Joe Moore

There is, I admit, a non-zero chance that my professional requirement to know this stuff is slightly frying my perspective. Though I do wonder if the succession of ✨interesting✨ Chiefs of Staff we’ve had lately means any successor[s] get structurally more coverage than might have previously been so?

Half-cooked take: you’d get at least marginally better governing if you abolished the ‘Chief of Staff’, give narrower roles with appropriate seniority for ‘pure politics’ people, have a No 10 COO or similar to run the staff, thereby getting away from that sitting with ‘closest politics brain’

I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle: baseline level of interested observers knowing who the Chief of Staff is rises a lot with internet and how politics is covered, but there’s plenty of space for that to not be damaging before you’re getting to the DLR material…

Feels like longer than a year ago that I watched my first film of 2025 waiting for the eventually abandoned takeoff of a plane. Mastermind was terrific though.

Just settling into my first day doing digital comms at the OBR. Now to sit down and watch the Chancellor deliver the Budget

I fear that my view that we should do basically all of them in a week or so and do them in London is never going to catch on, but I feel like that captures much of the upside without bringing government to a halt for a month

Arsenal’s late winner against Newcastle is giving Keir Starmer’s speechwriters everything they need for a tortured central metaphor about how he’s going to come back from the Government’s current difficulties to win again, I’m sure

Theoretically, it feels like this is a dynamic that stands to cost the Conservatives fairly badly in LD facing areas with very little upside in the other direction. Usual election-prognostication caveats all apply, but the Conservatives would have an uncertain future as the minor party of the right

Given current polling, you can argue that the Tories become ‘the Lib Dems of the right’ as essentially the minor party in the right block. And if a would-be Conservative voter in the Lib Dem facing bit of their coalition is doing the vibe check on Reform… they may not like it

Agree with Stephen’s take that the Lib Dems are essentially seen as the minor party in the ‘left block’, so a would be LD voter is performing a vibe check on the Labour Leader to check they’re happy with the idea of them in No 10. An interesting question is how this could apply to the Tories.

People are asking this

DBT was always the sponsoring Department taking it through, think Madders sat across both teams for those purposes, so would assume it stays there

YouTube video by The Poke The Nick Clegg Apology Song: I'm Sorry (The Autotune Remix)

Me in the office tomorrow:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=KUDj...

One imagines they’re going to call it BrewDOGE

These Days Julie Byrne, Laugh Cry Laugh · These Days / Velocity! What About The Inertia!? · Song · 2023

Julie Byrne doing ‘These Days’ is a really good one I’ve listened to a lot lately
open.spotify.com/track/2kJYJi...

Yeah if I were guessing I would think (i) Budget is less doom and gloom for most voters than the briefing suggested, (ii) as the Government tries to be a bit more positive you probably get a different tone of coverage, (iii) maybe a tiny bit of looking over at the US in dread?