Liberal minds are neurologically wired to accept greater uncertainty than conservative minds. Which leads the latter to reject change: medicine, tech, migration. Fascinating. www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...

The suggestion doing the rounds this morning is that total income tax/national insurance will only rise for those earning over £50k. That means a lot of tactical revenue raisers elsewhere which will have messy behavioral and distributional effects. Not sure the politics are better either.

Gen X. This is our moment in history. Ah. Our minds have been turned to jelly by Facebook. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Monoculture hires are the worst. They think they are truly great. But they are frequently manchildren. Usually given an opening and a platform by other manchildren.

This is the point. There are already huge barriers to EV adoption. The added relative expense will be used by the motor lobby/populist politics to try to reverse a whole raft of regulation supporting the transition. This is not a neutral space.....

This really is poorly thought through. If you are going to do a per mile charge it should be for all vehicles. Petrol is undercharged in comparison to its negative impacts. And it's a phenomenally bad idea to create additional psychological barriers to owning EVs. on.ft.com/4oxpaFs

Removing VAT and legacy green levies from electricity bills is an excellent idea. Removing VAT from gas is a very bad one. Use social tariffs on gas if you like but widen the electricity-gas price differential in general. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

What is most notable about these data is how the UK is remarkably liberal/social democratic on social issues, trade, the state, welfare, diversity, public services...and even migration. Only exception really is crime. How on earth have we ended up with our politics? natcen.ac.uk/publications...

We need to hear more young voices in our culture and democracy. And this one on the appeal of the manosphere and why we might be letting young boys down is powerful. Male body image and its associations is a massive driver of the Tate etc enterprise. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Attitudes to welfare hardening including amongst the young is predictable in the current political environment. And the growth of tax less, fewer public services shows a desperately weak understanding of consequences. Citizenship is hollowing out. We've been warned. on.ft.com/47Texqq

In awe at the way train staff, passengers and emergency services responded yesterday. It's always the stories of heroism that light up the darkest night. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Have we stopped to consider that, contrary to received wisdom, we might be at the end rather than mid-way through the populist wave? And have we given some thought to whether, without hubris, progressive politics can be more self-confident, bolder, ambitious? www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Mostly I feel sadness for those who went through hell last night, especially those who have sustained terrible injuries. And thanks for the emergency services. And anger towards the perpetrators. I can't help also feeling contempt for those who seek political profit from these horrendous acts.

Go big. 2.5p with 0.5p earmarked for local government. And make the case for it and why those who oppose it are charlatans who aren't being straight with people. And next time obey Clegg's law: don't promise things you can't deliver. observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Climate scepticism has gone from denying climate change, to denying it's man made, to accepting it is but denying it's going to be disastrous. The next step is to accept that it's real, it's man made, is going to be disastrous but apparently it's too late. Because of them.

Quite the scene. #rome

Here's another progressive idea. Force councils such as Westminster to charge more across all bands by setting a minimum tax for each band. Redistribute the revenues to less wealthy areas. Fair and generates some cash. on.ft.com/47R1u8W

My growth plan for Italy: in shops/cafes etc instead of the person taking your order being different to the person serving you being different to the person who takes your payment, make them the same person. It will add 1% to growth.

Pursuing policies for the future rather than grievances for a lost past turns out not to be electoral suicide. Just in.

We should concentrate more on adaptation not emissions. And biodiversity not emissions. Human welfare not emissions. Because these are choices, right? And "green activists" don't even think about them. Are you sure? www.ft.com/content/e913...

We need a bit of optimism. D66 succeeded through hope- sustainable new towns, increased minimum wage, positive about migration and Europe, investment in education, supporting responsible AI and green transition. The opposite of the UK's miserabilist politics. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Just what is incentivising racially divisive, increasingly extreme politics in the Conservative party? It's a mystery.

I'm seeing a lot of good, responsible uses of AI in education. Teachers and institutions doing careful research and implementation- from community colleges to Eton. The big worry is that knowledge of what it should and shouldn't be used for isn't that widespread (esp parents). We need to fix that.

A long argument from Bill Gates to deprioritise climate change. In which he manages to place "human welfare" in a separate category to "achieving net zero". Sorry he got bored with it but it is most definitely, absolutely about human welfare. www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-pa...

I've got a better idea than bringing in business executives to run Government. Do it as an exchange scheme. Get experienced Cabinet level politicians to run major businesses in return. Because that makes just as much sense. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Complaining about lack of representation is a brave line for an anti-DEI party to take.... Chasing their own tail.

Yet more evidence for my pothole theory of populism. Some of the BBC's reporting on Epping etc was ropey but this is good. Captures the generational divide over culture and politics well. Everyone despairs at Britain and each other. via @martinhwheatley.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

One of the myths of our age is that the internet/social media has meant disintermediation of citizens and politics. It couldn't be more false. We are now hyper-intermediated and that is why X etc are so dangerous. Musk is mediator. Law, regulation, politicians haven't kept up.

But is racism racist? Are racists? Tonight on Gaslight TV.

Abundance latest. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

40% of UK food price inflation is being driven by climate factors. What was that you were saying about "abundance" again? www.ft.com/content/ced8...

I do wonder how solid the theory that when the anti-Reform squeeze comes out will work extremely strongly in Labour's favour is. There's also the scenario in a lot of seats where there is a double squeeze- anti Reform *and* anti-Labour. Like this one.

I'm old enough to remember "latch-key" kids. The moral panic in the 80s was kids having *far too much" play time. Then it was TV, abduction, gaming, sex and violence in movies, murder by delinquents, drugs.... If I were American I'd worry far more about guns and cars stealing outdoor space....

Reversing declining fertility is nothing to do with better childcare etc. We just have to make ourselves far poorer, less educated, and more unequal. Handy, as the populist right have just the project to do that (while also tapping into male status anxiety). www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A letter from the age of truth. Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley. We need more of this in our public discourse. Call vile ideologies and the people who peddle them out for who and what they are.

Dubai calls. Do send a postcard.

Quite apart from the biggest assault on the family in our history, the attack on law, public services, business, children and decency... The notion that you have to earn £39k or to have never claimed any benefits - not even child benefit - to be making a contribution is completely amoral.

There is basically no argument against adding employers' national insurance to partnership earnings in LLPs. None. Although one person does laughably try to argue that lawyers, accountants etc will leave the country. on.ft.com/4qnsbcs

Jogging past a local private primary school this am, observed a long line of SUVs, each one attended to by teachers basically acting as a hotel porter. Kids escorted by an individual teacher from their idling cars into school. Seriously. And all I can think of is quadrupling VAT on school fees.

This is a welcome quote from Reeves. It doesn't hide behind "the way in which we left the EU" implying there was a good way to leave when there wasn't. It names Brexit directly. Now we are naming Voldemort we can confront him directly.

The Enoch Powell (+!) strategy is now a route to advancement rather than exile. And that is why by the time the battle for supremacy on the right is over the Conservative party will be unrecognisable - if it even exists. God knows what this battle will do to the country. But it won't be good.

A frankly astonishing assertion by the Greek PM in the FT that the EU has been prioritising decarbonisation above all else. I think we all know where this way of thinking leads. Net Zero becomes an afterthought with catastrophic consequences. Slippery slope.

The Education Secretary is delivering a statement on post-16 skills. Which the BBC parses into a statement on "universities". And that, in a nutshell, is the problem we have. We need great universities *and* a great universal skills system. We have the former.

The thing about the Overton window is that it just shifts by default if you let people propose insane policies like removing people with indefinite leave to remain without robust challenge. It doesn't just go away, it slowly leaks into the mainstream water supply unless you properly hose it down.

This on nature and urban design in Copenhagen almost makes me want to weep. In our current debate nature is framed as the enemy, a "blocker", of development when, in fact, it almost defines quality of urban life. This is what our future should look like- for all. open.substack.com/pub/ericsand...

Feeling a lot of love for Brum at the moment for some reason.

Jenrick's "rough and tumble" comments about the 1980s are part of a wider collective forgetting. The 1980s were a pretty grim time. The country seemed to wake up in the mid-1990s but until then everything felt stuck and aggressive (not least, football hooliganism).

Paid paternity leave or similar across the world. Not great are we? Yes, there are mechanisms to share parental leave but nonetheless. No prizes for guessing which parent carries the heaviest burden of this. (Via @heejungchung.bsky.social )

I've published a new (short) article on 'John Maynard Keynes and Universal Basic Income', which might be of interest to those working on these debates: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Every day another story about how our development system is fundamentally broken. And private developers have the Government over a barrel: on affordable housing, on nature, on contributions to infrastructure and public services. This is not the way. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...