Bleak, and accurate.

“Taxes on wealth are essential politically, but they are insufficient for a resilient social-democratic politics and a truly better society. Taxation is the downpayment that we as citizens all make to live in a fair and cohesive society“ - could not agree more.

Breaking the tax pledge is the right call...and politically sulphurous. Reeves must argue, far more forcefully, that taxes are *the* essential downpayment we all pay for a fairer society. Patrick Diamond and I wrote for @renewaljournal.bsky.social. Key points in 🧵 👇 renewal.org.uk/blog/if-labo...

New - Louise Haigh and Vicky Foxcroft are reviving the Tribune group to do organising in the PLP along the soft left. Key figure in the welfare rebellion are formalising their organising power ahead of the Budget. (yes this is one for the nerds) Story here - www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Did women ruin the workplace? Should we tell everyone? Should we throw a party? Should we invite Blue Labour?

BBC News bulletins leading on the story of an Algerian man being mistakenly released by the prison service. Funnily enough I don't remember these cases ever leading the bulletins when an average of ten prisoners were mistakenly released a month in the final year of the last Government

Centre-left politicians worried about anti-car policies polling badly in the short term need to remember: every measure that pushes people to cycle or use public transport ultimately creates more centre-left voters; every measure that leads to more people driving creates more right-wing voters

Tax policy on the British left is pure "anti-bedtime left". Bizarre idea that you can have a big social democratic welfare state without everyone contributing properly www.economist.com/britain/2025...

Exactly this. Found it chilling a few weeks ago when a BBC journalist asked Starmer if he would be comfortable with his daughter walking past an asylum hotel. Mainstream broadcasters seem to have decided it is not worth questioning the assumption Rob describes here.

I used to run the Labour Campaign for Childcare Reform X account. We abandoned it as our supporters stopped seeing our posts, and we stopped seeing much from potential supporters. We did, however, start getting funnelled a lot of content about the merits of the racist ‘white replacement‘ theory.

Available in paperback for anyone who wants to share the experience of reading an excellent book and feeling malaise about the Labour Party! books.google.co.uk/books/about/...

Thought the Times had been hoaxed. Turns out to be so much better than that

Quite why is unclear at this point. Clearly this place is a bit of an echo chamber. It’s just an echo chamber full of people previously inclined to support Labour and half the journalists and think tankers in the country.

The main difference between the UK and our European counterparts who enjoy cheaper energy bills is that where we add levies directly to energy bills, they often fund the same things through general taxation instead.

Nice summary of the fiscal situation in the UK. I’ll add this - over recent elections the pattern between income and vote choice has broken down. Labour, without quite realising it, have become a party whose younger, graduate, professional voters are now the ones paying much higher marginal rates.

I think this is absolutely right. Also, so many of these guys do actually understand that 'a mixed-race family in an advert' is there to sell people things. They absolutely cannot stand that some minorities are successful. It is resentment all the way down.

"It is striking that Calgie’s apology went down far worse with the population of X than his original offence. Perhaps the conservative soul has changed. But if the right’s problem is ideological hygiene, then perhaps it’s because it’s swimming in an open sewer."

🙃

Union affiliates‘ impact on turnout important - I’m actually quite surprised turnout wasn’t lower.

Good piece on the Caerphilly result. open.substack.com/pub/willhayw...

Irrespective of whether she was freelancing, or speaking for the Conservative Party - Katie Lam is plain wrong. It's unconscionable to threaten to deport hundreds of thousands of people who have Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK. This is not who we are as a country.

Idi Amin deported 80,000 Asians from Uganda in 1972. So although the Conservatives want to propose the first mass deportation of legal migrants since Idi Amin - especially with the retrospective changes in ILR - Lam is proposing to deport 20 times as many people as Idi Amin.

Have to say, I love this trend of making teachers stick their class of six year olds in hi viz for school trips. My tube carriage this morning looks like it’s full of tiny, precocious traffic wardens.

“Some people say choosing judges based on their political beliefs makes them politicians’ puppets - what do you think of that?” “Rubbish!”

"While Britain was redefining what a woman is, China was building five nuclear reactors," says Kemi Badenoch. I cannot be the only person curious about how these two things are related

All these people really want is to pay no taxes and be treated with floor scraping deference. Everything else is just bullshit in pursuit of that goal.

Labour Party conference's most stylish accessory - modelled here by @imogenshaw.bsky.social

If you’re heading up to Labour Conference from Euston today, remember to say thank you Louise Haigh for getting the giant departure boards back 🙏

I've written about Mainstream, "The Starmer Symptom", and why the soft left getting organised is a good idea – if they can update themselves. www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/0...

The evidence for this argument has grown and grown, and become increasingly convincing. The policy remains difficult, unavoidably. But the rhetoric is clearly wrong. Critically, the centre left must directly challenge the slow normalisation of far right ideas for both moral and tactical reasons.

Lots of cats love shoes… but not many quite as much as Mordred.

The good news: I finally have my Labour Conference pass. The bad news: The party’s printer has done something to my photo which makes me look like a Halloween zombie 💀

Retrospectively removing indefinite leave to remain would be immoral and economically damaging. It would tear families apart. Attacking it as ‘potentially illegal’ is completely beside the point. Argue with the (awful) idea. Don’t try ’well, actually you can’t do that’.

Thousands of Londoners have indefinite leave to remain. They have legal rights and are our friends, neighbours and colleagues, contributing hugely to our city. Threatening to deport people living and working here legally is unacceptable.

Yet another example of the bot-filled, far-right X atmosphere shifting norms in mainstream journalism

I wrote about the noticeable Vibe Shift around Keir Starmer's viability as PM: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

Me for SEC Newgate News: ‘What was forgivable in opposition, faced with a long-serving and unpopular Conservative administration, is not enough to carry a party through five years in government.’ www.secnewgate.co.uk/our-insights...

At a point where both following and working adjacent to UK politics was feeling depressing, this thread was a delightful read.

So now No10 Director of Strategy Paul Ovenden has quit over “lurid comments” made about Diane Abbott. Every time I think I could not rate the judgement on display at the top of government any lower, I’m proven wrong.

Our Government needs a revolutionary change... in the social media platforms it uses.

It’s far from the only (!) problem with UK political discourse, but the government could do a lot worse than get off X. Journalists would adapt. It’s not widely used by members of the public. What‘s the remaining audience, apart from bots, fascists and a billionaire owner who does things like this?

👇 Leadership matters and does change things. (A smaller scale version of this is watching people on here who have a red rosette where their own moral compass should be sharing a statement that only earlier this morning they thought it was Actually Wise Not To Make)

At this point, I don’t even think the No 10 operation is listening to dissenting voices from the Labour *right*, let alone the middle and (soft) left of the party.

Why Labour’s deputy leadership contest is - and isn’t - significant. Me for SEC Newgate News ⬇️

A rare example of an all-women planning panel - you love to see it! #GGsummit

I understand (though I do not accept) the government's case for remaining on X. What is totally indefensible is the *exclusive* presence of many MPs & departments on that site. They are handing a monopoly of key government communications to a site that's increasingly run by & for the radical right

"The Cat Read the Emails First" (2025) acrylic painting By Ukrainian artist Nataliya Bagatskaya - n.bagatska [IG] #art #painting #illustration #caturday

Nothing I have seen so far has convinced me that a Reform majority/largest party outcome at the next general election would produce a whip-able Parliamentary Reform party…

Happy International Cat Day to Mordred and Hoid