Katherine Fletcher

No, he still doesn’t get it. If you can’t secure shipping lanes 70% of the resources, goods and food the UK needs won’t arrive. If you fail to deliver energy and data security you can’t grow the economy or protect the NHS. If you don’t modernise our armed forces, you can’t deter conflict. What will it take to get you to do your first duty Prime Minister?

New blog: results from a deep research project on swing voter attitudes to KS, Kemi, Farage, immigration, NHS, net zero, benefits etc… Want to know what swing voters think? * They hate Westminster and both parties more than ever. 'It's like they hate us' is a common view. *The cost of living and immigration dominate discussion much more than SW1 realises. * Voters greatly UNDER-estimate the scale of immigration by ~5-30X, contrary to the conventional wisdom. They are already angry about the immigration farce of Tories and Labour before they are given the real numbers. So there is huge scope for *much greater hatred for the old parties* and much more support for *much tougher action*. Millions of LAB voters want much tougher action on immigration than Tories like Gawke and Barwell. *The fact that the millions are mainly legal not illegal is further terrible news for both old parties and makes voters hate them more. Voters want MUCH tougher rules on 'can they support themselves financially', use of NHS, and blocking/deporting of violent criminals. Dinghy farce stopped. * Voters are much more sceptical of Net Zero than 5 years ago. Showing them PRC emissions helps win the argument for a shift of policy they support. *Voters are much more sceptical that more money will help the NHS than in decades - maybe since the start of the NHS. They want to hear new ideas but hear nothing from the old system. *They HATE HATE HATE the utility companies - the hate is the same across CON/LAB/REF etc. This is an open goal for all political entrepreneurs. *Voters are much more angry about benefit scams than MPs of any party. This issue seems less polarised than immigration. *Voters were deeply hostile to Starmer BEFORE the Epstein debacle. There is zero prospect of this turning around given KS's skills and temperament. (The conventional wisdom from the likes of the Institute for Govt and FT was KS is ‘a serious person’ who will ‘bring stability’. The system is now disowning KS but he was their boy.) *Voters have few views on Kemi because they ignore the Tories because ‘they’re just not relevant any more’. They know nothing she's said or done. 'Useless but irrelevant'. * Voters want ‘a team and a plan’ from Farage but fear he won’t give them it and fear another bout of chaos making the cost of living nightmare even worse. *The aesthetics of right wing videos tend to be bad for persuasion. Aesthetics polarise emotionally even when people agree on facts/arguments re immigration etc. *A big chunk of the SW1 NPC class has radicalised so much on immigration they can’t see sense and will keep sabotaging themselves. E.g Sam Freedman says that it’s HARDER for Britain to stop the dinghies crossing the Channel than for America to control the 2,000 mile southern land border! 🤣🤡 The NPCs will generate any degree of nonsense necessary to avoid confronting reality on immigration. They have radicalised even more since 2016 when their delusions sank them in the referendum. *This should not surprise you — this network decided they understand managing tech companies better than the guy who built SpaceX and spent 3 years saying X was about to collapse before self-cancelling to Bluesky where they've driven themselves mental. *This is not a network that will update accurately in response to voters. Much of SW1 will continue radicalising Left and supporting the continuation of how SW1 works as the voters hate it, and them, more and more and more. *Like the Democrats doing things which gave Trump the White House, this NPC network is making it much easier for Farage to become PM, even though that is the thing they want to avoid most. *The left who think they should copy Mamdani will also self-sabotage. *The elite fragmentation, radicalisation, OODA-loop-as-denial-of-service attack, and pathological politics will continue. *Chances of financial crisis and blood on the streets go up every month. *What LAB MPs should do is pick the person with sensible priorities who is the best suited to controlling a pathological Whitehall and getting things done. They shd optimise for good government, a No10 which is NOT Media Entertainment Service. They shd not think first of polls and 'communication' (which the old parties can't do). The only path to partly averting the debacle of Starmer is to orient towards the voters and *change Whitehall to deliver those priorities*. But this won't happen! Labour like Tories *prefer to lose* than to have rows at dinner parties about firing officials and improving the management. More likely is the Trolley>Truss show -- meltdown then double meltdown with Miliband/Rayner. *Voters want 'a new team and a detailed plan' and a leader who can stick to core priorities particularly cost of living, immigration, and NHS. Neither LAB nor CON can do this. Farage says he will but will he? If Reform is essentially just NF + Tory dregs, then we're heading for either a Reform clownshow or a red-green-yellow-troon-loon-ScotNat-Hamas coalition clownshow... Or entrepreneurs create the thing voters want and take votes from everybody! *Everybody Reform is asking for money from shd ask: 'what's your recruitment plan for actual serious people who represent the best of the country and have a record of building things?' *If you want to get a sense of voters, rather than what the usually wrong ‘experts’ tell you about voters, check out the link in next tweet…

The grooming gangs scandal exploded once people were able to read the court reports. For Labour there's only one obvious response: make it harder to get court reports.

Is this the image the UK 🇬🇧 would like to spread in the Indo-Pacific? Perhaps this PM doesn't care about maintaining a great Britain. What is more serious is such weak & meek behavior undermines deterrence, emboldening the authoritarians and inviting their adventurism.

The scrapping of an Eton-backed free sixth form in Middlesbrough tells us more about Labour than any manifesto ever could. A project designed to educate the brightest children from one of the poorest parts of the country was not stopped because it failed, cost too much, or lacked need. It was stopped because it threatened to succeed. And success, when it cannot be controlled, is intolerable to this government. This was not a fee-paying outpost or a vanity scheme. It was a free school, approved under the last government, partnered with a proven academy trust, aimed squarely at deprived pupils with high academic ability. The offer was simple: take children who show promise and give them an education equal to the best in the country. That should have been uncontroversial. Instead it triggered hostility, suspicion, and finally cancellation. Not because of what it would have done, but because of what it symbolised. The real offence was a four-letter word: Eton College. That name short-circuited reason. Local Labour figures spoke of "elitism" while opposing a free school for poor children. Ministers talked about surplus places and SEND funding while quietly abandoning a project already designed to address a regional attainment gap that everyone admits exists. None of it holds up. The explanations came after the decision, not before it. Look at the facts Labour prefers not to dwell on. The North East lags badly behind London on A-level results and university entry. That gap has widened, not narrowed. This school was explicitly designed to deal with the A-level drop-off that has trapped bright pupils in the region for years. Its location was central, its funding secure, its academic model tested. Scrapping it did nothing to help SEND pupils and nothing to raise standards elsewhere. It simply removed an option that would have worked. What happened in Middlesbrough fits a pattern we have already seen. When schools succeed by insisting on discipline, knowledge, and high expectations, the response from Labour is not curiosity but suspicion. Not imitation but obstruction. Katharine Birbalsingh and Michaela showed what happens when deprived children are taken seriously. Instead of being celebrated, that success is treated as a problem to be managed. The lesson is the same here: excellence outside the approved model must be neutralised. The Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, claims the money could be better spent elsewhere. That argument collapses on contact with reality. Identical Eton-Star colleges have been approved in other Labour-run areas. The money exists. The model is acceptable. What differed in Middlesbrough was not need, but politics. Local ideological resistance was indulged, and bright children paid the price. This is the quiet cruelty of modern Labour education policy. It speaks endlessly about disadvantage while dismantling the very ladders that allow people to climb out of it. It treats aspiration as a threat and excellence as exclusion. It would rather keep everyone inside a failing system than allow some to rise beyond it, because rising exposes the lie that background is destiny. We are told this is about fairness. It is not. Fairness would mean expanding opportunity wherever it appears. What Labour practices instead is levelling by denial. If not everyone can have something, no one should. If a school might allow working-class children to outperform expectations, it must be stopped in case it embarrasses the system. Middlesbrough did not lose a school. It lost permission to excel. A message was sent to its brightest children: know your place. That is not compassion. It is control. And until Labour grasps the difference, it will keep dressing envy up as justice and calling restraint care. Ministers will feel nothing. Children will pay the price. "Bridget Phillipson, claims the money could be better spent elsewhere. That argument collapses on contact with reality."