Marc Thatcher

My letter in today’s @FT on why the windfall tax on UK oil and gas should not be removed and why there should be no new development in the North Sea giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/ac…

@BaldingsWorld I believe all policy issue positions for many people can be reduced to functions where one of the variables represents whether Orange Man is involved in any way. If true, this will result in potentially wildly different policy positions even for mundane issues.

Nothing is proved yet Zack. The fact that you are spreading misinformation is appalling for someone in your position. To date no one has been allowed to see any evidence of casualties or even the site itself. The regime says it’s America or Israel. The Americans say they were nowhere near the area. Here’s what Iranians inside Iran say: IRGC blew it up themselves to fill it up with dead bodies of children they’ve kept on ice hidden away in cold storage from the January slaughters to put on display in order to blame their aggressors. The fact that we have not seen the evidence yet is a red flag as we know the regime would have gleefully paraded those images on television and all over the internet. Most probably they were caught on film transferring the bodies hence why there is now a media black out on this story, as well as a full internet blackout. As Iranians we know how this regime operates. We’re talking about new levels of evil. So any narrative like the one you are pushing Zack actually supports the regime in their “don’t care how many die as long as we stay in power” quest. For the love of God and humanity, please stop. #IranMassacre #IranIsraelWar

THE CHOICE BEFORE THE LABOUR PARTY by David Miliband @DMiliband In Britain we cannot afford the luxury of another failed government.  The last party leader to win  a majority and last a full term was Tony Blair in 2001.  That was a quarter of a century ago. The message since then from the electorate could not be clearer: get your act together.  A failure to do so is all that Reform have. A great aspiration weakly implemented – like a strong opinion weakly held - will get nowhere.  Ten year plans without the funds and reforms to implement them will not register. Now is the time for our leaders to lead. One great benefit of being in government is that the hard truths are staring you in the face. For example, the British economy needs booster rockets if it is to get from 1 per cent growth to 2 or anything like 3 per cent. Another hard truth is that we cannot afford to have the public services we want, the defence investment we need (and have promised), plus the commitments to pensioner and welfare benefits and the promise of a functioning social care system, on the current tax base. The biggest hard truth is that the world has changed in such a way that a manifesto written in 2024 constrains more than it enables. The Government’s approach to this has been contradictory. What we promised not to do has taken precedence over what we said we would do. On the one hand, the Government has held tight to the manifesto, for example on tax and on Europe, in ways that have been challenged by changed reality. On the other hand, the government has jettisoned the five “missions” that were the strategic political backbone of its promise to the electorate. The right thing to do is to start from the condition of the country and ambitions for the country, and have the policies that emerge in service of our values define the political identity, rather than vice versa. That is how successful governments have broken new ground, and created a new and distinctive politics. Labour won the last election with the dividing line of change versus no change.  That is always an attractive formula.  It will be the foundation of Reform’s effort next time.  For Labour, as the incumbent party, the dividing line needs to be good change versus bad change. That is in our power to establish. newstatesman.com/politics/uk-po…