C.I.A. Deputy Director Has Replaced Agency’s Top Legal Official With Himself. It is not clear what is behind the move by Michael Ellis, a Trump loyalist. A legal ethics specialist said it could raise conflict-of-interest issues.

What on earth has happened to the Tories? This wouldn't have been acceptable in 1965 let alone 2025. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Interesting: Leaving the #ECHR would be a grave mistake, writes former UK Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Sir Robert Buckland KC👇 🔗 conservativehome.com/2025/10/05/r... via @conservativehome.bsky.social

I'm usually a scold for sharing headlines w no link, but the piece is inessential - exactly who you'd go to (Ron Radosh and Joshua Muravchik) if your rolodex is outdated and you want a "modern socialism is bad" piece.

If you could take the men & women who won the Second World War, and show them what people who claim to venerate their memory are doing to the country and its ideals, you would make some very unhappy spirits indeed.

Politico: Kent County Council controlled by Reform UK, 'is likely to raise council tax rates next year after its cost-cutting “DOLGE” program struggled to find savings, the FT reports. Council Cabinet member Diane Morton said local services were already “down to the bare bones”' Exactly as warned.

One reason Labour leaves me confused: buff.ly/c7m4CGZ

Today will see a flurry of speculative claims about the GFA & ECHR. Most significantly that rights weren't important/were late editions/didn't mean the whole ECHR in NI law. I'm begging journalists to push back. Civil Servants were planning for Labour's Rights Agenda for NI from the 1997 election:

*gasp*

In another demonstration of Hegseth-style opsec, Hegseth has detailed discussions of deployment of special forces unit on Signal, and screen shots of the signal messages are leaked to media. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Exclusive: Nigel Farage has not updated his register since May, despite continuing to present his GB News show, record Cameo videos and being a verified X user Qus are now being asked about the non-registration of his shareholding in GB parent co All Perspectives observer.co.uk/news/politic...

Notable how far France is ahead of the UK on this stuff

“To be honest, I think things are worse now than in 1979,” he says. “Clearly, there was a lot more racial violence then than there is now, but it’s coming back. What’s worse now is that the rhetoric of the extreme far right is not too dissimilar from the rhetoric across the political spectrum.”

Support for staying in the ECHR has been rising (probably a Farage effect of solidifying the majority who oppose him, maybe Trump osmosis effect). Media and political opinion on the right believes there is a strong public desire to quit. Badenoch has now committed the Conservatives to quitting.

Trump wants to declare this a win. Question is whether he’ll let Netanyahu take it away from him.

If this was 15 years ago you would have assumed it was a mockumentary.

An interesting point raised elsewhere: these boats that the United States is striking don't appear to have the fuel capacity/storage capacity to even reach American shores.

Many of their people ended up as movement Conservatives in the Republican Party. Within the Democrats, they were eclipsed by the more business friendly DLC.

Insufficiently appreciated how much Blue Labour resembles the Old Labour Right in the US - Social Democrats USA/Coalition for a Democratic Majority.

In trying to elicit sympathy, The Teleform may have landed Farage in trouble instead. I don't see this declared as a donation anywhere in his register of interests...

Israel: The High Court rejected a request for an interim order to appoint Zini as head of the Shin Bet.

Possibly just the vibe of one particular congregant at Holy Trinity Brompton?

The part of Crumpsall where the attack took place is incredibly mixed at a house to house level: a mezuzah outside one house, a koranic text next door.

Look, nothing will get picked up of this car crash beyond Badenoch's howler over NI supposedly supporting Brexit, but read on, and her take on NI is entirely mediated by English interests. On the Legacy Act the only constituency that matters to her is army veterans: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The UK baffles me. To summarize the country's 21st century: they handed the reins to conservatives and conservative governance systematically weakened, isolated, and impoverished it. Never mind "great power," it barely qualifies as a developed country any more! And yet the right just plugs on.

evergreen post

Nobody inside government seems able to give any clear account of what they are proposing or not proposing on indefinite leave to remain for migrants already in Britain My column discussed some apparently contradictory messages www.easterneye.biz/keir-starmer...

Tory plan to scrap Climate Change Act 'backwards step' that would 'damage our economy', says CBI - www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

England imports another element of Northern Ireland flags culture.

These issues are also anchored on a deeply flawed assumption that there are no working class voters who might also have a more liberal or leftish outlook

Fundamentally, if you were designing a refugee policy that annoyed everyone, then I'm not sure you could do much worse than still accepting refugees but turning them into a permanently precarious underclass.

Turns out the Catholic Church is dominated by the professional managerial class.

What company to keep. What a journey. It's really something to read Goodwin's 'impact case study' from REF2014. Far right extremism: against it before he was for it. impact.ref.ac.uk/casestudies/...

We now have two v prominent advocates of Reform - both Matthew Goodwin and Isabel Oakeshott - arguing that Shabana Mahmood (so Rishi Sunak and Paul Ince) can't be English. That was a settled question long before this match in 1998. This kind of radicalisation by online racists would harm Reform

There’s definitely something interesting in the fact the “Englishness is an ethnicity” people seem so uncurious about Englishness as a culture. Like, you never see Matt Goodwin eulogising test cricket, or warm beer, or Gregg’s, or mad East Anglian non conformism, or In Our Time

The Spectator points out that if Miliband bans fracking a Reform government can just repeal it. If George Osborne did this, they would be calling it political genius.

Labour to launch 'Send the Frackers Packing' campaign against pro-fracking Reform UK in shale gas areas This is bloody excellent. Well done Ed Miliband. www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

I went to Labour conference and tried to work out if Sadiq Khan really is running for a fourth term as was reported last week (probably not) and who is trying to succeed him as Labour candidate and the messy politics of that. www.londoncentric.media/p/sadiq-khan...

Aside from Goodwin being a racist POS, it is remarkable that he actually does not understand the difference between ethnicity (which is still a group identity) and race.

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important

Given today's speech, a reminder that POTUS has asserted a prerogative to use of the US military to kill outside the law—a prerogative without any clear limiting principles. www.justsecurity.org/120568/carib...

17 people are dead from US strikes in the Caribbean this month and we still don't really know who they are and so far the president and VP have made jokes about scared fishermen.

All the jokes and memes aside, Hegseth is now openly acknowledging that the Trump administration wants to ideologically reshape the US military in line with its Far Right authoritarian agenda for America and its neighbours in the Western Hemisphere

A lack of meaningful Palestinian involvement in the Trump and Blair plans - and where they intersect - is against all best practise in reconstruction and reconciliation which is usually predicated on the fact that the local population should own the process.

🙄

The ECHR is essential to safeguarding the Good Friday Agreement but Nigel Farage wants to walk away from it. 🚨 Hilary Benn MP: "I cannot think of anything more irresponsible. It's wrong, it's reckless, and we've got to make sure it never happens."

Was Orwell calling on Labour to embrace the PMC in 1941? 'The suffocating stupidity of left-wing propaganda had frightened away whole classes of necessary people, factory managers, airmen, naval officers, farmers, white-collar workers, shopkeepers, policemen.' www.orwell.ru/library/essa...

Part of what is going on is that blue collar nostalgia is useful for disciplining (or just expropriating via AI) white collar workers, which becomes ever more important as the latter form a larger part of the workforce.