This weekend has been an interesting approach to winning over the Parliamentary Labour Party for a leader on the verge of being dumped.

An important reality “despite its struggles Reform is still likely to pick up a swathe more councils next May, and will lead national polls for the foreseeable future” And of course… Fix Social Care or nothing gets fixed

”But it’s also a function of *the frustrations of power*.” Important read 👇

Someone call the police, there’s been a triple homicide. (Great post though.)

This is an excellent read

New post just out: "The Reality Trap" On Reform's struggles running councils. What it tells us about how they'd fare if they won a general elections. And about how broken our system of local government is. (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

*Huge* number of thoughtful and well-informed answers in here (if you're a subscriber).

Big statement win for England. Builds on a really positive year. Also how good is Henry Pollock? We've got a world class player for a decade plus if he stays fit.

At a rugby club in small-town Leicestershire. This was on the window ledge in the toilet. Fearing the worst, I scanned the QR & opened it in an incognito window… It’s a link to Amnesty International’s explainer on asylum & refugees 😍

Great that personal bribery has become the default way to get deals with the world's richest and most powerful country. Really positive development.

(walks into a room, sees a blonde man called Brexit frantically stabbing for four years a twitching near-corpse called British Productivity) "Well, the Resolution Foundation has a *lot* of explaining to do"

Immigration policies should be debated on their merits but it is worth repeating that the Social Democrats are on 21% in Denmark and the Greens are on 13% (with other far left parties on another 9%). They're not exactly politically triumphant.

In practice there will still be a permanent route. There is one in Denmark. But it's not automatic and you have to meet lots of conditions.

If one assumes Starmer will be gone after May, then the more they try to appeal to the right now, the more that leadership election is going to be about tacking back. (Especially if the Greens do well in London and other cities).

This has always been been argument against our fiscal framework. You need some kind of debt rule but this kind of last minute flailing around is toxic for policy development.

Don't think there's any doubt it would have been incredibly unpopular. The relevant questions are a) will the tax rises they do instead be more or less unpopular and b) would it allow them to do things that made them look more competent in three years' time.

But James Johnson did a poll showing 700k+ people were going to leave? Surely that wasn't complete and utter obvious bollocks?

Just up from my third general anaesthetic in a month. Starting to get use to it... (All fine - dealing with aftermath of kidney woe last month)

This is why I thought they'd back off. But because they made the pledge all the options are shit.

54,314 patients waited more than 12 hours in A&E for admission in October up from 44,765 in September. I'm in that statistic!

New post from @ldfreedman.bsky.social Will Russians continue to support the war? Will 2026 be a crunch year? Will the Ukranians be able to counter-attack? Answering your questions part 2 Covers all of this... (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/w...

If I was being cynical I'd say they floated the income tax rise to push gilts down during the OBR measurement period. But that would require a level of advanced planning that seems unlikely.

There really is no word that says "strategic clarity" more than "smorgasbord".

Yay, the even worse option of lots of small taxes upsetting noisy lobby groups.

Surely the intrinsic reward of getting to produce such high-quality journalism, the thrill of inteprid original reporting, is reward enough?

If he does run I really hope his campaign slogan is "Chaos with Ed Miliband".

There's a certain type of politician that needs to believe themselves to be too moral to get involved in the dirtiness of politics and gets caught in the cognitive dissonance of hiring other people to do it for them. Gordon Brown was like that with Ed Balls and Damian McBride.

One of the takeaways from this is that the Ukraine war has in all likelihood severely weakened Russia.

They were being integrated with the mayor role anyway so this makes total sense. No need for a separate function. Helps build up mayors as the single tier of regional government.

New post from @ldfreedman.bsky.social Will Russians continue to support the war? Will 2026 be a crunch year? Will the Ukranians be able to counter-attack? Answering your questions part 2 Covers all of this... (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/w...

🎶 We didn't start the fire 🎶

Reading about the rapid collapse of Eastern European governments in 1989 as completely rotten and corrupt leaderships disintegrated when people realised fear was all that was holding them up. Apropos of nothing.

pretty funny in retrospect that QAnon hinged on the idea that powerful elites at the highest levels of government were smart enough to talk in code when sending emails to each other about their despicable crimes

If we didn't already know Epstein was a pedophile and eugenicist that style of writing emails would be such a red flag...

Recipe recommendation - made this yesterday. It got high approval from the twins ("absolutely banging") - and it's hard to get praise out of them. www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes...

A good example of someone using "economically inactive" to mean "available for work but choosing not to" and forgetting it covers students, early retirees, carers, severely disabled people, parents with very young children etc...

It's an interesting Q as to whether if there was an indisputable smoking gun linking Trump to the crimes the GOP would have the guts to properly turn on him (impeachment etc...).

And if you want to read on why a leadership challenge is likely and who the candidates to replace Starmer are.... samf.substack.com/p/who-might-...

Quite - both Major and Johnson won majorities without "their own mandate". Brown and May would have too if they hadn't either delayed an election or run a terrible campaign.

New post just out: Will the Greens' surge continue? Should Starmer sack Morgan McSweeney? Will Trump run for a third term? Answering lots of your questions. Here's what I cover open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/w...

FYI I don't think Streeting is actively trying to push Starmer out now. I think a lot of MPs have decided Starmer is going to go so possible candidates are quietly trying to get a sense of support levels.

And if you want to read on why a leadership challenge is likely and who the candidates to replace Starmer are.... samf.substack.com/p/who-might-...

Finally got to write about this obsession. Elon pushed people to stop linking the articles they were talking about. He's started to roll that back, but we were left with a culture of people yelling at screenshots of headlines on monetized accounts

Yes this looks very much like "we need to avoid a JR" rather than "we're now going to pay out".

Genuinely sad the extent to which Smith now beclowns himself. He used to be interesting but is now properly brainrotted.

Wise points on cheaper energy and climate disasters as macrotrends in this typically great column by @samfr.bsky.social samf.substack.com/p/will-the-g...

Trump is incredibly unpopular here! including amongst Tory voters. What are they doing?

New post just out: Will the Greens' surge continue? Should Starmer sack Morgan McSweeney? Will Trump run for a third term? Answering lots of your questions. Here's what I cover open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/w...

The answer to this question is that British people could discuss this question till the end of time and not be done.

Most people think the BBC is biased but in different directions (or they're not sure).