Chris Smith 🇮🇲
@spy_historian
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Historian of the Second World War, the Cold War, and on occasion a historian of cats and jokes. Manx. My views are my own.
Wales
Joined January 2018
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@PeterSweden7
Historian here
White men
-enslaved non-whites
-denied women the vote
-Fought the Allies in WW2
-Disproportionately discriminate against others
-"White privilege" is an indisputable historical fact which persists
-"Male privilege" is an indisputable historical fact which persists
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I trained as a historian for eight years. I've worked as an academic historian for a decade. My specialism is the Second World War. I've written two books. I am far less sure about the rights and wrongs of strategic bombing and the atomic bombs than folk who've watched a movie.
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Perhaps they haven't considered that maybe their God doesn't support their terrible politics and vicious candidate?
Supporters of Pres. Trump knelt in prayer outside the Clark County Election Department in Nevada as votes continue to be tallied nationwide.
#Election2020
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This dude seems to fetishise 19th-century subsistence peasants. And "fresh breast milk ice cream"? 😬
Boys want arm candy.
Men want someone who isn't on birth control, is loving, graceful, who wants to buy a farm, start homesteading, homeschool the kids, who's obsessed with cows and is dying to make fresh breast milk ice cream.
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How is this not the top story in every newspaper on earth?
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So, deffos true then.
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For a man who has written extensively about history, I'm surprised that Max has forgotten that the Republicans of the 1980s didn't exactly have good ideas regarding the AIDS virus...
I’m old enough to remember when the Republican Party was known as the “party of ideas.” That was in the 1980s.
Since then it has become the party of pseudo-scandals—which are growing more untethered from reality.
@PostOpinions
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Dwarves, elves and wizards don't exist. Yet "fans" are complaining that black actors are playing these roles because it's inauthentic? Good grief. Is there nothing these clowns won't moan about?
#LordOfTheRings
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Snyder spelling out the obvious reality that, frankly, too many commentators have missed.
It is senseless to shelter Putin from the sense that he is losing. He will figure that out for himself, and he will act to protect himself. 1/17
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@KirstySedgman
That 12 line passage has significantly fewer fullstops than the man has orgasms and the woman has hands. Giles obviously was never told that if a sentence is three lines in length it is probably too long.
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Victoria Newton: "STOP THE PRESS! A teenager took drugs and had sex."
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Anyone up for a terrible joke from the Second World War?
@SpitfireFilly
one you, nor anybody else, will appreciate.
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@APHClarkson
@Sime0nStylites
@timoconnorbl
@rolandmcs
The vast, vast majority of academics and analysts, people paid to pay attention to facts and evidence, were horrified by Brexit. On the day after the result, going to work at my then uni felt like going to a funeral.
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@mrjamesob
For the record, what the brilliant David Cesarani had to say about that:
"David Irving denies the gas chambers. Anyone who deals with him is tainted with that."
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@Robin_C_Douglas
@IanDunt
You're comparing throwing soup at glass to alleged statutory rape? You might want to take a deep breath...
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@sgfmann
We have left the EU, there I no "EU red tape", there is British red tape and the reality of trading with a massive economic block as a third party and position of inherent weakness.
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@thelilynews
@L_Historienne
@CAKitchener
They make it sound like the format and medium is some vast barrier. It isnt. It is easy to cite, you say that there is a really good book on the subject, which informed much of the discussion and tell the listeners to go buy or preorder it. Even better: interview the expert.
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@CanterburyCCUni
Good for you. Given his incendiary comments date back long before 2020, academics and historians need to do some soul searching and ask ourselves why we tolerated him, associated ourselves with him, legitimised him with membership of our institutions for so long.
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I have taught many students who under achieved at A-Level who went on to do outstandingly well at degree level. Maturity is not reached at 18 and we should not limit people's access to higher education based on tests they did as children.
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@1940Andy
@guywalters
@OliverDowden
@DCMS
@UkNatArchives
Nope, I won't be doing that. I'm an historian, I'm also a trade unionist. Staff have a right to a safe working environment. My right to read files does not trump the right of others to a safe working environment.
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@ejrosetta
@chhopsky
You used the word therapist, which includes the word rapist. What are you implying?
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@AuthorGerald
@TomABacon
@christopherhope
First question: "Does the Prime Minister believe that the Official Secrets Acts and the Ministerial code still matter?"
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@chucklambert18
@Oteachjohn
@AmirSariaslan
@werocktheplanet
Or go the other, more sensible direction, and treat education as the public good it is and subsidise it entirely.
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@Andrew_Adonis
Umm, no they aren't. The job of a union is to protect the interests of its members. Thus far the gov. has failed to produce research which shows it is safe for teachers to return to work, it has failed to provide them with PPE or proper guidelines.
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@timmyvoe
@ArchRose90
Do you often sit around of an evening fantasising about sexual assaults? Are you on a watch list?
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@HaslamJonathan
@thehistoryguy
How is providing a taster for a podcast episode about a dreadful historical event "knocking Britain"? Why must he instead talk about other history more palatable to you?
What a ridiculous comment.
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Journalists screaching about Prince Harry's kill count "boast" (not actually a boast if you read the quoted text they report he has written) are going to lose their minds when they discover Chris Kyle, Sydney Valpy Radley-Walters and Douglas Bader.
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The Party of Law and Order effectively stating that the most senior judges we have are "blockers" because they require the UK government to operate within... the law.
Following today’s ruling,
@RishiSunak
is taking the extraordinary step of introducing emergency laws to beat the blockers.
When Rishi Sunak said he'd halve inflation - he delivered.
So when he says he'll stop the boats - you can bet he means it.
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@aroberts_andrew
I see you are careful to avoid mentioning the fact that Goebbels and Rosenberg publicly announced that the regime was exterminating Jews in the east in 1941.
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Also, massive respect to my colleagues and friends who do study this fraught subject. It is an absolute moral minefield, one which i would not touch. I look forward to
@Alan_Allport
's new book and his view on this.
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@WallStreetSilv
@BBCSteveR
@TuckerCarlson
The BBC has an enormous audience globally. What on earth are you talking about?
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@Telegraph
It's interesting that you blame "degrees" for a failure of government to stimulate a productive economy that fails to produce jobs commensurate to the education and skills of the population.
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UK academia is just maddening. The proliferation of byzantine bureacracy mixed with near Soviet style hierarchy is beyond belief. I started designing my own modules less than a decade ago and in that time everything has become so much more complex.
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@GuidoFawkes
If you count the contents page and other supplementary material and read it in published form. As a manuscript in Word with the default settings, the actual substantive text is just over 3 pages.
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@morgantethdwarf
@waitmanb
That's a very long-winded way of saying you don't know what you're talking about and humiliating yourself on the internet.
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@redhistorian
I do a lecture on this. It reached absolute absurdism with the following video:
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@Andrew_Adonis
The unions are entirely right to withhold their support from a proposal until these basic questions of safety have been adequately addressed. I know you haven't been an historian or on the left for some decades, but safety in the workplace is a big union 'thing'.
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This thread of replies strikes me as spot on. Electoral reform is vital to sideline ERG radicals pushing an extreme Brexit. It was possible, even likely, that we could have had a soft compromise Brexit, palatable to most remainers. But instead we have polarised our politics.
@Lord_Sugar
It would take the following:
1) Stable, substantial, popular majority for Rejoin (stable majority already exists - needs to be bigger)
2) Competent campaign to keep it in spotlight (
@euromove
&
@MarchForRejoin
)
3) Both Labour & Tories w/ high Rejoin MP numbers.
4) Willing EU
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When did accepting reality become doing Britain down?
@wmarybeard
was right. Britain hasn't been a first rank power in decades. This was accepted by Tories since Suez. Until this brexit fever has shattered collective sanity. We can only move forward when we accept reality.
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How much evidence, from survivor and witness testimony to images of women hostages their crotches soiled with blood, do we require? Yes, the IDF has a long record of lying and coverups - so, too, does the British Army. That doesn't invalidate what we know happened.
“Believe all women” was always an absurd overreach: woman should be heard, claims should be investigated, but evidence is required. The same is true of the allegations out of Israel.
But also, this isn’t a “believe women” scenario bc no female victims have offered testimony.
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@MartinDaubney
@brianmoore666
'Fair comment' hasn't existed under UK law since the Defamation Act of 2013 replaced it the defence of 'honest opinion'. An honest opinion must be based "any fact which existed at the time the statement complained of was published". Which facts are you contending are true?
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@beverleyturner
@toryboypierce
Bev, you're laughing at the rhetoric rather than the essential point. You've not covered yourself in glory here. And what do you or Andrew know about any of this?
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Is there an autocrat Tracey won't shill for?
Definitely needs to be recorded for future generations to contemplate (assuming human civilization isn't wiped out) that the one European leader consistently calling for "peace talks" and cessation of hostilities is also the leader most furiously condemned as a "danger" to Europe
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Such is the degradation of the now thoroughly partisan US Supreme Court, it is now legislating from the bench based on fabricated events which it didn't bother to check even happened.
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@CharlotteCGill
What a disgraceful tweet. Amess was murdered by a sympathiser of Islamic State, nothing to do with peaceful protestors.
Stop lying.
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@IanDunt
Sorry, Ian, but they didn't throw soup at a van Gogh, but at a sheet of glass. Meanwhile, you are talking about what was, in effect, a harmless act, ergo they have succeeded in their aim. It is worth noting that suffragettes like Anne Hunt, lauded today, actually destroyed art.
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Well, this is a bit embarrassing. Half of Twitter has pointed him to Yalta.
In what way did Churchill sell out Poland? He wasn’t even in government when the Nazis invaded. You don’t read history, do you?
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@RhonddaBryant
Also, Chris, that is with the generous formatting of a parliamentary publication. As a standard Word document with default settings (calibre font 11, 6pt After spacing, default margins of 2.54), it really is just a shade over 3 pages (excluding notes).
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@MarkVipond
@BritainElects
@YouGov
Drivel. Johnson lied to parlaiment too many times and was defenestrated by his party. The print media is nearly all pro-Tory, pro-Brexit and the broadcast media doesn't challenge it at all, taking its lead from the papers. The Tories are in trouble because they are useless.
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@JuliaHB1
@andyrossecon
Then why are you taking issue with his point? Britain is not a top rank power and has not been for decades. Membership of the EU was a means, successfully, of amplifying our remaining power.
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@internetarchive
Hi, is there any activism by authors to support you? After this absurd and philistine decision by the publishers, and let's hope they are unsuccessful, I would happily allow you to use my books under the current setup.
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John Redwood can't point to Afghanistan on a map and the Brexit paper of record, the Express, don't know which party Angela Merkel belongs to.
Such is the state of the UK right.
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@BarackObamaMarx
@Morgxn2001
That 30% will pay for his education, which hopefully will mean that he has a better understanding of political and economic theories than his old man.
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@Otto_English
Did you see she also claimed that the Tories were on -5% in the polls the day Johnson resigned? Not actually true, that was the following day. In fact, on the 7th the polls were -11-12. Either by accident or on purpose, to make a better point, she managed to get that wrong. 🤣
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@antifaducks
@setoacnna
Can we not call them "gender critical", as that adds legitimacy to a position which is, in essence, hatred of transwomen.
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@jimmyOsborn13
@AnaKasparian
@realDonaldTrump
From July 17 to July 18 wages rose by 2.7% while inflation in the same period was. 2.9%. Most Americans had a pay cut. That's a fact.
Or is the Bureau of Labor Statistics part of the grand socialist conspiracy?
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@chrisbarra22
@hammer_mo
@GuidoFawkes
With that formatting, default Word formatting, which is probably how he read it circulated prior to publication, is indeed a shade over 3 pages.
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#BletchleyPark
is currently faces a swinging round of
#redundancies
b/c
#Covid19UK
.
@spyhistory
& I have written a letter we intend to send to the press requesting gov intervention. If you're an scholar/educator &'d like to sign, DM us.
#twitterstorians
#SpyHistory
#IntelHistory
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@sarahditum
Tell me you don't understand how systemic racism works without telling me you don't understand how systemic racism works.
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@redhistorian
As a BP specialist, I find the whole Alan Turing bit profoundly idiotic. The lesson from Bletchley Park is the precise opposite, that international cooperation leads to success.
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@Bren4Bassetlaw
You disrespected not only parlaiment itself but the public who elected it. If you had any integrity, you would resign. Failing that parlaiment should suspend you, your constituents should petition for your removal and you should face a by-election.
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@andrew_lilico
So, you're imagining a set of histories that didn't happen which are worse than the history which did happen, but which you know nothing about?
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@amandajplatell
Utter rubbish, as one can only expect from you. Of course, civil servants who know what they are doing thought Brexit was a terrible idea. They still carried it out, which is proof of their impartiality.
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@benjcartlidge
I was reasonably good at exams, but aside from low cost, easy marking and their ability to limit cheating, they have little pedagogic value and are highly flawed tools in assessing learning and progress.
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@MikeYstad
@LizKwillResist
@tedlieu
@igorbobic
Fortunately, they are spectacularly bad at suing. The Trump/GOP lolsuits have been batted into the crowd by every judge they have faced.
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As this tweet seems to have gained a tiny amount of traction, I'd like to highlight the cause of the historians at Chichester.
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@ScottAdamLipsky
@jwpetersNYT
@JoeNBC
To be honest, all varieties of poker are tedious. Real card players play Bridge.
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@jobsacuk
Fancy a career change? Undertake a gruelling pg degree to enter a sector chronically oversubscribed with hugely motivated people, most of whom spend years precariously employed, only some of whom ever make it into a career.
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@AlStewartOBE
@winterhasbeen
Like all twitter bullies, you love to dish it out but mewl when you get a taste back.
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@johnmilbank3
Amazing. Every time some progress for women is threatened, the same tired old reactionary tropes are trotted out by angry men. Is this the "true" nature of women, John?
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@JoeySalads
The CDC recommended school closures 13 days after the first case was detected in the USA. That spring nearly 1,000 schools were closed.
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@JohnFea1
Honest question: is it possible that there any young historian has been asked their view of these critiques of the
#1619Project
by any hiring committee?
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@wisestreligion
@toadmeister
@SpeechUnion
@AndrewSabisky
You realise that Lynn's work has been roundly discredited? That education and environment have a significant influence on results? That IQ tests do not easily transfer across cultures? That IQ in general, is dubious? That the very idea of "intelligence" is an ill-defined concept?
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@jeffmcnamee
@mjluxmoore
You should invest in blood diamonds mate or arms dealing. Sounds right up your street.
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How does Hitchens still get seriously as a commentator when he comes out with rubbish like this?
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
.
@phillipspobruen
*Who* considered Russia to be ‘one of the world’s greatest militaries’? Anyone informed knew it to be corrupt and decrepit. The exaggeration of Moscow’s conventional capabilities has been one of the oddest features of this crisis. Now it has been proven beyond…
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Why are academic books so madly priced? I want to buy a new book, but I also don't want to mortgage my house or kill my mother for the inheritance.
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@ElbridgeColby
Phillips O'Brien, among the foremost military historian of the Second World War, has written a lengthy tome on this subject. I recommend you read it.
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@John_for_hope
@GoodwinMJ
Err... Sky is owned by Murdoch; the BBC is run by a former Tory councillor; ITV Channel 4 a former Government Lead Non-Executive Director in the Cabinet Office appointed by David Cameron. Need I go on?
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In other news, my Book The Last Cambridge Spy, a biography of the 'fifth man' of the Cambridge Ring of Five, will be coming out in paper back early next year.
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@davidfrum
As horrific as his crimes undoubtedly are. I am uncomfortable with trying minors as adults. If you are not old enough to legally drink alcohol, to vote or raise a family, you should not be considered an adult by the criminal justice system.
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@nigelreynolds
@thetimes
Hi Nigel, 1. the story reveals that a mere two books have been removed from two lists. There are 140 universities & many thousands of modules. 2. Students are being given an option, not denied material. 3. content warnings are a part of everyday life & have been for decades.
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Hitchens was once a revolutionary Communist. Today he is a Conservative. Ergo, conservatism is leftwing.
That's the level of argument we have reached.
The German Social Democrat Konrad Heiden , in his 1938 biography of Hitler, notes the large numbers of former Social Democrats and Communists who joined the Nazis after Hitler came to power. Before this week, I never heard anyone dispute this.
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In some other news, I've been offered a contract for a book on "Bletchley Park in myth and memory", a working title totally stolen from
@daniel_todman
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@thejpc
This plan was rejected by the 1937 Zionist Congress. Probably best to delete your post. Quite embarrassing.
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@ucu
Hi, I voted no because I don't want to pause strike action. But I am not opposed to consultation, I welcome it. Why was the question so ineptly phrased?
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I had planned on naming friends and colleagues who work on this stuff, but I felt the list was too long, and if I forgot someone, I'd rightly be in big trouble. So I went with a general forthcoming history.
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@DunsPitcus
@campbellclaret
Not really, Keir has been very forceful on this. But LOTO attacking government ministers isn't as newsworthy as former Tory PM laying into one of his Tory successors.
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