A key part of watching this episode of Uncloaked is the Stephen outfit reveal, it’s like waiting for the returning crowned queens runway in a drag race finale.

This is why it is so beautiful and great and popular

To be sincere, what does he think they need to hold their nerve on? They've prevaricated over worker's rights, they've walked back inheritance tax and pip, their other plans are...erm...incomplete, what are they to hold to a belief in?

enjoying my first day at the OBR so far! I think it's going well, just scheduled the budget outlook to publish while I'm on lunch :)

😱

you can currently claim at least partial child benefits if you're earning up to 80k so that would be, in theory.......basically all parents on ILR and settled status? wtaf

Hadn’t, in truth, really absorbed the scale of what the Conservatives are proposing on ILR and immigration more broadly until this week’s Sunday Times interviews. Some thoughts on that in today’s note:

this makes me so profoundly patriotic

It’s a little known clause of the Labour party rulebook (Ch.5,sect.xii). “When the party is in office, no clear statement can be made until half a dozen people on Bluesky have embarrassed themselves by claiming that the silence is actually part of a grand strategy“.

The actual regime that these people are hankering after is Dubai: a small elite of citizens, most immigrants to be transient, insecure and all immigrants to be second-class. In reality they would hate the world they would create and would find ever-more ridiculous scapegoats for their failure.

[Keir Starmer's Britain, 2027] your alarm rings; you yawn and wake up, and slowly turn around with horror, you realise that your spouse isn't in bed with you; instead, it's Louise Casey you scream, get dressed, run out of the house and onto a bus Louise Casey is driving it

The thing I don’t understand about fining water companies for pumping shit into rivers is that their only source of revenue is us. So we have to put up with the shit and pay the fine for it?

Here Lam explicitly sets out her proposal - which is official Conservative Party policy - to deport long-standing legal permanent residents who have *ever* claimed any benefit, including the state pension or child benefit (even if the child is British), or who earn less than £39K.

There’s no solidarity quite like that between client journalists, the government and their billionaire backers. It’s all one big club. This so-called “journalist” called for me — a British MP — to be deported because I’m Muslim. Yet somehow he’s the victim. Cry me a river.

I really think people are underestimating the degree to which 21st century politics are going to be apocalyptically bad; we are collectively sliding towards mass ethnic cleansing being the norm in the Western World, out of no reason but pure fucking spite and empty nostalgia.

Idk how a gay person is looking at the current political environment in the UK and not, at the back of your mind, envisaging you might one day need to become a refugee. To have absolutely no empathy with those who seek safety here now truly blows my mind.

Sharon Graham:

the reaction to Mamdani's campaign is clear proof that centrism is a reactionary ideology, and has nothing to do with a pragmatic desire to win.

Holding a NATO conference in The Hague seems like a scheme he’d come up with

Kemi Badenoch wants to reduce net immigration. She also wants fewer people to leave the country and more to want to come here.

Last week, we took a major step forward in establishing a public, independent inquiry into the UK's complicity in the Gaza genocide. I have written to the Prime Minister to ask for assurance that this inquiry will be established.

We are so fucking back

I had to read this several times as “prioritise growth” and “hit universities over the head” are so mutually contradictory

Bob taking “Shadow Justice” to its most vigilantism conclusion

Is that good?

the man contains multitudes

Giving elected mayors the ability to set a tourist tax does really seem like a no-brainer. Seems common place in all of Europe now. Think is particularly warranted when our museums and galleries are rightly free that tourists make a small contribution through a tax.

as ever Lady Hale is a sensible voice www.theguardian.com/law/2025/may...

This would be wildly popular with the vast majority of voters.

Who knows what’s going on, but I note the advisor seems to have spent half of 2024 telling journalists that the elected leader is basically a bonnet ornament, more like a mascot than a leader really.

While Labour's attempts to appeal to Reform UK voters have not gone unnoticed, just 4% say they are likely to consider voting Labour 2024 Ref: 56% feel Labour are appealing to them / 4% would consider voting Labour 2024 Lab: 48% / 70% 2024 Con: 36% / 9% 2024 LD: 32% / 38% 2024 Grn: 12% / 24%

Wonder when we’re going to see some charges for the people selling weapons to a state committing genocide

By far the most straightforward way to resolve this would be to reintroduce it universally again

you know how Americans have an appalling way of pronouncing “buoy”, well how the hell do they say buoyant

I completely get the arguments from those fed up of big sections of public parks being taken over by paid-for festivals, but also know first-hand how great those festivals can be. Feels like the Mayor should have a coordinating power to share the benefits and impacts across London more fairly

I'll level with you, they're not my kind of people.

The Venice Biennale was stunning and thought provoking in its own right, but in particular I enjoyed stepping into a world where the climate crisis was real, trans lives were loved and the evils of imperialism were acknowledged.

“The pope’s a catholic” used to be short-hand for something completely obvious, but it does seem to be a genuine revelation to some people that the pope believes in basic Catholic teachings

Reading “Rahaf is a 3-year-old double amputee who lost her legs in an airstrike.” makes me just want to scream forever

Ms Rachel: “I met Rahaf from Gaza. She is a double amputee who lost her legs in an airstrike. We FaceTimed Rahaf's two young brothers who are still in Gaza. I watched their mom look at them proudly, like l look at my son. They don't eat in front of the boys anymore cos there's so little food there.”

Keir Starmer’s anti-immigration rhetoric isn’t just a dog whistle — it’s a foghorn to the far right. It echoes Enoch Powell & fuels hate. Last summer, a hotel housing asylum seekers was set on fire. This is the deadly cost of pandering to racism. Shame on the Prime Minister.

You’d have to imagine Louise Casey is really enjoying the government making major policy interventions into the policy area they’ve asked her to review

In August there was a giant fire at a London block of flats that briefly led the news. Luckily everyone survived so interest subsided. But what actually went wrong at Spectrum House? London Centric has investigated and got the internal reports and pictures. www.londoncentric.media/p/spectrum-h...

This is harrowing. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

#AllStars is giving whenever Bosco's not on screen, all the other queens should be asking, "where's Bosco?"

what is fascinating to me is the number of people whose “knowledge” of government appears to just be an accumulation of cliches and stereotypes + an inchoate sense that if something is big and costly then it must necessarily be “wasteful”

I genuinely don't know how to process this. It seems unthinkable that deliberate, calculated mass starvation is just... happening. In full view. It's impossible and yet real.

The problem with the Government demanding that degrees lead to good jobs is that degrees, or universities, do not create “good jobs”.