Wonderful to be out selling poppies with @KemiBadenoch and the Shadow Defence Team recently. To all who have served or are currently helping protect this county - thank you. Our armed forces deserve support now more than ever.

This is unacceptable. Labour's disjointed, last-minute approach from Labour will leave us economically dependent on China. That is why I will bring trade, economic policy and military strategy together to ensure Britain is protected from Chinese coercion.

Labour’s Treasury Minister admitted she doesn’t think employers are working people. No wonder. The entire Cabinet has less private-sector experience combined than our Shadow Chancellor. They’re no longer the Labour Party. They’re the Welfare Party.

When will the demands stop? Everyone knows the transatlantic slave trade was wrong. Britain played a huge role in stopping it. So when it comes to the question of reparations, my answer is no. It’s time for the Commonwealth to start looking forwards, not backwards.

Slavery was an evil in which people from every continent and region participated. We should be honest about the whole history, not select the parts that are politically convenient today, especially given Britain's leading role in ending the transatlantic slave trade. If Caribbean countries are asking Britain for a formal apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, will they also be asking the same of the descendants of African kingdoms, rulers and merchants who captured, sold and profited from the trade? On demands for reparations, whether through cash or debt relief, we have been down this track before. Twenty-five years ago, Jubilee 2000, Drop the Debt and Make Poverty History argued that cancelling the debts of poorer countries would give them a fresh start. More than $100 billion of debt was eventually written off, but many of those countries have since built up even bigger debts. Labour are already spending too much on Britain's welfare state, now is not the time for Andy Burnham to be providing global welfare. There is no reason British taxpayers today should be held financially responsible for things that happened generations before any of us were born. And I have even less patience for political elites in commonwealth countries who don’t know how to make their own citizens prosperous now looking for another opportunity to blame Britain. As Prime Minister, Andy Burnham should be Britain’s greatest defender. Instead, he is writing articles saying we need to confront our history (as if we haven't done enough of that) and considering another formal historical apology. Tony Blair already expressed Britain’s deep sorrow and regret for our role in the slave trade nearly twenty years ago. There is no need to do so again. This is all another navel-gazing distraction. The Commonwealth should be looking forward, not endlessly backwards. That means economic partnerships to make us all richer and deeper military and security cooperation against common threats. If every Commonwealth summit becomes an exercise in presenting Britain with demands for cash then we need to start asking if it is worth the effort.

This half term week, have you noticed how much pricier it seems to book a little break with the kids? Forget breathing space - holiday cottage owners, hotels and B&Bs are all being squeezed with extra taxes, higher bills and more regulations. They’re struggling to make the numbers work without passing the costs on to you - and now Labour wants to charge a 5% tourist tax on the cost of your overnight stay. We have a plan to help bring those costs down, turning that half-term doomscroll on the booking site into the start instead of an affordable adventure.

Bridget, telling lies is a breach of the Ministerial Code. It's well known from your time as Education Secretary (before your demotion!) that you struggle with the truth. As the then junior minister responsible for financial services regulation, I was not even remotely a 'co-author' of the mini budget. I did not see it until the night before. I’m flattered that my decades of real-world business experience outside Westminster trigger so many Labour MPs. It’ll be useful when the next Conservative government has to clean up your mess! (P.S. Mortgage rates are higher now than in 2022…)

Brilliant stuff from Tony Sewell in the @thetimes today. He’s absolutely right to say the people pushing reparations are political elites in these countries who want to blame Britain than fix problems in their own countries, with our useful-idiot activists over here egging them on. If you haven’t read it, or don’t have a sub buy a copy. An essential read 👇

This is astounding. The government's own figures show working-age welfare will go up by £60 BILLION by 2030, yet the Treasury has to rush out and correct the Chancellor to say there is no timetable for cutting the benefits bill. Looks like foot in mouth syndrome is spreading. John Healey couldn't even find £10 billion to get defence spending to 3% of GDP - the thing he quit over. Don't let anyone tell you this was a 'do no harm budget'. In doing so little, Labour have harmed our economic security and they've harmed our national security.

Good to chat to you @bbcnickrobinson about the choices I would make as Chancellor. Not all will agree with them, but, just as when I was a CFO, I will always set them out transparently and protect the nation’s finances. This from @thetimes. 👇

Ah. I see the problem here. The first line should have said "Piddington is not JUST an immigration issue". Stop getting your knickers in a twist over a typo. If it's not an immigration issue why am I talking about the ECHR and illegal arrivals in the same tweet? 🙄 If you'd actually been to Piddington, you'd know that putting 1300 men in a camp next to a village of 130 women IS also a women's safety issue.

I don’t blame her. She is merely the latest symptom of the metropolitan clerical class that has spent decades sanding the Christianity off the Church of England until all that remains is a sort of ecclesiastical diversity department with stained glass. (Or a nightclub at St. Paul's) There are some great parish priests but for too many senior clergy, faith has been replaced by virtue signalling, doctrine by fashionable causes and truth by whatever the bien-pensant in North London currently think is nice. The modern CofE hierarchy has perfected the holy trinity of gesture, apology and review. It has become so terrified of offending everyone else that it has forgotten the one being it is actually supposed to answer to.

Macron and Tusk are speaking and acting with an urgency that makes the latest reports about Russia violating Lithuanian airspace even more concerning. It is not clear that the Government is taking the threat from Russia seriously enough. Its own intelligence assessment says an attack on NATO could come by 2030, while repeated smaller-scale incursions are already taking place. It comes only weeks after CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced visit to Moscow, reportedly to warn Russia against attacking a NATO member. Our European allies are responding with growing urgency, yet the Government still will not say what it intends to do on defence. The NATO Secretary General was in Britain only yesterday calling for that path to be set out, and I agree with him. The Conservatives set out two weeks ago both our route to higher defence spending at 3% of GDP and how we would pay for it. The Government should now explain what it knows about the escalations in Eastern Europe, how it assesses the threat and what it plans to do. We will put national security first and work with the Government where necessary. But when our own PM talks of national security not coming at the expense of social security, Labour MPs should remember: this was heard not only in Westminster or Manchester; it was also heard in Moscow.