"In a recent study, led by Alistair Ross of London Metropolitan University, of British 14- and 15-year-olds across 120 schools, a quarter of students had “no real idea” what Britain’s political parties stand for. Others were unclear about the mechanics of voting."

This is why Rutte is so totally off the mark

A #Europeday slightly different over here... No Schuman book so this will have to do. Got to start them young (and get them to question the 'father of Europe' framing as well 🤷).

The hard part of the energy transition is not finding futuristic “silver bullets” like SMR. It is building grids, infrastructure, planning systems, public transport, housing retrofits, storage, flexibility and institutional capacity fast enough to electrify the economy well before 2050.

Crucial point by John Curtis on BBC - Councils flipping from Labour to Reform are because Labour are losing **to the left**, & Cons to Reform Chasing Reform failed Labour; they lost the base & didn’t convince many on the right (Failed Tories too) Watch everyone learn the wrong lesson anyway

Kind of surprised that this hasn't been bigger news. It's finals week for a whole lot of universities, and yet, Canvas (a learning/grading platform used by ~9,000 schools globally) is currently inaccessible because of a pay-or-have-your-data-leaked hack. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

Sharing, without comment, British newspapers’ depictions of the only Jewish person currently leading a UK political party . Times. Mail. Telegraph. Sun.

AI produces MORE editorial labor, not less. “[To weed out slop] the journal doubled its deputy editors from 6 to 11 & nearly doubled its sr editors from roughly 30 to 60. All of this is volunteer labor, unpaid academics donating time to maintain scientific quality.“ www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

EPA scientists cut 90% by Trump administration t.co/05bluCvI2c

You know, I'm pretty confident that whatever happens, this clamour won't. When your pitch is that the safety of democracy relies upon a relic of feudalism your account of a modern democracy is broken. And it's pretty brazenly wrong to say that only the party in government chooses peers.

Can’t quote tweet, but this was a huge campaigning issue for Labour people on the ground for years, yet it doesn’t seem to have been sold at national level, or landed, at all. If politics is about whose side are you on you’d think this would be front and centre for Labour (eg during Gorton)

Happy first of May ✊ - for once thanks to maternity leave I don't have to grumble about working on the first of May in the UK. Not shared bank holidays still one of my weirdest immigration hang ups...

🛎️ Next week in #ECPRSeminars on Environmental Politics 🎙️ Nick Kirsop-Taylor explores how biodiversity loss & ecological crisis could drive a new governance model on restoring nature. He examines the idea of a “Nature Restoration State” and the barriers to its development. 💻 7 May, 15:00–16:30 BST

Terrific short piece by @paulcairney.bsky.social that's equally applicable to Canada's federal govt. Important for advocates (in public health and otherwise) to get past the 'speaking truth to power' understanding of advocacy that buys into this mistaken view of how policymaking works.

Annnnnd this goes well beyond what was written down in Project 2025!

To be clear eyed about this: It's not just that this is the most anti-science crew ever to head the federal government. It's that they view both the people who produce science & those who think it ought to guide & constrain policy as their *enemies*, so destroying US science is a blow against them

As someone who runs an organisation that is in the unpleasant situation of applying for Horizon grants without university-level capital, this is not just bad for the system, it’s particularly bad for the social science and innovation parts of the system.

Put another way, is 'taking back control' by 'going it alone' practically achievable for the UK as long as it exists next door to the EU? Experience to date suggests No and yet Brexiters will say 'but domestic deregulation has not been tried'. /end [Lowe challenges Singham at 12:36:30 & 12:48:30]

There's a global race to secure EV battery gigafactories & reduce reliance on China. But not all clean-tech projects are created equal. Some generate good jobs & domestic capacities, others produce ecological harm & low value-added enclaves. New paper & thread 👇 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🚨🚨It is not often #EUlaw make the headlines but today's significant seminal ruling by the @eucourtofjustice.bsky.social where the Court ruled that #hungarian laws breached the fundamental values of the EU in Art 2 TEU is a major political victory for #LGBTI+ rights. 🧵 www.politico.eu/article/eu-t...

This is already demonstrably incorrect. And Wright isn't even dead yet.

Registration now open for #UACES2026: another great programme for all those working in European Studies!

The Palentir statement on its desired “Technological Republic” is one of the scariest things I have seen in a while. It is a call for a world dominated by an authoritarian U.S., generated by AI (both the statement and the world), run by tech-surveillance companies. Technofascism pure!

Writing (like reading) is thinking is a key tenet of humanities-based concern about AI, especially in education. Its shocking that instead of systematically testing whether (& if so, how and when) that's true, we're signing staff and students up for minimally-tested AI reading and writing tools. 2/2

Palantir put out the most cartoonishly evil statement possible. They’re so arrogant and self-confident they don’t seem to believe their fascistic plans can be opposed. We must get rid of Palantir altogether. twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...

Joanne closed her helpline for single parents right around when she announced she'd be donating heavily to anti-trans causes. They closed because of lack of funding. She's a billionaire. She doesn't care about "single mums". www.gingerbread.org.uk/our-work/new...

The Palantir manifesto is so over the top fascist it's ludicrous but even knowing that, I did not expect straight up 'Japan and Germany need to re-arm' as a key point. Of course the fact that Germany is doing much more on defence these days and is pro Ukraine does not fit in their world view.

Of course conversations about diets and food consumption are always sensitive, but I bet most people aren’t aware that US per capita beef consumption peaked in the 1970s and is now 1/3 below what it was then. Chicken is the #1 consumed meat in the US diet since around 1990.

Absolute “Big Mac weight loss plan” levels of idiocy from the German government here.

A toddler nearly died at an ICE detention facility in Dilley, Texas. After more than a week in intensive care, she was sent back. Sarah Stillman reports. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

checkmate, fellow terrorists

“Why aren’t college students protesting” stories are almost always wrong (they are protesting), omit crucial context (they were brutally punished for protesting before), and somehow suggest that 19 yr olds have more moral responsibility than elected officials three times their age

Today is Sextidi the 16th of Germinal in the year 234. Germinal is the month of sprouting. Today we celebrate lettuce.#JacobinDay More information on lettuce

“Three Hundred Habeas Cases in Which the Government Has Defied Court Orders” An extraordinary database of non-compliance, from @katherinepomps.bsky.social and @benjaminwittes.lawfaremedia.org for @lawfaremedia.org. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/thre...

New post in the board games as pedagogical tools series at Active Learning in Political Science, with Jenny Morrison and @michaeltoomey.bsky.social This time we’re playing Daybreak, a game about climate change and international cooperation. activelearningps.com/2026/03/30/s...

I started covering this last year, and I can't overstate how important this is: the Trump administration officially labeled some of the most commonly-used forms of birth control as 'abortion' jessica.substack.com/i/173447780/...

🚨Job alert🚨 We are looking for two lecturers/assistant professors in environmental politics (permanent!) www.bath.ac.uk/jobs/Vacancy...

Afghan women have now been banned from applying to study in British universities by the Labour government www.gov.uk/government/s...

Texte remarquable de @jjurvoas.bsky.social sur le blog du Club des juristes www.leclubdesjuristes.com/hommage/lion...

My new book arrived in the post from @manchesterup.bsky.social! Pleased to see it for real! Make cheese not war: Transnational resistance and the Larzac in Modern France manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526175878/ 🗃 #skystorians

This is a big deal. It won’t make the politics easier, but will empower the coalitions that have been gated from information about land so far. Information is power.

Another tough day for team “there’s no point in complaining about AI, just accept it.”

For all the technical detail, the politics of this statement is very interesting. It shows us just how keen the govt is to get the SPS deal done: a) by unfussily committing to align with the vast majority of EU regs and b) by clearly telling businesses to get ready to adapt.

Gotta love how academic books don't earn you money, but LLMs can make money off of stealing them in the aggregate and if you write enough, they can also profit from stealing your personality after you are dead.

Fintan O'Toole: Ireland has spent the last 70 years unsuccessfully trying to dethrone King Cattle

BREAKING: A US court has just sided with fossil fuel pipeline giant Energy Transfer and ordered Greenpeace International and Greenpeace entities in the US to pay them US$345 million. This is a billionaire-backed attack on the right to protest. Greenpeace stands for all of us.

🎉 As we enter the sixth decade of IEEP leadership, we are pleased to announce the appointment of Mercedes Sanchez Varela as IEEP's new Chairperson, supported by Marianne Kettunen and Thomas Nowak as Deputy Chairs. Read more about Mercedes, Marianne, Thomas and their appointment 👇

Without family voting, British Asians would have instead voted for…the guy who thinks that they are not British? Or the woman who both reputable polls showed in third place? Seems legit!

This is a massive shift which would upend the lives of millions - not just the nearly half million directly threatened but their families. It would abandon a basic principle of law that changes are not retrospectively applied.

When you consider the fuss that UK officialdom made for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (a fuss that could and should have been much louder), yes absolutely the FCO has to answer for its abject failure here in what is actually a very similar case.