Contrast this with Trump's infamous mocking of a disabled journalist

This weeks post: UK Productivity and the Budget mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/11/uk-p... if the Chancellor is going to break her tax pledge, she should do so in a big rather than small way. What she wants to avoid at all costs is finding herself in the same situation in a year or two years time.

"Far from draining our welfare system, migrants are supporting the British state’s solvency." New analysis by @lgilbert.co ukandeu.ac.uk/lower-migrat...

This weeks post: UK Productivity and the Budget mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/11/uk-p... if the Chancellor is going to break her tax pledge, she should do so in a big rather than small way. What she wants to avoid at all costs is finding herself in the same situation in a year or two years time.

Vital piece of investigative reporting from Sky. They've uncovered the X algorithm which feeds users extremist right wing material from the moment they join the site. It is a far-right radicalisation engine, by design. news.sky.com/story/the-x-...

“When it comes to breaking a tax pledge, the phrase ‘better late than never’ applies. Far better to break the tax pledge now than in a budget nearer the election” The Chancellor’s tax pledge cannot override her commitment to meet the fiscal rule involving the current deficit.

Y'days post: UK Productivity and the Budget mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/11/uk-p... From a political point of view, one way to soften the damage caused by breaking their tax pledge is for the government to both increase and reduce some of the big three taxes.

Good article here by @sjwrenlewis.bsky.social. If the facts change, why then should anyone continue following the previously announced course. It can be argued that Reeves should have done this earlier, but as stated in article: better late than never. mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/11/uk-p...

On the UK need to raise taxes: "...it may well be that the OBR’s previous assumption of an eventual 4% hit to the level of productivity from Brexit may be too low". To justify tax raises the rationale is easy: UK voted for Brexit and thus to become poorer.

The case for tax rises is stronger & clearer than Reeves pretends. It's that, given our lack of productive capacity, we have an inflation problem, which means that the alternative to tax rises is either infeasible cuts in public spending or higher mortgage rates.

"Labour will be attacked for breaking its pledge whether it does so in a big or small way, or to use economic jargon, there is a large fixed cost element in breaking the pledge. What she wants to avoid at all costs is finding herself in the same situation in a year or two years time."

"What also seems clear from a political point of view is that if the Chancellor is going to break her tax pledge, she should do so in a big rather than small way." 👇

After a video seemed to show Israeli soldiers abusing a Palestinian prisoner, Israel has... arrested the lawyer who authorised the release of the video www.ft.com/content/0456...

And yes, one decisive budget now - to push markets into right direction - rather than attempting tax rises closer to a General Election. bsky.app/profile/sjwr...

New post: UK Productivity and the Budget mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/11/uk-p... When it comes to breaking their tax pledge, the phrase ‘better late than never’ applies. Better now than in a budget nearer the election, both from a political and economic point of view.

It's really notable how the govt, and the rest, rushed to condemn this policing decision as antisemitic (either without reading the details, or ignoring and burying them)...but take ages to respond to outright racism and incitement from the British herrenvolk crew and the MechaHitler guy 🤔

Very poor from the government: it won't review suitability of X for its communications, and insists on keeping secret its previous review.

This weeks post: How the reaction to a football ban showed how our politicians and media have become trapped in right wing Islamophobic narratives and detached from the majority of voters mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/10/how-... Within 5 hours leaders of the 4 main parties had condemned the ban.

This is really poor by BBC researchers and producers. Goodwin hasn't been an active academic for a number of years, yet is described as one (thus legitimating his relentless Reform activism and constant bad faith misrepresentation of evidence). 1/?

Amazing how quickly everyone moved on from this - just 10 days ago the media was flooded with stories about how the UK is overwhelmed with a crisis of antisemitism, and how SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! This is an emergency, we were told, and it shames Britain. Today, silence. bsky.app/profile/sjwr...

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

This weeks post: How the reaction to a football ban showed how our politicians and media have become trapped in right wing Islamophobic narratives and detached from the majority of voters mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/10/how-... Within 5 hours leaders of the 4 main parties had condemned the ban.

Y'days post: How the reaction to a football ban showed how our politicians and media have become trapped in right wing Islamophobic narratives and detached from the majority of voters mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/10/how-... Within 5 hours leaders of the 4 main parties had condemned the ban.

Your daily reminder that the government continues to commercially support an individual who wants to destroy it through fascist violence.

Hits so many nails on the head.

Reform are into Day Three of Racismsplaining. It's harder than it looks. thecritic.co.uk/easy...

Those expected to be rational all too quickly fall into reinforcing right-wing ideology.

New post: How the reaction to a football ban showed how our politicians and media have become trapped in right wing Islamophobic narratives and detached from the majority of voters mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/10/how-...

"For the government it’s quite mad to keep using X. It’s active participation in its own destruction and against its own interests. I cannot fathom the logic of doing it. It would be like a Reform government communicating entirely through the Guardian comments section." 👏 @samfr.bsky.social

Very good from @jonnelledge.bsky.social but I think misses the vital role of the "respectable" conservative press in normalising this. Compare/contrast the Times' evisceration of Powell in 1968 with its current enthusiasm for deportation/"remigration". www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

Ballroom will ensure greatness, says editorial board of newspaper entirely owned by major donor to the ballroom project... (without mentioning that detail...):

The breaking down of anti-racism norms *in elite circles* in British politics is starkly at odds with the direction of public opinion on race.

"What voluntary alignment does mean is a clunky process of copying and pasting new EU regulations onto the UK statute book for limited economic gain. It is a high-effort, low-reward strategy." ✍️ Joël Reland reflects on Labour's Brexit trap https://ukandeu.ac.uk/labours-brexit-trap/

You can’t even complain about the number of black people in your town or on TV these days without being called a racist.

Something unprecedented happened this week in Europe that should alarm every European citizen who values democracy.

Breaking: The Department of Justice announced it will "monitor polling sites in six jurisdictions [in New Jersey and California] ahead of the upcoming November 4, 2025, general election to ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law." www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justi...

Striking words from anon former senior civil servant to George Osborne, relayed on podcast with Ed Balls, re briefing against Chris Wormald, cabinet sec... 1/5

It is really hard for me to imagine a scenario where there are free and fair elections in the US in 2026. Europeans need to come to terms with that. America is transitioning to an authoritarian form of government. So what are we going to do here?

Ed Luce watching democracy die in the United States of America

That scene of the Welsh BBC correspondent being the only person interviewing Caerphilly's new Plaid AM while the rest of the media interviewed Reform's loser in the background was far too on the nose.

Reform lost in Caerphilly in Wales by 11 points, because they had a very good chance of winning the seat, and most people did not want them to

The anti-migrant language about "cultural coherence" used by rising Tory star Katie Lam sounds very much like the 1930s, when her grandmother found sanctuary in the UK www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/pol...

This week's post: What the call for fiscal headroom reveals mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/10/what... Exaggerated claims about market reactions to debt and deficits infantilize fiscal policy, and that can be dangerous. The call for more fiscal headroom is just a small example of that danger.

This week's post: What the call for fiscal headroom reveals mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/10/what... Exaggerated claims about market reactions to debt and deficits infantilize fiscal policy, and that can be dangerous. The call for more fiscal headroom is just a small example of that danger.

Why is a Labour Home Secretary perpetuating this myth in The Sun? Asylum applications in the UK are significantly below the average for all European countries. The only person helped by spreading this falsehood is Nigel Farage

Y'days post: What the call for fiscal headroom reveals mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/10/what... We don't ask the Bank to provide headroom for its 2% inflation target so why require it for fiscal rules? Is it because the taxes=current spending rule is incorrectly viewed as an asymmetrical target?

A policy this expansive would certainly mean mass stripping of permanent residence status from people with ILR (including pensioners and parents of British children) on a scale far beyond anything any democracy has ever done before. There is no public support for such an extreme policy.

The North Carolina legislature is set to pass a new Trump-inspired gerrymandered congressional map. The move is likely to give Republicans nearly 80 percent of US House seats in an otherwise closely divided swing state where Trump won 51 percent of the vote in 2024.

To be clear, the Conservatives, as His Majesty's Official Opposition, have drafted legislation which they propose to use, and which would allow for the deportation of tens of thousands of people from the United Kingdom. And provide arbitrary power to extend the conditions for such deportation.

My understanding tho is the issue here is precisely that everyone knows who is responsible for the strategic (such as they are) choices made over the past year, and part of what is going on is “those people don’t want to admit fault, and are willing to crash the plane to avoid doing so”.