Good interview in the paper, this. I think Sadiq is right: London 'needs' to be less successful than it is for a bunch of political arguments here in the UK to work, hence the fictions being invented about it:

The monarchy requires unity to function. The populist right requires division to thrive. They are irreconcilable. Great mini thread …

Well said Charles. Leo. Zac. #ukpol

Those observing Christmas are celebrating a family of asylum seekers. If there is indeed a "War on Christmas," it's being waged by those trying to make our country less safe for the poor, for the marginalized, and for refugees.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Uncle Ebenezer Farage... the ghost of Christmas past. He wants to take away your free NHS healthcare by privatising it, and cutting workers' rights to make his rich pals richer. He's already helped make us poorer through #Brexit #ukpolitics #ReformXmas

“Pope Leo said in a Christmas Eve sermon on Wednesday that the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn should remind Christians that refusing to help the poor & strangers today is tantamount to rejecting God himself.” Obvious to any REAL Christian. #MerryChristmas

Letter to the FT that stingingly sums up Brexit and the shit creek we now find ourselves in. A terrible idea (naive, prejudiced and uninformed) that has deeply divided us and left us poorer and less secure… but unwilling to face up to the damage we’ve done to ourselves. While the EU moves on.

this is totalitarianism, basically. it’s almost eerie how much this is an open expression of what arendt described as the essence of the totalitarian mindset.

Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark – a sovereign nation. Venezuela is a sovereign nation. Panama is a sovereign nation. Canada is a sovereign nation. Mexico is a sovereign nation. Ukraine is a sovereign nation.

For those who actually care about evidence-based city-making, there’s a ton of evidence that decongestion pricing has been a massive success in New York City, by every measure of success, and many ways that can’t be measured.

The number of British programs where they mention they lost someone due to Covid. I think New Zealanders totally underestimate how lucky (and well managed) we were. The still loud antivax voice/Covid deniers doesn't help. Much harder to deny Covid exists when everyone knows someone who lost someone.

Trump has revoked legal status for at least 1.6 million immigrants over the past year by cancelling programs like TPS and student visas. Remember: these are people who entered the country legally. Trump never cared about “legal immigration" — just inflicting cruelty.

I’m not certain if there’s a big #nzpol community on here, but if there is: Last night I finally launched my web tool to track when this Parliament has gone into urgency, and which bills were affected by it. Takeaways: Urgency sessions: 19 Bills: 104 See the stats: nzpt.cjs.nz

Quite a journey we’ve been on in the last couple of decades haven’t we? From bankers too big to fail To billionaires too rich to jail

The immigration debate has dominated British politics this year. It’s a topic that’s close to our hearts on PSUK and we’ve done our best to push back on the scapegoating. Here’s a reminder from Nish on the bigger forces at play. #PodSaveTheUK #UKPolitics #UK #NishKumar

Watching the Prime Minister doco and the March 19 mosque attack and reminded how David Seymour was the ONLY MP who voted against the gun reforms.

The tax vs spending forced choice Q

What does it take to move 1000 people? Smart infrastructure supporting choices that don’t take up so much space (or produce so much emissions/pollution, cost so much public money etc). Mobility in cities is about space. Graphic via @seattlesubway.org based on a Sydney graphic I spread years ago.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Beyond parody. We have an attorney general who is covering up the Epstein Files and a President who is proud he could identify a giraffe

The problem with media treating politics like a game or a horse race is that it removes journalistic focus on the very real consequences of policy decisions.

For all of Farage’s bombast and bravado, Reform is basically just a retirement home for disgraced Tories - and the media should be reporting it as such

Dear @therestpolitics.bsky.social Given Rory’s focus on economics policy, debt & austerity, you should get you get @meadwaj.bsky.social former shadow chancellor economic advisor on leading or on TRIP for an erudite balanced, credible, progressive economist perspective #disagreeagreeably

Really enjoyed James Medway @meadwaj.bsky.social on @zackpolanski.bsky.social podcast. Felt like a live interview to be the greens economic advisor and he smashed it out of the park. A much more credible and rounded assessment than MMT, without any dilution of progresssive values. #ukpol

The next time you hear conservatives railing against "handouts for the poor," remind them that we should really be cutting corporate welfare — unnecessary and unwarranted aid for profitable corporations that are dependent on the taxpayer.

Post-war period fascinates me - we built *loads* of infra and houses but public debt levels fell. There must be things we can take from that era to inform what we do next. Also fascinates me that the 1980 to 2008 period is considered a success - we maxed out our private debt, and what did we build?

TL;DR: Russia has decided that the UK is Russia's enemy, and there's nothing we can do to change that as long as Putin is in power. The choice is whether to be an undefeated enemy or a defeated one. That's all the choice we get.

Farage's failed Brexit promised the world and has delivered nothing but misery. So why trust Farage's Reform with the UK economy? They can't even run councils they've won. #SpottedNews

Well that’s worked, hasn’t it – disapproval absolutely skyrocketing among Labour voters, but 1% down among Reform voters! Surely at some point Starmer will have to stop courting the votes of people who’ll never vote for him. But has he left it too late to rescure the votes of people who once did?

Bring Johno home! #nffc #johnsonin

Saw the notifications. The dead include: - A 39-year-old undocumented Nicaraguan man released by the Trump admin in 2018 - A 41-year-old Haitian man who entered legally through CBP One in 2023 - A 46-year-old Eritrean green card holder - A 56-year-old Bulgarian man who at one point had a green card

FOUR new deaths in ICE detention. That puts the total this year at 30 people dead; the highest in ICE's history and worse than even during the COVID years. It's clear that the system is breaking down. Many of these are preventable deaths.

"AI’s biggest impact [in elections this year] wasn’t a single “fake video,” but the thinning of the truth. The sheer volume of AI content led to “liar’s dividend,” where politicians could claim real scandals were “just AI deepfakes.” open.substack.com/pub/aiandpol...

I don’t support criminalising slogans, except when they’re directly used to harass or intimidate. But I think it’s a profound moral (and tactical) failure that campaigners didn’t stop using them long ago. www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-b...

Because our politics is in such a terrible place, I think we downplay quite how awful Kemi Badenoch has been. In any other era the leader of the Conservatives saying 'only migrants commit sex crimes - mass deportations now' would have not just been career ending but would've sunk the whole party

Now that, I'd LOVE to see💚 #nzpol

“The phenomenon is known as induced demand. The result is an endless cycle in which congestion leads to highway expansion, which invites more trips, which brings back traffic…The pattern is so inevitable that economists have dubbed it the iron law of congestion.” #InducedTraffic

This used to be Tulsi Gabbard.

2025: Priti Patel says Labour adopting Erasmus is a betrayal of Brexit 2020: Priti Patel was Home Secretary when her boss Boris Johnson said Erasmus would not be taken away because of Brexit

Today I have mostly been a petulant, attention-seeking cry baby.

Can we get something straight? Putin did influence the Brexit referendum. That's a fact. The question remains, to what degree were those efforts effective? Given the tiny margin...Putin's interference could easily have made the difference.

It's like writing a history of presidential assassinations but 'refusing to relitigate the cases of Lincoln and JFK'

The Pulitzer Board is actually fighting back against one of Trump’s vexatious lawsuits, saying, ‘If you were harmed, prove it — with medical and financial records.’ Not rolling over like some of the capitulating companies we’ve seen. newrepublic.com/post/204475/...

BREAKING on MS NOW: Jack Smith, in his opening statement to House Judiciary, says: "Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power."

How can you have a review of foreign interference in elections without, you know, reviewing past elections? Who wants a review of a film you haven’t seen yet??

The NZ Govt has announced that it will be reducing support for the Total Mobility scheme that subsidises travel for some disabled people That money being taken from disabled people is 25% of the tax rebates that were introduced for a tobacco company #nzpol www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...

From a professional comms perspective, I'd say a good start for Labour combatting far right rhetoric would be to stop repeating it, saying they "understand it" or including its stock tropes in official documents pretty much any time they talk about migration. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...