In 2016 I was running a local government think tank, so I spent a lot of time in the regions. I could clearly see that the GFC had kicked the stuffing out of some places. I get why so many people felt left behind and angry, but I always thought Westminster was the problem, not Brussels.

My teams chat currently has both flash floods and a heatwave going on. Make up your mind, anthropocene.

I would simply bring in 20 hotshots.

As Andy Burnham prepares to journey to Westminster in his long standing quest to close the north south divide, here’s one of my favourite Tony Wilson quotes.

I've been listening to the audiobook and it's very good, though the non-linear structure made me feel slightly like I'd missed something in parts. It's an insight into a different moral universe - glittering establishment success concealing hollow, tawdry and treacherous souls.

This is my ultimate grumpy old man topic. I am absolutely 100% fine with the idea that you should have GCSE English (or an equivalent) to get a university degree. There should be loads of non-degree options too.

There is still too much polling.

Tungsten carbide drills!

Sorry kids.

Well between this and a new Mieville novel that's this autumn's reading shaping up nicely.

Every local government FD has tangled with a service like this. It clearly needs more money, but it's very hard to disentangle the actual need from inefficiency. You have to link money to reform, and you'll probably have to drive the reform yourself.

This headline is an absolute bloody disgrace.

If LGR saves so much money, why are so many new unitaries on EFS or going bust? Latest in a regular series. www.themj.co.uk/council-inev...

The correct answer is Leveller. But no one on this thread seems to be one. I can only assume it's because they are all French.

Ok so I'm not a legal expert or anything, but I've been responsible for equalities in two councils and a government department and, errr, I'm struggling to see why the Public Sector Equality Duty is such a big deal. Quick thread on what it means in practice... or at least as I've practiced it.

It is a squalid and misused little book, that has us looking for tyranny in all the wrong places.

Rick Astley / Tony Slattery.

Great thread. One way to understand populism is to see it as a call for someone else to pay. On the left it's the rich who will shoulder the burden. On the right it's immigrants. Both are fantasies. @danneidle.bsky.social is quite right that we have to make grown-up choices.

All those wonderful Oxford PMs who did so much to prevent the UK's slide into terminal decline.

'Anti-white racism' is a concept that used to be confined to BNP council motions. How far we have fallen.

I was in Amsterdam at the weekend and saw a Google streetview style car driving round automatically enforcing parking. Cool. But thanks to Eric Pickles we can't use them here. If there's no ANPR, it isn't my devolution.

Fiscal devolution is good. It means councils have control of their finances. Austerity becomes a local choice. And it's associated with both higher growth and lower regional inequality. Lovely. Now can we do it pls? www.oecd.org/en/publicati...

🐷🙅‍♀️🤝🫂

Flabbergasted by how bad Alex Wickham's take is. Manchester city is not wealthy. Rochdale is not in the city centre. The whole point of Manchesterism is to secure growth in the urban core and connect people to jobs with better transport. It's working, and nothing in these charts says otherwise.

Really struck by the line that only four people knew about the Reform donation. We know two of them - Harborne and Farage. It's quite hard to conceal £5m from your partner so we can assume Laure knew. Only leaves one possible source. Or Russia.

Sigh. We know what happens with fuel duty cuts. The benefit takes a while to kick in and is never fully passed through to consumers. What benefit does get passed on is rapidly swamped by the supply shock. This is a PR line not an energy policy. Cash for poorer households please.

Reading about working men's education in the 19th century, I'm struck that so much of socialism back then was almost pre-political, ie about the cultivation of values, capabilities and habits that could form a good politics. I wonder if we have lost sight of that pre-political realm a little?

We had to leave Europe to become European. Latest in an increasingly frequent series. blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...

Very interesting. There is a certain AI-pilled take on government, and indeed business, which says what matters is how effectively the vision of a great founder is translated into action. Blairism encoded this. Cummings shouted it out loud. It's a miserable fantasy of total control.

Fund. Local. Government. Everything will get a bit better. More good local jobs. Better high streets. Cleaner neighbourhoods. Less pressure on the NHS. Visible signs of renewal. For buttons.

Atmospheric CO₂ of 340 ppm

If Reform do as well as expected, I'll be reposting this on the hour all day tomorrow.

I was a teenager in the 90s and... I'm not particularly nostalgic for it. The first half felt quite exciting culturally. Then there was Britpop which devolved into pissed blokes in football shirts singing Wonderwall in fake Essex accents. Christ it was crap.

Just googled an old Guardian piece I wrote about when Ken Livingstone hosted a celeb lunch for Rudy Giuliani to discuss zero tolerance policing. Simpler times. It reminded me that the article is 24 years old. Thanks Guardian.

This is consistent with every study I've seen on the issue. Confrontational protests from the likes of Just Stop Oil don't have any direct effect on policy support. The wider literature suggests they may actually increase support for more moderate climate groups through the radical flank effect.

I've had two emails in the last few months asking me to apply for secret, highly paid jobs. They are obviously fake - headhunters in Florida and Chicago rarely recruit for English local authorities - but I can't help wondering what the scam is?

See also the latte... a drink that is both a signifier of wealthy elitism and available for less than £2 with a sausage and egg mcmuffin.

I read a history of early 20th century socialism and it's crazy how much of it is just clubs doing art or reading books and trying to get miners and factory workers to do art and read books.

Without wishing to wade into the rights and wrongs is there a precedent for this sort of public rebuke to a party leader? Intuitively as a public servant it doesn't feel quite right to me.

Bermondsey was incredible. A couple of Quaker politicians creating local health services so good the NHS couldn't afford to keep them running.

One of my main arguments for keeping public sector pensions is do you really want another 20% of the workforce to have crap retirement savings? The other one is that scrapping them is counterintuitively expensive in the medium term because liabilities will be steady but contributions fall.

This is good! But it's right to say that simply extending the current right to buy timeframe doesn't achieve much on its own. The key thing councils need to see is a business plan to revitalise these assets. Why can you make it work when someone else has failed?

📢 Today we've launched our Local Government #AI Accelerator — 6 new projects that pair @cam.ac.uk researchers directly with local councils to develop practical AI solutions for #publicservices. ➡️ Read more & meet the projects! www.ai.cam.ac.uk/news/cambrid...

Reminded of Eric Williams' famous quote about British historians acting as if their nation created negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it. We can be ashamed of the first while celebrating the second.

Excellent thread. TL;DR we're raising taxes to pay down the debt from the pandemic.

Extremely pleased to hear this from Mark Rowley, much needed clarity when a community which has been repeatedly gaslit by senior figures about its own safety

New piece from me in @renewaljournal.bsky.social. The 2025 local elections raised important questions about the future of local governance and whether Reform UK can offer a genuine alternative. Has it? And what does that mean for the Green Party? renewal.org.uk/blog/the-sea...

Here’s a little story about my brush with evangelical Christianity. 1/6

Defeating the left so you can hire George Osborne is quite the flex.

Thanks to this post I've established that Quaker Oats does not contain actual Quakers. Stuart's grandfather just wanted to signal integrity and trustworthiness.