Remembering the other time Trump drafted the army in for a rally and Cody Rhodes and the Street Prophets came out to entertain them. www.fayobserver.com/story/news/m...

Trump’s onscreen attendance and promotion of UFC is very different to his invisibility on WWE programming - this despite the McMahon/HHH government roles. But his grifting purchasing TKO stock while promoting UFC paints WWE’s distancing from Trump as aesthetic. www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...

Levels of Kid Rock intensifying

“Highly unusual intervention” is it? In one of my lectures about the British political-media sphere I have a slide with a few headlines/articles describing Blair’s “rare interventions”, making the point they’re so frequent the phase has become a cliche. So nice to see a twist on the classic.

“Highly unusual intervention” is it? In one of my lectures about the British political-media sphere I have a slide with a few headlines/articles describing Blair’s “rare interventions”, making the point they’re so frequent the phase has become a cliche. So nice to see a twist on the classic.

CM Punk has let himself go.

Incredible

An iconic Jesse Ventura role. 👽

using "it has emerged" on the Labour Right networks is like when a wrestler beats his rival with their own finisher

Well there seems to be the answer then.

Burnham as Empty Signifier. In this article I will …

So, WWE superstars will be appearing at the Trump-UFC “Freedom 250” event - next question is whether they have a choice, or TKO decides who goes. Just hope Danhausen is far away from this whole thing. No need to ruin one bright spot at the moment. www.cagesideseats.com/wwe/443380/w...

Today’s BlueSky is largely media columnists and commentators posting their FindMyPolitics results that read ‘Technocrat’, ‘Liberal Conservative’ and ‘Progressive Realist’ and writing “that sounds right” - which feels the sort of data analysts of the Herman/Chomsky school would once have screamed for

18 months ago, @ntmatthews.bsky.social and I published a paper on the persistence of the mythology of New Labour in British Politics and how it seemed to play a big role in the new government’s thinking. Feels relevant today (open access) — www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

It was notable in Eluned Morgan’s concession speech that she explicitly wished Plaid well, said she hoped for stability & that they all wanted the best for Wales. In doing so she framed PC as legitimate and reasonable - where you’d imagine the knee-jerk from London would be ‘nasty separatists’ (1/2)

“…to understand our world, we need to look to “men in teeny tiny hot pants”. Maybe we’re all wrestlers now? … We all follow cultural and political scripts to some degree; it gets more dangerous when we forget that’s what we do.” www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

One Labour figure said: “There was a collective failure of elite political thinking in the UK about this, too many of us looked around and said, if everyone else thinks he’s acceptable then he must be.”  www.ft.com/content/a829...

TKO World

“In Westminster, “adult” is a conman’s compliment. It sounds a judgment of character, when it is really a definition of ideology. One proves political maturity by not banging on about injustice, by not troubling too much the rich and powerful.”

Absolutely agree with this. The metaphor of the end of the Gulf Stream is perfectly put. The loss of Wales will have major repercussions. One of Starmer’s many major failings has been to take Wales for granted - symbolic of a general lack of interest and understanding of politics beyond Westminster

Report: WWE 'Politically Forced' To Sign RFK Jr's Niece cultaholic.com/posts/report...

According to the people who run the country, the best (& only) two options for Ambassador to the U.S. were the 2 guys - friends outside work - famously caught up in a scandal re. accepting hospitality on a Russian oligarch’s yacht w. dodgy £££ claims. Democracy! www.theguardian.com/politics/200...

One of the worst things in semi-recent UK politics was the attempt to turn Ed Balls into an amusing object of fandom. Finally confronted to his face, his role on the GMB news desk has symbolised the worst of the political-media bubble at play - the fact this has even been seen as normal or tenable.

Understandable people are denouncing conspiracy theorists today, faced w. claims WHCD shooter was a false flag of some kind. But it also highlights a difficulty the political discourse has conceptualising/discussing *real* conspiratorial aspects of politics, e.g.: tribunemag.co.uk/2026/04/the-...

Of course Shane McMahon would be at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2026. Because of course.

Starmer’s Mandelson arranged off-the-books Palantir meeting is admittedly old dodgy news, but it stunk at the time, and it’s a good thing the stink is getting talked about more. The world envisages by Palantir is still the world Starmer-types want to usher forth. www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...

I would simply ask: if the party was on fire in a ditch within five years of the rescue, then it what sense was it “saved”?

In 2024 Starmer told journalists “I don’t know any more than you do” when asked about Mandelson staying at Epstein’s property while the latter was in jail. He had many months and clearly many discussions in which he could have asked the guy about it. I guess he just forgot 🤷🏻.

There’s something interesting about the fact the Hulk Hogan documentary is getting mainstream press and being treated as offering an insight into contemporary American culture, but WrestleMania itself - the contemporary WWE product - was last weekend and received zero mention in the same newspapers.

I think we can see the reason for this is the same as any number of abysmal scandals at all kinds of major British institutions: Nobody wants to go lifting rocks because of the very high risk that moving one of them will send a geyser of scalding hot corruption leaping two hundred feet into the air.

For a moment I genuinely thought this was Samoa Joe’s WWE entrance music youtu.be/oWQqCgSOIKY?...

You should when appointing someone to a government position check if they have a wikipedia and if they do read the controversies section at minimum.

Mandelson wasn't a "washed up old spinner", he made millions selling his political contacts to represent firms like Palantir, a career path Team Starmer admire and want to copy ,and he helped design Team Starmer's devious route to leadership. This wasn't a 'mistake', its is who Starmer's group are

Erika Kirk and JD Vance are drawing like WCW in 2001

BLOOD WORK MARKETING DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS: I'M JUST A BLOOD MACHINE, AND I WON'T WORK FOR NOBODY BUT YOU View more on Instagram: www.instagram.com/p/DXCj-0FDGE...

So, Kid Rock is essentially the U.S. President’s entrance music. The symbolism of attending an MMA fight at the same time your negotiating team is trying and failing to ‘wrestle’ out any sort of deal. A spectacle of strength overlaying a base of material failure. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

In 2025, Keir Starmer allowed B61 nuclear bombs to be delivered to a US air force squadron at RAF Lakenheath, the first US nuclear deployment in the UK since 2008. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Brody King made the Drudge Report

AEW Dynamite was in Winnipeg last night, and the Canadian crowd broke into a "Fuck the tariffs!" chant 😆

Fans boo Trump’s tariffs in pro wrestling's latest anti-MAGA turn www.dailykos.com/stories/2026...

Content warning for article: hard to imagine another U.S. Education Secretary’s husband (separated) facing the allegations here - alongside ‘ring boys’ ones - and it not being a national scandal. Instead WWE lent into the McMahon name & referenced VKM on RAW. www.cagesideseats.com/wwe/430346/j...

“Fuck ICE” chants, speaking up against the genocide in Gaza, a deathmatch with glass, barbed wire, and an exploding table. Welcome to the AEW. The full story: lataco.com/all-elite-wr... By @afroxander.bsky.social

Jesse Ventura claims Trump faked his assassination attempt with “a blade job” - the act in pro-wrestling where one uses a hidden blade to open a cut and get blood flowing. I wrote about the ‘Trump bladed’ conspiracy theory back in January 2025 (link below) (1/2) www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/wwe/ar...

Luckily if we wait until after the next election, we’ll have some books by Lobby journalists which giving the insider scoops, and may out exactly what happened - to much wry comment and general moving on.

An old favourite from 2001: Peter Mandelson’s “strange stare” at the Bilderberg conference. From Jon Ronson’s ‘Them: Adventures with Extremism’. This was back when Bilderberg was secretive even denied, rather than discussed as normal on the Ten O’Clock News, with photographs of people going in.