Puumph!

@JolyonMaugham @bankofengland @stonewalluk Here we go…..fox avoidance not tax avoidance.

@MorrisMay @treesey @Channel4News There is an air of detachment with them. They think they’ve got it all figured out as long as people go along with it unquestioningly.

@treesey @Channel4News Did she just think that no one in the press would raise these points? She sounds completely flawed by fairly obvious questions. Still, looking forward to the unity around his cabinet appointments especially for No 11

Brilliant from Gary Gibbon interviewing Lucy Powell on @Channel4News, piercing the fake happy-clappy mood

I present to you our new Health Minister, “Angela Rayner.” God Bless Britain 🇬🇧

😁...

@The_Dicksonian I’ve literally had the same experience. My proclamation of “ I could do without the unqualified squeaking of the diminutive Dane.” Elicited an eye roll.

@genevieve_holl @nickgutteridge @michaelsearles_ I thought she’d resigned in disgrace.

Angela Rayner is being lined up as Andy Burnham’s health secretary to push through radical social care reforms, The Telegraph understands @nickgutteridge @michaelsearles_ & me telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/…

A quick note from a Greece-obsessed author on the eve of Nolan’s Odyssey adaptation: I can’t litigate the casting. I'm an American in Las Vegas (I know) writing about a Macedonian king who's been dead 2,300 years. If loving a people's past from the outside is a crime, I turn myself in. What’s worth mentioning, though: Greece rebated the production €6.5 million to shoot across the Peloponnese. The Ministry of Culture was behind it. This is their national epic. And in the whole cast — Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, Helen, Menelaus, Agamemnon, Athena, Calypso, the suitors, Eumaeus, Sinon, Tiresias — not one Greek in a named role. During filming, Greek and Cypriot writers sent open letters to the production with a single message: We are still here. A living people whose story has never stopped being written. A €250 million production used their country, their myth, and their money, and found no room in it for them. Whatever that is, it isn't inclusion. It's a beautiful backdrop and a favorable exchange rate. So I stand by the tried-but-true adage: the book is always better.

@joshxhowie @NeurolawNerd There’s no one Robin Ince hates more than Robin Ince. Sabotaged his own BBC career for Trans and clout and now whispers pestiferous poetry into the sky blue. It will not end well for him.

Robin Ince is a racist thick piece of shit.

At 10pm last night, campaign group @38degrees, whose former director Matthew McGregor will be Burnham’s director of political strategy at No 10, projected these images onto the Houses of Parliament. Exclusive photos from Nigel Howard Media.

This is like putting Karen Carpenter on the cover of 'Shape'.

"Burnham in the UK? It was pure Black Ops. The guy's talking about teabags, while simultaneously creating a substrate of known activists hostile to the majority view, so that he can abrogate moral responsibility in his role as PM and ride out the storm from his Manchester bunker."

@jmasseypoet Would you recommend the France Biography?

Today I took the best picture of Jarvis I’ve ever taken. I’m going to have a nice print made, frame it, and hang it up in my living room.

Burnham’s new Director of Political Strategy is the current CEO of 38 Degrees, which funds The Good Law Project

Starmer, in power for a tad over 2 years, has appointed 17.5% of all the members of the house of lords - a total of 135 peers.

@RonniNicole1 Playing with her balls.

What's with Ellen's continual hands in the pockets stance? To hide those delicate, dainty hands?

@Miss_Snuffy Manny manly man man !

This woman should not be arrested. 🙄 She should be put in a Time Machine to send her back to a traditional school that would teach her right from wrong.

@helenlewis You should never let personal grievances cloud your comparisons

As with the case of Graham Linehan, being an unpleasant prick on the internet should not be a criminal offence.

@spectator Just make @Madz_Grant the editor before it’s too late.

The new film astutely threads the needle between the real world and the supernatural right from the first frame, which is a caption that reads, somewhat ambiguously, ‘In a time of apparent magic’. This echoes another trick buried in the original Greek called ‘double determination’, which means the plot can be simultaneously explained either by divine intervention or without the gods pulling the strings. Does Poseidon whip up a terrible storm, or is it just bad weather? It’s the ancient equivalent of Inception’s spinning top: you can read it either way. ✍️ Count Binface Article | spectator.com/article/christ…

Shabana Mahmood is one of the outstanding politicians of this generation. She is admired across the political spectrum. This morning the Home Secretary is cited everywhere, including this morning’s splash in the Financial Times, as Andy Burnham’s chancellor. Reaction in the gilt or government bond market this morning? Zilch. Reaction among Labour MPs across all wings of the party, left, right and centre? Eek. Why? Because successful governments of the past forty plus year have all had at the centre powerful chancellors with a vision of how the economy works, from Howe, to Lawson, to Brown to Osborne. Visions all different. Ability to drive important change all shared. And although Mahmood may have such a vision and a plan, she has shown no evidence of it. She did a brief stint more than ten years ago shadowing junior Treasury ministers, but she has never evinced any great interest in or manifested any solutions for the great challenge faced by Burnham: how to end almost twenty years of stagnation in productivity, growth and living standards? So what on earth is going on? Why would Burnham choose her? Here is the shorthand. His ally-who-would-be-chancellor, Ed Miliband, is seen as too disliked by too many powerful interests, from trade union leaders, to business leaders, to investors and the right-wing media. That he almost certainly has the best qualifications to be chancellor - deep knowledge of how the Treasury works and an economic vision - is seen as not enough. But why rule out other candidates, such as Yvette Cooper, who does have deep experience of the Treasury, or Wes Streeting, who has articulated a programme that actually looks like a growth plan? Or why not skip a generation, as Cameron did with Osborne, and appoint someone who knows a thing or two about economics, and has been an important Burnhamite, such as Miatta Fahnbulleh. Well, according to those who know Burnham’s mind, he and his transition team just want someone at Number 11 who will simply execute their will. The plan is to drive the economy from 10 Downing Street. On this model, poor Mahmood would be a cipher for Burnham and his cabal. And she would be a fabulous cipher at that, because her revealed skill at the Home Office is to brook no opposition from officials and to drive reform. If this is Burnham’s plan, it is hugely risky, and I suspect it would end in tears. Burnham won’t personally have the time to micromanage the Treasury. No prime minister does. And the Treasury, like no other department, can only be led by someone - the Chancellor - with personal expert authority and a plan. In all other circumstances, the Chancellor is led by officials. Also I very much doubt Mahmood would allow herself to be any prime minister’s puppet or cipher in any case. By far the biggest decision Burnham will take in his first days as prime minister is his choice of chancellor. It is possible he has an insight into Mahmood’s economic expertise that is yet to be seen and heard by the rest of the world - or even by his most intimate allies. It is no exaggeration to say the success or failure of his government will depend on it.

@TheAkoFiles @CoprinusGarden So anyone can turn up and love these children?

After this interview, I was threatened with legal action and told my career would be ruined if I published it. So here it is. The public deserves to hear the conversation and judge it for themselves.