The media seems v unlikely to notice dramatically falling school numbers as they continue to run inaccurate stuff about migration pressures on school places

Wow. The Department for Education has just published new projections which estimate that the number of pupils in state-funded schools in England will plummet by more than 9% by 2031 amid falling birth rates And yet this issue receives probably 1,000th of the coverage the immigration debate receives

One complaint I've picked up from Burnham allies is that there still isn't really a settled inner circle so nobody really knows who is in charge. Hence the constant contradictory briefings

This is interesting. It seems to have become much worse since 2016.

We simply shouldn't tolerate this kind of shit. In 2017/ 18 I received quite a few emails/ social media comments saying that I should be hanged as a traitor because of what I wrote about Brexit. I'm not saying I was in genuine danger, but it was extremely unnerving. 2/2

I’m not sure that a sausage in a bun that presents itself as a rite of passage is a foodstuff you should be putting anywhere near your digestive system.

A 14-year-old boy has been charged with planning a far-right terror attack on two mosques in Sutton, south-west London, and racially aggravated vandalism of a car If convicted he would be one of the youngest ever terror plotters in Britain

The difference between Starmer and Burnham is that Starmer only became a disappointment* after he became leader. *Understatement alert.

This is surreal. And not in a good way.

SpaceX stock on watch after hitting all-time low, threatening to dip below IPO price

What's striking about this list is that there's no single policy or attribute that served to focus hostility to Starmer: like the poll tax for Thatcher, Iraq for Blair, the mini-budget for Truss or Suez for Eden. The animus runs across the political spectrum, but the reasons given differ wildly.

Now that's a truly revolutionary level of bad take.

"As far as the government is concerned, they’ve washed their hands of us. Would they do that to a white person?" For a @prospectmagazine.co.uk feature on Britain's citizenship-stripping boom, I spoke to families of people who have had citizenship revoked www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/uk/...

I found this story genuinely shocking to report. The legislation has expanded so much that now the grounds on which citizenship can be stripped are incredibly vague and there is hardly any recourse. Anyone who the government believes MIGHT have a claim on another nationality can be denationalised.

The increasingly public fight about whether Miliband should be chancellor is indicative of a Burnham operation that is currently somewhat chaotic with a lot of people claiming to be working with him / speaking for him.

Republicans are actually going with anti-communism as their central message to voters for the midterms. I figured House Rs would ignore Trump’s ridiculous plan, but it appears Mike Johnson and his band of sycophants has decided to go with it while adding Christian nationalism.

It is mad that we have, somehow, allowed net zero - a policy common to all major parties under 5 years ago and supported by a majority of the public - to become a synoym for mad radicalism. It is doubly mad that we've allowed this to happen during the hottest summer on record.

I dedicated a decent amount of my life a few years ago to investigating dodgy PPE contracts. Here’s what I made of the Covid Inquiry conclusions released today 👇🏻

If Burnham buckles to the City in not appointing Ed Milliband… but doesn’t buckle to the millions of disaffected Labour voters in not removing Mahmood from the Home Office, that’ll be about as depressing a start as I’ve prepared myself to expect.

???

So let’s get this straight…..he was president during the election of 2020. So he’s going to go on TV to tell the American people that HE didn’t do his job when HE was president.

A historic moment in Paris! For the first time ever, Ukrainian troops marched down the Champs-Élysées for Bastille Day celebrations. Even the skies joined in, featuring Ukrainian pilots flying in French Mirage fighter jets. A truly powerful symbol of European solidarity. 🇺🇦🇫🇷

Almost £10 billion of the £15 billion that Boris Johnson's Government spent on PPE during the pandemic was wasted, the Covid Inquiry has concluded. The Inquiry found money was wasted on a "vast" scale, with companies with "connections to government" given first preference for contracts

You'd think the intelligence services having to raise the national terror threat level because of a surge in Nazi terrorism might have been a bigger story

There are people who wake up every morning wishing horrible outcomes to befall hundreds of thousands of people they have never met. You will know them best from their work supporting and leading the Reform Party.

What consistently impresses me about Farage and his Reform friends is their sense of perspective. Their total lack of it, that is. Without the hot gusts of extreme hyperbole they would deflate like a sad balloon.

I hadn’t appreciated the extent to which The Times had been radicalising its readers. Well, I had actually. But I always assumed they were trying to indoctrinate them to be fanatical supporters of Farage and Reform.

Farage holds a very large measure of responsibility for the death of Jo Cox. The supposed culpability of Dan Hodges (and other notorious left-wing agitators like, er ... The Times) is not exactly comparable.

Reform and their supporters now trying to reframe all journalistic scrutiny of them as being dangerous political attacks, bordering on terrorism. A preview of what we could expect from a Reform government

So many common phrases were invented for ads... "When it rains, it pours" (for salt) "Always the bridesmaid, never the bride" (for Listerine) "Lovely jubbly" (for an orange drink called Jubbly)

”Brexit was a dishonest and self-harming response to the English question. But the great and the good seem loth even to hear it, let alone try to provide a better answer.” Seriously good from the great Fintan O’Toole. www.theguardian.com/books/2026/j...

A great actor is all men, somehow (3,5) #cryptic #crossword

Isabel is suddenly worried about words having consequences. Morning.

Sort of amazing Burnham is doing this again given how damaged he and the other 'mainstream' Labour candidates were by abstaining on the second reading of a welfare bill during the 2015 leadership contest. But really, there is no reason to be having this vote now. It should have been delayed.

RIP Sam Neill. A true Aussie (and Kiwi) icon. I’d imagine it’s lesser known to an international audience, but The Dish remains one of my favourite films of all time (despite it taking enormous liberties with the history it’s based on).

NEW | On the current grim game from Farage and friends… "WE CAN’T SPECULATE, BUT…” Ann Widdecombe's murder has prompted an out break of not-speculating speculating from Nigel Farage, Reform UK, and their friends in the right-wing press. brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/we-cant-sp...

It’s odd how often you hear people arguing for dialogue, common-ground & consensus seeking, when historically the best policy is often utterly destroying vile ideas, humiliating their proponents, liberating their adherents & salting the earth so that they never seep out of a putrid morass ever again

PSA.

Just The Telegraph having an almighty fannywobble at the idea that “women, disabled people, ethnic minority communities and LGBT+ individuals” be represented on bank notes. One of the suggestions was to feature the HMT Empire Windrush. Truly, the horror.

They don't It does PIP is not an out of work benefit. FFS, these people are about to ruin people's lives with absolutely no idea what they are talking about while they do it. Not to mention the complete lack of understanding about how needs change, which makes arguments like "mild ADHD" redundant

This was a chance to repudiate the May-Johnson red lines. He didn't take it. But Labour supporters will tell me he wouldn't want to say that because it would cause a storm. i. Just say nothing then ii. Why espouse a safe position you don't believe in? This looks like no change in Europe

Such an exquisitely crafted headline. Bravo FT!

Very arresting. 'AI increases the psychological and moral distance between those who exercise destructive power and those who bear its consequences... The core issue is the cognitive transformation that these technologies may induce in human decision-makers.' www.techpolicy.press/why-fear-mat...

I always love a good conspiracy.

This was a really moving interview. We're enormously proud of Peter at Queen Mary. He's been a lone voice for a particular kind of virtue in public life: not as something we admire in ourselves, but as something we practice towards others - and especially our opponents. And he really embodies that.

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham died Saturday evening after a "brief and sudden illness. n.pr/4wCsmD4

There is simply too much focus in the UK media on a puffed up narcissist with a ludicrous title who pops up to spout idiotic soundbites whenever actual adults are trying to discuss the future of governing Britain. For example, here he is talking about Count Binface.

The Telegraph used to like this kind of humour, until the right wing grifter is part of the establishment I suppose. "It shows our unique ability to reduce serious situations to silliness; and to use a rebellious sort of facetiousness to prick pomposity" www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking...

There's no sugarcoating this. We are living under an increasingly evil regime in the United States. ➡️Shifting deadlines are confusing businesses as the end of TPS for Haitians and others looms, making them ineligible to live and work in the United States. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/u...

The smart ones seem to prefer term 'liberal elite' because including two factors lets you switch backwards and forwards between narrow and broad definitions as you see fit. Cleverly obfuscating the the fact that most of the elite isn't liberal, and most of those who are liberal aren't the elite.