Beth Rigby, "All of the people in the Makerfield focus group voted to Leave the EU. When Burnham said it at conference I thought: Brexit betrayal. Those Leave voting parts of the country won't like this." "But you ask those people and they don't seem to mind (closer ties with the EU" Brexiter 1, "I voted to leave.. Much younger then.. Didn't understand it.. Dad told me to vote for Leave.. It's harder now.. Maybe it would be better if we went back" Brexiter 2, "Everything seemed better when we were in Europe, it just did" Brexiter 3, "I think we were over-promised things.. I think we would be much better as part of an EU.. Than on our own" Brexiter 4 says she would vote the same way because she thinks we would have to adopt the Euro - currently six EU countries do not use the Euro My view: The Makerfield focus group tells you how much the Brexit argument has changed. These were all Leave voters. Now one says she didn’t understand what she was voting for; others say life in the EU felt better, that they were promised too much, and that Britain might be better off as a member again. That doesn’t mean every one of them would vote to rejoin. It does show that the old assumption—that Leave voters would always reject closer ties with Europe—is wearing thin. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage helped persuade people that Brexit would deliver easy gains, without being honest about the trade-offs or what leaving would mean in practice. The euro objection shows how those scare stories still shape the debate. - Six EU countries currently don’t use the euro and the UK had an opt-out when it was a member. What this shows is the need for clear information, not deception, half-truths and outright lies, shaping the conversation. Because when people are given clear accurate facts, the majority of them do not buy into populist rhetoric, so much of which is based on hate and division.

Who?

One of the men in this picture is a politician currently serving 10 and a half years in prison for accepting Russian bribes. The other was his boss and doesn't think there's evidence of Russia interfering in UK politics.

'I couldn't get a job, I grew up in Middlesbrough, where 5 years older than me, everybody got an apprenticeship. When we left school there was nothing. Maggie Thatcher was the enemy. She was the devil' Former Middlesbrough Mayor and former Labour Politician, Andy Preston, spoke to Asher Gould and Mark Wogan on the Late Show about leaving school in the UK under Margaret Thatcher's premiership. @virtualash | @centre_right_

Day 15 of asking @andyburnham to jam with us so we can talk about getting UK artists touring Europe again! 🎵 Tag @andyburnham in the comments so he sees this!

Andrew, forget for a moment the endless Brexit accountancy — customs forms, regulations, GDP fractions and whether one trade agreement adds 0.1% here or subtracts 0.2% there. There is a much larger question: where does British power come from? Churchill understood it perfectly. Britain was powerful because it stood at the junction of what he called the “three majestic circles”: the Commonwealth, the English-speaking world and United Europe. That was not sentimental Europeanism. It was hard-headed British geopolitics. For three centuries British strategy was based on one central principle: never allow the European continent to be organised without Britain having a decisive voice in its organisation. Marlborough understood it. Pitt understood it. Castlereagh understood it. Palmerston understood it. Churchill understood it. The object was never to escape Europe. It was to shape Europe. That is why Churchill could simultaneously be the supreme Atlanticist, an imperialist and the man who declared at Zurich: “Let Europe arise!” Brexit can be argued economically until the last customs declaration is filed. But geopolitically the question is much more profound. Sovereignty is the legal freedom to act. Power is the ability to make others act with you. Britain historically maximised the second, not merely the first. The great British foreign-policy tradition was never “splendid isolation”. It was ensuring that Britain sat at every important table — Washington, the Commonwealth and Europe — and could play one circle through the others. Leaving a table may increase your freedom from its rules. It does not automatically increase your power over what is decided there. Churchill’s Britain wanted both sovereignty and leverage. That is the argument Brexit has never satisfactorily answered.

Evidence of Young Bob assaulting a member of Stand Up to Racism yesterday.