With so many voters having changed their minds in the last 15 months, for @samfr.bsky.social, I used @britishelectionstudy.com and @yougov.co.uk data to look at who is moving, why, and whether they’ll return. A 🧵 looking at the key points, but the whole article has so many more essential details!

A lot of parties are acting as if the election is tomorrow as opposed to likely 2029 after which either Trump is out of office, or more concerningly, still in office.

The government want more coercive powers for the state against protests, and the main opposition party wants more coercive powers for the state against migrants. Our political-media culture continues in a loop where the response to every perceived problem is yet more coercive powers for the state.

A notable response from the most traditionally conservatives of the Ivies. Essentially ‘go do one’.

👏👏👏👏👏

Holy hell. DHS just openly stated that its agents use “reasonable suspicion” to make ARRESTS. This is blatantly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court is clear that you need probable cause to arrest someone, as opposed to stop them to ask them a question or two. This is huge b/c…

Couldn’t agree more with this para from @jonathanfreedland.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Can always rely on @jonathanfreedland.bsky.social to say what needs saying and say it well on occasions such as these www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Weirdest government shutdown ever

Here's the ADL description of how the Moon Man is a neo-Nazi, white supremacist symbol. Here's the Moon Man in a video just posted by the US Department of Homeland Security today. Trump's administration, of course, just cut ties with the ADL.

A little end of the week treat with my new bubble graphs. Thought I would break down some of the cross party differences (at least as of May 2025) on a few different 'cultural' variables. So a very quick thread 1/n

IF ANY CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY SIGNS THIS RADICAL AGREEMENT, THEY'LL LOSE BILLIONS IN STATE FUNDING — INCLUDING CAL GRANTS — INSTANTLY. CALIFORNIA WILL NOT BANKROLL SCHOOLS THAT SELL OUT THEIR STUDENTS, PROFESSORS, RESEARCHERS, AND SURRENDER ACADEMIC FREEDOM.

And, just as importantly, that they would do the same for mosques, churches, temples, gurdwaras, or any other places of worship were they to be similarly threatened. Something about the UK to be genuinely proud of, that the overwhelming majority of us help to build & maintain, despite everything.

POLLS: Who do Americans blame for the gov't shutdown?* WASH POST 47% blame Trump/GOP 30% blame Dems MARIST 38% blame GOP 27% blame Dems NYT/SIENA 26% blame Trump/GOP 19% blame Dems MORNING CONSULT 45% blame GOP 32% blame Dems [*all taken b/w late Sept & Oct 1] www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...

Just out, here’s me chatting to Fat Tony and Steve Lamacq about the state of Britain’s nightlife and engaging in an extended and possibly unnecessary trip to my past and famed Oasis show in 1994 at the Tunbridge Wells Forum. Plus my corniest ever payoff. What’s not to love?

Part of the burden of Jewish history is being touched, and proud, that the British police rushed to the site of this atrocity and that the reaction of the British prime minister was to send police reinforcements to synagogues. For millennia, this was not so. It is not taken for granted.

Another instance of Reform voters being massive outliers. And the rump Tory vote being much closer to Labour and LDs than the supposed other part of the "right bloc".

One reflection talking to other Jews today is how unshocking this is. Numbing, upsetting, scary but not shocking. We all knew it was coming. Given the enormous rise in antisemitic incidents in recent years, it's a surprise it hasn't happened more often.

Washington Post asked a thousand Americans who is responsible for shut down — way more blamed Trump and his congressional majorities than blamed Dems. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

Reminder: Best reporting on Harvard v Trump is consistently in @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social Today: Why the fed shutdown freezes Trump's ability to *appeal* the fed court ruling that went 100% against him and ordered admin to start releasing funds. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

You don’t actually have to both sides this. The Jewish community in the UK is not the Israeli government. You can just condemn the murder of two British Jews killed in their place of worship and you don’t have to say a single other thing.

"I hear again and again that the Israelis – the Jews – had it coming. Knowing allusions to Jewish influence, Jewish power. Stereotypes of Jewish cruelty." Written before today's attack on a Manchester synagogue. It's the kind of piece I never thought I'd write. www.newstatesman.com/internationa...

Palace striker Jean-Philippe Mateta has earned a first call up to the France senior team Huge and deserved reward for the striker after an outstanding 18 months for his club. Did well at the Olympics too. #CPFC www.nytimes.com/athletic/668...

Thank you to the GMP officers who, it seems, prevented the terrorist hurting anyone else. And thank you to the CST volunteers who protect British Jews every day. For those doing so, wishing them an easy fast.

There are good reasons to think the number of small boat crossings may fall in the next couple of years - and it will have little to do with whatever has been announced at party conferences Europe’s astonishing drop in illegal migration economist.com/internationa...

Heaton Park. My heart is broken. British Jews have been warning you about this for years. It’s Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur. This is one of every Jews worst nightmare. Why we have so much security at synagogue. The anxious thought you try and push to the back of your mind. Heartbroken.

Horrible horrible stuff. On today of all days

Fucking hell - awful. On top of a serious racial assault in Bristol last night as well. Feels like things are very much spinning out: we need to take this shit on in every way.

To further on this and using my new graph template here is May 2025 opinion by party and occupational growth on economic attitudes and environmental attitudes (latter is 10 point scale on environment versus growth).

New post: "Identity Crisis" Labour keeps trying to appeal to a lost white working class vote + alienating middle-class grads / ethnic minority voters that are a much bigger part of their coalition. Why? And how can they rebuild their coalition more effectively? open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/i...

Broadly agree with John but some of this comes from those in government targeting everything towards tomorrow's headlines and treating backbenchers like unruly kids. I think the Select Committees often show many MPs want to think deeply about policy, outside of govt media aims.

Labour needed Liverpool to go well. Labour also needs Manchester to go well for Kemi Badenoch! Indeed, this is more critical to Reform in many, many ways… While some may not be as interested in CPC, understanding why the Tories continue to lose support is a HUGE issue.

FARAGE: “.. I’d love to sit here with you in two years’ time and we both say: ‘Wow. That WORKED.’” 🤡

Politics is not like selling biscuits, where the task is to find out what people like & flog it to them. It's a moral activity. It's about arguing for the things you believe in. It's about *shaping* the "median voter". Farage has moved the centre-ground of politics. His opponents can move it back.

The idea that someone can become British but never English is so agonisingly stupid that it makes me fear for the future of the species.

Delightful just delightful. Fare thee well goons, we hardly knew ye.

Impressed to see the New Statesman potentially beating the Bluesky ratio record.

What company to keep. What a journey. It's really something to read Goodwin's 'impact case study' from REF2014. Far right extremism: against it before he was for it. impact.ref.ac.uk/casestudies/...

In addition, I think also: politics is about argument! When I say 'the free movement of services, goods, capital and people is good for growth', I am not saying it because it is popular, but because it is true. It is in fact racist to say that mixed-race people should be deported!

NS going back to old ways here… a little close for my taste to ‘complaining about racism is virtue-signalling’

Someone really needs to inform Matt Goodwin that England is also a country with a territory, football team, cricket team, education system, church, set of regional accents and oh why bother…

Praise for Matthew Goodwin, declaring Shabana Mahmood can't be English, from Britain First leader Paul Golding

Now we're cooking

Oh hell yes *SUPREME COURT REFUSES TO LET TRUMP IMMEDIATELY OUST FED'S COOK

Bold of Reform-associated people to go for the "yOu CaN't Be PrOpErLy EnGlISh" line while simultaneously complaining about being called 'racist'.

We now have two v prominent advocates of Reform - both Matthew Goodwin and Isabel Oakeshott - arguing that Shabana Mahmood (so Rishi Sunak and Paul Ince) can't be English. That was a settled question long before this match in 1998. This kind of radicalisation by online racists would harm Reform

Can't disagree with Gavin Barwell. It's high time the right in this country cleaned house. They won't though, because this is what the right have become. The likes of Barwell are very much a minority.

The racism of MG’s assertion is obvious, but there’s also something terminally America-brained about giving more weight to (tendentious interpretation of) US census categories in understanding British identities than the experience and beliefs of British citizens who have lived here all their lives.

Matthew Goodwin continues to harden and radicalise his own views, year on year.

Apparently 5% of Reform voters think they are racist.