This is the sort of clip you see in the opening minutes of a deeply dystopian film

I am not Roman Catholic but Pope Leo is an inspiring figure in many ways and I am genuinely grateful for his intervention.

Five railwaymen whose jobs disappeared with the end of steam on British Railways on 17 August 1968, photo by Roger Bamber (1944-2022). Carnforth locomotive shed, Lancashire.

Trump & Vance’s 🇺🇸 is NOT an ally And they definitely do not represent civilisation let alone Western civilisation or Christian civilisation. And definitely not truth or freedom. Lies and repression.

Interesting piece on the case for more development in the corridor between Liverpool and Manchester, although it would be nice to have something more substantial than deregulate everything close to a motorway junction 🧵 substack.com/@timleunig/n...

I feel sick to my stomach waiting around to see what atrocity Trump has in mind for the people of Iran this evening. It's hard to fathom our other elected leaders aren't able to check him in any meaningful way. It's an indictment not just of voters but of our whole system. We're ruled by a mad king.

It’s easy to make fun of Ian Leslie at a terrible time like this. So let’s do that.

This is the ultimate test for a constitutional order. Either constitutional mechanisms are used to check and balance this, and remove him from office, or they are not. For there can be no greater test for any constitution.

The problem with vibes based government is that the vibes are entirely detached from reality (see how far you can get through the thread without going full joker challenge). One exception: people generally understand that today's contributions pay today's pensioners. But the rest: hmmmmmm.

Scarcely believable that the King is being sent to be nice to this madman.

Spot on. There aren’t any simple, quick solutions to the problems facing the country and even good things done in isolation can make other problems worse. Time for more realism in policy debates.

Opportunity cost is long due a comeback in policy debates (PPFs = production possibility frontiers).

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson's former best friend and Spectator journalist, James Delingpole, is speculating on Artemis 2 being fake. Quite how he still has a career is something of a mystery.

NATO isn’t fraying because Europe won’t spend enough. It’s fraying because much of the MAGA right no longer see Europe as the same civilisation. My latest on a relationship possibly destined to become ever distant, whatever Starmer and European leaders do now. substack.com/home/post/p-...

He's growing into his paws 😬

Lowe delivering his Easter message

If you want to depress yourself further then give this excellent piece a read. The UK is now seen by the American right as a warning and something they need to defend themselves against. Reform/Restore are riding on the back (and funding) of this view open.substack.com/pub/goodalla...

Sounds awfully like he’s threatening a nuclear strike. That’s really going to help the Iranian people as well as opening the Gates of Hell for everyone else.

Unfortunately American voters have but 🤷‍♂️

“Takes one to know one” as my gran used to say.

Many good points here, on both sides. But I suspect there's not a single thing that'll boost growth everywhere. We need a broad spectrum approach; we can build trams AND stop restricting universities AND [insert many other policies here].

Still trolling. He thinks he’s a tough guy but the entire world sees him as a pathetic loser.

The triple lock is not about the state pension keeping up with the cost of living. That would be achieved by linking it to the CPI which was the change introduced by Thatcher, and kept by Major, Blair and Brown because it saved money..

Donnie Darko timeline.

One of the best jobs in UK social science, research & policy.

Next step woke Marxist sharia

Really useful piece on the importance of training for power as you get older. Use It or Lose It open.substack.com/pub/seniorhe...

Really interesting article. Regulations are the expression of trade offs in a democracy. They may not also do that as well as they should, but to present them as fundamentally anti growth misses their fundamental point.

The damage has already been done. Trump’s actions have trashed the world economy. It’s what we do next that counts.

Another data point to support the view that Reform and Restore are fish in the same pool of disillusionment voters as the Greens

A big part of Donald Trump's appeal among his ~30%, ride-or-die core is that he's the first president to be sincerely, authentically stupid and incurious in the exact same way as the fabled Median Voter. *Nothing* about his unintelligence is a gimmick or a put-on.

The pessimistic case is "There's no civilisation left".

'inside the red-faced hawk is a dove, with an almost physical horror of violence' 'Trump is as close as a pacifist as we've seen in the White House' Pure pundit brain from Ian Leslie in March 2025

From 1965 and frighteningly relevant today with a deranged madman in the White House youtu.be/qfZVu0alU0I?...

Yet again, she edges towards an ever more baffling patch of ground which is something like “the party i was a minister for made massive mistakes but fundamentally left the country in a good state but Labour have ruined it in 20 months but the country is not broken”. It’s quite convoluted?

It cannot be ruled out that this is a threat to use a nuclear weapon against Iran

Just catching up with the “King Charles has converted to Islam” discourse and I’m trying to comfort myself by assuming it’s all part of hybrid warfare rather than people just being ******* stupid.

A really important thread. The Greens are a force for good, but it's critical that their policies are grounded in reality, not just feel-good populism. If the economic consensus is faulty, they still need sufficient economic literacy to suggest a *realistic* alternative.

Fascinating essay open.substack.com/pub/james194...

The whole "don't share screenshots of his tweet, it'll just amplify his reach" argument doesn't really work when the guy is the president of the United States.

you know the way "why did the Roman Empire fall" and "what are the causes of the First World War" are big questions that sort of function like Rorsharch tests, allowing people to debate ultimately inexplicable moments in history? "Why did no one stop Trump" a decent future shout for the third.

What can you say about that post? Other than that the President is threatening war crimes and sounds absolutely unhinged?

Though if you take a mentally unstable figure, give him vast military power and watch him confront an opponent with its own delusions of grandeur then I'd tend to view batshit crazy escalation as more likely an outcome than all the complacent TACO memes that distort the thinking of US elites

America went from this to this.

As Arthur says it's bizarre to ask the King to interact with someone so dangerously unhinged.

The US president appears to be primarily a narcissistic sociopathic madman who is probably mainly just posing as an incoherent nihilistic theocratic madman

Happy Easter

Looks like the Telegraph are now using AI generated images

Honest Bob doesn't appear to know that the LGPS is actually a fully funded DB scheme. Nor is it true that the 'old parties' have ducked the issue for years. The Coalition commissioned the Hutton Review and made changes to non funded DB schemes in response to its recommendations.

Now simply making things up.