Labour has a lot to celebrate this week.

Not all of it made the papers, but there was plenty of good news for progressives.

8 important changes: 1. Half of rail operators publicly owned

Greater Anglia's services entered public ownership on Sunday.

Public operators now run 33% of all passenger rail journeys.

Nigel Farage is the king of the U-turn.

He changes his mind so often, it's easy to think he'll say anything for attention.

9 telling reversals: 1. Second referendum

Before the Brexit vote, Farage said he wanted a re-run if the result was close.

He told the Mirror: “In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way.”

But after Leave won, he said he’d boycott a second vote.

Reform’s polling lead is astonishingly brittle.

The headline numbers may look impressive, but the underlying data reveals a fundamental weakness.

4 major headaches for Farage: 1. The public doesn’t trust Reform to govern

Just 32% think Reform would improve how Britain is run, according to YouGov.

Even fewer (24%) believe a Farage government would govern competently.

Reform isn’t a political party. It’s a corporate lobbying firm.

The business model is simple. Wealthy elites pay Farage to push policies that could make them millions.

4 infuriating examples: 1. Net zero

40% of Reform’s donors either question climate change or invest in fossil fuels.

They include Jeremy Hosking, who has tens of millions invested in oil firms.

Which explains why Reform is so passionately anti net zero.

Farage is desperately trying to sabotage Britain's recovery.

Reform tried to block some genuinely transformative laws. The polls would look very different if we talked about this more.

5 examples: 1. Reform are anti-workers.

The party’s MPs voted against:

• Banning zero hours contracts
• Sick pay and unfair dismissal rights from day one
• Making ‘fire and rehire’ illegal

The most dangerous stat you’ll read today:

“1 in 8 prisoners were born overseas”

It’s being weaponised by far-right figures to stoke fear.

But here’s the crucial detail they’re not telling you: On its own, the “1 in 8” stat means nothing.

We need to know how it compares to the general population.

And this is where things start to look bad for the far right.

London is thriving. And the right can’t stand it.

They talk down our capital constantly, but the city is measurably becoming a better place to live.

6 facts that shatter their doom narrative: 1. London is getting safer

Knife crime is lower now than in 2016. The murder rate fell 28% from 2019 to 2023.

In fact, you’re less likely to experience crime in London than you are nationally.

It was a great week to be Labour.

Votes at 16 rightly grabbed the headlines, but there was plenty more good news for progressives.

7 things to celebrate: 🧵 1. £500m for youth services

The money will fund schemes helping children struggling with:

• Mental health difficulties
• School exclusion
• Crime

Experts are warning the economy is about to implode!

Well, that’s what GB news wants you to think. It’s a masterclass in cherrypicking and scaremongering.

Let’s reveal the truth together… 🧵 “Four graphs prove the UK economy is in serious trouble,” the story warns.

And just one look at them will make you want to sell up and move to Dubai.

But even a GCSE economics student could spot the fatal flaws.

There’s a VERY good reason asylum seekers get circus tickets and Amazon parcels.

But the Mail on Sunday was never going to tell you that.

Here’s the crucial detail they left out: 🧵 The paper wet the bed over Kent County Council’s spending on asylum seekers:

• £162,077 at Amazon
• £70,056 at Argos
• £6,055 at a swimming pool

Yes, that’s taxpayers’ money. And it’s so easy to explain.

Labour racked up the wins this week.

Lots of new initiatives to build a fairer, greener country. (Though much of it didn’t make the papers.)

7 announcements you might have missed: 1.⁠ ⁠Letting local people save community spaces

A new Community Right to Buy gives residents the chance to take over pubs, cafes, or sports centres before developers can buy them.

A great example of Co-operative Party ideas taking the fight to Reform.

Yields hitting Truss levels does NOT mean the economy is crashing.

Anyone who says this doesn’t understand economics. I covered this stuff for years at Bloomberg.

Quick explainer that a child could understand: 🧵

https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/1942587341589410290

Lots of things affect bond prices. Sometimes it’s a domestic issue, sometimes it’s global.

Right wingers are desperately trying to argue this move is domestic – that investors are worried about the UK economy.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to check.

16,500 millionaires will leave Britain? Total rubbish.

Yet leading figures of the right have fallen for it, including the Shadow Home Secretary!

It takes just 30 seconds to expose the truth: Look at who’s repeating this line with absolutely no fact checking.

None of them thought to ask the most important question:

Who’s behind the story, and why?

Everyone says Labour has no story. They're completely wrong.

A golden thread runs through its agenda.

It’s part one of a powerful framework to demolish the *three big myths* about Labour’s first year: Everything Labour does is about one thing.

It's not obvious at first.

But once you see it, you notice it everywhere.

Labour secured a ton of wins this week.

While Middle East tensions grabbed the headlines, Labour made demonstrable progress towards building a fairer, stronger Britain.

5 eye-grabbing changes:

(and this is only since Monday) 1. £9bn for crumbling schools and hospitals

Labour is investing more than £6bn a year to make NHS buildings safer, including removing RAAC concrete.

Another £3bn goes to transforming schools and colleges.

Labour has already done more on asylum than the Tories managed in 14 years.

And no one needed to be sent to Rwanda.

5 measurable signs of progress: 1. Asylum decisions more than doubled

Labour inherited a massive 175,000-case backlog from the Tories.

But by March, the Home Office was making 116% more initial decisions than before.

Labour is rescuing the NHS faster than anyone predicted.

The latest stats show their strategy is creating tangible improvements – and a brutal reality check for the Tories and Reform.

5 undeniable signs of progress: 1. Waiting list falls to two-year low

Backlog inherited: 7.62m
Backlog today: 7.39m

That’s a drop of 230,000, and the first time in 17 years the waiting list has fallen in April.

Labour is fundamentally re-engineering Britain.

It’s become almost impossible to do basic things like building homes or fitting a heat pump. Now a flurry of new laws are ending that era of national self-sabotage.

5 examples to be excited about: 1. Fast-tracking two new reservoirs

Without them we face holding back housebuilding, even higher water bills, and risk of drought.

The same law also speeds up other developments like railways and clean energy projects.

Reform is stumbling harder than anyone expected.

Their local election victories were a brief flash of glory. But the reality of governing has quickly exposed their inexperience.

5 early failures: 1. Scrapping floods committee… in a flooding hotspot

Reform-run Lincolnshire Council abolished its flooding scrutiny committee, which holds Anglian Water and the Environment Agency to account.

This was Lincolnshire in January:

This is nonsense.

A department store blames Labour for its collapse. But the CEO’s political leanings, the store’s history, and the local public’s reaction tell a very different story.

Here’s what really happened: 🧵 CEO Tony Brown wants you to believe Labour killed Beales.

He’s plastered Rachel Reeves’s face across ‘closing down sale’ posters and blamed tax rises for making his business “unviable”.

But Beales was already collapsing under the Tories.

Reform’s victory could be the start of its downfall.

On the surface, it feels like momentum. But look back at history, and the warning signs are clear.

Here’s what they are:

(and how Labour can benefit) Until now, Reform wasn’t really a political party. It was a pressure group with a fan club.

Shouting from the sidelines, but not in charge of anything.

Now it controls ten councils – and that changes the dynamic.