This will offend some people When considering how we deal with the problem of Islamist supremacism, it's tempting to throw up our hands and despair But the fact is, we've been here before and have a playbook for dealing with this stuff. There was in England's history a recalcitrant religious minority that claimed the authority of a higher power to re-order English society by violence, even abrogating for itself the right to murder the monarch: it was called Catholicism, It's imperial claims were suppressed and eventually defeated by the application of specific laws designed not to persecute people for being Catholic, but to thwart the political objective of making England a Catholic country As always, the answer to our problems lie in our own history, if only we had the wit to see it.

Hey Mr Starkey - Ireland may want a word, you absolute basket case.

Am not an energy analyst but why does seem every interview with a U.K. minister this week included a pointed question about why not drilling more in North Sea and almost none about renewables/net zero as an energy security imperative?

It’s bizarre, frankly

This 1990 speech by Carl Sagan is timely times two:

#war #climate

🤣🤣🤣🤣

‘Drinking from a fetid pond’: superbug-creating genes found in UK’s largest lake Exclusive: Lough Neagh, which supplies drinking water for 40% of NI, contains genes resistant to last-resort antibiotics

Superbugs resistant to antibiotics are rising fast. I tested water at Lough Neagh (40% of Northern Ireland’s drinking water) & found high levels of antibiotic-resistant genes from human & livestock poo. If we treat waterways like sewers, this is what we get. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The Oil Lobby Is Using the Iran War to Revive North Sea Drilling but Official Data Shows It Won’t Cut Bills Fossil fuel funded think tanks, petrostate-linked policy institutes and oil market insiders are all being presented as impartial observers by the media, reports Nafeez Ahmed

🔴The Oil Lobby Is Using the Iran War to Revive North Sea Drilling but Official Data Shows It Won’t Cut Bills

Fossil fuel funded think tanks, petrostate-linked policy institutes and oil market insiders are all being presented as impartial observers by the media, reports @nafeez.bsky.social

Scrooge, but wearing a hockey mask cos it's friday the 13th.

"You boy, what day is this??"

Djokovic and Draper serving up probably the most insane point you're likely to see.

If I had a nickel for every time Franz Ferdinand was involved in the precursor events of a world war, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice

For anyone who would like the clip (including George).

"We called London a war zone and moved to Dubai by mistake"

"This is bonkers!"

How did the Speaker of the House of Commons end up in the British Virgin Islands with a tip-off that Mandelson allegedly planned to flee there - a claim he calls "baseless"?

Irish Independent: Man stole three coffee machines in a week from Monaghan department store.

How does he sleep at night?

I’ve found it, I’ve found the worst take

Okay, this is quite outstanding from Bedford Council.

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

McSweeney goes - but ​​Josh Simons in the frame over targeting journalists Cabinet Office minister hired a PR firm to investigate journalists. His explanation is bewildering - and begs one big question. How can Starmer keep him on?

When he ran Labour Together, Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons hired a PR firm to investigate journalists

After our revelations, and a flurry of news stories, Simons finally gave his side of the story

But it doesn't seem to tally with the facts... 🧵

democracyforsale.substack.com/p/mcsweeney-...

PR firm probed over Labour Together investigating journalists Investigation into APCO Worldwide deepens questions for Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons

🔴 Investigation opened into PR firm's work investigating journalists and sources for Labour Together

PRCA has launched a probe into APCO Worldwide following Democracy for Sale's reporting

Now will Cabinet minister Josh Simons explain himself?

democracyforsale.substack.com/p/pr-firm-pr...

How extraordinarily fortunate for Wes Streeting that the only text messages he sent Peter Mandelson just happened to be exactly the sort of things other Labour MPs want to hear from a potential leadership candidate

Right that the prime minister has resigned. His successor, Keir Starmer, has a very difficult inheritance.

💥 GOOD.

Because that £240 million contract gifted to Palantir, with no competition…

…after Starmer had an off-the-books meeting with Mandelson and Palantir…

…while Mandelson was officially LOBBYING FOR Palantir and so personally financially benefiting from such links and contracts…

Stinks.

Peter Mandelson 'Pestering for a role': how Mandelson talked his way back into the Labour fold Officials, MPs and other insiders recall a need for clarity and Blair-era frisson before election - even if Sue Gray was wary UK politics live - latest updates Daniel Boffey Chief reporter Fri 6 Feb 2026 17.52 CET

The question debated in parliament this week was how Starmer could possibly have thought it was appropriate for Mandelson to be appointed as US ambassador. The one raised by Labour insiders is why he was brought back into the party fold at all by the prime minister, who supporters claim was never fully trusting of his character. Mandelson was clearly not involved in the party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, whom he so keenly sought to unseat, but neither did he have a role in Ed Miliband's team. "All of us believe in dignity in retirement," Miliband said in 2010, on being asked about a possible return of Mandelson. Why did Starmer not think the same?

Many point to the relationship between Mandelson and McSweeney - they were introduced by the peer Roger Liddle, who lives near McSweeney in Lambeth. However, their politics clash, as one former minister laid out. "Morgan trying to bring Labour back to doorstep bread-and-butter issues and rejecting the progressive internationalism of New Labour, hitching his wagon to the architect of it? Peter the most eloquent exponent of the need to embrace and celebrate globalisation, Morgan the man whose politics begins by rejecting that entire approach?"

No one is sure how or why this bent self-dealing crook found his way back into the party after deliberately undermining anyone who tried to get rid of him, but let’s be clear: It definitely doesn’t involve the PM’s right-hand man, who was groomed by him and who fastidiously backed him to the hilt.

Democracy for Sale's scoop about Labour Together paying a firm to investigate journalists has now been picked up in FT, Politico and the Guardian

Huge questions to answer - for Morgan McSweeney, Josh Simons, and Keir Starmer

Oh, and do support D4S 😀 democracyforsale.substack.com/subscribe

Epstein is like the evil Forrest Gump, somehow present and responsible for every terrible thing of the last twenty years.

What’s happening in America is technofascism. It could happen here Peter Thiel's data surveillance company Palantir is powering Trump's ICE operation in the US. Carole Cadwalladr argues that the UK will be next

NEW: What’s happening in the US is TECHNOFASCISM.

It’s fascism + surveillance technologies. Palantir is playing a central role. And the UK is next in line.

My latest for @thenerve.news
1/

www.thenerve.news/p/technofasc...

Post-Brexit, Epstein told Thiel: "Brexit is just the beginning" – eyeing crypto deregulation via right-populism. 7/12

Zack Polanski, "Palantir.. £240 million contract last month"

"That was lobbied by Global Counsel which is Peter Mandelson's lobbying group"

"The idea that a defence company from the US has its fingerprints all over our healthcare system, alongside Peter Mandelson"

Wow - this guy must be really, REALLY bad with money if an extra £208 per month will “ruin” his retirement.

Let’s take a look at his situation based on what he told the @Telegraph

Because this does NOT add up!

No, this is not a “poor pensioner” scrabbling around for pennies…

🧵1/9