Rich Stewart 🔰

@SkySportsPL Another English midfielder Pep is going to ruin.

Manchester City are in pole position to sign Elliot Anderson this summer, Sky Sports News understands. Anderson is focused on the rest of the season with Nottingham Forest and helping them stay in the Premier League.

@IsabelOakeshott @Iromg He’s a cunt that’s all you need to know

WHY did our stupid prime minister feel the need to mark St Georges Day with a divisive Tweet about 'hatred and division'? How about just saying something positive? What is WRONG with this man?

@ZiaYusufUK Like most Labour MP’s @carla_denyer is a fucking moron.

She still thinks there’s a “war” going on in France

@BBCMOTD Another iconic BBC show totally ruined by a DEI hire. What is the point of the woke agenda pushing BBC anymore? I’m suprised you don’t hire a tranny to front the show.

An incredible 52-year journey comes to an end. Following extensive consideration, BBC Sport has made the difficult decision to say goodbye to Football Focus at the end of this season. First broadcast in 1974, Football Focus is a testament to the brilliant team who have worked on it over the years and, of course, the audience. The programme has been a staple of the BBC’s football coverage for decades, providing fans with interviews, analysis and stories from across the game ahead of the weekend’s fixtures. But changing audience behaviours mean fans are now increasingly consuming football content in different ways and we need to respond appropriately as we face difficult decisions around how the licence fee is spent. Fans are accessing discussion, highlights, analysis and news through digital platforms and on-demand viewing and as viewing habits continue to evolve, it is right that BBC Sport adapts how it brings football coverage to the widest audiences across television, radio, online and to its extensive social platforms. BBC Sport boasts a strong football rights portfolio and is set to significantly expand its digital output this year growing content across BBC platforms, as well as a bold new slate of exclusive shows on YouTube. Featuring fresh formats, big personalities and more frequent, always-on content tailored for digital audiences, the expansion will bring fans closer to the game than ever before delivering more high-quality, accessible and engaging football coverage at scale. We will release further details on these plans in the coming months.

@JamesMelville E-Type it’s achingly beautiful. Like the DB5 it’s iconic.

I’m my opinion, the most beautiful car ever made. The classic Aston Martin DB5. An icon of British culture and James Bond. What do you think is the most beautiful car ever made?

@JChimirie66677 The crazy thing is Jim, if the Epstein files had not been released, Mandleson would still be US ambassador potentially leaking classified information to whoever pays the most money. This is terrifying. Starmer should be arrested not fired.

The Man Nobody Is Talking About. His Name Is Sir Philip Barton. Buried inside Tuesday's committee testimony, beneath the headlines about constant pressure, bullying and secret job searches, is the detail that may prove the most consequential of this entire affair. It concerns not Olly Robbins, not Morgan McSweeney, not even Keir Starmer. It concerns the man who was there before all of them. The man who said no. The man who then left his post eight months early. Sir Philip Barton was the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office when Peter Mandelson's appointment was announced in December 2024. He was, in other words, the most senior civil servant in the building at the precise moment the machinery of state was being directed to place a man with documented links to Russia and China into the most sensitive diplomatic posting in the Western alliance. What Robbins told the committee on Tuesday is this. Barton pushed back. When the Cabinet Office argued that vetting Mandelson was unnecessary, that a peer and Privy Councillor did not require developed vetting, Barton refused to accept it. He insisted that vetting was a requirement. He had to be, in Robbins's own words, very firm in person. He also voiced reservations about the appointment to Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser, reservations that were noted and not acted upon. He was worried, Robbins suggested, about exactly the same reputational risks that had been detailed to the Prime Minister before the appointment was announced. Then Sir Philip Barton left his post. Eight months before his tenure would otherwise have concluded. The question Richard Foord put to Robbins on Tuesday was the right one. Why did Barton's tenure end early? Robbins said he did not know. He suggested ministers may have felt it was time for a change. That answer is not an answer. It is the absence of one. Consider what the timeline now shows. A senior civil servant pushes back against the appointment, insists on vetting when the Cabinet Office wants to bypass it, raises reservations with the National Security Adviser, and departs eight months ahead of schedule. His replacement arrives to find the appointment already treated as a fait accompli, the vetting process under constant pressure from Downing Street, and the question of outcome entirely subordinate to the question of speed. If Barton was removed because he stood in the way of this appointment, then Robbins was not the first civil servant sacrificed to protect it. He was the second. And the question of who else was moved aside, overruled or silenced in the months between December 2024 and the moment the security services finally said no, becomes the most important question this affair has yet produced. Starmer sacked Robbins for following the rules. The Foreign Affairs Committee will now call Barton to give evidence. What he says will either confirm what the timeline already suggests or provide an alternative explanation that the evidence does not currently support. There is a pattern here that goes beyond process failure. Process failures are random. They point in different directions. What this affair has produced is a series of events that point consistently in one direction. Officials who comply are retained. Officials who push back depart. The security services are bypassed. The vetting is treated as an administrative inconvenience. And the one question nobody at the top of this government will answer is why this appointment, this man, this post, mattered so much that every obstacle was removed to make it happen. Barton apparently asked that question. He left eight months early. The country deserves to know why.

@SimonJWoodUK @Nigel_Farage @Keir_Starmer I don’t understand this post, like him or not he’ll do more for hospitality than anyone else. Those that ushered in Labour must have buyers remorse especially those in the pub and restaurant trade.

@Nigel_Farage @Keir_Starmer Hopefully you can join him

Let’s send @Keir_Starmer to the jobcentre on May 7th. GETSTARMEROUT.COM

@SaintedAngelica @Matt_Pinner Come off that fence Angelica 😍

@Matt_Pinner Boris was a massive letdown, hugely disappointing and basically a disaster; HOWEVER, he was always entertaining and an annoyingly likeable buffoon: Starmer on the other hand is a dangerously corrupt/incompetent cunt with not an iota of redeeming value

Do you believe Boris Johnson was a better Prime Minister than Keir Starmer?

@Matt_Pinner No, Johnson was an unmitigated disaster. Starmer is equally as horrific.

@Adrian_Hilton @EmilyThornberry This is the Emily that was overlooked for AG and given to Starmer's Dick Hermer.

I've always had a soft spot for Dame @EmilyThornberry. When she's fed up, you know it. She tells it like it is. She asks pointed questions and candidly answers journalists' awkward questions and doesn't particularly care who might be inconvenienced in the process. Her performance today was consummate, and we're lucky she's chairing the Foreign Affairs Committee at this time (and the Prime Minister is rather unlucky).

@rawespresso Pensions and special needs travel. Suck it up taxpayer.

Your council tax just went up another 5% this April. Average band D in England is now £2,280 a year. For that you get bins collected once a fortnight, a library that shuts at 4pm, potholes nobody's filling and a leisure centre with the pool closed for repairs. Genuinely — what is the £2,280 actually paying for?

@jk_rowling @andrewdoyle_com @campbellclaret The irony is @campbellclaret is a cunt.

That's because I wasn't interested in being used to boost the viewing figures of a pair of exceptionally arrogant men whose understanding of this issue drips with classism and misogyny, @campbellclaret. If you're genuinely interested in a debate I'm at a loss to understand why you're uninterested in interviewing @ForWomenScot, who secured the Supreme Court victory and are therefore THE leading voices on this issue. But perhaps your charming daughter has adequately represented the entire Campbell family's view, by describing them as 'ugly' women, with whom she wouldn't 'want to be in a room'?

Mmmm. Bit weird 👇🏻 but hey ho … for all those claiming we won’t listen to people who share @jk_rowling views we have in the past asked @jk_rowling who said no. She is a leading voice and therefore we would happily talk to her on LEADING. Previous attempts have been rebuffed.

@RachelD1892 Nope he’s a lying cunt.

Do you believe Keir Starmer is being open, honest, and transparent about the appointment of Peter Mandelson? A simple yes or no ...

Two MPs kicked out of the Chamber for unparliamentary behaviour, purely so they can put a clip on social media for their supporters. Appalling conduct.

@LeeAndersonMP_ what a guy - brutal but true.

The Pattern That Demands an Answer. Is Starmer Compromised? There is a threshold in political commentary beyond which responsible analysis must go, even when the conclusion is uncomfortable. The question that this series of events now compels is not one any serious observer raises lightly. But the evidence, assembled piece by piece over months, makes it impossible to avoid. Is Keir Starmer compromised? That question deserves to be asked precisely rather than loosely. It does not assert that Starmer is an agent of a foreign power. It asks something narrower and more troubling. Whether the consistent pattern of decisions made by this Prime Minister on matters relating to China and Russia is compatible with the actions of a leader whose primary loyalty is to British national security. Consider what that pattern contains. Starmer attempted to surrender the Chagos Islands, handing Beijing strategic proximity to Diego Garcia that successive governments had refused to concede, before the deal collapsed under the weight of its own strategic incoherence. He allowed a China spy trial to collapse because his government refused to describe China as a national security threat in court, even as MI5 publicly declared it one. He approved the largest Chinese embassy in Europe, with a concealed underground chamber built within a metre of the fibre-optic cables carrying the City's financial data. He oversaw the Royal Navy's withdrawal from Indo-Pacific training at the precise moment China's navy became the largest on earth. He moved to relax accounting standards for Chinese companies listing in London, weakening City oversight for a state his own intelligence services treat as a strategic rival. Each decision was defended with the language of pragmatism and balance. Each delivered a strategic benefit to Beijing. Now add the Mandelson dimension. A man whose Chinese state enterprise connections alarmed American senators sufficiently to refer a dossier to the FBI. A man targeted by Russian intelligence for decades. A man who failed his developed vetting on grounds centring on his links to Russia and China. That man was placed in Washington with Strap Three clearance, giving him access to information that could endanger intelligence sources if leaked. The Prime Minister who placed him there had read a due diligence report flagging those exact concerns. Senior Whitehall sources say he was warned about the major risks and waved them away. The cumulative weight of these decisions defies innocent explanation through incompetence alone. A Prime Minister can make one catastrophic misjudgment about China. He cannot make six sequential decisions, each advancing Beijing's interests and retreating from Britain's, and ask the country to attribute it all to poor judgment. Two explanations exist. The first is that Starmer governs according to an ideological framework that genuinely regards Chinese engagement as opportunity rather than threat. The second is that something else is driving those decisions. Something that operates through networks, relationships and private arrangements that never fully surface in the public record. No commentator can answer that question definitively. Only a full independent inquiry, with access to intelligence material and the classified record of every decision documented here, can do that. What commentary can do is assemble the visible evidence and ask whether it is consistent with the leadership of a country that intends to defend itself. It is not. And the country deserves to know why.

@JamesPGoddard90 I’m no big fan of Neville - he’s completely let slip his working class mask. However this is totally out of order. No one should be subjected to that kind of abuse especially in front of his wife.

Is that Gary Neville? W@NK3R Whoever the man is that confronted him is a hero and speaks for millions

There’s always a clip eh Keith.

@drchrisnewton @TomHayesBmouth Is this the cretin that stole election leaflets- what a clown. I hope he’s looking for a job he’ll be on JSA come 2029.

Appalling behaviour from @TomHayesBmouth. Aggressive, arrogant, rude, entitled, evasive, deflecting, nasty. And he wonders why are politicians are despised and Labour are tanking? I would urge some self-reflection, but let's face it, that's very unlikely. x.com/GBNEWS/status/…