The West Midlands is the win condition of British elections! Equally, I don't understand why 'I think it's a good idea to talk down the job of running a Labour stronghold and England's No 1 growth success story' is something Cabinet ministers don't realise.

I do think this has been a week in which new levels of 'why don't senior Labour politicians understand we can ALL hear them' have been reached. Why would Andy Burnham do a 'I'm gonna hike taxes on London and the south, you're all rich!' Why would Steve Reed use 'regional politician' as a putdown?

perennially unable to say Ming Campbell's name to anything other than the tune of Anita Ward - Ring My Bell. r.i.p. x

Absolutely pathetic. There are other voters out there you know! You're losing plenty of the ones who'd like to see Starmer there fgs!

Assuming this is just a template reaction to every single announcement now. New hospital built in Swindon. Factory opens in Halifax. Parkinson's cure found in Cambridge. Pothole work on the A42.

Cautiously optimistic they'll get voted to leave. Think BBC will likely vote Yes on Israel participating. Germany, Switzerland and Azerbaijan too. Apparently Cyprus + Austria in favour. Hard to think of too many more broadcasters who are likely yeses tho: France, Norway + Denmark maybe. Past that...

These people absolutely exist and they’re nuts, and I can even understand doing a story on them, but it’s really quite pathetic to frame it as “Wow, just like 2020!” when it’s a bunch of random people online and not, like, *the candidate themselves and the overwhelming majority of elected officials*

Writing for Pitchfork used to be a game of Grandmother’s Footsteps where the average review score would creep up slowly until the editors would send an email around saying “the 6.x score does exist you know” and the cycle would begin again

I don’t love the “feud” framing, as much as I do appreciate the mayor standing up to Trump. Sadiq Khan is not feuding with anyone. He was the target of a vicious, racist attack and is standing up for himself and others.

Phenomenal. In my 10 year update of A Brief History, I make the point that in the first edition, not one disease had been successfully treated using gene therapy. Today that number is at least 7.

You guys do yourself a favor and look at what Eric Adams wore to Rosh Hashanah services at the Sephardic Lebanese Congregation

Not so long ago the Conservative Party would have seized upon the notion of deporting Ukrainians and Hong Kongers and extracted a heavy political price for it. Instead the position yesterday from CCHQ was that Farage is "once again copying Conservative ideas."

I think we're actually all sleeping on the fact that the Lib Dems 'only' polling at their GE level is a very good result for them, they usually collapse in midterm because they don't get much attention.

spokesperson for Sadiq Khan: “We are not going to dignify his appalling and bigoted comments with a response. “London is the greatest city in the world, safer than major US cities, and we’re delighted to welcome the record number of US citizens moving here.”

A church organ version of Amerie - 1 Thing would fuck so hard

This is IMO why you can't understand Morgan McSweeney's approach to politics without reference to Liz Kendall (whose campaign he managed) getting 4.5 per cent, a contest from which he basically took the lesson 'don't try and argue for something, ever'.

I can't disagree with Dan here...

Not even the average Reform voter! This batshit policy polls at THREE PER CENT! That is like 1 in 9 Reform voters!

Imagine you're in a weird romcom where Paul Hollywood is your rival. Do you go "let's have a bread baking competition" or do you emphasise your own relative strengths? Because that in short has been the central problem with the traditional two's approach to anti-immigration voters and Reform UK.

It just straightforwardly *insane* how much political chatter in the United Kingdom is about the next general election, an event that is a long way in the future, and how basically none of it is about 'uh, this policy agenda doesn't look adequate to the scale of the inherited problem'.

It's obviously true unless something unexpected happens, but a) the incumbent government needs to actually have *delivered for its coalition* to lead a republican front b) the leader needs to be a plausible leader of it and c) they do need to actually be able to say 'Vichy was bad'.

The reduction in the number of people coming to the United Kingdom is going to improve Labour's polling, the political debate around immigration and the British economy any day now.

Actually shouted at the telly earlier when I heard Labour's response to Reform's plan to abolish settled status was "it's a gimmick". Bloody do one! It's evil and it'd be awful for the country to get rid of loads of people who are part of the active citizenry and the fabric of our communities!

I'd go further. Knowledge rich curriculum is more important than ever, because, without them & closed book exams, it's impossible to know if the student used an LLM to get a lucky good answer they might get 90% of the time without the wisdom to distinguish it from a hallucination in the workplace.

Of all the ridiculous “now that we have [x], we don’t need a knowledge-rich curriculum”, AI is maybe the silliest. How else are you meant to know whether it is right or wrong?

Polling shows the public expects Labour to tackle poverty, but 60% say they’re going the wrong direction on the cost of living and hardship. Labour’s Deputy Leadership candidates are right to make child poverty central to their campaigns.

Maybe - just a crazy idea, but bear with me for a moment! - the reason why the Lib Dems should not “get serious“ is that the UK’s most important media organisation covers politics in babytalk so much of the time?

Called it / looool queen!

Do not surrender. Do not log off. Do not permit Lord Glasman to have sex with his wife

Loooooool at Australia going to the wall to stop the US entering Intervision

Why are Pomeranians always so happy. Have they not seen the news

ARTPOP could be anything and this is ARTPOP

the pub I'm in just slammed straight from the Liverpool-Everton match into the R Kelly version of Lady Gaga - Do What U Want. problematic... yet powerful!

Man who told his first wife he wanted a divorce while she was in the bath so she couldn't chase after him as he ran away would like a word about courage.

This leaves out the best, most badass part of the letter, which is “and I won’t have to send another”

Psychologically very fascinating the extent to which the two historically major parties just hate their actual electoral coalitions.

Lol. How well did the last govt insulting load-bearing parts of their electoral coalition work out for them? Like they watched what the Lib Dems did to the home counties and wondered what it'd be like if the Greens did that to the two dozen largest university towns.

Excellent @stephenkb.bsky.social Essay Immigration & the trade offs that politicians AND citizens face must be much more clearly explained. But this caught my eye: The children of immigrants to the UK tend to do much better than their parents unlike in France & Germany. www.ft.com/content/43da...

mood

“Xena…you’ve taken liberties with a living religion and not just a dead one!”

56% for Liberal and Centre Left leaning parties and 40% for Right to Far Right parties if you place this in terms of electoral blocs

jaysus

Everything else is noise, really.

The two boxes Labour need to tick in 2029: 1) Do they have a record to run on and/or have global circumstances done them a solid in 2029? 2) Is their leader a plausible receptacle for the anti-Farage front

Another thing I love about the present moment - Musk regularly goes 'don't worry, we are going to change THAT' whenever Grok produces an answer that doesn't align with his priors, yet the British Labour government thinks that they are going to be able to land an argument on there in 2029.

Danny Kruger having a big role in Reform immediately takes them in a decidedly more anti-abortion direction. Implausible he'd have jumped without discussions on that point

I mean, privacy really isn't a considering factor if you send the kinds of messages you would be fired - or at the very least, severely reprimanded - for on a *work account* as a *professional adult*.