BREAKING: JD Vance comes out in support of birthright citizenship

Would summarise this as: treat voters like adult stakeholders and not children who need to be managed.

This might be the most viciously cutting paragraph I’ve ever read that contains zero lies or inaccuracies. Just brutal truth.

This has to be one of the least surprising news stories ever written

This ties into the “save our high streets” debate too. Although it’s politically unpopular, modern consumer preferences mean that most towns can’t support a traditional high street as many imagine it. That might be unpalatable, but that doesn’t make it untrue.

This is utterly revolting, and should be condemned as such.

Leaving aside the absolute nonsense culture war bait here: Yes we need more workers in many trades, but we do not need 50% of all school leavers to become tradespeople! Deeply, deeply unserious and stupid analysis.

This is like the Shadow Realm version of when everyone on Labour Twitter was doing fantasy cabinets during lockdown

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?

I'm not sure I could ever forgive this government if it allows the BBC World Service to die

Great thread - and illustrates an important point that is often missed. Freezing the thresholds isn’t just regressive by making people on lower incomes pay more. It also means that those on very high incomes pay off the loans in full much quicker - and then stop paying!

The eternal dichotomy of Scottish rugby

Everyone who participated in the Great Free Speech Panic was either a cynical partisan or a credulous moron

Lib Dem voters: too much like the 2024 Labour voters, painful to admit the 2024 strategy didn’t really work Green voters: painful to admit the 2017 election result happened Tory voters: eww!!! Might have to use words like ‘aspiration’ And so…the 18 months they’ve had instead. So

There being only one UK university on here and it being the LSE is absolutely incredible. Not the one that immediately comes to mind if I start trying to thing of “woke” universities…

This means that even if Palestine Action ad not won on Human Rights Act/ECHR grounds, Palestine Action would have won on another ground. No doubt this will be missed by a lot of media reporting of this judgment, but even if HRA repealed etc, Palestine Action would have *still won*.

I’m not qualified to opine on the legal merits of this decision, and so I will not. However, this has become yet another case of the government getting itself into a political quagmire through short-sighted desires to “look tough” and appeal to Reform voters.

This is British culture at its finest (also he’s completely right on all three points). A sticky toffee pudding should be sticky but soft, drenched in sauce and consist just of the pudding and custard - no unnecessary distractions.

I appreciate that for non-physicists this is not immediately intuitive, but space is actually terrible at cooling things down and anyone who suggests it’s the perfect medium for it has - to put it bluntly - no idea what they’re talking about

Loss to Reform - 700k Loss to Green - 800k Loss to LD - 1m Loss to Don't Know - 1.3m Ref gain from Cons -1.7m Ref gain from non-voting - 1.7m. "Someone who is good at winning Reform votes please help me, my party is dying" (all figs to Summer 2025, ripped from @dylandifford.bsky.social)

The purest realisation of the financialisation of everything, promoted by those who have realised there’s a group of people who are: 1. Bored/existentially terrified 2. Wealthy enough to be worth scamming 3. Overconfident in their own intelligence And are fleecing them for as much as they can.

Data centres in space will not happen. Leaving aside technical and physics problems, there’s a fundamental barrier: building a data centre in space will be hugely more expensive than doing the same on Earth. Unless we literally run out of space (unlikely), there is zero reason not to build it here

The Discord news is why I oppose age-gating content on social media. By doing so, you leave it to platforms to decide what kids can see - American platforms who take their lead from the US government. Meaning that right now, age gates are being used to prevent access to any queer-related content.

Look all I'm saying is we've tried chaos *without* Ed Miliband

A reminder of one of the most important rules of life: never forget the Celts…

This is incredibly mangled but the core point is basically right: If you get rid of a comms director, you had a bad comms director. If you lose four comms directors in two years, you have a garbage in garbage out problem.

Japan is a typical, developed democracy. Elections take place in an environment where the general public have a range of political parties to choose from, operating in a pluralistic media landscape, with totally free, secret ballots, after which the LDP win.

Right, but just to clarify, you did not appoint Peter Mandelson, because you were not Prime Minister.

Also, McSweeney’s statement says he takes full responsibility for Mandelson but that he didn’t oversee the process. Which begs the question: who did and why aren’t they resigning too?

Right that the prime minister has resigned. His successor, Keir Starmer, has a very difficult inheritance.

In keeping with Keir Starmer Thought, this comes three days too late to be of any political value or appease anyone

Okay, British bluesky folks: Who else is staying up for the Super Bowl?

I agree. And I hope that within the EU we might mitigate this by legislation. Here is how: www.digitalemigration.eu/digital-sove...

This. Unfortunately, one of the most societally damaging aspects of social media is also one of the simplest: the fact that you can directly monetise your activity means that grifters are incentivised to spam whatever will maximise attention, regardless of truth, ethics or anything else.

This is what I meant when I said a few days ago that this will be a drip drip drip story. Between the FT and others pursuing existing lines of inquiry, and almost guaranteed new revelations from the ISC releases, this won’t go away no matter how much Starmer hopes it will.

Everyone has their breaking point, I guess! (A rather spectacular goof from The Spectator...)

this is who we think it is yeah? *UK POLICE SAY CARRYING OUT SEARCHES IN WILTSHIRE, CAMDEN *UK POLICE CARRYING OUT SEARCH WARRANTS OVER 72-YEAR-OLD MAN *UK POLICE SEARCH RELATED TO PROBE INTO PUBLIC OFFICE MISCONDUCT *UK POLICE SAY NO ARREST, ENQUIRIES ONGOING

I have no doubt Mandelson lied. But, given what was already known and in the public domain when he was appointed, limiting scrutiny to these three specific questions is a completely failure of judgement and responsibility.

I’m sorry, but this doesn’t hold water. I, some random dude with a Bluesky account, knew all about those links when he was appointed. For Starmer not to know suggests he was wilfully blind.

There's no reason to accept this as normal, though. Much of Starmer and Labour's unpopularity is not misfortune but his own doing. Mandelson was a choice. Consistently pursuing policy positions designed to appeal to people who will not vote for you - and alienating core supporters - is a choice.

There's exactly one normal man left on planet Earth.

This is the basis for my Ed Miliband propaganda. Is he the perfect candidate? No. Does he, out of the viable options, have by far the most consistent, convincing and deliverable worldview and agenda? Yes.

this is vicious and correct www.economist.com/britain/2026...

Lots of Mandelson/Partygate comparisons today (of varying degrees of accuracy). One key similarity: because of the role for the ISC in vetting docs for release, and the ongoing Met investigation, we will get new news in bits and pieces for months. It’s not one bad story. It’s a stream of them.

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

Well that’s his Economics A-Level failed