Thanks Nick!

Thank you!

Thanks Josh!

Ultimately, a small % of government spending into a local area will come from targeted pots of money like these. Need to think holistically about govt spending + services (particularly) in deprived areas. Hence e.g. IfG call for 'Total Place 2.0':
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

There'd need to be a lot more thinking about the problems of who really 'represents' a community (why more representative than local govt?). Sometimes a bit of magical thinking here ('if only we could bring people together locally, we could overcome basic problems of power/distribution').

There's some energy around "communitarianism" and hyper-local initiative as a response to current political malaise. But would need to make this agenda much more central & do a lot more if wanted it to be a central plank of a "project".

... is it about more participatory democracy, cohesion, economic renewal, tackling deprivation, or just some improvements in social infrastructure? These aren't all necessarily complementary!

They aren't a one-size-fits-all solution to spatial inequality & deprivation, political disillusionment, far-right politics etc. Got to be clear about what you want to get out of it...

Labour govts have have had bouts of enthusiasm for area-based initiatives, as a solution to all sorts of problems (often all at once). Lot of good stuff achieved, but both 60s/70s Community Development Projects and New Deal for Communities were associated w/ quite a lot of disappointment.

Tory policy is to revoke permanent residence (ILR) for everybody who does not earn £38k - deporting most nurses who have ILR

This is put in the video as "who is unlikely to contribute more than they cost"

NB: video does not say EU settled status is exempt

No govt since Idi Amin has done this

This is not normal discourse. It is not just a bit of fun for a Sunday paper interview. It is beyond the realms of the concept of decency shared across the political spectrum until last year.

Are you now, or have you ever been, an associate of Morgan Jones

Might have to agree to disagree on this alas

I inevitably think that's a bit ungenerous Bidenomics, but yeah - the specific combination of inflation and nominating a visibly declining 80-something who'd lost the ability to communicate effectively hard to recover from

'Don't insult voters you need to win over' and 'focus on material issues' is sound advice, but it doesn't actually follow that you should therefore shrink from criticising your primary opponent's policies & values (& alienate key constituencies in the process)

Why are you aiming this at me

Look, I enjoy it as much as everyone else does when online strangers are being needlessly personally rude to David, but I don't really understand why you feel the urge to be needlessly personally rude to me too