Tom Hill

To make a comparison from a different age and context, I think @donjrobertson.bsky.social has said that Trump reminds him of the Athenian politician Cleon.

Rachel Reeves needs to put up taxes to cover £40bn deficit, thinktank says NIESR suggests a rise of 5p in the pound on basic and higher rate of income tax would fill the budget gap

I understand the need for additional tax but a 5p increase in the basic and higher rates of tax feels like more than a 'moderate' increase. 😬

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

I prosecute and defend the most serious sexual offences in our courts.

The overwhelming majority of offenders are British-born. Overwhelmingly the victim is someone known to them, either a partner or relative.

Anybody purporting to care about protecting women might start there.

83/ I don't think it's at all reasonable to run a campaign literally entitled 'change' and then get mad at voters for being pissed off that things haven't meaningfully changed.

82/ If Labour do lose the next election, it will be because they shat the bed in their first year in office.

42/ The Labour party is somewhat unusual among western European social democratic parties in having a coalition that isn't going to die off in the next 20 years, which makes their romanticisation of a voter coalition that hasn't existed for 50 years even more baffling.

There's obviously an element of considering place, scale and context (i.e. around AONBs etc) but generally speaking I've always found turbines aesthetically and symbolically beautiful.

This is very interesting. Makes me wonder what proportion of folk are suspectible to be radicalised.

The more I see people I've known go down the radicalisation spiral the more I can see the pattern. A particular combo of predisposition, bitterness, a trigger moment, attention from the new tribe.... over and over.

🎯

Good piece this. Ultimately what Labour needs is not a “narrative” - it is a policy strategy. Too preoccupied with not doing things which are unpopular, not enough with “what will make us popular by 2029?”

Two (slightly contradictory) thoughts:

UK economy ≠ UK stock market

&

There's a strong case to be made that since pensions are treated so favourably from a tax point of view that UK plc should get something out of it.

Maybe. But the US' performance is dominated by the Magnificent 7. If those are even potentially overvalued then the whole logic falls down.

How are people buying these 30 year bonds? Direct or on the secondary market?

Do you have specific funds in mind for that?

That's an interesting perspective.
Out of interest, why do you consider the provision of defence to be fundamently different to other essential services such as the provision of food? Would it be blackmail, for e.g, for France to use access to their agricultural markets as leverage in a negotiation?

Streisand effect in full motion.

I'm relatively agnostic about the Euro but it definitely wasn't a win win for Greece in its financial crisis.

Contribution to European defence would be the card for the UK to play if it wanted leverage in negotiations. Whether or not that's ethical is another question though.

Compelling evidence that UK voters interpret the word 'rejoin' to mean 'rewind'.

It's a wonderful book. I understand that he also has a similarly good one on Art, but have not read it.

I came out as a Progressive Activist, but suspect that I'm in the process of turning into an Establish Liberal (the modern equivalent of Churchill's dictum).

Some of the questions felt difficult to answer without a 'yeah, but'...

This is fascinating research -

Attacking Reform on links to Trump and corporate interests reduces support for them.

Whereas showing video of Labour going after small boats perhaps marginally increases support for Reform.

Ed Miliband is entirely right here.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I feel like one way out of this is to reduce housing costs for working ppl by:
- Binning off the triple lock.
- Allow inflation to burn for a few yrs, whilst encouraging wage inflation & a big decline in real house prices.
- Also build sh1t loads of houses.

Then, 🔼 taxes a bit from the savings.

Nigel Farage, "The main reason this country wisely voted for Brexit in 2016"

Heckler, "Because they were lied to"

Keir Starmer then humiliates Farage saying he has no interest in solving small boats as Farage and Reform want to milk it

Hence the point about redistribution.

Probably the only way to do it in practice is to hope/encourage money to be left over in inheritances and then to try to redistribute that more effectively. And allow people to offset debt against future inheritances....

This analysis from the OBR is both terrifying and almost certainly a huge underestimate of what would happen in a world of collapsing food systems, rapid sea level rise, and rolling extreme weather.

It does feel like some of Labour's problem is Comms and cut-through rather than activity per se...