unexpected champion of the week, keep 'em coming please!

🚨 NEW: Zack Polanski’s Green Party will conduct a “full review” of its policies

Policies including abolish the monarchy, making private landlords illegal, and reducing the motorway speed limit to 55mph are set to be cut

[@POLITICOEurope]

Ed Davey and the inexorable drift towards conservatism Despite unprecedented electoral success, the Liberal Democrats are drifting on the tides of political debate and utterly failing to shift its terms.

Ed Davey and the inexorable drift towards conservatism by @jamesgraham.theliberati.net www.theliberati.net/quaequamblog...?

now, is it now?

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://help.ft.com/faq/gifting-and-sharing-an-article/what-is-a-gift-article/. https://www.ft.com/content/034361bc-641b-4a73-a3d1-3ee76c4ed573?syn-25a6b1a6=1 One Labour official who knows Starmer well said that while McSweeney, a protégé of Mandelson’s, wanted to send him to Washington, Starmer was never that close to him. “Keir didn’t even really like Mandy, and suspended his judgment as he does so often,” the person said. “At that point, the machine took it [Mandelson’s appointment] as his intention and does what the British state does, which is bend the process to the signal it thinks is being broadcast from the principal.”

An all-time classic entry in the hall of fame 'does the person saying this realise how damning it is?' quotes:

Same age and, same!

Patriotic Millionaires UK 🇬🇧 Britmaxxing since 2021

The real headline: crypto crook (who pleaded guilty to breaking US money laundering rules) plans to try and buy UK politics www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...

mega private donations sent from Thailand / mega private donations sent from the UK

Yes, Bob or Greg James 🙏

'Only the president knows where things stand and what he will do' - Leavitt

this is not what we build states for

After 50 years on my allotment, the council is bulldozing it for graves Richmond council plans to expand Teddington Cemetery into the 120-year-old allotments despite nearly 1,700 residents opposing the idea

Coffins over food, in this economy?

www.thetimes.com/article/411d...

We don’t know eachother irl but you a very known to me and many people round our way for all the wonderful work you did keeping our community fed thru Nunhead Knocks, Claire. You are a legend *and* your opinion matters x

So there is an argument that many MPs- and their staff- are highly aware of the kinds of problems that their constituents face.

What is more complicated is their ability as individual MPs to do something about these problems in a systemic way.

I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like To Try Cake By A Horse Hello. I am a horse. I work very hard at my job of being a horse. When humans say move the heavy thing, I move the heavy thing. When humans sit on top of me and pull on my head, I carry them where they want to go. The main food the humans give me is hay and oats. But I am thinking it would be nice to have a different food. I am thinking I would like to try cake. Yes, yes. Cake. I know all about it. When humans eat cake, it is in glad times. It is the food for a celebration, such as when a woman becomes 47. I have seen cake on the Fourth of July. When humans have a cake, they stand around it and clap hands and smile and say happy birthday at each other. Sometimes there are beautiful markings on a cake, such as balloons or a pink shape. Sometimes the top of a cake is on fire and a boy must blow on the fire with mouth wind. This is the scariest cake. I do not want this kind. But I will eat any other cake. Any cake that is not the fire cake that tries to kill the boy. Please understand: I do not get money for doing work. I do not get to go inside the house. All I am either doing my horse job or standing in my pen or eating food off the floor. I always do these things. But I have never once gotten cake and I would like it very much. I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children. I am more helpful to the farm. Children do not move the heavy things like me or let anyone ride on them. And yet they get cake. Maybe the humans will realize this. Maybe they will say, "You know who deserves cake? That horse. That horse whose back we are always on." Every day I dream about what it will be like if I get to eat cake. Here is what will happen. First, I will walk to the cake and putt my nose at it like hrrfff to make and stomping my hooves to make sure it is not a snake. Then I will trot in a circle to show that I am a horse and I am large. After that, I will nuzzle the cake to …

The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me.

It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."

I would quite like to hear an informative and calm airing on our general readiness for rationing in the UK. What’s stopping us, city boy tears before lunchtime?

James Dyson is framing his own financial interests as if they were about national security. As farmers, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, founders of energy companies, and business leaders we say Dyson is 100% wrong. We millionaires who love the UK say tax us more and tax us now.

There is no april fools' skit too lowbrow that I won't fall for it.

No one wants to talk about rationing. It’s not pretty economic policy. But the ugliest form of rationing is rationing by price explosions. That’s why it’s high time to put fair emergency rationing protocols in place for energy. Shortages are already here.

It will be a catastrophe for Labour for a long time if they persist with implementing this cruel plan.

I acknowledge the printing press in the room, but I’m v wary of celebrating the counterweight AI can provide social media, when it seems to come at the expense of all the habits, norms, and the literal environment that enable *humans* to reach objectivity.

No evidence of 'family voting' in Gorton and Denton by-election An investigation into alleged

As the police find no evidence whatsoever of illegal family voting or voter coercion in the Gorton and Denton by-election, the BBC should ask themselves why, on the morning of the result, they gave so much airtime to these absurd and obviously racist claims from Nigel Farage

Much needed and brilliantly convened intervention by Tax Justice UK

🚨Breaking 🚨
40 UK orgs & unions urge the PM and Chancellor to tax excess profits of energy, banking and defence sectors - set for bumper paydays from the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran - to help with the cost of living pressures.

Read the open letter at taxjustice.uk/IranWar

I think I became a little bit welsh just by watching this 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

How a ‘convenient’ phone theft means Peter Mandelson truth may be lost forever | The News Agents The full story of Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador may never be known, with messages with Morgan McSweeney, responsible for him landing the role, lost forever in a “conveniently odd”…

Morgan McSweeney had his phone stolen, along with every message he had with Peter Mandelson's, in a oddly "convenient coincidence".

The News Agents are keeping "an open mind", but there are serious questions about the loss of such crucial evidence...

www.thenewsagents.co.uk/article/how-...

I needed to read this today!

Funding for populist-right ‘media-political complex’ exceeded £170m in five years, research finds Handful of billionaires gave huge sums in particular to media organisations that boosted rightwing politicians, says Liam Byrne MP

This is what happens when extreme wealth shapes the news.
That’s why we need an ‘extreme wealth line’ - the ££ value when extreme wealth starts to harm society - beyond which, it's clear a free press is beyond the reach of any regulator
https://theguardian.pulse.ly/4ov2vhrpve

Poll by Patriotic Millionaires International: 2024 poll of G20 millionaires, shows that everyone is deeply concerned about so much wealth being concentrated in the top 1% of humanity

If millionaires think this, then so should Governments @labouruk.bsky.social