An interesting thing about the Mandelson-Epstein affair is that no one is expressing any surprise at Mandelson’s venality and corruption. Yet until recently the media treated him as a “serious politician”, albeit controversial. Which leaves me wondering, what is it that political journalism does?
I need to work on my burgeoning online presence: I can no longer feed the beast.
📧 Blogging by email. It’s a blast from the past!
Press any key
Superficially, it’s disappointing that a Labour leader is way more timid than a Canadian former central banker turned centre-right PM.
More worrying is how the UK government’s slithering exposes nakedness where UK state capacity should be. Surely Treasury and FCDO considered the end of neoliberalism and contemplated the breaking-down of the post-War rules-based order? The “Error. Press any key to restart” status of the UK establishment now - which we witnessed a decade ago after Brexit, and then again at the start of the pandemic - is a painful reminder of how unserious and irrelevant the country has become in the years following the global financial crisis: out of ideas, without a plan, and desperately seeking the magic key combination that reboots to normalcy.
But like Mark Carney said, “nostalgia is not a strategy”.
The UK grocery industry, which receives a massive government subsidy in the form of in-work benefits for its workforce, still will not pay a living wage.
I wonder how British populist right politicos and their propaganda wing in the media would sell an American invasion of Greenland and the end of Nato. Wartime nostalgia? Comeuppance for cheese-eating Euro-surrender monkeys?
Speaking to fellow advisers before Christmas, [Downing Street Chief of Staff Morgan] McSweeney said this would not be a “year of promises” but a “year of proof”, when public services would begin to improve and bills start to fall.
The proof in this case is the proof of the moonshine that McSweeney is necking.
Keir Starmer to woo voters and MPs with new year plan to cut cost of living.
Good thing social media didn’t exist when Nigel Farage was a schoolboy at Dulwich College - or his party would be demanding he be stripped of his citizenship
Did I miss the calls to strip Lucy Connolly of her British citizenship after her Southport tweets?
The wind blows a bin out at Heron Quays
