A carnival of mediocrity: the year in politics This has been a 12 months for resignations, disgrace, duplicity and strife in Westminster By @willdunn.bsky.social

The Palace of Westminster has long been a tourist attraction – but never quite like this... @willdunn.bsky.social: At the Ministry of Magic

I wrote some festive political fiction for the New Statesman's magnificent Christmas issue www.newstatesman.com/culture/fict...

Moving piece by @anooshc.bsky.social on reading to her toddler and why the Bookstart scheme is a model of progressive universalism. www.newstatesman.com/politics/soc...

Excellent piece from @willdunn.bsky.social. The para below says it all. There is still no indication it might actually be cleared! >> At Oxfordshire’s waste mountain, a national monument to greed www.newstatesman.com/politics/the...

Christmas "sounds like fun", says plump, succulent turkey

Great scoop by @robwaugh.bsky.social in Press Gazette. Just searched my emails and I have 113 unread from this spam PR company pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/d...

Free speechwriting tip for the PM: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

Free speechwriting tip for the PM: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

At Oxfordshire's waste mountain, a national monument to greed 🖼️ @willdunn.bsky.social's sketch

What the fuck? The train pictured can carry at least 589 seated passengers. On Monday morning it's £193 per standard single ticket. Why does it have to be empty?

🚨Some personal news: I'm honoured and humbled to have been asked to take over running the Jumbo Profiterole and XXL Eclair Factory. It's a dream job, but I've got some big choux to fill

This week, I went to that giant mound of rubbish in Oxfordshire www.newstatesman.com/politics/the...

Happy Crap Friday everyone!

Did Jeremy Hunt write this Budget? It’s looking like fiscal drag forever 🖊️ @willdunn.bsky.social

Massive rise in incapacity benefits forecast 25% higher in four years, during a time of recovering economic growth? It is hard to see how this will not be an attack line from the opposition.

Sorry I haven't been active on social media today, I've been flat out making sure everything goes smoothly on my first day as website manager for the OBR.

oh you'll find out soon enough my child www.newstatesman.com/business/eco...

Quite the look at how the gilt market intersects with politics from @willdunn.bsky.social www.newstatesman.com/business/eco...

Excellent cover story by @willdunn.bsky.social who has the inside track on the bond markets influencing the Budget - feat. the incredible bit of an analysis by one investor who found each welfare rebel MP equals a *£1bn* debt premium over the Parliament...

New investigation: how Sky Bet relocated to Malta to avoid £55m of tax/year This kind of tax planning is often reported as "clever, but perfectly proper, and there's no suggestion that any laws were broken". But here it looks improper. Laws may have been broken. 🧵

Roblox was released to the public in 2006 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This wasn't being mean for no reason btw - it's part of an argument about how the global media ignored Sanna Marin's politics and treated her as a celebrity

It doesn't look like I'll be getting a job at the Spectator www.newstatesman.com/politics/the...

Don't do it guys!

If I had to describe the fairly modest moves in the gilt market today, I would say it is a bit like the feeling of slightly needing the toilet after half an hour in the swimming pool.

The only compensation the Waspi women should receive is an apology from the bullshitters who have strung them along for years on the promise of extra cash to which they have never been entitled. www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

Among the revelations in this interviewis that Wandsworth was so short staffed, they asked someone doing 5yrs for fraud to keep track of where the prisoners were

Tax policy on the British left is pure "anti-bedtime left". Bizarre idea that you can have a big social democratic welfare state without everyone contributing properly www.economist.com/britain/2025...

Tice was introduced as “a local man” and a “self-made entrepreneur”, which is certainly one way to describe a man who spent 14 years as the CEO of his grandfather’s property company. @willdunn.bsky.social's sketch: Richard Tice’s pitch to Tory Middle England

In another brilliant sketch @willdunn.bsky.social nails the weird folk-public-school vernacular of Reform and the Reform-curious:

I asked Jimmy Wales why the reporting of the Daily Mail isn't linked to on Wikipedia. Fair play for a frank answer: www.newstatesman.com/technology/2...

I asked Jimmy Wales why the reporting of the Daily Mail isn't linked to on Wikipedia. Fair play for a frank answer: www.newstatesman.com/technology/2...

Jimmy Wales: “Elon Musk is very pleasant to me in private” 🗣️ @willdunn.bsky.social meets Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales

The oil market has turned against Putin New sanctions are not the result of political courage – they are an opportunity presented by the price of crude 🌎 @willdunn.bsky.social www.newstatesman.com/busine...

Can Mary Barton save Britain’s badgers? Parliament’s longest-standing protester is fighting to end the culls – but Labour’s Steve Reed is biting back 🖼️ The sketch with @willdunn.bsky.social

If you work in Westminster you probably know the DEFRA Badger (aka Betty). I asked her: has Labour betrayed Brock? www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

Spolier: it's cement

Say what you like about Specsavers, at least they're not shaking your head over some burning henbane in the hope that worms will fall out of your eyes

A trip to the optician in pre-Norman England

Harris + Partridge = essential reading A point in favour of Late Partridge is the books, there is a line in Big Beacon that was so good a fellow train passenger asked if I was okay

Brilliant read on the lefty lawyers who actually run Britain

🚨NEW PAPER🚨 We all know the 2022 energy price shock fueled the cost of living crisis. It also caused a profit bonanza for the very rich. We show the US reaped the largest profits ($377bn) of any country. 50% went to the richest 1%, only 1% to the bottom 50%. A🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I wrote about the Tory conference, having watched most of it on GB News: www.newstatesman.com/politics/con...

Exclusive: 38 police officers were involved in Sycamore Gap investigation @willdunn.bsky.social: "If only real crimes were taken this seriously"

With the greatest respect to our Nation's Fallen Vegetable King, 38 police officers seems like a lot www.newstatesman.com/politics/soc...

Macron remarks are notable- some quotes: "We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies."

Enjoy putting together mad pairings of places for the imaginary but generic conference speech I’d write. From Falmouth to Falkirk, Aldeburgh to Aberystwyth, Weymouth to Wick, Plymouth to Peterhead, Lerwick to the Lizard, Brighton to Bo’ness, Mile End to Ealing, Brixton to Bounds Green, Reading to Le