#AnyQuestions “With rising energy costs, should we be exploiting our gas and oil reserves?”
@EdwardJDavey “The truth is that price of gas/oil is set globally so even if we produce more it won’t help. Good news is renewables can cut people’s bills.” #CostOfLivingCrisis
@EdwardJDavey “This is just a swindle! The chancellor is telling you, Robert just repeated it, that he’s cutting taxes. He’s not, he’s shoving yr taxes up…conservatives have completely lost the plot!”
“There should be visa free access to our country for #Ukranian refugees. No visas! Says @EdwardJDavey
“We allow wealthy people from over 50 countries to enter 🇬🇧 visa free, with no security checks…. Why can’t we allow Ukrainian mothers and children fleeing Putin’s bombs?”
“This PM has to go!” Declares @EdwardJDavey audience breaks into 👏👏👏
“And the reasons is to face the domestic #CostOfLiving crisis and #Ukraine️ crisis, we need a PM we can trust. And I don’t think even Tory backbenchers trust him TBH, let alone the British public!”
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
🧵 Last night on @Channel4News, Lord Maurice Glasman (who claims that McSweeney is one of theirs) said the quiet part out loud:
Brexit was just the beginning.
What comes next? A radical border regime, slashed welfare, and a purge of “progressive” politics — under Labour. 👇
Glasman called Brexit “a great move by the British people”. For him, it wasn’t about sovereignty — it was about rebuilding the nation on harder, harsher terms: national service, closed borders, and an end to liberal rights.
This is the ideological engine behind Starmer’s rightward lurch. Glasman, who founded Blue Labour, wants to reset the nation — not toward social justice, but toward tradition, obedience, and state‑enforced identity
🧵Brexit wasn’t a rebellion against global elites. It was a blueprint by them.
Hedge funds and think tanks turned “Take Back Control” into a fire sale.
From the start, Brexit was bankrolled by billionaires — not for patriotism, but for profit.
Take Crispin Odey, a hedge fund boss who made £220 million betting on chaos the day after the referendum.
He didn’t lose from Brexit. He cashed in.
1/7
Then there’s Paul Marshall, investor in GB News and backer of the Legatum Institute — the think tank that pushed the myth of a deregulated “agrarian utopia”.
They sold farmers dreams. Now they sell outrage.
These people didn’t want stability. They wanted a bonfire of regulation:
💷 Scrap protections
🏦 Slash tax
🌱 Open the door to cheap, low-standard imports
All under the flag of “freedom.”
Who lost?
🔻 SMEs swamped by red tape
🔻 Farmers undercut and abandoned
🔻 Workers told to accept less — or leave
🔻 Families paying more for food, fuel, and rent
• “Progressives” remember that the only time the Lib Dems were in government in the last 80 years, they voted for massive cuts to public services and council funding, and a tax on poorer people’s bedrooms, among many other catastrophes, for which we’re all paying a price.
And don’t get me started on Vince Cable’s fire sale of Royal Mail. The question Martin Kettle should be asking is: “How is this disgraceful outfit still going?” Peter Loschi
Oldham, Greater Manchester
• “Maybe people don’t take the Lib Dems seriously because of the sense that the party is opportunistic, a fact that manifested itself in 2010. Under Nick Clegg, it couldn’t move fast enough to form a coalition government, which went on to inflict the cruel and callous economic austerity measures that reverberate to this day. The Lib Dems are, and always have been, anything to anyone, depending on which way the wind is blowing.”
Gordon Vassell
Hull
• Over the past 70 years, the Lib Dems and their predecessors have presented themselves as a party of protest primarily aimed at disaffected supporters of the government of the day. Before then, Liberal party key thinkers such as David Lloyd George, John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge offered realistic critiques of political and economic “certainties” and were profoundly instrumental in establishing the welfare state and postwar full employment. Such far-sightedness offers a model of political thinking and practice to all who want substantial change today.
In his column, Martin Kettle rightly highlights the important writings of David Marquand, a man of great analysis and vision. In Mammon’s Kingdom, he laid bare the devastating trajectory of UK politics and economics since 1979. Everyone interested in politics – left, centre or right – should read this book and, as they do, ask themselves how we stop this continuing catastrophe. Marquand’s death last week was a very severe loss for us all.
Paul Lally
Liverpool
In the first of a two-part series, business reporters look at how parts of the service economy are faring almost two and a half years after the end of the Brexit transition period in late 2020.
“Britain voted to leave the EU seven years ago, but has failed to define its new global trading relationships. To regain its place as one of the strongest growing G7 countries, Britain needs a bold, forward-looking policy agenda and industrial strategy integrated with an actively… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
China USA trade war is serious threat to Britain thanks to #Brexit.
“Britain voted to leave the EU seven years ago, but has failed to define its new global trading relationships.”
Analysis finds that the UK’s economy will suffer more than those of the US, EU and China in the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Tories are drawing up plans for a succession of by-elections in the event that Boris Johnson is forced to resign and prominent supporters stand down so they can accept peerages.
The Times has been told that party staffers will conduct a series of “by-election drills” next week… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Senior Tories are increasingly concerned that Johnson could resign in protest if the report, due next month, is critical of him. He could also face a by-election if the committee decides to suspend him from the Commons for 10+ days.
Johnson has denied that he is preparing to make a “chicken run” to Henley, a constituency in Oxfordshire he previously represented. John Howell, the incumbent who is standing down, has said that Johnson would succeed him “over my dead body”. A spokesman for Johnson said: “Boris… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Clark said PM was so unenthusiastic about the idea that it was “like a guilty secret”, and that he had never heard Sunak even refer to “industrial strategy”.
The role of the state in the market economy has become a huge issue after US president Joe Biden’s $369bn green subsidy… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Another huge error by Sunak when chancellor: he binned Clark’s industrial strategy in March 2021 in a move that even surprised some of those working in Boris Johnson’s government at the time. “The Treasury blindsided us,” said one official.