This was brilliant. Highly recommend

Ofc, the most wtf thing about this is that Starmer's ability to remain PM rests on convincing Labour MPs that he's learned from his mistakes and won't be making new ones. While I'm not as great a strategist as McSweeney, I feel reappointing the source of many such errors might work against this.

Next week’s cover, “After the Comeback,” by Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet, captures the joy on the streets of New York City after the Knicks’ historic win in Game Four of the N.B.A. Finals. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/PiB0E9

Sidenote: I'd really appreciate it if you repost this, if only because getting the damn thing to display on Bsky with a decent alt text was something of a labour of love. And also because, obviously, I want everyone in the universe to know this is coming.

Smart move. If anything, too many Labour councillors were re-elected last month.

Seeing various reports that Kevin Lee could be AB’s chief of staff. Don’t think that’s right, fwiw. Also not sure it’s right that Burnham wouldn’t touch Mahmood’s immigration reforms. Would be surprised, not least given the things he’s said himself

See when this happens on X it's always a first tweet of "what a lovely sunny day" leading somehow into "and that's why we need full racial segregation". Isn't this a *much* nicer mystery journey?

Searching for a notorious review that asked "why God bothered with Depeche Mode". AI: "God might have 'bothered' with Depeche Mode because the Basildon synth-pop outfit spent their entire career acting as a dark, obsessive theological mirror." The whole vibe is "essay question it hasn't revised for"

really fucking hate how "accessibility" has been hijacked to mean "let's treat everyone as if they're children at all times"

A reminder: at the local elections, more Labour voters said they didn't vote for Labour because we were too harsh on immigration, not because we were too soft.

If Labour had not made its tax pledges, it would almost certainly have won a smaller majority. But it would have had more actual power to govern. It doesn't matter how many seats you hold, if you brick up the levers of power. You end up either breaking your promises or breaking public services.

Dave Eggers, on NPR's Wildcard with Rachel Martin: www.npr.org/2026/06/11/n...

It is quite strange to listen to political coverage currently, even from mainstream sources, and remember that net migration has quartered since its peak, and is likely to fall to Cameron's tens of thousands target next year and this has made no difference to the discourse.

I need some far side

Yes

As I wrote at the time of the Ballymena pogroms, I'm old enough to remember when the LVF attacked the home of disabled child because he was insuficciently Protestant. I'm old enough to remember this because it happened in 2024. www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

Per most recent figures, net migration to NI *over the past 22 years* has been ~62,000 people. Only 3% of Northern Ireland’s population currently belong to an ethnic minority. Pogroms in Belfast (as with Ballymena last year) are just gutter-level "One Is One Too Many" racism, and nothing else.

Northern Ireland, functionally, has no immigration. Net immigration last year was about 8000 people in a population of 2 million, and that was a record.

Jesus Christ. This is AI, right?

Every poll, on every issue, shows the folly of the Starmer-McSweeney “treat Reform voters as your lodestone and Tory voters like lepers” strategy.

They love to take the most violent, criminal, tiny group of thugs in a place and claim that they stand for the whole nation, and refer to their actions as if they are committed simultaneously by the whole population acting as one

Another item began with a declaration (to paraphrase) that "we keep being told that violent crime is falling, but it doesn't feel like that". As if how people "feel" is just an independent variable to which the news has to respond, rather than something that inaccurate reporting helps to shape.

What’s particularly maddening about the Soho Society is…they could move 10-15 minutes walk either way, still be in the centre, and it would be quieter.

ALTERNATIVELY sign up for the father's day offer and you can have 10% off a year of the newsletter PLUS a free one*, no questions asked. *or one of my first two books

Good cause alert. Tangible difference to be made, reliable person.

Realistically, Keir Starmer is probably in his final month as prime minister. There a freedom in that, or there would be if he chose to embrace it. So it feels especially telling that even in the face of what's happening in Belfast he's still so…absent. And tepid. It's consistent, I guess?

To people being like: oh Armando Iannucci doing the paddington movie get ready for swears and politics, people… did u not see his David copperfield movie

Important reporting www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Callout to pubs/restaurateurs! Looking to speak to anyone who'd like to talk about:- - the pros/cons of the World Cup late kick-offs - the VAT discount on kids' meals introduced by the government. DM me. #journorequest

I’ll be unveiling my ai art of a sleeping lion draped in a Union Jack in front of Big Ben being woken up by a little girl saying ‘we need you its time to wake up’ while some stirring music plays in the background shortly. Very pleased with it actually.

My mom was asked by the police to issue a statement in the local press appealing for calm following my father’s killing. In 1988. I truly don’t know what the solution is to kneejerk retaliatory violence, and I wrote an entire book about it.

When Musk was beamed into the Unite the Kingdom March last year he called for our democratically elected Parliament to be ‘dissolved’. Imagine if an Iranian or Islamist billionaire had done the same at a ‘pro Iran’ March and what the political response would be!

There last few weeks shows how deeply principled and decent people can be, even when going through the most terrible pain. Their grace stands in stark contrast to those who would exploit their suffering for political gain.

Of course the prime minister is posting on X about how bad the riot organised on X is. Fucking of course he is. An expression of complete subservience to the men in Silicon Valley and the White House who have instigated this moment.

getting some real mixed messages from the Midlands rn

There’s a tone of earnest incredulity in social marketing which I find maddening - especially when they’re trying to convince you that some basic aspect of life is a massive innovation. It’s all like, ‘Guys! NGL, I’ve been eating something shortly after waking up all week and it’s a GAME CHANGER!’

We've had a lot of wannabe Churchills over the years, but few prepared to do what he actually did: to name the threat; to speak out clearly against it; to spell out the scale of the danger; and to inspire a country to stand against it.

Burnham saying that we should look at banning the kirpan was further confirmation that the response to Starmer's failure will be 'what if we had the same soft left policies, the same equivocation, but with a more charismatic leader who actually likes and does politics'

It does. But the wilful blindness of the UK's political establishment to the scale of the danger scares me even more.

The thing that is so deeply exhausting about this whole thing is that the end result is basically to provide legal backing to people harassing people who they perceive to be gender non-conforming and little else, there just isn't another outcome here.

this article is circulating with a COMPLETELY bullshit framing and clickbait lie about it, the "ai cybersecurity" firm is actually training AGAINST AI and the conan series is about helping people spot deepfakes and other gen-ai material, beginning with the famous robert smigel video mouth sketches

Brighton indie duo Penelope Isles’ new album '3' is on the way. Check out their shimmery song "Thinking Seat.”

This is, fwiw, why I find Polanski very difficult. Whilst he may not have said those words, it is the logical conclusion from the statement he is making and he should have the courage of his convictions to actually stand by that statement. It's fine to think food is not priced fairly to farmers!

If you don't spell "reelection" with an umlaut you are NOT a New Yorker

New screenings with Q&A and book signings added: Brighton next week: www.whitewallcinema.co.uk/june25th

JD Vance can do one www.thetimes.com/article/fb27...

See, now that is pure Kemi.