We are going to have a new Prime Minister in 12 days – politicalbetting.com
We are going to have a new Prime Minister in 12 days – politicalbetting.com
? NEW: Former armed forces minister Al Carns has finally ruled himself out of standing for the Labour leadership.He has told Sky's @cathynewman that he is backing Andy Burnham.Nominations in the contest open tomorrow.More here: https://t.co/K5nbWDuL0j pic.twitter.com/u32fX9ktF8
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Edit: First like FIFA in a probity competition.
Where is it again?
The House of Commons operates under a mixture of standing orders, precedent and the Speaker’s authority, and MPs are expected to wear “business-like attire” in the Chamber.
Parliamentary guidance says clothing should demonstrate respect for the House, and that uniforms, large slogan-bearing items and other forms of demonstrative dress are generally not considered in order.
Members who show “flagrant disrespect” in their manner of dress can be asked to withdraw from the Chamber, and the Speaker may refuse to call them to speak.
https://x.com/cazjwheeler/status/2074855535292141924
Should have voted for them in 1980s.
I would expect the bin man to do likewise.
What we need is a silly bit of polling showing Binface has a chance, to see if that shifts his behaviour at all - he's never had to keep up the gimmick as long as he will have to this summer.
I've just gone into a pub - admittedly it's in Aldershot - and asked if they had any real ale.
They didn't. The English twenty-something bar lady said she didn't even know what that is.
Pippa Crerar
@PippaCrerar
NEW: The Met Police has launched an investigation into a £40,000 donation to Robert Jenrick’s campaign to become Tory leader in 2024 after a referral from the elections watchdog @theipaper reveals.
This follows a story by our @rowenamason
in April that police were assessing claims it came from an overseas donor, following a referral from elections watchdog.
Today's best bit of news from Nato - Erdogan gave the other leaders each a revolver engraved with their name and a box of live rounds.
But Starmer has had to leave his in Turkey to be decommissioned because, while Erdogan gave him a note waiving export controls, it's illegal to import into the UK.
https://bsky.app/profile/cjmckeon.bsky.social/post/3mq5nttqebc2z
Friends of my age are utterly mystified by this, their kids just do not want to drink alcohol.
This is a very serious issue and the right hon. Gentleman [James Cleverly] is experienced in this House. He knows that while he was Home Secretary, the Conservative Government had an early release scheme that let out 10,000 offenders—10,000. They had six schemes within a year. They had a scheme that they announced on 6 June 2023, another scheme on 17 October 2023, another scheme on 8 March 2024, another in April, another in May and another in June—all before the election. That is why the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), it is rumoured, called the election in the first place. They left a system with just 83 empty cells. That is what the previous Justice Secretary inherited when she came into office.
Sure, it may be 'the uniparty mocks democracy by standing a joke candidate against the mighty Farage', but it is still a blow to dignity to be constantly in pieces next to a middling comedian with a bin on his head.
*though they much prefer Restore because Musk tell them to
Raheem J. Kassam
@RaheemKassam
[Binface is] an establishment luvvie sent to try to undermine the aspirations of people who vote for right wing candidates or parties.
https://x.com/RaheemKassam/status/2074895729177264448
Not sure Reform really want to throw former Breitbart News editor Kassam into this one if we are asking who people really are?
Going after Binface for not being funny (matter of opinion, I'm sure he's fine in small doses but probably not an entire campaign), or being an establishment stooge (which is just silly - being a middle of the road safe parody candidate hardly makes him some uniparty agent), makes them look angry and that they are taking him seriously, which is what the Count wants.
Yes people can give advice to parties they don't support.
ECB in trouble with international game’s governing body as farewell speech was released from inside dressing room during Trent Bridge Test
England have been accused of breaching rules related to Test cricket’s anti-corruption code by posting a video of Ben Stokes sharing news of his retirement to his team-mates.
Stokes retired as England captain during the recent Trent Bridge Test, taking the highly unusual step of announcing the news when he was mid-spell.
The England and Wales Cricket Board announced the news at 3.25pm, 15 minutes before tea on day four of the match, which Stokes’s team went on to lose heavily.
Alongside the news, the ECB shared a video of Stokes telling his team-mates the news before play that morning.
However, as reported by the BBC, this has resulted in the ECB being contacted in writing by the International Cricket Council about the video, which alleges that publishing the footage during play contravenes its standards for players’ and match officials’ areas (PMOA) at international matches.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2026/07/08/ben-stokes-retirement-video-broke-anti-corruption-rules/
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“We had a month…35,000 (KIA) two months ago. And I would say more Russians. But it's just, they're people. They're people. And there's actually very little difference between the people. I mean, you know, it's like the Russians and Ukrainian people. And they can get along. But, but it's a nasty war” - American President on Wed, Jul 8, 2026 in Ankara, Turkey, during the NATO Summit.
P.S. Nothing triggers the average Ukrainian more than comparing them to russians.
https://x.com/KaterynaLis/status/2074906310844231899
Young people should be getting pissed.
So I do not drink or smoke, but I would oppose killjoys making those and other things harder or more expensive as a means to forcing them to stop (smoking is disgusting, but if people want to just ban it overall they should do that rather than incremental half measures). If someone has a pint at lunch, what's the problem?
@Arron_banks
In the U.S. this type of attack on Trump propelled him forward, you guys never learn. People hate the establishment,media & professional politicians!
Narrator: Farage has been in politics since being elected to the EU parliament in 1999.
That's over twenty five years of being a full time professional politician.
@Arron_banks
In the U.S. this type of attack on Trump propelled him forward, you guys never learn. People hate the establishment,media & professional politicians!
Narrator: Farage has been in politics since being elected to the EU parliament in 1999.
That's over twenty five years of being a full time professional politician.
What was he thinking?
I exoect the main pollsters are already scrambling for it.
Look, i don't like Farage, and he has tried to curry favour with Trump for a long time, but he really is not very Trumpian in style and history. He dabbles in blame all the media, yes he has been a political outsider, but he's not a major figure outside politics seeking to disrupt it, he's had a decades long approach of influencing mainstream debate, edging forward, and is surrounded by firmly 'normal' political figures because he has kicked out the bigger radicals and loonies because they were too out there.
He is not a Trump, even if opponents often reach for that comparison because he obviously likes and supports Trump.
So whether or not 'mocking' him is a good strategy or not, the situation is more complex than just 'they mocked Trump and it failed, they mocked Farage and it will fail for the same reason'.
As a good book once said, this is not america. Farage could not get away with half the stuff Trump has said or done because our political culture is not the same.
If there are hand pumps on the bar then they do, if there aren't any then they don't.
I am a beneficiary of the British Coal staff pension scheme. Since set up the scheme has been underwritten by the government and the government has had the right to any surplus. The scheme is defined benefit and by most standards people’s is generous.
The scheme has a large surplus as has the sister mine workers pension scheme.
The government has recently agreed that billions of pounds of surplus from both could be distributed as enhanced benefits.
Whilst I don’t begrudge the improved pension for me and my fellow beneficiaries I can’t help thinking this would be better spent on other priorities , defence for instance.
I do wonder whether the government is taking fiscal management seriously.
Mid-August - you could hardly ask for a more perfect time for a silly-season result.
.
Jamaica?
No, she was a volunteer.
A question for the gathered braniacs, tangentially related to the Clacton byelection but not the politics.
To resign his seat Farage took the office of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead. Up until he took it, the office was held by the second to last MP to resign with the last having taken the office of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds.
So far so good.
But what happens if Farage then wins his seat back? Does the stewardship then remain vacant until the next resignation or does it revert to the last holder?
And will the next resignation get Northstead or the Chiltern Hundreds.
Completely unimportant I know, in the grand scheme of things, but these questions do nag at me so and seem so much more important than Binbrain vs Binface.
AFAIK you can hold an office of profit as long as you were elected after appointment. If that has changed it has changed fairly recently. Those two were specifically designated as offices of profit when ministerial offices were exempted in the early 20th century so MPs could resign their seats without requiring either elevation to the peerage or suicide.
https://erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/5412/chiltern-hundreds-and-manor-of-northstead
So I think that means someone technically holds the office until the next resignation, or in this case Farage would, as a legal fiction at least, need to be released from the office before taking up office as an MP again after winning the by-election.
So just as someone can say 'I retire' and it is treated as a request to be appointed, winning the by-election would be treated as asking to be released from the office.
Typically they appoint the crown offices alternately.
My wife's gone on a canoeing trip in Poole Harbour.
In Dorset?
Yes, she'd recommend it to absolutely anybody.
Will going full Trump work electorally here as it - marginally, let’s remember - has done in the USA? I hope not. But strongman populism has a long, bloody history of success on every continent (well, to be fair excluding Antarctica unless you count Amundsen).
So Farage continues until the second-next MP wishes to resign
Because there's a Leek in Staffordshire....
Here, Farage can be removed in under an hour by a simple vote. And convicted by a bog-standard court if he ever acted like Trump, even while in office (although he'd be out of office faster than Trump drops his trousers in the presence of beauty pageant contestants if he had his collar felt).
The structural difference is very important. The President is effectively the monarch of America while in office. The Prime Minister is ultimately less secure in office than the average junior typist.
The way people umm and ahhh about this in this country mystifies me. You need it right now in County Durham, how southerners can cope I have no clue at all.
The two min walk from the taxi rank to the platforms at St Pancras and I was drenched.
There are Stones all the way down.
I find things hilarious until I think I am being obliged to find them hilarious. Then they can piss off.
The farce of the byelection is hilarious though.
I do wonder if Farage will actually chicken out and not stand. It stops the parliamentary disciplinary. He perhaps might stand again at the GE "having cleared his name"
Mid-August and a low turnout it will be.
I think that point stands; I would hope that even if someone I admired pulled the stunt Farage has attempted over the past 24 hours, I'd be able to manage a wry chuckle at said stunt backfiring so spectacularly that they ended up debating a Bin for a month or so.
Whether or not said Bin is hilarious is entirely beside the point right now.
It would weaken his position in the party but I'm not sure what other downsides there are.
However, enjoyable as this farce is, I'd feel for the residents of Clacton if they were left holding the Bin, so to speak, with no option but the Count to represent them.
The current situation is enjoyably farcical, becoming hilarious if Clacton chooses Binface. A by-election with Binface standing alone makes a mockery of democracy imo, and becomes something much less funny.
Count Binface was an insignificant adjunct to previous by-elections. Farage has prompted him to become less insignificant. But we shouldn't take a bit of fun too seriously.