Happy. Friday! It’s been quite the week, I feel we could have improved relations with the US if we’d sent our election officials and counters from Newcastle and Sunderland South (for those that don’t know, they are the two constituencies that declare first!). But last night Trump went over a line of decency. We’ll get to that later but I’ll start with local stuff first!

Here are this week’s links…

Lord of misrule. Rory Stewart with a beautiful article on Boris Johnson and why he’s ruining public life…

Perhaps it is envy. Johnson is after all the most accomplished liar in public life – perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister. Some of this may have been a natural talent – but a lifetime of practice and study has allowed him to uncover new possibilities which go well beyond all the classifications of dishonesty attempted by classical theorists like St Augustine. He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true. And because he has been so famous for this skill for so long, he can use his reputation to ascend to new levels of playful paradox. Thus he could say to me “Rory, don’t believe anything I am about to say, but I would like you to be in my cabinet” – and still have me laugh in admiration.

Opinion: Alastair Campbell What Johnson and Corbyn have in common. I always felt that the New Labour project was flawed on the issues that mattered (housing, making work actually pay) and it’s solutions were sticking plasters (PPI and Working Tax credit). That’s before we deal with the disaster that was Iraq. All that to say, that I’m constantly surprised to find myself agreeing with Alastair Campbell, and here is another example…

Liverpool is tired, angry and ready for a fight with Boris Johnson. I missed this, but why doesn’t the rest of the country feel this way?

There are other things going on in the world and indeed other elections…

Ivory Coast president wins third term after opposition boycotts ‘sham’ election

US embassy urges Ivory Coast leaders to respect election ‘process’ hours after Donald Trump challenges vote.

Stephen Colbert nails the damage that Trump is doing to his country. The USA is really leaning in to it’s dark side.

Trump’s deep narcissism acted as a distorted mirror for millions of voters

Captain Hindsights always insist that whatever just happened in an election was both totally foreseeable and proves their theory. But this election is not proving any theory, other than that the US electoral system is, yet again, not fit for purpose, when a candidate can win millions more votes and still not necessarily win.

The future of the Senate majority could hinge on two Georgia runoffs

Trump’s desperate White House rant was everything people feared about his presidency in a nutshell

Today’s funny is Ted Lasso…