Jennifer Smith

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This Labour government had a golden opportunity to do so much better, to take the opportunity for joined-up, cross-department initiatives, with strong, principled leadership.

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My view of the Trump-Vance treatment of President Zelensky in the Oval Office, its implications & how it relates to Sir Keir Starmer’s efforts on European security.

BBC interview at approx. 12.15, 3 March.

tl;dr Horrific & highly dangerous development.

youtube.com/watch?v=HSj4...

Bonkers and empty column from Andy Haldane. From absolutely nowhere he plucks a proposal to cut regulatory bodies and budgets in half. For good measure he advises that AI can help find overlaps between regulatory rulebooks. I mean, come on.

Great as ever Clive👏🏻 This shock of hope even brought tears to my eyes "If you do want to change culture, ... want people to have faith, ... want people to think differently of you, what a great ... opportunity to start in front of more than 4,000 travelling fans." Then I saw the ref: David Webb 😭

Interesting piece by Haldane in today's FT on the importance of social capital, with quite the final sentence. Not for the first time, it makes me wonder why ministers seem more interested in metro mayors than fixing the problems of local government

Out today for @smfthinktank.bsky.social

Why joined-up immigration and skills policy is set to become a key political battleground in the UK. And what that might mean for how it is run and who runs it.

www.smf.co.uk/wp-content/u...

Migrant care workers claim rampant breaches of their employment rights which the tied visa system discourages them from reporting, new Work Rights Centre research says. www.workrightscentre.org/media/1422/t...

Here is my attempt to systematically think through possible consequences of new Trump tariffs

Suppose US imposes 20% tariff on all goods imports

Effect 1: higher prices for goods imported into US. This hurts US consumers by raising living costs 1/

An interesting correction to the OBR Budget document, which perhaps suggests that the Treasury was intending to compensate adult social care providers for the costs associated with the employer NICs rise, before changing its mind...

The data files for my paper proposing new local labor markets have been posted. Go to below site and scroll down. The files referred to in the paper are in a zip file. Also available are 2 smaller files which simply say which SLM each county is in. research.upjohn.org/up_workingpa...

Parents' boring blue letter-writing paper - though somewhat redeemed by the removable sheet to guide straight-line writing. Rejected by me as too dull for uni letters home - bought various coloured and marbled A4 by weight from Paperchase instead (addictive pull of beautiful stationary). Late 50s.

Incredible that the Harris-Walz campaign is just basically this now, and it's working.