Alastair Campbell interviewed Neil at the HTLGI Festival last weekend. I was in the audience, I have to say the mans' still got it…

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"The problem is that I don't believe that any of the lefts, and particularly the Labour Party, are actually meeting the moment. This is a moment of absolutely transformational change, whether it is climate change, AI, or the geopolitics." 🗣️ @johnmct.bsky.social on the state of the left in the UK

Tony Blair used to talk about the difference between the 3-second, 30-second & 3-minute conversation - the point being that simplistic policies, that poll well, collapse under the more sustained scrutiny of an election or time in govt. So what happens when there is *only* the 3-second conversation?

Now seems like a good time to remind ourselves of @pauliewaulie.bsky.social 's proposals to save democracy www.paul-evans.org/save-democra...

The Big Lie just keeps getting bigger.

How Keir Starmer could survive and even win the next election: my weekend article for @the-independent.com www.independent.co.uk/voices/keir-...

"There’s a void at the heart of Labour: it needs a battle of ideas" www.thetimes.com/comment/colu... — @patrickmaguire.bsky.social

Have they totally forgotten how the electoral wing of the party works? www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

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and maybe just maybe if 'the electoral genius' McSweeney had used his position to restructure the party so that ward organisers like myself could effectively communicate up to the leadership that this is exactly the picture our doorstep conversations are painting they wouldn't be so blind to it

🚨ICYMI🚨 Nigel Farage is on the rise, Keir Starmer is stumbling and the Conservatives are fading into irrelevance. Should we be worried? @gavinesler.bsky.social is joined by @bwalker.uk to discuss 👉 play.megaphone.fm/inx2cr4utxi8... #farage #ukpolitics #podcast #reform #starmer

Blog post on today's digital ID announcement. Most important issue is what the impact will be on people with low and no income - will the new rules create a new barrier for employment? www.careful.industries/blog/2025-9-...

Should Developers Care About Software Architecture? | @davefarley77.bsky.social & Sam Newman 📽️ AVAILABLE NOW Watch HERE ➡️ youtu.be/iehOOyfunog

Citation needed - yougov.co.uk/politics/art... - www.theguardian.com/politics/201... - www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wale... - www.ipsos.com/en-uk/labour...

The role of procurement in delivering mission-led government New report by @njdavies.bsky.social and @drbenpaxton.bsky.social on how public procurement could support delivery of mission-led government, and the key barriers to this. www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

Keir Starmer — a management consultancy's idea of what makes a good Prime Minister.

My limited experience is that Labour Together was almost entirely focused on electoral effectiveness and how to improve it after Labour had spent a decade talking to itself and become totally insular.

My point being if LT had been a slush fund for Keir Starmer's leadership bid it wasn't a very effective one. My recollections from the time are that Keir won on his own merits, that the membership voted for someone they saw as a reliable technocrat.

The review into Labour's 2019 election defeat produced by @labourtogether.bsky.social probably did have an influence on me and close colleagues when it came to the 2020 Labour leadership contest and why we voted for: Lisa Nandy

Former Mirror editor Alison Phillips has been appointed as the new chief executive of the Starmer-supporting think tank

Prime minister Keir Starmer is expected to announce plans for a compulsory UK-wide digital ID scheme. But the introduction of ID cards has been debated in Westminster for decades. So why is it back on the agenda? @jillongovt.bsky.social explains www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/di...

To scale regenerative food systems, cross-sectoral innovation and investment is required. At @foodtank's "Nourishing People, Planet and Future", I launched our report with case studies from Brazil, Scotland & Sweden. Read our mission-oriented approach to school meals ➡️ www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/pub...

Do you have a complex business rule-set problem? Business rules spread across platforms, systems, and apps? At KotlinConf’25, Anshika Koul shared how Norway’s 377-year-old national postal service tackled this challenge with Kotlin Multiplatform. 📺 kotl.in/v528cc

New post just out: "Last Rites" What happens if the Tories completely disintegrate? I look at why a rapid collapse is increasingly plausible, how it would play out, and how it would change the political landscape. (£/free trial) samf.substack.com/p/last-rites

I’ve put together a free guide on how to get started with BDD in practice, and how it can help you write better specifications, better code, and ultimately better software. If you’re curious, you can grab a copy here ➡️ www.subscribepage.com/implement-bdd 4/4

I find it hard not to conclude that Starmer’s government aren’t just a bit stupid, and don’t understand something essential about how modern states work. medium.com/@pauliewauli...

Anyone comforting themselves that Trump is pulling Farage into extreme and unpopular positions should consider this: When he parrots Trump, maybe they're both mainly serving the gods of political grift, knowing whoever does that best can then direct the money into winning elections?

The words ‘party’ and ‘democracy’ don’t belong in the same sentence any more than “military intelligence” or “Left Unity.” “Democracy” and “selectorate” will never work together.

A new complexity based risk-management framework from Dave Snowden and a tidy Tottenham win in the League Cup https://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/cleaning-up/

Domain-Driven Design London's next event is 𝐎𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟗𝐭𝐡, 𝐢𝐧-𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 in London! @icooper.bsky.social will be presenting 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲-𝐃𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝. Grab your tickets here: dddlondon.com/events/responsibility-driven-design/

IDEA – nonverbal algorithm assembly instructions

Today marks an exciting milestone: Team Topologies, 2nd Edition is published 🎉. Manuel Pais and I share real-world success stories from 10 organisations across every continent - small teams to global corporations, with lessons for all. Grab your copy here → https://www.teamtopologies.com/book

It seems obvious to everyone who’s not very busy in politics that the contest to control parliament is something of a sideshow now. Control of The Public Sphere—what people see, hear, and believe—is now more important. And the only ones who seem to get this are the populists, here and in the US.

New blog post: 40 years later, are Bentley's "Programming Pearls" still relevant? https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/09/40-years-later-are-bentleys-programming-pearls-still-relevant/ In September 1985, Jon Bentley published Programming Pearls. A collection of aphorisms designed to reveal truths …

Are you an experienced software buyer? I could use your help. I'm working on the second edition of "Observability Engineering", and hoping to include the kind of advice an experienced principal engineer might give a staff engineer buying for the first time. charity.wtf/2025/09/19/a...

"Anti-fascist rallies…routinely collapse into a muddle of side causes…alienating the broad coalitions that we will need to counter the far right"

"Instead of shifting public opinion, [demonstrations] too often offer easy targets for bad-faith critics who will succeed in associating an entire cause with it’s worst placard or loudest fool."

The must-read Democracy for Realists explores "retrospective accountability"—voters punishing governments for poor short-term economic performance, even when it's beyond their control. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

The split in Your Party has broken into the open. Jeremy Corbyn urges supporters not to donate to the link promoted by Zarah Sultana. Sultana responds calling it a "sexist boys club."

You can sign up to volunteer for or donate to @hopenothate.org.uk at hopenothate.org.uk/support-us/

Deeply disturbed to see today's 'Unite the Kingdom' march in London with 100,000+ attendees. This was likely the largest far-right protest in British history and was led by Tommy Robinson and addressed by Elon Musk. The far right are emboldened like never before. But, here's the good news... 🧵

Describing @luke-akehurstmp.bsky.social as "the Blairite MP" I mean come on, seriously ?

Having met Angela it'd take a lot of convincing for me to believe she had her sights on the role of PM. She struck me as being much smarter than that.

Absolutely !!!insane!!! to me that the UK government, lobby and newspapers litigate at length every minor infraction by the BBC, rival newspapers, or what some random columnist has posted. But all of them just carry on not even commenting about this media owner. He’s not hiding, he’s telling you!

My assessement of the Corbyn years. labourlist.org/2025/09/jere...

Highlighted by the brilliant @hannahfearn.bsky.social on @ohgodwhatnow.bsky.social - this is shameful. A single person needs to earn £30,500 a year to reach a minimum acceptable standard of living in Britain in 2025. A couple with 2 children needs to earn £74,000 a year between them.

Who is agile: making the invisible visible with @kevinrutherford.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBQD...