Laura Blance

[Jack Dart @JackWDart]

If people genuinely believe Burnham won’t receive the exact same media onslaught, they’ve not been paying attention.

Starmer is not, objectively, bad. This idea that he is somehow the worst PM in British history is frankly laughable.

Liz truss lasted 49 days, crashed the pound and was laughed out of Downing Street.

Since Labour took office, Keir Starmer’s government has:

• Scrapped the two-child benefit limit, lifting hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty and putting money back into some of the hardest-pressed households in the country.

• Expanded free school meals, cutting costs for families and making sure more children get a proper meal during the school day.

• Expanded funded childcare, reducing one of the biggest monthly costs facing working parents and making it easier for people to stay in work.

• Raised the National Living Wage, increasing pay for millions of low-paid workers.

• Strengthened workers’ rights, giving people greater protection against insecure work and bad employers.

• Introduced statutory sick pay from the first day of illness, so workers are less likely to choose between their health and their wages.

• Ended no-fault evictions, giving renters more security in their homes.

• Brought rail operators back into public ownership, taking key services out of failed private hands and giving the public a stronger stake in how they are run.

• Cut NHS waiting lists from their post-pandemic peak, meaning more patients are being seen sooner.

• Raised the state pension through the triple lock, protecting pensioners’ incomes against rising costs.

• Scrapped the old non-dom tax regime, making some of the wealthiest people in the country pay more fairly.

• Added VAT to private school fees, raising money from those most able to contribute.

• Removed business rates relief from private schools, ending an unjustified tax break.

• Increased neighbourhood policing, putting more officers and PCSOs back into communities.

• Helped bring knife crime down, meaning fewer families face the devastation of serious violence.

• Recorded the lowest homicide rate since the 1970s, a material improvement in public safety.

• Created Great British Energy, giving Britain a publicly owned clean energy company.

• Created the National Wealth Fund, backing investment in industry, infrastructure and clean energy.

• Passed planning reforms aimed at getting homes and major projects built faster.

• Improved relations with the EU, reducing diplomatic hostility and rebuilding practical cooperation.

• Agreed a UK-EU security partnership, strengthening cooperation on defence and European security.

• Signed a long-term partnership with Ukraine, reinforcing Britain’s support against Putin’s invasion.

• Secured new trade agreements, opening up markets for British businesses.

• Helped restore seriousness to government after years of scandal, chaos and decline.

People do not have to like Starmer. They do not have to vote Labour. But pretending this is the record of the worst Prime Minister in British history is absurd.

[Marina Purkiss @MarinaPurkiss]

Dear Reform-voting ladies…

Do you know you’re voting for a party that wants to:

❌ Scrap the Equality Act - your legal protection against workplace discrimination & unequal pay

❌ Kill the Online Safety Act - the law protecting you from revenge porn

❌ Vote AGAINST the bill to stop workplace sexual harassment

❌ Stack the party with anti-abortion politicians - some opposing termination even in cases of rape

❌ Push “pro-family” policies that put women back in the home

I guess the question is…

Do you hate immigrants more than you love your rights?

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

This is what hope looks like.

Sign up at https://t.co/0bhBHhWvVa.

[Have I Got News For You @haveigotnews]

Boris Johnson has been bitten by an ostrich at a safari park. Medics were quick to the scene to carry out an emergency check for infection... but the ostrich is fine

[Hey, Dave! @davegreenidge57]

Here’s a video produced by “Led by Donkeys” out of the U.K. that puts down the timeline of how Musk used X to get Donald Trump elected. I would save it because I don’t think it will be up for long.

[Ava-Santina @AvaSantina]

Lib Dems Ed Davey has taken a stronger line than the PM:

[The Secret Barrister 🦋 @BarristerSecret]

Ultimately it’s your vote, America, but one of your candidates is a racist convicted fraudster and proven sex offender who proved himself one of the most disastrous presidents in your history and attempted to overthrow your democracy when he lost an election. And the other isn’t.

[Marina Purkiss @MarinaPurkiss]

For all you easily misled folk who need a reminder of what actual corruption looks like…

[Supertanskiii @supertanskiii]

Women: These bad bitches fought and died for your right to vote. So fucking use it.

You have until midnight:

https://t.co/POBMNXozaP

[Carol Vorderman @carolvorders]

How many Angela Rayner Units in a Tory? #AngelaRayners

For instance..
£7,897 Boris Johnson booze bill for his Brexit party Jan 31st 2020
5 #AngelaRayners

Many more below⏬️ and in this thread 👍🏼🧵
One Angela Rayner Unit of £1,500 is what the Tories claim she may owe in CGT on a house she bought in 2007. Her tax advisor says she doesn't.

With @Conservatives hypocrisy reaching explosive levels, I thought it a good exercise to see how this claim of theirs relates to just some of their own waste, fines and dodgy dealings.

£15,000 Liz Truss in-flight catering on one private jet single trip to Australia
10 #AngelaRayners

£34,000 Libel Bill - Michelle Donelan got us to pay after she libelled an academic
23 #AngelaRayners

£61,000 fine for Vote Leave breaking Electoral Law. MD Matthew Elliott given a peerage
41 #AngelaRayners

£67,801 illegal donation (broke Electoral Law) for Boris Johnson's flat refurbishment
45 #AngelaRayners

£334,803 spent by Foreign Office in 2021 on alcohol alone
223 #AngelaRayners

£370,000 paid out for Priti Patel bullying Philip Rutnam. She bullied. We paid.
247 #AngelaRayners

£993,086 severance payouts to Tory ministers during Johnson/Truss debacle
Some had only been in office a matter of days or weeks but were due taxpayer funded payouts anyway
662 #AngelaRayners

£2,000,000 for 8 by-elections caused by Tories bad behaviour/quit under Rishi Sunak
1,333 #AngelaRayners

£40,000,000 VIP helicopter contract which Ben Wallace was cancelling. Sunak intervened and kept it
26,667 #AngelaRayners

£65 million PPE estimated profit for Michelle Mone and husband under investigation by the National Crime Agency
43,333 #AngelaRayners

£4 BILLION wasted on unusable PPE
2,666,667 #AngelaRayners

Other Tory amounts of hypocrisy welcome 👍🏼

(all numbers rounded)

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

Gillian Keegan

Gave £1m to her husbands firm from the Education fund.
Had her offices refurbished for £32m this year, as schools collapse.
Threatens to punch Oftsted staff.

Said ”I’m doing a good f***ing job.”

FIRE HER NOW!

[Ed Conway @EdConwaySky]

🚨How British companies are bolstering Vladimir Putin’s war machine🚨
A depressing thread.
But an important one.
With some pretty shocking charts.
Let’s begin with the “official” picture. It suggests UK trade with Russia has collapsed since Feb 2022. Down by 74%…

[Peter Stefanovic @PeterStefanovi2]

LBC has learned that Indian tech giant Infosys, in which Rishi Sunak's wife is a shareholder, received a near-50% increase in public sector invoices last year – representing the best-ever year for the firm

Please tell me the penny has now dropped

https://t.co/GASRwLjk4q

[Marina Purkiss @MarinaPurkiss]

Tell you what is a lifestyle choice…

Living rent free at your mum and dad’s while you cream £25k off the taxpayer.

[Edwin Hayward @edwinhayward]

Get to Know the Bibby Stockholm...

- 500+ single adult men crammed onto a barge with a capacity of 222 in normal use (e.g. as accommodation for oil workers)

Single rooms:
- 2 strangers, sharing an austere metal bunk bed
- TV (as mocking and useless as a paperweight: they've been deliberately detuned so they won't pick up anything, to "encourage socialising" apparently)
- 1 chair, 1 desk, 1 wardrobe
- A window (it's supposed to be able to open; this is touted as a major plus by the barge's owners)
- Shower and toilet

Slightly larger rooms:
- 4 strangers, in 2 bunk beds

Communal areas:
(Most of the larger ones have been repurposed into dormitories. The thin list below is pretty much all that's left.)
- Narrow corridors
- TV room with sofas, seating up to 12 people max
- Tiny gym
- Classroom with seating for perhaps 20, some sort of laptops, and "wifi access"
- Bar (off-limits to asylum seekers, and reserved as a "staff lounge")
- Multi-faith prayer room
- Games room with a pool table and a few chairs
- "Outdoor" space surrounded on all four sides by massive walls made up of the 3-storeys of cabins, so you can't see anything other than sky
- Canteen dining area (not nearly big enough for 500 people)

Other facilities:
- Basic meals 3x a day (but note that the canteen seems far too small to seat everyone at once, so presumably there will be shifts coming and going all the time)
- Laundry service
- On-site nurse 5 days a week
- Access to GP if referred by the nurse

Beyond the ship:
- Airport-style security (metal detectors etc.)
- 24/7 guards conducting "robust security checks"
- 15ft high fence all around
- No pedestrian access to the port or the wider area
- Only way to get to Weymouth and beyond is on the occasional shuttle buses
- Have to sign register every time they leave

The asylum seekers on board are likely to be there between six months and a year or more.

They can't work.

They will be fed and their clothes washed, but they will have just over a pound a day for absolutely everything else they need.

They are expected to spend the overwhelming majority of their time on the barge, where as we've seen there are leisure and learning facilities for maybe 1/10th of people if we're being extremely generous with how we estimate it.

It is truly, truly disgusting.

[Carol Vorderman @carolvorders]

A GB News Presenter called Camilla has written a piece for the front page of Telegraph today, where she demonstrates how she finds it incomprehensible that someone, after 13 years of Tory govt, would not want to vote Conservative! Or show responsibility to society. Hmmmmm.
Still it’s good to know that an old bird like me, & all of us together, can get them so gloriously confused!! Nice graphics 🙄

[Carol Vorderman @carolvorders]

Tory MPs just voted to restrict our freedom of dissent even further to change what parliament has already decided.

Tmrw @GreenJennyJones has put a Fatal Motion in House of Lords BUT she needs Labour to support it. So far, they aren't. Pls change yr mind @uklabour @LabourLordsUK

[Love Britain, Hate Tories ℹ @realtoryparty]

You MUST listen to this.

A lady called Philipa Bateman phoned in to "BBC Any Answers" last week and talked about her experience of the lockdown and her opinion of @BorisJohnson.

WARNING ⚠️ this is POWERFUL!

Please share.

[Laura Blance @lauraaablance]

Demand the Crown Prosecution Services bring charges of Misconduct in Public Office - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/BxKzusHza5 via @UKChange

[PoliticsJOE @PoliticsJOE_UK]

Boris Johnson has resigned as an MP after the Privileges committee found him to have misled parliament.

The law is finally catching up with the wise guys of the Tory party.