Becket McGrath

I think also, the actual structural issue, in politics as in pretty much every field, is that the honest list of 'how to be good at your job' is 'step one: have a good predecessor'.

OK this makes me extremely angry. Has everyone forgotten the massive profiteering from thousands of avoidable pandemic deaths?? The unconstitutional suspension of parliament to force through an act of nationalist destruction that cost our children their future??

EXPRESS The EU's so bitter about Brexit it's trying to destroy the UK car industry - it's pathetic The European Union has plans for strict new manufacturing rules, which could leave UK brands at serious risk, says Luke Chillingsworth.

A certain type of divorced guy who can’t move in with his life and so invents grievances about his ex in an attempt to convince himself that she’s still thinking about him.

this guy’s an antisemite? this guy? next you’re gonna tell me elon musk is in the epstein files

The BBC is getting played here: if a contributor gets to flat out deny having his own words quoted to him on television (with the viewer not told the denial is untrue) then post about "dropping truth bombs". The mission to inform & counter misinformation is flailing if the editorial controls so weak

Matt Goodwin and the end of England How one man's career explains our public life.

Matt Goodwin and the end of England: How one man's career explains our public life iandunt.substack.com/p/matt-goodw...

Honestly what is the point of having a programme that is *not* live if you are not going to use that function to aggressively factcheck the people on it?

Incarcerated for journalism. And for sticking it to various frauds & grifters who profess to care about ‘free speech’.

The BBC has simply failed to understand that these ethno-nationalists will tear it to shreds if given half a chance.

In fact. They already have.

YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free

Interesting moment in the post-Trump succession struggle. 1/

Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs. The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.

Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers.

This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.

Auschwitz took time.

Rejoining the EU is the only way to stop Trump It is time to return home

Full EU membership should be put to the public at the next election. It's time to return home.

inews.co.uk/opinion/rejo...

The problem of politics in a noisy age We are once again having to readjust to a vast expansion in the amount of conflicting information at our fingertips

I think what both have in common is that in the modern age, you are always only one click away from either being screamed at by idiots or having to look at an idiot's opinion. A hugely radicalising experience for many people!

Walz: "To Americans who are watching this, I've got a question for you: What side do you want to be on? The side of an all powerful federal govt that can kill, injury, menace, & kidnap its citizens off the streets? Or on the side of a nurse at the VA hospital who died bearing witness to such govt?"

‘Thank God we have video’: Minnesota’s escalating fights over eyewitness footage | CNN Business When the Trump administration immediately blamed the victim in Saturday’s shooting in Minneapolis, Gov. Tim Walz reacted by saying, “Thank God, thank God we have video.” The unrest in Minnesota is fur...

Bellingcat founder @eliothiggins.bsky.social: It's "really important to get analysis of events" like the Pretti shooting "out to the public quickly, especially when it's clear the US government, ICE, and DHS are willing to immediately start lying about what’s happening" www.cnn.com/2026/01/24/m...

Another chilling shooting by a federal agent in Minneapolis, this time of a nurse. My heart goes out to Alex Pretti's family.

We cannot let Nigel Farage and Reform import Trump’s dark politics to the UK.

A wake up call to anyone supporting democracy, freedoms and civil rights.

These ICE agents are, clearly, lawless sociopaths—being enabled by a phalanx of congenital liars in the Trump administration.

Carney: “Canada can’t solve all the world’s problems, but we can show that another way is possible.

“That the arc of history isn’t destined to be warped towards authoritarianism and exclusion; it can still bend towards progress and justice.”

My brother fought in the infantry and lost soldiers in Afghanistan. The press used to report deaths before families had been told and I would check my phone over and over, scared it would ring.

I went to the inquest of one of his killed men. I saw his red-eyed parents, girlfriend and baby daughter.

I am not surprised. I still remember the dark looks I got in a first class French train carriage when my children were small for daring to travel with them. The outrage!

Notable that Labour's losses to the right (11%) are dwarfed by their losses within bloc (27%) and Don't Knows / WNVs (21%). Collectively 4.5 times as large. The argument that ONLY losses to the right matter in the constituencies Labour have to defend seems increasingly tenuous to me.

This is a moral abomination and strategically suicidal. Trump’s regime is destroying American hegemony in the most pathetic and nonsensical way.

“Principled and pragmatic: Canada’s path” Prime Minister Carney addresses the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Thank you, Larry.It’s a pleasure – and a duty – to be with you at this turning point for Canada and for the world.Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and th...

This Davos speech from the Canadian Prime Minister is very good. If I were a Canadian, I would be very proud. I particularly like the references to Havel, who knew a thing or two about dealing with authoritarianism (though Carney's references are more subtle).

www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/spee...

"Who is we?“

As we wait for events in Davos to unfold, a thread about a question posed to me in London a few weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, and why I am thinking about it today, on a day of severe crisis for the Western Alliance. 🧵