ClaphamFox

It was being suggested in some of those social media circles that the Russians had bioengineered a whizzy next generation form of pneumonic plague that was: a) much more contagious than previous forms of plagues; b) had a long incubation period; c) induced a feeling 'euphoria' that encouraged the infected individual to go out and party like Keith Vaz, infecting everybody they met; and d) was completely resistant to antibiotics, meaning a 100% fatality rate for anybody who caught it. I'm relieved to see that these reports seem to have been exaggerated.

So are we all safe from the big Russian plague or what? It seems to have gone a bit quiet…

I agree entirely. The problem arises when someone who wants less privatisation also wants to wipe Israel from the face of the earth (the Green Party motion called for the establishment of a single Palestinian state). Nobody remembers Hitler for his support for animal rights, his advocacy of nature conservation and green belts, or his opposition to smoking.

@Grebfromgrebland is correct. Between September 2025 and March this year, Green Party membership grew from 68,000 to 215,000—and was still rising. According to the Guardian, a large proportion of those new members are Corbynites who followed him into Your Party but have moved on since it was clear that project was doomed. In other words, there is an itinerant community within the British radical left whose politics are stable but whose political home is constantly changing. The Green Party is just their latest domicile, but they have managed to completely change the party in a short space of time. I sympathise with long-standing Green Party members who must be wondering where they go from here. However, from the purely selfish standpoint of somebody who does not want Reform anywhere near power after the next election, I’m quite relieved see the Greens disintegrate in this way.

It turns out the Green Party member who proposed the ‘Zionism is racism’ motion is a close friend of a jailed al-Quaeda terrorist. There you go. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckm23709pjz7o

Just three more sleeps before this one! (I really should see the doctor about my narcolepsy).

With so much drama in Washington DC It's kind of hard life bein' Donald T But he somehow, some way, Keeps comin' up fresh new shit, like, every single day...

Bolsonaro has said he wants to "free the Brazilian people". Trump has explicitly used the language of 'liberation' and freeing ordinary Americans. Brexit was sold by the Leave campaign as an act of national emancipation and Reform continues to talk in such terms. Promising 'freedom' is a remarkably powerful rhetorical device. If you persuade enough people they are somehow constrained or imprisoned by the status quo & tell them you'll liberate them from it, many will support you without troubling themselves much further about what this 'freedom' actually means in reality. It's an emotional appeal rather than a political argument, but unfortunately it often works.

It will be very interesting to see the extent to which smacking down the Farage threat determines how people vote at the next election. YouGov published some research a few weeks ago which showed a sharp rise in the number of people saying they will tactically vote to keep Reform out at the next general election. This suggests that anti-Reform sentiment is increasing in intensity across the political spectrum. Long may it continue.

On Polanski specifically, I suspect that daft Golders Green retweet may prove to be for him what the Salisbury poisonings were to Corbyn—the moment when any veneer of sanity disintegrated and everyone could suddenly see how batshit crazy they really were. The "Zionism is racism" motion will merely hasten their rapid decline back into electoral obscurity.

“There’s not even a debate to be had” rather gives the game away, doesn’t it? Zionism covers a huge range of views, from people who simply believe Israel should continue to exist as a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state, to genuinely racist extremists. You can certainly argue that Zionism is discriminatory, but you need to actually make that argument. “Just speak to them and listen to what they say” is an exceptionally weak way of trying to establish a proposition without having anything to back it up. It’s the equivalent to encountering a particularly antisemitic Palestinian nationalist (of which there are plenty) and saying, “Palestinian nationalism is totally racist and there’s not even a debate to be had—just talk to them and listen to what they say.” Both cases involve focusing on certain members of a heterogeneous group and treating their opinions as defining the entire ideology. It’s a cheap trick that has become depressingly common on social media platforms but never helps to shed light a complex issue.

International breaks are how I imagine wellness retreats to be. Nice to have a break and probably good for you, but ****ing boring.

There doesn't appear to be any suggestion it was a Russia/Ukraine thing. It seems one of the pilots wanted to crash the plane and the other tried to stop him and got stabbed for his pains. The passengers and crew managed to subdue the attacker and two other pilots on the plane, travelling as passengers, managed to land it. The flight's destination was Israel, which may or may not be significant when determining the motive of the would-be mass murdering pilot.

This is a bit mad. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqjdv7pmj9dno

The ‘more to it’ possibly being a group of fuel thieves out on the rob unwittingly stumbling into the vicinity of an airforce base that is being heavily monitored by the security services because of a terror threat. There is something so British about it that makes me feel a little patriotic…