Lots of discussion of my article from January on trade union voting in internal elections in here:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04...

The most Telegraph headline possible?

Dr Who fan, what would be your handful of serials from the classic show that you would show to someone who had watched a lot the modern series but none from the original?

I don’t think he will be the next pm but do think he’s next chancellor

A post will please the Labour righ and the Labour left, and annoy a lot of Bluesky. Man doesn’t miss.

Ed Miliband being mentioned seriously as a candidate for PM, Francois Hollande running for President again. The piss weak social democrats of 2012 are back and they're turning up the volume!

Yh I think it’s a lot more to walk away from being prime minister than from leading an opposition party that a lot of people were saying wouldn’t win the next election

Yh I completely agree. Adorable dog btw

I don’t even think it would need to be that massive, as his position is vulnerable right now. Can see a small number making a big fuss and apathy doing the rest

Running a little late due to travel - here's Daniel and Dharnish with the post-Chelsea pod. Nearly back in the CL, folks!

Audio -> linktr.ee/nqatpod

and so much of the press still fawned after him

'Terrified of rent increase': How housing benefit cuts hit renters The government froze local housing allowance, which effectively meant a real-terms cut to housing benefit. This is what it means for renters

NEW: More than 160,000 private renters on low incomes face rent shortfalls worth up to hundreds or even thousands of pounds a year due to Labour’s housing benefit cuts

Greater Manchester and the West Midlands are particularly badly hit

By me, for the Big Issue: www.bigissue.com/news/housing...

Yh it wasn’t an appealing field

There's rarely a *good* time to hold a leadership contest if the contest is due to the incumbent's failings, as those failings can be related to why the timing is bad (perhaps only tangentially on this occasion)

And there's never a good time to keep a PM who's actively bad at the job, as Starmer is

They could do it in 6 or 7 weeks tbf

Always found it interesting how the Labour right in particular are keen to have massive love-ins with gambling.

@antoniabance.bsky.social tuc diplomacy well and truly left behind there

along with an SMR for every home, it’s the dream

Thinking of the Labour Party staffer who thought that ASLEF was about 5 times the size it actually is (due to their affiliation fee), without thinking how many train drivers that would mean there were in the UK…

As the compromise on day one rights against unfair dismissal showed, there are some affiliated unions that have heft and some that do not. Most Labour people can’t tell the difference between the two, mind.

Adorable

www.ft.com/content/2310...

I'm hoping they move away from the current model, but we'll see. Do you think there's anything they could do now, having not got a better license fee settlement?

What so you think would be the best things for the Secretary of State to do in this situation?

As in you reckon most people have views along those lines or think the people surveyed are the exception?

Yh a lot of Labour doesn’t seem to accept a lot of its core vote is women. I’d be interested to see how the difference compares to historical tendencies. Also curious why such discrepancy over Gaza, though don’t think it’s a movement to radical left or anything

I agree it didn’t really say why these things were happening (I’m also sceptical at their permeance), what’s your analysis on it?

Yh they've only really got one option- until events mean that isn’t tenable, which hopefully doesn’t happen

What do you think about it?

‘Power in the hands of people’: union leaders push to revive ailing US labor movement Organizers unveil new drive to reverse decline in union membership as workers seek to combat growing wealth inequality

And there are still some in Britain who thinks the UK union movement has things to learn from its US counter-part; and grifters who will try to sell this.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

HELP NEEDED IN UPDATING Bibliography of the 1926 General Strike In 2006, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations (HSIR) 21 published ‘The General Strike and Mining Lockout of 1926: A Select Bibliography’, compiled by John McIlroy, Alan Campbell, …

Are you a historian of the 1926 General Strike? If so, we need your help updating the strike's bibliography to mark its centenary. sslh.org.uk/2026/04/02/h...