*stares in British University*

Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee finds govt’s “earned” settlement proposals will will harm integration, make it impossible for disadvantaged and vulnerable groups to settle, cause child poverty, and increase labour exploitation of sponsored workers www.workrightscentre.org/publications...

Wandering around central London in the heat makes me appreciate London more than ever. Plant more trees. The contrast between full sun and shade is *glorious*. Well done everyone involved in the street tree planting initiatives of 30-odd years ago.

If I were one of Labour's 400-odd MPs, I'd be pretty bloody pissed off at the idea that no one among the current cohort was even worth considering. Also doesn't say much positive about the future of the party, does it?

This week's @privateeyenews.bsky.social describes Shabana Mahmood as a "centrist favourite" a) Centrist? How? b) Favourite? Whose?

Back in 2010, while still an active EU politics blogger, I was told by several UKIP supporters that I should have turned down a €5,000 journalism prize from the European Parliament as it made it look like I owed the EU a favour.

If only anyone had predicted that SpaceX stock was going to tank.

I like the way the generic rejoin option has higher percentage support than there is *in the UK*, by most polling. And yet some people still think we'll be rejoining sooner than - my most optimistic estimate - about 2046.

Fascinating the extent to which people responsible for billions of pounds base their views on nothing but vibes.

How are things in Belfast? Are the people with Legitimate Concerns about paedophilia attacking unionist politicians’ homes in response to the Donaldson verdict? They aren’t? How strange. Their Concerns seemed so Legitimate when they were burning foreigners out of their homes a few weeks back.

Where are the save our girls crowd?

Keir Starmer Resigns Amid ‘Not Being Very Good Prime Minister’ Scandal

While I've found him disappointing, frustrating, short-sighted and often a bit pathetic, I don't get the *hatred* of Starmer. He's too bland to get passionate about. Continuity Sunak, with less of the arrogance. Burnham, though, I've long actively disliked and haven't seen much to change my mind.

been furious with Starmer for long enough that this is genuinely coming as a surprise to me, but I'm feeling a bit.......sad this morning? not really about him per se but about the waste of time, I guess, and the end of yet another political failure when Britain really couldn't afford another one

Have spent the afternoon under a tree reading about Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida - as you do. Adequate, and far preferable to football or politics. Where's the Bluesky postmodern hermeneutics starter packs?

Perhaps the Oxford Union could debate which of these perceptions is the correct one.

I dunno, man - all I want is some genuinely good sci-fi movies I've not already seen. Is that so much to ask?

For fuck's sake. That was the one thing I was actually looking forward to.

Darkly funny that this was ultimately pushed through to prop up and secure the Conservative Party most of the status quo, and to fend off the threat of a Labour government that might be politically disastrous and economically ruinous. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it.

Over 40% of the people of Makerfield voted for parties who want to deport my wife, so forgive me I'm not exactly seeing the positives here.

Yes, but... The last time Labour won a massive majority they managed to screw it up so completely that today a Prime Minister who's so bland he makes John Major look like a charismatic titan is one of the most hated men in the country.

If you were wondering just how much Dan Hannan’s brain and soul have rotted, he’s casually sharing naked racism from his Front National supporting pals without a care in the world now.

This. Insisting on people using their own names may seem like a simple solution, but will actively discourage participation in public life.

But that is exactly how the suffragettes operated. With a nationwide organisation of sleeper cells of arsonists and bombers. I’m gratefully people have reached out and referenced my work today. I remain (I believe) the only academic expert on the terrorism of the suffragettes. Links below:

I am going to continue to push back on "high skill migration" even if I am the last dead ender. The UK has a much more pressing shortage of low-skill labour than high-skill labour. We have people giving up jobs as magic circle lawyers to take care of their parents.

When it was a “racism crisis” mostly composed of heavily interpreted tweets and Facebook likes - created offscreen by party insiders and newspaper journalists, working together - it was all screeching, finger-pointing and calls to destroy and eradicate and expel. Now it’s the real thing: Nothing.

Yes, we probably do deserve “Posh National Front MP in tears after verbal assault by thuggish Lib Dems, just because his party is deliberately inflaming hate that is now causing riots”. It is not IMO that much dumber or more insulting than any of the rest of the shenanigans.

If we get very assymetric "two tier" media coverage & political attention to a murder in Cambridge or an attempted murders in Belfast - depending on ethnicity of the perpetrator - then broadcasters will generate + reinforce skewed public perceptions. They do have a duty to try to check that.

I see that the Southampton rioters are once again proving to be the kind of decent, law-abiding, women-defending, pleasant stout yeomen of the shire we should be paying attention to.

🚨 A network of Russian far-right extremists – created under the umbrella of a sanctioned oligarch close to Putin, and now openly promoted by Tommy Robinson – has been driving ‘White Lives Matter’ propaganda over the murder Henry Nowak. @bylinetimes.bsky.social bylinetimes.com/2026/06/10/r...

It’s so wild that we are dependent on the grieving families of recently dead and maimed people for leadership right now Jesus Christ

Will Farage, Musk etc be condemning white people in general for the actions of this violent white person, and advocating rage or violence in response? Will the BBC be laundering their 'legitimate concerns' about those white folks?

surely you can see how the anger needed to burn down homes must be understood and empathised with, but the anger needed to throw some paint at an aeroplane is criminally dangerous?

I'm old enough to remember waves of moral outrage at horror films and computer games and rap music for supposed connections to violence. Now we have the world's richest man and multiple leaders of right-wing movements actively and openly calling for rage and violence on our streets and... Nothing.

You will recall, less than a year ago, British police were instructed to disclose the ethnicity of suspects of crime as an explicit sop to the far-right after their last attempt to gin up pogroms. Our then-Home Secretary, now Foreign Secretary, lauded the move. Do we think this helped.

In fairness to ‘em, the NS are correctly asserting - with evidence - that successive governments sold or outsourced most of the state’s capacity to improve society somewhat*. The Spectator is repeating a lot of gargling Nazi horseshit about The Suicide Of The West. These are not the same.

seen multiple versions of this today and can we not? do you know how many entirely friendly people have been issued visas by *all* the home secretaries? my wife was issued a visa by theresa may. you get where this talking point will end up when the people doing the rioting see it, right?

In 2011, after the August riots, the CPS pressed for the most onerous sanctions for all riot offences. The Director of Public Prosecutions was Keir Starmer.

Nigel Farage called for "pure cold rage" and that's exactly what he has now got. Why it's time for our leaders to finally start acting against the forces of hatred now bringing racist pogroms to our streets bylinetimes.com/2026/06/10/t...

There's a line in Fight Club in which the narrator talks of his contempt for giant pandas that won't screw to save their species and I think about it a lot in reference to the government's response to the proliferation of hatred and incitement online which increasingly drives violence on our streets

Yes, but Paddington's hard stare actually works...

There are ordinary working people who have been pushed too far and whose anger is understandable and then there are the tofu-eating wokerati who should feel the full force of the law

We need leaders who can spell out what's happening clearly and with force.

I don't know how Keir Starmer can wake up in the morning, see that pogroms have been taking place under his watch, that they are being fuelled by literal illegal activity on social media, and not make it his entire purpose to stop it. We know you're no politician, but are you not a lawyer?

If you look at the state of the UK over the last decade and conclude that immigration / immigrants are a bigger problem than the far-right, racists, xenophobes, and people with "very real concerns" (almost always based on lies started by the racists and xenophobes), then YOU are part of the problem.

Everyone on X and elsewhere who called for a violent response should be charged with incitement. Everyone involved in the pogrom should be locked up with exemplary sentences. Govt should make it clear that will be the response in future anywhere else. Enough.

Maybe the BBC and the police can imagine a bunch of pensioners holding placards about opposing genocide when they see minorities being bludgeoned by baying mobs.

turns out having a functional theory of how fascists operate to attack and scapegoat vulnerable minorities is kind of a superpower these aren't people driven by "backlash" or "reasonable concerns," they are aggressors looking for a target

I don't know about you, but Union and St George's flag-waving mobs claiming that the police (of all people) are "woke" and "anti-white racists" - while certainly being illiberal - don't strike me as leftists.

A reminder that crypto is an almost entirely parasitic industry, enabling crime, wasting the money of retail investors, energy and resources. We definitely do not need a national crypto reserve, the effect of which will be to tranfser taxpayers' £ to those already heavily invested in crypto.