Nick Anstead

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD USE HYPHENS

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20 years of MSc Politics and Communication @lsemedia.bsky.social event about to start.

Wowzer.

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Politics live with Andrew Sparrow Farage criticises BBC over racism allegations and claims some fellow pupils say he was 'offensive' but not racist - UK politics live

Not the greatest defence is it?

My fear is that closer relations with the EU becomes similar to electoral reform - something Labour governments reach for in desperation when they have lost authority, rather than something they will argue for from a position of strength (although the two are not exactly analogous obviously).

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Very interesting thoughts, thank you for sharing.

Oh yes, sorry I missed the reference to local elections! The primary problem remains though that any carve up will have to massively favour the Greens given current polls & both parties are fishing in the same poll of voters (maybe with the exception of seats with large numbers of Muslim voters?).

Plot for the next James Bond film right there.

Guardian a live blog piece from today on Your Party / Green pact. Members of Your Party have taken a step towards an electoral alliance with the Greens after voting to adopt a "targeted" strategy of only standing in seats where the new leftwing movement founded by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana has a good chance of winning. While no such pact is currently in place, the decision not to have a strategy of trying to maximise the number of Your party candidates could play a role in some key battlegrounds in next year's local elections where the vote to the left of Labour would otherwise have split. They include Hackney, traditionally a Labour stronghold, but where Green councillor Zoe Garbett is hoping to build on momentum behind her party and succeed next year on her third attempt at winning the borough's mayoral election.

Seems unnecessarily premature with election 3+ years away. Your Party have made this statement (it seems) without any kind of a deal with the Greens, who might not be up for it.

Also, very unclear what basis for deciding who gets which seats could be. Ultimately, they probably want the same ones.

If only someone had an article under review on how the far right instrumentalises the welfare state to entrench themselves in power and undermine (liberal) democracy, and using Orbán's Hungary as one of the case studies...

PhD opportunity at the University of Oxford. The Morelli scholarship funds a doctoral student to work with me on on democratic backsliding, strategies of democratic defense and regeneration, or the rise of illiberalism. Deadline Jan 9. More information at users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0073/

The BBC (in name of 'impartiality') has entered some post-post-truth hall of mirrors, in which it holds the Labour Chancellor to some epistemological standard so high, that nobody can understand what the hell it actually means

As ever @stephenkb.bsky.social nails it in his email this morning… the “scandal” of when Reeves saw OBR data/ messaging from treasury is either heroically concocted or heroically wrong-headed. The big long term story of budget are the massive assumptions that have been used to make it add up.

168 Songs Of Hatred And Failure is a Times Book Of The Year. Many thanks to @victoriasegal.bsky.social

Perfect Tom Stoppard story from DTel obituary:

His response to a letter from Harold Pinter canvassing support for a proposal to have the Comedy Theatre in London rechristened the Pinter Theatre, “Have you thought, instead, of changing your name to Harold Comedy?”

Fun fact about gerrymandering: what you are doing is redrawing boundaries to spread your votes as efficiently as possible (& your opponent’s inefficiently). But relatively you also potentially weaken the position of your incumbents. Mass retirements might be an indication GOP has overreached in TX.

Your Party conference thrown into chaos as Zarah Sultana boycotts first day Sultana skips Saturday’s proceeding in solidarity with delegates expelled over links to other parties

The ironic comedy value in this story is Corbyn (who so long claimed to be the inheritor of the Benn legacy) playing the soft left role to Sultana’s neo-Bennite position in terms of left-of-party organisations.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Most British reaction to this policy ever would be other “mansion” owners being very supportive, as the levy forces out the people on their road who don’t have the resources to maintain their properties and are thus harming the value / saleability of their houses.

Even @channel4news.bsky.social opens its budget coverage by asking "What will this do for Labour's position in the polls?"

Polls are not even a good predictor of future elections. They're certainly not a test by which budgets should be measured.

We have to break their cold, dead grip on politics.

The downside of this is if you believe that the U.K. faces structural problems, then your chance of something turning up will inevitably be hampered by those.

It doesn’t quite fit with our romantic vision of big pictures and grand reform but there is an argument that the greatest skill in politics is biding your time and just waiting for something to turn up. If you can defer a problem long enough the situation might well change to your advantage.

Yeah, that’s what I had assumed Reeves was hinting at in the speech yesterday.

Someone who bought later simply won’t have experienced the kind of rises required to mismatch their income and property value to such a big degree.

Also Reeves did say something about alternative measures, so presumably there may be ways older homeowners can defer payment in extreme scenarios.

I wonder if there is a temporal dimension to this policy becoming viable too? The apocryphal scenario are people who bought a house in some parts of London decades ago which has skyrocketed in value since the 70s/80s. But most of these people are presumably leaving the property market now / soon?

Divided by a common language.

This is a great question… as ever with these things implementation with be tricky.

Personally - speaking as current petrol driver but aspiring EV driver, hopefully in a few years - I can see the rationale for this. You do need to replace the revenue you are losing through petrol duty.

‘I don’t live in a mansion. It’s a 1930s house’: Richmond residents react to council tax rise Rachel Reeves’s new council tax surcharge on homes worth £2m or more earns mixed reception in well-heeled London borough

Fascinating diagram in this @theguardian.com article on the so-called mansion tax… it shows 25 constituencies with most £2m+ properties and only four of them have a Conservative MP (otherwise Labour, Lib Dem’s and Corbyn). Shows spectacular pivot in UK politics.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Whatever else this government do (and there's plenty of issues with this budget) ministers will always be able to point to this as an incredible important contribution to the country's future. Almost half a million kids taken out of poverty.