We'll be at @psaepop.bsky.social #epop2026 this week in Liverpool, with ten colleagues involved in 14 presentations over the two days. Come along and say hi!

This Neo-Nazi is attempting to target RNLI volunteers. The police have to act, and the Prime Minister should be making a public statement.

Pay very careful attention to the difference between the press's reaction to this and the actions of groups like XR and JSO, which also disrupted traffic sometimes.

Chris Grey@chrisgrey.bsky.social · 3w ago

The images here are extremely sinister, and the word 'protestors' hardly applies. But there's also a bizarre aspect as it's thought to be a 'stop the boats' action, yet it is targetting cars trying to reach the terminal to take cross-channel ferries to France: www.kentonline.co.uk/dover/news/l...

Very surprised and delighted that my lead-authored article with @robfordmancs.bsky.social & @martamiori.bsky.social has won the BJPIR John Peterson Best Article Prize for 2025! If only I could find a uni to employ me I would keep trying to produce research at this level 🤣

BJPIR@bjpir.bsky.social · 4w ago

We are delighted to announce that the winner of the #BJPIR John Peterson Best Article Prize for 2025 is ‘Inside the ‘secret garden’: Candidate selection at the 2019 UK general election’ by Chris Butler, Marta Miori, and Rob Ford. 🎉 Congratulations to our winners and runners up! 🔗 buff.ly/EwyGhl1

New publication: I've been interested in how male and female politicians differ in their attitudes towards whether parties should emphasise their differences or try to work collaboratively having picked up such a gendered difference among politicians I interviewed for a project on political trust

Thinking today of all the water-absorbing front gardens torn out and paved over to park cars on - all without any government oversight or regulation.

Birmingham weather warning as 'significant flooding' leads to fire service callouts

Heavy rain creates problems for residents, with flood alerts in place on Thursday across the region.

bbc.co.uk

There has been a significant breakdown of anti-racism norms in British politics and it’s impossible not to see a connection with how X has changed as a platform and the unwillingness of gatekeepers in Westminster to speak up.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · last mo.

This is the quality of online discourse behind inventing "Yookay" as a pejorative for Britain & ethnic minorities who think they are British. But we now have peers & MPs starting to use it bsky.app/profile/sund...

Farage’s biggest achievement was convincing Labour that "Red Wall" voters are a monolith who hate asylum seekers and care workers, despise local universities, and reject culture. ​Labour swallowed a caricature of working-class communities whole—and rebuilt their entire strategy around it.

I had totally forgotten I had a website until I received a large bill for renewing its hosting 🙄

Quarter of a million people now fleeing out of control wildfires in France and Spain, and it is still acceptable for leaders of apparently mainstream political parties (Badenoch, Trump, Farage) to deny climate science, cheered on by the Murdoch press.

We can now see the smoke from the Canadian wildfires in the UK. Meanwhile, the rightwing press are pushing for more drilling in the North Sea, and Badenoch is banning Tory candidates who support net zero. Cool cool bsky.app/profile/meto...

Met Office - weather and climate@metoffice.gov.uk · 2mo ago

Have you noticed an opaqueness to the blue sky this morning? Wildfire smoke from North America is drifting south across the UK, meaning the clear skies may not be as blue as you might expect 🌤️

What is the point of VAR if it doesn’t exist overrule the ref here?

It might be briefly amusing to imagine Farage losing to a joke candidate, but Clacton has many deprived constituents who would benefit from an MP’s office that is good at casework. It really would be better if a serious candidate won

Incredible stuff. I would recommend reading the full story to get all the details and a cameo from our new friend AI www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

Starbucks Korea to temporarily shut all stores for history lesson after bungled coffee promotion

The closures, so employees can watch a recorded lecture, will cost the company an estimated 2.1bn won ($1.4m) in sales

theguardian.com

Linguist here! Love this skeet. Couple of really nice US-UK language differences here. A little primer for the curious: 'interesting' US = 'wrong and stupid' UK 'somewhat' US = 'not at all, not one bit, actively not' UK If you enjoyed this guide, please subscribe and retweet!

Sky Marchini@sky.skymarchini.net · 3mo ago

One of the most interesting interpretations of 1984, and somewhat supported by comments by Orwell, is that the rest of the world is normal and Britain was just, sort of, like that

Interesting. Here’s another thought - how about we try and stop social media platforms inciting riots in the first place? 🤦‍♂️

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 3mo ago

Make platforms that promote violent content pay towards riot costs, Streeting says

Yes to all of this, but also let's not forget Jeremy Hunt, laying a trap (that Labour shouldn't have walked into) that basically salted the earth and has left the country weaker and less able to defend itself as an electoral gimmick

Twlldun@twlldun.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The pledge not to raise general taxation is basically this government’s original sin and a synecdoche of everything that’s wrong with it - timid, and forced into a series of unpalatable, harmful and unpleasant manoeuvres that please literally nobody because of its timidity.

Perhaps Tony Gallagher might like to let us know if his view is that 8000 migrants a year in Northern Ireland is a level that justifies firebombing houses.

If you're gonna pick a group to compensate for their treatment by government why not pick one that did acrually face financial disadvantage without notice, like Plan 2 graduates? As opposed to "some people who had many years' notice but didn't open some letters"

A reminder that Brazil banned Twitter for failing to stop the spreading of disinformation. There is nothing stopping the British government from doing the same.

Didn’t the government temporarily suspend blackberry messenger during the 2011 riots or am I misremembering?

Nadhim Zahawi describes Nowak as someone "who lost his life because of incompetence". Greg Dyke points out that nobody is saying the mistake by police caused the death. Phillips intervenes with "nobody knows". A lack of basic research on a very sensitive topic. Paragraph 16 of sentencing remarks:

A reminder of what Nigel Farage said following the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer.

I am proud to play with Arthur as with all my trans teammates. This guidance is horrifically short-sighted and dehumanising. We cannot let this pass without a fight.

Arthur Webber 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈@bernietranders.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Wrote a letter to my MP, it’s probably not the most coherent thing in the world but I couldn’t not say anything.

This 👇

Matthew Barnfield@mbarnfield.bsky.social · 4mo ago

We would be better off without the data. Not only are constituency polls deeply unreliable, but if they have any influence on the outcome, that a) is extremely inappropriate and b) will skew our understanding of British politics. drmatthewbarnfield.substack.com/p/if-polls-p...

If you totted up the sums for every financial scandal in British politics (£2k per parliamentary question for cash-for-questions, £200k for Johnson’s No 10 renovation, the cost of that very nice campervan) even with second tier stuff like Rayner and Polanski, would you get close to £5mn *in total*?

Jim Pickard@pickardje.bsky.social · 4mo ago

crucial context: Peter Mandelson was sacked from the first New Labour government for having a £373,000 *loan* (not a gift) from a Labour colleague (Geoffrey Robinson) to buy a house

As an act of mayoral solidarity, perhaps Sadiq could post one of these to Andy.

The briefings that Starmer is ready to run really echo Portillo & the phone lines in ‘95. He choked, only Redwood challenged and Major clung on. Perhaps we’ll see a repeat 30 years on?

To add, perhaps, to Rob's argument... separate Kingston, Richmond and Sutton from the rest of London and compare 2006 and 2026. In those three strongholds they're up from 93 seats to 149, in the rest of London they're down from 224 to 94.

Rob Blackie@robblackie.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The biggest risk for the Liberal Democrats is playing it safe. We've had a poor set of elections, given the unpopularity of both Labour and the Conservatives. www.libdemvoice.org/the-biggest-... In inner London we have had our worst vote share since 1978...

Guys I don’t know about you but given how exhausting this all is maybe we should just give Chaos with Ed Miliband a go?