Julian 𝚃homas

Can't abide wibble goats

[Tim Shipman @ShippersUnbound]

Further to Blair. Literally every honest sensible person in all the main parties privately agrees with all these propositions:

- welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap
- defence spending is too low
- the triple lock is unsustainable
- without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution
- we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea
- migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state
- any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement
- we are deeply embedded with America in ways which the public does not understand and cannot be told and however joyous it makes us feel to hate Trump, disengagement at the deep state level is not only wholly unrealistic but also undesirable
- Whitehall needs a total overhaul so specific project expertise and political appointees can be brought in quickly

Blair basically says all that.

The one thing he doesn’t say and which the same group of people agree on is this and it’s something Blair left behind:

- judges and quangos have too much power, are unaccountable and without redressing the balance in favour of parliament it is very difficult to do anything big fast
- the bare minimum that needs to change in this regard is to reform judicial review and planning law so we can put building and economic growth ahead of newts and NIMBYs

None of that above really ought to be up for discussion. It is all common sense but not one of our politicians will publicly say all of it

Whatever you think of Blair, engage with what he’s saying not how he makes you feel. The bare minimum we should expect from any leader is that they have an analysis of the current situation and a plan to deal with it which is as coherent and realistic as his intervention. Pretty well every critique I’ve read so far has failed to meet this requirement.

Over to Andy and Keir and Kemi and Nigel and Zack and all the others

[SOI media 🇬🇧 @MediaSOI]

If we simply rename the English Channel “Keir Starmer’s desk” then nothing will fucking cross it

[Julian 𝚃homas @partially]

@MDC12345678 @clim8resistance I think many of us are becoming accelerationists.

[Steven Barrett @SBarrettBar]

This is extremely serious

And we need immediate Police Action by @gmpolice

Now.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Labour was elected in July 2024 with an overriding promise to accelerate economic growth. We now now have its record for its first full calendar year, 2025:
Q1: 0.7%
Q2: 0.2%
Q3: 0.1%
Q4: 0.1%
So, far from stimulating the economy, the dead hand of Starmer-Reeves has knocked the stuffing out of it. They took a good start to the year and squandered it with reckless tax, spend and borrow (none of which was in their manifesto).
Our giant services sector — 2nd biggest in the world — is stagnating. Construction is in its worst state for over 4 years, with output down 2% in Q4 (which is why Labour’s promise of 1.5m new houses by 2029 is already broken).
As for GDP per capita, which was very popular among X tweeters under the Tories but not so much now (I wonder why), it fell for the second quarter in a row — so we’re effectively in a GDP/capita recession.

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

The British Establishment has a simple rule:

The problem is never the problem. The problem is people who dare to point out the problem.

Grooming gangs, illegal immigration, terrorism, men in women's prisons, Net Zero.

Same playbook every time: "racist", "denier", "Nazi".

You'd think when you're calling a beloved children's author a Nazi, you'd maybe stop and pause. But no.

Another part of the rule is that no matter how right the "bad" people turn out to be, they remain tainted by having been right.

Feminists like JK Rowling were vilified for opposing puberty blockers being given to children. The government rowed back on the policy. But the women who spoke out against it are still considered bigots.

Grooming gangs turned out to be racist anti-white hate crimes. If this had been done by an invading army, it would be rightly treated as a war crime. But the people who covered it up and ignored it are still the "good" people and the people who complained about it are still the "bad" people.

The same is true of illegal immigration. Islamism. Net Zero.

And this is why the country is screwed. Because we live in a society where the golden rule is that you must tolerate the intolerable or you'll be made a pariah for caring about the safety of British women and girls, for wanting a cohesive society, for wanting a strong economy.

I've had enough of this and my sense is so have the British people. We won't keep quiet anymore. Call us all the names you want. It doesn't work anymore.

[Alan @A1an_M]

We used to have lots of places in the UK where you could get most of what you needed within 15 minutes walk: school, GP, grocer, butcher, church, pub, children's playground, sports club.

We called them "towns" and "villages".

Then along came central and local government.

They encouraged large chains to build out of town supermarkets, forcing town centre butchers and grocers and fishmongers out of business.

They planted acres of new housing around towns and villages, with no facilities, and too far away from town centres for people to walk there. And they sold off sports grounds and playgrounds for more housing.

They built centralised "superhospitals", moving patient care away from their local neighbourhood, while running down the GP service and replacing it with call centres and "apps".

They raised business rates and car park prices in town centres, and installed lots of bike lanes and "traffic calming", thereby narrowing roads and causing more traffic congestion, reducing footfall, and sending town centre shops out of business.

They closed pubs, playgrounds, sports clubs, churches to save us all from a *checks notes* deadly respiratory virus.

And now what do they want to do?

They want to recreate those 15 minute communities that we used to have in small towns and villages, but in bigger towns and cities instead. Only they're not doing it by encouraging small businesses to open neighbourhood stores, or reducing local business rates, or decentralising the NHS, ensuring we can all live in that same 15 minute paradise.

No, they're doing it by installing traffic filters and CCTV and enforcement infrastructure and fines. All stick and no carrot. Creating new inner city ghettos.

There is seemingly no situation which central and local government cannot make worse.

[Oliver Cooper @OliverCooper]

How did the UK economy do in 2025 compared to the OBR's pre-election March 2024 forecasts?

Growth
🔵 Forecast 1.9%
🔴 Now 1.4% 👎

Inflation
🔵 Forecast 1.5%
🔴 Now 3.4% 👎

Unemployment
🔵 Forecast 4.4%
🔴 Now 5.1% 👎

Deficit (2025-26)
🔵 Forecast £78bn
🔴 Already £140bn 👎

[Gully Foyle #UKTrade @TerraOrBust]

📰DON'T LET THESE STORIES DISAPPEAR📰

The world is moving quickly - and Labour are benefitting from many many issues dropping off the radar that we should all be very concerned about.

Don't let them be forgotten! Make sure you share this list far and wide!

1. Why is it fine for the Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves to break the law, what happened to lawbreakers cannot be lawmakers?
2. Why is it fine for the Labour Deputy PM David Lammy to mislead Parliament over violent foreign offenders being accidentally released from prison at an alarming rate?
3. Why is it fine for the Labour Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, to appoint a Labour and personal donor into a position of power?
4. Why did the electoral commission choose to not investigate further over them being misled on £750k donations to Labour Together?
5. Why three Ukrainian male models firebombed Keir Starmer's house?
6. Why Labour Chief Whip Nick Brown was suspended in September 2022 with no explanation at all?
7. Why the Chinese spy case was allowed to be dropped when there was sufficient evidence to proceed?
8. Why Starmer was able to avoid tax on his parent's donkey sanctuary land?
9. Why China think they were given illegal assurances that their mega-embassy would be built?
10. Why the government seem performatively upset about the Israeli football fan ban when they were told about it over a week in advance?
11. Why it was fine for Covid rules to be regularly breached for Starmer to have in-person vocal coaching?
12. Why it was fine for Starmer and family to move to Lord Alli's flat during Covid lockdowns, without any claims for the benefit?
13. Why the assailants of the police at Manchester airport are *still* free?
14. Why the Labour government gave away the Chagos islands, when there was no legal case for doing so?
15. Why the Labour government gave away £12 Billion worth of fishing access to the EU, for merely the promise to negotiate further concessions in the future?
16. Why the Labour government are not held to account for the lie of the £22bn black hole, when the OBR stated very clearly at the time that such a hole did not exist?
17. Who knew what about links to Jeffrey Epstein when Peter Mandelson was appointed to his role in the US?
18. Why hasn’t the Grooming Gang Inquiry been set up yet?
19. Did Sadiq Khan cover up the existence of grooming gangs in London?
20. Why has Labour MP Dan Norris, arrested on child sexual assault allegations in April, not been charged and had his day in court some ten months later?

[Kabrutus @kabrutusdeid]

Seriously if I were British, I’d make a page or YouTube channel just for this. Amelia teaching the world about British contributions. Real reasons to be proud of your ancestry and history.

Never be ashamed of being great.

[Eva Vlaardingerbroek @EvaVlaar]

Holy sh*t.

I’ve been banned from traveling to the UK. They revoked my ETA.

"Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conductive to the public good."

3 days after posting this about Starmer.

[Eve Barlow @Eve_Barlow]

It is a conservative estimate that 2,000+ men and women have been killed on the streets of Tehran at least in the space of 48 hours.

Where are the student protests.
Where are the celebrity open letters.
Where are the Western diplomats.
Where is the UN.
Where is Amnesty International.
Where are the feminists.
Where are the queers for Iranians.
Where are the antiracists.
Where are Iranians in your intersection.
Are Iranian rights human rights.

What? Not the right kind of brown? Not the right sort of oppressed? Are 90 million Iranians just another one of those “right wing conspiracies”? Your masks have fallen.

Day 16. Free Iran. Free the west from the progressive ps-ops.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

“Instead of abolishing an 800-year-old right, the Justice Secretary should be putting more safeguards in place to protect ordinary citizens from state overreach.”

Juries are more likely than magistrates or judges to acquit across the board — and that’s especially true for speech offences. Defendants who justify their actions on free-speech grounds are almost twice as likely to be acquitted in a Crown Court with a jury than in a magistrates’ court without one.

Lammy claims this radical step is needed to address the 80,000 backlog of cases facing Crown Courts backlog, but juries aren’t the problem.

If the government were as concerned about delays as they claim, they’d stop trying to criminalise vast swathes of ordinary human behaviour.

The most egregious and hypocritical part of all this isn’t just Lammy’s former adoration of juries — it’s that, as an MP, he is immune from prosecution for speech offences thanks to parliamentary privilege. Provided he commits the offence in the Commons chamber — including stirring up racial hatred — he cannot be charged.

Read more from Lord Young below ⬇️

[Calgie @christiancalgie]

If you missed Kemi, you need to watch this.

A 10/10 Commons performance

[Freddie Sayers @freddiesayers]

What a disaster that, flying in the face of the data we now have from Sweden and other states that opted for *less* stringent lockdowns rather than *harder, faster*, the British state should reach this moronic conclusion.

This is collective face-saving and motivated reasoning. The failure and panic that led to the lockdowns went so wide, and so deep, and involved so much of the political class, that to own up to it now would simply be too grave an admission. So instead we get this.

[David Paton @cricketwyvern]

Baroness Hallett has produced a report of 800 pages at a huge cost to the taxpayer.

And yet, she has got things spectacularly and inexcusably wrong.

A few examples from the Chair’s statement:
…

[Julian 𝚃homas @partially]

@EfficaciousJL @davidyelland @BBCHughPym @BBCFergusWalsh Exactly this!

[Julian 𝚃homas @partially]

@RoryStewartUK You would unfortunately be perfect

[Julian 𝚃homas @partially]

@basilthegreat Promises promises!

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

The authorities picked a side this week and lied about it.

They turned their backs on Jews and the law-abiding public - and did the bidding of vile, Islamist thugs.

The Jew hate and two-tier policing I saw at Villa Park: #avfc https://t.co/dbfGfNmk2W