Daniel Lamb

26 | Hartlepool | London | Work in Politics | 🌹

[England @England]

Because maybe, you’re going to be the one that saves me.

[Andy Burnham @andyburnham]

Keir has given huge service to our country and I want to thank him for his leadership and dedication during such a challenging period.

His decision marks the beginning of a transition and it is important that this process is conducted in an orderly and responsible way. I will put myself forward as part of this process.

The country expects stability, seriousness and a continued focus on the issues that matter most and that is what it will get.

As we move forward, our priority must be to work together to get the country back to where we all want it to be. People want to see progress on economic growth, cost of living, public services, housing and opportunities for the next generation. Political change should never distract from the responsibility to improve people's lives.

The Labour movement has always been at its strongest when it looks forward with confidence and purpose. This is what we will do from here and we will make sure this transition is a positive process of renewal for our party and our country.

[Hartlepool United FC @Official_HUFC]

Five years ago, a dream became reality.

Together, we’ll dream again 💙

[The New Statesman @NewStatesman]

MAKERFIELD DAYS by @Will___lloyd

A season of superlatives was dawning over Makerfield, a collection of peri-rural suburbs, former pit villages and  towns spread beneath Wigan. The vote was seismic. Historic. Make-or-break. The chance of a lifetime. Andy Burnham had staked his political future and the future of the Labour Party on a single vote against Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon, a plumber and former army reservist, burdened by a digital fossil record of embarrassing remarks about women. Makerfield was a constituency that, like Wigan itself, like so many other places with largely white, Brexit-voting, working-class populations, was speeding to the right. Win or lose, mayor or prime minister, Burnham was being run close – terribly close, given he was the most popular Labour politician in the country up against a man who, as one union apparatchik put it to me acidly, was “only as good as the last podcast he listened to”.

The constituents of Makerfield – trying their best, frowning at their bills, staring at Facebook, feeling uneasy in blunt ways that were hard to articulate in front of journalists – had woken up one morning to find themselves the most psychoanalysed population in Europe. Greater claims began to be made as the race went on. Makerfield was not simply Makerfield. It was, a prominent pollster argued, all of Britain: “A snapshot of the country in miniature.” And what kind of country was that?

I knocked on doors for several weeks. I drank in dust-furred community clubs and backstreet pubs. I ate half a dozen meat pies. I tried to speak to the Afghans and Kurds who adorned Wigan town centre in the middle of the day. I bumped into a squad of absurdly young men canvassing for Restore in the poorest parts of Abram. I watched the crowds at the women’s rugby league in Orrell and spoke to formidable local dignitaries who had spent decades trying to keep the area’s head above water. Burnham and Kenyon didn’t really interest me. Makerfield would be forgotten in a few weeks' time. The circus, self-involved and self-serving, would move on. Yet the people here matter. What interested me was not the race, but what was happening in people’s heads in Bickershaw and Platt Bridge and Hindley – what was happening to all of us right now that meant you could meet people seized by apocalyptic fears of race war and depressed social democrats living on the same street.

I have been sent all over the country in the past two years, trying to take its temperature, check its symptoms, diagnose its ills. I found that it was becoming harder to speak about the surreal things I saw and heard in a straightforward way. Every reporter I knew who was not too blind to see what was going on was struggling in the same way. They suffered from the same queasy, plunging intimation about where we were heading. I was tired of writing and speaking about the country like it was a “normal” place full of happy “normal” communities and cheeky “normal” Brits. Nothing I saw or heard seemed “normal”. Everything was changing.

Britain is a country where it’s easier to imagine where the next pogrom will happen than how a new high-speed rail line will be built. And I am sick and tired of the six-figure salary newspaper columnists who deny the country is broken on X while masked men go door to door in grand old cities, looking for homes and people to burn. Were they daft? Did they think they were clever?

Illustration by The Red Dress

[Andy Burnham @andyburnham]

Politics isn’t working for places like ours.

I will change that.

#AndyBurnham #ForUs

[Hartlepool United FC @Official_HUFC]

A Letter to Pools Fans from Landon Smith

#HUFC

➡️ https://t.co/w3kSsz0qFS

[Rob Law @RobLawTees]

I was asked to write something for @BBCSport online about the 8 month media ban & our return this week.

Again, thank you for all the amazing messages. The support has been very humbling.

You can read the full thing here ⬇️

https://t.co/azgcjHFlMA

#Pools | #HUFC | #BBCFootball

[Hartlepool United FC @Official_HUFC]

Mega today. Well done you lot 💙🤍

#HUFC

[Hartlepool United FC @Official_HUFC]

Hartlepool United Football Club.

#HUFC

[Hartlepool United FC @Official_HUFC]

Welcome to Hartlepool, Landon Smith! 🇺🇸

#HUFC

[BBC Sport Tees @BBCTeesSport]

Happy New Year, @Official_HUFC 🥹

[Robbie Stelling @StellingRobbie]

Thank - and forgive my lack of professionalism here - f**k for that. Who knows what this new dawn will have in store, but here's hoping for a return of the Hartlepool United we know and love!

[Hartlepool United FC @Official_HUFC]

Hartlepool United can today confirm that a takeover of the Club has been completed.

Read more below.

#HUFC

➡️ https://t.co/TLH7OpXNxm

[England Cricket @englandcricket]

The urn. The history. The battle. The drama. The rivalry.

The Ashes. It's without compare.

[Heidi Alexander MP @Heidi_Labour]

Sam went to work on Saturday morning to do his job. He left a hero. His remarkable quick thinking and selfless action saved lives and he has demonstrated bravery beyond measure. I want to send my very best wishes to him and his family.

https://t.co/NEvTmKIJre

[Bridget Phillipson @bphillipsonMP]

It’s time to unite the Party and beat Reform.

https://t.co/8pOyeS6zI2

[Hartlepool United FC @Official_HUFC]

We are all with you, Ronnie 💙

Everyone at Pools sends their love and support to former manager Ronnie Moore following his Myeloma diagnosis.

#HUFC

[HU Supporters Trust @HUST_1908]

No to the divisive, unnecessary vote.

[Jeff Stelling @JeffStelling]

Supporters have been left in an intolerable position with a perceived threat to the future of the club should they not support the current owner. Let’s remember it was him who wanted to stop funding the club. Yet now he seems almost affronted that others want to take over 2/3

[Jeff Stelling @JeffStelling]

@Official_HUFC Football should not matter so much . But it does. Feel like crying after that. Totally out- footballed. Heading for a Darlo derby at this rate.