Always remember that Britain chose to make things this hard. It ejected itself from the EU, left the Single Market, bodged up a rubbish trade deal, cancelled HS2 and told paying students they weren't wanted. The country has chosen the steepest, rockiest, most difficult path. 🇬🇧

Thought a talk I did this week at @EdinburghUni might be of interest to politics students and anyone else who, like me, still thinks the Tories are worth paying attention to. This is Part One of what'll be a mega thread.

“This is bad, full stop. It creates a class of person who are forever excluded from civic life no matter how long they live here. It’s also a clear breach of the refugee convention.” Damn straigt, @colinyeo.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Ultimately it matters not if your constitution is written or unwritten or codified or uncodified…

…once those in power do not recognise political or legal rules higher than their own personal or partisan advantage it is constitutional ‘game over’.

Constitutions need constitutionalism, most of all.

📊 As financial market jitters grow about government borrowing, what are the lessons from past Labour administrations for Starmer and Reeves?

📕 Historian of Labour's economic ideas Chris Kirkland writes:

labourlist.org/2025/01/rach...

This is sort of fascinating because if you were to turn on pretty much any talk radio station or pick up any tabloid, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was the inverse.

the model of university that assumes students are all full-time teenagers with no paid work in term time and no dependents full stop was surely proven obsolete during the pandemic. and yet we are all still completely in thrall to this idea.

Calling all folk with an interest in UK public policy: I’ve created a starter pack of think tankers, policy analysts & commentators active on @bsky.app go.bsky.app/LtNiL1o

A lot of the Conservative leadership contenders really haven't absorbed the scale of the 2024 defeat yet. Several MPs tell me that contenders are making job offers to win support. (Hint: there are 95 ministers to shadow in the House of Commons - there are plausibly only 80 MPs to do that.)

Only 14% of the country say that the people participating in the riots speak for people like them - compared to 86% who say they do not. Again Reform voters tend to be outliers here, although a majority still say they do not speak for people like them.

What do people think the motivation for the riots are? About 23% say legitimate concerns about immigration, around a third say far right ideology and racism, but the biggest group - nearly half say a desire to engage in violence and criminal damage.

Firstly, most Briton's see the events as riots rather than as protests, overall 74% say they are riots 14% protests and 4% something else. Reform voters are the most likely to describe them as protests (34%).

NEW from @IpsosUK: Keir Starmer's first satisfaction rating as PM (f/w 24-30 July)

Satisfied 37%
Dissatisfied 30%
Net: +7

Net positive but % satisfied behind May (54%), Cameron (57%), Blair (65%) and Thatcher (45%) when they took over.

More here: www.ipsos.com/en-uk/keir-s...