A small point from the Mandelson/Robbins saga. Refom and many Tories argue for a civil service than can be more easily bent to the will and whims of their elected political masters.
This is precisely what happened here.
Appalling
Hello I’m an idiot
The US military has significantly depleted its stockpile of key missiles during the war with Iran and created a “near-term risk” of running out of ammunition in a future conflict should one arise in the next few years, according to sources. https://cnn.it/4e1Y7zv
Great stuff from @lewisgoodall.com
All I can say is, be careful what you wish for. None of the current candidates to replace him would be any good, just bad in a different way.
Starmer is a decent person who just doesn't have what it takes to do the job. That's the unglamorous truth. The trouble with building moralistic scaffolding around it, pretending he's The Devil just to make ourselves feel a bit better, is that after he's gone, what will remain is our own dishonesty.
Modern childhood in too many places today 😢
'TRUTH. Truth Details 3201 replies Donald J. Trump @realDonald Trump STATEMENT OF PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP: Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other. President DONALD J. TRUMP 2.39k ReTruths 11.1k Likes 4/21/26, 9:09 PM
I tend to be against Trump escalating World War 3 and getting us all killed, I am actively against global annihilation in fact, but this seems like a very clear, backtracking, holding pattern, from someone who is massively out of their depth.
The extent to which I would much rather be writing about the IfG's new report on employment support (read it! It's really interesting) tomorrow than yet another round of 'man who refuses to do the job of PM properly continues to be bad at it' cannot be overstated.
Holy. Shit. This is Reid Wiseman's video he took with his iPhone while at the moon 🌙
👀💥 Passengers on trains passing the Tuapse Oil Refinery are documenting the extent of the damage from today's attack..
In my piece last week about the US not understanding war, it was said that one problem was the US finds war too "easy" (with disastrous results). In this piece I explain how that works and why US assumptions about war are built often on unreality. open.substack.com/pub/phillips...
This is a really good show. My sons and my niblings (ages 9-14) were screaming with laughter
Well.
news.sky.com/story/politi...
Then it became 'the process was impeccable', but in the end, it all came down to the PM allowing himself to be convinced and/or pushed aside by people who wrongly thought that the benefits of appointing Mandelson outweighed the risks:
His question is: do you think anything has really changed since the Holocaust? Are you sure that your friends & neighbours wouldn’t turn on you just like they did then? If it’s still the same, then the existence of Israel is still just as essential and you should move here.
One of the things I most resent about this is that I know it to be a deliberate strategy by Netanyahu, he does not want Jewish people to feel safe living outside Israel. And it’s working, global antisemitism is rising. The antisemites are making his point for him.
Excellent thread. Sadly it seems that no one explained all this to Starmer.
Exit polls missed by a fair margin so unfortunately looks like an absolute majority
bsky.app/profile/euro...
🇺🇦🇭🇺 I would like to return the money, we will talk to Magyar, — Zelensky about the stolen funds of Oschadbank
The President announced his intention to conduct a dialogue with the newly elected head of the Hungarian government, in particular, on the restoration of cooperation.
Extremely normal and fine for a company to put this in a public statement
Narrator: in fact, he had quite a lot of cards.
Extremely good thread which fits my experience almost exactly.
This is one of the points @ldfreedman.bsky.social made in his post. Ukraine becoming a drone superpower is giving Zelensky some big diplomatic tools.
This is a new government statement on the existing legal position, rather than new legal advice.
But hard to see how it squares with what a foreign office minister said in the Commons last September.
It also represents a major escalation of the row between No 10 & Olly Robbins.
NEW: Downing Street is attempting to demolish the argument from Olly Robbins’ allies that he was prevented by law from telling ministers that Mandelson had failed vetting, ahead of key Commons statement on Monday.
Donald J. Trump • ® @realDonaldTrump Today, an Iranian-flagged cargo ship named TOUSKA, nearly 900 feet long and weighing almost as much as an aircraft carrier, tried to get past our Naval Blockade, and it did not go well for them. The U.S. Navy Guided Missile Destroyer USS SPRUANCE intercepted the TOUSKA in the Gulf of Oman, and gave them fair warning to stop. The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom. Right now, U.S. Marines have custody of the vessel. The TOUSKA is under U.S. Treasury Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity. We have full custody of the ship, and are seeing what's on board! President DONALD J. TRUMP Apr 19, 2026, 9:23 PM
Not going to end well.
Last month, Trump's DOJ inexplicably dropped the prosecution in the largest ($20 billion!) Iran sanctions violations case ever:
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/n...
Now one month later, they're bragging about how they're going to so so so sooooo prosecute Iran sanctions:
www.wsj.com/world/middle...
Nobody seems to be mentioning that Boris Johnson failed his security vetting and Theresa May still made him Foreign Secretary. Then the Tory members made him Prime Minister still without clearance. Conveniently forgotten by the media and by the Tories who are calling for Starmer’s resignation.
