With new strategic authorities being established I encouraged Government today to ensure clear guidance around effective working with resilience forums and key partners to ensure operational readiness for major incidents.
A very good overview of DV vetting within the civil service from @calummillerld.bsky.social here 👇
When I appoint a member of staff I have to wait for them to pass security vetting, as do all MPs. It beggars belief that the PM would not have known that Mandelson had failed to pass developed vetting for a position as high level and high profile as Ambassador to the US.
Shout out to this book, which is where I learned about Post in the first place www.liberalcurrents.com/a-uniquely-a...
People will be closely studying how Hungary's opposition pulled off their win in such a pro-incumbent system. Important to note that the theme was corruption. Democrats need to get much better at calling out Trump's corruption.
They don’t know how war works and they don’t know how negotiations work—but they do know how grift works. Our oligarchs will make money, Putin will make money, and that’s the only "victory" they care about. As a war this is obviously a defeat for the US—had the US won it would be dictating terms.
Donald Trump’s idiotic war has damaged the global economy and left British families and businesses suffering.
A total disaster backed by Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage.
Exactly ⬇️
Lord Peter Ricketts, former national security adviser: "The UK should 'completely forget' the idea of a special relationship with the US and can 'no longer rely' on Washington as an ally."
The loud aggressive litigant pulls the case and pays indemnity costs to the other party, and enters into a compromise which leaves the other party far better off than before the case was brought.
Bullying and boasting, but based on blundering and bombast.
Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey has today called on Keir Starmer to withdraw US access to UK air bases to prevent Britain becoming an “accomplice to war crimes"
This is a pretty laughable and gross Trump error.
Chamberlain appeased the aggressor, Germany
If Starmer gives in to Trump, the aggressor in this Iran war, as Trump wishes him to, Starmer would then BE an appeaser. In refusing he’s the opposite of Chamberlain
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Constitutional law should be boring, not about avoiding Armageddon.
🔶🚨 Proud that we @libdems.org.uk are leading the fight against the cost of living, in the wake of Trump's illegal war in Iran.
Our plans will save the average North Cornwall constituent, for example, £6.60 PER TANK of diesel, will cut rail fares by 10%, and slash bus fares by £1. ✅
This is HUGE mistake. I would understand continuing with the visit, despite humiliating circumstances, if it had any genuine chance of restoring transatlantic relations. But it won’t. Trump will bask in the spotlight, and go back to slagging off the UK one day later. www.nbcnews.com/world/united...
Devon & Cornwall Police has 199 officers per 100,000 residents, compared with 383 officers per 100,000 in London.
That's before taking into account new houses or the seasonal tourist surge in the summer. The minister has some homework to do.
PM set to ban crypto donations in blow to Farage Max Kendix - Political Correspondent Sir Keir Starmer is expected to ban cryptocurrency donations in a blow to Nigel Farage as an independent review warns that they risk letting foreign powers intervene in British democracy. Reform UK was the first party to accept donations in cryptocurrency, which Farage has strongly advocated. He has also personally invested £215,000 in a bitcoin scheme run by Kwasi Kwarteng, the former Tory chancellor, and claimed the party had received “a couple” of donations in crypto. Tomorrow Philip Rycroft, a former senior civil servant, will publish his report on foreign interference in British politics. The Times has been told he will call for a ban on crypto donations as concerns rise about a lack of transparency and the risk of money laundering. Farage has previously said a ban would be “aimed directly” at Reform. Ministers have promised that Rycroft’s recommendations will be “incorporated” into the Representation of the People Bill, which is making its way through parliament. The Rycroft review was launched after the conviction of Nathan Gill, the former Reform MEP in Wales, for accepting bribes to promote pro- Russian narratives. It will also recommend forcing individuals behind opaque company donations to declare themselves to regulators. Rycroft said the report would “set out clear, practical steps to modernise political finance rules ... and better protect UK democracy”. Last year Farage received what was believed to be the largest political donation by a living person when Christopher Harborne, a British crypto tycoon based in Thailand, donated £9 million to Reform. Soon after the donation was received, on August 1, Farage publicly promoted Tether, the crypto company in which Harborne bought a 12 per cent stake in 2016. Farage denied that Harborne had asked for anything in return.
Crypto donations to political parties to be banned. Good.
Farage claims this is aimed directly at Reform. Good.
He also says that him publicly promoting Harborne’s crypto company had nothing to do with Harborne giving Reform £9M.
You’d have to be a v special kind of useful idiot to believe that.
A failure to understand the people who we were operating amongst was one reason why the US-led intervention in Iraq unravelled. The UK must not repeat that mistake, and I will take the Defence Secretary up on his offer.
So it turns out Reform are laundering their donations through crypto, before converting them into cash, hiding the original source of the money.
So who is really funding Nigel Farage and Reform UK?
observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
The American broadcaster Tucker Carlson is seeking to denigrate Churchill and to elevate the fascist leader Oswald Mosley, as if he led the Opposition to the government. The only obvious reason to do this would seem to be to dissolve contemporary norms against fascism
www.thejc.com/news/world/t...
Just heard the response of Trump’s allies described as ‘lukewarm’.
My prediction would be that things are going to get colder.
Allies can remember a time, a month ago, when the Straits were open. Allies might ask who - unilaterally - did something to change that.
Gen. Grynkewich: "What I've observed over the course of studying air power in history is that any time you attack a civilian population, you usually end up finding that it just hardens their resolve."
Disappointed to see Labour MPs vote down @libdems.org.uk proposals to cap the cost of branded school uniform. We want to put ££ back into parents' pockets and give schools freedom to set their own uniform policy. The Government's approach risks putting up uniform prices.
Trump's decision to bomb Iran is now the greatest windfall to the Russian war effort on record. If it continues, it might save the Russian war economy.
A purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States. This would provide Donald Trump with a pretext to try to cancel or “federalize” the coming Congressional elections.
snyder.substack.com/p/the-desire...
Given Trump's illegal war that is devastating the Middle East and pushing up energy bills, Keir Starmer should advise the King to call off April’s state visit to the US.
A state visit should not be given to someone who repeatedly insults and damages our country.
Do think there's a point missing even here with regard to US / Iran... which is that we have international law for a purpose, as the collected wisdom of many years as to what is and is not generally a good idea. It wasn't just set down by bad guys to stop the good ones.
Iran’s people were facing a horrible shortage of water before the war began. If we are destroying desalination plants and setting fire to Teheran we are committing unfathomable crimes.
There is nothing patriotic about outsourcing Britain’s foreign policy to Donald Trump.
Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage want Britain to blindly follow Trump into his reckless war - even though the President has no plan for what comes next.
