Who'd have thought that someone so intimately associated with Brexit would happily express this kind of view?

Would be better if the Indie printed what I or anyone else really thought of Mandelson after sacking. ie that his complicity in Epstein's life and his disingenuousness about his involvement subsequently mean that he should exit public life. Not least for the sake of Epstein's victims.

Abridged Peter Mandelson PR strategy: "I was so gormlessly in awe of my rich friend that I believed he could never be involved in awful crimes he was then convicted of, and this is why you should be interested in and impressed by my assessment of Donald Trump's character."

The only believable part of the whole thing is about having 'long meetings on the priorities of the government', given no one seems to be able to find out what they are from the prime minister.

This morning Bluesky has chosen to monster this piece, but Mr Ovenden makes some really important points. /1

I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian hotel. I was listening to the air conditioner hum.

Think this is exactly right - political journalism that is completely abstracted from policy, which was not the norm before 2017, has become the default. Impossible to have a serious attempt to either shrink what the state does or widen the tax base (have to do at least one) on that basis.

This thread is the best explanation of Labour's economic approach at any time since Keir Starmer became leader. Some might say it's near enough the only explanation, but let's not be uncharitable. The full thing as one post: skyview.social?url=https%3A...

I thought this was both funny and also an accurate criticism of some of the most desperate pre-Budget floundering ever, but what do I know

Nigel Farage is more wary of seeming to agree with Tommy Robinson than this. I'm not even kidding.

'Mean-spirited' is pretty weak. I think what you're looking for is 'evil'.

This thread ought to embarrass the Liberal Democrats, a party that exists to entertain and enable the wonkiest nerdiest policy wonks in the UK to develop what they consider to be the most evidence-based ideas into policy.

Most modern information technology is about increasing volume and quantity at the expense of quality, filtering, and judgement. If you were designing a system to undermine the ways we have successfully communicated in the past, you'd be hard-pressed to do better than the LLM-accelerated internet.

I despair at the stupidity of this government, yet again.

Definitely plausible, not least because he has, and is already using, the easiest get-out from having to answer whether he's standing: "I've done it before, and have no desire to do so again"... which of course doesn't rule out the classic reluctant "people have prevailed upon me".

Are we finally going to get the promised white paper this side of the new year?

“In an email from January 2019, Mr. Epstein wrote to Mr. Wolff of Mr. Trump: “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”” Starting to see why Mike Johnson kept the House shut down for weeks rather than allow the 218th signature to release the Epstein docs…

It really does take quite a lot of incompetence to make Kemi Badenoch look in control and on the front foot.

I do like how, in the bit of Prescott's memo where he criticises the BBC for editing together different parts of Trump's speech, his own quote of "what Trump actually said" is... edited together from different parts of his speech.

You'll never guess what county the people who created this are from.

By my reading, it's hard to remember a more scandalous example of a social media company being negligent in their responsibility to users. It's so so bad, and deeper investigation and regulatory action must surely follow.

It's a great song, but I cannot get over the fact that one of the long drawn out notes he sings sounds painfully flat to my ear. I am conscious this is disputed.

Brb, sending this to everyone I know

Nigel Farage is currently giving a speech that is solely about defending the right of wealthy City boys and their international, borderless non-dom overlords to do whatever they want, whenever they want. He wants them all to come back to London, a place where you apparently can't wear a watch.

Rest In Peace Lia Smith. You deserved a whole, full, beautiful life.

Yes. Imagine what George Osborne would do to enable middle class tax cuts, then do it in reverse.

A lot of people asking whether the US's dictator will run for a third term are asking questions already answered by the US's dictator

"Don't let MPs buy good office chairs!" "Don't let people claim sickness disability for injuries incurred in the workplace!" "Don't let the fact that £30bn represents 150 million office chairs get in the way of a shit headline!"

In the UK, we have a government who will complain about peaceful protests taking up valuable police resources while simultaneously complaining that the police shouldn't ban far right football hooligans with a history of violence and disruption from attending a match.

How has the government got itself into the position of standing up for Israeli football hooligans, while criminalising peaceful supporters of Palestine Action?

BY THE WAY If you've updated to Windows 11 recently, you're probably on version 25H2. There's a new setting in Settings: Privacy & Security. Scroll aaaaaaaalll the way to the bottom and you'll see "Text and Image Generation." TURN IT OFF.

Many people are saying the BBC's news values are a bit skew-whiff.

High-level 'reckons' breach

It's really telling that mainstream journalists are doing stuff about the *possibility* of the ADF or the Heritage Foundation starting to influence UK politics, when the reality is that they have been here for years, spending huge quantities of cash and succeeding in areas like trans rights.

Wasabi (it's just the wrong kind of spicy for me, I'm afraid) Possession (1981) - once is enough Happy (Pharrell) - just awful

It's bloody exhausting living in grief and fear. 🧵⤵️ Grief because I used to be a citizen of a continent and now I'm trapped on a little island. Fear because the vast majority of the media and political establishment in the UK are hell-bent on removing the human rights of my loved ones.

Labour are incapable of treating people with dignity and sensitivity, because their conception of how society and policy work relies on humans being no more than interchangeable units. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Today in "you'll never guess what this is a response to"

if you’ve ever watched the apprentice, that’s the world without arts or humanities degrees

I keep thinking about this from @jonnelledge.bsky.social and might have to write about it. It combines so many problems facing the liberal/left of politics: 1) lack of emotive story 2) fear of hypocrisy 3) individualism (morality 'from within') 4) technocratic bias

Ruin a book with a car Much Silverado About Nothing

I don’t think that this is just labour people, but, researching attitudes towards minorities for the book I am currently writing, I was surprised how deeply engrained the conviction is among experts & politicians that things could never take a very ugly turn in the UK. A perilous form of certainty.

You have to laugh, or you'll cry, etc.

Worth a read by Ben Williams, on why Liberals should continue to argue against digital ID cards in the UK. Ben is the sort of Liberal who can properly articulate both the principled and practical issues at play here - we should all take note. #StillNO2ID

If you see this, post a concert pic you took

I very much hope that people are right about prospective Reform voters being willing to change their minds and remove their support for Reform on the basis of the mad things Nigel Farage says. However, I have not observed this willingness in anyone I know who is Reform-curious.

Far less worried about the exact shade of gold/orange the UK's only liberal party uses. Far more worried that their deputy leader describes their strategy as below. I would really like to see someone, anyone, senior in the LDs take a position with a bit more substance than 'pro vibes'.

So glad we're outsourcing the entirety of our public sector's tech stack to massive corporates who bend the knee to this mad fascist.

The fact the Lib Dems have so far used their conference to wave some flags and teeter (with leadership's clear approval) towards abandoning one of their only consistent policy positions held through the pre-, during, and post-coalition era is not filling me with hope.