I wasted an amazing amount of time I will now never get back trying to explain why Labour got walloped in Scotland and how easy it would be to regain at least some of their lost support, and got little but indifference and abuse in response, so my attitude now is: enjoy the May elections, smart guys

It finally happened

“Much more likely is a short to medium-length campaign to degrade the capabilities of the IRGC and the paramilitary Basij force in order to reduce the repressive capacity of the Iranian state... That wouldn’t be as easy in reality as it is on social media.” abuaardvarkghost.ghost.io/eternal-suns...

On the one hand sure, I agree! On the other, most of these people probably voted Labour in the late 2010s, some of them enthusiastically, and the entire pundit class spent five years baying for Sir Keir to annihilate that type of person. So it’s perhaps not surprising if he’s a bit confused, now.

Using boilerplate messaging that would use for George Galloway about Hannah Spencer personally & how she will approach being an MP is tin eared, graceless, implausible to the immediate audience (Labour MPs) and esp the broader one (Labour waverers/switchers) underpinned by the wrong strategy

On Politics Weekly, Pippa explains that a few weeks ago she thought Labour would lose because that’s what MPs were telling her, than more recently they changed their minds, which was confusing. The question of whether they were lying to her at any point doesn’t seem to have occurred to her.

Robert Faro, your refusal to unleash this so-called “Faro Swarm” or “Faro Plague” is downright anti-American

Holds up

LOL yes, baffling conundrum and enigma as several big-bottle beers disappear from my fridge on Friday night

Why, it’s almost like “pundits and strategists” somehow *cannot hear* facts and views that they are hostile to.

Kiran Stacey at the Guardian and Pogrund at the Times both saying they expect the government to get - and I paraphrase here - an absolutely brutal hounding in London in May

Have to agree with John Harris here: this is extremely odd, isn’t it? It is IMO hard to explain how we had not one but two crushing landslide victories for what we were assured were popular political parties with firm public backing, and now, both are despised and completely fucked.

Recall: the public were loudly and repeatedly told that Sir Keir so successfully annihilated the legion of Hitlerian racists in his party because of his masterful competence and ruthless focus. Does that seem more likely to you than “What, my anti-elephant amulet? Well, do you see any elephants”

Well, you’ll recall that we’re supposed to be in year six of The Great Realignment here, enjoying year two of Boris Johnson’s crushing second election victory over an utterly destroyed left.

I don’t listen to St Vincent that often but every time I do, I wonder why I don’t - she is a badass

“Be inclusive” and “improve people’s lives” really isn’t that high a bar to clear, and yet

A good summary of stuff that was very obviously always going to happen, even seen from several years ago. David Graeber did whole long chats about how this stuff was very plainly these people burning their own house to the ground so that they could lord it over the ashes, and that guy died in 2020.

High profile Sensible Moderate public figures and publications teaming up with far right cranks to jointly batter and demonise the left in roaring hate campaigns, to their mutual benefit? Surely such things could never happen in the English-speaking world

Getting a lot of replies from Americans today about how Labour’s woes portend doom for the Democratic Party, if they don’t mend their ways. I think that’s right, in one specific way: both wanted so badly, for so long, to claim the centre ground as the party of mean-as-fuck Business Win authority…

New blogpost: Twofer - The Greens were nailed on to win the Gorton and Denton by-election because they offered a twofer for a plurality of voters: you could thwart Nigel Farage and simultaneously stick two fingers up to Keir Starmer. fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.com/2026/02/twof...

Especially when Sir Keir’s own project was explicitly intended to split the lib/Sensible Centrist part of the Labour Party and weld it Frankenstein-style to the bloc of Reasonable Tories and racist pensioners. It was actively intended to be divisive, and wildly succeeded without unifying shit.

I am so sick of this rhetoric. Politics is inherently divisive!

Lmao

Imagine devoting your entire career to selling the idea that the British public hates wokery and is clamouring for radical right wing populism, only to then be defeated in an actual election by the most left wing possible coalition of politicians and activists in the country. It's got to hurt

Shutting the stable door after you’ve shot the horse and had it made into Findus Crispy Pancakes

Speaking as a former bland Guardian liberal, who was radicalised by repeatedly finding myself on the receiving end of dog’s abuse from people like this twerp and his allies: I welcome Sir Keir’s comments about people who don’t like him being the “extreme left”, and I encourage him to go further.

Again, it’s striking how heavily populated the British political/media sphere is with horrifyingly racist far right crackpots with horrendous politics

The biggest problem with the UK's political system is that colossal pieces of shit can write abhorent nonsense like this in a journal famous for publishing vile poison... and still have everyone come to their garden party because it's all a bit of a lark and all in good fun eh chaps wot wot.

I think both the Tories and then Labour collapsing to despised public enemy levels within two years of being roared into power by their supporting media outlets, may suggest that a lot of important people were badly wrong about some important things. When do the mea culpas begin?

Dunno Ed, if I had to pick a party in Gorton that's "playing with fire" I think I might take a closer look at the Blood and Soil chaps micro-parsing who gets to call themselves English and flirting with Great Replacement Theory, not the nice Greens lady encouraging brown people to vote.

Insane, antiquated voting and parliamentary system; world’s most poisonous media outlets, who operate as a gangster extortion racket; slavish obedience to US governments; bulging, slimy chained door in the cellar that must never be opened, in case The Demonic Horrors come spilling out into the world

I’d remind you of that pollster saying Sir Keir’s Labour “has no floor”. She meant: there was a constituency for dirty hippie labour that would loyally turn out, but *almost nobody* likes this Fuck You, We’re Doing Crackdowns! version. Which means there really is no bottom to how bad this could get.

developed democracies are balkanising into 'internet fascist' & 'progressive liberal' teams nobody wants reactionary centrism

*Years* of this insulting drivel, at absolutely incredible volume. Utterly relentless, shoved down the public’s throats, entirely because it was what these people wanted.

Yes: they didn’t want to be a party that had to pretend to listen to students and dirty hippies and upset ethnic minority groups and sundry other losers. They wanted to represent Business Winners, police and retired racists and be mean-as-fuck flag-humping war pigs. So they pushed it until it broke.

That’s weird, because back when Labour used to talk about these things every day, the press that said it was deranged and possibly treasonous student politics nonsense and the people currently running the party said it was a disaster that threatened its very existence

"The forgotten majority" being the 71% who didn't vote for you.

And it's too late baby now it's too late, though we really did try to make it. Something inside has died and I can't hide it and just can't fake it.

Just so: I may have all kinds of wacky ideas but my consistent political desires have always been 1) a less deliberately horrible, cruel and vicious political/media culture 2) more and better public services and 3) far less complicity in America’s horrifying wars. This doesn’t seem extreme, to me.

[throwing my 'the ecoterrorist monsters want to turn your daughter into a drug-addicted prostitute' placard in the bin as I enter the pub] Thank god for our progressive alliance, right lads?

It’s about much more than the destruction of Gaza but on that specifically, it’s not just the horrible actions: it’s also that they’ve made it crystal clear they regard everyone who is angry about it as scum to be managed at best, as well as a national security threat to be arrested en masse.

Can we just take a few seconds to reflect on the Tories registered their WORST EVER by-election performance at Gorton and Denton. They lost their deposit. They got 7.9% in this seat in 2024. Now they got 1.9%. Questions for Badenoch as well as Stramer

It’s worth returning to Monday here, to remind ourselves that the commentariat seemed genuinely astonished and deeply alarmed to discover the public are more upset about facilitating crimes against humanity than they are about the pundits’ forever war upon transgender people in toilets

Can't get a posh job - blame the "woke" establishment. Can't get a shag - blame the "unregulated sexual economy". Lose a by-election - blame cheating. Anything else - blame immigrants. Reform really is the party of excuses for mediocre white men.

Aaro doing amazing work this morning

The very serious problem they have here was plain as day in 2015, and as one all the lads simply decided they didn’t want to talk or even think about what had happened in Scotland. They wanted to push it and push it until they got what they wanted, and now they’ve finally broken it archive.ph/B65q7

Would prefer to be positive this beautiful morning, but let’s just pause to observe what sad, resentful little men these people are, and how much they hate this country, and how much they hate having their arses handed to them

We can laugh at this little fash twat but this poisonous dreck is mainstream stuff now: we had *weeks* of this shit from Ashworth and Debonnaire after they got binned, gladly repeated on news stands and broadcasts, presumably with the intent of fending off repeats. Repeats like this, in fact.

Minor thing, given how much political discourse uses "authenticity" and "out-of-touch politicians who know nothing about real life" as essentially a metaphor for not being anti-immigrant, it's notable the two nativist parties stood an ex-academic turned race hate pundit and a management consultant

Given that we're told that Muslims as a bloc are communalist, anti-Semitic, misogynist homophobes, you might assume voting for a non-religious white woman, standing for a LGBT friendly party, led by a gay Jewish man, might lead you to stand down all those sectarianism headlines.