Bob Garland

Photo of Starmer speaking Starmer signals closer alignment with EU's single market to ease harm caused by Brexit Starmer attacks Farage over 'botched' Brexit The Labour leader has outlined the party's ambition for closer cooperation with Europe

"He said if we left the EU there would be less red tape for trading into Europe - try telling that to any business that is trading into Europe. "He said if we left the EU regular migration would go down - it quadrupled under the Boris wave. So I wouldn't listen too much to what Nigel Farage has to say about this." Sir Keir described the previous government's Brexit deal as "botched" and highlighted Labour's efforts to negotiate new arrangements, including on food and agriculture, which he said "lead to lower prices in our supermarkets".

Not sure ‘botched’ Brexit is the way to go. Particularly as Farage agrees, blames the Tories and threatens to make it even worse.
At some point you need to tell the truth. It’s not botched. It’s exactly what you get when you prioritise prejudice over pragmatism.
app.independent.co.uk/2026/02/01/2...

Unreal. He’s shutting down the Kennedy Center, after his flunkies caused mass defections of artists?

Everything the man touches turns to ash. Our cultural heritage; destroyed. Our national treasures; plundered.

Churchwarden linked to foreign-born billionaire is behind £200k Reform gift The man whose firm made the donations will not discuss where the money came from, nor his ties to wealthy Farage allies who may not hold citizenship

This is what’s known as dodgy as fuck…

Farage is in hock to murky foreign billionaires, taking their money to prioritise their interests if they buy him power. He’s exploiting people’s racism and anger to pretend he’s on their side. But he’s already sold them out.

www.thetimes.com/article/660a...

President Trump, your Melania movie has bombed

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

This is good. "Perhaps Goodwin was always like this… Or perhaps he… was gradually radicalised by the thing he was studying. Who knows? Who cares? Life is short and we must not squander it wandering in the psychological wastelands of deeply average people."
iandunt.substack.com/p/matt-goodw...

Regime continues siege of Northern Oblast controlled by opposition faction. Government forces have begun a roundup of journalists deemed hostile to The State. Questions swirl around Dear Leader's health as mid-level Apparatchiks engage in a behind the scenes succession battle.

Is time a fundamental part of reality? A quiet revolution in physics suggests not Physicists long believed time was a basic feature of the universe. But it may just emerge from cosmic information.

Physicists long believed time was a basic feature of the universe. But it may just emerge from cosmic information.

From Viz, three years ago: The Brexit Opportunity Detector.
Still looking.

Okay, so this is an authoritarian playbook trick, once the evidence is overwhelming say everyone needs to wait for the official investigation then either fix it or attack it when its completed. Same shit Russian pulled with MH17 and chemical attacks in Syria, very predictable.

Iran protests are not just about economics – they’re a full-blown ideological crisis Iran’s young population is educated and connected to the world: even state violence cannot deny their freedom in the long run.

Iran’s young population is educated and connected to the world: even state violence cannot deny their freedom in the long run.

As the world finally punches back, was this the week Donald Trump went too far? | Jonathan Freedland The US president took his bullying doctrine to Davos and hit a wall of opposition. If this creates a new western alliance against him, all to the good, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland

Out of the Trump shitstorm comes opportunity. To join forces with Europe and Canada, “ditch Brexit delusions… and leave Farage marooned on the wrong side of public opinion, fanboy to the man who insulted Britain’s war dead.”

Yes please. The only sane response.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Trump's Davos speech was the act of a madman and that is the only sensible manner in which it should have been covered iandunt.substack.com/p/breaking-t...

'Manchesterism' is building a better politics and a strong economy. The whole country should be inspired | Andy Burnham We are the fastest-growing city-region economy in the UK, proof that it is possible to use public funds effectively while reducing crisis spending, says Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester

Spot on @andyburnham.bsky.social

"Thatcher’s deregulation and privatisation created a race to the bottom

They left people and businesses paying way over the odds for the essentials and are the root cause of today’s cost-of-living crisis"

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP NOW

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Elon Musk is a white supremacist. Case closed.

There you have it, the Board of Peace is nothing more than a corrupt real estate deal dressed up as diplomacy with the sole purpose of enriching Trump and his favoured cronies.

Mark Carney has delivered one of the most important speeches of our era. There is a better future waiting for Britain if we dare to follow his example.

inews.co.uk/opinion/trum...

Donald Trump is not forgetting America’s old alliances – his goal is to destroy them | Rafael Behr European leaders who know their continent’s history must now see that the US president is siding with the forces of tyranny, says Guardian columnist Rafael Behr

The problem when trying to rehabilitate Trump’s attachment to old European alliances is that his politics and character are aligned with the dark forces that had to be defeated for those alliances to exist. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The Carney doctrine Open comment thread on the PM's Davos speech

Mark Carney's speech really is terrific: full text is here and very much worth your time.

The message of Trump’s letter to the prime minister of Norway signals that the president “genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him,” @anneapplebaum.bsky.social argues. theatln.tc/U0fviLiM

We now have a full-blown European-American crisis, and for no reason that the president is able to articulate

Trump and Farage

A real shame if this photo went viral again today.

Europe’s Only Hope Is to Stand Up to Trump Time for some transatlantic hardball.

Europe should know by now that appeasement doesn't work. ICYMI @daliborrohac.bsky.social: lnk.thebulwark.com/49UbwXT

Copenhagen town hall square, Denmark right now.

Massive solidarity with Greenland demonstrations.

Source: dr.dk

I am calling for a complete and total boycott of the Mercator projection in all news stories about Greenland until every member of the American public has seen this

Thought I’d do a mega hread on NPR, partly because I’ve seen some London based commentary that doesn’t really get the bigger picture quite right imho

Fix NHS or extremists Will win, warns Davey By Nina Lloyd, Sophie Wingate and David Lynch Populists and extremists will be the winners if politicians fail the NHS, Sir Ed Davey warned yesterday. The Liberal Democrat leader suggested failing to bring down A&E waits would allow for "disillusionment" to be exploited as he set out his party's plans to give patients a legal right to be seen within 12 hours. Speaking in London's Chartered Accountants' Hall, Davey attacked Labour and the Tories for their record on the NHS. "If we don't show we can change things, if we can't fix this crisis, that's when the populists and the extremists will take advantage," he said. "Not because they can fix it, of course they can't. They're not even interested in fixing it. "But because populists feed off disillusionment, they thrive when people simply don't believe that any government or any party can really make their lives better." He singled out the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage (inset), who he claimed "doesn't care about the NHS" and wants to "privatise" the service by replacing it with "an American-style insurance system" Under the proposals, £1.5bn would go towards making 6,000 beds available for care by the end of the year, in an effort to end what Davey called a "deadly corridor crisis" Ministers would have a "statutory" duty to limit the time spent waiting to be admitted in A&E to 12 hours or less, the party added. The party said their plan would be funded by scrapping the Government's pharmaceuticals deal with the US, which could result in the NHS paying billions more for drugs. Davey told Donald Trump to "bring it on" as he faced questions from journalists about the prospect of retaliation if the UK ripped up its trade arrangements with the US.

So this is what Farage wants to do with his precious Brexit ‘sovereignty’: sell out our NHS to Trump’s America and grub for power in the misery of its collapse.

Such a cynical, malignant politician. Happy to lie to our faces, weaken our rights and break what we value, if it enriches him.
(iPaper)

Do you know how many Labour MPs are now on Bluesky?

It's now over 300 out of the 400 or so MPs!

And many do post!

I've created starter packs and a list!

Firstly the list:

bsky.app/profile/did:...

1/5

The decayed decade: how Britain fell apart after Bowie died If it’s generally accepted that the last 10 years have been dreadful, is there any science behind that? A look back, probably in anger, at the last decade

David Bowie once described the internet as "exhilarating and terrifying".

On the 10th anniversary of his death here's what's changed: politics has turned upside down – post-truth, division and nationalism replacing optimism, all driven by algorithms ⤵️

@eastangliabylines.co.uk

The American people electing Trump after he staged a coup attempt 5 years ago was a nail in the coffin of our democracy. You can rationalize it all you want - But inflation! But wokeness! - but ultimately it was a societal suicide attempt and probably the dumbest collective voting decision ever made