Colm O'Cinneide

PS: With no one having any idea about whether previous tinkering generated positive results, or how you'd even assess or measure that. Endless churn for the sake of it.

I'm always amused by how blithely they change the rules of a competitive exercise as they go along. This is typical - halfway through the current cycle, they are 'considering' having a new rating.

this work saved millions of lives in 2021, won the Nobel Prize in 2023, and is cancelled in 2025

Excellent on ethnic data reporting in both the criminal justice system and in employment.

The UK needs a national identity based on commonality Labour must contest the right’s attempt to connect the grievances of ‘white British’ people to those who are not white

Many people in Britain sense the relationship between them and others has changed. Populists speak directly to this, but progressives can too

My piece in today's FT on.ft.com/4or0GxW

Johnson continues to make the false claim that the Rwanda scheme would have removed every since asylum seeker to Africa. The small UK/French pilot is about 5-8 times the size of the Rwanda policy in year one: 2500 vs 300-500. It was an obvious bluff (lie) that the govt could send tens of thousands

Lol at the 😲 reaction to this. Thoughts:

1. This is not crazy as it sounds, but

2. Unsurprising given admin's bad / missing mesaging

3. This is why it's useful to have agency heads with credibility

1/

It’s a grim reflection on most of these publications that they accepted this exclusion with such passivity.

Since the interviewee must remain anonymous, we are now calling this Moynihan's Law:
"The easier a governmental task looks to an outsider, the more likely it has been found to be impossible by many smart people in the past."

An excellent question!

Trump And Miller Compel Colleges Not To Enroll International Students Trump officials are using rules, policies and agreements to compel and discourage U.S. universities from enrolling international students.

Wow. Had not realized that Columbia’s settlement with Trump admin included a commitment to decrease international student enrollment. In what way does this help “combat antisemitism,” which is supposedly the administration’s objective?
www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...

Sorry, 'precluded', by the SC's majority analysis, which makes relevant assumptions about the factual context.

(IMHO the boundary lines drawn in this area are conceptually unsatisfying, which is why I raise the point. Not saying the SC was wrong per se, just questioning the brusque dismissal.)

I'm sure HMG, if allowed to intervene, would have made clear they weren't inviting deference on questions of law - but would have emphasised their expertise vis facts/context, and argued that was relevant to determining scope & substance of the duty. Arguments which I'm not convinced are precludes..

There isn't, when it comes to the question of what the law is. But weight is given in other contexts to government takes on context, impact etc. (I find all of this an interesting grey area, constitutionally speaking!)

Deal!

(As you know, I like your take on these issues. And my main objection is to Reed loftly dismissing a government attempt to intervene while basing doctrine on the assumed wider regulatory impact of bribery laws.)

That's obviously a point of contention, given that the UKSC majority agreed. And if you start considering the wider social impact of bribery law, then you open the door to the elected legitimacy claims of the executive to pronounce with expertise on that topic.

Sure, as a matter of doctrine vis judicial determination of what the law is. But comity/respect/deference principles (delete as you like) aren't similarly boxed off elsewhere.

(No matter how half-baked & unprincipled those executive takes may be - as I'm sure they were in this case.)

I knew you'd love this particular take. I'm unconvinced by the special pleading of private lawyers that their brand of law should be immunised from the deference shown to the executive elsewhere.

The UKSC was quite dismissive of HMG's attempt to intervene in the Hopcraft car dealer commission appeal: 'nothing of substance...as to the relevant law or context' [56]. However shouldn't HMG's take on private law be granted a certain degree of deference/respect - and be heard, at least?

Come to think of it, it's gotta be pretty hard to reconcile laying traps for people when they show up to hearings with the fifth amendment, seeing as it essentially operates to deny people process that was otherwise guaranteed to them by law

Some people laugh when @mcopelov.bsky.social and I describe crypto as -- for some technofuturists -- a platform for dismantling the Westphalian state system. It doesn't matter how insane this sounds or how vapid Balaji's book is, crypto anti-statism is a real force in the world.

Interesting thread. Support for ECHR withdrawal essentially on a par with continuing enthusiasm for Brexit - i.e. 30%, with little shift despite the last few months of media pressure.

Good question.

This is (unsurprisingly) terrific, thoughtful, and thought-provoking.

Displacement of Gaza residents in 2025. Copyright Jaber Jehad Badwan. Image is not linked to the letter but is taken from a post about the famine in Gaza by one of the letter's authors https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres/health-humanitarian-crises-centre/news/465306/famine-and-genocide-gaza-personal-view

UK-based academics: sign & circulate this open letter pub'd by @bmj.com to Starmer & Lammy to act to stop genocide & famine in Gaza
www.bmj.com/content/390/...
The letter was initiated by UK medical experts but UK academics of all disciplines are asked to sign
forms.cloud.microsoft/pages/respon...

How soon before we start getting asylum applications from US citizens?

As someone who came here as an immigrant, I can’t tell you how jarring it is to see this anti immigration narrative flooding our politics every single day, people will say they don’t mean you, it doesn’t matter, it’s disgusting

The “import the 3rd world become the 3rd world” guys just got a guy elected who fired government statisticians for producing a jobs report he didn’t like.

One of Erdoğan's most successful innovations has been repeatedly firing state statisticians who report bad news - Turkey's economic figures have gained a lot.

President Trump is learning from a master.