My instinctive anti-populism approves.

I had the thought that you could do a travel documentary series based on Borderlines (or maybe for global reach an alliance between me and @jonnelledge.bsky.social ), focused on how the tightening of border control, fortifications etc affect locals, landscape and so on along the frontiers…

‘Yours truly, Jack D Ripper’

What surprises me is how high some of these are for units created in the 1970s - the metropolitan counties, Cumbria etc. The English have learned to love the Heath-Walker counties.

Tugboat captain, including service in Plymouth docks in WW2. Civil servant working in a Labour Exchange.

How this happened - the last time a former Prime Minister was restored to power - is described in my essay on the February 1974 election in this book (link) I’ve always found Feb 74 one of the most interesting contests and results post-war www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/britis...

People explain the real impact of politically-motivated changes to the settlement rules on their lives, the Home Office responds with "We make no apology ..." IME people in power who use the "no apology" formula know full well that they are doing something very wrong

Drusilla Beyfus obituary

Trendsetter Reggie Maudling was up to no good in Dubai in the late 1960s. I wrote about it in my biography of him. This stuff runs quite deep in British politics.

Or ‘party conference season’ as we used to call it.

Back in the day kids actually did fight other schools, while it now seems to all be social media nonsense… The headmaster's had enough today All the kids have gone away Gone to fight with next door's school Every term, that is the rule

Sorry. My fault for going on a diet.

Too many analysts and commentators are framing war goals as if this is Bush or Johnson era fantasy campaigns of state-building rather than a devastating raid to shatter a state until it cannot be rebuilt bsky.app/profile/pear...

Glad the government has listened and done this.

Keir Starmer has said the UK would not be joining US and Israeli "offensive" strikes on Iran In a Commons statement on Monday, the PM said any UK action must have a "lawful basis and a viable thought-through plan", adding that “we all remember the mistakes of Iraq and have learned those lessons"

I became a teenager in the U.K. in the mid 1980s. The fear of nuclear holocaust was real and the social conflict and state abuse in the miners’ strike was real. But some stuff - not all - got better.

It’s 2036. As the political spectrum has fragmented further, the SNP is now the Official Opposition at Westminster. It’s still apparently too difficult to reform the electoral system.

There’s no crime against the law or morality so gross that it doesn’t have an honoured place within the US administration.

Laughter in the dark at this observation.

I’ll try to remember this slide every time I get impostor syndrome. But then I’ll also remember that the authors got paid more for doing this than I’ll earn in a decade.

I was certain in myself that they would come for Commonwealth voting rights. It’s part of the far right programme to make voting harder or impossible for people they don’t like.

Sadiq gets it right www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

HUGE thank you to Simon @biggreenbooks.bsky.social & @lewisbaston.bsky.social for my copy of A History of the World in 47 Borders by Jonn Elledge. If you aren't already following / participating in #buyastrangerabook, I encourage you to do so. I've done so from both sides and it's a LOVELY thing!

Anthony Eden enters the chat, confused.

Once may be an accident. Twice is something else.

‘Everyone is 12’ theory of the US administration chalks up another win.

I can see a future in which Downing Street is picketed by political scientists waving placards that say this sort of thing even more bluntly. Not out of partisanship, but out of the existential pain of witnessing stupidity on this scale.

John is right as he often is. The message from G&D to Number 10 was admirably clear but that letter they’ve sent out in response is not the right approach (and commits the cardinal sin of repeating the enemy’s framing about ‘sectarianism’).

Replace ‘Muslims’ with ‘Irish Catholics’ and you can find exactly the same sort of thing in the politics of 1880.

Doesn't anyone edit anything any more? It's a bunch of words fighting in a paper bag.

I was at the count in Gorton and Denton last night and we all saw Matt Goodwin eat ballot papers. His girlfriend and team begged him to stop but he kept stuffing it into his mouth and making grunting sounds like the Cookie Monster

I don’t expect anything better from Simons but I’m disappointed in Paul Goodman. I knew him back along as an affable fellow who knew history and had a sense of proportion. Perhaps the article isn’t as bad as the headline. I’d like to believe that.

A fair point.

Lab vote share decline is all the more dramatic for having fallen by 16 points between 2019 and 2024. Governments defending by-elections are normally starting from the high end of their range of vote share but not in this seat.

Going to bed now. Today’s been rubbish, I’m sure rubbish things will happen overnight while I’m fitfully asleep, and that tomorrow will be rubbish too.

Yeah this looks concede-y.

Toad ran back across the meadow. He waved the kite over his head. The kite went up in the air and then fell down with a thud.

I think Labour have done plenty of stupid things in the recent past, but if you think Labour is stupid enough to have chartered that van to attack the Greens like that on election day, I think there's a slight chance that you might have allowed your political bias to affect your cognitive processes.

Failed so hard today at thinking and writing and I really needed to succeed. I feel so abject and hopeless.

This is a fantastic idea. Tempted to go away and devise a complete map on this basis (is this evidence for an ADHD assessment? I think so). Enfield North would be Freezy Water. Dagenham & Rainham would be Whalebone. I’d probably still be in Holborn as there’s a deficit of funny names here.

Canadians - has there been a rationale for the very long names given to ridings, or have they just grown? Also, do MPs refer to each other in the chamber by riding name? If not was this ever the practice and when did it stop?

Not beating those tankie allegations if you call your slate the Bolsheviks, tbh.

I should probably get on with some work really.

Right. Let's do one last leaflet review before tomorrow's fun shall we. WHAT'S BEEN COMING THROUGH CHRIS'S DOOR?! First. A classic of the genre, the glossy by election faux magazine leaflet. Powerful Lib Dem vibes emanating off this from the Greens.

Wish I could mute both Labour and Green ‘vote for us’ Gorton & Denton posts today. They make both parties go down in my esteem. There is precisely one G&D undecided voter on here anyway and that’s @cjterry.bsky.social and I doubt he’s impressed either.

This is bad and parties shouldn’t do it. It’s incompatible with occupying the high moral ground.

Policy priority 2 after 4 years of Russia’s war against Ukraine: Stop relying on 🇺🇦's ‘resilience’ to ensure its survival. European leaders should not look at the dogged endurance of Ukraine’s armed forces & civilians & assume that it is infinite. Read here: buff.ly/6RWmjER

This is a lovely initiative and in the spirit of mutuality I’ve chipped in and I hope someone gets a copy of Jonn’s excellent 47 Borders book on the strength of it. #buyastrangerabook @biggreenbooks.bsky.social - hope I’ve done it right but the money is resting in the BGB account for someone.

I yield to none in my dislike of this party, this candidate and this wretched leaflet, but it does seem - extraordinarily - to have been the printer’s fault in this instance and the legal hearing has taken its course.

Indeed, it’s not saloon bar racism or dog-whistling. These people’s starting point, the well from which all their politics is drawn, is racial nationalism and a hierarchy of races with whites at the top. It’s an evil against which civilised countries and people fight.