Paul Groenhuysen
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pgroenhuysen.bsky.social
Paul Groenhuysen
@pgroenhuysen.bsky.social
Follow politics..UK Labour member
Sinatra and Jazz music nut
Test match cricket watcher
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Feel like I'm going mad. The Budget's 'headroom' is based on frankly irresponsible and wildly optimistic claims about what Labour will do in the final year of the forecast, and on ignoring a bunch of upward pressures on spending, and the claim is that she was being exaggeratedly *pessimistic*?
Suggestion Rachel Reeves exaggerated fiscal pressures is absurd
Chancellor was instead far too optimistic about public finances and government’s ability to secure cuts
www.ft.com
December 1, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
👏🏽"We must all now confront the reality that the Brexit deal significantly hurt our economy. We have to keep reducing frictions. We have to keep moving towards a closer relationship with the EU. And we have to be grown up about it. To accept that it will require trade-offs."👏🏽

Music to my ears. ~AA
December 1, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
All of us: Why, in our judgement, Chris Mason is misleading on most political points, all the time.

Because he’s incapable of political commentary that isn’t marinated in his own rightwing bias. Allegations for Labour. Free passes for Tories/Reform. Every Single Time.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Chris Mason: Why, in my judgement, Reeves was misleading on one specific point
The Chancellor chose not to share some information on tax receipts in an unusual press conference, given before the Budget.
www.bbc.co.uk
December 1, 2025 at 7:22 PM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Labour’s Employment Rights Bill - a rare effort to address inequality of power.

“A large majority of voters backing Nigel Farage also want stronger working rights. Yet he and his MPs voted against every item in the bill.”
But of course they did.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
It’s under fire from left and right – but Labour’s workers' rights bill is a huge achievement | Polly Toynbee
It makes no sense for union leaders to cry betrayal when it will be their members who benefit from these sorely needed reforms, says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee
www.theguardian.com
December 2, 2025 at 7:23 AM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Our economic woes are caused by Brexit, (Ukraine), Covid, Brexit’s ugly baby - our dismal immigration policy, Truss budget, 14yrs of austerity…
All rightwing policies.
Quite mad that our media acts as if Labour’s budget is the end of days, when they failed to adequately scrutinise any of
that👆shit.
December 1, 2025 at 7:27 AM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Our media has become the story. What they decide is newsworthy, what they scream about, who they accuse, who they excuse, who they blame…

They have an agenda entirely of their own. Not one rooted in public interest or national responsibility. But one that is deeply rightwing and undemocratic.
I must have missed the wall-to-wall coverage of demands for an investigation into Nigel Farage's lies about being a racist

Or about whether he knew Nathan Gill

Or about who bought his house in Frinton
December 1, 2025 at 7:29 AM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
This is the most alarming story I’ve read today. Giving up the fight before it’s started
November 30, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Your Party decides to call itself Your Party.
November 30, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Not the Brexit deal.
Brexit.
A prejudiced moronathon that will continue to damage our country until we’re brave/sane enough to admit it, demand accountability from those who insisted upon it and then, finally, start to fix it.
The tide is turning. Even the Telegraph is now admitting the damage the Brexit deal has done to the economy.
November 29, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
The scale of the Brexit damage forces the less dishonest Brexiters to admit reality.

(Sunak, same paper, continues to delude himself and his readers)
(Farage would rip up any reset and plunge business into more costly uncertainty)

“Such evidence cannot be dismissed as Project Fear. It is data”
November 30, 2025 at 9:50 AM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Glorious, cathartic, taking no shit at all, Stewart Lee.

Brexit: “like someone stepping round a massive pile of dogshit on the living room carpet. Every day. For nine years.”

If only all our media could be as ruthlessly challenging as this.
www.thenerve.news/p/stewart-le...
November 30, 2025 at 11:04 AM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Popular Front of Judea comrade. 🤣
Zarah Sultana is not attending today's opening day, in solidarity with those excluded for being SWP members (on grounds it is another registered party). Unlike Corbyn, she does not favour a single leader, but both intend to stand if a single leader model chosen
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Your Party conference thrown into chaos as Zarah Sultana boycotts first day
Sultana skips Saturday’s proceeding in solidarity with delegates expelled over links to other parties
www.theguardian.com
November 29, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
“It sounded as if he was suggesting that songs about gassing Jews, Asians and Black people amount to no more than “banter”. That’s not schoolboy Farage talking, but the Farage of 2025.”

Yes. Same racism. Now weaponised by the wealth and power of the far right.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Antisemitism allegations against the teenage Farage matter – look at what he went on to do | Jonathan Freedland
Farage has cosied up to US figures who espoused conspiracy theories about Jews. That kind of talk is becoming alarmingly mainstream on the Maga right, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland
www.theguardian.com
November 29, 2025 at 9:06 AM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
If it's true, if the US is willing to allow borders to be redrawn by force and let aggressors be rewarded, then the gates of hell are about to be opened.

This may prove to be the single most destabilizing and conflict-spawning decision of the 21st century.

A truly Black Friday.
November 28, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Why wouldn’t you want to know? What have you got to fear? Losing your precious Brexit? Being revealed as a traitor and a liar?
Surely, anyone decent and honest who genuinely cares about our country and our democracy has nothing to lose from this. So, sign up.
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/74...
Petition: Call a public inquiry into Russian influence on UK politics & democracy
We are concerned about reported efforts from Russia to influence democracy in the US, UK, Europe and elsewhere. We believe we must establish the depth and breadth of possible Russian influence campaig...
petition.parliament.uk
November 28, 2025 at 8:11 PM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
The UK, where the day after a decision to take half a million children out of poverty, the media & political world has been full of sneering at those same children & their families, labelling them as ‘Benefits Street’, while the same people are moaning about a tax on £2m mansions. Shameful stuff.
November 27, 2025 at 8:22 PM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Is Farage still the racist bully he was at school?
“there’s a substantive case that Farage did change. He’s seen the strategic necessity of maintaining a clear boundary with the far right”
Cynical political manoeuvring should not shield him.
So yes, he still is.
www.thenewworld.co.uk/sunder-katwa...
How Farage fails the racism test
Would a person from an ethnic minority trust Nigel Farage in power? So long as the answer remains “no”, Farage and the Reform party are unfit for office
www.thenewworld.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 7:40 AM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
“Speaking outside his chateau in France, former Brexit Party and UKIP MEP Coburn answered "no" when a BBC journalist asked him whether he’d ever been paid to give a speech to promote pro-Russian campaigners”

Just FFS investigate the whole dodgy traitorous lot of them.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Former Brexit Party MEP denies taking payment from pro-Russian campaign
A prominent former MEP for Nigel Farage's old party denies taking bribes in a pro-Russian campaign.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Oh Zia Yusufski, you and your Reform lot are going to have to get cross with *a lot* of people. Here’s Private Eye taking the piss out of you too.
November 26, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
You just cannot take the iPaper seriously when it wheels out Kwasi ‘mini budget’ Kwarteng to comment on the budget.
We don’t *ever* want to hear from this arrogant clown again.
“No prudence”
FML.
November 27, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Quick analysis of The Times today:
Wall to wall negative coverage of Labour’s budget. An editorial that tuts about lack of growth but takes no responsibility. And a double page ad to join Farage/Reform.
Absolutely no analysis on how rightwing ideology - including Brexit - has been utterly ruinous.
November 27, 2025 at 8:22 AM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Even @channel4news.bsky.social opens its budget coverage by asking "What will this do for Labour's position in the polls?"

Polls are not even a good predictor of future elections. They're certainly not a test by which budgets should be measured.

We have to break their cold, dead grip on politics.
November 26, 2025 at 7:15 PM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
On Truss & Kwarteng in ‘22. Allister Heath, Telegraph: “the best budget I have ever heard a British chancellor deliver". Alex Brummer, Mail: “a genuine Tory package elbowing to one side the Treasury's fiscal conservatism".
These men will now be paid actual money for their analysis of today’s budget.
November 26, 2025 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by Paul Groenhuysen
Surely not?! But the Telegraph.....🙄
The OBR says that the VAT charge on private schools has raised more money than expected because fewer pupils have gone into the state sector

Never believe the Tories and their media.
November 26, 2025 at 3:24 PM