Uncharacteristically mild wording from Ian but unerringly accurate as always.

Morning.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN!! 🎂

- Today is my Birthday! I have autism and I officially turn 29 years old. I would like to receive lots of birthday wishes from people around the world! please Share/Like! to help make my birthday wish come true! ❤️

Hello. Former Index On Censorship staffer here. To be very clear, having your request to speak at a society of which you are not a member does not count, in any sense whatsoever, as censorship. nation.cymru/news/uproar-...

Left: Nigel Farage calls for an end to working from home Right: Nigel Farage's Reform UK advertising a job which is working form home

You might as well tee up ‘I Got You Babe’ & have Bill Murray waking up to this news.

VAN HOLLEN: Did you in fact make the visit to Epstein's private island? LUTNICK: I did have lunch w/ him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me as were my 4 children and nannies. We had lunch on the island. That's true. For an hour. We left with all of my children

1. Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been caught brazenly lying about his relationship with Epstein. In October, Lutnick claimed his relationship with Epstein was "absolutely done" after a single meeting in 2005. That is absolutely false.

@mrjamesob.bsky.social @lbc.co.uk For those looking: harpers.org/archive/1941...

I'm not going to block *everyone* who fails to understand this, but I will if the incomprehension is personalised & expressed aggressively or obnoxiously. In short, don't be cultish! x

EXC: Nigel Farage has been accused of having no solution to Britain's problems by his own candidate. Matt Goodwin repeatedly attacked the Farage in historic posts, as well as the Reform party as a whole www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

When he was a Tory politician (you remember, just after he was binned as a Labour one) female colleagues were free to express their disgust at his blatant misogyny. “Lee is an odious sexist,” was Anna Soubry’s irrefutable conclusion. I wonder what his current colleagues will have to say…

Last week, we voted to lift 450,000 children out of poverty and selected 500 schools to get free breakfast clubs. That's the change we should be focused on, that's the change voters want, and it's only possible because Keir Starmer secured a five year mandate. He must see it through.

Perhaps I’m old-fashioned but an actual resignation has always struck me as a much more courageous vote of no confidence than a mere call for one…

A 1935 Sinclair Lewis political novel has a title almost identical to this.

It’s a bit special.

@mrjamesob.bsky.social See below re the Reform letter in G&D - my reply to Rob Ford's post. This is a bigger story than not having an imprint. I believe it was a deliberate attempt to deceive voters, and then the printer had to come up with a story to cover for being found out. It's not an error.

Hate-filled fake videos about London are everywhere. We've obtained a recording of a TikToker confessing to secretly filming Londoners in their homes for clicks. He says it's not political. He just wants to make money from far-right anger. Read what he says: www.londoncentric.media/p/london-tik...

This! Labour’s leadership is being talked about as if it’s some kind of poisoned chalice. In reality it’s a chance to take over the first term of a government with a huge majority. It’s the political opportunity of a lifetime.

I was in a studio with no cameras for a couple of days. So audio only for these two. And we dropped Mystery Hour because of breaking news. Back to normal tomorrow!

Reform UK are seeking to fob off blame for their illegal leaflet on a printer error. That won’t stand up with the police - responsibility for making sure the law is followed lies with the party commissioning and distributing the leaflets.

“Difficult decisions have been taken,” Will Lewis states in his farewell note, displaying the same lack of personal responsibility he has shown since he was, calamitously, put in charge of the Post a few years ago

Will Lewis has just told staff at the Washington Post he is stepping down

Is anybody ever gonna take a step back and realize the "Russia Russia Russia" people — derided as lunatic wine moms — were actually underplaying the foreign influence stuff, and the loud people who kept insisting it was all fake are now saying Jeffrey Epstein was kind of a cool guy?

the perils of being a commentator

Absolutely

Good grief.

Acive duty military are being ordered to buy a ticket to Melania and watch it, whether they want to, or not. www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/mil...

I wrote this yesterday - Starmer could still turn his premiership around, if he finally, FINALLY, finds the courage to address the grubby circs which allow people like Mandelson to rise so far. bylinetimes.com/2026/02/07/t...

This is a political piece, but it has lessons for all writers in how to craft a story that really lands with readers. The focus, the intelligence and the skill stand out a mile in the current pathetic crop of writing on Reform.

Not Moscow?

And speaking of scoops… McSweeney’s brand of political genius looks more like the Cummings variety every day.

Have a read of this. Great scoop, obviously, but it’s also an absolute masterclass in how to report on these jokers. Plenty of London-based hacks could learn a lot from Martin Shipton here. If they actually wanted to… nation.cymru/news/the-new...

But they all seem so honest & competent!

A lot of racists in UK media & politics are currently limbering up to hold Donald Trump to an infinitely lower moral standard than they did Gary Lineker. Starting with Farage, inevitably…

The odd of us bombing Iran just went way up after the racist meme.

I had the great privilege of debating with Trinity College Dublin students at their University Philosophical Society last night. I successfully opposed the motion ‘This House Believes Journalism is Dead’ & came away inspired & uplifted by speakers on both sides who were all less than half my age!

“Llamas said ‘right’ more than 30 times and ‘yeah’ more than 130 times, over the course of the interview.”

Perhaps Trump wanted to remind people that he’s a racist so they’d stop talking about him being a rapist.

Lots of great lines in this furious piece but this, on McSweeney asking if PM could be US ambo part time, replacing Karen Pierce, is 👌 “This gives you a good indication of Westminster’s relative assessment of value: One full-time experienced woman is worth less than a part-time inexperienced man.”

A plea to my fellow professionals in the media. Please put Trump’s racism on the top of your news agendas? Where is it? The leader of the “free world” is using his racism to make all of our lives worse instead of better. A racist is a threat to us all. Whatever else he is doing, holds no worth.

forgot to share the link sorry www.ft.com/content/f869...

Here we go…

Oh.

"British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was never mixed up with Jeffrey Epstein but is in grave peril of losing his job because of him," writes Stephen Collinson | Analysis https://cnn.it/4risAgJ

So true. Also, many of the Americans doing literally nothing about Epstein’s American ‘associates’ are precisely the ones lying about Europe & particularly the UK being overrun with child-rapists. It’s insane.

Boris Johnson’s Deputy Chief of Staff here, worried that secretly-funded lobby groups masquerading as ‘think tanks’ might finally be held to account. Because of course she bloody is.

Hallelujah!

Some rare good news!