NEW: Wes Streeting claims Labour talking to more Conservative MPs about defecting 🚨politics.co.uk/news/2024/05/1…

Nadhim Zahawi’s lawyer is at risk of facing sanctions for attempting to restrict a critic of the former chancellor with intimidatory warnings.

first time a solicitor has been referred to a tribunal over an alleged ‘Slapp’ — a strategic lawsuit against public participation

By…

This increasingly looks like the main part of 'the Brexit effect' on trade. A function of comparative advantage and the size of the new trade barriers.

NB this also wasn't particularly well modelled pre-Brexit where services barriers were exaggerated.

NB2 - any FTA impact?

Wilfred Frost: Your reaction to the GDP data?

Yvette Cooper: 'The govt seem to think we should be grateful that were no longer in recession.. working people are still worse off than 14 years ago.. the Tories are trying to do a victory lap.. just shows how out of touch they are'

Look 👀 out tomorrow on Sky News documentary “Can Farming Survive?”

Thanks to Dan Whitehead for highlighting our farming and food crisis!

Scheduled tomorrow at 0630, 1030, 1330, 1530, 1830, 2130 + SAT 1030 and 1230

We started to turn out cattle yesterday after long, wet and…

Someone responsible for hemming us in, putting up barriers, removing our rights, limiting our choices, making us poorer and dividing the country…
Someone who calls for us to leave the ECHR…
Someone we can’t vote out.

What an objectionably stupid and pompous little man.

Was due to speak at The New Statesman conference on Energy & Climate Change. Then it turns out it's sponsored by Equinor UK - the company backing giant Rosebank oil field. That's me out. #StopRosebank

Before Brexit Michael Gove said the UK could have higher environmental standards.. he wasn't being very truthful was he! But neither was most of Vote Leave's campaigning..remember the NHS £millions on the side of the bus?

🚨NEW Scottish Westminster VI for The Scotsman

📈Labour lead the SNP for first time in a Savanta poll.

🌹LAB 37% (+2)
🎗️SNP 33% (-2)
🌳CON 17% (-2)
🔶LD 7% (+1)
⬜️Other 6% (+1)

1,080 Scottish adults, 3-8 May

(change from 6-11 Oct '23)

I would love to see Labour create a 'Minister for European Relations' role as soon as they come to power.

(Don't call the role 'Minister for Europe' - that's too divisive.)

It would emphasise the supreme importance of a good relationship with our nearest neighbours.

The Bibby Stockholm

Should there be a crime of aggravated climate genocide?

theguardian.com/us-news/articl…

Today's Twitter Poll: Are you 100% sure who you'll vote for at the General Election later this year? Which of these is CLOSEST to your view...

I have clearly angered the Twitter gods. An algorithm seems to be kicking out my followers without them knowing. If you can help me reach them again by RTing that would be wonderful.

Demonstrably the UK government was in no position to negotiate anything in 2019, not knowing what it wanted, how talks worked, or how to create a political narrative. Just not convinced we've made so much progress since then, because we don't want to talk about the failings.

Reached the stage of Shipman where the political and negotiating tracks are falling apart because both were flawed individually and more so together, and wondering how different that is to UK India trade talks which also can't live up to the expectations.

Returned to Shipman and now wondering 400 pages in whether there is a single person involved on the UK side who understands negotiations or the EU, with the sole exception of Ivan Rogers, who of course had been pushed, possibly for that reason, before this book really starts...

Telling as well how bad the alternative suggestions were at the time of the first UK withdrawal deal. Walkouts, as experts said then, and evidence showed later, wouldn't change the fundamentals. Nothing could. But somehow that never seemed part of the political conversation.

Finally we have a UK EU deal on page 250, but at this point one is more wondering how we could have a top team so obviously lacking the required expertise in negotiating, the EU, or trade. EU brokered, and obviously doomed to fail in Parliament.

Page 225, and one has to admit that trade twitter repeatedly saying through 2018 that the EU would not accept UK negotiating positions while correct clearly did not make the blindest bit of difference. Have things improved since then? Not sure...