Really excellent report here from @christabelcoops.bsky.social and @danmead.bsky.social on the politics of post-industrial towns - covering both how Labour can win them, and what a politically and economically credible future for them could look like (spoiler: it's becoming like Reading)

Looong week so only just got round to this @christabelcoops.bsky.social analysis of who Labour’s lost & where to pitch to get them back (economically left, socially liberal). Clarity across labour now that chasing Reform isn’t the answer but …https://thinklabour.co.uk/thinking/who-is-labour-for

A really strong bit of work from @christabelcoops.bsky.social - and quietly damning of the political strategy of the past 4 years. Essentially arguing for its reverse. Big question is how you can now break the impression that strategy has left. New leadership necessary but not sufficent imo

🧵on Report's findings on locals & future: 128/139 MPs of deprived towns & suburbs are Labour MPs. And before last week, well over half of councilors in these areas were Labour. Now it's just 19%. Overwhelmingly voters in these places voted for Reform, with the Greens making marginal gains 1/18

Whoever ends up leading Labour will face the same existential question after the local elections: how does Labour rebuild a coalition broad enough to win again? I argue Labour should be clearer that it is an economically left-leaning and socially liberal party. thinklabour.co.uk/thinking/who...

For an Opposition, the position you take is important given you can't control the status quo and you want to avoid being the "scary' alternative. But astonishing how many people in a governing party don't see policy outcomes as a serious part of their political strategy

Since everyone (including the voters) have forgotten about the Tories it's worth highlighting that some of Labour's major losses to Reform are partially the result of the collapse in the Cons vote share In Tameside: Lab -30 pts vote share lost 16 seats Con -27 pts vote share, only lost 2 seats

I suspect the problem is not absolute deprivation but disappointed expectations - both for the young and for the average 55 yo Reform voter who doesn't have the gold plated early-retirement enabling pension of older Boomers, who own low value houses in fairly run down areas they can't move from.

If Trump had walked away a lot earlier he could have claimed the victory his ego needs - killing the Ayatollah and degrading Iran's military, while Iran would have got what it wanted - establishing its stranglehold on Hormuz as a credible deterrent to further attacks. But he didn't. And here we are.

This is a terrible and deliberately divisive piece of reporting by the Times. Somewhere near the bottom of the article, they admit that actually Muslims prioritise the cost of living above Gaza. It's not even close - cost of living was prioritised by 50%, Gaza by 25% www.thetimes.com/article/5c7c...

This is really good from Chris -a just read for anyone with an interest in polling.

We’ve built an interactive game to show what the pressure of adult social care looks like in practice. In Run the Council, you take charge of a fictional council for four years. Can you run ‘Northfield Council’ amongst mounting financial pressures? Play here: www.labourtogether.uk/council-sim

Looking forward to Nick Timothy condemning the group of Christians outside Parliament right now who are singing religious songs outside, in public, not in a church in a clear "act of domination". Or... Is there something different about these guys!!

Local government finances are in trouble. Council tax is outdated and regressive. Social care is underfunded. But council tax reform sits in the “here be dragons” bit of British politics, since it contributed to Thatcher's downfall 36 years ago. But @danmead.bsky.social has a solution! 1/

Staggering that many on the right (eg Andrew Mitchell) still think the UK isn't supportive enough of the US. They are the equivalent of tankies, so wedded to their pro American world view, that the fact the US is led by a malevolent toddler who is directly harming the UK economy, is irrelevant.

The default assumption that "the right is brilliant at politics" is undermined by their stance on Iran. Twice as many Brits oppose action against Iran as support it. Starmer's initial reluctance was the only sane response to a war that makes Iraq 2003 look like a masterpiece of strategic planning.

A senior Danish guy in the Social Democrats said to me that Denmark does not think of itself as a multicultural country whereas Britain does, which makes our situation very different.

Getting shown up in the arena of elite impunity by *the British monarchy* is an incredible “America at 250!” achievement

NEW PAPER from @labourtogether.bsky.social argues we should allow Thames Water to go down the drain. The alternative is a fudged deal that softens pollution targets and sees large returns for hedge funds. This will fuel calls for nationalising the industry, and the uncertainty could push up bills.

Trade unions are pretty popular! The reluctance to make the case for strengthening them, seems to stem from a historic and now misplaced belief, that unions are still unpopular. Amazing how people who claim to guided by "what the people want" so often fail to look at actual public opinion.

The problem that Amy new leadership candidate has is that they need 80 nominations from a PLP who mostly face Reform as their challenger and many of whom (wrongly IMO) think being tougher on migration will help, but they also need to win the Labour membership who are very socially liberal.

A big factor in Gorton & Denton is the significant number of voters who will be seriously scared about having a Reform MP. Imagine being Muslim and having to go to *Matt Goodwin* with your immigration casework. So they'll be highly motivated to vote for whoever is best placed to defeat Reform.

The most important thing about this by-election won't be who wins, it will be which of the anti-Reform parties comes first. If Reform win it will only be because the opposition has split catastrophically - if Lab come 2nd, it is a warning of what happens when Greens don't tactically vote.

These Tory to Reform defections could trigger 3 dynamics: 1. Blunt Reform's "insurgency" appeal 2. Convince Con/Ref waverers that Reform is the only viable party to beat Labour 3. OR push Con/Ref waverers back to the Cons as the only "sensible" option www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

A Reform majority would probably be won with little more than 30% of the vote with most British people opposed to PM Farage but having been unable/unwilling to organise themselves to stop it. It would be a government which has unrestricted power to make radical change yet no mandate to do so.

I wrote for @renewaljournal.bsky.social on the fracturing of Labour's vote, arguing this has been a long, structural process and can't be reversed by nostalgia about the 1950s when the two main parties got 97% of the vote between them (current polls have Lab plus Con at less than 40% vote share).

We really need to think about the fact that yes, the Dems banging on that Trump was a threat to democracy didn't electorally work, and yet what they said was true. Rather than blaming the left for hysteria we need to understand why the public didn't believe them or believed them and didn't care.

1/ Something which I don't think gets articulated clearly often enough is that a system where countries generally respect international sovereignty and territorial integrity is not pure charity or morality by the United States, but in its direct interests. Despite it being the strongest bear.

What do people in England think about their local area? In this short report I take a look at surveys we conducted with @yougov.co.uk in 2022, 2024 and 2025 to gain some insights... Some key findings...

A big reason for this misunderstanding is that the type of migration people care most about—small boats—is *not* falling, and the public vastly overestimate how much this contributes to overall migration. The government often doesn’t help itself here. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

It's worth remembering that Trump is not omnipotent. He is not a Roman Emperor who can execute people who disagree with him and push on regardless. The saner Republicans do have the power to curb his worst excesses - and I'd have thought with polls like this, they now have an incentive to do so.

I think Trump is miscalculating over Venezuela because his mentality revolves around the division between the strong and the weak, and the assumption that the weak always submit to the strong. America has demonstrated its strength so the Venezuelan regime should submit and let the US run the place.

NEW When should social media posts have legal consequences? Comparing and contrasting the cases of Lucy Connolly and Alaa Abd El-Fattah By me, at @newstatesman1913.bsky.social www.newstatesman.com/politics/soc...

Parts of the left were rightly attacked for only acknowledging some forms of racism and ignoring others. Astonishing to see the alacrity with which the hard right has imitated this behaviour - plus the lack of critical comment this hypocrisy receives from the "moderate" right.

Labour does so badly in this poll mainly because, as the tables show, they lose 29% of their 2024 vote to the Lib Dems and Greens. Only 8% goes to Reform, just ahead of the 6% to the Cons. Those Lab–Con switchers push the Tories over 20%, despite them losing a quarter of their 2024 vote to Reform.

The commentary says "People switching from Labour are heavily motivated by tactical considerations with 30% saying this is the primary reason for their switch" yet the new voting system doesn't need tactical votes to keep out Reform. If Lab can communicate this, they might get a few votes back.

Bus usage has been increasing across the North – but one of the biggest increases has been seen in Greater Manchester. Is this a result of @andyburnham.bsky.social taking buses back into public control? And are there other reasons for optimism? Short 🧵 1/4

Completely agree. For me, private school changed my life because I came from a poor family, the government paid my fees and state schools in London at the time were poor. But it will add much less value to a kid from a wealthy family who could get them into what are now, very good state schools.

Partly the problem is "party people already suspect might be racist is led by someone suspected of racism" is less of a story than "party which tells everyone else not to be racist doesn't deal with racism in its own ranks". Left wing parties are inevitably going to be held to a higher standard.

I think the reason Trump is so bad at peace making is he can't understand why people fight wars - because he can't comprehend why people are willing to die for a cause greater than themselves. He doesn't get why an (apparently) weaker party (eg Ukraine) won't just concede (eg give up the Donbas).

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):

This statement not acceptable and I suspect not sustainable. Large majority of public support principle of asylum, support letting people stay permanently. Majority for that among Labour and other progressive parties’ voters is overwhelming. The Reform voters this is aimed at will never vote Labour

There is little public understanding about what local authorities spend their money on (ie principally adult social care). Labour Together's polling finds people think it takes up 13% of council spending, in fact it's 39%. And they overestimate admin costs. www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

Further thought on Caerphilly: it's a grim result for Labour because it has been replaced as the progressive party most likely to beat Reform in Wales. But the *scale* of the collapse of Labour's vote is a much bigger problem for Reform, because it shows the level of tactical voting against them.

Particularly notable that Reform was beaten in a high turnout election. At May's locals they seem to have benefitted from turning out people who did not vote in 2024 - looks like we're now seeing a similar turnout among more progressive voters, motivated to beat them.

Enjoyed doing this podcast with @davehillonlondon.bsky.social. I made the point that Labour can't afford to lose its support in London. Right now 14% of the seats it won in 2024 are in the capital. But in the latest @yougov.co.uk MRP this rises to over a third of the 144 seats Labour keeps.

I accept that even the Tories can't out-Reform Reform on immigration, but is it a totally crazy pitch for them to say to Con/Ref considerers "sure, we aren't as hard line on immigration as Reform, but we are pretty tough, and importantly we are not completely batshit on the the economy."

Interesting that Reform, which is currently 10+ points ahead in the polls, has accused Starmer of "scholastic terrorism" apparently without being worried that it is labelling the Labour/Reform considerers it needs to attract as supporters of terrorism.

Thoughts on the potential impact of a Your Party/Green pact versus the parties standing separately. Standing independently hurts Labour the most, but overwhelmingly the beneficiary is likely to be Reform. OTOH a pact helps Your Party in a handful of seats. Neither scenario really helps the Greens.

The problem with the Ukraine-Russia negotiations is that Trump completely fails to grasp that the aims of the two sides are totally incompatible, and he needs to decide which side he actually wants to win. Ukraine wants to be a sovereign, thriving state. Russia ideally wants to subjugate Ukraine.