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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I'm a few days late to this, but it's worth noting as amid all the years of deeply weird discourse about low-traffic neighbourhoods this is perhaps the most unhinged thing I've ever seen. [Plus: they're not "Sadiq Khan's LTNs". They're done by councils.]

Sadiq Khan’s LTNs made me flee Britain, says millionaire philanthropist

Sir Peter Lampl claims mayor’s traffic policies make London unsuitable for ‘wealth-creating entrepreneurs’

“To do all that, I needed to be able to get about,” he wrote. “I needed to be able to meet people, make deals, go campaigning, chivvy politicians into action. I needed black cabs and roads they could get down. And I needed to be able to get home at the end of the day without spending an hour stuck in a single lane of traffic on Park Lane.

Sir Peter said the expansion of bike lanes in London and introduction of traffic calming measures, such as 20mph speed limits and low-traffic neighbourhoods, had created “a capital city in which we literally can’t get around by taxi”.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"I am ten weeks into this job, and not all of my recent predecessors have been able to say that." Obligatory Liz Truss joke near the start of Andy Burnham's Labour conference speech.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I do sometimes wonder if the political history of this period, when written, will mainly conclude: “Many people lost their way simply by spending too long on X.”

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

*Sighs very deeply in public health-ese*

Camilla Tominey

There’s no excuse for being fat

Given the availability of new weight loss treatments, we shouldn’t feel afraid of telling it how it is

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Are Reform UK *sure* they want to yoke themselves to people like Daniel “Danny Tommo” Thomas? Nigel Farage was adamant for years that most voters instantly recognise and intensely dislike football thug types like him and Tommy Robinson.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It's perhaps time we had the reminder that making generalisations about "cyclists" is about as useful as, say, assuming great aunts are also some sort of homogenous group who can be defined via what is just one element of who they are.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I keep wanging on about how important I think tactical voting is likely to be at the next election, especially in terms of Reform-blocking, so interesting to see some actual experts backing this up.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Insisting a government guarantees not a single boat carrying asylum seekers gets through is about as realistic as expecting a medieval king to guarantee a complete stop on all smuggling vessels. Borders are porous. Yes, you can greatly limit unofficial crossings, but this is absurd.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Conservative response to Lucy Powell admitting the Government cannot stop small boats landing on British beaches

Chris Philp MP, Shadow Home Secretary, said:

“Labour have admitted they will never stop the boats.

“Keir Starmer’s pledge to ‘smash the gangs’ was always a farce, and open-borders Burnham has learnt absolutely nothing from his predecessor.

“The only way to stop the crossings is to deport all illegal immigrants on arrival, and only the Conservatives have a plan to do that.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

Lucy Powell said that the Government cannot stop small boats landing on British beaches. STUDIO: ‘Is it [small boats not being intercepted in the Channel] embarrassing?’ POWELL: ‘Well, look, can’t stop everything all of the time’ (BBC Radio 4, 24 September 2026, archived).

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The Conservatives say that in power they would cut universal credit by 30% for claimants who have not paid enough NI and load the payments onto a “back to work” debit card where you could not buy alcohol or tobacco. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

theguardian.com

Tories target universal credit claimants in plan condemned as ‘fast track to poverty’

Proposals aim to push people into work, but charities say families are still paying price of austerity cuts and rise in cost of living

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Ed Davey has just begun his speech to the Lib Dem conference, but it was released under embargo so here is what is is saying/will say, by me & @lexytopping.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A load of Lib Dem MPs and activists are baking in the autumn sun outside the Grand Hotel to cheer Ed Davey as he heads to the conference centre to make his speech later.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

My attempt to sum up a Lib Dem conference low on open drama but with a constant (mainly) below-the-surface debate about how the party adapts to the modern political era without risking irrelevance. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

theguardian.com

Caution versus ambition: strategy debate dominates Lib Dem conference

Party strategists say careful targeting of seats has paid off and should continue, but some say a wider vision is needed

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

At the Liberal Democrat conference there is about to be a debate on a motion on trans rights. If the motion is passed - which seems likely – then the LDs would be the first major UK party to explicitly reject the EHRC guidance and call for possible legal change to the supreme court ruling.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Most Liberal Democrat exchange ever.

Matt Chorley Roz Savage, Lib Dem MP, has written an essay.

Ed Davey I love essays.

Matt Chorley Saying...

Ed Davey How long was it?

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Speaking at the Lib Dem conference, home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson calls Reform UK “plonkers with dangerous ideas”, which is quite catchy.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Lib Dem statistic of the day, as revealed at a More in Common-led fringe, is that the greatest single predictor of Lib Dem support in an area, more than education, or income, or age, of gender... is the fact the constituency has a branch of Gail's. This backs up the previous anecdotal evidence.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I’m at the Lib Dem conference and, as ever, that’s Christmas sorted.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Bridget Phillipson on the BBC about Jim Ratcliffe's latest complaints about the UK: "You'll forgive me if I do take with a pinch of salt what someone who is a tax tax exile has to say about our country."

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Lib Dem conference starts today. I’ve written a preview of the issues at stake for what you could argue is - bear with me here - currently the UK’s most interesting political party. Let me explain… www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

theguardian.com

Lib Dems have ‘moral responsibility’ to block Reform, says Ed Davey as party gears up for snap election

Exclusive: Lib Dem leader bullish ahead of party conference despite static poll ratings and MPs’ frustrations

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

New: Zack Polanski requested that the Greens’ ruling executive committee postpone the party’s imminent annual conference so they could focus on the Holborn and St Pancras byelection but was refused, the Guardian has been told. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

theguardian.com

Polanski request to postpone Greens’ conference to focus on byelection refused by party

Leader understood to have wanted to focus on Holborn and St Pancras campaign in London but executive committee voted against plan

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Reposted by Peter Walker

Lizzie Dearden @lizziedearden.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

While Piddington dominates the news, at Leicester Crown Court this man was sentenced today Ivan Jennings, a former Conservative councillor, called for terror attacks on small boat migrants and Muslims and shared target ideas, telling fellow white supremacists to kill as many “subhumans” as possible

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I have since seen that the chair of Piddington parish council appealed to Elon Musk and Donald Trump for help. Appealing for help to someone found by a civil court to be a sex offender over fears of sex offences.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Like an Ealing comedy, but without any charm whatsoever.

Delivering the result, Susannah Parden, vice chair of the parish council, said: "We are Piddington the village that roars.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

This, from Nadhim Zahawi on Times Radio, is an example of something increasingly prevalent and unchallenged on the UK media: the direct conflation of asylum seekers and sex offenders. There have been some awful cases, but it's an idea is based, as far as I can see, on precisely zero proper evidence.

Women feel they have to beg in Piddington to be made safe because of the high levels of crime and, you know, rape that takes place with these migrants.”

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Reform in Wales having quite a bad day. Announced in the last 5 mins: • Leader Dan Thomas steps down due to "personal reasons" (he was arrested). • Reform MS Sarah Cooper-Lesadd defects to Plaid, saying Reform are "far more interested in division, opposition and headlines than finding solutions"

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I see we are back into one of the intermittent periods of media moral panics about cycling. It is presumably a matter of days before someone calls for mandatory registration and insurance. Please do wake me up if anyone writes something we haven't already read 10,000 times before.

Celia Walden

Failure to act on e-bikes is now wilful negligence

Reckless pests are becoming more brazen and the injuries – and deaths – they cause will only rise if the Government does nothing

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

One more time: Inheritance tax *is not unique or even uncommon* in being "double taxation". The coffee I just bought was paid for with wages on which income tax and NI had been levied, but was also subject to VAT. Just stop it.

elen Whately: “One of the problems with inheritance tax is that it's a form of double taxation.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Without getting into any either/or nonsense - I’m a longstanding disapprover of cyclist light-jumping - the context often missed is cyclist wrongdoing is just more *visible*. You’ll notice a goon on a Lime bike glide across a red light; when he’s in car and doing 30 in a 20 zone you probably want.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Reform sound like they're pre-emptively preparing the ground for their £72m windfall to be declared invalid. But this is a bit misleading: • "Lawful at the time they were received" ignores a bill in parliament which changes the facts. • Retrospective legislation is rate, but it does happen.

Make no mistake.

There is no precedent in modern British political history for a government to pass legislation that retroactively confiscates donations from political rivals that were lawful at the time they were received.

The fact the media are trying to normalise this only shows they share the government's goal of damaging Reform.

Burnham and his far left MPs are a threat to Britain as we know it.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I interviewed Rhun ap Iorwerth, Plaid Cymru’s Welsh first minister, who told me that if Andy Burnham is serious about devolution he has to understand that Wales is a nation and “not a region in England”, and has different needs. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

theguardian.com

Burnham must understand Wales is ‘not a region in England’, says first minister

Rhun ap Iorwerth, the first non-Labour Senedd leader, questions Westminster’s willingness to relinquish powers

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Any party election machine would welcome £72m in extra resources. But I do wonder if Reform accepting such vast sums in 24 hours from two very similar men - crypto billionaires - might end up being a net harm to their brand. The attack ads just write themselves.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

If you have a big story about Reform and approach them for comment it seems they go quiet and then quickly give the news to a friendly outlet (ie the Telegraph). Lesson seems to be: don’t approach Reform.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

A potentially big political moment looming at 2.30pm with the first Commons vote on the revived assisted dying private member's bill. MPs on both sides say that while it passed Commons last time, less focus on the issue and patchy attendance means it's hard to predict. If vote is lost – that's it.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

According to a column in the Times, gangs of masked vigilantes blocking roads have demands which "represent a consensus view across the country". This is very patently utter bollocks. Daniel Thomas, the organiser, is a far-right racist thug. His views are not in any way mainstream.

Should anyone wonder that groups of angry white men in balaclavas have now started occupying Dover and blockading coaches sent to ship more and more men into this utterly negligent system? It’s astonishing it hasn’t happened sooner. I don’t mean I want to see gangs of masked bricklayers marauding around ports. I don’t. But I do think that if you have spent three years allowing masked Gaza activists to take over the streets because police are too scared to stop them, and five years blocking policies such as Rwanda that would actually stop the boats, you cannot start hyperventilating the moment working-class British men take to the streets non-violently, as in Dover if not Portsmouth, to make their feelings known.

The non-violence is obviously critical. This was not a riot, as we saw in 2024. It was not a campaign of harassment. It did not target random people. And unlike the Gaza marches or “stop oil” stunts, its demands represent a consensus view across the country and relate to something under the government’s direct control. They amount to: “Can the government please do what it promised and stop ferry-loads of undocumented foreign men arriving on our beaches to fill up regional hotels and roam around town centres?” They might reasonably also ask for the Home Office to stop handing out asylum to the thousands who falsely claim it while visiting on student or work visas.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I've talked to the Reform councillor in Portsmouth who had to explain to a masked vigilante mob outside the city's Marriott hotel that a group of young men who had arrived on a coach were not asylum seekers but an U21 cricket team from Pakistan. He called it a “massively unfortunate incident”.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Brendan O’Neill’s endless pursuit of the wrong end of any argument has, perhaps inevitably, now got him defending fascist-adjacent street gangs.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Clarification to the clarification - the councillors are not saying who they back. Some might support Chowdhury, others Polanski. But they all nominated Chowdhury to widen the debate. Everyone got it?

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I’m now told that the six Camden councillors who nominated Hamza Chowdhury actually support Polanski and only did so to generate debate/a contest. They’re seemingly not pleased at being billed as backing him, or about his statement calling Polanski a carpetbagger.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Briefing seems to be that the Holborn and St Pancras byelection will take place on 8 Oct, a week *after* the Green conference, meaning Zack Polanski: • cannot arrive at the conference as a victor/plucky loser • will be subject to onerous broadcast rules about election candidates for the conference

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Reposted by Peter Walker

Andrew Sparrow @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Polanski faces challenge to be Greens' candidate for Holborn and St Pancras, as most Greens on local council back rival, @peterwalker99.bsky.social reports - www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Thinking back on the Reform UK conference, one of the big impressions it left was *cosiness*. This sounds odd given the rhetoric, but it reminded me of some Tory conferences and Labour under Corbyn, where it was often a comfort blanket for members, with no beliefs or failures really challenged.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Emma Reynolds on Sky with a fairly robust response to the new far right agitation in Portsmouth overnight, and the events in Dover: "As a politician, I absolutely support the right to peaceful protest, but this has crossed the line. This is thuggish and intimidating behaviour."

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Look, I know @colsonwhitehead.com isn’t short on plaudits, but I’d so recommend his Harlem trilogy. It’s rare to have books where you simultaneously want to plough ahead as the plot and characters are so gripping and re-read whole chapters to fully appreciate the language and cadence.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

A parting thought from the Reform UK conference: teal is a pretty tricky colour to carry off. Double teal - as in jacket *and* trousers/skirt - all the more so.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Barely any voters will have heard of him but losing Dan Jukes is a big blow for Farage. They are extremely close - Jukes has been his media person/representative on earth/attack dog from as long ago as the Ukip days.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Not now, Zika- and dengue-spreading invasive mosquito.

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