Brazil’s National Anthem is only slightly less identical to a Rossini overture than Uruguay’s is.

The Starmer government has done wicked things. We must not let it go into the night pretending that its primary fault was being boring. It chose to persecute minorities in pursuit of the votes of people it thought would like that. The Starmer premiership was utterly morally bankrupt.

This gets doubly bad, if basically the last ten years of Labour politics was you and your mates relentlessly smashing fuck out of Sir Keir’s predecessor and his supporters, just so you could then cheer Starmer on to one of the all-time horrific clown performances in office. That looks really bad!

The stuff about this admirable, decent man with his inoffensive politics and respectable behaviour has 0% to do with Sir Keir’s actual conduct, and is entirely about how the British pundit class absolutely has not fucked it into the stratosphere yet again, in a humiliating fashion.

The whole Burnham thing does feel strangely reminiscent of ‘we’ll just stick Billie Piper’s face in at the end of the ep and work out the rest later’

The fascinating thing about the parade of ‘I simply cannot understand what Starmer did that was so bad’ from the commentariat is that it once again reveals their belief that left wing people don’t meaningfully exist.

Sure mate: we sold most of our stuff in a crazed 50-year project to drown government in a bathtub and put as much as possible beyond democratic control; now ministers only announce crackdowns and decide which donors get contracts. And this is all the fault of four French philosophers.

Labour don’t win without the left. It’s always been that simple. They don’t necessarily win with the left, but they definitely don’t win without them. The problem they now face of course is that all the people at the top of the party *pathologically hate* the left.

The Venn diagram of people who complain our union isn’t strong enough and the people who complain when another union shows its strength is a perfect circle.

Well indeed, and again: this shit is happening because the world did nothing to even impede the obliteration of the Gaza Strip, and the men who did that took it as global permission for them to expand their murderous destruction across the entire region. And here we now are.

my youngest grandson returns from The Waste. No food again, just metal scraps. But he's so proud, and wants a reward. "Tell me again about The Great Before. Tell me why The Green went away," he begs. "in the Before," I begin, "people had questions about who should participate in women's sports..."

Every single British podcast has someone called ‘Producer Ben’ who speaks maybe twice per episode and has the exact same voice as all his other fellow Producers Ben.

I think I head to accept that I am one of those people who has every intention of leaving at half past but always somehow ends up leaving at quarter to.

It's quite incredible how it's somehow taboo to say the obvious truth about the UK, which is that it's a well integrated society where most people just get on with their lives no problem. Apart from a core of extremely insulated journalists and politicians who refuse to be integrated.

‘We are not involved in this at all! Please ignore the warplanes you just saw taking off for a bombing mission’

An FA cup fifth round without a single 3pm Saturday kickoff.

if you’re planning to wait for all the sensible, reasonable columnists who said that they *weren’t* transphobic, they just had reasonable concerns, to rush to the defence of trans people who now need to change their driving licenses, do pack plenty of food and water, you’ll be waiting a while

Liars update

I thought that there was nothing this lot could do that could shock me any more, but here we are. This graphic is from a poll which has the Greens level with Labour on 28%, rising to 30% among likely voters. This is the most dishonest PM and government we've ever had. And we had Johnson's Tories.

Wrote this for @newsocialist.bsky.social six years ago and think it stands up pretty well, particularly this bit on what the Labour right actually believes. newsocialist.org.uk/plea-wavering-…

The folk who told me I was a resentful, foolish crank for thinking the Labour Right were truly dreadful corrupt people propped up by a smug, incurious commentariat seem to be apologising awfully quietly.

Well played.

Two minutes into Traitors and there is already a gay I would die for.

I cannot stress enough how much this was the consensus in Actual 2003

Breaking news! Hadley Freeman has finally written a column that isn’t banging on and on about how we must persecute more trans people! I wonder what her other interests… oh

Bigots are so endlessly weird

The Labour right is obsessed with the idea that constantly saying ‘I’m fucking brilliant, me’ is excellent politics, when in fact it is always incredibly cringe.

The Guardian has done a ‘how will the budget affect you?’ calculator which is literally impossible to use if you don’t have a car. A wee bit on the nose, that.

We worked together on my dad's last radio play- most of our scenes were duologues- and he was the most generous of actors to perform with. RIP. metro.co.uk/2025/11/25/w...

That’s two General Elections in a row won by straight up frauds on platforms of lying and drivel, then pivoting to both pleasing themselves with dumb, nasty culture warrior horseshit and very nasty authoritarianism. Almost like there is political/media class unity about those things, where it counts

I see that eighteen months into this Sensible, Moderate, Thank God The Adults Are In Charge government we have reached the ‘let’s steal jewellery from refugees!’ stage.

We really do need to find a way for noisy Sensible Moderates to finally admit they’ve horrifically fucked it, in a way that they’ll find acceptable. It’s going to be hard, because so many of them relentlessly clowned themselves by advocating for horrible cranks who have total contempt for them.

LISTEN TO THIS. I mean, I would say that, but listen to this.

I see the cosy Facebook fash have finally killed off Big Brother, then- a franchise which for a while back in the day made this country look a lot more accepting and diverse than it is. An all-white, all straight final with a Turning Point spokesperson in there feels very 2020s.

‘The dirty cranky lefties who told me exactly who he was from the start were right, but since I just sneered at them I am going to pretend that didn’t happen’

Three points I keep repeating 1. Left and liberal voters actually really exist 2. The right and "centre" are trying to rule without liberals - they are way out over their skis 3. Reports of right wing total information control are greatly exaggerated

The number of people taken in by this deeply unpleasant person is astonishing to me.

Social media makes touring an even more surreal experience. Standing at a luggage carousel at Heathrow watching a video of myself at a curtain call in Munich earlier today. Wild.

You know, it feels as if it isn’t *the left* who are the bad losers after all.

There is something grimly hilarious about all the Labour politicians lining up to pretend they’re on the same side as Mamdani after spending a decade scorched-earthing everything he stands for.

*Laughs in 2015-2019* I think we know what comes next.

If you want to experience the highest level of embarrassment it’s possible to feel for another person, the Sensible Centrists have taken to calling Zack Polanski ‘Magic Grandson’ because (a) they are terrible at jokes and (b) they think being left wing can only somehow connect to Corbyn.

Also, it’s really not great if you’re having to resort to stitching together weird Frankenstein creations to beat a party that’s polling just over a quarter of the electorate

Getting hammered & wailing into their mojitos that they told their core voters they were scum who can fuck off, imposed a lot of diet fash & upcycled racisms no one but them wanted & now they're all out of ideas 😭

Oh look, their broken system is about to fuck up, again, and they’ll tell us it’s somehow our fault, again.

'Hurray!' I think as I click Trust This Browser. 'I'll never have to go through this process again now!'

This is excellent news, especially for those of you who are about to discover it. Brilliant stuff.

'It's been lovely meeting you all... I've been totally consistent, and I am... ... a twaitor'

Here is a v sharable and relatable poem that I wrote about how Thing Were Better In The Old Days

Woah! So Labour's position really is, 'telling us off for breaching human rights undermines the case for human rights'? Proper Trumpian stuff from Labour's answer to Suella Braverman.