I'm seeing a lot of Discourse TM on Respect For The Dead Or Not so now might be a sufficiently respectful interval to say that I thought Nigel Lawson's post-Commons career did more damage to Britain than anyone else I can remember and I was glad when it stopped.

Tommy Robinson is a useful idiot for a hostile state. What kind of so-called British patriot jets to Moscow to rub shoulders with Putin’s cronies, bankrolled by a US trillionaire? We must protect our democracy from far-right thugs, shady tech bros and foreign interference.

Thomas Tuchel increasingly resembling his Dead Ringers character.

Simultaneously, hundreds of lunatics were walking around in suits of armour and woollen clothes and bashing each other with swords in a field near Tewkesbury.

People compete in sheep races because of heatwave #Gloucestershire #BBCNews

In today's #SixOnSaturday... Linaria, baby blackbirds, Phlox, Crocosmia 'Lucifer' & a small Buddleia 🌱 onemanandhisgardentrowel.wordpress.com/2026/07/11/s...

A Hostile Foreign State Could ‘Buy A UK Election For Just £25m’ A former UK diplomat who spent a decade tracking Russian influence operations explains how open our politics is to foreign capture bylinetimes.com/2026/07/09/a...

Fair play to The Guardian for running with this “Base Justice” series. I’m puzzled why I’m not detecting any follow up on broadcast news or in my socials. This appears to be a systemic failure of the British state to protect its own citizens. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Despite my best efforts, it’s hard to be completely unaware of US politics on here, and, say what you like about the Clacton by-election and Count Binface as a candidate, neither is as farcical as the Maine Democratic Party.

I'm guessing it involved courgettes.

L’aggressione di Mosca contro l’Ucraina legittima la sua presa sul 🛢️ del Tatarstan, sui 💎 della Jakuzia e sull’agire politico di 140 milioni di abitanti. Una guerra così non finirà finché Mosca potrà alimentare la propria ambizione imperiale. - my latest essay in 🇮🇹 www.linkiesta.it/2026/07/russ...

I wish the myth that Starmer was good at foreign policy could be put to bed. He was unprepared for Trump despite ample warning both that he was likely to be President and of how he'd act, and he fundamentally miscalculated the necessary response.

As someone who is genuinely fond of America but is sometimes finding that hard to remember right now, I am glad that the Pope is out there being very obviously an American, but not _like that_.

Likely identity of the party's 2027 presidential candidate should become clear on Tuesday with outcome of Marine Le Pen's appeal ruling. Our paper explores faultlines within the party and how they could shape an RN presidency: ecfr.eu/publication/...

OK, well done to Belgium for dealing appropriately with a disgrace to football. Can you please now deal with your next adversary ie whoever designed your change shirts.

Thread on Dr Hussam Abu Safiya👇

Happy Tynwald Day to those who etc. A Norwegian (OK, Norse, don’t @ me) Parliament in the literal middle of the British Isles, ahead of the Eng-Nor game. This ceremony does always make me think of when it was hot at school this time of year and we had lessons outdoors; College Green, anyone?

In one chapter of his book entitled 'The Art of the Bribe', Nigel Farage donor and convicted fraudster George Cottrell describes how politicians can be bought www.ft.com/content/7a0f...

Can't even eat at Pizza Express anymore, because of Woking

For no particular reason, obviously, this weekend I found myself remembering all those allegations about mysterious dark money funding untraceable Facebook ads during the Brexit campaign.

The NATO treaty says nothing about spending targets. Here’s some things they do say; a thread: 1️⃣Article 1: Resolve disputes peacefully 2️⃣Article 2: Support organizations, promote stability and well-being

A story that encapsulates so much about British attitudes to its history of Empire. BBC News - Thousands of forgotten Punjabi WW1 soldiers recognised for first time www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

As a Brit, its kind of hard to be unaware that it’s the 250th birthday of the USA. Back on 1st May 2007 I went into work and idly asked colleagues iof anyone knew the significance of the day. No-one did. When I told them that it was the 300th birthday of the UK, it provoked mild apathy.

A Times investigation reveals Farage and his partner own *at least* five homes across Surrey, Kent and Essex, all but one bought with cash since 2000. In 2017 he said he was “skint”.

The saddest aspect of Scotland’s rubbish World Cup is that we were deprived of long threads from bemused Americans trying to puzzle out the cultural significance of “Yes sir, I can boogie” in Scottish society.

Always concerning when the opposition has better footballing Brians than England have. Not to mention footballing brains.

great year for medievalists; first you’ve got a tyrant starting shit with the Pope and now we have a full blown schism

Israel destroying entire villages in Southern Lebanon with HUGE explosions and almost 0 coverage. I can't find any coverage on this besides Al Jazeera and individual Lebanese accounts on X. Same play like Gaza, just saying it is to root out Hezbollah, targeting tunnels bs

Labour can threaten a £10k charge on migrants and still it’s never enough for the hard right. Perhaps there’s a lesson here? 🤔

Linocut by Monique Wales. ‘Birds of a Feather’ Size 13 x 11 Inches.

On Damnatio Memoriae and de-Trumpification. (Gift link) Been waiting for this one to go up. Please read and share.

Bugger. Buggerbuggerbugger. www.espncricinfo.com/story/eng-vs...

Lovely, lovely rain.

Sanna Marin, apparently, in case anyone cares.

*Pitch* AIRMAGEDDON When faced with extinction from heat death, humanity's only hope is a ragtag bunch of American Bluesky air conditioning engineers who must train with NASA so they can fly a giant Air Con unit and attach it to the moon.

J D Vance's grandmother was an amateur. My Granny kept an 1897 Pattern infantry officer's sword over the mantle piece.

Reform UK councillors have introduced a motion to rescind King's Lynn and West Norfolk's climate emergency declaration and deprioritise decarbonisation efforts The council were going to vote on it on Thursday But the meeting has been postponed due to extreme heat

On this day in 1985, Prefab Sprout released their second studio album “Steve McQueen”

Brilliant thread here, with the merit that every point is forensically backed up with data. The one defence of Starmer that can be made is that cost of living and NHS waiting lists are both tough nuts to crack and the former made tougher by Trump.

Tomorrow, all dads are 50% off

Yup.

Two very good threads here (one inside the other) and bonus marks for attempting to answer the questions raised in the first one.

The creatures outside looked from President to Algae Slime, and from Algae Slime to President, and from President to Algae Slime again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Sadly Wright Hassall LLP are no more

@mikegalsworthy.bsky.social says “The EU is an anti-tyranny engine” and refers to the two global politicians who do not like it: Putin and Trump. The EU flag stands for values that we all want to see in our countries.

Entirely correct take by Adam Bienkov here that I've been making for some time too. I wish more people on the progressive side would spend less time handwringing or appeasing and more on noting the lessons.

I know I'm late to the Bluesky Marc Bloch party, but I love his quietly passionate defence of the humble footnote*. ("The Historian's Craft", tr. Peter Putnam, 1954) * Or endnote; for once that is not the argument here.

We are very sad to announce the death, after a short illness, of our colleague Professor Rosamond McKitterick, Professor Emerita of Medieval History and Emerita Fellow of @sidneysussex.bsky.social (31 May 1949 – 13 June 2026). Colleagues and students pay tribute: www.hist.cam.ac.uk/news/profess...

If we want to fix the sewage crisis - we need to fix politics. Read Roz Savage MP's article explaining why the political system is the reason we continue to pump sewage into our rivers. fairvoteswatch.substack.com/p/lets-fix-p... #politics #sewage #rivers #fixpolitics #fairvotes