Cam Vargas

The Revolt of the Young Men? Britain's second wokest cohort might surprise you

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The right wing should be worried about young men. Unlike Europe and the US, British young men are swinging wildly behind progressive parties. Some thoughts on why, and why most of the right are ignoring it.

open.substack.com/pub/joxleywr...

Build the rail! Save the snails! — Labour Together Why does British infrastructure cost so much? This paper, by economist Dan Davies, argues that Britain’s adversarial planning system forces developers to gold-plate solutions to hypothetical problems....

Terrific report on that by @dsquareddigest.bsky.social for Labour Together, this:

Tesla Muffin (@Tesla_Muffin) / X Tesla Muffin (@Tesla_Muffin) / X

x.com/Tesla_Muffin lol this is his alt... which explains a *lot*

Related-ish - we polled banning MPs from having second jobs. *Unbelievably* popular, especially with Reform voters...

Excellent thread and piece by JP

It’s crazy to me there’s not been *one* decent intervention by a senior politician on AI, what it’s for, should be about and our society. Unless I missed it? It’s just people saying ‘productivity’ and ‘jobs’ with literally no thought, thinking or ideas. But then I suppose same on everything.

The results are in lads

How could I forget, here's the UK version

The fact that in both 2019 and 2024, the winning party did so with a set of manifesto promises that could not be kept and dissolved upon contact with actual office is something that as an industry we should be much more bothered by than we are.

Yesterday, we put out a report on the most important issues to voters.

We know that immigration now tops the traditional most important issues question (see below from @yougov.co.uk).

But that doesn't tell the full story.

Here is a rundown of the experiments we did to test this out (A THREAD):

Top top work here from @cwp-weir.bsky.social

Buxton: Why one small town with very little immigration turned to Reform UK How national concerns affected a local election in the heart of the Peak District.

This is an interesting piece but I just read it going “the missing bit is the section on how the internet has fried everyone’s brains”.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

The UK has very few mass transit systems compared to peers

The map below shows how far behind France and Germany we are in mass transit. In France, every place with over 150,000 people has some form of tram or metro.

But if mayoral areas can 'become builders' as @tracybrabinmayorwy.bsky.social puts it in the foreword, we can turn this around.

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Is Cumbria seeing a resurgence in manufacturing? And a Northern productivity league table

A few weeks back, I wrote a post on why Greater Manchester is the fastest growing part of England.

Today, I’ve followed this up by creating a Northern productivity leaderboard and then looking at the second fastest: Cumbria.

futurenorth.substack.com/p/is-cumbria...

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Ministers could give mayors control of schools and hospitals in devolution shake-up Exclusive: Labour Together report, endorsed by Steve Reed, says devolving power can improve services while saving money * Labour thinktank hopes Starmer will devolve more power to his potential rivals Ministers are drawing up plans to give mayors significant new powers over hospitals and schools as part of a new wave of devolution that could change how public services are run in England. Steve Reed, the local government secretary, wants to give mayors control over many more local services, and is weighing up handing over some NHS services and even parts of the criminal justice system. Continue reading...

Ministers could give mayors control of schools and hospitals in devolution shake-up

So google maps updated some satellite footage, here’s one single Ukrainian village. One out of thousands

www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

See also the *massive* cocaine epidemic among 40- to 50-something men. The media keeps talking about young people and drugs but peak deaths are among 40-49 year olds now.

And yet... Under qualified pollsters fighting for attention in an oversaturated market, working with shit quality panels, will continue to churn out this polling, and sell it to naive reporters, whose editors desperately want this to be true

this is v good

Majority of Labour members back digital ID card rollout, poll reveals - LabourList A majority of Labour members want to see the government introduce a digital ID card system, an exclusive poll for LabourList reveals.

A majority of Labour party members - who are on any metric rather more socially liberal than the average voter - back ID cards. Plenty of polling showing they are popular with voters in general. Perhaps the zombie myth that British voters oppose them will die at last?

labourlist.org/2025/09/digi...

Top 10 areas for productivity growth in England. Greater Manchester is top in recent years.

Greater Manchester has been the fastest growing part of the country in the past decade – measured either by total growth or by productivity growth. I’ve had a look into the data to try to work out what is growing and why.

Below are some of the things I have found.

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Perhaps also you could interview some of those making editorial decisions in the media about whether they are taking their responsibilities seriously?

Aire Park in Leeds. Trees with a blue sky and buildings in the background.

Parks and playgrounds are integral to places, allowing people to relax, children to play and more. Hard to imagine NYC without Central Park, or Ilkley without its moor! This builds on a historic legacy of Victorian era council developing them for the good of their communities.

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What has London’s Bakerloo line got to do with the government’s ability to invest in the North?

Put simply, if we let London raise more money from high land values to pay for its infrastructure, this frees up more government spending for the rest of the country.

Read below to see detail 👇

This is how we pay for the Bakerloo Line extension One weird trick can extend the Tube, level up the north and make the Treasury happy.

This is how we pay for the Bakerloo Line extension FREE TO READ!)

takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/bakerloo-e...

About a sixth of the public endorse very extreme views on making legal/settled migrants leave & then follow up on the specifics. (This overlaps with the 8% who say they support violence in protests & liked the riots, so it should be challenged, not indulged)

After 800 people attended across 8 protests on Friday, up to 2000 across a dozen modest protests on Saturday, "UK braces for more protests" is an absurd headline

Largest protests & counter so far this weekend well below 500 people (but a much larger Gaza protest on Friday night mostly unreported)

Gna be fascinating and depressing to see the coverage of a property tax (if it happens) massively skewed by every commentator and newspaper editor owning an expensive house in London or the southeast and standing to lose out

Really good piece and thread (really worth signing up to this newsletter!) I think the big question, as a longtime supporter of fiscal devolution, is: what do you do about the fact that the tax base is now quite weak in a lot of places?