I see some of the nicest people on the internet are incandescent that I said on TalkTV earlier kids should be supported to be who they are, that if trans kids don’t want their parents to know there may be a reason for that, and that maybe we should trust and respect kids. (1/5) As adults we like to centre ourselves and assume we know best, but you can also frame it like this: if a child genuinely believes they’re in the wrong body and every adult around them tells them no, they’re wrong, they’re a problem, how does that help the child ever? (2/5)

Good to have an early shoutout for aspiration by Sunak’s wife. Remember kids, if you work for Goldman Sachs and marry a billionaire’s daughter you too can have a lot of money! Extraordinary chutzpah for Sunak to remind everyone how Labour tried to make Corbyn prime minister when he’s addressing a crowd that literally voted for Liz Truss

Ok I have to bloody watch it now because I’m talking about it on TV later Johnson now protesting that Sue Gray’s evidence should be admissible when it suits him, even though he spent the last few weeks discrediting her as a Labour stooge

Even Nicola Sturgeon’s critics should acknowledge that she has been Britain’s most talented, persuasive and successful politician for the last eight years. It will be extremely hard to fill her shoes. Whether it was the trans issue or the Supreme Court decision, in both of which cases she behaved with integrity, the truth is Sturgeon had seemed to pass the peak of her powers. The SNP’s problem is that the cause of independence appears to be headed in the same direction.

I’m not sure that Starmer ‘being on the side of the nurses’ union’ is the killer attack Sunak thinks it is #PMQs ‘Gone from clapping the nurses to sacking the nurses’ may, however, prove a good line

Interesting start to PMQs when Sunak refuses to confirm that recipients of Covid fines won’t be elevated to the Lords Starmer now going hard on Williamson. ‘A pathetic bully who’d never get away with it if people like the PM didn’t elevate him to power.’ Sunak says it’s right that he resigned but not that it was wrong to appoint him. To put it politely, he’s struggling.

Starmer asks who broke the asylum system and all Sunak has to talk about is Brexit. Starmer replies ‘no-one on this side wants open borders’. It’s gonna be a grim one. Clearly Starmer wants to tackle the immigration issue and show that Labour can talk tough, but he risks alienating a lot of people who are appalled by the Tories’ rhetoric and want to know Labour is opposing on account of principle, not just efficiency.

OK, this should be interesting… Sunak certainly seems more cheerful than he did yesterday

How is this only Truss’s third #PMQs? It feels like she’s been prime minister for ten years Anyway, here we fucking go.

First #PMQs in what feels like 500 years. Truss is now firmly Johnson Mark 2: completely ducks Starmer’s question about whether the market turmoil is down to her budget and defaults to talking points about energy, much as Johnson would drone on about the vaccine rollout. Truss bizarrely lies that Labour backed down on the National Insurance cut. Literally everyone knows that Labour opposed it while Truss, in her previous government role, walked through the lobbies for it

Moving on where now? Truss speaking faster than in interviews and seems a bit more relaxed, but has no understanding of pace or timing or how to vary her delivery. So far there’s been zero conviction even when she’s talking about stuff she believes.

Not sure that was the reception granted to a chancellor you’re expecting to remain chancellor for very long ‘A little turbulence’! At least when the pilot says it you can be reasonably certain they know how to fly a plane

Here we bloody go Truss pledges to work constructively with ‘all members of the House’. A more gracious and less bombastic introduction than Johnson could ever have managed

I’m going to watch a debate between two hard-right, careerist charisma bypasses and I’m going to tweet about it, but I want it put on the record that I’m only going to do it because it’s grey outside and I have nothing better to do Sunak’s rictus smile. Jesus fucking Christ

Genuinely hard to call the membership vote. There could be enough Europhobic, hard-right zealots to deliver it for either Sunak or Truss On a serious note, I don’t think it’s a runaway for Truss at all. She’d appear to appeal to more extreme part of the party, and that may well chime with the member demographic, but, as with Mordaunt, the more she opens her mouth in the campaign the more members could take fright.

Hoyle begins Johnson’s last PMQs by saying this shouldn’t be about personality. Except personality is the only reason Johnson ever wanted to become PM and the only reason he was elected to the office. What absolute bullshit. Keir Starmer begins by wishing the PM and his family the best. A few moments later Johnson calls him a ‘great pointless human bollard’.

Omg. It’s the shittest version of the X Factor ever conceived. ‘I’m standing to be YOUR prime minister!’ Give us a fucking vote then you smarmy bellend

I’m sorry, enough is enough. Penny Mordaunt may, in some ways, seem decent and likeable. But you cannot watch this and conclude that she is fit to be prime minister. The 2016 referendum was a flood of dishonesty from start to end but Mordaunt’s intervention was the only time a Leave minister told an out-and-out, provable, clear-cut lie. She’s had multiple opportunities to apologise, say she misspoke, correct the record. She has never done so.

Sunak and Truss have both advantage and disadvantage of being known. Mordant is completely anonymous to public. That means she’d get a bounce, but probably not a big one, because voters won’t embrace someone they have no idea about. After that, where does the support come from? Mordaunt comes across as decent and serious (notwithstanding the lies) and as a minister appeared competent. But she has no experience of a great office, isn’t naturally charismatic and won’t energise floating voters.

Astonishing. Mordaunt has had six years to come up with an excuse for telling naked lies to the British people and this is the best she can do.

https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1546931094238412800

By the way, there are more lies and half-lies here. Gov policy was to support Turkey’s membership in principle - not unconditionally, not prematurely. Everyone in the EU knew that accession was decades away, if ever. Unless Mordaunt was totally ignorant, she knew it too.

Talking awfully speedily isn’t he Lol at ‘setting relations with the continent’