Perfect synchronicity from @BigIssue on this week's cover @woburnista

Belfast, the league table nobody’s torching a bus over: 🔥 West Belfast 1 in 3 children growing up in poverty. Not after one knife attack. Every day, for years. 🔥 NHS waiting lists the worst in the entire UK. Half a million people in the queue. A man waited six years for a new knee. 🔥 45,000 kids’ families docked by the two-child cap while the politicians look the other way. Now what does Nigel Farage talk about? Not that. Never that. He talks about the bus stop, the small boat, the bloke who doesn’t look like you. Because while a third of west Belfast’s children go without, Farage has trousered over a million quid in “second jobs” since the last election nearly £1.2m a year from GB News alone, £189k to flog gold bars, fifty grand recording birthday videos on his phone. Highest-earning MP in the Commons. Then he routes it through his own company so he pays corporation tax instead of the income tax the rest of us cough up and still managed to file £380k of it late, 17 times over. That’s the trick, isn’t it. Point at the poorest man on the street so nobody looks at the richest man on the telly. A hungry child in Ardoyne doesn’t pay his GB News salary. Outrage does. Real patriots feed the kids in their own constituency. Grifters just sell them someone to blame at two grand an hour.

90% of countries in the world can own their water but not us. People in England want their water back. But the government is protecting private water profiteers. It’s time to give the public a say. @Feargal_Sharkey wants you stand up and be counted. Sign the petition: vist.ly/576px

You voted against scrapping zero hour contracts. You voted against banning fire and rehire. You voted against day one sick pay for workers. You said the minimum wage was too high for young people. Reform politicians openly say they don't like trade unions. You will always put the interests of your offshore crypto billionaire donors ahead of workers.

Gianni Infantino knocked down all the reporting over visa concerns for this World Cup in August 2025: “I think it’s important to clarify this. There is a lot of misconception out there. Everyone will be welcome in Canada, Mexico and the United States for the FIFA World Cup next year. “There is a process to go through to get visas and so on. This process will be smooth… “We want to unite the world and we will unite the world next year. The world needs occasions of unity, of bringing teams together, of bringing people together, of bringing fans together... So again everyone will be welcome, be positive and you will see it will be a great, great celebration of the greatest FIFA World Cup ever.” No, again we are just meant to look the other way and allow this thing we love so much, that we want to enjoy, that we can map our whole lives around, to be used and abused. Again we are told about unity and inclusion when division, disparity and denial is the reality. It is a great, great celebration of getting more money whatever it takes, no matter who has to pay the price. The greatest showpiece of allowing - unopposed! - the man who is meant to protect and grow the people’s game into playing celebrity, massaging his own ego and that of heads of state. The biggest, most expensive, least accessible World Cup ever. The thing we love and all the beautiful pieces of it we’ve lost.

When I woke up this morning, I started to think: why Suella Braverman? Why does she keep coming back into the national conversation? Why does a politician who already sat at the heart of power still present herself as if she is some outsider banging on the door? And then it struck me. Suella Braverman is useful to the right because she performs anger very well. She gives people the theatre of toughness. The raised voice. The hard words. The dramatic warnings. The sense that everything is collapsing and only people like her are brave enough to say it. But here is the problem. She was not watching government from the sidelines. She was in it. She was Home Secretary. She had power. She had a platform. She had access to the machinery of the state. And yet now she talks as though Britain’s problems simply appeared yesterday, delivered by Labour, immigrants, lawyers, judges, civil servants, human rights, or whoever the latest enemy of the week happens to be. That is the trick. Turn failure into rage. Turn responsibility into performance. Turn government record into opposition theatre. Suella Braverman is not anti-establishment. She is what happens when the establishment fails, then grabs a microphone and blames everyone else. And this is why the Conservative-to-Reform pipeline matters. Because it is not really a new politics. It is the old Conservative failure trying to escape the crime scene wearing a different badge. Same language. Same fear. Same division. Same people who had their chance. Different stage. Britain does not need more rage from politicians who already held power. Britain needs seriousness. Competence. Decency. Delivery. Suella Braverman is not the answer to Conservative failure. She is one of its loudest symptoms. Britain deserves better. #LessNoiseMoreDelivery

This morning I asked myself, not for the first time, who is Nigel and I made some notes. And it does add up. Here is a man who sells himself as the ordinary bloke with a pint, the man of the people, the great outsider standing up against the establishment. And yet somehow this ordinary bloke always seems to arrive with a camera crew, a donor network, a friendly broadcaster, and now a parliamentary investigation into a £5 million gift from a crypto billionaire. Very normal. Very grassroots. Very “just one of the lads”. The peoples revolt, apparently, now comes with lighting, branding, fundraising dinners, professional outrage, and a small question about whether millions should have been declared properly. Everything is a betrayal when Labour does it. Everything is “nothing to see here” when Nigel does it. Housing? Blame Labour. The NHS? Blame Labour. The economy? Blame Labour. Boats? Blame Labour. A £5 million gift? Suddenly everybody must calm down and respect the process. And then came Tuesday. A young man died. A family was grieving. A country was trying to understand something horrific. And Farage stepped forward. Not with calm. Not with care. Not with responsibilty. But with his announcement of “pure cold rage”. That phrase matters. Because anger is human. Anger can be moral. Anger can demand answers, justice, accountability and truth. I understand anger. A lot of people are angry. They have every right to ask serious questions. But rage is different. Rage does not ask careful questions. Rage does not wait for investigations. Rage does not protect grieving families from becoming political props. Rage looks for a target. And that is where Farage always seems most comfertable. Not solving the pain. Not calming the country. Not asking how institutions failed and how they can be fixed. But standing beside the pain with a microphone, turning the temprature up, and calling it leadership. Warm enough to repost. Warm enough to donate. Warm enough to vote. But never calm enough to ask: “Hang on, who benefits from keeping us this angry?” That is the trick. He does not need Britain to feel hopeful. He does not even need Britain to feel informed. He needs Britain permanently one headline away from rage. Because rage is usefull. It fills rallies. It drives clicks. It turns grief into theatre. It makes slogans feel like solutions. And while everyone is shouting, nobody asks the boring questions. Where is the plan? Where is the funding? Where are the costings? Where is the responsibilty? Maybe that is who Nigel Farage is. Not the man of the people. But the man who knows exactly how to turn peoples pain into his own political stage. The Reform & Tory Sitcom continues. Same chaos. Different rosette. Anger can demand answers. Rage just sells tickets. If this speaks to you, please add your comments, repost it, and maybe follow me — not for me, but because politics needs fewer slogans and more people asking proper questions. #Farage #ReformUK

*BRITISH WRITER PENS THE BEST DESCRIPTION OF TRUMP* Someone asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?" Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response: A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump's limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don't say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it's a fact. He doesn't even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn't just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It's all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don't. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He's not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He's more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless or female – and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy' is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that: • Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and most are. • You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it's impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

Just in time for a regular reminder that all the Brexit chaos was brought to you - because a former Tory PM thought holding a referendum would be a clever way to avoid his Party losing a few seats to UKIP. That worked well - didn't it?😉

Lest we never forget :

The Nigel Farage Guide to Being a Working-Class Hero Step 1: Be born to a City stockbroker. Step 2: Attend Dulwich College, fees currently £53,000 a year. Step 3: Skip university. Become a City commodities trader instead. Step 4: Run one of your metal broking firms into insolvency. Step 5: Get elected to the European Parliament. Spend the next 21 years drawing a salary from the institution you're paid to dismantle. Step 6: Claim £15,500 a year in expenses for an office your party was given rent-free. Step 7: Put your wife on the EU parliamentary payroll. Take her off only when the rules force you to. Step 8: Get investigated by the EU's anti-fraud office. Eventually have half your MEP salary docked to repay misused public funds. Step 9: Throw a Brexit victory party at the Ritz. Decry the "professional political class" to a room of millionaires. Step 10: Take £450,000 in personal gifts from Arron Banks. House. Car. Lifestyle. Step 11: Take £5 million, undisclosed, from a Bangkok-based crypto billionaire. Days later, announce you're standing for parliament after all. Step 12: Win Clacton. Take the £93,904 MP salary. Add £1.2 million a year from GB News at £2,300 an hour. Become the highest-earning MP in the House of Commons. Step 13: Speak in parliament fewer times than any other party leader. Fly to America at least nine times in your first year. Refuse to hold in-person constituency surgeries. Holiday in France while parliament is sitting. Step 14: Tell the working class you're one of them. Tell them to vote against their own interests, over and over again. Pint, mate?

I’m calling for a ban on firms that donate to political parties from winning government contracts. Politics is too close to big money. It raises questions on who our democracy serves. Break the link - show Labour stands for the public interest, not private profit.

Can we get this retweeted 10,000 times???? Keep Palantir out of the NHS! Spread the word!

"Leader calls for water companies to be made public." Basingstoke councillors get it how come govt doesn't? Sign the petition here.... petition.parliament.uk/petit… basingstokegazette.co.uk/new…

LEGO What Shall We Do with the Drunken Hegseth? 🍺 🤮

Everyone knows Brexit has failed. Like and retweet if you want YOUR Freedom of Movement back.

The poorest shouldn’t have to pay for Trump’s war. No more cuts: protect people, not profits.

Just signed this, hopefully anyone reading this post will do the same and publicise it to their followers. Thanks. Petition: Hold a referendum to bring the water industry into public ownership petition.parliament.uk/petit…

Even the Lemon was speechless.