Mike Farnworth

@flightwithin @PeckerwQ It is!

@xemptor @PeckerwQ Enjoy 💜 must be a wonderful place to visit 💜

💜🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿💜 @PeckerwQ

@KuwlShow Great post, Rob.

CLARITY FOR 100 YEARS Why would President Trump - author of The Art of the Deal - bring this exact constellation of executives to meet with Xi Jinping at one of the most compressed geopolitical moments in modern history? Not just politicians. Not just diplomats. But the CEOs representing: • global banking • global payments • semiconductors • AI infrastructure • aerospace • food supply • tokenization • communications networks • custody • biotech • manufacturing • capital markets Because perhaps the real negotiation is larger than trade. Perhaps the old architecture itself is under negotiation. The post-1944 world was built on: centralized debt, military enforcement, petrodollar dependency, SWIFT control, and industrial-age financial rails. But a digital civilization requires something different: • real-time settlement • neutral interoperability • decentralized verification • tokenized value transfer • sovereign cooperation without surrendering sovereignty • transparent ledgers instead of opaque intermediaries • economic incentives aligned toward stability instead of perpetual conflict What if the real “deal” is not about China defeating America or America defeating China… …but preventing mutually assured financial destruction during the largest technological transition in human history? Because AI + quantum + tokenization + autonomous finance cannot scale on 1970s settlement rails. And if value itself becomes instant, global, programmable, and interoperable… then whoever helps architect the transition may shape the next 100 years. Maybe this is why payments giants, asset managers, chip manufacturers, aerospace leaders, and tokenization infrastructure firms all suddenly matter in the same room. Not because they represent separate industries. But because they collectively represent the operating system of the emerging world economy. A sovereignty-first system. A multipolar system. A digitally interconnected system. Potentially even a peace-through-prosperity system. Not a world without nations. A world where nations can transact without financial hostage-taking. Not centralization. Interoperability. Not conquest. Coordination. Not endless friction. Atomic settlement. And perhaps that is why the room matters more than the headlines. Godspeed, Mr. President. @realDonaldTrump

@Labourheartland Terrific post. Chapeau!

Michael Foot was right. “We didn’t fight for the vote to give it away.” That was the whole point of #Brexit. Not fantasy. Not nostalgia. Not flag-waving theatre for careerists in Union Jack cufflinks. It was about sovereignty. Democracy. The basic right of the British people to hire and fire those who make their laws. That was all Brexit had to achieve. The rest was down to Parliament. Down to government. Down to the political class who spent years pretending to “respect the result” while doing everything possible to blunt it, bury it, sabotage it, or turn it into another managerial stitch-up. So when #Starmer now dresses up closer EU alignment as some grand rescue mission, let’s be honest about what is really happening. He is not fixing Brexit. He is exposing the failure of the politicians who never wanted to carry it out in the first place. His latest speech pledged to put Britain back at the “heart of Europe”, while Downing Street still claims the red lines on rejoining the single market and customs union remain in place. That is not leadership. That is triangulation with a Brussels postcode. Brexit did not fail because ordinary people voted wrong. It failing because the same political class that hollowed out our towns, sold off our industries, crushed our unions, privatised our utilities, and shipped power upwards and outwards was suddenly asked to return power downwards to the people. And they hated it. The people voted to take back democratic control. The shower of parliamentarians handed us delay, deflection, bad faith, managed decline, and then blamed the voters for the wreckage. That is the oldest Westminster trick in the book: fail the people, then accuse the people of failure. Michael Foot understood what Starmer never will. Democracy is not an ornament. It is not something to be admired in speeches and surrendered in treaties. It belongs to the people, or it belongs to nobody. We did not fight for the vote to give it away. And we certainly did not fight for it so Keir Starmer could hand it back wrapped in a focus-grouped bow that told him it will win back support. Here is the hard truth Starmer needs to face: he never had that support in the first place. He became Prime Minister by default, carried into Downing Street on the wreckage of a collapsed Tory Party, not on a great wave of public belief. There was no national love affair with Starmerism. No working-class uprising for managerial politics. No mass demand for grey men with donor-class instincts to tell the country what it really voted for. He mistook Tory collapse for Labour consent. And now he wants to mistake that thin mandate for permission to unpick Brexit by stealth. #JustResign

@flightwithin @PeckerwQ @Traceyteebee - would you believe it!

💜🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿💜 @PeckerwQ

@AntonSpisak Not only about ‘Europe’, but more specifically about the ‘corrupt, failing and anti-democratic European Union’.

Ten years too late, we might realise that the Brexit referendum wasn’t really about Europe, but about the dissatisfaction of a large swathe of voters with the state of the country and ‘the system’. The tragedy is that an entire British political class used that disenchantment for its own political ends. They promised voters one thing, delivered another, and never took responsibility for any of it.

@JChimirie66677 @JaneSim66 @SueWhitake10081 It’s why the ‘£22bn black hole’ appeared so early in the narrative: to provide cover for ignoring or reversing previous commitments, and creating new policy.

Exactly right. The false prospectus argument is one of the most powerful available and should be made more often and more forcefully than it is. The 2024 manifesto did not mention the two-child benefit cap reversal that cost them hundreds of millions before the first budget. It did not mention the winter fuel payment cut that alienated millions of pensioners within months of taking office. It did not mention the employer national insurance rise that has suppressed hiring and squeezed small businesses. It explicitly promised no return to the EU single market or customs union while the government has since pursued exactly that kind of realignment through the back door. And it made no mention of the scale of the policy accommodation toward China that has characterised every significant national security decision since July 2024. A government that wins office on commitments it then systematically reverses or ignores has not received a mandate for what it is actually doing. The mandate argument cuts both ways. Starmer invokes it constantly, telling critics he was elected with a landslide on a five year term. But a mandate is conditional on delivering what you promised. When the prospectus is false the mandate is hollow. The case for a general election is not just politically convenient for the opposition. It is constitutionally grounded. The country voted for something specific. It is receiving something entirely different. Farage and Badenoch are both right that the public should have their say. The question is whether the parliamentary arithmetic allows it. With a majority of around 160 seats, Starmer cannot be forced to the country. He can only be persuaded or pressured into going. May 7 was the pressure. Whether it was sufficient remains to be seen.

Labour Is Looking For A Saviour. Its Candidates Cannot Even Save Themselves The results are in and the succession speculation has begun. Andy Burnham is the answer. Angela Rayner must return. Wes Streeting has 80 MPs. The political class that produced the worst local election result in Labour's history is now debating which of its members should be trusted to reverse it. The results themselves suggest a different conclusion. Burnham's target seats around Manchester saw Labour fall by twenty percentage points overnight. The eight councils surrounding the city went into Thursday with Labour holding sixty four percent of seats. They woke up to forty four percent. Tameside, which Burnham would need to win over as part of any northern coalition, fell after forty seven years of Labour control. The data journalist at the Telegraph put it plainly. Burnham may want to cast his net wider than Manchester for a seat. Based on what happened on Thursday, considerably wider. Rayner's Ashton-under-Lyne seat is projected by Electoral Calculus to fall to Reform at the next general election by nine points. The woman being positioned as Labour's answer to the North represents a constituency the Labour electorate has already abandoned. Her HMRC investigation has not been formally closed. The question of whether a Cabinet return contingent on a favourable tax investigation conclusion represents a conflict of interest has never been satisfactorily answered. There is also the matter of a leaked 2024 recording in which Rayner pleaded with Muslim voters in her constituency, acknowledging she could not have held her seat in 2019 without their support and promising Labour would do everything in its power on Gaza. A candidate whose electoral survival depends on bloc vote cultivation is not positioned to address the two-tier policing and rising sectarianism that drove voters to Reform across the North. Streeting clung to Ilford North in 2024 with a majority of 528 votes over a pro-Palestine independent candidate. The forces that nearly unseated him then have strengthened since. He accepted over £370,000 in donations from individuals and companies with connections to the private healthcare sector, according to the Good Law Project, while overseeing the dismantling of NHS England and the expansion of private provision. Global Counsel, Mandelson's lobbying firm, worked for Palantir, which holds NHS contracts that expanded significantly during his tenure. He has been asked to publish his communications with private health donors. He has declined. Three candidates. Three sets of vulnerabilities. And not one of them has addressed the questions that produced Thursday's results. Not the small boats that keep coming. Not the dispersal of unvetted men into communities that were never consulted. Not the two-tier policing that jailed ordinary people for expressing views on immigration while sectarian marches through British streets went unchallenged. Not the energy bills driven up by net zero dogma while working people and family farms paid the price. Not the China pattern. Not the network of private arrangements and financial relationships that has shaped this government's decisions from Washington to the NHS. Sunderland fell to Reform after fifty years. Gateshead fell. Blackburn fell. Tameside fell. These are the communities Labour was built to represent. They did not vote for a different version of the same arrangement. They voted for a party that did not exist four years ago. Changing the name on the door does not change what happens inside. The voters of the North and Midlands have delivered a verdict not just on Starmer but on the political culture he represents. The candidates queuing to replace him are products of that culture. None of them has said so. None of them has proposed dismantling it. The country does not need a rebranded version of the same arrangement. The results of May 7 make that unmistakably clear.

@darrenpjones @Keir_Starmer Any ‘mandate’ was predicated on the Labour Party manifesto presented at the General Election, and promises made in the run up to it.

The election results today have clearly been tough for Labour. I’m sorry that we’ve lost so many brilliant Labour colleagues across the country, and thank them for their service. And I’m sorry that so many voters felt unable to vote Labour at these elections. @Keir_Starmer has taken responsibility and committed all of us to delivering on the mandate the country gave us at the last election. The Labour Party shouldn’t waste a minute of the time we’ve been given to get on with that job. If we turn inwards the public will think we’re walking away from that challenge. The next election will have unity or division on the ballot. A Britain built for all, or a Britain for the few. Britain is at its best when we come together and rise to the challenges of our time. And Labour is at its best when our values of equality, collectivism and unity power our project for the British people. We can deliver a better Britain in the years ahead and beat the prospect of division at the next election, but only if we come together, get on with the job and face the future.

@brexitblog_info We need to emulate the American system of political economy, and fast!

“How do you kick start your economy by aligning yourselves with the slowest growing economies in the advanced World?” Andrew Neil quickly demolishes the feeble remainer mantra that there’s anything to be gained from Starmer’s EU reset.

@JoeLang51440671 Biiiig shout out on Dave X22 just now! Chapeau, Joe!

@timfarron Follow @SamaHoole to understand what we really need to do with our farmland, Tim.

Spot on. Surely Trump's conflict in the Middle East and Putin's invasion of Ukraine show how utterly vital our food security is? The Government needs to wake up and back our farmers. farmersguardian.com/news/4529155/c…

@YesterdaysBrit1 It’s a pre-cursor to a total ban on alcohol, irrespective of the heritage. We need to get used to it.

2 pubs closing a day in Britain The £10 pint is now in London For Christ's sake, this can't go on. The Great British pub is part of Britain's heritage. Like corner shops. Seaside towns. Bustling High Streets. Parks filled with children playing safely. Kids playing football in the streets. Supermarkets selling affordable food. Burgers being delivered to our homes isn't part of our culture. Neither are vape shops, iffy taxi companies, Turkish barbers or people dumping their rubbish in the street.

@kadmitriev Thankfully, the sovereign alliance is in control!

You are rightfully concerned and dwell on the health of the UK economy. Historic debt yields are just the beginning — a light breeze before a tsunami. 🌊 Starmer is one of the few in the UK who is not concerned about the health of the UK economy. Ignorance is bliss.

@KathrynPorter26 The actions on Iran are a proxy for the destruction of the City of London. Quite how we in Britain rise from this is anyone’s guess. My solution is a 180° about turn, and an adoption of the American system of political economy @sjkokinda @BarbaraMBoyd

This is worth a read. Some excerpts... The real shock to the British economy is coming from the Middle East... Yet no one in the Labour Party has a credible plan to deal with the realities we face. The Bank of England set out three potential scenarios for how the conflict could impact the UK economy. All of them, even the most benign, are worse than anything the Office for Budget Responsibility included in its latest forecast. Inflation could reach over 6%. Growth could stall. Unemployment could rise still further. Interest rates will remain higher for longer and may need to rise significantly. In such scenarios, debt-servicing costs will rise and the impact on the public finances will be brutal. Fiscal headroom will disappear and there will be no room for additional borrowing. Neither @Keir_Starmer nor @RachelReevesMP... has shown any willingness to grapple with what this means.... To say they are fiddling while Rome burns would be to credit them with noticing that Rome is on fire. ... by materially increasing borrowing relative to the 2024 baseline, Reeves has left us dangerously exposed to the risks we are now experiencing. The idea that she is somehow holding down gilt yields is fantasy. Britain is not returning to a low-interest-rate economy. That era has gone and it is not coming back this side of an election. Thanks to Labour’s handling of the public finances, Britain is now a high-interest-rate country. That has profound implications. It means that debt carries a real and rising cost. Attempts to expand borrowing will be met with even higher gilt yields and still tighter monetary policy. In that environment, the current debate within Labour about “doing more” or “being bolder” looks reckless. No leadership contender is prepared to revisit the triple lock. No one is engaging with planning reform that would deliver 1.5 million homes. And no one is willing to level with the public about the trade-offs that a high-interest-rate economy imposes.... telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/…

@benonwine Cook

WITHOUT GOOGLING, Name a Famous Captain but it can’t be Captain Kirk?

@TheHauskarl @mion39939826 She’s spot on, though. We were supposed to have 10 years of dystopian lockdowns before a vaccine emerged.

@mion39939826 Yep I think that's widely recognised at this point, my observation is drawn more from anecdotal observations of watching politics in different countries for many years and noticing how the pace - specifically - seems to have markedly picked up in recent years.

Indeed there is something ominous about it, absolutely, BUT I'm starting to mull over another theory too—specifically relating to the sense of how "rushed" multiple governments including the UK's have appeared in recent years. Labour most of all. Ever since Brexit there's been a palpable sense that somehow someone somewhere is running out of time. Sometimes it's ramming through assisted suicide. Sometimes it's a Digital ID. Sometimes it's abortion up-to-birth. Sometimes it's a million H1Bs here, there and everywhere. Sometimes it's Canada, sometimes it's Germany, sometimes it's Australia. But the pattern is always the same: deeply, profoundly unpopular governments ramming through masses of unwanted legislation that they never campaigned on and was never in their electoral literature. That's what I notice in the broader context of unloved regimes attempting to speedrun bad legislation through their respective parliaments. VPNs are only one small part of the larger pattern.

Chris, we’re miles off having a coherent response to the left-lib orthodoxy (Labour, Green, Lib-Dem, SNP, PC), and we know the centre-right (Con, Ref, Restore, SDP (maybe) Advance, Heritage) are fragmented. But I believe it will coalesce quickly. The key is articulating and promoting the right ideas for parties to adopt.

This person 👇 responded to my post about Farage and Lowe with this. "The first job of a political party is to gain power." That sentence is exactly why I left Reform. And exactly why I will never go back. The first job of a political party is to represent the people who voted for it. To serve them. To fight for them every single day whether the cameras are on or not. Power is the means. Not the end. The moment gaining power becomes the priority, everything else follows. Truth becomes negotiable. Policies shift with the wind. Pledges made on Monday get quietly dropped by Friday if the polling moves. The voters who believed in you become a resource to be managed rather than people to be served. We have all watched this happen before. With Labour. With the Conservatives. Parties that started with a purpose and ended up fighting for survival, changing position with every focus group, saying whatever kept them ahead in the polls. Reform told us it was different. I believed them. I built a local branch. I gave my time. I recruited people who trusted me. Then I watched the gap open up between what was said and what was done. Between the promise and the parliamentary record. Between the language of revolution and the reality of a leader spending 140 working days on second jobs while a failing government went largely unchallenged. And now this week. Threatening to place detention centres in areas based on how people voted. A policy their own leader told us on camera was a political impossibility. Not a plan. A gimmick. Designed to frighten people into voting a certain way and to generate a headline. That is what power for power's sake looks like. It does not matter if the policy works. It does not matter if it is legal. It does not matter if it contradicts what you said six months ago. What matters is whether it moves the dial today. I did not leave Reform to find somewhere more comfortable. I left because I believe there is a better way to do this. You build a political movement on foundational policies that genuinely improve people's lives. Policies that are costed, grounded in law, and designed to last beyond the next news cycle. You build trust slowly, brick by brick, by doing what you said you would do. By turning up. By asking the questions. By holding the line even when it is not popular. And you build from there. That is what Restore Britain is. Not a rebranding exercise. Not a vehicle for ambition. A genuine attempt to put the British public first at every single opportunity, with policies published in full for anyone to read and challenge. Power built on that foundation means something. Power seized as an end in itself means nothing at all. I have seen both from the inside. I know which one I am helping build.

@real_shirelass We are reaching the crescendo- hold on!

I do fear….if they don’t flip the switch soon, many who are struggling to hold the light for humanity are going to break. We are losing many great patriots everyday, it’s a struggle to keep up with the constant psyops, it’s completely emotionally draining us. We are losing the enthusiasm and energy, we are weary and becoming mentally drained. I’m feeling it already, it feels like a heavy burden, a sadness which covers my soul. I know the ending to all this, it’s what has kept me going, but I’m exhausted and so are many others. Justice is light….Justice is the way we can start to feel a release of what has built up for so long. The pressure is immense right now, and as human beings, how much more can we take. Psychologically what we are all going through is difficult. We are living through a time where nobody in our history has gone through before. Please give us something if you can hear us, we need to catch our breaths again. Please God, help us🙏

@KiszelyPhilip He could have been the ‘Tooth Fairy’ in an other incarnation.

“What? He’s a lying, abusive charlatan? I’m shocked!” Said no one ever.

@Plamps9000 @stuey_beef Followed

@stuey_beef As the Tory EU nut jobs before them. Labour are about to find out that lunatic Regime policies are unsaleable bollox. More EU, more taxes, more net zero and more garbage immigration are shit policies. Who knew?

The constitutional vandalism of what’s about to happen: After Thursday’s massacre, Labour backbenchers will draft an open letter - echoing the September 2006 round-robin that forced Tony Blair to name his departure date - demanding Starmer sets a timeline to quit. Tom Watson and junior ministers resigned en masse to force Blair out. This time it’ll be the 2024 intake, MPs who won their seats under Starmer, telling him he’s the problem. The difference? Blair was still winning. Starmer is presiding over 75% council seat losses, 15-point national polling collapse, and gilt yields at 28-year highs. Markets are pricing in a PM on death row. Wes Streeting is “plotting to move first” with 81+ MPs. Angela Rayner would beat Starmer 48-37 in a members’ vote. Andy Burnham leads first preferences. The Cabinet faces “collective nervous breakdown.” Yet Starmer lectures MPs about not “doomscrolling through leaders like the Tories.” The arrogance is spectacular. He’s not saving Labour from Tory-style chaos - he IS the chaos. Every day he clings on, borrowing costs rise and Britain pays the price. Resign.