Humiliation or (increasingly futile) escalation. Those have always been the choices, they are still the choices. The only question now is what the political psychology of Trump himself will mean for the path he chooses. Declaring a piece of paper a "win" is getting harder, he's cornered and angry.

Philip Bunn‬, @nickbloom.bsky.social, @paulmizen.bsky.social, Gregory Thwaites, & @iyotzov.bsky.social use survey data to show that UK firms now expect higher prices and lower margins, especially among energy-intensive firms, since the start of the Iran war. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

(1) Starmer obviously has to go. (2) The Catherine West plan is mad. Best outcome now would be a half dozen plus cabinet ministers telling Starmer to set out a timetable to stand down or they resign.

I think decent speech - good delivery, rhetorically fine, although very policy light. But a pretty grim question and answer session so far.

Excellent matter of fact question on policy by @pickardje.bsky.social. Non-answer from Starmer far more damning than any of the ones intended to be gotchas.

Somebody ask him if the manifesto red lines remain. This is the only question that matters.

Stories do beat spreadsheets. But the trick is not to say that. When did you last read in a novel “I shall now employ a narrative device to move the plot on”.

After the 'make or break' PM speech, commentary may move on to the 'make of break' King's speech on Wednesday. But how easily can you make changes to that at this stage? Small, but significant changes, maybe. Wholesale change not so much.

Completely right. I think Churchill makes a lot more sense as a late Victorian, who still fundamentally saw the world as a late Victorian would - who happened to be prime minister in the mid twentieth century.

The Starmer government started to go wrong - economically - within weeks of taking office. Business and consumer confidence - both which had enjoyed a post election bounce - fell quite sharply over the summer and into autumn. Mostly because of a drumbeat of negative noises from the government.

It’s not a reset. He’s going to argue for the importance of making ‘big arguments’. Presumably a three part plan. 1. Make the argument for big arguments. 2. Make the big argument. 3. Maybe, at some point, perhaps act on the argument.

Reading Steven Sears’ Gettysburg. A story I hadn’t heard before:

Didn’t see any of the afternoon session. Which was the best Durham bowling of the year so far. Turned on YouTube in time to see a first over Durham wicket. Worried I’d cursed them. But looking pretty solid now.

Yes, I’m taking this out of context… but this the entire problem in half a sentence: “Starmer was hoping to save his job with a speech”

Army parachutes onto remote island to help Briton with suspected hantavirus www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

There is no more wholesome way to start your Sunday than with circa 70 5-7 year olds learning cricket.

It’s the final day of @prospectmagazine.co.uk paywall holiday! Have a free read of my piece on the baby bust, the coming natural shrinkage of Britain’s population — and eventually the world’s www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/pol...

Some things to bear in mind for politicians considering spouting nonsense about gilts (again) Me, 300 free clicks: - as.ft.com/r/031c1f71-5...

New post: "Seven things we learnt from the elections" We found out a lot about how multi-party politics is working in Britain over the last few days. I look at the implications for all the main parties + the broader challenges for our system. (£/free trial) samf.substack.com/p/seven-thin...

Started playing this catfishing.net this week. Guess ten wiki articles from their categories. Very tricky. But quite satisfying.

Napoleon Dynamite with the eldest. A film which has aged very well.

The answer to every public policy question is not always “some sort of, ideally off-balance sheet, special purpose financing vehicle”. www.ft.com/content/cffa...

Durham need a big innings from someone here.

Real comedy potential in editing Catherine West’s Wikipedia page now. Decent chance that any claims that make it through will appear on some news website or another.

This 1952 memo from the Pentagon UFO files is superb There is no point preparing for aliens ‘because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.’ 🤣 www.war.gov/medialink/uf...

Presume the Enfield results make Crews Hill New Town plans a bit trickier?

They order ballot papers by drawing lots in Australia. Yet more evidence for: Australia has the best electoral system.

Political nerds, I made a thing! How well do you know the UK electoral map? Could you find ten constituencies, picked at random? Test yourself! play.jmoxley.co.uk

Review from me featuring real gripping anger spectator.com/article/acce...

I am reminded of Elmer the elephant by the Birmingham political map of 2026 though the quite positive patchwork of harmony message of that storybook may be challenging to emulate in city local politics

Please sir, my first past the post electoral system, it is very sick.

The results: Extinction level as serious parties of government for Labour & Conservatives. Strong showing for Reform, but still too narrow to win a majority at a general election. Good for Greens. But only winning in a narrow set of seats. Ditto for Lib Dems. Strong for Scottish/Welsh nationalists.

Since the day has finally come, reminder that one look at the 1931 election result should tell you that Labour losing badly in Wales is a more existential result than the Red Wall or even Scotland

First chance to get YouTube on today.

Thought I had my headphones switched on. Didn’t. Anti-socially blasting out a @soumayakeynes.ft.com podcast on the train for a couple of minutes before a fellow passenger let me know.

JPMorgan: "The risk of $5 gasoline can no longer be dismissed"

A guess a lot people will be spending a lot of today checking some slowly changing numbers on a BBC webpage. If you enjoy that sort of thing and want it to be a more than annual occurrence - can I recommend getting into county cricket?

Got about a third of the English local authority results and none of the Scottish or Welsh devolved administration results so far. Lots of post-match commentaries being written about 20 minutes into the game.

In a reasonable world we would have a moratorium on local and devolved election takes until tomorrow evening. I’m old fashioned enough to think one should wait for the votes to be counted.

SCOOP: A confidential new CIA analysis delivered to policymakers this week concludes that Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for at least 3 to 4 months before facing more severe economic hardship, a finding that contradicts those hailing an imminent collapse 🧵

I know we all know that the police could, in fact, track down mobile phones if they thought it was worth their time, but it is nonetheless galling to have it confirmed.

A long term prediction: we’ll see a lot more of this as weight loss drugs become ever more common. If people can’t signal by weight, they’ll try and signal by muscles/tone.

Good piece. Lots of analysts worried something is going wrong with the GDP seasonal adjustment. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Alphaville quiz tonight. Or, as I think of it, my annual lesson that I don’t know half as much as I think I do.

I sort of love the BBC election day live news pages. Valiant attempt to cover a big story without actually saying anything.

I'm fine with this. All academic awards are made up anyway, and tbh, we're always getting told to self-nominate for prizes This just shows initiative

The XAI/Anthropic deal is big in many ways, one of which is that it feels like an admission of defeat from Elon. Can't create a model good enough to compete with Claude so suddenly you've become a service provider for the company you accused of Destroying Western Civilization last month

Everyone is focussing their obits on CNN. But, for me, he’ll always be the man who financed Jeff Daniels shouting “bayonets!” in Gettysburg.

The day has finally arrived. You can now *officially* watch puffins live from the Farne Islands, 24 hours a day: bit.ly/4tRz72T Please enjoy these puffins kissing in celebration of this momentous event.

Well @duncanweldon.bsky.social, @johnspringford.bsky.social + co, you wanted daily General Strike podcasts. Not daily but we're doing 3: part 1: 3-5 May - Reith, Churchill & BBC News pod.fo/e/40c526 part 2: 6-9 May - The Archbishop + the PM pod.fo/e/40f18e part 3: 10+ May - Reith Wins? (out Sun)