I’m really surprised this isn’t bigger news. Just under 10 million people live in Tehran. Where can they go? Where else in Iran will have enough water? This will undoubtedly strain the country’s and the region’s politics, finances and governance capacity.

Well that’s one way to drive down immigration. I highly doubt it will raise anywhere near £600m though. Labour may well end up being worse for the higher education sector than the Tories.

Starmer isn't Britain's worst ever prime minister, but he is Labour's worst ever prime minister and it's not even close

These bumps are fascinating and a great illustration how distorting the British tax system is.

If the BBC switched to a fee paying model proposed by Reform, it would be older voters who lost out as they disproportionately watch the BBC and don’t pay the licence fee. They are also far more likely to vote Reform.

NEW: Rachel Reeves signals she intends to remove the two-child cap *in full* "I don't think a child should be penalised because they're in a bigger family through no fault of their own," she tells BBC.

The irony is that Nigel Farage would be a nobody were it not for the BBC.

Drives me mad that people talk about Danish immigration policy as a *political* success without bothering to look at the polls.

More fearless reporting from the @sheffieldtribune.bsky.social. If you live in Sheffield I highly recommend subscribing. High quality journalism at the local level.

Strong argument from @oilsheppard.bsky.social that, despite all the speculation and pitch rolling, Reeves will not raise income tax. on.ft.com/3LvQRzA Why Rachel Reeves won’t raise income tax

For as many years as anyone been counting two or more inmates been mistakenly released from British prisons most weeks. Record does not make it acceptable. System needs to be fixed. It does leave me asking why BBC now gripped by end-of-civilisation hysteria heard on Radio 4 Today programme.

Elon Musk is deliberately using his platform to poison our politics and divide our country. It's time for the government to wake up to the threat he poses to our democracy.

Ed Miliband was largely seen as a media dud ten years ago, but to my mind he’s the only senior Labour politician doing political comms right in 2025. He’s moved with the digital age in ways the others haven’t.

Good from Martin Wolf, as usual, in today’s FT. But I have a couple of quibbles on.ft.com/47nYFvX

The guy who got famous betting against the housing market in 2007 just before that bubble burst - played by Christian Bale jn “The Big Short” - just wagered $1 billion on the collapse of the AI boom. www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

If you’re a methods teacher who tells students that they can’t say anything about a result with a p-value of >.05, then you’re part of the problem so there’s no point looking all scandalised at this.

Look at the distribution of z-values from medical research!

Dan is right. This is extremely good from @geoffmulgan.bsky.social

open.substack.com/pub/geoffmul... A lot of very important points in a short post

Substantial speeches help you communicate on TikTok and also in fragmented media environment more broadly because they tell people, including your own comms and activists, what you’re about and that helps them. But the problem is her speeches are not substantial.

Reeves should have made this speech 18 months ago. Labour's majority might have been smaller but the government would have had much more room for manoeuvre. There would already be a year's worth of tax rises on 'working peoople' in the fiscal coffers for starters.

I've written a couple of things over the last days about how the government and much of Westminster remaining on X as the platform becomes increasingly toxic is having consequences for our politics...

"It’s time the British government got off X" observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

I love to see stuff like this because it helps explain to people trapped in tech-sponsored information bubbles the actually obvious fact that universities teach people to know & think things, and AI is a way to produce the effect of knowing & thinking things w/o actually knowing & thinking them.

I keep being told spending cuts are easy. Honest proposals such as those recently outlined by Policy Exchange show they are not My column www.ft.com/content/f086...

About time...

More evidence that universities falling under the remit of the education secretary just get treated like naughty secondary schools. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/risk-st...

Great stuff from @stephenkb.bsky.social. Reminds me of Jim Bulpitt’s statecraft theory. Its dimensions are: - Party management - A winning electoral strategy - Political argument hegemony - A governing competence - Another winning electoral strategy Starmer has poor statecraft. on.ft.com/47ipCBj

The first thing she can do is not take office immediately after someone who cut 20bn off national insurance.

This is the lesson Labour desperately needs to learn.

This is an *incredibly* good idea.

Love it!

The Corbyn-led Labour Party had a far greater understanding of the media environment they operated in than the Starmer government – and Corbyn’s comms team were woeful at times. It’s a whole new depth of cluelessness in No. 10.

Any fellow academics who are not as sad as me, I’ve watched Bridget Phillipson’s statement on the Post-16 Education and Skills white paper so you don’t have to. Very little comfort for universities.

Waiting for a white paper to drop is never a productive way to spend a day – especially when it’s likely to contain thin gruel for universities. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Westminster is still on X and either oblivious or simply doesn’t care that it has become a toxic information environment.

My postgraduate module on international organisations and global governance continues to evolve. Very interesting points from Anders.

Well worth a read 👇🏼 You’ve been given free access to this article from The Economist as a gift. You can open the link five times within seven days. After that it will expire. Gita Gopinath on the crash that could torch $35trn of wealth economist.com/by-invitatio...

Shouldn’t the enshittification of generative AI be starting about now? For the sake of humanity it can’t come soon enough.

In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.

My Trade Secrets column today. Trump's been thrashing round with his tariffs for nearly nine months now but the global economy's doing....not too badly? I look at why, and also note there's a much bigger threat from the AI bubble and the US's renewed addiction to fossil fuels.

Excellent research on services exports here and an important counter to the growing narrative that services have largely been unaffected by Brexit.

As ever, this is sobering but nonetheless required reading on where public services find themselves in 2025 (and beyond) and why. Top notch work from the @instituteforgovernment.org.uk team.

Really great @stephenkb.bsky.social column today. on.ft.com/3KOUh07 Key para.

Brilliant.

Excellent points, which seems a must-read book for academics. However, the golden triangle has not been affected in the same way as others. They continue to recruit EU students despite higher fees. They will lobby government to maintain the status quo. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/brexit-...

Read my thoughts on the legacy of #Thatcher and #Thatcherism here (courtesy of the #BigIssue ): www.bigissue.com/news/politic...

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

McSweeneyism!