I think I agree with this one…

Evidently, some people can’t stand the heat in the “hottest” country in the world right now.

Together with over 60 law professors we asked @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu to open an investigation on Peter Mandelson’s exchanges with Jeffrey Epstein at the time the former was EU Trade Commissioner. As reported by @politico.eu #playbook Full text of the letter: thegoodlobby.eu/wp-content/u...

The State of the Union, but in a Cork accent: the staaaate of the Union, like.

I’m wondering whether Rupert Lowe will end up being Nigel Farage’s Nigel Farage, dragging Reform ever further right, or whether Lowe’s main role will be making middle England feel comfortable voting for Reform as a relatively sensible and moderate position. Not mutual exclusives, I suppose.

Trump dispensing patronage to his daughter’s in-laws.

“For my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly…” /1

Martin van Buren fell out with NYC mayor and 1812 Presidential candidate, DeWitt Clinton, because he (wrongly) blamed Clinton for his losing out on the position of NY Att Gen to Corkman and United Irishman Thomas Addis Emmett, who once had his portrait painted by Samuel Morse of Morse code fame.

Me, whenever I hear Liz Truss has an idea.

Bank manager: “Ms Truss, why £350 million? Where did you get that from?” Liz: “I saw it on the side of a bus.”

Newly formed FIFA Supreme Court rules Trump can impose emergency tariffs.

It’s Trump’s luck that his deterioration into a raving, incoherent mess has been matched by a similar deterioration in public discourse and in concentration spans (TikTok-ificiation means people are usually not seeing the unhinged nature of a full-length Trump rant).

Trump failed the problem question on the exam and isn’t taking the feedback very well.

If Trump made an executive order abolishing the Supreme Court and personally ran a bulldozer through the building, Justices Alito, Kavanaugh, and Thomas, with rubble falling all around them, might be heard over the noise shouting “THIS IS TOTALLY LEGAL!!”.

My nomination for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize goes to the inventor of the thumbs up reply in Outlook, which has obviated the need for countless unnecessary affirmative response emails.

AG Ćapeta’s Opinion clarifies that rule-of-law compliance must consider the broader constitutional context – showing that the Commission was wrong to release funds to Hungary. TÍMEA DRINÓCZI highlights how this approach can guide post-illiberal reconstruction. verfassungsblog.de/text-is-not-...

Funerals: Fr Dougal Maguire

I am more and more convinced that a significant portion of the modern right, of the MAGA variety and its European equivalents, is simply ante or anti-enlightenment.

Nadhim Zahawi thinks London is now unsafe, because the other day a tired-looking man walked past him during the morning rush hour.

If that Court follows the AG (as I think it should, because the EU’s foundational values should not be negotiable), it will help strengthen the Commission and the Council against the continued express or implied threat of Hungary’s veto in the area of foreign affairs and security policy. /1

🇭🇺⚖️🇪🇺💶The first of CJEU AG opinions on Hungary is out - AG Ćapeta advises the court to find that the Commission's unfreezing of funds for Hungary under the Common Provisions Regulation should be annulled, as the alleged rule of law reforms didn't really happen. 1/

Our entire public discourse is being colonised by uninformed, lazy pub bores like Jim Ratcliffe.

What we are also seeing here are the reaches of the chaotic effects of Trump. You’d imagine Mandelson would have been nowhere near the ambassador role had Trump not been elected. Starmer’s misjudgment is a still a novus actus interveniens, but no Trump, likely no Mandelson.

Tomorrow's Headlines The Telegraph: Starmer Next! The Guardian: Morgan McSweeney's Gone, Thank God! The Irish Times: Irishman forced out of UK Labour Role The Irish (Cork) Examiner: Having Completed Michael Collins' Work, and brought low the British Government, Macroom Calls it's Son Home

For anyone in Ireland wondering, there are no bonfires lighting in the villages of England to mark the departure of Morgan McSweeney. Not in this part of Cheshire anyway.

One wonders what McSweeney’s departure will do to the already fraught state of Cork-Not Cork diplomatic relations.

In what world but the Westminster bubble is Sunday a day for a resignation? In fact, the whole phenomenon of politics being a Sunday sport is odd when you think about it.

JD Vance probably convincing himself that the booing was oppressive woke Europe trying to cancel him and that only brutalisation of the decadent booing masses by state-sponsored thugs can restore free speech.

I hope Piers Morgan doesn’t find out about Trump’s racism and the tooth fairy on the same day.

Starmer gets unfair criticism, but one criticism I think is fair is that he seems unable to spot and utilise opportunities: the US going rogue is a chance to say that 2016 was in another age and there is now a clear case for saying the decision to turn away from Europe was wrong and must be reversed

It’s obvious that most political correspondents are trained in - or have as their bread and butter - day-to-day political or interpersonal machinations. A “week is a long time in politics” view of the world. They’re not so good on the longer term constitutional structures that underpin it all. /1

I’m sorry, but if large corporate chains can’t support themselves without state intervention, maybe they shouldn’t have so many pubs…

The utter beautiful chaos of the Irish Traitors. The first series in which contestants finally say the quiet or unspoken things out loud.

I think the safest route is an omnibus bill depriving all peers of their titles. That would head off all future problems of this sort.

Mandelson must have a drawer of resignation letter precedents.

Matt Goodwin now wears a leather jacket and shades, and smokes, and is not a nerd. So no nerd stuff for him like reading, or conversing beyond a few monosyllables, or even thinking. He’s his own man, but also a man of the people. And you’re a nerd for reading this.

The search for proper Brexit must continue until morale improves.

The Express: “Please go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest, and if he will give us food and shelter for this night he can join us in our quest for a proper Brexit.”

The Express, alone on a raft, raving mad, floating down the Amazon, searching for the Eldorado of a “proper Brexit”.

EU Rule of Law - New and interesting book out very soon exploring one of the EU's most pressing challenges: the erosion of the rule of law. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/dealing-w...

As I’ve said before, if it was Aristotle who said that nature abhors a vacuum, it is definitive evidence that he was never in Limerick Junction.

If ever you find yourself in a roomful of chalices and one of them is the holy grail, but you don’t know which one, don’t choose one covered in jewels. Jesus was a poor, humble son of a carpenter, so it’s unlikely he was drinking out of super expensive goblets.

Does a Matt Goodwin imply the existence of a Matt Badlose? It’s been a long day and it’s all I’ve got, you animals.

The likes of Farage can say/do the most stupid and crass things, even be openly supportive of Trump (regardless of how unpopular Trump is), because they do not require people to vote *for* them per se. They merely require people to be so angry or hopeless that they vote *against* liberal democracy.

On a semi-serious note, the Conservative Party is simply losing politicians who were never really conservatives in the first place.

Breaking: tree on Conservative Party logo defects to Reform.

At a reenactment of the English Civil War Battle of Nantwich yesterday. MC asks the crowd to raise their hands in turn if they are pro-royalist or pro-parliament. About half were for the king, meaning that there are either (a) far more people than I expected for absolute monarchy, or (b) … /1

I would love to see national associations and/or players boycott the World Cup. It would probably happen in the Ted Lasso universe. Alas, that show is to elite-level football what the West Wing was to US politics.

I often think the debate on ‘what is the rule of law?’ is esoteric and often detached from reality. Questions like whether compliance with international law is a necessary element of the rule of law miss the point, imo. /1

“No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued. Shall any man be above Justice?” - George Mason at the Constitutional Convention, 1787