Lara Bird, also Lara Bird-Leakey, also Pyla Bird-Leakey, the new SNP MP for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, has caught growing attention for her disparate accents and dumbing down of her name. Twas ever thus…
Bird-Leakey is an English lawyer and sits on the Executive Committee of the pro-Palestine Balfour Project. Here’s the Wikipedia page for the Leakey family…
She was conducting PhD research at King’s College London on International Humanitarian Law and staffed in Westminster for the SNP prior to her selection in the by-election seat. Presumably she has to pick one accent going forward…
Andy Haldane, Burnham’s recent adviser on the economy who has not taken up a No10 job, told Andrew Marr on LBC:
“The market now suspects that this is a traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better TikTok videos…
imposing windfall taxes on oil & gas or on banks or upping capital gains tax would […] repeat the mistake that Rachel made […] The Achilles heel, the fiscal Achilles heel of this government thus far has been its unwillingness and/or inability to cut public spending.”