Fintan Smith (Mac Gabhann)

Welcome to slot-machine Britain! Our cover this week is on First Past the Post, the voting system that turns multi-party politics into a lottery.

Featuring our new modelling of British elections: www.economist.com/interactive/...

The Green party: We should tax wealth!

Also the Green Party: No! Not like that!

The eternal story

If it were steel works we would have a government bailout plan, yet losing thousands of jobs at unis is met with a shrug. & unlike steelworks universities were profitable when they had foreign students.
You are killing the golden goose… one of our best exports…

HOW IS THIS HELPING GROWTH?!

The whole interview is worth listening to and is a fair car crash.

But this is worth noting this segment given that some have said he's stepping away from MMT. Claiming we don't need to borrow more money, because we can print more.

All this budget news, claims, counter claims is confusing, but two things of consequence.

1. We're all talking about that, not any financial benefits (or losses) of the budget.

2. Yet more focus on the very weird few weeks and politics of it all. Starting to feel dangerously like a norm.

Donate to Help us help Moses build new sanitary toilets in Kibera, organized by Miriam Ronzoni Moses is an activist who has dedicated much of his life to impr… Miriam Ronzoni needs your support for Help us help Moses build new sanitary toilets in Kibera

Christmas is approaching, the season of giving, and this December I have decided to make a gift of my dignity by bravely/foolishly joining in a festive season challenge. Every day this month I will (attempt to) do 100 press-ups, to raise money for this fine cause: www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-he...

The publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary have declared "rage bait" their word of the year, but just 35% of Britons are confident they know what the word means

Confident know what it means: 35%
Vaguely know what it means: 22%
Have heard it, but don't know what it means: 9%
Not heard it: 34%

Nus Ghani MP - the Deputy Speaker - moved to the UK as a small child. She has been elected by the voters in Wealden in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2024

More outright racism from the regular GB News & Talk TV contributor Lucy White - who previously called (on GB News) for all Muslims to leave Britain

The minimum wage is not a cure all — we’re asking too much of business Politicians spend too much time uttering cheap rhetoric about cheap labour

My column in today’s FT: the vision since 2016 has been that the lever British governments pull to fight poverty is to increase the minimum wage. Time for government to start pulling its weight again too:

Excerpt from a BBC article: ""We usually work, 10, 11 or 12 hours a day," says a 49-year-old woman from Jiangxi unwilling to give her name. "On Sundays we work around three hours less." She is in an alleyway, where a dozen people are huddled around a row of bulletin boards. They are reading the job ads on the board, while examining the stitching on a pair of chinos draped over it. This is Shein's supply chain. The factories are contracted to make clothes on order - some small, some big. If the chinos are a hit, orders will ramp up and so must production. Factories then hire temporary workers to meet the demand their permanent staff cannot fulfil. The migrant worker from Jiangxi is looking for a short-term contract - and the chinos are an option. "We earn so little. The cost of living is now so high," she says, adding that she hopes to make enough to send back to her two children who are living with their grandparents. "We get paid per piece," she explains. "It depends how difficult the item is. Something simple like a t-shirt is one-two yuan [less than a dollar] per piece and I can make around a dozen in an hour.""

The people who make Shein's clothes labor for ten to twelve hours per day (in violation of China's labor laws), some up to seven days a week, and earn as little as 15 to 30 cents per t-shirt.

I am very much team ‘you need to reduce the salience of asylum’ - but fixing a manifestly broken system has got to be some part of that surely.

There’s aspects of what was announced yesterday I’m not sure will work, but there’s not enough people on here engaging with the problem itself imo

Thought the plan was to smash the smuggling gangs not emulate them.

This is true in Britain also. Many such cases! Twitter weirdos are just that - weirdos! Stop treating them as the voice of a generation!

A month ago I looked at what I called Labour's midlife crisis- an obsession with chasing socially conservative Reform-curious voters and ignoring groups of disaffected voters with social attitudes much closer to Labour voters. But some people thought there was method in their madness. Was there? 1/n

Voters *already* think Labour have broken their tax promises

Most British young men reject the far right - UK in a changing Europe Emilia Belknap and Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte explain their analysis on the demographics of Reform UK voters in the UK. They argue that while the dominant narrative is that young men are the most likely to turn to the party, the evidence does not support this.

"The most common response among men aged 18-25, as with their female peers, is to state that they would never consider voting for Reform."

Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte & Emilia Belknap argue that most British young men reject the right

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/most-british-young-men-reject-the-far-right/

The 2025 state of the climate report: A planet on the brink

🚨 Earth's vital signs are flashing red.

🌡️ 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history.

Read the latest Climate report from @williamripple.bsky.social and Christopher Wolf's team, published in BioScience.

oxford.ly/47i6K5j

Green party voters are the only voter group where a plurality say they have achieved less in life than they expected to when they were younger.

Happiness = reality - expectations!

Which means they may not be differentially mobilising voters on the right as dramatically as is assumed. Left parties still struggle to mobilise, and I constantly think of Remain voters in 2016, but the 'Reform threat' is going to be a powerful signal for them (unlike expecting Leave to lose).

Particularly notable that Reform was beaten in a high turnout election. At May's locals they seem to have benefitted from turning out people who did not vote in 2024 - looks like we're now seeing a similar turnout among more progressive voters, motivated to beat them.

People keep telling me the UK is so over and they're going to move to Dubai and, like, fine. Go on then. Would you like directions to the airport?

Data is available upon request … but only in the form of one hundred non sequential 3.5” floppy disks containing a segmented zip file, inside of which are confusingly named files that can only be opened using the 1996 application StatView for Apple Mackintosh. Enclose a cashiers check for postage.

All reminiscent of liberals’ paralysis pre-2016. Complacency + dismissive contempt for Farage + dislike of incumbents + embarrassment in defending the status quo.

I'm not sure this should be a 'true question' for liberals at all! Irrespective of public opinion, the liberal defends minority rights.

Feel like we should bring back the old twitter follow friday to boost good people on here who maybe didn't get an initial boost from the starter packs.

So follow @psurridge.bsky.social and @profjanegreen.bsky.social - two excellent and thoughtful political scientists.

Constantly amazed at the desperation to make “young men love Reform a thing”, despite all evidence to contrary

I don't disagree with the first two sentences, but I think in general there's been far too much movement from 'not really noticing the problem' to 'despair'. Let's experiment with 'people and organisations try and enforce the norm' and then see if it is actually hard for it to be re-bottled.

The story of the weekend looks like about 3000+ people protesting asylum, 2000+ counterprotestors while 210k people do parkrun

I suppose this is the point when I should say again that:

the amount of money the videogames industry brings into the UK economy every year is *more than double* the value of the fishing and steel industries *combined*

what this country is really good at is producing culture

This would be a strong entry in normal years, but unfortunately for Maurice, the bar for “vapid and useless suggestions to the UK’s soluble problems” is now set at “remigration”. Good luck in next year’s tournament, Mo!