Northern Man v2

@Ed_Miliband “You can’t solve a shortage of something by producing more of it”

You can’t solve a fossil fuel crisis by doubling down on fossil fuels. The only route to energy security is clean homegrown power that we control.

@TrisOsborneMP @CarignanRidge @Conservatives I notice you are studiously avoiding the inconvenient data on the risible “one in, one out” deal. Party before country as usual.

@CarignanRidge @Conservatives It’s the data, Roger.

Some very positive news but due to the right wing Iran War there is caution. A war Kemi/Nigel backed from outset. The number also way below the 8.1% peak figure under the @Conservatives from 2010-2024.

@campbellclaret Before Brexit I was worried about weapons of mass destruction raining down on me within 45 minutes. After Brexit those worries went away.

I’m sure the media will remind them there was no small boats issue before Brexit

@SteveReedMP Oh we're feeling it. You'll get some feedback on 7th May (now that we're allowed to vote, which your government didn't want us to be able to).

Labour is changing the country but people aren’t feeling it yet. We will keep working hard until they do.

@TrisOsborneMP @Covbluenose @UKLabour What is the latest data on the so-called “One in, one out” deal telling you Tris? Personally I think a clear trend is emerging don’t you?

@Covbluenose @UKLabour These are the stats Mark, I’ll wait for more but a clear trend is emerging based on data series. Just possibly you are so partisan you don’t want to see the evidence?

6 month trends also point to this conclusion. Almost as if @UKLabour is once again managing a public policy mess left. Without the Rwanda gimmick…

This, in spades.

@D_Fens_Ghost “Line on the left. One cross each”.

Bavette steak Cauliflower cheese puree Cauliflower cheese Glazed golden beetroot Mustard roasties Crispy kale Amarone and bone marrow jus

@LukePollard I love that a minor party is dominating your every waking hour. Your publicity is helping them to form the next government.

The Conservative councillor who ordered the chopping down of the trees in the middle of the night on Armada Way in Plymouth is now standing for Reform UK. Not surprising considering they're a retirement home for failed Tories.  plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-…

@10DowningStreet After months of breathing recycled air the first smell the crew gets is the stench of hypocrisy.

@JackWDart GB News is under no obligation to be impartial. Don’t you know that?

More than anything else, are we still pretending GB News is impartial? This is beyond a joke. No pressure, just agreement with an official from the same party. Ofcom isn’t fit for purpose.

This is hilarious. @TomHayesBmouth is a legend, though not in the way he thinks he is.

@PaulPitt1967 Morning Paul. I’m not much wiser having looked it up.

Morning everyone I must be getting old Looks like I'm gonna have to wait a while What the hell, I'm bored

@JChimirie66677 @sqlblues @petuniasforever If the result is not disclosed then why bother with the vetting? I have been vetted and my employer was told the outcome - they had to be to know that I could do the job.

Tim, fair point and worth addressing properly. Multiple sourced reports published yesterday state that information arising from the vetting process, including any concerns, is never shared with ministers, and that the result itself is binary and not disclosed. The system as reported does not appear to separate the result from the detail in the way you suggest. That may well be a flaw in the system, and it is one that Ciaran Martin's position supports. But on the basis of what is currently on the record, the result was not Robbins's to share. The question that remains unanswered, and which Monday's statement must address, is who authorised the exceptional override, and on what documented grounds.

Starmer Sacked the Man Who Followed the Rules. Keir Starmer did not sack Sir Olly Robbins because he did something wrong. He sacked him because he did something inconvenient. That distinction matters more than anything else that has happened this week, and this has been a week of considerable consequence. Ciaran Martin, former head of the National Cyber Security Centre and a man with direct professional knowledge of how the vetting system operates, went on the record yesterday to say that Robbins had not only no duty to inform Downing Street of Mandelson's vetting failure, he had a positive duty not to. The system is designed that way deliberately. Security vetting exists at arm's length from political authority precisely to prevent ministers from interfering in assessments that should be made on security grounds alone. Robbins followed the rules. Starmer dismissed him anyway. What Starmer has done is construct a causal chain that does not exist. The argument being assembled in Downing Street runs as follows: Robbins overruled the security services, Robbins did not tell us, and therefore we bear no responsibility for what followed. Every part of that argument is false. The decision to appoint Mandelson was Starmer's. He made it before vetting was complete. He made it in full knowledge of the Epstein connection. He made it because his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, a protégé of Mandelson, pushed for it despite institutional warnings. The vetting failure did not cause the appointment. The appointment came first. Starmer signed it off and the vetting process, working exactly as designed, subsequently said no. The sacrifice of Robbins also destroys what remains of Starmer's own defence. He has spent months insisting that process failed him, that he was deceived, that the system let him down. A former head of the National Cyber Security Centre has now said publicly that there was no process failure. The system worked. Which means the problem was never process. The problem was judgment. Starmer's judgment, exercised before the process had even concluded. Consider what the dismissal means for Whitehall. Every senior civil servant in every department now understands the lesson. Following established procedure will not protect you if the political consequences prove embarrassing. Correct conduct is no defence against a Prime Minister who needs a fall guy. The chilling effect on institutional independence will outlast this government and this scandal. Starmer has not just sacrificed one official. He has sent a message to the entire senior civil service about what loyalty to process is actually worth. Meanwhile the documents withheld from Parliament grow more suspicious by the day. The government will not say how many it is concealing. It will not describe their general type. It will not explain why their release would prejudice any future prosecution beyond asserting that it would. Sir Michael Ellis, a former Attorney General and criminal barrister of seventeen years standing, has said publicly that the prosecution argument is nonsense, that the test for contempt requires a substantial risk of serious prejudice that the existing wall of media coverage has already made effectively impossible to meet. A government with nothing to hide does not hide things it cannot explain. A Prime Minister with clean hands does not sack the civil servant whose hands were cleanest. Robbins told friends he would not be the fall guy. He was made one regardless. Starmer called the vetting failure a failing of the state. The man who followed the state's rules lost his job the same day. The public can see what that is. They have a word for it. So does the Ministerial Code. Keir Starmer and Olly Robbins

@jonburkeUK Prove point 3. I asked you before and you ran away.

1/ Renewable electricity can be used to power machines like cars, displacing ruinous fossil fuels. 2/ Renewable electricity can be used to manufacture steel and chemicals like ammonia for fertiliser. 3/ 93% of North Sea oil and gas has been extracted. It peaked in 1999.

@RachelReevesMP Were you making the tea?

In D.C. I have been working with partners to support safe passage for energy supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, to protect households and businesses from rising costs. It is good news that it has been reopened, now we must see a permanent ceasefire and stability returned.

@jonburkeUK The UK’s outrageous electricity prices are certainly being noticed, hence the withdrawal of a planned £31bn investment earlier this week.

Britain’s clean, secure energy success story is being noticed across the world! 🇬🇧⚡️♻️ For the first time in decades, we’re a leader not a follower, yet all Farage, Badenoch, the Daily Telegraph, & the rest of Britain’s right wingers do is talk the country down.

@FlavellG @Redagitator Wow! Many congratulations to both of you and best wishes for a long and happy life together.

News Alert ‼️ Sorry I wasn’t on much yesterday, was a little busy getting married! Yes, indeed, my sweetheart @Redagitator & I eloped in Antigua, and will now relax & enjoy our honeymoon… 🥂🍾❤️ Surprise! 😎

@paulmasonnews What are they lubricated with Paul?

Wind turbines give you free energy and reduce your dependence on petroleum-states

@sallyanna25 @JuliaHB1 Just what I was thinking.

Flying to another country to co-host a VIRTUAL summit. You couldn't make this stuff up. 🤯

@afneil @ward4749 Trump should break off diplomatic relations with Starmer’s government. The PM put a known security risk into the heart of the American government, where Mandelson will have seen things above Top Secret level.

Amid the welter of details that will now engulf this story let’s keep in mind one thing: How is that that somebody who failed security vetting could still be appointed our ambassador to the USA? It defies belief and logic.