Starmer - [Farage is] A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. “Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.

Going round & round with this immigration white paper stuff. It is what it is, & hysterical arson attacks are simply deplorable. I'll leave you with a quote from Starmer today:

If there has indeed been three separate fires overnight linked to Starmer, that is really quite bonkers news, no matter your political persuasion. Coordinated arson against the Prime Minister. No wonder counter-terrorist squads are investigating! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

For no particular reason at all, here is some excellent Turkish punk music: youtu.be/1LXNQQ9V8pE?...

After the Atlantic published the texts this morning, Tulsi Gabbard is confronted today on why she lied in her testimony to the Senate yesterday. She says she misremembered.

Starmer phone call with Zelenskyy: “The Prime Minister expressed his support for President Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s democratically elected leader and said that it was perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during war time as the UK did during World War II.”

A dictatorship hosting another dictatorship to negotiate with an aspiring dictatorship about the future of a democracy that’s not represented.

Bumping for relevance.

Watch him get confirmed, and then draw conclusions about those guardrails you think are there in the American system…..

This is a very good read, and chimes with what I’ve been seeing since Labour came to power. The govt has not been without scandal, but the scale of some of the reporting has not matched the scale of some of the stories. Some stories need hounding down, but not every story is Starmer’s watergate.

kinda curious how deepseek decides when to use "can't answer" and when to give propaganda

I was debating trying the new Chinese 'Deepseek' generative AI, but the official app lets you know that it collects key-strokes etc...; you need an account to try it on the web, and according to Newsweek, it refuses to talk about Tiananmen square. Yeah, no thanks. www.newsweek.com/deepseek-ai-...

It’d be nice if you could sort Bluesky lists by number of subscribers. I’d like to see the most used lists.

Trump confirms that the US is again withdrawing from the Paris climate accords. "We're not going to do the wind thing" says Trump, saying wind turbines are ugly. Reaffirms that the policy is to "drill baby drill."

"It was a Roman Salute" the Elon Musk/Paolo Di Canio crossover we didn't know we needed (because we didn't)

I do like video, but… Am I the only one who experiences this consistently? Occasionally a video will work, but it’s the exception not the rule.

Vivek's involvement with DOGE lasted negative Scaramuccis

A day later...

Would be nice to have some breathless media coverage about what this tells up about market perceptions of the state of the UK economy..

A pol comms side note - I’m sick of seeing news reports like: “100 killed, including 31 women & 27 children.” When it should be: “100 killed: 42 men, 31 women, & 27 children.” The former infantilises women, removes their agency, and at the same time acts like the deaths of men aren’t a concern.

Biden: Good afternoon. It's a very good afternoon, because at long last I can announce a cease fire. And a hostage deal has been reached between Israel and Hamas

Please let it hold. Please to all that is holy let it hold.

With the rise of AI, I imagine we will see a decline of political cartoons in news media: because they don't have to imagine or imply ideas now, they can just commission pictures that show exactly what they mean. And this has consequences (beyond annoying historians, who love political cartoons)...

This is utterly heinous. I can’t believe people act like Mogg has any pretence of civility. Childish, stupid, dangerous, and with a sexist undertone. Don’t people realise EVERY major female politician will already be in deep-fake/AI porn? Where is the concern over using this technology in politics?

It’s going to take me a while to get over the idea of “unconditional discharge.” Quite hard to rationalise such an abject failure with the types of systems I usually put my faith in.

Making voting easier is the right call 👍 Our latest report on voter turnout recommended expanding accepted photo IDs or removing ID requirements entirely. This step from Angela Rayner is a welcome move in the right direction. www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...

If 29 deaths in 3 years is enough to outright ban a form of transport, maybe these people should be looking at motor death numbers….. Do we need to get the E-scooter stuff right? Absolutely. Do I regularly encounter older people who have an irrational hatred for them with no introspection? Also yes.

The Prime minister hits back at Elon Musk ‘Those that are spreading lies and misinformation…are not interested in victims’

This is, to put it mildly, the punchiest statement I think Starmer has ever come out with. Musk has completely and totally embarrassed himself, and I think most people see that.

Welcome to the new political mainstream.

A sentiment I whole-heartedly agree with, given what I’ve just been working on for the last 5 years!

Just the three weeks between these posts. This right wing business is a fickle game.

It’s not an exact parallel, but Elon Musk abandoning Nigel Farage for not supporting Tommy Robinson would be roughly akin to him ditching Donald Trump for failing to endorse Nick Fuentes.

The triangle of political incentive around Musk/Farage/Robinson is fascinating. Farage designed the Brexit Party (now Reform) from the ground up to be a ‘palatable’ right, especially re: the red wall. He’s never going to be comfortable endorsing Robinson. Whereas Musk has gone all in on him. Mad!

It’s been a month since I’ve posted this, and I have now had a grand total of two videos load correctly on Bluesky. All I ever usually get is a pinwheel. I’m curious if this is a common experience?

If I would be dictator for a day, I would mandate that you are only allowed to published graphs that show the full range of the y-axis.

"I just found out that my PhD student, Assad Hassan, has become Syria's new foreign minister. And here I was asking his Indonesian and Palestinian friends why he hadn't been attending classes for the past two weeks." 😅

It is VERY interesting that the tweet Hank references here is flagged as misleading by the Bluesky mod team. It makes me wonder what their decision-making process is for what order to tackle these things. I suspect they would prioritise the most viral posts first, but clarity would be welcome…..

The UK parliament has joined Bluesky, with proper verified domains and everything: • @houseofcommons.parliament.uk • @houseoflords.parliament.uk • @ukparliament.parliament.uk • @commonsspeaker.parliament.uk

Surprise!

He was a technocrat in so far as he performed a technocratic style of politics - he had a technocratic vibe, but not much technocratic delivery. This is actually something I’d maybe like to write about in the future, since it relates to my work on populist performance.

I wish all the best for Syria and I hope from the bottom of my heart recent events bring Syrians justice, freedom & peace after so many years of suffering, but I can’t help feeling worried about the possibility of another Taliban style regime. Who are HTS? 👇 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It’s crazy how quick this is happening. Assad seems to have lost every major city but Damascus, and Damascus could now be cut off from the sea. With little help coming, I don’t really know the scenario that allows him to turn this around.

I’m reaching the point now where I clearly have more followers on Bluesky, none of them seem to be bots, and my discover feed is dramatically better than on X. However, it’s not all roses. I literally haven’t once had a video load correctly on here. Still definitely some kinks to iron out.

Lee Jae-myung, Leader of South Korea's Democratic Party, live-streamed himself scaling the walls of the National Assembly to bypass military barricades so that he could vote to overturn the President's martial law.

I know nothing about South Korean politics, but that presidential statement sounded absolutely mental. Some vague threat of communism, and he’s trying to block lawmakers from voting?! Sounds like sensible heads have prevailed, at least in the short term. Will be interested to learn more.

Went back on X to post a couple of stories… the entire timeline, literally 90% of posts I saw, were about some poor woman’s PhD topic. Pure brain rot.

Excellent short piece about "anti-woke publics" in an overall excellent Political Communication symposium on various aspects of far-right politics. 👍