Josh Westerling

The loathing is deeper & more visceral than Westminster-ites can grasp. It’s not party-political or procedural. They worry about the effects of leadership change on bond markets. That’s nothing. But our political class is able to grasp let alone address the scale of the political climate change (2/)

Particularly good as it doesn’t overlook some of the more pernicious versions of communitarianism we’ve seen alongside liberalism’s hollowing out of the public square

The pessimist who became a prophet Philosopher Michael Sandel was ignored by a generation of political optimists. Now he is searching for a way out of the mess he saw coming

Good piece from a series of conversations with Michael Sandel. Sandbu is right to highlight caring more about “the civic consequences of economic power” as key theme from his work, esp in current context www.ft.com/content/7804...

If rumours of another GM seat coming free are true, there is (possibly, and fortunately) still time for key people on the NEC to, quite frankly, wise up and realise they have a duty to the future of the Labour Party.

Yet this is a government with three years left to run and an enormous Commons majority. For all the problems, there is an enormous opportunity there for someone with the political nous to take it and use it.

Dad would've been 57 today - here with my Mum roughly the same age I am now.

Keir Starmer apologises to victims of Jeffrey Epstein UK prime minister faces criticism from Labour MPs but insists he is not about to quit

EXC:

I can reveal the contents of a memo by Labour peer Lord Maurice Glasman in January 2025 warning Number 10 it was making a mistake to hire Mandelson - sent to Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney.

www.ft.com/content/584a...

I mean yes, in a way, but it's not *the reason* and *bad governments* aren't really the problem.

Everything we are seeing is downstream from the hollowing out of democracy as per Peter Mair. Parties have stopped mediating between the public and the state. Instead we have the managerialism...

Britain’s worst political scandal of this century The Mandelson affair threatens Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership

Whole column here if you like reading column www.economist.com/britain/2026...

Yeah this line is not tenable

Looks essentially the exact same today!

Change the law. And make a point of not referring to him by his title and why you’re not

The Epstein files expose the rot of Mandelson's Britain New Labour’s dead-end of pragmatism over everything else – including morality

Labour needs to bake morality into how it campaigns and governs.

My @newstatesman1913.bsky.social column on the Epstein-Mandelson story, and the hangover of a post-ideological age:

Those practical difficulties leave the govt response looking quite limp. Removing his peerage is the absolute minimum and govt should do whatever is necessary to make that happen.

Mandelson leaked sensitive UK government tax plans to Epstein Former ambassador forwarded memo from special adviser to Gordon Brown to late sex offender in 2009

BREAKING on ft website:

Lord Peter Mandelson leaked a sensitive UK government document to Jeffrey Epstein while he was business secretary that proposed £20bn of asset sales and revealed Labour’s tax policy plans

www.ft.com/content/fdf7...

Have seen this take a lot and really disagree. Gov’t could invest in anchor institutions for towns; build FE colleges in town centres; set up childcare co-ops; retrofit iconic buildings and make them into community gyms, etc. We are more than individual consumers - that’s the point of politics!

“Work is the best route out of poverty.”...That’s the promise, but for millions in the UK, it’s broken.

📉 In-work poverty has risen from 2.5m workers in 2000/01 to 3.8m in 2023/24 (12%).

Work matters, but without secure jobs, fair pay and a real safety net, it’s not enough.

For UK growth, look to the Andys Burnham and Street have a keen understanding of the value of empowering local people and places

www.ft.com/content/c7aa...

Andy Haldane champions "the Andy's" in the FT, who are overlooked by their respective parties.

Bonner Street, Bethnal Green (1986)

#WestHamUnited

📸 A London Inheritance

How liberals lost the internet | Robert Topinka In the first part of our series on digital politics, we look at how centrists have lost ground fighting disinformation – when the real battle is over emotion and attention, says digital media academic...

“The overwhelming liberal focus on disinformation misreads how digital platforms work…cutting-edge propagandists now focus less on policy messaging and more on massaging vibes”.

Start of a new series by the excellent @robtoes.bsky.social

Know there are practical difficulties to actually doing it but I don't think there are any other good arguments against removing his peerage.

YouTube video by Reform UK The Good Days Will Return.

This Reform ad is well pitched and moves them into a space tonally and rhetorically beyond Broken Britain.

Highly recommend this paper!

Carney, Trump and the power of a good speech Leaders don’t need to write every word themselves, but they do need to make sure it clearly represents their vision

100%

'swans off to be mayor of Manchester' is a pretty incredible thing to brief

Good piece that offers a guide to break out of the low-trust doom loop.

Centre-left politicians and parties should have respect for the "intellectual capacities of the public", make clear who its people are and communicate the choices and trade offs they're making.

Would very much like more speeches available as purely audio and uploaded on a podcast platform, rather than only options being reading the transcript or watching the thing

Voters want charisma! They want politicians who grab their attention! If your party doesn't promote these people, they will vote for a party that does!

There are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in every suburb and on every estate in Britain.