Chris Wilkins
Political consultant, strategist & writer. Media commentator. Former Downing Street Director of Strategy and serial Tory SPAD. Politics, stratcomms, national security, global affairs.
- This is right. There’s a real opportunity for Kemi here. Will she take it? inews.co.uk/opinion/this...
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- Reposted by Chris WilkinsI detest the "open borders experiment" line so much. It ignores obvious pressures brought on from Covid, but also neglects the thousands of Ukrainian, Hongkongers, Afghan refugees who we welcomed at that time. Leans into terms like 'Boriswave' which was pushed by far-right conspracists online.
- Reposted by Chris WilkinsRobert Jenrick: an apology. thecritic.co.uk/fran...
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- Reposted by Chris WilkinsStarmer keeps using this line, & it's bonkers. Most importantly, it's untrue: the party that ended Free Movement, ran the "hostile environment" & made Suella Braverman Home Sec did not run "an experiment in open borders". It's also politically mad. Voters who believe this will not vote for Starmer
- This is true. It reveals such a reductionist view of the world.
- Think this is genuinely revealing and says more about Jenrick than anything. So there is hope for the Tory party yet.
- Reposted by Chris WilkinsThe Reform pitch is increasingly “the last government was terrible, so we’ve hired everyone who was in it”.
- Reposted by Chris Wilkinsthere’s always a tweet
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- Reposted by Chris WilkinsThis "open borders" line is *infuriating* - these people came here to study or work, because they had a uni place or a job to come to. They paid visa fees, student fees, NHS surcharge - and many of them are doing challenging and important work - staffing our care homes, for example, including Mum's.
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- Reposted by Chris WilkinsAbout 18 months ago I sent this letter, along with a copy of my book, to a number of MPs and peers, including Wes Streeting. I never got a response (which to be fair was my baseline expectation), but it’s still disheartening to see today’s news about Haidt’s invitation to speak to policymakers.
- Great piece that does a lot to explain one of the most curious characters of the MAGA world…
- So many eyebrow raising bits in this piece about some of the quite mad but apparently leading figures on the so-called ‘new right’: airmail.news/issues/2025-...
- Reposted by Chris WilkinsThe full Weiss memo is dogshit -who cares if administration figures “regret” sending people to CECOT -who cares about the criminal histories of the people we sent to CECOT, we sent them to a torture prison —who cares about the “debate” over the legality of sending people to a torture prison
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- This is a really good piece about the status of our immigration debate. Hits the nail on the head.
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- Really hate this move to Downing Street press conferences. We don’t live in a presidential system. It’s inappropriate. It was wrong when the Tories did it and wrong now. Broadcasters should refuse to cover them or guarantee the opposition an equal right to reply.
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- Reposted by Chris WilkinsEven by my low expectations for Kemi Badenoch ‘violence against women and girls is something done by immigrants and nobody else’ has shocked me.
- For the second day in a row, the Tories are bizarrely on the wrong side of the political argument and demonstrating how out of touch they are with people like me, a parent of teenagers. It's really not clear who they think they're going to get to vote for them.
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- Exactly. Again, we’ve just lived through a whole budget process where *none* of this context was referenced. If there’s a disconnect between these major issues and the Westminster conversation it’s because the govt has done nothing to make them the Westminster conversation.
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- What a truly terrible piece this is from the owner of Politico. Naive in the extreme. Politico do some good stuff generally… and then you remember who owns them.
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- Really great piece this. But the thing is, none of this is a secret. This is the world we’re now living it. Yet we’ve still just managed to go through an entire budget process that barely referenced any of this important context or to make any provision for us to respond. Time to wake up.
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- This whole thread on the US‘s new national security strategy is worth reading, but this point on its incoherence and self-defeating nature is important
- Reposted by Chris WilkinsThe new National Security Strategy is a propaganda document, designed to be widely read. It is also a performative suicide. Hard to think of another great power ever abdicating its influence so quickly and so publicly. It will be worth following the reactions around the world, not just in Europe.
- Trump's national security strategy is out and some of the Europe sections are shocking. "...the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism." www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...
- Worth following @shashj.bsky.social for insights into the US’s new national security strategy published overnight. It’s a real window into the bizarre parallel world in which its authors live.
- Trump's national security strategy is out and some of the Europe sections are shocking. "...the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism." www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...
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- Reposted by Chris WilkinsUS national security strategy. Something sure is unrecognisable here, but it’s not Europe. www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...
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- Good and important piece by @robertshrimsley.bsky.social highlighting why the government needs a sense of urgency that it sadly lacks
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- The madness of our justice system in full. We complain about prison overcrowding and end up releasing a load of people early, then put two men in prison for cutting down a tree.
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- Brilliant
- Essential thread
- The budget debate we should actually be having… www.thetimes.com/article/646f...
- Good. Bye bye. Off you go. But again, they haven't 'defected'. They're not MPs. They just joined Reform online like any member of the public can.
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- This is right. Budgets are essentially works of fiction. We spend ages analysing things that will most likely never happen.
- Keep reading that No 10 denies the Chancellor misled people ahead of the Budget, but they don’t seem to have an alternative explanation. We’ve all seen the timeline and the evidence. What else is there? Did she just not read the OBR documents?
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- Reposted by Chris WilkinsI hate that this is necessary, but it is. So it’s good that things are moving. www.politico.eu/article/euro...
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