Steve Akehurst

Option B! Option B!

Having watch child poverty rise like a slow-motion car crash since the two-child limit was introduced, sat in meetings up and down the country, in foodbanks, in schools, to work out how to get child poverty down, the idea that this undoing this policy is 'PLP management' is a joke.

Even that Zemmour vs Glucksmann debate recently was like something from a different planet, viewed from London

It's such a bizarre framing. Labour MPs think taking 450k kids out of poverty is putting the country first! That's why they wanted it to happen! It's not because they personally benefit.

Britain’s left-wing government is left-wing An obvious fact. But still an overlooked one

Britain's left-wing government is left-wing www.economist.com/britain/2025...

Tactically I think Reeves made best of a bad situation today - the individual measures were sensible and some good stuff in there.

But we're 4 years from an election not 4 months. Key is whether less pain now (re: manifesto) now means less progress on public services, cost of living etc by 2029.

The two-child benefit cap might have been popular, but consequences of keeping it (rising child poverty) would not be.

And its those Lab would have been punished most harshly on, as @persuasionuk.bsky.social research showed.

Brave but right decision to lift it this far from election.

It's hard not to conclude a lot of Westminster politics is just what Balkan people calls predstava; a kind of performance theatre of public opinion as imagined by elites, played out through the empty shell of legacy media, as much about impressing each other as managing existing voter coalitions.

This daft jewellery story - which turns out to not even be true but proved needlessly divisive on a sensitive topic - happened because bits of Lab are *still* obsessed with briefing right wing tabloids.

But here's thing: nobody reads these outlets anymore. Labour/Reform voters don't. So why do it?

Thanks, have given Colin a follow and ofc a big Sunder fan (!) so will have a read.

More concretely I’d be v interested to read alternative proposals on making the system less dysfunctional and reducing boats esp, particularly from a more progressive pov - if you have anything you’ve seen let me know (saw some Refugee Council stuff on hotels that seemed sensible)

I agree with much of that - if anyone in govt briefed that jewellery story (which doesn’t even seem to be true?) they need firing out of a canon. And speaks to a broader blind spot for sure.

But still thought there was a massive head in sand aspect to some of how Polanski responded for instance.

Not sure - prob returns have got harder post Brexit. But you do get these waves, saw a similar one in early 2000s post Yugoslav wars too but the system adjusted and it become more sustainable. Am no expert but I think huge amount is instability + growing cottage industry of smugglers, lawyers etc

I am sometimes frustrated by the comms or electoral strategy on this stuff, but it is simply not some right wing hoax issue.

Some rough numbers:

~110,000 asylum claims last year compared to ~40,000 a decade ago.

~3,700 people arrived on small boats *every month* Jan-Oct this year, most of which were adult men.

Human trafficking on an industrial scale.

Lower courts endlessly gummed up with spurious legal appeals.

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

A lot of English ppl are not as attached to national team as their club so are less tribal. That does a lot of work here, it’s really not that sinister !

just wanted to test a bunch of possible 'bad things' ! not inconceivable that perceptions of crime or real crime would rise in the context of tight budgets and such

Well yes if your obsession is managing the lobby, that will happen. But they aren’t the only ones, it’s built into the architecture of govt comms.

This is important and depressing. Key point for me: you cannot understand anything in British politics today without understanding the radicalisation of right-leaning media in Britain and the power X has added to its ability to set the agenda.

One nice detail that can easily be lost in this graph - even right wingers trust the BBC more than the right wing tabloids

🇬🇧🇬🇧

This story currently has more views on the BBC website than the Tim Davie resignation. We are still a country

I suspect there's also a strong element here of far too many journalists and BBC managers spending too much time on X and getting a wholly misleading impression of how big a story the Trump edits were. They're excessively influenced by right-wing activist opinion, and particularly US opinion.

good question but not sure - would need to find a long-term dataset with that question in it! but i don't see why they would necessarily?

Possibly! Hadn’t thought of that. Was mostly just thinking “well yeh if you came of age in the 90s you probably thought the world was going to be great forever”

Relatedly! @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social bsky.app/profile/stev...

Meet gen X: middle-aged, enraged and radicalised by internet bile | Gaby Hinsliff Who is driving the populist insurgency? It’s not grumpy pensioners or vulnerable teenagers – it’s my generation, says Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff

Great column here as ever from @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social - Gen Xis the key to understanding Reform, Trump etc, not Boomers.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Agreed. Very keen to look at this in the context of less artificial info environments about who can win and lose locally.

Yeh those cycles have sped up in ways that are terrifying, and candidates and issues still matter, but in the US esp it did a huge amount of work in 2020, 2024, last night and will do next year too