"Seizing Brexit opportunities to deregulate."

Drives me mad that people talk about Danish immigration policy as a *political* success without bothering to look at the polls.

no surprises here: a Berlin court has confirmed that the "political activity ban" on Ghassan Abu-Sittah 1,5years ago was against the law – I remember being on a train to Berlin when those news broke; infuriating like almost every encounter with the city in the last two years

Happening today 11am! (A recording will be available later.)

Strongly agree with this.

Between 11am and 1pm tomorrow, join Robert Spano, Jens Elo Peters Rytter, @colmocinneide.bsky.social and @profveronika.bsky.social to discuss the future of the European Convention on Human Rights, both in Europe and the UK. Sign up to attend this in-person event at @laws.ucl.ac.uk 👇

The factional grifters will hate this, but the Mamdani-Spanberger-Sherrill axis actually suggests the outlines of a broad, emerging Dem coalition organized around both anti-Trump *and* affordability politics, not a party bitterly divided against itself.

Mamdani absolutely beams with affection for New York City; that he *cherishes* it, and its people, is present in every smile, and every stride.

Dick Cheney did more than anyone else to build up expansive and destructive executive branch powers in the wake of 9/11; he lived to see another president turn those same powers against his own daughter. He should be a warning sign to the GOP today but too many of them are in the cult.

if you literally ignored every single poll and assumed "Democrats will overperform because Trump is an unpopular incumbent and it's an off year election", you would have nailed every single race

Very much looking forward to speaking about my book 'Violence against Women and Regimes of Exception' on the Equality Talks series next Tuesday 11 November 2025 @5pm UK time, 6:00pm CET. For details and to join: academy-humanrights.uni-koeln.de/en/news/equa...

The first talk is on 11 November at 6pm CET (5pm UK) by @catbriddick.bsky.social (@refugeestudies.bsky.social) on her new book, Violence against Women and Regimes of Exception, with @colmocinneide.bsky.social & Lourdes Peroni as discussants. Register here: uni-koeln.zoom.us/meeting/regi....

there is one of the largest mass hysterias i’ve ever witnessed in politics with people who hate zohran mamdani and it’s all going to be so much funnier when he wins

“There are some people who hate London, and hate New York,” Mayor Sadiq Khan told me, on Bloomberg TV. “There's a reason why they demonize London, and now, indeed, New York. Why? Because we are progressive cities. We are liberal cities. We are multicultural cities. And we are incredibly successful.”

“People being summoned to the U.S. Embassy in London — intimidation, threats of cessation of business, threats of family members losing visas.”

Absolutely shocking that the Chinese govt pressured a UK university to shut down research about forced labour in Xinjiang and the links to global supply chains. The work of Laura Murphy and her team had been instrumental in getting Chinese companies sanctioned. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Opting Out of Accountability: The United States and the Implications of Withdrawal from the Universal Periodic Review | by Michael Lane and Alice Storey

This Friday between 11am and 1pm, join Robert Spano, Jens Elo Peters Rytter, @colmocinneide.bsky.social and @profveronika.bsky.social to discuss the future of the European Convention on Human Rights, both in Europe and the UK. Sign up to attend this in-person event at @laws.ucl.ac.uk 👇

Amid many a silly “free speech” panic, here is a genuinely chilling case … Sheffield Hallam professor accuses the institution of negotiating “directly with a foreign intelligence service to trade my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Pleased to be hosting this important discussion on Friday 7th Nov next.

Hard-core legal realism in action - Wall Street futures trading on the outcome of the SCOTUS case on the lawfulness of Trump's tariffs. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Pleased to be hosting this important discussion on Friday 7th Nov next.

With the official prognosis giving one additional seat to PVV and one to FvD compared to the ext poll, the narrative should really not be that the Netherlands/Jetten has beaten the radical right. The far right bloc remains remarkably stable.

Somebody at HMRC needs to be canned for this idiotic ‘fraud-detection’ idea. And I fear future use of AI in welfare cases might well produce this kind of story regularly (as they have in Nevada for example).

Fascinating detail in the second screenshot of where the Times’ weird obsession with Mamdani (a politician running for office in a city in a different country) is coming from.

Having proudly proposed it, why have the Conservatives now disowned their Deportation bill - once they were challenged to publicly defend the most unprecedented deportation agenda ever proposed in a democracy? Are there lessons for norms+boundaries in politics? www.easterneye.biz/immigration-...

Lam took a bunch of X posts from far-right racists and so-called "thinktanks" and turned them into a policy that collapsed as soon as anyone actually read it/understood it. Would have been an absolute travesty if she hadn't won!

Hundreds reportedly killed at Sudanese hospital as evidence of RSF atrocities mounts #ElFasher #Sudan #warcrimes www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Recent Eur elections where the main split has been cosmopolitans vs. nationalists (not econ L-R): FR2017 & 22 Pres: Macron v LePen AT2022 Pres: Van der Bellen v Rosenkranz SK2023: Smer v PS RO2025 Pres: Dan v Simion PL2025 Pres: Trzaskowski v Nawrocki NL2025: D66 v PVV => convergence of WE & EE?

Death announced of Mary ‘May’ McGee who won historic Irish Supreme Court contraception case www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025...

This is exactly the shape of it - Trump is reviving the imperial presidency, while Congress is completely dormant. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o...

If I had a shitload of money and wished to hasten the arrival of the Kingdom of God I would simply follow the clearly labeled instructions by housing immigrants, freeing prisoners, and so forth

My impressionistic sense is that many of the histories of neo-liberalism as it emerged in the 1970s/80s written over the last decade underemphasise this point - which remains a big problem for left-wing politics in the Western world.

its remarkable to see random suburbanites in their fucking PJs have more courage than the vast majority of america's political, social, and civil elites

Reform lost by 11% in Caerphilly - because of a surge in turnout, because Reform looked set to win the seat. This illustrates Reform's vulnerability *because* they are leading the polls (in a 6 party system) while being an *unpopular* party. A much bigger problem under FPTP 2029 than PR 2026

The story of British politics of the last 12 monthe is of a vocal populist minority coalescing to set most of the political and media agenda + the unknown, unpredictable question of whether or how Britain's pluralist, complicated populist-sceptic majority will or won't respond to that by 2026-29

Broadcasters - especially the BBC - have been working hard to ensure they give a voice to the 25-35% of people willing to vote Reform (and harder groups within that, like anti-asylum protest and Tommy protest) Need to pay as much attention to the unheard majority who fear that form of politics

The UN Charter at 80 | by Devika Hovell

The bleakly funny thing about this story is that visibly *this morning* the Conservative leadership had not absorbed just how crackers the policy they had signed up to was.

Really interesting piece on private prosecutions in the UK & how they are increasingly functioning as a back door route to justice. www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

Hadn’t, in truth, really absorbed the scale of what the Conservatives are proposing on ILR and immigration more broadly until this week’s Sunday Times interviews. Some thoughts on that in today’s note:

It is not “broadly in line”. It is *exactly in line* because it is literally the policy as set out in a “draft bill” presented to parliament as the law a Badenoch government would enact.

A reminder that the procedural rules of legislatures control who is entitled to sit & vote as a member, and thus confer immense potential power on whoever gets to interpret & apply them - subject to any residual constitutional controls that may be exerted by external institutions, such as courts.

New: a $60 mod to Meta's Ray-Ban glasses disables the privacy LED light. This is supposed to light when people are filming with the glasses. We bought the mod, verified it works. Now you can never be sure whether someone wearing Meta Ray-Bans is filming you or not www.404media.co/how-to-disab...

Some - cautious - good news on the govt’s civil service gagging rules Nick Thomas-Symonds has written to us rowing back on the worst aspects: “it is important for civil servants to speak in public about matters for which they have responsibility” www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/welc...

In general we have far too much "deregulation brain". Most regulations are codifications of good business practice; if your industry is becoming unviable on that basis it is worth looking at whether there might be another reason for that.

New, from me: until recently there was strong bipartisan consensus that a nonpartisan civil service was good and that politicization was bad. Now views are more divided, with Republicans aligning with the pro-politicization actions of Trump. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trump-has-...

A good question.

If any Labour MPs are reading (go on, you know you want to), as someone trying to hire six new Oxford professors in AI / experiments / big data / all the stuff you say you want, I would really appreciate knowing if new hires can, you know, stay in the country they move to... current policy is chaos