A couple of hours to kill in Woking so figured I’d look for the blue plaques

I finally gave up and admitted to myself that I hated it and everyone involved when Mishal Hussain left, I at least found her voice and manner bearable in the morning but all the others are just aggravating. Who wants to get to work in a foul mood every day?

I gave up on it some years ago and the positive affect on my life was such that I still have a burst of pleasure every morning when I recall that I'm not listening to it. In that sense I'm glad it still exists out there, so I can enjoy its absence.

We've had a Green MP for just over a day and there's already someone in the neighbourhood WhatsApp group complaining they haven't solved flytipping yet.

So far I've come up with one rational explanation for Labour's response, which is that maybe Reeves has placed a significant amount of Treasury funds on a very specific accumulator about this May's elections, including Labour losing all their London councils and finishing fifth on projected vote.

That article is a bit weird though. I agree Today is appallingly bad and its style, priorities, and biases have a deleterious effect on the country’s politics… so it was jarring that the author’s first complaint was “it has too much arts coverage”

I've barely listened to the Today Programme for twenty years, because it was so terrible for so long, but apparently it has more recently been getting *even worse*.

Labourites chasing Reform voters remind me of Democrats who couldn’t “imagine the Democratic Party without West Virginia”—historically a miners’ union state—even decades after it had gone hard Right based on race, culture wars, and anti-environmentalism. [more]

Reboot of the West Wing, but it’s just members of the Bartlet administration testifying about their appearances in the Epstein files.

Welcome back!

We were very sorry to learn of the death of political theorist William E. Connolly this week. He published six books with us. Here is our appreciation.

Not that anyone asks historians anymore, but I think my sense that the last GE was Labour's 1906 (they are the Liberals in this analogy) still might stand. What remains unique (and so without historical analogy) is that the Conservatives are being *successfully* challenged by a party to the right.

A good overview. Also includes sound advice for Labour should it wish to revive its fortunes. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

One of the weirdest things about British politics at the moment is the consensus view that Badenoch is now doing quite well on the basis of no discernable electoral or polling evidence whatsoever.

Tough morning for Goodwin, but doubt it hurts as much as when I beat him in the 2014 Political Studies Association Executive Committee elections.

I’ve learned that you can write four million Substacks with five million graphs and they will still absolutely refuse to admit that there is any voter that matters other than Dave and Carol, aged 63, hate immigrants.

cc @chrisbrooke.bsky.social

Obviously I want him to lose but the thing about Goodwin is he's a deeply unhappy and bitter person and becoming an MP wouldn't change that. If he wasn't pushing such foul views I'd feel sorry for him.

In honour of the Sunday Telegraph's editor and offical maddest columnist, we have created the Allister Heath headline generator... stirring-fox-7e1fab.netlify.app

I love the idea of some hotel receptionist saying “And we’re looking forward to welcoming Lord Mandelson next week as well“ and Hoyle saying “wait what”

Two! #magpiescience

Ozymandias, King of Kings, is one year old today. He successfully overcame FIP to become the luxuriantly-furred and mighty hunter that he is today, and we are very proud of him. Happy Birthday, Ozzy!

I stumbled across this talk by Jennifer Pitts on the French translation of Cugoano's Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery. She argues that Condorcet, likely with the help of Sophie de Grouchy, did the translation. Interesting bc Cugoano was a far more radical abolitionist than Condorcet.

to seriously deal with the implications of Jan 6 (and everything around it) would mean reshaping the entire way they covered politics, and they really didn't want to do that.

“I’m from the government. I’m here to regulate your sexual economy."

‘For Mandelson the cast of people who matter is very narrow, he is always the betrayed rather than the betrayer, his press critics are always acting in bad faith, and he is never adequately rewarded or appreciated.’ @piercepenniless.bsky.social in the new issue. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

*taps the sign*

why is he such a creepy weirdo? Would v much be up for adding "don't be a creepy weirdo" to the Nolan Principles.

Quite the Eye Told You So in Private Eye, flagging its reporting of Mandelson’s dealings with Epstein from 2009 (!)

a year is a long time in politics

‘Peter Mandelson tended his own mythology and influence over the party, of course. But many were attracted to the politics of pure means that he represented, irrespective of ends.’ Online now from the next issue: @piercepenniless.bsky.social on Mandelson and Epstein. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I wrote on the fall of Peter Mandelson for the next issue of the @lrb.co.uk Online early now: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

More books should start like this. #thepeoplestwopowers

It will never stop baffling me that there are people — mortal, like the rest of us, marked for death after a cruelly short span — who willingly watch televised awards shows. When I moved to England and saw people talking about watching the BAFTAs I genuinely thought they were joking!

Marmalade also gets a mention in Hansard, 12 Dec. 1854. Austen Layard advised re: conditions for troops in the Crimean war: 'Let us not waste our money in sending out jams and marmalades, and such like delicacies, or in objects which will perhaps arrive too late, and prove utterly useless'.

That it is a monumentally stupid strategy is unlikely to dissuade the higher-ups in the Labour Party from pursuing it, insofar as they have been committed to a similarly stupid electoral strategy for a long time now, and won't see any reason to stop, because they are like that.

an ironic thing: China is considerably more corrupt than the U.S. in day-to-day life, but Chinese college admissions are one of the least corrupt parts of the system and U.S. ones one of the most corrupt parts.

Pardon

Yes. Over the years any number of people who really should have known better have talked this up to me. It has been extraordinarily successful regime PR, for a deeply unlovely regime.

Launching Marx back into the Sphere of Circulation as we prepare for a retirement move.

In the large: Mortality in France, 1816-2016.

My wife is attempting to explain the Gorton and Denton by election on the phone to my in laws. *Romanian yelling* (the default Romanian volume) "Keir Starmer" *more yelling* "Nigel Farage" more yelling "idioată" *yelling again* "Sistemul electoral"

There is nothing one-dimensional about Wile E. Coyote.

It Happened to Me: Someone I consider a dear friend asked me how my manuscript is coming along

I have flipped on the television and Wales have just taken the lead in a Six Nations rugby match and this is very surprising indeed.