Michael Swadling 🗽

Obama was careful to say he wasn’t intervening in the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign, but then did. And it backfired.

Because, obviously, this solves a hugely urgent social problem. As usual, it's a FGS from me. This government's political priorities as so screwed up and always involve bans and more bans.

Toast that has a lower risk of cancer will be banned by the EU because it is gene edited. Good to see so many pro Brexit stories in the left wing press. theguardian.com/science/2026/a…

Spot on from Reform as it happens (and I have been railing against Kanye/Candace/Fuentes tendency for some years). Sadly, Labour Gov has succumbed to pressure & banned. Dangerous to encourage such top down bans.

“Mr Smith recognised the shoplifter as a repeat offender and “grabbed the bag” from him” Waitrose Sacks Employee After ‘Altercation’ With Shoplifter Stealing Easter Eggs dailysceptic.org/2026/04/06/wai…

“The Nuffield Trust illustrates this by pointing out that a newly qualified doctor in 2017 would have seen their pay more than double in real terms by 2025 as they specialise” A closer look at "Pay restoration for doctors" taxpayersalliance.com/a-closer-look-…

It’s 35 years since Palace won the ZDS Cup. 🏆 Steve Coppell’s side beat Everton 4-1 at Wembley thanks to goals from Geoff Thomas, Ian Wright (2) and John Salako. ⚽️ “ZDS Cup winners, you’ll never sing that!” 🎶 #CPFC

NASA's Artemis II just released the first photo of the far side

@MrNickKnowles I've always been an advocate of apprenticeships. My nephew did one as a tree surgeon and now has an excellent job which he loves. We really should get more home grown talent back on the tools.

FARAGE ON KANYE: "I wouldn't buy a ticket... his comments are vile... but I think if we start banning people from entering the country because we don't like what they say I worry where that ends up... it's a dangerous path to go down."

Bookmark this for when the money runs out and we collapse in debt.

Six of the top ten universities in Europe are in the UK*. If the EU wants their students to have access, they should be paying us. Instead, we’re now on the hook for subsidising their Erasmus scheme. order-order.com/2026/03/30/lab…

“The story of that Waitrose worker shines a harsh light on our post-heroic age” Sacked for tackling a shoplifter? Britain is so lost right now spiked-online.com/2026/04/06/sac…

“The British Medical Association (BMA) ordered the walkouts after rejecting a deal, which it did not put to members, that would have left resident [junior] doctors 35% better off than four years ago” Striking Doctors Cost NHS £3 Billion dailysceptic.org/2026/04/06/str…

They didn't wait for the government. They didn't wait for anyone. 🍺🇬🇧 Centuries before the NHS, ordinary British working people built their own system. In secret. In pubs. Every week they pooled their pennies. If you fell ill, they paid your rent. 🏠 If you died, they buried you. ⚰️ If your family starved, they fed them. 🍞 No government. No institution. Just British working people looking after each other. By 1800. Four million members. 🇬🇧 They called them Friendly Societies. The NHS. The trade unions. The co-operative movement. All of them started the same way. In rooms like this. With people like these. And almost nobody knows this happened. Britain lost its story. We're taking it back. Story by story. Name by name. Nobody is coming to do this for us. If you want to be part of making sure this country remembers who it is: proudofus.co.uk/support Be Part Of Us. Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧

As promised lower food prices.

From today, Working British parents will both now need to earn a combined total of £71,000 just to match the benefits of non-working families with 3 children. Labour always tax the productive to subsidise the unproductive.

Milei is controversial and highly unusual. He is known across Latin America as El Loco, the madman – and came to international prominence as “the chainsaw president” – after wielding the noisy, petrol-driven device at multiple campaign rallies, symbolising his plans to slash public spending. But since taking office in December 2023, Milei has transformed a hyper-inflationary basket case into a fast-growing economy, with inflation way down at 30pc, while generating Argentina’s first budget surplus in a century. His decisive policies – a fiscal consolidation of 6pc-plus of GDP in a single year, scrapping a fifth of public sector jobs and radically simplifying tax and labour laws – have caused upheaval. Bien pensant intellectuals have squealed, as public sector unions have protested. But Argentinian voters awarded Milei’s party a landslide victory in October 2025 midterm Parliamentary elections, endorsing his free-market reforms. And last week Bloomberg reported that growth, drastically lower inflation and more targeted welfare spending means poverty in Argentina just hit an eight-year low. Some 28pc of the population now live below the poverty line, compared to 42pc when Milei took office, with this hardship metric on a steep downward trajectory. 🧵3/7

Economists warn electing far-right Milei would spell ‘devastation’ for Argentina. So said the headline of a Guardian article back in November 2023. The Guardian was reporting a letter signed by 108 intellectual luminaries – including French academic Thomas Piketty and US-based Jayati Ghosh – designed to undermine arch-reformer Javier Milei ahead of Argentina’s crunch election. After years of bailouts and chronic economic mismanagement, Argentinians were enduring 220pc annual inflation and a sharply contracting economy. The country’s deeply incompetent government was running a ruinous annual budget deficit equal to 15pc of GDP. The signatories, many from leading universities, warned of economic “devastation” if Milei’s policies – “rooted in laissez-faire economics and involving contentious ideas like…significant reductions in government spending” – were implemented. The letter didn’t label him “far right” – that was an embellishment by Guardian headline writers. But it was clearly a serious attempt to prevent Milei from gaining power. 🧵2/7

This story below reveals the true extent of Angela Rayner's cluelessness when it comes to economics, the public finances and financial markets. I say that not with glee - but deep alarm and regret. If this is really how the probable next Prime Minister of the UK thinks - betting markets put a more than 50% chance on leadership coup by June - then the ousting of Starmer/Reeves by Rayner (or Miliband) is likely to spark an instant spike in gilt yields, from their already elevated levels. Just the fact that Rayner has said what she has below will put yet more upward pressure on the market-driven borrowing costs – whatever the Bank of England says is these days mere mood – that drive the interest rates faced by firms and households. I have nothing against more social housing – on the contrary, the arguments in favour of building more are at the heart of my book "Home Truths", along with policy mechanisms that could get that done. But if you think that, in the current environment, hard-nosed international creditors do - or even should - give a monkey's about the "social benefits" of subsidised housing then you are utterly and dangerously deluded. Again, I say this in sorrow, not glee. I knew plenty of smart people at the top of successive Blair governments. The architects of New Labour – at least the Blairites – always made sure there were financially literate and market-savvy people in the room when big decisions were made. That was important back then - when the national debt Britain had to service was 35pc of GDP. Now – with the same metric pushing 100pc of GDP and Britain paying more than Morocco to borrow money – it is absolutely vital. It seems that there is no-one – NO-ONE AT ALL – near the top of today's Labour government who has the first clue about the realities of public accounts and global finance. These are – once again – NOT tribal or party-political points, but statements of cold fact ....