The second main reason for non-EU migration was for work, with 171,000 people migrating for this purpose in the year ending June 2025. This was down from 471,000 in the year to December 2023.

“CTA – UK, Ireland, Right of Abode”, “EU Settlement Scheme”, and “Indefinite Leave to Remain (not EU Settlement Scheme)” together account for 96% of the UC caseload.

9.2% of people on UC were in the “EU Settlement Scheme” group. 2.6% of people on UC were in the “Indefinite Leave to Remain (not EU Settlement Scheme)"

The Black/African/Caribbean/Black British ethnicity group accounted for 6.0% of claimants.

84.3% of people on UC were in the “CTA – UK, Ireland, Right of Abode” group. Of these, 99.9% are UK citizens.

"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea." Indeed, Mr Cantona, indeed.

This is now politics as football, where regular dismissals of gaffers (read PMs) are seen as part of the now normal rhythm of a season (read a "typical" parliamentary term).

– no @newstatesman1913.bsky.social it's not the "scandal of the [fucking] century – as if, without it, the chaos, the drama, the feeling of shaping the course of history itself – as opposed to being the author of its first draft – they're unable to keep audiences within their spheres of influence.

... without a change in leader, without subjecting the public to another trip to the polling booths. The media, too, has long been complicit in manufacturing and exaggerating narratives of apocalyptic crises in government ...

... (just look to the extremes of the 20th century). It is not an aberration. It is merely the public expression of the enduring myth of white supremacy in its subtle and less subtle manifestations. What's new is simply the world in which it exists. And that says it all.

... promoting imagery that has long been used to dehumanise black people in a country that systematically sought to exploit and destroy men, women and children based on the colour of their skin, does not represent a collapse of the overstated virtues associated with western enlightenment ...

Discover more below 👇🏼

#Labour #Conservatives #Greens #LibDems #Independent #ReformUK #WorthValley #ByElection #LocalElections #LocalElections2026 #BradfordCouncilElections #BradfordCouncilElections2026 #LocalPolitics

www.theilkleyjournal.co.uk/p/living-sta...

There’s much that’s wrong with Labour. This latest Burnham saga has just added to it.

... shifting the focus away, once again, from delivering change locally and nationally to instead the melodrama of self-absorbed internal party politics … and costing taxpayers millions in the process.

It would simply have been another distraction from doing the things that really matter (and providing further fuel for populist demagogues that "they're in it for themselves") ...

That's a whole lot of risk for what feels like a vanity exercise, with Burnham and his team seemingly buying into the idea that vis-à-vis his so-called “crowing” as the “king of the north”, he's the saviour the country (and the @teamlabouruk.bsky.social) has been waiting for.

Further, there were never any guarantees he’d get elected, nor that the Greater Manchester Combined Authority would stay Labour

I don't see this squaring up with his argument that with a dangerous right wing style of politics on the rise, he would be better placed to take this on. How exactly would he have done this?