Nik Alatortsev 🔶🇪🇺 @ldnik

Chris, there are rare occasions when an author dismantles his own argument before the reader has progressed beyond the opening paragraphs. This is one of them. You readily concede that much of your reporting over recent months rested upon anonymous briefings, unnamed sources, private conversations and opinions offered only on condition that they could never be subjected to public scrutiny. You then ask your audience to accept that such material provides an accurate account of events. With respect, that is not evidence in any meaningful sense. It is an interpretation of events, constructed from assertions that the reader has no means of testing, verifying or challenging. No serious observer disputes that confidential sources have a legitimate place in political journalism. They always have, and they always will. But there is a profound distinction between using anonymous sources to illuminate established facts and using them to construct an entire political narrative over many months. The former is responsible journalism; the latter risks becoming an exercise in reinforcing assumptions until they acquire the appearance of fact simply through constant repetition. Indeed, your own article inadvertently exposes that very process. It repeatedly invites readers to accept what unnamed MPs supposedly believed, what unidentified advisers were allegedly saying, and what anonymous insiders privately thought. Such accounts may well have reflected genuine conversations, but they remain assertions rather than verifiable facts. There is an important distinction, and one that ought never to be blurred. More striking still is the omission at the heart of your analysis. You devote thousands of words to explaining how Westminster concluded that Sir Keir Starmer's premiership had become untenable, yet you devote scarcely a sentence to examining whether the relentless stream of anonymous briefings and speculative commentary from sections of the political media played any part in creating that very outcome. That question surely deserves examination. Nor do you grapple with the constitutional consequence of what follows. The British people elected a Government led by Sir Keir Starmer. Should he be replaced by another individual through internal parliamentary manoeuvring alone, the process may be constitutionally lawful, but that does not automatically confer political legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate. Those are two entirely different questions. Many of those now defending such a transition were previously among the most vocal critics of Rishi Sunak for assuming office without seeking his own mandate from the country. Constitutional principles cannot be invoked when politically convenient and quietly abandoned when they become inconvenient. History has a habit of punishing such inconsistency. If Andy Burnham were to become Prime Minister in these circumstances, I believe the pressure upon him to seek his own mandate from the British people would become irresistible. In my view, he would have little practical choice but to call a General Election within six to eight months. Whether Labour would survive such a contest is, of course, for the electorate to determine. My own judgement is that they would face a severe electoral reckoning, with the country returning either a Reform UK-led government or a hung Parliament. Journalism should chronicle events, not become so intertwined with Westminster's internal conversations that it begins to mistake the mood of the political class for the settled will of the British people. That, in my view, is the fundamental weakness running through your analysis. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

JUST IN: The White House just blamed an intern for the worst information warfare defeat of the 21st century. Here is the sequence. Energy Secretary Chris Wright posted on social media that a US Navy-escorted oil tanker had successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz. The claim was false. No escort had occurred. The White House confirmed this. Wright deleted the post. The administration blamed a “low-level staffer” for the inaccurate publication. Before the deletion, Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf screenshotted it and posted fifteen words that have now been seen by over one million people: “An oil tanker crossed Strait of Hormuz escorted by US Navy ships? Maybe on PlayStation!” Twenty-one thousand likes. 4,700 retweets. One million views. The most engaged Iranian government post of the war. And it was accurate. The escort did not happen. The American post that claimed it did was retracted. The Iranian post that mocked it stands. A low-level staffer published a claim about the most strategically sensitive waterway on Earth from a cabinet secretary’s official account during the most intense military campaign since 2003, and nobody in the chain of command reviewed it before publication. That is not a staffing error. That is an institutional failure in a government prosecuting a war where information moves faster than corrections. The oil market moved on the claim before it was deleted. WTI crashed from $119.50 to $87 on a cascade of de-escalation signals that included escort announcements. The escort that was announced did not happen. The price that moved on it did. The correction that followed has not reversed the price. The market is now trading at a level partially determined by a social media post that no longer exists, authored by a person the White House will not name, published from an account belonging to a secretary who apparently did not approve it. Meanwhile, the physical Strait remains unchanged. Seven hundred tankers queued. Visible transits: 2 to 3 per day. Seven P&I clubs withdrawn. Zero reinstated. A few dozen Iranian mines confirmed in the water by US intelligence, with 80 to 90% of mine-laying vessels still intact. The 31 autonomous IRGC commands continue firing. The Supreme Leader is a cardboard cutout at his own rally. The IEA just proposed the largest emergency reserve release in history because the Strait the staffer claimed was open is not open. Iran did not hack an American account. Iran did not plant disinformation. Iran waited for America to publish its own false claim, watched America delete it, and then broadcast the deletion to the world. The information warfare victory cost Iran nothing. A screenshot and fifteen words. The United States has three carrier strike groups, eleven heavy bombers, and the most powerful military in human history deployed to reopen a strait that a low-level staffer accidentally admitted is still closed. The staffer’s crime was not posting inaccurate information. It was posting the aspiration before the achievement. The escort was supposed to happen. It has not. And now the world knows it has not because Washington told them first and Tehran made sure they remembered. PlayStation. One deleted post. One unnamed staffer. And the Strait is still closed. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86

4 months ago

JUST IN: Iran’s Parliament Speaker just won the information war with fifteen words and a gaming console reference. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, 11 March, 6:54 AM: “An oil tanker crossed Strait of Hormuz escorted by US Navy ships? Maybe on PlayStation!” One million views.

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BREAKING: Senator Richard Blumenthal emerges ashen-faced from an Iran War briefing and reveals that he has never been so "angry" in his entire 15 career year in Senate. And the details are jaw-dropping... "I emerge from this briefing as dissatisfied and angry, frankly, as I have from any past briefing in my 15 years in the Senate," he told reporters. "I am left with more questions than answers, especially about the cost of the war. However, my questions have been unanswered, and I will demand answers because the American people deserve to know." According to The Washington Post, the United States burned through a staggering $5.6 billion in munitions in just the first two days of the illegal war. This is the same administration that insists that we don't have money for healthcare or social services. "And I guess I am most concerned about the threat to American lives of potentially deploying our sons and daughters on the ground in Iran," Blumenthal continued. "We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of the potential objectives here. And there is also, as disturbingly as anything else, the specter of active Russian aid to Iran, putting in danger American lives." "Literally, Russia seems to be aiding our enemy actively and intensively with intelligence and perhaps with other means. And China also may be assisting Iran," he continued. "So the American people deserve to know much more than this administration has told them about the cost of the war, the danger to our sons and daughters in uniform, and the potential for further escalation and widening of this war, a war of choice made by this president, not chosen by the American people, with potentially huge consequences to American lives," the senator added. That "war of choice" bit is particularly crucial. Trump launched this deadly, evil war on behalf of Israel despite Iran posing no immediate threat to the people of the United States. He's slaughtering men, women, and children and can't even articulate a coherent strategic goal. Meanwhile, he never bothered to get Congressional approval for the war as demanded by the Constitution and he's rapidly burning through our tax dollars. The mere suggestion that we would put boots on the ground in Iran should horrify every American. In addition to being a morally reprehensible action, it would result in the greatest military disaster in U.S. history. Iran has a population of 93 million people, it's four times larger than Iraq and it's all mountains. Our brave soldiers would be walking into a slaughterhouse. Please ❤️ and share to demand an end to the war!

@Robyn_hut @Humblewank @SamCoatesSky When has there ever been "police preset at every polling station"?? This is not a thing that happens in the UK

@THE_Chris_Evans She resigned as Deputy Leader as well as DPM. There's an internal process for (s)electing the Deputy Leader, with the timetable agreed by Labour's NEC, which is apparently meeting early next week.

@Surviving_PDX Super excited for this. Trying to perfect the last couple of challenges from the original game before release! Speaking of wjixh, will the Relaunched version include the challenges system and if so, will it be updated to include content from Below&Beyond and the Martian Assembly?

Falmouth Penwerris (Cornwall) Council By-Election Result: 🌹 LAB: 44.7% (-19.8) 🔶 LDM: 30.2% (+25.5) 🌍 GRN: 25.1% (+16.6) No CON (-19.7), IND (-1.8), TUSC (-0.9). Labour HOLD. Changes w/ 2021.

@ElectionMapsUK Falmouth Penwerris (Cornwall Council) Lab 337 - 44.7% LD (John Spargo) 228 - 30.2% Green 189 - 25.1% Turnout 15.47% Lab HOLD

@ElectionMapsUK The Cornish ward should read Falmouth PenWerris (no capital in the middle, just the letter that got missed out) 😉

Liberal Democrat MPs will fight in Westminster to restore local health and care services after years of neglect.

Always we have lies about immigration, here are some facts.

In the wake of 4 more lives being taken by our borders we’ll hear ‘Smash The Gangs’ instead of ‘Stop The Boats’. But we’ll not hear ‘Open Safe Routes’ & that’s the only thing that will stop more lives being lost.

Of course, the NHS was an idea proposed by a Liberal (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beveridge…) - so this wouldn't be anything new...

BBC Politics @BBCPolitics

2 years ago

Steal our ideas, Lib Dem leader urges government bbc.in/3XUUzam

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One of the less noticed achievements of the Lib Dem campaign is that the party retained every single one of the seats it originally won through by-elections. That is an absolutely remarkable feat.

OMG 😱 Farage’s party came second in 120 constituencies They got 12.6% of the votes - 3rd highest vote share They got 2 MPs While the winning party only got 36.9% Oh no, wait a sec - that was UKIP in 2015! #GeneralElection2024 1/5

Not another one! 😱🤯😅

Election Maps UK @ElectionMapsUK

2 years ago

There's 1,866 days until the latest date of the next United Kingdom General Election (15th August 2029).

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Eastleigh LDem: 39.7% (+5.2) Con: 35.8% (-16.0) Lab: 17.4% (+5.7) Grn: 6.0% (+3.9) LDem GAIN from Con newstatesman.com/politics/2024/…

What a 🗳️ for the 🔸Liberal Democrats 🔸means in this election…

This was one of our most shared images of the last 4 years so we've updated it for this Thursday's election. In *most* seats across the country, Labour is the vote to stop the Tories winning, however in these seats a Labour vote won't actually help... #GE2024 #TacticalVoting

Vote Liberal Democrat on July 4 to give you, your family, and your community the Fair Deal you deserve. 🔶