THREAD: Sangita Myska, James O'Brien and LBC.

When I was a kid, such was the sheer quality of the news coverage on British television, I thought journalists told the truth. And were motivated by exactly that: holding truth to power, essential to any flourishing democracy. I watched Newsnight and Channel 4 News avidly. I read the Sunday Times news review every weekend.

And the BBC's coverage of conflict in the Middle East, through fearless reporters like Jeremy Bowen, Orla Guerin and John Simpson, was consistently outstanding.

THREAD: The Supreme Court, trans rights, and the left.

Many times over the last 4 or 5 years, I've warned again and again about the ludicrous rabbit hole of its own making which the contemporary left was disappearing down over trans rights and women's rights. A rabbit hole which would inevitably be exploited by the far right for its own appalling ends. As is currently happening, to the horror of so many looking on, in the United States and elsewhere.

I had hoped the Supreme Court's clarification would help the UK left see sense.

I was talking with my aunt about this yesterday. We talked for over 8 hours (not only about this!) - that's a lifetime record for me!

I was very shocked at just how low wages were and how high bills were. She really DID scrimp and save massively. So did plenty of others.

https://twitter.com/G0ADM/status/1903517682818756995

That's not to say I'm in any way oblivious to the insane levels of inequality and unfairness now. I told her it was harder to buy a house now than at any time since the nineteenth century.

But very many boomers DIDN'T "have it easy". Not at all. Especially single ones.

THREAD: Mr Starmer goes to Washington.

There's already been plenty of complaints on here that the Prime Minister is 'sucking up to Trump'.

No folks. He's trying to maintain the most incredibly fine balancing act. And so is Macron by the way.

Both of them have to do that. Macron has more leeway for several reasons.

1. He's known Trump for much, much longer. He's one of very few world leaders who's been in office almost as long as when Trump first became President.

2. He has no more elections to fight, so can be a little freer in what he says.

So, Reform are ahead now, if only just. What are their prospects?

1. No, there won't be a deal between them and the Tories any time soon. Reform's next goal is to wipe the Tories out altogether and replace them.

2. They will have a MAJOR problem breaking through 30%. I fully expect them to stay ahead of the Tories throughout the rest of the Parliament.

But actually looking like a credible party of government to enough voters is another thing entirely.

Remember: they and Farage are Marmite. Huge numbers hate him and are scared of them.

UNPOPULAR OPINION (among the left and probably many of my followers): the modern liberal left, of whom I've always been a card carrying member, got it VERY wrong on mass immigration.

And all because it didn't try to remake society after Thatcher wrecked it and the working class. What the UK has been crying out for for many decades now has been huge investment across the country.

When Johnson spoke of 'levelling up', he was more than onto something. He'd hit the nail on the head. But because the Tories are a bunch of shysters and crooks, nothing happened

While Andrew Neil - who played more than a minor part in turning Britain into an ungovernable failed state through his complete non-journalism over Brexit: which had no consequences for him but terrible ones for most - wets himself in excitement, a note.

About the UK media. You'll recall the hysterical cries of LABOUR CRASHED THE ECONOMY LABOUR SPENT ALL THE MONEY when Gordon Brown actually *rescued* the economy.

And the hysterical cries of WE'RE GOING TO TURN INTO GREECE when the coalition negotiations weren't allowed to run their proper course.

Imagine you were a Muslim living in Britain.

For almost a quarter of a century, you've had to put up with fear and hatred for the crime of your being a Muslim.

You've been stigmatised, you've been stopped and searched, and going through airport immigration is a nightmare. Everyone else walks through customs with no problem at all. You don't. You randomly get stopped by officials again and again and again.

And you know why. It's because you're brown. It's because you're a Muslim.

THREAD: Scotland's men's national football team.

Ireland have qualified for 6 major tournaments. They reached the knockout stages 4 times.

Wales have qualified for 4. They reached the KO stages 3 times.

Northern Ireland have qualified for 4. They reached the KO stages 3 times. (Technically, twice in their case - because of FIFA's daft format of four groups of three in the 1982 second phase - but Northern Ireland reached the last 12 and BEAT HOSTS SPAIN, so we'll ignore that).

Scotland have qualified for 12 major tournaments in their history.

Emily, of course, knows exactly why Newsnight is being deliberately run down. She's just too decent a human to spell it out.

So I'll spell it out instead. The reason why Newsnight, probably the best current affairs programme on the planet for decades, is being destroyed is:

https://twitter.com/maitlis/status/1793926807101534582

- The same reason as Emily was raked over the coals by her CBC (no typo) bosses for the crime of asking Rod Liddle whether he considered himself a racist and highlighting his never-ending racism.

For having depicted a racist as a racist, she had "failed to be even-handed".

I don't think Sunak's chucked it exactly. He's not a complete idiot; he does, contrary to many appearances, know what reality is. It looks like this:

1. This election is unwinnable with any strategy or for any Tory leader. It's been that way since the mini-budget in 2022. 2. The Tory party is also completely unmanageable - especially under anyone who even vaguely tries to look for the centre ground. Just as it was between 1993 and 2005.

3. Waiting till the end of the year would've meant EVEN MORE public fury and disgust.

OK, let's deal with this. It's too easy and trite to dismiss it as antisemitism - it certainly comes up a lot.

Labour Friends of Israel was founded in 1957. Less than a decade after Israel's creation: which a Labour government had a HUGE amount to do with.

https://twitter.com/trainman1958/status/1787023678892376505

I think the number 1 reason Israel-Palestine is such a constantly huge issue on the British left and in British politics generally is just that: our large historic role.

Yet back in 1957, Israel barely enjoyed any real US support. That didn't follow for another decade.

Yes, that claim was completely false. But:

1. No, it wasn't the primary claim or any kind of claim given it was completely debunked before the war

2. You don't seem aware of the history of Iraq annexing Kuwait, them being driven back out, or of the whole of the 1990s!

https://twitter.com/bevcott/status/1786284864842448935

The reason we know Iraq had WMD (including chemical weapons) is:

1. Saddam used those chemical weapons against the Kurds at Halabja and against the Iranians in the 1980-88 war

2. Ourselves, the US, France, West Germany and the Netherlands had sold them to him!

The thing that shocks me about @simon_schama, a fellow alumni of the same school incidentally, is he's not just a brilliant historian with a majestic ability to explain complex events in rivetingly engaging ways people can identify with.

He's always - until now - been so HUMANE. That was what echoed throughout so much of his work. His warmth, his humour, his empathy, his sheer humanity.

Now, it's completely gone missing. I would say I find it incomprehensible - but not quite. Here's why.

Another man without the first damn clue what he's talking about.

When an icon as great and heroic as @Martina speaks, I listen.

She knows that women's spaces and women's sports are under grave threat. She also knows how unbelievably homophobic the entire discourse has become.

https://twitter.com/BenRothenberg/status/1778876343716913156

Martina = mensch. And all time legend.

Rothenberg = who?

You pathetic, odious, vile little plankton.

Gary Neville won 8 Premier League titles, 2 Champions Leagues and 85 England caps.

You got relegated with Newcastle, relegated twice with QPR, handed Man City the title by assaulting three of their players, and won 1 England cap.

https://twitter.com/Joey7Barton/status/1743335074463170928

That one lousy England cap was as part of our worst team since 1993. The ONLY one not to qualify - and you weren't even good enough to be picked for it more than once.

In fact, you have MORE CONVICTIONS FOR VIOLENT CRIME than England caps, you absolute waste of skin.

Today, in the world of sensible centrist liberal media 🙄🙄🙄

1. Thomas L. Friedman is worried for the world and tries to explain what's happening to it. He explains what's happening to it by... saying THIS. Yes folks. The difference between Dubai and Gaza isn't that one is staggeringly rich in natural resources and the other is a rock. And it isn't that one is independent and the other has been illegally occupied and blockaded for so long.

It's 'visionary leadership'.

THREAD: Argentina. Why has this happened - and what's going to happen now?

The first thing to say about why this has happened is pretty simple. The options facing a desperate, frantic Argentinian public were APPALLING. All of them. In August, at the primaries, the mostly centre-right Juntos por Cambio (which governed, very badly, through Mauricio Macri between 2015 and 2019) voters made a dreadful, in my view indefensible blunder.

They selected Patricia Bullrich over Horacio Rodriguez Larreta.

When the provisional IRA tried to assassinate the entire British government, the British government did not respond by carpet bombing Belfast for weeks on end.

Nor did it impose a 16-year-long siege on the island of Ireland. Nor did it cut off electricity, water, food, fuel and communications.

In fact, much of the world - including, notably, the US - understood that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland had an entirely legitimate grievance. And were victims of an historic injustice.

"Research by the IJPR shows about 2% of the population of Great Britain can be characterised as “hardcore” antisemites - defined as those believing multiple anti-Jewish tropes simultaneously - whereas 70% is found to hold no anti-Jewish views at all".theguardian.com/world/2023/oct… "A 2021 survey by the institute, conducted two months after the last war in Gaza, found that almost three-quarters of Jewish adults in the UK felt that non-Jews held them responsible for the actions of the Israeli government during the conflict..."

Someone just asked me if I thought Gazans supported what Hamas are doing. I replied: "Mostly, yes".

But no, that's not because ordinary Palestinians are terrorists. It's because they have been left so completely bereft, they have nowhere else to turn. It cannot be overstated just how corrupt, how weak, how pathetic the Palestinian Authority now is.

Under the risible leadership of Mahmoud Abbas: who's both a vehement antisemite and traitor to his people, only interested in his own position and status.