I haven't posted our documentary *The Trust Crisis* here for a while... so here you go if you have 35 minutes.

Peter Mandelson was hugely influential in New Labour, but some commentary implies that he was its singular political force. No doubt a lot of his 'Prince of Darkness' image was self-cultivated (much like Dom Cummings) to instil fear in opponents and allies alike. He was one actor among many.

Some people like using our (w/ @markuswagner.bsky.social) heroes & villains paper to teach partisanship. We've made it easier (and fun?) for students with a new online playground 🦹 doi.org/10.1017/psrm... www.turnbulldugarte.com/heroes-playg...

#greysky #nobluesky

I enjoy that every generation of advisor thinks they are uniquely cursed with an immensely stupid figurehead PM and they are the real power

A red letter day. As the rain tanks down outside, and the lawn resembles the Somme, South East Water lifts a hosepipe ban that has been in place since July...

The Mandelson saga is doubly bad for Starmer & co. First because it goes against their supposed brand of probity. Second because it fits their actual brand of not listening to concerns from their colleagues and majoring on ideas that only make sense in transactional terms or getting through the week

"IT'S ALL SOCIAL CARE!" they screamed.

It's worth saying that in the UK, parts of 'traditional' media play a significant role in production of online outrage (GB News, tabloids, Telegraph, etc) - dominantly on right, but also on left too.

This quote from a Reform UK councillor sums it up beautifully. Cross-boundary moral outrages, exported online and sold (especially, but not exclusively) to generations that grew up before the internet, are such a central feature of radicalisation today. www.kentonline.co.uk/maidstone/ne...

I’m sorry to hear about Robin. It’s absolutely true that he understudied me in Auntie and Me (with the late great Margaret Tyzack) and I asked him to go on when Arsenal were playing Man Utd. I was grateful! At least he got to do the show once. It was a 90 min monologue he’d spent weeks learning. RIP

Lots here but I can't help but find it funny how low salience the Chagos Islands deal is when the Tories and Reform are utterly obsessed by it.

What is the point of Keir Starmer staying as prime minister?

The Washington Post but it’s ‘The Traitors’

You tell me.

I haven't posted our documentary *The Trust Crisis* here for a while... so here you go if you have 35 minutes.

The US was supposed to be more resilient to autocracy because its Constitution, administrative state, and civil society (mostly business) decentralized authority. But this decentralization may have actually made civil society institutions easier to extort one by one.

At last some stronger political messaging around Pride in Place from the government. For this to cut through to the public, it needs to be a running theme rather than a one-off speech. Is it too little too late for Starmer?

Keir Starmer is going ahead tomorrow with his speech on community cohesion & national renewal: this includes announcing extending the Pride in Place programme to 40 more places. Sky News reports some of the themes of his speech, released to the media news.sky.com/story/sir-ke...

Seeing the first events of the Winter Olympics start today, a good opportunity to mention my book about organisation of the Olympic Games - published in 2012... feels a long time ago.

Ron really doesn't like it either

That Jeff Bezos's Amazon gave Brett Ratner, someone photographed with Jeffrey Epstein and in the Epstein Files, $75 million to make a doc about Melania Trump, while he chooses to destroy The Washington Post, says about all you need to know.

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

Here's who the Washington Post just laid off.

This guy does not look 47.

New Q poll: ICE approval 34%-63%, down from 40%-57% on Jan. 13. 60% think ICE should withdraw from Minneapolis, while 36% think ICE should continue its operations in Minneapolis. poll.qu.edu/poll-release...

I have (more) news! 👇

Weird and almost universal revisionism today. Even at the time, it was pretty clear that Mandelson wasn't appointed *despite* his dodgy links but *because* of them. Trump's Washington is a dirty swamp. Mandelson was deemed a man able to swim in it. This wasn't a secret. Everybody said it out loud.

It's genuinely fascinating how despite Starmer's hatred of Boris Johnson, Boris is easily the PM he's most wound up resembling

Ron Wyden has long form of doing what he can to flag when classified stuff is happening he doesn’t like but can’t talk about. Releasing this letter feels like an *extremely* strong hint of…something.

every malcolm gladwell book starts from the premise that any idiot can become an expert on any topic and then spends the entire book underlining how wrong that premise is

Gets worse and worse

It's a shame Cracker's David Lowery is no longer on Bluesky... the opening track of the band's last studio album is rather pertinent, despite having been released in 2014...

I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.

An observation from our area about proposals for local housing developments is how slow they are coming on stream and how critical social/public infrastructure (shops, GPs, schools, transport, etc) just aren't being prioritised in planning permissions. This will have long-term consequences.

Tiny changes mean Reform lead Labour by 9 and the Tories by 10 in this weeks voting intention, with Lib Dem’s and Greens 4th/5th ➡️ REF UK 30% (+1) 🌹 LAB 21% (-1) 🌳 CON 20% (nc) 🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+1) 🌍 GREEN 10% (nc) 🟡 SNP 3% (nc) N = 2,005 | 31/1 - 2/2| Change w 28/01

Seriously?🌧️

Last week the story was that TikTok censored anti-Trump/ICE/Pretti videos after the U.S. ownership change. We investigated with a large set of US TikTok data and found some interesting results, short thread...

Stop the presses, the podcasters have the global challenges facing humanity figured out!

well, glad our top minds have settled that www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/ge...

One might interpret the Washington Post news as consistent with my ongoing claim that our legacy institutions, once thought to be the bulwark of civil society, will not save our democracy. They are simply too vulnerable to the extortion leveled by the ruling regime.

UPDATE - I have now received a reply from the Greens apologising for the oversight in using my image and quote without consulting me and giving assurance it won't happen again. That's good enough for me, so I won't be taking any further action beyond writing it all up for my Substack

Reminder: Mandelson was appointed to made a trade "deal" (with zero legal basis) with a country which is reneging on it and which anyway buys only 17% of UK goods exports. Not convinced that's worth a scandal which might bring down a prime minister. America-brain strikes British politics again.

Seriously?🌧️

The Greens are coming for Labour's vote and the Lib Dems' bar charts...

I have yet to receive a reply to this from anyone in the Green Party - my image and quote appear under the title "Everyone Agrees, Labour Are Done!". As the excerpt from the same article quoted here I reproduce below makes clear, I do not "agree". This clearly misrepresents my views.

ohhh ‘democracy dies in darkness’ was aspirational

Cowardice is really one of the defining character traits of our age.

just walked out of a dainty little west London café as their "fancy bacon roll" costs 18 (eighteen) pounds and for that price I'd need the "fancy" to mean "contains both caviar and cocaine"