Torsten Bell says Labour manifesto ‘did not set out the timeline’ for changes to living wage after scale of youth unemployment crisis revealed in Milburn report
Labour has said that it is “astonishing” that Reform UK chose Robert Kenyon as its candidate despite knowing about some of his past social media posts.
There have been multiple reports in recent days about past comments he has made that have been sexist, anti-migrant, vaccine-sceptic, pro-Russia and anti-abortion. He has also been asked to apologise for one that was supportive of another man making a sexually explicit comment about Carol Vorderman, and for another post claiming Hillary Clinton was to blame for the Manchester Arena bombing because of policies she pursued in Libya as the US secretary of state.
It’s astonishing that Reform have admitted they knew about Kenyon’s social media accounts. Nigel Farage needs to urgently explain to the public why, if his party was aware of his online history, he was happy to put forward a candidate who has made vile degrading comments about women, multiple homophobic posts and spread dangerous false narratives about the Manchester Arena bombing.
I am rough around the edges. I have made mistakes in my life. I’m not perfect. Nobody is. Not a single person in the world is perfect. I think everybody does say things that eventually they regret.
It was a crude attempt at a joke to probably about 50 followers.
No offence was meant, and it’s not something I’d do now.
I think I’ve addressed the issue. I think that no offence was meant and it wasn’t a direct comment to her. If you go into any building site in the area or any public barracks, I think you’d hear a hundred times worse said.
As I read on, I kept waiting for the main topic of conversation on doorsteps in Makerfield to make an appearance. And it never did. The fall in the living standards of millions, and the reality that life has got harder for most year on year since the financial crash in 2008, is, I believe, the gaping omission in his analysis.
This has been the single biggest driver of the turmoil in politics he describes and the cratering of support for traditional parties of right and left, here and around the world.
The Labour government in which I was proud to serve did many great things. It did not, however, take us off the direction set by Thatcher. For instance, the failure to reform right-to-buy and fully restore the public housing stock is the root cause of today’s housing crisis. Similarly, acceptance of the deregulation and privatisation of essential services is the same for the cost of living crisis.
This has given us 40 years of neoliberalism and the simple truth is this: it has not been kind to communities in Makerfield and those like them across the UK. Trickle-down economics did not in the end trickle down very much at all.
The secret to our success is setting a unifying long-term vision for the city-region that all sectors can get behind. It’s the polar opposite of the Westminster culture. Where they do point-scoring, we do problem-solving. Where they do party-first, we do place-first. We have built a pro-business approach and a new political culture that could be part of the forward plan for the country, a more collaborative politics in Westminster creating a stable platform for some of the long-term structural changes the country needs. In other words, a new politics to build a new economy.
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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/may/29/labour-welfare-youth-unemployment-living-wage-milburn-starmer-burnham-blair-latest-news-updates
Author : Andrew Sparrow
Publish date : 2026-05-29 12:26:00
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