Mike McLean

Trump's brain flits wildly from Mamdani to shoveling snow to having a conversation with a woman in the audience who has bad eyes. He claims he "gave her a lot of money to get her eyes fixed." This event is totally off the rails.

America, what is wrong with you? How can you accept such a monster as a leader? You are ok with following a criminal? A rapist? And you stand by and watch as he enriches himself and his family at your expense? How far does he have to go before you do something?

of protest against the madness of today? Please let me know so that I can get behind them, too. /end

It’s something of an indictment of modern music, than the musicians who are writing about the most immediately pressing issues are U2, Springsteen, and Bragg. I suppose that Pearl Jam and Green Day also fly the flag, and Bad Bunny also uses his position to weigh in. But who are the new champions/1

Indeed. How are they ever going to be able to establish an adequate due process to background check hundreds of candidates when they can’t even manage to do one at a time?

I take it this is what the Russian asset means, when he says he has been completely exonerated by the files.

To reiterate this point: during the Q&A Farage dismissed very arrogantly a perfectly fair question from the brilliant Anna Gross of the FT and then took the piss out of the paper. If you want to persuade people that you don’t have predilections towards bullying it was not ideal. It was grim.

You've appointed Tories to your top team. Why should people believe your party is any different?

Farage: "These were two people who were ministers, but frankly weren't ministers for very long".

Suella Braverman was a minister for over 4 years.

Robert Jenrick was a minister for almost 5 years.

A dozen bits of positive news in the last week. From a drop in our debt payments, to mobile job centres to the most competitive mortgages since 2008 and cleaning up the waterways in Anglia.

Labour Fixing Britain

As Nigel Farage makes Robert Jenrick his Shadow Chancellor, here's a quick reminder of the sort of man Reform wants to put in charge of the nation's finances

The only question worth asking at these incredibly flash Reform press conferences that take place every week now, is who is paying for all of this and what do they want in return bsky.app/profile/pete...

I suspect several of those who opted for “Restore Britain” don’t know anything about the party but quite liked the name.

it sounds like when he wrote the book quoted in the documentary, he was already a long way on his path to selfishness, willingness to abuse others, and being downright unprincipled. To which he appears to have added being a total creep and relying on a very narrow definition of certain words. /end

Thanks for posting this. I knew there were serious questions about BD and their CEO (I seem to remember reading that most of the trees in their forest died) but this included a lot I wasn’t aware of. I’d like to think that it’s the old story of riches and power corrupting their holder, but it/1

The introduction of Deadwood makes an excellent argument for Lords reform.

Given Wes Streeting's links with Mandelson and Palantir, both stronger than Starmer's, the question MPs ought really to be asking themselves is, if we replace Starmer with Streeting are we hopping out of the frying pan and into the fire?

To be fair to him, Nigel doesn’t do any work at home. His Clacton home, that is.

Fair point. I should have written “calls for”. I am so incensed!!

Or ask him about his tweet from last April?

Presumably Anas Sarwar now disagrees with the version of himself from last April.

Maybe Anas Sarwar should now call on Anas Sarwar to resign.

Quite. Maybe Starmer should sue Trump for reputational damage, as he had to choose a corrupt and unsuitable ambassador to deal with a corrupt and unsuitable president.

Absolute 🐍 I have no words.

The world has gone crazy. The Epstein Files revelations should have led to Trump resigning, not Starmer. Especially as the main problem for Starmer is Mandelson. Who was only chosen because of his similarities with Trump.

I suppose there has always been a variety of tin-pot, corrupt, and/or despotic countries, where the national leader should be in prison rather than in control. The surprise is that the USA has willingly joined the group.

This Turkish barbers in Glasgow got fed up with Nigel Farage’s comments about businesses like theirs, so
👇🤣👏

I would have thought that serving as a Minister, or Shadow Minister, would be an important pre-requisite. I can’t think of any PMs in recent times who haven’t previously served in another office, but I’ll stand ready to be corrected!

Yes, they should definitely be vetted, to ensure they are morally suitable: that is, in the light of recent events, increasingly important.

But it’s not going to help ensure they have the necessary qualities, skills, capabilities, and experience to run the country though, is it?

a completely unknown (to them) figure coming in as PM. That would be leaping into the dark, surely? /end

corrupt, useless, or both.

I’m not saying that a Labour unknown would be the same as a Reform unknown, btw. But they would still run the risk of lining up people who, once we find out about them, are found lacking in something important.

And I don’t think people generally would be happy to have/2