Rest in peace, Camden political legend and former Lib Dem councillor Flick Rea, first elected in 1986. I wrote about her when she stood down from her Fortune Green ward in 2021 and passed the seat on to her colleague Nancy Jirira. www.onlondon.co.uk/lewis-baston...

It takes a lot to get me on the ‘authoritarian’ side of an issue but ABSOLUTELY NOT. Particularly if it’s based on junk science.

I'm sure this event will have lots of varied opinions and won't just be a moanfest about how it's all the EU's and Remainers' fault. Morning.

A microeconomic textbook I used in the college library was setting out some abstruse reasoning and noted a corollary with the comment ‘the attentive reader will already have noticed that…’. Someone had written sarcastically in the margin to subsequent generations ‘are you an attentive reader?’

www.maptap.gg May 25 99🔥 99🔥 99🔥 95🏆 95🏆 Final score: 966 bit imprecise today 😞

Russians destroyed the Chornobyl Museum in Kyiv during an overnight missile attack. A renewed exhibition had only recently opened there to mark the 40th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant tragedy.

It turns out conservativism can actually win over intellectuals by becoming more intellectual rather than having to tear down the academy

MapTap friends - how many people have the paid-for version? It doesn’t seem to cost much and gains access to some features like forming leagues so I think I will, particularly if there are others with the additional features. Side benefit: we needn’t bore non-players with map nonsense.

www.maptap.gg May 24 95🏆 95🏆 95🏆 100🎯 98🔥 Final score: 974

www.maptap.gg May 23 100🎯 100🎯 100🎯 99🔥 95🏆 Final score: 982

Oh meant to say, @stephenkb.bsky.social has very kindly let me commandeer his newsletter each Friday for the next few weeks for my myriad of Burnham thoughts, so you’ve been warned

East Fulham 1933 and Hamilton 1967 are my two usual calls on this question (and County Clare 1828 if you stretch ‘British’).

Question wording deliberately devised to stop people from Manchester saying ‘London’.

www.maptap.gg May 22 95🏆 89🎉 100🎯 92👑 88🎓 Final score: 924 probably my worst score? I feel a bit stupid about 2 and 4 but location 5 was taking the piss.

www.maptap.gg May 21 99🔥 100🎯 98🔥 93👑 99🔥 Final score: 971

A lot of our discourse seems to assume that 1) these wrong beliefs somehow arise naturally and 2) politicians have a duty to behave as if these wrong beliefs are true. It saves asking questions about old and new media, or doing anything brave, but it’s rotting our society and economy.

This fellow is Nadir Awad, who died in the gun attack on the mosque in San Diego. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I’d imagine this would translate into a fairly large Lab majority thanks to our peculiar electoral system. Hardly any Con/Lab swing since 2024 and there aren’t (from memory) all that many places where Ref was within this range of Lab?

My coffee is part of a range including ‘Indonesian Strongman’ and ‘Peruvian Generalissimo’.

www.maptap.gg May 20 98🔥 100🎯 100🎯 91🎉 90🎉 Final score: 941 ah it was going so well for a bit.

Book review: Borderlines by Lewis Baston. This is a mixture of travel and history as he visits 29 famous and obscure European borders, debunking territorial revisionism. If there is one message from this brilliant book, it is to leave borders well alone. balkandave.blogspot.com/2026/03/bord...

There’s a rainbow ending in the next valley even though it hasn’t rained in this one.

It’s raining meat! Hallelujah it’s raining meat! That’s neat!

Anyone want to help search through the Reform candidate in Makerfield's recently deleted twitter account? web.archive.org/web/*/twitte...

It also incentivises violent and illegal disruption of future elections with the implied promise of pardons and payoffs for pro-regime militias.

Another Green councillor has resigned from #Lambeth Council, creating the possibility of Labour replacing the Greens as the borough's largest party: www.onlondon.co.uk/lambeth-seco... I will be able to add to this story later today. #London

🗳️ ConstituencyClick 650/650 — Prime Minister 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 play.jmoxley.co.uk while I’m boasting about my high scores on map games (it’s a fun game for the political geography buff in your life courtesy of @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk ).

www.maptap.gg May 19 100🎯 95🏆 100🎯 98🔥 100🎯 Final score: 989

Again, I really don’t know what you do about the fact that “the president is stealing a billion and a half dollars from the government” is both universally understood by all political actors and also correctly understood to not be an especially politically damaging story

As I said a while ago, I find the Lib Dem discussion interesting. It does go to an essential point - what is the party for? Is it to embody an ideology of liberalism (which isn’t centrism) or is its function to take a (now rather large) number of seats out of the right column into the left column?

I was at a Quaker wedding on Saturday and I’m disappointed nobody invited me to join the conspiracy.

🇬🇧 British Political Spectrum Quiz (by @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk ). My result: Social Democrat Economic: leaning collectivist Social: progressive Sovereignty: cosmopolitan Military: centrist Authority: centrist Constitutional: leaning reformist Take the quiz: quiz.jmoxley.co.uk

The creepy kitsch aesthetic and bullying manner of fascism.

www.maptap.gg May 18 92👑 95🏆 99🔥 100🎯 99🔥 Final score: 982

Haplogy

Is it appropriate for Susan Hall, a London councillor representing the Conservative party (and Tory leader of the London Assembly), to be saying she wishes she could go to Tommy Robinson's "Unite The Kingdom" march? Has she forgotten his racism and Islamophobia?

Social democrat. No surprise. But ticked a number of ‘Neutral’ where I agreed with one part of the proposition and not another. My political avatar is…

www.maptap.gg May 17 100🎯 100🎯 99🔥 96🏅 100🎯 Final score: 986

It’s probably the question on which I’ve moved most to the left over the past 20-30 years. Billionaires are threats to democracy. I’m not sure what practical and effective steps can be taken to deal with the threat though.

www.maptap.gg May 16 95🏆 99🔥 100🎯 91🎉 100🎯 Final score: 967 - could have been better I feel.

An initial dispatch from Makerfield as.ft.com/r/42148349-f...

www.maptap.gg May 15 92👑 97🏅 100🎯 100🎯 95🏆 Final score: 974 bah

Josh Simons standing down makes me think of what Metternich said on the death of Talleyrand (‘I wonder what he meant by that’).

I’d have thought Withington would have been better for Andy Burnham if he had the choice.

The government has delivered on pledges on immigration, NHS, policing and workers’ rights. It clearly isn’t helping. Were they the wrong pledges all along? Were they the wrong things to prioritise? Or has Britain become “ungovernable”, as some claim? (I think there’s a decent argument for each.)

One of the largest drops in nhs waiting lists on record, which no one will now hear about. Opportunity cost from all the leadership turmoil www.england.nhs.uk/2026/05/heal...

www.maptap.gg May 14 100🎯 99🔥 95🏆 95🏆 88🎓 Final score: 938 let myself down a bit.

I had a theory at the time to explain the gap in Ed perception between most voters and my peer group (who generally liked him and would be Bsky people now). Most people couldn’t see him as a boss. But if you were in and around HE you could easily imagine Ed as a pretty good head of department.

Everyone praises the 35 per cent strategy for the next election as brilliant and ambitious.