Oona

Yes great, but the last time he said this he followed it up with asylum policies which divided people and played on their sense of grievance. Hopefully the departure of McSweeney means things will be different this time, but I'm sceptical.

‘Pulling up the drawbridge’: Alf Dubs criticises Shabana Mahmood’s plans for child refugees Exclusive: Labour peer, who came to UK as a refugee, says some ministers try to show they won’t ‘just do things because of their background’

Children need their families. Refugee children are no different.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Just plotted the "difference" lines from this table to show how big the swings are over time. Wild.

public.flourish.studio/visualisatio...

Immigration falling but public still thinks it is going up – new research - British Future Findings from the British Future/Ipsos Immigration Attitudes Tracker into what the public thinks about immigration for work, study and asylum

Bad news for the government that net migration is down 70% yet only 1/6 people know it started to fall at all.

A big part of that is the visible lack of control of boats + hotels

Part is government voice almostly always saying "too high/out of control" itself

www.britishfuture.org/immigration-...

The political problem for the Labour Party is it keeps saying any number is too high/unsustainable with no account of what is sustainable.

Was rightly saying too high for 900k, 600k, 400k.
(Was quietly targeting < net 250k)

Now says 200k much too high. Mahmood may well say 100k sounds too high too

The Home Secretary has several times said she thinks levels of net migration remain quite high + are comparatively high

This is mainly a vibe.

There are a few factual mistakes/over-spins in her explanation of why she thinks this but many journalists + MPs may not quite notice those.

The Home Office now describes asylum seekers as "illegal immigrants [living in hotels]" with no reference to the reason that these people are in government-funded accommodation is that this government has taken & will process the asylum claim from them in 98-99% of cases of unauthorised entry.

Young men are the second most liberal group in the country after young women.

Democracy for Sale's scoop about Labour Together paying a firm to investigate journalists has now been picked up in FT, Politico and the Guardian

Huge questions to answer - for Morgan McSweeney, Josh Simons, and Keir Starmer

Oh, and do support D4S 😀 democracyforsale.substack.com/subscribe

BREAKING: McSweeney’s think tank paid PR firm to investigate journalists Labour Together put private investigators onto journalists writing about its funding. Starmer's right-hand man knew.

“This is dark shit.”

An astonishing scoop from Democracy for Sale:
https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/exclusive-morgan-mcsweeneys-labour-together-investigators-journalists

Am increasingly of the feeling these bans will mainly have the effect of isolating kids who rely on social media to build social connection, and push some children to un(der)regulated parts of the online world where they are at more risk of harm.

Yes I think so.

all the bad is true. And so are all the reasons that we like coming here and don’t call it a hellsite

There is something so (sorry) culturally Christian I think about the assumption ”everything people like is bad for them probs”

The parable of Andy Burnham and Peter Mandelson Voters are unimpressed by Keir Starmer’s contrasting treatment of two Labour politicians

Voters in focus groups are contrasting Labour’s treatment of Burnham and Mandelson – that’s a dangerous comparison for Starmer. www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

“Some students have already dropped out,” the MP says. “They have taken on debt for something they thought would change their life.”

When people talk about the idea that some universities must go under, there’s a certain tendency to behave as if these smaller local campuses are negligible- regrettable casualties perhaps but not ‘real’ universities. This report does a great job of illustrating why that’s wrong.

So much of GOP conspiracy land is simply not understanding how counting works. No one is ever “ahead” or “behind” until the counting is over.

Elon Musk’s flagship artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, continues to generate sexualized images of people when users explicitly warn that the subjects do not consent.

In 17 tests, Grok generated images after being told they would be used to degrade the person.

www.reuters.com/business/des...

Most of Epstein’s victims were either too frightened to come forward, or silenced through legal threats. Oh, and here’s a senior British politician giving Epstein tips on how to silence them

This is just a joke. You can't put a constituency poll out like that and then disavow it.

Now: Bruce Springsteen sings “Streets of Minneapolis” in Minneapolis

www.joxleywrites.jmoxley.co.uk/p/airport-bo...
Great piece on “airport book brain” - the tendency of politicians to swallow simplistic solutions. Latest example the Jonathan Haidt book shaping policy on teens and social media

An experimental study on institutions and social norms of tax payment Abstract. The production of public goods, which are fundamental to well-functioning societies, requires the payment of taxes, but taxpayers have clear ince

New OA In ESR

How do institutions and social norms affect tax payment?
@lucaspasin.bsky.social #Aaszekely @squazzoni.bsky.social find that in low-quality institutions contexts, social norms can trigger vicious cycles of evasion, even when evasion is socially disapproved
doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaf057

wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage

If anyone at the press conference is reading this, ask Jenrick and Farage about their position on the Postcode Address File. Maybe there will be a divide between the two on this!

Reminder that in the UK an incoming radical, populist government would have immediate access to immense, unchecked executive power.

And the current government is doing nothing to protect us from that.

Even by my low expectations for Kemi Badenoch ‘violence against women and girls is something done by immigrants and nobody else’ has shocked me.

“Polls suggest the most probable result is a loss for the party’s candidate, a former government minister understood to have been handpicked by the PM.

“Among the reasons cited by analysts are frustration with Frederiksen’s hardline policies on issues such as integration and immigration.”

Those who hold more restrictive views on refugees are more likely to see Labour as pro-immigration, while those who hold more liberal views tend to see Labour as anti-immigration

yougov.co.uk/topics/polit...

This passage is key. What will criteria and fee for this new route be? How many refugees are expected to qualify? Some refugees will be unable to work or study and they will be very harshly treated under this plan.