[Tubby Isaacs]

It might do. I'd be surprised if Zack picked it up though.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Christ. This is indeed "brave". Unless it's a joke.

[Boiler]

So brave, it's gone!

[Tubby Isaacs]

It seems indeed to have been a joke. It's the bit at the end, about imposters.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ ... 6acea7?6ap

[kreuzberger]

Without the tweet, it is difficult to unpick what was happening there.

The fact remains that a fair few hacks directly messaged 10-ers and got the dirt by return, chapter and verse. It seems rather unlikely that there was an outbreak of 90s-sytle phone spoofing on Monday evening.

That these hacks won't reveal these sources is not relevant. It merely means that they now possess digital Semtex that could blow Downing Street to smithereens.

Oh dear.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The disappearing tweet was a report of someone in Number 10 saying that the journos must have spoken to impostors. The OP deleted it because he now thinks it's a joke against themselves, because nobody's coughed. I think it's a joke too, there's no way you'd take the big political correspondents on like that.

Perhaps the joker was thinking of The Times who managed to get quotes about Mamdani from Bill De Blasio, wine merchant, instead of Bill De Blasio the former NYC mayor.

[kreuzberger]

I'm still struggling to fathom this, to be honest.

A bunch of our finest scribblers messages Starmer's phalanx with their juicy copy-fodder. These easily identifiable individuals eagerly reply as the night wears on and turns in to tomorrow. It's all reported verbatim until Streeting waves it away with a zeitgeist-appropriate reference to Traitors - what ever that is.

Job done. Case closed. Train to Manchester.

Number 10 is now taking the piss.

[Tubby Isaacs]

More budget stuff.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... udget-plan

Hundreds of thousands to lose heat pump subsidies in Reeves’s budget plan
Exclusive: Supporters say grants largely going to middle-class households, but experts warn move will slow transition from gas boilers

The subsidies seem pretty high, but I wouldn't cut them too far. Subsidies for new technologies often go to the better off. But I do actually accept the logic that high bills are a big problem for the Government, and that there's a danger of losing support for the cost of net zero, so I think something has to be done about that. I'm glad that's not my problem.

Also a reference to insulation in here, which seems like it's a lot harder to do than some people say. Our old house got cavity wall insulation in about 2012, and the wall all went funny.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'm still struggling to fathom this, to be honest.

A bunch of our finest scribblers messages Starmer's phalanx with their juicy copy-fodder. These easily identifiable individuals eagerly reply as the night wears on and turns in to tomorrow. It's all reported verbatim until Streeting waves it away with a zeitgeist-appropriate reference to Traitors - what ever that is.

Job done. Case closed. Train to Manchester.

Number 10 is now taking the piss.

Depends if you think the original approach was in good faith. I certainly wouldn't trust Mason and Wickham not to plant the lily let alone gild it. Some of it looked incredibly like bullshit. How for instance would you know that 50 front benchers were prepared to resign to push Starmer out? That sounds like somebody might have said something like "we'd have to take action like Tory MPs did with Boris Johnson". Or even the journo said that, and somebody agreed, and it gets put as a quote. Nobody can ever check this stuff.

You chuck in a bit of "cui bono" and "that Wes Streeting is ambitious" and hey presto. You then put it to Number 10 that they have to comment because this is definitely happening, and hey presto again.

I'd be in favour of sacking the person who got drawn into this briefing (whether it's happening or not) for being incompetent. Do the Government know who it was? Maybe, maybe not. The joke about an imposter was a joke about that.