"the dynamic that defines reactionary centrism: the right must be understood, but never blamed. The left can be blamed, but need not be understood."

i swear i was just there to use the zipline!! the zipline!!

Nearly a decade after Newsnight had to edit Corbyn into a MAGA hat, the beloved moderate centre left sensible Starmeristas just make them on their own for real Ofc it's not 'Populism' when the managers do it

I can tell you right now that the far right will still be protesting outside the Britannia Hotel in Leeds tonight. They don’t care who feels unsafe

cannot overstate the degree to which like, no normal person in the uk cares strongly about trans people either way btw. like, the reason the media manufactured moral panic is working is because it has convinced lawmakers that people care about it, not because it has made people care about it

The date at which Britain's "once great institutions" were not like this moves forward, much like the "it was a different time back then" defense of racism. The Tories and the right wing press have been roaring for fascism for my whole lifetime, and I am not young.

New! Cassetteboy vs Keir Starmer. This took absolutely ages, so if you'd like to buy us a coffee at ko-fi.com/cassetteboy we'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

I mean yes this is funny, but the fact that these unconstitutional stormtroopers are so directionless that they literally stand around waiting for random nonwhite delivery guys to bike past them is just pathetic. No mandate, no mission, no clue. Just racism.

What if that ship didn't even exist? Did you ever think about that? I didn't know! So now, if I went in and made a major security issue out of it, everybody steps in. There are no exclusive rights, nobody wins. So I made a decision and it was... wrong. It was a bad call, Ripley. It was a bad call.

Lammy Blows It

Remember how lefties used to say "abolish ICE" back in the 2010s, and got roundly scolded by the centrists for it ever since, and now events have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were 1000% on the correct side of history, but somehow they're still being scolded? Fun.

Liberals spend their entire lives tearing their clothes and wailing for someone to stand up and speak plainly about toxic xenophobia. But they won't ever support someone who actually does.

Classic multivalent signalling error as per @dhnexon.bsky.social 's work: 1. Say to The Guardian that the fascist march sent shivers. 2. Say to The Telegraph that he agrees with the fascists and will do the fascism harder. On the same day. We're all too stupid to not see the contradiction here.

It is fascinating how Britain's journalists have all spontaneously decided to sell this. Owen here knows that the very same survey shows support drops *massively* for a *Digital ID Card*, which is what the government is proposing. But he pretends not to. Why?

It infuriates me that British journalists, no matter what their background, always join ranks with the elites and try to say they're doing it for 'those in poverty'. You're not going to supply those in poverty with a phone, or free internet. And what is proposed is far larger than our neighbours.

Just baffling to see people whose profiles suggest an awareness of politics & social issues exposing themselves as completely unable to understand a basic point like this.

omg lol

you have the power to keep doing this because you do, in fact, have the votes but you should not expect anyone who has not made the same moral and ethical compromises to respect you for it

the labour party deploys britishness like american parties deploy americanness, seemingly without the understanding that britishness is not considered a desirable thing in many parts of the UK they long for that thing american pols can do where they say the name of the country and get a cheer

I’m not sure that we can just move on from all this with a cynical shrug. Of course we all know the Labour Right are horrible. But it is still a big deal that, in a 2 party fight, 1 party was hobbled, then changed beyond all recognition, by a known conspiracy of donors, advisors and the press.

@kamalaharris.com you were the vice president at the time

"The British Army tried to suppress a report revealing that female soldiers were locking themselves in their bedrooms at night to avoid sexual assault by drunken male comrades." [Tiny piece in the Times p13]

Oh no I stayed up late enough to start seeing posts about Keir Starmer

I like Jimmy Kimmel. I really do. I have no issues with him. I'm talking about something very different. Kimmel was only suspended. But he's back now. Karen Attiah and all the other Black journalists are still fired. Y'all do know how to fight, when you want to. But you don't really want to. 🤷🏿‍♂️

This is a bit like when the “Boris Johnson had a Covid-busting birthday party with Rishi Sunak present for the cake” was the first line of a Times long read, briefed as a positive bit of colour by Downing Street. Then two years later the same fact helped bring down the government.

i honestly think the level of energy these guys have about getting people to RSVP to a protest doesn’t make any kind of sense unless you take into account that most of the people saying “don’t RSVP“ are Black women and then you see they’re just dunking on Black women Then the energy makes sense

Well, TiL the great white hope of centrist liberals in the West was groomed at the age of 15 by their 39 year old teacher. Why do they all have to be so weird

What we're seeing in the "don't sign up for protests" discourse is what Paulo Freire described as the convert's failure to trust the knowledge of the oppressed. As the convert tries to stand in solidarity with the oppressed, they refuse to let go of a world where they were the authority by default.

You just know the awful stuff that Rachel says about black people in her private messages. It's astonishing that these people are so safe in their echo chamber that they would be so hypocritical. Of course, these weren't private messages - they're the Labour party's messaging system.

No words.

i think how we got here is that the right's favorite move is working the ref and the radical centrist's favorite move is self flattery that they could never be worked

I am all in favour of Ben being prefaced with a disclaimer about his ideological and factional allegiances in all of his subsequent media appearances. Ben of course does not believe that his rules should apply to him or his mates.

I get to choose between two right wingers for the Labour deputy leader vote next month. What a wonderful state of democracy. The only difference between the two is that one is Starmer's choice, and the other is just a less favoured crony.

"I don't care that he's dead." "He's not a hero." "He's a scumbag." "He shouldn't be celebrated." No, no. I'm not saying that about Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk said that about George Floyd. Just in case anyone's interested in what he thought was fair to say about someone who was killed on camera.

Kyle accuses the media of not doing their job properly when it came to Mandelsons appointment He's right. And its not lost on me that when he says to Phillips, "lots of comments, including from you, were celebrating his appointment", Mandelson was best man at Phillips wedding!

Just to emphasise the point: The campaign to smear Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite that led to people describing his pronunication of 'Epstein' as a dogwhistle was spearheaded by a man who was Epstein's "best pal" and who defended him when he was jailed for soliciting minors for prostitution.

This man will not be fired for calling for the murder of American citizens, yet multiple journalists/reporters/teachers lost their job for accurately reporting things Charlie Kirk actually said and stood for. But it’s the “violent left” that’s the problem

If we transported 2025 Charlie Kirk back to 2012 he would have been widely considered the most vile and contemptible human being in politics, worse even than Limbaugh. That he wasn't in 2025 is a testament to how much of a permission structure for gutter racism the right has built.

THE GUARDIAN: Labour donor Lord Alli evicted tenants before hiking rent by nearly £1,000 Family with children forced out of north London home before property put back on the market at 25% higher rent Archive: archive.md/SQfXO

Lots of people in this country need to hear the message - it isn't the left's fault that everything you wanted and fought for is absolute fucking dogwater. I, too, am sorry that you won and imposed this shit on us, but we actually tried to stop it.

There’s a real generational divide between Labour MPs leaking to the Guardian and Labour MPs leaking to the Huffington Post

At no point are these people ever going to hold their hands up & say 'yep, we fucked it good & proper. We led a 5yr long tantrum to get exactly the dogshit politics led by the kind of personality free briefcase we worship but that everyone but us hates & it's predictably exploded in our faces'

Shout out to everyone only now learning that "Albert Einstein was reclusive at the end of his career, shunning public engagements." Really meant, "For the last *20 years* of his career, Einstein opposed US racism by only speaking publicly at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

Chris Mason here, seemingly unclear whether this is jaw-dropping or long publicly known, or both

It will never cease to amaze me that a grown man can post like this on social media. No, wait I mean "amuse".

Cannot be stressed enough that there is a crucial and fundamental aspect of the Jeffrey Epstein story that directly corresponds with the Jimmy Savile story, to wit: Everybody knew.

IDF sniper from Chicago who says he killed Gazan teenager just for trying to retrieve his brother's corpse: “They’re thinking, ‘Oh I don’t think [I’ll get shot] because I’m wearing civilian clothes and I am not carrying a weapon' and all that, but they were wrong. That’s what you have snipers for.”

I apologise for constantly posting this but I’d like to make sure people see it (7.1k followers here and that’s turned into 84 people following me on Patreon, so I need to convince Uhm about 7k people to follow me there too…)