LilliputianX

🚨 BREAKING: John Healey has announced a £100 cash payment for 20 million households in Council Tax bands A to D "This will be paid directly into people's bank accounts" #Budget

When I was in HMT, I worked on the “Project Fear” document. It turned out to be Project Fact.

Nonsense from Trump. No immigrants were involved. The ultra left who attacked police and public buildings are almost all white French. The looters who exploited the chaos were very young kids from the poor suburbs, brown and black in many cases but almost certainly French

National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell telling friends he might quit - which would be pretty huge. He’s the collective memory on the political side and one of the few with good contacts in Washington and the Middle East spectator.com/article/does-a…

6/ Why that matters: whatever change in framing people like David Miles brings, the OBR’s basic architecture still ties headroom to population. Its central forecast assumes all migrants have the same tax and spending profile as UK residents of the same age and sex.

The digital world has enabled Russia to interfere in democratic votes, like with the Brexit referendum, says former CIA director John Brennan. "I think they look at all elections as being an opportunity for them."

The small boats crisis has gone on longer than WWII. I will always regret that I could not solve it. We have to show people the journey is pointless. Rwanda was criticised as a fantasy, but the real fantasy is thinking you can stop the boats without it. For some time I had said that if forced to choose between membership of the ECHR and our national and border security, I would pick the latter. During my tenure, attempting to leave the ECHR with only two years left in the parliament and with no mandate to do so would have been a recipe for constitutional chaos. You couldn't resolve all the issues thrown up by leaving in 24 months with a fractious parliamentary party, a sceptical House of Lords and limited diplomatic capital. Other countries can read our opinion polls. With the help of KCs, we'd done extensive work on leaving. The plan was to say in the election campaign that we'd seek radical reform of the convention and the court, and leave if that could not be achieved quickly. Like so many things in that campaign, it didn't go to plan, and we dropped the idea after Nigel Farage entered the race, for fear it would be dismissed as a panic move and make it harder to focus the election on tax and the economy. With a mandate, a majority and a five-year term, it would be very different, and worth doing. My Sunday Times column today looks at how 👇 thetimes.com/comment/columni…

This is a completely different Europe in 2026 to 2004. Look at the PPP map. The great post-communist gulf is hardly what it was. Unemployment is lower than in Western a Europe. Instead, Poland is on the path to surpassing Britain by GDP per capita in 2030 and has lower unemployment than Britain. Remaining much diminished low wage labour pool, mostly in Romania, is an asset and preferable (usually return, no families coming too, no asylum rights) to the opposite pattern Brexitwave migrants (India/Nigeria/Pakistan) as lower total numbers and costs to the benefits bill. The best option for migration control is to join a changed Europe.

Just responding to Reform’s claims by show France vs Britain’s Net Migration figures over years. The Brexitwave of migration to the UK is what stands out. The UK had lower and better managed migration when it was inside the EU.

Earning £100k does not make you “rich”, especially if you’re a single-earner family. The tax trap penalises work and Labour should address it on those grounds. arguably.uk/p/britain-cant-a…

Les révoltes lycéennes téléguidées par l’extrême gauche et La France insoumise prennent de l’ampleur à #Bordeaux ! Ils prétendent manquer de moyens dans leurs lycées, mais mettent le feu à leur propre établissement et au mobilier urbain. Une honte !

Oh that’s a misunderstanding. Rather the European Union is the device that has rescued the European nation state from a total loss of control on the world stage. Look closer and the EU empowers them by handing even the smallest of nation states a veto and veto and a say over affairs at the continental level over which they would otherwise be powerless.

The EU should clarify as is in its gift that rejoin does not mean the UK being forced to adopt Schengen or Euro against its will. (New members join with a derogation and have veto on their own implementation).

Calling the 80s a nightmare of deindustrialisation is extremely simplistic. If you take car manufacturing, Thatcher oversaw a revival that continued until Tony Blair came to power.