dare both these guys to head to Belfast and start telling these rioters that this community belongs in the hands of the Irish, should be given back to Ireland for the Irish, things of this nature

This is a really good analysis of just how blokey the BBC’s Brexit documentary:

Condemning riots isn't enough. We need policy action, including an immediate appraisal of X as a vehicle for coordinating far-right disorder. And we need political leadership, to challenge white nationalism as an idea, not to validate it daily and then complain when it turns violent.

Zombie Blairites still have British politics in their grip – it’s time to break free | Aditya Chakrabortty Tony Blair’s departure as PM should have prompted a fresh start for Labour. But Starmer’s sad, backward-looking government remains in his thrall. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Horrid.

What a mess: a disastrous, nonsensical outcome. Anti-progress couched in progressive language. ‘The judgment introduces a regressive legal standard that will fundamentally alter the lives of potentially hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people:

Fucking hell

Oh look, it’s the Labour right coordinating with the Times of London on an internal party wrecking campaign. If only there had been recent examples of exactly this happening that could explain what’s going on

When people (Tony Blair) talk about the ‘radical centre’, it’d be good to know what they think it’s the centre of. Because it certainly isn’t public opinion.

The spectrum of acceptable politics, ladies and gentlemen. If you don’t like this, there’s Farage and his crypto millions, just to ensure everyone is properly represented.

Awesome: Five decades of politics revealed as no politics at all, just different ways of badgering the public to accept the desires of a comparatively tiny clique of squillionaire-adjacent ideological cranks. Generations of Britons choosing democracy in any colour they want, so long as it’s black.

Interesting that the idea of another EU referendum is regularly discussed on broascast media as something that would cause division and thus a bad idea. But plans to deport literally millions of people are discussed as administrative questions.

(obviously I think the government should encourage and welcome all kinds of immigration but) extra infuriatingly, basically nobody even thought international students were immigrants until the UK government started to bang this drum. They literally could have just taken them off the figures.

“The injustice of it, I couldn’t believe it.” Former Team GB rower @oonaghcousins.bsky.social talking about the #MECFS “scandal” where patients were told they were deconditioned and needed Graded Exercise and CBT. It is the “opposite of what they needed” and that legacy still runs “super deep”.

Pretty wild if - as alleged here - the opposition and the government were being directed offscreen by a notorious crook who was too embarrassing to publicly appoint, who then turned out to be deeply mobbed up with notorious criminals and Russian oligarchs.

You would think "this Mosley fellow is here to tell us he should be allowed to privatise the cops" would be a step too far even for the Times. But, no.

one of the reasons i am always on about elite persuasion is that i have seen elite persuasion operate in real time. as toby documents here, the radical anti-trans push in the uk didn't come from some "bottom-up backlash," but was orchestrated and organized primarily at the most elite levels

Alex Crawford: "Those being mourned are increasingly medics.. the Lebanese govt says they're being deliberately targeted. They call them double taps, & this one was caught on camera. The video we're going to show you is shocking..."

For real: If The Russians revealed e.g. the Tories offering more NHS contracts to US private healthcare firms, Labour Together taking undeclared billionaire bungs and Farage trousering gigantic cheques from crypto, then The Russians have a surprising enthusiasm for public interest reporting.

We’re going to be referring back to the cuck porn article a lot, aren’t we?

Peck’s presenting this as sleight of hand, a creative technicality that you can imagine Oxbridge twats thinking is very clever, but then you get to “a spin doctor will be quoted as a cabinet minister” which is just straight-up fraud

"I'd be remiss if I didn't also point out, as an American trans person, that Labour's bathroom policy is significantly more bigoted, invasive, and restrictive towards trans people than anything that any American Republican red state has managed to implement."

she was SIXTEEN fucking years old. i never have words to give shape to the anger. every time someone’s “just asking questions” about bathrooms or sports or prison or healthcare or whatever abstract they suddenly think is a problem, there are individual trans people who pay for it. she was a CHILD.

“The previous Conservative government had announced plans to reform “sick note culture” shortly before losing the general election to Labour in 2024. The plans were halted after doctors criticised the proposals.” You might wonder why we have elections at all.

Honestly this seems like the least we can do. But if enough of us do it actually helps. So get on it.

I hesitate to use scary terms like “Shadow Government” here but OTOH I have been asking what Peter Mandelson’s actual job at the Labour Party was for at least five years, and I’m no closer to getting an answer or working it out myself.

The average British punter can say accurately that at the last two elections, they were loudly and repeatedly told by most media outlets that it was vital to Get Brexit Done with Johnson, and that Starmer was just the Sensible Guy we needed for Change.

Strong SA content warning. Absolutely astonishing article.

This isn’t ’progressive’, it’s the same old rhetoric you’d find in any right-wing paper’s opinion section. And it gives an impression that the DWP are a soft touch rather than a bureaucracy capable of stunning cruelty and opacity.

Robinson complained on stage that without the support of wealthy Americans, it wouldn’t have happened. “This event would not be happening if I didn’t go to America,” Robinson told a crowd of people who otherwise complain about foreign influences on UK politics.

Allowing a man who ran a factional org that broke the law when it channelled secret cash to fund Starmers rise, & which then ran a smear campaign against journalists investigating its role, to opine on whats gone wrong for Labour & the need to come together, is frankly absurd.

The man who ran a secret campaign to target and smear journalists says anonymous accounts on social media are polluting our public conversation.

Why does JP Morgan get routine meetings with the PM?

Some Tory MP says unchallenged on the BBC that "the welfare bill is spiralling out of control" Here's that 'spiralling' in full - steady for the last 20 years

Ok, so if Burnham is serious about (2) that would help. But otherwise, Streeting might be the best bet for (3) with the Greens?

"I don't want to be Prime Minister but we can't let Wes Streeting be Prime Minister" is a message I can back.

Insane dystopian shit here, totally unacceptable. I expect politicians and commentators to be outraged by it, regardless of their opinion of the crimes these people were convicted of.

I feel like Wes Streeting would be the current politician most likely to work with the Daleks then get exterminated ten minutes before the end of the episode.

what's preposterous—& makes labour feel so abject—is they've processed the cultural right as their 'boss' whose desires must be enacted & the left (their own voters) as their underlings who must be whipped into line to accommodate them

Today is #MEAwarenessDay ME/CFS is often described as neglected and under-researched. That ignores the true history. George Monbiot and Carol Monaghan have described it as one of the greatest medical scandals of the 21st century.

It is objectively insane that all the money the average renter earns until mid May every year goes straight into the pocket of their landlord.

The inevitable trajectory of this will be the sanctioning of ordinary citizens worldwide who dare criticize the authoritarian regime of the US (etc) governments. Extricating ourselves from US tech infrastructure is a matter of urgency for a free and fair democratic society.

Literally my only sympathy for him comes from having had those dreams where you’re stuck and can’t do the thing, but time passes really quickly. He’s been leader of the Labour Party for six years!

The cold hard reality is that there are now three (3) things that can stop Reform from winning big in the next election: 1. Reform itself collapses from infighting or legal troubles (can't count on this) 2. Electoral reform 3. GPEW or Lib Dems /totally/ eat Labour's lunch a la SNP in 2015

Good stuff here. “This is obviously silly”

Why wouldn’t there be a ‘concerted media campaign’ to destroy Wes? Is it because he is so beloved by the common people?

Getting this guy to lecture Polanski on antisemitism is, frankly, rancid.