Tom

enjoying my first day at the OBR so far! I think it's going well, just scheduled the budget outlook to publish while I'm on lunch :)

😱

you can currently claim at least partial child benefits if you're earning up to 80k so that would be, in theory.......basically all parents on ILR and settled status? wtaf

Tory deportation plan would upend Britain Proposing such a radical bill with little public support is a gift to Nigel Farage

Hadn’t, in truth, really absorbed the scale of what the Conservatives are proposing on ILR and immigration more broadly until this week’s Sunday Times interviews. Some thoughts on that in today’s note:

this makes me so profoundly patriotic

It’s a little known clause of the Labour party rulebook (Ch.5,sect.xii). “When the party is in office, no clear statement can be made until half a dozen people on Bluesky have embarrassed themselves by claiming that the silence is actually part of a grand strategy“.

The actual regime that these people are hankering after is Dubai: a small elite of citizens, most immigrants to be transient, insecure and all immigrants to be second-class. In reality they would hate the world they would create and would find ever-more ridiculous scapegoats for their failure.

Similarly Government is talking about getting the “water companies” to invest. Ultimately that is all customer money. It is an absolutely bonkers system.

[Keir Starmer's Britain, 2027]

your alarm rings; you yawn and wake up, and slowly turn around

with horror, you realise that your spouse isn't in bed with you; instead, it's Louise Casey

you scream, get dressed, run out of the house and onto a bus

Louise Casey is driving it

The thing I don’t understand about fining water companies for pumping shit into rivers is that their only source of revenue is us. So we have to put up with the shit and pay the fine for it?

Here Lam explicitly sets out her proposal - which is official Conservative Party policy - to deport long-standing legal permanent residents who have *ever* claimed any benefit, including the state pension or child benefit (even if the child is British), or who earn less than £39K.

Tweet from Christian Calgie: “Just a quick message of enormous thanks to everyone who's been in touch over the past few days offering support. From government to opposition, all parties and none, and all corners of the media, it was immensely kind and nearly as overwhelming as the pile on. Back soon - KBO” Attached to tweet: 3 scenic photos and a video

There’s no solidarity quite like that between client journalists, the government and their billionaire backers. It’s all one big club.

This so-called “journalist” called for me — a British MP — to be deported because I’m Muslim.

Yet somehow he’s the victim. Cry me a river.

I really think people are underestimating the degree to which 21st century politics are going to be apocalyptically bad; we are collectively sliding towards mass ethnic cleansing being the norm in the Western World, out of no reason but pure fucking spite and empty nostalgia.

Idk how a gay person is looking at the current political environment in the UK and not, at the back of your mind, envisaging you might one day need to become a refugee.

To have absolutely no empathy with those who seek safety here now truly blows my mind.

Sharon Graham:

the reaction to Mamdani's campaign is clear proof that centrism is a reactionary ideology, and has nothing to do with a pragmatic desire to win.

Holding a NATO conference in The Hague seems like a scheme he’d come up with

Kemi Badenoch wants to reduce net immigration.

She also wants fewer people to leave the country and more to want to come here.

Last week, we took a major step forward in establishing a public, independent inquiry into the UK's complicity in the Gaza genocide.

I have written to the Prime Minister to ask for assurance that this inquiry will be established.

We are so fucking back

I had to read this several times as “prioritise growth” and “hit universities over the head” are so mutually contradictory

Bob taking “Shadow Justice” to its most vigilantism conclusion

Is that good?

Jeff Arcuri saying "I can't believe Josh said 'lay pipe' and 'acquiesce' in the same sentence". And Josh responding, "You never read the dictionary horny?"

the man contains multitudes

You really do contain multitudes

Giving elected mayors the ability to set a tourist tax does really seem like a no-brainer. Seems common place in all of Europe now. Think is particularly warranted when our museums and galleries are rightly free that tourists make a small contribution through a tax.

Court ruling on legal definition of a woman ‘misinterpreted’, Lady Hale says Speaking at book festival in east Sussex, former supreme court president says reaction to judgment ‘very binary’

as ever Lady Hale is a sensible voice www.theguardian.com/law/2025/may...

This would be wildly popular with the vast majority of voters.