"Dame Antonia is described as behaving in an "unreasonable," "degrading," and "demeaning" way towards staff and of being more interested in promoting her own "personal brand" on social media than that of the UK government." The second half of that complaint is said quite widely around Whitehall.

Starmer needs to commission an independent inquiry into Labour Together- or he too becomes implicated in an increasingly unsustainable cover-up New by me in @theguardian.com on why PM needs to act on Labour Together hiring a PR firm to smear journalists www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Marco Rubio just flew to Budapest to deliver a speech in which he provided a full endorsement of Viktor Orbán in the upcoming Hungarian elections. Here is the letter he signed in 2019 warning about Hungary's "downward democratic trajectory" under Orbán h/t Carrick Ryan

Farage absolutely clueless on the Epstein/Mandelson story here, where the FT (especially @pickardje.bsky.social) has led the way on recent revelations. His thin skin could easily become a vulnerability.

"The White House is caught in a trap of its own making. During the election, it thought it could use the Epstein story to embarrass Democrats, and then drop it without anyone noticing. That hasn’t worked, and their obvious desperation to move the story on only makes it harder for them to do so."

Britain enters its greatest recession of all time due to the Great Plumber Surfeit of 2037.

Yes, my nine-year-old that I just made up is constantly coming home from school with excessive homework from double gender followed by woke studies. AND the school is even teaching identities in maths class now!

They found a woman! Only one, of course. Don't want to get carried away.

Fine, I admit it, I was the one who made up Al Carns as a generic name to test how many people would support any Labour MP but Starmer, it's gotten out of hand and now I don't know how to stop people talking about him.

Watched the Blair docs. Here's the quote – from Cherie – that has stayed with me: “He is an amazing politician. As a husband and as a human being, that’s a different matter. But that’s really between me and him.” What does she *mean*? www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-t...

"As ever with Blair, it is the desire for a legacy that seems most likely to squander it. Liz Truss might be the most obvious post-prime ministerial flameout, but there is an argument that Blair’s meltdown is lower-key but more consequential."

"The Green Party has a habit of supporting things in principle and opposing them in practice. It wants environmentally friendly transport, then opposes HS2. It wants clean energy, but opposes wind farms locally. It supports affordable housing, but opposes almost every building project it sees."

BlueAnon (the putatively liberal version of QAnon) is 100% a thing and it’s important for us to acknowledge that and try to root it out.

EXC: Robert Jenrick has been mocked for using Ozempic and told “you can't take an injection for personality”…by his Reform colleague Matt Goodwin. In previous interviews, Mr Goodwin also said Jenrick had “no charisma”, and Reform risked becoming a Tory tribute act” www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

The $15 million spent on Vought's personal security detail would be enough money to deliver polio vaccines to around 21 million children.

Fahrenheit is an American temperature measure in that Americans will endlessly explain why it's actually better for every day use to the rest of the world, who will all continue to just use Celsius.

Also, it favours motorists and penalises pedestrians. Rare to find such vocal opposition to that, as well.

"The Green Party has a habit of supporting things in principle and opposing them in practice. It wants environmentally friendly transport, then opposes HS2. It wants clean energy, but opposes wind farms locally. It supports affordable housing, but opposes almost every building project it sees."

This is an incredibly unusual result in the UK, BTW, where it is quite rare to find a ban or a crackdown that the public doesn't love.

Whereas this metaphor I think is exactly right. (Right down to we do on occasion close a park or a space to children in order to give us more time to fix the space)

On enforcing the DSA: “Brussels will have to choose either to pull the trigger on potential enforcement actions against some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names or admit that, for now, its digital rulebook must run secondary to the bloc’s wider reliance on the US” www.techpolicy.press/the-eus-onli...

"AI detectors" are themselves AI, and yet are endlessly trusted by people on here if they say that a newspaper article is AI. AI detectors are snake oil. None of them reliably works. And UK broadsheet are not yet using AI to write articles. No, that link to the deal you found doesn't prove it.

Just because you have bottomless (mysteriously funded) budgets to throw every piece of strategy spaghetti at the wall doesn’t mean you should. Especially when you burn your bridges with the civil society groups who would have helped you, by screaming at them that they’re on the side of paedos.

I’ve picked up on an interesting vibe lately that pro-OSA and child safety groups are sussing that spending five years trying to rewrite the global internet (≠ platforms), whilst labelling anyone who criticised them pro-child abuse shills for Big Tech, achieved nothing. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Retain them as key parts of the government's comms operation?

Dispatches from the #GortonandDenton by-election: local community Facebook groups are being flooded with some really dodgy 💩. One for my neighbours in Levy and for investigative journalists - not sure whom to talk to about it. See a few screenshots here, and 🧵on why I think it's sus below.

also, maybe it's just me, but I'd probably put the catastrophic decline of vaccine uptake nearer the top of the list of "most urgent public health issues" because you know, I don't think kids should die of measles in the 21st century.

Reforms endless confusion around whether or not it wants to pay people to have kids continues. The party initially supported the two child benefit cap, then u-turned and said the government should abolish it, then u-turned AGAIN and said they should keep it. Now...what?

not that it's not a complex issue but it drives me *insane* that we've been watching the world set itself on fire over the past decade or so partly because of people quite suddenly going from Not Very Online to Way Too Online and governments now want to recreate that experience with teens everywhere

Since the government is about to introduce a social media ban for under-16s based largely on vibes – and Jonathan Haidt's shitty book – in the hopes it boosts its popularity (it won't), I'll re-up this. If we're banning under-16s, why not over-60s?

just got an anonymous leaflet in my letterbox asking me to put in an objection to a local Premises License application and making the point that I "may wish to use AI to get a comprehensive view of how to craft your email effectively" 😬

The Green candidate – a local plumber – is convinced she can win. But does a Labour-Green fight risk splitting the vote on the left, and handing the seat to Reform? ✏️ @jamesrball.com

Plot twist: it’s posing as more responsible AI refusing to engage in roleplay, but actually it’s just that user testing has shown users like their AI daddies to be emotionally distant

And not forgetting this too bsky.app/profile/timb...

The cat was going for a moody romantic look here but I think she's ended up looking like she's trying to be a Labour candidate in a safe seat.

It is absolute and utter neglect to let this come this close to the wire just as the US has let most of its overseas broadcasting shutter.

Thing is, if the tools are building anything truly worth a damn, people would be obsessively talking about what they've built. This feels like cargo-cult productivity at best. The Pokemon Go of hustle culture. Show, don't tell. If agents are so great, the results should speak for themselves.

Just a total collapse of the right's cordon sanitaire! A Tory MP and the Tory leader in the London assembly are both on the board of this movement!

Notably there aren't any houses in this shot. It's a motorway underpass heading into the industrial estate on which Reform have set up their HQ. The number of voters who could hear this IRL is probably close to zero. So...do they think it's a good visual for social, or what?

The Labour Together dossier making hay with one of the journalist's Jewish identity feels *particularly* damaging here, given the story it tells of its own founding being a response to Labour antisemitism. Josh Simons' responses to date feel distinctly lacklustre. This one might be unspinnable.

But I thought Matt would debate anyone, anytime, any place 🤔

It might. Turnout differentials may also matter. Reform’s surprise win in Runcorn & Helsby driven in part by unusually high turnout on their strongest wards. Gorton & Denton a much heavier lift though. They need to turn their vote out in force, and need low anti-Reform turnout & a split vote

Josh Simons has refused to answer a single question from Democracy for Sale for 10 days Now he is saying that the ‘PRCA is investigating’ so nothing else to see here If he was so ‘distressed’ by the reports he commissioned why is he ok with a voluntary PR trade body being the only accountability?

Yesterday morning kids were sent running from their bus stop in panic because ICE showed up. This guy at today’s ICE Out of Lindenwold protest is a must watch 😭. @maddow.bsky.social

Just thinking of who’s lost their job etc over Epstein and I’m wondering who the most senior straight man who’s faced consequences in 2025 or 2026 is? I’m excluding Morgan McSweeney here, as he didn’t lose his job over any association with Epstein, but over ignoring Mandelson's.

An important thing to know about Gorton and Denton: in 2024, Reform and the Conservatives *combined* got less than 25% of the vote. Reform only wins this seat with both a breakthrough and a catastrophic failure of coordination on the left. Might that happen? www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-m...

I lived in a (rented) house on a sheep farm in the Yorkshire moors (peak wuthering) for a while as a teen. I also lived in a house previously lived in by Bramwell, the shittest Brontë, for a bit. Commissioning editors: I am available for takes!

Russia killed Alexei Navalny with frog toxin, UK and allies say

“I think I recognise your dog,” one man says to another. “Yes, Lucifer! Yeah, he’s gone viral a few times online,” says the proud owner of a tiny black Pomeranian, as someone nearby mumbles that he hopes the dog’s name gets shortened to “Lucy” when meeting on the doorstep.

I spent a day up in Gorton and Denton, following the different campaigns for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social Here’s what I saw: www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-m...