A glimpse of the scramble for patronage: “Discussions between Poulter and senior Labour figures have been going on for many months at the highest levels about… advisory roles he could play in future in developing the party’s health policies…”

theguardian.com/politics/2024/…

For The Times and The Sunday Times, I review Baroness Chakrabarti's new book in defense of human rights. A lazy and meandering effort—she can do better and she knows it. Unpaywalled link. thetimes.co.uk/article/b969c1…

“This has doomed them to fighting about how to fight about what they are fighting about.”

Lexington: The campus is coming for Joe Biden

economist.com/united-states/…
from The Economist

National Swing Man’s channel of choice

‘Boris Johnson was an electoral asset whom the Tories mistakenly stabbed for personal ambition’ is an interesting piece of Labour jujitsu (and notably not the line in 2022..)

Was wondering how Sunak could divert R&D to MoD in context of the 2019 manifesto commitment to hike it to 2.4%. Turns out that a massive ONS methodology revision has already nuked the target...

1/ Another addition to the list of 'things the UK does worse than peer countries for foolish political reasons': VAT.

My latest is on why the UK should be putting VAT on pretty much everything, and how VAT exclusions distort the economy and politics.

economist.com/britain/2024/0…

'Campaigns are currently running to exclude sunscreen, bras, dog food, hotels, toilet roll, home makeovers, pubs, audiobooks, defibrillators and haircuts. Some are well-intentioned; others are cash grabs.'

… did they though?

One reason the Conservatives might do worse than uniform swing implies: tactical voting. In BES data, I found that the number of voters considering more than one progressive party is at its highest in recent history economist.com/britain/2024/0…

Interesting: 'It would also provide for equal treatment (i.e., non-discrimination) between EU and UK citizens in respect of higher education tuition fees.'

'Under the envisaged agreement, both EU and UK citizens aged between 18 to 30 years would be able to stay for up to 4 years in the destination country.'

All subject to a long process and negotiations.

Press release: ec.europa.eu/commission/pre…

👻 👻

Matthew Holehouse This ironically stands up reporting in my book, written up by Hugo Gye, which Truss contested when it came out.

Specifically: Plan was for a £30bn deal with Norway; it spooked the Treasury who tried to block it; was dropped after strong No11 pushback. inews.co.uk/news/politics/…