The Starmer operation is so unserious. Oh, look at us, we’re furious at the woman who was an impeccably loyal deputy even as our operation substantially changed political position away from hers, for articulating the concerns of many of our MPs, even though the “direction of travel” was right.

Of course no one from *checks notes* Sudan or Afghanistan could be in genuine danger.

Moderate Conservative MPs have been handed - and almost exclusively flunked - two big tests: “can you stand up for the idea that skin colour is not a measure of integration?” and “can you stand up for religious freedom and pluralism?”. And on that basis not gonna be an effective Ofcom chair.

Because I am a bitter Yes to AV partisan who refuses to come out the jungle: this is why preferential voting is good for parties! It forces everyone to think honestly about what your actual preferences are!

don’t judge Offord for what he said “with a group of mates” is an insane defence for a drunk speech given to 200 people clearly they weren’t all his mates or one of them wouldn’t have remembered how offensive it was for years and come forward as soon as Offord entered electoral politics

love the people complaining about this being a spoiler

It /is/ a really ridiculous analysis, but tbf, I can absolutely believe Labour MPs are looking for an excuse to do nothing

I’m spoiled since moving to the tram line, have to get the bus and it’s sooo annoying not just being able to turn up and know something going the right way is coming soon

So, as the Scottish election campaign gets underway, can we talk about the need for a cordon sanitaire? We are facing into what will likely be the first session of Holyrood with a substantial far right group, where they could plausibly be relevant to government formation maths.

clicked the article and navigated the insane ads in order to learn that this guy isn’t just a fringe weirdo who has gravitated to Reform, he was a Tory spad!

Me, falling victim to looney tunes conspiracy theories

The excuse is insane. “Huge world-building shows”? It centres around one main protagonist who is nearly always the POV character, and 90% of it is set in one school!

just checked and my constituency Reform candidate ran for Galloway’s turbo-unionist party last time. wonder if he’s gutted Galloway has come out for independence

the BBC have now tried to split the difference by obliquely describing the joke, but in a way that wouldn’t make any sense unless you had read the full thing. consistently baffling choices!

I think it’s funny that when you paste a table from Excel into Outlook it will default to the most horrible, spaced out, unoptimised formatting, and then you just need to click AutoFit Contents and it’s perfect. Like a little vibe check to make sure you know the options menus well enough.

Badenoch's position - unsurprisingly, but I don't think we should stop noting it just because it is unexpected - is visibly just 'I'm not across this, but here comes some bitter partisanship and a demand to spend yet more money'. She sees herself as a thinker!

Feel like more people outside of Scotland should see this because this is genuinely horrific stuff from not just a Scottish Party leader but a member of the House of Lords

Met Police have just released a log of Morgan McSweeney's call after his phone was stolen in October, in which he doesn't mention that he works in Downing St or for the PM undermines the idea that police were "too busy" to properly investigate the theft McSweeney failed to explain why it mattered

This is really starting to piss me off. Tell us what the joke is so we can judge it for ourselves!

So, two things: It is *unbelievably* frustrating to me that we’re going to have a whole news cycle about this, and no outlet is actually reporting what he said. They are insulting my intelligence as a reader by presuming to tell me only half the story. 1/2

you see dubious political chicanery, I see admirable proof that the Met doesn't discriminate when it comes to its abject failure to investigate phone theft, even if the phone in question was being used to run the government

Okay as a journalist you really have to share the joke at the point at which you start talking in these terms.

The Greens want to maximise fossil fuel subsidies?

I think stories like this should have to include the joke or slur they’re referencing.

Good that the Chancellor made a statement on energy today, and good that she is building up a toolkit of options without overcommitting yet. However, there is a gaping hole in the government's response (and the whole discourse) so far: we need to help people use less oil and gas

It is beyond cowardly for the government to sit on their hands whilst this is gathering pace. They should be made to state whether they support this or whether they'll change or clarify the law to stop it. Obviously hope for the latter but anything better than this uncertainty.

What's great is that the entire last year has been No. 10 pushing the CMA to be more flexible, literally they fired people over it, in pursuit of balancing market concentration with investment and then they just stroll in here on the basis of a basic misunderstanding of price signals.

despise Holyrood magazine for this kind of thing, but it's incredibly brazen how the profile stops dead in its tracks, forces the interviewee to explicitly endorse the editor's prejudices, and then rewards him with favourable adjectives once he agrees you're meant to be more subtle about it!

Interesting interview, but yeah, the part where Holyrood magazine clearly asked him to look into the camera and say he’s the same kind of gender critical as them really just sounds so insincere and vague. I hope if he’s re-elected that he can find more of a voice.

Zack Polanski has liked this tweet, which is the top reply to his tweet shown above. In my opinion this tweet is a ludicrous exercise in excuse-making for violent antisemites, who obviously don’t think they’re targeting Israel by attacking a Jewish ambulance charity.

This reads more as a set of personal frustrations with this era of feminism than an actually useful obituary. It’s telling that Helen Lewis doesn’t bother to analyse the good things this movement brought us. Things were so much more sexist two decades ago! www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

An organisation's culture is set by its leader, and Starmer is curiously unburdened by asking 'is that true?' and it spreads through most of the government.

So many people in British politics don’t seem to grasp that the underlying problem is that the world *really* does have less of several very important commodities than it did four weeks ago, it’s not a weird trick by people who love the Iranian regime or the oil companies or the supermarkets.

This stuff is so frustrating. We have a great device to manage this stuff - it’s called “taxes and cash transfers”.

watching Back to the Future Part II, which appears to be a movie about the world’s most conspicuous undercover agent

Asked if she agrees with Nick Timothy, Best says: "No. I think like prayer is a fundamental right of every UK citizen, and if you don't like it, walk on."

On the BBC's London Politics show, Emma Best, deputy leader of the Tories on the London Assembly, says there has been "misrepresentation" about the Trafalgar Sq event, saying she had friends and colleagues there, and most people didn't even take part in the prayer part.

Cleverly praises Nick Timothy for being "very thoughtful" on the issue, an assessment slightly undermined by the fact that neither he or Badenoch are willing to endorse the actual substance of Timothy's argument - that Islamic prayer is of itself specifically intimidating.

imagine being James Cleverly and waking up every day thinking “if it wasn’t for my supporters being the worst tactical voters on earth I could have been leader” and then having to go out and defend the latest idiocy

Haven’t seen the British SNL, but it does seem good they’ve got some fresh faces on there and live music. Huge complaint about British comedy is it’s always the same ~10 people. They should be applauded for trying something different (albeit borrowing a US format).

the thing about SNL UK opening on a Starmer skit is that every other George Fouracres character sounded a little bit Starmery

listening to the FT Political Fix discussion of Nick Timothy’s comments. fascinating that until Stephen comes in on it, they’re all saying “I don’t get the strategic angle on this from Badenoch”. guys it’s not strategy. she’s motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice and her team acts accordingly

For several months, people have been wondering why Reform hasn't declared any crypto donations, despite Nigel Farage saying they'd received some Now @theobserveruk.bsky.social can reveal why...

No, we absolutely fucking can’t. The moment we fall back “ho hum, there he is crowing over his enemy’s death again,” we have lost something we will never get back.

finding myself annoyingly sympathetic to Starmer over the sheer quality of opposition to his decisions on the Iran war. Badenoch and Farage doing a completely shameless 180 (and then Badenoch doing a 360, 540, …), Lib Dems and Greens talking about it as if he’s in lockstep with Trump

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... More cases of British citizens being deprived of their statutory right to enter their country because they “can’t prove” they’re citizens, even though the reason they’re being refused entry is because the state knows they *are* British citizens.

I was sceptical going all in on the Epstein stuff including the winks and nods to the conspiracy crowd because all conspiracy theories in the end lead back to some pretty heinous antisemitic tropes and here we are.

I do strongly feel that even though I think the general changes are bad, it's especially heinous changing the rules under people's feet like this. It isn't fair.

the world’s most shameless woman?

Again I don't understand why the second sentence of pieces like this doesn't read "So, please, for the love of God, never read anything I write again. ENDS"