@FFS_WhatNow Good luck to Gibraltar once the border opens… they’re gonna need it.
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Matt 🏳️🌈🇺🇦🇮🇱
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@NeilDotObrien This has been true for over 30 years, including the government he was part of. It’s just Starmer has made a particular art of it just at the moment the chickens have finally come home to roost.
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Incredible criticism of Starmer from a former Labour Defence Secretary: “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.”
Lucy Fisher@LOS_Fisher
Robertson has spoken exclusively to @FT and shared a speech he’ll make in Salisbury tmrw In it he’ll accuse ‘non-military experts in the Treasury’ of ‘vandalism’, arguing: ‘We cannot defend Britain with an ever expanding welfare budget’ ft.com/content/88b1f1…
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@jcartlidgemp Ever since the end of the Cold War successive governments have prioritised growing the welfare state over defence. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. There needs to be a dramatic cut in the size of the welfare state, far beyond even what’s being talked about today.
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Today, 2 of the 3 authors of Labour’s own Strategic Defence Review - Lord Robertson & Gen Barrons - have slammed Starmer’s failure to fund Defence. Robertson says ‘cut welfare’. We’d restore the 2 child benefit cap to fund defence & have offered to work with the PM to go further.
Kemi Badenoch@KemiBadenoch
The former Labour minister who wrote Keir Starmer’s Strategic Defence Review has accused the PM of “corrosive complacency” and said “we cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget”. I completely agree. It was exactly what I told Starmer in Parliament yesterday and said in my speech to Defence experts at the weekend. We need to get serious. The Conservatives would restore the two child benefit cap and repurpose funds from net zero projects to invest in our military. Meanwhile the government have NO plan and, as Lord Robertson points out, Rachel Reeves had only 40 words on defence in her Budget and none in the Spring Statement. You can’t trust Labour on defence.
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@WG_RumblePants @englandcricket That’s just it. The last four years have been an attempt to short circuit all that hard work with a style of play that emphasises hope over preparation. The only way to improve is to do the hard stuff right.
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Sort of feel that this is part of the problem. England are not a better team than that. They’re a pretty average team that occasionally outperforms, but they haven’t beaten India or Australia in a series home or away in a very long time.
They need to put in more work on getting the basics right: work ethic, professionalism, technique and relentless hunger to win.
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@DPJHodges It’s government by opposition. A generation of Labour politicians who have known nothing but “saying stuff” from the opposition benches without ever having to actually do anything.
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This highlights the issue. Starmer’s rhetoric, and the No.10 spin, is never actually matched by action.
Ben Obese-Jecty MP@BenObeseJecty
“There is a corrosive complacency today in Britain’s political leadership. Lip service is paid to the risks, the threats, the bright red signals of danger.” An extraordinary intervention from Lord George Robertson, former Labour Defence Secretary, former Secretary General of NATO and co-author of the current Strategic Defence Review. His criticism here of Keir Starmer’s failure to expedite the increase in defence spending to match the current threats we face says much about our inability to address the gaps in our capability. Lord Robertson points towards the inability of Rachel Reeves and the Treasury to make funding available as they prevent the Defence Investment Plan from being signed off in favour of an ever-increasing welfare budget. Keir Starmer has no answers on defence.
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@anon_opin Sorry guys, the football pitch has to go so we can install a downhill slope on the off chance one of you might make it to the olympics.
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Great Britain would get far more medals in the Winter Olympics if these sports were promoted and taught at all state schools instead of just a bunch of rich kids who's parents can afford holidays in Verbier during the February half term.
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@kateferguson4 Maybe ask Lebanon to stop allowing Hezbollah to use their territory to attack Israel if Lebanon wants to be included in the ceasefire.
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Keir Starmer is up in Parliament giving a statement to MPs on the Iran war.
PM: “Whilst the ceasefire is undeniably welcome, it is also highly fragile.
“A lot of work is needed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“We call for Lebanon to be included in the ceasefire.”
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@danielmgmoylan Interesting that they feel they need this power and so don’t think they could get these changes through Parliament even with their massive majority.
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@sharrond62 Wonderful, proper old school sic-fi. I suggest taking tissues as you end up caring more about a rock alien than you ever thought you would.
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Project Hail Mary… who’s been? Ages since I’ve been to the cinema, think this might be the one
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@TransHomophobes Straight men not concerned by homophobic and misogynistic ideology shocker.
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So basically you’re saying that only gay men and women respect you enough to be honest with you?
I’d say man up, but… you know 😉
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@pittworldwide Like a Prayer, Intervention, Erotica, Hung Up, Waiting
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You get to listen to 5 Madonna songs for the rest of your life and no others - what you choosing?
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@Telegraph So how did they know which children were boys so they could be treated as gender fluid (up until they weren’t) and the girls could be treated as girls from birth?
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👦 The Bowes links 19th-century breeching practice to LGBTQIA+ ideology but gender-critical campaigners say it is ‘rewriting history’
🔗 telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/1…
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@MrTCHarris Personally I love Labour’s plan to become the party of genderists and Islamists just as those voters found the Green Party.
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Well, d'uh. More worrying, though, is a Labour Party culture that rewards ministers who refuse to stand up for women's rights. I know political parties must evolve and adapt, but who could have predicted this trajectory for Labour?
Daily Mail@DailyMail
Bridget Phillipson 'betraying women' on Supreme Court gender ruling: Labour minister is accused of 'blocking guidance on single-sex spaces to protect her career' trib.al/KbTJ9aM
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@anyabike So the boys were gender fluid up to the point when they weren’t, meanwhile girls’ gender was established from birth. Neither of these things are possible if you assume gender is fluid rather than it being absolutely obvious to everyone whether a new born baby is a boy or a girl.
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Is there a Naomi Woolf prize for historical research? I would like to nominate this if there is. telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/1…
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@iseult “I don’t use it like a cis man” means “I use it exactly the same way but with way more cognitive dissonance”
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Matt 🏳️🌈🇺🇦🇮🇱 đã retweet
Very, very important speech today by @KemiBadenoch at the @LondonDefConf. This is what sets her apart from all the other UK party leaders. "The mirror that [Trump] is holding up to Europe and that we find so uncomfortable to look in is showing us that without the United States, we cannot properly defend ourselves."
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@MrTCHarris I seem to remember the Papacy was all in favour of the Crusades.
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God was agnostic on Hitler, apparently.
Pope Leo XIV@Pontifex
God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs. Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.
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@kylie_90s One of Kylie’s great lest live moments. I’d love her to do this again, devote a part of her show to her ballads/down tempo moments and just let her vocals shine through, her voice is even stronger today than 25 years ago.
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and this live vocal 🔥 🎤
mason ✰ AG8 IS COMING@masonsvie
AG8 track 1 will sound like this I hope
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@sethdanie1 Why would you include “missing and murdered” in an acronym with sexualities and gender identities?
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Please just call me the f-slur at this point, we're begging you
Joey Mannarino@JoeyMannarino
Canada has updated the LGBTQ acronym to MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+. That stands for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual. Yes, really. I'm not joking. I wish I was.
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@tomhfh See also “dementia tax” in 2017. It’s easy for Labour when the media do their propaganda for them. No wonder that since 2017, there have been no further serious attempts at solving the social care cost issue.
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Remember when the coalition government decided to give less free money through Housing Benefit or UC to working age benefit claimants living in large council houses that had spare bedrooms?
Why did the media let Labour get away with calling that a "tax"?
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