Simon James

The £1m man: Why did Boris Johnson take his donor to Ukraine? Exclusive: Leaked files offer a glimpse of the ex-prime minister’s relationship with Christopher Harborne As he boarded the night train to Ukraine, Boris Johnson had the usual entourage of aides and bodyguards – plus the man who had given him £1m. Less than a year had passed since Johnson accepted what is thought to be the largest donation ever to an individual MP. It was from Christopher Harborne, one of the UK’s biggest and most private political donors. Continue reading...

The £1m man: Why did Boris Johnson take his donor to Ukraine?

Bari Weiss Signs Huge Deal To Usher CBS News Into Its Vichy Era | Defector On Monday, newly appointed Paramount CEO David Ellison announced that his company had acquired the Free Press, the smirking blood-and-soil blog founded and run by former New York Times hall monitor…

How could the Free Press be worth a reported $150 million, and why is its oafish founder about to oversee a huge press operation? Respectively: It isn't, and she shouldn't. defector.com/bari-weiss-s...

PORTLAND: “The frogs are multiplying”

(#NotAWarZone Noem Matter what Kristi says)

The BBC is slowly but surely destroying Radio 4 as well. It’s the last bastion of intelligent debate in Britain, yet it’s increasingly becoming a vehicle for culture wars. When the history of the UK in this period is written, the BBC will have a lot to answer for when it comes to stirring division

The same lack of quality as Trump's cabinet - expect televised meetings of Farage having smoke blown up his arse by his Reform stooges if he ever gets in.

...even if it takes another 80 years.

"Go back to your constituencies and prepare for mass deportations", didnt cut through?

It's not just Badenoch or Jenrick. The entire British conservative project is dying iandunt.substack.com/p/the-empty-...

This country's media is suffering from premature Farageification.

The “Eye of Seymour” 🤣 (Deputy PM) here is the #AtlasNetwork connection to #NZpol
The list of atrocious decisions logged are classic Atlas partner efforts to take from the public to fatten the mega rich’s (offshore) bank accounts.

Don’t vote LNP, Australia. The worst neoliberals are back. #auspol

Trump could just claim to have won a peace prize that no one had ever heard of before. It worked for Corbyn.

At some point, Jenrick is going to start appearing in a military uniform.

Plus, always moving forward is a fundamental tenet of Fascism.

It's always Groundhog Day for those interviews - the Farage slate gets wiped and everything is new again.

Is there a better indication of how superficial and unhelpful mainstream media has become than that they are cutely musing about whether the domestic terrorist who changed "The Department of Defense" to "The Department of War" will get a Nobel Peace Prize—instead of reporting the fascism/terrorism.

If she owns a yacht, the US "Department of War" blasting Venezuelan boats out of the water begins to fit into place.

Let's hope she doesnt own a fishing boat.

I expect she's still worshipping Millei even though his slash and burn economics has already crashed and burnt.

There's some variation in the polling, too, but the ones that have Reform in the mid-30s gets more attention than the recent one where the gap to Labour is only 2 points.

Tbf; the BBC was way behind on the post office scandal - Private Eye was reporting it for years. On that timescale, the BBC should be right on top of the hacking scandal some time in the 2030s. #r4today

Somewhere in the US is going to get renamed "Trumpmania" at some point.

Noem claims Portland hid their war zone from her.

The leader of Blue Robbo's party was publicly boasting about them delivering Brexit less than 48 hours ago. #r4today

The growth in numbers of polling companies and a lack of transparency about who owns them is a big part of the problem, as is looking at the results but not the sampling or methodology.

SHOCK POLL: NIGEL FARAGE WILL BE PM TOMORROW IN an amazing poll conducted by The Pointless Polling Company, it was revealed that voters' intentions may well change over the next three and a half years and at present it's 100 percent impossible to guess what the next government might look like. However, 99 percent of journalists agree that it would be much more fun if we had an election tomorrow and everybody resigned and everything was chaos and Farage had a go at being PM, just for the hell of it, because it was so much fun when Brexit happened and then the government kept falling every five minutes and we could write endless pieces about (cont. p94)

Private Eye offers up an excellently scornful commentary on the relentless polling. It’s become ridiculous and has oversimplified our politics to dangerous levels of stupid and irresponsible.

Simon Calder interviewed on new border controls leaves no listener in doubt about his feelings on our disastrous Brexit making us a third party country on our own continent.
#r4today

What routinely happens is they'll put up a minister who then gets asked questions tgatcaee mostly nowhere near their own brief, and only really sharp operators like Wes Streeting can cope.

They're hoping the most enthusiastic members of the Tommy Robinson Tendency will do it for nothing?

a man with a beard is saying well i panicked but then i handled it . ALT: a man with a beard is saying well i panicked but then i handled it .

The plot of Iron Man 3 had Ben Kingsley playing a part as a terror leader who is really an actor playing a part. I often think this is a more influential film than we give it credit.

Screenshot of a tweet from OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) on X. The tweet claims to show a close-up of a note that Secretary of State Marco Rubio handed to President Donald Trump during a White House roundtable. The text of the note allegedly reads, ‘Very close. We need you to approve a Truth Social post soon, so you can announce deal first.’ Below the tweet, a blurry photo shows a piece of White House stationery with partially legible handwriting and the words ‘Very close’ visible at the top.

I guess we know who is behind the writing some of these posts now.