🚨Don't forget On Tuesday we're publishing a book – combining analysis & policy with in-depth conversations to understand the needs of lower income families – and hosting a major conference on it. With keynotes from Andy Burnham @andyburnham.bsky.social & Ken Murphy. Register➡️ buff.ly/2tG8LsY

Just a month ago Peter Mandelson was urging UK & EU to grow up, give up their “instinctive allergic reaction” to Trump & figure out how to prosper in his new order spectator.com/article/euro...

Look forward to this — and not only because it’s an interesting time to hear Andy Burnham on the state of the nation. Join us!

Are Britain’s big parties dying because class politics is finished? Maybe, for “class” in terms of jobs. But class defined by property is only getting more powerful NEW COL www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/723...

Interesting detail here is a full manuscript is being returned to Mandelson 5 days after Mandelson stops being Business Secretary (amid an industrial crisis) & effective deputy PM. Must have been written in office You’d have thought he might be too busy

Prospect paywall down! Soak in 2,000 pages on 1,000 years of capitalism — distilled into 2,000 words www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7184...

Interesting to hear frm @gabrielzucman.bsky.social on prospects for taxing assets in France/US/UK + bonus unsettling tale of Harvard dangling a job in front of the scourge of Big Wealth -- and then changing its mind c/o @benjamin-clark.bsky.social www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/views/people...

Exceptionally insightful constituency profile - as you might expect from someone who knows their psephology AND knows the seat

2 things jump out of this new analysis: i) Just how big a deal Universal Credit is (affecting MOST children in the UK) ii) just how small the price tag is on solutions for many of its problems

Oh and the paywall is down til Monday, so you can read @benansell.bsky.social, @jamesbloodworth.bsky.social, @jenstout.bsky.social, @isabelh.bsky.social, @danielharris.bsky.social and others to your heart's content. (And then maybe subscribe? 🙏)

New year, new Editor in @philipjcollins1.bsky.social 1 & now - for a FEW DAYS ONLY - @prospect.org is entirely free Take in Phil's opening cover essay, fill your boots with everything else -- & discover why you need to subscribe!

Hello, I have a new book out in the spring with Picador and I would love it if you could help me spread the word. IF WE TOLERATE THIS draws on years of work, to help readers understand why British politics is hurtling rightwards and what to do about it. Pre-orders: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/if-w...

Keir Starmer’s procedural victory over Andy Burnham only leaves the prime minister more exposed, writes Tom Clark .

The quickfire, backroom vote to keep Andy Burnham out of Westminster was a classic triumph of machine politics The twist? It’s now plain that just one lonely man is operating the machine And Starmer’s brittle command of it could easily crack www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/722...

Those below the poverty line are, increasingly, well below it New @statspeter.bsky.social @katieschmuecker.bsky.social @jrf-uk.bsky.social study www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Shame not to try a — well, you know — argument, rather than falling back on Bernard Manning era “she’s mental” slurs

Calling elections “costly & destabilising” = not the best look. Also being used to delay various council elections this year Echoes of the “more democracy will only spend £s that could go on NHS” argument Dominic Cummings ran in NoToAV campaign in 2011

In the depths of the pandemic, I spent a couple of weeks talking to people who’d worked with Andy Burnham, who described his evolution from likeable lightweight to a substantial fighter for the communities he represents www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/407...

100% called this to the producer. Evan Davis is the only radio presenter I can imagine bringing up geometric vs arithmetic indexing.

Both these podcasts with Robert Kagan (one US, one UK) are worth a listen open.spotify.com/episode/3RAL... Political pundits may still view midterms thru the usual Qs: “thing to watch is any shift in college-educated suburban women” etc etc Historians see things through an altogether darker prism

Well.

‘Grown-up’ commentary on Greenland: - “What practical compromise can give Trump what he wants on security without breaching norms?” - & “Does Trump know what he’s playing with in terms of NATO?” Q it doesn’t ask: - what if Trump WANTS to break NATO & the Greenland obsession is just the means?

Even as Carillion directors continue to be fined, the key regulatory changes the scandal pointed to as needed are being dropped www.theguardian.com/business/nil...

Lest this particular u turn get lost in the noise: as.ft.com/r/cab1b495-e...

After 2025’s “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” comes the Orwellian creation of 2026: “Board of Peace” And women, it seems, need not apply

📢 Applications for our Research Training Programme 2026 are now open. Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic graduates are invited to apply for a 12-week training programme based in our Westminster office and paid at the London Living Wage. Details here 👉 buff.ly/Guyvcgk

If all 8 matches in the round of 16 in, say, the FA cup or the Euros came out 3-1, songs would be sung about it & mystics asked to discern its meaning in the tabloids The odds are phenomenal Snooker doesn’t get the same attention these days, but the Masters has just delivered 8 straight 6-2s

US Dept of Labor — please remember who YOU are. A bureaucracy tasked with things like, you know, employment law & reliable job statistics… Rather than peddlers of all-white American history set to trance music & slogans that somehow sound translated from German www.facebook.com/departmentof...

All the data you could want about a 20-year squeeze on struggling Britain— plus a chance for Andy Burnham to say what, if anything, he’d do differently in response Should be quite a day — sign up

How does the Government's rhetoric around the cost of living compare with the reality? Could we really be “turning a corner” in 2026, as Starmer hopefully proclaimed at PMQs? Read in full (and subscribe!) here, to find out how “£150 off Energy bills” works in practice ⤵️ buff.ly/wkw0Sqh

🧵 what ‘Reform’ might involve — ‘Packing the Lords is absolutely on the table as an option’ — Considering Govt appointing judges & bishops — Trump 2, not Trump 1

It was the Conservative Campaign Guide for 1914, which really is a stunning document. And "right-wing Leninism" is spot on. Large numbers of Tories really do convince themselves that the state must be overthrown by revolutionary violence, in the name of "the people". It's an incredibly period.

Today, on @ppfideas.bsky.social, we're exploring the Home Rule crisis of 1912-14: the closest modern Britain has come to civil war. It's an amazing story, in which Conservatives supplied weapons to paramilitaries, built refugee camps and fomented mutiny in the army. So here's a short intro...🧵

“Home Rule is a little bit like Brexit” Knock off for the week & tune in - a truly fascinating conversation

A different sort of economic recession!

Can these sorts of UK formulations — “like and respect”(!) — survive the current crisis? Obviously not, but then, the record suggests — absolutely! www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Great to see our Public Right to Justice work with Nuffield & @queensparkkaren.bsky.social in a magazine that guarantees many MPs will see it

This triad of political horrors looms for Keir Starmer in May Strangely, however, his personal chances of surviving it might be better served by Labour division than Labour unity www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/720...

The natural year prayers are for peace, prosperity and harmony The odds of an embattled PM, however, could actually be improved by an unhappy new year www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/720...

“I watched last night, one of the most precise attacks — on sovereignty” One of the clearer lines in Trump’s rambling press conference speech

In reviewing a “brisk” new biog, @alexdean94.bsky.social gives an even brisker intro to Wittgenstein’s two successive philosophies. V nice piece! (Am looking at the same book for @prospectmagazine.co.uk on a slower timetable…)

The winner of the 2025 Enlightened Economist book prize (ie. my top choice among the econ and econ-adjacent books I read this past 12 months): www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.p...

Half reform inheritance tax so farmers treated a bit more like others Run into a backlash Wait Wait Wait till it’s dropped off radar Then decide that a quarter-reform might be better Will this win any votes? Hard to imagine What it will do is make it harder to make other policies stick

Capitalism tomes at the double... Prospect Magazine (UK) reviewed Capitalism and Its Critics alongside Sven Beckert's Capitalism: A Global History. Thanks to Tom Clark for a thoughtful article. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7184...

Books of the year! A round-up c/o @prospectmagazine.co.uk & @pghoskin.bsky.social www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7185...

Verian method statement that gives this poll specific standing Most polls in the online age are self-selecting panels of the (possibly atypical) types who enjoy giving their opinions Constraining self-selection might get you closer to a true random sample And they got v close in ‘24

There’s a lot to know about ‘slavery after slavery’ www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7184...

In Florida the forward march of child labour was halted this year But will capitalism let things rest there? www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7184...

The second most-read PQ journal article this year was: 'The Contradictions of the Albanese Labor Government in Australia: The Promise and Limits of Thin Labourism' Well done, Rob Manwaring and Emily Foley! Read it now for free: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....