"You could not live with your own failure. Where did that bring you? Back to me."

I think all the Discourse about the UK being Impossible To Govern will continue until the next time a prime minister comes along and does the job competently, mostly by not being a mendacious opportunist and having a political vision.

It really should be a bigger story that a former UK prime minister has fully lost her mind.

🫡

Labour MPs talking up Al Carns as a possible leadership contender:

Me, politically savvy and knowledgeable about the Labour Party.

"Uh, no, sir, they're saying 'Booo-uona sera' ... 'Booo-uona sera'."

Borismaxxing.

In this photo, Matt Goodwin has adopted the pose he always uses for talking to young people, regardless of age or height.

We could do a very small Snowpiercer when the climate catastrophe happens.

If he's lost the Beano, it really is over.

My postdoc at @durham.ac.uk is now open for applications! Three years research, open field. Happy to answer any questions/chat/give feedback on applications. NB: You *must* be nominated by a department - check with the department for the internal procedure/deadline. www.durham.ac.uk/research/ins...

I see SOMEONE hasn't read William Gladstone's collected speeches.

Elon going to war with a politician whose career has been this meme on repeat:

"Thomas Holland"?

@ucunorthumbria.bsky.social are on strike 12, 13, 17-19 Feb and 2-6 March to stop bosses @northumbriauni.bsky.social slashing pay and pensions forever. Please donate to the branch fighting fund here: Unity Trust Bank, UCU Northumbria Univ NE119, Hardship Fund, SC 608301, AN 20295578

New Bluesky bio.

Young Peter went to his guidance teacher and said what he really wanted to do with his life was resign in disgrace. That's not a job, said the teacher. I think I could be good at it, said Peter. You'll never make a whole career out of it, said the teacher. Young Peter determined to prove them wrong.

Osteopaths manipulate spines, never facts. For shame. www.osteopathy.org.uk/news-and-res...

Hear me out: can we have Gordon back

What's particularly good about this quote is that there are reams of Epstein's private correspondence in the public domain now that reveal him as a creep and a halfwit mediocrity.

This took me fucking ages

"... a disproportionate response to an unfortunate trespassing incident involving a few men with attenuated links to junior White House staff..."

💪💪💪 @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social members start indefinite Action Short of a Strike @northumbriauni.bsky.social on 12 February. Strike Action is currently scheduled for...

Peter Mandelson:

Oh no, not Philip Roth too.

Still the best Isaac Chotiner parody.

🗃️ CfP: Journal of American History Textbooks and Teaching section, 2027 (of which I am the new co-editor!). See image below as well as thread: We invite submissions for the March 2027 Textbooks and Teaching section of the Journal of American History. We are particularly interested in essays

Hard to think of a scandal better calibrated to blow up in the UK than "politician allegedly took large sums of cash from billionaire paedophile while conspiring with him to ensure bankers got their bonuses."

Fascinating article. There's a PhD waiting to be written on Franco's Spain and American conservatives, particularly the Catholic intellectuals. William F. Buckley's brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell Jr., explicitly endorsed Francoism as a model for the US.

Still can't get over a former academic criticising anyone else as a "nerd."

"Hello, are you a member of the Left Behind?"

NGL this description of Bsky in Vulture cracked me up

Nothing to see here.

Am currently comfort reading Sourcery, the fifth Discworld novel, and I’m tempted to put this in the front of all my future books

"The president's plan is simple: we kill the Batman."

Xi Jinping, apparently:

every epstein commentary is these immensely rich/powerful/influential people raving about what a genius epstein was, and every one of his emails is just “helo, my name jomfrie”

Now: Bruce Springsteen sings “Streets of Minneapolis” in Minneapolis

Now just hold on a minute, that could be any Elon Musk.

As Novak Djokovic is two months older than me, I am very much not enjoying the "this aging, decrepit warhorse, stubbornly refusing to go gently into the night, an inspiration to the overlooked geriatrics" tone of the Australian Open coverage.

If he has a fault, it's trusting too much and too hard. That and accepting large sums of money from sex offenders a year after their first conviction. And who among us would condemn him for that?

Trump is LBJ's Wario and Vance is his Hubert Humphrey.

Murderer lobby calls on government to implement nationwide Return-To-Office mandate.

This is terrible political project but a fascinating political science experiment to determine the Conservative Party's core vote.