Together with Visiting Prof Simon Case and Sir Jonathan Phillips, former Perm Sec of the Northern Ireland Office, this week our students dived into the political, security & diplomatic history behind “The Troubles”. Applications for 2026/27 are now open! www.kcl.ac.uk/study/postgr...

Great to have the masterful Professor Sir David Omand at our class on the History of Prime Ministerial and Whitehall Defence, Intelligence and Security Decision Making. This week students learned about how governments have survived crises in the recent past. @strandgroup.bsky.social

Join us @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social on 26 February when David Williams (Permanent Secretary Ministry of Defence 2021-25) will be in conversation with Visiting Professor Lord Case (Cabinet Secretary 2020-24) Tickets: thestrandgroup.kcl.ac.uk/event/in-con...

Great to kick off "Prime Ministerial & Whitehall defence, intelligence and security decision-making", co-taught with Lord Simon Case. This week’s guest was Professor John Bew, former Chief Foreign Policy Adviser to the PM. Applications open for MA Government Studies 2026/27 👇 lnkd.in/e27J7UHC

So pleased to be joined for the first time by ace new teacher and @strandgroup.bsky.social PhD @clearys.bsky.social for our 'Conservative Years, 2010-24' module. And what better way to kick off than discussing the inner workings of the Coalition with former Deputy Chief of Staff Baroness Fall...

All smiles as we're back underway with our 'London: Governing the Global City' module on @strandgroup.bsky.social MA Government Studies - Prof Tony Travers delivering his masterful '2000 years of London history in 45 mins' lecture to kick off... (1/2)

PhD thesis is finished, checked, and ready for one final proof read. 🥳

Tell you who and what's profoundly un-English - anyone adopting a Blood And Soil definition of it.

‘Israeli military says… it has bombed the building of Iran’s state broadcaster in Tehran. centre was used by the armed forces to promote military operations under civilian cover, while using its own means and assets,” it said, without giving any evidence’ www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblo...

Looking forward to discussing my new book ‘The Art of Delivery: The Inside Story of How the Blair Government Transformed Britain's Public Services’ with Sir Michael Barber 28 May 1830 @strandgroup.bsky.social @policyatkings.bsky.social @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social Do join us! Sign up here 👇

Reality check. Thank you, Financial Times.

More dodgy maths, too. "An extra 0.2% of GDP is around £6bn [i.e.] the cut to the aid budget. Yet [Starmer] trumpeted a £13 billion increase in defence spending...seems to make sense if one thinks the defence budget would otherwise have been frozen" ifs.org.uk/articles/ifs...

It's like how a lot of people think historians' job is to memorize historical facts!

And here we go. Mostly a PR stunt for now, but cumulative radicalization is a thing and we have it going mainstream. Once it fully does, rolling it back would be extremely hard.

Myles Lewis-Skelly, by the way, is unreal.

Restores my faith in brutalism (pun intended)

'Beigel Bake, Brick Lane' (2020) by Marc Gooderham marcgooderham.co.uk

Just been reminded of this piece by Beth McKernan, less than six months old - and from a different era.

“The working class did not rise like the sun at an appointed time.  It was present at its own making.”   EP Thompson. Were he still alive he would have been 100 today.

Looks fascinating! Straight on to my ‘read once the PhD is (finally) finished’ reading list.

Calling all potential students! King’s College London’s MA in Government Studies launches this September.

“Doctors in Gaza said that children, weakened by lack of food, had died from hypothermia and that several newborn babies with mothers who were undernourished had not survived for more than a few days.” www.theguardian.com/world/2024/j...

www.linkedin.com/posts/the-st... Looking forward to this very much indeed.