There is no point trying to appease this chump of a president, as whatever you do, he will probably come up with three or four different responses over a short period. Best to do what you think is best.

Manchester United fans unveil pro-immigration banner aimed at Sir Jim Ratcliffe www.nytimes.com/athletic/707...

I hear that tree has just applied for voluntary redundancy.

Watching Verona v Napoli listening to a Beethoven string quartet while drinking some wine while the world explodes. What to do?

Thackery taking a very strong line on the nature vs nurture debate.

The futility of these policies (if they’re meant to attract ‘hero voters’) was known prior to Gorton; the result just reinforced the point. Being nasty & electorally ineffective is quite a trick but it makes you wonder if some are doing this out of genuine belief. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

If being ‘angry beyond belief’ was an appropriate response to a difficult political situation then maybe we should vote for this guy. But I’m not completely convinced that it is.

Anticipating a poor result for Labour I suggested a while back Starmer needed to have a big, cinematic Mea Culpa speech which outlined a new approach ready in his pocket. But ironically for someone elected as PM on the basis of ‘Change’ he seems incapable of it.

The Spurs decline analysed. It would take a heart of stone not to laugh. www.nytimes.com/athletic/707...

Site is a wonderful thing, but when Starmer sold himself to the Labour membership as a kind of competent Corbyn in 2020, & not really meaning it of course, maybe that’s what he should’ve actually been?

He was certainly grating candidate.

Labour needs to be a catch-all party while the electorate is fracturing and be led by someone who can confidently articulate finesse. Mission impossible?

Agree.

You know who else needs to be publicly humiliated for their egregious errors?

It was if the spirit of Mandelson was still haunting Labour strategy. Time for an exorcism?

If I was Putin & looking for a silver lining from this by-election, it’d be that the parties that came first and second are both more than happy to abandon Ukraine, weaken NATO & appease Russia. The only difference being that the Greens will do it for free whereas Reform need a financial inducement.

I’m already bored by reactions to this by-election: yes journalists without imagination, it might be described as seismic et cetera but then again it very likely is not, depending on what follows in the next year or two. Does anybody here remember Orpington??

I took this yesterday in a part of the constituency where there are flags still flying and it seemed evocative of something.

If organisation & numbers of people knocking on doors by themselves won by-elections Labour would have won this. It is now being squeezed on its left & right & doesn’t have a strategy to prevent that. It’s pointless replacing Starmer when none of his likely successors have yet to outline one.

Not voting but drowning.

There’s always one - and that’s them.

The view of Manchester City centre from Gorton. 🫤

When I last watched this a couple of years ago, I was absolutely staggered by what a selfish & narcissistic individual Bader was. And yet the film was meant to glorify him as a hero.

Perhaps not surprisingly Green and Reform supporters are following the by-election most closely but even they aren’t really following the by-election at all closely.

Deeply unfair to write that there has been infighting since the launch. It's important to understand that it started before the party was founded.

‘This is a very queer and dark and incomprehensible universe and I understand it little. … I shall never trust logic again!’ The concluding speech in Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 play Rope, which critiques the crude Nietzschean idea of the Superman, also speaks to us today. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

I had completely forgotten about the existence of this lot. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Glasman the Gasman is now I n serious danger of bringing even himself into disrepute.

We are advertising a two-year lectureship in Modern British History at University of Cambridge, please spread the word! www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assista...

This looks interesting and obviously very relevant to our politics today

A ‘fame is fleeting’ moment ~ from the storage room of Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in 1979, disembodied heads of figures ranging from Jackie Kennedy to WG Grace to Richard Nixon, plus Elizabeth Taylor’s feet as an added bonus www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPor...

I forget who recommended this on here but whoever it was, thank you very much.

if he has any political sense, and obviously that is certainly up for debate, Starmer will have to own the result, win or lose and should already have a mea culpa speech somewhere in his back pocket which outlines a post-McSweeney strategy

I’m going canvassing in Gorton and Denton again today, anticipating I’ll be annoying more than anything those foolish enough to answer the door to me.

Spent most of today reading this unprecedentedly engrossing novel. Amazingly there are one or two laughs amongst its evocation of what it feels like to be a Jew on the run in Nazi Germany. I’m sure there are lots of contemporary parallels. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pas...

Gotta defend the brand.

‘All the major problems faced by his immediate successors were a direct or indirect result of his policies’: discuss this assertion in relation to the premiership of Tony Blair.

Not even a majority of Reform supporters would likely support a UK ICE given this - and a significant minority might actively oppose it. yougov.co.uk/topics/polit...

Late to this, but maybe Starmer is learning to do both the right and the popular thing - at last?

I’m 64-year-old man and I just bought this.

Given that so few Britons ever attended church whenever they had the choice not to do so the idea that we have an unalloyed ‘Christian heritage’ that is defined by its churches is completely thickheaded. So no change there then with reform.

It seems to be Reform’s ambition to be the little echo of a failing and flailing Trump regime. It seems just a little bit odd electorally, but there must be far right billionaire dollars in it somewhere. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Unsure how useful this is to help us navigate our troubled times, given that today we - historians included - don’t know how tomorrow will turn out. But it does seem it’s often wiser to be a pessimist tho to survive surely you need to be an optimist? 🤷‍♀️ www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/o...

The defining metric is: if you think Mrs Brown’s Boys is funny, you *might* be working class; but if you don’t think it’s funny, you *could* be middle class. I hope this clarifies matters.

“The guy did a great job for a competitive rate. I’m really pleased with it”

And now I want them to redecorate my kitchen.

Still got it. www.nytimes.com/badges/games...

I’m just popping round to Herr Hitler’s, to check for the 9th time what his red lines are.

Oh, come on @nytimes.com