Please try not to sink the Hohenwart Plan or any subsequent efforts at further federalization beyond the parameters of the Ausgleich this time around.

Quite! There are character flaws that lead people to make bad decisions - for instance, being rash or over-cautious; stubborn or credulous; over-loyal or treacherous - but somehow Starmer seems to possess none of these consistently but all of them at times when it causes greatest harm.

At a conference with the SFO:

Pattiserie Valerie collapsed in 2018, they charged them in 2023, the first court date was 2026, this was then delayed by the defence requesting more time, so they now won't see court until 2028.

10 years.

For context, SBF was prosecuted for FTX within 12 months.

Kate Ferguson @kateferguson4 • 7h X The Labour left smelling blood when it comes to Labour Together 6 89

Yeah, everyone gets really brave, when the fighting is over and it’s time to bayonet wounded enemy soldiers. Except on this occasion it’s deeply weird because there wasn’t even any fighting, it was just an army showing up then punching themselves in the head for about five years.

Bookends for a low, dishonest decade here: from cranky auntie Margaret on ITV saying that getting a letter for publicly roaring abuse at her boss reminded her of her relatives under the Third Reich, to Margaret explaining that Jobs For The Lads are fine actually, for the correct type of Lads.

Consistent theme: Me and my mates can do whatever the fuck we like, behave as horrendously as we want, and if people object to any of it then that is a kind of terrifying ideological derangement

What happens, when these people are presented with a choice between apologising for their terrible conduct and making deep, painful concessions, or trying to shitehouse the disaster further by recruiting e.g. Nigel Farage for the most terrifying round of McCarthyist screeching yet?

The rush to appease Trump led Keir Starmer into this ethical void | Rafael Behr Mandelson’s flaws were mistaken for credentials to represent Britain in the court of a rogue president, says Guardian columnist Rafael Behr

Sure, but I don’t see much here that doesn’t apply in spades to all of the lads who - from the late 2010s - thought “let’s get Peter and his mates in to mutilate the Labour Party and turn it back into a bung-taking powerhouse of unpleasant right wing reactionaries” was a very, very good idea.

Boris Johnson on his way back from a party

Kemi Badenoch can't believe Keir Starmer would allow anyone with links to the Kremlin anywhere near government

WaPo says that Warsh “promised independence” and “demonstrated seriousness” during his hearing. When asked who won the 2020 election, he basically hid under the table. Promises of independence from someone so cowed and cowardly are less than meaningless.

Spain pushes to end EU-Israel association agreement Madrid will propose the measure at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Tuesday, said Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

Obviously right thing to do for EU & UK (for its similar agreement with Israel).

Absolutely no excuse for preferential trade agreements with a country that is deliberately defying international law to pursue systematic mass killings, war crimes & ethnic cleansing

www.politico.eu/article/spai...

Interesting @markjacob.bsky.social point here: Why not more stand-alone stories with heds like "Trump Is Dismantling Democracy"?

"Such a headline would be easy to support with facts that the NYT and other major media report in isolation every day. They’re simply afraid to hit the total button."

Tim Cook donated $1M to Trump’s inauguration.

He fawned over Trump and gifted him a 24-karat gold plaque (as Apple lobbied for tariff exemptions).

Apple donated to Trump’s White House ballroom.

And it removed ICE tracking apps from its stores following a demand from the DOJ.

Remember this.

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.

A Labour Party spokesperson blamed the previous Conservative governments, adding Labour was "finally bringing down" immigration numbers. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood had taken "decisive action" to cut small boat crossings and "restore control of our borders after the Tories' failed open borders experiment", they said. "We have already stopped over 42,000 illegal migrants attempting to cross the Channel since the general election," they added. "We have removed or deported nearly 60,000 people with no right to be here."

Obviously Reform's proposals is simultaneously racist, economically and socially damaging and impractical.

But, yet again, instead of saying so, Labour/the government's response is tin-eared me-tooism.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Everyone who did so should be treated as though they work for a pedophile mafia, because they effectively do.

We know why it's because he was connected to the Russians to the super rich so they thought he was in the in crowd with trump. Non of them know what to do now, the curtains have been well and truly ripped down and they're frantically trying to hide that from us all.

I thought John McDonnell explained it pretty well by accusing Labour Together of a clandestine right-wing coup and Starmer of being their hapless toady, utterly obliged to give McSweeney whatever he wanted

What, everyone suddenly remembered at the very moment that Peter and Morgan made them all look like clowns in front of their American colleagues? That doesn’t seem very likely either, does it.

I particularly struggle to believe that, because I don’t remember anyone breathing a word about McSweeney being Mandelson’s protege until the Americans released those emails, at which point it immediately turned out everyone had always known it and had just neglected to mention it on air.

I mean, we can muse on whether Sir Keir is crooked or just thick, but I struggle to believe that none of these people understood where all the money, the smear campaigns against rivals and the friendly newspaper coverage were coming from.

Like, are we saying that the only person in this tiny clique of people in politics and media who understood that they had been doing Peter’s dirty work and helping his project, was Sir Keir himself? Because that seems unlikely to be true

Also, why did everyone line up to repeat everything they were told by Morgan McSweeney, given all of them appear to have understood he was Peter’s boy, with mysterious access to Peter’s millionaire friends and Peter’s media contacts, and they could see he was running very Peter-style hate campaigns?

Trump’s presidency is what evil looks like: absurd, frightening, cruel | Nesrine Malik Commentators have said that the US president’s clownishness and lack of ideology somehow make him less dangerous. They’re wrong, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

Trump’s presidency is what evil looks like: absurd, frightening, cruel | Nesrine Malik

Thanks Frank

We all need to lodge an official complaint. It takes no time at all, and I've dropped a link to BBC Complaints in the comments. This is shocking.

His nicknames were "the Prince of Darkness" and "the Dark Lord".

He was repeatedly sacked from government for lying.

His connections to Epstein and Russia were widely reported for years.

Yet Starmer still trying to claim he was somehow kept in the dark about Mandelson being a wrongun. Come on

Apparently, we are going to get "angry Starmer" in the Commons.

But politically, constitutionally, logically and administratively all this flows from his - his! - appointment of Mandelson.

All else is the putting into effect of that decsion.

But: anger at others, blaming others, sacking others.

Whether Starmer goes is more a matter of politics than about the constitution, but the Prime Minister should properly account to Parliament for his own decision to appoint Mandelson.

His current approach of ducking, and blaming and sacking others, is a failure of prime ministerial responsibility.

By Nigel Farage Opinion Jews are now living in danger - and the Government's failure to confront the root causes is a national disgrace Antisemitism is at odds with British values but the rot is spreading with Keir Starmer's Labour asleep at the wheel April 20, 2026 0437

It’s quite amazing how British politics relentlessly innovates in the art of insulting the public