Despite decades of right-wing politics in the UK - inc. Osborne austerity, Brexit & Liz Truss - the centrist commentariat such as the FT's Janan Ganesh still cling to the orthodoxy that Labour cannot dare be more left-wing. Missing the point. Labour should be more authentically Labour.

Reform councillor who replaced colleague who stood down over racism allegations steps down and is revealed to be facing racism allegations. I wonder what qualities they are looking for in the next candidate? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Clement: Makama has broken a bone in his foot. Likely to miss most of the remainder of the season. #ncfc

Surprise, surprise the Daily Mail really wants Starmer to quit, having slammed any suggestion in 2022 that Johnson should be removed.

Just beyond parody at this point

The Times calls Keir Starmer's decision to hire Peter Mandelson an "egregious error" which deserves an "inquiry into the appointment process." Not included is any demand for an inquiry into their own appointment of him, long after his post-conviction relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was exposed

British values

We are all Giorgia Meloni #WinterOlympics

Damning piece from Labour MP @labourlewis.bsky.social about what the Andy Burnham saga has revealed about Keir Starmer bylinetimes.com/2026/01/30/k...

Can thoroughly recommend catching Charlie on his Dylanesque never-ending tour.

I'm not sure people appreciate quite what a blow to Starmer's government the acquittal of the Palestine Action protestors is. It both blows apart the whole proscription idea and demonstrates how out of touch they are. This was a jury. Juries represent the public.

1 And lo, there came upon the land a time of great Noticing, and many things were Noticed which had gone unseen 2 And the Hacks spake, saying, Whom could’ve known the taking bribes and wrecking his party with bullshit terror adviser guy was a Mandelson plant 3 And, it is a show, that is made of shit

If this doesn't finish Starmer the local elections will.

"We would find ourselves in a country in which the great majority did not want to live under a Reform UK government, but found themselves doing so anyway. If that happens, it will be entirely on this Labour government, and its self-interested refusal to change the electoral system." Totally spot on.

Blaming the EU citizens for every ill in Britain, forcing them to apply to live in their own homes with their own families. They will never forget nor forgive that. Let’s not lie to ourselves: Britain did #Brexit because ”too many EU citizens taking our jobs and benefits”.

Devastatingly sad. Every Labour MP should be forced to read this. In fact, every MP, who rushed back to Parliament to vote to save one steel mill, whilst hastening the collapse of dozens of universities - and harming the students, staff, communities and economies universities sustain and support

If Kuenssberg worked for Hello! she'd have been quickly sacked for being too soft on interviewees. “Everything across the BBC is funded by you. Thank you”. I am totally sick of licence-fee payers subsidising the normalisation of a forthcoming far-right government. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

for connoisseurs of local journalism traffic farming, this is the latest frontier – you reprint ancient facts from Wikipedia and present them as news, in order to create curiosity gap headlines that appear in Google Discover / Apple News

So it’d be super-awkward if this whole government had been Peter’s project from day one, because it’d be riddled with this stuff top to bottom. The whole thing would be built on backhanders for secretly negotiated policy, wouldn’t it.

Everybody - and I mean, everybody - knew that Mandelson is an amoral, corrupt shite who gets blinded in the headlights when rich people are around. His appointment was criricised at the time, and acknowledged as a gamble even by ministers. But, yeah, "I didn't know". #KeirStarmer #NotFitForoffice

I mean... this is REALLY not ok

Who leaked this Number 10 discussion to Jeffrey Epstein? And are there consequences for the leaker? It’s an internal discussion re. getting markets moving in the aftermath of the financial crisis. No doubt of great interest to Epstein and his financial market clients.

THE WEEK IN SCOTTISH FOOTBALL PATTER 2025/26: Vol. 24

Oh, and 4. Despite the demand for proportional representation from Labour members, Starmer won't change our ridiculous First Past the Post system. So he's in no position to blame anyone for "splitting the vote". share.google/buxD1tZ5BfKk...

BREAKING: President Donald Trump warns the UK against getting into business with China, saying it would be "very dangerous." He seems to have forgotten he has agreed to visit Beijing in April and invited Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state visit later next year

The Times is not entirely unsympathetic to Farage but on Matthew Goodwin it's Editorial(29th Jan) argues he has 'taken a dark turn'

Oh well, if I must...

“British cinema chain Vue debuted Melania at its premier venue in Islington, North London, at 3.10pm last Friday (January 23), yet only one person purchased a ticket.” The 6pm performance double attendance to TWO. It’s debut is in a 25 seat cinema.

@rafaelbehr.bsky.social is always insightful. This is the original sin of Starmer's premiership. Labour should have been honest with the electrate about the costs of Brexit, the costs of ploughing a lonely furrow on the world stage. 1

REFORM - leading in the polls - charges prospective candidates £125 to apply to run as an MP - before selecting a GB News host who is a colleague of the party leader and one of his MPs to run instead. You'd honestly think this was newsworthy. But apparently not.

This reads like a breathless Reform press release. Not the slightest reflection that being seen as a dumping ground for failed Tories might not be entirely positive. Or that it might help Tories detoxify. Or that Reform is ticking down in all recent polls. Dismal stuff. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Released on this day in 1993, what an album ❤️ ‘Here comes the blue skies And here comes the springtime When the river runs high And the tears run dry When everything that dies Shall rise in love’

not sure this is the classiest response from the Tories to the latest defection to Reform UK

Interesting Daniel Farke interview in the Sunday Times. #ncfc archive.is/blVgX

Nigel Farage couldn't find the courage to criticise Trump insulting British troops Saying his remark was 'not quite fair' Remember that next time they're waving union jacks 🇬🇧

I mean, #ncfc would be back in the bottom three if Portsmouth and Blackburn win their games in hand, but there's no way they're going down.

Best #ncfc away performance since winning 4-0 at Huddersfield in August 2023. So long ago that Rowe, Barnes and Idah were among the scorers!

As-it-stands #ncfc record since Clement's Birmingham "dry run" defeat - P12 W6 D3 L3 F17 A13 Pts21 - do that across a season and it's 80 points and the top six. There's a parallel universe in which we appointed someone like Michael Beale and are now marooned below Oxford in the bottom three...

When we make choices, they result in consequences. The consequence of forcing austerity upon everyone, and of spending a decade and a half frantically propping up the Thatcherite model is - it will now be extremely awkward to tell people they need to eat even more shit, to pay for tanks.

It's "Blue Monday", which is a load of nonsense, but it is an excuse for a thread about New Order and the UK's best-selling 12-inch single of all time #BlueMonday (THREAD 1 of 10)

enjoying tho the video thumbnail about two posts down on the same live feed page 😌

I'm fucking sick of this bloke and his what I did on my summer holiday style of writing it's absolutely infuriating

Full on delusional emperor mode. One can only imagine the work going on in DC probably among his own team to try to stop the now obvious Lear-style insanity causing too much damage

Rosindell did not attend or vote in parliament from May 2022 to early 2024 after he was arrested over serious offences. The MP declared he had been "completely exonerated" once the police decided after thorough investigation did not meet the threshold to charge www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Rat on rat action at #Reform

Unreal save. An important aspect of which is that he managed to make the ball stick too. Home crowd were genuinely baffled it hadn't gone in and you don't hear that often

Possibly the stupidest, most pathetic people in the world were the right-wing British 'intellectuals' who talked themselves into thinking Trump was good, actually, because they disliked the liberal left and the EU so much. Fucking useless clowns.

Great Yarmouth v Haywards Heath in the FA Vase may not finish!