Ian Dunt

I've been the UK explaining-the-madness correspondent for Late Night Live for eight years. This week, for the first time, I went into the studio. It was oddly moving. It's been such a privilege being a small part of this great show.

Pretty difficult to refute a single thing in this perfect assessment of where the f**k we are, from @iandunt.bsky.social:

I remember when ‘Brexit Means Brexit’ became a way for silly people to insist that they supported something they could neither justify nor explain. Obviously the context is very different, but something similar is already happening with the ‘war’ in Iran. And it’s mostly the same people doing it.

Anyone who wants Britain to join the war in Iran needs their head examined They don't know what they want to achieve, why they're doing it or what the consequences might be. They are lost in the void.

Anyone who wants Britain to join the war in Iran needs their head examined open.substack.com/pub/iandunt/...

Sidebar but I am reading about India/Pakistan partition and boy religious nationalism leads to some really bad places, probably should stick with liberal pluralism.

They deserve Dubai and Dubai deserves them

I’ve spent years, decades, obsessing over the Bush Administration’s Iraq WMD lies, writing about them, debunking them.

I can think of no lie about Iraq WMDs told by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al that comes even close to the enormity and absurdity of this lie from Donald Trump.

A senior Home Office official, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive policy details, estimates the changes could extend to thousands of individuals. They would not rule out asylum seekers deemed to have broken the law being forced into destitution and rough sleeping in the process.

And you wonder why so many Home Office policies are successfully challenged in the courts...

www.politico.eu/article/brit...

I understand the pressures on Rutte but he really has turned into a hapless buffoon. Helping to eradicate the rules based order he believes he's upholding.

These brave Americans died because Trump was bored and wanted to spice things up with a fight.

What happens if they kill this one? Is there another smaller younger one inside him?

So, in launching a huge bombing campaign on Iran they apparently didn't plan for:

- Who takes over;
- Interceptor shortages from sustained drone retaliation;
- How to defend US bases in the region;
- Threats to ships in the Strait of Hormuz; and
- How to evacuate Americans with airspace closed.

Reeves's Spring Statement was empty, dull - and an utter triumph It was an absolute snooze-fest. More of this please

Finally, the thing we were promised in 2024: boring stable government

inews.co.uk/opinion/reev...

This IPSO adjudication against the Telegraph is quite something

Confirms their story titled: ‘We earn £345k, but soaring private school fees mean we can’t go on five holidays’ was completely fabricated, with the family involved non-existent and stock pictures used

www.ipso.co.uk/rulings/0210...

"Today’s OBR projections reveal two competing realities in government right now. The OBR and Treasury forecast an upturn in net migration, which makes their fiscal numbers add up – while the Home Office says it is determined to drive net migration down still further. They can’t have it both ways".

This is a wonderful interview

I do enjoy these sort of charts. Somewhere between boom and recession. But probably quite similar to now.
Thanks OBR.

I don't really mind Stride, but he talking a tremendous amount of arse.

Shadow chancellor Mel Stride now doing his best to damage her, but honestly Reeves in a decent position, with some relatively benign economic indicators and a commendably and studiously boring financial statement.

Headroom up slightly from £21.7bn to £23.6bn. She's in a pretty good spot, which we haven't been able to say of the chancellor since she got the job.

Reeves confirms OBR growth forecasts include lower net migration. Growth slower in 2026 (1.1%) then higher in 2027 and 2028 (1.6%).

Wonderful slip by Rachel Reeves in her statement to the Commons.

The ‘changes we promised’ morphed into the ‘promises we changed’.

Mahmood staring at Reeves like the ghost of death sitting uninvited at a family feast.

Rachel Reeves entirely right to only hold one major financial statement a year, as a method to increase stability. On this basis she should also reform the obviously irrational one-number approach to fiscal rules, but that might be a hope too far.

I don't do as much Commons coverage as I used to, and honestly having to listen to the yaa-boo bollocks actually becomes more irritating the less often you hear it.

Imagine citing Donald Trump's opinion on something as if it weren't a) the ramblings of a madman b) like to change within the next 37 minutes

God I'd forgotten how annoying and half-arsed Priti Patel is.

'The relationship is obviously not what it was'. First true thing I've ever heard him say.

This is excellent news. A really important decision.

It seems Reform need to tell themselves & their voters a clearly false story about foreigners stealing the election from them, so as not to acknowledge the fact that Reform's "people's army" is unpopular: that a third of people like and that most people want to see defeated at the ballot box