The hospitality industry wants their VAT cut to 10%. It will cost £12bn Who benefits? ❌ The smallest most vulnerable businesses? Nope. 45% get nothing. ❌ Consumers? Nope - prices won't fall. ✅ Nearly half the cash goes straight to large chains. McDonald's gets £400m. 🧵:

The Embassy of Ukraine to Ireland expresses its serious concern regarding the continued export of alumina from Ireland to the Russian Federation. According to a trade data, this troubling trade flow has increased significantly, with exports rising from €196 million in 2021 to €318 million in 2025, positioning the Russian Federation as the largest destination for Irish alumina exports and surpassing traditional European partners. This represents the highest level of exports to Russia since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. These figures raise serious concerns, as alumina remains a critical raw material for the production of aluminium, which is extensively used by Russia’s military-industrial complex. Aluminium is used in the manufacture of a wide range of Russian military systems, including Iskander-M ballistic missiles, Tsirkon hypersonic missiles, Kh-101 and Kalibr cruise missiles, as well as Shahed-136/Geran-2 attacks unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The devastating consequences of Russia’s military production continue to be felt daily by the people of Ukraine. Over the past week alone, the Russian Federation has launched more than 2,900 attack drones, nearly 1,560 guided aerial bombs, and more than 150 missiles of various types against Ukrainian cities and communities. Every activity may contribute to sustaining Russia’s industrial and military capacity warrants careful examination. The Embassy takes note of the ongoing investigation being conducted by the relevant Irish authorities and welcomes the Irish Government’s commitment to establishing all relevant facts. We look forward to the timely conclusion of this process and to any measures deemed necessary on the basis of its findings. Ukraine fully recognises the importance of protecting jobs, communities, and industrial competitiveness in Ireland and across the European Union. At the same time, Russia’s continued war of aggression requires constant vigilance to ensure that commercial activities do not directly or indirectly contribute to sustaining the military capabilities of a state engaged in a brutal and unprovoked war against a sovereign European nation. Ukraine highly values its strong partnership with Ireland and deeply appreciates the steadfast support and solidarity demonstrated by the Irish Government and the Irish people since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion. We count on Ireland’s continued leadership in supporting Ukraine, strengthening the effectiveness of international sanctions, and ensuring that European resources, technologies, and supply chains cannot be exploited to sustain Russia’s war machine. The Embassy of Ukraine remains committed to constructive engagement with Irish partners on this important issue in the shared interests of European security, international law, and accountability.

The iconic @Keir_Starmer bringing down the house again.😂My admiration and respect for him has always been high, but it's skyrocketed over the past month and especially this last week. He. Is. Made. Of. Steel. #TenYearKeir #IStandWithStarmer

Lots of good news stories like this at present! The UK's relative strength in terms of venture capital investment, and how to build on it, probably ought to feature more heavily in the economic debate (might be easier when the politics calms down)

Q1 2026 G7: 🇬🇧 0.6% 🇺🇸 0.5% 🇨🇦 0.4% 🇩🇪 0.3% 🇮🇹 0.2% 🇫🇷 0% 🇯🇵 (not yet reported but estimates are 0.4%)

Promise made. Promise kept. A change that will impact so many lives for the better, thanks to this Labour Government.

On @bbcquestiontime tonight @rachelmillward called for more council housing. But in Green Party led Bristol, they dropped affordable housing targets and supported developers over tenants. bristol247.com/news-and-feat…

RT @metpoliceuk: “Apprehending violent and dangerous criminals is a full contact and messy task which may appear shocking to observers with…

If you want to know why it takes fecking years to get anything done in this country, watch the media fall over themselves defending a civil servant who didn't do his Job vetting candidates for jobs.

I just listened to a summing up of Olly Robbins' testimony today by @patrickxrbaker who said: "We saw a former civil servant who was master of his brief - " Hang on a minute. I saw a former civil servant who disregarded the code re recording telephone conversations with No.10 and admitted that there were calls with his office but didn't know who took them or who they were from. How is that being master of your brief? "- who was able to very calmly and eloquently paint quite a damning picture of a Downing Street that was essentially trying to get this through whatever - " I saw a charming fellow who used smiles and dimples to mask his anger at Keir Starmer and who painted a clear picture of disregarding the rules and "feeling" under pressure. That's different to pressure coming directly from Keir Starmer and being deliberately applied. It was Robbins' job to discern pressure and ignore it. And something Baker seems to have missed is that Robbins actually said he did not cave to the pressure. The important question is: did he know about the vetting, and did he tell Keir Starmer? The answers are no and no. Why didn't he know? Again, it was his job. Looked to me like he was protecting someone. Because somebody knew and withheld that information. Whether it was in No. 10 or Robbins' office wasn't clear from Robbins' testimony. In fact he said he wasn't one to throw colleagues under the bus. Ouch. He's possibly protecting a colleague but also refusing to take responsibility himself, since he was the chief. Pointing fingers at the PM but withholding info that could clear him. Charming. Like I said, he's angry at Stamer. Mad as a snake.

RT @charlotteukcity: @beneathbluster @Keir_Starmer I think for this week there will be a lot of hate posted about him, so we should flood X…

They are not the subject of legal action. Tice hadn’t identified a single error. Please correct that.

RT @b_judah: This is a really interesting idea: moving bits of NHS screening and testing out of hospitals onto the High Street to increase…

I seem to remember being on Question Time, a few months ago, in Dover…my constituency. You were too scared to even put a Reform MP up for tonight it seems. Weak.

RT @dr72w_david: Keir Starmer has got every big call right . If we had the useless Badenoch, or the far right Scum, Farage running the coun…

Operation Rolling Thunder. From 1965 to 1968, the United States conducted a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam. The goal was to break the will of the North Vietnamese government and people. To make the cost of continuing the war too high to bear. They dropped 864,000 tons of bombs. The will was not broken. So they escalated. Operation Linebacker. Operation Linebacker II, the Christmas Bombings of 1972: twelve days of around-the-clock bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, described by some U.S. generals as trying to "bomb them back to the Stone Age." Hospitals were hit. Residential areas were hit. Bạch Mai Hospital, the largest hospital in North Vietnam, was hit repeatedly. After the Christmas Bombings, the North Vietnamese negotiating position at the Paris Peace talks did not weaken. It strengthened. They bombed us into refusing to surrender. Every bomb that fell on a hospital, every family killed in their home, every village erased from the map created ten more people who would die before they accepted foreign domination. This is what American strategists, with all their degrees and all their think tanks and all their war games, failed to understand about the people they were trying to break. You cannot bomb dignity out of people who have decided they would rather die than give it up.

RT @MayorofLondon: Many people aren’t aware that measles can make children seriously unwell and can even lead to life-threatening complicat…

So how exactly is this a failure of the Labour government, when the procurement decisions were taken under the Conservative government that you were part of? It was your government that approved the procurement, oversaw the shipbuilding programme, and signed off the systems that were installed. When the service later discovered that key components did not work properly, including the engines and several other systems, those problems did not appear out of thin air. They stem from decisions made during the period your party was in office. The hypocrisy here is quite extraordinary, James. You cannot preside over the procurement, the contracts, and the oversight of a programme, and then attempt to blame the consequences on the government that inherited it. At some point the Conservative Party will have to take responsibility for its own failures. Until then, these criticisms sound less like accountability and more like an attempt to rewrite recent history.

The Daily Mail broke the story here making it clear that it was at an event organised by Jewish News. What was not reported was that it was an in conversation public event with Peston, as my remarks make clear. Your abusive tone is unnecessary and unpleasant.

‘Lobbying against our national interest is deeply unpatriotic.' Labour MP Calvin Bailey can’t understand Nigel Farage’s decision to ‘talk our country down’ while visiting Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.