Jennifer Williams

Indeed. If you asked the q “Liverpool” rather than “Merseyside” I daresay you’d get a very different answer

That’s not me making value judgments: people can and will disagree about the merits of the methods. But those are a few of the ways the city centre got moving. What does Manchesterism look like for a soft left government? I merely pose the q

Anyway: big things have happened in Mcr. But actually a lot of visible ones happened by Labour being fairly un-Labour, and certainly not soft Labour. Deals with Abu Dhabi, waiving housing affordability requirements to attract £, giving big taxpayer loans to profitable developers

😂

Probably sounds like I’m always being negative (NB if I didn’t love Manchester I’d have moved) - but anything like this deserves proper scrutiny (see GMP 2016-2020: not a proud period for devolution)

My personal hobby horse (atm, but others are available): do we know where the tram is going next? No. Not really.

I think Manchester has deployed boosterism well over the last decade, but it has tended to work because it delivered things at the same time. Boosterism without delivery is just words and there’s some risk the city starts to rely too much on narrative for its momentum

I don’t know exactly what they saw or where, and they’ve not said. I don’t think that’s unreasonable to want to know that tbh. It’s about accountability, which I thought was the point.

To be clear I am not accusing this organisation of making it up. I am saying that the manner in which they put it out then left a huge vacuum, that’s been filled by politics, which can’t be taken back.

Don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that an organisation making these kind of claims one minute past polling close is clear about who saw things, where, and what they saw. It’s Tuesday night, polling closed Thursday night, and some of these things are still not clear.

UK by-election council calls for evidence over claims of voter fraud [FREE TO READ] Manchester City Council asks Democracy Volunteers for report detailing ‘claims and any evidence’ over Gorton and Denton poll allegations

This one can be filed under the category of not solved. With @marinovik.bsky.social

as.ft.com/r/11fc084c-3... UK by-election council calls for evidence over claims of voter fraud

Had almost forgotten that was there

This by election will have presumably given massive legs to the idea that you can vote tactically and successfully to stop them

idk if the slight pivot towards traditional Tory lines on the economy is tacit recognition of that. not every seat is G&D but there was an interesting MRP (by public first) around the time of Caerphilly that showed intended tactical voting - even last year - would deprive them of a majority

Someone take his thesaurus off him

Wasn’t he comms?

It’s like a kind of rustle. My eyes. One of the more offensive pieces of polemic I’ve seen in some time and I covered the Gorton by election

'Donald Trump showing up just what an indecisive loser Keir Starmer is on Iran' This is yet another headache our fence-sitting Prime Minister simply wants to go away.

I have a feeling that the British public are closer to the Starmer position on Iran than this gung-ho commentary suggests

www.express.co.uk/news/politic...

Labour council accuses minister of ‘moral bankruptcy’ over social care dispute Hartlepool leaders ‘furious and appalled’ after meeting with Steve Reed about growing cost of social care

Labour council accuses minister of ‘moral bankruptcy’ over children’s social care dispute

www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Stockport: deeply into the ironising phase of its revival

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

And then obviously in that vacuum has immediately come the politics

There was some suggestion that the observers were not allowed to raise this during polling hours as it would constitute interference, but I also heard differing views on that. I’m not casting aspersions, just feel like I don’t entirely understand what’s happened

Although whether I was entirely functioning as a journalist or even human being on Friday morning is debatable, but I did try

Fwiw I was told the organisation’s chief exec was unavailable for comment on Friday, which made establishing any of the above impossible

This story has been puzzling, because im still not clear exactly what is meant to have happened where, or why DV insists there was egregious family voting but the council seems so sure nothing was raised with them on the day (bar one concern, I’m told, which apparently turned out to be innocent)

It’s fine Kelly Osbourne rightly blew it out the water

🤣 that properly made me laugh well played

It’s fine Jack Whitehall has brought things back into equilibrium by slagging off city, all good

Oh it might have only been live not on the telly. Ended it with up the fucking blues and half the arena switched to BOOOOO