Matt Polacko

NEW: After Gorton & Denton, how should we understand the threat to Labour's left?

Big new @persuasionuk.bsky.social report out with @38degrees.bsky.social on 'progressive defectors' - Lab 2024 switchers to Greens, Plaid, SNP, Lib Dems.

Who are they, who are they not & what's moving them? 🧵

Polling from More in Common shows that Greens and Reform win a higher share of voters who struggle to make ends meet, while Labour and the Conservatives win those who are most financially comfortable

Reform UK and the Greens are hoovering up financially insecure voters. My piece this week looks at the return of Britain's class politics (with a twist) www.economist.com/britain/2026...

Fossil fuel stocks are exploding in response to the war on Iran.

Who stands to benefit? The richest of the rich.

Who stands to lose? All of us who have to pay higher prices for energy and a new round of sellers' inflation.

Labour must cease taking progressive voters for granted, says Sadiq Khan London mayor criticises PM for calling Greens ‘extreme’ after Gorton and Denton loss, saying it is a ‘flawed strategy’ * Sadiq Khan: ‘Labour must stop channelling Reform and unite with progressives. That’s the byelection’s lesson’ The mayor of London has said the Gorton and Denton byelection has exposed a “far-reaching change and fracturing” in UK politics and Labour must ditch its “flawed strategy” of taking liberal progressives for granted. In what appears to be an attack on Keir Starmer, Sadiq Khan challenged the prime minister’s branding of the Green party and its policies as “extreme”, saying many of its supporters shared Labour’s values but were disappointed in the government. Continue reading...

Labour must cease taking progressive voters for granted, says Sadiq Khan

The case for a wealth tax is stronger than ever in Canada - CCPA An excerpt from “Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us: The Urgent Case for a Wealth Tax” by Linda McQuaig & Neil Brooks

The issue of wealth inequality is one of the most pressing social and economic problems of our time. States must take action to rein in the power of billionaires—and one key tool for doing so would be a wealth tax. By @lindamcquaig.bsky.social + Neil Brooks.
www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...

The majority of America’s teachers — a whopping 71% — have at least one side job because they’re so underpaid.

Meanwhile, the country is about to be launched into a long, drawn-out war that has already cost an estimated $2 billion.

Priorities.

NEW POLL on Dem. structural reforms: U.S. adults support 18-yr term limits for Supreme Court justices by a 50-point margin (GOP is +34 in favor), favor statehood for Puerto Rico and limits on pardons by POTUS, and are split on DC statehood, packing the Court:

www.gelliottmorris.com/p/two-thirds...

Trump starting a war against Iran is perhaps the most unpopular major use of military force in recent memory, as measured by polls taken just after each attack. Eg, support *among Republicans* is lower than overall approval was for invading Iraq
www.gelliottmorris.com/p/polls-trum...

Assal Rad @AssalRad post on Twitter 2 March 2026 She writes, The difference is by design. Images of 2 headings in The New York Times 1. Iran Says Dozens are Killed in Strike on School Circles in red 'Iran Says' and comments 'casts doubt' Underlines 'Strike' and comments 'No Responsibility/ 2. 9 Killed in Israeli City Near Jerusalem After Iranian Airstrike Underlines in red '9 Killed' and comments 'Stated as fact' Underlines 'Iranian' and comments 'Actor Named'

Posted elsewhere by Dr Assal Rad elsewhere🎯
#MediaBias

This cartoon was drawn in 2017.

9 years later, it’s still accurate.

There is a patronising and incorrect presumption that the only way to appeal to working class communities is through racism and xenophobia as opposed to, y’know, offering popular policies that dramatically and materially improve peoples lives

A major shift, via Gallup. More from @joshuakeating.bsky.social www.vox.com/politics/480...

⚠️ New WP ⚠️ with @ftorche.bsky.social: Can childhood exposure to local wealth inequality help explain growing class gaps in income mobility? Short answer: Yes! Read the full answer here: doi.org/10.31235/osf... #Demography #Sociology #EconSky

Trump might start a war with Iran. Can anyone stop him? Trump might start a war with Iran. Can anyone stop him? Congress, public opinion, and administration insiders aren’t reliable constraints on Trump’s foreign policy decisions.

Quick reactions after learning that no, nobody could stop him. 1/ goodauthority.org/news/trump-m... 1/

In case you’re just waking up, the U.S. has teamed up with Israel overnight to start an illegal war of regime change, apparently on a presidential whim with no involvement of Congress, and they are already committing horrific atrocities.

Once again, in actual democracies, people do not need to engage in permanent litigation & political mobilization to retain the basic right to vote, because none of the major political parties make restricting suffrage the central pillar of their policy platform. We also don't have to live like this.

It is possible to recognise the Iranian regime is hideous, murdering their own citizens, and ideally would be replaced by a more democratic government, and that the US bombing a city of millions is a bad thing and starting an illegal war is really bad. You don't have to support either government. 1/

Oxford Street pedestrianisation plan gets final official approval City Hall hopes to stop traffic from using the street by September.

Delighted to announce that following the consultation, I'm giving the green light to make Oxford Street traffic-free.

What a result!! Huge congratulations to the amazing Hannah Spencer - everyone in Gorton and Denton has just made history. This result shows @greenparty.org.uk can win anywhere, that the politics of hope can win over the politics of hate & there is no longer any such thing as a Labour safe seat 💚

Green party wins Gorton and Denton byelection, pushing Labour to third place in blow to Keir Starmer Hannah Spencer elected as party’s first MP in northern England, as Labour sees a 25.3% drop in vote compared to 2024

📢 Yay 🎉 Labour should get rid of Starmer and the nasty little right-wing clique that's thoroughly ruined the Labour Party and betrayed its values... #VoteGreenGetGreen www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Class Background Matters for Career Progression — in Academia and Beyond - Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Stone Center Affiliated Scholar Anna Stansbury of MIT's Sloan School of Management and Kyra Rodriguez of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business discuss their Stone Center working paper: “The Class Gap ...

Socioeconomic background is notably absent from most research on elite career progression. In their blog post, Stone Center Affiliated Scholar @annastansbury.bsky.social and Kyra Rodriguez of UC Berkeley discuss their forthcoming paper, "Class Background Matters for Career Progression."

Labour have alienated the voters they had on the left, and failed to win over any of the voters they have courted on the right. Now their core appeal is all but gone and ever growing numbers of voters have exit options on the left, right and in the centre.

Welcome to the Valley of Electoral Death.

Everything the Ellison family could own if Paramount buys Warner Bros:

Paramount+
CBS
CNN
Showtime
HBO
Warner Bros
TNT
TBS
MTV
DC Studios
Nickelodeon
Comedy Central
Cartoon Network
And more...

This is a rotten deal that the Trump regime has rubber stamped.

State AGs must step in and block it.

This is not a reasoned political response. Labour has spent two years making all the voting groups who backed the Greens feel unwelcome and unheard, and now attacks them for daring to back someone else. They believe Labour isn’t listening and Starmer seems determined to prove them right

Keir Starmer's attempt to paint the Greens as extremists yet again reveals his intolerance of political difference. His instincts are illiberal and authoritarian.

mount. Figure 1 presents two plots. Panel (a) displays the percentage of donors in each wealth rank that contributed to each of the six campaigns (i.e., Democratic and Republican nominees in 2012, 2016, and 2020).Footnote 17 Panel (b) displays the per capita dollars from each wealth bin, by campaign (including those who donate nothing). As Figure 1 shows, the association between wealth and contributions is approximately exponential. The wealthiest are much more likely to contribute, and the wealth gradient is even steeper in dollars because the top 0.1% contribute very large sums. This is one of the most robust findings in the campaign finance literature, but the figure demonstrates it with considerably more precision. By measuring wealth independently of contribution size, we avoid misattributing smaller contributions to non-wealthy donors and underestimating wealthy dollars. Most relevant to our analysis, Figure 1 compares the wealth gradients for Trump versus other candidates. In 2016, compared to other candidates, Trump’s wealth gradient is far flatter, because Trump elicited far fewer wealthy contributors and per capita dollars. For example, among the top 0.1%, Trump’s donors and per capita dollars represent about one third of Romney’s. While Trump did worse than all other candidates among nearly all wealth groups, that deficit was larger among the wealthy. In short, in 2016, wealthy donations to Trump are low compared to other presidential candidates. In 2020, Trump’s performance among the wealthy improved considerably over 2016 (Figure 1). Consider donation rates (Panel a). Among the wealthiest 0.1%, for example, Trump roughly doubled his rate, though he still significantly lagged Biden and Romney. He did even better in per capita dollars (Panel b) than in rates. Open access link to paper: http://cup.org/4cfm0Az

The wealthy dominate political donations. Our co-authored research found the top 0.1% contribute at rates 10-15x higher than bottom 90%. They’re not just more likely to donate, they give exponentially more per capita. The wealth gradient in politics is real. cup.org/4cfm0Az

Opinion | The Trump 1 Percent Fan Club Has a Lot of New Members

“Despite Trump’s having lost ground in almost every demographic during his second term, one group stands firmly in the president’s camp: the superrich who have their wallets open.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/o...

Canadians Love a Conspiracy Theory - Macleans.ca The country’s conservatives have embraced American right-wing rhetoric. Our democracy is in danger.

If democracy can fall in one of the world’s oldest and most established republics, it can also happen here. https://macleans.ca/politics/canadians-love-a-conspiracy-theory/