Rafael Behr

🚨🚨Start Your Week🚨🚨
Trump’s war in Iran continues and Britain’s right-wing gang are desperate for Starmer to get more involved. Why are they cheerleading what could be another drawn out conflict in the Middle East? @rafaelbehr.bsky.social & @jacobjarvis.bsky.social discuss ➡️ linktr.ee/bunker_pod

Yorkshire, black, pease, rice.

🔥🔥🔥NEW🔥🔥🔥
As Trump’s ill-defined Iran conflict unfolds, is it game over for the so-called Special Relationship? Are there any good choices left for Starmer? @mattgreencomedy.com, @jonnelledge.bsky.social, @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com & @rafaelbehr.bsky.social discuss
➡️ linktr.ee/ohgodwhatnow...

Thanks to @vennart666.bsky.social for introducing me to the unique moves of Luigi Primo, the pizza throwing wrestler

Are you Mark or are you Wayne? Pick a lane, dude.

[more US politics analysis to follow]

You are absolutely right, of course. I was riffing vaguely about culture, political priorities and not thinking properly about actual institutions.

Starmer’s position on Iran pleases no one, but that is because there are no good options | Rafael Behr None of the prime minister’s critics engages with the hard strategic dilemmas arising from Britain’s perilous dependency on US power, says Guardian columnist Rafael Behr

On Starmer, Iran and the impossible dilemmas that arise when your closest defence and security partner is also a rogue superpower www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Not me. Working fine.

⏰ START YOUR WEEK ⏰ Will Trump’s attack on Iran topple the regime or set off a regional war? Plus the fallout from #Gorton&Denton and more.

⏰ With @rafaelbehr.bsky.social & @jacobjarvis.bsky.social ⏰ Out now everywhere – linktr.ee/bunker_pod

@benansell.bsky.social has written superbly on this phenomenon in politics

Very much this. Westminster relying on muscle memory of two-party politics is in no fit shape for politics as it is now playing out in the country.

Tomorrow’s #WeeklyWrapUp is out early! We take a closer look at Trump’s barmy State of the Union, Labour’s SEND reforms, the latest from North Korea, and a fleet of AI-powered hoovers with @rafaelbehr.bsky.social & @jacobjarvis.bsky.social

🚨 Listen everywhere now linktr.ee/bunker_pod

I don’t live in London anymore but still consider myself native Londoner, like emigré fondness for the Old Country, and I wholly approve of this long-overdue move.

From Trump’s Maga to Farage’s Reform, they’re all following Putin’s nationalism playbook | Rafael Behr Reform is promising a ‘patriotic school curriculum’ – but what does that mean? In the end it comes down to submission to the leader, says Guardian columnist Rafael Behr

Column. On the nationalist core of Faragism and why it doesn’t need conspiracy, transaction or even knowing complicity to serve a Kremlin agenda. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Or political gangsterism. Hybrid of ideology and raw greed.

From Trump’s Maga to Farage’s Reform, they’re all following Putin’s nationalism playbook | Rafael Behr Reform is promising a ‘patriotic school curriculum’ – but what does that mean? In the end it comes down to submission to the leader, says Guardian columnist Rafael Behr

Column. On the nationalist core of Faragism and why it doesn’t need conspiracy, transaction or even knowing complicity to serve a Kremlin agenda. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Разговор о важном! Reform UK’s education policy, what it reveals about the character of Farage’s politics and where it inevitably tends. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

📳 NEW EDITION 📳 Nobody wants a wider war in Europe, but we might get one anyway. How can we prepare our military and wider society to deter Putin – or maybe fight him?
📲 Ed Arnold of @rusi.bsky.social talks to @rostaylor.bsky.social & @rafaelbehr.bsky.social
📲 Listen: linktr.ee/ohgodwhatnow...

!! … ah

Scholar sacking, as indicator of guard rails down, was big factor in later market reaction to mini-budget, or so bond analysts told me. So much higher order of significance on that front alone.

BBC didn’t have to concede those points. I wouldn’t have been surprised by boilerplate ‘breaking news, we just give both sides’ rebuttal. Seen plenty of BBC correspondence over the years and tone of the email definitely chastened by standard of these things. Hope it has some lingering effect.

In short, while pointing out that breaking news with conflicting perspectives involves publication of competing accounts, pending clarification, BBC accepts it was slow to adjust once it became clear that only one side was engaged in to truth. Key paras in long email here …

Day after Alex Pretti killing I complained to BBC about presentation of White House statements and evidence as equivalent. Duty of balance doesn’t extend to complicity with clear lies, I said. BBC could and should report WH making false statements as a *fact of the story*. Today I got response …

Where does this leave coconut milk?

And milk of human kindness?

This. Also, I gave Starmer much benefit of the doubt in print. Maybe too much; striving to analyse ways in which he could succeed - how it might work. But you have to recognise the data that tell you he is failing.

It is cope to believe this is all confected. My whole job is talking to MPs and ministers, I talk to a dozen different ones every day, I spend the week in Parliament in the same corridors, same coffee queues. Sometimes even I have been taken aback by the strength of feeling about the need for change

"History is women following behind with the bucket."

So Morgan McSweeney has been replaced by Jill Cuthbertson and Vidhya Alakeson. Antonia Romeo is about to take over from Chris Wormald. Steph Driver may return to fill Tim Allan's vacancy.

Sense that now there's a mess to mop up, get the women in

Haven’t yet seen a nerdy piece situating current political crisis in a mathematically predictable recurring pattern of chaos and corruption under headline “Mandel-rot Set” (with suitable illustration) and I think that is a missed opportunity.

As something of a specialist in mitigation, “Actually I took my children with me to Paedo Island” is not what I would open with.

Keir Starmer is the bandage Labour can’t rip off for fear of opening old wounds | Rafael Behr The party’s MPs know their leader is failing but they are paralysed by fear of a contest with no obvious successor, says Guardian columnist Rafael Behr

On Labour’s certainty that Starmer has failed and paralysing fear of what a leadership contest actually involves www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...