Andy Brown

@AngelaRayner Countries like Spain and Canada ? Oh dear you are really massively out of touch !

Our party has suffered a historic defeat. Many good Labour colleagues have lost their seats despite working hard for those they represented. We have lost good Labour administrations and lost the chance for more. What we are doing isn’t working, and it needs to change. This may be our last chance. The Labour Party must now live up to our name: we must be the party of working people. We’ve heard the same on the doorstep as we’ve seen in the polls - the cost of living is the top issue for voters of all parties. People have turned to populists and nationalists because we have not done enough to fix it. Living standards are barely higher than they were a decade and a half ago. People feel hopeless - that the cost of living crisis will never end, and now they see oil and gas companies use global instability to post record profits. Once again, ordinary people are paying the price for decisions they didn’t make. It’s no wonder that across the UK, working people feel the system is rigged against them. Things can be so much better than this. Countries including Spain and Canada have shown that economies can grow and people can thrive when governments stay true to labour and social democratic values and put people first. We need to learn from that. In London, we lost young people who fear they will never afford a home. In my patch and across the north, we lost working people whose wages are too low and costs too high. In Scotland and Wales, people do not currently see Labour as the answer.  We are in danger of becoming a party of the well-off, not working people. The Peter Mandelson scandal showed a toxic culture of cronyism.  Decisions like cutting winter fuel allowance just weren’t what people expected from a Labour government. For too long, successive governments have allowed wealth and power to concentrate at the top without a plan to ensure the benefits of economic growth are shared fairly. The result is an economy that does not work for the majority, with wealth concentrated in too few hands. This level of inequality, alongside squeezed living standards, is the outcome of a model built on deregulation, privatisation, and trickle-down economics. But we have the chance to fix this.  1/2

@AlistairCarns You were doing so well, until this ! The Gordon Brown who on multiple occasions said the years of boom and bust are over !!

This is v good news!

@BBCLancsSport Excellent analysis

⚽️ "It feels like a bunch of strangers have had a go in the Premier League." Speaking on Post-Match, football summariser Steve Eyre shared his thoughts on what's gone wrong for #Burnley #utc | #twitterclarets | #bbcfootball

@PrometheanActn From George Soros’s Quantum Fund to today’s policy circles , Stanley Druckenmiller (his former top trader) and Kevin Warsh now intersect in the same macro ecosystem. Markets, policy, and capital….all tightly linked.

Kevin Warsh said the quiet part out loud at his Senate confirmation: "regime change" at the Fed. Everyone missed it. The Empire didn't. Susan Kokinda on what Warsh, Trump's Defense Production Act energy order, and Mark Carney's toy soldier all have in common. 👇

@shanaka86 This take is clever but leans a bit too hard into certainty. Yes — blockade = pressure on oil exports. Yes — that hits Iran’s core revenue. But the idea this is a precise “fill storage → kill reservoirs” masterplan? That’s speculation dressed up as fact.

President Trump did not extend the Iran ceasefire Tuesday. He armed a different weapon. The Treasury Secretary named the mechanism four hours later. Nobody has connected the two posts. Tuesday April 21, 2026, around 4 PM Eastern as Brent broke 101 dollars and Vance’s Islamabad trip was called off, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade.” Brent pulled back to 98. WTI fell 95 to 88 in minutes. S&P erased a 400-point Dow gain. Iran’s UN mission filed an emergency Security Council letter calling the blockade “an act of aggression marked by the hallmarks of piracy.” Tasnim reported Tehran would not attend Islamabad. The press read this as a climbdown from Trump’s CNBC morning line about being ready to resume bombing. Wrong read. Hours after Trump’s post, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent posted on X: “As POTUS has made clear, the United States Navy will continue the blockade of Iranian ports. In a matter of days, Kharg Island storage will be full and the fragile Iranian oil wells will be shut in. Constraining Iran’s maritime trade directly targets the regime’s primary revenue lifelines.” The sitting US Treasury Secretary named the physical mechanism the extension protects. Per FDD senior fellow Miad Maleki’s April 12 analysis, Iran has roughly 50 to 55 million barrels of onshore storage at 60 percent full, leaving 20 million barrels spare capacity against 1.5 million barrels daily surplus. Storage fills in approximately 13 days from April 13. That lands on April 26. After storage tops out, wells shut in. Per Capt. Lance Gordon, retired Navy Intelligence, today: “Forcing Iran to shut in production due to lack of storage would risk long-term reservoir damage, including permeability loss, water coning, and formation compaction, effects that could permanently reduce future output and cash flow.” Kharg handles ninety percent of Iran’s crude exports. Iranian fields decline five to eight percent annually per FDD. Forced shutdowns could permanently eliminate 300,000 to 500,000 barrels per day, worth 9 to 15 billion dollars annually lost forever. Lloyd’s List confirmed Monday twenty-six Iranian shadow fleet vessels bypassed the blockade since April 13, including eleven laden tankers leaving the Gulf of Oman. Those evasions matter less than they look. Shadow fleet moves individual cargos. It does not empty Kharg storage. China, which buys ninety to ninety-eight percent of Iranian crude, holds 1.2 to 2.0 billion barrel stockpiles, 120 days of net imports per Eurasia Group. That buffer insulates Beijing. Not Tehran’s reservoirs. Trump addressed “the Government of Iran is seriously fractured.” US officials suspect a divide between Ghalibaf on the diplomatic track and Vahidi’s IRGC on the military track per CNN, with ISW reporting Vahidi and Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi are “driving the regime’s military decision-making” while sidelining moderates. Iran cannot produce a unified proposal while Vahidi holds Evin and Ghalibaf holds Islamabad. Reservoir clock outside. Succession clock inside. The “indefinite” extension is not indefinite. It ends at the Bandar Abbas tank farm. Trump did not blink. Bessent confirmed the weapon. They opened a reservoir. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@RaymondFHakim This is geopolitical fan fiction dressed up as oil engineering. Wells don’t just become unusable in days — that’s not how reservoirs work. But fear like this? That does move oil prices and markets very quickly. Always follow the incentive.

#إيران 📌عندما قال ترامب سأعيد إيران الى العصر الحجري لم يكن يقصد تدمير إيران وهدم بيوت الناس.. كان يقصد الذي فعله اليوم 📌تُنتج إيران 4 مليون برميل نفط يوميًا سعة التخزين لديها 90 مليون برميل والباقي يتم تصدير معظمه إلى الصين مخازن النفط داخل إيران ممتلئة والحصار يمنع التصدير، بدأت الكارثة.. لماذا..؟! 📌ترامب أرغم إيران على وقف ضخ النفط من الآبار هنا دخلت إيران العصر الحجري.. لماذا..؟! 📌إغلاق البئر يكسر توازن الضغط، مما يسمح بزيادة دخول الماء والغاز، وتكوّن الرواسب الشمعية (البارافين) يتسبب بإنسداد مواسير الضخ مما يجعل إعادة تشغيله شبه مستحيلة 📌4 أيام ستتوقف إيران عن ضخ النفط، صاغرة 4 أيام مئات الآبار ستتلف 4 أيام ستدخل إيران الشلل التام 4 أيام ستصرخ الصين والأهم والأخطر والأذكى وليست صدفة أبداً، 4 أيام تنتهي مهلة الهدنة، (إنها أميركا يا سادة) 📌بعدها تنقض أميركا وإسرائيل على إيران المشلولة والمتهالكة ترامب يحارب الصين وليس إيران فقط 📌عرفتوا ليش ترامب فرض الحصار وقال لإيران تعالي نتفاوض 14 يوم فقط عرفتوا ليش الحرس الثوري يستميت لتهريب باخرة نفط عرفتوا ليش دخلت الأن الحاملة "فورد" البحر الأحمر عرفتوا ليش ترامب استدعى الحاملة "بوش" وتصل ايضا بعد 4 أيام والعرقجي فرحان يفاوض ترامب قال🤦‍♂️ اسقاط الدولة والحكومات ليس فقط قاذفات وصواريخ الحروب لها أربابها 📌عندما تُخطط الأدمغة

@CJanego12 @RealFletch17 Saying the Iran war is “over” ~12 times in weeks isn’t just rhetoric. It moves oil. It moves markets. When the message keeps changing but the price reactions are predictable… You start to wonder who benefits 🧐

@AJBCumbria @RealFletch17 We will see . Time is on our side

Oopsy Looks like the Crown Is done done!!

@EricLDaugh Would this be the Scott Bessent who has a net worth of $600m !

🚨 HOLY SMOKES. Sec. Scott Bessent just said that because Iran BOMBED Gulf neighbors, those countries are suddenly opening up Iranian regime BANK accounts to Treasury So he can FREEZE their assets! Checkmate playing out. 🔥 "What may prove to be FATAL mistakes the Iranians made was bombing their [Gulf] NEIGHBORS." "Who are now willing to be much more transparent in terms of the funds, or do a deeper dive in investigating the funds that are held within their banking systems." "So, we have pushed out to them the request that we want to freeze more funds of the leadership of the IRGC and any members of Iranian leadership." "The other thing that we have done is we have told companies, we have told countries that if you are buying Iranian oil, that if Iranian money is sitting in your banks, we are now willing to apply secondary sanctions, which is a very stern measure." "The Iranians should know that this is going to be the FINANCIAL equivalent of what we saw in the KINETIC activities." Bessent is an economic ASSASSIN. 🇺🇸

@PrometheanActn @sjkokinda Always leaves out the blatantly obvious. Wonder why ?

Trump exposes the British-run Strait of Hormuz extortion racket, rolls up Iran's financial pipeline from Dubai to London, and forces Britain's military chief to confess the Empire has no war plan. @SJKokinda

@RealJamesWoods Islamist abyss ? Written by someone in the USA who has absolutely no idea of what life is like in the UK. Absolute nonsense.

Our friends, the Brits, went from relinquishing their right to bear arms in 1997 to standing on the edge of the Islamist abyss today. Our Second Amendment is not about the right to go duck hunting, folks. It’s about keeping power in the hands of The People.

@maggiewise111 No credible evidence of any “three nuclear powers summit in Moscow.” If it were real, it would dominate global headlines — not a TikTok clip. This is engagement bait, not geopolitics.

Britain’s Worst Nightmare: Three Nuclear Powers Meet In Moscow

@MsMelChen Free loading ? What do you think that the USA give weapons away to the EU ? Probably spend something like 100 billion pa on USA weapons etc, am sure that there will be other vendors happy for that spend.

Let’s be real here. Europe has spent decades freeloading on American security. Even now, with every NATO member finally hitting the 2% GDP target in 2025. But beyond the financial contributions, the real rupture is philosophical and the Iran crisis has shown a spotlight on it. Europe worships process. Endless committees, consultations, and “predictability.” Macron actually calls it a virtue. For Trump, this is paralysis as his style is to articulate a threat, fix a target, and act. The Americans are men of conviction and purpose. Europe on the other hand lives by bureaucratic liturgy and in high-minded abstractions. Sure, Americans might make mistakes when acting. But Europe never considers what the costs of not acting actually are. Just look at how their nations are doing on various fronts, especially on the border crisis, and you see the same cancerous rot that undergirds their foreign policy approach play out domestically. It's the same problem on a different scale. Iran is currently holding the Strait of Hormuz hostage, choking 20% of global oil and spiking prices past $100 a barrel. Meanwhile, the regime is bleeding from strikes, its nuclear ambitions are still alive despite degraded capability, and its proxies are firing missiles at allies and oil tankers. If this isn’t a clear and present danger to the global economy - of which Europe is a part - then I don’t know what is. Yet when Washington asked to use European bases to finish the job - bases the US has defended for generations, the response was hesitation and hand-wringing. The US did strike from RAF Fairford, but only after warnings that British soil could become a “legitimate target.” If you cannot agree that a theocratic regime with eschatological ambitions who have shown no restraint in hitting out at Gulf countries and threatening the world’s energy jugular is an enemy worth confronting, then what, exactly, are we allies about? Europe loves to preen about being tough on Russia. They issue condemnations and speeches and slap sanctions that hardly work to cripple the Russian economy. Now here was a chance to do something concrete: let the Americans use the bases they already pay for, help clear the Strait, and actually degrade the Iranian war machine that arms Moscow’s proxies. Turmp didn’t ask for boots on the ground or any kind of more offensive action. All he wanted was permission to operate from the infrastructure America has underwritten for decades. They couldn’t even manage that. So can you blame the Americans for seeing NATO for what it is? A paper-tiger alliance that expects Washington to bleed and pay while Brussels and London convenes and deliberates. If Europe refuses to treat Iran as the threat it is while happily letting American power keep the Strait open and the lights on, then the alliance is already dead. Trump is simply stating the obvious and the Americans are becoming very reluctant to subsidize the European delusion any longer.

@iqbalmohamedMP @10DowningStreet Agreed but also ban all and any religious ideology from politics.

@10DowningStreet - Ban all corporate donations to all politicians. Cap political donations from private individuals to £1000/year.

@Changnoi86 @11DarkKnight11 Another interesting view. I have no side to take. However from a pure optics point of view I would suggest that the Spanish PM is slightly ahead. Let’s see how it plays out.

@AJBCumbria @11DarkKnight11 Spain is a vassal to a the old Empire, they need a grassroots awakening and political shift or sit in the land of unicorns like the rest of Woke Western Europe.

IT'S OVER: Trump and Iran Just Shut Out the UK and NATO

@FerdyMayne1 @11DarkKnight11 Quite a binary view. Interesting. Let’s watch it play out. No opinion or sides from me.

@AJBCumbria @11DarkKnight11 Same way he's dealing with the UK who, like you, think the 'big middle finger' is big and clever. It can join the new world or it can starve to death at its leisure.

@MJTruthUltra So many gaps in this would take a book to set it all straight. Utter twoddle.

x.com/PrometheanActn… This is an absolute banger… love this lady 🚨 While President Trump was building a new diplomatic space with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan & Gulf States — UK, EU & NATO were NOT at the Table Susan Kokinda delivered a sharp, historically grounded breakdown of a seismic shift in global diplomacy. President Trump is forging direct, back channel talks with Iran through a new regional "Board of Peace" — while the traditional Western players (UK, EU, NATO) are completely sidelined and increasingly powerless. Kokinda frames this as the end of old empire-style leverage games, the weakening of Iran's proxy network, and a harsh reality check for Europe’s self-inflicted energy woes. - Iran’s Proxies Are Crumbling Fast and the new architecture is already delivering tangible wins: Lebanon is moving against Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority is openly condemning Iran, and Hamas is reportedly considering disarmament. Kokinda highlights how these developments strip Iran of its leverage without needing direct U.S. military action. It’s a classic Trump move — use regional players who actually have skin in the game (and shared interests in stability) to squeeze the problem. - No Oil, No Gas, No Seat: Europe’s Self-Made Energy Collapse. Why are the UK, EU, and NATO absent? Because their Green policies and anti-Russia sanctions have left them with absolutely ZERO leverage when it comes to Energy. Kokinda points to rushed LNG imports and a delayed vote on banning Russian oil as symptoms of desperation. Europe literally can’t sit at the table — it has no oil or gas cards to play. This isn’t just about the current talks; it’s the end of Europe’s ability to dictate terms in the Middle East or globally. The old British/EU financial and energy chokeholds (think City of London influence) are being dismantled in favor of American-led manufacturing, AI, and real energy security. - With Europe and Britain stripped of leverage, the endless proxy war in Ukraine is losing steam, and fast. Zelenskyy is scrambling for last-ditch support in London and Washington as the “sponsor” (Western backing) fades. The regional focus on Iran de-escalation redirects attention and resources away from the Ukraine conflict, leaving Zelenskyy exposed. It’s a broader signal that the old globalist forever-war model is over. - Kokinda connects this to Trump’s broader strategy: redirecting Gulf wealth (hundreds of billions) into U.S. manufacturing instead of London banks, promoting nuclear power and critical minerals, and rejecting “Kissinger-style managed conflict.” Iran reportedly gave Trump a “very big present” (likely tied to safe Hormuz Strait passage for oil/gas tankers) as a goodwill gesture. This is the death of the one system (British/EU/NATO-dominated globalism) and the birth of another (transactional, reality-based regional deals).

@RmSalih This was the type of rhetoric heard in England hundreds of years ago. The majority have moved on from this nonsense desire to divide. Follow any religion or cult you like, just keep it to yourself, frankly nobody really cares.

I don't get this Christian hate for Muslims but love for Jews. Islam honours Jesus and gives Chrstians a special status in the Quran. Judaism considers Jesus a false prophet and its leaders plotted against him, arrested him, interrogated him and handed him over to the Romans to be killed. If I were a Christian I know which religion I would regard more warmly.

@DillyHussain88 There are over 3.5 million Muslim people in the Uk and 257,000 Jewish people. The Jewish are an absolute minority. Maybe they feel somewhat threatened for historical reasons ? Focus on “British” issues it will help you.

Just imagine the unhinged outrage “patriots” would have if Muslims had their own community police force that impersonated actual police. I’m not against communities privately funding extra security. I’m against the selective outrage if it were Muslims.