Damn right

The rebranding of reactionary gender and biological essentialism as “heterodox and challenging ideas to which liberal students must be exposed” is one of the greatest achievements of our stupid era. Congratulations to the reactionary centrists who helped make it happen - you dupes, you utter dolts.

Nathan Gill is no fringe politician. He was the leader of the Reform Party and before that UKIP in Wales. A Brexit Party MEP. A friend and ally of Nigel Farage, who in 2016 called him: "terrific," and "as honest as the day is long." This is a MASSIVE story www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I think one of the underrated effects of an ageing population on politics is a growing demand for propaganda that shows actually this or that movement has the vigour of youth on its side, Charlie Kirk was a harbinger in that sense

In Britain, a former far-right Reform party politician has been convicted of taking bribes to promote Russian viewpoints. Another scandal that should be the end of Reform but will be ignored unless we make a lot of noise about it.

In the early 1960s a senior Conservative minister, John Profumo, resigned and inflicted perhaps decisive damage to the electoral prospects of his party for a decade ….. for far less than this

600 retweets for something that is… not true. It’s being built in-house by GDS/DSIT, and probably isn’t that expensive given most of the infrastructure already exists. takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/how-the-uk...

I'm just baffled as to how on earth is supposed to relate to how universities work in the real world

easy way to nip this in the bud is for someone to invite farrakhan or dr. umar

Nigel Farage of course seems to have been very happy to do his pro-Russian propaganda for free

Good. Enforce laws. Hold blatant racists to account. The culture of impunity for the most vile ugly bigots that Musk has encouraged on Twitter is toxic and needs challenging

For the Guardian, @turnbulldugarte.com and I discuss our research that clearly shows one thing: Labour's anti-immigration strategy will only strengthen Reform and weaken its own electoral prospects. It won't win voters back but ultimately normalizes the far right www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Right, this is actually the use case for government ID - should empower citizens issue a token that says absolutely nothing, cannot be used to steal your data, but does say to an estate agent 'yes this person can rent this home, yes this person has the right to work'.

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

Anyone who doesn't think Britain is already a "papers please" society hasn't tried to get a job in the last 20 years so this totally tracks for Mail readers, who are all retired.

Selling ID cards as the way to stop illegal immigration rather than as a tool to simplify everyone’s lives is yet another colossal and very obvious mistake.

Compare and contrast this, which has visibly also been knocked off by a junior speechwriter who doesn’t quite have Blair’s voice down, is not great prose, but is actually, you know, a policy driven argument for s thing:

Aside from anything else, I do not understand why Labour feel the need to issue mea culpas on their immigration stance when they weren’t in power from 2010-2024.

Good frame for understanding loneliness today: we're all subject to the forces generating it, but some groups are struggling to respond more than others

one thing i think about @moiradonegan.bsky.social's point is that you never hear people go from "male loneliness" -> why don't we get men involved in collective projects of meaning for the most part. instead it's usually a discussion about how society is too "feminine"

Wild how short these books are, given their influence. Lucy gets to Narnia on page six, and the whole book is less than two hundred pages! This is not a criticism.

I understand that today's LGBT+ Labour committee will be under enormous pressure from powerful people - people who can make or break their careers if they plan to seek election in the future - not to call out this Labour government's attacks on trans rights. But this, nevertheless, is a betrayal. >

🧵 Just found an old email from LGBT+ Labour from June 2020. It's about a leak to The Times which said the Tory government was about to break its promise to reform the Gender Recognition Act. They had held an emergency meeting to discuss ways to counter the Tories' plans, and had set up a petition. >

[the "britcard" branding comes from a think tank report in June, not the government's announcement which is happening tomorrow]

i don't even think it's an american socialist thing - it comes down to a specific class position in american politics where they adopt left politics but refuse to acknowledge the idea that policy has tradeoffs or the fact that voters *should* be able to face negative consequences and reverse

i think it's because it codes as establishment liberal in the US despite the fact that i am a Dipper on the left-wing of the party up here in Canada

Maybe some of those "arguments against" could be put forward by some kind of grouping of MPs opposing the government? Perhaps if they nominated some kind of "Leader of the Opposition" to speak for them? Possibly that leader could put some kind of "Questions to the Prime Minister"?

Still can’t quite believe the Tories elected this Onion columnist to be their leader theonion.com/somebody-sho...

He was bloody speeding, he'd still have to show a driving license or show up to a police station with one within seven days today!

Part of the 'no strategy, only tactics' problem this government has is: once you have made a manifesto commitment to bringing down child poverty, indeed, once you are *the Labour party*, you were going to have to do the thing that actually reduces it. Much has been wasted thru dallying for a year.

It is interesting how in many ways learning more about the actual course of the French Revolution, including the Reign of Terror, has both made me more convinced this is something to avoid if you can, and mostly made me /angrier at/ White apologists rather than Jacobin ones

Hobby horse time but: the missing link here is Late Antiquity. People struggle to see the East Roman Empire as “the Roman Empire” because they skip the centuries in the middle where it’s transitioning that way and nobody can possibly argue it isn’t Roman

“While Allied propaganda exaggerated it, the Germans did in fact do many war crimes in Belgium in WW1 and even more war crimes on the Eastern Front, dwarfed as they eventually would be by their atrocities in WW2”

Enjoying how this story (not Iain, to be clear) has continued on even after various MPs have gone 'yeah, I *like* being an MP, thanks very much'.

This is incredible. Just total historical illiteracy. One of these pacts was not like the others because it involved, you know, invading and dividing up Poland.

If Patrick Vallance isn't being lined up to go on every news programme they can find today, then that's absolute dereliction of duty.

One thing I think we all forget is that party conferences do get the relevant party far more coverage than usual and so people do notice if they have a bad one. The Tories did badly after their 2024 party conference and maybe Reform's recent shindig proved similarly unappealing to swing voters?

These people absolutely exist and they’re nuts, and I can even understand doing a story on them, but it’s really quite pathetic to frame it as “Wow, just like 2020!” when it’s a bunch of random people online and not, like, *the candidate themselves and the overwhelming majority of elected officials*

Can Sara Gibbs do anything without the internet trying to lynch her

Quite frankly, you Americans always make this so complicated. Hegemony this, hegemony that. How about you just advocate keeping your obligations to other nations and the planet and whether that ends up being "hegemonic" or not can be a question for nerds.

Somehow only just occurred to me there is some cosmic irony in me being given a date for an autism diagnostic appointment literally /the day/ after *gestures*

I just want to note here that Zohran Mamdani did *not* support Kamala Harris when she was the Democratic nominee, now Kamala *is* supporting him as the Democratic nominee, and this website managed to turn this into a story about *her* being a perfidious snake. I mean.

Again, he is talking about *paracetamol*, the world's most common drug

Rugby would be an option, but, you know, I'm Welsh

imagine if a family of beavers randomly showed up right now and finished whatever thing you've been putting off

This would carry more weight if you hadn't spent the last year cheerleading for the Cass Report

Interestingly if we did polling by "bloc" this would reverse the order of "traffic light" and "Ref+Con"

"cultural Christians" who wouldn't ever stoop to believe in such superstition as the Resurrection or Incarnation but who want other, stupider people to Christians because it's based and trad:

It is hardly the point but a) trans people existed in Medieval Europe, b) lots of currencies were used in Medieval Europe, not just gold, which was in fact uncommon, c) alchemy was a lot more common in early modern Europe, d) women are not a commodity you absolute weapons????