Catherine Miles

This is really chilling. Like a scene from a dystopian movie, and alarming for anyone who cares about democracy. A judicial nominee flagrantly flouting the constitution about Trump's eligibility for a third term. The constitution is unambiguous. He is not eligible.

Imagine the reaction if Keir Starmer came out tomorrow and said that he’d decided Reform voters voted for insurance-based healthcare, so he was taking away their right to the NHS

Until about a year ago, Farage regarded mass deportation as an extreme and (most of all) unworkable policy. Now, Zia Yusuf talks about deporting up to 2m and sending them to places that didn't vote Reform. The party is evolving fast. comment.press/far9

@LawDavF And lots more coming up including my analysis of next week's election results once they've happened. All my previews can be found here. samf.substack.com/p/elections-20…

And @LawDavF on why Putin is running out of time and facing decisions he's been desperately trying to avoid. samf.substack.com/p/is-time-runn…

Lot's more on the site this week including this exclusive poll with a counter-intuitive finding that's v important for British politics: Median voters aren't the same people as swing voters... samf.substack.com/p/wheres-the-c…

You don't have to agree with everything @robertshrimsley says in this FT piece but you should feel saddened and outraged at what so many British Jews are going through right now. Awful, depressing, and inexcusable, regardless of your views on the MidEast: ft.com/content/f9ee29…

How did Farage - who used to complain about being "skint" - find £225k to "invest" in a Bitcoin company? We now know: a £5m tax-free "gift" from a Thailand crypto king. Which raises huge questions about the methods Big Crypto is using to buy influence... times-comment.com/farage123

The Times: “The slowdown (in illegal immigration) began in October and now appears established. As of yesterday 6,416 small-boat migrants had reached Britain compared with 9,885 by April 30 last year, a drop of more than a third. The number of crossings is the lowest at this point at this stage of the year since 2023, when it was 5,745. This is despite significant numbers of “red days” when weather and sea conditions were good enough to attempt a crossing.” Could Farage and his colleagues not be commenting on that because it doesn’t suit their political agenda?

This is it. This is the extent of @thetimes.com interrogation of Farage about the £5m gift from the tax dodging crypto-billionaire whose interests his policies happen to further. Oh he didn’t steal it, so that’s all right then. Are most journalists now on the payroll too?

It’s stark when you see it like this, isn’t it?

From the outside, there are indeed funny aspects to Brexit. The fact that migration went heaps up is certainly the funniest bit.

- Two-thirds of Reform's money is wired from Thailand - Ben Delo, pardoned by Trump for breaking money-laundering rules, has given £4m. - Farage's secret £5m bung A new model of politics is meeting an old model of transparency. With dangerous results: times-comment.com/farage123

Let’s keep banging on about this because God knows nobody else is.

The Times today

It took nine days for Surrey Police to come to the conclusion that a young woman had not, as she first claimed, been gang-raped in Epsom recently But those nine days were enough for far-right street thugs to galvanise hatred, fear and revolt. Nine days in which bloggers, influencers and second-rate journalists gleefully spread racist conspiracy slime. And nine days in which mainstream politicians and magazines, which should know better, happily joined in. It was, in other words, a very modern story of information chaos and the way populists have learned to embrace and exploit it. app.prospectmagazine.co.uk/story/73184/co…

It’s funny, when you consider that Brexiteers used to complain that the EU was too bureaucratic, to learn that the UK civil service has ballooned since 2016 from 385,000 to 516,000. That increase of 130,000 compares with an entire EU staff of just 60,000! open.substack.com/pub/nixons/p/t…

A wall of crypto money is waiting to flood UK politics, as it did America's in 2024. It now has a vehicle: Reform UK. And Nigel Farage, who took a £5m "personal donation" from a crypto king. This isn't an insurgency: it’s a counter-elite. My column:- times-comment.com/farage123

We now live in a two tier political ecosystem: Can you imagine the outcry if Starmer had been “gifted” £5 million by a businessman whose interests then happened to shape his policies? Elections watchdog considers looking into £5m gift to Farage bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

@JoanneMiles2 We’ve all been Magnus at some point.