Sharp, brave insight work. Don't think anybody's come out of an FG and said "we need a detailed plan on COL, immigration and the NHS" before. And to have picked up on voters' distaste for the utility companies as well!

Reminder that to follow the Norway playbook you need to appoint Tony Blair as Chancellor.

Then: HL2Ep2; now... Probably Stalker SoC.

Elden Ring by a distance, then and now. A colossus, a landmark.

Many thanks to NYT connections for the free publicity. Check out my blog! www.hold-sway.com/blog

Time to re-promote this week's blog post: on how to read polls that tell you a majority of the public support any given policy.

New blog post: the trouble with issue and policy polls. www.hold-sway.com/blog/the-tro...

As I was saying on my new blog just last week:

Rightly lots of debates about growth this weekend - rightly because it was low productivity growth that saw wages entirely flatline during the 2010s.

Look, I’m a union MP. I want the employment rights bill in full. But I am also a pragmatist. Unions sat round the table with business and ministers and hammered out a compromise which means protections from unfair dismissal come in from six months not two years and we get Royal Assent by Christmas

"Platty Joobs."

I have worked to end the two child limit ever since the day I was elected. Today this Labour govt acted to give every child the best start in life. 5,540 children in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley will be out of poverty immediately. This is what a Labour government is for 😍

Still a few hours until the budget, why not have a read of my first blog post, on Labour's target voters? www.hold-sway.com/blog/labour-...

Started a blog, beginning with some discussion of Labour's target voters. www.hold-sway.com/blog/labour-...

Real pleasure to join Benedict for the latest episode of his excellent podcast!

This is a really interesting analysis but I don't think it's quite the debunking of Labour's strategy that it claims to be. The premise is that strategists believe people who've shifted Lab->Reform since GE24 have different characteristics in marginal constituencies than elsewhere.

This is good. Shows humour working at 2 levels: 1) a signal that you're smart, confident, charismatic and authentic; 2) a tool you can use to launch attacks without seeming mean, and divert without seeming slippery.

There are many, many ways of dressing up your "the voters are stupid" point of view, and this is among the more creative, but it's still that.

This is what happens when you think you're Gandalf but you're actually Saruman. NB we also know who Sauron is here (he controls the palantiri).

Horrifying to learn that I was born within 4 days of RJ.

Hold Sway polling for the TUC here! www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

We should be so proud to have an education secretary whose purpose shines through everything she does, who remembers the free school meals kid she was, who believes every child matters, and who acts on it

Feels like a headline from... 2017? 2019 at latest?

New data from me, for @tuc.org.uk, on tax. Overall support for several measures inc. a 2% wealth tax, notably shared by 2024 "hero" switchers and with Lab24 now considering Reform.

Am at a handball festival in western Norway. Couple of c. 10 yr old boys just walked by towing a big portable speaker, pumping out Gangsta's Paradise.

One of the weirder bits of the ERB debate is opposition parties claiming it amounts to a crackdown on pub banter. (Needless to say?), voters find this an odd line of argument to take. Daily Mirror story on Hold Sway poll findings for the TUC here: www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

Reform on 27% in this More in Common poll. On these figures that means a little over 3% of the electorate are Lab24->Ref25 voters, or in other words, about 10% of Labour's voters at the GE are now with Reform. Not insignificant.

Wouldn't qualify myself as a music dork but would nominate Random Access Memories, think it's 16 years after Homework.

Polling by me for the TUC covered here by @jessicaelgot.bsky.social. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/apr...

Substantial piece of work from Steve and team.

Polling by me for the TUC covered here by @jessicaelgot.bsky.social. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/apr...

"...but that's not important right now."

Think I've got to the bottom of it.

You can try all you like but you'll never beat "hang in there ladies".

IMO it's underrated just how weak these guys are.

Magnificent new meme template just dropped.

Big move by the TUC (and a little writeup of some groups I did for them recently).

Quote with a photo of a bridge from your gallery.

The real quiz.

Fair enough but if anything he'll be glad of missing that Q&A.

You might see people saying polling is useless/dead, esp. in the US. This would be premature. It was generally very good in 2018 and 2022, elections where Trump was not on the ballot. The same *should* apply in future elections! fivethirtyeight.com/features/202... edition.cnn.com/2018/11/19/p...