James Murray

Polanksi and Farage have more in common than you might think Despite huge political differences, the Green and Reform leaders have much in common, writes Laura Kuenssberg.

These people are entirely different in their personalities and politics. But I thought I’d draw some spurious comparisons anyway

Current UK electricity supply btw.

It’s insane this is legal. People around Trump are profiting off war and death. I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this.

In order to understand UK politics in 2026 you must realise that a plumber & plasterer doesn't represent the interests of the working class because she is left-wing but a wealthy broadcaster & former academic does represent the interests of the working class because he is right-wing. Hope this helps

Keir Starmer abandoned net zero to court Reform voters. He failed After byelection defeat and with right-leaning advisers gone, will PM return to his instincts and embrace Labour ‘DNA’ on climate?

This is a ridiculous headline to a much more nuanced piece. Starmer could and should have talked more about the government’s net zero efforts given they are popular and largely working. But at no point did he ‘abandon net zero’.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

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)

Geopolitical conflict impedes climate change mitigation - npj Climate Action npj Climate Action - Geopolitical conflict impedes climate change mitigation

Geopolitical conflict isn’t just tragic. It slows climate action too.

A timely reminder as tensions rise in Iran…

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

And every single one of these projects will help reduce fossil gas imports that are once again about to become massively more expensive.

Forestry England and GB Energy to explore potential for woodland solar and wind projects Joint venture deal could see England's 'greatest natural assets' host renewable energy projects

This looks like a good initiative from the government. There’s lots of public land available where well sited renewables projects make a lot of sense.
www.businessgreen.com/news/4526286...

A mug depicting KC Green's This Is Fine dog comic, but tragically faded

I've had my This Is Fine mug so long that the dog has become a ghost and all that remain are flames

If Labour wanted to build some bridges they could come out and say the Green's won fair and square, that we will learn lessons and that suggesting people with the 'wrong' skin colour or from the 'wrong' country should be denied a vote is racist. Pick a fight on this*

*They won't

Not the main point when this could be the start of yet another full blown war, but it’s now been nearly 20 years when every time the economy shows a few months with some signs of life something that sits on the spectrum between bad and disastrous happens.

If ever you needed a front page to capture the crass yet also dangerous silliness of so much of our media, and the impact of right wing nationalism which has done so much harm through a history from which some seem so unable to learn

I realise the low number of fatalities might be why this isn’t THE news story, but honestly the fact hotels in a tourist city popular with the whole world at being rocket bombed right now is wild.

Talking of elites normalising things… I’m getting increasingly convinced that our big problem is a breakdown of elite norms.

Stable democracies depend on elites implicitly agreeing on key things (cordon sanitaires, not spuriously claiming electoral fraud etc). A lot of those norms have collapsed…

Literally

I’m not entirely sure what the strategic value of killing a man (if they have) in his 80s, on poor health, who’s spent decades preaching about the value of martyrdom. Especially when you’ve said you want to do negotiations again in within 36 hours. But maybe expecting any kind of plan is elitist.

But solution to voter anger has to start with acknowledgement that hard work isn’t rewarded or even a way to avoid struggle - and convincing public you’re trying to solve it - something this govt and its predecessor have failed to do - is a prerequisite to getting a hearing - Hannah Spencer did that

One reason Hannah Spencer did well is she passed the “gets it test” few politicians do on two levels. First: personally we heard praise she seemed normal in touch & respected voters. Second message; the below from her speech is the perfect distillation of what we hear in groups.

I just feel like, ideally, the Labour response to yesterday's result would have tried to talk people *out* of detecting to the Greens, rather than, y'know, the opposite?

If Reform had won Starmer would be on his knees to those voters begging for forgiveness. Greens win and it's like "Fuck off cranks"

Building your economy on inherently volatile fossil fuel supplies really does come with lots of downsides, even before you consider the whole climate change thing.

Cornwall Insight on the energy bill reductions confirmed just this week. Fair chance the savings Labour engineered at the Budget will not last long…

www.businessgreen.com/news/4526098...

Sources close to Shabana Mahmood pointing out that the polls show her policies are popular with Green voters.

Sources close to Shabana Mahmood pointing out that the polls show her policies are popular with Green voters, continued.

You know, if the stakes of the next election were lower, Blue Labour doing a “actually, the policies are really popular…it’s just that the people who say they like it didn’t vote for us” would be incredibly funny.

A satellite re-entering every 3 minutes. Seems fine.

This is what I'm getting at.

Text: Speaking before the result, one Labour MP said: "The worst outcome for us would be a win for the Greens, or any result which shows us finishing behind them. That could herald the kind of split in the left which we saw in the right at the last election and which gave us a landslide victory." Lucy Powell, Labour's deputy leader, said: "What I take from this is that people want to see the Labour party shout more loudly about our values and how we are trying to change people's lives for the better." Andrea Egan, the general secretary of the trade union Unison, said: "The Greens won for a simple reason: many traditional Labour supporters, in Manchester and across the country, want to see progressive values robustly defended against the far-right, not gleefully abandoned.

“Worst outcome” should not be a party with similar underpinnings besting a party that would destroy everything you have achieved since the 1940s.

A Labour leadership with both says "you must listen to these voters who don't share your values and take them seriously" and "you must NOT listen to *these* votes who *do* share your values - their preferred party should be dismissed as extremist" is headed for electoral disaster, and deservedly so.

Really good thread this. There are precedents for things getting very bad indeed for Labour if it won't even try to rebuild its base and those voters believe there is somewhere else for them to go.