I am no longer under embargo. #AnimalFarm consequence.net/2026/04/anim...

My genuine best guess here is that RFK is saying this because Trump said this, and Trump said it because he doesn’t know what percentages are so when he needed a percentage for a soundbite he just picked the biggest of the two numbers that were already on the piece of paper in front of him.

So when I spent three years in Cambridge studying maths, and paying tens of thousands of pounds to do so, was that worth it?

Reminds me of when I was a child there was a book series called Murderous Maths and one of the books contained a joke about a survey on if 1 should be considered a prime number with the following results:

Yes: 7
No: 8
Don’t know: 211
Don’t care: 99,999,774

You probably shouldn't goad Trump with the TACO stuff when what's at stake is the unilateral destruction of an entire people.

Oh and Bluesky's having issues again, we all poasted too hard about Ollie Robbins and Ed Miliband.

There's so many layers to this, I got a real laugh about the mention of VAT on private school fees, because it's not real economy bait without that thrown in as the root of all evil. And the fact they got someone with the surname RENTon to write the housing market clickbait is the icing on the cake.

I feel like Sun Tzu really missed out on "Invent Pete Hegseth and give him to the enemy"

This is true but does Hesgeth believe in military intelligence as a concept?

I'm not sure the "decent" line holds at this point. If we judge by actions then I think it's a tough sell at this stage. He's thrown an awful lot of people under the bus, and tolerated some appalling behaviour by people on his team. Feels generous.

Tough break for Ed Davey

I get that it’s meant to be a sort of “joke” rather than a real threat but even if some random on Bluesky said those things as a joke I would block them; Mahmood is the only person in the country with the power to make it happen, it simply cannot be considered acceptable.

The Home Secretary has to resign. Are we to accept that it’s okay to threaten to deport political opponents? And if the government decides that is okay what does that mean for democracy?

she has to resign

this is not funny, *especially* if you are the fucking Home Secretary, with the actual fucking power to unilaterally deprive *anyone* of citizenship

genuinely think this is actually resignation worthy btw, like we fine with the Home Sec joking about tasering and deporting Jewish and dual-heritage political opponents?

This is the crux of it because the politicisation of the civil service may have started under the Tories but it’s going to get a lot worse if the government expects civil servants, however “friends with Theresa May” they may have been, to fall on their sword over the decisions of elected officials.

By “neither here nor there” what I mean is Mahmood is entitled to hold views I find awful and she’s entitled to think I’m awful - as long as I’m equally entitled to criticise/protest her actions that’s part of democracy. She is not entitled to call for the deportation/harm of political opponents.

The Prime Minister doesn't understand his job.

The Chancellor has given up.

The Home Secretary has radicalised herself.

There isn't a foreign secretary.

A government on autopilot into oblivion.

I know she meant it as a joke but I don’t think that would be mitigating for this kind of “joke” at all.

One way of looking at this is that Mahmood, as Home Secretary, has the power to actually do this, so of course she shouldn’t joke about it, for the sake of democracy.

Politico report the Home Secretary was asked who out of Zack Polanski, Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch or Ed Davey she would taser or deport.

Mahmood replied: “All of the above.”

So Home Secretary is herself able to joke about deporting Badenoch, Polanski & Farage.

(Farage ought not to reciprocate)

Look the telling pro-immigration people to “fuck right off” is awful but kind of neither here nor there compared to this, Mahmood is entitled to her view on that after all. But a sitting Home Secretary threatening to deport or harm political opponents? That has to be the end of her career.

"Legitimate concerns" is just a euphemism for "legitimising hate"

One trend I’ve noticed in government is everything has to be the biggest/best ever these days. A health minister described the new smoking laws as “the biggest public health intervention in a generation” and honestly I can think of a public health intervention this decade that might have been bigger

If you criticise the Greens on this website you will get someone in your mentions accusing you of being a Labour shill and I find it funny that the Greens think all their critics must be Labour Party supporters because the thing about Labour Party supporters is there’s not many of them left!

The thing that makes me lean towards it being true is that when I was at Cambridge a lot of the boys from Eton and Harrow would brag about doing really outrageous and disgusting stuff on par with this and I’m not sure why. Possibly meant in a “hey state school boy look what we can get away with” way

As we know now it didn’t work - May got enough concessions from the EU to try another meaningful vote, which she lost and then resigned. But you can see why No 10 could have thought such a scheme might have worked.

The most boring conspiracy theory of all time.

with the EU owing to such a large defeat at the 2nd vote - being able to tell the EU they had to give major concessions to avoid a no deal Brexit, something that, while more damaging to the UK, would still have been damaging enough to the EU that negotiators were desperate to avoid it (cont.)

Why? A close loss would have put pressure on May to make small tweaks to the deal before the Brexit deadline, while a massive loss essentially forced Parliament to accept a delay to Brexit. A delay would allow one more meaningful vote, in which May would have a really strong negotiating hand (cont.)

For the most niche answer ever penned but one that I’m hoping appeals to my follower base: I believe Theresa May deliberately lost the 2nd meaningful vote. Obviously govt was going to lose the vote anyway but I think May tacitly encouraged some loyal MPs to vote it down to increase the loss margin.