“The BBC lacks moral courage”: foreign correspondent and former HardTalk presenter @stephensackur speaks to @carolecadwalla about Gaza, despots, and the problem with ‘both-sides’ journalism

Russia is using a network of holiday homes in the Baltic to wage hybrid war on the West. Great investigation from @JamesERothwell and @LilyShanagher Western officials are taking action against hundreds of Russian-linked homes in Lithuania, Sweden and Norway, which have been bought close to strategic military sites or key infrastructure. The most serious cases involve oligarch-linked properties at the entrances to naval bases, and holiday homes in close proximity to Nato facilities. telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2…

Riddle me this: Andy Burnham says Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum. His office says it did not change the result. Yet the Intelligence and Security Committee said the government had provided no post-referendum assessment of Russian interference. So how can the government be sure it made no difference if it never properly assessed the impact? 🤷‍♂️ Leave won by 1,269,501 votes, a 3.8 percentage-point margin. A net shift of about 635,000 voters from Leave to Remain—fewer than 2% of votes cast—would have reversed the result. What we know: • Twitter identified 49 Internet Research Agency accounts that posted 942 Brexit-related tweets. • Researchers identified 13,493 bot-like accounts that posted nearly 65,000 messages in a sample of 10 million referendum-related tweets. Twitter linked about 1% of those accounts to Russia. • A separate study counted more than 45,000 Brexit posts in the final 48 hours from accounts it classified as Russian. That does not mean every account was a confirmed Kremlin bot. • 89up estimated 10 million potential Twitter impressions from Russian-linked bots, and 134 million potential social-media impressions for anti-EU RT and Sputnik articles. None of this proves Russia changed the result. But the ISC recommended that the intelligence community assess potential Russian interference in the referendum and publish an unclassified summary. Why hasn’t the UK government acted on that recommendation?

RT @peterjukes: Let’s have both sides of the argument. Now Mr Goebbels, is it true that Poland provoked your invasion?

I love the way all the normie news programmes are now reporting on this as if it’s totally new information 🤯

Former Head of MI6 Sir John Sawers, "Russia was very keen that the Leave campaign should succeed and that Britain should leave the European Union" "Because that would marginalise Britain as a global player and weaken Europe in general" "That's the strategic opportunity the Russians spotted, and the leaders of the Leave campaign fell into it" My view: Former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers says Russia saw Brexit as a way to weaken Britain and divide Europe, and that the Leave campaign’s leaders walked straight into the opportunity. So let’s remember who sold it: VOTE LEAVE • Boris Johnson — political figurehead • Michael Gove and Gisela Stuart — campaign committee co-convenors • Matthew Elliott — chief executive • Dominic Cummings — campaign director • Daniel Hannan — leading Brexit advocate • Priti Patel, Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, John Whittingdale and Theresa Villiers — senior Conservative campaigners • David Davis, Liam Fox, Dominic Raab, Steve Baker and Douglas Carswell — prominent Leave campaigners LEAVE. EU • Nigel Farage — leading political figure • Arron Banks — co-chairman and major funder • Andy Wigmore — communications director GRASSROOTS OUT / LABOUR LEAVE • Peter Bone and Tom Pursglove — Grassroots Out co-founders • Kate Hoey — Grassroots Out co-founder and Labour Leave campaigner • Graham Stringer, Kelvin Hopkins and Roger Godsiff — Labour Leave campaigners • Sammy Wilson — prominent DUP Leave campaigner They promised Brexit would make Britain stronger. Sawers says Russia saw the opposite opportunity: a Britain marginalised and a Europe weakened.

The U.S. has been isolated by Democratic Governments around the world, and is a puppet for Dictators.

BREAKING: In an amazing moment, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy just met with all of Europe's leaders. Look at the reception he receives. Donald Trump would never.

George Monbiot explains why the UK should rejoin the EU, "There's a reason why Russia tried to intervene in the Brexit vote, they knew that it would harm the UK and the EU if we left" "They were very clear about that and boy have they been proved right" "It has damaged our economic life, our social and cultural life" "Wales alone has lost £1 billion net in regional and social funding which it would have received from the EU" "And it has greatly weakened the opportunities particularly for young people, to work abroad, live abroad, to have the freedoms we had before" "We could rejoin the Customs Union, or the Single Market, but if we did that alone we would be rule takers, we have to accept whatever the EU handed down because we would not be at the table negotiating and making decisions alongside other nations" "As an audience member pointed out, yes the EU is changing. But that's not a reason not to rejoin, but that's a reason to be there in case it changes into a direction we don't like. We can help it be the kind of EU that we want it to be" "I don't think there's any option but to rejoin fully" My view: Brexit was sold as a way to take back control. In practice, it has often meant giving up influence over decisions that still affect us. Our businesses have to navigate rules shaped in Brussels, but Britain has no vote in setting them. That is not meaningful sovereignty; it is distance from the table. Rejoining would give the UK a voice in the institutions where shared rules are debated and agreed. It would also restore a closer, more predictable relationship with our largest nearby market, making it easier for businesses to trade, invest and plan. Those gains would not erase every problem facing the country, but they would remove barriers we chose to put in our own way. The case is about more than trade. It is about making it easier for people to study, work and build lives across Europe; cooperating on research, energy, climate and security; and giving communities and regions access to shared opportunities. These are practical freedoms and partnerships that matter in people’s everyday lives. A halfway arrangement could reduce some friction, but it would leave Britain following many common rules without full representation in shaping them. If the UK wants influence over the direction of European cooperation, membership is the route that provides it. Rejoining would not mean surrendering every national choice; it would mean choosing to make some decisions together, with a seat, a vote and the ability to argue for the outcome we want. The question is not whether the EU is perfect. It is whether Britain is better placed to shape its future from within, alongside its neighbours, or to stand outside while decisions with consequences for us are made without us. After the experience of Brexit, there is a strong case for choosing influence, cooperation and closer ties again. And since Britain left, no other EU member state has followed it out. Instead, the Union has grown to 27 members, while 10 aspiring members are currently in the accession process. That does not prove the EU is perfect or that membership suits every country. But it does show that countries see real value in joining: access to a huge shared market, stronger economic links and greater stability. European Commission They are not signing up because the EU has no problems; they are choosing to take part in a shared project that can bring investment, opportunity and a stronger voice in decisions affecting their future. If countries across Europe are working to join, Britain should ask why it chose to walk away, and whether standing outside has made us better placed to shape what comes next.

Reform’s tactic today is not to attempt to deny what was caught on camera, it’s to attempt to convince you all that vile racism and misogyny is simply normal, and how decent “patriots” chat down the pub. No, we won’t accept it. We won’t let you destroy our standards and decency as a nation.

EXCL: John Healey poised to tax Britain’s banks in his 28 October budget to help offset the damage inflicted on the public finances by war in the Middle East, the Guardian understands. The chancellor is in Bangkok, where the IMF has praised the UK’s progress towards balancing the books, urging him to “stay the course”. To keep the Treasury’s deficit reduction plans on track in the face of rising government borrowing costs, Healey is understood to have decided to tap the financial sector for additional revenue. One option understood to be under discussion – reversing cuts to the bank surcharge made by Jeremy Hunt – would raise upwards of £2bn a year. Lenders have logged strong earnings on back of rising interest rates, with UK’s four largest lenders – HSBC, NatWest, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group – alone having generated £200bn in pre-tax profits over past five years. More from economics editor Heather Stewart, @jessicaelgot & Kayleena Markoff 👇 theguardian.com/uk-news/2026…

The President of the United States taking the piss out of a mentally ill man who died just a couple of days before. Frankly, I expected nothing less from this sociopathic arsehole.

For the first time, the British government has acknowledged that Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum. So who did BBC Newsnight invite on to discuss what happened? Sergei Markov, Putin’s former spokesman. Par for the course, says Nerve co-founder @carolecadwalla…

Ukraine hits 3 major data centres in Russia, and 𝐥𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝 ! "Patriot" bot activity tanks massively not only all over Europe but also thousands of pro-Trump MAGA accounts unusually quiet 👇 What a lovely moment amongst ourselves before they all come back 😀

Here it is. This is the clip from yesterday's @CNN interview where I'm asked - for first time ever - about Brexit-Trump-Russia. "These vital questions of national security have been interpreted as about politics. And it's not about politics. It's about power. And about Putin."

So, a British PM finally confirms what many suspected for a long time- direct interference from the Kremlin on Brexit vote. So- is this the point we not only undo Brexit ? And is it time to haul Johnson May and the whole shebang in front of the courts for deliberately withholding this information from Parliament and the public?? They knew - the referendum result was unsafe but still she and then Johnson persisted with it and wouldn't let Parliament discuss it. Is there consequences? And - Remind us about the roles played by Aaron Banks, Steve Bannon, Nigel Farage, Cambridge Analytica, Murdoch, Trump in advancing Russian interests by severing Britain from Europe?!?! With DISASTEROUS consequences.

When the Guardian went on strike to protest the Observer sale, I became a de facto spokesperson. Later a Tortoise employee I’d never met wrote to me to cancel my 20-year contract. No goodbye & no pay-off. This is how they now take credit for my work..but write me out of the story

NEW: Ten years on, Prime Minister @andyburnham tells @campbellclaret & @RoryStewartUK that there was ‘clear’ Russian interference in the Brexit vote. FINALLY after years of cover-ups & denials from the highest levels of the UK govt. That in itself deserves an inquiry. 1/

Thoughtful, insightful interview with the excellent Stephen Sackur, given a dog-whistle headline by the Telegraph. Of all the BBC’s cuts so far, Hardtalk has been the most painful, and Sackur himself is badly missed. telegraph.co.uk/books/author…

American Morality jonathanpie.com/londonlive/