It was a little over three years ago that Keir Starmer promised to do away with the House of Lords altogether as part of his plans to restore trust in politics. Now, he's nominating his own (less than stellar) allies, writes @arusbridger.bsky.social

#BBCLauraK to Keir Starmer: "You've been incredibly clear, that Putins attack on a sovereign country, Ukraine, was wrong & ought to be condemned. What about Trumps attack on a sovereign country of Venezuela.. will you condemn that action against a sovereign state?"

Did nobody notice that Liz Kendall was horrendous in 2015? Did nobody see that Yvette Cooper was not much better, and that this probably was the best they could do? This really, really was not hard to spot, and it’s not like nobody was pointing this out.

Fun as it is to see the Libs finally realising they’ve been diddled, it’s also deeply aggravating. We all love a sinner who repenteth etc but it was absolutely crystal clear ten years ago that they were exactly like this, that they had no ideas except for crackdowns, cruelty and flag-fucking.

It’s been answered but you hid it, might want to look into how that happened? bsky.app/profile/wari...

Pretending you don’t understand *and* falling over and pretending to be injured? And it’s only the second day of the year. Start as you mean to continue, if guess.

The Times is the worst. People reading the Sun and the Mail do on some level understand they are the Beano and the Dandy, for bigoted cunts. The Times is the British ruling class talking to itself in increasingly Mein Kampfy terms, and readers believe they’re getting the unvarnished truth.

This is the guy who had to resign as Keir Starmer's Chief of Political Strategy only three months ago after he was exposed having made racist and sexually explicit jokes about Diane Abbott. His author photo is the same one that was widely used by papers when reporting that very story.

That’ll be it Jim: it’s not that they’re just bad at their jobs, it’s that Twitter dot com has eaten their homework.

you can equally easily answer this question by asking 'which members of the public is this party supposed to appeal to?' and realising that it's a demographic almost exclusively comprised of journalists

Fascinating thread but I don't feel it's that complicated? This is what happens when you go out of your way to performatively kick your own coalition in the hope of impressing voters who never liked you to start with.

Ludicrous IMO but what the hell: does Starmer *not* deserve to get an avalanche of bad faith screeching, for failing to check what a guy he’s never met was saying on Twitter dot com in 2014? Of course he does, it was him that very stridently made this stuff the cornerstone of his public persona.

Compare that single instance of suddenly noticing things to, say, the damning evidence uncovered by the cranks at the national equality body in months of free access to the Labour Party’s internal systems, with the power to compel evidence and compliance. It’s comical, isn’t it. It’s a bad joke.

A Christmas Day tale in 3 parts. 1) Steve Reed - Housing Minister - launches a Xmas Day attack. 2) It's the Labour Governments usual shit. 3) join.greenparty.org.uk Merry Xmas! www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/exclus...

If you’re frightened by the new hateful bullshit but you loudly welcomed the old version because it wasn’t hurled at you personally and helped you to get things you wanted, congratulations! These are the consequences of your self-indulgent idiocy, now right in all of our faces for everyone to enjoy.

Goodness me, these judicial comments are astonishingly damming of the Campaign Against Antisemitism. news.sky.com/story/regina...

Yes, this is precisely why the Labour Racism terror had to be kept as far away from courtrooms as possible, and every expulsion and other piece of backroom shenanigans had to be lawyered to fuck to ensure it wouldn’t be subject to judicial review. I recall this being explained, openly, at the time.

Keir Starmer (2020) dropping some truth bombs, so time for the annual count of PM u-turns. Please put your favourites below.

Does it seem to you that these are good, well meaning people whom are doing their best to improve our society somewhat? Or does it look like they are something quite different entirely.

It’d probably help their cause in general if they at least *pretended* there was anything real or consistent about all that cancel culture drivel. But they can’t, because they are first and foremost malignant arseholes and so the urge to behave like a wanker takes precedence over everything else.

You know full well that if a presenter of a BBC program claimed that they'd been forced out for their anti-trans opinions then Keir Starmer and several other ministers would have takes printed on front pages about it the next day. But @robinince.bsky.social will not get that treatment.

Britain does not punish crimes by its elite, including genocide. Britain arms up and punishes the fuck out of *people who oppose genocide*, because the state is 100% behind that and, via proxies, it makes very sure that celebrities know their careers will be forfeit if they open their mouths.

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

My constituent, Amu, is on Day 40 of their hunger strike in prison. Last month, I requested an urgent meeting with the Justice Secretary to discuss their wellbeing. He has now officially declined my request. What an absolute disgrace.

And it's especially interesting to me because this is one of the factors that led to Starmer becoming Prime Minister. If you're rightly appalled that we have a human rights lawyer as PM who seems to be opposed to human rights, then you need to look at the movement which he exploited to become leader

I don't think it was your motivation or the motivation of everyone involved, but you can't look at the parliamentary wing of the Remain movement being maximalist in this way and reconcile it with serious concern about Brexit's impacts, especially when it evaporated when dawn hit on December 13th

My favourite example of just how much the media wanted to sell this drivel. SOUBRY: "I say bring it on! I'll be supporting the Government! " MAITLIS (shouting over her): "SHE'S THE OPPOSITION!" I don't want to be harsh, but... you got conned.

(For non-Brits: what’s happening here is that the bad-faith wingnuts of Britain and their media friends have been shown over and over that they can get anything they want, if they all scream for it in unison. So now, they scream in unison for *everything* they want.)

It appears the crackpots have decided that actually, this was not a collossal triumph after all, and actually it needs to be redone

The very sharp disjuncture between reading the executive summary of the EHRC Labour report; then reading the actual text of the Labour report, and then reading what the press were telling the public was in the EHRC Labour report. Then noting the chasm between the allegations, and what was found.

Do you notice how basically nothing in British politics makes sense, unless key players and major commentators are absolutely deranged? And then it makes *way too much* sense, everything slots together just fine. Because it’s elite radicalisation, they have driven themselves and each other crazy.

This was obvious every year since the crash and every year, the lads have chosen to continue chopping up and burning the furniture to keep the Thatcherite consensus warm and mostly happy, and the right sort of chaps’ arses in the right seats. I see no reason why that would change now.

Don’t like this? Shouldn’t have voted for the fuckers.

It is essential to remember that Sensible centrists got everything they wanted in the UK. The left smashed, their Competent Sensible politicians won by a landslide last year and have a huge majority and the policies they dreamed of implemented. And the result is endless horror.

Seriously, there's never going to be a better time for UK Sensible Centrists to implement their competent utopia, making everything balanced and moderate. And yet getting all the power they want has only lead to them aiding fascism in every possible way.

An article in which the Guardian pitches one euphemistic way after another to avoid acknowledging that the EHRC is a hot mess that’s no longer fit for anything in the vicinity of ‘human rights’. 1/3 www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

I see that Editor of the Spectator Michael Gove - who is still admired and platformed in some quarters - is currently publishing a column by an attempted rapist, & another by a fella who punched his pregnant girlfriend. Why do some think that this crass fucker has any place in a decent society?

It's worth noting this in the context of the "An assault on our ancient liberties" discourse around the plan to curtail jury trials. The UK justice system has always been anti-democratic and indulgent of the security state. Authoritarianism is built-in. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/nov...

While everyone is worrying about a Reform government, a Labour one is already taking away our rights

2020: David Lammy, "Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea" 2025: The Times, "Jury trials to be scrapped except for alleged rapists and killers"

"We grant people different rights based on their genetic heritage and on which scrap of land they happened to be born on. That’s mad, isn’t it?" I just think, when debating immigration and so on, that we should try not to lose sight of the fact that "nationality" is a made up thing.

To say the entire press taking this utterly cynical, vexatious horseshit and ramping it up into national terror amounts to a big thumb on the scales of democracy significantly undersells just how serious this stuff is. It raises questions about whether we’re a democracy in any meaningful sense.

The actual real explanation always turns out to be way more dumb and insulting than you imagined it was.

Telegraph has an interview with Maurice Glasman in which he recalls an incident where he stated "I teach political philosophy". Well, on the only occasion on which I've met him, he showed a staggering ignorance of the basics of the subject.

At this point I am mainly struggling to work out whether this guy is Lucy, Charlie Brown or the football itself

Drop what you're doing, this is very funny. This is where Grown-Up, 4D-chess-playing, Sensible Moderate Politics has got them, and us. Tragically, it was predicted by many (though not those in the video), but - in these dark times, you have to take joy where you can - it's a hoot nevertheless.

Everything that Rafel Behr complains about - Starmer's lack of principle, his inauthenticity - was known from day one, but he, like the rest of the commentariat, insisted this empty suit was uniquely qualified. They will never admit fault. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...