UK (Scotland), Find Out Now poll: Scenario: Nigel Farage (REFORM~NI) is UK Prime Minister Independence referendum Yes: 61% No: 39% Fieldwork: 11-19 December 2025 Sample size: 1,000 ➤ europeelects.eu/uk

“In focus groups, people say Starmer is a liar and only said what he thought he needed to say to get elected,” Tryl added. “Reeves is often deemed to be uncaring. People say she’s targeting people who can’t fight back”

In my 2026 predictions thread yesterday I laid out a number of reasons why I thought Badenoch more likely to survive than Starmer, but the simplest explanation is this: a majority of Tory/Tory adjacent voters approve of Badenoch, a majority of Labour/Lab adjacent voters disapprove of Starmer

“The idea that squeezing a tiny elite of billionaires will pay for everything is fantasy and we do need to expose that.” Good job no one’s ever actually said that - including me. So why is Labour again repeatedly lying to avoid taxing the super-rich? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

“[starmer’s policy] repeats the fatalism of Philip Snowden, Labour’s first chancellor, who insisted in the 1930s that there was no alternative to cuts. That path led to economic stagnation and Labour’s near-destruction. It may do so again.”

Jailed former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was found guilty of abuse of power in the biggest trial yet in the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal, a ruling that could have significant political repercussions reut.rs/4pg2s4f

DUDE LMAOO

A dictator and a lawyer bonded over weight loss. It helped secure one of the biggest political prisoner releases since the collapse of Communism.

Official data is in today, and US solar continues to grow rapidly, with generation up 21% compared to last year!

Justine Paul spent years in jail awaiting trial even as the evidence against him fell apart. Afterward, he lived on the streets and nearly overdosed 10 times. “They took seven and a half years of his life, and I think it broke him,” his lawyer said. By @kylehopkinsak.bsky.social, @adn.com

Just want to point out that this man was leading the whole Turning Point USA crowd in prayer last week. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crim...

Keeping the oil as it were. A reoccurring theme in his approach to foreign policy.

Unprecedented corruption

Crickets from the free speech bros on this, of course.

Great reporting on China’s efforts to replicate the machines that make the most advanced chips. Fake ID cards, oblique networks of suppliers, and a prototype in a Shenzhen lab that almost fills a factory floor. www.reuters.com/world/china/...

Auditors and new officials have been turning over stones at the body in charge of Teesworks. Turns out the Tees Valley Combined Authority has been lending hundreds of millions of £ to connected orgs, without loan agreements, and those orgs are now struggling to repay as.ft.com/r/ac457745-4...

"National Union of Journalists Wales has condemned attacks on Welsh media by Reform UK, citing comments made by Nigel Farage about BBC Wales director Rhuanedd Richards and legal threats against the NationCymru news website." www.nuj.org.uk/resource/nuj...

Wow. LA court halted a Chinese billionaire’s bid for dozens of surrogate-born American children after alarm at plans to "mass-produce" 20+ heirs he hadn’t met www.wsj.com/us-news/chin...

One thing this discussion highlights - as did Bharat and Neale's NYT oped - is that the ideas initially proposed by my colleague @isabellamweber.bsky.social on strategic price caps resonate with many people, and worth engaging with seriously.

LOL... Pentagon released a new AI military chatbot and it immediately pointed out that Pete Hegseth is a war criminal. abovethelaw.com/2025/12/pent...

masterclass in austerian misdirection this... www.ft.com/content/5aff... The claim that austerity damaged growth is not growth was 0%. It is that growth was lower than it would otherwise have been. Coming out of a balance-sheet recession, 2% is weak esp with low interst rates, huge spare capacity..

Disappointing set of GDP data this morning.

Former Tory MP Ben Bradley has now defected to Reform. They really are taking all the worst people from the Boris era.

So we've gone from "he never said anything Nazi" to "well he might have said something Nazi but not in a hurtful way" to "well okay he probably did say something Nazi in a hurtful way, but didn't we all?"

Reform will be using the Trump playbook... Leader of Reform-run council accused of ‘authoritarian’ attempt to silence opposition www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...

hoooo boy. *SPACEX SEES VALUATION OF ABOUT $1.5 TRILLION IN PUBLIC OFFERING *SPACEX SAID TO PURSUE 2026 IPO RAISING FAR ABOVE $30 BILLION *SPACEX SEES ABOUT $15B IN 2025 SALES, $22B-$24B IN 2026 *SPACEX TARGETS IPO MID-TO-LATE 2026, DEPENDING ON MARKETS

“a just and lasting peace settlement"... this is someone managing a situation, not shaping it. Presumably we don't have a position on Trumpian bullying of an invaded nation?

Because of course Henry had got the full roll call from Dulwich College and of course Trevor Phillips couldn’t even be bothered to read the stories he’s writing about

A point of nuance here: "masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable" is how lynch mobs are described, not state-sanctioned executions.

Syrian president accuses Israel of fabricating threats to justify militarism and divert attention from Gaza massacres.

"One of the most staggering things is that the Roberts Court has ruled for President Trump 90 percent of the time in shadow docket cases. Lower courts keep restraining the president but the Supreme Court is repeatedly saying that the president and his party are above the law"

Former Dulwich college pupil alleges Farage told him ‘that’s the way back to Africa’

During interviews with the FBI, the suspect arrested in the pipe bomb probe told investigators that he believed the 2020 election was stolen, people briefed on the matter said. https://cnn.it/4a0FdXW

J.D. Vance seems to think the EU’s €120m fine for Musk’s X was for “not engaging in censorship.” In reality X is being penalised for breaking EU law because of its “deceptive” blue check policy, untransparent advertising library and failure to provide access to public data for researchers

Farage has been dismissing evidence of Russian ties to the Salisbury Novichok attack since 2018 🧐

On the BBC Today programme can’t help but notice how much Amol Rajan loves the sound of his own voice. Not content with trying to outdo the sports reporter he rabbits on about science by reading out a list of UK scientists as if it were the Gettysburg address. Shut up please !

What did minimum wage get you each decade? In 2025, it buys you nothing but exhaustion. There’s not a single place in America where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford even a modest 2-bedroom. Not one. That’s the economy we’re living in. #TrumpAffordabilityCrisis

This is a million times worse than anything Hunter Biden was accused of doing in even the most fevered right-wing conspiracy dream

Heterodox traditions rejet neoclassical economics because it is built on (metaphysical) assumptions they reject (eg, equilibrium as natural, rational optimisation as fundamental, the world as essentially stable and knowable). 1/n

CarolAnn Tutera, a victim of David Gentile — the CEO sentenced to seven years for a fraud scheme — says she is disgusted that Trump commuted Gentile’s sentence

Really interesting shift from Starmer basically saying Reform are beyond the pale of normal politics. An active threat, unlike Conservative Party

🔴Crypto Investor Donates £9 Million to Reform UK After Nigel Farage Plugs His Company and Tells Industry ‘I Am Your Champion’ The Reform leader recently used media interviews to back Christopher Harborne’s company while promising to cut taxes and regulations on crypto firms

Beijing and Moscow jointly intend to resist the revival of “Japanese militarism,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry has announced.

🇨🇴 🇺🇸 The family of a Colombian man killed in a US military strike on a boat in the Caribbean has lodged a complaint against the United States with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). ➡️ u.afp.com/ShCj

Hundreds of millions. Wow, that's a lot. That's more than have died in every single war combined in the entire world since 1900.

here we go *HOUSE PANEL RECEIVES JPMORGAN, DEUTSCHE BANK EPSTEIN RECORDS *HOUSE OVERSIGHT DEMOCRATS RELEASING JPMORGAN EPSTEIN FILES SOON *HOUSE PANEL DEMOCRATS TO RELEASE DEUTSCHE BANK EPSTEIN FILES *HOUSE PANEL DEMOCRAT RELEASES US VIRGIN ISLANDS EPSTEIN FOOTAGE

The rightwing playbook is to first defund the public realm. Once it collapses, politicians declare it inefficient and replace safeguards with “managerial efficiency”. The goal is to shrink the state’s obligations permanently. 1/3