Saw the headline and thought WOW a Union leader who gets it. But no it’s a Union leader that’s even more deluded 🤦‍♂️. Never learn Thick as 🦏💩 @UKLabour @Unison Labour risks handing power to Reform without drastic change, says union leader bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2ly…

This is the video Andy Burnham doesn’t want you to see 👇

Kemi Badenoch was fearless today, ripping into Labour’s disgraceful choice to protect a bloated welfare state while Britain’s defences are left exposed. With Dan Jarvis nowhere to be seen, Kemi stood up, led from the front, and put national security first.

Nicola 🚘🚘🚌👠👠🖊️🖊️🎁🎁🧴⌚️🍾🥂🧂💄👛👝👜💍👟🩲 Sturgeon

Stephen Daisley nails it. The SNP didn’t have a transition plan for Aberdeen — they had a demolition plan. The biggest betrayal of a Scottish workforce in a generation.

I say this as a parent who is genuinely in two minds on a social media ban because the risks to our kids are clear but the solutions aren't. Starmer's announcement is clearly a knee jerk attempt to do something popular as his authority crumbles. That's a dangerous background for making new laws.

Promising everything, then giving nithing

If this (god forbid) happens, I expect Miliband to start championing Thomas Piketty’s global “justice” proposals, which aim to enforce degrowth and redistribute resources. He will justify all of this in the language of climate justice / equality and call it Climate Justice Leadership. This is why Net Zero matters so much to him politically. It does not just describe an emissions problem to be solved. He believes it provides the moral authority for a much wider remaking of social and economic relations. That is what Margaret Thatcher was getting at when she warned that the global climate agenda “provides a marvellous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism.” There is an irony here. The left often blames Callaghan and Healey after 1976 for preparing the ground for Thatcherism / neo-liberalism by accepting the logic of monetarism. Yet in the 2000s and 2010s it was David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson who helped unwind Thatcher’s legacy by laying the foundations for Milibandism by accepting the logic of the climate agenda.

For everyone mocking Keir Starmer for giving the stunning and brave Angela Eagle the Security Minister job, here she is explaining the powerful steps she is taking to stop illegal immigrants. Namely, popping adverts in overseas newspapers telling people not to come to the UK, and it's a shit place for them to come to. Britain is much safer with Angela in charge.....

Impossible for Baroness Brady to stay as a judge on The Apprentice after a BBC investigation showed she had known for three years that West Ham owner David Sullivan ( she was his Vice Chair and had worked for him for decades) was banned by the FA from contacting the women’s teams because of safeguarding concerns. Brady, 57, has been spraying around legal letters to the media warning them about any suggestion she knew anything about the sex allegations involving Sullivan. Her lawyers now say that although she was aware, she was not involved, in the decision made by West Ham in conjunction with the local authority and the FA to impose the restrictions. This is belter from the lawyers; They said there was no inconsistency or hypocrisy between her support for women’s rights and working for a bloke who was perceived to present a sufficient risk to women he was prevented from contacting them.

“How can you tell us with a straight face that you’re getting to where you need to be?” @NickFerrariLBC challenges Business Secretary Peter Kyle’s claims that the economy is ‘charging ahead’.

Keir Starmer has makeover in readiness for the World Cup. You will never unsee this, will you?🤣🤣🤣🤦‍♂️

Returning sickness benefit levels to pre-surge levels would release all money needed for defence.

Faced with a choice between a Defence Secretary who wanted to spend more on our armed forces, a Chancellor who wouldn’t, and an Attorney General who enjoys suing them, the Prime Minister decided he could do without … the Defence Secretary.

Chief Treasury Secretary Lucy Rigby has defended the Government’s decision to not reduce interest rates on student loans, saying the money is being used to fund benefit schemes including ‘free breakfast clubs’ and lifting the two child benefit cap. Trapping graduates in a lifetime of debt in order to fund breakfasts for children whose parents should be feeding them at home is not beneficial to anyone - children, families or young adults starting out in life.

The Telegraph says the stamp duty increase last year "backfired": transactions slumped, and receipts fell. I wish that was right, because there'd be an easy argument to reverse the increase, and even abolish the tax. But it isn't. A 🧵 on why this bad tax isn't going away.

THE DOSSIER #8: Andy Burnham MP – The Corpse of the North Born Liverpool 1970. Father a BT engineer. Mother a GP receptionist. Then Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. The elite's finishing school. You have never worked outside politics. Not one day. Researcher for Tessa Jowell. MP for Leigh 2001-2017. Secretary of State for Health. You failed at every level. You failed upward. You always do. You lost your seat in 2017. The working-class town rejected you. The "man of the people" too posh for his own people. Now Mayor of Greater Manchester. The "King of the North." The man who would be Prime Minister. You want the Labour leadership? You have tried twice. 2010. You came fourth. Eliminated with ten percent. 2015. You launched your bid in an accountancy firm linked to tax avoidance. You attacked the mansion tax as "spiteful." You abstained on Tory benefit cuts. You lost to Jeremy Corbyn. You cannot even win your own party. You slammed "indefensible" waste on NHS consultants in opposition. Then you tripled spending to £27 million per year as Mayor. While working-class girls were raped, tortured, murdered. While they were called prostitutes by the authorities you controlled. While they begged for help. You spent millions on consultants. You lent public money to a property tycoon. No full checks. He built luxury apartments. Working-class families slept on streets. You promised to end such arrangements. You lied. You always lie. But here is your extinction. Here is what ends you forever. Mid Staffordshire. You were Health Secretary when the scandal broke. Hundreds dead. Patients drinking water from vases. Left unwashed in their own filth. You resisted a full public inquiry. You delayed. You obfuscated. Whistleblower Julie Bailey called you "grossly unsuitable." She said you were "incompetent or negligent." The Francis Report exposed the rot on your watch. Maggie Oliver. The whistleblower who exposed the Rochdale grooming gangs. She came to you. She warned you. She gave you the evidence. Industrial-scale rape. Torture. Trafficking. Working-class girls, twelve years old, called prostitutes by Greater Manchester Police. Raped repeatedly. Tortured. Murdered. Their families ignored. Evidence destroyed. Complaints buried. Maggie Oliver said you "turned away" from victims. She said you "did not grasp the nettle." She resigned over your handling of the Oldham inquiry. You had the evidence. You had the warnings. You did nothing. The girls suffered. The girls died. You were Mayor. Under your watch, Greater Manchester Police abandoned one in five reported offences. Domestic abuse victims. Working-class women. No investigations. No safeguarding. No justice. They called for help. You were too busy being King. Too busy planning your PM bid. Too busy spending £27 million on consultants while children were raped. You preach about the NHS while your Labour government started the privatization. Section 75. Competitive tendering. The market devouring public health. You built the machine you now pretend to oppose. The hypocrisy is surgical. You want to be Prime Minister. Labour blocked your MP bid. You called it "an insult to people's intelligence." The insult, Andy, is you. The Cambridge-educated "man of the people" who failed the people. The King of the North who could not protect the North's daughters. Who turned away. Who did nothing. Who spent millions on consultants while children were raped. You have no seat. No hiding place. No sanctuary. You gambled that we would forget the girls called prostitutes while they suffered. You gambled that time would erase your cowardice. You lost. You are not a king. You are a caretaker of carnage. You are not a leader. You are a liability. You are not the future of Labour. You are its shame. You are its corpse. Your reputation is ash. Your conscience is a void. Your ambition is grotesque. Your career is over. Your betrayal of Britain is now complete. Permanent exile awaits. Congratulations. You are The Dossier.

Exc: Reform’s latest attack ad on Andy Burnham. Ten days till polling day.

Burnham Promised Affordable Homes. He Built Luxury Towers For Chinese Investors Before Andy Burnham stood for Mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017 he was explicit about what he would do with the region's housing investment fund. He criticised public loans for city centre and luxury schemes. He promised to renegotiate the fund so it would fully focus on the long term goal of an affordable home for all. Here is what he actually did. Burnham's Greater Manchester Combined Authority lent £578 million in public money to a single developer, Daren Whitaker of Renaker. In March 2024 Burnham chaired a meeting that approved £120 million in loans to Renaker companies in the space of one minute. Out of 11,000 homes built with that public money, 503 are classed as affordable. Less than five percent. Since 2020 Whitaker's personal fortune has grown from £140 million to an estimated £698 million, making him one of the wealthiest individuals in the North West. He briefly registered his residency in Monaco before switching it back to Britain. A tribunal found that GMCA failed to obtain a statement of assets and liabilities from Whitaker before lending him the money, exposing taxpayers to a risk the tribunal described as potentially wiping out the public funds. Whitaker also received a £40 million dividend payout despite restrictions in the original loan agreement. The GMCA would not say whether it knew about or approved those payments. The terms of the loans remain secret. A Court of Appeal hearing on £140 million of those loans is scheduled for June 9. Nine days before the Makerfield by-election. The China dimension is where the story connects to something considerably larger. The taxpayer backed developments were actively marketed to Chinese buy to let investors through Hong Kong estate agents. A marketing event was held in Hong Kong just weeks before the GMCA approved a £69 million loan for the Contour development. Hundreds of flats in taxpayer backed skyscrapers have been sold to Asian investors according to Telegraph analysis of Companies House filings. Angela Rayner, then Deputy Prime Minister, was simultaneously telling the Telegraph that it was a real frustration that international investors could buy up houses before local people get a look in. Her government's mayor in Manchester was lending public money to a developer marketing those same homes to Chinese buy to let investors in Hong Kong. Labour was pledging a stamp duty surcharge on overseas landlords while its most prominent northern mayor was facilitating exactly the investment it claimed to oppose. For Makerfield voters the question is direct. The constituency sits within a region where 18,000 people have no permanent address and one in 61 Manchester residents is homeless. The man asking them to send him to Westminster promised in 2017 to focus public money on affordable homes for all. He then lent £578 million to a developer who built luxury towers now owned by Chinese landlords, extracted dividend payments despite loan restrictions, and left taxpayers exposed without conducting adequate financial checks. For Britain as a whole the question is broader. The pattern of accommodating Chinese financial interests runs from the super embassy in London to the spy trial collapse to Mandelson's undisclosed relationship with China's finance minister. The Renaker story adds a further dimension. Public money, lent without adequate due diligence, flowing into luxury developments marketed directly to Chinese investors, by the mayor now seeking to become Prime Minister. The Court of Appeal will hear the case on June 9. The voters of Makerfield deliver their verdict on June 18. Both deserve an honest answer. "Burnham's Greater Manchester Combined Authority lent £578 million in public money to a single developer, Daren Whitaker of Renaker."

Worth watching. Proper, measured, thoughtful response.