Kieran Lucia

Badenoch says hacking into Harriet Harman's website 17 years ago 'not the same' as Reeves breaking law Kemi Badenoch has said hacking into Harriet Harman's website when she was younger is "not the same" as Rachel Reeves failing to get a £900 rental licence for her home.

Badenoch says hacking into Harriet Harman's website 17 years ago 'not the same' as Reeves breaking law

This such a perfect patriotic 🇬🇧 Fleet Street cock-up. It's one thing for a news outlet to be duped by a competent hoaxer. Excruciating, yes, but there's a fairly long history of such fuck ups. But to put out a statement SAYING you'd been hoaxed but you'd actually just emailed the wrong guy?

Trying to trace it back, think a lot of this wave comes from this Daily Mail article: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article... (a... spin... on C4s Mirror On The Industry report cdn-2.4sales.com/staging/2025...)

Genuinely think IMF WEO titles are the best six monthly snapshot of elite economic vibes.
Translating this as ‘quite confusing but feels bad’.

It just straightforwardly *insane* how much political chatter in the United Kingdom is about the next general election, an event that is a long way in the future, and how basically none of it is about 'uh, this policy agenda doesn't look adequate to the scale of the inherited problem'.

This Onion story is a little too on the nose.

I think VPAG has been unhelpful here. HMT loves the budget certainty, but it hides the trade offs from ministers. I don't think anyone can argue it's sustainable in the long run to have NICE approved prices discounted by 20%+ through rebates

I do wonder if government by whatsapp group contributes to this. Always another line to debate etc, very little thinking space on policy for anyone close to a minister (on political or civil service side)

Symptomatic of the state of government thinking on life sciences that adding a *third* Departmental reporting line to the OLS was seen as a positive. Like having it split between DHSC and DSIT has always worked well

‘Super sewer’ chief bows out to the sweet smell of success London’s £5bn Thames Tideway project has been completed without drama using a pioneering financial model

After my article on the rise in negative news yesterday, nice to see a good news story!: "the delivery of one of the largest UK infrastructure projects roughly on time and close to budget"

on.ft.com/41OFYOS

Year by year, Act by Act, the UK has long been slowly, steadily creating an evermore Illiberal security state.

And politicians and the media have just nodded it through.

Party politics and the press have made little if no difference.

Bears repeating that Lowe's position on remigration is to the right of the BNP in the 2000s. And the Telegraph is giving him softball interviews.

It’s a pretty common newsroom practice to say that protests of a few hundred (or even a few thousand) people aren’t headline news because they happen all the time. And it’s largely true.

What I can’t explain is why even Ofcom regulated TV is determined to make *these* protests news.

I’d bet decent money that there is less political risk in putting 2 percentage points on VAT (despite the manifesto pledge) than in a large reform of property tax.

Anecdotally, there does seem an increase in young men and boys supporting / identifying with Reform. It's picked up in the Youth Poll too: "There is growing momentum among the youthful right: 26% of young men, for instance, report feeling warm toward the upstart rightwing Reform UK party"

The most viewed source of news in Britain, btw.

A nice way of summing up the difference between UK and US governance. Our labour statistics are borked through incompetence, and theirs are about to be through deliberate manipulation.

Essentially every core understanding a Labour leader needs to follow to succeed is contained within Tony Blair’s 2011 foreword to the Unfinished Revolution.

WASPInomics and the magic avocado tree Why boomers struggle to make sense of the millennial world.

So, I think this piece is helpful in explaining why the inter-generational resource distribution discussion tends to involve people talking past each other. But gonna spend a second on the housing question open.substack.com/pub/martinro...

Spot-on from @nixonsimon.bsky.social

I was listening to David Runciman's excellent podcast on the impeachment of Warren Hastings yesterday and a real 'oh yeah, the world really was a very different place' moment was when he noted that, over the seven years of the trial ONE-THIRD of the House of the Lords had died.

Armed police threatened to arrest Kent protester for holding Palestinian flag Officers accused Laura Murton who also had a sign saying ‘Free Gaza’ of supporting a proscribed organisation

Alarming but predictable - Armed police threatened to arrest Kent protester for holding Palestinian flag www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Proper “crime is legal now” stuff here, just this time for serious and organised crime worth hundreds of thousands that no-one seems to think is worth their time to investigate

Particularly enjoyed the repeated 100 odd paragraph on page 104, mainly because it starts with "We will bring joy back"

Sorry not optimal, you need to ensure your sparkling new zoned campuses are adjacent to mountain tiles for maximum proximity bonuses.

It's worth reading this study, which estimates millions of deaths thanks to Musk and Trump's USAID cuts over the next 5 years.

remember when Elon Musk straight up performed a Nazi salute, twice, on stage, and the NYT was like "hmm, huh, what can this mean, who can say"

It's hard to make this any more explicit... from a cynical political perspective anyone in government comms should be concerned about the incentive structures that most "local news" sites have, which are increasingly shaped by big tech aggregators that push clicky headlines onto phone screens.

Weight based car taxes an interesting idea

These huge cars are vastly more dangerous, kill far more children, as they're higher at the front. They should have their own much lower speed limit in towns; and higher tax. Parking should be charged as for vans, they're larger than normal spaces. It's bizarre that they're treated as cars.