As this great thread is doing the rounds again, for me it will always be this

Relatedly, one of the most tedious things people do is go 'wow. How profound. My pre-school child, who I literally taught to speak and whose brain is a highly powerful and retentive sponge, has paraphrased my politics back at me in a cute way'. I mean, no kidding.

Man, the Bluesky Wrapped 2025 is pretty brutal

This, from the FT, is almost the perfect encapsulation of what is so maddening about this government. ‘If a convenient thing had happened we wouldn’t have had to agree to do something which we actually think is stupid.’

i’m setting you free. i’m releasing you from the discourse

Your boyfriend tells Susie Dent that she absolutely nailed her word of the day

Introduce a tax on parliamentary speeches that have a call and response bit

Definitely gives me more confidence in the OBR’s numbers to know they can’t tell the time

OMG. The Guardian have confused Kenneth Clark, presenter of the 1969 series 'Civilisation' with Tory ex-MP & former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke in their review of the new BBC series 'Civilisations:Rise & Fall'

Latest piece for the @thehousemag.bsky.social, on the island of strangers speech and similar. Also ft Bob Hawke. www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...

I have had to pop over to X to stop you posting that bloody Guardian screenshot about Starmer

Not sure if there’s ever been a list of ‘worst political briefings of all time’ but what has come out of No10 this evening is a high new entry

On the left, the refurbished Lincoln bathroom. On the right, picture I took in Saddam Hussein's palace in Basra in 2005.

Man, this person in No10 really wants to get something off their chest about a career bureaucrat who takes ages to make decisions for some reason that I can’t quite put my finger on

If you’re going to post a supposedly unhinged literary opinion. Please make it unhinged, I’m just getting quote tweets with stuff like ‘EM Forster was a bit overrated’.

Slightly amazed at his description of this as a ‘low-level mistake’. Just a completely untrue implication of Government corruption on prime-time TV. No biggie! www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

It'll be wild when Charlotte Church reveals she's been pretending to be Welsh this entire time #TheTraitorsUK #CelebrityTraitors

Have had it up to here with people who think telling you off for pointing out racist things are racist makes them the modern day equivalent of Philip Gould.

We have another “Let Keir Be Keir” quote by a cabinet member doing the rounds. As any student of politics knows, the moment this appears the politician in question is doomed

If Labour MPs really are approvingly sharing the essay here then maybe the problem isn’t Starmer

There is huge market share for the Lib Dem’s to run with the motto of “enough of this American nonsense let’s be sensible British people Again” and not sure anyone’s weird arguments that specific voters should be chased is needed at all.

Lib Dem MPs having literally no idea how hard it is to get ‘cut through’. Part of an endless series that has been going on since the party was founded.

I am not convinced that getting Keir Starmer to say the same thing about Angela Rayner six times is the open goal some people seem to think it is

“Fancy working in Downing Street? The hours are brutal and it’s high stress.” “Is there much job security?” “Most people last a year before being sacked.” “And will I get a reference?” “Oh yes. After you get kicked out we’ll tell the newspapers you were shit.”

Sometimes when dealing with the comms around a bad story you put down the blunt reasoning for a decision to help begin the process of turning it into something palatable. Here they just… used that as the statement?

it's time for the most fiendish literary quiz of the year. "Who said it - John Wycliffe or Wyclef Jean"

Terrific times. Trying to convey a message of ‘don’t panic, but also make sure you aren’t at risk of running out of petrol’. What could possibly go wrong?

This is a wonderful piece about all the times that people hit him (and includes an incredible Stanley Holloway line that I won’t spoil in advance): www.comedy.co.uk/features/com...

Seeing the original Naked Gun as a sullen teenager with my father and both of us ending up helpless with laughter will always be one of my favourite memories.

scientists have been working for years on formulating the text of a social media promo post that would be impossible to ever convert into a single click and they are finally ready to share their findings

Anthony Seldon writing a piece of analysis that should never have been published? Colour me shocked!

The next few years are going to be an enjoyable drumbeat of Conservatives discovering what it means when you're not one of the big two in a two-party system. Wait until they work out what being the third (or even fourth) party is like in Parliament! conservativehome.com/2025/07/15/n...

Strongly agree with this. No10 aside - where they get a lot of spads- we are still basically marooning inexperienced people in massive departments

Live Aid was shit, though. Sorry.

New Bluesky slogan just dropped.

Anthony Seldon weirdly just seems to regularly say things that imply he doesn’t know that much about the history of Prime Ministers or politics. Despite it having been his career

Life in Downing Street seems to be just an endless round of people going ‘What this policy/speech/ briefing by the Government. I had literally no idea!’

Weird thing about this is I don’t think as Badenoch’s spokesperson you really need to be encouraging the lobby on this one. Reckon they’ll be looking to follow up regardless

fully aware that I can't just move to England then complain about people talking about Glastonbury but ohhhhhhhhhhh my god you people love nothing more than talking about Glastonbury do you, fucking hell

“The problem is that the PLP has too many unthinking soft left types,” I say, as I go to work in a Downing Street that loves to ladle social policy obligations on business, with a near-zero interest in tax reform, and whose rail policy is “nationalisation will fix it”.

This run of interviews from Keir Starmer is just… weird? Basically amounts to saying he takes full responsibility for things he then doesn’t take responsibility for in the next sentence. Denies lacking a vision while repeatedly not offering a vision

This is basically my view as well. I can’t see a world in which they seriously think it’s better to risk losing

You have to admire the commitment to creating new material for Would I Lie To You?

The biggest indicator of our national decline is that 30 years ago copy like this would have been wearily chucked in the bin by the editor of the letters page www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/d763c5d...

I don’t know if BlueSky is dying or not, and the accusation it’s a bit po-face at times feels true. But the whole ‘it’s a useful isolation zone for liberals’ argument is massively irritating from people who apparently don’t want the same exclusion area for actual racists

Slightly random mini thread , and I doubt anyone will care but I bought a second hand biography of Samuel Beckett the other day which I think was previously owned by the historian AL Rowse en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._L._R...

This does seem an open and shut case of Adam Curtis making a claim about the polls in 1979 that is completely divergent from the facts.

Choosing to believe that the interviewer misheard “fifty” as “fifteen” and Evans was simply too embarrassed to correct her and just started spitballing the first plausible answer in that timeframe.

This is a big day for couples that are one super online person and one normal