Have lost track of the number of times I've had Westminster Village types (journalists, politicians, policy types) ask "what impact will votes at 16 have?" and all of them seem genuinely surprised when I say "virtually none". Its basic maths! There aren't enough 16-17 year olds to change much!

Didn't think I would agree with this but found it very convincing. This one is free to read. Subscribe to @arguablymag.bsky.social for just £6/month to read all our posts. open.substack.com/pub/arguably...

Why Starmer can't govern – Geoff Mulgan writes for @arguablymag.bsky.social on Labour's lack of preparation and how to reform Britain's "amateur state". www.arguably.uk/p/why-starme...

We’ll be launching @arguablymag.bsky.social tomorrow with our founding essay on where progressives go next. Subscribe now to receive it: Arguably.uk

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Superb piece, and this in particular absolutely nails it.

V good paper here by Dan on the big bang double whammy of nationalising adult social care funding and reforming council tax *at the same time* to unlock the otherwise impenetrable politics

🚨🚨 NEW BLOGPOST 🚨🚨 The right wing should be worried about young men. Unlike Europe and the US, British young men are swinging wildly behind progressive parties. Some thoughts on why, and why most of the right are ignoring it. open.substack.com/pub/joxleywr...

Terrific report on that by @dsquareddigest.bsky.social for Labour Together, this:

Excellent thread and piece by JP

It’s crazy to me there’s not been *one* decent intervention by a senior politician on AI, what it’s for, should be about and our society. Unless I missed it? It’s just people saying ‘productivity’ and ‘jobs’ with literally no thought, thinking or ideas. But then I suppose same on everything.

The results are in lads

How could I forget, here's the UK version

The fact that in both 2019 and 2024, the winning party did so with a set of manifesto promises that could not be kept and dissolved upon contact with actual office is something that as an industry we should be much more bothered by than we are.

Yesterday, we put out a report on the most important issues to voters. We know that immigration now tops the traditional most important issues question (see below from @yougov.co.uk). But that doesn't tell the full story. Here is a rundown of the experiments we did to test this out (A THREAD):

Top top work here from @cwp-weir.bsky.social

This is an interesting piece but I just read it going “the missing bit is the section on how the internet has fried everyone’s brains”. www.bbc.com/news/article...

The map below shows how far behind France and Germany we are in mass transit. In France, every place with over 150,000 people has some form of tram or metro. But if mayoral areas can 'become builders' as @tracybrabinmayorwy.bsky.social puts it in the foreword, we can turn this around. 🧵 1/9

A few weeks back, I wrote a post on why Greater Manchester is the fastest growing part of England. Today, I’ve followed this up by creating a Northern productivity leaderboard and then looking at the second fastest: Cumbria. futurenorth.substack.com/p/is-cumbria... 🧵 1/6

Ministers could give mayors control of schools and hospitals in devolution shake-up

So google maps updated some satellite footage, here’s one single Ukrainian village. One out of thousands

See also the *massive* cocaine epidemic among 40- to 50-something men. The media keeps talking about young people and drugs but peak deaths are among 40-49 year olds now.

And yet... Under qualified pollsters fighting for attention in an oversaturated market, working with shit quality panels, will continue to churn out this polling, and sell it to naive reporters, whose editors desperately want this to be true

this is v good

A majority of Labour party members - who are on any metric rather more socially liberal than the average voter - back ID cards. Plenty of polling showing they are popular with voters in general. Perhaps the zombie myth that British voters oppose them will die at last? labourlist.org/2025/09/digi...

Greater Manchester has been the fastest growing part of the country in the past decade – measured either by total growth or by productivity growth. I’ve had a look into the data to try to work out what is growing and why. Below are some of the things I have found. 🧵 1/7

Perhaps also you could interview some of those making editorial decisions in the media about whether they are taking their responsibilities seriously?

Parks and playgrounds are integral to places, allowing people to relax, children to play and more. Hard to imagine NYC without Central Park, or Ilkley without its moor! This builds on a historic legacy of Victorian era council developing them for the good of their communities. Short 🧵 1/3

What has London’s Bakerloo line got to do with the government’s ability to invest in the North? Put simply, if we let London raise more money from high land values to pay for its infrastructure, this frees up more government spending for the rest of the country. Read below to see detail 👇

This is how we pay for the Bakerloo Line extension FREE TO READ!) takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/bakerloo-e...

About a sixth of the public endorse very extreme views on making legal/settled migrants leave & then follow up on the specifics. (This overlaps with the 8% who say they support violence in protests & liked the riots, so it should be challenged, not indulged)

After 800 people attended across 8 protests on Friday, up to 2000 across a dozen modest protests on Saturday, "UK braces for more protests" is an absurd headline Largest protests & counter so far this weekend well below 500 people (but a much larger Gaza protest on Friday night mostly unreported)

Gna be fascinating and depressing to see the coverage of a property tax (if it happens) massively skewed by every commentator and newspaper editor owning an expensive house in London or the southeast and standing to lose out

Really good piece and thread (really worth signing up to this newsletter!) I think the big question, as a longtime supporter of fiscal devolution, is: what do you do about the fact that the tax base is now quite weak in a lot of places?

More A-levels taken in PE than in French, German and classical languages combined! on.ft.com/3Hw6eq3

A bit behind schedule, but how voters moved in the year since the 2024 election. Labour facing same splintering of the last govt: a significant bloc crossing floor to primary electoral opposition, with a numerically larger chunk moving to opponents on same side of spectrum, plus many 'don't knows'.

preach

large parts of UK politics are swinging far-right with very, very frightening speed, and racists are getting increasingly open about expressing their bigotry.

What if – hear me out – some people just sincerely think digital ID would be a good idea for public policy and that the trade-off with civil liberties is worth taking, and a weird quasi-conspiracy isn't required?

Increasingly convinced the cheapest way to address this is to reverse local government austerity. Returning English local authority budgets to 2010 levels would cost about £7bn. Factor in population and demographic change and you'd want maybe £15bn. Benefits could be seen quickly and felt widely.

How about, instead, we give them ballooning responsibilities, less money, and limit their ways to raise it themselves?

The new Devolution Bill entrenches the mayoral model, extends its powers to new areas and creates a framework for the transfer of more powers - including a new right to request and a parliamentary lock on the removal of powers. New article by me in the MJ: www.themj.co.uk/genuine-mile...

Since people keep asking... We don't know with confidence how 16 and 17 year olds would vote. Polling evidence is quite scant because young people are some of the hardest to reach (and I would expect those you can reach will be disproportionately engaged and, therefore, not very representative). 🧵

PS. We'll need to be careful about polls of 16-17 yr olds until we have good confidence in samples and adjusting for turnout. I say Greens only because its Greens who are capturing protest votes from Labour among young voters atm, and may be able to mobilise preferences>votes.

A very important correction thank you @ecasalicchio.bsky.social

✈️ Britain’s talked about a third runway at Heathrow for two decades. Our new report with @BritishProgress shows how a flight could take off before 2029 - if Parliament chooses to speed up the process through a Public Bill.

And most people don't know how income tax bands work

Was with 100k+ people in Hyde Park last night having a lovely evening as the sun set. Walked to Green Park to get home and passed dozens of great bars + restaurants. These tedious misanthropes need to go outside.

Paid internship at The Economist. Put a lot of effort into the piece. Be original and write it well. www.economist.com/britain/2025...