Report out on tax options for the Budget. 2p income tax rise alongside 2p national insurance cut would mean no tax rise for an employee whose income comes from a job. With employment overtaxed at the moment, workers pay packets should be protected and distortions in the tax system removed.

I think this is probably it doi.org/10.1080/1751...

The growing AI confidence gap. And what the government should do about it: institute.global/insights/tec...

AKA have some confidence and try and win the argument!

As a paid up (or fully paid) member of the Tony Blair Institute I don't often speak about AI on Bluesky. Our report out today with @ipsosintheuk.bsky.social has some really interesting data on adoption and trust in the technology - here are five key takeaways.. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

AI sits at the heart of Labour’s growth agenda. Yet UK adults view AI more as a risk than an opportunity. How can we build public trust to accelerate AI adoption? New research from TBI & Ipsos👉 bit.ly/4ndnu3d Data and key findings in 🧵 1/6

I wrote about the noticeable Vibe Shift around Keir Starmer's viability as PM: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

Over half of ‘disgusted disruptors’ think their local area has declined a lot – twice the national average IMHO, this is one of THE most striking findings in our research - and 1 of the most under-rated factors - driving the Reform vote: just how much people feel their places have been left behind.

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?

Big week for me and the team as "The British General Election of 2024" has now gone into production. The definitive book of last year's landmark election will be hitting stores later this autumn, and is available to pre-order right now! Here's the Amazon page: www.amazon.co.uk/British-Gene...

OK now do the 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act

The archetypal Labour voter today is in fact a lower middle class working mum in her mid-40s, who has a degree and a mortgage, just as likely to live in the south as the north, is primarily concerned about living costs and public services, and is socially progressive but not necessarily libertarian.

New post just out: "Burn it down vs build it up" With the right radicalising by the day - how can the argument be won on the key dividing line in politics? (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/b...

What would Orwell think about a huge face on a gigantic screen telling a crowd of people they should wage war on foreigners and dissidents? No way of knowing, I guess.

As the last prime minister to win successive parliamentary majorities says:

The amount of agency that Andy Burnham has clearly demonstrated in shaping this Deputy Leadership contest (so far) has done a bit to undermine the 'procedural hurdles to the leadership are simply too high and too many for Burnham' hypothesis.

Is it rational to expect to win elections? @mbarnfield.bsky.social argues so-called "wishful thinking" about election outcomes is part of how voters make rational sense of their role in democracies. Read OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/g5aHeG0 @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social @sagepub.com

There used to be a sort of alternation to BBC Political Editors - John Cole left-leaning, Robin Oakley right-leaning, Andrew Marr (then) left-leaning. But they did their jobs to high professional standards and tried to be fair.

An interesting analysis – which isn’t reflected in ‘would you consider voting for X’ data (which suggests Reform *is* reaching parts UKIP didn’t). There’s no contradiction: Reform is reaching more voters, but only because of Con/Lab collapse. Suggests ‘Reform Modernisation’ narrative is overdone.

Correcting the reports. UK withdrawal from the ECHR absolutely breaches the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/t...

Until relatively recently I had discounted the idea that the Conservative party might get to a point where it had accepted its own death sufficiently that a Reform-Tory pact could happen this parliament, but I am not so sure these days.

The stupid thing isn't giving them the coverage they deserve - I don't like them, but they lead in the polls - it's not taking them deadly seriously and going "OK do you seriously mean what you say...because...welll". They might still win, but would be less daft and pathetic.

Since this is apparently a resigning matter, I’ll just leave this here… www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Hey, Sky News! Hey, BBC! See how easy it is?

The sort of policy area that Tice should not be stumbling anywhere near, and another small, early indicator we could be at Peak Reform. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Nigel Farage’s penchant for Trump’s Republican Party is a huge brand weakness and will probably be the undoing of him in the end. But he either can’t help himself or is too hubristic to care.

New long read for @prospectmagazine.co.uk. What’s really happened to private schools since the start of VAT on fees? Deep dive where I try to get to the heart of Britain’s love/hate relationship with these institutions 👇🏽

The big question the media haven't noticed or started to ask is why none of the trouble & disorder in summer 2025 (most of the sporadic disorder is in London suburbs & southeast Epping, Cheshunt, Hillingdon/Heathrow, Canary Wharf) & v little protest of any scale is where riots happened a year ago

This is my flag.

Mike Reader MP writes for us, he is unapologetic about his use of AI.. www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...

a much more persuasive version of this article would be like "here's why I'm forcing myself to get on TikTok"

Some people on the left have argued politics is destined to become 'blame the migrants vs blame the rich'. Fair or not, this binary turns out to be a surprisingly useful question for dividing the country right down the middle! Look at the generational splits, madness.

You could be forgiven for assuming that Trump faces significantly stronger domestic opposition to deploying peacekeeping troops than Merz, Macron and Starmer. Not the case. Identical levels of support for peacekeeping troops in France, Germany and US. Only UK with a slim majority in support.

Thoughts on the potential impact of a Your Party/Green pact versus the parties standing separately. Standing independently hurts Labour the most, but overwhelmingly the beneficiary is likely to be Reform. OTOH a pact helps Your Party in a handful of seats. Neither scenario really helps the Greens.

The electoral geography logic for Andy Burnham is very powerful. Labour’s strategic position in the north of England is significantly weaker now than in the south, where (crudely) the ‘right bloc’ vote will be split in 2029. Labour need someone who can outperform the party in the north of England.

More than half of those polled opposed the strike, while a third supported the resident doctors, a new poll for LabourList has revealed

some rare good news!

"Yet the radicalisation of the old attracts little notice compared with the panics about the young..... even when memes rip through boomer WhatsApp chats, like smallpox through an Inca village."

Interesting how you never see the head of this school on Question Time or elsewhere opining on the culture-war topic of the day.

Good luck to the IEA/Farage mob making the case in future for privatising the NHS. Over a million folk are paying for this privately. For many, probably most, this will be their first sustained interaction with private healthcare.

I think the Mamdani campaign is threading this needle well btw. "Prices are forcing people to move out of New York. This is bad *because New York is such a great place to live*."

What an absolutely hysterical set of reactions to the Swedish PM using AI. Within two years there will be no one in an information job, which a PM is, who won't be actively using it in some form. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

What if – hear me out – some people just sincerely think digital ID would be a good idea for public policy and that the trade-off with civil liberties is worth taking, and a weird quasi-conspiracy isn't required?

All those balaclavas- terrifying

As we have been putting the finishing touches to The British General Election of 2024 book and looking at drivers of vote choice (and vote switching) it does seem at times like the government has little sense of the people who elected it (who it needs to vote for it again in four years time).

Yes. Don’t underestimate how much some grassroots Greens would dislike this.

Theres the potential for this to become the defining cleavage in the Green leadership contest – or at least the timing is such that Polanski will have a very clear mandate to pursue and advocate for cross-party co-operation if he wins. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...