This fascinating, long and data-rich analysis from @benansell.bsky.social makes a simple point: Labour should be worrying a lot more about its loss of electoral support to the Lib Dems and Greens and a lot less about Reform open.substack.com/pub/benansel...

This is a fascinating graph from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com , and it explains a lot about why immigration politics are the way they are in multiple countries

I'd bet on Alex Massie being right that this summer will prove to have been as good as it gets for Reform. Right too in his complaints about the unseriousness of a chunk of the PLP (and A. Burnham) open.substack.com/pub/alexmass...

We can build a COVID vaccine in a matter of months, invent AI, and create the smartphone but ... it seems impossible for anyone to manufacture a sofa bed that's actually comfortable to sit on. Weird

Another excellent and thoughtful Substack post from @peterhyman.bsky.social, this one using Maslow's Theory of Human Motivation to illustrate the mistake that the left makes in spurning the politics of aspiration open.substack.com/pub/peterhym...

"Britain is slowly going bust" trumpets The Economist, ludicrously. On its own admission, "belt-tightening needed to stabilise debts is about 2% of gdp, some of which is already budgeted for... By historical standards, it is not a demanding target" www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

This @samfr.bsky.social post on the growing likelihood and possible implications of a Conservative implosion is fascinating - on the latter, as much for its discussion of the impact on the Lib Dems as on Reform and Labour open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/l...

This is v good on China’s overwhelming role in the “opening of a new epoch of world economic history.” From @adamtooze.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/adamtooz...

This is very good on some of the many ways that our scandalous neglect of the 55% of British kids who don't want to go to university is coming back to bite us. From @peterhyman.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/peterhym...

This is something of a lost art in UK centre left/right politics - making an enemy of a person or group whose support you don't need but whose enmity helps define you in voters' eyes

Academic publishing is "a racket so audacious that if you pitched it as a business model, investors would laugh you out of the room. Yet for decades this scheme has siphoned billions from research budgets." @wsj.com

@peterhyman.bsky.social is good on successful politics in a superficial world - grab people's attention, tell stories that they can engage with, persuade people you can get things done (actually getting things done not so important). All bloody depressing but ... open.substack.com/pub/peterhym...

A useful corrective to the present media framing from @philipstephens.bsky.social One might also add that, below the horizon of an increasingly superficial media, Labour is actually getting a lot done -see this Full Fact policy tracker share.google/jDpSW6obgiHZ...

Across many advanced economies pampered pensioners are crushing the hopes of younger people - on.ft.com/46AUDjd via @FT

BBC news app has virtually eliminated European news now. Just two stories today: nuns on the run and NATO's move to strengthen border defences (the latter buried so deep it took me nearly five minutes to find it)

Unpopular opinion on Mandelson: Yes, he is and always has been a creep, and had/has a lot of enemies in Labour, but he is also the UK's most experienced trade negotiator. Given there's no evidence he was ever party to Epstein's sex offences his appointment had logic

As the USA turns against the "free world" it once led, and against the freedoms it once exposed, democracies must increasingly bypass America, forge alliances to defend their freedom, and rapidly rearm reader.foreignaffairs.com/2025/09/12/h...

If MPs can't be bothered to write their own speeches for the House of Commons then what's the point of parliamentary debate? www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/mps-are-al...

The front page of the BBC news app has a live feed, 3 stories, and 10 video news clips about the shooting of Charlie Kirk - seems over the top for a UK news organisation

Anyone who's studied British political parties, and especially Labour, will be sad to hear this news - Sir Bob was a true pioneer in the field. RIP.

On the history of road safety in the UK - 20-fold decline in deaths per mile driven since the 1950s means the UK now has amongst the safest roads in the world ourworldindata.org/britain-safe...

This substack post is a useful reminder that we often need to look below the surface of events and focus on the deeper structural forces that give rise to them. From @chrisdillow.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/chrisdil...

Not The Onion. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

This history of the - astonishingly successful - French nuclear power station programme of the 1970s and 80s (and of what went wrong thereafter) is fascinating. H/t @alphaville.ft.com open.substack.com/pub/worksinp...

Across much of the media, hyped-up nonsense now seems to be a fundamental part of the business model

The reason the pre-1994 Labour governments tended not to hold onto power is a tendency to confuse 'important core stakeholders' with 'core voters'. And the remake is going the same way.

A useful reminder that, while we arm for war but hope for peace, we should also seek to reinvigorate the UN and focus it on its historic peacemaking role The UN’s next secretary-general could prevent great power war - on.ft.com/47WiDhN via @FT

"Governments need to put aside magical thinking and embrace difficult thinking instead." VG analysis here from @stephenkb.bsky.social in the FT - though I'd add that Labour also badly needs a better theory of managed capitalism if it is to run the economy effectively - on.ft.com/3HZUufJ (free)

Astonishing fact of the day - college sport in the USA generated revenues of $19bn last year, *twice* that of the UK Premier League, but it paid its players precisely nothing www.economist.com/united-state... From The Economist

We can but hope. ‘Radical’ property tax would hit older and wealthier people, experts warn - on.ft.com/4lDr457 via @FT

Another day, another problem with UK national statistics. We're in a worse position now than Harold Macmillan when it comes to managing the economy - like planning a rail journey using last year's Bradshaw, except that at least last year's Bradshaw could be tusted on.ft.com/45DFTyr via @FT

It turns out fears that EV's are like phones with batteries that will only last a few years are groundless - by the time we're scrapping the car it'll likely still have >80% of the original battery capacity open.substack.com/pub/hannahri...

“Western European powers in general and Britain in particular are operating at peacetime mode when we’re actually getting close to needing war-time readiness”. George Robertson talking to Lawrence Freedman open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/p...

Italy's attempt to charge VAT on the imputed value of personal data handed over to companies by individuals in exchange for "free" services is a stroke of genius which the UK should emulate www.reuters.com/world/europe...

"to believe you can strike en masse without any responsibility for the consequences is – to me, at least – a disingenuous fantasy sold by the BMA" www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

15 years on from the financial crisis, we are still training economists to fail because "Economics today resembles Catholic theology in medieval Europe: a rigid doctrine guarded by a modern priesthood who claim to possess the sole truth. Dissenters are shunned."

The dependably insightful Margaret MacMillan on why insulting and provoking its less powerful allies will inevitably reduce the long-term security of the American empire reader.foreignaffairs.com/2025/07/21/m...

Excellent long interview with Gus O'Donnell - the best cabinet secretary of the past 50 years. By Suzannah Brecknell in @civilserviceworld.bsky.social www.civilserviceworld.com/in-depth/art...

Why Brits need to stop thinking they're paying more tax now than ever before taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/06/27/u...

This is good on how better to deliver policy objectives, but this sentence stood out for me: "frontline wisdom must inform policy at inception, not as an afterthought". By Patrick Diamond and Vijay K. Luthra www.civilserviceworld.com/news/article...

Sage advice for politicians from John Plender - beware inevitable unintended consequences of manipulating pension funds to promote UK growth. Instead, focus on eliminating opacity and excessive risk-taking in private capital markets on.ft.com/3FTNxMl via @FT

This is fascinating. The UK's Exchange Equalisation Account (once used to prop-up fixed exchange rates via bilateral loans) is still there. It has £150 billion lying idle in short-term securities, yet the account's secondary objective is “making investments to further broader economic policy aims”

Lawrence Freedman on the pressing need to change our thinking on defence - Russia sees itself as at war with us and what we do needs to reflect that fact engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the... @ldfreedman.bsky.social

Having duffed up Reform in one article, The Economist moves on to a brutal demolition of Kemi Badenoch and her underwhelming leadership of the Conservative party www.economist.com/britain/2025...

"Reform’s policies add up to an agenda of fiscal recklessness that rivals, and may well exceed, the disastrous 49-day, hair-raising, market-tanking premiership of Liz Truss" www.economist.com/britain/2025... From The Economist

This is v good on the parallels between Trump's tariff war and Joe Chamberlain's turn against free trade in Britain 120 years ago. From @duncanweldon.bsky.social at Engelsberg Ideas engelsbergideas.com/essays/when-...

That President Trump receives his daily intelligence briefing as a sort of table mat with plenty of pictures and not too many words is ... jaw-dropping. Less so is that briefings are likely increasingly telling him what he wants rather than needs to hear open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/s...

This piece makes a persuasive case that it's China that has the upper hand in the trade war with the USA. By Adam Posen in @foreignaffairs.com reader.foreignaffairs.com/2025/04/09/t...

More evidence that trust in the USA is evaporating on.ft.com/3RNLR9n via @FT

This FT article makes a very good case for studying the arts if you want to be a more flexible thinker - on.ft.com/3XU1y2w