The Lee Miller exhibition at Tate Britain has the lot: glamour, wit, play, brutal honesty, important exposure of brutality and a celebration of the efforts of women in war. I thoroughly recommend it as an antidote to jingoism and shallow but performative remembrance.

Farage’s claim that flag mania was down to ordinary citizens couldn’t be further from the truth. Brilliant expose via @manchestermill.bsky.social. manchestermill.co.uk/the-men-who-...

So presumably all of the women are going to riot now that it has been confirmed that once more some blokes have committed a horrible violent crime. Wait….

Reform has lost 1 in 20 (5%) of the 677 councillors it gained in May elections In Kent alone, it has lost 14% of its councillors... -11 have been expelled -6 suspended -9 have left the party -1 has defected to UKIP -9 have resigned from the council altogether www.politicshome.com/news/article...

The Rachel Reeves rent thing is just not a story. Yawn.

Thoughts with the lovely Sam West and his family today. To lose both parents in the space of a year had quite an impact of me. Imagine how much more painful when they are Timothy West and Prunella Scales and their faces are everywhere you look.

HTRT Assemble! Today Roundtable meets to discuss what’s going on in the system, what’s not going on and where our energies are best directed. #education #leadership #HTRT

UK will be second-fastest-growing G7 economy this year and next, IMF predicts. Almost as if Rachel Reeves knows what she is doing.

Oh no! Losing Diane Keaton and Robert Redford in the same month is really sad. What a great career she had people.com/diane-keaton...

Big fan of Gordon Brown too! These two have a fair bit in common.

Nigel is still smarting because his teacher called him out for singing Nazi songs in the street. Diddums.

If you are a member don’t forget to vote for the next Deputy PM. I like both Lucy and Bridget but I have worked with @bphillipsonmp.bsky.social and I know how strong and personally fierce her commitment to social justice is, so she got my vote.

I would have happily seen the demise of The Conservative Party when they were in government, but the way in which a far right party like Reform has crowded into their opposition space is not the outcome I had hoped for. Be careful what you wish for.

“Yet another colleague (from his school) described how, at a camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler Youth songs.” Reform can deny it all they like, but the reliable source is the teacher. Don’t back down David.

When discussions are had about whether it was right to close schools during the pandemic, I hope that it is remembered that school colleagues died of COVID when schools were open and that employees in school were not prioritised for vaccination. I never understood that decision.

Not to make light of the editorial failure, but look how far Twitter lies now permeate in to normal discourse. We think we know about the racism but the utter contempt for truth since Musk bought the platform is deliberate & very dangerous. You can’t foment racism with fact checkers in the building.

Civil War in Sudan resulting in 75 killed in a mosque, more dead following Putin’s attacks on Ukraine, mass killings in Gaza and now murders in Manchester. Sometimes it does not feel that human beings have evolved sufficiently. #HopeNotHate

I want this to be a succession strategy not a schism. Own the need for a ten year plan and control the narrative. That strategy would, of course, include evolving leadership to meet the needs of each stage.

I don’t particularly enjoy watching golf on television. But The Ryder Cup victory wasn’t golf. It became politics. And we won the argument.

Whoop! I wonder how many of those obsessed with England flags have been watching! Wait….they haven’t have they.

Billy Bragg on fire

Grabbing brekko at Coventry station on my way back from Question Time. Didn’t expect to see this stirring evocation of the defeat of fascism adorning the wall of Coffee #1 #AllYouFascistsBoundToLose

Well done to Bridget for speaking openly about this. Most women in any powerful role have experienced this. I do wish the media would drop the Burnham vs Starmer factionalism. I bet Bridget gets on well with both of them. The agenda is not driven by the preferences of the males.

So excited! Off to listen to Obama this evening!

The village has spoken. These are now appearing in windows on The High Street. Let’s continue to make the argument.

Newcastle is taking a stand against the rise of fascism by holding an event on Saturday. Our cities have the power to show the way. We should not shy away from making kinder, inclusive values clear just because working class voters are caught up in this bigotry. Make the argument.

Reform are now coming after people with permanent residency. It'll be citizens next. No one is safe from authoritarian governments.

Last night, in my Cambs village, a bunch of far right thugs surrounded the kind citizens who had decided to clip down the flags that have been on our street lampposts and save the council money. The first thing they shouted to the citizens was “Are you white?”. Then they called them “faggots”.

Really looking forward to hearing this man speak next week. I often like what he says but it is the way he says things that inspires me most.

Lovely review of Tom’s play northernartsreview.co.uk/north-east/r...

What does a holiday in September look like?

Nobody wants to be thought to be racist. But whether you are or are not is for others to judge from what you say and do!

A balanced and sensible perspective on the new Ofsted framework from our friends at @headsroundtable.bsky.social

Right now, this is an extreme minority magnified by a social media that sends extremes viral. If nobody has the courage to say that’s what it is - & that normal people, even if worried about immigration, spend their Saturdays in Tesco or taking the kids to football - it won’t stay extreme for long.

The far right is not ‘uniting the kingdom’. It is creating terrible division and fear. This is uncool Britannia.

I very much hope that those on the fascist march have been popped on the Prevent list. Children with such extreme views in our schools would be.

The people marching in London today are very obviously the ideological descendants of the Mosleyite BUF fascists of the 1930s. The mainstream news and media are too timid to point it out, but that's what they are - and we normalise it at our peril.

The biggest indoor political rally ever held up to that point in Britain... and just weeks before we went to war with fascism.. about 35,000 attended...roughly the same number of people marching today

Flags of St George are haunting me! Here’s the Sardinian flag that is everywhere here, but unnervingly adorned with the black heads of vanquished princes. They are sometimes depicted with the blindfold on. More explicit than the way the English one is used by the far right but it feels the same.

I mourn for Charlie Kirk’s family. I didn’t agree with almost anything he said, but he had a right to go on a work trip and return safely to his wife and two young children. Like all Americans, he deserved to be safe from gun violence.

It is September. Retired folk said I had to have a holiday in September. So I did. Sorry.

Hmmmm. A letter written over a line drawing of a very young and barely developed female body in which youthfulness and secrets are cryptically referred to. No need for much subtextual reading there. But he will doubtless get away with it. Rich, powerful men invariably do.

There were no education events at Reform conference. Their only policies appear to be giving private schools their tax breaks back and changing the history curriculum to trumpet the benefits of empire.

The media mob last week: “she did not pay the proper stamp duty, she must go!” The media mob today: “she is an amazing woman who is raising a son with special needs and is the fall guy for an unpopular government.” They never take any responsibility. ‘Julius Caesar’ captured this so well.

Journalists questioning Nigel Farage should be pointing out Brexit has been a primary factor in the sky rocketing number of small boat crossings. How hard can this be? youtu.be/cKXFjbxSBBI?...

Last November Farage told Sky News: “I’ve just exchanged contracts on the house that I’ll be living there in – is that good enough?… *I’ve bought a house in Clacton* What more do you want me to do?” Oh, I dunno Nigel. Tell the truth? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Pleased to see that we don’t have a reshuffled SoS for Education . For a few years that job got reshuffled so many times that the wall of portraits at Sanctuary Buildings was so expansive that I wondered if some of the pictures would end up in the adjacent loos.

"Farage has given two contradictory versions of the purchase. One that he bought it and the other that his girlfriend owns it. If the second is correct then he has ­engineered a massive saving on stamp duty, larger than the one that forced Angela Rayner to resign." www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...