A decade+ since I was inadvertently invited to a Downing Street room with Facebook/Google/etc and Cameron walked in and asked everyone what they'd do to boost youth referendum turnout and a grand woman shouted "WE NEED GRIME ARTISTES, DOES ANYONE KNOW ANY GRIME ARTISTES" and I began to doubt Remain.

No no let's hear it out it's worth considering

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Right, well, it's been 12 hours and still struggling to think about anything else. It's *so* well done. It might be his best work, fo the stuff I've seen. Cucumber and Y&Y were both disappointing shows with one haunting standout sequence - Tip Toe makes that sequence the entire thing.

Since there still seems to be some bafflement around about why Starmer has failed so badly, I’m reposting this reply I made yesterday. At an overall level it’s quite straightforward, really.

10 years today! What a wasted decade. So many things we need to be doing that got pushed down the agenda to deal with a deeply stupid idea.

Very little. The Holy See is (adjusted for inflation) the single biggest funder of astronomical research in history. As for Galileo, he was found guilty of suspicion of heresy, spent one day in gaol, and the rest of his life living in a palace, and continued to publish heliocentrism around Europe.

Tip Toe. Fucking hell. Fucking *hell*.

this is just the vision she has at the end of Titanic as she dies

critics are already calling it "some things we said into some microphones earlier today"

OK, I’m calling it. Burnham to win next election with 550 MPs.

this is by some distance the best omen the Burnham premiership has yet had

Due to a catastrophic failure of concentration I have accidentally sent this person who was generous enough to sign up to my newsletter some powder to help with any impacted anal glands they happen to have.

after years treating everyone else's politics as fuel for arguments about the Labour party, it's hard for the British left to argue that Americans should shut up about Britain just because they haven't a clue what they're talking about

Yes. The structural explanation is that all the evidence we have is that Burnham is committed to a bad set of policies that has already made Labour unpopular. Because we do actually pay attention to British politics

fuck it I'm having an ice cream

Surely the worst crime committed by the leader of a UK political party. Horrendous.

not saying the heat's getting to me but as I left the house i genuinely had the thought "oh I should leave sky news on in case the dog wants to see Burnham sworn in"

Delirious with heat shouting "will you resign!?!" At the woman in WH Smith’s

shout out to the news crews who've been sent to film platform 14 at Euston station in the middle of a heatwave

i think, if I tried to boil it down to a sentence, it'd be: "All politicians are hated by their opponents - but Starmer went out of his way to be hated by his supporters too."

All the people "puzzled by why Starmer is so disliked" are then doing a follow-up where they go "but people are giving a hundred different reasons rather than one!" Yes. That is why he is so disliked.

Welcome aboard your Avanti West Coast service, calling at Stockport, Stoke on Trent, Stafford and the Finland Station

I'm amazed by the number of people with sash windows who don't know how they work to properly air a room. Tbf, I didn't either but now I do, so PSA:

been at a breakfast, have I missed anything

Keir peering out the curtains, wondering why there are so many reporters outside

"The biggest assumption overturned by the by-elections, though, is the depressingly widespread belief that the only way to win was to keep ratcheting further and further towards the politics of rage." Latest brainfart, of everything I thought about Makerfield on Friday

Does feel a little like everyone's trying to meme the prime minister into accepting the bloody obvious but that he might, in fact, not have accepted it

The case for Ed Miliband as Chancellor.

I don’t think “his team” imagined any such thing - that Starmer had started phoning around former staff is I think a pretty clear signal that he was looking for someone who’d say “yeah, boss, definitely you can fight and win. Great idea!”

3 month transition? This isn't America? Absolutely not. Stick to tradition - 09:00 Downing St hunky lectern guy 09:30 Resignation speech 09:45 Palace (ex-PM) 10:30 Palace (new PM) 11:00 Downing St acceptance speech 11:15 Hunky lectern guy 11:20 Briefing against new PM It's in Bagehot, look it up.

Reading some of the reports of Starmer's evolving thinking this weekend, it does feel a lot like his team imagined more people would come out in support of him because, well, he must have a faction, right? He's the prime minister.

"War, it concludes, is not just economically useful, or strategically necessary: it is “the basic social system”. An extract from @philtinline.bsky.social's fascinating book Ghost of Iron Mountain

"The biggest assumption overturned by the by-elections, though, is the depressingly widespread belief that the only way to win was to keep ratcheting further and further towards the politics of rage." Latest brainfart, of everything I thought about Makerfield on Friday

The secret to this problem is basically to whack a university nearby, because you suddenly have a high spending population, who go out quite a lot to sustain nice coffee shops and brunch places and also a cheap labour force to staff them.

This is flat wrong from Unite. It’s just not true there’s been ‘almost no thought for jobs, skills and national security’. There’s been a huge amount of thought on all these issues and a decision has been made that jobs, skills, and security all benefit from a faster clean energy transition.

I'm gonna have to fill one of the feeders with anchovies instead of seed

just realised Channel 4 is gonna be doing one of those comedy drama documentary things that it sometimes commissions about this weekend, so it'a a good day for George Fouracres' agent at least

My main prediction: Starmer is going to embark on a multi decade Ted Heath-like sulk about being removed.

I know I am a broken record on this, but the Treasury are doing budget predictions with c.200k net immigration, Health are flagging shortages already, and the Home Office are still pursuing policy changes to reduce net immigration. This is the consequence of having a checked out Prime Minister

"The Americans can't get the slime out of their capital's monument pool and will arrest you for touching it," sounds like the sort of lie they'd tell us in the Soviet Union so we'd stop bitching about bread lines.

Classic example of the genre known as "I clearly despise you and want you to fail. Here's why you should follow my advice"

a theory: Camilla Long is actually on holiday so wrote early and scheduled an email before she went

see everyone's very excited now but let's see how they like it when pelican start swarming like parakeets

Can humanity break the cycle of monstrification and embrace Monstrofuturism, the work of imagining and building a future in which difference is celebrated rather than shunned? 1/ #history #booksky #politics

No one necessarily needs me to join in the commentary about this utter pudding of a piece, but I *love* the idea of an comment article on how Westminster has lost track of the interests of ordinary people also utterly dismissing out of hand the political relevance of bus travel.

Labour won by 20 points and net immigration is down by over 80% in two years. But sure write your column again.

You know the way, in a horror movie, they think someone's dead and then they come back to life for one last attack, sometimes - if there are sequels - repeatedly? A really cool thing about writing books is the process of writing a book can do that too!

Very chuffed that @jonnelledge.bsky.social invited me to come up with an extract from my book for his splendid newsletter - thank you sir

"War, it concludes, is not just economically useful, or strategically necessary: it is “the basic social system”. An extract from @philtinline.bsky.social's fascinating book Ghost of Iron Mountain