Devastating. In Our Time is the best thing on the radio, bar none. economist.com/britain/2025...

So I suppose it’s about time I told those of you who still care exactly what I’m going to be doing with my life from now on 😂 In a couple of weeks, I’m incredibly fortunate to be taking up a role at investment manager Baillie Gifford. Here’s to no more 4am alarms…

Congratulations to all those getting exam results today, but in particular my nearly 70 year old father who just smashed an A in his AS Level Irish 👊🏻🇮🇪 Still got it, Da!

I swear to God, this bloody country. I need antibiotics. I ordinarily live in London. But am temporarily resident in Northern Ireland. My GP in England tells me they are unable to send a prescription outside of England. So what’s the alternative? You guessed it: A&E. No wonder there’s a crisis.

Evergreen.

My final piece of journalism. And I think it’s an important one. news.sky.com/story/orderi...

And that, as they say, is that. It’s been a hell of a ride. You stay classy, Bluesky.

Just had a prospective buyer massively lowball our flat, and then try and explain that he “has a LISA and won’t get the Government bonus if he buys a flat over £450k.” Well, I mean… don’t view flats way over your budget then? It’s not my problem.

Anyone else notice how social media is now absolutely swamped with ChatGPT guff? Just account after account with their thoughts entirely scripted by AI. The syntax is so obvious—not to mention the em dashes that nobody actually used until about a year ago. Driving me mad.

Some personal news. In a couple of weeks, I am leaving Sky News. And indeed, leaving London, and journalism altogether. It’s not a decision I’ve taken lightly, but it’s one that’s best for me and my family. I’ll be moving to Edinburgh, and into the world of finance.

BREAK: Police have charged a member of the Irish rap group Kneecap with a terror offence. Liam O’Hanna has been charged with displaying a Hizbollah flag at the O2 Forum in London last November. He’ll appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on 18th June.

In the gym. Forgot headphones. Big mistake. Now listening to two enormous blokes segway *seamlessly* from discussing the benefits of taking steroids, to how they never took the COVID jab, because, and I quote “I’m not having anyone inject any old shit into me”. Beyond parody.

It’s 5am. I’m driving to work, and there are *scores* of people out jogging. Some in fancy dress. Clearly it’s marathon related, but why?? Why are people jogging before dawn when they’re about to run a literal marathon?

Just amazing how American liberals can essentialise weird racialised views about being British in ways they would never never tolerate in America.

By “token immigrants” do you mean… British people born and raised in Britain? Weird “progressive” opinion to have, tbh.

Football. Bloody hell.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court unanimously rules that “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex. Ruling against the Scottish Government. But Lord Hodge cautions against seeing this as a victory for one side or the other. Suggests some nuance to follow.

Lettuce speak? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The Irish Daily Star wins.

TL;DR: The new U.S. tariff rate against our two largest trading partners is either 10%, 25% or 35%, and so far no one I've reached out to at the White House is able to tell me which.

Markets be like:

As a rule, democracies ought not to fight trade wars with autocracies. See this Economist piece from 2019: www.economist.com/graphic-deta... TL;DR: Regimes with no voters don’t much care about imposing tariffs that hurt their own economies.

China says it will retaliate against US tariffs with 84% levy on American goods - follow live updates

I have just encountered the phrase “picking up nickels in front of a steamroller” to describe the strategies hedge funds often use to make small profits, but on the kinds of trades that may now crash the whole system. And thought I would share, because it’s brilliant. on.ft.com/429y43e

This is a fantastic analogy. Why Trump’s America - if we believe the justifications put forward by his economic adviser Stephen Miran - is behaving like a modern Athens towards the Delian League. Which worked out well for them. (It didn’t - ask Sparta) othermeans.io/p/the-americ...

Trump now worse than a global killer disease, not yet as bad as Hitler's tanks rolling into France and the Low Countries. More as we get it.

Downing St official: “Trump has done something we don’t agree with but there’s a reason why people are behind him on this.” Are they? The data I’ve seen is that Trump is haemorrhaging support on his economic agenda. Such a weird thing to conclude from all this.

We have had nearly two decades of panic about Free Speech on Campus and not a single case, not even the ones they made up, were as bad as what's happening now

Presumably Marjorie Taylor Greene is consistent in her view that he should “go back to his own country” www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Breaking: Read the Signal messages. theatln.tc/XISUWloF

Love to see it. My adopted home of Dundrum named best place to live in Northern Ireland. Featuring an interview with Dad, obviously 😂 www.thetimes.com/article/368a...

Incredible timing as Sky News throw to Katie Barnfield in Newcastle just seconds before Newcastle United score. Couldn’t make it up.

🦅📉

There was a very interesting piece in @foreignaffairs.com this month on exactly this. The point being that the breakdown of democracy doesn’t have to mean a leap to full-fat, no-elections autocracy. But the weaponsiation of state apparatus against the opposition, so elections aren’t a fair fight.

“If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/o...

Watching my daughter build precarious towers of wooden blocks, and seeing analogies for the Liberal International Order. I think that might be enough internet for today…

One thing is clear. We’re all going to have to start paying a lot more in tax. Or cutting some stuff we really like. Perhaps both. I wonder how long Labour’s manifesto pledges can hold?

After the AfD's surge on Sunday, far right parties are the most voted-for of any grouping in Europe, for the first time in history: www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

I appreciate we need to actually get through the next four years first. But here’s a head scratcher. How does a nation like America function in the world if the parties competing to govern it every 4 years not only offer different policy perspectives, but radically different geopolitical alliances?

Not having many ties to the US, I don’t know a lot of ordinary Trump voters. But are they really looking at all this and going: “Yep, that’s our guy”? Not the mad online ones. But the many ordinary Americans who just elected him.

You can send donations yourself direct to ukraine here: war.ukraine.ua/donate/ #SlavaUkraïni

I don’t mean to be overdramatic. But as I studied 20th Century history, I always used to wonder what it must have felt like to stand on the precipice. To watch the tectonic plates of international relations shift underneath you. Franz Ferdinand. The Munich Agreement. Probably a bit like this.

Jeez. You step away from your phone for a couple of hours… I don’t even have intelligent analysis at this point. We continue to plumb new depths.

The scale of the UK’s military dependence on the US is set out in great detail here. An alarming situation if we are forced to imagine a world where the US is no longer an ally… www.thetimes.com/article/1545...

I’d like to think I’m the first person to get into a flame war with VPOTUS from the swimming pool of Woburn Center Parcs at half-term.

Can we also keep in mind that while Zelenskyy like Churchill 1940-45 postponed elections, Trump in peacetime tried to overturn by violence an election he lost - and has since pardoned all the co-conspirators in his attempted coup?

If Home Alone was filmed in 2025

NEW: Soldier F is to stand trial for alleged Bloody Sunday murders in September. The former soldier denies murder and attempted murder. 14 people were shot dead by the British Army at a civil rights demonstration in Londonderry in 1972.