Oh no, how unfortunate

I take it the Greens have won then, because we are instantly on our bullshit

Helpful, here

Yeah, we laugh at this but what, is any of this new? It’s much the same shit everyone was doing terrified squealing into microphones over years ago. It just looks weird and undignified because they’ve gone from zero to 170 mph in the space of a week.

Another way of looking at this is that when times are tough, money is tight and elites are hard pressed due to e.g. abysmal corruption scandals, they tend to drop the polite facade and move towards overt enforcement archive.ph/SNpXO

This is what I mean when I say the late 2010s were seen by many people in politics/media as an era of exception, when all kinds of horrendous behaviours were to be briefly acceptable in the name of fixing the crisis. But there are good reasons for having rules and norms you don’t derogate from, ever

George Osborne’s great innovation in government appears to have been inheriting a system of decades of benign neglect, then asking himself: does the neglect have to be *benign*, specifically?

This had me wondering what happens in that game if you max out the tech tree and reach the game’s limits, and you then just leave it running into what should be the medieval and modern eras, rather than switching it off. It’s pretty much what you would expect.

The level of rage I have towards the New York Times that enabled this while blaming us for it is indescribable.

Helpful for understanding everything from London as money-laundry to the world’s criminals, decades of privatisation and “Russian interference” in democracy: Britain is just a place where half the ruling class swoons for a rich man who wants something channel4news.substack.com/p/exposed-72...

I just don’t think this applies in cases of fraud. Every newspaper and broadcaster was *screaming* inflammatory bullshit at the public, demanding they either vote for the Tories and hard Brexit or against Labour. Bombard people with scams, and lots of them will get conned. Whose fault is that?

Just noting here that if a school headteacher anywhere in Britain had gone on National Front radio at any point in the last seventy years before now, it would’ve been a national scandal and she would’ve been dismissed instantly. Not now, of course.

Quite rare to see a chart that says quite so overtly that no one involved has the slightest clue what’s happening here

Shattering the historic voting bloc of left, libs and Sensible Moderates was *the entire point* of McSweeney’s project, at first in secret and then openly. The entire plan was to replace it with a crushing natural party of government composed of Sensible Moderates, Reasonable Tories and bullied libs

A long process here: whatever vaguely progressive ideas members of the public might like and want, then sooner or later they’re going to be blocked by the Labour Party standing athwart it shouting: Fuck you, you can’t have it. And at that point it, becomes very clear what type of people they are.

🎯

shotgun not me but think there's scope here for a proper, lengthy, meaty feature looking at every single policy area in Britain that's currently fucked specifically because of a decision George Osborne took, reckon you could make it an actual mag cover, his fingerprints are everywhere

the dumbest fucks in the world.

It didn’t used to be like this, you know. This is a recent development.

That's why the modern dystopia is not a fully private state but a fully contracted out one. Things are still funded from taxation but the government provides no services directly. It buys everything from the private sector.

When you want to give fascist zillionaires a squillion pounds for dreck, but you aren’t sure how to go about doing it

To appear on one far right podcast may be regarded as a misfortune. To appear on two

We really should’ve picked a wizard or a dragon: really anything other than a king. Even an elf would be better. At least a dragon blasts you with fire if you embarrass him. It doesn’t get one of its dad’s flunkies to side-swipe your car with a white Fiat Uno.

*raises hand* who's taking the ubers and where are they going

Here, just in case anyone thought I made this up www.theguardian.com/politics/201...

Inspirational

Remember when rubbish leadership challenger Owen Smith realised he needed to appeal to left wing Labour members, so he announced that he wanted to negotiate with ISIS? They don’t listen to what people who don’t matter say, so they mostly don’t have a clue what those people think or want.

It’s bracing to see that this time, it’s just completely mask-off “Yes, we’re protecting Jeffrey Epstein’s erstwhile pals”, rather than a panic about people getting called shitheads on Twitter dot com. Gets right to the core of it, without any messing about.

If you're in the UK, read the following and ask yourself: exactly how far away from this are we?

How about you all meet behind school at home time for a square go, lads? It’d be more dignified than whatever the hell this is

The noisy, aggro misunderstanding things will continue until rich and powerful people stop getting arrested for crimes

How Matt Goodwin's definition of "the Elite" focuses on university workers and civil servants, while excluding the investment bankers, asset managers and global real estate executives who pay him bylinetimes.com/2026/02/25/r...

This is the kind of thing that would’ve had this paper doing (quite justified) semi-hysterical campaigns in the 2000s

But surely Peter Mandelson would never visit a highly exclusive Caribbean island for dubious, self-interested purposes

An amazing day here for anyone who has previously noted that public figures can adopt the rhetoric, politics and policies of the far right very acceptably, without criticism, provided you don’t use crude language in doing so.

"The UK parliament now has an MP who is openly racist and far right." Guardian senior political correspondent, 25/02/26 'now'

We’ve been headed towards exactly this stuff becoming standard for most of the century so far and on rocket boosters since at least 2015, almost all of it imposed from above by politicians and media deliberately stoking hate and fear, rather than arising organically.

Trump Invites Victims Of Jeffrey Epstein Investigation As SOTU Guests

We all agreed that a ruthlessly enforced non-choice of Thatcherites overseeing the ruin of the public realm, while offering much the same crackdowns as the system’s only movable mechanism, was an excellent idea. Now, it’s disastrous and totally fucked. Is the voting system to blame?

But if we have transparency, the public will just get angry about all the terrible things we’ve done. That helps nobody and it only makes everyone upset. Much better if we keep it all nice and secret, where nobody can see.

Let me translate: Labour win - Everyone in Britain needs to eat shit to stop Reform Reform win - Everyone in Britain needs to eat shit to stop Reform Green win - Two-week hysterical national panic about “sectarian” voting

Times reaction

It is and always was elite radicalisation - these awful people, egged on by their media friends, driving themselves and each other insane.

Well, has Peter often met problems that couldn’t be overcome and crushed by either short term or sustained media whispering campaigns and poisonous shenanigans? We might laugh and say: he’s not bullshitting his way out of this one! But why wouldn’t he at least try?

Remarkably, as far as I can see, the media has allowed Reform's leadership to avoid having to make *any* official comment about whether Goodwin's campaign manager's holocaust-minimising & racist posts, were acceptable to them. We only know Mitula was suspended because *he* has confirmed it.

Things have truly come to a pretty pass when the government of the cannot facilitate the destruction of a city of two million civilians to curry favour with the world’s most powerful and abysmal fascist authoritarians, without facing a lot of impertinent political campaigning

Tfw you are being investigated for crimes relating to a global influence network with access to many private islands, and the idea you might flee abroad is outlandish www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Amazing scenes tales here from the Mother of Parliaments

I reckon Peter should start threatening to name names; start shouting about how he’s going to crash this fucking plane once and for all, taking everyone down with him, and other things of that nature

We don’t even have to go to Disco Elysium for cultural works about fascism springing from virulent, septic hatred of women. People were saying it back then too en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastik...