The Blueskyers reacting with shock to this news haven’t noticed two things that have been going on for years. 1. The realignment of Le Pen, Wilders, and Robinson as defenders of Jews. 2. Amichai Chikli trolling so hard that he is fine with the Emmanuel Goldsteining of Soros.

A memo back to "Anonymous", the author of 'What did we learn over our summer holidays?' substack.com/profile/1051...

Pure Burnham game-playing. He advocates a return to the EU then says it won’t come “anytime soon” but got the headline and intra-left wedge issue he wanted. Media - let’s hold Labour figures’ feet to the fire on something doable and meaningful (Rejoin EEA) and make this a real debate.

✍️"Tell me lies ..." - my new www.242.news post on Farage, Starmer, Mandelson and Labour's silent Remain-ultras. twentyfourtwo.substack.com/p/tell-me-lies

Spoken like a true and committed Roman Catholic.

Mayor Claire Ward wins today’s bullshit bingo 🥇 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

All The President's Men, Three Days of the Condor, The Candidate, The Natural ... all-time favourites, which meant somehow I thought Robert Redford couldn't die.

I wasn’t in favour of Andy Burnham till now.

Hallelujah. Note that anyone who has anything good to say about him is or was in a position of great wealth (like his “best pal”) or great power. A Labour economist once told me “Peter thinks I’m a clerk”. No fourth act please.

Mandelson denied *profiting from the friendship*, insisting: “We didn't do any business together". What a sophist. Dave Epstein from South Croydon wouldn't have got a one-page birthday card. Like everyone Mandy ever charmed or bullied, Cole missed the faint. www.thesun.co.uk/news/3664234...

The @financialtimes.com political, economics, and leisure editors have let themselves be spun. This isn't a "powerful" policymaking body. Communications specialists Tim Allan, Morgan McSweeney, Katie Martin and Ben Nunn aren't on this board for their economic policy expertise.

I find the clockwork predictability oddly comforting. Night follows day. Germany wins at football. Where there’s an attentive sponsor with $600m, there’s Peter Mandelson www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic...

🔊Podcast: 'Proof of concept' - in this @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social and www.242.news interview, I talk to @benstanley.eu and @stanleysbill.bsky.social about Poland’s unfinished illiberal revolution and their book 'Good Change' @stanfordpress.bsky.social: twentyfourtwo.substack.com/p/podcast-pr...

Just when I thought I was out, Niall Ferguson pulls me back in again: substack.com/profile/1051...

On Saturday morning, I was on the Northern Line northbound at London Bridge when I heard a scream, the incoming train stopped suddenly, and there was a person under the train. Everyone was evacuated from the station. Since then, I’ve seen and heard nothing. Was anyone else there? Is the person okay?

@nadinedorries.bsky.social is going to be disappointed by her latest Messiah.

Eric Lombard nails the French political disease in @financialtimes.com interview: www.ft.com/content/612d...

@jvl.bsky.social is right to be angry and he’s angry with the right people.

For months, the case against another dissolution of the French national assembly was opposition from centre-left PS and centre-right LR voters. Today's IFOP poll shows that has changed with these voters now 62-64% in favour of new elections. www.ifop.com/wp-content/u...

Corinne Lhaïk’s shortlist to replace contains surprises like François Villeroy and Pierre Moscovici as well as usual suspects Gérald Darmanin, Sébastien Lecornu, Bernard Cazeneuve and Xavier Bertrand … www.lopinion.fr/politique/em...

And while you’re at it, listen to my www.242.news and @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social interview with @anneapplebaum.bsky.social about the hardback release of her book in July 2024: twentyfourtwo.substack.com/p/podcast-on...

Russia’s only “concession” is to accept temporarily that it only requires 20%-plus of Ukrainian territory along with Ukrainian demilitarisation and neutrality rather than the removal of its government and full annexation.

Trump’s response to being fooled like this will be ferocious. He’s sick and tired of being messed around by Putin and Lavrov. Sanctions, and accelerated weapons supplies to the Ukrainians. You watch!

🔊Hear me talk more or less coherently about Europe on the 'Get Sharpe' podcast out today. podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/t... open.spotify.com/episode/1HwH...

Jean-Luc Mélenchon read a history book and you’re never going to hear the last of it. melenchon.fr/2025/08/14/e...

200%! Watching European policymakers and analysts react with horror to Trump restating what he has said since February 2022 is beyond baffling. Forget the Americans. They’re gone.

I saw the @dailymail.co.uk headline but I was never in any doubt that a Boris Johnson “but …” was coming and, sure enough, after 14 paragraphs of £25-a-word Sixth Form invective, he does his usual: www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic...

This is spot-on. I wrote at www.242.news on 23/3: “Getting and staying angry about this has become self-indulgent - like pressing on a bruise for entertainment … Trump has many faults, but he doesn’t hide who he is, the tyrants he admires, and the elected democrats he hates”.

I suspect this from @katie0martin.ft.com is the answer to the Despite Trump rally. Truss and the Greek deficit recalculation (and the April 2-9 tariff experiment) were momentary shocks but markets fail during transitions to kleptocratic clientelism (See bit.ly/3S41EBe). www.ft.com/content/045d...

James Vance: we’ve introduced a goods-sales tax on Americans to provide Americans with tax relief.

Janan Ganesh @financialtimes.com is an enjoyable read but he’s simonjenkinsed this one. I’m also a cultural snob but you don’t have to be Shakespeare to be very good, and reading is as bingey, solitary and prone to bores as TV. www.ft.com/content/2ba3...

Americans, with your state-level rule setting for national elections and now this, do you have any idea how unique you are and how far down the road to appearance-only democracy you are? punchbowl.news/article/camp...

I knew McEntarfer was one of the good guys but this from her @wsj.com profile clinches it. Any McEntarfer would feel at home in the universe of Gargravarr, Hig Hurtenflurst and Zarniwoop. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

The next person who tells me “I don’t have any media subscriptions … well, except The Guardian” will be condemned to spend a year reading nothing but Sir Simon’s very expensive contrarian takes.

Republican administrations have form when it comes to activating Fed sleepers. After Waller and Bowman dissented against the FOMC's decision last night, I was reminded of this episode in William Silber's 'Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence'. www.242.news podcast at: bit.ly/44WmZE3

Richard Quest @cnn.com 💯.

Hallelujah to @r2rsquared.bsky.social - the EU-US “deal” is a win for the US like an own goal is a goal. The $750bn and the $600bn are as made-up as Trump’s $350bn to Ukraine and his 1,400% drugs-price cut. Humour the idiot.

Spot on from @mariatad.bsky.social on Franco-German performative anger over the EU-US agreement to raise the US tax burden.

Admits? “That’s because the cash would come entirely from private sector investment over which Brussels has no authority, *two EU officials said*”. Did anyone think the EU’s agencies planned a $600bn nationalisation programme in the US? www.politico.eu/article/eus-...

Strip out the political embarrassment involved in this EU-US "deal" and basically the two sides have agreed to impose a regressive 15% goods-sales tax on Americans (and not on Europeans) and that Europeans will carry on buying energy and arms they need thanks to Russian imperialism.

My new www.242.news post on whether Europe deserved to sustain the rotation out of US assets. Read at open.substack.com/pub/twentyfo...

This is Craig Murray's "biggest worry" about Jeremy Corbyn's new political party.

This ridiculous coment from the increasingly ridiculous Scott Bessent reminded me of the John Gielgud character in 'Plenty' describing a sychophant as having his "tongue so far up my fundament, all you could see of him were the soles of his feet". www.cnbc.com/video/2025/0...

“*If* Japan’s ruling coalition loses its majority in the upper house today, the country *could* a period of economic *uncertainty*”. Award-winning void from the BBC World Service.

Just finished listening to Simon Russell Beale reading ‘Karla’s Choice’ and (apart from a Brechtian ‘going forward” in Chapter 9), it’s uncanny how Le Carré’s Smiley it is. Freakish. Better, sometimes. Delighted @nickharkaway.com is doing another. And more I hope.

He really said: “I’ll tell you in about two weeks”.

I’ve come across this on Amazon before but this is extreme. What can explain it? Is it money laundering? I particularly like the €5.99 delivery fee.

The one plus from Trump’s release of the Rutte’s WhatsApp is that anyone from the European centre-left looking for reelection is going to have tone down the sexting because they never know when their orange ex might kink-shame them to the world.