😮
08.03.2026 21:52
👍 0
🔁 0
💬 0
📌 0
😮
I've just looked on the BBC News website and a story about this fire in Glasgow is nowhere to be seen. :/
I look forward to them
I would certainly recommend that anyone interested in politics and who wants to understand how we ended up leaving the largest trading bloc in the world should read it. Just skip over the bits focusing on Tory party minutae though and focus on the broad sweep stuff. Great work on that from Tim 12/12
It's a very long book but the final summary chapter towards the end (chapter 35) is a great distillation of what went right and what went wrong on both sides with some honest soul searching recorded by those on the Remain side. 11/x
In the end my biggest takeaway from the book was that because the result was so close in the end there were all sorts of things that Remain could have done that could have won and it's tragic that so many opportunities were missed. 10/x
Someone who could push back and overrule Cameron and Osborne. Instead the Remain campaign just meekly acquiesced to what the PM and Chancellor wanted to do. And on far too many days "winning the campaign" did not appear to be top of their list. 9/x
And it gives me no pleasure to say this because I used to consider WIll Straw a friend (he recruited me to write for Left Foot Forward when it first launched) but I think he was out of his depth as the head of the Remain campaign. It needed someone with the heft of Jim Messina or Lynton Crosby. 8/x
Corbyn was a disgrace. He was clearly a Leaver and did everything he could to sabotage the campaign. Alan Johnson who ran Labour's In campaign was in despair in the end. If Labour had been led by someone genuinely passionate about staying in the EU that would likely have made all the difference. 7/x
Cameron and Osborne focused primarily on keeping the Tory party together (ironic given where the party now is) over actually winning the campaign. Whereas Leave (in the guise of Gove/Johnson/Cummings) didn't give a shit about this. That gave them a huge edge over Remain. 6/x
It seems likely that Leave won before the short campaign even began with its parliamentary guerilla tactics forcing Cameron to accept the wording change from In/Out to Remain/Leave (polling suggest 4 points from this alone) and various other things like purdah rules etc. 5/x
"Meaningful Brexit votes" and chaos under May followed by the car-crash of Johnson and Truss and finally the electoral oblivion Sunak committed them to in 2024. From the perspective of 2026 with it looking quite possible they are never in government again this seems let's say "precipitous". 4/x
It's also amusing to see how in the conclusion it's recorded how the Conservative Party was able to steady the ship as a serious party of government within weeks of the vote with Theresa May at the helm. Of course we all know what happened in the years that followed with the chaos of the... 3/x
It's fascinating to read in a book like this written in the immediate aftermath how much importance is attached to things like Andrea Leadsom's leadership campaign and the internecine strife between Gove and Johnson which in the grand sweep 10 years on seems pretty irrelevant. 2/x
Just finished All Out War by @shippersunbound.bsky.social - a comprehensive account of the Brexit campaign before, during and its immediate aftermath. It's perhaps the most detailed political book I've ever read and quite an achievement given he finished within 3 months of the referendum. Thoughts..
Mark Thompson (@markreckons.bsky.social) joins me for a chat about Pizzicato Five, Your Party Needs You, Lost In Austen, Society, Shadow Chasers, Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo, Jasper Carrott's I've Got This Mole and more...
timworthington.org/2025/03/18/l...
Its also demeaning to the dead and acquaintances or families who might see it without warning.
BBC News. Please do not put pictures of children who have died on your main page. Some of us who have lost children so not want to see it. It's triggering to see.
Also closedown at 1:30 in the afternoon for over an hour!
A tweet from the Daily Mail with a headline saying "Four biblical signs the world has entered the end of days as US bombs Iran
This perfectly illustrates my point that the British tabloids are aiming at a US audience. There like 5 people in the UK who think about this. But it is huge among US evangelicals.
British politicians need to ignore UK tabloids, as UK tabloids are talking to an audience in the US for clicks.
I just got this bsky.app/profile/mark...
My latest OneDrive "On this day" image recommendation that is inexplicably a picture of Janet Fielding as Tegan in Doctor Who whilst under the influence of malevolent force The Mara with lit up red eyes.
Er...
coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool.
IPSO have published their verdict on The Daily Telegraph’s fake £345,000-a year banker couple who claimed they couldn’t afford five holidays.
The paper declined to explain to the watchdog how the article came to be published - but our reporting at the time sets it out…
Yes. I was just thinking that. Farage may have a plurality but he'd be unable to command the confidence of the commons. Polanski on the other hand in that scenario conceivably could. Albeit with a minority coalition and C&S.
Oh god, I've had a bad and sad Celebrity Immient Death Vision™️
And this one will really upset me
Ruh roh
"We called London a war zone and moved to Dubai by mistake"
Its decline makes me sad. 40 years ago when I was a kid living in a small town our local W H Smith was quite a posh place with a whole section given over to calligraphy pens and paper all in ornate cabinets. Now every one I go in is a dump with half the lights not working and rubbish on the floors.
