Cllr Stuart Bestwick

This isn’t an abstract financial markets ‘thing’. It indirectly impacts your taxes, food prices, mortgage, pensions, how much we can spend on defence, the cost of student loans and much more. And nothing about this chart is good.

@benonwine Boris Karloff would have been a better PM than Keir Starmer

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

The Labour government borrowed a lot more than expected in February - £14.3 billion. Meanwhile borrowing costs are soaring - 3 times faster than the rest of Europe - & this morning reached the highest level since the 2008 financial crash. Why are we borrowing more & more at an ever higher cost in order to pay millions of people to do nothing? 1/2

So the UK's 10-year gilt yield - the cost of government borrowing - is now up at 2008 levels. An 18-year high The difference is that, back then, UK national debt was 48pc of GDP, and now it's the best part of 100pc. So the debt service costs are much MUCH heavier. Of the £14.3bn the UK government borrowed in February alone, no less than £13bn of that was spent on interest on existing debts - a situation which is not only unsustainable, but very close to provoking a disastrous financial collapse. Yet still, our national discourse is all about more spending, more borrowing, more "state intervention". When is the Labour party – and much of the listless, unthinking rump of the UK's political and media class – going to start acknowledging reality? WHEN ....?

ANDREW NEIL: We’re heading into what could be the greatest energy emergency ever with a bunch of clueless inadequates at the tiller mol.im/a/15665931

Everyone knows Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. 💡 Everyone is wrong. His name was Joseph Swan. Born in Pallion, Sunderland. Son of a failed entrepreneur. No university. No laboratory. No backing. Just a chemist's apprentice in his home town who couldn't stop thinking about light. He worked on it for twenty years. Along the way he invented bromide photographic paper. Artificial fibre, the process that led to rayon. Over seventy patents. And still nobody had made a lightbulb that worked. Then on the 18th of December 1878, in a lecture hall in Newcastle, he switched it on. It burned bright. Then it broke. But the idea was proven. ⚡ Six weeks later, 3rd February 1879, he demonstrated it again. This time it worked. Seven hundred people watched the room light up. Eight months before Thomas Edison. Edison heard about it. Filed a patent. Then sued Swan in America. The US Patent Office found against Edison. ✅ Edison sued Swan in Britain. The British courts found against Edison again. ✅✅ As part of the settlement, Edison was forced into a partnership with Swan. The company was called Ediswan. Swan's patents. Swan's filament design. Edison's name first. Eventually Edison bought him out. Swan was knighted in 1904. The Savoy Theatre, the first building in the world lit entirely by electricity, used his bulbs. Edison got the credit. Swan got a knighthood nobody remembers. And history forgot Sunderland. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Did they teach you his name? Together we keep our history alive. proudofus.co.uk/support Be part of us. 🙏 Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧

@amittalwalkar Indeed.

@stuart_bestwick Prime years were lost in apartheid

A staircase to cricketing heaven. Generations of skill in one frame. They didn't just play the game; they defined an era.

Will Robert Jenrick now be defecting to them? 😀

Not a single Reform MP bothered to turn up to the vote on fuel duty. This was a moment to stand up for drivers and pile pressure on Keir Starmer. But Reform didn’t even get out of first gear.

The 2 Socialist Parties want State control of our pensions

The UK economy had stalled well before the US President unleashed “Operation Epic Fury”. Ministers want to blame Britain’s dire growth numbers on Donald Trump’s airstrikes on Iran – but it won’t wash. In January, the UK flatlined –registering zero GDP growth, having expanded just 0.1pc during both the third and fourth quarters of 2025. So when Trump discharged chaos across the Middle East a fortnight ago, sparking what the International Energy Agency calls the “largest disruption to crude supplies in history of global oil markets”, the British economy was already on its knees. That’s not to say this energy price spike won’t hit the UK economy hard, as will be seen in GDP numbers for March onwards. Britain as a net energy importer with an already hefty fiscal and trade deficit, is uniquely vulnerable. And that’s why the government’s reluctance to tap heavily into North Sea oil and gas now, as this Middle East conflict exposes our energy dependence, is stupid and even crass. It’s as if ministers care more about net-zero virtue-signalling than about jobs, the public finances and keeping the lights on. 🧵2/6

Before William Garrow, a criminal trial in England lasted minutes. ⚖️ No lawyer for the accused. The judge asked the questions. Hearsay counted as evidence. Confessions beaten out of people were read aloud in court. If you were poor, you were guilty before you opened your mouth. In 1783, a twenty-three-year-old barrister walked into the Old Bailey. 🏛️ Son of a clergyman. No money. No connections. He chose to defend the poorest people in London. Murderers, thieves, prostitutes, servants accused by their masters. And then he did something no one had ever seen. He fought back. ⚔️ He tore into prosecution witnesses. Exposed lies. Demolished weak evidence. He told the court: you cannot testify to what you heard. Only what you saw. He challenged confessions extracted by violence. He insisted the prosecution must PROVE its case. Judges tried to silence him. He kept going. Prosecutors feared him. The establishment resented him. He won cases that should have been unwinnable. And he kept saying the same thing. Every person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. He didn't invent the idea. It existed in law books. He made it real. In courtroom after courtroom. Case after case. In 1948, "innocent until proven guilty" became Article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 🌍 Every common law country on earth. Britain, America, Canada, Australia, India and more. All use the adversarial system he pioneered. Over 2 billion people live under his legal principles. A clergyman's son from north London. Did they teach you his name? 🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🇬🇧

Totally shocking by our Prime Minister that twice Siobahn White, mother of Rhiannon, 27, who was stabbed to death by an illegal migrant from Sudan, has written to Starmer for a meeting and neither time received even the courtesy of a reply. Starmer wouldn’t have looked on Siobahn as somebody in need of answers and a public embracing of her grief but as a political danger as he has done nothing to stop these killers coming to our shores. She told The Telegraph; “Starmer wants to go out there and apologise to Epstein’s victims but what about ourwomen and children? “ What about my daughter? What about my grandson who had got to grow up without a mother?” Great points that need answers. If Starmer can’t deliver them, and won’t even respond to a distraught mother, it’s time Labour MPs rose up and threw him out

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Labour’s 1976 IMF bailout. Labour forced Britain to seek an IMF bailout under James Callaghan. $3.9bn, the biggest IMF loan in history at the time. 2026 déjà vu.

And yet this is the most nepotistic Government in modern history. A few families make up the inner circle, Front Bench/Cabinet/No10/top LP staff positions. Brand new MPs were elevated immediately to important Govt jobs such as whipping MPs to vote despite never having voted...

@afneil @DominicFarrell In the old days, the defence minister would have resigned

This is a remarkable table. It shows that to all intents and purposes the UK currently doesn’t have a navy it can deploy. It is a national scandal. But, of course, nobody — political or military — will be held accountable, much less sacked.

This is important. Their Bill could set a dangerous precedent. Reform looking to do something similar, giving Government even more control over Public Sector Pensions👇

Chart of the Day 🤔 To put accusations of corporate "price gouging" in context, retail profit margins for petrol average around 7% (+/- a few %). The government's take is around 55%. source: #what-makes-up-the-cost-of-a-litre-of-petrol-or-diesel-in-the-uk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">rac.co.uk/drive/advice/f…

Under Lammy's plans, jury trials in England would fall from 15,000 to 7,000 a year. And the efficiency gains? The Institute for Government calls them "extremely marginal". Sonia Sodha on a reform that makes no sense.... comment.press/lammy