Good. Enforce laws. Hold blatant racists to account. The culture of impunity for the most vile ugly bigots that Musk has encouraged on Twitter is toxic and needs challenging

An important thread on the constitutional implications of the iD cards announcement.

Bless those who think the Home Office can successfully carry out a huge IT procurement exercise for digital ID cards for implementation before the next general election.

"on a technicality" Not really. A failure to get necessary consents to a terror charge is not a slight error. They are safeguards when a person faces a serious charge. Prosecutors should take such safeguards seriously: this is terrorism law they are using. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/s...

This is one context in which the concept of human capital is useful: why should we tax one form of capital asset differently from others? (Ans: coz politics beats good economics.)

Reminder that Skinner is political strategy genius Dom Cummings suggested candidate for London mayor.

In need of some good news? Smoking has now been virtually eliminated among school age kids in England! (Yes, some of this is a shift to vaping but still...) assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68d3ee...

Also economically. The argument is explicitly 'New Labour's economic approach was wrong'. Okay, Keir...what is yours? Do you have one?!

Meanwhile the Pride in Place programme (the build a youth club bit) needs boasting about in its own right, not offering up like an apology for Labour’s supposed past failings. Anyway, let’s wait for the speech, but this feels like he accidentally published the workings out.

I really hope the Starmer speech on patriotic renewal is better than this summary of it, which basically argues that New Labour and the Tories let in too many immigrsnts but this one is going to give you a youth club instead so please don’t vote Reform www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/f9444c6...

The absolutely chaotic energy of Devon refugee protests continues, as it turns out that the local protesters ended up feeling sorry for the refugees and moving the flags somewhere else so as not to bother them eastdevonnews.co.uk/2025/09/09/a...

Yep, that's great. Just fantastic. We were told that Starmer would lay out the patriotic case for diversity today. What we got was an article in the Telegraph, behind a paywall, about how the left failed to tackle immigration and now we all have to have ID cards www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09...

Goodwin was radicalised, I have it on multiple good authority, by the fact he was such a terrible hang that nobody in the circles he moved in could bear to be around him, which he perceived as elite snobbery. Terrible patter in a public figure should not be ignored, it always leads somewhere dark

20 years ago, several of us went across to Shieldaig Island to count the number of Heron nests for the RSPB. We counted 26 (so an approximate population of +/- 75). A few years later the now resident pair of Sea Eagles arrived. There are now no herons on the Island at all (sensible choice).

This sounds like the kind of thing you'd do before a purge www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Introducing slightly less cruel/damaging version of Farage's plans would not "outmanoeuvre Reform";would be an economic/ political own goal Far better to attack Reform/Tories for Powellite ethnonationalism & say migrants who come here, contribute & *choose* to stay are welcome -and become British.

New post just out: "Last Rites" What happens if the Tories completely disintegrate? I look at why a rapid collapse is increasingly plausible, how it would play out, and how it would change the political landscape. (£/free trial) samf.substack.com/p/last-rites

NEW The Prime Minister’s extraordinary and significant statement on MI5 misleading the High Court A practical example of the judiciary and executive holding the security service to account By me Substack: emptycity.substack.com/p/the-prime-... Personal blog: davidallengreen.com/2025/09/the-...

(2/2) So what *should* the government do? Some suggestions from me & colleagues ( @uofgvc.bsky.social @sjwrenlewis.bsky.social @mazzucatom.bsky.social @elerianm.bsky.social, Jim O'Neill, Gus O'Donnell) here: archive.ph/M4r2Z

As @benzaranko.bsky.social argues here, the fiscal constraints -and the resulting requirement for tax rises - the government faces are not the result of either the fiscal rules or the OBR, but simply reflect economic realities. (1/2) observer.co.uk/news/politic...

This country made significant progress against racism in my lifetime - but we did not do so by chance. There is a visible visceral regression in experiencing of overt racism because the toxic fringe with the most extreme views have a sense of permission & impunity www.easterneye.biz/racism-in-uk...

As I set out in this post focusing on the local is key to beating Reform. But another regeneration fund, while welcome, isn't going to be enough. samf.substack.com/p/burn-it-do...

This government has been falling over itself to give off the vibe of "we will capitulate, my god we will, we don't even know what a confrontation is", so it's not surprising that seasoned international business people recognize this and decide to have a go at threatening us to see what shakes out.

If Trump were president of a small African country, the BBC (if it reported anything at all) would do a colour piece on how the benighted nation was governed by a corrupt idiot. Instead, as Adam Smith said, power attracts respect, even if wholly unwarranted.

Surprise so many people are going "thank god we're so back" when this poll actually shows RefCon at 48 and LabLDGr at 46. We're definitely not out of the "FPTP Random Number Generator" woods here

It's up! I try to liven up one of the most tedious subjects imaginable by using it as a metaphor to talk about risk management regulation www.ft.com/content/ce26...

Genuinely no clue what @paulbrand.bsky.social is talking about This was *precisely* the argument made in 1997 manifesto & subsequently elaborated by Blair under rubric of "managed migration" Difference is it was coupled with uncompromising defence of economic and social benefits of diversity 1/3

I think reporters should interrogate press releases a little more - particularly when theyre from the CPRE as part of a active campaign.

I think the key problem here is a continuing assumption, in traditional media, that when the White House speaks on a major topic, this is a big news story. That model can't cope with a president with no regard for truth, who's in constant broadcast mode, & who veers around from one day to another.

Newsom: "I fear that we will not have an election in 2028 -- I really mean that in the core of my soul -- unless we wake up to the code red, what's happening in this country, and we wake up soberly to how serious this moment is."

Excellent by @stellacreasy.bsky.social here on Reform's xenophobic and half-baked plans on ILR.

Americans I am begging you to sort this out. Your mad racist uncle has shat himself in public again.

"The tax system gets worse and worse over time." @danneidle.bsky.social makes the case for big-picture tax reform.

It is with profound sadness that The Yorkshire County Cricket Club announces the passing of Harold Dennis “Dickie” Bird MBE OBE, one of cricket’s most beloved figures, who died peacefully at home at the age of 92. Read more: yorkshireccc.com/news/harold-...

There has never been a better time to go out in the middle of the night and spreadeagle a pair of your old pyjamas on the steps of a church along with a note saying “If you’re reading this, you missed the Rapture.”

Why are the American president's claims about autism the first item on British news bulletins? He's not our president, the advice doesn't apply here and he's not presented any evidence to support his assertions. So why spread these claims? What make this the biggest story in the UK?

It's dangerous to say as the BBC does that Trump's claims of a link between paracetamol & autism are "unproven" & "disputed". This is because people over-estimate small probabilities & so give even wild claims too much credence. Here's one I wrote ages ago: chrisdillow.substack.com/p/dangerous-...

Mickey Mouse economics.

As well as the fantasy £234 bn, journalists should also be clear Farage's claims most new migrants don't work, and those who do are on low wages, are entirely false. In fact, 1.8 million recent migrants are on payrolls (others will be self employed). migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/co...

Putting all this together, @lgilbert.co find the following. It's not that Farage is (just) exaggerating/overstating - he is simply lying about migrants, jobs, wages and benefits. Media should be very clear about this. www.laurenpolicy.com/p/are-recent...

It was obvious when EU citizens had the terms of their settlement here retrospectively revoked that a precedent was being set and that, in time, the argument would move on to other categories of migrant, always tending towards a purity test of who is ‘indigenous’. Unless resisted.

I'll have more to say on Reform's proposals to scrap ILR at some point but for now I'll just note this - anyone telling you this is a popular idea doesn't know the polling. Overwhelming majority of public back giving people who work and pay taxes most or all rights after 5 years or less

Good to see CPS publicly retracting their nonsense numbers here. I explained their errors to them when they first published, and wrote it up here - they simply didn't understand what the OBR was saying. docs.google.com/document/d/e...

"cheap foreign labour" is just the ugliest, nastiest phrase.

This is reminding me of Times Radio during Covid which all of a sudden gave air time to some very very strange opinions. Relatedly, I’m convinced that Covid broke everyone’s minds and one of the manifestations of that is increased radicalism.

I dipped randomly into a Times podcast and it was like you'd taken a middle class dinner party and lightly drizzled twitter over it. In general, but also the specific sense of rapid radicalisation over the course of just a year.

Which makes it the perfect time to read a train-based travel book...

Given resource constraints, this project means not building other infrastructure or housing. Only if we know the benefits of a 2nd runway relative to the best of these alternatives can we know its impact. As I said here, the govt ignores opportunity cost: chrisdillow.substack.com/p/politics-v...

The true question right now is whether you believe in the moral character of the British public. If you do, you'll want to have the fight with Reform. You'll believe that the public will hate the idea of breaking up families, spying on & deporting people who've worked here for years.

Something cheerful for a Monday observer.co.uk/style/featur...