Experts.

FIFA allows reselling of World Cup tickets and takes 15% of the profit. And now two tickets for the final have been put up for sale for €2m (original price €9,377) and that is fine as FIFA can take €300k as their revenue. Quite the racket. Fits with the host country. rp-online.de/politik/deut...

Yes, Reform voters are more decided than others. But we'd also need to see which party are voters most definitely ruling out voting for. Very likely Reform too, and that would be much larger numbers.

Trump swings and roundabouts: - only president in (polled) history never to have reached 50% job approval - his 36% still far from the depth reached by Truman (22), Nixon (24), George W. (25) - only he himself managed to get down there so fast (<1 year) - he didn't have as far to fall

me hugging ed miliband

Reminded of Miliband's best line

On average, the voters of every British party consider their party to be ideologically further to right than themselves. Barely so for those on the left of the party spectrum, but seriously on the right. Reform UK and Conservative voters consider themselves much more moderate than their parties.

Remember when the BBC apologized for calling Reform UK "far right"? And how journos invented "hard right" for them? Well, one thing voters and experts can both agree on is that they are far/radical/extreme right - whichever term you prefer. They belong to that party family. Nothing mainstream.

Remember when the BBC apologized for calling Reform UK "far right"? And how journos invented "hard right" for them? Well, one thing voters and experts can both agree on is that they are far/radical/extreme right - whichever term you prefer. They belong to that party family. Nothing mainstream.

Why "except"?

Mr Orbán's Fidesz built itself an electoral system that boosted it until it didn't. In 2014, the first year under the system, Fidesz-KDNP won a ⅔ majority with 27% of the registered voters. Now, with 30% of registered voters, it is on track to 29% of the seats. __ Made in base R with extrafont

An indictment of German taste if any was needed, importing more cheese from the Netherlands than from Italy. But also raises serious questions about Italians: what do they want our Limburger and Spundekäs for?

A van was parked in our street today, and on the side of it it simply said LAMINATE GLASGOW. And I was thinking, whatever problems this city has, this is not the solution.

Affirmative action/quota places for those who despise the idea of affirmative action/quotas. But the new thing is that it is explicitly your ideology that qualifies you for an academic position, also implying that your ideology will shape your output, which is deeply problematic for a university.

Musk is more than three times as rich as he was when Trump got into office. The biggest scrounger in world history.

www.timeshighereducation.com/news/uk-univ... yes, but ... if we were market stall holders.. you said we could only sell apples for 50p. and it didn't matter how much inflation was, 50p was the price. but you also said we could sell peaches for as much as we like, because the price of apples was.. 1.

Hold on. Is blockading now the same as reopening?

Is it creative or unimaginative to make The Doctor a doctor?

Frankreich reduziert technische und politische Verwundbarkeiten. Erstaunlich oft vergessen: Ein souveräner Markt entsteht nicht von allein, wenn der Staat einkauft wie bisher www.heise.de/meinung/Euro...

He is not Jesus. He is a doctor. And what's glowing in his hand is bleach.

Now Matt Goodwin is threatening Hungary with a decade of modernization and prosperity. Nasty stuff.

aka the silent majority.

For years, but especially in the last few months, I have been trying hard to imagine what it will feel like seeing Orban decisively defeated. I just couldn't. And yet here we are: it is truly and well over. I have more reservations about Peter Magyar than I could say in 300 characters or a thread...

Very good deep dive into the history of conservative anti-intellectualism. "It's not that conservatives are stupid people. It's that conservatives want people to be stupid." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-right-wa...

Don't write Germany off just yet. We can still be world-leading - even in a crowded field of "most disliked heads of government". de.euronews.com/2026/04/13/u...

No amount of gerrymandering will fix that

abhorrent graph crime here

Pretty devastating for anyone who was under the impression that AMS was a PR system. One thing I wonder is how well MRPs can predict patterns of tactical voting when Reform largely replaces the Tories who were the generous ones in 2021, lending to Lab and LD, which I doubt Reform voters will do. 1/

Collectively, the British electorate might finally be starting to see sense and moving towards hanging their parliament. Which is their only way out of this mess.

Sometimes I think spammers could make more of an effort.

If you ever needed a bit of calming your nerves, this is the go-to guy.

You could make Donald Duck US President (it would be an insult to cartoon ducks to say that you did) and every single one of his incoherent utterances would become a headline everywhere.

Books on baking banana bread available now 🍌 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

As said in their mission statement, "Your Party" is indeed "building a new kind of party". One that is not bothering with that election nonsense that the older kind of parties are so terribly obsessed with. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2598104...

Interesting that Australia's policy response to the energy crisis is to recognise that it's a supply issue so they need to reduce demand...

"Radical right activists fear radical right stuff could stop people from voting for radical right party" www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

"opposition leader"

Oh yes!

Everyone wants to find their kind of people.

Since the narrative of “young right-wing men” persists so — here are some findings/patterns from the representative election statistics of the various German federal states. Spoiler: *IN NO GERMAN STATE DO MEN AGED 18–24 VOTE FOR THE AfD MORE THAN MEN AGED 35–60.*

Attention span of a toddler, interests of a teenager. (apologies to toddlers and teenagers, as almost all of them are far better human beings, and on top have space for improvement) www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi...

His imagined talks are always the best and most consequential talks.

Language now in as much turmoil as markets.

Also today: first day in over half a year I haven't needed hand warmers - as a quite severe sufferer of Raynaud's disease. Spring rules!

Today is the day. Uteøl. My all time favourite Norwegian word.

This portrait is what happens when Cleggy put up student loans so the artist could only do the foundation course.

A radical right party does not replace the party of the centre right as the party of the centre right. It replaces it as the party of the right. It is not like Reform are moderating in the process. They are radicalising those on the right, voters and discourse. spectator.com/article/well...

Come to the best conference on elections and all things public opinion and parties!

The UK decline (shown below) is particularly marked. It's surprising to see a decline to below levels of the 1970s, when there was (for example) internment without trial in parts of the UK (1/2)

V-Dem v.16 is now released, w. updated scores for 2025. Most countries remain stable from 2024, but some clear improvements (on diff’t democracy indices), incl. S. Korea, Sri Lanka & Mauritius. Largest declines came, by far, in the US. This figure shows 10-yr changes on the Liberal Dem. index.