Lewis Baston @lewis_baston Twitter profile

Last Seen Profiles

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@Payal_0143

@Lalocampos03

@triplocker_

@QingyuZhan6832

@Glenda890a

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@ahmd_500000

@jusantoz

@primarycatdad

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@NSFWPoliticsNow

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@NicolasW_GRAOU

@hoshysvt

@Ch_Porquier

@ZoeyStarkWWE

@csoobpage

@FairSaturday

@SnoozeButtonBen

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

I bought the Times yesterday in paper form because my parents are visiting; was quite an auspicious day to do this as it turns out I have one of the pre-suppression copies. A moment - a very peculiar moment - in media history.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

Hello from the departure area of Singapore airport, with a few thoughts on why anyone talking about ‘Singapore on Thames’ doesn’t know what they’re talking about…

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 years

Just a reminder of what Johnson said in the House of Commons on 8 December 2021 after the Stratton video appeared. I can’t see how it’s possible to conclude that this was other than deliberately misleading the House.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 month

Recently a Conservative MP. Finds arson and attempted murder funny.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 year

It’s clear that senior BBC management roles are now entirely political appointments. Labour should clear the lot out. We have a state broadcaster answerable to the government, responsive to bullying. It’s a great shame.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 years

The number of people signing the Revoke petition (3.92m) has now overtaken the number of people voting UKIP in 2015 (3.88m).

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 years

The number of people signing the Revoke petition (610k) has now overtaken the number of people who voted UKIP in 2017 (594k).

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 years

Hello from Poland 🇵🇱 where there’s supposedly a lorry driver shortage but life goes on, the corner shops are full of goods and there’s petrol readily available.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 years

And with tedious predictability here we are.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

This always happens. The narrative of ‘Labour underperforms’ gets established on the basis of overnight results from a skewed selection of areas. Then the Friday counts contribute large numbers of Con seat losses but the narrative sticks anyway.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

1. Yes, Singapore is a free-market open economy. But it has an extremely active state. There is little hesitation in managing people’s lives in considerable detail. People comply. British-style libertarians (ie entitled rich loudmouths) would hate it.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

6 years

Interesting that Daniel Kawczynski hasn’t retracted or deleted his ridiculous and deplorable ‘Marshall Aid’ comments. Unless he does, it makes him a shameless liar rather than merely an idiot.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

PS oh yes, masks. Everyone wears masks indoors (rule to be lifted soon exc on public transport) and quite a lot of people do outdoors as well (entirely voluntarily) because of a collectivist understanding of public health and because people trust the govt.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 year

The Home Office warps people, but I think there has to be something rotten in someone’s character anyway to behave like this.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

8 months

The one redeeming feature I thought Johnson had, his support for Ukraine, just casually abandoned. No matter how low the bar, Johnson will be a squalid disappointment. A worthless man.

The i paper

@theipaper

8 months

Boris Johnson endorses Donald Trump and says he believes he won't abandon Ukraine

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

6 months

It shouldn’t be left to Muslim Tory MPs like Sajid Javid and Nus Ghani to do the work of condemning Anderson. Where are all the others who could be standing with them in public?

Beth Rigby

@BethRigby

6 months

NEW: Understand that Sajid Javid absolutely furious over Anderson remarks: anti-Muslim hate is just as unacceptable as anti-semitism. No 10 under huge pressure to act. Am told he’s demanding either Anderson issue a sincere apology or have the whip removed. Watch this space

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

3. If you don’t like official multiculturalism, or mass immigration, you really won’t like the Singapore model.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

4. Singapore builds LOTS of houses. Public sector mass housing in planned modular developments. It doesn’t do NIMBY.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 months

An opportunity to repost one of my favourite pieces of financial journalism ever

Henry Mance

@henrymance

5 months

Abrdn executive Ptr Brnnr has complained the company is facing "corporate bullying" because of its ridiculous name

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

Until close of poll on Thursday: ‘vote is about bins not Boris, we’re Local Conservatives and don’t like what was going on at Number 10 any more than you do‘. After the votes counted: ‘endorsement for bullish Boris’…

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

Singapore is profoundly collectivist in attitude, and conformist - which is the architecture which makes its free market model work (rather as Scandinavian individualism coexists with social democracy). The British aren’t. It can’t work. Singapore on Thames is a foolish mirage.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

2. Public investment is planned on a decades-long timetable. Governments persist with the plans and stuff tends to happen on time and on budget. The metro system is already huge and will be all-encompassing by 2040.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

6. Singapore is incredibly environmentally-conscious. It has a carbon tax, it will be carbon-neutral by maybe 2030, cars are very expensive (and largely electric it seems). It has paper straws. Sorry, all you ‘contrarian’ right-libertarians in UK.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

Johnson also spat in the face of everyone who supported the government’s COVID measures in the national interest. He’s easily the worst human being to have occupied the office of Prime Minister in two centuries.

James O'Brien

@mrjamesob

2 years

Starmer has, for good or for ill, been at pains to prioritise unity against Russia. He’s declined to score easy points at PMQs & decided that now is not the time to press harder for Johnson’s resignation. In return, today Johnson claimed Labour would raise a white flag to Putin.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

5. (ctd) … run this for London, and as a Londoner this is great. But the rest of England isn’t Singapore-on-Thames, it’s Johor but with rubbish weather and infrastructure that doesn’t work, waiting for the cross-border trickle-down.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

The proportion of 🇸🇬 workers governed by sectoral minimum wages has grown rapidly lately. There’s also discussion that there’s too much rote learning in the education system and humanities and critical thinking should be valued higher.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

April 2016. I think my slightly melted Easter egg in the shape of a frog had glimpsed the course of events over the next six years, and perhaps the whole Lovecraftian abyss of despair and horror lying beneath existence.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 months

It was literally pledge 2 of the ‘five pledges’

Ben Bloch

@realBenBloch

5 months

Jeremy Hunt on the ONS figures confirming a technical recession in the second half of last year: "I don't think any of us were expecting the economy to actually grow last year." Comments in full:

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 years

It gives me absolutely no pleasure to bash the BBC but I thought its Spanish election headlines and coverage was lamentable. Shoehorning the result into a 'rise of the far right' narrative, leading with that regardless, never mind an actual swing to the left.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

Let’s check in on a few bricks in the ‘Red Wall’ shall we? Start at Wakefield because there’s a by-election pending. Last year percentage votes: Con 47 Lab 42. This year Con 34 Lab 51…

Daily Express

@Daily_Express

2 years

Tomorrow's front page: Bullish Boris back on track as 'red wall' keeps faith #TomorrowsPapersToday

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 year

Very nice of Banks to provide ‘concrete’ proof that the libel caused damage to O’Brien’s reputation and therefore fully justifies court action and damages.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 months

I try to resist the temptation to do Twitter posts of the form ‘take a look at this idiot’. But… take a look at this idiot.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

5. Singapore is a city of a bit short of 6m - about 3.5m citizens, 0.5m permanent residents, 1.5m ‘non-residents’ including migrant workers of all kinds. Labour shortages (semi or unskilled) can be met in the short term by temp passes for people from Malaysia or Indonesia…

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 years

Hmm. How about ‘former Prime Minister who had many faults but actually fired people for breaking the Ministerial Code applies consistent judgment to the Cummings case’? The literary allusion implies she’s being irrational and vengeful because she’s a woman.

Nick Robinson

@bbcnickrobinson

4 years

Hell hath no fury like a Prime Minister scorned. @theresa_may gives her verdict on “Mr Cummings” - “I can well understand the anger of those who have been abiding by the spirit of the guidance given by the government”

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 years

In another (probably doomed) attempt to introduce actual statistics to a 'debate': Labour target seats are NOT, repeat NOT, strongly Leave. of the 50 seats where Labour came closest in 2017, the average Leave vote in 2016 was... 50.1 per cent. This makes them more Remain than avg

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

10 months

Thing about Braverman is that as well as being a nasty piece of work, and dishonest, she’s also useless. Her side-swipe about Northern Ireland marches is one of the most inept pieces of politics I’ve seen.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 year

The UK economy seems to be now more fundamentally broken than it was in 1974, which was probably the worst economic legacy a government ever handed over to its successor…

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

I'm reminded of the joke about why KGB officers worked in teams of three. One could read, one could write and the other was there to keep an eye on the two dangerous intellectuals.

Sergej Sumlenny, LL.M

@sumlenny

2 years

Russian FSB has fabricated a "plot" to kill Russian TV propagandist Solovyov. Allegedly by Ukrainian SBU and Nazis. One of the "evidences" is neonazi inscription on a book. Signed by "Signature unclear". Yes, FSB got an order to sign it with a "signature unclear" - and did so!

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 year

How is everyone celebrating the one-year anniversary of the first batch of ‘don’t underestimate Liz Truss’ comment articles?

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

6 months

Kicking off the GE campaign with a beating in the local elections is probably the stupidest option. Which means they’ll probably go for it.

Politics UK

@PolitlcsUK

6 months

🚨 NEW: Rishi Sunak "doesn't think it's sustainable" to hold an election in November No 10 Tory source: "He thinks it’s an ungovernable party and he might have to go in June or July, simply because it all collapses. They [allies] want the election in November" [ @thetimes ]

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

Rules of British politics - one side is entitled to take the absolute piss with impunity, the other risks destruction for the slightest step over the line however accidental.

Jim Pickard 🐋

@PickardJE

2 years

if you think Keir Starmer quitting would mean Boris Johnson feeling obliged to quit I have a bridge to Ireland to sell you

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 years

It's Sunday, so the government trails some stupid gestural culture war rubbish with a random word cloud of right wing catchphrases. Pathetic way to behave for grown adults in public office.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 years

I was bored and did a map of an imaginary Metro and tram system for my home town of Southampton (plus Portsmouth and other nearby places). How's your social distancing weekend going?

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 years

Looks like there are strong grounds for an EHRC investigation into the Conservative Party for Islamophobia, which they have avoided until now.

Times Politics

@timespolitics

3 years

🔺 EXCLUSIVE: A Conservative MP has accused a party whip of telling her she was fired from her ministerial job because her Muslim faith was “making colleagues uncomfortable”

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 months

Switching to FPTP for PCC elections was a very effective and unscrupulous manipulation of the electoral system by the Conservatives.

Election Maps UK

@ElectionMapsUK

4 months

8 of the 16 Conservative PCC wins so far have been decided by less than 3%.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

I’ve been reading the Liz Truss biography. The authors clearly set out to write a sympathetic account but the subject defeated them. Truss comes over as dogmatic and arrogant; instrumental and cruel even to her allies, without the talent to back it all up. Good riddance.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

Interesting - first time I've had to search up and down the High Street to get a prescription filled. The pharmacist said there were supply problems for quite a few medicines at the moment and it would probably get worse. I'm not saying it's Brexit... but it's Brexit isn't it?

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 months

Worth remembering that the last handover of power from a majority at dissolution of Parliament for Party A to a majority in the GE for Party B was in 1970.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

Zemmour was vastly the less popular far-right option… except in Paris. Really tempted to write an article about how all the Zemmour fans are out of touch metropolitan fascist elites who don’t get what moves the authentic people who don’t live in Paris-XVI or Neuilly.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

As always, it’s the stuff that’s legal that is the real scandal. Peerages - seats in the legislature! - and subsidies flow in one direction, slavish propaganda and intimidation of opponents go in the other.

Sam Freedman

@Samfr

2 years

The news that Dacre is about to be put in the Lords does at least explain the absurd sycophancy of the paper in recent months - even by their standards.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 months

Being admitted for an operation on the arteries around my brain. I’ll miss a few days of the election campaign. I do hope it’s not going to be a 28 Days Later scenario when I wake up and find everyone has suddenly decided to vote Tory for reasons I’ll never understand.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 years

The lunatic state of British politics is well summarised by the fact that this is intended as a criticism of Hunt.

Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧

@montie

5 years

Hunt is coming across as someone who sees Brexit as all a bit difficult while Boris is getting the applause for refusing to contemplate defeat #ITVDebate

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

6 months

Don’t usually comment on single polls but this one is a bit special. Con below 20 in a non-People Polling survey and a Con lead over Reform down to 4 is catastrophic.

Lara Spirit

@lara_spirit

6 months

Labour lead at 25 points in latest YouGov poll for The Times CON 19 (-1) LAB 44 (=) LIB DEM 9 (=) REF UK 15 (+1) GRN 8 (+1) Fieldwork 19 - 20 March

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 year

Difference between Trump and Johnson is that while both are narcissists, Trump is far more sadistic and malignant. He’s an organised crime figure who slid into politics. Johnson’s an entitled chancer who fundamentally doesn’t believe other people exist in the same way he does…

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 year

What did David Cameron say in 2008/9 about going into coalition? Did any of our journalistic corps ask him? What were Theresa May’s thoughts in 2016-17 about a deal with the DUP? Has anyone asked Rishi Sunak about his intentions?

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 year

East Hertfordshire District Council is not supposed to be electorally interesting - it's usually a very safe Tory council. But not only has it gone NOC, but it hangs on one ward whether the largest single party will be the Tories or the Greens! ...

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 years

I enjoy the Khan/ Javid running joke ( @sajidjavid sent a nice message to Khan after 2016 Mayoral election). It’s gentle and respectful, and it feels genuine, in a way few political exchanges are in Britain.

Sadiq Khan

@SadiqKhan

3 years

Always good to see the children of bus drivers do well! Congrats @sajidjavid on your appointment as Health Secretary. Look forward to working together to protect our communites from this awful pandemic, get London vaccinated and continue opening up our city and country safely.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 years

If Johnson took (another) leaf out of Caligula’s book and appointed a horse, it wouldn’t even make the top 10 of the most weird, inappropriate, daft and regrettable individuals in this ‘government’.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 year

The Minister is Lord (Simon) Murray. He has a life seat in the legislature, gifted by Liz Truss following a single term on a borough council. He appears to be a nasty, pompous piece of work who backs Robert Jenrick’s cruelty to children.

Every Child Protected Against Trafficking 🧡

@ECPATUK

1 year

Asked by @AlfDubs about disgraceful actions of @ukhomeoffice to remove cartoons from Kent reception as they are 'too welcoming for children', Minister says: 'It is the correct decision these facilities have the requisite decoration befitting their purpose' 📢Shameful cruelty

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 years

I've been doing some analysis of the London Mayor second preferences... the candidate whose supporters cast the most effective second preferences, i.e. 56 per cent counted in the second round, was... @CountBinface

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

El*n M**k probably just feels solidarity for the side whose vehicles keep bursting into flame for reasons they find difficult to explain in public.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 months

Andy Street showing the dignity and grace that Susan Hall lacked, even though it must have been a much harder few hours for him.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 years

Someone (with a good relationship with the Telegraph... hmm...) is lining up the Private Office to take the fall. Probably a good idea, if you're one of those officials, to get in touch with @PippaCrerar or @PaulBrandITV asap.

Ben Riley-Smith

@benrileysmith

3 years

Exclusive Downing Street private office drunk booze and stayed late on the last Friday before Christmas 2020, when group socialising was barred. Was on Dec 18 (same night as the infamous press party). Martin Reynolds attended. Three sources speak to Tel.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

9 months

Happy Christmas from under the missile toad.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 years

As a fat middle aged bloke who looks scruffy even in a good suit, and is a bit in awe of people with a sense of style, this is the first time I have felt represented by this UK government.

Sam Freedman

@Samfr

4 years

This is the Quentin Blake illustration for a Roald Dahl story about Brexit.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 years

It’s exhausting living in a country where the national conversation is so utterly stupid.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

Dudley… I thought Lab’s task here was to avoid annihilation. But they actually broke even 12-12 on wards, with two net gains from the Tories since 2018. A bit of a contrast with last year’s 21-3 wipeout.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 month

I continue to be amazed that there are people without honesty or shame, who just leave their lies up there long after they’ve been exposed.

Lee Anderson MP

@LeeAndersonMP_

1 month

Political Stitch Up Labour has decided to modernise the way Parliament works. They have decided that smaller parties like @reformparty_uk are not allowed to sit on the Select Committees and hold them to account. I said this earlier 👇

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 year

I constantly worry whether I’m right, whether I’m clever enough, sharp enough to be worth listening to, to earn the right to a hearing. And then I see a genuine idiot like David Frost use up the oxygen of the public space and I just despair.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 months

The finding that a Tory can win if they have a strong personal brand isn’t necessarily great news for Rishi Sunak.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

Interesting story from Australia. A PM who believed in his unique rapport with the voters, who dodged economic issues and stoked up culture wars, and had a Cabinet of duds… got trounced.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 years

@caitlinmoran Timpsons have always been good people - they help unemployed people with free dry cleaning for job interviews, and get ex-prisoners back to work. They are treating their staff with decency in this crisis.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 months

My favourite postal voting fact is that Ken Livingstone beat Boris Johnson in on the day voting in the 2012 London mayoral election. Johnson’s margin was all in the postal vote.

Brendan Clarke-Smith

@Bren4Bassetlaw

4 months

📮🗳️ Postal voting - it’s time to scrap it.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 years

This parliament is not and should not be ‘dead’. It has a more recent and stronger mandate from the electors than the referendum (18m votes in 2017) and represents the balance of opinion in a divided nation. Long may it like be while this appointed, mandate-free government fails.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

Every big splashy announcement from Johnson - bus revolution, high wage economy, 40 new hospitals - is meaningless verbiage. It’s never true.

Jonathan Calder

@lordbonkers

2 years

Remember the "£3bn bus revolution" Boris Johnson announced last year?

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 months

The constitutional 'theory' behind this doesn't stack up. There's not enough time to vote and instal a new leader, and I'm not convinced that prorogation can be cancelled anyway. For those who care about proprieties, it would make a mockery of the King's position. So no.

Christopher Hope📝

@christopherhope

4 months

👀 Wow! Extraordinary but true - some furious Conservative MPs are tonight working on a plot to CALL OFF the general election by replacing Rishi Sunak as leader before Parliament is dissolved next Thursday. One rebel Tory MP tells me he believes “several” more letters of no

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

I hold it against Mordaunt that she told a direct, cynical lie straight to camera and seemed to feel fine about it at the time. She’s still lying. Disqualifying - or it should be.

LBC

@LBC

2 years

It was 'disingenuous' of David Cameron to claim the UK could have vetoed Turkey joining the EU, believes Tory leadership contender Penny Mordaunt. @IainDale | @PennyMordaunt

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

I think less of you if you use ‘north London’ as a slur. The one geographical insult it’s apparently permitted to use in British political discourse. It’s cheap and cliched and shabby.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 years

If the sight of a middle aged politician with glazed eyes dancing badly in a rumpled suit distresses you, never - I mean NEVER - attend a party conference.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

@JolyonMaugham Saw this book placement a few years ago…

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 years

In the interests of being positive, thank you to these Conservative MPs who defied the whip and voted against discharging sewage into our water

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 years

The statue to a war criminal that was taken down in London... in 1868

Lewis Baston: An empty plinth in Cavendish Square - OnLondon

Not long ago I was sitting on a park bench in the garden in the middle of Cavendish Square just north of Oxford Street, eating the takeaway dim sum that was my reward for a socially distanced walk...

www.onlondon.co.uk

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

7 years

This thread is so revealing. The sheer exceptionalist special pleading and arrogance of Nick Timothy and Theresa May deserves every bit of the humiliation that is coming to them.

Hugo Rifkind

@hugorifkind

7 years

@NickJTimothy I'm serious. Imagine Scotland had voted to leave the UK. Would a Westminster Conservative government be thinking, "shit, our settlement better work to Scotland's advantage"? Of course not. And if they were, voters would be appalled. These are the consequences Britain voted for.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 months

I think we’re through the looking glass now.

Jim Pickard 🐋

@PickardJE

3 months

👀 this attack ad *from the Conservatives* suggests that they could come third

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 months

A lot of Tory bleating about First Past the Post, public anger etc can be summarised as ‘they don’t like it up’em’. They’re perfectly content when these things work to the disadvantage of their opponents and now they experience the rough end they’re on a self-pity binge.

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Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 years

Shocking how prepared the Telegraph and Spectator are to just... lie. It’s impossible to have a healthy public sphere if this is how supposedly respectable actors behave.

Roland Smith

@rolandmcs

3 years

"EU red tape"

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524

11

121

306

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 year

If Keir Starmer said he was entirely confident, all of the media would condemn him for being arrogant and taking the electorate for granted. An example of everyday, often unconscious bias.

Sky News

@SkyNews

1 year

Rishi Sunak 'entirely confident' Conservatives will win general election despite polls

529

22

111

16

52

305

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

8 months

Wish we could just get the election out of the way. A year of this sort of dishonest smear and scare - which is all the Tories have left - is going to be unpleasant and tedious.

9

53

297

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

Pope has made a number of statements suggesting sympathy for Catholicism but his religious affiliation remains unclear.

3

48

293

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

1 month

Bit of a litmus test for the right here - do they have more sympathy for this man, or for the thugs who were terrorising his neighbourhood? Several people who normally opine on character and discipline stand exposed as failures and hypocrites.

Johnny Slim

@johnnyslim123

1 month

@BeardedGenius Feel so sorry for the locals

14

616

2K

5

92

291

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 years

I’ve had a short nap - even psephologists need to sleep - and I wake to see some takes on the local elections that are so dense that light bends around them.

8

97

276

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 years

Idea for a novella: Harry Potter and the Algorithm of Injustice - in which the sorting hat is replaced by Gavin Williamson and Ofqual, and Harry is told he can’t possibly be a wizard as nobody from his school has ever done so before.

0

100

279

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 months

There's a lot going on in the Times story about Mark Menzies. One of the less eyecatching but more systemic issues is the existence of these locally-held slush funds, which seem to defeat the point of regulating political finance as well as being a standing temptation for misuse.

11

142

284

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

2 years

I've been tolerant of Zahawi's ebullient bullshittery in the past. But this is disgusting and twisted.

Fred Dimbleby

@freddimbleby

2 years

"President Zelenskyy will be punching the air" says Nadhim Zahawi after the vote

216

123

755

5

49

281

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

6 years

One of many astonishing things about the big vote last night - there were no abstentions or voluntary absences. None. 634 voted, 4 tellers, 4 Speaker and deputies, 7 Sinn Fein, 1 severely ill. A first in parliamentary history? @HistParl ?

15

141

266

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 years

A lot of the uncertainty has gone out of the old parlour game of ‘who would have collaborated if the Nazis had invaded Britain’.

5

63

272

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

5 years

No Deal parties 29%/ Deal and maybe deal+ref main parties 34%/ Remain parties 36%.

Election Maps UK

@ElectionMapsUK

5 years

European Election Voting Intention: BXP: 26% (+26) LAB: 22% (-3) LDM: 19% (+12) CON: 12% (-12) GRN: 10% (+2) UKIP: 3% (-24) Via @BMGResearch , 7-10 May. Changes w/ 2014.

93

396

700

12

132

266

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

6 months

An acute point from @rafaelbehr in a rightly scathing piece on the budget and the state of Britain

2

150

273

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 years

A display of lickspittle servility which would have embarrassed a member of the Politburo in East Germany.

Lindsey Graham

@LindseyGrahamSC

4 years

Golf is a great way for the President to get away from the confines of the White House and the pressures of the office. Keep playing Mr. President. ⛳️🏌️‍♂️

9K

607

5K

5

40

253

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

3 years

Never trust the guy who is apparently an amiable pillock and conceals his corruption behind the facade of being a blundering fool. A maxim for our times in politics as well as #LineOfDuty

4

40

262

Lewis Baston

@lewis_baston

4 months

Please, kids, don’t work out an estimated national share from local elections and then feed it back into a dumb Uniform National Swing model based on the 2019 results.

6

36

265