When the former villain has to team up with a ragtag bunch of heroes to defeat an even bigger, more existential bad guy...

The anonymous student classmate quoted here, with a quietly brutal summary of a good part of the radicalisation process...

I'm sorry to return to digital ID when it's finally been replaced by donkeygate in the headlines, but worth reiterating that Ellison bankrolls the Blair Institute which sees itself as the begetter of this plan. I don't for a moment think govt is proposing anything as sinister as this but...

See, Burnham could have just waited, given this speech, got the headlines he wants/needs and not piss off a load of people the week before conference!

Someone in the Labour top brass is obsessed with set-piece events. Using Conference to attempt a jarring change of tone in comms, as if no one will have noticed the last fortnight...

Remember seeing people lamenting that Shabana Mahmood had been put in an 'impossible situation' by being made Home Secretary, because *obviously* she would want to liberalise immigration law. Penny for your thoughts now...

it's over, i've already depicted you as weak anti-New Deal bankers and me as the Chad FDR

Getting mighty tired of the meme on here of “oh, it is just so difficult for the government to set the agenda”. The government (which literally employs thousands of press officers) is setting the agenda - it’s just that it is setting it on toxic ground it can’t win.

Think this is absolutely true - so much is written about boys and Andrew Tate - Tate is more popular with grown men than boys!

*Beatrice Webb emerges in the robes of the Reverend Mother* 'Our plans are measured in centuries'

Finally getting the kind of insane pro-tankie takes over here that we used to get on Twitter.

David Goodhart is having his (shitty) revenge, it seems.

Morning walk

Goji 4 Gobi

🚨 BREAKING: The former leader of Reform UK in Wales, Nathan Gill, has pleaded guilty to #bribery, admitting he received corrupt payments as a Brexit Party MEP in exchange for making statements in the European Parliament to promote Russia’s interests in #Ukraine.

This line is completely bonkers

Personally, I'm not sure a man found guilty of an attempted sectarian pipe bombing should be on bail. His given address is a mile and a half away from his intended target. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Quite something to live in a world where a Labour PM with a huge majority is at risk of being comprehensively outflanked to the left.

Dredging this back up from the depths of my memory. Over 4 million people in the UK don't have a smartphone. Seems like something to consider. www.theguardian.com/money/2025/f....

These false beliefs do not arise in a vacuum. Yet we seem collectively incurious about their origins.

Let people go offline.

That "progressive fightback" in full

I really hope the Starmer speech on patriotic renewal is better than this summary of it, which basically argues that New Labour and the Tories let in too many immigrsnts but this one is going to give you a youth club instead so please don’t vote Reform www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/f9444c6...

My 'No 'pensioner deportations' under Reform' t-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my 'No 'pensioner deportations' under Reform' t-shirt... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

There is a startling lack of common sense among the people making these decisions. Children at the wheel of a bulldozer.

The total number of voters who believe that Reform are right about immigration but you can trust Labour more to actually do something about it may be literally zero. Including the people who wrote this article in the name of the leader of the Labour Party.

Behind a Telegraph paywall, no less!

My contribution to The Loneliness Discourse is that we see D&D, Warhammer, etc, going mainstream because they‘re Third Space Provider Games so we should all talk more about such things to save America.

Realising that we're going to have a news cycle featuring David Blunkett and Jack Straw talking about how great ID cards are...

CHOTINER: And you didn’t know this person - what did you call him again? CELEBRIMBOR GREATEST OF THE ELVEN SMITHS: Right, his name was Annatar but CHOTINER: And you taught him to create a ring harnessing all his malice and cruelty? CELEBRIMBOR: Well I mean I was deceived CHOTINER: So you’ve said

Literally every such pro-flagger press piece that I've looked at has ended up with the flag-raiser being a member of the far right:

Liz Truss is now dunking on Andy Burnham

Me: Which is why I did a Chotiner interview meme post Chotiner: but you did want engagement Me: Oh, of course! But it wasn’t just that. C: You felt you could add to the conversation Me: My own perspective. C: By posting the same joke as everyone else Me: it’s a funny variation

*Galaxy Brain Take* Andy Burnham is actually a stalking horse for the triumphant enthronement of Ed Miliband.

It can never be stressed enough how different the practical rules of politics are for the right and the left. People used to say that this was just bias sensitivity, or cherrypicking, but nobody does any more, cause you just can’t ignore it.

Look what we have here then.

I have had a large number of people say they simply did not understand the extent without posting the actual examples. Hence my approach to doing so It remains the case that compelling evidence of just how much we are tolerating has yet to wake up those with actual responsibility and power yo act.

An important read about the background and possible motivation of the ICE shooter. His friends describe him as an extremely online edge lord, with no strong political leanings. www.kenklippenstein.com/p/the-ice-sh...

Emotion, agency and identity. Professor Nadine Rossol examines flag conflicts in Germany during the 1920s and 30s, and what we can learn from history about current English 'flag wars'. Read the @royalhistsoc.org article: brnw.ch/21wVYZq

Burnham managing to combine 'I don't want to be a distraction at conference' with being on the front cover of the NS and all over the papers? The sort of tactical genius we have come to expect.

Quite. So many Labour people on this website visibly have no idea of just how bad things have got for ethnic minorities since they came on, and how their visible indifference lands.

A sub plot of this is “which MP will he swap with?” Aside from the fact two of the most obvious GM ones are in dangerously marginal seats, it’s an absolutely toxic optic. Speaking solely as a voter the entitlement would be off the scale

The perfect ending to this story.

I particularly love how Matt says “having worked in it I saw this first hand”. Mate, the market research company sent you the data and you put your name on it. You didn’t get any more insight on how the industry works than the rest of us.

Zelensky at the UN General Assembly session:

dudes rock

Most people don’t follow the news that closely, so probably the cumulative effect of “they have said a lot of mad shit lately”.

Anyway, here is some actually incredible news www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...