I’ve written this lengthy FT analysis overnight about the multiple multi-thousand pound Epstein payments to Mandelson’s husband these particular paragraphs are worth reading slowly www.ft.com/content/608a...

This is such an interesting piece viewed from a UK Labour perspective. Such familiar narrative beats as the left divides and sub-divides, but with unfamiliar names and locations. Is there a comparable US reference point to the People's Front of Judea?

New Swingometer! The Gorton and Denton By-election: A tale of Two Manchesters open.substack.com/pub/swingome...

100%. I'm totally bemused by talk that this has made Andy Burnham stronger. It's where vibes collides with actual politics. He's been the main character for the past few days, and months, (vibes) but is definitively not going to be an MP when only MPs can challenge Starmer (actual politics)

Quick reax piece on Burnham block. The 8-1 vote suggests his team hadn't prepared properly. Despite Starmer, there 4 extra votes he could reasonably have expected to win, which would have changed the result. That he didn't get any tells its own tale labour-uncut.co.uk/2026/01/25/t...

Quick reax piece on Burnham block. The 8-1 vote suggests his team hadn't prepared properly. Despite Starmer, there 4 extra votes he could reasonably have expected to win, which would have changed the result. That he didn't get any tells its own tale labour-uncut.co.uk/2026/01/25/t...

Paul and Mrs Weller must have had an unusually continental lifestyle for England in 1977 if it was midnight and he was only then bringing the food home. What time would they finish eating, 2am? Also, who brings a takeaway curry home on the tube? Pick one up after you get off.

Decent people know you don’t count white faces and pretend it tells you something about integration

I see a transmission belt for this. Jason posts a few times. Holyrood candidate(s) see it and say they want to do this. Media write up as a policy commitment. Trump goes ballistic. Starmer says he'll block the windfarms if we get tariff relief. Trump does the deal. Jason's bluesky posts save UK £bns

For all the eye-rolling, I think it's worth Starmer trying to set out why an esoteric dispute matters at a practical household level. The audience here is the British public, via news clips and packages, and the most likely impact of the chaos for normal people will be economic

Beautiful obit for Sir Patrick Duffy, former Labour defence minister, who has died aged 105. Remembered the General strike (grandmother in Ireland during the famine) WW2 hero and published his last book in 2024 (!) labour-uncut.co.uk/2026/01/03/s...

Beautiful obit for Sir Patrick Duffy, former Labour defence minister, who has died aged 105. Remembered the General strike (grandmother in Ireland during the famine) WW2 hero and published his last book in 2024 (!) labour-uncut.co.uk/2026/01/03/s...

Shouting 'stakeholder state'/'blob' is the biggest tell for a lack of imjudgement. Judgement is what's needed to know when to say yes or no to groups. Endless consultation & engagement is a function of lack of judgement. Note: judgement is different to ideology, it's effective programme management

From the 2025 Labour Uncut awards, Labour frontbencher of the year annaturley.bsky.social . In a thin year for Lab, she's hugely boosted Lab's attack effectiveness with rapid response & max impact lines within the params of what's possible given the issues at No.10 labour-uncut.co.uk/2025/12/31/t...

Let's be honest. London sticking two fingers up to the MAGA and ethno-nationalists is a good start to 2026.

Lots to weigh in this mess, this is the best articulation of a reasoned position (aka I 100% agree)

Ridiculous that these posts weren't found earlier. Feels an FCDO screw up given recent Tory govts were similarly vocal about this guy's release. If nothing forthcoming from him that genuinely demonstrates he's changed his views then no basis for him to be in the UK

This was the year that sensible people realised that genAI was a useful but incremental technology. Not transformative, not existential, just useful when deployed right. Certainly not worth surrendering your national sovereignty over..... www.reuters.com/business/bus...

The big, big self-delusion at the heart of almost everything Labour is doing wrong is that through some old-time Labour economics you can avoid having an electoral coalition that looks a lot like 'Labour in 2024, Australian Labor in 2025, the Canadian Liberals in 2025' or indeed 'Harris in 2024'.

On annual crimbo crawl with mates round pubs in middle of London. This one the same as long as can remember, an eternal 70s time capsule. How many places now have these cigs machines? And decos from older relatives Christmas box? Full marks.

We’re now up to 22 ex-Tory MPs joining reform. It’s not subtle - every day clearer this is just a rebranding of the nutty fringe of the Conservative Party offering to rerun the Truss/Johnson omnishambles

👀 Zarah Sultana voted with the Tories in *every* vote on the Employment Rights Bill last night 👀 Including - voting to KEEP strike ballot thresholds - voting to KEEP the Tories’ 2016 changes to political fund ballots

This is such a good piece

On a purely factual point, Trevor Phillips’s column in the Times misrepresents our reporting in casting doubts on claims that there were more boys called Patel than Smith at Dulwich in 1980 (we did not report 1976 as the year it occurred). 1980 roll shows 13 Patels and 12 Smiths.

This is proper Truss LA LA LA from Polanski. I don't think he understands that the state is borrowing from the market. He believes evil billionaires have conned simpleton politicians into giving them cash and he can just stop it with his 'new paradigm'

Orwell diagnosed this problem generations ago

All the supposedly progressive people saying 'Nigel Farage's racism doesn't matter. His fans love it'. It matters whether the leader of the party leading all the opinion polls is an outright racist. It matters if he called black people 'wogs' and said 'gas them' to Jews. Not everything is a game

Just an excellent explanation of what the budget is on BBC Newsround just now. A little bit more of that on the grown-up news, rather than endless horse race stuff, would really help contextualise it. Takes focus back to the substance rather than smarty pants politicking

Very much liking the Anthology 4 versions of Free As A Bird and Real Love. The latter esp is great, sounds like a proper song rather than an offcut demo, turns it into a wonderful track and that very rare Beatles phenomenon: a John and George number

Nick Robinson uncharacteristically under-briefed for this interview and letting the minister get away with talking bollocks basically

Fwiw, I believe Labour might have been able to successfully execute a 'mixed' strategy on immigration that reduced the threat from Reform without alienating liberal/left voters it needs. Avoiding rhetoric of the right while letting the numbers fall as they were already doing would have been a start.

On the BBC row, IMO critical question is Did The Board Stop An Immediate Apology For The Edit? Personally seems EXTRAORDINARY that experienced BBC journos wouldn't have said 'Yeah, apologise quickly, kill the story'. To delay is to tie the Beeb news team to tracks to be run over by the train (1/2)

Not resiling from this one iota in spite of the feeding frenzy, the resignations, and the talk of a billion dollar law suit of the last few days. If those on the right in this country seriously think that lining up with Donald Trump against the BBC is a good call, then I say good luck with that.

Mamdani is a fabulous communicator and hugely charismatic...but am I missing something about the result: A solid win but 50% vs 42% for Cuomo who's (a) a terrible pol and (b) a sex pest, isn't the blowout win that's currently being written? If Silwa had pulled out, would've been close

Wholly correct position. Wait it out. Even if it takes decades, Gen Alpha will be the avengers for Gen X and Millenials and banish the Gen Z madness of shorts, socks and, for me worst of all, sliders. What went wrong in the last decade for kidz to model their look on Hyman Roth?

On Pochin Labour took the lead and went hard against her, not on day 5, but from the start: the result has been a Tory and Reform smash up. It would be nice to hope lessons have been learned.

Wes Streeting on Reform’s Sarah Pochin: “She’s only sorry that she’s been caught & called out & she said the quiet bit loud. What we’ve seen in recent weeks/months is a return to 1970/80s racism. I think what she said was racist” #bbclaurak

The Tories once claimed to be One Nation. Now they’re flirting with a policy the BNP would be proud of: deporting people legally here to make Britain “culturally coherent”. It’s grotesque. Families would be torn apart. We are a compassionate country and we must stay that way.

Katie Lam’s comments stink of desperation. This crass racism used to mean she’d be kicked out of the Tories but not now. The Conservative Party seem to be falling all over themselves to chase the tail of Tommy - two names - Robinson. It’s becoming like the BNP in a twin set & pearls.

The Enoch Powell (+!) strategy is now a route to advancement rather than exile. And that is why by the time the battle for supremacy on the right is over the Conservative party will be unrecognisable - if it even exists. God knows what this battle will do to the country. But it won't be good.

Twin features of the folk I know who've gone bananas online (a) Personal grievance - Feelings of not getting what's deserved, turbocharged in 40s/50s with what used to be called midlife crisis (b) Praise - Online validation from loons saying 'yes, you've been cheated, you're right,they blocked you'

V good summary of the predicament. Makes me think Treasury soon in same zone as Osborne 2012 when considered big migration liberalisation to boost growth. Think OBR model has net 100k=0.1% pa. Only mechanical way to increase growth forecast if urgent need to back-off bond markets

As might be reasonably expected, Goodwin is talking bollocks here. This is what I think he's referring to in the US census.

For the first part of Starmer's speech I thought he was going to be hit for ChatGPTing. But it got better, some good passages and his section on race & immigration was great. Even tho it set out what should be basic norms, given where we are, he nailed it. No Tory PM would've, prob not Brown either

I thought the Friday Starmer speech was inadequate in terms of meeting the moment. Felt like it was drafted to respond to the Robinson march, basically ignored Reform's mass deportation plan. Much better this morning, finally called it right 'racist and immoral'

Exactly the right language and tone from Starmer here -no nonsense about "legitimate concerns" or weasel words about cost/practicality. Now government needs to put his money where the PM's mouth is (in policy terms)

Literally after every par, there's a silent 'Parklife'

If Tel piece is the speech: 1. How can Starmer not take on the mass deportation argument. Is not about immigration (e.g. new arrivals), these are people here legally, paying taxes etc. 2. How does piece square with an econ policy hinged on 300-400k pa net migration? Ineptitude or madness. Who knows

Reform’s immigration plan falls apart on hard contact with evidence, economics and any form of engaged brain. Never be afraid to stand up for this country and its decency and future by giving them short shrift.