McSweeney may be a fantastic campaigner – I wouldn't know – but he's self-evidently f*cking useless in government. Almost like they are different things.

Would go some way to explaining all the other alleged strategic geniuses – Mandelson, Cummings, Hilton, Timothy...

Here's an exciting thought: I wonder if political parties might consider separating governing from campaigning...

Is Tulsi Gabbard the Most Shameless, Desperate Member of the Trump Cabinet? The former Democratic congresswoman turned director of national intelligence is willing to U-turn on the 2020 election and war with Venezuela and Iran just to appease her boss and keep her job.

“Is Tulsi Gabbard the Most Shameless, Desperate Member of the Trump Cabinet?”

The ex-Dem congresswoman turned DNI is willing to U-turn on the 2020 election and war with Venezuela and Iran just to appease her boss and keep her job.

My latest for Zeteo:

Yes, this IS pure evil.

Israel to take more West Bank powers and relax settler land buys, media say Israel's security cabinet approved a series of steps on Sunday that would make it easier for settlers in the occupied West Bank to buy land while granting Israeli authorities more enforcement powers over Palestinians, Israeli media reported.

Israel to take more West Bank powers and relax settler land buys, media say reut.rs/4a5aKaL

I totally missed this, but did Tim Stanley literally call for the kidnapping and extraordinary rendition of Kier Starmer by the USA?

One of the problems with elections is you tend to judge them in binary win/loss terms, not a measurement against most likely predicted outcome.

I also liked the briefing to the Guardian that actually, Morgan now thinks that Wes Streeting isn't a very good health secretary. So many 'why don't you realise this stuff is a self-own?' moments these past two years.

"should the government kidnap 5 year olds and deport them? We asked seventeen ethics professors and they all just screamed"

One of Boris' Cabinet ministers used to say that Dominic Cummings was like Richard II: 'everything is going badly, he just kept going "hey, remember when I stopped the Peasants' Revolt?" and Dom is like that, but with Vote Leave' and so much of this is the same.

Portugal, ICS-ISCTE-GfK-Pitagórica exit poll:

Presidential election, second round today

Seguro (PS-S&D): 67.0-71.4% (+69.2)
Ventura (CH-PfE): 28.6-33.0% (+30.8)

+/- vs. Last election result

➤ europeelects.eu/portugal

Labour breathing a sigh of relief that there is no 'Labour Liz Truss'.

One of the more depressing paragraphs in a throughly depressing read.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/b...

It's such a fascinating description, a) as you say, do they think the government is not floundering now? b) was that really the case in the Corbyn years? I don't think 'Labour lacks direction' was the issue!

Morgan McSweeney does have some fans in the Parliamentary Labour Party, of course. One MP says they are "devastated" he has left. Another warns it represents "full speed ahead to uber-woke, net-zeroist, rejoinerism". An MP who has been through several general elections when the tide was against Labour says of colleagues: "Good luck to all these careerists when they face an election without someone like Morgan at the helm. "Some of us are old enough to remember the Corbyn era with no one in charge and the party floundering."

Yes, god help we risk a floundering government that feels like no one is in charge.

Exit poll: Center left wins Portuguese presidency Center-left candidate António José Seguro is projected to defeat far-right leader André Ventura and become the country’s next head of state.

Center-left candidate António José Seguro is projected to become Portugal’s next president by a comfortable margin, exit polls indicated today.

I do wonder about anyone who thinks McSweeney single-handedly won Labour its majority. They do realise they were up against a catastrophically unpopular government? The 2024 result was very much an underperformance against the fundamentals.

Asserting strength is not the same as pointlessly alienating people.

Fond memories of Harry Cole on the other place mocking me for saying it was a mistake to remove the whip from two-child limit rebels...

Portugal seems to be blessed with the last centre-right in Europe that wholeheartedly believes in the principle of ‘to our right, only enemies’.

Just beyond parody at this point

Since Labour has been in government the lack of preparation and depth of thinking has been apparent but I think one of the biggest mistakes was going to war with the PLP so early. It stunned a lot of MPs to be told they could not even table amendments. This resentment is a massive part of the story.

so much of our present misery is just a giant, prolonged backlash to integration

Feels a bit HS2ish? In that the advertised reasoning (safety / faster trains) doesn't match the reality (21st century parliament/ capacity), so people get pissed off when it ends up looking different to what they expected

Do think people need to appreciate that it’s not merely a “do some expensive repairs to stop it falling down” job, but a “spending tens of billions to build a new improved giant temple” job

Sure. This ignores that the full decant costs are also crackers because it’s not just a repair job

The problem is that the opponents to the repairs to parliamentary refit
a) complain costs too much
b) say that MPs should stay in Westminster during the works (which will dramatically increase costs)

Doesn't feel like a grown-up debate
www.ft.com/content/7fca...

Autistic girls much less likely to be diagnosed, study says By age 20 diagnosis rates for men and women almost equal, research finds, challenging assumptions of gender discrepancy

Fascinating study, casting much doubt on the ubiquity of the "overdiagnosis" myth www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

What Starmer cannot say The hypocrisy, in so many directions, the Epstein files reveal of the Westminster and the media class

Have written about a week where the hypocrisy of much of the media was laid bare (and address mine).

I also write about the truth Starmer cannot say: he appointed Mandelson to the court of Trump not in spite of the Epstein connection but in a sense, because of it. open.substack.com/pub/goodalla...

Absolutely this ⬆️
Mandelson was clearly chosen because he had established connections to the Trump administration which included links to Epstein and a plethora of powerful people with dubious histories and morals.
I guess they gambled that keeping US sweet was worth the political risk.