We're making the UK the hardest possible target for foreign interference. Last week, I led briefings with MI5 and key sectors to help them identify the threat. This week, we're launching a new tool to help universities report cases to security experts. www.gov.uk/guidance/pro...

Lots of mentions in the Parliamentary debate today of former MP and DCMS member Ian Lucas’ book on information warfare ‘Digital Gangsters’ — three years old but ever more relevant subscribe.bylinetimes.com/product/digi...

This is worth watching in toto. And though I am loath to single out any politician given the existential threats of Russian interference in Ukraine our democracies, @danjarvismp.bsky.social’s grasp and reach and generosity on this issue is stunning. www.youtube.com/live/BXlk5uf...

Peter Oborne was prescient in his @bylinetimes.bsky.social diary 👇 bsky.app/profile/byli...

Required reading.

Outstanding reading, brilliant insight.

This is a good read

🔴The End of Morgan McSweeney: Peter Oborne on Keir Starmer's Departing Chief of Staff As McSweeney resigns, we re-publish Peter Oborne’s Byline Times reporting on how Keir Starmer's chief strategist drove Labour towards defeat by the far-right www.bylinesupplement.com/p/the-end-of...

Oborne couldn't be more right about this bit: "Yet more shocking was the withdrawal of support for Labour’s candidate in Clacton, paving the way for a smooth victory for Nigel Farage and the synchronised dog-whistle attacks against Britain’s vulnerable Bangladeshi community."

It's not very often that analysis like this ends up being so spot-on even in retrospect. Respect to Peter Oborne, and thanks for republishing.

The whole thing an excellent read - and re-read. Thanks for the reminder. And great mention of the unjustly mainstreampress-shunned "The Fraud", Paul Holden. Oborne is up there with the greats, integrity, authenticity, honesty--the lot.

Essential reading. “I predicted .. in August that Morgan McSweeney would win his power struggle with Sue Gray. He has duly done so .. This is a disaster for Labour, but even more so for Britain .. Such creatures may be useful during election campaigns, but should not be allowed near government.”

This really is an excellent read.

An excellent summary.

McSweeney and Cummings both benefited from a mythical status promoted by lazy journalists: Advisors’ “status is elevated to often mythical levels, but also the journalists whose careers are dependent upon maintaining good relations with them.” Like Cummings - McSweeney just shouldn’t have been there

While celebrating McSweeney’s resignation, I don’t think Starmer should necessarily go next. He has a moment to pivot to reform and transparency. He can still change the political culture if he wants to. People can surprise you. Think of Zelenskyy. Live in hope

My hunch is that McSweeney really believed a ‘Blue Labour’ approach was the right way to win back the ‘Red Wall’ seats, while radically underestimating the reality of anti-Tory tactical voting

This is magnificent 👇🏻👏🏻Prescient analysis that is deeply depressing 🤔

Starmer👎 "McSweeney’s core job is electoral strategy, and I suppose I can see the rationale in mopping up as many voters as possible regardless of how racist or bigoted they are. But Harold Wilson was onto something important when he said the Labour Party was a “moral crusade or it is nothing”."

This is very good

Another must read from @bylinetimes.bsky.social

"If current trends persist, the McSweeney/ Starmer legacy will be twofold: the final destruction of Clem Attlee’s Labour Party – and a Nigel Farage premiership."

'Long before anyone else, Oborne traced how a backroom strategist had succeeded in seizing the levers of power, while pursuing a factional war against the left and playing into the hands of the nationalist right.' @bylinetimes.bsky.social is there any hope that it could be turned around?

'McSweeney’s core job is electoral strategy, and I suppose I can see the rationale in mopping up as many voters as possible regardless of how racist or bigoted they are. But Harold Wilson was onto something important when he said the Labour Party was a “moral crusade or it is nothing”.'

'Wilson, like his great predecessor Clem Attlee, understood Labour is a broad church uniting left and right. There is, moreover, a great deal to be said for doing the right thing and not just the strategic thing. Indeed, Starmer’s promise to put ‘country before party’ involves doing exactly that.'

'a coterie of political saboteurs picked out Starmer and ran him as their candidate for the Labour leadership. Their leader is Morgan McSweeney, now Starmer’s Chief of Staff. Their objective was the destruction of the left, and Holden shows that they were not scrupulous about the means.'

Good grief. Is there a single politician, not being manipulated by others, out there? Is there any media, other than Byline Times, out there that is honest and truthful?

Our great @bylinetimes.bsky.social diarist Peter Oborne spotted the problem with McSweeney back in August 2024. Here's 18 months of his coverage of Keir Starmer's Departing Chief of Staff open.substack.com/pub/bylinesu...

(Actually the claim was being the "third Rome")

A federal judge in Oregon issued a sweeping rebuke of the Justice Department’s nationwide push to seize state voter rolls, ruling that the department can no longer be presumed to be acting in good faith and warning that its conduct threatens voters and states’ rights.

Morgan McSweeney’s fall offers a new beginning. Starmer and his cabinet had better grab it | Polly Toynbee www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

If you hear someone saying that they hope lawyers are ready to go to court to protect free and fair elections, I suggest you let them know that my law firm is already litigating more than 80 voting and election cases in 40 states.

ALERT: "The intelligence in this case is as least as dangerous to our democracy as the Ukraine call was in 2019.” I will sit down with the Gabbard whistleblower’s attorney TODAY at 12 PM PT. This might be one of my most important interviews. Link: youtube.com/live/P3TvfMI...

And Johnson actually put a son of KGB agent into the Lords. Where were the outraged media then?

This series of articles by Peter Oborne is so spot on - withering about McSweeney - and his obsessive focus on party politics, scheming and tactics, at expense of policy conducive to the national interest - and in process ultimately ruining Starmer’s govt.

The "Labour Illuminati" & the deep state will control the puppet strings of Rayner and install Streeting, says former prime minister Liz Truss, who also says Labour have nobody to compare to herself.

Our great @bylinetimes.bsky.social diarist Peter Oborne spotted the problem with McSweeney back in August 2024. Here's 18 months of his coverage of Keir Starmer's Departing Chief of Staff open.substack.com/pub/bylinesu...

Check out the fucking TIMES magazine cover this weekend

They must have been aware much like the Conservative Friends of Russia… www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Still my favourite evening on Bluesky. bsky.app/profile/pete...

The email source here

Epstein was in and out of Russia every few months according to his travel documents, but Mandelson was partying in nightclubs in St Petersburg and regularly in Moscow. How did our intelligence services fail to pick this up? Or were their reports and investigations suppressed?

If you’re wondering why the Silicon Valley Tech Bros mutated into MAGA monopolists and purveyors of online hate and Russian propaganda, this dinner might be a good place to start

“Will Lewis’s exit is long overdue. His legacy will be the attempted destruction of a great American journalism institution” www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...

Terrifying that such powerful people have mad and dangerous religious extremist views.

Ok UK media - oh so scandalised by Mandelson - when are you going to be scandalised by US interference in our democracy? Epstein, Farage, Bannon, Vance, Thiel, Musk, Trump, Brexit, Heritage Foundation, the funding of far right populism to collapse our govts….?? After you’ve helped their collapse?

Farage - a total hypocrite on the Mandelson appointment. And, besides, the Epstein files expose him too. A grubby apologist to Trump. A useful idiot to Bannon. And a traitor to the UK. open.substack.com/pub/adambien...

Most of our media is studiously ignoring the Epstein links to Brexit, Farage and far right populism. Farage is being touted for No.10. He wants an even more extreme Brexit. A race to the bottom to sell us out to this global network of oligarch crooks. Why TF isn’t he being investigated and stopped?

It is no longer some far fetched theory that billionaires are trying to destroy our societies, because they want to rule as despots. And I for one don't it's radical to state they should be expropriated.