"average New Labour minister causes 3 scandals" factoid actualy just statistical error. average minister causes 0 scandals. Scandals Peter, who lives in cave & causes over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

On immigration, Spain's Pedro Sanchez is the only sane leader on the continent. 🔗 www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

At last, the issue of student loans is properly hitting national politics.

And finally there is an editorial, in which we argue that Donald Trump is "creating a militia which answers only to himself" and how he could use it to "stage provocations pretty much anywhere with impunity, including during elections" if Congress does not step in www.economist.com/leaders/2026...

An online identity tool that underpins the digital lives of Dutch people and has partly fallen into American hands is prompting the country to reconsider its reliance on U.S. technology.

France announced today it’s phasing out Teams, Zoom, etc. to be replaced with a French/European solution called Visio. The data is hosted on Outscale. Transcripts and subtitles are also handled by French providers. The target is set on 2027 for government agencies.

if this guy had any real talent for posting he'd announced he was opening negotiations with Minnesota

📊 Explore updated data on HIV/AIDS— When HIV was first identified four decades ago, nearly 100% of those infected died, typically within a few years. Thankfully, global public health efforts and medical advances such as antiretroviral therapy (ART) have improved this situation dramatically.

Digital detox is like "giving up smoking", something that's within the power of some individuals, but not for society as a whole. The majority of the decades-long progress on smoking cessation/reduction is policy, not willpower.

Incredible

"The initial response from EU leaders to the Greenland crisis — suspending an EU-U.S. trade agreement, sending troops to Greenland, threatening to deploy sweeping trade retaliation against the U.S. — served as a taste of what might come." 🔗 @politico.eu | www.politico.eu/article/eu-l...

Trump's Davos speech: and I told Denmark don't keep Greenland anymore, you keep Greenland anymore we're going to have problems, and Denmark says "why do you send me a picture of my house?" and I say you're going to have to figure that out Denmark

Me watching Titanic in 1997

not to lib out but if anybody in labour made a speech that demonstrated even 70% of the understanding of what’s happening and, importantly, the willingness to explain what’s happening as that mark carney one, they should obvs just coronate them leader now and save everybody the faff

Davos, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum.

“The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.” As a piece of prose and geopolitical analysis Carney’s Davos speech feels history-making. paulwells.substack.com/p/the-carney...

Chancellor Merz: Currently,security in Europe is more of a concern in the East than in the West. We see the war in Ukraine. This poses a serious threat to our overall security… Western Europe,that includes Greenland, isn’t currently threatened by Russia to the extent that some are suggesting

Great interview/profile of him here. I think even if the show hadn’t been successful, the book would still be defeating him, because its great conceit - the POV narratives - just means that it all moves incredibly slowly.

It's 2026, you shouldn't have to wait months to find out when an appointment is, even a vague November-December 2027 time frame that gets narrowed down as the dates near would be better than the current hearing nothing for months and wondering if it's fell between the cracks again...

Two useful tools for anyone interested in actual policy delivery instead of endless Labour Kremlinology: 🔗 Legislation tracker from @dangroshev.com | labourreforms.uk 🔗 Government pledges tracker from @fullfact.org | fullfact.org/government-t...

It continues to be a bad failure that essentially there's a policy debate that is obvious to you if you read a business newspaper OR the gov dot uk website or the MI5 threat update OR a decent policy Substack is basically invisible on the BBC and in 90 per cent of Commons debates.

Agree that behavioural science still has a lot of insight for governance. Uber's big innovation wasn't making the taxis arrive any faster, it was just reducing the uncertainty about when it would arrive. A simple tracker for your position on a NHS waiting list would reduce a lot of frustration

Digital services and GOV.UK are one of the main ways that citizens interact with govt. Whether a service is too complicated, or works brilliantly, can make a big difference. Why passport service and repeat prescriptions work is they fixed a particular (visible) problem, and stopped there. (3/3)

New post just out: "Troubleshooters" How fixing the many small frustrations - that make up most of our interactions with the state - can give people faith in goverment's ability to make things work. And help create a different Whitehall culture. (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

The way politics is being conducted by both the tories and Labour seems surreal to me. We have a lunatic in the WH who simply cannot be relied on to be an ally, indeed the opposite, we need to spend a ton of cash on defence and no-one seems to think voters might need to be, er, readied for all this

Fellow (ex-)academics should read this very funny and relatable piece by my brilliant and hot friend Hadas. Actually cheered me up this morning bsky.app/profile/hada...

Let's give Brown another go

Burnham openly jockeying for the leadership and in with a good shout if he gets a seat and STILL talking about constitutional reform, proportional representation and abolishing the Lords is him making his pitch to me, specifically. #ready4andy @labourlist.bsky.social labourlist.org/2026/01/burn...

Still lots of scope for an Employment Rights Act 2 once the first has been enacted. Keen to see movement on the single status of 'worker' consultation. 🔗 @andymcdonaldmp.bsky.social @ieruk.bsky.social | www.ier.org.uk/news/gutting...

Sabotaging public goods in the service of private interests.

[Me, earlier this week]: it's annoying all the best/free/official employment support out there is so dispersed and doesn't join up [Me, today]: wait a minute I write a website ✍️ www.citizensadvice.org.uk/scotland/wor...

Also everyone owes that apology meme form to the French, who (for the many faults of the Gaullists) have warned from the very beginning of NATO about the possibility of this kind of scenario and have time and again tried to wean the European rulers off of their learned helplessness

Govt source: "We have to [...] build up our independence, power and autonomy with Europe. Our relationship with the US is imposing a heavy price domestically and to unite the progressive left we need a stronger European offer.” @georgeeaton.bsky.social morningcall.substack.com/p/morning-ca...

This is really good political journalism. Process matters and it could be decisive here

I've spent quite a long time looking into the current system by which the Labour Party grants votes to affiliates in its internal elections. It's more interesting than it sounds, and may be very consequential re, who will be the next Prime Minister. www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

Germany's actually spending €200m on Sovereign Tech Fund too, directly funding maintainers of critical open source infrastructure. Meanwhile UK government just renewed its Microsoft Enterprise Agreement through 2030 - literal decade-long lock-in while talking about sovereignty.

Emmanuel Macron recently said we've been naïve to entrust our democracies to American big tech. In 2022 Germany created the Centre for Digital Sovereignty which founded openDesk, an open source challenger to Microsoft 365 now used by the ICC. The UK needs to take digital sovereignty seriously too

Recently updated an advice page which said in practice gay couples might find it hard to get life insurance for their partner "even if they aren't HIV positive." Realised the page hadn't been updated since the 2010 Equality Act. Hard to overstate what a profound change that law has made in 15 years

It was exactly as amateur and pigheaded as it looked from the outside. 🔗 Anatomy of a disaster: The inside story of Wilfried Nancy's Celtic | www.heraldscotland.com/sport/257533... @heraldscotland.bsky.social

We need digital sovereignty to keep our communications, banking, energy, travel and healthcare systems secure. If we stay dependent on foreign tech firms for our digital infrastructure, the UK risks its independence and resilience. Sign & share our petition ⬇️ you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

Foreign States have used their control over digital infrastructure to wield power. Even historic allies aren’t reliable. The future doesn’t need to be orange. We need #DigitalSovereignty in the UK to keep our systems running. Read more about our campaign ⬇️ www.computerweekly.com/news/3666371...

This has needed to happen for a very long time. Parliament effectively runs as 650 small businesses, with all the variation in quality of employer that you’d get from 650 small businesses in the ‘real’ world. And the lack of progression of salary and career means you lose a lot of v good staff.

Quite funny that the government is so bad at getting positive stories out there LabourList feels it has to do it for them labourlist.org/2026/01/good...

Solidarity to the workers at Vue St Enoch in Glasgow are extending their strike for another four weeks until 6 February 2026. If you're in Glasgow and want to go to the cinema, don't cross the picket line at Vue St Enoch. ✊🏻 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Woke 1: it is not enough to merely not be racist Work 2: it is enough to merely not be racist

you can say this reveals a certain darkness in their soul, etc etc but it sure seems like as a practical political matter much better to frame any kind of egalitarian social agenda in as undemanding terms as possible.

the backlash to anti-racism kinda shows there’s a constituency within dominant groups who are willing to passively tolerate non-dominant groups making gains in society when they perceive the ask being made as passive toleration, but who flip the fuck out when it’s framed as active obligation

“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me” is one of MLK’s more underrated quotes because it’s a very good observation about the limits of politics.