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Sean Kemp

@seankemp.bsky.social
1.5K followers 314 following 428 posts

Advised the Lib Dems during coalition. Somehow still able to get work

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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 1h
Yep, when I catch up with other former Lib Dem Spads we just sit around cackling about how we destroyed the Tories by making them compromise on key issues. ‘Wow we totally screwed their electoral chances for a decade’ we say as we laugh into our drinks.
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I’d say it’s one of the things people most know about her
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I know it’s not exactly a forgotten novel. But it baffles me this isn’t more widely read.
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Me too. A colleague bought a batch at Tory conference and the person selling them said: ‘you’re just taking the mickey aren’t you?’
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
There was absolutely a tactical choice that they should talk about Trump a lot as it would work well in terms of high-level positioning and in target seats. Cutting through is always the challenge
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
They are brilliant whilst also clearly could be half the length. You just have to embrace the fact it’s about so much more than the biography
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Oh yeah, I was about to tune in at 8, when it turns out I’d have been watching Renovation Rescue
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Isn't this still embargoed?
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
His running joke about Berlin Alexanderplatz in The Teleportation Accident regularly pops into my mind
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Yeah, people have been recommending it. But ultimately because he seems like a nice bloke with a good life. And I’m happy for him, but didn’t make for a gripping read
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Well, that was an unexpected twist to me reading the four-year-old her bedtime story
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
This is a much more important group of disgruntled MPs than the hardcore group of (four? five?) Starmer loyalist MPs that some people have said could be a problem.
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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Taking the opportunity to repost this story (from John Boorman’s book) about how shooting the last shot of Zardoz caused Sean Connery to fall into so fierce a rage it led to a man changing his identity
Zed eventually destroys the Vortex, giving the Immortals the gift of death. He survives with Charlotte Rampling and they have a child together. The final sequence is done in a single shot with a fixed camera.
Sean and Charlotte are sitting side by side in a cave with the baby. The baby becomes a child, the child becomes a youth, gets up and leaves them without looking back; they get older, then become ancient, and finally just their skeletons remain, which eventually crumble to dust.
Only then does the camera move. It tracks in to a handprint on the wall of the empty cave, like the cave painting of primitive man in Lescaux, suggesting that this future world could have been in the past, and that as that civilisation ended, ours began.
This shot took an entire day to shoot. The actors had to be removed and make-up applied incrementally to add the years. Sean has a delicate skin and hates make-up. He had to endure it all day. He became more and more irascible. This was the last day of shooting. We had the wrap party that night. Sean had a golf tournament to go to the next day. I had to hold him until the morning for the laboratory report. The call came at 6 a.m. There was a fault in the film stock. It would have to be redone. Sean was apoplectic. He stormed and raged, but it had to be done.
We reassembled with our hangovers and started again. A long day, hours of make-up, Sean smarting from his suffering skin. Finally it was done. The clapper-loader took the magazine from the camera to prepare1973: ZARDOZ
it for the lab. A few minutes later he came to me, trembling and ashen-faced. He looked so devastated, I thought someone had been killed or that the Third World War had started. I was almost relieved when he admitted that he had opened the can by mistake and exposed the film to daylight.
Sean would not believe me. "Is this your idea of a joke?' he fumed.
Finally convinced he would have to do it for a third time, he erupted. It was a terrifying sight. He roared, he ran amok. He went after the clapper-loader. He tried to kill him. It took four strong men to subdue him.
Twenty years later I was drinking coffee in Starbucks in Venice, California, when I was approached by a man with a familiar face. I couldn't place it. He reminded me that he was the clapper-loader who had exposed the film. He had fled the country immediately after this catastrophe, changed his identity, and was now a cameraman shooting commercials in LA. As we parted, he said, with an ironic smile, but also with a trace of fear, "Sean's not in town, is he?'
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
I am duty bound to say my own team (Tottenham). But Palace is a good shout
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Reposted by Sean Kemp
Jennifer Williams @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
AB, a 🧵
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
I sent it to my wife and she said: 'Do you really want me to read this?'
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
That whole 'calling the by-election means Farage can dominate the news agenda when Burnham thought it would be him' take is not aging well so far.
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
It literally begins with several (very good) jokes that anticipate how people will react, I don't understand why it's made some people so indignant
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
‘“His decisions are shit and it’s going to be a complete disaster” said one of Burnham’s biggest supporters.’
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
From the latest story in The Times about Mahmood to the Treasury. Minor point, but I’d say if you’re giving the press quotes like this then you’re not actually an ‘ally’ of Andy Burnham
A senior ally of Burnham said: "Shabana has no sense of the economics. It's just not something she's ever spoken about. She's not collaborative. It's not clear how she would drive the machine."
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Also this section (James Purnell is behaving entirely appropriately!) made me laugh
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
As a public affairs consultant myself I get the frustration. There have been Burnham policies floated, including in the FT, that affect specific sectors with no way for companies to engage or understand. But realistically his team can’t be doing much business engagement when he’s not even PM
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Second was a draw! The polls were split. Third Cameron won by a mile
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Gee W @geewalsh.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
There are many things Matterface would like to say.... And he's written them all down the night before and will spend the whole match ham-fistedly trying to insert his shitty puns and quips into his commentary.
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
The bin is not funny. The apparent formation of a bin attack unit is funny
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Also standing in this one when the others don’t does scream establishment stitch-up in the way Farage would want. There’s good arguments both ways, but I think I’d lean towards not standing as the right call.
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
I think Farage wins a second by-election whatever the commission says. But I don’t think it’s daft that the Tories might feel their best chance is to duck this first one in the hope that a longer period of scrutiny/trying to make him look thin-skinned and a bit silly chips away at him a bit
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
In reality, I think it's very hard for Kemi not to run someone. But in an ideal world of 'what would least play into what Farage wants' it'd be turning this into a non-event. That's probably more about amusing me than the reality of the circumstances here
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
He's going to win this by-election. The only issue is how to not play his game
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
I am very tempted by replaying the David Davis ‘this is just a PR stunt and none of us are playing’ approach. Some kind of stitch-up pact to engineer a winner is a non-starter
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
I strongly believe none of them should run a candidate.
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Right, so do the other parties do the hilarious David Davis thing and not stand?
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
I mean his actual stats are still amazing! (didn't mean to sound rude BTW, just meant people watching the previous games would have seem quite a few more touches than that)
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Cannot believe people are sharing this as if it's actually true. He has not only touched the ball eight times in this tournament. he touched it eight times in the match
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Worst thing about this red card thing is I now have to hope that rubbish Belgium team wins.
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
‘Preparation matters’ he says in the interview, before ordering a pizza intended for a family of four because the pub’s chef has a day off.
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
This quote from the Morgan McSweeney interview is nuts. Labour had been miles ahead for years by this point. Every public affairs consultancy in the UK was preparing for an inevitable Labour Government. But Labour wasn't? Really?
Quote is "He said that there had been a widespread expectation that Labour would require at least two elections to return to power after its crushing defeat in 2019, and "quite a lot of people" thought it needed a plan for defeat rather than victory in 2024.

He recalled that during planning meetings early that year, he "did start to realise that we hadn't done enough to prepare for government".
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
It’s a penalty, but they were so much better than Belgium. Utterly brutal
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👻 Jack Djinn Wail 🧞 @jacktindale.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
And so, Penelope Keith goes to her grave having never faced justice.
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
I’m pretty sure it was. I was in govt at the time and remember going round the lobby on the day it was launched. The cover was the first thing any of the journalists mentioned
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Yeah, I'm probably going to be proved wrong now, but I feel he didn't actually bring it up much himself? Certainly not the crowbarring in that you now see
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
How dare you, Mike Tapp saw them off single-handedly
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Yep, job done!
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
With this and Al Carns, I’m starting to feel like serving in the military should actually disqualify you from being an MP
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
My own view is that he should just announce this will be Josh Simon’s’ permanent office, purely for the comedy value
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
This is brutally accurate
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Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 23/06/2026
A decade+ since I was inadvertently invited to a Downing Street room with Facebook/Google/etc and Cameron walked in and asked everyone what they'd do to boost youth referendum turnout and a grand woman shouted "WE NEED GRIME ARTISTES, DOES ANYONE KNOW ANY GRIME ARTISTES" and I began to doubt Remain.
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Political scientists were repeatedly writing about what he was doing wrong, almost from day one.
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
I remember how the easiest way to do Twitter numbers was to say anything disobliging about him at all and watch the pro-Corbyn folk do the rest
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Sean Kemp @seankemp.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Maybe I’m being unfair, but he just had a vibe of trying too hard and just getting it a bit wrong.
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