📺TV EN DIRECTO | Jorge Pueyo, de Chunta Aragonesista, que ha duplicado los resultados del 2023: "Le decimos a Azcón que este es el principio de su fin, que la izquierda aragonesa está más fuerte que nunca" #EleccionesAragón social.elpais.com/3iqbp9

The media, then. Now, many are silent, but the rest are omnisicent hypocrites.

The Downing Street chief of staff's job just can't be 'winning the election'. That's someone else's job! It would be like if someone went 'he was ruthlessly focussed on cost control in Whitehall's canteens'....okay, but that's *someone else's job*!

El PP ha convocado elecciones para estar más en manos de Vox que hace dos meses. En su cabeza parecía espectacular

A big, healthy, fuck right off to the far-right in Portugal's presidential election today, it seems. The Portuguese remember. If only others, elsewhere, did. ✊🇵🇹

"Eighty-two years after his execution by the Gestapo on June 16, 1944, the Jewish historian and resistance fighter Marc Bloch will be inducted into the Pantheon on June 23... His family requested that 'the far right, in all its forms, be excluded from any participation in the ceremony.'"

Is there an upper age limit on this tax?

Just beyond parody at this point

One thing is very clear in Spain now - PP can only govern with Vox, a party of real-life fascists. This is Pedro Sánchez's last best hope in general elections where turnout will be higher than in regionals. It's not Vox and PP voters currently staying at home.

The main point about Net Zero is not that it’s a vote-winner or loser, or even that it’s a legal or treaty commitment. It’s that it’s essential to the medium-term liveability of our planet. 1/

The Times calls Keir Starmer's decision to hire Peter Mandelson an "egregious error" which deserves an "inquiry into the appointment process." Not included is any demand for an inquiry into their own appointment of him, long after his post-conviction relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was exposed

My unpopular opinion: releasing the emails & messages surrounding Mandelson’s appointment is entirely reasonable. Releasing every communication between Mandelson and any ministers or Spads over the course of his ambassadorship is disproportionate, unnecessary and sets a really bad precedent.

I don't think this is accurate or fair: they are not from "Team McSweeney" beyond being appointed as deputies within no 10 Autumn 2024. They have different trajectories from him & each other. Alakeson built her career outside party politics in power to change

McSweeney going now very much fits the pattern of this government doing the thing it should have done after having first spent all its political capital on defending not doing it

Four points from six against Spurs and Liverpool away. City will be pleased with that 😉

The differance between *what the govt is actually doing* and ehat 90% of people, including its MPs apparently, think its doing is remarkable.

I may not know much about management theory, but I’m not sure having two ‘Chiefs of Staff’ is one of the favoured models.

Imagine if there'd been a couple of minutes to go and Liverpool had equalised. Absolute carnage.

The electoral genius of Morgan McSweeney in graphic form ...

I do wonder about anyone who thinks McSweeney single-handedly won Labour its majority. They do realise they were up against a catastrophically unpopular government? The 2024 result was very much an underperformance against the fundamentals.

And that's ultimately who he was: the preferred chief of staff of the 'no policies, just vibes' crowd, who are in denial even now that they have driven Labour to the brink of death.

Got to be honest, I know absolutely nothing about either of them but the fact they're being promoted from within Team McSweeney does indicate Starmer has learned absolutely nothing. That said, he's so far removed from political reality he probably doesn't realise there's anything to learn.

I mean, very obviously these blokes should not be Labour MPs. Yes, of course they're blokes!

Everybody looking forward to the Dominic Cummings / Morgan McSweeney / Nick Timothy podcast? The Rest is the Fault of the Blob

All rumours, of course, but it would be very Starmer not to understand that a strategy revolving around hating your voters and coveting voters who hate you is doomed to fail no matter who is responsible for it.

Yes, god help we risk a floundering government that feels like no one is in charge.

Reform Gain

This type of X comms from the Home Office seems a political gift to Reform, and fuel for overt racists, while repelling progressives at the same time

Unfortunately, Starmer does not know this.

Any sports event where the main interest is the half-time show is not really a sports event. Any sports event that even feels the need for a half-time show as anything more than mild distraction lacks self-confidence and has its priorities wrong. This is a hill I will defend strongly.

You don’t know how heartening it is for a Man U supporter to know that however bad things are with us there’s always Spurs.

Spurs relegation doom watch thread (1) Serious football clubs assess players on a muliple series of factors. Characteristics like temperament, fitness and consistency are given as much weight as technical ability ...

Peter Mandelson – the great genius at the heart of New Labour. Dominic Cummings – the great genius at the heart of 'Leave'. Nick Timothy – the great genius at.... Morgan McSweeney – the great.... Steve Hilton... Can we ban all alleged great geniuses and cast them into outer darkness forever?

Labour source: "It seems bizarre Morgan has gone just for giving advice. There are plenty of other people still around Keir who have hidden behind Morgan and tried to pretend they weren’t pushing for this appointment. They will no longer be able to." www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/morgan...

Not promising for those pinning their hopes on a change of strategy.

Well, this quote has aged interestingly.

In a touching tribute to his mentor, Morgan McSweeney has resigned in disgrace.

Time for McSweeney to move to the phase of his career where he writes the same column monthly saying that the Govt’s woes are a consequence of them having failed to stay the course he charted for them.

Ex-Corbynites exuding schadenfreude at Starmer's self-inflicted disasters need to ask themselves why someone like Zack Polanski and before him Caroline Lucas when faced with the Labour establishment seems able to avoid all the traps that Corbyn and co so enthusiastically plunged into

The barest minimum. But so much now depends on who Starmer chooses to replace him. The danger is McSweeney - or those close to him - are advising on this. If that's the case, nothing changes. www.ft.com/content/af75...

Sorry, final comment on this, the real visible tension in Thiel's commentary, if you strip back the pseudo-intellectual horse shit, is a belief that environmentalism and the ensuing regulation is a bigger driver of apocalyptic societal collapse than the climate change it's set out to prevent.

France has ended up in a strange position after using some €250bn of tax-payer money to build a fleet of nuclear power stations. Wind and solar power is merrily entering the French power market at prices nuclear production can't match, resulting in huge surpluses of power. 1/

Polling below Reform’s lead seems to be all over the place at the moment.

Reform’s former Deputy Leader of Worcestershire County Council Councillor David Taylor resigned from the party live on BBC Politics Midlands.

This! Labour’s leadership is being talked about as if it’s some kind of poisoned chalice. In reality it’s a chance to take over the first term of a government with a huge majority. It’s the political opportunity of a lifetime.

We’re buying software to run the NHS from this fruitcake.

I suppose we now know that you shouldn’t try and complete one of the most physically demanding events in sport with a torn ACL. The commentators keep on banging on about “no Hollywood ending”, but nothing about a duty of care. Imagine a boxer being allowed to fight with a detached retina.

Since #bbclaurak is trending, let’s remind ourselves that ONE MONTH ago, the BBC invited Mandelson on for a soft-ball interview on her show. While HIS CLIENT , Palantir’s Louis Moseley appeared as a pundit Both, as I wrote at time, were ‘abject failures of journalism’ 1/

Of course, at this point there remains one very good reason why a Rayner candidacy, let alone leadership, is a terrible idea - and that is not the right wing press's fault.

Colour photos and print that did not smudge. It was revolutionary.