)
Lib Dem: 72 (Range 57-87)

RANGES
An overlap of low Tory 72 to high @libdems at 87

The LIB DEMS can form the opposition if you VOTE TACTICALLY

Believe it

https://t.co/3Rt9iA6euK

[Billy Bragg @billybragg]

please use this tactical voting website to find out how best to utilise your vote to push the Tories into third place on Thursday and change the balance of power in parliament for a generation. Spread the word! 8/8 https://t.co/pEptRxGreZ

[Savan Qadir @savanQadir]

Gosh this is brutal 🔥

[Edwin Hayward @edwinhayward]

You may dislike the current incarnation of Labour and deplore their Brexit position. You may believe that one Tory MP more or less makes no real difference when we're facing a Labour landslide.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The huge prize at this election is the Tories coming THIRD.

That would change absolutely everything.

It's the difference between them biding their time until they can regroup, and being finished forever as a political force.

Here's what they would lose by finishing up behind the LibDems:

- 6 questions at PMQs every week

- Automatic media coverage

- 17 Opposition Days when they get to set the agenda and hold votes

- First right to reply to key speeches like the King's Speech and the Budget

- A lot of their Short Money

- The right to form a Shadow Cabinet (other parties can mirror government functions but nobody really cares) as a government in waiting

- Chairs of several Select Committees

- Privy Council membership for senior figures

- Office of the Leader of the Opposition, with additional resources, funding and staff

As you can imagine, without any of that good stuff to fall back on, the path to rebuilding would be a vertical cliff.

That's why it's essential to vote tactically to get the Tories out, no matter what you feel about the current incarnation of Labour. (Personally I'm furious about their views on Brexit and other issues.)

The chance will never come again to wipe them out for good. Literally never. We will never see the perfect storm of factors converge again:

- 14 years of Conservative rule, marked by growing public discontent

- A string of mismanagement issues, from the PPE scandal to Brexit complications

- The rise of Reform UK, splitting the traditional Conservative vote and the perfect protest vote for people who would never vote Labour, LibDem or Green

- A resurgent Liberal Democrat party

- An astonishingly poor Conservative election campaign

And with the LibDems in Opposition, the topic of Brexit will finally get a proper and frequent airing. That will advance the cause of Rejoin more than any other action possibly could.

So hold your nose. Look past your frustration, your distaste, your anger, your apathy. And vote for whichever party can beat the Tories in your constituency.

Eyes on the prize. Always. Eyes on the prize.

[Our Rach @our_rach]

Peter Andre giving Richard Madeley some serious competition in the Alan Partridge stakes here

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

USA media dishes brutal truth about Brexit Britain

“Every decision taken by Tory (and @LibDems) governments was a political decision—it did not need to happen that way. Austerity was never the hard logic of dutiful caretakers; it was a political calculation to rescue rich friends and dump the burdensome price on those least able to endure the cost.”

“There is mold in the walls and shit in the rivers, posh butter in the supermarkets has anti-theft tags stuck to it, the trains run on schedule about half the time, the average pub-poured pint of lager—the blood of the nation—is nearing the criminal price of 5 pounds ($6.34), and on May 22 a new general election was announced to the people of Great Britain by a prime minister who is richer than the king. 

“Should the polls prove correct—short of a 2016-scale error—the annihilation will be justified. Wage growth is at its lowest level since the Napoleonic Wars. What the Financial Timescalls the “rental market” and what the rest of us call “How much of your money someone richer than you takes every month” is stratospherically inflated; rent is about half a person’s average salary in London. Chain stores on British high streets close permanently at a rate of 14 per day, leaving most shopping areas a procession of corrugated shutters, uncollected rubbish, and the sleeping bags of the homeless.

“The precious marvel that is the National Health Service is cracking at the seams; at the current rate, waiting lists will not be cleared for another 685 years. The union for junior doctors, the BMA, has organised 10 strikes and walkouts in the past year for a pay deal that would only bring wages up to the current level of inflation. The city of Birmingham was the first to tip over into bankruptcy; more will follow.

“In 2022, at least 3% of all families in Britain—around two million people—could not afford to eat. Like a revenant from Dickens, Victorian diseases like scurvy, rickets, and scabies are back to blight children.

“Life expectancy has dropped to the lowest level since 2010—tellingly, the year the Conservatives took power, at the height of the recession.”

“These are the bitter fruits of austerity: an experiment in sado-monetarist economics and financial barbarism. Not much unites those five PMs other than the constant ritual tribute in blood to their coiffed icon, Margaret Thatcher. Yet Thatcher, back in the 1980s, did not lie about how brutal the first shock of neoliberalism was going to be. She coldly promised torture before riches.

“Its sequel, however, was pitched by its architect George Osborne, chancellor under David Cameron, as a bit of belt-tightening resembling that most prized memory in the national canon: the Blitz Spirit. Come on, chaps, buck up and give it some welly. The shattering of society into thinner fragments was supposed to be a hardy adventure. 

“Midway through this downhill plummet, Britain bumbled backward out of the EU. The wreckage of this four-year disaster can now best be seen as an attempt to escape the harsh bite of austerity.

“Brexit was a retreat from hunger into myth: an embrace of antique fables about British pluck and derring-do, a belief that even without an empire and an industrial base this archipelago might reclaim past glory. Faced with profound turmoil, much of the nation turned to a half-remembered falsehood about their grandfather’s generation, marching along with Churchill. This election is the reckoning Brexit postponed.

https://t.co/PRKpMibIqR

[Supertanskiii @supertanskiii]

This is an excellent bit of comms by Labour. Jon Richardson, in a bath with a beer, telling you how Sunak made his millions from the downfall of our economy.

Really important message, brilliantly delivered.

[David Owens @asoundreaction]

Fair play to Colleen - she's lasted a lot longer than his other six wives.

[Cons @CaptainCons]

Wife: I just know when you’re out golfing with the guys you’re being gross, drinking too much, and talking about girls

The guys:

[Scott Bryan @scottygb]

“Things Can Only Get Better” by D:Ream is drowning out Rishi Sunak’s speech calling a general election.

[vids that go hard @vidsthatgohard]

This might be the greatest SNL skit I’ve ever seen lol

[one @ONE_AMN]

Saka brother I will not forget what you’ve done this season

[Jonny Sharples @JonnyGabriel]

Manchester United's post-Erik ten Hag summer.

[julia @juumelo_]

I love men they’re only ever thinking about sports or existential dread

[The Middle-earth Mixer @MiddleearthMixr]

I have no words

[Watch LFC @Watch_LFC]

This is what 10 points dropped looks like.