Fiona-Natasha Syms

Had a little look at the candidates for my ward. All of them have run before - indicating commitment ✔️- and the only one without an address is, quelle surprise, the Reform candidate. 🙄 I’ve had the Hitler parliamentary candidate, don’t tell me they’re now pushing a stranger to the area….

2024 Labour voters are split on how Angela Rayner would do as PM compared to Keir Starmer 25% think she would be better 24% about the same 27% worse yougov.com/en-gb/articles…

The long weekend's coming to Avenue Victor-Hugo (16th arr.)

Nick Cooper is Reform UK's chairman of the Rayleigh and Wickford Branch. He's also agent for Reform UK candidates in the local elections. Here he is dressed up as a Nazi SS Officer. Here he also is with @Nigel_Farage. That's Reform UK for you. Moreover, his email address is based around the term "Iron Cross".

'Little Italy, Frith Street' by Jonathan Stewardson jonathanstewardson.com

🚨 NEW: Two Green Party candidates have been arrested on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred for allegedly posting antisemitic comments online One of them posted a placard that read "ramming a synagogue isn’t anti-Semitism, it’s revenge"

'Twilight Reflections; Palace of Westminster from Lambeth Bridge' (2025) by Harriet Lawless harrietlawlessartist.com/gallery/p/orig…

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey suggests the antisemitism 'we saw in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, we're now seeing in the Green Party' and that all parties need to clean up their act on anti-Jewish hatred.

An 'exhausted' Eluned Morgan accidentally said "vote Plaid Cymru" during a week-to-go Senedd Election event. The First Minister and leader of Welsh Labour made the slip-up during a campaign event at Barry Island's bandstand on Thursday (30 April). Ending a speech to party members, she said: "For fairness you can feel, vote Welsh Labour in the election next week." She followed up in Welsh by adding: "Pleidleisiwch Plaid Cymru..." meaning "Vote Plaid Cymru", but corrected herself immediately to say "Plaid Lafur" (Labour Party), which was met with laughs and claps by party members. Speaking to ITV Wales' National Correspondent Rob Osborne, the First Minister said: "We're all a little bit exhausted, once you switch into Welsh the word 'Cymru' comes off your lips. #itvnews #politics #wales #walesdecides2026

The reason we don’t want police kicking a perp in the head is because they can’t be seen to be behaving like thugs themselves. Not because we’re particularly concerned about the welfare of the perp. They have firm rules for a reason. They regularly suspend their own for crossing a line. I want them armed and protected in the Jewish community - protecting it and protected themselves. But I never want to see head kicking.

👀 So he’s actually admitted it. And he was 17 and 18. In my experience people with extreme views at a very young age are the worst of the lot - the most hardened.

So he shouldn’t even be walking the streets at all.

He replaced the Haztola ambulances overnight. His wife is Jewish. I think this isn’t widespread feeling and whatever it is, it needs to stop.

The rise of antisemitism isn’t just down to Israel’s overreach (and that’s polite) after 7/10. It coincides with the rise of Reform, a hideous resurgence of the far right in general and a Tory Party suddenly taken to places it’s never been before. Islamophobia normalised. Both hatreds rise and fall together. I’m seeing language I haven’t heard since the 70s/80s on here since Musk took over. Being casually or extremely racist has been totally normalised. Reform fields racist candidates time & time again, I’ve had them in my hood. Tory frontbenchers are obsessed with Islam - strangest bloody thing I’ve ever seen, it certainly ain’t Tory and I’ll keep taking it on - and back an out of control Netanyahu, also crackers. We’re in a very bad place as a country on the right and the left. The Green Party has an antisemitism problem - course it does, it’s full of the Corbynistas Starmer kicked out - and a Jewish leader who plays it down. No words for that. The racist thug Tommy Robinson lauded by Israel as a mensch? A sick joke. Rupert Lowe an electoral prospect? Horrifying, he’s the National Front with a Sloaney drawl. It’s all fixable - at the ballot box. Don’t back extremists on the right or left. Don’t vote for the Brexit bloke who was rabidly antisemitic as a late teen and has lied fluently about it. Don’t vote for a bloke who changed his name but sold out his entire community when it was under attack. The inclusive, stable and unshouty middle looks good to me politically and it’s where most of us are. I got drowned out by my own party for years as it did plenty of things I thought were morally wrong or not good for the economy and picked a succession of idiotic leaders, Badenoch principal among them, she makes Truss look good. Happy to clean up the mess across the board from every party, reverse Brexit - also a driver of racism - and get us firing on all cylinders again and being the tolerant country we used to be. The centre is the one thing that always holds and it must continue to.

Firmly disagree. A disaster waiting to happen and the father of a catastrophic Brexit.

Three months ago, Congress passed more aid for Ukraine, and @POTUS signed it into law. It’s not charity – it is an investment in a partnership with the world’s leaders in drone technology. Who is withholding appropriated funds from Ukraine? Are senior defense officials unwilling or not allowed to visit Ukraine? washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/…

Would rejoining the EU be the best growth strategy? How much did Brexit cost the UK? Would rejoining make us richer? In latest Rest is Money pod I talk to Stanford prof Nick Bloom about his influential forecast, recently adopted by Rachel Reeves, that quitting the EU made Britain 8% or £240bn poorer than it would otherwise have been open.spotify.com/episode/48j5RF…

*I left any Abramovich references out whilst commenting on Wolfson’s interview earlier. He’s got very firm views on the Iran war machine yet serves a bloke close to Putin’s.

So both an ex-AG and the current Shadow AG are working for Russian oligarchs. Both should be gone. There is no grey area. What has gone wrong with the Tories. The ugliest of sleaze. 🇺🇦