Recent posts by Global News and Politics Professionals on Bluesky

Rabbis Charley Baginsky + Josh Levy, co-leads of Progressive Judaism, on their new book exploring the deep tension they feel between the trajectory of Israel's government and their understanding of Jewish values in contested arguments over Zionism + Judaism itself www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Defend Our Juries on the Palestine Action ban: "More than 1700 people have signed a letter, led by legal professors, which Prof Peter Hallward, a Professor of Moral Philosophy, will hand-deliver to the Court of Appeal today "The letter simply reads: “We oppose genocide, we support Palestine Action”

This is the combined wealth of just 8 people, for clarity. Tax them aggressively in CA, then introduce legislation in Florida, then anywhere else they want to try hiding away to avoid fairly contributing. Eventually they'll have to, as moving physical assets endlessly would be too costly/unviable.

Politico: Tory "James Cleverly questioned the timing of Labour’s deal to end the Birmingham bin strike, telling the Tele “it can hardly be a coincidence that this capitulation comes so soon after Unite...slashing its funding for Labour." Illogical. Unite has *weakened* its leverage over Labour...

If only there were some way to legally formalise this kind of relationship www.thetimes.com/article/8aee...

Politico: "76% of Brits say that MPs drinking before votes is unacceptable...Green MP Hannah Spencer recently criticized fellow MPs for drinking alcohol" pre-votes. Probably fair. MPs vote late but they do it max 3-4 days a week. No idea how you'd enforce it though. Breathalysers in the lobbies?

www.maptap.gg April 28 100🎯 99🔥 96🏅 75🤗 45😨 Final score: 751 ouch. Worst performance I’ve had on this by a long way. Stupid error on 4. But also the hardest are (3 and 5) places in sparsely populated regions of the world - you can get big distance errors while picking a ‘neighbouring’ spot.

Reform schools: Suella's plan for your children. open.substack.com/pub/davidaar...

What exactly is @antoniabance.bsky.social's evidence that 15 years of precarity/risk of deportation for care workers - which is what the "earned citizenship" proposals mean - is a "red line"? But clear she supports the biggest roll-back of workers' rights in the care sector in living memory.

I caught up with Andrew to better understand how filibustering (by a handful of unelected peers) rather than a vote, thwarted Kim Leadbeater’s Bill, and what comes next. 🎧👇

I not surprised at all that neither Robbins or Collard relied on verbal briefings and never saw the entire PM vetting document.

Really proud to be on the front page of Krytika journal

Keir Starmer Set To Defeat Tory Bid To Hold Sleaze Probe Into Mandelson Scandal www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/keir-s...

Important analysis by Jessica Elgot in the Guardian: 'Mandelson and McSweeney: a partnership forged on winning and crushing the Labour left': www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Last week we published the vile views of a Merseyside Reform election candidate - who claimed the Holocaust was a ‘hoax’ and propaganda’ Sadly in the cesspit that is social media, there were a worrying amount of people who supported him in these sick views

This person left an egg on top of a polling card and it seems to have imprinted the "it is an offence to..." text from election law. It's quite poetic.

NEW NEW NEW ⚽️ Karren Brady's #WestHam legacy... ⚽️ What gives with #wba points deduction? On WTMG - the pod that takes you inside the football boardroom with me & Charlie Methven. open.spotify.com/episode/5Kk1...

Ipsos survey on impact of Scottish 2026 election campaign shows marginally positive shift in leaders, parties (from a low base) with the exception of Reform, who are set for a Holyrood breakthrough with 1/5 support (but 6/10 scepticism) + are only party perceived more negatively than pre-campaign

Absolutely this - not to mention the pastoral side of it: treating people with sensitivity, respect, dignity. Asking questions. Understanding that a person is so much more than a body that needs help.

Well yes of course they should. (n.b. best done without saying you're considering it, and now must be done retrospectively, i.e. at 1 April 2026 levels) And well done to the renters' unions, several Labour MPs, Green Party and trade unions that have pushed this. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Good to see Electoral Commission scrutiny of corporate donations resulting in a referral to the police. This should encourage the Government to go further in tightening up the laws around political donations. www.thetimes.com/article/cc62...

One dead and multiple overdoses as contaminated drugs bring tragedy to streets of Merseyside town

NEW EPISODE: ⚽️ Karren Brady's #WestHam legacy... ⚽️ #wba points deduction.... On WTMG - the pod that takes you inside the football boardroom with me & Charlie Methven. pod.fo/e/40806f

This keeps getting retweeted into my feed and I've had the full cocktail of emotions: 1) secondhand embarrassment for this adult not handing it to the nearest child 2) contempt for the adult 3) deep mirth imagining another guy with a big beard and glasses watching this at home and going 'oh no'

Everything about how we provide 'free' childcare in England is silly. In addition to the incentive not to earn more, if you lose your job you have a race to find another or you lose your free childcare, meaning you might get stuck unemployed until the time you can enroll in a nursery.

Keir Starmer's future: does he have 3 years, 3 months or 3 weeks left at Number 10? My column this week www.easterneye.biz/keir-starmer...

Fantastic piece by @jessicaelgot.bsky.social, filled with insight and 'can these people hear themselves?' quotes:

You have to laugh at the descriptions (still) of Morgan McSweeney and Keir Starmer as being 'ruthlessly focussed on winning'. So ruthless that they have chased winning all the way to the safest wards of inner London, where it is making a desperate last stand against his choices.

I know the ballroom discourse is clearly Very Important and all that, but can someone remind the president that the Strait of Hormuz is still, y'know, blocked? If it helps, remind him construction equipment needs oil, I guess?

I don't have any crows or ravens, but if we're going corvid, here's one of my magpies. Don't worry, he's got six more buddies further up my arm, so he's not solo.

These sorts of potholes should make the King feel at home...

“And you just don’t get it/keep it copacetic…” It is 23:19 on April 27, 2026 and, for some reason, I have the minor 1996 rock hit ‘Bound For The Floor’ by Local H. stuck in my head.

It's okay though because we'll all demand the government bail us out for the extra costs and that will all work out absolutely fine with no consequences at all!!

Joel’s right and it’s part of how parochial the British political class has become that hardly anyone says this, and that hardly anyone points out that Labour’s ODA cuts have literally killed people.

Subsidising energy consumption in the face of both a short-term supply shock and the long-term need to decarbonise. Bad for the economy, bad for the planet, bad for the world's poor. And *if* you favour a wealth tax (I am sceptical but there's a case) spending it on *this" is just idiotic.

What a fantastic day of snooker, and it's only been the last 16! Hossan Vafaei, Judd Trump, John Higgins, Ronnie O'Sullivan, Mark Selby and Wu Yize especially have produced brilliant matches up there with the very best in Crucible history.

Btw, this is not meant as a snide dig at the King’s visit. If he can buy a bit of goodwill, great. But, it won’t last….

This may not be a popular view, but the best way to restore UK-US relations would be to increase UK defense spending, so we have a credible military force again. More effective than any royal visit. www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/k...

God, Six Feet Under is such a terrific show. Just got to “The Room”, the episode where Nate discovers a side to his father he never knew in life.

"Nothing less than a political turn around and a complete reinvention in office will do, but with these heirs apparent and this PLP? It's would be a kindness to book them into a Swiss clinic now."

Fun to find this in my local corner shop this morning

"Consumers will pay a flat 20p deposit for all containers as part of the new Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) launching in 2027, non-profit and official DRS operator Exchange for Change has announced." Long overdue but welcome nonetheless www.edie.net/uk-deposit-r...

"Electric vehicle ownership has reached a 'tipping point' that signals an irreversible shift away from petrol cars, not only in China but parts of south-east Asia and Europe despite stalling in the US, research finds" www.ft.com/content/ef33...

Ian Collard does not disappoint. (I wonder if they can just reinstate OR)

Eighth. It just looks weird on the page and feels odd when spoken. I get it right but I have to think about it for a moment longer than other words.

Waiting for the Out is both an incredible BBC drama mini-series, and also the longest ever advert for induction hobs

Currently 99p on Kindle - go go go! amzn.eu/d/03TaZQca

I don't know what middlebrow means anymore. For Virginia Woolf it meant consuming highbrow art in a shallow way as a signifier of status. But now? No idea. Stuff that's clever but popular? Stuff that's only pretending to be clever?

All (except one) UK broadsheet newspapers.

No, the Prime Ministers are the problem and a politics more widely that is built on believing in nothing but what’s expedient to win the next election.

This is the kind of film you hope to see in April, where you go “yeah, I completely see why the studio had doubts but it was a mad, singular vision and I loved watching it”.

This js a really great question. I’ve been very vaguely discussing with someone London based an avant garde writing and visual art magazine based out of London and Paris. Working title is BellesVilles ™️

Yeah this sounds like something from the white flight suburbs between Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Latest on solar panels for cars (still a while off from rollout, but interesting nonetheless): "A roof‑integrated silicon PV system typically provides 10 km to 15 km of daily range for an efficient electric vehicle under northern European conditions, according to Oxford PV."

Some rather rare, uplifting tech news: "Ecosia, the search engine that directs 100% of its profits into climate action, has reached 250 million trees planted worldwide, marking the milestone on Earth Day 2026." www.energylivenews.com?p=361099#:~:...

Starmer now openly stating that his government is already soft left in policy terms – a fact most analysis has long missed.

EXC: Rachel Reeves considering imposing a one-year rent freeze on the private sector as worries mount about the Iran war fallout. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Absolutely incredible

Not just demanding that someone gets sacked for their speech, but in this case that he's sacked for not psychically predicting an assassination attempt. Not just thoughtcrime but thoughtprecrime. Still, when Bari Weiss and the Free Press find out about this I bet they'll be FURIOUS!

Anyone who feels like coming to the finest event in the Paris social calendar pls DM me.

It's really exciting to see a BBC show as auteurish as Mint. Not just that the show itself is bold and original and takes risks but that the BBC took a risk on Charlotte Regan and said "Go for it. Do something different." I'm bored to death of generic crime dramas.

Someone should poll whether it's acceptable for politicians to eat before late night votes, just to give us a benchmark bsky.app/profile/debe...

No, but I am in favour of the policy for Royals ...

NEW in this week's pod with @pippacrerar.bsky.social: - What the govt is hoping for from King Charles in Washington - Why McSweeney might surprise some people with his testimony on Tuesday - Why Labour MPs think its "Burnham or bust" after the locals www.theguardian.com/politics/aud...

I stomped through the swamps of the Daily Mail’s Meghan coverage.

Here are 3 ways the current system screws Wales. If politicians are not talking about these issues, they are not serious about fixing Wales' problems. The challenges Wales faces are not because of immigrants, they are because the system of funding we have is set up so that we can’t fail to fail.

I am sick and tired of hearing about that 'special relationship'. It never existed, really. And it should be put to bed latest now. It's humiliating for the UK. Always has been. As is Charles visit to Washington.

www.maptap.gg April 27 99🎯 100🎯 90👑 98🎯 94🏅 Final score: 955

Ah, one of the most wonderful summer smells: London pavements after it rains.

Well this has perked me up! A Woman of No Importance has been chosen as one of the 14 best page turner non fiction books of.all.time! Wow!!! inews.co.uk/culture/book...

Sorry Google maps, but that absolutely is not Oxford Street.

Musculoskeletal, in large part because even if you get halfway there, spellcheck still won’t help you.

Try not to gripe about personal stuff on here but how - HOW - did Capita get the contract to administer the civil service pension scheme? (Not mine, Mum’s, but falls into my lap and Kafkaesque doesn’t begin to describe it 🤬)

'Three weeks, three months, or three years? The uncertain future of Keir Starmer'' – new @sundersays.bsky.social column for @easterneye.bsky.social www.easterneye.biz/keir-starmer...

Just back from a series of focus groups on Scotland, lots more to report, but the thing that jumped out was this was possibly the most unenthusiastic or “meh” I’ve ever experienced people be about their choices in an election.

John Swinney has published his initial steps for independence if the SNP is returned to power. It sounds pretty familiar. Questions remain over whether he think there would be a legal case based on the precedent of the first SNP majority, if Labour blocks his plan. www.scotsman.com/news/politic...

I’ve got ‘Cocaine Salmon’ to the tune of ‘Mustang Sally’ in my head now. Guess you’d better slow that swimming down…

Feast your eyes on these images of #London created by Jill White who @juliehamill.bsky.social has been talking to: www.onlondon.co.uk/julie-hamill...

erm, 76% of Reform voters say that it's unacceptable for MPs to drink before voting in parliament. I now question the value of such polls.

I have somehow displeased the Catmittee.

Oh fuck off. (If I were talking like the Daily Mail, I’d have starred that out)

George Michael could be slow, and perfectionist, but he could also be explosively quick, producing classics in a matter of hours. Tonight The Music Seems So Loud: The Meaning of George Michael, is published this summer. You can pre-order now and book spaces at live events. Sathnam.com/events

🚨 Big blow for the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the credibility of the UK’s #Anti-MoneyLaundering (AML) regime as the Court of Appeal finds AML breaches by the world’s largest global law firm don’t automatically amount to professional misconduct.

No 10 publishes memo saying PM was assured after Mandelson sacked that 'appropriate processes followed' in his appointment - www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Anna Turley MP, Labour Chair, on news that police are to assess a donation to Robert Jenrick’s Tory leadership campaign: “Robert Jenrick is no stranger to donation scandals. As a Tory minister, he abused his government office by admitting he helped a donor swerve a staggering £45 million in tax."

Maybe one reason why 'Michael' is doing so well at the box office is so much else has that deeply unappealing 'the UK cinema in April' vibe of 'talky film for grown-ups with a script that needed another few drafts'.

My Dad has carers who come in three times a day - all overseas workers. They do amazing work; work I know I could never do. With tens of thousands of vacancies across social care, we fundamentally need people to come here and take these jobs. I wrote more here: open.substack.com/pub/nicolake...

Poland's success is closely intertwined with its EU membership. This isn't complicated

We've been reporting on the impacts of intensive farming in the Herefordshire region, and beyond, for years This week chicken giant Avara Foods (part owned by Cargill) faces legal action in the high court over its alleged links to pollution of the rivers Wye, Lugg and Usk

Keir Starmer plans to fight + win the 2029 election. Others think him more likely to survive 3 weeks or months than 3 years as PM. My Eastern Eye column this week explores how premierships end as a guide to Westminster's cluedo-style conundrums on what happens next www.easterneye.biz/keir-starmer...

This is quite the 'stoic British upper classes' vignette.

I'm struggling to understand how anyone would think "making a donation to Robert Jenrick's party leadership campaign" would be a good use of £40,000, whatever its origin.

Thinking a lot about relationships across political divides as I realise the biggest ideological split in my marriage is probably over voting reform. ((As in, reforming the UK’s voting system and bringing in some form of proportional representation, as opposed to, you know, voting Reform))

The thing I will never understand is the large group of people who are clearly, sincerely upset about what they find after checking who has blocked them or the insane lists they’ve been put on.

Contrary to her lyrics, Ms Swift's honorific is indeed going out of Styles.

Badenoch claims case against Starmer 'overwhelming' as she welcomes debate on referring PM to privileges committee - www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Can’t decide if this is a huge L or a massive W for my “all stories are about commodities, except for the ones that are about management” take.

Hoyle stresses that allowing debate tomorrow does not mean he thinks Starmer likely to have misled MPs - www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Americans are united in believing they are divided...