Tom Baldwin

Attacking Farage for the damage he has already done through Brexit - is one way - perhaps - Starmer can win back some of the votes Labour is losing to progressive parties. This is what I wrote for
@thenewworldmag.bsky.social
this week.

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Starmer’s problem isn’t just Reform If you want to understand the true depths of Labour’s electoral challenge, pay a visit to Hampstead

If you want to understand the true depths of Labour’s electoral challenge, pay a visit to Hampstead

✏️ @tombaldwin66.bsky.social

Would leaving the ECHR really 'stop the boats'? The extent to which leaving the Convention would make a difference to immigration has been greatly exaggerated, argues Lord Sumption

Some really decent in depth and fact-based reporting from BBC which runs counter to a narrative swallowed whole by much of the media and politicians of all stripes (some of whom should know better). www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Starmer’s problem isn’t just Reform If you want to understand the true depths of Labour’s electoral challenge, pay a visit to Hampstead

My piece for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social on how Labour can still be a coalition which stretches from Hampstead to Hull. app.thenewworld.co.uk/story/143155...

Sun fails to sell Cole to Washington The former political editor's YouTube show is struggling to pull in the viewers

The former political editor's YouTube show is struggling to pull in the viewers

✏️ Rats in a Sack 🐀

David Gauke is just one of the many thoughtful, principled and decent Tories eviscerated from our politics by Johnson (and their mad old constituency parties) in what may well be the most damaging legacy of Brexit (the same happened to Labour under Corbyn).

Leaving the ECHR won’t fix illegal migration Half-baked tales of rulings turning on chicken nuggets are no basis for cutting Britain adrift

At least one Conservative still upholds his party’s traditional respect for human rights and the rule of law. He even still believes in evidence-based arguments. This week he will be the exception, not the rule. www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Just heard Chris Philp on BBC’s Today programme explaining why the Tories want to leave the ECHR. He claimed ECHR isn’t mentioned in Belfast Agreement - which is simply untrue. The UK govt agreed to incorporate it into NI law & give direct access to the courts (Strand 3). Why no BBC fact-check?

Presumably Nigel Farage wants the UK to join Russia and Belarus as the only European countries outside the ECHR because he admires Putin so much. I guess Kemi Badenoch wants to leave only because Farage has already promised to do it.

Starmer’s aides have been worrying all week about his sore throat and whether he might lose his voice. But, as he took Farage on over division and racism, he
found it.

The media is obsessing over the PM using the word “racist” to describe Farage’s policy. That doesn’t mean anyone who supports Reform is racist. Nor is it patronising to tell them straight this plan is racist, immoral and unpatriotic because it will tear Britain apart.

Keir Starmer’s clarity today about a “very different fight” against Reform shows he’s resolved one dilemma - they’re not the “same old Tories”. But the next one is harder because the best proof of the harm Farage would do is Trump, with whom the UK cannot afford to fall out.

Farage has gone strangely quiet today. Probably makes sense to keep his head down after Reform’s boss in the last set of Welsh elections admitted taking bribes to peddle Russian propaganda. Especially awkward because Nige once said he admires Putin above all other world leaders.

No 10 contradicted by No 11 - "simplistic" is a more accurate critique than plain "wrong" - because of a repeat of the White Paper comms mistakes.

There are social democratic (authentic) arguments for much of govt policy in the white paper but it is inauthentic & inaccurate to exaggerate this

We have 20 years of UK evidence that says Rachel Reeves is correct about this.

Deeply depressing that some in government (let alone other parties) seem incapable of grasping it.

migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/br....

bsky.app/profile/d-mo...

Anyone at the BBC or Sky or LBC going to wheel Farage out to question him on this blatant example of Reform undermining the UK in favour of Russia?

Thought not.

bsky.app/profile/d-mo...

Ex-Reform UK Wales leader Nathan Gill pleads guilty to bribery charges Nathan Gill admits eight charges of bribery while being a Member of the European Parliament.

This is a very important story in the context of Nigel Farage’s publicly expressed - if apparently unconnected - admiration for Putin and other links with a regime that only wants to harm our country.

We know who made this number up - it was the Centre for Policy Studies.

However, after I pointed out two major errors, they have admitted it is completely wrong and have withdrawn it - see note on their webpage here.

cps.org.uk/research/her...

To take on Reform, Labour needs to fly the flag for an in... Challenging the narratives of the populist right means offering a unifying vision grounded in respect, writes Keir Starmer’s biographer

I’ve written this for @theobserveruk.bsky.social on how Labour intends to show that loving our country does not - must not - mean hating others.

To take on Reform, Labour needs to fly the flag for an in... Challenging the narratives of the populist right means offering a unifying vision grounded in respect, writes Keir Starmer’s biographer

I’ve written this for @theobserveruk.bsky.social on how Labour intends to show that loving our country does not - must not - mean hating others.

Ethics advisers told Starmer about Mandelson’s Epstein links A two-page document shared with the prime minister before Labour peer’s appointment detailed his friendship with the convicted paedophile

A deeply misleading headline in the Sunday Times above a story saying the information provided on Epstein was a summary of “what was known at the time” - in other words the documents revealed by Bloomberg on Wednesday represented materially new information. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

Misinformation and myth: the UK’s phoney war over human r... The debate over the future of the European Convention on Human Rights will shape conference season and beyond

At last, some decent reporting on the ECHR. observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Ethics advisers told Starmer about Mandelson’s Epstein links A two-page document shared with the prime minister before Labour peer’s appointment detailed his friendship with the convicted paedophile

A deeply misleading headline in the Sunday Times above a story saying the information provided on Epstein was a summary of “what was known at the time” - in other words the documents revealed by Bloomberg on Wednesday represented materially new information. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

Of course, they didn’t know what they know now (thanks to Bloomberg) but the same applies to Keir Starmer who moved swiftly to sack him when it became clear the available facts had changed.

There is an awful lot of hindsightery on display from journalists about Mandelson today who, with honourable exceptions, stampeded to present his appointment as ambassador as a masterstroke. This includes broadcasters who regularly interviewed him without mentioning Epstein.

One of the things that annoys me most about the BBC is watching a package from Mark Easton, which *always* involves him going to a market town in the E Midlands and asking four people their opinions, bookended by a couple of meaningless pieces to camera