The story of how the NHS was established breaks pretty much every rule of modern policy formation and programme management – which should perhaps make us wonder just how useful the rule book is. open.substack.com/pub/sfhwebb/...

Thoughts on the Signal farce.. 'there is an approach to security that covers lawyers and yechnical experts' backs nicely, but creates processes so unworkable that awful security breaches are an inevitable outcome' open.substack.com/pub/sfhwebb/...

"unless a reasonable person could disagree with every word you say, you are not talking strategy, but platitudes" open.substack.com/pub/sfhwebb/...

open.substack.com/pub/sfhwebb/... If university is not improving underlying skills and merely being used by employers as a proxy for measures of general intelligence and conscientiousness, this might suggest a major misallocation of resources.

Realism’ in geopolitics is a different beast now. Cardinal Richelieu didn’t care what carnage he was causing during the Thirty Years War if it was in France’s interests. Robert Walpole boasted in 1733 "There are 50,000 men slain in Europe this year, and not one Englishman." 🧵

We need to stop delegating out moral decisions to technical 'experts' in international law open.substack.com/pub/sfhwebb/...

Is the City suffocating the UK economy? What steps might a populist future government whether Blue Labour or of the Right take to rein it in without destroying the goose that lays the golden eggs? open.substack.com/pub/sfhwebb/...

@wdfpodcast.bsky.social Shout out for the show in my substack. People keep asking 'why Wallenstein's Camp'? open.substack.com/pub/sfhwebb/...

Time to break up the Treasury? open.substack.com/pub/sfhwebb/...

Fascinating discussion over at Unherd between Sayers and Wolfgang Munchau about German economic and political decline.

How did Britain outspend France. A country four times the size, in the eighteenth century? The Bank of England against the 'Thirty Maidens of Geneva' open.substack.com/pub/sfhwebb/...

Tocqueville noticed the short lived flourishing that was possible when strict rules of form were first loosened.  Ulysses and The Waves are remarkable, but having done this once, who wants to read another stream of consciousness novel?" open.substack.com/pub/sfhwebb/...