Pete Walter 🇪🇺

Wannabe underwater piano player. Centrist dad

[Natalie Walter @natwalter]

The fourth episode of our insom-com #StillUp is out on @appleTV from today. Thanks to everyone who has watched and liked it so far! 📺 https://t.co/8zWrbIjhbn

[Mike McCahill @mike_mccahill]

One of my favourite new shows of the year lands on Apple TV+ today. Romantic comedy lives! British comedy survives! https://t.co/BUgtVcGUQQ

[BBC Politics @BBCPolitics]

"Conservatives are pretending that everything that tackles climate change is more expensive, they're just factually wrong"

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey on possible changes to government green policy

Hear the full #PoliticalThinking episode on Thursday https://t.co/4J38lcza7f

[Natalie Walter @natwalter]

I reckon it was worth having insomnia all those years to get this review in The Guardian for Still Up (which is streaming from Friday on Apple TV+) 📺 ☺️

https://t.co/F8o3wkGmph

[LUKE 1977 @LukeRoper]

To celebrate our partnership with @AFCWimbledon we’re offering a chance to win 10 platinum hospitality tickets for the AFC Wimbledon vs. Bradford City match on 14/10/23

To enter, just like and share this post. For an extra entry follow our page. Winners announced on 29/09/23

[Pete Walter 🇪🇺 @pete_walter]

@JacquiMellor A golden era

[Apple TV @AppleTV]

Not sleeping together is complicated. Still Up is an almost romantic comedy starring Antonia Thomas and Craig Roberts. Streaming 22 September on Apple TV+.

[Pete Walter 🇪🇺 @pete_walter]

@BakesShannon Thanks. Sadly not. I almost got a history show on BBC 3 but that was a while ago now.

[Pete Walter 🇪🇺 @pete_walter]

Can you be ‘beyond excited’?

[Pete Walter 🇪🇺 @pete_walter]

@dannymacca81 You’re doing a great job. The professionalism of the club has palpably improved since you joined. Keep up the good work and don’t let the haters get you down

[Edwin Hayward @edwinhayward]

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

(Long - please expand the tweet.)

1. The Tories will wreck everything at an ever increasing pace as the GE approaches, like irresponsible teenagers who know they're not going to be the ones cleaning up the morning after their wild drunken binge.

2. Labour will win the GE on a desperate tide of people wanting to Get the Tories Out, but (and this will be VERY important later) their future freedom to manoevre will be hampered by the bright red lines they laid down on things like Brexit.

3. Labour will start trying to fix some of the stuff the Tories broke. It will prove very expensive. Mending is always more expensive than breaking.

4. Labour will try to Make Brexit Work. The RW tabloids will tear even bigger strips off them than usual.

5. Make Brexit Work won't. Work, that is. Trying to make Brexit work is like trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube after you've brushed your teeth with it.

6. Meanwhile, Labour are having to spend more more more just to keep stuff from literally falling apart (think sewers, water pipes, collapsing schools, crumbling hospitals etc.)

7. Tories watch from the sidelines, laughing and jeering. "Typical Labour. Always spending money they don't have."

8. If they're VERY lucky, Labour will go into the GE-after-next with the overall situation in Britain slightly better than it was when they took office. The country will only be knee-deep in metaphoric and real sewage, rather than thigh deep.

9. The Tories and the RW media will tag team to blame everything that's (still) broken in Britain on Labour. "Same old Labour. Can't be trusted with the economy. Can't be trusted with anything. Can't even fix Brexit, despite their lofty promises."

(Important intermission: Labour will never get fair coverage in our British media. But this is a "known known". They need to figure out how to win, repeatedly, anyway.)

10. GE2: Electric Boogaloo. Labour are stuck. The taunts about having failed their flagship Brexit fixing policy hit home, because they're true. That lubricates the way for all the lies the Tories and RW media are spinning about their wider performance to slip down like honey.

IF Labour pivot towards SM/CU/Rejoin, they might as well tattoo "we wasted 5 years because we didn't have a clue about what we were doing when it comes to Brexit" across their collective foreheads. They may pivot anyway, because the alternative is even worse. This is where those bright red lines (remember them?) will bite them in the fundament so hard they won't be able to sit down for the next six months. Because the press can absolutely legitimately scream "U-turn! Come and see the U-turn so big, it's visible from the Moon." And it will be true.

(Absolutely critical point: there is no "Get the Tories Out" vote. "Ooh, the scary Tories will get back in if you don't vote for us" doesn't have anything like the same impact, especially with non-core Labour voters who lent their votes last time but who are absolutely livid about Labour's failing approach to the Brexit they detest.)

11. Labour lose GE2. A one-term wonder, and they're done. The Tories do what they do best: keep blaming everything on Labour, while picking their looting back up where they left off last time.

-----------

Scroll back up through the scenario above, and look at how Brexit runs through it like a vein pumping pure poison.

That is why Labour need to change their fundamental approach to Brexit, and they need to do so now.

Stop ruling anything out (not saying you won't do something isn't the same as proactively saying you will). Think along the lines of "Labour will do whatever it takes to mitigate the damage Brexit is causing". Make the change far enough ahead of the GE that the fuss about the U-turn is reduced to the constant every-day moaning and carping of the RW press by the time the GE comes around.

Also, Labour need to reconsider PR. It's the only hope they (and we) have of anything approaching long-term stability.

Many of the problems Britain faces will take 2, 3, 4+ election cycles to fix. And they need to be fixed. But the only conceivable way of getting the time necessary to do so is to form long-term partnerships via PR.

That way, you get rid of the short-termism that has dominated British politics to the ruin of us all. (In the current 5-year political cycle, the first year is spent learning the ropes and the last gearing up for the GE, so there are really only 3 even vaguely "productive" years to be wrung out of incumbency.)

Phew, and we're done. You may disagree. You probably will disagree. But please take a very deep breath and a big step back, and think about whether your disagreement comes because it feels genuinely too horrible to contemplate the real world in the stark terms I painted above, and whether your support for a particular political party is blinding you to the reality of what they can achieve in a short 5-year (really 3) period in office.

[Pete Walter 🇪🇺 @pete_walter]

We’re going to win the euros #eng

[Pete Walter 🇪🇺 @pete_walter]

@GNev2 @WeAreTheOverlap @CEO4TAG Loved this chat. Thought Steve parish came over extremely well. Palace are lucky to have him

[Pete Walter 🇪🇺 @pete_walter]

@stuartsemple Fingers crossed this happens. Would be transformative for that area of the town

[Lib Dem Peers @LibDemPeers]

A very moving piece in the @guardian today - @EdwardJDavey on love, loss and the local election results.

We are proud to have such a leader!

The piece is really worth reading right to the end 👇

https://t.co/0sB9Lkipqj

[Bob Cryer @bobbicee]

Megan, you’re not fooling us…

[Pete Walter 🇪🇺 @pete_walter]

@AndyJon63142626 Sorry to see you didn’t make it over the line Andy. Most undeserved. So hard for independents to make a mark in UK politics

[Pete Walter 🇪🇺 @pete_walter]

@George4Labour @PBSTcommunity @Boscombe_Forum @PokesdownCF @BournemouthLP You’ve got my vote. Good luck

[Pete Walter 🇪🇺 @pete_walter]

@AdamHighcliffe Kind of conflicted on this. I will never vote Tory. But Elwood is probably in the top 1% of tories and has spoken out bravely against recent governments. So would be sad to see him go