To whoever cast Joseph Fiennes as Gareth Southgate: I see the resemblance, but I also cannot shake the feeling that it is in fact Commander Waterford from The Handmaid's Tale managing the English Football team, and that is giving me the ick.

/The premier said she herself will vote in favour of Alberta remaining a part of Canada.// Because that has worked so well for David Cameron……

🗳️ ConstituencyClick 451/650 — Shadow Cabinet 🟥🟥🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟥🟨 play.jmoxley.co.uk This is a great brain teaser for other UK politics nerd out there

This is giving me PTSD from all the Article 50 extensions during Brexit negotiation

I can hear the collective sign of relief from the EBU HQ #Eurovision

There are three certainties in life: Death, taxes, and Cyprus voting for Greece in #Eurovision

From our February Issue: Press Coverage and Accountability in State Legislatures by ANDREW C. W. MYERS. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

If this isn't "designed to stir up hatred" against Jews, what is? Why are the Met not arresting them?

All the drama surrounding Andy Burnham highlights a lesser known consequence of devolution in the UK: It upended the unidirectional political career path of the past. Talent and ambition may emerge outside of Westminster, but our institutions and parties have yet to acknowledge that.

IN NEW ISSUE: Short-term rentals can disrupt urban life & influence the ballot box - @tonirodon.bsky.social, Raya & Llaneza link high Airbnb density in Barcelona to increased support for parties targeting home-sharing regulation: buff.ly/mB6zhbp @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social #polsci #polsky

I can't decide if this is too mean or too generous a description of Liz Truss, probably both

I suspect the problem with a Steerting leadership bid is that he is too similar to Starmer, both in character and position. He would be a strong successor to Starmer's legacy if the latter decides to throw in the towel, but I don't see how he could win a challenge against Starmer.

Unlike some other places, we don't threaten elected representatives with disqualification just because they uttered something before or after their oath of office. (ICYMI, this is a subtweet)

New in Nature: LLMs give "the party line" in the languages of authoritarian regimes. This works when they control the media, which feeds pretraining data. We show more state control over the media means less critical LLMs. 6 studies spanning 38 languages & 13 models. Details ↓

Shot fired in Philippines Senate as a senator is evading an arrest warrant for him to be sent to The Hague for suspected crime against humanity

What is parliamentary speech used for in a Westminster style system? How much are parliamentary skills valued by party leaders when looking for new ministerial talent? These are questions I look at in my paper on speech and ministerial selection, recently published in Legislative Studies Quarterly.

All the drama surrounding Andy Burnham highlights a lesser known consequence of devolution in the UK: It upended the unidirectional political career path of the past. Talent and ambition may emerge outside of Westminster, but our institutions and parties have yet to acknowledge that.

People favour politicians from modest backgrounds and perceive them to be better representatives of citizens' interests, more accessible, and more trustworthy www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

On 7 May 2026, Britain ran a PR experiment: Scottish Parliament: a Mixed-Member Proportional system Welsh Senedd: a (new) Low-Magnitude Party List system Same day, same political context, different outcomes. Which version of PR would be better for Westminster? 🧵

I think it's a missed opportunity not to call this movie "The Odyssey: An Ancient 2001"

The Hong Kong police just announced in a presser that they have arrested a 12 YO boy for making explosives with …(check notes)… baking soda and vinegar 🤯 Are they going to arrest everyone who buy a pack of Mentos and Diet Coke from the supermarket? 🤣

Since last year, META began auto translating ads from local businesses in UK to Simplified Chinese! They have since upped their game as I just came across a video ad on FB by Waitrose that was AI translated into Mandarin. I'm a Cantonese Speaker from 🇭🇰! Learn the difference, META!😡

In other words, 28% of Brits are against the sitting POTUS appearing on TV before the watershed

The tragedy of Dan Quayle is that he was just too ahead of his time

It's not news that the vetting process of candidates for Reform UK is sketchy at best, but this hit particularly close to home. There are some genuine concern among HKers in UK on where Lee's loyalty and allegiance lie.

It is frankly unbelievable that Starmer "Wasn't told" of Mandelson's failed vetting. Did he appoint him without knowing the result of the vetting process? Or did someone from FCO lied to the PM that Mandelson did pass the process. Either way, this make Starter appear incompetent and clueless.

Thrilled to share that my paper with @mattgrossmann.bsky.social and Caleb Lucas is now out at American Politics Research. In it, we introduce CongressData, a novel repository of 1,300+ variables on the US Congress. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/....

This is absurd! There are partial result of the first round already. There could be massive strategic voting among those who is voting today, benefiting from the hindsight not available to those already voted yesterday.

A new dawn has broken, has it not? 🇭🇺

The same vibe:

This is the Whitehall equivalent of pubs near football grounds banning fans from wearing football scarves etc on matchdays.

With this poll, Orbán is laying the ground to refuse to recognise anything but a win by him as legitimate, eg. www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/cur.... Such an outcome would drive a further wedge between Europe and the US government.

The same vibe:

You're going to need a bigger distraction

🌮🤭

Trump threatens that 'a whole civilization will die tonight' Somebody should just show this clip to him and call it a day

The toughest part of the astronaut training program that nobody knew: Facial expression management

This is almost exactly the same as the Euro-Sausage episode of Yes Prime Minister 😂 (A sign that there will be a new PM soon? 🤔)

It's crazy that the last time Italy was in a World Cup knock out game, I was a first year undergraduate student

It's based on a sci-fi book about a scientist working with extraterrestrial alien to save the world with science! In the end the protagonist put all life on Earth at risk and sacrifice his life to save an alien planet! It's about as "woke" as it can get!

Is partner partisanship associated with vote choice? @cerifowler.bsky.social finds that it was for the 2016 Brexit Referendum & subsequent elections in the UK & argues that this can help us understand gender gaps in vote choice. Read OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/D8Fdnbw @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social #polsky

Watched Project Hail Mary the other day. Quite surprised that I was among the handful in the theater that laughed at the reference to Close Encounters of the Third Kind Am I really that old? I'm still in my 30s BTW, my review of the movie: 👎👎 #IYKYK

"Why would you punish people for being strong?" "But all the strong people will move away, and who would be left to protect us?" "We need to lower their obligation so that people are incentivised to get stronger"

Just out: the new @vdeminstitute.bsky.social is clear: "The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history" V-dem uses a global dataset on democracy with over 32 million data points for 202 countries, from 1789 to 2025. www.v-dem.net/documents/75...

V-Dem v.16 is now released, w. updated scores for 2025. Most countries remain stable from 2024, but some clear improvements (on diff’t democracy indices), incl. S. Korea, Sri Lanka & Mauritius. Largest declines came, by far, in the US. This figure shows 10-yr changes on the Liberal Dem. index.

Somebody at GBNews has been watching the Yes Prime Minister Christmas special 😏