Starmer responds to questions from the Big Issue journalists and from vendors. Nothing particularly groundbreaking here but it all sounds good.

A slightly too wordy and too long article that I nonetheless basically agree with. Key paragraphs:

Starmer’s strategic sense has been impressive, from opening his leadership consensually with qualified support for, and constructive criticism of, lockdown, to encouraging Boris Johnson to get his denials of Partygate on the record and leaving them there, to, most of all, his relentless focus on the voters he actually needs to win, rather than the ones who make the most noise.

This, of course, is the source of the biggest criticisms of Starmer from the left: that he won the leadership by relentlessly focusing on the voters he needed to win within the Labour Party, and then pivoted towards the national electorate rather than sticking with a prospectus whose chief appeal was to people who had already been shown to be a minority of a minority. I am not wholly unsympathetic to this view: his ten pledges were mostly bad, and he shouldn’t have made them; but dropping bad policies is better than sticking to them, and winning is better than losing.

After all, Jeremy Corbyn didn’t keep any of his promises, which may be why a recent election leaflet endorsing his bid to be the independent MP for Islington North gives so much prominence to his role in saving the Number 4 bus route.

Refreshing sanity from Conservative Home, of all places!

There's no equivalence between what Kevin Craig did (placed a bet on himself to lose) and what Craig Williams is accused of (using inside information to place a bet), and no need for a new law, given that what Williams is accused of is already illegal.

This is according to research by Get Voting. Seems worth sharing just to potentially have Liz Truss lose her seat!

This is what's keeping me up at night, and also exactly why I think all the predictions of four or five hundred seats for Labour are overblown.

The left is only able to demand that an apparently imminent Labour government be bolder in office because Starmer has got the party to the brink of victory – and has done it by doing the very things they opposed.

Never have I 'this'ed so hard.

The 2024 Labour Manifesto is now online!

I am genuinely excited by loads of it, especially the green policies and the expansion of workers' rights, but probably the most important part of it is the stuff aimed at economic growth.

What do you think? Love it? Hate it? Inspired to volunteer? Some more sensible, moderate emotion?

... But great news for Britain!

Hartlepool is on track to lurch back to Labour in the election. Reform UK is in second spot

Came across this via LabourList, so giving them a shout, too.

HOW IS HE SO BAD AT THIS?

He should've said, 'Look, I was very fortunate growing up, there's no point denying that. What I want is for every child to have the opportunities I had, that's why our policy is to blah, blah first-time buyers blah tax, etc., unlike Labour who want blah VAT on private schools, blah'.

Instead, he gets immediately rattled and starts gibbering at the first follow-up question. He is just the worst.

By the way, this is the interview he thought was so important he had to run away from Normandy to do it. Apparently, it wasn't important enough for him to do any prep.

Harper said the vote was:

a now-or-never opportunity to remove the Tories from power. Only Labour is able to do this across the UK and only Labour has a plan to halt environmental destruction.

I couldn't have put it better.