Gemmill

Aye that's true as well. If you stay and fight your seat, you get extra cash. This is just a bloke sticking the boot in to the Tories which I fully welcome. Labour could do with a narrative change atm.

He's standing down. I don't think this is an attempt to become a candidate for Labour.

I'm not having that like. Trump represents the end of democracy in America if he gets re-elected. He nearly managed it last time, and this time he'll ensure that he dismantles any and all checks and balances so that he can finish the job. He's already corrupted the judiciary and the entire GOP, that part is done going in this time. You might not like Biden's policies, but he doesn't have designs on being a dictator.

Another defection.

Bloke tells him his mam died during the pandemic and he can't fucking help but mention that he was the Chancellor who gave everyone furlough.

Interesting that Labour are saying little to nowt about the Truss / Lotus Eaters thing. I don't think they want to bounce Sunak into taking any action against her cos she's more valuable to them as a millstone round his neck. I cannot remotely fathom how she's set to retain her seat though. Some parts of this country are fully backwards.

Good man Craig.

Never forget.

Looks like Starmer is cleaning house.

Or maybe not actually. Is this bloke a wrong'un? Seems to be some suggestions on twitter that this is long overdue and is internal Labour machinations getting rid of a problem candidate. So I might be getting my conspiracy theory on a bit prematurely.

Obvs no one knows the full story but wouldn't be remotely surprised if this was a Tory stitch-up because they know it's getting away from them.

Ed Davey still enjoying his gap year.

8% of under 50s. On a par with Reform. Gonna take something magical for this lot to have a future as a party.

Who does he think he is man? This all probably appeals to some of the more arrogant amongst the team's following (so about 80% of them), but it's doing him zero favours with the actual people he needs to negotiate with.

Mint news mate, pleased you got something sorted quickly, and it sounds like a winner too.

Aye, that's the weird thing. That Sunderland fans lay out their travelling outfit the night before a holiday and it's ALWAYS one of their shitty strips. And then they arrive and make a point of exploring the hotel and walking round the pool area in them, so everyone can mark their cards that the bamps have landed.

Aye, it was during the period when they were being hypersensitive and trying to show that Starmer was zero tolerance, and they completely overreacted. Mind, you can guarantee that if he hadn't immediately acted, it would have been used as a stick to beat him with by both Tories and the press. Which kind of underlines that she should probably have put a bit more thought into what she was doing and considered possible consequences. Or she knew and she was just seeing if she could test boundaries - that's what I mean about whether she's actually more of an arse pain than we realise.

New FT model to play with.

I don't know whether she's a bigger headache behind the scenes than any of us realise, because otherwise what you say makes perfect sense.

I don't know what their plan was if the election was in November. Presumably they always wanted to do this manoeuvre during a campaign (but handle it better) cos it would all be done and over with quickly. But if the plan was to make her wait another 5 or 6 months in limbo, that's a pretty appalling way to treat someone.

Looks like Labour have handled the Abbott thing terribly. They'd come to an agreement with her to restore the whip and then she would announce that she was standing down and bow out gracefully. But some dipshit yesterday told the Times she was "barred from standing" and now it's all become very acrimonious. I think the terms of the agreement were pretty much that she wouldn't stand, but when you've taken all this time to engineer an outcome, got the outcome you wanted, and then still managed to fuck it up is pretty shit.

This is supposedly the seat Iain Dale is getting after he announced he was leaving LBC to run. If Labour and the Lib Dems voters even remotely get their shit together on tactical voting, it'll be a short lived break from LBC.

On the plus side, they might have to drop into the conference league cos Nice are already in the Europe League and got there by finishing higher in Ligue 1. Ineos are in talks with UEFA and are "confident" everything will be fine, but I'll direct you to Ratcliffe's confidence that they would get Ashworth for a song. If UEFA don't take a stand here, then this rule basically goes in the bin and it won't be long before clubs under the same ownership are playing one another in semi finals, with all the controversy that would bring.