Another Labour MP, Gerald Bathtub, went on to say, 'say what ya' like about 'im, but at least that Mr 'itler made the bloomin' trains run on time'.

Tricoteuses react to Starmer's ruse to escape culpability.

Distraught Labour backbenchers to enter a period of mourning as McSweeney quits.

A disturbingly accurate summation of where UK politics is.

This is an excellent question for @thetimes.com. What would be the threshold racism had to cross for you to recognize it as racism, and not as “racism”?

"policy ideas are clearly based on the newspaper headlines they will promote" Ever wondered why, despite all the government policies, nothing ever changes? Balanced budgets that necessitate cuts to services/tax rises beng the other half of the equation.

“I graduated with £42,000 of debt and even though I’m paying it off, it’s now £72,000.” It's truly an abomination: On a normal job you keep paying forever. 40 years! “Why would I trust a government that mis-sold me a loan when I was a child?” is a very good question. www.ft.com/content/7bf5...

And the winner of the pithy headline award is..... www.davidmcwilliams.ie/post/the-wor...

A blessed relief that Starmer's dynamic new broom has finally swept away years of Tory inertia, sleaze, incompetence and xenophobia. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Here is your case for socialism. Formally, an institution like the Washington Post can be treated as private property. But substantively it is something else. And there’s an unavoidable and sometimes violent conflict between the form and the substance.

I wonder what will happen if Reeves reanimates PFI in order to satisfy her self-imposed rule to balance budgets? 🤔 "Critics fear Papperger, who leads negotiations on big German contracts, runs rings around procurement officials." www.ft.com/content/a326...

To paraphrase Yosser Hughes (ask your grandad), "Neoliberalism's fans must remember a job is about more than the money. The value of work often gets left out of discussions about neoliberalism". So is Ai and UBI a departure from, or an extension of neoliberal logic? www.ft.com/content/18ee...

This is it. If banks can't lend reserves and it's just an asset swap, how would markets react if the Fed 'threatened' to buy all outstanding Treasuries?

Happy St Brigid’s Day! This is a depiction of her from Harry Clarke’s Geneva Window.

For those on Bluesky tired with political scientists squabbling about what policies need tweaking or who will win the next election, this David Runciman interview gets to the core. Thoroughly recommended.

I’ve written this lengthy FT analysis overnight about the multiple multi-thousand pound Epstein payments to Mandelson’s husband these particular paragraphs are worth reading slowly www.ft.com/content/608a...

Mian uses plain language to highlight the macro issues that come with rising inequality. Excellent!

Fighting Words: We’re thrilled to announce the Brendan Behan Celebration on Saturday, February 7th from 11am to 3pm! Join us as Dublin City Council unveils a new plaque honouring Brendan Behan’s legendary contributions to Irish literature at Behan Square, the site of Brendan's childhood home.

Being honest and upfront with citizens? It'll never catch on.

German industrial giant Bosch confirmed today plans to cut 20,000 jobs after profits nearly halved last year, underlining the mounting strain on Germany’s once-dominant manufacturing sector and increasing the pressure on politicians in Berlin to find a solution.

"Hello, can I speak to social services..."

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. The headline and lede from The Daily Mirror:

“I once spent a year in Pittsburgh. I think it was a Tuesday.” – WC Fields, born this day. Too cowardly to mention my British and Irish equivalents!

Decca Mitford trying to find employment in the US encapsulates the essence of both countries. "She had no luck with applications until someone told her that ‘colour’ meant skin colour not hair. She stopped writing ‘brown’, started writing ‘white’, and immediately got a job."

Too late. The irony is winner takes all capitalism is toxic for both winners and losers. The double irony is that it is economists who suggest we maximise productivity gains. *other people's that is

Wonder if Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin remembers this.

"Thank you Chris Mason...."

With little use value and no attached revenue stream, 'momentum' simply a $ hedge by the tinfoil hat brigade?

A fondness for Stalinist style purges Starmer's only socialist trait? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Is everyone sitting down... www.bbc.com/news/article...

BBC to finally call it as an assassination, or will it be more "conflicting accounts...." gaslighting?

"Andy Burnham is doing a great job as mayor of Greater Manchester." Yet again, Starmer's vaulting ambition is placed ahead of the good of the party/country. 🙄 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

There's a point at which "impartiality" becomes gaslighting. The BBC has crossed this point.

The eager willingness of right wing intellectuals to humiliate themselves in a brown nosing competition for Trump and MAGA's approval will be studied for decades.

Another Gestapo murder in Minnesota. Six agents wrestle someone to the ground and then shoot him in the back www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Minnesota is the best of us.

Munger had Trump down to a T.

1/Board of Peace is not about peace through cooperation but peace through dominance and extraction. Clear effort to replace rules-based international order with a structure that bolsters Trump and his effort to create a neo-royalist system. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/u...

Bang on. He identifies the issues that touch our everyday lives and communicates it all in a really engaging manner. Great stuff! But whilst identifying core issues is one thing, implementing solutions is a whole different ball game. But fingers crossed!

Authoritarians test the water by saying the quiet bit out loud. 'I will transgress norms by doing "X", what are you going to do about it?' If there is push back they back down, if there isn't, they proceed. Whilst international pushback to Trump, domestically? www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Yes. As the world (WTO, US constitution etc.) is finding out, institutions are not enough in and of themselves – somebody has to enforce rules.

Wtaf! Byung-chul Han on digital panopticons "The prisoner of the digital panopticon is a perpetrator and a victim at the same time. Herein lies the dialectic of freedom. Freedom turns out to be a form of control" www.thenational.scot/news/2578000...

Trump confuses Iceland with Greenland again.

amazing, the Trump order captures, to the letter, the 2022 critique of institutional landlords we wrote for the European Greens, 'My Home is an Asset Class'. and to their shame, it's more extensive then anything the Greens (blame the German ones) were ready to propose in the Parliament

Worth reading this speech from Carney. It’s kinda fun to watch ‘elites’ catch up with most everybody else: “Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition” The speech has an argument, a structure, an analysis, careful positioning & chiasmus. Wish the U.K. would do this.

The Prime Minister of Belgium speaks:

Well well well. The Danes are weaponising firesales.