Neil Atkinson

This article was amended on 5 March 2026. An earlier version said low-skilled workers would “receive immediate access to welfare and social housing” if Labour did not make them wait longer to apply for settlement. In fact, settlement status only gives people the eligibility to apply for welfare and social housing, it does not give them instant or automatic access to such benefits. This has been clarified. From breaking news to huge investigative proje

Guardian has now [after my complaint] corrected Mahmood's deliberate & incendiary false claim settlement gives immigrants "immediate access to welfare and social housing".

Good for Gdn but embarrassing/shameful that Home Secretary deliberately misled the public for political gain like this.

This is a life and death story for the UK – so why is it being brushed under the carpet? The news that healthy life expectancy is in decline in Britain exposes a serious truth about the state we’re in, says Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty

Powerful oped, not just about public health but the state of our democracies:

"That’s real progress. Not GDP going up 0.1% or Rachel Reeves forecasting an extra couple of billion in fiscal headroom – but whether you live or die, are well or sick"

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This is a READ 😭

Can you ever trust the British State? Should you ever trust the British State?

There is a grunt Noddy Holder gives on 2:16 into Cum on Feel the Noize which should be sent into space as amongst human civilisation's greatest achievements.

I think they were going to buy two forwards.

He can't train every day.

Look at Kaide Gordon, Rhian Brewster, Jayden Danns, Stefano Bajcetic. So many injuries for so long.

Highest scoring wide player this season is 9.

Gakpo is the joint 8th highest scorer of non penalty goals from wide areas this league season. 4th highest xG of those players. He isn't for me. But the idea he is nowhere starting just doesn't stand up.

Manager has regularly played every new signing he can since he has been here bar Chiesa.

Not in the first team squad. I like Endo as a 6th midfielder to do bits but he can't be considered a going concern.

Doesn't need to be big names.

Thursday AFQ AFQ AFQ

Milburn
Molyneux (c)
Hannan

Get your questions in...NOW!

Lads who didn't make 10 league/CL/EL starts last season I am simply not counting as first team squad players for Liverpool. Ngumoha should be Liverpool's sixth or seventh option at best.

We know this season we started with two fewer than the club would like (one died; tried to buy Guehi). If you add three proper first team options - net one in each of the lines - you get to 19. Perfectly reasonable and achievable.

Murder for the sheer joy of killing and the thrill of total impunity: a thing that should not really surprise us, historically speaking, nor in light of the tens of thousands of killings already killed in appalling atrocities carried out by or with the direct support of these men.

This is the point about Labour introducing retrospective changes to the immigration system. They set the precedent for any Govt. to say that they can go back on promises to migrants and people of colour as far back as they want.

Literal BNP policy. Disgusting.

The "immediate access" to social housing is particularly bad misinformation - it's a scarce resource that many people would like but can't access. They're all too ready to believe that immigrants skip the queue. In reality of course they get access only to the housing register, like everyone else.

..the fact Mahmood is using precisely the same sort of deliberately misleading language as Goodwin, Jenrick, Lam and Farage tells us all we need to know about how acceptable/fair she thinks her policies actually are to Guardian readers/the British public.

"would otherwise receive immediate access to welfare and social housing" is BS.

Correct: "after 5 years working in a care home, would be eligible to apply for welfare and social housing on the same basis as the rest of us."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Deliberately misleading/disingenous.

If your political strategy is to alienate your entire voter base and pave the way for a hard-right government, sure Andrew McDonald @andrew-... • 56m EXC: Inside Morgan McSweeney's cosy leaving drinks last night — Acc to multiple witnesses Keir Starmer, in a speech to room full of Labour right types, said that McSweeney is not only one of the best political strategists in the country, "but in the entire world"

Well, they do not appear to be overly concerned about that, do they. What conclusions should we draw from that?

📲👇

If you are a doctor or a nurse, the Minimum Income Requirement doesn't allow your foreign national spouse to live with you in this country

Invoking the NHS by mentioning doctors and nurses as being people who are more deserving whilst bashing migrants is breathtakingly cynical, frankly. Moreover, low-skilled workers also contribute, often in jobs that are not easy to recruit to:

Restoring order at the border speaks to Labour values. Without that, we won’t be able to do anything else at all | Shabana Mahmood Our approach, unlike that of the Greens and Reform, is in step with the British people. They don’t want extremes – they want a system that is managed and fair, says home secretary Shabana Mahmood

God, this response is both tin-eared and disingenuous. If Mahmood's proposals are so reasonable, why won't she submit them to proper democratic scrutiny, particularly as Labour have a majority in the House?: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Special mention here for Guardian Pippa, who appears to have been genuinely astonished to see the Greens crush the by-election, because everyone she spoke to in the Labour Party said they felt very confident and thought they might win.

No, it is the children who are wrong This week: Keir Starmer has decided that he blames the voters. Also: some golden age anti-car propaganda; and some new maps of British living standards.

"Where’s the soul searching about why voters might have defected to a challenger from the left? Why, in God’s name, did anyone think it was a good idea to imply a large chunk of Labour’s coalition is, in fact, stupid?"

Newsletter out. Bit angry.

Done Review and my qualm is about the starting approach and the time of that sub, not the direct choice.

The New Statesman * @NewStatesman BRITAIN HAS AN AMERICA PROBLEM by @b_judah The year I would spend in the Foreign Office, as special adviser to David Lammy when he was foreign secretary, was to watch from the headquarters of British diplomacy as the rules-based order began to collapse. Being in politics means living various lies. Dutifully, I found myself ticking lines to approve sent by the embassy: we were the US's "day-one, night-one partner" for interventions, or "America's closest ally" - but we were just living in a different age from the one those slogans came from. It was painfully clear to me under both presidents whose teams I met that their real special relationship was with Israel.

I will not easily forget, sitting in the Foreign Office, how a Trump delegate explained why we needed to accept his 10 per cent tariffs and not overplay our hand in negotiations. "You've got to remember," he grinned, "it's like being at school. America's the big kid and it's coming for your lunch money." What Britain really has is an America problem. That's why, brutally, our grand strategy no longer makes sense. The superpower we have built our security around has become erratic, unpredictable and unmoored from its old alliances. We have a Europe problem too. The current situation is one we've all been happy to accept so long as it was economically beneficial. Shall we let the Americans lead on owning that super-sensitive defence infrastructure, with us getting to use it, or shall we make voters pay for it in tax rises? We all know how Europeans will answer that question, as long as they can get away with it.

Welcome as it is to see people wising up and admitting they’ve fucked it - more of this, please - I note that any vaguely left wing public figure would’ve been booted to death on live television for saying this, as recently as one year ago. Ben would’ve helped.

The Hold Steady Quiz - Weekender 2026 9th Edition

It’s very shortly the most wonderful time of the year. And this is the most wonderful quiz yet

I don’t see how this can have happened without someone in politics or political reporting having been at least somewhat wrong, at some point. And yet we seem to have gone between these two events without any of the lads being wrong about anything, at any point in between.