Rob Froome

If you want something bad enough, work for it

[Claire Adams @claire_adams694]

I’ll happily discuss Nigel Farage triggering a by-election.

Right after we’ve discussed Andy Burnham triggering an MP by-election and then a mayoral by-election.

I’m just trying to establish whether taxpayer-funded elections are always a scandal, or only when Nigel Farage is involved.

The hypocrisy is deafening.

[Patricia🇬🇧 @Patricia344130]

So ironic that Labour are calling Farage’s by election a ‘stunt’.

What do they call drafting in Burnham as PM without a mandate?

An undemocratic manoeuvre without the backing of the country.

Far worse in my opinion.

[Zach Perrimott @perrimott]

HMRC delays report showing capital gains tax rise would backfire https://t.co/r54Qju4WnE

[Ross Kempsell @RossKempsell]

Now today's out the way I'm sure we will be hearing a lot more about how:

- Labour's first two Budgets increased taxes on British workers by £36 billion and £26 billion respectively, pushing the tax burden to an historic high of 38.3% of GDP

- The OBR forecasts 240,000 more people will be unemployed in 2026 than it previously projected - it said this is largely attributable to Labour's employment policies

- The UK unemployment rate was 4.9% as of early 2026, up from 4.6% a year earlier, an increase of 124,000

- Total UK welfare spending this year is estimated at £333.7 billion - up from £315 billion

- The UK is spending £301 million per day just to service its debt interest on Labour borrowing

- Labour promised 1.5 million new homes this parliament. Between 9 July 2024 and 15 March 2026, it had build just 342,100, way off target

- More than 1 million young people aged 16-24 were not in education, employment or training in the first quarter of this year - up 89,000

- The NHS waiting list stands at 7.22 million cases

- When Labour took office in July 2024, just 58.8% of patients were treated within 18 weeks. The target is 92%. By March 2026 it had only reached 65.3%

- Around 100,000 patients are waiting over a year for NHS treatment

- Over the past year, approximately 1.56 million people waited more than 4 hours in A&E - a huge breach of the target

- The outstanding caseload in the Crown Court stands at around 80,200 - the highest level recorded since 2016 and more than double the pre-Covid caseload

- A quarter of all Crown Court cases have been open for more than a year

- There are currently 14,749 sexual offences cases waiting to go to the Crown Court - a 75% increase

- There were approximately 530,640 shoplifting offences recorded in England and Wales over the past year - the highest in the entire time series on record

- There were 41,000 small boat arrivals in 2025

- Of all people who have arrived by small boat since 2018, only around 7,500 (4%) had been returned from the UK by the end of 2025

- Last year the Home Office spent £4 billion on asylum support. This includes £2.1 billion on hotel accommodation alone - around £6 million per day

[Katharine Birbalsingh @Miss_Snuffy]

Not true 👇Uniform is the number one way school leaders improve behaviour across schools.

This policy prevents schools from improving- disadvantaged kids suffer.

Bridget is hurting the kids she says she wants to help.🙄

[Harry Cole @MrHarryCole]

Not sure Labour are in a very strong position to be criticising the cost of by-elections right now...

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Possibly, as Minister for Health, James Murray could compel the adult gender clinics to hand over the data they refused to give to Cass. We might then find out just how much benefit these interventions confer long term, without needing to perform experiments on children too young to give meaningful consent.

Read the testimony of the ever-expanding numbers of detransitioners. Grasp that these young people, many of them extremely vulnerable - autistic, care-experienced, abuse survivors, same-sex attracted in unsupportive families - have been irreparably harmed, left with their fertility destroyed, unending medical complications and profound psychological damage.

This is a medical scandal of epic proportions and people of power and influence are still too frightened of trans activists and trans lobby groups to do the right thing and put an end to the insanity. Kids are being sacrificed to ideology and cowardice.

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

Why did you resign then?

[Charlie Walsham @CharlieWalsham_]

This unbalanced BBC News report is, to me, a perfect example of where the corporation is going wrong. It presents the issue as if there’s only one reasonable perspective, when the Pride movement, as symbolised by the Progress Pride flag, has become genuinely controversial. An impartial report would acknowledge that and explain why many people no longer feel comfortable displaying it.

Most people have no problem with the LGB community. Nor do they have a problem with trans people as individuals. People should be judged by the content of their character. The disagreement is about rights and the safeguarding of children.

Accepting self-identification - whereby any man can declare himself to be a woman and society is expected to accept that - undermines the hard-won sex-based rights of biological women. Defending those rights is not a regressive or bigoted position. It is a progressive one. Wanting to protect women’s single-sex spaces does not mean wishing anyone harm. It means recognising that rights can come into conflict.

The same applies to children. The sharp rise in the number of gender-distressed young people being referred towards medical interventions with potentially profound and irreversible consequences is a legitimate cause for concern. I believe that many of these young people would simply grow up to become healthy gay, lesbian or bisexual adults if they were given time rather than encouraged to see themselves as having been ‘born in the wrong body’.

This is what I believe, and it is what many people who choose not to wave the Progress Pride flag believe too. I want to protect women’s rights, safeguard children, and prevent young people from making life-altering decisions that they may later come to regret when it’s too late to undo the consequences.

The real intolerance comes from activists who insist there is only one acceptable view. If you disagree, you risk being labelled a bigot, ostracised, reported to your employer or driven out of public debate. That isn’t tolerance or inclusion. It’s ideological bullying, and we must resist it every step of the way.

[Suella Braverman @SuellaBraverman]

My capital city, festooned in the flag that celebrates child mutilation, puberty blockers and blokes using womens’ loos.

How we have lost our way!

[Janet Murray @jan_murray]

From Sadiq Khan’s TikTok account this afternoon.

Given that many women now regard the Progress Pride flag as representing an ideology that undermines women’s rights, I find this footage quite unsettling.

Did anyone even question whether publishing footage of central London lined with row upon row of political flags might convey a message beyond simply “celebration”?

Or is City Hall so ideologically captured that nobody even notices how this looks?

[Katharine Birbalsingh @Miss_Snuffy]

How lovely for Norway!🥰

Children matter. Culture matters.

There is only one flag that flies at Michaela: The Union flag.🇬🇧

Except during the World Cup when we fly the St George’s Cross.🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 😊

[Mike Fairclough @1MikeFairclough]

Lisa Nandy MP has said she is leaving X because it now favours misinformation over meaningful debate. In contrast, she praises the BBC as one of the "greatest defences against mistrust and misinformation."

However, during the pandemic, the BBC wildly exaggerated the risk of Covid, promoted worst-case scenarios, sidelined scientific dissent, and helped create the climate of intense fear that justified lockdowns.

And, of course, @devisridhar on BBC Newsround lied directly to the nation's children about Pfizer's experimental Covid vaccine, saying "So far the trials have shown the vaccine is 100% safe for children."

What Lisa Nandy really means by "misinformation" is speech that the government disapproves of (which is, more often than not, the truth they don't want you to hear).

[Ben Graham @BenGrahamUK]

Lisa Nandy had no problem using X when it helped Labour get elected. She's posted on here over 10'000 times in total since 2009.

Now she's in government, facing far greater scrutiny, she's suddenly decided the platform is the problem.

After being Community Noted multiple times and turning off replies to many of her posts in the last 12 months, walking away from X looks less like a principled stand and more like an attempt to avoid criticism.

If you're in public office, scrutiny comes with the job. Running away from it is spineless.

[Annunziata Rees-Mogg @zatzi]

People are very optimistic about our (frankly useless) politicians to run companies efficiently. 👇

Not quite the lesson from BT….

In 1984, just pre-privatisation: a one-hour afternoon (peak/standard rate) call up to 35 miles away cost £4.56.

In 1994 (10 years after privatisation) the same call cost around £5
A 34% real terms fall in prices.

By the mid 2000s and in a competitive market that call cost ~5.5p.

An inflation adjusted fall of 99.5% from when BT was a nationalised industry.

Thanks to privatisation.

[𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 🇮🇷 ✡︎ @NiohBerg]

Andy Burnham is about to become the leader of Britain with no election, no vote, no debate, not even an interview, while his party has literally never been more hated.

They will look you in the eye and claim this is somehow democratic.

[Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1]

Our border security is a joke.

People smuggler convicted in France now seeking asylum in UK, BBC discovers. https://t.co/p14Tzl9mUf

[Burnside @BurnsideWasTosh]

Perhaps spending £500bn on a flu outbreak wasn't the best use of money in retrospect? Maybe those who called for it should be nowhere near Government?

[The Telegraph @Telegraph]

Families’ disposable incomes are now worse off than they were before Sir Keir Starmer came to power, new figures show, breaking one of the Prime Minister’s key pledges.

🔗 https://t.co/gIVZZDa3qZ

[Bella Wallersteiner 🇺🇦 @BellaWallerstei]

Sweden is on track for lowest number of asylum applications in 25 years, due to deportations and integration testing. For the first time since the 1960s, more people are leaving Sweden than arriving. Proof that a country can control who comes in if it actually wants to