MsMottram

They also have a holiday guide to Cap Ferret (which has just been evacuated because of wildfires). Not the happiest day for the Times editorial team

Third recent poll to have Reform and Labour tied. Expect to see one with Labour ahead soon.

Just had Palantir’s comms person call me an ‘anti Palantir campaigner’ The classic 2026 populist move ‘I don’t like what you’ve said. You must be a campaigner against me’ Anyway read the pieces and judge for yourself….

how can people vote for this rot?

Good time to re post this:

Breaking: The Metropolitan Police has launched a criminal investigation into at least £500,000 of donations made to Reform UK by the mother of the convicted fraudster who secretly bankrolled Nigel Farage. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

“When you’re bathing in a sea of radicalisation and extremity, stuff like that starts to slip out of your mouth.” Lewis Goodall says Rupert Lowe should apologise for his ‘insulting’ comments about the Dunblane massacre

This is terrible terrain for them. On race, religion, guns etc there is just a very small constituency for this stuff.

Yeah. This guy is a Bad Egg. From the New Statesman

Dearie me

“Comte Tête-de-Poubelle” has killed me. Proust could never

The "family" in this case being George Cottrell, who calls Farage "Daddy", so probably counts.

According to Robert Jenrick, Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times is now ”the left-wing press” 🤔

Would be good.

Private Eye points out that former Ukip leader Paul Nuttall is heading up candidate vetting for Reform ahead of the next general election. Readers might remember when items on his CV were revealed as false during the 2017 Stoke-on-Trent by-election." #IronyIsStillDead

NEW: The attorney general, Richard Hermer, has told his office to no longer post on X, making it the first UK government department to stop using the Elon Musk-owned platform amid increasing worries about its use to incite violence and racism. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Exc: First Government department quits Twitter over racism and violence concerns Richard Hermer sent a directive to staff last week saying the Attorney General's Office would be coming off the platform observer.co.uk/news/politic...

Time to bring back the Department of Culture, a big job that could be a real platform for someone with political ambitions.

Banning children from social media?

After the tarp went up to try and stop the “Berlin Wall” moment, Cliff Owen of the AP got the iconic 📸 shot. 🇺🇸

Morgan McSweeney is back advising the Prime Minister – four months after he resigned over his role in the Mandelson scandal 🔴 Exclusive from Caroline Wheeler & Richard Vaughan Read more: trib.al/X41qw6a

Every day, a migrant saves someone's life in an operation, teaches a child, cleans a building, is a good neighbour or parent. That never leads the news. No gangs rush down streets thanking people who *might* be migrants. But as soon as an atrocity happens, all "migrants" are held responsible. 1/3

Really hard to understand why his approval ratings have fallen off a cliff recently.

Realistically, Keir Starmer is probably in his final month as prime minister. There a freedom in that, or there would be if he chose to embrace it. So it feels especially telling that even in the face of what's happening in Belfast he's still so…absent. And tepid. It's consistent, I guess?

Was it worth it? Southampton sentences. Andrew Summerhayes (2 year-old daughter): 3 years, 2 months Dillon Crawford (partner is expecting his third child): 3 years Taylor Grundy (cries continuously in the dock after being sentenced, as do his parents): 2.5 years www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cn...).

"Look at Belfast today. That's what the entire UK will look like when Farage is prime minister. "That's the dystopian future heading your way under these cynical people." @mehdirhasan.bsky.social on what Starmer's message should be after the violent protests in Belfast.

Keir Starmer's spokesman tells me there has been "no change" to the Government's policy on using X, despite Elon Musk helping to incite the hateful scenes we saw in Belfast last night. Also no new plans to take action against X for its role in the violence

If I were Andy Burnham, watching Starmer's hopelessly impotent response to the national emergency caused by fascist agitators at home and abroad, I would see both an opportunity and a necessity to do things very differently

Why is the prime minister and labour still on X? Your party and your government has a large majority so why does your government seem so afraid to take difficult decisions?

Until Elon Musk is declared a terrorist and X/Twitter is declared a terrorist organisation and banned from operating in the UK, there is no chance of restoring calm or preventing future violence. The government is acting like a bunch of supply teachers here.

Everyone on X and elsewhere who called for a violent response should be charged with incitement. Everyone involved in the pogrom should be locked up with exemplary sentences. Govt should make it clear that will be the response in future anywhere else. Enough.

At moments of crisis, leaders have a responsibility to speak to, and for, their country. The PM should be on the airwaves, telling the stories of the children, teenagers and families who have been burned out of their homes; naming those responsible; and leading a national fightback against them.

The rationale seems to be that Lowe's posts were reposted by Elon Musk to his millions of followers. But the logic of that position is that Musk - who has an overt political project, which he bought X to amplify - gets to set the news agenda for the platforms he doesn't own as well as those he does

Mad - and maddening - how rare these voices are.

Ah yes, woke HR training: somehow simultaneously a boring useless waste of time that changes nothing and so powerful it created an entire two-tiered system of reverse racist policing in the United Kingdom.

As Badenoch saw sense, it was just Farage playing politics over a young man’s death | John Crace

What Reform did today was an incitement to rioting and an insult to a grieving family. This bloke should have hung his goddamn head in shame.

If @andyburnham.bsky.social becomes Prime Minister, he should look to these, and the example of Peter Magyar in Hungary. Fight for standards. Set values. Sweep out all those who don’t

Thanks James. Non-paywalled version below. Meanwhile I’ll get onto Slate - the original version used to be free

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

👏🏽 "No one in cabinet has a clearer view of the concrete, daily damage Brexit has inflicted on the creative industries than Lisa Nandy does... Her job is to stand up for those musicians, those touring artists, those students. Not to suggest they are out of step with what voters want." 👏🏽

Yes but they could never tackle a huge project like HS2! 🤔 youtube.com/shorts/u0jO-...