YouGov has the Greens in second place for the first time

Yeah, having now slept on it properly, it is weird that no losing parties statement really reckons with why people might have chosen the Greens and instead they all chose to blame sectarianism. It does suggest that they still don't really recognise people who vote Green as, you know, real people.

Good analysis by Ben, my only addition is that I think psychologically Labour cannot accept that their median voter is closer to Hannah Spencer: still young, well off but still renting, female, and socially liberal than it is their desired median voter: Lee Anderson, and that is because of misogyny.

This is good; Labour have failed to work out how to talk about the Greens or the Governments own record and it is only when they lose (I suspect) at least three flagship London Labour councils that they will realise how deep the rot is

@stephenkb.bsky.social your point about what does Kemi do in recess- she clearly spends it on Twitter getting angry about renovation plans for Parliament!

What is the culture secretary doing about this?

This is a gimmick. Putting a building in Birmingham does not make a difference- the tories put a treasury campus in Darlington!

Keir Starmer is the man for the moment.

What is the point in this?

Very odd briefing in the FT that the membership can’t be trusted so Keir must remain PM- the membership voted for Jeremy because the PLP put him on the ballot and most of those members have likely now left

I think NDJ shows a lot about the PLP and the party. He is clearly on the left of the party yet was selected by the fabled ‘best vetting ever’ machine: He has been right about a number of policy decisions and showed more political judgement than no.10… www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Absolutely brilliant column by @patrickmaguire.bsky.social: every word of it true:

It is stupid we have a system where an appointed committee can remove elected members of parliament from the commons but Lords are essentially powerless. The best argument for lords being term limited and massively reformed

This is actually a really good challenge to Labour Fabianism/old rightism and why I think that an actual liberalism needs to be part of labours approach- it’s not even about ideology as both Blair and Ken Livingstone were huge supporters of liberalism

Does he really think anyone is stupid enough to believe this?

It is very funny as every Labour government has a minister who makes mad comments and suggestions- this is the maddest. MPs do not make policy and do not have control over GDP- you might as well link their pay to house prices in Hamburg.

100% because they knew Andy would be a challenger to Keir. Oh well I look forward to when instead Wes deposes him and we get someone even worse in charge

The BBC coverage is absolutely terrible. It leads on "sharply contested narratives" It has a dramatic skew to the US government It has posted the video but has failed to report on what it shows: it shows the US govt account is untrue

A few days ago, I stood in the graveyard of an 1100 year old church, getting damper and damper in the drizzling rain. A woman walked into the graveyard, waved, said hello, and, as we had previously arranged, handed me a paper bag full of human bones. The life of a churchwarden is a strange one...

For the first time in years people will be rushing to work out who is still sitting on the NEC and whether they will vote for Andy.

Great to see the Secretary of State has woken up but another weird attempt at pushing levelling up on a sector which already does it. Rather than lecturing museums could the government perhaps support arts venues outside of London? www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

The old cuomo quote about poetry and prose was wrong in that you govern in both poetry and prose- the poetry of this government has been a right wing, po faced timid one while the prose has been an old Labour economic message- no wonder it’s unpopular!

Notable that Labour's losses to the right (11%) are dwarfed by their losses within bloc (27%) and Don't Knows / WNVs (21%). Collectively 4.5 times as large. The argument that ONLY losses to the right matter in the constituencies Labour have to defend seems increasingly tenuous to me.

Telling that Ed Miliband praised the speech on the radio this morning!

This "open borders" line is *infuriating* - these people came here to study or work, because they had a uni place or a job to come to. They paid visa fees, student fees, NHS surcharge - and many of them are doing challenging and important work - staffing our care homes, for example, including Mum's.

Another u-turn after Labour MPs spent months defending it and also means that a sensible policy (ID cards) is now written off as its associated with a terrible government www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

"Your base supporters are crucial because they're the ones sharing, discussing, and framing these moments in everyday conversations. When they're demoralised, they either stay silent or actively undermine your messaging, allowing opponents to dominate the narrative space." [email protected]

A good article and one where I have really complex thoughts; and comments made me realise we don’t think about what a successful business looks like and why would someone want to open one?

The level of quixoticism at this point is like Kemi Badenoch spending all day trying to win over Your Party voters. What part of ‘no’ does Blue Labour not understand?

A good article from @stephenkb.bsky.social rightly expressing fury at the moral vacuum that the Government and a lot of the Labour ‘old right’ have towards basic fundamental rights. www.ft.com/content/0e12...

Peak Kemi on Radio 4. Says Maduro being removed was morally good because she lived in Nigeria, moaned that the PM spends all his time in meetings and then starts ranting about welfare.

a politician able to use proper words and reasonably complex sentences instead of sounding like GenAI trying to communicate with primary school children

@stephenkb.bsky.social thought you would find this funny- I assume it’s some sort of ‘the 1945 Government did too much universalism?’ stance?

Extremely candid but I see we’ve reached the stage of ‘payroll minister’ is able to criticise the PM and his team with no fear of retribution. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Yeah, look, I realize I just wrote something, but the NYT has managed to annoy me enough to get me to write something else. othermeans.io/p/reforms-of...

Excitingly, my book now has a cover. You can see it here, where you can also now pre-order! www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/no-sec...

Is welfare spending ''out of control''? It's estimated to be 10.8 per cent of GDP this financial year. That's just 0.8 per cent of GDP higher than in 2007-08, and total welfare spending has actually fallen fallen by 1.2 per cent of GDP since 2012-13⤵️ buff.ly/s5mz97u

The OBR publishing early is bad news for a) the person who carries the can b) the political debate around the OBR but maybe good for those of us who think Budget documents should be published before, not after, the Chancellor speaks as a matter of course when the world doesn't end at 13:30 today?

I commend this review which I carried out in 2013. The recommendations remain relevant today. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f09...

I think one of the biggest failures has been that the university sector & policy people who benefited from it have completed failed to make the case for the sector. There is a lot of blame to go around but it’s a really big failure considering how much the sector is worth…

She really is uniquely terrible.

An article which claims the Prime Ministers Chief of Staff, a very busy man, is spending hours of his time with Lord Glasman- a man who wants to deploy the navy in the channel. www.thetimes.com/article/a4a7...

Really hard to see how this would work- what would happen to the thousands of Syrians in the UK? Would Govt really want a difficult debate every year about essentially deporting people based on a foreign office assessment

Here's a chart of the marginal tax rate for someone with two kids. They pay 53% tax on every £ they earn between £60k and £80k. 62% on every £ they earn between £100k and £125k. 9% more if they've a student loan This is from our tax calculator: buff.ly/CFoExUX

At this point I struggle to see why the U.K. shouldn’t just do an Italy and appoint a technocrat who actually believes in making choices and fixing stuff. We are led by a PM whose only North Star is a rapidly increasing poll deficit.

My take is that politically tax rises will be more unpopular and damaging than a lot of people on here think and tax rises are always unpopular but Labour cannot sort out living standards and public services without reaching for the big levers

Great news. They were a Cameronite gimmick which made no sense and just confused people about who is responsible for policing.

This is a classic ‘the person you hate the most is doing a bid to get rid of the leader… please support us’- Mays team did it by claiming Grant Shapps was leading a coup! There’s a reason they’re talking up Wes.