Jan-K @JanKay_

Spencer Pratt just called George Clooney out in public, and he didn’t miss. Clooney has spent years treating every red carpet and every interview like a pulpit. Income inequality. The usual Hollywood sermon. “Do as I say.” Then he and Amal hit the Venice Film Festival this week and she walked a four-hour event in a custom Haider Ackermann for Tom Ford look with Cartier earrings priced at $149,000 and a Cartier diamond bracelet at $225,000. Roughly $375,000 in jewelry. For one night. Pratt posted the Page Six photos and wrote: “$500M net worth George Clooney could’ve permanently housed 8 homeless people for the rest of their lives with the money he spent on a single-use dress for his wife at a 4 hour event.” Then the line that actually landed: “I will never tolerate a woke scold lecture from these people. Just be an ostentatious celebrity and own it.” That’s the whole point. Wear the diamonds. Fly private. Buy the custom gown. Spend what you earned. Nobody elected Clooney to live like a monk. What doesn’t work is the lecture while the same people drip in stones most Americans will never see in their lifetime. Clooney can spend his money however he wants. He does not get to spend it like a king and then scold everyone else about fairness. Pratt said the quiet part out loud. Own the lifestyle. Drop the sermon.

@Prof_Umbongo That properly made me laugh. Bravo!

@QprSteven @CrimeLdn The account says London and UK news.

@kirtlenus A very well thought out and interesting set of proposals for the party going forward.

This is dispiriting. My immediate thoughts reflect that. In fact, this is the biggest missed opportunity in Yookay politics that nobody will talk about, and the most damning indictment of our political discourse that nobody will consider. How many times have we complained that there is a lack of seriousness in politics, that the political class has become critically unmoored from what the people want, and that the country needs are policies that are radical yet carefully considered? Well, here we had an insurgent party that actually matched the views of a plurality of voters, that took the time to do proper research and present brave policies, and that was led by somebody whose views were drawn from deeply considered first principles; who saw things with a clear eye as they were rather than what the SW1 NPC Narrative claimed; who wanted to engage in serious and proper debate; and who seemed above the focus-group refined soundbites and shouty, student common room pie-throwing contest that passes for politics in this country now. And what did he get for the hard yards he put in? Nothing. I found the Clacton by-election hugely affecting -- sometimes wretchedly dispiriting and sometimes radicalising. To be clear, nobody deserves a political platform: they must earn it. But it was a terrible shock to see the media in unison push Binface as a sort of public school yah boo sucks jape that would allow them to slap a cream pie in Farage's face; but where the joke was really on the voters in one of the poorest and most disenfranchised constituencies in England. There was, after all, at least one serious politician standing against Reform. William's reign at the SDP was a chance to improve British politics. To show that insurgent parties weren't all shouty golf club yahoos or callow, Keffiyeh-wearing, third-generation Crypto-Trots for whom Israel seemed to be as important as the NHS or schooling. To keep the mainstream parties honest by foregrounding ideas from outside the Westminster bubble. Instead, it was studiously ignored (I suspect, but cannot prove, that I am correct to use that adverb). Peter Hitchens has said that William Clouston's resignation is 'a pity'. I think it's more damning than that. It seems to me that people like him are aggressively extruded from the mainstream parties, and simply ignored outside it. What chance is there for national recovery, or to avoid the emergence of dangerous demagogues when the big crisis eventually hits (which it increasingly looks as though it will), if we exclude voices like this? Look, it's true that I am a supporter of the SDP that William built. I agreed with most of their platform. I liked many of the people there, who were engaged, concerned citizens of the best sort, and who were refreshingly normal, decent people (not necessarily a given in the world of political activism). I also liked William very much. I found him friendly, generous and wise. He was a stoic (in the philosophical sense) and far more intelligent than many people realise -- and certainly more than me, which is something that is always engaging. So perhaps people will say that I *would* write all this, given my personal feelings. And I understand that. Yet I do think that his resignation represents a lamentable missed chance for something better, and terrible indictment of our politics. I should also thank William for all his hard work in giving politically homeless people like myself some comradeship and hope, and wish him all the best. If ever somebody was suited to a position in the House of Lords, William is. Perhaps Lord Owen of Plymouth might finally like a companion on the social democrat benches after all these years of being alone.

William Clouston SDP @WilliamClouston

3 weeks ago

I have resigned as leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Thanks to all that have given me support, trust and kindness since 2018. (letter below ⬇️).

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@Wayne_Dixon @WilliamClouston @SDPhq Great words Wayne, I hope William knows how much he is appreciated by his party.

@TheExtremeMusi1 Bore.

Jason Arday’s family have released a statement to say they are thinking of Narinder Kaur at this difficult time.

@Lord_Talbot64 Bottom right was in Gavin & Stacey but the rest of them? No idea at all.

@RebeccaCNReid Ever the rebel Rebecca!

@Trailer_Swift69 It was Lady Nugee threatening to sue, here's a great take on it! youtube.com/shorts/IGT4Bnh…

@SamTrowler @SDPhq Welcome aboard, you made the right decision!

@ScepticalSista @aswren Norris. Worked in the newsagents with Rita and Mavis. Back in the day when it was worth watching.

@ThePapaCars @Wilko55elaine @CrimeLdn A beautiful *knife wielding* bike thief.

Dear Adam, I have taken time to think about your apology. Mostly because, having made a mistake publicly before, I was keen to accept yours. It hurts when people don’t understand that you are sorry for messing up. I get that, probably more than most. But here’s the thing… I’m not sure you understand what you did wrong. And so you don’t really understand what you are apologising for or why. With that in mind, I want to help you. I didn’t know Ann, except as a powerhouse in politics and that so many people have spoken of her friendship and great loyalty. How lovely, I wish I had known her. I am utterly disinterested in her sexual prowess or the state of her virginity. But I would have enjoyed hearing you speak of her great accomplishments. Not as a woman, but simply as a human being. Here’s a list. She served in the House of Commons for 23 years and won five general elections. She served as a government minister in Social Security, Employment and the Home Office, where she was Minister of State for Prisons. She rose to become Shadow Health Secretary and then Shadow Home Secretary. She was appointed to the Privy Council. After leaving Westminster, she built an entirely new career as an author, broadcaster, documentary-maker, stage performer and television personality. Then, at the age of 71, she returned to elected politics and became a Member of the European Parliament. She was a longstanding advocate for Britain leaving the European Union and, when the political establishment failed to deliver the referendum result, she left the Conservative Party after more than 50 years and stood for the Brexit Party. She was elected as an MEP and took the argument for British independence directly into the European Parliament. She was also an unapologetic defender of free speech. She continued to speak openly on difficult and unfashionable subjects when others chose silence, it was easier to do that, she accepted the criticism and hostility that came with it rather than surrendering her convictions. Her Catholic faith was central to her life. She converted to Catholicism, met Pope John Paul II in Rome and was later made a Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great by Pope Benedict XVI for her service to politics and public life. She remained a powerful public voice well into her late seventies, defending her beliefs despite decades of ridicule and hostility. That is an extraordinary life of public service, courage and reinvention. Yet, when asked to speak about her after her sudden and violent death, you chose to tell the country that she was a “spinster”, an “old maid” and a virgin. You discussed a failed relationship and suggested that afterwards she simply dedicated herself to other activities. Do you understand the reduction involved in that? You took the life of a highly accomplished woman and assessed it according to whether she had married, whether she had sex and whether a man had wanted her. That is what was wrong. That is what you should have known. It wasn’t simply that your words were poorly chosen or badly timed. It was the instinct to view a woman’s entire life through her relationship with men, even when her achievements should have rendered that completely irrelevant. Nobody discussing the death of an accomplished male politician would think it necessary to tell viewers whether he was a virgin, speculate about his sex life or describe him as an ageing bachelor whose romance had failed. I don’t want you cancelled. I don’t believe that people should be denied forgiveness when they make mistakes. But a meaningful apology has to identify the actual wrong. Ann was murdered after a lifetime of public service. At the moment her achievements should have been remembered, you diminished her to an unmarried woman who apparently hadn’t had sex. She deserved better than that. And I’m still not sure you get it. But every woman who watched you speak of her and then read your apology does. Bernie.

Adam Boulton @adamboultonTABB

2 months ago

AN APOLOGY I was seriously wrong and insensitive in one of the several media appearances I made yesterday in reaction to the death of Ann Widdecombe. I got the timing and tone of my initial word portrait of her wrong. Of course I shared, and share, the horror at her murder and

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@carlos_dnger @daily_romania It was a male, female and their two children. It was also the second time they'd squatted having previously done the exact same thing to another property owner.

Badenoch's Purge is a Mercy Killing, not a Massacre For years the Conservative Party's problem was not policy. It was character. It kept promoting people who talked like conservatives and voted like technocrats, who nodded along to net zero targets they privately doubted and treaties they privately resented. Kemi Badenoch has just done something rare in British politics: she has looked at that habit and called it what it is. Cowardice dressed up as pragmatism. Her decision to block former MPs from standing again if they still cling to net zero, or still defend Britain's subjection to Strasbourg, will be painted by critics as ruthless. It is not ruthless. It is honest. A party that lost catastrophically in 2024 does not get to relitigate that defeat by recycling the same faces and the same instincts. Voters did not reject the Conservatives because the party wasn't nice enough to its old guard. They rejected it because it had stopped standing for anything distinguishable from the consensus it claimed to oppose. Net zero and the ECHR are not minor technical disputes. They are the clearest tests going of whether a politician actually believes in national self-government, or merely enjoys the theatre of it. A candidate who still insists Britain must hit arbitrary carbon targets, whatever the cost to industry and household bills, has not learned anything from a decade of rising energy prices. A candidate who thinks Strasbourg's rulings are compatible with controlling Britain's own borders is not being moderate. They are being evasive. What makes this striking is the alternative Badenoch is proposing. Not more career politicians, not more special advisers who have never run so much as a corner shop, but people who have actually built things, taught in classrooms, served in uniform, or kept a small business afloat. It is an unfashionable idea: that competence and conviction matter more than polish. But it is exactly what a party trying to prove it has changed needs to demonstrate, not merely announce. Compare that with the government it is up against. Much of the current Parliamentary Labour Party arrived from the charity sector and NGOs, backgrounds built around advocacy and institutional compassion, not the harder trade-offs of running a country. It shows in the instincts on display: a preference for managing sentiment over confronting problems. Badenoch's bet is that Britain needs fewer people trained to represent a cause and more who have had to deliver a result. There will be a cost. Some of the rejected will go to the papers. Some will drift to Reform, adding to a defection story that has already dented the Tories once. Badenoch's response, "so be it", is the correct one. A party terrified of losing people who do not agree with its direction will never have a direction. Every serious political project involves deciding who does not belong in it. The Conservatives spent the last parliament unable to do that, and the country noticed. Contrast this with the alternatives on offer. Reform's vetting has produced candidates that make its own leader wince. Labour, with over four hundred MPs, could not find anyone better to replace Starmer than a man who once lost to Jeremy Corbyn. Against that backdrop, a party willing to say no to its own former MPs looks less like an act of cruelty and more like the first sign of a functioning institution. None of this guarantees electoral success. Polling still has the Conservatives level with Labour and behind Reform. But recovery has to start somewhere, and it rarely starts with comfort. Badenoch is betting that voters can tell the difference between a party performing seriousness and one practising it. That bet is worth taking.

@allanjakeford @TalkTV @JuliaHB1 Except she (Catherine) wasn't, it was at the Queen's Platinum Jubilee.

@MattyAustwick @Footballfights I jumped on the thread to say exactly that but you beat me to it - 21 hours ago!

Yes, lots of people used to say things like paedophile criminals could be housed in the female prison estate. Nightmare.

Lisa Nandy MP @lisanandy

2 months ago

I've decided to leave this platform and my Department will too. A platform originally designed for free speech and expression now favours abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate. It isn't healthy for our democracy or our communities and I don’t want to support it.

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