Martin Wright 💙

@thebathams Do you have any 0% bathams ?? I’m on the sick for few weeks and gonna miss my favorite beer

WES STREETING: “I’M PRETTY FRUSTRATED” Interview with @PronouncedAlva Labour, languishing in the polls, is having a torrid time in office and a leadership contest is widely expected at some point in 2026. Privately, cabinet ministers barely pretend that the party isn’t in deep trouble. Over the course of our interview, Streeting doesn’t either. “I’m pretty frustrated, to be honest,” he tells me. “I feel like on one hand, since we’ve come into government, we’ve actually done a huge amount that we said we’d do… But that’s not reflected in the polls, and I don’t think it’s even reflected in our storytelling. I think we sell ourselves short.” Labour is in danger of presenting itself as the “maintenance department for the country”, he says. “The problem with that kind of practical, technocratic approach is that if someone else comes along and says, ‘Well, I’ve got a maintenance company too, and mine’s cheaper,’ why wouldn’t people go, ‘OK, well, we’ll give that maintenance team a try’?” He doesn’t name Starmer, but the critique of the Prime Minister’s “practical, technocratic” leadership is clear.