Every word true.

If only more of the electorate understood place & community in the way that the great geographer Doreen Massey did: as arenas in which multiple trajectories converge & are juxtaposed. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

So THAT’s why Infantino wore inappropriate white trainers - operation prevent Trump trying to join the celebrations again. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

This photo is worth a thousand words. He can't help himself. robertreich.substack.com/p/he-cant-re...

Not sure what was better: Spain overcoming a dirty & spiteful opposition or Infantino having to drag Trump out of the celebration moment.

It’s annoying that we’ve seen football Americanised over the last few weeks, but the traffic hasn’t all been one way. Good to see Americans using the word “football” properly at last!

This imagined conversation between Hegseth & Trump about “manly warfighters” is disturbingly credible. There is something very kinky about Hebseth’s obsession with a certain kind of excessively violent masculinity. www.thetimes.com/comment/cart...

So a firm with no track record in PPE got a contract for over £200m in the first instance, after buttering up Michael Gove & the Tory Party during a national crisis. And the now Spectator editor still insists on lecturing all & sundry about public duty. bylinetimes.com/2025/03/10/c...

Douglass found support & solidarity among Manchester’s workers. On his voyage back though, he was relegated to a third class cabin despite having a first class ticket because of the colour of his skin. Only intervention by the cruise line’s owner restored him. www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ju...

It’s like blaming flies for “piling on” a dog turd. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Fascinating on the distribution of power between the right wing press and Farage www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Settler colonialism is always established through acts of everyday, small scale terrorism to “clear” the land. It also always relies on political & logistical support from distant as well as local states. Israel’s terrorism now depends on Trump’s disregard. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

The knowing stupidity - the wall of disbelief that protects Western interests - that Omar analyses so eloquently here in the extreme, urgent case of Palestine, is the same condition that allows such strong anti-reparative instincts in the face of slavery. www.equator.org/articles/mor...

The Church of England has recognised the need for reparations (Project Spire) as we have benefited from blood money. Even Judas threw his back in the face of the religious leaders. Talking down Project Spire is to heap insult onto centuries of pain inflicted in the name of Christ 😔

Tx - and while we’re can we bring back the ban on CofE priests being in Westminster. After all we do have bishops….. who do all the jobs that no one else wants to and speak for all the communities who have no constituency

As long as Netanyahu’s government persists Gaza will remain a concentration camp built on rubble, and ethnic cleansing will continue in the West Bank. While Israel continues to oppress and displace Palestinians, the existential threat to Israelis will persist. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

For a glimpse of the deceit and manipulation being used by right wing opponents of the Church of England’s Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice (Project Spire), read this on their mendacious commission and reporting of a flawed parishioner poll: alanlester.co.uk/blog/the-mer...

This is beautiful but I'm telling @countbinface.bsky.social now that he won't be able to answer all letters and emails within three days 😂

No longer a joke candidate, Count Binface offers a manifesto that delivers far more for Clacton than Farage ever has.

Won’t it be interesting to see if Farage defends this man’s right to “free speech” as he did Lucy Connolly’s? Will he complain to American audiences that this arrest is further evidence of the UK becoming like North Korea? www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

The divide between supporters and detractors of the Church of England’s Fund for Healing, Repair & Justice (Project spire) is not one of slave trading v government annuities. It is one of institutional accountability v bad faith right wing activism. alanlester.co.uk/blog/the-arg...

“It’s the Inequality, Stupid.”

Our politics and our climate are in sync. “Normalising extremes”. No coincidence of course since the far right is wedded to fossil fuels and climate science denial as much as it is to immigrant & Muslim othering. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Trump is a tantrum- prone toddler, only one who threatens war crimes rather than toy throwing. His hubris & his misplaced trust in Netanyahu got him into a mess from which he cannot extricate himself & his further problem is everyone now knows that TACO. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The BBC, intimidated and infiltrated under the Tories, lost its guts and its mojo. The political assault combined editorial attack with a critique of the licence fee as poor value (which it isn't) and as 'regressive' - a low move from politicians who gave precisely no f*cks for the hard up.

100% this We need public service broadcasting. What we have now has been hijacked by the right We need Gibb out of that organisation

Farage may be the most corrupt politician in Britain but he’s go an awful long way to go to match his American idol. www.thetimes.com/us/american-...

Interesting that this is a Faisal Islam piece, and therefore coming from the economics and business team, rather than from the politics department

Read here @alanlester.bsky.social's systematic dismantling of the "arguments" against the Church of England's reparative Project Spire. What is it, I wonder, that drive's someone to seek to minimise at every turn involvement in chattel slavery? Where are the psychic returns on that? It's weird.

Add to this, the fact that former Reform Leader in Wales is serving 11 years for taking bribes from the Russians, I'd say that Reform is the most political corrupt party in British history. I wish people would remember that UKIP was formed with the intention of preventing rich men from paying tax.

The BBC couldn’t be any clearer: Farage took huge sums of money to push the interests of crypto investors. By far the most corrupt politician in modern British history. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

1/2 The Church of England was complicit in one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history. As an institution with a moral mission it has acknowledged this and is seeking to atone through a forward-looking investment programme, Project Spire. www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/202...

Interesting hearing the @caricom.uk delegation discuss its updated manifesto in London last night. It’s good with more for example on the distinctive experience of women. But, I fear, still too little thought about what will bring the UK to the negotiating table. caricom.org/documents/th...

It’s astonishing the lengths to which the right wing, anti-reparative justice lobby will go to stop the church acknowledging & atoning for its enormous complicity in one of the gravest crimes against humanity. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

No doubt Farage, Lowe, Yaxley Lennon at al will be seeking out every opportunity to condemn this threatened attack in the strongest terms. Twelve arrested over threat to Islamic event www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

In this new blog I show how Paul Marshall (GB News, The Spectator, UnHerd) and Michael Gove are frustrated by @willdalrymple.bsky.social’s erudite & rival influence on the public’s historical understanding. Also, how the British Empire is *really* taught in schools: alanlester.co.uk/blog/teachin...

New blog on Teaching the British Empire in Schools. The Spectator couldn’t resist misrepresenting the way the Empire is taught in their attacks on @willdalrymple.bsky.social and @zackpolanski.bsky.social Here’s the truth. alanlester.co.uk/blog/teachin...

It’s really difficult to capture just how stupid Kemi Badenoch’s purging of candidates supporting net zero is in this context. Future generations will find it jaw-droppingly short-sighted. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Announcing this in record-breaking temperatures: all Badenoch’s political instincts to the fore.

As Carol Cadwalladre has shown, there’s nothing new about Farage’s corruption. He is being exposed more effectively now only because the Murdoch empire has turned against him. Looks like his debt to crypto was too niche. www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

The evidence seems damning. But just imagine if it’s proved that a coterie of foreign-based, criminal & crypto funders paid Farage’s to become “their” MP and Reform to become “their” governing party - would millions of easily manipulated voters still support him? www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

This illustrates a really seismic shift in UK politics: that much of the British Right now talks, thinks & argues in the same online space as the American Right. That's pulling it to a politics of faith, flags & firearms with little in common with traditional 'Toryism' www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Farage’s and Reform’s nasty, racist, corrupt antics are no laughing matter but I do find it genuinely funny that they’re now scared enough of Count Binface to try to discredit him - a bloke with a bin on his head! They’ll be trash- talking him next.

@BylineTimes doing incredibly important proper investigative journalism to reveal how Cambridge University is being expolited by the immensely rich, trans-national, far white, racist, Christian-nationalist network. bylinetimes.com/2026/07/09/p...

People of Clacton, can you think of anything more quintessentially English than electing a bin to kick out a privately educated City Boy who’s been gifted millions to represent billionaires’ interests? Show the world how Freeborn English Men & Women act and vote Count Binface!

'The decision to slash funding for creative subjects comes despite the field being named as one of the UK’s “highest potential sectors” in the government’s industrial strategy.' 1/2

Dodgier & dodgier. Looks like Farage’s £5M gift was in instalments, one before he stood as a parliamentary candidate and one coinciding with his candidature announcement. But of course it couldnt possibly have been a payment to stand as Harborne’s puppet. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Fascinating watching Leila Cunningham try to defend Farage’s election deflection on @channel4news.bsky.social. Until about half way through she forgot to deploy Reform’s Deny, Attack & Reverse Victim and Offender playbook. Totally stumped. Well done for callling out her lies @krishgm.bsky.social

Spot on.