Two interesting charts to put side by side. From here: moneypower.substack.com/p/solvency-a...

British Politics has hit new heights of self-parody today: a parade of commentators experiencing the holy revelation that it's best to have a plan & people to implement it. Meanwhile, the question I most want answered about the Blair essay remains unasked: 'Who wrote it?'

@mayor.nyc.gov: “I have thought often of the "Margeret Thatcher quote: ‘the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.’ If anything, my friends, it seems that you eventually need a socialist to clean up the mess."

Take constituency polls with a pinch of salt but fascinating coalescence of the left-liberal vote in Makerfield. Result clearly still on a knife edge.

Reflecting on the extraordinary performance of @dash-arts.bsky.social Our Public House, the Speech! Speech! project workshops are embedded in the characters, their speeches/songs, the amazing workshop participant speeches - performed live on stage - and the plot. thanx @profafinlayson.bsky.social

That’s how you do it! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 @MayorofLondon

I love these "critics of proportional representation" who have been watching seven years of Governments with sizable majorities under first past the post disintegrate but still stick to the line they learned in A Level Politics. Next level resolution.

We are proud to have led the first ever analysis of the Scottish Election, out now! Funded by @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social the Scottish Election Analysis 2026 gives fresh insights on a wide variety of topics by leading scholars - from AI to young voters. More: www.gla.ac.uk/news/headlin...

“…this is not a great situation, for a number of reasons, but when you accurately compare bonds between currencies, the UK is not such an outlier”.

I was interviewed for this article in @theipaper.com 'Why Elon Musk has cooled his bromance with Tommy Robinson' by @sanyaburgess.bsky.social and Jane Merrick @sosslancaster.bsky.social @lancasteruni.bsky.social inews.co.uk/news/elon-mu...

The only way this story could be more Norwich is if the deer had only gone in there to refresh supplies for mixing original gin cocktails at a small summer festival. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A new far-right terror attack in the UK has been confirmed in court. Alina Burns, then 18, tried to behead an Iranian refugee who was standing outside a barber's shop in Bristol with an axe The attack took place on 2 August 2025 but a judge did not rule on 'terrorism connection' until today

At a times where we are in need of expanding our understanding of democracy, Rhetorical Citizenship is of the crucial importance. This is about a project on Rhetorical Citizenship and a play based on this project - it's a Rhetorical Citizenship in action.

Emergency Podcast Live! It's free, it's online, it's tomorrow, it's me and @profafinlayson.bsky.social talking about all this stuff that's going on: www.eventbrite.com/e/emergency-...

Great thread.

Is there really that much to talk about? We'll find out tonight at this LIVE EMERGENCY PODCAST RECORDING hosted by ‪@autonomy-institute.bsky.social‬ in Bethnal Green with me and @profafinlayson.bsky.social talking about the implications of the latest political earthquakes.

A reminder that a wiser, savvier Labour Party (in this case, during the 1945 election campaign) understood this. Credit Herbert Morrison, perhaps. But Attlee got it too.

Thinking about Starmer's nationalisation of steel to save 2700 jobs in Scunthorpe (good) & the news that at Nottingham Uni 2700 staff face redundancy risk (bad). How much of Lab's problem is a fantasy of heroic manual workers they'll "save", leaving some workers feeling patronised, others ignored.

“Stop the small saucers”

It's comforting to recall that the collapse of the government under the weight of its own venality doesn't matter: the British state is now run by an algorithm on a Palantir server somewhere in the Texas desert.

“Your generosity would enable us to lure academic job seekers who might otherwise scorn our hidebound institution in favor of innovative civics centers, private think tanks, and parents’ basements.”

The Tribune Group of MPs set out their economic approach:

We now have the Haigh and Yang intervention, which appropriately has been published in the social-democratic journal Renewal.* *(to which you should all subscribe) bsky.app/profile/rene...

I imagine the Cabinet meeting today will be similar to The Traitors roundtable: people with no clues all trying to decide who to vote out by working out who everyone else is going to decide to vote out and then rounding on a random person for being too enthusiastic that one time.

“A blind man cld see that the upcoming administration is stacked with ‘our guys’ from tech, specifically from Thiel's camp *** Our cover is blown [so stop apologizing] … We are the new elite because we are the most capable…” - Rainmaker founder Augustus Doricko, 12/14/24 1/

With my rhetorical analysis hat on: it was a mistake to give the speech in language which made it an appeal only to The Labour Party, positioning the rest of us as a third-party: 'they'. Obvs Starmer wants to win over MPs/members but you do that by first winning the country. An opportunity missed.

So, we’ll get a speech about hope. Not hope for anything in particular. Just the abstract noun. I’d be positive about, say, rational hope I’ll not be made redundant; that there’s a plan for universities. Others will have their specific hopes. But offering ‘Hope’: leave that to the priests.

"The Callais decision has been catastrophic in substance and timing. The Roberts Court not only dismantled the country’s most important civil rights law, but put its thumb on the scale of the 2026 elections, turbocharging Trump’s gerrymandering arms race" www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

STILL seeing plaintive bleating from diehard Starmer supporters along the lines of “why is no one talking about all the positive things Labour is doing, rather than focusing on the negative?”, and it really hammers home that British politics should have paid a lot more attention to the Tacitus Trap.

"There is little to no statistical relationship between Reform performance and Labour performance, but a very strong (negative) relationship between Labour and Green performance." @patrick-pme.bsky.social

Good data is essential for policy. Today it’s been a year since we had a permanent National Statistician. No news on what is happening with the current recruitment which began Oct 2025. This is an under the bonnet issue that points to state failure 🧵 uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/news/stateme...

I’m totally bewildered by this. I’m sure Brown has intelligent things to say but how could anyone think this would appeal to anyone or even make sense in a context when people hate ‘the old’ politics? Labour is so old-fashioned & out of step as it is. Why put a spotlight on it? It’s so insular.

The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals. Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:

How’s it possible to be in office for 24 months & have not one (not one!) single specific proposition for action to offer? And to claim not one (not one!) specific policy or political success? The answer to the question of what went wrong is here. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Don't worry about the elections now - the results aren't even all in yet. Instead, sit back and listen to @profafinlayson.bsky.social and I discuss the relationship between politics and religion. Here, or search for Culture, Power, Politics in a podcast app: culturepowerpolitics.org/2026/05/08/r...

A prediction come true already!

I have family members who are very reliant on the state. And I use the NHS a lot for endometriosis. Sometimes I think the eye-rolling I see on here in response to voters' belief that everything is broken is because the eye rollers are middle class and don't interact with the welfare state much.

I fear Labour people risk falling into an ecological fallacy visible from space when reacting to these results. Here is what is very clear in results so far: Labour are losing *seats* to Reform, but... Labour are losing *votes* to the Greens Greens split the vote, Ref comes thru middle

As a PolProf I think I now know what the astrophysicists feel when a comet or eclipse is on the way. The stars that would align and collapse the two party system were visible long ago. Some of us thought it would have happened by now but Brexit held it up. Now it’s going to happen…

The Daily Mail works hard at keeping the ideology up here but lets this truth slip through: "For all the young women I spoke to, immigration was not a concern, nor were they fearful of trans rights: the political gender divide is not a culture war, it's an economic one". All about that base.

A bonus to whoever at @today.yougov.com devised this question. It’s fantastic and really quite revealing.

On Friday afternoon before the Bank Holiday, colleagues in the Humanities department were called to a meeting on Tuesday. They were informed that the University Portfolio Review had decided that English Language, English Literature, Philosophy, History & Creative Writing UG degrees would close

This will be the most significant outcome of Thursday. Labour’s defeat will matter & losing London get a lot of coverage. But long term, anti-Union parties in power in all 3 devolved nations & Unionism represented by, in essence, an English ethnonationalist party will intensify deep instability.

US/UK cultural differences (2026 edition) In the US the viral on/offline trend is young people coordinating storming Scientology churches. In the UK it's to storm the Clapham M&S - which is, I suppose, also a kind of cult. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciento...

"I've seen things you wouldn't believe...

Interesting letter on university management structures in the @economist.com this week.

In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis. Paywall bypass: archive.is/6RdK9

There've been plenty podcasting about Mandelson (even I've done it) much of it great. But the crown will go to @badgayspod.bsky.social mini-series deep dive into PM's embodiment of the contradictory & complex cultural history that has brought Labour to the ruin it will have to face next week.

Some useful public speaking tips from Freud here.