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Tom Peck
@tompeck
Political Sketch Writer and Columnist .
East, East, East LondonJoined February 2009

Tom Peck’s posts

31 years since my dad sent me to the shop for a tin of red and white striped paint and the shopkeeper sent me back to ask him if he wanted horizontal or vertical, and i sussed out on the way home what was going on and then kicked the front door so hard it broke.
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To be fair to the guy, he did always say he was going to "lie in front of a bulldozer." And now he has, for forty straight minutes.
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People aren’t keen on Elon’s Twitter but the “readers added context” feature is genuinely excellent. Here’s the actual prime minister of the United Kingdom being quite correctly called out for his massive lies.
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I want to protect the price of your pint at the pub. And now the UK has left the EU, we can do just that. So we’re bringing in one of the biggest shake ups to the alcohol duty system in the last 140 years. The plan 🧵👇
Graphic reads: Brexit guarantee to back British pubs. Protecting pubs at the heart of British communities. Tax paid on pints in the pub now cheaper than the supermarket. Lower prices in shops for UK favourites like Irish cream, pre-mixed gin & tonic and prosecco. New tax relief for small producers to help grow their business.
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All of these things could be done while the UK was a member of the EU. Minimum allowed duty on beer in the EU is less than 10% of what is charged in the UK. taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/taxation-1/exc…
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I quite want to be there when his teenage daughter reads this and asks him ‘did you really leave mum because you couldn’t work out on your own what to give a five year old for lunch?’
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We built it. We spent almost a decade wondering what to do with it. And we still didn’t think to use it for cricket.
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You have to think that one of the many reasons the Tories are so utterly doomed is because Tory columnists have been reduced to wanting to starve more people so it’s fair on their other victims.
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While 4.2million Brits live in food poverty those aboard the Bibby barge eat til their hearts content.. One in ten British children don’t even have breakfast while illegal migrants fill their bellies like a Cruise holiday buffet Eggs, cheese, meat, cereal, toast and jam -… Show more
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Why spend money on a new rail line when you can spend it on two hundred midnight taxis from Preston to Edinburgh? Absolute scenes here.
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I’m not quite sure how to explain what’s happened tonight, because it’s still happening - but here goes… At 4:40pm I jumped on a train from London to Edinburgh.. It was comfy, it was quiet In hindsight, too good to last…
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In which the education secretary gets annoyed with the media for not having done enough to thank her for everything’s she done with regard to hundreds of schools having to close on the first week back because they’re not safe for children.
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Education secretary Gillian Keegan is recorded on camera saying others ‘have been sat on their a***s’ on schools Raac crisis and shares frustration about not being thanked for doing ‘a f***ing good job’ itv.com/news/2023-09-0
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As someone who lives in an outer London borough that’s about to get ULEZ’d am genuinely quite surprised that ULEZ can lose you a by-election. My crap car is sixteen years old and it’s entirely exempt.
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It is just so ridiculous that we have a system in which failed prime ministers hand out jobs for life to their chums on exit. It makes no sense on any level. We are drowning in these people now, entirely because the Conservative Party has been so stunningly useless.
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Boris Johnson's former aide, Charlotte Owen becomes a peer. She is 30, and as the oath says her peerage is literally "for her life", she could be in the Lords for SIXTY YEARS.
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If we’re bringing back national service, why not have a fortnight of ‘civic exploration’ for the over 65s too? They could learn such things as how to set up an iPhone, or how to tell the difference between things on Whatsapp that are true and things that are not.
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Penny Mordaunt has 16-year-olds in mind when she suggests bringing back national service. But she’s missing a trick, writes @tompeck #NationalService independent.co.uk/voices/nationa
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Remarkable really that NatWest’s risk team considered Nigel Farage a risk. Now that the CEO’s gone and he’s shouting for the whole board to resign, I hope they reflect on how wrong they got it.
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Just two weeks ago, Gillian Keegan was busy telling heartbroken eighteen year olds that no one will care about or remember your A Level results in ten years time. But I reckon people will remember her two F***s and an A*** for the rest of her life.
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Education secretary Gillian Keegan is recorded on camera saying others ‘have been sat on their a***s’ on schools Raac crisis and shares frustration about not being thanked for doing ‘a f***ing good job’ itv.com/news/2023-09-0
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I sort of can’t really believe that a train service was voted on and approved, that would reduce London to Leeds from 2hrs13 to 1hr21 will now, at very best, take 1hr53 plus another metro train from suburbia into Central London - ie a worse service that you’d actively avoid.
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Have really come to enjoy this new tradition of a prime minister flying into a large, powerful country, which is traditionally an ally of the UK, and acknowledging that the much hyped trade deal with them will in fact not happen.
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Rishi Sunak warns trade deal with India may never happen as he jets into New Delhi mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ 📸: @singharj
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Absolutely none of these have got anything whatsoever to do with inflation going down. Like, none of them. Two of them haven’t even happened.
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Replying to @RishiSunak
Second, we’re tackling the causes of inflation that drive prices up. ➡️ Backing oil & gas in the North Sea to secure our energy supply ➡️ A huge new childcare package to help parents back into work ➡️ Keeping people in work with a £1 billion tax cut on pension contributions.
Tackling the causes of inflation.
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When I covered Fifa, the key to understanding it was that they had all liberated themselves entirely from their own shame. They threw $10K wedges around in public, they stuffed it under one another's doors, because they had let go of their own moral decrepitude. That is Boris.
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Genuinely worse than Boris Johnson.
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Labour: ❌ Ban new oil and gas licences ❌ Rely 100% on imports ❌ Protect Russian jobs ❌ Risk UK security Conservatives: ✅ Back new oil and gas licences ✅ Power more of Britain from Britain ✅ Protect British jobs ✅ Strengthen UK security thesun.co.uk/news/politics/
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One more year of this relentless bullshit and they’ll have fucked off for good.
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Today we are saying no to @JustStop_Oil and their political wing the Labour Party  We will power ahead with new oil and gas because it’s in the best interests of the British people, of our economy and of our national security
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Well if liverpool want to win three cups this season they’ll actually have to score a goal in a cup final, which they’ve not managed yet.
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So as long as everybody wants to die prematurely from breathing in diesel fumes, the Tories have a chance.
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Sky News cut to Boris Johnson's speech ten seconds ago and already he is talking absolutely radioactive bullshit.
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Might seem like a silly question but are there actually “spades in the ground” on HS2, as Rishi Sunak claimed at least ten times this morning? Is it being dug by hand? That would explain a lot.
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It's not been widely pointed out that this letter was also the most cynical moment of the whole campaign. Gove knew Cameron would always veto Turkey, but he also knew he couldn't publicly say so, because of terrorism related intelligence sharing commitments. Utterly shameless.
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Boris Johnson said "I didn't say anything about Turkey in the referendum". But he put his name to this letter warning about Turkey joining the EU a week before the vote voteleavetakecontrol.org/letter_to_the_
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I do find this idea somewhat strange that the state can somehow disincentivise you from having a third child. If the first two don’t do it then absolutely nothing will.
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“The hope and genius of the British people will drive us forward,” says Rishi Sunak, before explaining that the British people absolutely cannot sort their rubbish into different bins.
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Boris Johnson is *still* claiming we can go back to Brussels and get another deal in time to leave on March 29th, and that there is no need for a backstop. Absolute, glow in the dark, visible from space, rubbish.
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Wayne Rooney’s just had to do a little shimmy to get round me on his way out the toilets and the frisson of excitement has taken me right back to Euro 2004.
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Definitely up for a referendum on net zero, just so long as the voting age is lowered to five and everyone gets one vote for every year of remaining life expectancy.
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Sunday Telegraph leading article calls for referendum on net zero telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2023/0
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Really, really need the Mbappe deal to collapse and soon. Can’t wait much longer to do my “They tried to make him go to Riyadh / He said no no no” tweet.
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Low grade politics is probably here to stay but it’s the constant denigration of lawyers that’s so objectionable, it’s been going on for a long time now and it should stop. Politicians make the laws, if they’re reduced to attacking lawyers they just reduce themselves.
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This is what we’re up against. The Labour Party, a subset of lawyers, criminal gangs - they're all on the same side, propping up a system of exploitation that profits from getting people to the UK illegally. I have a plan to stop it. Here’s how 🧵 dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1
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Replying to @lindayaX
X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.
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Highly enjoyable, this. Tories seem to have blocked out, mainly as a psychological coping strategy, that Rishi Sunak is arguably the worst campaigner in British political history. Played 1 and Lost 1 - to Liz Truss.
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Rishi Sunak’s going to have to find a better way of talking to voters. If he repeats today's @lbc performance in a general election campaign, that Labour landslide will be even bigger. Tonight's #WaughOnPolitics is in your inbox. inews.co.uk/opinion/rishi-
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If it turns out you can’t build a “high wage economy”, what you can do instead is tell everyone their degrees are worthless.
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Too many students are being sold a university education that won't get them a decent job at the end of it. So I'm cracking down on rip-off degrees and boosting apprenticeships to ensure students get the best deal possible. Widening access. Boosting jobs. Growing the economy.
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I honestly thought that time he was on the media rounds on Barnard Castle weekend, desperately trying to discuss the widening of the A66 was the biggest tit of himself Grant Shapps would ever make.
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I’ve written to @Keir_Starmer to request he pays for the criminal damage the Just Stop Oil attacks on the Energy Security Department caused this morning As the political wing of Just Stop Oil, it is the Labour Party not the taxpayer that should be paying the bill
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All this stuff ever boils down to is the same old thing - which is that to people who’ve only ever known the world from a position of immense good fortune, the slow rise of fairness feels like oppression.
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🗣 ‘The weird thing about this movement is they think they are downtrodden. They think they’re the underdogs.’ 📺 The View from 22 | Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) on the ‘oppressed’ establishment 👉 youtu.be/TYVR6nsT6Y0
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Honestly the hardest thing about writing political columns at the moment is just trying to remember even a third of the ridiculous and appalling things that they’ve done.
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Honestly think the last time I turned the telly on of an evening and it was showing anything other than masterchef might have been the mid nineties.
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I made this point on TV once, and the other panelist, an actual expert, told me that, (I think), 40 per cent of global emissions come from countries who themselves account for between 1 and 2 per cent of emissions. If they all abdicate responsibility in this way, we’ve no chance.
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Clarifying by Janan Ganesh ft.com/content/64903f
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That poll that said they’ll get 90 seats - I honestly think it could be less. They have a leader who is as bad a campaigner as it’s possible to be. And also, this is all they’ve got.
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🧟‍♂️ The eco-mob are rising and they're wearing Labour rosettes 🥀
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Dear people under the age of about 30, I swear the world wasn’t always like this. For a little while, maybe twenty years or so ago, it was kind of normal. Not sure it’s ever going back.
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Luis Rubiales’ mother has been taken to hospital from the church where she was on hunger strike. Angeles Bejar started the sit-in protest at the Divine Shepherdess church in Motril near Malaga on Monday. She was due to be holding a press conference at the church this evening. She… Show more
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It's not just the lies, the shamelessness and the delusion, the disgraceful timing. It's also just objectively a terrible, terrible speech. He's all over the place. It's garbage.
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. is in Uxbridge where he’s just said the words “Where people have an issue of substance to vote on they vote Conservative.” You have to think he’s going to be quite shocked to learn that there are other issues of substance out there, beyond levies on diesel cars.
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You are aware that you will still be able to? It’s not either or. And your journey to Old Oak Common will be far more pleasant if the Elizabeth line has not been overrun by every single hs2 passenger, none of whom will have any alternative options.
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All the public goodwill these guys built up when they targeted Wimbledon, The Ashes and various priceless works of art has just been completely undone now they’ve gone after George Osborne’s wedding *and* a Tory think tank.
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🖌️ BREAKING: Just Stop Oil Paint Policy Exchange Think Tank HQ 🟠 This morning, 2 Just Stop Oil supporters have painted the climate criminal think tank @Policy_Exchange orange. 🖋️ Sign up to slow march at juststopoil.org
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Just because everyone absolutely loves a pedant, Liz Truss became Tory Party leader a year ago today. She became prime minister a year ago tomorrow.
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The longer they focus on this issue the clearer it becomes, for all to see, that they simply can’t sustain any of their wrong arguments for long enough to conceal the obvious truth - that the mess is their fault and no one else’s.
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Immigration minister Robert Jenrick says if you process the claims of asylum seekers more quickly that encourages more people to come. He's admitting that leaving asylum seekers in limbo, in temporary accommodation, not allowed to work, not able to restart their lives, for years… Show more
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Half a million quid to sack someone over a petty historic grievance. And then another fifty billion or so when they’re not around to prevent you setting fire to the economy because you don’t understand what you’re doing. Pricey times, the Truss weeks.
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Replying to @MrHarryCole
BREAK: Sacked Treasury Perm Sec Tom Scholar received a f £335,000 severance payment and £122,000 in lieu of annual leave. He was paid more than half a million last year in total.
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Saw some absolutely horrifying climate change graphs about twenty minutes ago that reduced me to a state of utter panic and dread. Thankfully have now managed to forget all about it, pretend it’s not real and am feeling much better.
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Not sure as I’ve ever seen a more intense happiness than the look on the face of the seven year old boy standing next to me in Argos being bought a PS5.
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Everyone very excited it’s been a year since Holly and Phil skipped the queue but surely the more important cultural anniversary is it being a year since Center Parcs announced it was going to throw out all its guests.
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The House of Lords does noble work and can just about be defended on a practical level. But it will have to be abolished now and it will be just another thing that was touched by Boris Johnson and so left ruined.
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Lord Bailey of Partygate gets his peerage
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If I were the Labour Party, one of my big ideas would be to intervene everywhere where free markets fundamentally do not work, and ask the public for suggestions. Not just the big ones but the really annoying ones like: 1. Parking apps 2. Mobile phone coverage
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Not criticising the MP or any of the people present in the slightest, but if young people wonder why they get relentlessly, relentlessly screwed over by politics…
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Another busy ‘house meeting’ last night in a Talbot Woods. Lots of topics came up and another opportunity to engage direct with constituents. I don’t know who will come or what issues will be brought up in advance. Always grateful to generous hosts opening their homes for us.
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I swear you’ll never see anything like small boats week ever again. So watch it. (Don’t) drink it in.
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BREAKING: Asylum seekers to be moved off Bibby Stockholm barge after Legionella bacteria found news.sky.com/story/asylum-s
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Just rise out your seats, stand and applaud for , who is on Sky News right now saying the words “People see Labour in charge and they see them botching things and making a hash of things.”
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People are laughing but this happened to me once. I came back from waitrose with a turkey with no kidneys. They’d been cut out and just left inside it in a little plastic bag. Horrifying.
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I know of two British women in a well known London hospital who came back from Turkey with no kidneys. Their organs were literally stolen while the women were under anesthetic. The deals luring Brits to Istanbul for cosmetic surgery mol.im/a/12151565 via @MailOnline
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What does Charlotte Owen say to, like, a foreigner? “How did you get your job?” “Well it’s kind of like a perk for if your boss has to resign in disgrace.” “Oh right.”
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The backstop has lost Theresa May a vote in the commons by 230 votes. It has caused 117 of her MPs to back a no confidence motion against her. Does Boris Johnson not think that, if she could just "go back to Brussels and get rid of it", then perhaps, maybe, she would?
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I think this is the first time in my life I’ve ever laid eyes on actual Sinclair C5. I’ve got goosebumps. Decades ahead of its time. This vehicle’s time is now.
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Watching #stateofchaos as it cuts between Raab, Dorries, Hancock and Sir Gavin, as they worry that they might not have a grip on things. And then there’s the calm voice of reason Helen MacNamara, the ethics advisor later fined for bringing her karaoke machine to a lockdown party.
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Can you blame them? Large numbers of MPs and former cabinet ministers keep telling them it will be fine and that there's nothing to worry about.
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This process has taken three full years. A full parliamentary term is five years but more commonly four. More recently it’s been two. Completely absurd.
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MP Margaret Ferrier, who broke Covid lockdown rules, loses Westminster seat after constituents vote to remove her bbc.in/3OE92SS
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Lovely stuff. If they can string this out to an entire election campaign they might lose by less than three hundred.
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Labour are no longer the party of working people. Weak on union demands, border control, & supporting families. We are the party of free childcare, 11 million workplace pensions, a million businesses, fair fuel, & protecting the public. Labour's record is more Beach Ken... 🏐🏐
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Theresa May’s ‘abuse of power’ is a intriguing new form of autobiography, in which the author writes about herself through the medium of instead writing about only the people who wronged her, through having the temerity of not doing exactly what she wanted them to do.
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Theresa May's new book is a page-turner for all the wrong reasons, writes @tompeck. She may not be particularly interesting, but she is thrillingly delusional independent.co.uk/voices/theresa
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Are these insurmountable problems though? Maybe he faces a bit of a dilemma but he’s picked the wrong option imho. He is the President of the FA. And he also genuinely likes football.
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You’d think the latest twist would make it more, not less, obvious that you really don’t have a clue what’s actually going on so why not just not do any tweets about it?
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If you’re seventy five years old your vote gets counted once. Five years old - seventy five times. Indeed I would introduce this rule for general elections as well.
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I have no strong feelings about the incident but I do have strong feelings about the idea this is in any way comparable. Labuschagne spent whole overs batting out his crease to nullify the lbw. It was a tactic, so this was fair game. Not the same, at all.
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The people I know who refuse to fly, who don’t eat meat, if you ask them why they do it, knowing it makes no difference, they tend to say so that they have something to say when their children ask them what they did. Grant Shapps can just show his this.
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Today we are saying no to @JustStop_Oil and their political wing the Labour Party  We will power ahead with new oil and gas because it’s in the best interests of the British people, of our economy and of our national security
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Someone told me once that in a meeting between Philip Hammond and Wolfgang Schauble just after Brexit, Schauble said Germany wouldn’t try to steal the City of London, because they wouldn’t actually want it. They’d worked hard to have a balanced economy and equitably spread wealth
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NEW: America is a rich country. Britain is a poor country with one wealthy region. People love to compare the UK to Mississippi, but it’s far more informative to look at UK subnationally, too. London ranks fairly well, the rest of the country does not 👉 ft.com/content/e5c741
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Can’t really cope with any more pieces that idly conflating ULEZ with net zero. ULEZ is about air quality in London, not global warming. And the political debate about it is about whether it’s *really* about that, or actually just a revenue raising con (which is a fair question).
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It will be very interesting to see whether my local MP, Andrew Rosindell, is able to turn next year’s contest into a single issue election.
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