Matthew Holehouse

When the electorate fragments, first past the post electoral system becomes a slot machine. In an election tomorrow, a remarkably wide spread is possible.

This week's UK cover story on the coming legitimacy crisis featuring @owenwntr.bsky.social's new model
www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

Zanny Minton Beddoes interviews Sir Keir Starmer | The Economist Insider Sir Keir Starmer was meant to be the man who rescued the political mainstream. After the chaos of Brexit and Labour’s wayward radicalism during the Corbyn years, his serious-minded pragmatism was supp...

Full interview now live
www.economist.com/insider/the-...

🎰🍌🍊🍎🍍🎰

Our new model captures the lottery of Britain’s electoral system Similar results, our data analysis shows, can yield strikingly different outcomes

Whizzy inside note featuring work of @rospearce.bsky.social @mariesegger.bsky.social @futuraprime.net @owenwntr.bsky.social and more

www.economist.com/interactive/...

When the electorate fragments, first past the post electoral system becomes a slot machine. In an election tomorrow, a remarkably wide spread is possible.

This week's UK cover story on the coming legitimacy crisis featuring @owenwntr.bsky.social's new model
www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

The EU single market’s elephant in the room Small, often invisible barriers to trade affect products from businesses across Europe, including a fluffy Ikea pachyderm

Interesting piece - regulatory divergence is also an issue within the EU.

Though I think it's striking that - contra to all the current calls to slash red-tape - the logical way out of the problem is *more* EU legislation to harmonise standards

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Our interview with Sir Keir Starmer Britain’s prime minister understands the size of the moment. He just does not know how to meet it

Starmer: Reform is institutionally “pro-Putin or Putin neutral.” It would pull the UK from the pro-Ukrainian Coalition of the Willing. “There is no way on earth that the UK could be part of that configuration with Nigel Farage as prime minister.”
economist.com/britain/2025...

if the problem is a crisis of legitimacy (with which i agree), reform on the basis of stymying one's partisan opponents is a cure worse than the disease

more on that in this week's paper (although I'm very cautious about whether constitutional reform framed in narrow terms of partisan advantage is very attractive)

Zanny Minton Beddoes interviews Sir Keir Starmer | The Economist Insider Sir Keir Starmer was meant to be the man who rescued the political mainstream. After the chaos of Brexit and Labour’s wayward radicalism during the Corbyn years, his serious-minded pragmatism was supp...

www.economist.com/insider/the-...

Our interview with Sir Keir Starmer Britain’s prime minister understands the size of the moment. He just does not know how to meet it

“If there is a Conservative government, I can sleep at night.” A right-wing populist Reform UK government, however, “is a different proposition”.

Starmer speaks to @zannymb.economist.com; note by @duncanrobinson.bsky.social

www.economist.com/britain/2025...

"She is not being honest at what happened at the British Women's Chess Association Girl's Tournament. Ah know. Ah was there."

The disappointing English cousin to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth

we must never let prof edelman to find out about news industry awards

OBR: No, you are the leaker

It’s not a defence of Reeves’ inept handling of this to say that if Osborne had produced a surprise £16bn windfall that averted expected tax rises he’d be hailed as the master conjuror with the mother of all rabbits. But perhaps we’ve grown up.

I think it’s good if we decide chancellors have a maximal duty of candour and transparency in the months before budgets. Happily it would mean the Rabbit in a Hat Secret Santa Surprise school of budgets afforded to all reeves predecessors is dead

It was the most botched budget briefing since Truss… but this is increasingly wild. It is not an unsubstantiated “claim” that the OBR priced the productivity downgrade at £16bn in foregone revenue!

the odd thing is there's so much dry kindling in the budget for the Conservative Party! a very easy budget to pull apart

It's genuinely hard to find the line in Reeves' speech that would justify the claim she told "lied", a term that has traditionally had a precise meaning. If she "maintained the perception" that tax rises were necessary and coming then - on £4.2bn of headroom pre-measures - they really were...

Rather unusual for a chancellor to be told to resign for not increasing taxes as expected in light of better-than-expected revenue forecasts.

That nerdy bit: 50% of uk trade

Five year bout of writers’ block

When it was suggested in opposition that Starmer might write a 16,000 word pamphlet on his beliefs he was mocked by his own MPs on behalf of their voters. So many words!

It's possible that Reeves' "simple workaround" becomes politically impossible to unwind in future, and very expensive - a de facto second class of personal allowance. The new fuel duty escalator...

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

Also a wave of the future: the rebottling of old-fashioned moral objections as a mental health issue

Wave of the future right here:

what on earth are you on about

The grunting and yelling of an Olympic weightlifter for a 5lb dumbbell of a budget

YouTube video by Jamie839 The Day Today - "The Pound Has Been Stolen!"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3277...