Former Conservative MP and chief of staff to Theresa May, Lord Barwell on why he was stripped of the whip by Kemi Badenoch. Turns out it came down to one Tweet in which he criticised her decision to oust Tory candidates who want to achieve Net Zero by 2050

Or their first

Well he certainly doesn't seem to have many problems with them

I guess the difference would be that war criminals don't get to avoid a trial by calling a by-election against a bin

Funnily enough I don't remember Andrew ever expressing these concerns the last four times a Conservative MP became Prime Minister outside of a general election.

Reform and their supporters now trying to reframe all journalistic scrutiny of them as being dangerous political attacks, bordering on terrorism. A preview of what we could expect from a Reform government

Talk TV presenter Kevin O'Sullivan here, shortly after the police warn that media speculation about Ann Widdecombe's murder risks jeopardising their investigation

Yeah, just imagine a politician failing to do what voters pay them to do in Westminster

Nigel Farage will soon be the least popular political party leader in the UK by some margin. The confidence trick isn't working any more www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/the-nigel-...

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I don't think I've ever seen a group of people take a joke quite as badly to heart as this lot have this week

When you come third place to a bin

I reckon the 17% of voters who don't think Reform are at all sleazy is probably pretty close to the vote share they end up winning at the next general election

Standing up against the establishment on behalf of *checks notes* "a very successful aristocratic family".

Two headlines from today's papers

The Metropolitan Police have launched a criminal investigation into a £500,000 donation to Reform from the mother of the convicted fraudster and Farage donor, George Cottrell www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

So they're all taking this really well

His claim to be fighting for the people of Clacton would have been somewhat more convincing if he hadn't been forced to go back more than two years before finding a clip of himself there

"Major threat"? No-one had even heard of this guy until about six months ago

Jesus wept

I mean credit where credit is due: "If he wants to spend the summer arguing with a bin, I won't stop him" is top tier posting

If I were a politician who had taken such large amounts of undeclared cash from a convicted fraudster that it had prompted investigation by the National Crime Agency then I'm not sure I'd be rushing to shout about, it but here we are

I'm not convinced wasting huge sums of public money in order to protect himself / divert from an investigation into his finances would help him much

Nigel Farage says he will make a statement "on my future in public life" at 2pm

The facade is cracking

In one chapter of his book entitled 'The Art of the Bribe', Nigel Farage donor and convicted fraudster George Cottrell describes how politicians can be bought www.ft.com/content/7a0f...

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'Make it sound like a minor administrative error then lead on the denial'

Amazing work by Reform in picking Robert Jenrick as the man to tour the broadcast studios to portray Nigel Farage and his party as a model of probity