Heather, if you listen to last week's excellent Politics Theory Other podcast about the history & strategy of Spotify, you'll want to find an alternative - and quickly, and rightly.

Agree this is good, but - much though I admire Polanski's politics - for an ex-actor his acting is rather stilted.

That's not exactly helpful in telling us what fiscal policies a progressive UK party should be advocating now, Jonathan, and that is the crucial question.

Shabana Mahmood is an avatar of open Britain – that’s what makes her fable about immigration so seductive | Nesrine Malik ‘She is the daughter of immigrants,’ supporters of her cruel asylum policies say. ‘How can she be wrong?’ Let me put them straight, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

Just a superb column from @nesrinemalik.bsky.social

So you need to start organising to this end within the PLP

Yes the Guardian is weird like that, & much keener on radicalism abroad than at home.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3Tp...

The Times, Telegraph, Mail & Express are doing their bit to prepare the ground

Yes, it's particularly hard to predict because there's likely to be lots of tactical voting against both Labour & Reform. It'll vary hugely from seat to seat as people look at local polls & choose which of the rest to vote for.

#JamesOpstad #MarcSabat #Bach #Magnus Granberg #Skogen #JuliaEckhardt #MortonFeldman

This is some fine sounds

Thanks, Steve x

Good piece. Now that the government has decided that perhaps genocide isn't so nice (while continuing to supply arms), will all those big name commentators on bsky who have remained silent for 21 months finally find their voices?

powerful piece - thanks for posting it

Radicalisation isn't just caused by individuals with personal problems. It's also caused by eg a political culture founded on lying & deceit (eg Johnson & Starmer). And imo it's right to be radicalised the west's response to Gaza, which has laid bare hypocrisy & double standards in droves.

under FPTP they urgently need to create an effective alliance with the Greens, or both will fail

On the contrary, I think McSweeney is determined to prove that he's a real hard man by accomplishing the almost impossible feat of reducing the government's approval rating to single figures.

Almost everyone in the media helped project him as competent, grown-up, focused, efficient forensic etc etc, yet now that they have turned against him, no-one admits to having made a mistake.

Agreed, but the leadership election system was carefully tweaked in such a way that it's hard to see how anyone with even slightly different politics can win. So we'll almost certainly get more of the same. I think Labour have had it.

If Sir Keir cares about international law, it's in a very strange way. Israel is breaking international law at will in relation to the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and above all Gaza, committing war crimes almost daily, but not a peep of criticism from Sir Keir.

this was excellent, thanks

The Revenge of the Left Zarah Sultana’s recent announcement that she has resigned from Labour to ‘co-lead the founding of a new party’ with Jeremy Corbyn marks the beginning of probably the most significant left-wing schism ...

this (by Alfie Steer) is the best piece on the new party I've read: renewal.org.uk/blog/the-rev...
I wish them well, but think Alfie points to some potentially serious problems, and will stick with the Greens myself

The common factor between Spiked & McSweeney is a form of disavowal whereby the principal determinant of whatever position you adopt is that it must fly in the face of established left-wing opinion. It's pathetic, childish & (as we now know) disastrous when applied in power, but there we are...

Corbyn might well have messed up the parliamentary procedures too, but at least he'd have been trying to implement humane & decent social democratic policies.

I suspect they're desperate to try to give Starmer a more human / sympathetic image, and hope that this will help. But it's desperate stuff, and almost certainly a futile mission.

Don't underestimate the ability of the ghouls in charge of Labour to ignore or unilaterally adjust the rules so that the membership are left with the option of simply rubberstamping whoever they want to succeed Starmer. They've run the Party like a dictatorship for 5 years, and habits are ingrained.

Another slide towards authoritarianism, led by a human rights lawyer and his home secretary, who was The Guardian's (and most centrists') pick for Labour leader in 2016. Labour have lost credibility as a progressive, or even a liberal force, and need a total transformation.

Yes in a way it's extraordinary. But in another way 'politicisation without democratisation' is completely typical for a lot of centrists as neoliberalism flounders.

Kind of appropriate title considering the racist nonsense currently coming from our government

My only slight hope is that in next year's local elections Labour do terribly, especially in city seats, and the Greens emerge as a viable alternative for left of centre voters. We need some such tectonic shift asap

During 2016-2020 the Lab right spent all their time determinedly undermining & attacking the left. That was successful but became a habit & that sectarianism is now a fixed mindset. But running the country requires a very different approach, vision & set of skills, which they simply don't have.