The germanic equivalent of 'liberty' is 'freedom'. The germanic equivalent of 'fraternity' is 'brotherhood', or maybe 'friendship' if we're not being sexist. But what's the germanic equivalent of 'equality'? Fairness? Evenness? 'Freedom, fairness, friendship' isn't too bad, and it's alliterative!

Incidentally, also the logo of the Aliança Catalana who totally did not steal it

Tale of two petrostates. Data from @robbieandrew.bsky.social: robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/

If you stop to think about it, it's hilarious how many politicians have opinions about survey methodology. What exactly is it about YouGov's quota-based sampling methodology or weighting schema that you disagree with Mr Farage?

On Lords reform, important to have a clear idea of the goal alexparsons.co.uk/blog/posts/s...

5.6 effective parties in this dammed two-party system

We explain political change using totally different causal models if we approve of outcome of not: 1. Change we like is organic, bottom-up genuine expression of public demand 2. Change we dislike is artificial, top-down result of manipulative elite I’m calling this Motivated Causal Attribution

And so we write to brilliant postgraduate students from Sudan, withdrawing the offers and scholarships they won in open competition with the best in the world. A sad day for the University of Oxford.

As a member of team PR, I appreciate the provocation. But, genuinely, it's great to see this sort of debate emerge. Electoral reform feels closer than it has for ages, even if it's still some way off.

Every second of free time you have ever had in your life was subsidized by the existence of the combine harvester.

Sorry, but I just learned about the UK defence attaché to the United Arab Emirates, then I had to spend ages verifying that instance of nominative determinism

Anthropic have this cool "Anthropic Economic Index" thing. But kinda bleak that the most common topic in most US states is "Complete academic assignments". We have our work cut out for us.

As an IR professor, it's depressing that this is outperforming all others as the best theory of US foreign policy

Equally surprised and delighted to win this!

Inflation in action: I just saw a petrol station update the price of petrol by 1p per litre in real time

Every U.K. job ad is like “we seek a dynamic, world-leading expert to care for priceless, load-bearing activities. Salary: £28,000 p.a.”

🇬🇧 UK Poll of Polls: 07 March 2026 27% ➡️ Reform 19% 🌹 Labour 18% 🌳 Conservative 15% 🍃 Green 12% 🐥 Lib Dem 5% 👽 Other 3% ✖️ SNP

Some meta-commentary: I didn't actually run this analysis or post this. I wrote the underlying script myself, so I know that it is correct, but a Codex automation ran the script and posted the output to Bluesky on my behalf. Wild times.

🇬🇧 UK Poll of Polls: 07 March 2026 27% ➡️ Reform 19% 🌹 Labour 18% 🌳 Conservative 15% 🍃 Green 12% 🐥 Lib Dem 5% 👽 Other 3% ✖️ SNP

Best thay can be said is that they are far from the only people - inside/outside UK - frozen in terror at the wheel. 38+ states all over the world *all simultaneously* trying to convince themselves of some specific, local *and reversible* reason why the Radical Right has returned in their country.

Probably has a better shot than bombing Iran

The stars are aligning for proportional representation takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/the-stars-...

The way Trump does this is almost smarter than Bush/Cheney too. It’s always something that would hypothetically have happened if he hadn’t done X/Y. “Our country was about to collapse, but I stopped it”. So he never has to prove anything because, don’t worry, the (imaginary) danger is gone now.

EPSS Travel Grants for 2026 Belfast conference: PhD students & junior scholars @ institutions in European countries that are often underrepresented, can apply for full fee waiver & £500 stipend Apply: lnkd.in/ehXjhCgf Deadline: March 8, 11:59pm GMT. More details: lnkd.in/eZTP5sWR

Manchester people! I'm hosting a small meet-up for my readers/followers tomorrow as I'll be in town! Sign up here if you want to come along! forms.gle/RgJfXTRhMCX9...

New piece from w/ @hannahbunting.bsky.social & @jess-smith.bsky.social on the Gorton & Denton byelection, and what it might tell us about British politics. We cover turnout, late-deciding voters, gender gaps & the continuing fragmentation of the party system 🧵 theconversation.com/late-decider...

*Academics of Bluesky:* Do you know a great UG/PG student with excellent quants skills? @nspmartin.bsky.social and I are advertising a great fully-funded PhD on MRP and minority voting with our friends at Ipsos, so send them our way! ✌️ www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Genuinely, what will it take for the institutions of the United States to finally kick into gear and impeach this idiot?

*Academics of Bluesky:* Do you know a great UG/PG student with excellent quants skills? @nspmartin.bsky.social and I are advertising a great fully-funded PhD on MRP and minority voting with our friends at Ipsos, so send them our way! ✌️ www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

🇬🇧 UK Poll of Polls: 03 March 2026 Looking more and more likely that we'll soon reach a point where we have 5 parties on ≈20% each. ➡️ Reform: 26% (22-31%) 🌹 Labour: 19% (16-23%) 🌳 Conservative: 19% (16-22%) 🍃 Green: 15% (10-21%) 🐥 Lib Dem: 13% (10-16%) 👽 Other: 4% (3-6%) ✖️ SNP: 3% (2-4%)

Among the many, many reasons this is nuts: the bulk of British Muslims are Sunni, while Iran is a Shia theocracy. Sunni-Shia rivalry and mutual hostility goes back roughly a thousand years and has played as large a role (if not larger) as Protestant-Catholic rivalry/conflict in Europe

Just a flavour, but there are currently four 'permanent' jobs on jobs.ac.uk in politics, and **not one** in the UK.

This loss of talent will have long term consequences for our national research base. Government and funders should do something about it.

I know so many immensely talented people who are just not going to get jobs in academia. The number of post-docs and job openings is so much lower than just a few years ago. The conditions are brutal.

Also, the electoral system is completely different! You can't just copy the strategy of a party competing under list PR when you're competing under first-past-the-post. You have to actually do some thinking.

🇬🇧 UK Poll of Polls: 28 February 2026 ➡️ Reform: 27% (23-31%) 🌹 Labour: 21% (18-24%) 🌳 Conservative: 19% (15-22%) 🍃 Green: 14% (10-20%) 🐥 Lib Dem: 12% (9-15%) 👽 Other: 4% (3-5%) ✖️ SNP: 3% (2-3%)

Reform support is ticking down and Green support is ticking up, so we should expect fragmentation to increase as the parties come to similar levels of support.

🇬🇧 UK Poll of Polls: 28 February 2026 ➡️ Reform: 27% (23-31%) 🌹 Labour: 21% (18-24%) 🌳 Conservative: 19% (15-22%) 🍃 Green: 14% (10-20%) 🐥 Lib Dem: 12% (9-15%) 👽 Other: 4% (3-5%) ✖️ SNP: 3% (2-3%)

Why does he look like he just dipped his face in iodine 😭

It's probably this and everyone should read it. jwmason.org/slackwire/po...

While you're all messing around on Bluesky: I have a new working paper on the Gallagher index, the most common measure of disproportionality. TL;DR: I show that it is constrained by the size of the party system, which can cause problems comparing elections across time and space.

It’s not. Its political results are that of a standard European democracy in 2026, mediated through a worse electoral system.

While you're all messing around on Bluesky: I have a new working paper on the Gallagher index, the most common measure of disproportionality. TL;DR: I show that it is constrained by the size of the party system, which can cause problems comparing elections across time and space.

Here's a table in the new @britishelectionstudy.com book (forthcoming). We calculated 'second preferences' - here Labour voters after elections 2015 to 2024. 50% of Labour's 2024 voters had Greens as second preference. 42% the Lib Dems. The left bloc is coalescing behind the most viable left party!

And with that citizenship, a voter in yesterday’s by-election too!

Brilliant and timely work by two brilliant colleagues, one of whom just became a UK citizen *and* a doctor in the space of two days! 👏

The UUPification of the Conservative Party continues apace

A wake up and smell the coffee moment for Labour. Early signs are that Labour wants to sip hot milk instead ("we couldn't turn out our vote." No, you did. That's the problem.) Governing strategy, policy, comms, campaigning - all needs a complete reset and in that order.

I've been militant on people doing this with other parties, so I'll just remind that aggregate vote change charts cannot be "clear" about voter movement, you need individual-level data to be able to be draw conclusions. Words like "suggest" or "likely" would be better, but still aren't 100%.