Step 1: Ensure that your left-wing programme flatters the pre-existing prejudices of Britain's media class

You will never get the commentariat to care about this even a hundredth as much as they cared as that time a college girl wrote an OpEd about rape culture in the campus newspaper in 2018.

Happy “liberal arts professor helps save the Union” day to all who celebrate

Matt Goodwin is not just repulsive, he hates Britain. Yassin Mohamud's story is a fantastic example of how great this country is. That you can come here as a refugee, work hard and end up as Lord Mayor. That's inspiring! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Also, it's long past time to retire vulgar Marxist arguments about how racism and nativism are just a tool that the capitalist class is using to divide the working class. This stuff is not a distraction. It is a central motivating and binding force in politics, both in the US and elsewhere.

even if it was good policy, this shit is completely ancillary to the goal of actually limiting the power of big tech. Elon Musk has a trillion dollars and is trying to start a global race war, your response to that can’t be “kids should be on their phones less”

If only there was a word for "people granted asylum". Or perhaps the BBC is avoiding using the word "refugee" because it makes this policy look even more like it is - performative cruelty?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Defenders of this sort of stuff often call it a return to common sense but it's actually a radically new thing, education that explicitly does not think that they have to prepare children to become good fellow citizens.

Vital that refugee stories like these get told so that people don’t just disappear behind the demonization and misrepresentation that is now so widespread

I do find it a bit upsetting how the world became a noticeably kinder place in many ways as we grew up and that seems to have made some people furious

My favourite one of these is that the Russian word for Germans is немцы which means "the mute ones"

I remember when non-binding language suggestions from university HR departments were national news, subject to repeated outraged columns in multiple media outlets. Do you see any of that national outrage about this real, bona fide, state-enforced intimidation & censorship?

Dead people aside the fact that even lots of very right wing young people do not like Brexit is huge

A decade+ since I was inadvertently invited to a Downing Street room with Facebook/Google/etc and Cameron walked in and asked everyone what they'd do to boost youth referendum turnout and a grand woman shouted "WE NEED GRIME ARTISTES, DOES ANYONE KNOW ANY GRIME ARTISTES" and I began to doubt Remain.

Bunch of journalists are just desperately looking for an equivalent for the Truss crash on the left without wanting to understand why that happened because they know the people who cheerlead the crash socially

With the heat and being up since 3am it will be a miracle if my 4yo doesn't murder someone at school later.

Let's remember one thing before Starmer goes: this is the man who thought it would be a good idea to risk thousands upon thousands of deaths in poor countries by cutting aid to own the libs. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, mate. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-to-reduce...

The lives, happiness, and dignity of real human beings matters more than whatever philosophical point you are trying to make is basically the entire basis of my ideology now.

It really is noticeable that there are a lot fewer England flags up everywhere than there were in the last World Cup, presumably because nobody wants to be mistaken for those clowns who were putting them up everywhere for no good reason last year.

This is an embarrassing image for the UK. A self-respecting British fox should be dragging Binface's contents out over the stage

I think this is a really important point and something that struck me reading histories of the Thatcher government that really should have struck me before is that so much governing is just making thousands of small decisions that all add up. If you have no compass, these decisions will clash.

Concerned about this 'swathes of ex-Reform voters returning to Labour' narrative taking hold. On the numbers it does not seem likely to be true - Reform got more votes at this by-election than they did across the constituency's wards at the locals.

i think more than the fact of having bad opinions about gaza itself, looking at everything happening in the world right now and choosing "im gonna write an op-ed praising trump on gaza" as the thing you want to speak up about is insane.

If Labour stands for anything I thought it was caring about the individual life experiences of the less well off. And for most Labour supporters that also includes immigrants working legally in the country.

Shit like this does make me wonder how many people were left wing in the past entirely cos they thought the left was more iconoclastic

Al Carns is a quietly strong contender in the contest to be the British politician who finally gives me an aneurysm

Americans have forever lost the right to make fun of cricketers stopping for tea after they inserted this into football.

Every little trick like this should be seen as a small theft from the common stock of trust and goodwill.

Sunak's national service vibes tbh.

re the day's debate - I get that I was pretty precocious but I did move to an entirely different country where I didn't know anyone, by myself, at 17 years old, and I'm yet to regret it for even one moment, and I hate that we're apparently building a world where 17yos as seen as babies instead?

Entirely unscientifically from my IG feed but the only parents I know who are celebrating this are also the sort of parents who were the socially successful kids at school.

NEW POST: SEND reforms and the forgotten children at risk of exclusion. Justina Asafu-Adjaye, says any honest assessment of SEND reform must begin with the system as it exists now, not the one being imagined in policy language. www.specialneedsjungle.com/send-reforms...

I’ve been watching a lot from when the UK brought in same-sex marriage and it’s remarkable how willing Tories were to constantly make good,clear arguments for it. “Marriage is good for [reasons]. Therefore all couples should be able to do it”. When does Starmer ever make arguments for his proposals?

“Curfews for older teenagers will be introduced. Daily social media use will be restricted for 16 and 17-year-olds in a move designed to curb unhealthy late-night scrolling habits”. Sure. Why not? Let’s say 17 year olds can vote but can’t watch YouTube in the evening.

Deeply funny to give 16 year olds the vote and then impose a curfew on them using social media

In addition to your point, it's in fact...good if most people who come to fill a vacancy in a low pay profession move into a higher paying one after a while. In a low pay job that is a vocation for some people, you will always have some turnover. That's fine!

So I hate Kalshi but fuck it if companies rediscover going viral for being woke then cool. We can turn on them when we stop doing melanin checks on stabbers and dick checks in bathrooms.

Send in...the Towns

My younger daughter is hosting her first sleepover. She spent the afternoon writing a scary story to read to her friends before bed. Now, the other girls are too terrified to sleep. I couldn’t be prouder.

It’s crazy how many American adults on here haven’t figured out that the gun industry is selling a fantasy of empowerment in the same way that people who sell truck nuts are

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

UK papers this morning are horrendous, exemplified in the Times editors saying the ultimate cause for fascist unionists in Northern Ireland conducting a pogrom, burning houses and attacking non-white people in the streets is ‘legal and illegal immigration’, calling it a ‘national security risk’

What the absolute fuck???

a psychological theory: a reason ukraine became a cause celebre for left liberals and social democrats around the world after february 2022, not just in its neighbourhood, is because we so desperately need a good cause to believe in that doesn't seem fucking doomed

Burnham saying that we should look at banning the kirpan was further confirmation that the response to Starmer's failure will be 'what if we had the same soft left policies, the same equivocation, but with a more charismatic leader who actually likes and does politics'

An awful lot of this is downstream of a decision not to antagonise Trump. If you make that a priority then all sorts of really obvious things become unthinkable.

there were already many reasons to do this but Elon Musk actively encouraging racist violence in Belfast should be the final straw for every UK government institution to stop doing business - including being on X - with him in any way, and for him to be barred from entry to the country.

In the before times BuzzFeed would have a quiz up by now for 'which Peter Murrell embezzlement item are you' and this is what they took from us

Superb and fun little paper looking at peer effects amongst West Point Graduates ahead of the civil war. In years with a larger free state cohort, fewer slave state officers joined the Confederacy. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

He was better though deeply imperfect on AS than Corbyn and I’ve considered whether he got the issue more or just cared more about winning so wanted to close down a political vulnerability and I’ve settled on “who cares?”. It’s just the opposite of wondering whether Keir is really anti immigration