A reminder that JD Vance is deeply unpopular in Britain

Bloomberg hot headlines that make me LOL: *TRUMP: STOCKS SHOULD GO UP, NOT DOWN

Examined a good PhD this week which made extensive use of the BWA (@ukandeu.bsky.social's Brexit Witness Archive). If you know any researchers (or even ug students doing disso's) who are working on British politics, do let them know about it. It's an absolute treasure trove. This one's esp. fab.

City AM issues broadside against flood of AI slop being submitted by writers for its pages: "if you can’t be bothered to write it, why should anyone be bothered to read it?" www.cityam.com/there-should...

BAN THE PERVERT GLASSES

BLYTON.

"It is very long, more revealing than most Burnham interviews have been, and full of nuance" I'll take that thanks kind @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social 🙏 Read it here www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

A reminder that crypto is an almost entirely parasitic industry, enabling crime, wasting the money of retail investors, energy and resources. We definitely do not need a national crypto reserve, the effect of which will be to tranfser taxpayers' £ to those already heavily invested in crypto.

DfE pupil data is out today and shows that the number of private school pupils has dropped 5.6% since VAT was introduced. Not 25% like the independent schools council predicted. Or the 50% we saw in some right-wing papers. 5.6%.

The right in this country have totally lost it, a complete and utter collapse of any kind of cordon sanitaire with the far right in favour of gutter racism. It's been slow, but the grinding move from "anti-white racism is real" from far right agitprop to Times leader is complete.

Weird name for a theme park…

X is currently full of posts falsely naming Christi Hill and another officer as having arrested Henry Nowak. One names and pictures the other PC, saying, "Wanted: dead or alive". It gives his address. What more exactly will it take to get UK MPs, ministers and departments off that hellsite?

welcome to the cause, comrade Jeremy Hunt

Keir Starmer on Henry Nowak murder: “We must not allow this tragedy to be hijacked by anyone who seeks to divide us.” Speaker (calling the next question): “Nigel Farage”

Keir Starmer's response to Nigel Farage at PMQs just now was probably the most powerful and eloquent I have seen him in the Commons. The full answer is worth reading.

The full Farage statement is also notable for: • The open ethno-nationalism - Farage contrasts minority ethnic Britons with white citizens who may well have lived in the UK "for centuries". • The claim that many police promotions are happening not on merit, but due to race/religion.

When you're just not picking up on the signals

Politics in a nutshell! - Well done - Thank you! - Let's talk - I've been fired.

*sets the 'days since tech bros reinvented the bus' sign back to zero.

A mention for my new book in the Economist - and the (I think?) rarely mentioned point that the same set of policies would deliver higher migration in the UK than in less attractive destinations All else equal we should expect UK work/study policies to be a bit more restrictive

Meta Glasses Users Report Bug Where They Can See Mark Zuckerberg’s Memories https://theonion.com/meta-glasses-users-report-bug-where-they-can-see-mark-zuckerbergs-memories/

I increasingly suspect that cutting air pollution is going to be a huge sleeper benefit of electrification. The kind of thing we look back on in a few decades and link a lot of positive social changes too - like the Bazalgette sewers or taking lead out of petrol

Couldn't think of a song related pun for the headline no? Nothing in his back catalogue you could link to still not being dead

This is cool... new data from the @iea.org shows grid investment is rising💪 In the Age of Electricity, grids are the arteries and veins that keep the electricity flowing..

The most British thing about this scandal is the tone of "I can forgive the embezzlement but I draw the line at poor taste" and not only am I here for it but I've rarely felt more patriotic

For #TidesOutTuesday I’ve got this image to share with you all that I took at Harlech in North Wales in the evening with Snowdonia in the background #thegardenjungle

🤓And the full report here www.jrf.org.uk/social-secur...

Read a write up by @guardianheather.bsky.social here www.theguardian.com/money/2026/m...

I think I’ve got heat stroke.

Thanks, Vonnegut. 💜

No there will not be an early election. A man with 400 seats will not risk half of them three years early to satisfy columnists’ belief in mandate fairies.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say he isn't actually sorry.

Using LLMs is making people less good at human relationships. Be warned.

Weird feeling watching SW1/commentariat picking through the pronouncements of Andy Burnham. Read his words carefully. He sends out signals while often leaving himself space to move, sometimes to positions quite far away from the signals.

I still like Andy more than most people here and think he would be a major improvement, but I’m not sure about logging on to Bluesky for the first time since announcing your run for PM to make hard policy commitments in the canary’s replies because some guy named Tony @‘ed you

Absolutely spectacular, no notes.

When I reported on the 15 Minute Cities protests in Oxford I was struck by the way lots of people I spoke to described themselves as a car driver in a way that really felt like an underrecognised form of identity politics. Having said that OH MY GOD

Migration forecasts are very difficult, but James has been clear about his methods and is continuing his updates. Worth watching.

Tech CEO or guru predictions are given prominence because they seem to be experts. But they are not paid to think about how whole economies work. And maybe it pays them to exaggerate the transformational power of the thing they are trying to build and sell.

A good, fixed-term senior researcher job going at SPICe in Holyrood @parliament.scot The role focuses on devolution and constitutional issues, elections and referendums, and parliamentary procedures and scrutiny. #Job #Vacancy #Research #Holyrood 🔗 ce1046li.webitrent.com/ce1046li_web...

UK fuel consumption was the lowest since 2014 in April (excluding the COVID shock). Illustrates both the demand destruction that has outperformed estimates and the secular decline in fuel demand tied to EV market share gains + higher efficiency.

Due to visiting a friend and her bilingual kids in Germany many years ago these will always be baby-wildschweine to me...(possibly I could have retained some more useful vocabulary).

“A vote for me in this by-election is a vote to change Labour,” Burnham says, in a sentiment not usually heard on the by-election trail.

🇧🇩 Donald Trump lookalike buffalo draws crowds in Bangladesh Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed "Donald Trump".

There are days when I miss being an editor. I loved writing headlines. Whoever did this, I hope they took the rest of the day off.

Wonder what the PM's "special reviewer on finance and cooperation" (Gordon Brown) would make of this idea:

"On the present trajectory, Iran will emerge from the conflict many times stronger and more influential than it was before the war. It will exercise leverage with dozens of the richest nations in the world." From Robert Kagan, @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

Yet there you are, outside.

And as luck would have it, there's a whole series of tax policy suggestions we published in the run-up to the 2024 Budget. Oddly none were taken up. I'm going to be optimistic beyond all rationality and say that this is now the time: taxpolicy.org.uk/tag/budget20...