Such a great chart. www.ft.com/content/12f5...

I missed this yesterday, but very much file under: oh, fancy that.

“Enough about war, disintegrating alliances, human rights. Can we go back to talking about Reform UK?”

I know this is hijacking a fun post with a serious point, but: the Feast of the Flight into Egypt is a commemoration of the fact that Jesus and his parents fled to Egypt as refugees, which should be more often remembered, particularly by those who say they want to defend the West’s Christian values.

Plaid open 14 point lead over Reform UK in our January 2026 Senedd voting intention Plaid Cymru: 37% (+7 from 4-10 Sep 2025) Reform UK: 23% (-6) Green: 13% (+7) Conservative: 10% (-1) Labour: 10% (-4) Lib Dem: 5% (-1) Other: 2% (-2) yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

I find it hard to comment on all this because the multitude of reasons this is wrong seem just so obvious.

I must be good at my job. I have an email saying my marking is outstanding and I haven’t even done it yet.

This week on @ppfideas.bsky.social, we're exploring "Home Rule for Ireland!" Home Rule shattered the Liberal Party, broke the women's suffrage movement, brought thousands onto the streets and drove Britain to the brink of civil war. In the next two episodes, we ask why. So here a quick intro... 🧵

People who fancy quoting the Melian Dialogue ("the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must") ignore the fact that Thucydides was clearly portraying this as the kind of hubris that squandered Athens' primacy and paved the way for a devastating peer war that it ultimately lost.

Dont wish to worry any of my co authors @robfordmancs.bsky.social @timbale.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social but the asparagus has spoken

Racial and religious hate crime on UK public transport is growing, data shows

pound for pound this might be the funniest thing ever written

Honestly also the brass neck of this paper, which cheered this asymmetric trade deal at the time and advocated that Liz Truss, the Cabinet minister who signed it should become *prime minister*.

My paper on fiscal consolidation, its growth effects and implications for debt sustainability assessments is out in the December '25 issue of "Review of Evolutionary Political Economy". I review €zone fiscal consolidations and what the research record shows about growth effects.

Quite the chart. www.ft.com/content/30a4...

Revealing below-the-line comment on the dire state of the Tory Party on the ground (Source: conservativehome.com/2025/12/18/c...)

We welcome the return of Erasmus. But how welcoming is the UK for international students? Rising costs, visa restrictions and growing uncertainty are driving international students away. Time to make the UK a genuinely welcoming place to study again. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c4...

🚨 NEW BLOG Labour have won every election in Wales for 100 years, but they are on track to (badly) lose the 2026 Senedd election - why? @jaclarner.bsky.social and I have looked at new data, which shows how support is shifting within (not between) Wales's blocs! blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/thinking-wal...

Recently published figures showing a huge drop don't take into account new restrictions introduced by this government. So further falls are very likely. To give one figure from the post in August 2023 we gave out 18,300 health/care worker visas. Last month it was just 600.

For the historical polling nerds out there, an article about our project with @ropercenter.bsky.social that digitised ~800 surveys by Gallup poll in Britain between 1955 and 1991 has been published in JEPOP. The merged dataset contains over three-quarters of a million respondents.

And what, pray tell, have Labour strategists done? Why, they have made the debate around immigration salient, through draconian new restrictions and breaking promises made to existing immigrants. An issue that splits the left bloc and where Reform, not Labour, ‘own’ the issue. Genius. 9/n

If you are a Labour strategist what do you need to do? Find what the left bloc have in common, make that salient, especially if you own the issue, and avoid finding something that splits your block, making that salient, and not owning that particular issue. 8/n

On issue ownership: some political parties 'own' various issues. Labour own NHS, Tories own taxes, Reform own immigration, Greens own environment, Lib Dems own fixing local church roofs. You also want to make salient issues that you own where you consequently have higher trust. 7/n

Here's one of my bubble plots. Voters arrayed in terms of their economic and cultural attitudes split by party and by education. Note that in the left bloc, the educational divide is vertical (high ed = less socially cons) but in right bloc it's horizontal (high ed = more economically cons). 4/n

The other aspect is that you don’t owe a website your presence. I am not going to give the owner profit and validity and endure an awful experience out of appeals to duty. I don’t want to spend my free time feeding the trolls.

It is almost 10 years since Hanspeter Kriesi published his seminal article on the politicization of European Integration @jcms-eu.bsky.social. A short thread on how things stand as of 2024, with @chesdata.bsky.social, looking at salience, clarity, and unity of party positions towards the EU 🧵:

"Migrants who came to the UK on skilled work visas in 2022-23 will make a net contribution of £47bn to the public finances over their lifetime, according to new estimates from the government’s Migration Advisory Committee." Not surprising, but some observations (1/n) www.ft.com/content/10da...

SNP voters are more likely to believe that Westminster holds responsibility for key policy areas than Labour or Conservative voters yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

I don’t know the extent to which people are aware that the Scottish AMS system produces quite disproportionate results in these circumstances.

New Scottish Parliament poll, Ipsos 27 Nov - 3 Dec (vs 12-18 Jun): List: SNP ~ 28% (+2) Lab ~ 18% (-4) RUK ~ 17% (+1) Grn ~ 17% (+2) Con ~ 12% (+2) LD ~ 7% (-1) Constituency: SNP ~ 35% (+1) RUK ~ 18% (+4) Lab ~ 16% (-7) Con ~ 11% (+1) Grn ~ 9% (nc) LD ~ 9% (nc)

It's the little titbit at the end, that the impact assessment found reducing migration would have a negligible impact on community cohesion, that I especially like. That seems to be the government's current sole justification for their policies: www.ft.com/content/2b60...

Home Office Ministers state publicly, on the record, that they are deliberately making life worse for older people and people with disabilities who depend on care services, but it's worth it because it reduces net migration.

Government has now - belatedly -published the impact assessment for the changes to skilled worker and care worker visas announced in May. Impact is estimated between -£2 billion and £-10 billion (central - £10 billion). assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6937e6...

Welcome to Britain, a country so short of dentists that an MP's 87-year-old mum pulled her teeth out with pliers. Also a country with thousands of foreign-qualified dentists who can’t work until they pass an exam so oversubscribed it’s like trying to book Glasto tickets. www.ft.com/content/f4e5...

📈 #IFSSatStat: The number of children in the UK is expected to decline by about 7% or 800,000 between 2025 and 2035. These declines are expected to be fastest in Scotland (8%), Wales (10%) and Northern Ireland (15%).

The relief that neither Scotland nor England are playing a world cup game on our wedding day. 😮‍💨

Welcome to slot-machine Britain! Our cover this week is on First Past the Post, the voting system that turns multi-party politics into a lottery. Featuring our new modelling of British elections: www.economist.com/interactive/...

New post just out: Six lessons from the 2024 election. And what they mean for the next one. Covering: Labour's fatal misunderstanding about why they won; effects of a more fragmented system; changes in media/polling. (£/free trial) samf.substack.com/p/six-lesson...

Every sympathy for University of Essex (and pressures facing them) but this is very bad news for Southend. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Essex university to cut 400 jobs as overseas student numbers plummet

Obviously this is impossible because Alan Moore looks like he's genetically a wizard, it's simply impossible to imagine what he would look like as a schoolboy oh there he is.

Interesting snippet from the OBR report. Alcohol duties revenue forecast notched down by an annual £1.7bn.

This, from the FT, is almost the perfect encapsulation of what is so maddening about this government. ‘If a convenient thing had happened we wouldn’t have had to agree to do something which we actually think is stupid.’

The Prime Minister and Home Secretary want to drive net migration lower than net 205k. The Chancellor could reduce borrowing £7.4 billion/year in 2029/30 using the OBR projection that it will return to net 340k later in the parliament obr.uk/box/the-impa...

Good news for election nerds and relatives of election nerds - our publishers have confirmed "The British General Election of 2024" will be published on 3rd December. To celebrate its imminent arrival, I am starting a "BGE 2024 advent calendar" thread - first door opens in next post

Begging Disney to stop requiring me to watch some other series with characters I don’t care for to understand whats going on in the series I am watching. Also, if you’re going to do this at least start the series with “this doesn’t make sense unless you watched X” instead of me having to google it.

The *whole* economy?!?

Budget 2025: This is how you lose the world iandunt.substack.com/p/budget-202...

I say this as a PhD student who is also in work: there is little reason to put the effort in to pursue an academic career, now. The job market was already extremely competitive, for very low pay vs. comparable private sector jobs. The deteriorating state of HE is the final nail in that coffin.

Another one from today’s @resolutionfoundation.org report. If anyone is complaining about the mansion tax, show them this. www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...