Keir Starmer is under pressure to resign for appointing a friend of Epstein's as US ambassador. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was just outed as a friend and business partner of post-conviction Epstein and it's barely a headline.

BBC News presenter asking Chris Mason whether McSweeney going means the heat is off Keir Starmer and Mason gave a waffling answer which ended with ‘I think the key question now is whether or not McSweeney’s departure means the heat is now off Starmer’

Everyone should of course pay for @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com 's McSweeney story youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/so-about-t... I am a bit doubtful that this guy was a genius schemer.

To be fair, he lasted just over a month longer than Mandelson did following the May 97 election.

A QTWTAIN.

Listening idly to this FT politics podcast. www.ft.com/content/b5b3... The utterly fatal point is the one made by @stephenkb.bsky.social at 33 minutes. What is the achievement Starmer cites? Removing the child benefit cap. Which he was forced to do. /1

[For lawyers only] The full story is that the Rolling Stones were booked for the Ball, but then had two hit records (versions of Lennon & McCartney's 'I Wanna Be Your Man', and Buddy Holly's 'Not Fade Away'). So, their manager demanded more money to appear. /1

"The air was mild, it was obviously Spring, the sun was shining and the daffodils were out." GHT's first impression of England at the beginning of March 1939, having left a bitterly cold Berlin, arriving in Southampton on a kindertransport. @dinahrose.bsky.social

They didn't even top the bill

Sir Guenter Treitel came to the UK on the Kindertransport. He became the foremost authority on English contract law. Famously, he held the Rolling Stones to their contract to play the Magdalen Ball in 1964 for £100 - they had suddenly become superstars after being booked as unknowns in 1963.

Plenty of fine, normal people. But not great. The reason they're finding it hard to replace Starmer is the very reason why Starmer is PM. There was nobody else. Even the Tories (!) in 2024 had more plausible leadership candidates than Labour does. /1

Says something (and nothing good) about British publishing that Jim Kelman's recent books are being published by PM Press in Oakland, California. The story of the stone is a collection of his short short stories. Includes a fabulous introduction on his style, and the voice of his characters.

I yield to nobody in my hatred of these blockchain tokens, but this isn't quite right. There is no "con", nor is it "pyramid scheme" nor are the buyers "rubes." If any of that were true, the value would have hit zero years ago. /1

yup

Guenter Treitel on his experience on the kindertransport. www.oxfordchabad.org/multimedia/m... Treitel was, in my view, the most important English contract lawyer of the last 100 years. /1

If BTC goes to zero I’m going to open a bottle and wait for @spinninghugo.bsky.social to tear up the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 like a terrier with a postman’s trouser leg.

Extortion. Let us not play down its utility for extortion.

Declarator of incompatibility for Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, s 170 by Lord Lake in the Outer House

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

George Orwell: "not gifted artistically... not intellectual ... a horror of abstract thought .... world-famed hypocrisy ... a love of flowers ... addiction to hobbies" But "a land where the bus conductors are good-tempered and the policemen carry no revolvers.. hatred of war and militarism" /1

The Al Carns stuff is just a re-run of the Burnham fantasy. Starmer is a lame duck, he won't be running in 2029, but he is going nowhere fast. But this crisis should be seen as an opportunity (see also Trump on Greenland, which Starmer missed). /1

when people start talking about lucy powell as leader, you’ve got to start thinking the labour party might really be cooked this time

Not the only but one problem is, as @duncanrobinson.bsky.social notes, part of the appeal of Starmer was as a clean start human rights lawyer, after the years of Johnson sleaze. If he can't fulfill even that role, what is the point?

Weird and almost universal revisionism today. Even at the time, it was pretty clear that Mandelson wasn't appointed *despite* his dodgy links but *because* of them. Trump's Washington is a dirty swamp. Mandelson was deemed a man able to swim in it. This wasn't a secret. Everybody said it out loud.

Reading a legal theory blog, by someone who I respect, about the "Hart/Dworkin Debate" as if it were still a thing. FFS. Hart won. We've got satisfactory answers to "general jurisprudence" questions, and have had for 30+ years.

I am really fed up with the facts out there in the world radicalising me. Leave me alone, stupid inconvenient facts.

It is one of the oddities of US law that this is seen as a "civil rights" case. The man was intentionally shot in the back whilst posing no actual or perceived threat to anybody. You don't have to be Dicey reborn to think the issue is murder.

Reminder that "jaywalking" was literally made up by american car manufacturers to shift the blame for accidents from drivers to pedestrians. "Jay" was a slang term meaning "idiot" or "rube".

The problems with Starmer's Mandelson decision 1. It was objectively disastrous 2. There was no real upside if things had worked our 3. It reinforces the view that he has no real political judgement 4. He was influenced by others whose judgement is bad But I still can't see Starmer falling. /1

Well. Quite.

In a democracy, whether it is acceptable to severly injure someone should be determined by democractically elected representative making laws in an open way in advance. Not by 12 random people in secret after the fact.

We should abolish juries. We should be governed by laws, enacted in advance. Not by some of 12 randos, some of whom think hitting someone in the back with a sledgehammer is ok, because part of a political protest.

Starmer would be toast. If there were someone else. But there isn't. So he isn't.

Some PMs seems to enjoy the job even though obviously unsuited to it (Johnson). Rarer are those who are suited to it, but who don't enjoy it (Callaghan, he got it too late and the circumstances were awful throughout). Starmer isn't suited to it and doesn't enjoy it. /1

No more McSweeney? Cometh the hour,

☀️ Grateful for the return of some sunshine after a grey few days in Oxford

Selden’s Sister presents: the book launch of Celebrating Women in Legal History 4 March 2026 5pm Old Hall Queens’ College Cambridge

This is a must-read. A forensic analysis of a planning application (and a report from planners recommending its refused). Kafkaesque is over-used, but it is the perfect description of the process so far for the extremely popular Shoreditch Works scheme.

This is preying on my mind a bit. Jeffrey Epstein was not primarily a British scandal! So far we've removed a Prince from the Royal family, fired our US ambassador who was one of the most important political figures of the last few decades and banned the CEO of Barclays from the financial industry..

For those who want a nice summary of the law of misconduct in a public office, the Law Commission Report, pp 20-27, seems very good. Portes' instincts here seem to be the law. /1 cdn.websitebuilder.service.justice.gov.uk/uploads/site...

We need all our cities to be a little more like Croydon. A local planning reform that allowed developers to replace suburban homes with small blocks of flats that looked like suburban homes led to an unprecedented building boom in Croydon (until it was cancelled):

Just over 1/6 2019 Tory voters voted Labour in 2024. yougov.co.uk/politics/art... Labour's stategy was successful, unlike Burgon's, which was tried. Twice. The problem is not that Burgon was right, he obviously wasn't. Rather it is in sticking to the same approach in changed circumstances. /1

“Not a guaranteed win” is an enormous euphemism…

The son of the manse is right. It at least arguably looks like misconduct in a public office, and he ought to be questioned. It is a serious offence. Perhaps the conclusion will be that he is just a fool but they ought to look at it.

Is it a bit odd that only three people have had their lives and careers completely ruined by the Epstein files, and all of them were British? An unhappy coincidence?

1. Interesting to see Reform abandon its flirtation with nativism / birth rate boosterism in favour of the policy of the last Tory government 2. “Starve a kid for a cheaper pint” is quite the policy. Be interested to see how that performed in focus groups (especially all male versus mixed).

Bad life choices. I hardly ever log into facebook. But my contemporaries are all posting about flying around in business class (I fly steerage if at all) or *retiring* in their early 50s. I still have a huge mortgage and won't be able to quit before 70 (health permitting). /1

…over a cover it printed in March 2011 referring to the controversy over the paedophile sex trafficker’s friendship with the then Duke and Duchess of York. 🧵2/5