One week to go! 'Whose Song to Sing: A Memoir' by @benwildsmith.bsky.social is publishing 5 February 📚 Pre-order now from your favourite local bookshop or via the link below! 📚 www.uwp.co.uk/book/whose-s...

If, as seems likely, Labour now careens through a series of damaging defeats. Starmer will surely be shown the door this summer. Control-freakery and weaponizing party structures can only get him so far ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1dtO

Family is part of anyone’s identity, positive or negative – we get no choice – but so is culture and community, and that, we can choose. Ben chose Wales, or Wales chose Ben – who cares which way round ✍️Desmond Clifford

After weeks of bellicose threats on the sovereignty of Greenland, including a couple against Iceland for good measure – it’s all walruses and Commies, what’s the difference – the retreat has started ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1dib

Nothing Trump is doing differs from standard American practice around the world, what’s changed is that he feels no need to fabricate justifications for it and he’s happy to include Europe as a target ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1cWo

Memoirs must be based on life stories of actual interest. That’s the starting point for Ben Wildsmith, and his story is interesting. Vivid and well-written, this history is sometimes vertiginous, but you’re never far from a laugh ✍️ Desmond Clifford

Watching Robert Jenrick badmouth all his mates and fall like a shot pheasant into Nigel Farage’s bulging game bag brought plenty of cheer to a dreary January afternoon ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1cLk

One of the paradoxes baffling anyone engaged with politics in 2026 is the enthusiasm with which those who rail against ‘globalism’ import political obsessions from abroad ✍️ Ben Wildsmith

Publishing 5 February, 'Whose Song to Sing' is a heartfelt collection of essays from @benwildsmith.bsky.social. Follow Ben's path from childhood privilege to addiction and despair, before the healing power of community offers a route to happiness. 📚 www.uwp.co.uk/book/whose-s...

Trump is now governing as a cartoon villain – nodding and winking to us that he has no ideological mission at all. ‘Ha! You thought we took Maduro because of drugs? Don’t be a child, we did it for the oil.’ ✍️Ben Wildsmith

I’m kind of done with railing about politicians driving us into barbarism. This weekend’s events confirm that plenty of people want an end to civilization as we’ve understood it ✍️Ben Wildsmith

We’re in it together, and alone all at the same time, facing the sheer rock face of a new year with uncertain prospects. We smile at each other, pet the dogs, and breathe in the cold, shocking air like a restorative medicine ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1bNK

Not appointing a Welsh leader is as good as a concession that no Reform talent exists here. Rhun ap Iorweth need only to ask where ‘Welsh Dave’ is to expose Farage’s lack of faith in Reform’s Welsh operation ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1bzk

Jake Paul is the least of boxing’s problems in terms of ethics. He gives us the ick, though, and it’s because he represents a wider feeling that nothing seems to be authentic anymore ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1bes

If Reform UK supporters are disorientated by bumping their smooth heads against the glass ceiling of electoral reality, then Labour’s remaining fans must be punch drunk✍️ Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1b3o

Cheap, backward-looking nostalgia combined with aggressive hostility and ignorance aren’t, traditionally, indicators of a new dawn in any society. A last gasp seems nearer the mark ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1azt

Following a series of public spats, splits, and financial shenanigans, the headlines yesterday went to Zarah Sultana MP, who boycotted her own conference! ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-19MW wp.me/p8Mk4U-19MW

As we squirrel away whatever we have, feeling the peril of the moment, our politicians lack the imagination to face reality at all ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-19DH

Now that Reform UK has, as Nigel Farage predicted, replaced the Tory party, it remains to be seen if Zack Polanski’s Greens will do a similar number on Labour. Plaid Cymru seem sure to hoover up the non-Reform vote here in Wales ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-19eM

Everything from the royal family to the Church of England, to the Labour Party, the Conservative Party and the BBC is in existential crisis over the border ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-190y

Self-styled ‘patriots’, festooned in flags and poppies, cannot wait to euthanise a public British institution in favour of private news organisations funded from who knows where, and by God knows whom✍️ Ben Wildsmith buff.ly/XAwF35X

Archiving our experiences whilst they are ongoing is part of a new normal that sees us becoming detached from our own lives ✍️Ben Wildsmith buff.ly/WPLQ5m1

As the UK heads towards the 2026 devolved elections and a likely 2029-30 general election, Caerphilly offers a blueprint for resistance to Reform’s national surge✍️Thomas Lockwood

From here on, the monarchy dances to a new tune. Without magic blood, the performance will have to be up to scratch or new dancers will be found. That’s showbiz ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-18fr

The electorate in Caerphilly proved that 21st century politics is a sophisticated business and that people have grown past tribal loyalties to prioritise values that are under threat from populists ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1863

Reports routinely describe Andrew as ‘entitled’. Well, he literally is, isn’t he? Every moment of the man’s life has been experienced from a protected, privileged vantage point so removed from ordinary lives as to preclude empathy for them @WildsmithBen wp.me/p8Mk4U-17Rr

By now, the Reform suits had been joined by Laura Anne Jones MS, whose permanent smile had a long night ahead of it. It was a lonely night too, as by midnight the men at C&A had faces like half a tin of condemned veal ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-17Kq

Reform UK fanatics, with their laughing emojis, ‘legitimate concerns about immigration’, and belief that the 2.2% of our population intend to turn Wales into a Muslim state, are unreachable via reasoned debate ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-17rH

As our politics sinks into toxic rancour, essentially reduced to a choice between scapegoats, we are facing monumental change that is proceeding with little or no democratic input ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-17ie

As information becomes concentrated in the possession of a handful of billionaires and sold to us as a utility, it is vital that we produce human beings who can think contrary to those interests✍️ Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1762

Reform-friendly influencers are actively calling for the Senedd’s abolition now, even as the party is contesting a seat in it. The Brit-Nat, racist fanatics who shout loudest on social media, however, do not win elections as yet✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-16WK

We have reached the point where Labour and Reform are riding the same train. It’s time to change tracks ✍️Ben Wildsmith

As Reform peddles its lies against a background of Putinism and personal disgrace, our governing party misleads electors in the service of a Westminster leadership that impoverishes us as a matter of reflex ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-16L6

Labour is now unable to change course credibly because nobody trusts the man at the wheel. If he stays, the coming rout in May’s elections will be UK-wide and quite possibly final ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-16Ct

From the doof, doof, doof of AI-written dance music, to the blue and orange tyranny of Greggs on every High Street, life is battered into familiar shapes through which our primal needs – sex and sausage rolls – are marketed to us ✍️Ben Wildsmith

If the Green Party’s vanity is responsible for Reform UK winning in Caerphilly, much of the left in Wales will never forgive it ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-16hD

Plaid’s job is to reveal the Reform UK project as Brexit MKII- another deregulatory con trick intended to line the pockets of the wealthy. Nigel Farage’s Wat Tyler meets Arthur Daley act has been allowed to run unchallenged for too long ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-15Xa

From QUANGO-sitting apparatchiks to green energy millionaires to £800k seaside flats and rental empires, Labour represents everything it was founded to upend ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-15Kb

The higher ground of politics is prone to give way suddenly when your time is up, and this week’s events suggest that serious slippage is starting beneath the Prime Minister’s feet ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-15C6

This week’s conference has revealed how extreme, undisciplined, and downright weird Farage’s party is ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-15p7

From subscription libraries, union scholarships, and the NHS, to the miners’ buyout of Tower Colliery, Cymru can point to a culture of cooperative action that has often led the world in social innovation ✍️Ben Wildsmith nation.cymru/opinion/cymu...

Whilst flying a national flag is, of itself, a neutral act, the loud support for this movement from anti-immigration politicians suggests motives beyond benign love of country ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-153j

Now is the time to condemn, to shun, and to ostracise. If that seems harsh, particularly if you are related to them, well sorry, but decent people have legitimate concerns ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-14VK

Reform UK plan on capturing our politics for flags that don’t represent us, with a leader who neither lives here nor intends to participate in our governance ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-14Jt

As Yaxley-Lennon promotes his ‘festival of free speech’ in September, and the provinces of England are illegally plastered in flags, we shall see where the strange, sinister journey that Lucy Connolly has taken to infamy will lead her next✍️ Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-14Bk

The politicians & influencers driving division in our societies are riding two horses at once. They ‘love’ a United Kingdom of flags, & beer, & bacon but hold its population, languages, institutions, environment, & even laws in contempt ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-14p0

Silence in the face of naked authoritarianism has legitimised it for politicians who are increasingly reaching for its tools to remedy their inability to persuade the public ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-14eM

Fringe parties are almost always the authors of their own destruction. Formed to be anti-establishment, they are forced to choose between ideological purity or electoral appeal and end up fighting like rats in a shoe ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-144p

Voting for Labour nowadays is like driving one of those Chinese-made MGs. The only item left from the original is the badge, and on closer inspection, it’s plastic ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-13We

Devoid of anything hopeful to sell us, our politicians evoke fears and then offer us solutions to them. If those solutions seem to have leapt from the pages of a science fiction novel, then all the better ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-13I6