⏰ START YOUR WEEK ⏰ Will Trump’s attack on Iran topple the regime or set off a regional war? Plus the fallout from #Gorton&Denton and more. ⏰ With @rafaelbehr.bsky.social & @jacobjarvis.bsky.social ⏰ Out now everywhere – linktr.ee/bunker_pod

Very much this. Westminster relying on muscle memory of two-party politics is in no fit shape for politics as it is now playing out in the country.

Tomorrow’s #WeeklyWrapUp is out early! We take a closer look at Trump’s barmy State of the Union, Labour’s SEND reforms, the latest from North Korea, and a fleet of AI-powered hoovers with @rafaelbehr.bsky.social & @jacobjarvis.bsky.social 🚨 Listen everywhere now linktr.ee/bunker_pod

I don’t live in London anymore but still consider myself native Londoner, like emigré fondness for the Old Country, and I wholly approve of this long-overdue move.

Column. On the nationalist core of Faragism and why it doesn’t need conspiracy, transaction or even knowing complicity to serve a Kremlin agenda. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Column. On the nationalist core of Faragism and why it doesn’t need conspiracy, transaction or even knowing complicity to serve a Kremlin agenda. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Разговор о важном! Reform UK’s education policy, what it reveals about the character of Farage’s politics and where it inevitably tends. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

📳 NEW EDITION 📳 Nobody wants a wider war in Europe, but we might get one anyway. How can we prepare our military and wider society to deter Putin – or maybe fight him? 📲 Ed Arnold of @rusi.bsky.social talks to @rostaylor.bsky.social & @rafaelbehr.bsky.social 📲 Listen: linktr.ee/ohgodwhatnow...

!! … ah

Day after Alex Pretti killing I complained to BBC about presentation of White House statements and evidence as equivalent. Duty of balance doesn’t extend to complicity with clear lies, I said. BBC could and should report WH making false statements as a *fact of the story*. Today I got response …

This. Also, I gave Starmer much benefit of the doubt in print. Maybe too much; striving to analyse ways in which he could succeed - how it might work. But you have to recognise the data that tell you he is failing.

It is cope to believe this is all confected. My whole job is talking to MPs and ministers, I talk to a dozen different ones every day, I spend the week in Parliament in the same corridors, same coffee queues. Sometimes even I have been taken aback by the strength of feeling about the need for change

"History is women following behind with the bucket." So Morgan McSweeney has been replaced by Jill Cuthbertson and Vidhya Alakeson. Antonia Romeo is about to take over from Chris Wormald. Steph Driver may return to fill Tim Allan's vacancy. Sense that now there's a mess to mop up, get the women in

Haven’t yet seen a nerdy piece situating current political crisis in a mathematically predictable recurring pattern of chaos and corruption under headline “Mandel-rot Set” (with suitable illustration) and I think that is a missed opportunity.

As something of a specialist in mitigation, “Actually I took my children with me to Paedo Island” is not what I would open with.

On Labour’s certainty that Starmer has failed and paralysing fear of what a leadership contest actually involves www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

🔥🔥🔥It's emergencycast time!🔥🔥🔥 @rafaelbehr.bsky.social and @zoegrunewald.bsky.social discuss McSweeney's departure and what it means for Starmer and 'Starmerism' in this special bonus edition ➡️ linktr.ee/ohgodwhatnow...

Peter SCANDALson, amirite?

🚨 NEW EP OUT EARLY in case of… you know… 🚨 “I’m Mandy, buy me.” The Mandelson downfall horrifies even seasoned scandal-watchers. Could it consume Starmer too? 🚨 With @jonnelledge.bsky.social @rostaylor.bsky.social @rafaelbehr.bsky.social & @nndroid.bsky.social 🚨 Listen: linktr.ee/ohgodwhatnow...

Exactly this. Starmer’s position is so bad because, even with his defence of being lied to, the question ‘what is the only acceptable degree of past intimacy with Epstein in a potential ambassador?’ demanded the answer ‘zero’.

On the sleight of hand that uses free speech as a diversion from questions of who controls the digital infrastructure of democracy and to what purpose. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

On the sleight of hand that uses free speech as a diversion from questions of who controls the digital infrastructure of democracy and to what purpose. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

⏰Start Your Week⏰ Yet more damning information linking Andrew to Epstein has emerged and Peter Mandelson has quit Labour due to new revelations. Will this scandal ever reach a conclusion? @rafaelbehr.bsky.social and @jacobjarvis.bsky.social discuss ➡️ linktr.ee/bunker_pod

On the Starmer doctrine: pretend there is a way to avoid the hard choice, find out the hard way there isn’t. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The Boss has spoken.

Put simply: if you tell voters you don't want them or are unwilling to represent them, they will vote for someone else.

One of the stories of British politics over last 15 years has been Conservatives and Labour valuing narrower and narrower ideological coherence over their historic, broad coalitions and then being astonished that their vote shares keep falling. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

On the Starmer doctrine: pretend there is a way to avoid the hard choice, find out the hard way there isn’t. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The BBC coverage is absolutely terrible. It leads on "sharply contested narratives" It has a dramatic skew to the US government It has posted the video but has failed to report on what it shows: it shows the US govt account is untrue

Someone should ask Kemi Badenoch (or whichever Tory is up for Sunday shows) if the Tories’ proposed “removals force” with “sweeping new powers” will be modelled on ICE www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Europeans after managing to prevent the collapse of NATO for another 1-2 weeks… #Europe #Rutte

Starmer maybe rightly doesn’t take bait each time but he needs an outrider - a semi-licensed “off message” attack dog - to make Haw-Haw Farage pay for sucking up to the guy who denigrates British war dead.

Welcome to the clicktatorship, where everything is content

The problem when trying to rehabilitate Trump’s attachment to old European alliances is that his politics and character are aligned with the dark forces that had to be defeated for those alliances to exist. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Remember the Soviet joke about a man who always goes to look at the papers but never buys one. The news agent asks him what he's looking for and he says, "An obituary" and the news agent points out that they're always in the back section. "This one won't be".

In case anyone missed it in the torrent of mind-slurry, here is the point where Trump’s speech takes an excursion into raw, undiluted unambiguous racism.

The problem when trying to rehabilitate Trump’s attachment to old European alliances is that his politics and character are aligned with the dark forces that had to be defeated for those alliances to exist. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Kemi Badenoch tells the BBC's Matt Chorley that if she were prime minister, Donald Trump would simply not be like this.

Interesting how, when pressed to sound more forceful personally against Trump, Starmer restates essential nuclear and intelligence partnership. Wld be interesting to know what, if any, implicit and explicit threats US has made to withdraw that cooperation. Strong whiff of backstage menaces there.

If I was President of the United States, the last thing I’d do is start questioning territorial claims based on ‘people arriving in boats hundreds of years ago’.

New Politics on the Couch. On Hypocrisy - everywhere in politics, routinely reviled and, maybe, misunderstood? shows.acast.com/politicsonth...

New Politics on the Couch. On Hypocrisy - everywhere in politics, routinely reviled and, maybe, misunderstood? shows.acast.com/politicsonth...

@stephenkb.bsky.social v good on Jenrick defection, opportunity it presents to Tories, unlikelihood of them seizing it giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Hello Bluesky - glad to finally be here! I will post EU institutional and democracy stuff, especially Commission presidentialisation, the (party-)politicisation of EU decision-making, inter-institutional dynamics, and the growing influence of far-right actors in the European Parliament and beyond!🇪🇺

5 hours ffs

Badenoch driving the most troublesome rat off her sinking ship, ideally to go and plague Farage with competing ambition, is not the worst move.

We regret to inform you that Keir Starmer has once again told a joke. My SKETCH of PMQs. thecritic.co.uk/come...

Very informative conversation here about Iran, internal regime dynamics, its brittleness, its options, drivers and limitations of opposition and more. www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/wha...

When the interior ministry declares its militia to be above the law in terms that equate dissent with treason there really isn’t any question of whether or not we are looking at an authoritarian regime.