‘Like England, Greater Manchester has its richer south, the Cheshire fringes where the superstar footballers live, its main city of hedonism and sky-high rents, and its decapitalised northern towns.’ @jamesmeek.bsky.social on Andy Burnham’s Manchester, from 2024. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"During his summit with Xi, Trump also suggested that the US, China and Russia should join forces to combat the [International Criminal Court], saying their interests were aligned, according to the people familiar with the talks."

Crispin Odey and the £79mn libel battle that wasn’t - www.ft.com/content/edbe... Nothing but awesome respect for the resilience of the FT and victims

Reading this and thinking of the taxi driver in Torquay last weekend enthusiastically telling me he’d watched a video of Nigel Farage speaking up on Question Time to champion the needs of those who earn just £15,000 a year. He’d later discovered it was AI, but “I was impressed anyway”

it’s such shibboleth of modern politics to blame politicians for failing town centres when the primary driver is - surely - all of us buying more and more stuff online

If you like it then you shoulda put a stylised owl’s head on it

A remarkable portrait from @christopherjm.ft.com ‘I’m fighting two wars. One against the Russians. And one inside myself.’

It's a 70s sitcom, but without any good humour or lovable characters.

Highly recommend @hettieobrien.bsky.social’s timely new book

This is essential reading

#FrescoFriday the tomb of Nebamun, an accountant from Karnak. It dates from c1350 BC. The hunting scene in particular is extraordinary; the detail on the birds is so life like, you’d think a 17th century Dutch painter did it 🏛️BM 📷 mine

Everything these days is a choice of 'the all-inclusive luxury package, £499' and 'crisps and a fizzy drink, £4.99' with no in between

Very good on why Britain can't seem to build or run anything unless a group of seven-figure-bonus suits in Manhattan give their permission

Gas generation was down 16 per cent in the first quarter due to the UK's latest wind power generation record. If it weren't for renewables this fossil fuel-induced energy crisis would be even worse. www.businessgreen.com/news/4528492...

I’ll never forget watching The Wicker Man with my outer Hebridean mum. “I just don’t know where there got all that wicker from”

Little 🧵 on vetting: There’s been a certain amount of chest-puffing from former holders of DV clearance about how rigorous and exacting the vetting process is and how rare for it to be overruled. The latter is definitely true. Never heard of it happening, ever. 1

No10’s account is incredible. I held Developed Vetting for nearly ten years and spent three years at the heart of the Cabinet Office. I have never heard of a Developed Vetting denial being overruled. Here’s why…🧵 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Great analysis of Orban's defeat from Ivan Krastev c.o. @equatormag.bsky.social www.equator.org/articles/the...

You don’t even have to be a socialist and make an argument any more, it’s there on the front page of the New York Times: champagne for the wealthy, austerity and war for the rest.

I keep thinking about the UK elections in 2034 when the country will be so desperate to kick out Farage after five years of corruption, racial persecution and institutional destruction that it'll vote for an ex-Farage fan called John Briton to do the job

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MAGYAR.

Wonderful news from Budapest but also a horrific marker of where we have got to that Orban’s entirely normal acceptance of the fact of his democratic defeat should seem so strange

Looks like it’s gonna be a very bad night for Matt Goodwin, James Orr and the Spiked crew….

There is no McTry.

Andrew Cockburn on Mossad’s kill list - read it here: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

This is very good, treating NATO as it is, an alliance of fading convenience, rather than, as too often wrongly characterised, a body with agency apart from that of its constituent governments

Here on the beach, feeling angry about privatisation all over again

From Roger Scruton cafes to paying Matt Goodwin $10k a month, Viktor Orban has built a network of populist right think tanks, journalists and activists Today Democracy for Sale delves into Orban’s allies on the British right Well worth a read democracyforsale.substack.com/p/orbans-brits

God-emperors are the worst people to have to get presents for

There is an imagined working class, that largely no longer exists and a modern working class that the political class rarely interact with outside of service provision.

Today, I'm introducing my wealth tax — and more than 50 members of Congress are joining me. It’s time for the government to start working for American families, not just the ultra-rich.

There is something profoundly unserious about demanding the country spends vast sums on reducing its carbon emissions and then calling for a massive fossil fuel subsidy to consumers the moment gas prices rise.

These people have a funny way of saying "Environmentalists have been proved right yet again."

Donald Trump is still continuing discussions with an unnamed Iranian leader. #wato

It is given to few to draft their own epitaph

Yep, largest TACO. The enemy gets a vote. Iran delivered PAIN to Trump via multiple paths: (1) Hormuz Chokehold (2) Gulf Kings (3) Financial meltdown Domestic politics of war termination then requires Trump to sell strategic defeat as Iran "crying uncle" & US "winning" bsky.app/profile/jeff...

Danish state broadcaster reporting how, after Venezuela, Denmark sent transfusion blood for combat casualties and explosives for runway demolition to Greenland. (American-made) Danish fighters sent for ‘exercises’ carried war loadouts of weapons www.dr.dk/nyheder/indl...

They said it would take 193 years to clean London’s air. We did it in nine. 💨 London has now met legal limits for nitrogen dioxide air pollution.

Reminder to avoid the Thiel distraction. A point we’ve been hitting on tour is the temptation to apply intellectual history methods to a regime of accumulation (digital capitalism) is misguided. You won’t understand the Tech Right by reading books (they don’t read). Look at how they run their firms.

The Secretary of War of the United States of America, ladies and gentlemen. Book now. Must close soon.

Why aren't Iranians rising up to challenge their regime, as they did in January? Many answers here in this insightful report by the FT's Teheran correspondent Najmeh Bozorgmehr as.ft.com/r/6e31d260-f...

They should put a monkey on the £50 note and a pony on the £10 note to confuse the hell out cockneys.

Lebanese are just dead. Israelis are killed.

I think this is about the temperature but honestly it works for decades as well

‘My father and I went to hand in our empty cylinder and returned with eight kilos of cooking gas. Other men were carrying cylinders home with children walking beside them as if they were guarding treasure.’ Hassan Ayman Herzallah in Gaza, new on the blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

The war of theocracies

On being in Kyiv in 1991, and now