Darren Milne

[Count Binface @CountBinface]

Labour, Tories, Lib Dems and Greens: I demand you stand down in Clacton. I will be a unity candidate and pledge to build at least one affordable house.

Nigel Farage says he wants The People versus the Establishment. So be it.

Leave him to me.

[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.

[Waqas🔶️ @m0w4q45]

Hello Zia,

Quick question was this policy written by a crypto fella on the back of Cigarette packet?

“Tax-free overtime!” sounds brilliant until you do the maths.

You’re on £15/hr, overtime goes tax-free… so your boss quietly drops the base rate to £14. Same take-home, you did the hours, they kept the saving.

Meanwhile firms “discover” their £74k manager is actually hourly, clock him in for “overtime,” and pocket the tax, while the bloke on 39 hrs gets zip.

And earn £75,001? You lose the perk entirely. Reward for a pay rise: gone.

Turns out “reward hard work” mostly rewards whoever runs the payroll.

[Ivo Graham @IvoGraham]

2:15 tomorrow, please share with anyone who might want to join. One belting rendition in the Statue Park, lyrics on phones but also plenty of printouts for anyone who wants them, then into the CG to dare to dream once more

[Edwin Hayward @edwinhayward]

Here's how the future is going to play out...

(Long - please expand the tweet.)

1. The Tories will keep on wrecking things faster and faster as the GE approaches. They'll act like irresponsible teenagers who know they don't have to clean up in the morning after a wild drunken binge.

Why?
A) It's their last chance to firehose cash at their friends and cronies.
B) It's an opportunity to further feather their own nests before they're out of office.
C) It stuffs Labour even more - we'll return to this soon enough.
D) The more chaos they cause and the more scandals they trigger, the less chance there is of any one case of wrongdoing being investigated.

From a Tory POV, the best stuff to break is anything that's unfixable. For instance, the closure of all train ticket offices. Once those have been turned into coffee concessions and the staff fired or moved elsewhere, both the facilities and the expertise will be gone for good.

2. Regardless of actual policies, Labour will win the GE on a desperate tide of people wanting to Get The Tories out. However (and this will prove vital later) their future freedom to manoevre will be severely limited by the bright red lines they've been laying down on stuff like Brexit.

Related aside: Remember, the losing party has a blank slate. The electorate thumbed their noses at the manifesto, so they have total freedom to bin it. ("Nobody liked what we had to offer, so we need to do something different.") But this isn't true of the winning party. Even though pledges do get broken and manifesto commitments forgotten, they are still constrained by what they promised to win office.

3. Labour will start trying to fix the stuff the Tories broke. It will prove very expensive. Mending stuff is always more expensive than breaking it. It will be slow going too. And Labour will be trapped by the need to be "fiscally responsible" in a way the Tories never would, because our mainly RW media is waiting to tear them a new one if they spend as much as a single brass penny without accounting for where it came from.

Related aside 2: Is the political playing field level when it comes to British media? Absolutely not. It's totally unfair. But this is a known known, so Labour have to find ways to win - and win repeatedly - despite being hobbled by the press.

4. Labour will try to Make Brexit Work. The RW tabloids will tear bigger strips off them than usual, painting even minor concessions as a Great Betrayal. (If you're not paying attention, you need to realise that the tabloids pillory Labour every. single. day. So this will be a ramping up rather than a different attitude.)

Related aside 3: Since anything Labour does to "undo Brexit" will be portrayed as a betrayal, no matter how insignificant, they might as well take huge lumbering steps rather than teeny tiny ones. It won't make the tabloids more rabid than they're inevitably going to be.

5. Make Brexit Work won't. Work, that is. You might as well try and put the toothpaste back in the tube after you brushed your teeth with it. Brexit is inherently unworkable by its very nature. The small improvements won't be nearly enough for Rejoiners, will infuriate still-Leavers, and will barely move the dial on Britain's Brexit problems.

Related aside 4: Young voters who came of voting age since the referendum already break 86/14 in favour of Rejoin. By the time we get through a first Labour term, anyone under 32 will be overwhelmingly keen to re-enter the EU.

6. Meanwhile, Labour will also have to spend more and more and more to keep stuff from literally falling apart. Think sewers, water pipes, collapsing schools, crumbling hospitals. The legacy of Tory underinvestment has played havoc with already fragile infrastructure. Again, stern questions will be asked about where the money is coming from.

7. The rump of the Tory party, whatever's left after the GE wipeout, will sit on the sidelines laughing and jeering. "Typical Labour. Always spending money they don't have." They will point to every single broken thing, claiming they're all Labour's fault - and the RW media will amplify the message.

8. If they're very lucky, Labour will go into the GE-after-next with the overall situation in Britain slightly better than when they took office. We'll only be knee-deep in metaphoric (and maybe literal) sewage, rather than thigh-deep.

9. The Tories and RW press will continue their tag-teaming attacks. ("Same old Labour. Can't be trusted with the economy. Can't get anything working. Can't even fix Brexit, despite all their lofty promises.)

10. GE2: Electric Boogaloo.
Labour are stuck. The taunts about their flagship Make Brexit Work policy hit home - because they're true. And that lubricates the way for all the other lies the Tories and the RW media are spinning about them to slip down like honey.

If Labour pivot towards SM/CU/Rejoin to try to win GE2, they might as well tattoo "we wasted the last 5 years and prolonged the damage because we didn't know what the hell we were doing" on their foreheads. They may pivot anyway, because the alternative is even worse. This is where those bright red lines (remember them?) will come back to bite them in the fundament so hard, they won't be able to sit down for a month. The press will scream "U-turn" and again it will be absolutely true: a U-turn so big, it's visible from the Moon.

Related aside 5: There's no Get the Tories Out vote in GE2. Why? Because they're already out. The impetus to keep them out won't win over disgruntled voters who already lent their votes to Labour once with gritted teeth, despite Labour not doing what they wanted on things like Brexit and PR.

11. Labour lose GE2. A one-term wonder, and they're done. The Tories do what they do best: they blame all Britain's ills on Labour, and start wrecking the country afresh with a clean slate. Heck, they're still bleating about the "No money left" letter today, so we know exactly how this stuff plays out.

Related aside 6: From the standpoint of history, being PM is perhaps 100x more important than being Leader of the Opposition. A place in posterity for eternity is the grand prize that even very rich people can't buy (though their wealth can certainly help towards attaining it). So Keir Starmer won't be nearly as disappointed as you might imagine. If he makes it a full term, that's already longer than May, Johnson, Truss (!) and Sunak managed. His standing is assured. Put another way: his incentives are not our incentives.

12. Another ruinous decade or so of Tory rule. (We know how hard it is for Labour to win. They need the Tories to mess up so badly that a tide of outrage carries them over the finish line. That tide is unlikely to rise again over a term dominated by constant reminders of "Labour's failings" playing out 24/7 in the RW press and on RW TV and radio.)

Deep breath. Have a coffee and a biscuit. You've earned them. We've seen the problem. Now it's time to tackle the solution.

Scroll back up through the scenario above. Notice how Brexit runs through it, like a vein pumping poison.

That's why Labour need to change their fundamental attitude towards Brexit, and they need to do it now - not just before the GE.

Stop ruling things out. Not saying you won't do something isn't the same as saying you will do it. Read the previous sentence a few times - it does make sense. Think along the lines of "Labour will do whatever it takes to mitigate the damage Brexit is causing Britain". The actual message can be polished by the pros. It's the intent that matters. Without the red lines on SM/CU/Rejoin, anything becomes possible.

By making the change now, it blunts the moaning in the media. Why? Because it dilutes the impact of the u-turn over a year or more, rather than concentrating it into the last month of intense scrutiny just before the GE.

The other vital ingredient is PR.

Simply put, PR is the only hope we have of achieving any sort of long-term stability.

Why? Because many of the problems Britain faces will take 2, 3, 4+ election cycles to fix. And they need fixing. But the only conceivable way of unlocking the time to fix them is to form long-term partnerships in the national interest. In other words, PR.

PR rids us of the short-termism mindset that has dragged Britain down for decades. Though the exact balance in Parliament will change from GE to GE, even under PR, a coalition will almost certain be possible without involving the Tories or other RW parties. It is better to have a share of power forever than absolute power for a few years before the other lot come in and undo everything you worked towards.

Related aside 7: Don't think of GEs in terms of a 5-year cycle. When the party in power changes, their first year is spent trying to pick through the mess and understand what's going on. And the final year of every 5-year cycle is focused on the next GE. So there are really only ever 4 (and more often 3) years of actual governing possible under FPTP in every 5-year election cycle.

Summary: Labour needs to adopt a completely different attitude to Brexit (stop ruling stuff out, and make the change now) and move to introduce PR.

Phew, we're very nearly done. Congratulations on making it this far.

In parting: You may disagree with what you just read. You probably will. But please take a big step back and evaluate whether your disagreement is because it's just too horrible to think about the real world in the stark terms I painted above. Also, please consider whether your support for a particular party is blinding you to the reality of what they can hope to achieve in a short 5-year (really 3) period in office.

Thanks for your interest, and have a great day.

(P.S. If you found the above interesting, please RT to share this with others.)

[Swindon Needs Speedway @SNSactiongroup]

Absolute disgrace!

[Darren Milne @Milneyishere]

@SamMorshead_ You called it 🤦🏼‍♂️

[Kevin (Only Hunter Goodman can save us now) @_Kevlar23_]

Look.....Pat McAfee has said a lot of dumb shit but "I don't think anybody is upset about the commercials" may be the dumbest thing he's ever said out loud

[ND @CopaceticNuts]

The only chance we have of ever getting "7 hours of commercial free football" back on RedZone is if people stop paying for it

[Tyler @TylerFFCreator]

I'm all in on #boycottredzone

[ThatsGoodSports @BrandonPerna]

If I were the CEO of a giant company, say Bud Light for example, I’d sponsor RedZone.

7 hours of commercial free football brought to you by Bud Light. Bud Light is happy to make sure you have zero commercials today!

I am a marketing genius

[Akash @YZR_Fantasy]

Cracker Barrell switched back their logo because of public outrage and that was just a logo. When you fundamentally change the entire nature of your product, the outrage is gonna be way louder #BoycottRedzone

[one dozen rats at a keyboard @PanasonicDX4500]

never forget what they took from you.

[Akash @YZR_Fantasy]

All we need is for “boycott redzone” to be trending and we can win

[Blain Crain @Blain_Crain]

Like this tweet if your boycotting RedZone

[WBR @W_B_Rick]

ESPN getting their hands on Redzone and immediately hitting the commercials button is so brazen. They don’t even try to pretend they care about the viewer anymore. Despicable organization.

[Three Year Letterman @3YearLetterman]

This is 1,000 times worse than the Cracker Barrel logo

[Tre @Tre092]

This greedy capitalist society is rotten to the core.

You see a fun product like redzone, consumer friendly without any gross corporate overreach into production, get sniped by old, out of touch pieces of shit who want to plaster ads on it so they can make a quick Buck.

[Ashlie @EMT_Ashlie]

I feel bad for Scott Hanson something he loves so dearly ruined immediately by ESPN and corporate greed. There’s zero point to watching RedZone if there’s commercials

[Nick Bateman @nickbateman33]

I actually think everyone should cancel their redzone subscriptions. Sacrifice one year so they give us 7 hours of commercial free football for life