So glad to have football I care about back

On course for the last four men and women's World Cup and Euros finals to be Spain v England.

My wife and I say "That's pretty much what I figured" to one another on average once a day.

Pre-registering a take: Andy Burnham resembles Boris Johnson. Same ability to connect emotionally and reach constituencies other politicians can't, same tendency towards people pleasing and reluctance to make hard choices. If he succeeds, Burnham will deliver on the promise Boris sometimes showed

When people complain about economists and their narrow instrumental conception of education, I think it's mostly special pleading. But there are results like this (and there are others) and I fear that education is a bit of a black box that we're so far from understanding let alone optimising.

The good thing about Mr Blobby patriotism - in contrast to, say, this recent list of things people in every country do (don't mean to pick on @npjgarland.bsky.social, just an example close to hand) - is that it is distinctively British. It's concrete and specific, not abstract and generic.

This is bang on. One of the most frustrating things about being in government was how often we got stuck without political direction on meso level questions because spads/number 10 didn’t have capacity to get into that level of detail...

Impressive of Starmer to also get sued for similar overreach of power and impropriety as Trump with regards to the independent bureaucracy

This is an excellent piece. Agree with all seven rules of thumb, and also think ‘rules of thumb’ is exactly the right way to frame them: presumptions, not iron laws.

Two years ago Labour promised a “devolution revolution” to drive growth. Today, with @officialedballs.bsky.social, Nyasha Weinberg, @annastansbury.bsky.social and @esmeelsden.bsky.social, we publish our verdict: a government at risk of squandering the best opportunity in a generation. 🧵

Yesterday, as a personal project, I put out a UK poll tracker: pollingpolis.co.uk It has UK Voting Intention, Best PM, Net Approval and Vote by 2024 Vote, Region and Age. A quick tour of how it works 🧵

I think this is a function of being low scoring (also part of what makes it so dramatic), which means that games are more likely to turn on pivotal judgement calls.

This was a very interesting piece from @econromesh.bsky.social but I wonder how far it invalidates the premise that trust in economists has risen in the last decade, among both remain and leave voters yougov.com/en-gb/articl...

Lol Erling Haaland literally self identifies as a "watch enthusiast" www.esquire.com/uk/watches/a...

Agree with some of the points here by @harryqp.bsky.social, but the premise that Trump has been more strategic and effective in government than Starmer is...debatable harryquilterpinner.substack.com/p/preparing-...

Lol

The response to the prospect of Ed Miliband, clearly the candidate with the most qualifications and relevant experience to be Chancellor, getting the job have really been a litmus test for who's ideological and who's technocratic, eh?

Add this to the pile of problems the government created by being too clever in their design of the graduate tax and pretending it isn't a tax.

Anybody else thinking about how many more layers it would have added to the discourse if it had been Senegal beating the US, like it really should have been?

Last week we learned that even after four years in opposition, Morgan McSweeney felt Labour was underprepared for government. Andy Burnham has two weeks. So what does being ready to govern actually look like? On my Substack today, I propose ten tests. open.substack.com/pub/producti... 🧵 1/11

I'm probably being boringly literal here but surely the answer has to be a goalkeeper? Like, Fatty Foulkes or something

I'm in @arguablymag.bsky.social today making a case for a positive-sum immigration policy in the UK: www.arguably.uk/p/20-ideas-f...

20 ideas for Andy Burnham’s first 100 days, featuring @davidlawrenceuk.bsky.social on GB Crossrails, @zoegrunewald.bsky.social on banning second jobs for MPs, @pollycurtis.bsky.social on compulsory voting and @jamesomalley.co.uk on the Postcode Address File. www.arguably.uk/p/20-ideas-f...

🤞 Billy Bob Thornton's non-union Mexican equivalent can make it 4/4.

Really enjoyed this by @will-davies.bsky.social, which made me less enthusiastic about getting a dog, but keener about doing it with a sociologist if I ever do www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

So here's how I think it looks if the government prioritises growth. You get a lot of "growth-washing" of policy proposals. Civil servants, advocacy groups, think tanks all scramble to argue that the thing they want is actually good for growth. And the government is able to adjudicate the claims.

I'm similarly sceptical to Will that there's a magic growth lever hiding in the Treasury that the government is just refusing to pull. At the same time, it would be strange indeed if prioritising growth made a government less likely to achieve it, at least in expectation

I have a piece with Niamh O Regan in @newstatesman1913.bsky.social mapping child lead exposure by parliamentary constituency, drawing on modelling by @leecrawfurd.bsky.social www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/he...

Do take a look at our misformatted table (or, better, read on desktop)

I have a piece with Niamh O Regan in @newstatesman1913.bsky.social mapping child lead exposure by parliamentary constituency, drawing on modelling by @leecrawfurd.bsky.social www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/he...

Sensible and measured piece - these two caveats are critical

Good thing Andy Burnham is going to be our first woman Prime Minister because the gender balance in senior roles isn't shaping up too well.

Score one more for idealism over materialism in the big political argument of our time www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Really good primer on where we are and how we got here in terms of British economic policy. Tantalisingly hints at some interesting questions at the end about alternative ideas of social progress to simple economic growth...

[average evening as a Scotland fan] well, Scotland just needed Argentina to avoid defeat to Stirling Albion, however the Binos produced a wonderful display

South Koreans hate Cristiano Ronaldo on an unparalleled scale papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I have Scotland dead 50/50 from here to make the knockouts www.expectinggoals.com/p/world-cup-...

Plus two in the studio

Stupid, irrational format

Four former Aberdeen players in the Scotland XI, more than any other club by my reckoning?

Scotland's 5th meeting with Brazil is their 26th match at the World Cup One in five (19%) of Scottish matches at the World Cup are against Brazil! Scotland have not played anyone else 3 times at the World Cup. Have met Morocco & Uruguay twice; also the former Yugoslavia.

The concept of "democratic mandate" is so important and subject to such sloppy thinking it's unreal.

I will continue to die on the hill marked "it would be completely mad for a PM with 400 seats and 3 years left in a government term to call an early election which is all but certain to weaken his party." www.arguably.uk/p/dont-be-a-...

This is absurd. I visited a couple of health centres in Kenya recently and it's frankly scary the number of things with the USAID logo on them.

Flashback to having a tutorial with @mds49.bsky.social on the day James Purnell resigned and not really getting why he seemed so personally invested

Seeing the invisible is public health’s superpower. By seeing threats clearly, we can generate the motivation to stop them and catalyze effective, lifesaving solutions. Thanks @aveek18.bsky.social for reviewing The Formula for Better Health!

It's a bad thing that our political discourse struggles so much with the concept of a counterfactual, literally essential to almost any of policy analysis bsky.app/profile/avee...

Going to start explaining heated rivalry to Australians by saying imagine if Shane Warne and Mike Gatting had also somehow been in a secret relationship when the ball of the century happened

People from lower socio-economic backgrounds are under-represented in think tanks. This amazing opportunity (which am proud to say the @smfthinktank.bsky.social is one of the host orgs for this year) is looking to change that. A genuinely entry level role... www.smf.co.uk/new-opportun...

🤷‍♀️ Most people identify Labour as left-leaning, basically as you would expect. In fact, the general public perceive Starmer's Labour as being further to the left than political scientists do yougov.com/en-gb/articl...