I confess that I'd never heard of Cat Burns before "Celebrity Traitors", but I've been really enjoying getting to know her music. This one's lovely. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB9q...

For as many years as anyone been counting two or more inmates been mistakenly released from British prisons most weeks. Record does not make it acceptable. System needs to be fixed. It does leave me asking why BBC now gripped by end-of-civilisation hysteria heard on Radio 4 Today programme.

This morning's top headline on Today: "Robert Jenrick has accused the government of a total dereliction of duty after two inmates were mistakenly released". The release of a prisoner is news. What Jenrick says about it is comment. Both have a place, but only one of those is in the headlines.

As context to freeing of an Algerian man, here's some info about HMP Wandsworth, where he was: • Built for 900 prisoners. Holds 1,600. • Daily roster of prison officers c.70. Up to 15 staff on long-term sick leave. • 36% of officers have >3yrs service. • 12% of prison staff leave *each year*.

It's obviously a bad thing if any prisoner is released by mistake, but why is it worse if it's an asylum-seeker? It seems just to be taken for granted now that someone is more dangerous because they're an asylum-seeker than because they're a criminal. Something very dangerous is building here.

I did a lecture on the impact of Brexit on British politics. Watch it here if you're really bored www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztqL...

I wonder if the people proposing this strategy have encountered the Brexit referendum, in which a government tried to stop an insurgent, Faragist movement focused on immigration by talking exclusively about economic risk.

I've only just been able to watch this, as I was teaching at the time, but it's excellent. Clear-eyed, challenging & wide-ranging, it grapples with hard questions about the stakes of the war, what Britons are willing to pay, the reliability of NATO & who supplies new weapons. Well worth watching.

@robertsaunders.bsky.social was joined by @qmulsse.bsky.social's own @philipjcowley.bsky.social, Baroness Finn, the Conservative peer and deputy chief-of-staff to the prime minister from 2021 to 2022, and Baroness Shephard, a minister in the Thatcher government who is a Fellow of @qmul.bsky.social.

Do we still live in Thatcher's Britain? I was joined at the @mileendinstitute.bsky.social by Gillian Shephard, Simone Finn and @philipjcowley.bsky.social to discuss the Thatcher legacy, 100 years after her birth. The full video is available here. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLJK...

Our webinar on "Whatever it Takes: The Policy Implications of Supporting Ukraine" is now online. Starring @evieaspinall.bsky.social, @elkeschwarz.bsky.social, @patporter76.bsky.social and @drjamesstrong.bsky.social. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUvQ...

If parties want credit for telling hard truths, they need to tell them when they're genuinely hard. If Labour had told the truth about taxes & the costs of Brexit before the election, its majority would be smaller. But it would have more real power & the public would put more faith in its judgment

Sang one of my favourite pieces of choral music this morning at Mary Mags - and one that felt very appropriate after the terrible events of the weekend. Edgar Bainton's "And I saw a new Heaven", beautifully sung here by King's Cambridge: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lyy7...

I would definitely watch this.

Just took a deep breath & went to look at X. It's an absolute cesspit of hatred & glee: one huge account after another blaming the Huntingdon attacks on immigration, with total disregard for information, evidence or the safety of those at whom they're pointing. The yearning for violence is palpable.

I asked Jimmy Wales why the reporting of the Daily Mail isn't linked to on Wikipedia. Fair play for a frank answer: www.newstatesman.com/technology/2...

Ironically, Katie Lam was named "Parliamentary Newcomer of the Year" last night by the Spectator. It's an example of the "Boris Johnson" problem in British politics: that being loud, self-promoting and outrageous brings prizes and name-recognition. Learning your stuff & being thoughtful does not.

An excellent piece on the long struggle for women's political rights - in this case, not the right to vote or to sit as MPs, but simply to be allowed to watch debates from behind a screen in the House.

Exactly right. Voters can only hold MPs to account if they understand what they're doing. Yesterday's ECHR vote was a "ten-minute bill": a way of raising an issue in a short speech with almost zero chance of becoming law. That even many journalists misunderstood this is bad for trust in politics.

Labour’s pledge not to raise income tax was grotesquely irresponsible - as many of us argued at the time. But that pledge was made. At a time when trust in politics is dangerously low, breaking it may have very dark consequences. And those who want to burn politics down will feed on the fury.

On a smaller point: do these people ever actually read Tolkien? The whole point of the LoTR is that power corrupts; that no one can be trusted with the ring except the little people who want to destroy it; & that it's "the pity of Bilbo", not "the hard men of Gondor", that saves Middle Earth.

This is like complaining that George Washington hasn't chopped down any cherry trees lately. Larry has taken on higher responsibilities. He is the thin mew line between order and chaos.

It is way past time for the UK government & the BBC to get off X & for Musk to be treated as a threat to national security. The world's richest man is using his site to promote civil war, ethnic violence & the overthrow of an elected government. You won't win him over with another conference on AI

The East India Company spent most of the half-century prior to 1820 in various states of looming bankruptcy, vexatious scandal, and aggressive war. Famine and revolt erupted routinely on its watch. Is this a good thing?

If the model here is that you let a private company conquer a country, co-opt local elites to exploit it for profit and govern it by force, while providing no public services and never worrying about elections, then, yes - this is a really good analogy, Mr Kruger.

Trump to reporters yesterday: "I have the best poll numbers that I've ever had".

Indeed. You cannot give human beings that much power and money, and not expect them to turn into raging megalomaniacs. It's why so much of the history of political thought centres on the dangers of unconstrained power.

I'll be speaking tonight at the launch of Tom Hurst's new book on Margaret Thatcher's speech-writing. Featuring Smash Hits, sellotape, late-night whiskey sessions and Monty Python. Congratulations Tom! www.tickettailor.com/events/kings...

Today, 12 o'clock! Free online webinar, registration details below.

Public service announcement: your phone does not need to go "PING!!" every time a text comes in - especially if you're in the quiet carriage. The rest of the train does not need to be alerted to this Very Important Stream of Messages.

Politico: "MPs should consider deleting X, according to a committee led by Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle... "On social media, the report said MPs should feel “empowered to step away from platforms that pose more harm than benefit.” Absolutely. Please get on with it.

After a catastrophic journey back from Cornwall a few years ago, the train ground once again to a halt and the guard came on the blower: "You'll think I'm making this up, but there's a swan on the line. And before you ask, no we can't just mow it down. It belongs to the Queen".

Farage: epic grifter

"Commerce is not warfare... We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends...while cynically waving the American flag". " If Trump's latest tantrum gets more people reading Reagan's 1988 address, that will be a gain. www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/spe...

What should the UK be doing to support Ukraine? What does this mean for taxes, defence spending & energy security? Or for Britain's relations with the EU, NATO & Trump's America? Join our brilliant panel to discuss all this, online on Tuesday at 12:00. All welcome! us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Trump's enthusiasm for tariffs has never been principally about economics. It's about power. Tariffs give him a tool with which to punish enemies, reward allies, lift himself above Congress & give businesses an incentive to curry his favour. They are more a constitutional than an economic strategy

Really enjoyed recording this discussion with David Runciman, covering threats to democracy, early 20thc theories of oligarchy, how algorithmic social media is changing politics, the problem with 19thc approaches to suffrage - and much, much more!

If you'd told me after the Grimsby match that - with nearly a quarter of the season gone - United would be above Liverpool in the table & level on points with Man City, I'd have assumed you were Liz Truss in disguise. But for the first time in years, there's a bit of joy in the air at Old Trafford!

The US & UK constitutional traditions both assume that the best way to constrain a tyrant is to ensure parliamentary control over "the power of the purse". If a president can pay troops via a private donor, & impose taxes at his personal whim, a key pillar of Anglo-American constitutionalism falls.

There is a serious, principled case for a codified constitution, for some of the reasons George sets out. But botching together a constitution to stop Farage - a constitution that could not command widespread support and that was widely seen as rigged - would deepen our problems, not resolve them.🧵

Nothing on the BBC Radio news this morning. Nothing I could find on their website. This is an MP from the party whose lead in the opinion polls normally ensures them wall-to-wall coverage. She spouts racist nonsense for which even she feels obliged to apologise. What on earth are they playing at?

A politics that claims to speak for "the people" against its "enemies" is always dangerous. "The people" are a glorious array of different ideas & interests, with democracy a dialogue between them. Populism is founded on a lie,so its fruits are always authoritarianism, simplism & conspiratorialism

Govt should withdraw its guidance which prevents civil servants from speaking at public or stakeholder events as this will reduce the quality of policymaking. I’m a co-signatory of this letter in The Times coordinated by @instituteforgovernment.org.uk a asking for this guidance to be reconsidered

There is a serious, principled case for a codified constitution, for some of the reasons George sets out. But botching together a constitution to stop Farage - a constitution that could not command widespread support and that was widely seen as rigged - would deepen our problems, not resolve them.🧵

Just seen two Christmas ads in a row. May I politely assure YouTube that it really is *not* "looking a lot like Christmas".

As a modern historian, I love the massive expanses of time that paleontologists work with. "This allowed them to say with high certainty that the dinosaurs found in New Mexico lived in “the last few hundred thousand years of the Cretaceous, before the asteroid hit”" www.thetimes.com/uk/science/a...

😍😍😍

A Victorian writer anticipates the age of the internet, as a force for peace and "sympathy"... "Such a network of wires, we may hope, will one day connect together the ends of the earth; and, like the great nerves of the human body, unite in living sympathy all the far-scattered children of men".

Because I am a glutton for punishment, I have just been to hear Curtis Yarvin speak. The speech was an extraordinary parade of straw men, bogus historical analogies and bizarre non-sequiturs, delivered to an almost exclusively male audience. Is this really the great thinker of the radical right?

Looking forward to this next week. Join us, detail are below