I will never understand this. "People didn't want to vote for me because of my views." Yes! That's politics! If some of your views are unpopular with your particular electorate, you will probably lose. You don't get a special exemption just because you think God told you to think that way

Yamal is running an absolute mok here

Year 2 of your PhD:

On this topic and immigration, the current Labour government has been steering in the rear view mirror. When immigration plummets and hits OBR estimates and they have to bail out Russell Group universities it might finally dawn on them.

People in my timeline seriously arguing that this is why we needed Southgate, as if Southgate wouldn’t have reacted to Ghana’s tactics by bringing on Jordan Henderson to shore up the midfield in the 85th minute.

A function of the higher income base that Labour now have that such policies are not their real preference any more. Asking your voter base to take socio-cultural hits in return for economic policies that benefit other people turned out not really to work because most people aren’t that selfless

Just as they've fought hard for the support of largely imaginary voters, they were waiting for imaginary Starmerite MPs to speak up on behalf of the imaginary passionate Starmerites in the party

The attacks in Edinburgh, in which an armed bare-chested white man terrorised Muslims, leaving five people injured, don't feature on a single newspaper front page this morning. Two tier journalism

Some people like seeing the flags, many don't. But everyone knows what it means - and it's not about uniting the kingdom.

You wouldn't guess from the coverage that Makerfield is pretty much average for income and deprivation. It is Reform-leaning because it is old, white and less-educated, not because it is especially deprived

Since John Healey mentioned the Strategic Review: It is worth repeating that this study warned that the post-war order was desintegrating, &that Britain needed a “whole-of-society approach to defence”. In a normal world this would have triggered a national debate led by the PM. But Starmer didn’t.

I will point out that the Prime Minister felt that the assassination of an American YouTuber required him to release a formal within 30 minutes of it happening at 11pm on a Friday night. But race riots in the UK itself aren’t worth his time

I do think "false flag" is one of the most destructive phrases ever invented. It's like a cognitive virus. The proportion of actual, documented false flag events to events that have been called false flags must be 1:1000 if I'm being generous

Notwithstanding that attracting such a cohort of anti-Semitic cranks should prompt some deeper reflection, on a purely practical level, how could you not have done some due diligence on your candidate in a high-profile by-election weeks after being dogged by bad headlines around the locals?

- Subsidising consumption in the face of a supply shock - reducing incentives to drive less/switch to EVs - using up limited fiscal space to help better-off drivers rather than the most vulnerable. Hard to think of a worse policy right now.

753 drones! 753! russia fired at Ukraine 753 drones and missiles today, and MIGs just took off to keep terrorizing us. Is this even news in the foreign media? A quick search done from my corridor shelter showed only BBC, Guardian and Euronews reports. russia escalating isn't newsworthy?

I see progressive voters have repaid Labour’s contempt with interest. Starmer won’t learn from this. He’ll lurch to the right in a futile effort to impress Reform supporters who are never going to vote for him.

Ridiculously silly thing for them to say. There is no strategy. That's the issue.

Just watched BBC News have to spool through 17 party politicians from England, Scotland and Wales on election eve. Not the fault of my old colleagues but the antiquated Ofcom rules around election coverage- at a time when online is a wild west- have never seemed more ridiculous.

The peace-at-any-cost crowd shies away from saying out loud that Ukraine capitulating would not bring peace to Ukrainians, but it would turn Ukrainians into cannon fodder in russia's next rounds of wars of aggression.

Statements that have now come to light from a handful of @TheGreenParty candidates are totally unacceptable & require immediate action. There’s no place for anti-semitism or any hate speech in the party. This is a society-wide problem & needs to be rooted out wherever it’s found

And no, nice policies like Renters’ Rights don’t balance out being told your friends and family aren’t welcome here and should be deported.

(Incidentally I also think that makes people better citizens but that's not the primary goal.)

Every single fucking time there’s an antisemitic attack people immediately jump in with this bullshit. Fuck all the way off.

I could live to be a thousand years old and not understand how people do not understand that the logic of 'blowback' only motivates you to do something if you are *already* racist.

Reminder, in light of the awful incident in Golders Green, that anyone who victim-blames or engages in antisemitism or whataboutery isn’t doing anything to help Palestines or end the genocide. They’re just opportunist thugs

MPs are voting along party lines 90+% of the time. It’s only because of the stupid antiquity of our system that they have to do this by walking through certain lobbies (even as a fully functional electronic system was in place during COVID). That system causes some of them to hang around in bars.

If a party talked about "educating the public" today, they'd be monstered as "elitist" and "patronising". The language of education has been replaced with that of consumerism, in which "the customer is always right". The "focus group" has replaced the "pulpit". It's not been a positive change. 2/2

Pardon me for having a memory that goes back any further but there were credible accusations of genocide in both the Syrian and Chechen wars, the former aided by Putin, the latter undertaken by

Screams in Evgeny Lebedev

Politicians just seem to have given up trying to explain the world as it is to people. It's a huge problem.

We do not have 'rational policy' now. We have a government with a patchy policy record that has set major traps for itself in the 2027-9 fiscal events. The rightwing press are not why Labour have shed half their votes to the Liberal Democrats and Greens - those voters do not read it!

The Russian government has something on Donald Trump and it will turn out to be one of the biggest scandals in history.

Think this half hour is why I have big concerns about Carrick

The victory of the opposition in Hungary yesterday, like the Polish election in 2023, is a victory for democracy, not just in Europe but around the world.

this shows Democrats laser focused on a thing they can *actually* do (win the midterms so you can stop Trump congressionally) over a symbolic strongly worded letter (which is what impeachment is in this congress) so I'm sure Bluesky has responded with praise and satisfaction!

All that remains of the southern Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab.

Polanski has said he'll build a relationship w Pu and convince him to give up nuclear weapons; wants the UK to leave NATO; thinks sending weapons to Ukraine is bad and peace negotiations should be prioritized and some Green party fans are trying to gaslight me that he's not a vatnik. Get a grip.

Because doing so would force them to reckon with what it is they are defending. A genocidal imperialist regime of the type they say they abhor.

5/ Yeah dude, Russia's economy is going great guns. They're crushing it. This is the kind of economic inisght and analysis that made Yanis such an invaluable asset to Greece. Is monthly inflation of 6% and a 15% interest rate good, Yanis? Military Keynsianism lmao.

1/ This Yanis Varoufakis screed made me so angry the only way I can salvage my day is to go through it line by line as catharsis. You are welcome to come on the journey toward my aneurism with me. An angry h/t to @sianushka.bsky.social for bringing this into my life. unherd.com/2026/04/why-...

There it is: Trump calls off the attack, declares ceasefire.

I think the non-use of nuclear weapons should be everyone's goal. I do not think our current policy is adequate to guaranteeing that task in the face of the fact that vastly unqualified, dangerous, and deranged sociopaths are capable of getting into the highest echelons of American government.

Banning Kanye West from entering the UK over anti-Semitism concerns then posting about it in a self-satisfied way on on the Nazi app owned by the Nazi sympathiser is just a perfect encapsulation of this government

I can have empathy that psychosis is possible and that Kanye has a verifiable mental illness. But hundreds of people facilitated him, they manufactured swastika T-shirts, they were extras and backing singers and producers of his Heil Hitler single and music video. Don’t these people have any morals?