Remember this? Things can seem pretty dark, but these people can lose. There is a wide gap between what they think they can do and what they can actually do.

There should be a high bar for politicians attacking the media, but maybe Ed Davey has half a point here? For example, the first three paragraphs of this BBC story repeat Reform's £243bn figure without saying that the thinktank behind the estimate now disowns it. (This is mentioned in paragraph 35)

Nigel Farage comparing paracetamol to thalidomide reminds me of Jeremy Corbyn comparing the evidence Russia was behind the Salisbury poisonings to claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Tapping into different seams of the "Don't Believe what THEY tell you" mindset, but with the same goal.

I’m shocked, shocked to learn that a report by CPRE arguing for building “somewhere else” might be economical with the facts.

Another datapoint for the hypothesis that your average UK voter overestimates the size of the UK military as much as the number of migrants in the UK

Making other leaders walk like this is a total Putinesque move. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

When a typo in your Google search leads to new and exciting philosophical positions

This is how the Tories die: as a dessicated Reform tribute act. Farage fans will always prefer the original. Centre right voters who shun Reform’s polarising politics are given nothing to vote for (and many will end up voting Lib Dem).

Why are the American president's claims about autism the first item on British news bulletins? He's not our president, the advice doesn't apply here and he's not presented any evidence to support his assertions. So why spread these claims? What make this the biggest story in the UK?

“AI is all the rage now, quick! We need to have some of that on our website!” “But we’re a poetry site…”

Deadbeat dad knows f-all about parenting. More as this story develops.

You know, asides from anything else, the same media outlets that spent years shoving BoJo down our throats now saying "BoriswaveBoriswaveBoriswave" need to be called out.

This, which is just the "LOL, they have no plan" thing that has failed since 2016, is the wrong response. Call this out for the harmful racism it actually is.

This. Everyone has been trying for a decade to win with this One Trick (it's illegal, it's immoral, it's harmful for muh bond yields, etc) because they're afraid to take the fight to the core argument: we are a country of agreements, and you need to have a process to rip them off

The true question right now is whether you believe in the moral character of the British public. If you do, you'll want to have the fight with Reform. You'll believe that the public will hate the idea of breaking up families, spying on & deporting people who've worked here for years.

Yes Reform's plans on indefinite leave to remain are a moral disgrace. They would also be an economic catastrophe, lead to chaos in public services, create a constitutional crisis and make the UK a pariah. It will be reported as "controversial".

💯. Progressives have to stop franchising out their consciences to the courts. Politics is about moral choices. The problem with Reform's proposal isn't that "the courts won't allow it". It's that it's grotesque and inhuman. If we're democrats, we must believe that this argument can be won.

"They've said they'd do that" is crucial. The most important lesson of the last ten years is: when these people tell you who they are, believe them. Anyone saying "surely even Reform wouldn't go that far" just hasn't been paying attention.

"Drastic action on those with leave to remain" - These people are not a problem. They are exactly the legal immigrants who the hard right said they had no problem with. They are overwhelmingly just normal people living normal lives in the UK.

Retrospectively removing indefinite leave to remain would be immoral and economically damaging. It would tear families apart. Attacking it as ‘potentially illegal’ is completely beside the point. Argue with the (awful) idea. Don’t try ’well, actually you can’t do that’.

Good, more of this please. www.theguardian.com/business/liv...

Saw Rosamund Pike in “Inter Alia” the other night, quite good. Thoroughly recommend. www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/...

Hang in there, sisters!

It’s not enough just to say these things. Action is also needed. If you can criminalise an organisation for vandalising RAF planes, then other organisations can also be criminalised. It is still the case that foreign donations to British political parties are not legal, has this been happening?

Who is it still protecting the bridge from Ukrainian attack? Who is it saying that the bridge is not a legitimate target?

That this even needs saying shows part of the problem with the rhetoric of “peacekeeping” and “reassurance”. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

People who complain about unskilled immigration and say they want more skilled immigration: let’s make skilled immigration prohibitively expensive.

There's a similar problem where I get shown posts by people I don't know celebrating their coming out/transition. Congratulations to them, but the algorithm should absolutely not be basically sending a huge "harass this person" flag to random strangers

again, as somebody who has actually lived in a dictatorship and worked with dissidents from across the world, this kind of whiny cosplaying by academics pretending they have some secret knowledge of resistance is very annoying.

Well, this is… I never, ever, understood what people on the left saw in Corbyn. It felt very much like when some politician is declared a “breath of fresh air” and the person concerned is an obvious danger-zone. The guy was always useless. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

See the thing is, what Orban did in Hungary could never happen in America, because it’s too big and diverse and wealthy, its institutions are too strong, and freedom-loving Americans would never put up with it. They said www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09...

UK Prime Minister Starmer: In recent days, Putin has shown his true face, mounting the biggest attack since the invasion began, with yet more bloodshed, yet more innocents killed, and unprecedented violations of NATO airspace. These are not the actions of someone who wants peace.

I cannot think of a democracy anywhere in the world where this sort of thing could happen. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/b...

So, I just found out about the new Japanese phenomenon of Butsukari. www.tokyoweekender.com/japan-life/n...

is this good

Myers-Briggs remains Woo-Woo alternative medicine for the Linkedin generation.

Brexit continues to cost us billions. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Cranks.

"Musk represents a particular sort of naive reader with no particular stake in or knowledge of the country, who nonetheless sees “Japan is fallen” narratives in every post." www.taipeitimes.com/News/editori...

Absolutely fascinated by the thought process and specifically the political payoff she, a female black immigrant, thinks she’ll get in return from a crowd of racist men specifically protesting immigration.

[me, a journalist who spends all day every day on a social media app where the discovery algorithm is personally controlled by its owner, captain birdseye] you know, a lot of people are talking about fish fingers, we should probably cover that

Having listened to decades of lecturing from Americans about how bad UK defamation laws are and how great the US 1st Amendment is, let me be the first to say: LOL, LMAO. Especially since the 2013 act was brought in, the UK is way better on this. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Xinyi District of Taipei 60 years ago

New post just out: "Burn it down vs build it up" With the right radicalising by the day - how can the argument be won on the key dividing line in politics? (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/b...

This - what could be the beginning of the end for the Conservative party - would have been absolutely unimaginable ten years ago. It took Brexit, the connivance of May, the mendacity of BoJo, the incompetence of Truss, and the stupid games in the last leadership race, to deliver this result.

Good. Build these quickly please. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

If you can’t comment on a foreign billionaire calling for your government to be brought down, what is the point of you?

I fail to see why the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers can’t say this. The only explanation I can come up with is fear.

OK, so this is a pack of nonsense. The only words you need to read here are “most of it speculative”. Barring so secret breakthrough, all of the technologies put forward here are nowhere near being able to detect submarines. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...