Xit Davos

@afneil How Keir’s Britain is getting more like China

ANDREW NEIL: How Trump's America is getting more like China mol.im/a/15070817

@sturdyAlex This is not unusual for a person to be paid to a company

@Rupali_Gautam19 Nasty people

@Kevin_Maguire That’s stoking violence KM

Dom Starmer exploiting Rayner quitting to trigger his own Godfather-style massacre.

@theipaper Millions of people do this. They get paid to a compan. Polanski doesn’t seem like he’s been in the business world.

Zack Polanski calls on Nigel Farage to resign as Reform leader He is reportedly paid for media appearances through a private company, meaning he pays corporation tax on this income, not income tax It follows Rayner's resignation for underpaying stamp duty

@SenSanders Who’s paying you Sanders?

Yesterday, President Trump said of RFK: “I like the fact that he's different." Yes. RFK is *different.* He’s the first HHS secretary to actively endanger children by undermining what doctors & scientists around the world know to be true: Vaccines have saved millions of lives.

@LBC 30 arrests a day for online posts. 10k pa. Starmer boasted this James must be turning a blind eye to the facts

‘Why are the most rich and powerful people on the planet telling us our free speech is under threat?’ James O’Brien wants answers, because it’s ‘the same people’ who wanted Brexit.

@MarinaPurkiss He urges DT to Punish the British government, stop lying

In a functioning democracy with a decent press, these would be wall-to-wall headlines: Fury as Farage Urges U.S. to Punish Britain Farage Accused of Undermining UK Sovereignty But no... "The stamp duty receipt that ended Angela Rayner’s career" FML

@wongthink He’s not an MP!!

Fools, we should not be celebrating Rayner's departure. We have just set up Andy Burnham as the next Prime Minister.

@SteveReedMP Do more with less Steve

No Ideas Nigel Farage and his clueless crew don't have a plan for Britain. mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…

@SteveReedMP You ought to be a farmer Steve you know so much about it

@SteveReedMP Look in the mirror, Steve

@labourlewis Sympathy with Fabian?

An Observation on Angela Rayner and the Labour Government: One cannot help but feel a measure of sympathy for Angela Rayner. I know her well enough to say that she came into politics for the best of reasons: a desire to serve, a determination to improve the lives of people whose struggles she understood from her own experience. But the further up the ladder one climbs in politics, the more insistent the temptations become. This is not simply about individual weakness or personal failing. It is structural. Over the past 40 years, Britain has built a society in which consumption, status, and proximity to wealth have become defining features of the political class. The gravitational pull of money is now so great that even those who arrive in Westminster with the clearest sense of purpose find their heads turned. Angela’s story is not unique. She came from humble beginnings, but the wealth that circles political life today is more concentrated, more brazen, and more intrusive than in the past. The old checks and balances, party rootedness in mass membership, trade union accountability, a press less entangled with oligarchic interests, have all weakened. Where once honour, public service, even a sense of historical duty could command respect, today those values are dimmed in comparison to the pursuit of material position. The mechanism is subtle but relentless. It is not corruption in the brown-envelope-under-the-table sense. It is the slow, almost invisible turning of heads. You are introduced to those who walked this path before you, former ministers who now sit comfortably in boardrooms or on the payroll of consultancies with six and seven-figure salaries. You are invited to corporate boxes at sporting events, to private dinners, to concerts and premiers. Lavish clothes or spectacles can be “within the rules,” provided they are declared. But by then the damage has been done. The message is implicit but unmistakable: play the game, listen to us, and you too can enjoy more of this. The logic creeps into your personal life. You stretch to buy the house that can host the right gatherings. You measure your worth by the standards of a world that equates success with possessions and proximity to privilege. And once you are on that path, it is hard to step off. This is, of course, a simplification of a complex socio-economic and political process. But as someone who came from a council estate myself, I see it all around me in Westminster. And it is not going to be changed by media witch-hunts, the tutting of ethics advisers, or even the occasional burst of public outrage. As Gladstone once warned, “Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.” But in our current system, what is morally questionable is too often normalised, excused, and rebranded as “just the way things are.” Real change will only come from a collective decision to choose a different path: to stop outsourcing our state to private interests, to end the revolving door between government and corporate boardrooms, to challenge the idea that the role of politics is to serve vast concentrations of wealth. We can choose differently. We can once again put community, solidarity, and public service at the heart of our political life. We can insist that worth is measured not in the size of one’s house or the company one keeps, but in the contribution one makes to society and the integrity with which one serves. Until we do, until we decide as a polity to hold up those values rather than the glittering prizes of private gain, hese scandals will not just recur. They will define the very character of our politics.

@TheNewsAgents @lewis_goodall @maitlis @jonsopel Corrupt but also incompetent

"Rayner's resignation feeds into this critique that all the mainstream parties are incompetent: They are unable to govern." Labour losing its Deputy PM and being forced into a reshuffle just a year in is - as @lewis_goodall puts it - 'less than ideal.' @maitlis | @jonsopel

@JeremyClarkson What education? 😂 Oh, you mean elocution lessons ? 😂

We paid for Angela Rayner’s education. We paid her wages when she worked for the local council. We paid her wages when she became an MP. We even paid the settlement that enabled her to buy a house. Tax payers have funded every aspect of her entire life.

@GeorgeCochrane1 Ugly cars

Today's Caption Competition 1 - There is no prize 2 - I accept no responsibility for any/all responses

@loosecollie @darrenpjones Unfortunately, people in the UK don’t appreciate good food. They go for price and convenience before quality. It’s a cultural thing, people who have moved to the UK from places like Italy, Spain, Taiwan really notice it

Italy is something. A good place for the UK government to visit to see the value of agriculture and businesses. Minimal inheritance tax. Tax incentives for growing businesses. Food culture valued, and healthy living promoted. @darrenpjones a learning curve indeed. #farming

@orikron Nothing new. Seen this in other countries, eg Taiwan 25 years ago

🇨🇳 The Chinese government has announced that all schools must provide their students with convertible "siesta chairs" starting in February 2026 to facilitate midday naps. China has a deeply ingrained midday napping culture, prevalent at all ages, institutions, and workplaces.

@LBC Fabian

'It's like the Craig David school of racist agitation… and it works.’ James O’Brien asks: ‘how do you have a conversation about migration that is rational, when the whole world has gone mad?’

@JonathanPieNews Fabians

I'm getting a lot of people telling me how I've 'suddenly woken up' or I'm 'jumping on a bandwagon'. The video below is from 2019. FFS.