On the Gleichschaltung of 60 minutes

The UK-Rwanda Asylum Partnership award is out. The UK won as the Tribunal held by majority decision that the financial arrangements were amended. Link to the award: pcacases.com/web/sendAtta...

Any word on MCC and MU?

Potus is starting to be so incoherent and contradicts himself so often that listening to him becomes a pointless exercise. Is the Iranian military 100% destroyed, did they leave it alone, are prices 600% down, up, left, right?

Joint Statement by the Heads of the IEA, IMF, World Bank, and WTO

JUST IN: Judge Williams is pressing Trump's lawyers to answer for allegations that they committed a fraud on the court and filed the president's lawsuit against the IRS as a "collusive" effort to create the $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The UN report on conflict-related sexual violence listing Israel and Russia passblue.com/wp-content/u...

Some progress on the Draghi report.

* looks at scrabble manual * * looks at @soumayakeynes.ft.com ’s column * *sheepishly hides scrabble manual behind his back * www.ft.com/content/9876...

So... the board of peace has two funds. One with independent transparency obligations with the World Bank, which is empty. One without such obligations with JP Morgan, which is not. www.france24.com/en/middle-ea...

Unpopular thought: Tony Blair is right about one thing - we need a debate about substance, not people. /1

Caption 1: Maybe one day AI will resolve our environmental problems... ... that it caused. Caption 2: we had the choice between having water for human consumption or having water to create AI slob. Guess which one we chose? www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

The IPCC adapted its worst-case and its best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario got better (yeah!), the best-case scenario got worse (oh well). All of this is just how science works - and not a global conspiracy.

FTA GI wars. The US-Argentina FTA includes provisions against EU & UK GIs /1

The US Bangladesh RTA ustr.gov/sites/defaul...

Is Restore Britain advocating ceding Norther Ireland or do they just not know the names of the country they pretend to feel patriotic about?

The new encyclical letter on AI (citing Tolkien) www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

Shocking details in this report by UNSR #Torture Alice Edwards. Horrific abuse, sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners by #Israel. & importantly, incl details of denial of right to adequate std of living- sanitation, food, water. Disgraceful conditions. #humanRights www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...

BREAKING: Judge Waverly Crenshaw dismisses indictment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia based on selective and vindictive prosecution. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The US approach to NATO much like the U.K. approach to the EU in 2016 risks taking for granted the achievements of the institution and failing to see how they come about /1

The United Nations’ top court issued a landmark advisory opinion on the right to strike on Thursday, finding that a cornerstone labor treaty protects the ability of workers to walk off the job.

AI in higher legal education

There is not a shred of doubt that the EU would want the UK back. But the EU is also keenly aware of UK politics. And that includes how Reform did in the elections. So the question the pro-join side has to work on is: how to assure partners that the UK reliably wants to join and stay. /1

The GA Res endorsing the ICJ climate change advisory opinion has passed with 8 vote against, among those the US. The whole thread is fabulous.

The US is withdrawing as an ally part 1 www.reuters.com/world/us-pla...

Reading @annettedittert.bsky.social ’s new book is both a tremendous joy and brings back PTSD of the Brexit days. Britain is lucky to have such an empathetic explainer

I fear election reform and normalization of the EU debate might be tied to each other. Because no matter how many surveys say a majority of the UK population wants to join the EU, it is the ruling party that gets to set the policy and as long as there's a good chance that'll be reform....

Whichever way this goes, one thing is increasingly clear: the UK electoral system is broken. FPTP does not work with so many significant parties. And it is important someone with power tackles this, even though by definition the person came to power via FPTP.

There are quite a few things where standing up to Trump and risking his wrath makes sense: defending international law, the EU, Spain, institutions, science. But just randomly risk his anger? www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

The Trump phone terms and conditions are hilarious. Particularly as you can always just go to a shop and buy an actual phone rather than a conditional opportunity to maybe one day get a phone at the complete discretion of the vendor. trumpmobile.com/device-preor...

Raising the fascinating question: what %age suffices in an FPTP system with a fragmented party landscape to give someone a chance to win the election?

The District Court injunction against US sanctions on Albanese is available here ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

Any CEO of a tech company who thinks he’s unchallengeable and his software irreplaceable has not watched the last years. The reality is that Germany cannot afford to make itself dependent on Palantir. /1

Just in case you are interested in knowing any policy of reform that is not "it's the foreigners' fault", here's their "proposal" for the NHS. /1

If the US would operate like the U.K. many a President would apparently have had to step down after the mid-terms.

The elections demonstrate the need for electoral reform. FPTP should be killed. It does not work in a 5 party system.

Allow me to gently disagree with the framing. Labour droht nicht das Ende. Labour wurde die zweitstärkste Partei. Es gibt aber zwei wichtige take-aways der Wahl. 1) Die stärkste rechte Partei ist Reform. Ein Erdbeben. 2) 5 Parteien erreichen relevante Werte @franziskah.bsky.social /1

The UK electorate remains fundamentally split: reform+con=2201, labour+libdems+greens=2295

Somehow I feel it's only going to get worse from the current vote count in Wales.

Currently REF+CON ist at 52%, LD+LAB+GRN at 45%.

Looking at the English council elections it is easy to spot the weak point of the barrage of "the UK is getting closer to the EU" news.

Some discomfort with the CIT’s tariff decision: us courts continue to grant potus an enormous amount of deference for factual determinations. So enormous that I wouldn’t exclude Trump trying to use 122 again. Given Trump’s difficult relationship with truth this is quite problematic.

Trump gives EU until 4 July to ratify trade deal or face ‘much higher’ tariffs

And so… Trump’s new basis for his tariffs, sec. 122, is also gone if this is confirmed on appeal. /1

. @fromtga.bsky.social is indubitably right. No matter how often people keep telling me ‘we want Germany to rearm’ the space between ‘Germany has to rearm’ and ‘OMG, Germany has a strong military‘ is non-existent. There’s only one solution: Europeanisation www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Austria is no longer willing to look away when spies operate in Vienna. Congratulations to @bmeia.gv.at ! www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

The whole immigration debate is characterised by that one massive miscalculation described by ‘but I do not mean THEM’. Many people who vote solely on the basis of migration and are massively against it think they vote (only or mostly) against benefit-scrounging non-working criminals. /1

We shall use the additional years of life expectancy we have compared to the US to ponder the question…

More on how Trump enabled a nuclear Iran

One of the reasons Trump might be particularly edgy is that is extraordinary power of salesmanship seems to wear thin. Which... is not astonishing given the message he now peddles edition.cnn.com/2026/05/02/w...