Happy Birthday! If you could go back to one sliding doors moment, and take a different path/decision - what would you choose and what would be different?

Sounds like you’d be an ideal candidate for a compliance role at the OBR 😀

I hope it's a very special time for you and your family. We are also technically on shared parental leave, but I haven't taken any of it. My wife is a teacher, so has been "returning" to work in the school holidays, getting paid at salary rate rather than maternity pay. Heck of a loophole.

I wouldn't bet on 2029 being an election year. In fact this budget seems geared towards a 2028 election with so much pain planned for 2029

Can I nominate you? Not actually a Labour member - but I would be on that kind of platform.

12 miles and several worlds apart!

Every single vote Mr Moore received will have cost him over £1,500. Ouch!

Good thread. We’re also starting to see that Greens are surging in young urban areas, which is different from where LDs have advanced. Cuts off future LD growth, but hardly impacts held seats.

Yes I agree. The evidence that people will reluctantly line up behind a "not-Labour" alternative to Reform is growing. Caerphilly, local-by-elections, opinion polling. The evidence that people in numbers will come back to Labour to beat Reform - where is it?

Bet he has Elvis locked away in a basement somewhere though.

I would keep an eye on whether the money is actually paid. I wouldn't bet on it!

I'm jealous of you in a seat where the anti-Reform vote isn't Labour. Just feels an impossible ask to support Labour next time with how feeble they've been in Government and taking on Reform's actual arguments.

That one was a gain from CON wasnt it?

Am I missing something? It's a *branch* meeting for members, a routine part of political activity? Not out of the ordinary to have food at such a meeting. Part of the social aspect of political activity.

Very different from offering free food to members of the public.

Branching out into fantasy I see!

Milton Keynes was really designed as a buffer zone to block the marauding forces from Oxford from advancing on Cambridge. All planned that way from the start.

The right line I think - but members need to have a formal say on this very soon.