Former Channel 4 boss Sir Ian Cheshire beats Margaret Hodge to role as clamour grows to properly regulate right wing channel ✏️ @jamesrball.com

Germany has passed a law saying fighting aged males can't leave the country for extended periods without getting permission. Can we please get serious.

Agree. Need further study to work out whether being the country that experiences more cyber-attacks than anywhere else but the United States is good or not.

Two more days to get a copy of 'The #Bosnian Straitjacket' for less than a pound (or a dollar). #Bosnia-#Herzegovina. www.amazon.co.uk/Bosnian-Stra...

💥“I just hope that a new government would stop hatemongering against the media—and against everyone else, for that matter. My expectations are low, but not seeing my tax money being spent on hate campaigns would be a good place to start,” I told @columjournreview.bsky.social.

An important read

Been trying to point to this for years. Far Right For Pay is a massive unreported feature of UK politics.

Latest edition of On London Extra asks how high the Reform UK tide will rise in the capital on 7 May. Plus other elections intel and news of a related major project I'm working on with @lewisbaston.bsky.social. Available from my personal Substack: davehillonlondon.substack.com.

That Serbia went along with Russia/Orban's ridiculous plot to interfere in the election should have consequences for Serbia's EU accession process.

Bad reports from both Israel/Saudi media, no UK ship was struck. “Original sources was Channel 14 in Israel. Royal Navy confirmed no ship has been attacked. UKMTO, which monitors attacks on British-flagged ships in the region, also confirmed they had not received any reports.”-The Telegraph

What UK warships are in that area? Can't be many... Would be pretty disastrous if it was HMS Dragon..

The thing about doing an obvious false flag but not doing something coup-like after is you just look ridiculous*and* dangerous, and give Magyar an even better chance of getting a constitutional majority & saving Hungarian democracy longer term. This could be the moment Orban really blows it.

And for GBNews too

Lol

These people sold Trump the Restrainer peace president. They should be apologising to the world.

A Hungarian political crisis at the current moment would really heighten the Suez crisis vibes.

If Trump is to be believed, a lot of senior US military leaders are now planning war crimes, and many more will be committing those war crimes in the coming days. I'd like to see a senior Democrat or two let them know that once this whole series of atrocities is over, there will be a reckoning.

2/ Helmut Brandstätter, an Austrian MEP and a former journalist does not seem amused by Orban's claims about the bombing plot. ⬇️

What's happening in Hungary is an absolute 5 alarm fire. Europe can't allow the overthrow of democracy in its midst. The response needs to go beyond diplomatic protests.

Hungarian Russia expert András Rácz wrote three days ago about a potential Russia-backed false flag attack in Serbia targeting the gas pipeline to Hungary.

1/ An Iranian ballistic missile strike has completely destroyed an Israeli drone factory, only 24 hours after it was profiled by an Israeli newspaper. It illustrates how media reports may potentially lead to hostile targeting. ⬇️ bsky.app/profile/wild...

Wheels up all friendlies out. C130 got a wheel stuck in the sand at the FARP and a Delta element had to come in and blow it in place. Whole op sounds dicey as hell but they pulled it off.

Would be another result for the UK defence industry.

Really great to join @powervertical.bsky.social to chat about all the ways the war in Iran has exposed Russia's collapse into little more than a regional power (if even that), and how deftly Kyiv has handled the war. Listen to the latest Power Vertical here: www.powervertical.org/2026/04/03/z...

"Russia made no territorial gains in March, the first time its progress has stalled entirely in more than two years." www.semafor.com/article/04/0...

Looks like @pkrugman.bsky.social feels the same way:

US forces in Europe if the Russians do ever come knocking

Hey is actually the Joe Rogan of the left.

"Ukrainian and UK intelligence indicates that the frontline situation is the best that it has been for Ukraine in the last 10 months." understandingwar.org/research/rus...

It’s the 68th anniversary of the fatal stabbing of mob enforcer Johnny Stompanato. Famously, it wasn’t a rival mobster who did him in in some creative, Godfather-like way, but Lana Turner’s 14-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane, who stabbed him for beating up her mother. Probably... 🧵

IMO, part of the reason Labour is so unpopular with its potential support base is not dealing with stuff like this just looks pathetic as well as destructive to the society they want. Like the way Dem base wants fighters.

@dexeve.bsky.social & I have a new piece out in Survival. In 2024, South Korea secretly deployed more than 300 KTSSM missiles at soft, fixed sites--suggesting that, in a crisis, Seoul may strike first & giving Pyongyang 300 reasons to beat them to it. doi.org/10.1080/0039...

This was probably my favourite of these conversations: we talked about one-time Trotskyists and their subsequent trajectories, from James Burnham and Irving Kristol to Frank Furedi and Claire Fox

3 months of no/negative territory and personnel losses over replacement for Russia represent a turning point I'd have expected to get more attention.

One source said a Blackhawk may have also been hit over Iran while conducting rescue ops to find the second F-15 pilot. The Blackhawk was tailed by a trail of smoke as it crossed into southern Iraq from Iran today.-NewsMax

Deeply depressing. Just lazy soundbites and bad economics. Populism without racism is infinitely preferable to the combination. But Greens badly need something that actually resembles a coherent economic strategy. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This is also why the cover up of war crimes by UK Special Forces needs breaking.

i think this is right & wonder if the nervousness about askng people to save fuel is partly a hangover from lockdown; some people are really, really neuralgic now about being told they can't do anything (eg the nutters convinced 15 minute neighbourhoods are a plot to lock them up again)

He may rant and rave like a madman at times but Tom Cooper/Sarcastosaurus is the only mil analyst I've seen talking about the US inability to destroy these missile cities and the capabilities of Iranian loitering SAMs throughout the conflict and well looks like he was onto something.

Xi has little on Hegseth.

This a lot less significant (in both economic and environmental terms) than either side think, and it's a sign of how unserious politics is at the moment that the whole thing has become such a totem.

It is a bit grim that a sizeable slice of the UK left grew up learning the economics they know from Lexit Larry. When was the UK last self sufficient in food Larry?

It’s not doing great credit to the prestige and general bullshit around the warrior corps that they’re all just knuckling under to this clueless oaf

Such revelations are a weekly occurrence now. Police and military officers have started to spill the beans, putting themselves at risk, as pressure grows on them. This also underlines, in my view, that people increasingly expect Fidesz's governance to be over in weeks and investigations to begin

Another bombshell in the Hungarian electoral campaign, 10 days before the vote. Military officer Szilveszter Pálinkás, the face of the army's recruitment campaign, gave a long interview to Telex about the disastrous management of the Defense Ministry under Orbán. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMuy...

Zeldin is one POS. He did so much performative damage at EPA to set himself up to get a more high profile role. At least he might be out of the EPA now.

Hungary, Publicus poll: TISZA-EPP: 49% (+2) Fidesz/KDNP-PfE: 40% (+1) MH-ESN: 6% DK-S&D: 3% (-1) MKKP→G/EFA: 3% (-1) +/- vs. 24-27 February 2026 Fieldwork: 27-30 March 2026 Sample size: 1,002 ➤ europeelects.eu/hungary