Beth Rigby, "All of the people in the Makerfield focus group voted to Leave the EU. When Burnham said it at conference I thought: Brexit betrayal. Those Leave voting parts of the country won't like this." "But you ask those people and they don't seem to mind (closer ties with the EU" Brexiter 1, "I voted to leave.. Much younger then.. Didn't understand it.. Dad told me to vote for Leave.. It's harder now.. Maybe it would be better if we went back" Brexiter 2, "Everything seemed better when we were in Europe, it just did" Brexiter 3, "I think we were over-promised things.. I think we would be much better as part of an EU.. Than on our own" Brexiter 4 says she would vote the same way because she thinks we would have to adopt the Euro - currently six EU countries do not use the Euro My view: The Makerfield focus group tells you how much the Brexit argument has changed. These were all Leave voters. Now one says she didn’t understand what she was voting for; others say life in the EU felt better, that they were promised too much, and that Britain might be better off as a member again. That doesn’t mean every one of them would vote to rejoin. It does show that the old assumption—that Leave voters would always reject closer ties with Europe—is wearing thin. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage helped persuade people that Brexit would deliver easy gains, without being honest about the trade-offs or what leaving would mean in practice. The euro objection shows how those scare stories still shape the debate. - Six EU countries currently don’t use the euro and the UK had an opt-out when it was a member. What this shows is the need for clear information, not deception, half-truths and outright lies, shaping the conversation. Because when people are given clear accurate facts, the majority of them do not buy into populist rhetoric, so much of which is based on hate and division.

Pope Leo urged Putin to allow a ceasefire in Oleshky so aid could reach civilians. Putin agreed to cooperate on aid, but didn’t confirm a truce. Witkoff later called him a “humanitarian”. Now the White House says Melania Trump, the President’s wife, brokered a local ceasefire. The US Foreign Service has 14,152 employees—so what was her role? And given how difficult her public remarks can be to follow, how did she negotiate something this delicate? Meanwhile, Russian attacks across 12 Ukrainian regions killed eight people and injured 67 in the past 24 hours. “Humanitarian” hardly describes a leader whose forces keep bombing the rest of Ukraine.

The Trussell Trust’s latest report makes for grim reading: • 9 million people are projected to experience severe hardship in 2026/27 • 3 million of them are children • That’s around 1 in 7 people in the UK What should Labour do in the Budget to make sure people can afford the essentials?

Lady in dungarees raises the important question about why we haven't created a solution for the energy created by wind turbines, which have to switched off because we don't have the capacity to store the energy produced. My view: The latest full-year figures from Britain’s grid operator show that 13% of the wind power that could have been generated in 2024/25 was stopped because we could not store it. That is an extraordinary waste when households are paying for energy and the government says we need more supply. Storage could help capture surplus wind and release it when demand is higher, reducing the need to rely on gas. But batteries and pumped storage need to be built alongside stronger transmission lines, so electricity can also get from windy parts of the country to where it is needed. The answer to a shortage is not simply to drill for more gas. It is to stop wasting clean electricity: expand storage, upgrade the grid and make renewables work harder for us.

On #BBCQT Wes Streeting lists all the ways that Russia is a threat to the UK, except social media, where they interefered in the Brexit referendum, and continue to stoke division on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and elsewhere. A Defence Secretary who talks about national resilience should understand that our democracy and social cohesion are targets too. You cannot warn Britain about Russian threats while ignoring the online platforms where those threats reach millions of people. Streeting needs to explain how the Government intends to confront that part of the threat, not just list the hardware and hostile activity that are easier to point to.