Joined August 2017
- Tweets 17,194
- Following 1,496
- Followers 1,090
- Likes 108,051
1,826 Photos and videos
Sad to see @redditchrache misleading remark re dementia wasn’t adequately challenged on today’s debate about assisted dying.
Fact: Under the bill brought last term by @kimleadbeater anyone not mentally competent is unable to be considered for an assisted death ! #politicslive
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Here’s hoping it gets through this time.
Assisted dying bill set to return to parliament news.sky.com/story/politics-…
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Jun 12
Wonder what’s causing such a delay in the sentencing of those 4 activists found guilty of destroying equipment at an Israel-based defence firm's UK factory. Sky News say they expect to stream live from Woolwich Crown Court from 4pm but Judge has not even started his remarks yet !
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Jun 11
The u-turns are happening faster than ever !
Jun 11
NEW: Burnham *rules out* awarding financial compensation to Waspi women demanding billions of pounds, following an angry backlash within Labour
Greater Manchester mayor has instead floated the idea of offering early access to cheaper travel schemes as recompense
ft.com/content/fc90116d-519d…
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Jun 11
I think Healey’s resignation is going to have a critical impact on this government & ultimately will lead Keir to resign rather than face any challenge. I’m genuinely gutted but I don’t see how he survives the loss of such a loyalist in the midst of a political & financial crisis
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Kathy retweeted
Jun 9
🚨🚨ATTACKER IN IRELAND
So REFORM WHEN HE ARRIVED
Braverman was Home Secretary
Jenrick was Immigration Minister
WHEN HE GOT LEAVE TO REMAIN
Braverman was Home Secretary
Jenrick was Immigration Minister
Anderson , Rosindell, Kruger were Tory MP's
Pochin and Cunningham - Tory councillors
Yusuf still a paying member
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Jun 9
Hmmm, who was Immigration Minister throughout 2023 ? Why, it was none other than @RobertJenrick !
Jun 9
Home Office confirms the Belfast suspect is a "Sudanese national with leave to remain in the UK until 2028. He entered the UK in 2023 and was granted refugee status the same year. The individual claims to have entered the UK via the Common Travel Area."
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Kathy retweeted
Call you old fashioned? Alright, old-fashioned, @PatrickChristys, let us go through the decades you prefer.
The 1960s: Ian Brady and Myra Hindley tortured and murdered five children, buried them on Saddleworth Moor, and recorded their screams on tape.
The 1970s: Peter Sutcliffe murdered 13 women with hammers and screwdrivers across Yorkshire.
Dennis Nilsen began strangling young men in his London flat, dismembering them, boiling their skulls on his stove, and flushing the remains down the drains.
The 1980s: Michael Ryan shot 16 people dead in Hungerford. Fred and Rose West were raping, torturing, and dismembering women and girls and burying them under their house in Gloucester. Their own daughter among them.
The 1990s: Two 10-year-old boys abducted a toddler from a shopping centre in Liverpool, tortured him, and bludgeoned him to death with bricks and an iron bar.
Thomas Hamilton walked into a primary school in Dunblane and shot 16 five-year-olds and their teacher. Harold Shipman was murdering his patients by the hundred.
The 2000s: James Watt and his family enslaved a man for a decade, tortured him with baseball bats, air pistols, boiling water, and pit bull attacks, then decapitated him and dumped his body in a lake.
Mathew Hardman, 17, murdered a 90-year-old woman, cut out her heart, placed it on a silver platter, and drank her blood.
The 2010s: Derrick Bird shot 12 people dead across Cumbria.
Thomas Mair shot and stabbed an MP in the street while shouting "Britain first".
The 2020s: Jemma Mitchell decapitated her friend, stored the body for two weeks, and drove 200 miles to dump it.
Those are the decades you prefer. And for each decade there are 20 other equally horrific incidents.
And here is the thing, old fashioned Patrick. According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, violence, burglary, and car crime have fallen by close to 90% since the mid-1990s. The ONS confirms that violent crime is two-thirds lower now than in the 1990s.
The country you live in today is measurably, statistically, dramatically safer than the one you are nostalgic for. That's not an opinion, it's a fact.
And I am not even touching Glasgow and its past knife crime epidemic.
So, which decade was better, Patrick? Tell us.
Call me old fashioned but I preferred our country before Somalians started trying to behead people in the street.
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Jun 9
I must have reported those fake Farage scam ads over 50 times but they’re STILL showing up ! How I wish we had the twitter of old when @jack used to run it instead of the moronic twattery it has become since Melon Usk took over 🤬
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Jun 6
What did he promise @joshsimonsmp for standing down and triggering this shitshow ? Says so much about the man that he believes others can simply be bought off.
Jun 6
NEW: Bloomberg Saturday read
— Andy Burnham’s campaign is increasingly confident he’s going to win Makerfield. They believe he’s edged ahead of Reform this week in part due to what they see as Nigel Farage mishandling the Henry Nowak case and Robert Kenyon’s poor public performances.
— It means the conversation has turned to what happens next, actively encouraged by Burnham who is now in the extraordinary position of making national policy announcements despite previously saying he was focused on the by-election. Labour MPs are split: some (his supporters) want a Burnham coronation and others think there should be a full leadership election.
— Allies of Keir Starmer are defiant and insist he will fight any contest. One says they don’t believe Starmer will simply give up because he strongly believes in his mandate. Another says polling shows Starmer still has support among Labour members. Crucially, they say he would see it as a dereliction of duty to agree a handover to someone with no clear plan for power, whose policies are unknown and haven’t been put to a vote.
— Still, Burnham supporters say they hope Starmer and Wes Streeting see their man is the only viable successor. They say they’ll lobby the cabinet to tell Starmer not to force a contest and to agree an orderly handover. They argue there doesn’t need to be a full leadership election. Their preference is for a coronation, either immediately or with an agreed handover date.
— One option suggested by some Burnham supporters is that Starmer stays in post for a few more months to manage ongoing crises from Iran to Ukraine and the NATO summit in July. That would give Burnham time to formulate a plan for government ahead of an agreed handover later in the year. (The risk is this looks like an admission he doesn’t have a plan.)
— Other Labour MPs are adamant there has to be a proper contest. Wes Streeting tells Bloomberg he will not allow a coronation. Burnham allies think he doesn’t have the numbers and in any case can be bought off with a cabinet job. Still, one MP warns that failing to scrutinise Burnham in a contest risks a repeat of Gordon Brown’s unopposed takeover from Tony Blair in which they say his ideas weren’t tested, only storing up problems for later.
— Officially Burnham says these conversations are premature, stressing he isn’t complacent or taking anything for granted. That said, he really is having his cake and eating it, claiming to be focusing on local issues and refusing to engage on some of the harder national policy questions then openly opining on others when it suits him, especially in the last 24 hours. It isn’t going down well with some in the Labour Party.
— Labour officials think Farage overcompensated with his rhetoric this week because he’s worried about Restore. Reform officials insist Farage is in tune with voters despite what Westminster thinks, and to expect more of the same in the weeks and months ahead. Both Labour and Reform officials still say the by-election is close.
Story with @Joe_Mayes >>> bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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Kathy retweeted
Jun 6
My column on Nigel Farage’s wildly differing conduct in the wake of three murders that horrified the nation
theguardian.com/commentisfre…
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Kathy retweeted
Jun 5
The interesting thing here is not that everyone suddenly loves Starmer.
It is that outside the Westminster/media bubble, many people seem to understand something very basic:
A country cannot rebuild itself through permanent leadership panic.
Stability is not glamorous.
It does not trend as easily as drama.
It does not feed the pundit class in quite the same way.
But after the Tory circus — five prime ministers, endless faction fights, mini-budgets, resignations, scandals and collapse — stability matters.
You do not have to agree with every decision Starmer makes to understand that.
You do not have to think he is charismatic to understand that.
You only have to ask one question:
Would another leadership war really help the country right now?
For many people outside the bubble, the answer seems to be no.
Country first cannot just be a slogan.
Sometimes it means giving a Prime Minister with a majority the time and space to govern.
If this speaks to you, please repost it — not for me, but for someone who is tired of chaos being sold as politics. And - yeah you guessed it - follow me.
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Kathy retweeted
Jun 5
Why would anyone, including MPs who want Starmer to remain PM now campaign for Burnham. He’s making a travesty of this election.
‘Vote for me if you want to topple this Labour government’ bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp9p…
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Kathy retweeted
Jun 5
After seeking to run in virtually any seat available, Burnham admits he will then abandon it to run in any contest to unseat his own leader.
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Jun 5
I didn’t watch the ‘Andy’ show bc the self-adoration is nauseating.
Did he talk of Labour’s priorities and Labour’s achievements since the 2024 GE or was it his usual waffle and self-congratulation ? Did he say he was only interested in Makerfield as a stepping stone to No 10 ?
Anyone sceptical about @AndyBurnhamGM attempt to return to national politics should watch the #BBCQT special, especially his comments on policing.
Andy can articulate & address the concerns of ordinary, working class people in a way that is rare in today’s front line politics.
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Jun 4
I think @stefan_boscia is completely wrong to say Starmer is using the murder of Henry Nowak politically. His contempt for Farage’s position was very clear and very genuine at y/days #pmqs
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Jun 2
Reform’s London Mayoral candidate, Leila Cunningham, keeps saying she was a “senior crown prosecutor”. I’m interested in hearing about the cases she prosecuted so please share any links that mean I can read about the cases. Thank you
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Kathy retweeted
Jun 1
What strikes me is that people are treating Mandelson’s private frustration as proof of Starmer’s failure, when it may actually be evidence of Starmer’s independence.
Mandelson is the ultimate New Labour operator. If he’s complaining that Starmer won’t govern with enough “panache”, won’t go full “Trumpian”, and keeps refusing to follow the path Mandelson wants, that doesn’t automatically weaken Starmer — it suggests Starmer is making decisions that even one of Labour’s most influential power-brokers cannot control.
The real question raised by these papers isn’t “Why did Mandelson criticise Starmer?”
It’s: when has Peter Mandelson ever not criticised leaders behind closed doors?
Blair was criticised. Brown was criticised. Miliband was criticised. Internal critique is practically Mandelson’s native language.
Despite all the talk of “advance/buckle”, Starmer still led Labour from opposition to a landslide victory after 14 years out of power, while repeatedly taking positions that angered different factions of his own party.
That may not be weakness.
It may be the difference between performance politics and governing.
Ironically, the more Mandelson complains that Starmer won’t follow his preferred script, the stronger the evidence becomes that Starmer is governing on his own terms.
#KeirStarmer #LabourGovernment #UKPolitics #LeadershipMatters
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Kathy retweeted
Jun 2
The aim of the Tory humble address was to get evidence which would show that the PM knew more about Mandelson’s misdemeanours.That he had lied to the nation.
The documents released yesterday did no such thing. What a damp squib, no matter how much journalists try and talk it up.
Jun 1
ANALYSIS: The Mandelson files bring yet another dark day for the govt as doc dump reveals extent of Mandelson’s influence across the PM’s top team & his clear frustration with Starmer. Embarrassment for ministers, ammo for opponents & a further blow to PM’s vanishing authority
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