@RhonddaBryant You are a top experienced politician, my sense is you and Labour could be so much stronger with higher quality briefings and comms, less reactive more strategic, on the front foot.
@RhonddaBryant You need a new comms director, car crash interview! Also what will be the new trade deals brokered from your travels to Morocco and Paris? #newsnight
Speaker Lindsay Hoyle was on a jolly to the British Virgin Islands when he says he learned Peter Mandelson was apparently a flight risk (unlikely).
No surprise he was in the Caribbean. Long been branded ‘long-haul Hoyle’ at our expense, spending more than £320,000 of taxpayers’ cash on foreign jaunts up until last summer since becoming Speaker in 2019.
He spent more than £200,000 on first and business class plane tickets plus tens of thousands more spent on chauffeur-driven cars, stays at luxury five-star resorts and restaurants.
During a previous Caribbean tour in March 2023, he shelled out nearly £5,500 chartering private planes to hop between the islands of St Maarten, Montserrat, Anguilla and Antigua.
In 2024, he spent £22,000 for a five-day trip to meet his counterpart in the Cayman Islands, staying at the Westin Grand, where his room was billed at £679 per night.
His snout. Our trough.
They really do take us for fools.
🇮🇹 The great Italian tenor, Andrea Bocelli, performs Puccini's classic "Nessun Dorma" at the opening of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan.
Italy is back, with class and style, and while cherishing her past, she has a renewed hope for the future.
#Olympics2026
New Epstein emails show Peter Mandelson secretly advising JPMorgan’s CEO on how to fight Labour’s 2009 bankers’ bonus tax - even suggesting he “mildly threaten” the Chancellor.
Mandelson was Business Secretary at the time.
A year later, he was seeking work with JPM.
@Steven_Swinford@Geri_E_L_Scott Brighton & Hove council tax has a 100% premium for 2nd homes. Typical council tax depending on band say £2500- £3000pa (rates table available online). So @angelarayner have you been paying this since May? Will you be declaring your Hove flat as a 2nd home & paying it from May?
EXCL: Tory candidate (and Sunak’s closest parliamentary aide) Craig Williams refuses to tell me whether he had any inside information when he placed a bet on the date of the general election.
But he says: “I clearly made a huge error of judgement”.
On 19 June 2021, I retweeted allegations about Peter Jukes @peterjukes which I have no reason to believe are true and am not aware of any evidence to suggest are true. I apologise for this and I have paid a sum to charity and his legal costs.
@MartinSLewis Yes, I replied, he didn’t respond. But he has now after I chased him tonight & we’re talking tomorrow. Please look at this, it’s been going on since 2003, despite FCA, SRA, OFT rulings.
To those who might think their granny is a bit staid. This is how we were over 50 years ago, micro mini skirts. driving mini cars, in the pub at 14 (no ID), smoking a fat one, freedom.