Watch all my Tell Me More conversations from 🇬🇧 on this YouTube channel. Guests have included Tony Blair, @anneapplebaum, @KonstantinKisin & @francisjfoster, @Miss_Snuffy, @b_judah, among others. More to come. youtube.com/playlist?list=PL…

Clear & true words.

Es sind allesamt Fehler, die sich auf ein Grundproblem zurückführen lassen: Zu wenig Pluralität und zu viel Gruppendenken. Führt zur mangelnder Überprüfung von gewissen Vorannahmen. Den Verantwortlichen ist das seit Jahren klar. Aber sie sind zu konfliktscheu, es deutlich auszusprechen. Wenn das persönliche Wohl wichtiger als das der Institution, erhält sich eben nur das eine.

Rolls-Royce wins contract to build small nuclear reactors for Sweden. giftarticle.ft.com/giftartic…

There are more complex reasons than online radicalisation that mean we cannot simply dismiss the violence as just another outburst of a hardened racist few. Not least because to do so would seem to leave us destined to regular summer bouts of pogromist violence. We also cannot discount the powerful local forces in Northern Ireland that have caused the current disturbances. As Luqman Saeed wrote in a powerful account of the riots for the LRB, “In a society where sectarian identities still determine political affiliations, immigrants and ethnic minorities have become the new other.” Beyond the Irish statelet, the reality is that for much of the country immigration has come to stand as a synecdoche for the broader failures of the British state. Stagnant wages, flatlining productivity, rising rents and energy bills, decaying high streets filled with vape shops and cash-in-hand barbers, potholed roads, the now ubiquitous fly tipping: all these and more are symbols of the country’s deep dysfunction. If the government cannot get a handle on a few thousand people crossing the Channel in inflatable boats every year, many are now saying, what chance does it have of sorting any of this mess out? It’s likely that this, rather than some sudden mass outbreak of social sadism or racism, lies behind the YouGov polling last year that found nearly 60 per cent of people favoured a military solution to the small boats issue. @johnpmerrick newstatesman.com/politics/20…

Lieber Herr @polenz_r , da Sie meinen Post mehrfach benutzen, um das ZDF in Schutz zu nehmen, die Klarstellung: Was das @ZDFheute sich da geleistet hat, ist eine klare Falschbehauptung, die auch meiner Ansicht nach justiziabel ist. Davon unabhängig sind Musk & Robinson Stimmungsmacher in der Art und Weise, wie ich es beschrieben habe.

Einer dieser vier jungen Leute, die in eine Rüstungsfabrik eingebrochen sind und einen Millionenschaden verursacht haben, hat mit einem Vorschlaghammer einer Polizistin die Wirbelsäule gebrochen. Der Chef der britischen Grünen nennt das „Protest“. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70d…

„In the pendulum of political fashion Britain is now being offered its ,white lives matter’ moment, complete with the hyper-radicalised selective vision of the Black analogue.“ ft.com/content/3fa9d4d1-74f3…

Für Großbritannien stellt sich eine Frage, die so ähnlich auch auf andere europäische Nato-Länder zurollen dürfte: Welfare or Warfare? Über diesen Konflikt hat Keir Starmer soeben seinen Verteidigungsminister verloren. zeit.de/politik/ausland/2026…

Some of us did try to explain to you lot that identify politics would always lead to... identity politics. Hope you're happy.

🚨 BREAKING: John Healey has resigned as Defence Secretary over Keir Starmer's lack of funding for defence

Liebe @tagesschau , ich kann das Rätsel lösen, warum nicht jeder Messerangriff in Großbritannien Proteste und Ausschreitungen auslöst. Es geht eben nicht um Messerangriffe an sich, sondern um wiederkehrende Verbrechen von Einwanderern, die höchstwahrscheinlich oder sogar sicher vermeidbar gewesen wären, wenn der Staat nicht Fehler gemacht hätte – Fehler, die entweder mit der Überlastung durch starke Zuwanderung zu tun haben, oder mit einer Verdrängung der Probleme, die sie erzeugt. Hinzu kommt, dass eine Mehrheit der Briten seit über zehn Jahren immer wieder gegen Zuwanderung in diesen Dimensionen stimmte, während sie genau das Gegenteil bekommen haben. Solange diese Ursachen nicht von einer verantwortungsvollen Politik benannt und behandelt werden, werden radikale Kräfte sie ausschlachten und aus Wut noch mehr Wut machen, statt vernünftige Lösungen anzubieten. Am Anfang muss aber die realistische Aussprache stehen, und für die hat auch und gerade der ÖRR eine Verantwortung.

Here’s the problem. The liberal political class wants us to treat atrocities like Belfast as single, random, isolated incidents. “Yes, it’s horrific, but don’t overreact,” they say. “Let the police do their job. Justice will be delivered. Let’s remain united,” and so on. But the public can see that such incidents *aren’t* random or isolated. They are, in fact, all the consequence of massive state failure in the area of asylum and immigration. All roads lead back there. That’s why people are angry.. They are sick of the platitudes that get trotted out after each fresh incident. They don’t want to hear them anymore. They know that the decisions of establishment politicians have brought us to this current pass, and they don’t trust those same politicians to fix things, especially when some of them refuse to even recognise that the public’s anger is justified. There has been a huge vibe shift in recent years. Imagine - God forbid - there were another 7/7. Does anyone think the public response would be anything like as restrained as it was then? We are in really dangerous territory. The public don’t want flowers and candles and “Don’t let them divide us.” They want someone who says, “I recognise that the state has failed abjectly. We have allowed far too many people to settle in the country without knowing who they truly are. It has disrupted your communities. Your anger is justified. And I will do everything in my power to put things right.” Any politician unwilling to articulate that message, fully and sincerely, is effectively sanctioning more years of growing social disharmony and discord. Things cannot heal until those in power recognise the extent of the problem and what it will take to fix it. And, on both counts, most of them don’t. That’s why the next few years are going to be very, very turbulent.

Im Pulverfass #Belfast mischt sich das alte Gefühl von Identitätsbedrohung mit neuer Asylmigration und unzureichender politischer Aufrichtigkeit. Nichts davon kann eine Entschuldigung sein für die Gewaltorgie, die die Stadt gerade erschüttert. Aber umgekehrt kann die Gewalt auch keine Entschuldigung dafür sein, die Debatte über die tieferen Gründe zu verweigern, die die alte Bürgerkriegsregion gerade in eine neue Unruheprovinz verwandeln. zeit.de/politik/ausland/2026…

In Belfast, like in the Republic, a housing crisis has met increased immigration and created a tinderbox. In England, the Boriswave, asylum hotels, the X accounts chronicling every instance of urban decay, have tumbled into one throbbing ball of energy. When Nigel Farage said last year that no one realised how close the country was to civil disobedience “on a vast scale”, perhaps he was right, though, it is important to say, we are not there yet. Rioting is now regular, but it is not – yet – widespread. More than anywhere, Northern Ireland should have a readymade rhetorical framework to describe ethnic conflict, though its establishment was quick to try to deflect the crisis elsewhere. “The horrific scenes in North Belfast should not be used by the English, right-wing politicians to further their own end” said one centrist Northern Irish MP; “This has nothing to do with community” said Michelle O’Neill, the First Minister. Meanwhile, the burning cars of the previous night’s pogrom continued to smoulder. Ireland – North and South – is unique in its absence of a coherent political force on the right to channel all this energy at the ballot box. Sinn Fein has long departed from its republican, working-class roots – embracing the liberalism of its political rivals in the Republic, at least. Without anyone to ventriloquise the rage, protesters on the island will keep searching for political expression they can’t find in the mainstream – for now, in stochastic, sporadic episodes of pitchfork wielding on the streets. But one thing is clear – moments of extreme violence, like the attempted beheading in North Belfast on Monday night or the Southport stabbings – are having a flattening effect. England is not just transforming into a flag-wielding, rioting nation; but Northern Ireland looks like England in its own ways too; a burnt-out bus in Dublin looks remarkably like a burnt-out bus in Belfast. For the first time in its existence, Northern Ireland may be parsable to an England that has long found it alien, weird and foreign. By @finn_mcredmond newstatesman.com/politics/uk…

A very good analysis of what happened in Belfast last night: balanced, nuanced, and grounded in a deep understanding of local realities. 👇

Residents had to be evacuated from their homes in east Belfast following fires. Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service officers attended the scene at Lendrick Street on Tuesday night. Live updates: tinyurl.com/4xdm7tzu 📸: PA

After taking this photo of burned out houses in East Belfast, two local lads scrolled through my phone photo library to ensure I hadn’t captured any faces, telling me “with no animosity, like” to “fuck away off before you get kneecapped”