really doing their best to disprove "change through power, not protest" as an organising principle

Get in losers, we’re grieving

Running against Mussolini by agreeing with him on everything except the org-chart of his proposed train reform taskforce.

Good morning. Immigration is good. Trade is good. There are nuances but they are narrow enough that free and open movement of people and goods should be the default.

I think - and I feel it’s happening - that Labour MPs and mayors should take the lead in taking on Reform, rather than wait for No10’s line

Something I always find funny in Russian propaganda is that they’ll accuse Ukrainians of doing things – like cooperating with the Nazis – that they did on a much, much bigger scale…

Whenever I talk to anyone in Labour about Reform, they explain to me how they need to “defang” immigration. But I’m like: You just seem to keep sharpening the fangs…?

"They've said they'd do that" is crucial. The most important lesson of the last ten years is: when these people tell you who they are, believe them. Anyone saying "surely even Reform wouldn't go that far" just hasn't been paying attention.

Retrospectively removing indefinite leave to remain would be immoral and economically damaging. It would tear families apart. Attacking it as ‘potentially illegal’ is completely beside the point. Argue with the (awful) idea. Don’t try ’well, actually you can’t do that’.

Get a gay to check your organization names

Starmer's condemnation of extremists and foreign billionaires who ‘whip up hatred' has been so slow it feels like it's from another era of politics. And there's still no substance behind it. Nothing to constrain this malign influence on UK politics or to even leave X. share.google/hoDUqXYWinxQ...

www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/work-docu... Quite a stat, this:

This is good but he should say it in front of a TV camera! takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/this-is-en...

I wrote about the noticeable Vibe Shift around Keir Starmer's viability as PM: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

How do you deal with Russian fighter jets flying into NATO airspace? “Shoot them down” says Czech President Petr Pavel. Turkey did just that in 2015, and it didn’t happen again. Only now Europe doesn’t want to find itself in confrontation with Russia, without an ambiguous US.

Fascinating documentary series on Netflix called Gold & Greed - about an art collector who buried a chest of gold in the Rocky Mountains and left clues in a poem in his memoirs, and it set off a crazy treasure hunt involving tens of thousands of people

Separate but related - I feel like ministers like Kyle evangelize about “technology” and the future, but then dismiss concerns (like online radicalization) as sci-fi nonsense

This leaves out the best, most badass part of the letter, which is “and I won’t have to send another”

Wild

Separate but related - I feel like ministers like Kyle evangelize about “technology” and the future, but then dismiss concerns (like online radicalization) as sci-fi nonsense

Far too much of Labour's messaging on policy since taking office has been framed in negative terms. This just sends a signal that the party doesn't like/stand for particular groups - and alienates them. To retain/win support it needs to tell people what and who it stands *for*...

the New Yorker on Jimmy Kimmel

…

"But now we shall both surely drown", said Sultana. "lol" said Corbyn, "Imao".

Peter Kyle is truly an embarrassment of this government

I would’ve thought - given Kimmel’s, for want of a better word, network - there would’ve been a more widespread reaction like this

Remember tweeting months and months ago that I was less worried about Trump pulling America out of NATO and more about him destroying American military capability

I’m really interested in *the direction* in which people view the world. America and Russia are literal neighbours.

Shocked - SHOCKED - that those independent MPs are a “boys’ club”

Oh my god

In the 2010s, this country's elites were thrown onto social platforms with everyone else and could finally read what we all think about them and it caused them so much psychic damage that they decided to destroy both the internet and democracy to make sure nothing like it ever happened again.

I’ve started posting video clips from the show. The average viewership in the first half hour/hour of posting is in the hundreds. One I just posted about tensions between China and Russia? 0 views…

reminder: Jimmy Kimmel is enough of a mensch that he devised a segment on which actors who are just short of having enough work to qualify for union healthcare come on his show and deliver a single line of dialogue deadline.com/2024/07/jimm...

We *really* need to reinstall moral virtue on the right. Even if you dont think the Tate's are criminals, their wider (admitted and celebrated) treatment and attitude towards women is utterly reprehensible. They are scum and the modern right is trying to rehabilitate them.

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 170: Words matter. Words are the conduit for ideas. Words can affect the way your readers see the world; how they behave; how they relate to others. Every political movement, every religion, philosophy, war, began with ideas, translated into words. Use them wisely.

Last year, @ptklein.com and I talked about Robert Redford, The Candidate (1972), and All the President’s Men (1976) linktr.ee/strategyaaron

"Fred West and his wife Rose seem to have a knack for getting into trouble!"

From Wired a few weeks ago. A lot of the people who I was told for years were the adults in the room are being asked how they want to be remembered, and that answer is very clearly "cowards." www.wired.com/story/uncann...

"Britain must burn more fossil fuels and bills must rise in order to power the robot that'll fire everyone. How else will I afford my next private island?"

Steve Richards: Is the end of Keir Starmer's premiership already inevitable? 🖊️ @steverichards.bsky.social

I wrote this last October open.substack.com/pub/strategy...

All political tribes can be hypocritical but the right's current level of hypocrisy on free speech is deliberate. It's an assertion of power not a blindspot.

Shame on Downing Street for going along with this. So much for being committed to a free press

think if you're broadly a centrist and were suuuuuper concerned about attacks on free speech from the left and so you decided to give the right a hearing then you need to realise you were taken for QUITE the ride (and don't really have anyone to blame but yourself)

I heard it was a tough competition between these two.

We’re supposed to be *pretending* to be submitting to the Trump admin, not actually doing it

Fascinating read

These guys love to call folks on the left heretics but here they are engaged in literal blasphemy.

The government definitely needs to take a look at TikTok. I just signed up to promote the podcast. Not really followed anyone yet. First video on the homepage is an AI-generated one of a police officer telling a boat of refugees: “If your name is Mohammad, we have a free house for you.”