Most people know so little about settlement, attitudes are v framing dependent So this feels like comfort blanket/denial of political reality stuff that Home Office are circulating to media if More in Common don't have attitudes of the million people directly affected (and the relative salience!)

Low-income households with children gain the most from Scottish tax and benefit policy relative to the rest of Great Britain’s: +£2,760 a year for second lowest tenth of households – a 9% income boost. Low-income households without children see far smaller gains.

A genuinely big announcement on English devolution from Rachel Reeves today! As we at @instituteforgovernment.org.uk alongside others have argued fiscal devolution was a missing piece of the puzzle in the government's devolution white paper.

The 2019 ISSP did a module on social inequality and asked people what social class they think they are. The most "middle class" and up countries were Israel, then the Nordics, then Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. 39% in Britain identified as working class vs. only 20% in Sweden and 15% in Germany

Scotland also has the second highest wages of any region for the bottom 75% of the hourly pay distribution, only being beat by the South East at the 80th percentile and the East at the 90th percentile

We don't talk enough about how Scotland went from having lower wages/productivity than the UK average to being second only to the South East and London on both

The counties with highest proportion of car free households in the US are all major cities, remote parts of Alaska, or predominantly Amish

London had the highest number of dwellings per 1,000 residents of all regions in Great Britain in 1990, but 25 years of population growth and slow building reduced it to a distant last by 2015.

Numbeo's crowdsourced cost of living indices line up surprisingly well with ICP and OECD PPP benchmarks

I initially thought it was ridiculous to predict Poland overtaking the UK on GDP by 2030, but a simple state space model fit on quarterly GDP per capita data from the OECD puts the chances at almost 1 in 3.

'Across all OECD countries, single homeowners who have just lost their jobs retain 55% of their previous in-work incomes on average, falling to 22% if they are still unemployed after five years. In the UK, the “replacement rate” is just 12 per cent in both cases.' 👀 @sarahoconnorft.ft.com

TIL Scotland has 12% more dwellings per capita than England

Another fun angle is the annual wage percentile needed to be able to afford the rent on a one bedroom flat using the 30% of gross income rule. More than 90% of full-time employees can afford that in the North East and Yorkshire; only 30% can in London

I keep thinking rental affordability couldn't possibly be any worse in London, but the data shows it was somehow much worse from 2014 to 2020

We're running out of sky. If Saudi or Azerbaijan airspace shuts, Europe will be cut off from Asia. My newsletter, out now.

I decided to do a soft reset on my Substack. The first new post is reflections on @adamprz.bsky.social's lecture at the LSE from a few years ago about the future of social democracy and how it connects to Labour's two years in government. Please do give it a read! open.substack.com/pub/johnhand...

Have been a bit frustrated by some of the conversation about Labour's voter coalition. I've written about who the "Hero Voters" actually were, how we won them, and what we need to do to earn their support next time. chriscurtismk.substack.com/p/who-actual...

There are a lot of political shibboleths in Britain where inaction is justified by "someone tried this once 10/20/30 years ago and it ended badly for them so we can never try again"

Despite the long shadow of the Eurozone crisis, Spain's GDP per capita has now grown more since 2007 than the UK's

The Two Deprivations open.substack.com/pub/parables...

Could it actually be happening?

Central projection figures here (note there is a lot of uncertainty, especially for 2027, when it comes to EU national emigration, asylum numbers and the effects of the Earned Settlement policy): YE Dec 25: 182,000 YE Jun 26: 69,000 YE Dec 26: -41,000 YE Jun 27: -123,000 YE Dec 27: -140,000

Do people in the government seriously think that replacing leaders was one of the big contributing factors to the Tories losing in 2024?

Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch writes to the Prime Minister to say that tripling and quadrupling settlement times to 15 and 20 years "are a good start but should go further" Settlement taking that long are very niche positions among the public - British Social Attitudes - but popular among elites

The other myth that needs busting is idea of this vote as ‘PMC Lanyard class’ or Muslim vote. They're mostly frustrated lower middle class Millennial graduates. Recent homeowners or renters w/ housing costs they can’t afford. IT support, social workers, teachers. White. Normie!

If wages grow at the pace the OBR predicts and tax thresholds are uprated by inflation after 2030, the average annual salary will exceed the higher rate threshold by 2034

What do Britons think the UK military response to the US-Iran conflict should be? Purely defensive (shooting down drones, etc): 46% Retaliatory only against Iran sites that launched attacks: 26% Actively joining US + Israel in wide attacks on Iran: 8% yougov.com/en-gb/articl...

Every week since May 2025, I have alternated between wanting to leave the UK out of spite (and genuine terror about being able to renew my visa) or to stay long enough to naturalise specifically so I can vote against Labour over their immigration policy

We asked respondents to estimate the proportion of UK immigration in each of these categories [By giving them 100 points to split between 4 categories] Asylum: estimate 37% (actual: 7%) Family: estimate 17% (actual 6%) Work: estimate 26% (actual 40%) Study: estimate 19% (actual 38%)

Arguably biggest data point is that GDP per capita has risen now for two quarters running. Still 0.9% below its pre-pandemic peak, but it's a positive development.