Simon Tilford

a year is a long time in politics

Nah, you're amateurs at own goals. We're 'world-beating' at it.

Starmer 2.0: could a more authentic PM revive Labour’s appeal? After surviving a coup, and with his critics chastened, No 10 insiders say a more combative PM is up for taking the fight to Reform UK

Condemning Reform, Ratcliffe and Lam's racist rhetoric is an important and very welcome shift.

But it means little unless accompanied by changes to the government's own *policies* -especially the vindictive and counterproductive earned settlement proposals.

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

The entire point of debating frozen assets for months was to get around Orbán’s veto.

Either Hungary moves - or that option should be back on the table.

Britain’s Labour government feels the heat over Palantir contracts The U.S. data company is taking fresh flak in the U.K. — as the country’s reliance on U.S. tech firms shoots up the political agenda.

Palantir and UK Government keep saying "the data is secure".

But that's not the primary issue. It's having this tech embedded in critical health, defence and police supply and information chains. We're locked in- under the sovereign control of the US government.

www.politico.eu/article/brit...

The government's immigration plans: a dog’s dinner of half-conceived policy, Reform rhetoric, mean-spirited sentiment, and profound intellectual muddle iandunt.substack.com/p/can-we-ext...

Can we extract the Reform nonsense from Labour? These immigration proposals are obscene, but the government can be forced to think again.

This is excellent from @iandunt.bsky.social on the government's proposals on settlement: unsupported by evidence, counterproductive on integration, cohesion and economic growth.

As Ian says not too late for government to think again.

iandunt.substack.com/p/can-we-ext...

Let’s not pretend that Andrew’s activities are separate from his royal status. The whole concept of royalty is based on undeserved privilege, lack of accountability, luxury and hedonism, and the idea that others are beneath you, and can be used.

Labour minister falsely linked journalists to ‘pro-Kremlin’ network in emails to GCHQ Exclusive: Josh Simons pressed intelligence officials to investigate reporters, in emails described as ‘McCarthyite smear’

Exclusive: Josh Simons claimed to be “surprised” and “furious” at a PR agency’s work to investigate journalists on his behalf. He had been personally involved in naming them to British intelligence officials and falsely linking them to pro-Russian propaganda. w/ @dansabbagh.bsky.social

Struck by how supine so much coverage of the Royal Family continues to be, even now. “Business as usual” is the line I keep hearing. No, it really isn’t. And it shouldn’t be.

I’m no legal expert

but the documents leaked to Epstein by Mandelson seem even more market sensitive to me than the Prince Andrew ones

(Mandelson leaked information about imminent $500bn eurozone bailout, £20bn of UK gov asset sales, tax changes etc)

A century ago, Bristol had 17 electric tram routes running across the city.

Today, it has no mass transit system at all.

Meanwhile, 23 smaller cities in France have modern tram networks.

Brexit’s slow‑burn hit to the UK economy The UK is once again debating why its economy has grown slowly since the mid‑2010s. This column examines the impact of the decision to leave the European Union in 2016. Using almost a decade of data s...

New data shows #Brexit has lowered UK GDP by 6-8% over the past decade. Investment down 12-18%, employment down 3-4%. It's even worse than economists had predicted pre-referendum, because they thought there would be a bounce-back long term. "Economists were roughly right on the

The thing about bubbles is they can happen even when the underlying innovation is transformational.

Indeed almost all major technologies from railways to the internet were accompanied by an initial bubble.

It's kind of alarming the number of conversations I've had with policymakers that treat the concept of a counterfactual as something arcane and suspect, rather than an essential element of understanding the impact of their actions

Won't be a revelation to anyone but the reason all the worst people on the right are pivoting to talking about race and culture rather than immigration is so they can keep banging the drum even as net migration figures fall (UK) and even reverse (US).

This is the next step and it always was.

Sathnam Sanghera: what Jim Ratcliffe got wrong about immigration Britain is a multicultural country because it ran a multicultural empire. Would he undo the sacrifice my ancestors made?

Feels like I am going to have to keep writing this piece every other fortnight, forever. @thetimes.com

www.thetimes.com/article/e624...

Grand juries consist of normal citizens, and it would appear that they are slamming metaphorical doors in the face of the federal government. This is not happening all the time: some questionable charges, like those brought against the journalist Don Lemon, are still getting past grand juries. The trend is thereby not universal, but it is significant. The federal government is not getting its way, all the time. And so one ugly feature of American politics—the use by Trump and his administration of the Department of Justice to go after those who displease them—is prompting an equal but opposite reaction of grand juries generally saying no. There are still checks and balances in the US polity, even if the current majorities in Congress and the Supreme Court have abdicated their constitutional responsibilities. In the US it now appears that grand juries are generally, if not universally, preventing some of the grossest abuses of executive power. Many things can and are said about juries: they are an imperfect mechanism for deciding legal questions. But the great value of juries is not so much the powers they have, but the powers they prevent others from having.

The great value of juries is not so much the powers they have, but the powers they prevent others from having.

Column in which I ask the important question: has Torsten Bell ever killed a man?

economist.com/britain/2026...

Boris Johnson met a former KGB officers son without officials after a NATO summit. Ignored security warnings. Then gave him a seat in the House of Lords. We were told to just trust him. This is not normal. These questions still demand answers.

Don't think he's ever actually built a business, just borrowed very heavily to buy existing ones and then run to government with his begging bowl.

It is so embarrassing that it has taken nearly a decade for a British minister to say this, a statement of the absolute bloody obvious

Uproar as Reform policy chief threatens to defund Welsh university Martin Shipton Reform UK’s head of policy Zia Yusuf launched a culture war in Wales by threatening to withhold funding from Bangor University after its student debating society refused to host two lea...

Hello. Former Index On Censorship staffer here. To be very clear, having your request to speak at a society of which you are not a member does not count, in any sense whatsoever, as censorship. nation.cymru/news/uproar-...

This really is a very good piece. I think quite a lot lies behind it. First that the *actual* education of the likes of Musk etc is very superficial. Just enough Western Civ classes at elite universities for them to persuade themselves that they are talented intellects without any deep study.

"Farage would like to do away with the OBR because he would like to pretend he can deliver the impossible".

Very clear articulation of the case for independent *forecasting* (not policymaking!) by @sjwrenlewis.bsky.social

mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2026/02/fisc...

File this with all the other climate charts that look like someone plotted the latest data on the wrong axes

I have no problem w security guarantees for Russia: once it has retreated inside its internationally recognised borders, Ukraine & the West should promise not to attack RU territory. But Grushko is asking for guarantees of continued Ukrainian insecurity, not Russia’s security. That’s unacceptable.

300,000 children face 10-year wait for settled status under UK plans, says IPPR Thinktank analysis says proposed ‘earned settlement’ changes could trap families in prolonged insecurity

There is no reason the Home Office could not apply the same humanity to other refugees and migrants - instead we get this pointless, performative cruelty.

Not to late to stop this - the consultation closes Friday and the govt still has the opportunity to reverse

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

From Blair to Putin to Starmer: PR chief Tim Allan’s CV Former New Labour spin-doctor has faced criticism over his choice of clients, including Russia’s government

a reminder that Tim Allan, who quit Starmer's Downing St today, previously spun for....not only Kazakhstan and Qatar but also Vladimir Putin’s government

www.ft.com/content/a0a8...

Today, as yesterday, the Government is trying to govern from a Blue Labour standpoint with a progressive leaning coalition.

Locked in by a manifesto that prevents any room for strategic manoeuvre.

Whatever those data charts and hero voters said in 2019 it just doesn't work.