There is much going on in the US, it can be hard to keep track of things. But do keep your eye on this sham legal dispute and slush fund, as it tells you so much in just one case about what is going wrong over there.

He was getting standing ovations from actual Nazis in Germany in 2017 (news.sky.com/story/farage...) so I don’t know why it’s taken so long for this “exposure“.

The whips spent months telling No10 they were going to lose the welfare vote and then half of them got accused of colluding with the rebels rather than conveying what was correct and useful information. And when this became apparent they just got rid of half the whips.

So apparently “anti-establishment” politics now means defending the right of wealthy aristocratic families to make huge undeclared political donations, while “the establishment” is anyone who asks questions about this

one side's voters care about sexual assault and one side's voters don't and while I understand that "impossible to say whether this is good or bad" is the standard for the paper of record I think it's clear which side has the moral high ground here

I think familiarity with survey research from half a century or more ago makes me a bit more sceptical of the stronger doomer claims of this kind. Functional literacy and numeracy, basic knowledge about core aspects of history, politics etc were not so widespread in the past either!

BREAKING: in June 2026, *every single one* of the 1,062 refugees admitted in the U.S. were white South Africans. In FY 2026, the U.S. has admitted a total of 7,727 white South Africans, three Afghans (back in November), and nobody else. For reference, the U.S. admitted 100,060 refugees in 2024.

Yet again, the Telegraph ran a spoiler of this public interest story - based entirely on a briefing from Reform. The same as they did when Anna Isaac broke the original story. We all know whose scoop this was @annaisaac.bsky.social

The best way to describe Farage’s business model is instagram influencer who happens to work in politics not fitness supplements. He does just enough to keep in the media so he can get paid for endorsements. He can’t graduate to podcaster because all the episodes would sound the same

The single most damaging scandal to Starmer's personal authority when it came to the parliamentary party was one where all the key facts had been reported by the Financial Times in the summer of 2023. This by way of saying: the damage to Farage over this stuff is not yet done in my view.

One of the precursors for Greater Manchester devolution was the tram system. It’s something that all ten councils could work on because it benefited them all. Anything transport related has to be managed at a level above a local council to really work.

In his book 'How to Launder Money', Posh George, the Farage aide at the heart of Reform's latest controversy, has a chapter on 'The Art of the Bribe' He and his co-author recommend small gifts (explainable as “a mistake of overexuberance in friendship”) and "Paying some of the target’s expenses”

What an absolute.joke. Can never put sanctions on other countries again after all this.

Starmer was simply unfit for office. Never was able or willing to get to grips with “what are the political and policy implications of the decisions made in the 2024 and 2025 fiscal events for 2027-9?”

This July 4 we celebrate: And with that, a mighty cheer went up from the heroes of George III. They had banished the awful 13 Colonies forever, because it was haunted. Now let's all celebrate with a cool glass of turnip juice!

The rightmove listing to end all rightmove listings. If it wasn't for popbitch I wouldn't have caught this one. www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/9...

JAW on @socialsuplex.bsky.social is back and we will tell you everything about STARDOM, Marigold, TJPW, Unagi's produce show, Marvelous, Ice Ribbon, Diana, WAVE, AWG, PURE-J, Friday Night Gacha, Uptown and much more! redcircle.com/shows/130934...

This quote from the Morgan McSweeney interview is nuts. Labour had been miles ahead for years by this point. Every public affairs consultancy in the UK was preparing for an inevitable Labour Government. But Labour wasn't? Really?

Why is it that the US ambassador to the UN is allowed to say stuff that if I said it would have me denounced as an awful anti-American euro snob

It is now almost 100% of the time that when I do vox pops in rural America I get asked about Britain supposedly being taken over by Muslims and crushed under the boot of Sharia law. I was just asked suspiciously if I am a Muslim myself when I pushed back

one of the things that actually gives me hope has come from working in education, and seeing, generally, teenagers get much, much better when it comes to this stuff. I didn't know a single kid at my school that was out, or would have dared to come out. It would have been a death sentence.

I honestly think this largely boils down to the fact Birmingham is absolutely shocking at self-publicity, like it is practically our kryptonite, while Manchester has a sense of self-belief so vocal it’s practically American

The irony of owning a restaurant is that you will make so little, you’ll nearly starve.

In no country has a democratic party benefited from adopting anti-immigration policies. It fails on every level. It repels your own voters, & none of the far-right you wish to win over or appease ever credits you for it. 🇬🇧 is the best example. Polls still show voters trust Reform with that first.

If you are looking for a new TV show to get into, then Star City is brilliant. Maybe the best show I have seen this year (a touch ahead of Widow's Bay). Just, wow.

Liberal minded people, members of a minority or not, urgently need to get our heads round the fact that there is ALWAYS a reaction against gains in equality and not get allowed to ourselves to be seduced by the idea that it wouldn’t have happened if the less privileged group had been more discreet.

I figured the mechanical integrity of the polyurea membrane would keep badly attached parts linked with patches that are well adhered. I think the peroxide they're adding is making gas pockets under the membrane that are accelerating the breakup. bsky.app/profile/mona...

Every single day I thank God that we have a vaguely functional banking system so shit like Venmo doesn’t have to exist

Special EARLY release for JAW on @socialsuplex.bsky.social this week! We talk about STARDOM The Conversion, Ice Ribbon's 20th Anniversary, Marigold, TJPW, Marvelous & Kingacha, Sendai Girls, Diana, Actwres girl'Z, Michinoku Pro and much more! Check it out now! redcircle.com/shows/130934...

Piece by me this week - looking at the surging number of killings by police in the United States: www.economist.com/united-state...

Of all the things I will never understand about these past two years, is how neither Starmer nor Reeves went “wait, this is a massive alarm bell” every time they made scrapping the cap as their central achievement.

Once again, people are not checking government statistics dashboards to see if the immigration rate has dropped sufficiently for them to return to the democratic mainstream.

I hate to break it to the European diplomat quoted in @politico.eu this morning, but increasing the return rate will make no difference to the far right. They will just move on to demanding forced remigration. It’s not like there aren’t hundreds of examples of this already.

I know we’re about to have our seventh prime minister in a decade, but why are the voters being blamed for that? Cameron called a stupid referendum, May ran headfirst into leaving the EU before actually determining what version of being outside the EU we should pursue, Johnson was corrupt and

But another part of the problem has always been Labour's failure to understand its 2024 coalition, or basic electoral dynamics. It has lost voters to Reform, but these are a fairly unique fragment of their 2024 voters, v unlike those staying loyal or the greater number defecting to the Greens + LDs.

Then came a new flashpoint: the "islands of strangers" speech. Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters reacted strongly against it, with Starmer losing net positive favourability among 2024 Labour voters for the first time, while receiving absolutely no credit from voters on the right.

"The Americans can't get the slime out of their capital's monument pool and will arrest you for touching it," sounds like the sort of lie they'd tell us in the Soviet Union so we'd stop bitching about bread lines.

There is a group-think in the London media-political complex, that the only response to any political development is to shift further in a Reform direction, a view held from pundits and think-tankers to spads and BBC producers and news editors. But it is a spell, and one day spells can be broken.

As was foretold:

A way to understand Reform 2026 in context is that this is both * the highest national % for a 3rd or 4th party, But also * probably the weakest national % support & weakest net leadership rating for the leading opposition party in any modern parlianent, behind Foot, Corbyn, Hague, IDS

Hate this. The UK needs broad-based tax rises not just higher taxes on high earners. This is a deadend that will keep the UK's fiscal position precarious. Terrible for tax morale to pretend high earners taxes haven't already gone up over the last 15 years or that ordinary people haven't had cuts.

Having spoken to social care workers affected by the changes, I *hate* this language. Party management/vibes is a terrible way to make policy at the best of times but when the futures of several hundred thousand people is at stake, unforgiveable.

“the rise in the far right is not a result of changes in people’s attitudes. Over the last fifty years people have become more tolerant of minorities and less racist. What has changed is what is tolerated by the political elite. … the UK’s political elite started this, it can and has to end it.”

This is my local mp and none of us like him

🔴 SCOOP: Farage doesn't seem to want to answer questions about his money. So I went looking - and found that the Reform leader's personal company is in breach of UK company law democracyforsale.substack.com/p/revealed-n...

Literally just go and read what Morgan McSweeney, Steve Reed et al were telling the lobby journos years ago about what their politics are, what they had done to secure their important positions at the public’s expense, what they think the public like and want, and what they intended to do with power