The 'driving the DLR' metaphor turned out to be far too kind, in that I have never seen a kid in the front of the DLR who didn't know that they were aboard a train.

"Asking Burnham to outline his cogent political programme is like asking my cat, who came from a shelter near the Etihad, whether she supports Man City. You’re asking about something she has no interest in and that forms no part of her life."

Very, very good and adds to the sense that Burnham does have a grasp of a genuinely innovative approach to rebuilding trust in politics, but hasn't bothered that much with the detail and taking difficult decisions isn't in his nature. Bottom line: being Mayor suits his talents, being PM won't

Thought this was a good read on Burnham, his record in Manchester, and his prospects as prime minister

'My swastika tattoo raises lots of questions already answered by my swastika tattoo'.

Andy Burnham says land in the UK is ‘undertaxed’ - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... There wasn't any kind of battle of idea in GE2024 and now we're getting one. I know people are irritated at all the turmoil but this is at least a positive.

Back to the future A single market in goods was Thorneycroft’s big alternative to EEC in 1956 It failed then and will fail again - not least because the UK is a services economy that needs a single market in services (which needs FOM) www.ft.com/content/b13e...

"asylum needs to be treated as an administrative and diplomatic problem, not a theatre for successive home secretaries to manifest their performative toughness." Food for thought from Jonathan Portes:

Shocking. Worth noting that those who oppose such profiteering are often called nimbys.

Before the mooted return of the Messiah this was the most exciting thing to have happened in Makerfield during my lifetime. writewyattuk.com/2022/07/08/r...

This would be an absolute disgrace. www.ft.com/content/c98a...

Nobody knows more about GM than @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social

Cut VAT to 5% on warm beer, county cricket admission prices and old maids bicycling to evensong.

Really nice bit of work (open access) on wartime (and post war) French inflation. Including black market prices makes a *huge* difference. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

"War," a poem handwritten in 1944 by Mabel Bryant, the mother of a United States Navy sailor deployed in WWII

J'Acuzzi

It's another indicator that all the claims to a global role are a threadbare facade that barely conceals a retreat into parochial paralysis

Well worth reading even if you’re not Welsh, for a brutally honest attack on Starmer-McSweeneyism from a genuine Labour man.

"The International Energy Agency recommended 10 things governments could do to ease some of the pressures caused by the strait’s closure, and the government has done none of them." @stephenkb.bsky.social on a party that doesn't even try to make an argument to voters, let alone a difficult one.

Hadn’t read this phrase before. “Populism killing the future” exactly sums up why I find it so depressing that we have here in the UK a government pretending that the inflationary consequences of Trump’s war are the fault of the supermarkets, and opposition parties pretending it is the government.

Some of us are old enough to remember when Streeting’s big idea was to move the NHS from sickness to prevention.

I’ve seen some daft opinion pieces in my time* but “I found a model railway in my attic, turned up with it and the National Railway Museum wouldn’t take it. This says a lot about society” really takes the cake. *usually in my sent folder, amirite fellas?

This is a failure of journalism, on a really basic level, but it is also a failure of political leadership. It was going to fall simply in the basis of what the previous govt did. But Starmer somehow conspired to actively spread the impression it was rising.

Fits with his pre-GM career. It's basically how he lost in 2015 imo

This shows that Burnham has no clear strategy. It's all driven by tactics. Cf. Starmer.

A Labour government sits paralysed as many of the basic foundations of the UK's strategic competitiveness get stripped away one by one

- Subsidising consumption in the face of a supply shock - reducing incentives to drive less/switch to EVs - using up limited fiscal space to help better-off drivers rather than the most vulnerable. Hard to think of a worse policy right now.

Burnley isn't going to reindustrialise because it already has the highest percentage of manufacturing jobs in any UK city. The fact it has the second lowest average earnings should concern anyone sincerely pushing the value of reindustrialisation.

The era of supply shocks cries out for a politician willing to be straight with people: these shocks make us poorer, we have to divide out the pain while sticking up our values. None of these measures pass that test

This is such a good post and echoes many of the points that Eddington made in his Transport Study for Brown. Start with what you're trying to achieve and work backwards from there. Dare I say it, but the same approach ought to apply to energy.

Very odd this is being reported as a “UK Treasury” initiative as if it’s the civil servants pushing it This is a political idea presumably emanating from Rachel Reeves www.ft.com/content/5636...

Fuel duty moves, Russian sanction tweaking and talk of voluntary supermarket price caps are just a total mess of a response to an energy price surge.

A problem for populist governance is that the goods on which you could build a popular and moral case for profit limits are basic foodstuffs, but the profit margins on basic foodstuffs are extremely low already

Memo to Reeves: the strait of Hormuz really IS closed. This really IS causing shortages of goods.

How are Labour and the SNP going to look credible in attacking the Greens for economic populism after proposing price controls?

New Associate Professor role in modern British History, just advertised here at Oxford. @lifelong-learning.ox.ac.uk @ox.ac.uk @kelloggoxford.bsky.social my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

A lot of people are going to appreciate the state pension.

Too much to read; not enough time. Some of the articles in the latest issue of 'Technology and Culture' look really interesting.

Those arent running socks. Every time you see these "Burnham running from his house" pictures he is wearing no show invisible trainer socks. Nobody serious runs in them Andy. They fall into the shoe if you go any distance and they're so thin you'll put a hole in them in a week. /ends

Stiff leg thrown forward leading to a heel strike, he'll be crippled before he makes it to No. 10.

Thinking “Take back control” only resonated because of Brexit is a major error made by many politicians, particularly the present government.

This remains true.

While Labour is absolutely being too timid on this debate, and basically giving Farage a free pass to avoid talking about the damage done by his last racist political project, the UK discourse seems blissfully unaware that the likely response to a request to rejoin at present would be "no."

'The magic of "Manchesterism" is that it's mainly funded by people who don't live in Manchester.' www.linkedin.com/posts/david-...

The extent to which so much debate (still FGS!) seems to operate on the assumption that the UK fully controls pace and depth of relations with the EU is just ridiculous by this point. I know Matthew isn't claiming that, but so much of the vibes around Streeting and Burnham's positioning reflects it

A leadership race of andy burnham versus andy burnhams of the past is both going to be congested and fiercely fought

ICYMI: My latest post on the government's planned SEND reforms, where good intentions don't make up for underfunding... ...and my 40-hour Mad One creating a mega-spreadsheet by entering about 19,850 data points one by one chamindajayanetti.substack.com/p/send-refor...

Key (and I think accurate) conclusion of a very good thread

Right, this is exactly it. Most people say things that are not true because they are helpful or easy. Starmer says things that are untrue even when they are less helpful than the truth.

This is why I think “Starmer is a deciever” is a too flattering frame. His untruths are far less thought through than that.