The change in the Lab+LD+Green vote share since the election (-6 points) pretty much exactly matches national polling, except progressive voters seem to be coalescing around one party

Last few days have seen the sort of frank discussion of taxation, public ownership, relationship to the EU etc that I really can't remember from two years ago. And a social care levy has entered the chat!

(Taxes on work are, though few believe it, historically *low* for most UK workers at the moment. Overall tax is at an all-time high, but most of that increase is indirect taxes because no one will touch the big three. But politically we just keep pretending that's not the case.)

It is curious that the government spoke up an imaginary fiscal saving of £10 billion from the settlement changes. (There may be a saving of 5% of that, or no net saving at all). But has ignored that its net migration changes are set to have an actual £13-19 billion fiscal price-tag

The final straw for Suella Braverman's sacking was this - something the current Home Secretary would just be able to crack on and do with no worries.

"Just consolidate the progressive vote" is easier said than done, but the split on the right means that this is enough to be a winning strategy now

No 10 thought net 200k or 200-250k good landing zone this time last year [white paper] but were worried it might spike above that The govt has never had a decision to aim for < net 100k. It is Mahmood's instinct But costs Treasury £20 billion. PM does not appear to have any firm view of that choice

First official data evidence to back up what international students have been telling us. It’s now much harder to get a work visa as an international student than it was a couple of years ago.

I love these "critics of proportional representation" who have been watching seven years of Governments with sizable majorities under first past the post disintegrate but still stick to the line they learned in A Level Politics. Next level resolution.

I don't know whether he is right, but I do think a lot of European policymakers, journalists and professionals overestimate how much richer America is in general because the Americans doing the same jobs are *so so so* much richer. But that is mostly "being on the right side of inequality is nice"

This (and the followup post) rather emphasise what @benansell.bsky.social has been saying about Labour being in the lead if they hadn't annoyed so many of the voters on the left.

YouGov's study of the 2026 local elections shows that just 46% of 2024 Labour voters who went to the polls remained loyal, with more backing the Greens (22%) than Reform (6%) two weeks ago The Conservatives retained 55% of their 2024 voters, with 33% switching to Reform yougov.com/en-gb/articl...

Latest data due tomorrow but your regular reminder: net migration is *plunging* without these plans being enacted.

The UK has been on a crazed migration rollercoaster. We're now going to way overshoot and likely end up with net emigration next year. Should take evasive measures immediately.

Latest migration stats now released, showing, as expected, further fall in net migration to 171K, down more than 80% from peak New in this release: stats on population by country of birth, showing the rapid increase in the non-EU born population since 2021. www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...

Rejoining the EU might actually have the highest growth impact to unpopularity ratio of anything the UK could theoretically do

Where does a Burnham led Labour gain votes from, the biggest group who switch are those currently voting Green, but also those who have moved from Labour to Don't know - also disillusioned progressives.

This is one of the areas where the manifesto position is so vague that there is room to do something genuinely radical

It would be great if the government could spend some time trying to solve the many, many real problems facing the UK – instead of imaginary ones. UK retail operates on *tiny* margins – averaging around 4p in the £1. Supermarkets are cheap and efficient: food is expensive because inputs cost more.

I’m amazed anyone needs reminding of this, but local government spending power per person fell by 18% from 2010 to 2024 (would have been 26% but for increases in council tax). At the same time, social care pressures on local govt have grown a lot. The decay of the public realm is NOT a mystery

Another quarter of either productivity is finally growing or it continues its long stagnation, but we can't tell which because the LFS is broken

Before 2023, the highest "cut taxes and spend less" got was 9% (1983 and 2010) and now it's almost double that (19%). I doubt it can be fully explained by thermostatic public opinion. I wonder how much the media constantly saying "highest tax burden since 1949" has to do with it

Whether it's Miliband with Varieties of Capitalism, Corbyn with nationalisation + public services spending, or Starmer with workers' and renters' rights, one through line with Labour since 2010 is trying to do progressive politics without going big on welfare

I was reading some slides from the IFS analysis of the 2017 general election and then I stumbled upon this. Look at what the Conservatives were promising re: WFA and the triple lock!

West Central Scotland (Glasgow + suburbs) and Greater Manchester both went from ~12% below the UK average in GVA per head at the turn of the century to ~5% below in 2023

Not sure what to think about implying we should nationalise utilities and then subsidise bills like the £2 bus fare cap

If Leave and Remain voters in Makerfield support rejoin by similar proportions to YouGov's nationwide respondents, it probably supports Rejoin anyway

Even though I would be happy for Labour to do a bunch of stuff around taxes, electoral reform, and the EU that wasn't in their manifesto, after the last government and this one I don't really see what the point of even having them is

The local elections in one chart. Labour has been squeezed between the Greens in young wards and Reform in older working-class wards www.economist.com/britain/2026...

Much of the criticism of council tax conflates regional inequality with the underlying regressiveness of the tax. It makes sense that places with lower average prices pay higher rates to get similar services, but not that people living in more expensive houses within an area pay lower rates.

Miliband was neither especially popular nor unpopular - average feelings towards him during the 2017 election campaign were pretty similar to mid-2017-campaign Corbyn, 2024 Starmer, and 2019 Johnson.

Nationally, this suggests Labour vote disproportionately stayed at home or went to another left party. Massive collapse to Plaid in Wales. Reform turned out an energised base with some switchers on top. Greens also. Lab->Reform exists but not the major part of the picture.

The incoming Labour Government insisted it could transform growth and repair public services without reaching for "the tax lever”. In the event that lever was yanked, and yanked hard. Since the election the government has borrowed more, spent more and taxed more ⤵️ buff.ly/EIq0o5n

Intrigued by the 35% of Tory voters who say this government has represented "no change at all" compared to the previous government

I hate the "change" line so much because it completely dodged the "to what" and "how"

From Berlin to Barcelona by train. Today cross-country journeys mean several bookings and risks if you miss a connection. Let's change that. With one ticket and full passenger rights all along your journey. That‘s our new passenger package. link.europa.eu/HGxmpv

The real, damning indictment of this government, the true evidence of failure of leadership, is that the Treasury is still making decisions and projections using forecasts that assume the Home Office changes will not happen for them to work. That is why Starmer must go.

A move of anything less than, say, 0.1 percentage points -- sorry, Ten Basis Points -- in gilt yields is meaningless noise and does not qualify as news. Please stop breathlessly reporting every 0.02 pp move and connecting it to the Westminster soap opera! This is getting ridiculous.

Part of a broader trend whereby people get obsessed with fake "rules of politics" based on a tiny sample of previous events that have become mythologised. (Like Labour pols' belief they can't go into an election promising to raise tax because of 1992).

Easy to imagine from the local election results that the Greens are a lefty-liberal city problem for Labour, but they also clearly cost Labour councillors elsewhere. Greens got 16% of the vote in Sandwell, 15% in Halton, 11% in Wigan, 10% in Sunderland, 9% in Barnsley...

I’d also add that I’m resolutely pro coup, the Australian killing season was good actually if someone isn’t good at being prime minister get someone else, but having MPs do it means it can be resolved in hours or days not months

Oh, is scrapping non-doms, hiking CGT and introducing a mansion tax not raising enough cash to keep your promise of “change”? Who could have predicted it!

Despite wildly divergent productivity growth rates, real wages in the UK and the US have both grown by roughly 25% in the last 25 years.

Steve Reed is, in my view, talking bollocks www.newstatesman.com/business/eco...

The electricity-to-gas price ratio is the biggest barrier to electrifying European homes. Heat pumps deliver ~3 units of heat per unit of electricity. The maths works in Sweden but not everywhere. Much of gap is policy. More analysis in my forthcoming Substack newsletter janrosenow.substack.com

I've been thinking about this, and the equivalent chart for the last Labour government, and how it shows how little this government is actually trying to engage in redistribution despite the rhetoric on delivering for "working people"

First Past the Post is often dubbed a ‘winner takes all system’. But remarkably, it cannot even guarantee that the party with the most votes will win the most seats. This is what happened in Wandsworth, as the Conservatives managed to turn a second place in votes into the most seats on the council.

The last decade in the UK has been pretty damning for pre-distribution IMO. Huge fall in wage inequality; income inequality basically unchanged. Reinforces the importance of the welfare state in generating egalitarian outcomes.

Thinking about Krugman's post today about how a country specialising in a high growth sector trading with another specialising in a low growth sector can have different growth rates but similar income levels over time. You can see this for the UK/US with current vs. constant PPP GDP per hour worked.