David Costa

The printers are can't be telling the truth. The imprint wasn’t trimmed off. It wasn’t on the proof. If it was, the letter would be shorter, or the imprint was outside the print area. It’s a cover-up.

This is what happened in 5 posts:

1.
In order to make the ‘neighbour-to-neighbour’ letter...

The Returning Officer might advise Reform to withdraw it and/or refer it to the police for investigation and action. But the RO has no enforcement power.

Here’s what our two Labour Governments delivered for Wales this week 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

My politics have changed since the 1980s but I can never read Polly Toynbee pontificating about the Labour Party in the Guardian without remembering that she was a founder member of the SDP which tried and failed to destroy us.

Just a quick note to @greenparty.org.uk and @greenpartyhan.bsky.social - I was not consulted on being quoted on your leaflets and I have not endorsed your campaign (or any campaign in this seat). I think this note, like the bar chart next to it, is misleading and out of context.

It will get a mention in my next Substack update on the seat, and not a complimentary one. Here, for the avoidance of doubt, is my assessment of the race given yesterday

I don’t think anyone is suggesting execution and total forfeiture of property as in an act of attainder.

Read the comment below, printed in the Sun 31st January 2026, where JEREMY CLARKSON critiques REFORM UK and Farage's appeal to voters.

Re Gorton & Denton, I once again note how subdued the formerly vocal "We must vote for the candidate best placed to defeat Reform" voices are, while "Voting Green could give Labour a kicking and who really cares if Reform wins as a result it's just a by-election" seems to be their unspoken reality.

Big countries should be allowed to conquer small countries to their west, actually, say Sinn Féin

A quick search gives me the following list of combined authority mayors in this position: Greater Manchester, York and North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire.
The London Mayor exercises PCC functions but the post was set up under earlier legislation without this restriction.

Factual correction to your comments on the story: the Manchester Mayor exercises PCC functions and the post cannot therefore be held by an MP. A mayoral by-election would have been required.

Very pleased that Andy Burnham will not be allowed to stand in the upcoming bi election - in my view he should finish his mayoral term before thinking about a new job. Leaving early demonstrates opportunism and consideration of self before duty. Manchester deserves better!

If we’re going to talk in religious terms: “He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy.”

Much of the media will be very disappointed by this decision to deny Andy Burnham special dispensation to fight a by-election. Those parts of the media are bored and restless unless we’re changing PM every couple of years. But it looks nuts to the rest of the world.

I can’t speak for the members of the NEC panel, but it’s why I think they made the right decision.

No but he promised the party and the people of Manchester that he would serve a full term as Mayor and should keep his word. I feel exactly the same about Labour elected representatives at any level who stand down without a good, unforeseeable reason (illness or other major life change).

Burnham has a job. A good job. He should concentrate on that and not plunge Manchester into an unwanted election. Manchester can elect a Mayor in May 2028. Burnham can stand down and seek a consituency seat then.

"We aren't petty - he is being selfish and irresponsible in trying to walk out on this important job and we won't stand for that." Regardless of how important this really is as a factor in any decision to block Burnham it is a plausible - because accurate - argument to justify doing so.

Reform MP Andrew Rosindell tells the BBC that he "would not object" to scrapping the NHS and replacing it with private insurance

Because it is wrong for any Labour Party elected representative to desert their post and create an unnecessary by-election at this crucial time with Welsh, Scottish and local elections in May. He could be as brilliant as he and his supporters believe and it would still be wrong.

She has never been a Labour Party heavyweight or “grandee” and her role in glossing over anti-Semitism in the party under Corbyn, who then gave her a peerage, should never be forgotten.

I am a Camera came before Cabaret but was severely hampered by censorship on both sides of the Atlantic.

Now feeling that thanks to the great S R Gardiner I had to do a lot of typing compared with other respondents.

“It was plainly hazardous for Charles to push on without fighting, and at Rupert’s suggestion he ordered his troops to occupy on the following morning the brow of the steep descent which under the name of Edgehill rises high above the undulating plain of Warwickshire.”

Or, indeed, at all.

Even, er contextier

On roads heading into Cardiff, drivers are often urged to “use all city car parks” - quite a feat even if executed sequentially rather than simultaneously.

Reform: the home for failed Tories. In this case failed in the sense of failed to pay HMRC loads of tax he owed

Nigel Farage has just said Reform will vote AGAINST lifting the 2 child cap, despite promising to lift it in May.

Reform doesn’t care about working class kids - or their families.