New, from me: Take the Palantir manifesto seriously, if not literally. It reveals that our tech philosopher kings want public money, but without public accountability. This creates a dilemma for governments unaligned with its techno-fascist vision. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/palantir-w...

Well let's see how this strategy of telling "white liberals" to "fuck right off" works out in the local elections

The idea that being *a member of the House of Lords* in any way means you can be trusted with Top Secret/STRAP material without proper vetting is so beyond absurd that this must surely be a joke?

If you step back, it is truly extraordinary that so many people went to such great lengths and broke so many conventions and risked their political careers and the only outcome of all these efforts and risks was appointing a washed-up old spinner to an ambassadorial post

That Ganesh thinks this is 'strange', given the threat from Russia and the unreliability of America, says more about him than the EU. Calling these 'external favours' simply reveals deep naiveté. A typical failure to recognise that European integration is as much about security as economics.

So much of Labour's history since the 1990s seems to consist of things go wrong after finding jobs to keep Peter happy

The entire country has seemingly hallucinated an ultra woke 2024 campaign that featured a far left progressive candidate who lost in a massive landslide election. None of that happened!

Without energy efficiency, the EU would need — and pay — 31% more for energy today. Since 2000, efficiency has removed 265 Mtoe of demand from the market entirely. The best protection against a price shock is not finding cheaper oil and gas. It's needing less of it.

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/4833... Over ten years ago I reviewed a book predicting the Professions like law would be drastically disintermediated by the advent of AI. My strong suspicion that they would not was based on their market power and control over their commercial environment... 1/

Chris was that rare thing....a successful business leader who understood the purpose of politics and pressed for a fairer society. He was also warm, witty and clever. RIP

1/ This Yanis Varoufakis screed made me so angry the only way I can salvage my day is to go through it line by line as catharsis. You are welcome to come on the journey toward my aneurism with me. An angry h/t to @sianushka.bsky.social for bringing this into my life. unherd.com/2026/04/why-...

no offense to the hungarian people but i’m sorry, the idea that hungary is some last bastion of “western civilization” is absurd. can’t overstate how much this post-liberal, national conservative nonsense makes you sound like a putz

This is a great piece setting out why it's not just the backward-looking aspect of Labour's settlement proposals that are a problem - "the UK spent 75 years building something genuinely worth having: a track record of successful integration. And now a Labour government plans to blow it all up."

I'm a big fan of the triple lock. But this defence of it is stupid: there's no need to play off old against young (quite the opposite; the thing about the lock is that it benefits younger people more), nor to pretend that the lock is only affordable if we cut other benefits.

over on Twitter an economist I used to think was halfway sensible is still utterly obsessed with the idea that decisions on North Sea licences are the number one issue with regard to this energy crisis, and I honestly don't get how people become this deranged.

One story among many. For it is a simple fact that businesses in the UK face higher barriers to trade than their counterparts in all of our neighbours. This is a political decision to favour independence over integration made and denied by successive governments including this one.

The Daily Telegraph's April Fools story is somewhat revealing about the newspaper's personal and relentless obsession with Ed Miliband

I get why people say this, it's powerful, but he did start with camps. Dachau opened in March 1933, the book burnings were 2 months later. He purged the judiciary in April 1933. Nazism was a violent movement from the start, street violence was crucial from day one, even before he got to power.

The 2025 numbers are really striking. www.kielinstitut.de/fileadmin/Da...

Strikes me as an absurd threat, either we need the 4000 new training places or we don’t

Sen Mark Kelly, a retired Navy pilot, sharply criticizes Hegseth here: “It’s not the way somebody who claims to be a person of God—a religious person—should think,” Kelly tells me, adding that war is an "ethically complicated thing" for the "serious warfighter.” 5/ newrepublic.com/article/2083...

The Prime Minister’s plan for immigration will keep people working in key industries like care in temporary status for a decade or more, it will keep people in insecure work, make them more easily exploitable, poorer and marginalised - when did that become the policy of a Labour government?

This incoherent word salad is the best Mahmood's defenders can do. Apparently there are too many immigrants here so we need remigration, so we need to extend the period to settlement (??), but net migration may be negative and we may have too few migrants (??) www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

Is it any wonder our media ecosystem is such a mess? The guy in charge of the supposedly impartial watchdog is slagging off the BBC to the right wing Telegraph - which is hostile to the BBC - & defending the fact his organisation has let GB News act share misinformation and constantly promote Reform

The entire article is damning, and the depressing thing is that it likely would have forced Hegseth out even during Trump's first term.

I’m sure Mark Rutte will be happy to explain why this is actually a ‘huge favor’ Donald Trump is doing for us in Europe. Source for the quote above is here. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Significant day for UK trade policy. With the announcement of the EU-Australia FTA the UK now only has an FTA where the EU doesn't with Malaysia and Brunei as part of CPTPP. The EU meanwhile has a deal with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay that the UK doesn't.

Le Pen arriving in Budapest, Trump endorsing Orbán, Vance on his way, Netanyahu also calling for a pro-Orbán vote. I have never seen the European and wider (ironically) global far-right publicly uniting to swing behind a candidate in a national election in Europe so far:

You don’t have to caveat your condemnation of the burning of an ambulance.

He just doesn’t have to do this. It demonstrates the total brain death of NATO. The only plan is to just beg America to stay. It’s becoming a farce and it’s not even working.

This is utterly jaw-dropping. A school that bans Atwood, Zadie Smith, Terry effing Pratchett and *literal George Orwell* is actively harming its pupils. www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/03/scho...

"The church has a duty to protect the free practice of all faiths in this country" (Queen Elizabeth II, 2012). It's good to see the Bishop of Kirkstall rising to that call, reminding Nick Timothy that "Islamophobia is not a Christian value or Christian virtue". www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It seems worth going back through history and considering how many wars were arbitrary idiotic jaunts with no strategic logic, cooked up by political entrepreneurs because they seemed sellable at that moment economist.com/briefing/202...

Absolutely disgraceful behaviour by Mahmood. Peddling racist disinformation about the economics of migration. What a miserable and stupid path the Labour Party have chosen for themselves.

Got some lovely comments from my fans on X: zealot, thick, brainwashed… and one genius advising me to hand myself in for touching kids. All because I said electrify + clean power to escape fossil import dependence. The mask slips fast when the argument’s lost.

Aid to Ukraine from 2022-2026 was a rounding error. We used more in the first two weeks of the Iran war than we provided in the 4 years of aid to Ukraine.

On Kemi and the war, and what we can learn from a testy consensus. www.thetimes.com/article/e00b...

At @centreeuropeanref.bsky.social Brussels Conference, @piotrserafin.bsky.social says some say Europe can’t afford to defend itself without US help; but he believes that Europe can’t afford not to be able to defend itself.

One other thing re Rayner and ILR. Look at the clarity of language in her speech and compare it Paul Ovenden’s execrable waffle supporting Mahmood’s policy the other day. Orwell was right, obfuscatory and flowery political language disguises poor political thinking.

The government's "earned settlement" proposals "pull the rug from under those who have planned their lives and commitments and are contributing to our economy and to our society...I believe in a country where we keep our word and live up to our values” Absolutely right from Angela Rayner.

Excellent newsletter from Stephen Bush on supposed sectarian voting www.ft.com/content/c0cc...

Clearly there's a point where introspection can become excessive, counterproductive, and frankly narcissistic. But to conclude that the answer to that is to have "zero introspection" ... is pathological. And the notion that introspection didn't exist until 400 years ago is historically absurd.

Pretty staggering that the FT Trump interview opens with ‘if NATO doesn’t help us sort this mess, there’ll be problems’ and ends with ‘Russia might be helping target American soldiers, but really that’s sort of fair enough - we started it’. www.ft.com/content/1ca6...

These are literally war crimes, under the Geneva Conventions.

Funny how all the "free speech" warriors go so quiet when actual state censorship comes along. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

We should be honoured to host, teach and learn from these people not exclude them. I'm ashamed of our government.

Not an original observation but all that this does is to weaken the line of defence agsinst real anti-Semitism. As can already be observed. bsky.app/profile/prem...

Heat pumps are the most efficient heating technology ever invented. They harvest and compress pre existing heat in the air, ground or water and transport it where it is needed. That energy is all around us. It does not have to pass through the Strait of Hormuz or any other geopolitical chokepoint.

“AI is basically sucking up all human knowledge and throwing it back at us - and charging a price.” Talking Heads founding member David Byrne speaks to @faisalislam.bsky.social about AI and its impact on creativity. #Newsnight