It's almost exactly four years since Tim Shipman's notorious "Boris Johnson squats like a giant toad" tweet.

Seems like important context given how we often talk as though the next election – four years away – is a done deal.

Love this: "mediocre" is the only one US and UK agree on; US rates "average" above average

Sunday’s @thetimes.com cartoon times.newsprints.co.uk/morten-morla...

Have had this thought and tbh I also don’t like it, am I being awkward there? It’s a kinda student politics posey vibe and these are not those times. I’m much happier to be anti-fascist.

This is a president who has sent the military into peaceful cities run by political opponents, and who authorises the destruction of what are pretty much random boats in the Caribbean to make a point about drug gangs. This would not normally be Peace Prize behaviour.

Trevor Phillips on Sky about Trump and the Nobel Peace Prize: “Even long-time critics are conceding he will probably deserve it next year.”

I really don't think that's true. By any normal metric, Trump would and should be the very last person to win the prize, and many people realise that.

‘Religious fanaticism has been catastrophic for a region that was once the intellectual hub of the world’ www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Times/S Times campaign against Jonathan Powell accuses him of “caring about one audience above others: Starmer himself”. Clearly it’s a heinous crime for PM’s national security adviser to prioritise giving advice to, well, the PM..

Imagine being the UK diplomat having to respond to these "concerns" about how intel is handled, knowing that on the other side the people in charge are Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and Donald Trump.

‘Lessons from Enoch Powell to Robert Jenrick on race rhetoric’ Dominic Sandbrook www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Robert Jenrick: *Look, I hope you didn’t mind me saying that thing the other day, about how much I dislike being somewhere with no other white faces*

Our Week: Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick’s WhatsApps* @hugorifkind.bsky.social www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

This strikes me as a pretty major Brexit shift from Starmer.

Perhaps the beginning of 'Brexit is sh1t and has caused real economic damage'.

🚨 NEW: Rachel Reeves is set to blame Nigel Farage for tax rises in the Budget, saying he delivered Brexit with “easy sloganeering” and then walked away

Reeves will say that without Brexit, the economy would be stronger and taxes lower - and that Farage is to blame

Actually since Sparta is the model for British boarding schools and Machiavelli the model for the contemporary Conservative Party maybe we are more than halfway there.

What with all this the UK should emulate Dubai stuff, following hot on the heels of Singapore model, are there any other niche authoritarian city states we could go for? Brunei? Machiavelli’s Florence? Ancient Sparta?

Give up satirists.

Move to Saudi or something.

You're not needed any more.

No one in their right mind would have thought Hunt's NI cuts were anything more than an empty gesture. Tory Central office had known for at least two years that they were going to lose the election and he'd never have to live with them. Labour were mad to adopt them for the sake of a few more seats

The Right are doing this because they want you to believe there is a systemic problem with free speech in this country.

But there isn't.

bsky.app/profile/rola...

The Populist Right are desperate to signal that this one brave appeal judge is swimming against the tide of a system infected by 'Lefty Lawyers' – like the judge applied the law according to his own free speechy conscience.

He did no such thing.

Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest, it's still early June 2016.

Now do this with Putin!

stop thinking right now

What a loser.

It is also delusional thinking.
You think flattery is going to keep that man on your side in the long run?

Good luck.