GB News has accumulated losses of £140 million since its launch five years ago, The Telegraph reports. Still nowhere near profitability. Accounts at March 2025, the most recent, show a loss of £22 million.

The US and Iran have agreed in principle to hold talks, but no date or location has been set yet, WSJ reports.

Trump on Iran to Fox: “I don’t know how much longer they can survive.”

@chadbourn.bsky.social Grown ups have arrived - Last paragraph "non-belligerent". Going to be very interesting who isn't allowed in !

If the #JCB Family of Multi-Millionaires are so hard up to pay proper Inheritance Taxes, why are they able to donate SO MUCH MONEY to #Reform Party? Oh ... so they have expectations of #Reform helping out the Multi-Millionaires? Right. Noted. "Party of the People", eh?🤮🤮

A sanctioned Iranian supertanker - with its tracker on - has sailed through the Strait of Hormuz into Iran without interference. (Fars) Looks like the US blockade is just hot air. Who would have guessed.

Bit of a Let Them Eat Cake moment from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Morning Bluesky.

European NATO.

The US has lost a $238 million MQ-4C Triton surveillance drone over the Persian Gulf.

Remember when Trump put Magic Tariffs on all film and TV made abroad to bring them back to America? We all thought that would work, right?

One night that revealed Trump’s collapsing mental state. He’s getting worse.

“Globally the Far Right exist in a supportive ecosystem, a transnational system of corruption, repression and hatred. From Trump to Putin, Milei to Bolsonaro and all the mini-Fuehrers of the European white supremacist parties, the success of one strengthens the others.”

Fourteen years ago today, I went to @chadbourn.bsky.social's Business of Writing workshop at Alt.Fiction. The rest, as they say, is history...

Trump has attacked the Pope for the third day running and lashed out at Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for defending the Pope, in an interview with an Italian newspaper, CNN reports.

“It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.” - P G Wodehouse

The writing life, courtesy of Franz Kafka.

These are not sentences I ever thought I would write as a political reporter Labour MP Samantha Niblett wants Britain to have more open and inclusive conversations about sex – and that includes talking about it herself!

UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves tells The Mirror: “I feel very frustrated and angry that the US went into this war without a clear exit plan, without a clear idea of what they were trying to achieve. And as a result the Strait of Hormuz is now blocked. 1/2

Germany and Ukraine have signed a defence cooperation agreement in Berlin.

Xi: "The world order is crumbling into disarray."

“Globally the Far Right exist in a supportive ecosystem, a transnational system of corruption, repression and hatred. From Trump to Putin, Milei to Bolsonaro and all the mini-Fuehrers of the European white supremacist parties, the success of one strengthens the others.”

The Strategic Defence Review, which Robertson spearheaded, came out in September 2025, as I was writing the last chapter of my book, which is focused on foreign policy and strategy. I read that entire document and interviewed a number of experts about it. A few thoughts. 🧵

The US and Iran could resume talks later this week or early next week, Reuters reports.

New YouGov Westminster poll: RFM: 24% (=) CON: 19% (=) GRN: 18% (+2) LAB: 17% (+1) LDM: 13% (=) RES: 4% (=) SNP: 3% (=)

“We are underprepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe... Britain's national security and safety is in peril."

Starmer has set up a new cabinet committee to deal with the fall-out from the Iran war, the BBC reports. That means the government is expecting a long-term impact on the UK economy from a completely unnecessary and illegal conflict. The Middle East Response Committee meets shortly.

Morning Bluesky.

They’ve gone back to blowing up small boats. “Applying total systemic friction on the cartels. On April 13, at the direction of SOUTHCOM commander Gen Francis L Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations. 1/

Major effort underway.

Dropping like flies. Swalwell went earlier, now Texas Rep Tony Gonzales has resigned from Congress. He had an affair with a staffer who later took their own life.

Fear in MAGAWorld, anger in the Kremlin, joy in Europe.

Trump completely and unsurprisingly lying at a presser as he bizarrely accepts a McDonald’s delivery. Did you post that picture of yourself as Jesus Christ? Trump: I did post it, I thought it was me as a doctor. It's supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better. And I do make people better.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey says the King's state visit to the US must be cancelled. “(Trump) is a dangerous and corrupt gangster and that is how we must treat him.”

Fear in MAGAWorld, anger in the Kremlin, joy in Europe.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov: “The Hungarian people have made their choice, and Russia respects it. Russia expects to continue contacts with Hungary's new leadership."

Reporter: “Why did you attack Pope Leo?” Trump: “I don’t think he’s doing a very good job. He likes crime, I guess. “We don’t like a pope who says it’s ok to have a nuclear weapon. We don’t want a pope that says crime is ok. I am not a big fan of Pope Leo.”

Trump’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz will start at 15.00 (BST)/10.00 (ET).

Morning Bluesky.

US forces will start the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz tomorrow (Monday), CENTCOM says.

The US is pulling ancient aircraft out of storage after all the losses in Iran. USAF has reactivated retired KC-135 tanker aircraft including a 68-year-old Stratotanker built in 1958, now undergoing maintenance for possible return to service, BILD reports.

Live results here. vtr.valasztas.hu/ogy2026?filt...

Polls have closed in Hungary. A record 77.8% turnout. No exit polls, but shouldn’t be long till the actual results roll in.

Good. The wreckers have been setting the agenda for too long.

Screed # 1, with Trump attempting to upend the global economy with a blockade.

Reform UK donor linked to sanctioned Iranian conglomerate A churchwarden behind a £200,000 gift to Nigel Farage’s party is the director of a company cited in French intelligence memos

After three hours, a record 16.89% of the electorate had voted in the Hungarian election, a huge six-point increase on four years ago. #HungaryElection

“America’s experiment with MAGA is over. JD Vance will not win in 2028, nor will Rubio. Something is shifting in the American psyche.” - Matthew Syed in The Times. (He’s Right Wing, anti-Europe, anti-Net Zero and all that goes with that.)

The US-Iran peace talks failed. Vance is returning to America empty-handed while Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei says the talks took place in "an atmosphere filled with mistrust, suspicion and doubt".