Are the UK people going to be fooled by the hapless Burnham 'vibes offensive'?
He is clearly planning an imminent General Election. #bbcbreakfast #r4today
Like the failed Starmer, the progressive media are not scrutinising Burnham, we saw how that went. Starmer was so bad, the Labour Party had to throw him and Reeves overboard, in two years.
Be very clear, Burnham will have a hard left agenda, which like in France, will destroy the UK economy, in short order.
When Moochers Outnumber Producers, Can a Nation Be Salvaged? #bbcnews #newsnight danieljmitchell.wordpress.co… Not France & the UK!
Like a lot about Labour, dead in the water!!
#bbcnews #newsnight
Against a target of 1.5 million homes built in five years, we are on track for 856,000 (57%). Such an abject failure would in any other venture require an urgent change of strategy. Here, they just quietly abandon the target.
ft.com/content/285af47d-a0cc…
A Taxing Dilemma.
How to keep banks in London and keep them employing humans #Newsnight #bbcnews
catherinemcbride.substack.co…
It seems crazy that we tax businesses for employing people. We need to make employing people in the UK as cheap as possible; if not, the welfare bill will balloon. Businesses not only pay taxes on their profits, but by employing people, they also help reduce the welfare bill. Barclays will not be the last company to announce it is replacing staff with AI. Cutting employers’ NIC and unnecessary regulations will help businesses keep employing people.
Over to you Healey but this is Labour's reason for being! #Newsnight #bbcnews
BBC press officers refused to promote Emmy-winning Oct 7 documentary #newsnight #bbcnews telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10… Producer says she was forced to hire freelance publicist after in-house team allegedly told her Nova massacre film was ‘too political’
John Smith🗽Israel 🇮🇱 must prevail retweeted
Last week @neso_energy published its Winter Outlook suggesting the spare margin is in line with previous years
But scratch below the surface and you find a change in methodology and some optimistic assumptions and a heavy reliance on imports, including, implausibly from Ireland
Adjust those assumptions and the margin is all but wiped out
Rather than repeating tired mantras about security, NESO should set out proper stress tests where risks are correlated as they can be in real life
It should also adopt a more conservative approach to interconnectors. NESO uses the Capacity Market assumptions but the CM availability test for interconnectors is that they are capable of flowing not that they are importing
While NESO can shut off exports it cannot under any circumstances compell imports
@Miatsf @mgshanks @AndrewBowie_MP @ClaireCoutinho @harrietc @ColinMoynihanUK @drlukeevans @ashley7fox @TiceRichard @cmackinlay @DavidGHFrost @mattwridley @Iromg @AllisonPearson @MerrynSW @EdConwaySky @afneil @mattotele @jonathan_leake @julietsamuel @energygovuk
watt-logic.com/2026/10/27/ne…
John Smith🗽Israel 🇮🇱 must prevail retweeted
So we've hit £50 million in balancing costs for the day. The record is £52 million
John Smith🗽Israel 🇮🇱 must prevail retweeted
Replying to @Miatsf
Roger Pielke Jr.: “I would scrap the temperature targets” #bbcnews #skynews clintel.org/paris-temperatur… .
“Climate change is real but it’s not an emergency or the apocalypse, I think that’s a fair reading of the science.”
John Smith🗽Israel 🇮🇱 must prevail retweeted
Replying to @DrSimEvans
The claim that gas accounts for the rise in UK household bills is false. Since 2002, 'net zero' policies added £140bn to the cost of electricity compared to what it would have cost in a gas-led system.
Report here: richardlyon.substack.com/p/n…
The former head of the Directorate-General for Foreign Intelligence gives an initial assessment of the October riots. He dissects the alliance between the ultra-left and the youth of the neighbourhoods, against a backdrop of demographic shifting. #c4news #bbcnews
Le Figaro - à lire : « Des éruptions de violence devraient se reproduire, avec une fréquence et une intensité accrue » : l’analyse de Pierre Brochand, ancien patron de la DGSE lefigaro.fr/vox/societe/des-…
John Smith🗽Israel 🇮🇱 must prevail retweeted
Darren Jones admits John Healey is following the same defence plan as Rachel Reeves!
What was the point of his resignation?
If Healey fails to properly fund 3% defence spending by 2030, he must resign.
John Smith🗽Israel 🇮🇱 must prevail retweeted
Most fundamentally, if you arrive in a Downing Street promising to pass power down from the centre to the people, but instead pass it up to Brussels, you aren’t Mr Localism any more.
Rejoining the EU might help Labour squeeze the Lib Dems - but it would also mean gutting Andy Burnham’s own policy agenda, from devolution to reindustrialisation to trade to regulation. My latest for @theipaper inews.co.uk/opinion/burnham-…
John Smith🗽Israel 🇮🇱 must prevail retweeted
Knowing Europe, the response to US AI models dominance would not be removing technological innovation and growth barriers at home, the naive left would of course demand a wealth tax for all entrepreneurs. Unable to create anything, they always resort to such “solutions.” Unfortunately, a wealth tax would only accelerate the problem. Most entrepreneurial wealth in Europe sits in company equity, not cash or bank deposits. Taxing that unrealized value annually forces founders and owners to divert cash that would otherwise fund innovation, hiring, and capacity expansion just to pay the bill.
In an AI-driven economy where competitiveness depends on continuous investment in compute, talent, and proprietary data, that capital drain is particularly costly. European firms already face structural disadvantages in energy costs, regulation, and access to frontier AI tools. Adding a wealth tax would reduce resources available for the investments needed to close the gap. Lower investment means even slower productivity growth, weaker exports, and fewer high-margin companies. The result is a narrower corporate tax base, fewer high-earning employees, and less capacity to fund the welfare systems the tax was meant to protect, a classic vicious cycle.
History bears this out. Most European countries that introduced net wealth taxes later repealed them after capital flight, lower business formation, and revenue shortfalls. Taxing paper wealth in illiquid private companies does not create a new durable tax base, it shrinks the existing one. The left still demanding a wealth tax have never run a business or worked a single day in a real job. They simply have no idea how the real economy works.
There is an important implication of the AI revolution that will profoundly impact Europe’s future, one most people don’t grasp yet.
Europe’s high labor costs, driven by astronomical taxes and social contributions funding extensive welfare systems and overblown state spending, create a far stronger incentive to automate than in the US. With labor taxes accounting for over half of EU tax revenue, replacing workers with AI and robotics will directly shrink the tax base sustaining pensions, healthcare, and public spending.
The US faces automation pressures as well but holds a structural advantage, its dominant AI companies (holding roughly three-quarters of global AI computing capacity versus Europe’s roughly 5%) generate taxable profits and capital gains at home. Higher taxes on tech firms or shareholders can offset lost labor based tax revenue. Europe has no such option.
Attempts to tax US providers more heavily would risk restricted access, higher prices, or delayed releases for European users. Without competitive AI, European goods and services will lose competitiveness against those made with superior tools, further eroding corporate and labor tax bases in a reinforcing cycle. Europe would lose both income and corporate tax revenues to sustain its welfare, pensions, and big state systems, while facing a wave of displaced workers expecting benefits.
High energy costs (often roughly double US industrial prices) and data rules constraining training make large-scale European domestic AI development basically impossible. This stems from bad left policy choices that raised labor and energy costs while limiting flexibility and data needed for tech innovation with excessive regulations.
Bad left policies have always had serious consequences, in the current AI-turbocharged world, they will shake the foundations of European economies and societies. The unrest and riots now seen in many European cities will feel like a walk in the park compared to what is coming.
John Smith🗽Israel 🇮🇱 must prevail retweeted
Replying to @Simon_Nixon
We have lowest barriers in Europe, save for Norway.
Replying to @Unionbuster
UK equivalents (latest official data ~2026):
Pensions (State Pension): 13.3M
Public sector employees: 6.2M
Welfare (working-age DWP claimants): 10M
Total public recipients: ~29.5M
Private sector workers: 28.3M
Roughly 51% public vs 49% private. Categories overlap in reality; figures are raw headcounts.






















