I do also think Labour simply has lots of new MP's who are basically bored and causing trouble, and talking like this to journos gives someone to listen to them and make them feel special and important.

Big xG overperformance 🚩🚩🚩

I think it's been so long people aren't used to the idea that a significant amount of effective governance is just doing the gruntwork of actually making things happen, not lots of giant fanfare announcements.

This is not to say the current govt are being highly effective...

A lot of previous attempts have been significantly defanged on the way through, but clearly never really got at the roots of the problem.

Your paper was a good contribution on what those roots are.

Yimby political capital feels higher now, question is whether they can translate into results.

The government has issued a white paper that actually implements some Yimby proposals? Not perfect & still gotta get through Parliament but that's progress surely?

Yes, the amount of infrastructure we have is linked to how efficiently we can build it.

Political centralization, poor and inconsistent decision making are equally important.

Failure always has many fathers. We have to improve everywhere.

This kind of logic is how you get from £100m / mile to £300m / mile, each step justified by "its only a small fraction".

And now we have a rump line, none of the actually useful Northern stuff will happen, our infrastructure holds us back ever more.

"International Law" isn't real, at least most of the time, and definitely in this context. All that matters are the consequences of decisions.

EPA/play is a pretty major category to be ahead in for Allen tbf

Don't really understand this part at all. The goal figures in mind mostly seems to create units too small to be mayoralties alone, and too big to join up with several others.

It does fulfill the key criteria to get built - significantly improving commuter services to London.

Feels like quite a Starmer person.

Health's poor performance over the last decade isn't really very encouraging, even if there are pretty slim pickings if that's your criteria...

Her being knifed while she was on the train back from Leeds is brutally symbolic.

Huge loss to have a London based MP take over this brief.

The on-going slow transition of PCC powers to mayors seems like the obvious conclusion.

Clearly a more natural home for democratic oversight

Just 1 more piece of centralisation, that will fix it this time.

It's the secret sauce of microblogging, forcing bad writers to be succinct.

Teacher recruitment/retention/morale & SEND are basically the only areas where significant work is needed in primary/secondary.