I fear that my view that we should do basically all of them in a week or so and do them in London is never going to catch on, but I feel like that captures much of the upside without bringing government to a halt for a month

Theoretically, it feels like this is a dynamic that stands to cost the Conservatives fairly badly in LD facing areas with very little upside in the other direction. Usual election-prognostication caveats all apply, but the Conservatives would have an uncertain future as the minor party of the right

Given current polling, you can argue that the Tories become ‘the Lib Dems of the right’ as essentially the minor party in the right block. And if a would-be Conservative voter in the Lib Dem facing bit of their coalition is doing the vibe check on Reform… they may not like it

DBT was always the sponsoring Department taking it through, think Madders sat across both teams for those purposes, so would assume it stays there

Me in the office tomorrow:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=KUDj...

Julie Byrne doing ‘These Days’ is a really good one I’ve listened to a lot lately
open.spotify.com/track/2kJYJi...

Yeah if I were guessing I would think (i) Budget is less doom and gloom for most voters than the briefing suggested, (ii) as the Government tries to be a bit more positive you probably get a different tone of coverage, (iii) maybe a tiny bit of looking over at the US in dread?