Top recent posts by UK Constitutional Lawyers on Bluesky

Between takes on set Peter Cushing painted wargaming figures. He'd invite female costars to join him if they were new, looked lonely or being perved on by others on set. "Scream Queen" Ingrid Pitt proudly showed me the little figures they painted together once. Kept them all her life #nerdlings

Trump says he’s putting tariffs up to 15%, the day after he said they’d be 10% following the Supreme Court ruling. He’s flailing, knows he’s losing control.

The Mad King gets madder.

Totally appalling way to treat anyone but in this case this woman had not broken any immigration rule at all. And the British consulate were completely and inexcusably useless. Awful and I think deserves some response from the Foreign Office. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

And again, people will do anything to bring back smartly appointed independent shops apart from pay a small premium and a bit of inconvenience Vs the supermarket.

The most corrupt Eastern European oligarchs must be nodding with respect at the stuff Trump administration officials are coming up with. This is genius

Student protests have broken out at universities in Iran. (Iran International)

Agree with all this except honestly I'm less optimistic that anything will ever be done to prevent more harm. People in power simply don't care. It's only girls, whatever. Big tech is deeply hostile to women and, ofc, #banthepervertglasses - as.ft.com/r/da4838c6-4...

I regret to inform everyone that Brendan O'Neill is "at it again". A police investigation into a man with confirmed ties to the one of the leading figures in an interactive human trafficking ring isn't "hunting". It is due process.

Rather a daft piece. The answer is no, unless something emerges that we don’t yet know about. The piece tries to speculate about what that might be, but doesn’t get far. Much as I know this won’t please Bluesky, a disproportionately republican audience: I think it could well make him more popular.

They won't. Importers paid the tariffs then on-sold the goods to retailers, or incorporated them as parts in other goods, or used them in a thousand other ways it's not impossible to trace. Paying the importers back now can't refund the higher prices folks paid somewhere way down the supply chain.

This is such a weird thing to say (from the MP, not Sam), and yeah, really indicative of the information environment they are uncritically swimming in.

The Supreme Court found that the Trump administration can't misuse a trade provision intended for narrow emergencies to usurp broad power over tariffs from Congress and so they immediately pivoted to misusing another trade provision intended for emergencies to usurp broad power over tariffs.

Ah yes, of course - the international payments problems the US is so famously having today but which it wasn't having yesterday, and which are simultaneously so severe as to require emergency intervention and so mild they can be addressed with a 10% tariff.

Every language tells a story 💬✨ Happy Mother Language Day!

An underpriced risk for EU-US relations is a scenario where a process through which Fico and Orban fall from power is declared illegitimate by Trump who then threatens sanctions against Europe if outcomes in Hungary and Slovakia are not reversed

At the Munich Security Conference, Zelenskyy showed former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak real-time casualty data from the front. - 80% of Ukrainian kills are from drones - Russia is losing 1,000 soldiers a day.

This is almost certainly going to get lost amid everything else happening at the moment. But it’s a big story.

Dollar, bond markets under pressure after Trump’s tariff fiasco.

Not only is this yet another mess from the Home Office which potentially ruins lives and costs the victims of the cockup to try and rectify it, but also, it has to be factored in that the USA is just not a safe country to return trans people too.

We have Reform. Now we've also got Restore. What's next? I know! Revise and Resubmit.

there's a cat face in there somewhere but not sure where!

Evening.

You will never be this comfy

Police are still digging into the former prince Andrew investigation. Unmarked police cars were again at his previous home, the Royal Lodge, in Windsor Great Park, today. Thames Valley Police is expected to continue searching the 30-room property until Monday, the BBC reports.

Morning Bluesky.

The winner of the battle for the #fluffyFort is...

Bravo @iandunt.bsky.social. Now that change has been rung in Number 10 I very much hope the party can think again, particularly about the shabby rule-change on ILR for people already here. Britain should keep its word.

"A few years ago, the Saudis and Emiratis would have been egging on a US confrontation with Iran. Those instincts have been inverted. An Iran in chaos threatens all its neighbours. The Gulf dreads what Netanyahu craves." My Swamp Notes with Andrew England. Free to read. as.ft.com/r/73a09d87-b...

Tariff rebates will go to the importers that actually paid them, because the government knows who they are and what they're owed. Most couldn't pass those refunds on to final consumers even if they wanted to. The fun part is if these 122's are ruled illegal a year from now, all this happens again!

Jesus wept. Read the room. How do you look at the state of things and go “let’s stand up for the sweaty nonce”.

Happy #caturday from the derpiest of great hunters

“Don’t go – not with Trump in charge. It’s totally out of control." Excellent account of the unlawful 6-week detention of a UK citizen on valid US tourist visa. There's plenty of similar examples. Other takeaway is the pathetic response of UK consular officials. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Trump literally reminds me now of a bloated fish out of water, thrashing and flailing away.

Superb reporting. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski: “Germany and France together are now too small to govern Europe. Together they do not even have a blocking minority. “Poland is not only the largest of the ten countries that joined the EU in 2004. Our economy is now among the 20 largest in the world. 1/2

Thing i liked about this is that it's 100% in character for Tarkin. Tarkin was EXACTLY the type of military commander who would wander round in something comfy and not give a single fuck. Lecturing a Sith Lord while wearing pink crocs or summat. Then painting model Star Destroyers in his cabin.

Dude, the butchers can’t sell anything because AI took their door away

This is democracy manifest……

Saturday's the perfect day to hang out with your mates on a gravestone...

"Skill issue" gets thrown around too much. ... but the Trump administration manages to get itself repeatedly thwarted despite controlling the White House, having an obsequiously loyal Death Cult majority in Congress, a weak opposition party, SCOTUS it hand picked, and mostly supine corporate media.

Nutcase update. Morning.

Just endless, endless bollocks

Pay attention to Cameroon. Trump is off-shoring a Gulag operation

Every Steam Winter sale precipitates a bigger Balance of Payments crisis for me personally than the one Trump claims the US is in to justify his 15% Section 122 tariffs. When is Congress going to give ME unlimited power to smite the people selling me roguelikes and RPGs at competitive prices?

This is true. If you created a character like Trump for a novel or a movie people would say he's not believable.

Someone check the Epstein files for Brendan

As a Minister of Justice in apartheid South Africa is supposed to have complained: you appoint judges on the basis of their loyalty to the regime, but once they get there, they think they’ve been appointed on merit.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

I guess it's now illegal to help your spouse pack for a trip. This is some soviet shit

With enough time you could do a frame by frame of which deranged bits of twitter have fed into this.

I fully get that when companies and organisations get a lot of responses to job adverts they can't always provide individual feedback, but they could at least do a bulk mail out to say that your application hasn't been progressed. It is properly soul destroying.

I hate image quoting but i am apparently blocked from replying directky to this. It is NOT diminishing the role of women to, nicely, highlight a story isn't true. You diminish the real contributions of women in WW2 elsewhere by pushing a false narrative because the story is nice. /1

Good morning and welcome to your FT Weekend highlights thread of gift links which are free and therefore limited. Act now and do keep any disappointment to yourself, thank you so much. Leaving aside all the tariff news, what follows are the great reads of the day!

Simply a medical diagnosis.

So now you've all listened to my new podcast (i mean, obviously) PLEASE PLEASE do rate it on your pod app of choice. Especially Apple and Spotify. That then triggers it being recommended to new listeners. Otherwise they get pushed endless AI slop. Of course if you hated the pod ignore this post 😆

👏😂 @theguardian.com (Source: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...)

"Businesses on both sides of the Atlantic depend on stability and predictability in the trading relationship" Well, they won't be getting that for the next three years. Possibly from either side, but certainly not from the US. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

This @theguardian.com piece is fantastic like everyone says. Bravo to those who worked on it. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Content warning: this story is absolutely disgusting. It is also very funny, though

Me to my youngest: if a strange man stopped his car when you were walking on the pavement and said, would you like some mini eggs? If you get in my car, I’ll give you mini eggs. What would you do? My child: I’d get the mini eggs! Me: uh Child: ….and then I’d kill him.

It's sort of funny that Wales have a player called Blair Murray and Scotland have one called Huw Jones.

Brackett's diaries are a good read. They include the story of Wilder tearing up an angry letter from one of his lovers, but keeping one fragment. Brackett asked him why. He said he wanted to show it to his wife as the blue of the notepaper was the exact colour he wanted for their sitting room wall.

The Song of the Banyan Tree @jasonsinghthing, the Mozart (or maybe Brian Eno) of Biosonfication, attaches electrodes to our banyan tree to record its biofeedback and turn into a soundtrack for Tishani Doshi to dance to @oliviafraserart's British Council show, A Journey Within, opening Thursday

Even if this claim could be verified, and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that there are 350 people seeking asylum across the whole constituency, it would account for roughly 0.4% of the electorate, so not even everyone living there. Hardly a big issue.

Two issues linked by @samfr.bsky.social in his latest post - the tendency of politicians to assume that the problem is ‘comms’ rather than content, and the general challenge of getting ‘comms’ right when the media environment has become so fragmented. (£/free trial) samf.substack.com/p/the-signal...

Basically Rogue Trader RPG but with DS9. I'm in.

The eldest (13) had never watched a Bond movie before this week and was curious. Went with Casino Royale - my thinking being: the Craig era reset is as good a starting place as any. Initial reaction: “what? Is that James Bond? I didn’t expect him to be so old”.

Considering how long, in a political sense, this story has been running, and how much worse it gets as more information is revealed, it is quite telling about how weak Starmer's position is that he hasn't done more to distance himself further from Labour Together. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I'm wondering if the film will acknowledge Maureen Sweeney at all. BBC News - Irish woman whose forecast saved D-Day dies at 100 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Why hasn't Peter Mandelson been arrested and subjected to the glare of publicity...? Has the Commissioner of the London Met lost his nerve - unlike the courageous chief constable of Thames Valley?

Well well well. From The Guardian today. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Front page of Guardian magazine today.

This new Santa Fe press volume 4 of 'The Economy as an Emerging Complex System' has some enticing (& free to read) chapters. (One chapter is by me.) www.sfipress.org/books/eecs-iv

I’ve been heads down this week, so am late to posting this, but ironically what this most reminds me of is Corbyn rallies circa 2016/17. Not enjoying the dynamic www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/amp/entry/ni...

If you read just one thing today, make it this. Shocking. Journalists are dismissed as “mainstream media” by those who don’t want truth spoken to power; yet without them who would expose how big tech is monetising abuse & misogyny & highlight why regulation is needed? 🙌 Janine. Ltd free links so..

Have long struggled to take the "Matt has changed" narrative around Goodwin entirely seriously. A radicalisation trajectory has certainly evolved since 2014. But as people have occasionally had to with ex-colleagues in sub-disciplines I work in, it is worth examining initial signs that were missed

New shoes day, the Wimbledon #Parkrun effect.

Ok, so maybe the food at Wahaca is neither authentic nor particularly good but Master Chef and Bake Off combined have still inflicted near infinitely less harm on the world than the Apprentice.

The title is a victim of Trump’s limited literacy. It was meant to be ‘Bored of Peace’.

Why are so many people using Claude Code and saying "this is not just next token prediction?" It is, isn't it? Did they just not understand that next token prediction could be able to write working computer programs?

Lol, no. Not least because, despite a few overexcited republicans, the public is all on the same page as the king over this: disgust, anger, contain him out of sight, let the law get on with doing its job. Nobody is calling for the monarchy to fall.

Trade remedies lawyers right now

Good read on Labour’s way forward from @jessicaelgot.bsky.social and Kiran Stacey.

The US government can propose as much money as it likes for an ever-expanding defence budget, but if it can't hire enough skilled workers and ensure enough modernisation for shipyards it still won't be able to slow down the maintenance and manufacturing crisis that is weakening the US Navy

Is this retrospective? I have some receipts somewhere

You think this is weird. Around 1900 the Temperance Movement realised that if they didn’t have their own equivalent of pubs, serving non-alcoholic drinks, they were lost. One of the drinks they devised was ‘temperance champagne’: carbonated milk.

Brits can take criticism of British food; just not from a nation that puts sugar in its bread

A small child, asking their parents repeatedly "are we there yet" except it's me, a grown woman, asking the internet "is the EO here yet"

You can complain all you like about paying for privileges, but £50k to have to sit through a meal with Badenoch does sound like some kind of punishment. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I don't think we can class a teacher reporting a kindergartener to ICE as the "banality of evil" so much as just evil. Of course 'Conservatives' want him locked up. They also support the return of the brown shirts, so reporting on neighbours and a state of fear is exactly right up their street.

Healthy life expectancy at birth in the UK has decreased to its lowest level since the ONS time series began in 2011 to 2013 www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...

'More than eight in 10 respondents to a survey of working-age disabled people by researchers at Lancaster University said access to home working was essential or very important when looking for a new job.' 1/2

Forbes 30 under 30 strikes again

“What picture shall we use?” “The one of him in the red light district?”

They are getting really close. 'Wait, we can make a law that stops someone from becoming King?...... so we can do this for all of them, no?'

Many thanks to all those who came to the Rose & Crown, Chorleywood on Wednesday to hear about @prosperuk.bsky.social.

Nobody ask why this man is zooming in from a Holiday Inn in Norwich

To summarise a far longer conversation after seeing this headline : My wife: You're a non-binary bookworm, what is a non-binary book club? " Me: Pretty much every book is non-binary My wife: ??? Me: They're not written in 1s and 0s are they? My wife: You're sleeping on the sofa.

Just walked into a pub and was shown to a table. Looked at the menu, said I was after something more 'lunchy', and ended up walking out again. Maybe it's just me but there seem to be more 'all-day dinner' menus.