Hugh Pemberton

Nearly choked on my tea on seeing the Spectator quoting Trotsky in its (justified) denunciation of the government's failure to deliver rearmament to counter the Russian threat: ‘You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.’

This is a very useful corrective to Britain's prevailing national obsession with an imagined past in which life was just so much better than it is today. From @adamcorlett.bsky.social

adamcorlett.com/2025/11/30/d...

No train no gain - Learning and Work Institute

We should worry less about declining take-up of Arts degrees and more about fixing vocational education and in-work training. It's the easiest route to higher national productivity, higher earnings, and better life-chances for the majority
share.google/PnHGnr3hBsUb...

I note that the FT chose not to splash the "HMT 'misled' Lobby journalists on budget" non-story on its front page this morning

Questions for us as a nation:
*Adapting to climate breakdown
*Demographic transition
*How much immigration?
*Green energy shift
*Rearmament and defence
*Trade with the EU
*Housebuiliding and infra

Not a question:
*Most stuff the Lobby talks about

This is most obvious when it comes to Treasury briefings because political Lobby journalists dont have enough economics training to frame the sorts of probing questions that an economics correspondent would ask

It's ridiculous for Lobby journalists to clutch their pearls because "we weren't told the full story" when the organising principle of the Lobby is that political journalists get fed half-truths in private briefings that they then pass off as "scoops"

Lord Robertson: UK government must go much quicker on boosting defence At the LDC Investment Forum, lead author of the UK's Strategic Defence Review, a former NATO chief, spelled out that the SDR needs faster implementation and more money from the Treasury for defence.

Lord Robertson on the glaring gap between rhetoric and reality in the government's lethargic response to the strategic defence review
open.substack.com/pub/reaction...

Seasonal flu kills about 700,000 people each year across the world Seasonal influenza is sometimes seen as a mild illness, but it remains a major cause of death. In serious cases, it can cause deadly complications such as pneumonia, strokes, and heart attacks. Resear...

Flu kills around 700,000 people a year, mainly infants and old people, and mainly in regions with widescale poverty, poor underlying health, limited access to healthcare, and/or lower vaccination coverage
ourworldindata.org/data-insight...

A gross dereliction of duty | The Critic | The Critic Magazine In 1900, more than a fifth of those volunteering to fight against the Boers were rejected for failing the physical fitness tests.

This long piece is worth reading on the decay of Britain's armed forces to Potemkin status and the urgent need to expand and rearm them. Almost nobody with political power is prepared to acknowledge the danger we're in, let alone act accordingly. It's a massive failure share.google/i3GrnOSwTm1m...

The End of the Longest Peace? One of History’s Greatest Achievements Is Under Threat

Eighty years of peace between the great powers means almost nobody now has experienced a major war between them. Memory is fading, and therein lies the most direct threat to the endurance of peace
reader.foreignaffairs.com/2025/11/24/t...

"In practice, if you are doing fare freezes, what you are doing is cutting back the amount you spend on the railways". And we know where that leads...
@stephenkb.bsky.social at ep.ft.com/permalink/em...

Part of the prevalent "everything must change but nothing must change" mentality

The fiscal challenge Reeves' problem isn't raising money: it's much more difficult than that.

Refreshing bluntness from @chrisdillow.bsky.social on why we need both higher taxes on the better off (not the rich) and for quite a lot of people to lose their jobs
open.substack.com/pub/chrisdil...

Think tanks do not and cannot plan, and never have done because they don't have the resources. Placing much less faith in think tanks would be a good first step towards getting out of our current hole

I am moving to Dubai because England is so dangerous. www.ft.com/content/9bf6...

The surreal 45-day trek at the heart of Nato’s defence Europe wrestles with crumbling bridges, narrow tunnels and red tape as it plans how to move an army eastward

Hello, is that Russian Supreme Military Command? SACEUR here. Now, about your invasion of E. Europe. Could you possibly put it off for a month and a half so we can get our troops and armour over from the North Sea ports?

on.ft.com/4oP5Jbc via @FT

👇

On incompetence Much of our political culture is fundamentally incompetent.

I wish I'd written this. From @chrisdillow.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/chrisdil...

This paper examines the impact of the UK's decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) in 2016. Using almost a decade of data since the referendum, we combine simulations based on macro data with estimates derived from micro data collected through our Decision Maker Panel survey. These estimates suggest that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, with the impact accumulating gradually over time. We estimate that investment was reduced by between 12% and 18%, employment by 3% to 4% and productivity by 3% to 4%. These large negative impacts reflect a combination of elevated uncertainty, reduced demand, diverted management time, and increased misallocation of resources from a protracted Brexit process. Comparing these with contemporary forecasts – providing a rare macro example to complement the burgeoning microliterature of social science predictions – shows that these forecasts were accurate over a 5-year horizon, but they underestimated the impact over a decade.

Read 'em and weep. (www.nber.org/system/files...)

Indeed!

Absolutely. Been going on for a while, of course, but it isn't helpful and seems to have reached new levels of stupidity. Apart from anything else it introduces absolute chaos into a process that has always been fraught

Cabinet Office confirms Civil Service Pension Scheme handover Capita gets “final” go-ahead to take over scheme administration following delayed decision

Despite a clear warning from the Public Accounts Committee of a “clear risk” in allowing Capita to take over administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme given the firm's record the Cabinet Office are ... going ahead regardless.

Please God can we go back to the days of Budget purdah. Two months of quiet from Treasury ministers, spads, and officials whilst they put the budget together might help to wind down this incessant speculation.

Yes I know all economists love a policy trilemma. But what we have now is a simple dilemma: you can pay attention to political reporters; or you can have intelligent economic policy. Choose one.

And they're an absolute menace on pavements

Depressing @jburnmurdoch.ft.com and @sarahoconnorft.ft.com newsletter today - general use of AI in crafting job applications now makes it impossible to identify the best candidates. So a probable return to "it's not what you know, it's who you know" recruitment? Top work everyone!

China’s Massive Surplus is Everywhere (Yet The IMF Still Has Trouble Seeing It Clearly) China’s reported current account surplus understates China’s contribution to global trade imbalances. The massive gap between China’s export and import volume growth over the last six years tells a m…

"sometimes it pays to watch the flow of container ships and auto transport ships—and not to just trust the Chinese data"
www.cfr.org/blog/chinas-...

A sea-chamge in the special relationship

Striking that a little-reported UK story makes the Washington Post's lead editorial this morning - the breakdown of UK-US intelligence sharing (a fundamental pillar of the "special relationship") due to UK issues with US extra-judicial killings in the Caribbean

Crisis charity to become a landlord in attempt to rectify ‘catastrophic’ housing in UK Exclusive: Homelessness charity planning to buy properties as it can no longer rely on access to social housing

"We’re about 200 yards away here from the first Peabody estate which is the birth of social housing in this country and yet around the corner we’re having to start again"
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...