This, in particular. Increasingly of the view that government policy towards universities is the test case of whether it really has a wider economic policy.

Climate is THE test I use for assessing whether a party is serious about governing. Anti-NZ stances tell me that 1) you are willing to ignore warnings from scientists 2) you do not understand public sentiment 3) you lack vision and ambition in a field where the UK can genuinely excel

Catching a cold so bad that I'm shivering in bed is certainly a novel approach for my body to make me feel cool in this heatwave

COMEOOONNNNNN!!

I don't know Yassin - and I'm from a different party in the city - but he's worth 6 for Goodwin. His being Mayor is exactly how multiculturalism and intigration should work.

A shocking number of journalists now see climate change as a political and economic issue rather than a scientific reality. It’s all those things but it starts with the third

One of the lessons of the last two years is that Labour urgently needs to stop being afraid of its own shadow. Burnham should appoint whoever he thinks would be the best Chancellor and throw his authority behind them. The Daily Mail will try to kill them anyway. So just govern.

I fear as soon as we start talking the feasibility of "ah but they could never actually do this" kind of misses the point that this sort of policy should not even be entertained at all. It should be shamed, shunned, pushed to the fringes and called out for what it is.

possibly the most rotten failing of Keir Starmer is that this is true: he did come in and genuinely turn around the Labour Party on the issue of antisemitism - but leaves it more morally compromised than he found it, with trans rights being rolled back and the racist far right emboldened

Can't wait for @tldrjack.bsky.social to rename the Starmergeddon podcast to Burnhamania

I need you to know I spent 20mins post-midnight on this because of you

This is flat wrong from Unite. It’s just not true there’s been ‘almost no thought for jobs, skills and national security’. There’s been a huge amount of thought on all these issues and a decision has been made that jobs, skills, and security all benefit from a faster clean energy transition.

My against the grain of Bluesky opinion is that we should be campaigning for the - say - Belfast knife attack to have the same amount of coverage as the Edinburgh knife attacks, and not vice versa.

Not 100% sure on this 2024: Right block: 17k votes, 42% Labour: 18k, 45% Green/lib: 4k, 11% 2026 B-E: 59% turnout Right block: 19k, 43% Labour: 25k, 55% Green/lib: 500, 1% Change: Right block: +2k, +1pp Labour: +7k, +10pp Green/lib: - 3.5k, -10pp That looks pretty squeezy to me

If Burnham goes on to claim the top spot, he would become the UK's first Cooperative party Prime Minister, surpassing their previous-highest achievement of *checks notes* Ed Balls

Some news: 🇺🇦 Next month I'm driving to Ukraine. 🇺🇦 I'll be delivering an evacuation vehicle, specially modified for saving lives in areas of the highest danger. But that's only possible if I can fundraise enough - £3,500. I'd be so grateful for any support you can give. donorbox.org/johnoxleydu

There has been one leading politician the last ten years who has consistently, categorically and calmly called out the far-right for what it is and taken them on.

Sure but are you actually doing anything about it?

Poor duck, he's being run-over by batteries

My latest for Bloomberg: "We are about to see the Great Clean Energy Acceleration 2.0 – a discontinuity in energy markets as profound as the oil shocks of the 1970s, and one that could bring forward the peak in fossil fuel use and emissions to this side of 2030." about.bnef.com/insights/cle...

It's absolutely defeatist and wrong to think these are the views of all but a fringe of people, and this stuff presents a great way to drive a wedge between the Ref base and wider voters.

"The cake! We want the cake!! Why won't you just let us have and eat our lovely tasty cake??" www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

6/10 potential Labour voters would have a settlement norm below 10 years, with 5 years most popular

Cruel and entirely, entirely impossible to implement. This is going to be an absolute disaster.

To every trans person also feeling sick about this - I love you, fuck the noise and please look after yourselves! 🫶

Couldn't agree more. Labour's immigration stance was the straw that broke the camel's back for my Party membership.

Agree with Emily Thornberry here.. this is a properly shit decision from the govt. How can you just throw them under the bus

We've had a couple of years post-hydrogen bubble where the consensus was starting to become "maybe Li-ion batteries will be cheap enough to provide long-term storage". I was always slightly doubtful of that - limiting a large battery to cycling a few times a year doesn't make much commercial sense

Here's where we stand (via @climateactiontracker.org): climateactiontracker.org No longer headed towards 4C thanks to global decarbonization efforts. But current policies could give >3C-that's truly catastrophic, civilization-threatening levels of warming. That's why we need additional action.

Yep, as expected. Slightly surprised myself on some of the liberty/privacy questions

At Labour’s conference, Keir Starmer promised his government would “fight with everything we have” against those pushing racism and the idea of two-tier Britishness. Now it is the clear and stated policy rationale of his government that the racists were correct and must be appeased.

VERY funny that Labour are being pointlessly cruel and haemorrhaging support from their base and yet none of what they're offering is ever going to be enough for the people whose approval they're seeking, WHO could have predicted it

My greatest disappointment with Starmer is the continuation of this same old game. Half-arsed policy with focus on electoral dynamics over effectiveness. Underlying situation gets worse. Then you complain the border is out of control, when in fact it is your policymaking which has failed.

The basic problem with the temporary refugee status policy - especially one lasting up to 20 years - is it leads to very few removals (based on Denmark's experience) but does significantly worsen integration.

The Greens' next attack line, probably: "Labour would rather steal jewellry and bikes from refugees fleeing war than tax the rich" God I'm so angry. Incompetent and cruel.

The idea of the Home Office selling off the confiscated jewellery of those who have fled war and persecution should, in an ideal world, be the death knell for this government.

🧵/ How far does the public support net zero? Support: 60% Oppose: 25% Net support by party Green: +81 Lib Dem: +67 Lab: +64 Con: +11 Reform: -44 yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

Generative AI being 'wrong' in the information it produces, and being unethical in how it steals human labor are both overlapping issues and it's important to show a bit of damn solidarity even if you're not a scientist, or information worker, or a writer, or an artist, or a photographer

Flow of the vote in the average Lab gain from Con seat, i.e. somewhere like Southend E, Carlisle or Rugby. The largest dynamics here are Con -> Ref and Lab -> DK, tho Lab's wider splintering is costing them and allowing Reform a clear lead in such seats.

This is why these kinds of takes don't really grasp what is happening in what are currently Reform-facing Labour seats. The actual Lab -> Ref movement is small (and the least likely to reverse). Labour's key to remaining competitive is reuniting their losses to don't knows, LDs and Greens.

Yay. Priceless. The right column at the right time. And a gleefully English two fingers to the haters.

These are particularly critical points that should be much better understood, not just by the government but also by political commentators, journalists, and broadcast bookers.

Just a reminder that Starmer's accommodation of the radical right has not paid any electoral dividends to date. It's difficult to imagine circumstances in which it would...

Most political punditry misses this fundamental insight from political science.

Here's a figure from IPCC AR6 Summary for Policymakers showing the linear relationship between fucking around and finding out. Every tonne of CO₂ we add to the atmosphere makes things worse for us and all other living things.

A useful counter to the celebration of Reform as a "working-class insurrection". It suits both Farage and Maurice Glasman to present the party in this way, but that rests heavily on a particular idea of "the working class" as old, white and male, rather than (for example) young, black and female.

This is why mooting 'ditching net-zero' as the solution to Labour's woes is so silly. It's a policy that is popular with their core voters, critical to progressive voters they need to woo back, and Reform voters are sceptical but it's way down their priority list.

I’m all for expanding the social democratic coalition beyond liberals and progressives. But the idea that you can do social democratic politics *in opposition* to liberals and progressives is a nostalgic, self-indulgent fantasy.

As the article (in thread) says, outsize SUVs cost the public purse more in terms of strain on the infrastructure & pollution, and are far more dangerous for pedestrians & cyclists. Yes, we should tax them and their usage heavily. Why on Earth should the rest of us subsidise this obnoxious trend?