I'm so tired of him. Starmer is trying doublespeak on Remainers again, hoping we don't realise that "CLOSER" still means "OUT" and not "IN". ... Each day is moving him "closer" to the exit. #RejoinEU 🇬🇧🇪🇺

‘Cruise ships, garden centres, golf clubs and bungalows by the sea.’ I’m 66 and this fantasy description of retirement is my idea of hell.

This will probably come as no surprise to anyone but.. www.ft.com/content/3c05...

I don’t know much about the Services but I’d have thought an officer turning up with too small a beret and unshaven would be subject to disciplinary measures!

I think I must be dead! (Have to admit to feeling the difference between 60 and 66 a bit.)

Opinion: Donald Trump’s Operation Epic Fury on Iran has turned into an epic search for a way out. There is no obvious off-ramp, however, that does not lead back to the highway. Iran’s latest offer illustrates why. ft.trib.al/VgqPZDS

First NHS England and now NICE. Streeting is dismantling the safeguards that ensure that when the NHS spends money, decisions are led by what's best for patients. Instead he's taking control of contracting and it seems to be led by what's best for US big business. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Presumably the gentil can still drive their more traditional pony and trap to their nearest market town once a week or to visit their neighbouring gentry? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

With Reform polling strongly, first-past-the-post could hand power to a party backed by barely a quarter of voters. Tactical voting still matters, but only if it’s based on local data, not national trends. Stephen McNair explains eastangliabylines.co.uk/party-politi...

Fascinating on snippets here: www.history.ac.uk/library/coll...

The analysis is good. However an unaddressed question is how political parties might create mechanisms to ensure zombie leaders are not chosen in the first place. An issue might be that selection processes reflect internal factionalism rather than the public good.

Gentlemen, start your lettuces.

This photo should be on the front page of every single newspaper in America today.

Not seeing the irony that for many Reform supporters it is not the country she moved to because people like her moved to the country. I don’t get the pulling up the drawbridge mentality although I’ve encountered it a bit.

Patriotic history is what you get in dictatorships. Mind you, Al Capone was keen on it, too. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

How many people would Reform UK deport? Short, rough answer: At least two million are at risk but the plans are ambiguous and their effect hinges on Labour’s own decisions www.ft.com/content/a762...

If you haven't yet explored London Decides, a borough by borough, ward by ward, guide to the London local elections by me & @lewisbaston.bsky.social, you'd better have a pretty good excuse for not paying attention: londondecides.lowickhedry.com #london @mrjamesob.bsky.social @pickardje.bsky.social

Very resonant interview with @peteralanross.bsky.social here. Reflecting on his trilogy he addresses some fundamental questions of people, place, time and interconnection & what it is to keep making work with a kind of antithetical faith perhaps. mathewlyons.substack.com/p/memory-pla...

At this point the only reason to call it the Labour Party is it lasts too long, hurts like hell, and people keep popping in and out to check on your genitals.

Everything about this story makes me feel faintly stressed. 1) Just accept where the market is and sell your home for c£700k. 2) For god's sake don't move into a smaller home on two floors, why do you want to do this again in 15-20 years? If you can't find a bungalow, this is what flats are for!

But you can replace the buildings with parking lots.

Don’t write an article about them either!

Bridget Phillipson will introduce new laws to make it possible for Universities to be fined millions of pounds if they don't silence students who protest bigots invited onto their campuses. It's like the Tories never left office.

Rejoin is coming: Talk of the customs union and single market is a distraction. Only full membership offers a compelling vision of Britain's future iandunt.substack.com/p/rejoin-is-...

Trump broke the Commandents, so Vance had to commit the Deadly Sins. Trump compared himself to Jesus, so Vance had to claim that he was better at theology than the pope. This is one sad weird heretical Oedipal thing.

BREAKING: The U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine just issued a formal statement defending Pope Leo XIV's teaching authority on just war doctrine — less than twelve hours after JD Vance told a Turning Point USA crowd the pope should “be careful” talking theology. This is a serious escalation.

I went through Dover as a foot passenger two weeks ago. Hugely inconvenient and elaborate process. And there were about 30 of us. It's going to be utter carnage come the summer.

My theory on Starbucks: it caters primarily for that not insignificant sector of the market that likes the idea of coffee, but doesn’t actually like coffee.

“I exist in all languages: my language is Greek, my language is Syrian, my language is Hebrew. My language is that of all peoples for I exist in the unity of peoples” Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 147.19 (Met Museum)

For the second day, the BBC are running a story that presents itself as providing evidence of endemic abuse of the asylum system based on seemingly a single encounter with someone who is neither a lawyer nor a registered immigration adviser. Words fail. This is reprehensibly irresponsible.

The eyewatering hypocrisy writes itself.

Today's BritPol exam question. "After its supposed failure to see what was coming in the Brexit referendum, and with Reform leading in the polls, the BBC occasionally comes over as so desperate to avoid accusations of liberal bias that it risks overshooting in the other direction." Discuss.

Why Americans Need to Get Much Angrier About Donald Trump Hope is not a strategy and my fellow Americans need to wake up to the far greater damage to the US this President could still cause, argues Alexandra Hall Hall

#PopeLeo Pope Leo is a member of Order of Saint Augustine and is the first Augustinian Pope. True to his vocation is advocating for peace (St. Augustine, Father of Peace) JD Vance a Catholic, chose Saint Augustine as his patron saint and but is working in #Trump administration which makes wars!

Vance not grasping that war is a matter of morality and that Pope Leo is reiterating traditional Catholic teaching on Just War theory formulated by SS Ambrose, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and with roots going back deep in Antiquity.

Sarah Moss: Contrary to popular belief, loving relationships and talking about feelings are not new phenomena

Do they make *anything* better?

“Why aren't you criticising Donald Trump more vocally? He is clearly now habitually lying, delusional and you're not standing up to him. Worse than that you're sending the King to play nice with him" - Krishnan Guru-Murthy

"Will we be complicit in genocidal threats against other cultures? Will we be quiet in the face of cruelty against our immigrant neighbors?...We can resist." #PrayForPeace #PrayForAmerica www.ncronline.org/opinion/edit...

10 minutes that set Lebanon ablaze - terrific but harrowing visualisation. www.ft.com/content/5501...

Reports of a meeting between a Vatican representative and the Pentagon went viral, with allegations that the church had been warned to cease its criticism.

I find this so much more annoying from Davey than the other leaders, because unlike the others, I just don’t think he, at any level, believes this stuff.

The Middle East is full of religious extremists who blindly revere evil men. Oops! I meant *The United States* not The Middle East.

all these universities kept axing medieval history departments as if they thought tyrants beefing with the Pope was going to stop being relevant

BREAKING: JOINT STATEMENT FROM THE LEADERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM, FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, CANADA, DENMARK, NETHERLANDS, SPAIN, THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION, THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL AND JAPAN.

NEW: A stunning new report claims that the Pentagon summoned Pope Leo XIV’s top American diplomat and threatened him after the U.S.-born pontiff gave his January state-of-the-world address. Leo used the address to denounce a world ruled by “a diplomacy based on force” and “zeal for war.”

« Ne jamais interrompre votre ennemi quand il commet une erreur ». Bonaparte. Dans l’ombre du chaos #Américain 🇺🇸, l’ascension méthodique de #Pékin 🇨🇳. #TheEconomist ➡️ Voyez ce sourire discret de #XiJinping, impassible 😑 face à l’agité et ridicule #Taco #Trump 🥴

Frustrated that Waverley @libdems.org.uk and @greenparty.org.uk are standing against each other rather than cooperating as in previous local elections. I have two votes for the forthcoming new West Surrey Council elections and I’m thinking of casting one vote for each.