Rather illustrates why more Reform politicians getting elected several years before a Westminster poll is due may be a rather mixed blessing for Farage. Plenty of time for opponents and press to dig into his colleagues’ backgrounds. Things like this turn up remarkably often.

Medicare for All - "That's socialism!" Social Security - "That's socialism!" Debt free education - "That's socialism!" Universal childcare - "That's socialism!" Bailing out a failed libertarian austerity agenda in Argentina... "That's just how it is."

Agreed. Politics is not about avoiding conflict: disagreement is inherent to democratic politics. Sometimes you have to decide where you plant your standard; where you draw your dividing lines. This should be one such place.

I have a feeling the digital ID stuff will burn Labour badly. Logic: 1. A lot of people hate the idea. 2. A lot of people who don't hate the idea "in theory" will hate the specific way that Labour have chosen to frame it all about immigration. That doesn't leave much potential for happy people.

ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION YET? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is standing in the way of the EU's plan to seize €140 billion of sanctioned Russian assets and lend them to Ukraine. But the European Commission thinks it’s found a workaround to cut Hungary out of the process.

Digital ID cards will be a best of British bodge job: years late, billions over budget, and not fit for purpose even before they arrive. Nobody has mastered messing up huge IT projects quite like successive UK governments of all stripes.

Give it a month and Keir Starmer will tell someone interviewing him that he hadn't read this morning's speech before delivering it.

Yes. It *should* lead to thorough and timely investigation of the wider issues involved in this sordid case and the extent of Russian subversion.

A witch doctor writes…

This man has left his nation in a state of total isolation. He is disaster for Israel's international standing and security.

Nathan Gill, Reform's leader in Wales at the last Welsh parliament election, has pled guilty to 8 bribery charges, taking Russian cash while he was one of Nigel Farage’s MEPs to speak in favour of Putin's Russia in that parliament www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Latest on 🇪🇺 proposal to sanction far-right members of Netanyahu's cabinet: EU national reps discussed it today. Hungary indicated nothing will persuade it to drop its veto on those sanctions (which need unanimity). 🇩🇪🇮🇹🇦🇹🇨🇿 were quiet - they can hide behind Hungary's veto for now.

I favour an ID system, generally. I've always thought it's much riskier for dozens of private firms and gov't agencies - with questionable security - to hold various documents, bills, and personal stuff. But I ALSO think this is a binfire of a policy, dangerously mistimed, and a comms farce.

I love British daily tabloids. 🤣

The depressing thing about today is that it was sold as Starmer's answer to Reform. This is apparently what he has to offer as a vision of a confident diverse nation: ID cards. Just utterly joyless and emotionless.

Whether or not digital ID is a good long-term policy, the politics of it are that Labour just set up a battle with its own party and all the others, promising to achieve something this scheme probably can't, at an obvious actual and opportunity cost.

“Let’s call it for what it is: bullshit. The truth is, politicians have talked about little else but immigration for decades and in the most dehumanising ways. Polanski added: “Stop the boats’ is all we hear. Well, today I'm saying ‘stop the bullshit’.” www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Legal migration was not "uncontrolled". Why accept far right framing?

Today’s digital ID announcement yet another example of how X being the main platform for political discourse will inevitably throw the MSM’s coverage off course, because online right opinion is fevered/way off the beat with the public. Guess who need digital/reliable ID most? Those in poverty.

The sheer hypocrisy of this. You have to "show your papers" to vote in a general election. I have to "show my papers" to examine a PhD thesis. I can't sing evensong down the road without "showing my papers". The Mail backed all these Tory changes. But suddenly Labour is turning us into Stasiland

Mandatory ID cards are a terrible, terrible idea iandunt.substack.com/p/id-cards-a...

And we have today’s daily social media post award to @anandmenon.bsky.social

So, to be clear, Reform UK want a state strong enough to carry out mass deportations but identity cards would be a step too far in terms of state power?

ID cards are generally a solution in search of a problem. They double up as a way to make basic infrastructure work – like joining up government data and having shared logins across systems etc – contentious. They can turn into huge outsourced IT projects, that the UK is traditionally awful at. 🧵

The success of the far right is not only measured in votes and seats but in its impact on rhetoric, policy and ideology. The fact that a (nominally) social democratic head of government with a huge majority choses to say and do this is maybe the biggest success of the far right in Europe yet.

unforgettable television

So it is not compulsory for all adults, and it is not a card (govt news release)

Andy Burnham's pre-conference media grid hasn't gone down well with many Labour MPs One, who admits they're open-minded to Starmer going, tells our Harriet Symonds that the mayor's "overt" approach "will do him no favours" A raging minister said if he wants to "mess around", he should resign

With Labour MPs putting pressure on Keir Starmer to scrap the 2 child benefit cap, our poll shows 59% of Britons want to keep it - including 53% of Labour voters yougov.co.uk/topics/polit...

Brits don't hate them! They have always had substantial majority support in polls. (Most recent YG showed 57% support vs 25% oppose). What's odd is that bits of the right-wing press oppose them (e.g. today's Mail front page).

Never really got the outrage about ID cards when they were first proposed 20 years ago and get it even less now that almost every single human interaction is mediated, tracked and authorised on a second-by-second basis through our phones, anyway. What do people think it would really change?

A society in which the state exempts some people from carrying proof of ID while forcing that requirement on others is less fair than one where everyone is obliged to have a standardised proof of ID.

They’re not on course to form the next gov. Today’s polling suggests they might win if there was an election today…

Argentina's Javier Milei is battling the worst crisis of his presidency ahead of midterm elections. In October, the public will deliver its verdict on economic policies that pulled the country back from the brink of hyperinflation but have weighed on growth in recent months. on.ft.com/3VDP2CC

Is it "move to Dubai"?

Keir Starmer's aides are reportedly telling him not to go to the COP30 climate conference, because Reform would attack him for it. Yes, they might. And he should wear it as a badge of honour. Standing up for humanity, for science and a habitable planet. Where's the hazard in that?

🚨 The EBU will hold an extraordinary session of the General Assembly in early November, where EBU Members will vote on Israel's participation in #Eurovision 2026. "The Board agreed that this question merited a broader democratic basis for a decision, whereby all Members should be given a voice."

Yep, that's great. Just fantastic. We were told that Starmer would lay out the patriotic case for diversity today. What we got was an article in the Telegraph, behind a paywall, about how the left failed to tackle immigration and now we all have to have ID cards www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09...

Pete Hegseth has summoned every general and admiral in the US military around the world to an *in person* meeting next week. And he’s given no reason. That’s basically unprecedented. There’s lots of reasons you don’t do it, too – not least that it’s bound to make the rest of the world twitchy.

This really sums up everything wrong with Kemi Badenoch, just a politician incapable of not responding with partisan caterwauling, and of doing her job properly. “This needs a national debate”, imagine for a moment that it will involve a legislative process and parliamentary debates. Do your job!

Disney investors demand details into company’s Jimmy Kimmel suspension www.theguardian.com/film/2025/se...

When dreams come true... 😊 #cat #catday #bluesky #animals

‘Joanne has roasted Royal Park Swan in a Boston Duck infused sauce served on a bed of fresh paracetamol…’

BREAKING: All UK adults to require digital ID under Keir Starmer plan www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

Want to know how the new digital ID system will work? Good news! I’ve explained how it will almost certainly work here: takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/britcard

Not just old enough to remember when Oyster cards were creeping authoritarianism to allow government to track your every move, I'm old enough to remember when Leeds City Council introducing digital library cards to replace those old cardboard pockets was the precursor to the cold hand of the Stasi.

This withered little bellend will say anything in order to ingratiate himself with Trump. He hasn't had an original thought since the cries he let out on the ill-fated day he was born.

What I find darkly comic about this, and just how bad Labour is at policy, is that many of the "target migration", crew will be pissed off at the idea of them having to have digital id and people who would support id cards are more liable to be progressive and anti the xenophobic pitching. Lose lose

BREAKING: Keir Starmer dismisses Trump's claims about sharia law in London as 'nonsense'