Stephen Smith
@SteveNickSmith
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Financial Times journalist, fascinated by both markets and planning. Avid supporter of London Irish, George Eliot and Brighton and Hove Albion. All views my own
Joined April 2010
If you are one of the many getting fed up of this place and want to follow some people over at Bluesky: stevenicksmith@bsky.social.
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Every single broadcaster cutting away from Jeremy Corbyn as he was about to give his victory speech to cover Nigel Farage is the past decade in British politics in a nutshell.
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You’ve decided an entire race of people are anti-feminist and anti-gay?.
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I’m going to say UK journalism.
England riots: how has ‘two-tier policing’ myth become widespread?
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Ed Balls on ITV ventriloquising Starmer team said Duncan-Smith winning was “a price worth paying” for keeping Faiza Shaheen out of parliament. If you ever wondered where their political priorities lie.
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This would have been front page news for a week if Corbyn had made a gaffe like forgetting 9-11, during which you’d be able to turn on the news channels and watch a livestream of journos crowded outside his home front door.
Starmer describes the events of 7th October as 'the worst terrorist attack since the Second World War'
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It’s amazing how Labour have calculated they will never need these voters, or all the people these voters could influence in the future.
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This is a classic example of how Corbyn tried to build a Broad Church with the Labour Right to unite the party, he hated Trident but the Labour Right told him it was vital and he said, “OK, I’m a consensual leader”. His reward was for the Labour Right to lie about him eternally.
"Keir Starmer. he's committing Labour to spending on Trident. this is a contrast to the approach Jeremy Corbyn took". 2017 Manifesto "Labour supports the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent". 2019 Manifesto "Labour supports the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent"
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How can you be to the right of a Met Gala dress.
Pay rises not tax rises.
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One of the hilarious community notes you’ll ever see 🤣.
Shock Poll Shows It’s Down to the Wire for Corbyn in Islington North. @ClareHymer & @EllStats break down the latest numbers:
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No hanging around - Brighton Pavilion Constituency Labour Party has just passed an emergency motion 27-4 to condemn the explusion of @KenLoachSixteen and express solidarity with the filmmaker. First of many party units no doubt.
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If these reports are true, then blackmailing her like this after what she has been through the past few days will show that the party is led by political thugs.
🚨 NEW: Labour has reportedly offered to restore the whip to Diane Abbott. but only if she stands down from Parliament and doesn't run in GE2024. Reportedly, at least four people are hoping to become the Labour candidate in her safe Labour seat.
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Let’s be honest, the next General Election won’t be a change of government, it will be a Cabinet reshuffle.
Rachel Reeves states that Labour is supportive of Michael Gove's efforts to update the definition of 'extremism'
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Absolutely fantastic sight to see a very rich ex-footballer being assured he won’t have to pay any more tax under the next government.
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Whatever you think of Corbyn, after four years of relentless hammering from the entire UK media commentariat profession, one thing he definitely hasn't got is a thin skin.
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Is there anything more depressingly brazen than this arriving today. Our commentariat are not fit for purpose #GeneralElection
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All sports journalists piling into this wave of bigotry are a disgrace. BBC main news did not clarify that Algerian boxer is not a trans woman - even tho its journalists know this story is being driven by transphobes. It’s a joke the BBC have cheek to lecture about disinformation.
“Blood on her shorts” hahahahaha just absolutely insane reporting
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In my lifetime this kind of rhetoric has been used to demean gays, single mothers, anyone outside that sepia-tinted norm of bygone times. He knows what’s he’s doing and hopes this bit of dogwhistling will appeal to reactionaries rather than him do the hard work of changing minds.
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Telling each other how terrible they are as children suffer, for which they are now both responsible for. British politics in a nutshell.
🚨 NEW: Labour MPs laugh out loud at Suella Braverman after she says the one thing that "struck" her in the King's Speech was not scrapping the two-child benefit cap . One Labour MP: "You voted for it!"
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That incredible moment when @BBCNewsnight jumped the editorialising shark and gave us #Corbyn as Voldemort
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Seriously can’t believe Newsnight just platformed a parade of rightwing Labour MPs saying it was the left (!) undermining the party chances against the Tories in the 2017/19 General Elections with factional antics. Irony slaughtered, history being rewritten in plain sight.
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If ever I wanted to explain the concept of class loyalty among UK journalists to anyone outside the UK, I would just show them this tweet.
For good or ill, Rory Stewart would absolutely annihilate Jeremy Corbyn in a general election.
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Jo Maugham is doing what everyone thinks liberalism is, looking at evidence pragmatically and forming policy from the outcome. Wes Streeting is doing what liberalism has been in practice, which is just falling hook, line and sinker for whoever has the loudest reactionary voice.
I have some questions for @wesstreeting. 🧵.
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Sorry for being Captain Obvious. But if Corbyn made a speech tonight so visibly under the influence as Johnson below, the hit pieces would not be off front pages of newspapers for the next two weeks, all dutifully echoed by our “neutral” broadcast media .
I apologise for everytime I've criticised actors for playing being drunk too broadly, based on this I now realise you were going for naturalist approach.
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EXCLUSIVE: Keir Starmer broke parliamentary rules by failing to declare that a donor bought designer clothes for his wife, Victoria. The PM faces an investigation after he did not disclose gifts from Lord Alli — peer who also buys his suits and glasses.
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Maybe you should have voted for the party that was offering investment in public services in 2019 rather than labelling them clowns?.
I think ticket offices at railway stations are one of those things that remind of what a society should actually be. Real jobs and real interactions , and community can sometimes be placed above shareholder dividends. It's a choice we can make. #SaveTicketOffices.
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Labour calling child poverty a “trade-off” tonight should dominate this election campaign.
🎙️’Voters may recognise you are making a choice - you cld fully fund & fully cost lifting the 2-child benefit cap, and you are choosing not to’. 🗣️’There are trade offs’ . Labour Shadow Chief Financial Sec to Treasury Darren Jones on child poverty. #Newsnight
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Unbelievably and almost comically, Lineker is getting the Corbyn home doorstep treatment. Something you never see government ministers get. We have a Press pack completely cowed from holding real power to account but instead who routinely harass opponents of those in power.
BREAKING: Gary Lineker says he stands by his comments after he criticised the government's Illegal Migration Bill as "immeasurably cruel" and compared language used to announce it as "not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s". 📺 Sky 501
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The entire global Left serenading the Chilean comrades with a digital piano.
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If this was Corbyn, the entire lobby profession would be descending on a north London house with lighted flames and pitchforks. But as it’s their guy in charge, it’s a few shrugs and time to knock out more pieces on how Labour must get more racist to confront Reform.
📊 Conservative lead at 2pts.‼️ Labour in third place.Westminster voting intention. CON: 26% (-1).REF: 24% (+2).LAB: 23% (-2).LDEM: 11% (-1).GRN: 9% (-). via @FindoutnowUK, 04 Dec .
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Hopefully Ed, one day a political party will be bold and creative enough to advocate a national broadband service.
#virginmediadown has gone beyond a joke . People across #kingston & #surbiton are rightly frustrated and annoyed. @virginmedia please ask your CEO to call my office - with a very early time this morning for fixing this.
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Quite remarkable how accusing people of being antisemitic is now the first recourse of any random knuckleheaded bigot going. Thank you British media.
Man’s balls crawled up inside his stomach when the brother got active…
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A younger generation did politicise but it got crushed by the boomers sitting on their easy postwar consensus gains — while commentariat talking heads collectively went into full bitter and twisted mode at the sight of Glastonbury crowds cheering a Labour leader
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Why does every meeting of the Labour Party now seem to look like this
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Incredible that people don’t seem to understand such a basic, well-known concept as conflict of interest. If Burley’s clothes had been paid for by anyone else except her employer, there might have been a point here.
Kay Burley's work clothes are paid for by Sky. In 2017, she received a wardrobe allowance of nearly £30K. One assumes she receives much more today…. Her salary is three times that of the Prime Minister. Quite the fucking hypocrite isn’t she.
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Every line of this Evening Standard article from 2012 on Jacqui Smith is gob-smacking and testament to how discredited New Labour figures get strangely rehabilitated. While only 33% of country voted Labour, I don’t think even those people voted for this .
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Hmmm the most senior woman in the Shadow Cabinet paying the price for the male leader’s wooden performances you say .
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When something this fascistic and evil is carried out by a state military that our own government and main opposition party supports fully, it makes you wonder what the UK Establishment would do to our families here if they could ever get away with it.
Over 100 dead as Israel opens fire on Gazans scrambling for food, say Palestinians. @lindseyhilsum reports.
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I guess now that the commentariat discourse has reached “Corbyn is Hitler”, there is no lower it can go, we are at an end-point, at last. We were probably always heading here given the utter moral collapse of his critics.
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Both main parties moving in a massively rightward, racist direction on immigration was only made possible by the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn. Everyone who worked for that defeat has enabled state racism.
🚨 BREAKING: Labour confirms it will NOT repeal last year's Nationality and Borders Act, and confirms that it will KEEP the law that makes it an immigration offense to arrive by small boat. This is direct from Labour's Shadow Home Secretary.
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This is utterly indistinguishable from Tory Central Office putting up a spokesman, that the BBC have no editorial controls in place to stop their reporters ranting on like this is a disgrace.
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The Spectator has just published a piece that is openly racist against Muslims and also mocks a survivor of horrific domestic abuse . For how long is the rest of journalism going to tolerate and say nothing about this publication that brings disgrace to the entire profession?
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People really still puzzled about the “Labour should be 20 points ahead” meme? - it came from polls of a couple of years ago like this one, when the regular Labour poll leads under Corbyn were always greeted by the commentariat as not being good enough.
Survation:. LAB 41 (+1).CON 37 (-1).UKIP 7 (+4).LD 6 (-4).SNP 3 (=).GRN 2 (=). Fieldwork 31st Aug-1st Sep (changes vs 7th Jul).N=1,017.Tabs
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All my life I’ve been lectured by liberals that leftist thought is simplistic, lacks any form of nuance to explain a complicated world and erects bewildering Manichean narratives. Now the same people are telling me I must uncritically accept all Nato actions or I’m a Putin stooge.
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Sky just now putting up this huge graphic showing Labour have now made more gains from 2014 than the Tories, Lib Dems and Greens all put together. Sky analysts Michael Thrasher and Beth Rigby still gamely claiming it’s “disappointing” and “gloomy” for Labour . ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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The images of the dead from the UN school just bombed in Gaza are the most hell on earth you will ever see. The entire world is protesting but the horrific slaughter goes on and on. For one reason, western countries won’t do anything to stop it. They are complicit in war crimes.
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So sack yourself, that was the standard you set with Rebecca Long-Bailey.
I completely disagree with Jesus House’s beliefs on LGBT+ rights, which I was not aware of before my visit. I apologise for the hurt my visit caused and have taken down the video. It was a mistake and I accept that.
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🚨 BREAKING: CCTV shows Labour MP Mike Amesbury sucker punched and beat up a constituent. Amensbury claims he was 'threatened' before the attack. [@MailOnline]
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That “Lexit” had any significant role in leading to Brexit is one of the dafter conspiracy theories being promoted by centrists to cover up their utterly useless campaigning against the British Right.
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The Labour Right used this moral blackmail argument for countless decades against the Left and then first time the Left were in charge between 2015-19, the Right did everything they could to tank a Labour election win. So moral blackmail isn’t going to be taken seriously any more.
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"THE GRIP OF THE UNIONS ON THE POLITICAL PROCESS". Public service broadcasters should avoid using the "unions scary" language of the rightwing press when it's simply teachers' representatives playing their legitimate role in the public debate about the safety of reopening schools
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Being forced to apologise to currently the biggest anti-racist campaign in Britain sums up the Labour Party this year.
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Labour campaign to get @Keir_Starmer to say something, anything about schools reopening on Monday.
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As the planet continues to burn, I see the real priority is to have another insufferable day of this
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Actually, what really happened was Remainers relentlessly attacked the Labour Party for advocating this type of compromise. You completely ignored the momentum building behind no-deal because you collectively are terrible at politics.
For years after the referendum, Remainers were open to a Norway style relationship. That was branded a mockery and betrayal of the people's will.
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The head of Labour's Remain campaign in 2016 Alan Johnson just says he backs Theresa May's deal (that most accept is dead on arrival). That's the calibre of leadership that lost the referendum for Remain #bbctw.
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“Margaret Thatcher was demonised for what she stood for” is an actual quote from this car crash piece by Swinson .
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The moral case for a Labour government could be built on this policy alone. We are a prosperous nation, we have to stop treating the most unfortunate in society like utter shit .
BREAKING Labour confirm they'll scrap Universal Credit with £3bn rescue plan for the poor.
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May called the Gen Election last year to get a 100-seat majority to ram her Brexit deal through Parliament without ERG help. If there is one politician in Britain who stopped that and allowed a national debate now, it's Jeremy Corbyn. Show some gratitude
There are many to blame for today. But one ineradicable fact remains. If Labour had any other leader but Jeremy Corbyn since 2015 Brexit would not have played out as it has. Millions now struggle to sustain their loyalty. The coalition that is Labour has never felt so fragile.
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Thank heavens Labour isn’t a leadership cult any more
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Bless this sub-editor RT @AgnesBun Rapper 50 Cent now known as RM1.50 in Malaysia with the exchange rate applied http://t.co/2obP9GFOJU.
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Has anyone done a study of how there were reams of articles in the UK press in the 1980s about how boycotting apartheid South Africa was harming black and/or liberal artists there and would not allow us progressive influence changing the Afrikaans minority? This stuff is eternal.
"There are ways of lodging a complaint that don't involve the not very effective strategy of boycotting.". Discussing the Sally Rooney Israel boycott row, novelist Jonathan Franzen says he “wouldn’t want to divide” himself from “potentially sympathetic readers” . #Newsnight
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No more excuses: media liberals handing May the keys to Downing Street with obsessive attacks on Labour leader
No more excuses: Jeremy Corbyn is to blame for this meltdown | Jonathan Freedland
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So all those crying out for a General Election, your practical choice is going to be Blue Austerity or Red Austerity. This is a heavily managed democracy by the elites that effectively dispenses with the need for voting.
"When we talk about economic stability I want be frank. The damage the Tories have done. means things are going to be really tough, now & during my Lab govt. We cannot take any risks with the public finances, we have to restore economic stability". Keir Starmer at #TUC22
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Me looking at the tweets of Labour rightwingers for the rest of the evening
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The guy who is xth (whatever it is) in line to the throne has now a more leftwing analysis than the Labour Party.
Harry says the press barons have created a….“stalemate society, where they can enrage the public over the most mundane and petty things, to distract from the critical issues for our country and communities".
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Absolute goldfish memories. Back in 2015, McDonnell was regarded by the lobby crowd as the ultra-sectarian hard man of Labour Left whereas Corbyn had good relations on all side of House. Indeed, Corbyn’s first test was repelling the onslaught that came with picking JM as ShadChan.
Agree. Labour's left would be in a much better shape (and one which I'd more happily identify with) had McDonnell been leader 2015-20b.
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Who had lockdown turning Stewart Lee into Jon Lansman in the sweepstake
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Cooper will spend the next 4 years cosplaying Reform politics, absolutely convincing everyone to vote for the real thing.
❗️NEW: Poll suggests Home Secretary Yvette Cooper would lose her seat to Reform. Projected outcome:. 🟪 REF 35% (+6).🟥 LAB 34% (-14).🟦 CON 20% (+5).🟩 GRN 6% (+2).🟧 LD 4% (+1). Based on @Moreincommon_ poll, 19-21 Nov
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Streeting is absolutely gone in that seat next time if Leanne Mohamad sticks at it and campaigns hard locally. Hilarious that this feet of clay ex-student politician is regarded by so many big house lobby correspondents as the next Labour leader.
Wes Streeting has held on to his seat of Ilford North with a majority of just 500. Really, really gutted for @LeanneMohamad who ran a phenomenal campaign. Wes Streeting won the battle but not the war. We go again. This is not the end, just the beginning.
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Watching Labour MPs attack a US president from the Right on endless military occupations shows the breathtaking extent how supposedly pragmatic UK centrism was radicalised by neoconservative ideology during the Blair era. These are the fakest “moderates” in political history.
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Morgan McSweeney’s “to fight Reform we must become Reform” strategy going about as well as everybody expected it would (apart from the lobby groupthink of course who still think it’s multi-dimensional genius).
❗️ Reform have won their first council seat in Merseyside, after winning a St Helens by-election:. 🟪 REF 41% (+41).🟥 LAB 35% (-18).🟩 GRN 13% (-16).🟦 CON 8% (-10).⬜️ IND 4% (+4). Reform GAIN from Labour (30% swing)
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Newsnight really does put out some odd programming at times. They effectively chose to make Rory Stewart Leader of the Opposition tonight and allowed him to say, unchallenged, that Corbyn's Labour front bench had same policy on the emerging pandemic as Boris Johnson in March 2020.
“I was accused of being a hysterical populist.". Former cabinet minister @RoryStewartUK says in 2020 the UK government asked him to stop publicly advocating the use of masks. #Newsnight
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It just happens too constantly for it to be anything other than a deliberate approach. It’s because senior broadcasters have the same mindset and worldview as these centrist politicians voted out of representative public life. Thumbing nose at voters with plausible deniability.
Thangam Debonnaire gets more airtime on the BBC than Carla Denyer, despite being voted out at the election! 🤷.#Newsnight.
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Remember this is the guy who couldn’t win an election even inside his own family.
"The truth about the Jeremy Corbyn leadership is that he was never going to be elected as Prime Minister. he repels voters" says former foreign secretary David Miliband. Follow #Ridge live:
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Possibly it’s time the Guardian had a look at its Labour Party coverage and its propensity to just uncritically regurgitate bilge fed to them by unaccountable spads and hacks.
This is factually incorrect. I have never been offered a seat in the Lords, and would not accept one if offered. I am the adopted Labour candidate for Hackney North & Stoke Newington. I intend to run and to win as Labour's candidate.
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Regarding the “longer than a year” thing, a reminder that Starmer supported removing Corbyn as leader after nine months even despite Ed Miliband’s 30% performance in a General Election.
Expectation management from Keir Starmer: “I don’t think anybody realistically thought it was possible to turn the Labour Party around from its worst GE result since 1935 to a position to win the GE within one year. It was always going to take longer than that.” @BBCr4today.
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That’s the plan though, to lose elections. Those in charge of the Labour Party want to burn it down and start again, they accept this will mean election losses but they do have this sincere belief a centrist party will rise again at some point in the future. This is all priced in.
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Centrists hate Corbyn so much they are now circling the wagons around Alan Sugar to defend his blatantly homophobic tweet. Quite the way to end (and encapsulate) a year when political bad faith has rocketed into orbit.
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The Parliamentary Labour Party has a bullying problem, the screaming invective hurled at the leader is routinely what the Labour Left is accused by the Press of doing in meetings yet when Lobby journalists see clear evidence of it in the PLP, it is framed as a positive thing.
Corbyn was 'brutally attacked' at last night's PLP meeting. When are we going to learn that people who bully, abuse and insult others - especially a man who is ALWAYS polite and civil - will not create a kinder, fairer world. Tip for humanity:.Nasty people = nasty politics.
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Not sure I'll ever be able to see the phrase "it ended badly" again without thinking of CIA-backed fascists rounding up voters and executing them in a football stadium.
My sympathies go to the 45% of Chileans who voted against the left-wing extremist, @GabrielBoric, just elected as Chile's next president. - Chile has gone down this road before (in 1970-73) & it ended very badly.- Venezuela provides a more recent example of socialist catastrophe
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Actually virtually every single poll conducted during the General Election campaign showed the Tory lead narrowing day by day. All the evidence was there -- unless you were ideologically pre-disposed to dismiss all the evidence
The thing I will never understand about last June is how such a dramatic transformation in Labour's vote share occurred almost entirely undetected by any of the parties.
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How odd. Seems a bit incompetent for a senior Labour representative to dare people into not voting Labour.
Rachel Reeves states that taxing richer people 'isn't my priority' and that those who advocate for this 'will have the chance to express their views at the ballot box'
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Please someone convince me these aren’t THE most incompetent people in British politics. And this is someone who sold their entire political persona on listening and understanding the views of people in northern towns
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There's a bigger problem here about how vacuous concepts like "aspiration" have become ideologically re-defined by journalists (who should know better) to mean "opposing widescale state intervention". Actually people will become much more aspirant if eg. student debt is abolished.
The entirety of the British media has been lobotomised. Here’s Pippa Crerar defending Love Island’s Molly-Mae in the name of ‘aspiration’ & attacking… Jeremy Corbyn. Sensational.
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A party that has collapsed wholesale back into the respectable racist narratives that dominated politics before Corbyn tried to do something about it.
🚨 BREAKING: Labour has announced that it will ban care workers from bringing their dependents to the UK. Speaking to Sky News, Labour's Steve Reed said "I like the idea of it", saying the only issue is "when you phase it in".
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Centrist bros when they spot a new tweet by Zarah Sultana or Grace Blakeley.
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Starmer has already won Saturday’s Cope of the day in the first hour
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At this stage Rashford should just stand in 650 seats as it’s probably the only chance of a change of government.
Marcus Rashford to hold talks with Deliveroo after Mirror probe finds riders average less than minimum wage on thousands of shifts
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A man who leapt to the forefront of British politics because he did precisely this.
Keir Starmer: "I don't think we can simply ignore the referendum and go back in to the EU"
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Now fair’s fair, credit where credit is due. Well done Andy Burnham.
Westminster voting intention:. LAB: 40% (-).CON: 38% (-2).LDEM: 6% (-).GRN: 5% (+2). via @OpiniumResearch.Chgs. w/ 09 Oct.
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Remarkable. A technocratic class of politician who wants no accountability whatsoever, just to exist - in office - to do what they like at any given moment. This isn't democracy, by the way.
Labour MP @stellacreasy tells @PaulBrandITV why she would ban manifestos if she was #ITVActingPM. Watch or listen to the full episode of Acting Prime Minister:
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Ok what I want to know is . how come John Harris never found this fella on his northern safaris
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Except you spent years dumping on the only viable alternative to this, so that makes you complicit in this outcome.
THEY'RE NOT EVEN F***** HIDING IT!.MP Steve Baker just bluntly told @SophyRidgeSky that Paul Dacre is being put in charge of OFCOM because he wants UK News to be censored by "conservatives". I have to say it. This is some straight-up Goebbels sh**!
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So Labour just lost a council seat where they had 74% of the vote.
Knutton (Newcastle-under-Lyme) by-election result:. CON: 51.1% (+25.8).LAB: 48.9% (-25.8). Conservative GAIN from Labour. Chgs. w/ 2018.
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LMAO the story that much of national UK media is either, ignoring, minimising or whatabouting about is . the splash on my LOCAL newspaper
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