Jason Miller, Snr adviser on the Trump campaign says he’s spoken to the President in the last 24 hours and says he’s in (you guessed it) “very good spirits.” Interesting change of tone too, saying he wants Americans to “be careful”, socially distance and wear a mask. #MTP
Miller says that these were President Trump’s words to him: “Jason, I want you to tell people two things. We’re going to defeat this virus and be careful: if you can’t socially distance, wear a mask, wash your hands, use hand sanitiser.” #MTP
Fair to say this a) doesn’t exactly sound like the President’s style of speech b) has not generally been his consistent message up to now.
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NEW: Latest @TheNewsAgents Investigates - Britain’s hidden homeless children
Nearly 140,000 kids in Britain are now homeless, in so-called “temporary accommodation”. We went to a school where half of the kids don’t have a home to call their own. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the…
It’s having a devastating effect on the educational outcomes of a big and growing group of working class kids. They’re almost forgotten, because they’re not on the streets. But their living conditions are Victorian, often sharing one room with their parents, siblings, shared bath.
Some of the kids come to school not having been able to wash in the mornings because there wasn’t an agailable bathroom in the temporary accomm. They’re embarrassed and have to wash at school. There are sometimes safeguarding issues because the kids are sharing bathrooms with strangers in the TA.
NEW: Lib Dems call on the govt to suspend arms sales to Israel.
@EdwardJDavey: “Clearly, the thought that British-made arms could have been used in strikes such as these is completely unacceptable.
“The government must take swift action to suspend arms exports to Israel."
There's been (more or less) a fragile consensus between Conservative and Labour on policy towards Israel and the war. Pressure is going to increase on Starmer to move. Possibly (and more importantly) Sunak too...
Flick Drummond, Tory MP for Meon Valley has also said arms to Israel should cease.
“This has been concerning me for some time. What worries me is the prospect of UK arms being used in Israel’s actions in Gaza which I believe have broken international law.”
For the general election, very little. This was a unique by election and little is transferable. But it does change politics before the election and possibly tells us something about the shape of politics after it as well.
In the short term the result is highly embarrassing for Keir Starmer and for Labour. The Labour vote collapsed by over 40 % points. Labour will point to the fact that they withdrew support. But that reminds us that they had to withdraw support in a safe seat, itself a shambles.
Questions for the leadership as to why the by-election was held so quickly and why the selection process happened so quickly. As it is a safe Labour seat has been handed to one of the party's most implacable opponents.
It’s not like the British Parliament makes everything about itself, no not remotely
Net result of all of this? Starmer has a lucky escape. Speaker is weaker. Commons is farcical. Nothing changes in Gaza. MPs don’t really get their vote. We continue not to scrutinise what matters (and even then not that much) , which is the government’s position and plan.
Btw attack the Speaker’s decisions or not, but the threat of violence against MPs is real. Speaker should be thinking about that. The fact we’ve just come to accept that as a kind of background to our politics is the grimmest thing of all.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets
-cuts of to public services by £300m over two years
-21% rise in Council Tax
-dimming street lights
-fortnightly bin collections
Breakdown of cuts for 2024-25
-£23.7m from adult social care
-£51.5m from children’s services
-£6.2m from housing
-£39.2m from city operations
More elsewhere. This follows long term reduction in spending power from the council, as per rest of local govt.
Libraries, cultural organisations in the city all set to endure substantial cuts. 600 job losses at the council likely.
If you’re a Birmingham resident (biggest local authority in Europe) you’re going to feel this in years ahead in all sorts of ways.