With Kemi Badenoch lashing out at HR managers again this week, here is a piece I wrote on her anti-bureaucracy encyclical on this theme a while back. It is a peculiar Marxist/neoliberal crossover. And it ignores the reality of modern risk society. open.substack.com/pub/anthonyp...

First new home brewed beer of the year. Juicy all the way down. Hazy session IPA. Stone fruit, fruit pastilles, and citrus. Quencher. Happy weekend!

Just legitimate concern patriotic lovers of their country. And unbelievably..... www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midland...

England's first wholly cycle first street. Honestly, it's literally a couple of hundred yards and all it means is that a few local residents have to give priority to 1000s of cyclists using it daily. The best thing? It's sending the blowhards completely mad including in the national media!

Democracy can't function on this basis. Yes, this is about climate change. But it's also about the ability to critically engage with information. An extraordinary deficit. More than half of Americans don't believe climate change is caused by humans. www.forbes.com/sites/maryro...

A self-employed plumber won in Gorton and Denton. He's a self-employed plumber. Ergo.....

History disappears before our very eyes. Collapsed into an AI slop infotainment plug in.

Garden centres: key social infrastructure. Homes and communities: not. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

My main reflection on the Milburn review is that it focuses in absolutely correctly on a broken system of support for young people. Whether NEET rates were increasing or falling that would be true. And whatever the root causes are. And, by the way, the system of support for over 25s is broken too.

The fundamental problem with Blair's analysis - and I say this as a modernist (see my Substack posts if you don't believe me) - is hyper-modernity. There is no yesterday other than something that is past, something to react against. Only a future. So tomorrow will always save you. But it won't.

Coincidentally, I opened my piece on the "soft left" with Tony Blair's now disproven claim that Labour can only win as New Labour. The one he's repeating today despite the fact it's demonstrably false. And so odd to believe voters think in left-right abstractions. open.substack.com/pub/anthonyp...

When you distil the Blair thing it is pretty dystopian. 1. AI or bust. 2. Reorient everything around AI - go MAGA not EU. 3. Restructure Government around it. 4. Accept no regulatory limits to this. 5. Become a mini US. Enter the EU and turn it that way too. institute.global/insights/pol...

He was the future once. In a galaxy far, far away. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

It's really not responsible for the Government to increase the length of time people have to wait for citizenship, in limbo, with this lot waiting to swoop in and destroy their lives after the next election. Honestly, think about what might come next.

Legitimate concerns people doing their violent thing. True patriots and protectors of women. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The best applications of AI I see in education and skills are where the machine prompts the person rather than vice versa- the person has to demonstrate learning and capability and is assessed and given feedback. Yes, teachers and coaches can do all this well. But scale and access is limited.

If I were arguing for banning u16 social media I wouldn't say "it's like tobacco". If that's your argument, why unregulated adult access? A better argument: social media companies are like big tobacco. We are shutting it down for u16s while we sort it out. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

I know it's not the biggest issue here but why did he skimp on the toilet seats of all things? Really struggling to dissect that one.

"When you're on the line it's on top of you, you may feel ill, but that line will be 100%" "It's the most boring job in the world. The same thing over and over again. It wears you out. There's no need to think...you just carry on." The decline in industrial employment may not have been all bad.

Time to drop the pretence over tech, advanced manufacturing, and life sciences. Wine, tourism, olives and industrial coolants are our industries of the future. 🥵

A country with the best family policies you can imagine, more affordable housing than the UK, and the fertility rate still declines. Modern society produces fewer children. How we transition through is the policy challenge- including how we avoid crazy politics. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Not too shabby this Wales.

A CEO who thinks management is about "measuring" is somehow still a CEO. I'll watch this with interest and I suspect growing amusement.

No-one took on this bet. Wisely.

An afternoon of Manchesterism. And the tram to Ashton pops into shot.

The "soft left" has long been dismissed as unelectable and ineffective- since Kinnock's '92 defeat. It may be about to have its first Prime Minister in decades. Can it govern? This week's Substack. open.substack.com/pub/anthonyp...

I wonder how those targeted by ICE, including violently, using Palantir technology feel about the company's alignment with "public safety". And honestly, the British business secretary should devote far less time to delivering Palantir's sales pitch. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Great that we've finally found the solution to the decades' long decline in fertility rates. It was so simple all along. Just shows, you don't need complex social and scientific exploration. You just need to be able to point to things you can see.

Vetting is incredibly difficult. I mean you have to get someone to spend 15 minutes looking at someone's socials history. Not easy for a small party.

If anyone is interested in an arguably overly thorough analysis of the links (or lack of) between voting systems and political stability, here's one I made earlier: makevotesmatter.org.uk/wp-content/u...

I love these "critics of proportional representation" who have been watching seven years of Governments with sizable majorities under first past the post disintegrate but still stick to the line they learned in A Level Politics. Next level resolution.

The Labour party's fundamental condition is that it has to convince progressive voters that it's progressive whilst simultaneously convincing authoritarian voters that it's authoritarian. It needs a kind of magic to pull that off whilst also having a coherent Government programme.

I'm not a ban all tech/screens person at all but I have removed YouTube kids because the content is not age appropriate at all. Eg lots of gender stereotypes and body image stuff. You do need strict editorial control like the BBC. It's not there. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

All the evidence from the pandemic is that if you give people open, clear information they are responsive and change behaviour. Instead, the Government seems to assume we are a nation of vaccine, deep state, globalist conspiracists incapable of rational engagement. X brained.

This a million times. It's obvious that rejoin is a complex multilevel process. And ultimately the politics might become too difficult. The UK is not in a rejoin moment but it will never get there without establishing it as a goal/mission. Streeting/Burnham etc are not dumb.

Whilst Burnham is playing on easy mode at the moment, this is nonetheless a good interview. He does have fluency - for instance he says working-class people rather than "working people" - and paints in primary colours. And mass public housing? Yes, please. www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

Supporters and friends of the PM who repeatedly warn him off difficult but necessary arguments have a lot to answer for in the current predicament.

The thing I find problematic about the declining fertility debate is that women exercising agency and more control over their lives is a thoroughly good thing. We should work out how to adapt to that rather than reaching for despair, moral anxiety, and ineffective policy.

The big risk with Makerfield is not Burnham win or lose. It's Burnham triangulates away from being the change candidate in order to win and becomes Starmer 2.0. Then Labour - and the country - is back to square one. inews.co.uk/news/politic...

On the question of "how could the UK's first soft left Government for half a century govern effectively?" there is a working model. That is the Sanchez administration in Spain- an open economy, infrastructure investment, energy transition. There are some symbolic wealth taxes. It works.

Let's be honest slowing down some of the Government's agenda is a net positive. For instance, everything coming out of the Home Office.

Just patriots who want to show their love for country latest. If communities want to fly the flag great but it shouldn't be down to far right thugs whether they do. Those who vandalise community property and threaten and harm people should be arrested. Basics. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

If Burnham becomes PM it will be the first time in half a century the UK has had a "soft left" Government. Social democratic, pluralistic, internationalist, socially liberal, but still coded in the labour tradition - a sensibility and value set rather than ideology. That will feel different.

Radical change you say Mr/s Leadership candidate? The FT would like you to sit on that stool there while it goes to get a big bucket of iced water. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

More than two centuries of modern chemistry and yet no-one has managed to find an adhesive substance stronger than a cornflake dried onto a breakfast bowl. Maybe it can't be done.

I would certainly not have had Josh Simons down as a Burnham backer on my accumulator. Weird things are happening in the parliamentary party.

A week on, for all the "working people", "change", being bold, on a mission, Labour values, "what we were elected to do", this is the reality: Labour will have argument about deliverism dressed up in the language of values in a leadership contest. Without anyone with a decent "delivery" record.

The Labour party is coming to the rapid conclusion that delivery is the problem ahead of any leadership election. So everyone will say they will push faster, harder, deliver for working people. When everyone knows the issue is political economy. But that would require some tough choices.

But he doesn't face questions. He evades them and the conversation just moves on. No accountability, no consequences. Just relentless polluting the democratic river. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

A theme here is the refusal to properly regulate tech companies- including when it comes to child safety. Taking on tech power is an example of something that could have helped create a sense of change and public mission. So many opportunities.