At the start of Ken Burns' documentary series 'The Vietnam War', he interviews a former Viet Cong soldier who says: 'The only people who like to talk about war are those who have never fought in one.'

While I have no sympathy whatsoever for Hamas, I don't know why they should accept the latest Trump/Netanyahu 'peace plan'. The assurances they won't be killed if they lay down their arms are worthless, Netanyahu is refusing to contemplate a Palestinian state and admits IDF won't withdraw from Gaza.

Labour Conference always makes me think of the bit in Nathan Barley when Pingu (a v young Ben Whishaw) is playing ‘The Labour Party Conference Game’ and follows a cackling Gordon Brown sprite down a hotel corridor. When he opens the door …

The Chancellor can't just come out and call another party's voters racists. Let's be real. Reeves tied herself in knots, though, and you would have thought that before branding a Reform policy racist you would have worked out a line for the obvious follow-up.

Felipe II (1588) - Britain is cooked Napoleon Bonaparte (1805) - Britain is cooked Hermann Goering (1940) - Britain is cooked … Narrator: Britain was not ‘cooked’

I’m not innocent enough to expect a Labour Chancellor in 2025 to hark back to Beveridge, or not to roll the pitch for tax rises that didn’t appear in the manifesto, but a welfare system based on contribution, come on. That’s supposed to be a Conservative line.

Pope with a magnificent save from Timber’s header after a fine, intricate move from Arsenal.

You’re the *Labour Party*. You’re in Government. With a huge majority. One year into your term. Do something.

Do you think Churchill was sitting there in 1938 worrying about what the polls or the newspapers would say if he said we had to fight Hitler, not make peace?

We are getting towards the logical political endpoint of allowing and encouraging voters to blame ‘migrants’ for their problems because being honest about the real causes of those problems is too hard for politicians to do.

It was a true honor to talk to legendary political scientist Adam Przeworski about how he understands the present crisis, what he learned from Chile and Poland, and how to move forward from here www.dissentmagazine.org/article/how-...

The Soul Travels on Horseback and the road is beset with obstacles and thorns. But let it take its time for I have hours and hours to wait ...

- lines from 'Smoke', Jacob Polley (in 'The Brink', Picador, 2003)

Really, really good piece on the main practical questions surrounding Govt’s Digital ID proposals

Had never come across this lovely tribute from Mahmoud Darwish to Saadi Youssef before, but it made me very happy indeed (via Sinan Antoon in the LARB).

Left - campaign in (extremely turgid) prose, somehow stumble into power, obsess about and design policy for people *who did not vote for you* Right - campaign on a mix of lies and mindless fantasies, take power, hand over the entire state apparatus to your friends

Not carrying a ‘Brit Card’. Sorry.

Stephen Miller being so unmanned by Elon Musk that his wife has to come out and describe him as a ‘Matador’ in the bedroom might just make this whole fascist takeover of America worth it.

Can I just say, on behalf of the Bond Market, that I am not *spooked* by anything. And who is this Andy Burnham chap anyway?

Tomas Transtromer's 'Romanesque Arches' - profoundly moving in Robin Fulton's translation for Transtromer's New Collected Poems by @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social. Read it aloud - in Fulton's words each phrase becomes a vividly charged moment in an arc of evolving experience.

Samantha Power *hears front door close*, shouts down from top of the stairs: ‘How did the interview go, honey?’

This may help Argentina weather the storm in the short term, but in the long term trying to maintain the peso in a band where it is overvalued, spending down FX reserves crushing non-tradable sectors and public services is never going to end well.

UK to recognise a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, before occupation of Gaza and West Bank, apparently. That would be in keeping with the most obvious and natural reading of UNSCR 242, in my view.

Highlights of this day so far: a) waking up to find the other 1/2 still furious because I made a hurtful comment yesterday (some bullshit misapprehension on my part leading to misguided attempt at retaliation), or b) 9am dentist’s appointment to have a big hole drilled into my jaw, or c) …

Simone Weil (1940) dealing with Abundance, AI and Fully Automated Luxury Communism all at once:

If you come to Barcelona, eat at Mantis on Carrer de Paris. 2-3 star Michelin food, half the price. Catalan and modern European cuisine with intelligent use of Chinese, Japanese and Korean flavours. Exceptional.

On 18th of March, at 4.30pm there was a Westminster Hall debate on the question of the UK's military cooperation with Israel called by MP Adam Shockat (IND, Leicester South). Speaking for the Govt was Luke Pollard, Minister for Defence Procurement. hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025...

purely hypothetically of course, what would be the proper legal and democratic recourse for a concerned citizen who knew (or thought they knew) that, say, RAF planes were being used in reconnaisance & target-acquisition flights for another state's army that was committing genocide?

If the Government’s case in defence of the Palestine Action proscription is as weak as it seems (based on the leaked internal MI5 document), they are going to get a - deserved - thrashing in court and end up looking very stupid.

NEW Has the government overreached in using terrorism law against Palestine Action? A disclosed MI5 document indicates that the basis for proscription may be weak By me, at @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

11. I see what I want of blood: I have seen the murdered address the murderer who bullet-lit his heart: from now on you can remember only me. I, too, murdered you idly, and from now on you can remember only me... and you won't bear the roses of spring ...

In 'The Moronic Inferno' (1986), Martin Amis memorably described Palm Beach as a place where: 'a game of Scrabble is a literary event.' I think about that sentence a lot.

An entire live-blog devoted to panic about August PSNB 'overshooting', long gilts moving a bit higher and sterling moving off its 2 month high. No real context at all - either macroeconomic or global. No wonder our politics is shallow if coverage of the economy is so unserious.

UK apparently preparing to recognise a Palestinian state tomorrow. But only if there is no role for Hamas and if elections for the PA are held within a year. No detail on borders.

Well, they found their Horst Wessel

What a load of nonsense

it's your party, and you'll cry if you want to (join by direct debit)

Not sure Nick Clegg is aware of the full range of connotations or imagery attendant on the phrase: 'sloppy seconds.'

Reading Omar El-Akkad’s book: ‘One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This’, and (although I don’t agree with absolutely everything) it is remarkable how devastating it is simply to state plain truths, in unadorned language, about Western imperial power and its hypocrisy.

The Qataris gave Trump a 747 and they got bombed. We're giving him a (2nd!) state visit and supper at Windsor Castle, hoping to get a reduction on tariffs and inward investment. What we're actually going to get is no movement on tariffs and Palatir and OpenAI hoovering up our nascent industry.

It’s a stupid thing to say in a world like this, but I think every human being should be treated with decency and dignity. To the extent that they are not, we fail as a community and as a species.

Big fan of Redford’s directorial debut ‘Ordinary People’ - an Oscar winner but rarely remembered now. Great ensemble piece with some fine performances.

Little Danny Kruger, who no doubt thinks of himself as a kind of Adrian Vermeule or even Russ Vought of these Islands, when in fact he is Tommy Tuberville.

Trump is coming to the UK to AVOID the EPSTEIN story. Unfortunately the British public just crowdfunded the WORLD’S BIGGEST PHOTO of Donald with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. And here is right outside Windsor Castle, where Trump is staying with the King this week.

One of these days, an LLM developer is going to discover Sraffa’s refutation of Wittgenstein and Russell (making a Neapolitan gesture, swiping his fingers up under his chin before asking: ‘What’s the logical form of *that*?) and realise their whole understanding of what language is is wrong.

There’s a moment in The Sopranos when Meadow’s counsellor recommends she takes a semester (or a year) to study abroad at the University of Barcelona. Tony and Carmela are aghast, as if that would ruin young Meadow’s life.

A sign of how toxic and hated Musk is in the UK - even Farage has to distance himself. Keep up the good work, Elon. You’re going to crater Reform and anything you touch over here. We despise you.

Can’t even hear myself think for Nazis

Ban X in the UK, and Tesla. Now.

A central part of fascist consciousness is thinking of themselves as victims, as being permanently under attack by a coalition of forces dedicated to destroying the nation, its institutions and its traditions.