If the Labour Party has any hope of arresting its decline - and I'm not sure I want it to - it needs a politician of Jim Callaghan's stature to deliver a speech making a similar case, but against neoliberalism rather than Keynesianism. 'We used to think etc, etc.'

It's widely understood that the vast majority of people expelled on that basis were only guilty of supporting Palestinian rights or of simply being inconveniently left-wing, so if this is the best attack line they can come up with, they're cooked. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

He was known as the Prince of Darkness for goodness sake

Look at the all guns pointed outwards response to a couple of American journalists looking into the Trojan Horse Affair. Look at Starmer saying the Saville investigation never crossed his desk. What, does it *not* look ever-more shifty and bent with each passing day?

Look at it this way: knowing everything we know, all the stuff that is in the public domain, totally out there, does it not seem that the culture at the top is at best hopelessly dysfunctional, at worst a seething pit of corruption and criminality?

I’ve already met the angry young women, we regularly go for brunch

Sorry, but 'I'm only the prime minster, what do I know?' doesn't really wash in these circumstances

The other side

The backlash has arrived

"Whycomst do the proles disliketh Starmer so?" www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Big if true.

60 million visits to a "rape academy" website telling blokes how to be a bunch of pelicots & the British columnist class are clutching their pearls that Lily-Mae has pierced her nose, gone on an anti genocide demo with her mates and is voting green

The only people that fail to see Starmer as another disposable bullshitting overpromoted chancer are people who are themselves bullshitting overpromoted chancers. Unfortunately those people make up the entirety of the British commentariat.

I wonder how those Political Journalists (Pippa, Peter, Paul etc) could have possibly missed this or how members of Starmer’s cabinet did not read (or were not told) about it. It’s a real puzzler

It genuinely is staggering, Keir, just perhaps not in the way you meant

Sustained Protest Works. That’s Why Starmer Wants to Stop It | Harriet Williamson

The alt text on this seems malformed so quoting to correct it.

Forever impressed by the incredible work that @adriennebuller.bsky.social has done to create The Breakdown, and their new issue is out next month. It's going to be a good one!

Heady days.

either this is all just lying (it is), or Vaunted Manager Keir Starmer who loves his briefs and his briefcases and can draft a memo and chair a meeting is so out of his depth and incompetent he didn't check up on Mandelson, despite the whole thing being so sensitive and critical Come on now

They really are going to try to cling on by persuading everyone that it was the fault of civil servants acting entirely spontaneously. Incredible scenes

TBF the entire McSweeney/Starmer project has been important people doing absolutely ludicrous and despicable things on the grounds that, since everyone has gone along with it so far, then surely it can’t ever go wrong and nobody would ever squeal about the abysmal things they saw.

I mean let’s assume for the sake of argument that officials did decide not to tell the PM about Mandelson failing the vetting, which can only have been because they knew he was fixated on appointing him whatever - how does that reflect any better on Starmer or make position tenable?

I had a great time talking to Evan Robins at @vashtimedia.bsky.social about THE ASSET CLASS recently - you can read our interview here: www.vashtimedia.com/the-asset-cl...

Plus, you can read the editors' introduction, penned by me and my dear friend and colleague @adriennebuller.bsky.social, for free on our site bsky.app/profile/the-...

It’s striking that lots of very bad things have tended to happen to Labour people who foolishly made Peter unhappy, usually with quite unfortunate reputation damage and career consequences. But perhaps Peter is lucky, and that’s just one of those things that happens.

This is less dignified than that BBC reporter who just stands on the beach in Dover every day counting how many small boats land

The Mandelson affair, including the frankly non credible account of the last 24 hours, is a case study in how off the ranch Westminster is. There's a reason the public is so pissed off with politics. Politicians seem hellbent on justifying that anger.

Come for the cynical ploy to yoke Zack Polanski to Tommy Robinson; stay for the epic solipsism. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

An enjoyable discussion of Orwell's best work - his journalism - but, as ever with discussions of Orwell, unconscious bias intrudes. He is praised for his insistence on choosing sides against Fascism; Hobsbawm, who always explained his membership of the CPGB in such terms, is never cut such slack.

Hate reading time again

a 1975 political cartoon by Ron Cobb titled "They're having problems with their economy again" the parallels of history

@stellacreasy.bsky.social voted to lock ppl up for carrying anti-genocide signs. i was once sent a video of a south american trans woman being shot in the face. when these ppl complain about abuse i just have to roll my eyes. especially given the abuse i receive is bcos of this labour government.

Blue Liberalism ain't it, lads. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDx_...

What a grift:

Bleakly funny seeing liberals come to terms with the outcomes of their creed in real time. See also Martin Wolf. youtu.be/ZDx_w4BFP-0?...

This is very good, imo.

It was once thought that Fabianism and Neoliberalism were incongruent, that early 20th Century could be described as the Fabian Century which gave way to the Neoliberal Century. This was based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Fabians were the PMC of the early 20th Century 1/2

Reform aren't going to win.

The HEPI white paper waffles, doesn’t clarify what ‘populism’ means in this context, insists universities must listen to concerns of a nebulous ‘the public’ (via elected politicians) but reading between the lines it subtly advocates universities comply in advance of a possible Reform government

I reckon the reason Labour are so fucked off that prescriptions for anxiety & depression are rising is because it is a pretty solid indicator that life in modern Britain is damaging the health & wellbeing of ever-increasing numbers of people.

I welcome these sudden realisations and I urge the lads to go further. But Nick Timothy was also very openly a virulently racist conspiracy theorist when he was e.g. leading the charge against the cops over the banned fascist football thugs, and almost nobody said a word against that.

@unitesharon.bsky.social is asked if Rayner would make a good Lab leader Sharon is right to mention to her shameful record in relation to the bin strike. But Rayner was also part of a govt that targeted the disabled, demonised refugees &suspended MPs for voting to lift kids out of poverty

#OtD 9 Mar 2020 tens of thousands of women across Mexico went on strike in protest at gender-based violence which kills thousands of women each year in the country. Transport, banking, education and retail were amongst the industries affected. stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/1092...

"Britain carved out roughly 3% of the island after independence in the 1960's" Sky News discussing an article in the Guardian on protests in Cyprus against the British military bases there.

"We saw that change in Gorton and Denton – and that result unlocked a new level of confidence for potential Green voters that they can truly vote for what they want and get it." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Who voted for this? Water companies dump sewage in rivers. Execs get bonuses for destructive practices. Shareholders got £85.2bn in dividends. 6.17m people in England await 7.29m hospital appointments. 300,000 a year die prematurely. Policies made to appease corporations and super rich.