Even the journal publishing this research gets this wrong. Younger men are not shifting right: "The widening of the gender gap, then, is driven... by women moving leftward at a faster pace or men doing so more slowly – rather than a true divergence"

So, BlueSky, one of my passions is the study of tea in WW2. I need you to watch this oral history from three ex-tea ladies from the Bermondsey WVS. Because you could guess for ONE THOUSAND YEARS and you would not guess where it is going... #skystorians #history #tea

Here's one of my favourite pages. There are so many insights here, as well as the anecdote about Schumpeter. Starmer should have read this before talking about pulling the "growth lever"

Denis Healey's autobiography is a constant source of joy

The baffling thing about this age is how this utter chump gets routinely held to much lower standards than anybody else anywhere just by normalising being an utter chump & everyone just accepting that's how it is and who he is

And, apparently, we Brits weren't that good at the whole film lark... If you've never seen it, please do.

well I went to watch Kind Hearts And Coronets for the first time tonight and 75 years' worth of critics and cinemagoers absolutely had it right, it *is* just fantastic

Can anyone explain to me what the Blue Labour justification for this is? Who out there will vote Labour because Mahmood prevented a Sudanese Chevening Scholar? And to be honest, why won’t the PM simply overrule her?

I couldn't resist buying the Spectator for these two columns. Pure comedy gold. View it as a public service.

As George Orwell once said, "This, my sweet, is a letter from my solicitor telling you that your husband has filed a petition for divorce. Happy Christmas, Ange."

Your regular reminder than a large majority of voters - and overwhelming majority of Labour voters - favour giving settled migrants access to the welfare state after five years or less. The Home Secretary is not reforming rules in line with public opinion. She is doing the opposite.

The best explanation for the British right's enthusiasm for war with Iran: brain damage. thecritic.co.uk/the-...

Whatever else this is from Paul Ovenden, demanding Labour MPs back Mahmood’s immigration crackdown, it is the most over-written, pretentious thing I’ve seen for some time.

The Celebrity Cutouts website offers a colossal range of giant face masks. All but a handful of the names and faces are completely unknown to me (and, I suspect you). There are some surprises all the same. www.ebay.co.uk/str/celebrit...

Exibit a) Paul Ovenden - the PMs former Director of Political Strategy in The Times today. You'd think, having collapsed your poll lead during a GE and then further halved your support in office you might reflect on your approach. But no, full steam ahead. Mystery why were in this place

This is important - Ref got almost exactly what you'd expect a Conservative replacement party to get, in a seat they would never need or expect to win.

Putting aside that Mahmood is confusing two different things here (asylum and broader net migration)... ... this proposals are incredibly ill thought out and will not get through the PLP. She is picking a very painful fight here that she will lose.

So far I've come up with one rational explanation for Labour's response, which is that maybe Reeves has placed a significant amount of Treasury funds on a very specific accumulator about this May's elections, including Labour losing all their London councils and finishing fifth on projected vote.

Me too

Doing so while its voter base demonstrably breaks to the left while wining over a negligible amount of voters is certainly a bold strategy.

I have literally nothing to add to the thousands of takes, except that I suddenly remembered that me and @whyoutloud.bsky.social had previously described Gorton and Denton as sounding like the Building Society your nan used. www.politicshome.com/thehouse/art...

obviously today is a huge embarrassment for Matt Goodwin and for Reform, which is something that we absolutely ought to celebrate, but we must also remember it's a huge embarrassment for Morgan McSweeney and Maurice Glasman and all the Blue Labour weirdos, and that's important to celebrate too :)

On which, I see @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social had a G&D query from a reader yesterday and mentioned "wonderful collection" of political articles. "Wonderful" - the Guardian

That this only occurred to me after the election is yet further proof I am going downhill fast.

The actress Valerie Hobson in her drawing room at 3 Chester Terrace, Regent’s Park - her home was featured in House & Garden magazine in February 1961 - 5 months before her husband John Profumo embarked on an affair with Christine Keeler. Photo by Ray Williams.

The question now is how much does Labour have the capacity to learn, or do they do what the Tories spent the three years before the last GE doing and respond to every "you're fucked" warning light with mainlining tired clichés about "polls always swing back" or "govts always get hit hard in locals".

Latest piece for the @thehousemag.bsky.social - on the Potemkin consultations run by local government. (And others...). www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...

@philipjcowley.bsky.social finding the head of the nail

I had the privilege of visiting the MERL today and getting a closer look at the board

The good old days when shops didn't have doors, windows had flags mounted in them, the local bakers sold baguettes and we used decimal currency?

I have, inevitably, written about this. "Fascist capture of the English countryside has never been complete, never even been close to complete, for all the best efforts of the rural Blackshirts and all the strange bucolic dreams of the Fascists in the market towns." richarddsmyth.com/2026/01/12/t...

Side point: it is literally Andrew Windsor’s birthday!

Another nail in the parlous state of UK higher education in February 2026. More nails very sadly likely coming to an HEI near you....

Since the government is about to introduce a social media ban for under-16s based largely on vibes – and Jonathan Haidt's shitty book – in the hopes it boosts its popularity (it won't), I'll re-up this. If we're banning under-16s, why not over-60s?

not that it's not a complex issue but it drives me *insane* that we've been watching the world set itself on fire over the past decade or so partly because of people quite suddenly going from Not Very Online to Way Too Online and governments now want to recreate that experience with teens everywhere

Check out the post below by @philipjcowley.bsky.social, who’s written a great summary of ongoing work by me, @hannahbunting.bsky.social, @cerifowler.bsky.social, @jess-smith.bsky.social, and @annasanders.bsky.social on gender gaps in “don’t know” responses👇

I don't think Starmer has any conception of the "teaching" role of the premiership: the responsibility (& opportunity) to talk to the public, to shape how they understand the world & the choices before them. All the most impactful PMs have been teachers. Starmer seems actively to repudiate the role

If children were more politically active they would be quite pissed to be told that their screen time is “the most urgent public health issue” while the largest measles outbreak since the vaccine sweeps their schools because of conspiracies that the adults in their life believed from social media.

I don't normally dunkquote but three posts down he's saying "universities are doing OK, really" and I'm trying to decide if he actually is absolutely isolated from most people's lived experiences, or knows and doesn't care b/c the only thing that matters is pretending this Labour Government is good.

Just over thirty years ago, I was the only person to witness what was tantamount to a little piece of performance art by one of the greatest humorists of his generation – a piece of performance art predicated on a reference I didn't fully understand until yesterday afternoon. Let me explain.

I think I was Pritesh's last customer on Friday, as his news stand closed for good. There's not many proper news stands left these days. Sad times for print lovers, and his stand will no doubt be replaced with a cookie-cutter coffee shop. www.the-londoner.co.uk/closing-time...

This is such a fascinating piece about a deeply surreal bit of history: the competition the FT ran *in 1914* inviting readers to speculate about what the map of Europe would look like after the First World War was over:

'Is it still there?...It is! It is!'

That time when, two months into World War 1, the FT asked its readers to predict the impact the conflict would have on the map of Europe. As a game. With cash prizes: great @ftweekend.com piece by @theboysmithy.ft.com www.ft.com/content/79a4...

Happy birthday to Charles Darwin, patron saint of tired scientists, grumpy fieldworkers, and hating your own manuscript.

The piece that annoyed the non-existent culture secretary - you know what to do

A thing I wrote for @robfordmancs.bsky.social's excellent substack, The Swingometer. How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Recall Petition. Features Māori war canoes, Enoch Powell, Edmund Burke, and some spectacular examples of hypocrisy. swingometer.substack.com/p/waka-waka-...

Will the credits on Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights be as honest as the credits on the Morecambe and Wise version?