"It is terrible that Shabana Mahmood faces overt racism for being a high profile Asian woman" = good argument "The key to ending overt racism against Asians in Britain is that we must Stop the Boats" = a very bad argument indeed, on so many levels

Look, if you are trailing a budget and then immediately walking it back, before trailing an asylum bill and immediately walking it back, then you are just bad at politics and policy. There are no redeeming features here.

Ok nerds, so I haven't played Pokemon since the Nintendo DS days, and am pretty much a Blue/Red/Gold/Silver purist but I got a Switch recently so if I was to get a new Pokemon game, which should I get?

Of course, those dark forces are natural phenomena that cannot be countered by the full force of the British state, so we must sit back and let them wash over us. What else is a government to do?

Said this a lot before, but there is no politician conveying any sense of what they think the country should look in 2040 or 2050, so no sense they are taking steps to get there.

it's basically impossible to argue with this, they have won significant policy concessions, and there's no reason to think they'll stop pushing now that Labour have opened the door for them

I just think what this is missing is that income tax is going up under Labour and people already feel that a bit and will feel it more by the next election. Labour's 'not touching, can't get mad' approach to raising income tax can't work, won't work, is part of why they've lost trust.

By "the left" Goodwin could more accurately say that it is "84-95% of the white British" who reject Goodwin's drift into ethnonationalism

Also, maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. A lot of Labour voters clearly *felt* that Labour had let them down by bailing out the banks but it would have been even more devastating not to. The job is to govern.

More than anything, the Labour government being relatively unrecognisable to the Tory one in its style due to a managerial, visionless approach is bad for our democracy as people will look for more extreme options to actually see what they perceive as meaningful change.

parts of Bluesky think the Starmer Govt is bad because they're Actually Right-Wing or Too Centrist or whatever and this is fundamentally wrong because the thing is, they would be much better if they were any of those things, or indeed Left-Wing, or anything coherent, rather than *fucking useless*

A stark contrast between London Labour & Oxfordshire LibDems (pro charging drivers more to tackle congestion) and London LibDems and Oxfordshire Labour (against additional charges). Which party is in favour of which travel schemes is so often a postcode lottery.

Anyway: both the state and private developers need to build at far greater rates, the default aim should be 'a dual earner couple on average incomes can live in non-crowded conditions and raise a family', and the model family *for policymakers* should be three for obvious reasons.

The cycle to work scheme genuinely improved my health and wellbeing to the point that I can almost guarantee the savings on me not having to use the NHS probably outway the £500 or so discount I got, so who can say if it's good or not.

It’s very enervating to watch intelligent and educated people play dumb about this amidst the ascendance of a far-right reactionary movement driven by antisocial Silicon Valley psychos and Miami crypto scammers who all treat women as status symbols on the same level as NFTs and Labubus.

Media standards: 1) No Democratic scandal on par with Trump-Epstein, so it’d be biased and unfair to five it much attention. 2) Trump wouldn’t be shamed into resigning and his cult of personality wouldn’t abandon him, so Trump-Epstein wasn’t worth pursuing. Way too many think that’s journalism.

Again, if you wanted to confirm in people's minds that you're running a conspiracy to keep damning evidence about you hidden, this is pretty much exactly what you'd be doing

Can we circle back to the part where the NY Times never disclosed that they have incriminating information on Donald Trump from sent by Epstein that's been sitting on their email servers for nearly a decade?

My radical view is that the story about the president being implicated in a notorious paedophile ring should be covered as an important story *in its own right*, and then secondarily any political consequences can be covered later

Trump ‘spent hours’ at Epstein’s house with victim of sex trafficking, email alleges on.ft.com/49lfk4N

i mean c’mon. the president’s best friend was the most notorious pedo in the country’s history who ran a massive child trafficking ring. every bit of circumstantial evidence we have says that trump was a participant. if this were a criminal trial we’d have enough evidence to compel a plea deal.

I don't think a better example of a government flailing with no guiding principles could be given.

can't think of a headline that better sums up the BBC at present www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpo...

the fun thing about the BBC story is that I can't actually read about it for more than couple of minutes at a time because it makes me feel too insane :)

I do not understand the Labour government's reticence over defending the BBC and social media regulation. Their long-term survival basically depends on it. Their cowardice in the face of it may be the single thing they are most remembered for. on.ft.com/3JVxC1Z via @FT

IMO the worst thing about this government is its failure to see Trump, Farage, anti-immigration rhetoric, rising racism, and the 'gender critical' lobby as connected elements of a global war against liberalism and social democracy – and instead treating them as discrete issues to be 'managed'.

I feel like I'm going mad. This list of issues that Prescott highlighted appears, to me, to be completely alien to reality? Like, taking a step back, who would argue the BBC is pro-trans, pro-Gaza, or even not *pushing* enough migration stories??? Reads entirely like his own list of hobby horses?

“whatever club he’s invited to join has been devalued by the invitation”

there's a moment in PARADISE LOST where Satan arrives in Eden and realizes Hell isn't a place; it's a thing he carries within him and it'll follow him wherever he goes. and i think about that when i see these awful rich men whose monstrous wealth has enriched them not at all

What's fascinating here is that as she rhymes off the list of gender critical people at Newsnight pursuing an explicitly gender critical agenda, in the context of a discussion of ideological capture at the BBC, she doesn't recognise that she was part of the ideological capture of the BBC by GCs.

Objectivity, impartiality and balance are all *different things*, and the lazy tendency to treat them as synonyms, and to use partisan balance alone as a proxy for the others, is the root cause of a vast amount of nonsense.

I just feel like this BBC story is a culmination of the impact of decades of pressure on news journalism across all newspapers and TV stations to become representations 'of the debate' - rather than as you write, detail and precision reporting - because that drives scale

Unfortunately Kamala Harris wasn't responsible for a similar, balancing insurgency. I'm sure if she had been, the BBC would have dedicated a programme to it. Christ this Prescott guy is a moron.

The BBC is apologising for its Panorama edit. It shouldn’t. First, the narrative is true: Donald Trump *did* incite the Capitol riot. Second, the apology won’t appease those attacking it. So why not at least stand for something? Wrote this on it earlier this week: inews.co.uk/news/world/b...

The world’s first trillionaire initiated a move that has left more than half a million people dead, most of whom are children.

Slashed my finger open last night and honestly nothing has radicalised me more than trying to navigate NHS process in getting someone to actually see it. Save going to A&E, I finally have an appointment for 5pm because all the nurses are WFH. Yeah, great system gang.

All prepped and ready for a big boardgame weekend #rpg #callofcthulhu

It's especially annoying that when Labour have taxed the wealthy, such as agricultural land tax, private school fees etc some so called progressive politicians object to it List of Labour taxes on the wealthy below but in reality most people will need to pay more tax

Until I die, I will never understand why so many motorists think that “having a car” should give you special protections from doing crimes.

I don't know what is more depressing. That the BBC seems to have no clue what democratic socialism is or that someone who comments on politics for a living thinks it's the same as communism. Jesus wept, indeed. GCSE, Introduction to Politics, Chapter 1, stuff.

Vital piece of investigative reporting from Sky. They've uncovered the X algorithm which feeds users extremist right wing material from the moment they join the site. It is a far-right radicalisation engine, by design. news.sky.com/story/the-x-...

Tax policy on the British left is pure "anti-bedtime left". Bizarre idea that you can have a big social democratic welfare state without everyone contributing properly www.economist.com/britain/2025...

If you asked me to come up with the names of politicians who are publicly and unapologetically pro-LGBT and pro-trans rights in particular, two of the most obvious would now both be Muslim mayors of major cities. And both are routinely smeared as regards to 'Sharia Law'.

Amazing how much 2025 was a hyper correction for the fact that in 2024 voters clearly didn't know what they were voting for because the media didn't report on Trump's actual policies/voters refused to believe what they were voting for.

The funniest reactions to the elections are the Republicans on Twitter saying stuff like “well after Jay Jones won, we are never taking scandals seriously again, we will nominate candidates who have no morals and say anything!!!” - like I’m just not sure anyone is going to notice the difference

The only person who has been seizing private companies through the power of the state is Trump.

who the fuck is scraeming "MESSAGE DISCIPLINE" at my house. show yourself, coward. i will never message discipline.

“Only in blue cities” Right. www.mississippifreepress.org/mississippi-...

Here's another bit of conventional wisdom Zohran completely blew away: His speech was at well above a 10th-grade level. It was complex, erudite, punctuated by deep and fluent references. You don't have to condescend to voters with baby talk! Part of re-establishing norms is speaking like an adult.

real sense in which last night was fairly predictable. real question is why our pundits and the elites who listen to them couldn’t see it. (gift link)