Rishi Sunak is seeking to alienate vulnerable people in an attempt to recover his poor polling ratings
A thread on this week’s announcement 🧵
If his last big electoral gambit was cutting off high speed rail from the North, Sunak’s latest wheeze appears to focus on cutting off vulnerable and unwell people from the support they need to get by
The Prime Minister, staring down the barrel of a humiliating general election defeat, has decided to take the fight to "sicknote Britain" in a bid to make the lives of millions of struggling people even harder than they already are.
I saw a headline this week which read ‘homeless people should not be arrested because they smell’
How on earth did this even need to be said in the UK in 2024?
Well it’s a response to another cruel government policy 🧵
Why such a remarkable statement even has to be made by politicians tells us a lot about the pernicious and nasty agenda of this government when it comes to the vulnerable
The context here is that the government's Criminal Justice Bill is making its way through Parliament. The government says it is seeking to replace the archaic 1824 Vagrancy Act but its new plans are similarly grim.
There was some big news this week which should have been top of the news agenda - the fact that it wasn’t and the story that dominated the public space instead tells a worrying story about the priorities of many in this country 🧵
On Wednesday I was chairing an event about the future of the Liverpool City Region - it was a wide ranging discussion with experts in their field
One of those was Professor David Taylor-Robinson, an expert in public health and children’s public health
He told the event of some of the harrowing stories he has heard about children growing up in poverty in Liverpool while carrying out his research.
He spoke of kids turning up to school with no shoes and of hungry children sharing their only meal of the day with their siblings
It’s St Patrick’s Day and I am nap-trapped by a snoozing baby so I’ll use this opportunity to tell a story about a trip to Ireland that turned into an unforgettable family reunion 🇮🇪 🧵
My mum was born in England after her parents emigrated from Ireland. For her birthday in 2018, we arranged a trip over the Irish sea with the aim of tracing some of her family roots.
What we didn't know was that my brother-in-law - a keen amateur genealogist - had put some surprises in place that would make this a trip that we would never forget.
As if we needed any further proof, this past week has shown us what a total and utter con the government’s so-called ‘Levelling Up’ agenda really is
A little Sunday 🧵 for you
It was Maya Angelou who coined the timeless phrase: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
When it comes to Rishi Sunak, this phrase is highly pertinent.
It was, of course, on a sun-soaked green in Tunbridge Wells last summer when Sunak made it abundantly clear how he feels about 'levelling up' the country.
There was a day this past week when it felt like many of Britain's many problems were brought out into the open for all to see.
A 🧵 on a day in the life of a failing state
It was a Wednesday and I was on a train, going through some emails. Suddenly a glut came through from the so-called Department of Levelling Up.
Each of these emails on each of these topics opened a window into just how broken this country has become.
First up was rough sleeping. The data that arrived in my inbox showed that this is a soaring national crisis. Overall, rough sleeping is up by 27%. The, admittedly imperfect method of counting found that 4,000 people were rough sleeping in England on a single night last autumn.