She's absolutely out of control, a total fucking lunatic.

Yes. Do it. This has gone on long enough.

Labour’s contribution to the field of “least surprising opinion poll results” continues to to be very strong.

The BBC was far better when it didn’t give a shit about what its viewers/listeners thought. It absolutely should adopt a stance of slightly elevated detachment.

I just don't understand what about immigration is supposed to be so worthy of constant 'discussion'. The cost of living and the effects of post-Brexit, and the threat of AI come to that, are far bigger issues.

Cannot stop laughing at the pull quote for Bear Grylls' Festive Bible Apocrypha Fanfiction

Look, if you are trailing a budget and then immediately walking it back, before trailing an asylum bill and immediately walking it back, then you are just bad at politics and policy. There are no redeeming features here.

Why do they lie about something so easily verifiable?

I was on 'The Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls' in 2017 and he wasn't present on the island for more than half an hour, so the guy does have a history of making creative claims, but even so...

“Current affairs” presumably meaning “discussion shows where I can spout my unfettered bile without push-back.”

"Hm, our polling numbers are going down and down after each Reform-appeasing rhetoric we spout. I can only assume we need to be more outwardly racist and disgusting. That'll turn the ship around".

this makes more sense when you remember that Zarah Sultana is at least partly a product of NUS politics

And this *within 18 months of being elected*. This remains an absolutely astonishing demonstration of how not to do government.

Six weeks since the PM said Britain faced a choice between decency or division and our bad, obviously, for not understanding that he was in fact Team Division

Illegal immigration is not tearing Britain apart. A media-driven obsession with illegal immigration is tearing Britain apart.

Why is it important to include references to slavery on blue plaques, National Trust properties, etc? Because otherwise people are convinced that somehow those lovely houses were gifted to certain British families by the fairies, and don't think about where the money came from.

Good Afternoon, “Your Party” was a six month sociological study conducted by Royal Holloway, University of London. We are now complete with our study. Thank you for your time.

Wordle 1,612 3/6 🟩⬜🟩⬜⬜ 🟩⬜🟩⬜🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Most people have still not no idea whatsoever when they’re looking at AI-generated text or imagery. Many of the signs are so obvious. They’ll just consume any old slop, sadly.

And Brexit. I know it’s such an obvious, basic thing to go on about, but there can be no getting-away from it.

Wow, he looks just like him!

Admittedly, it is *very* easy to make the sort of people Trump was trying to appeal to believe Harris was all about culture wars.

It is a shame ITV won’t be showing snooker so regularly. Its coverage really has been excellent.

Christ, Rob Walker’s post-match interviews at the snooker are desperately embarrassing.

It strikes me that Labour has ended up putting itself in the same position over immigration as Corbyn ended up in on Europe: one that absolutely no-one believes.

Beginning to think there’s a bad carbon monoxide leak in Downing Street.

Again, I ask: is Starmer OK? Genuinely.

2015 Shabana Mahmood really needs to have a word with 2025 Shabana Mahmood

My favourite year for oppressed literary masculinity was 2023 when the number of women on the Booker shortlist was smaller than the number of men named Paul

That didn’t stop the North Devon Lib Dems from making him their president. #topical

Why is she in the Labour Party? Why has she been promoted to a high level in the Labour Party government?

They’re also spectacularly out-of-date in their views of the north, and particularly its cities, where the universities have long been an immense force for good.

The BBC is the biggest thump of soft power the UK has and its reach and influence to the benefit of the country is extraordinary. Destroy it, hugely damage the UK. The same people who helped weaken us over Brexit are seeking to do it again.

May this be the first of many.

Looking forward to them having to explain to steel-faced ICE agents at JFK what they’re actually claiming asylum from, then sending them immediately to prison when the answer is ‘Nothing, but someone called me a name online so I had to write six think pieces and go on Radio 4 to defend myself’

To add a further thought on this very good piece: it increasingly seems to be the case that large organisations in the UK, in the public and private sectors alike, are very poorly run. Are the wrong people - often those best at the corporate-speak stuff but lacking any basic sense - being promoted?

And, likewise, for those of us who have enjoyed the most wonderful friendships with people who’ve come to the UK for one reason or another? The message is, “No, you shouldn’t really be able to have those.”

Is he afraid of this, though? He has nothing to lose from it, unlike a lot of members of minorities and other groups. Increasingly I feel one of his biggest problems is how out of touch he is.

I do think, apropos of nothing, that Labour embracing the idea that refugees do have it easy and not the reality: bad accommodation, cheap food, insecure lives, is the real "political" mistake alongside the bad policy, as it just indulges their opponents.

Some politicians at local level, on the more forward-looking, enlightened councils, are going some way towards this. But at the national level they’re consumed by a pervasive inertia, having been sucked into the right-wing narrative that the country’s gone to the dogs.

Modern Labour politicians ought to be able to provide the antidote to all the “DO YOU REMEMBER SMOG?” nostalgia bullshit which forms a big and genuinely damaging part of the media diet consumed by lower-information voters nowadays. That they can’t is a savage indictment of their failings.

The impression given by a morning scroll is that the politics of Europe and North America has largely become a performative sideshow detached from real life (though not of course if you are one of the designated 'victims')

Is it that they all want to fuck young girls?

Absolutely. An iron law of whether a statement about immigrants is true is that it should also apply if you just use the word “people”. (A test that many claims on the liberal side also fail!)

Note, the far right guys aren’t going ‘we can vote Labour now they’re speaking our language’, they’re going ‘look, these idiots are smoothing the way for the extremist parties we have very openly said we’ve going to vote for for several years now.’

This creates an extra layer of bureaucracy at great financial, social, and political cost. And it buys *nothing*.

This won’t even work as intended. The people objecting to refugees aren’t asking for people to have to stay longer and jump through more hoops before they’re naturalised. They point blank want anyone not exactly like them kicked out.

I despair to see the Labour Party die before my eyes. I am Irish, but am of the European social democratic family. I have always felt a close bond with UK Labour. Now, it is diving down reactionary racist rabbit holes, betraying ts basic values of social solidarity. If this is Labour, let it die.

Not everyone is unhappy about the Government's descent into anti-refugee politics