Lorna Reede

@PaulPitt1967 And Mary Whitehouse.

Think I preferred life before the internet and Twitter when all the easily offended could do to vent their spleen was write into Points of view🤦‍♂️

@Glinner Surely if he wants to be a woman, he’d do something with his hair? And wash.

A fat, sweating bully

@ShippersUnbound I can’t stand Will Self and yes I’m sure he speaks very highly of me.

This is the best piece on Starmer you will read today, perhaps this year

@Leanne89_ Do the washing and then feed me chocolate?

😉🩶😏

My rabbit in the headlights look! I’m really not at all photogenic which is quite a drawback when you’re an attention whore!

@msloobylou Leave it aht.

🤮

@Debedee21 My rabbit in the headlights look.

Friday selfies 🤳 🤪 Still in my pj's as I feel like crap and had a stress full couple of days 😫

@Peston He should call a leadership election to be held the day before the by-election.

The consensus at the top of the Labour Party appears to be that Keir Starmer won’t announce a timetable for his departure until Andy Burnham fights the Makerfield by-election. But that makes very little sense to me. Because, as I said on ITV’s News at Ten, the probability he can survive as PM, even if Burnham were to lose the by-election is low. This is what his cabinet colleagues and trade union leaders have made clear to him (and to me). So the timing and manner of his exit are now at the mercy of events, which makes him a lame duck prime minister - whose utterances about policy will barely be heard above the racket of speculation about how and when he will go. This would be humiliating for any PM, but perhaps doubly so for Starmer given that his genuine success in taking Labour to a landslide victory after the nadir of the 2019 election would risk being forgotten and ignored if his last weeks in office are spectacularly chaotic. The limitations on his power are already conspicuous. As his closest colleagues tell me, he was only powerful enough to do the most limited and unambitious of reshuffles to fill the vacancy at health created by Wes Streeting’s resignation - although the disaster of last week’s elections would have been the trigger for a more comprehensive reshaping of the Cabinet if the PM were stronger. Starmer lacks the authority to force any of his ministers to move or leave the government. It’s telling that the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood kept her job even after her allies briefed she told the PM his time is up, and that Streeting dictated the timing of his own resignation, even though his enforcers were actively briefing against the PM. In the Cabinet, the prime minister is supposed to be the first among equals. In Starmer’s case, scrap “the first” and maybe insert “second”. Also, resignations and sackings have over months left his Downing Street team depleted. As even his friends tell me, few want to take a career risk by working for him, partly because of the open secret that he won’t be in post much longer (and partly because the Whitehall zeitgeist is that he is the worst kind of delegator, one who insists on delegating but then shows little loyalty or understanding when things go wrong). So what’s the alternative to him being in office but not in power, as it were? Perhaps he should emulate Tony Blair, despite many in his party having repudiated the Blair years. In September 2006, Blair announced he would resign within a year and he stood down the following June. This longer timetable meant Blair wasn’t tainted by the chaos of unexpected immediate elections. And because the election schedule was dictated by him rather than by factors beyond his control, he looked commensurately stronger. He appeared to be the master of events, not the victim. The “will he? won’t he?” about Starmer last week was exhausting just to narrate, as I had to do. Goodness knows how bad it was for the main protagonist, Starmer. To be clear, any PM that says he’s off is weakened by that very pledge. But Starmer might actually have even less authority in today’s limbo, where everyone but he acknowledges the reality that he is a short-dated stock.

@PolitlcsUK Isn’t it the role of opposing parties to oppose?

🚨 NEW: Former Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas says she hopes the Greens will “put country before party” and not campaign against Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election

@LucyTCWife According to the last Census, less than half the adult population are Christian but christianity is the largest single religion.

Why do people think they can talk this way and not cause offence? The UK is very much still a Christian country. We are extremely tolerant in the UK of other religions and cultures, but are not afforded the same respect. Respect should go both ways.

@JuliaHB1 @jamesmurray_ldn I have my ex husband’s in a jar. Does that count?

Do some women have penises @jamesmurray_ldn ?

@_Lee_18 I’ve always been behind the times!

@LornaReede It’s 09:15 not 08:15 😂

This is the time for action.

@TInvestor76 @Clare97097915 @CraigSpillard Exactly and certainly not over the long term.

@Clare97097915 @LornaReede @CraigSpillard Show me someone who goes into property with the belief that property values are going to go down.

Landlord charges £12,000 rent a year and is charged £6,000 per year on the mortgage interest. Of that £6,000 profit the government gets £4,536 the landlord gets £1,464 Of that £1,464 landlord has to cover repair costs, etc Is it the landlord or the government inflating rents?

@Jexxie Spend my time being delightful on social media.

I’ll never understand why some stay at home moms are so lazy. If your husband works all day, the least you can do is have a clean house waiting for him and a warm meal ready. What do you even do all day?

@SangitaMyska Always follow the money.

The unanswered question is why Josh Simons threw himself on his sword and resigned his Makerfield seat for Andy Burnham? He ran Labour Together & along with Morgan McSweeny and Mandelson nurtured Starmer as Labour leader, and organised a savage campaign to remove Jeremy Corbyn.

@SkyNews @joncraig The tennis guy?

BREAKING: James Murray has been named the new Health Secretary Sky's @joncraig reports ⬇️

@NoTime2Heel @lewis_goodall I thought polls in Gorton suggested he would have won?

@LornaReede @lewis_goodall Have you seen his polling amongst the general public? Not very impressive. The problem Labour always have, is that they think everyone else thinks like they do. They don't. lol Burnham is only popular within Labour. He's not popular outside of Labour.

Now the decision will be Starmer’s. Try and block (risk civil war) or allow Burnham to stand and guarantee removal later (if Burnham wins)? If Burnham stands we’ll have never seen a by-election like it. Essentially a primary for PM confined to one constituency.

@transportu67284 @DPJHodges He only got the job of Labour leader by pledging to stick to Corbyn values but ditched them immediately he was elected.

@LornaReede @DPJHodges John Major was an experienced politician. Sir Keir is an amateur. He only got the job because Labour's talent-pool is so desperately shallow.

Cabinet Ministers and MPs are now pointing me back to yesterday's statement by the Unions calling for a timetable. I'm told this is going to be used as a trigger for a "second wave" of calls from backbenchers for Starmer to step down if he continues to dig in.