Trump's speech to UN General Assembly. A stream of misinformation and delusional nonsense.

Is there anything coming out of Trump's catastrophic White House that his clone, Farage, is not willing to imitate?! Is he incapable of thinking independently about which public policies are appropriate to solve Britain's long-standing structural problems?! www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Published during Trump's first presidency, Timothy Snyder's primer, On Tyranny, now compulsory reading. Virtually every lesson from 20th C on rise of authoritarianism is being compromised during second Trump presidency. US citizens need to take heed in mid-terms, before point of no return reached.

Just a reminder, in view of recent events. It was Trump who poisoned public discourse in the United States, going all the way back to his 2015-16 presidential campaign. His back story will always haunt him - in every conceivable way.

Trump making utter fools of MAGA free speech evangelists, whether over suppression of the Epstein files or censorship of talk show hosts. They thought they were signing up to libertarianism, instead of which they're getting large dollops of authoritarianism.

There is an obvious response to those American media companies succumbing to Trump Administration blackmail for commercial gain. To cancel subscriptions and boycott their services. That way, they will suffer a net commercial cost, let alone the enormous damage inflicted on their reputations.

The Trump Presidency is the biggest threat to free speech in Western democracies. No more bullshit about limits on free speech in UK and Europe. It is the Washington Administration that is a direct and present threat to free speech in the meaningful sense of political dissent.

Musk incites far-right violence on the streets of Britain. A few days later, his erstwhile boss rolls into town to wallow in British traditions and to be comforted by the warm embrace of historic British institutions. Trumpworld!!

The continuing disastrous legacy of Thatcherism fuelling, as it has, growing inequality and concomitant political instability. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Haemorrhaging its ideological right-wing fringe, the Conservative Party has no political future under Badenoch's leadership as wannabe Reform. Its only hope is a radical change of strategy, re-occupying vacant space on the mainstream centre right of British politics.

Twisted by personal demons, Elon Musk is a white supremacist, moulded by South Africa's apartheid system, which collapsed under the weight of its own stupidity.

Far too little acknowledgement is given to the amount of time and energy Starmer has had to devote to trying to minimise the damage to European security arising from the destabilising impact of Trump's presidency. It has presented challenges unmatched since the 2nd World War.

Trump - true to form - imposed his own narrative on murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk - in advance of establishment of any facts concerning his murderer. It turns out his preconceptions - as usual - bear little resemblance to the profile that is emerging. Trump just makes stuff up!!

Glasman all over the airwaves saying 'I told you so'. Hilarious! The influence of his Blue Labour faction is one of the principal reasons why Starmer's Government is struggling.

Lo and behold - some coverage of this brewing scandal from BBC News at long last! BBC News - Farage faces questions over who funded £885,000 Clacton constituency home www.bbc.com/news/article...

The removal of Mandelson because of his close connections with Epstein turns the spotlight back on Trump's links with those same social circles and further ratchets up the pressure to publish all the Epstein files.

Those struggling to make ends meet yet tempted to vote Reform would quickly discover that in supporting Trump's clone - Farage - they would be signing up to a rich man's charter. His own murky financial affairs have that intention written all over them.

Mandelson's position as UK's American Ambassador is now completely untenable.

The world is a much darker place since Trump returned to the White House - in Middle East, Ukraine, and United States itself. He has been so accommodating of Netanyahu and Putin that they think they can act with total impunity. Making America Great Again is greatest political misnomer of all time.

There is no way Farage's financial affairs would satisfy integrity threshold of the ministerial code. In Number Ten, he would have three options: ignore it; dilute it; or scrap it. Standards in public life would have as little meaning as in Trump's Washington.

Rayner was careless about her stamp duty liability in Brighton and paid the political price for lack of due diligence. Farage - as is now on the public record - lied about his stamp duty situation in Clacton yet carries on regardless.

Reform's Annual Conference gave platforms to a medical conspiracy theorist, someone with a criminal record posing as a martyr, and a pantomime dame. Pledges were made and unmade in the blink of an eye. Add dissembling over Farage's tax affairs. Unfit for office isn't the half of it!

Time now for the media to ruthlessly turn their spotlight onto Farage's murky tax affairs. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Starmer seizing the moment, following Rayner's resignation, for a major reshaping of his Government, turning crisis into opportunity and, in the process, stealing the limelight from Farage at Reform's Annual Party Conference in Birmingham.

Farage dominated headlines over summer - and crashed and burned the first week in September.

We are now seeing the full international consequences of Trump's imperial America First presidency. Autocrats parading together in contempt of him, rubbing their hands with glee, as Trump abdicates leadership of Western alliances and the USA is reduced to a diminished presence on the global stage.

A presidency that goes on about threats to free speech in European countries shows absolutely no regard for civil liberties in its own backyard. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

After a summer exciting emotions through his provocative rhetoric, Farage again disappears from the country as soon as the House of Commons reconvenes. You could almost gain the impression that he's more interested in confrontational street protest than he is in parliamentary democracy.

From innocent bleating of Tory frontbenchers, you would hardly realise they were the ones in government who reduced the asylum system to disarray - and whose Rwanda policy, had it ever worked, would barely have scratched the surface of the chaos (let alone it's moral repugnance).

Trump's foreign and tariff policies are harming US interests every which way: reputationally through unpredictability; by enabling two international war criminals; damage to the domestic economy; and by incentivising opposing international alliances.

Mosley, Powell - and now Farage - ride on the crest of an inflammatory wave but eventually finish up in the dustbin of British history, in retrospect remembered as sad and despised politicians who tried to build political careers on the back of hate.

You cannot cut taxes whilst also ensuring public services are fit for purpose in an ageing society. Any politician who pretends otherwise is taking the electorate for fools. Irony of ironies: one of the ways to square that difficult circle is immigration.

Putin making Trump look like an utter fool. BBC News - Ukraine: Lives torn apart in Kyiv after Russia's heaviest bombardment for weeks - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Of course, Farage is the one who claimed Brexit would secure our borders. Evidently not! And it's not because it wasn't a 'real' Brexit. Johnson went for the hardest possible Brexit short of creating absolute mayhem. Farage is just a purveyor of quack solutions to serious problems.

Farage's extremism is no longer even thinly disguised. It's there in broad daylight, as he abandons long-standing British values.

Trump has no intellectual hinterland or understanding. Instead, he betrays the banality of locker room chuntering, laced with serious narcissistic disorders. As John Bolton observes, he will be recalled as a low point in the history of the Republic (and that's saying something).

Criticism of European countries by JD Vance et. al. for compromising freedom of speech is laughable given the intimidation of anyone who dare to show dissent from or criticise Trump. A règime riddled with hypocrisy.

Badenoch, Farage, and Jenrick are increasingly indistinguishable for their eagerness to embrace puerile Trumpian politics.

Having two leaders of the Conservative Party is becoming somewhat confusing 😕

It's not Trump mediating between Putin and Zelenskyy; it's European leaders mediating between a Putin-manipulated Trump and Zelenskyy.

Trump doesn't achieve objectives. He constantly changes the narrative to disguise the fact he's failed to do so. Putin dictated the terms at their Alaskan meeting; a humiliation for Trump.

As usual with Trump, his meeting with Putin was more theatre than substance. But the optics were terrible. Hosting an international war criminal on American soil. That Nobel Peace Prize he desperately cherishes, to emulate Obama, won't come simply through bending the knee to a ruthless autocrat.

The hallmark of Trump's presidency is casting a veil of legitimacy over international lawlessness, whether it be on the part of Netanyahu or Putin. Are we now reaching his Nevile Chamberlain moment - especially as Trump is completely out of his depth in his bilateral meeting with Putin?

Infantile economics. No credible immigration policy. Disregard for on-line safety of children. Crime assertions contradicted by official statistics. An energy policy leaving us at the mercy of fossil fuel dinosaurs. A 19thC industrial policy. The fantasy world of Farage and Reform.

Trump-Putin meeting: it's not about outcomes as far as Trump is concerned, which are incidental to him, no matter what the impacts on interested parties; it's all about Trump's extreme, pathological attention-seeking behaviour. The spectacle is the spectacle, is the spectacle.

That's how little difference Trump's 'peace' efforts have made. The situation in Ukraine has deteriorated rather than improved during his presidency; the same applies in Gaza - even more tragically. BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A wonderful cricket Test series comes to an end, albeit an anti-climax for England, losing by such a small margin, having got themselves into a winning position. What's there to look forward to for the rest of the summer: why, endless mindless babbling from Trump and Farage.

Trump's special envoy Witkoff off on yet another fool's errand to Moscow, lacking any diplomatic experience having already achieved next to nothing through his peace efforts either in Ukraine or Middle East over a long six months.

Farage's assertions completely at variance with consistent falls in overall crime, with exception of on-line fraud, substantiated in offical Crime Survey. More evidence of his cynical cultivation of national paranoia for naked political purposes.

The last time we saw hunger deliberately engineered by a state on a scale we're now witnessing in Gaza was in Soviet Ukraine in the early 1930s. That puts Netanyahu on a par with Stalin.