Absolutely barnstorming first week back at Re:State after a month of paternity leave last week. And just in time for us to get our new model for social care funding published! This is a must-read paper from Simon and Alice.
What connects doctor strikes, government security vetting, local elections and NHS data?
They are all covered in my Re:View for this week! Have a read.
Fifteen years of consensus on the principles of the Dilnot Commission have gotten us nowhere. We are right back at square one.
Tomorrow, we are breaking with the past and putting forward a different solution for the social care funding crisis. Standby.
“Sovereignty”, “regulating for growth”, “social investment”
Policy memes are ideas which take a life of their own and are repeated across Whitehall with little thought. We’ve been cataloguing them for 3 years @re-state.bsky.social, here are mine for 2026 ⬇️
restate.substack.com/p/policy-mem...
The Met have tried to block a premier jazz club from opening a new branch with a license until 1:00AM.
It’s really sad that the police see their job as preventing Londoners having a good time. Every international city I go to has a better nightlife than London now.
A new London Bridge would be a sign of urban progress which London’s skyline desperately lacks.
Opening up new urban spaces would allow the development to be funded through land value capture.
Good to see Ben Judah calling for the project.
open.substack.com/pub/benjudah...
A new London Bridge would be a sign of urban progress which London’s skyline desperately lacks.
Opening up new urban spaces would allow the development to be funded through land value capture.
Good to see Ben Judah calling for the project.
open.substack.com/pub/benjudah...
Independent economic scrutiny is vital to better policymaking. Great to see our research on the importance of the RPC's role covered in The Economist.
🚨NEW REPORT - The law of rule🚨
Britain’s regulatory system grows by default. Rules are easy to create, rarely reviewed, and almost never removed.
This report sets out a package of reforms to achieve “better regulation” by strengthening the system at every stage.
Really worrying yes!
Successive governments have lost control of regulation. The Government risks repeating this pattern.
Today, we @re-state.bsky.social have published ‘The law of rule’, calling for an overhaul of the Better Regulation Framework and more independent scrutiny.
re-state.co.uk/publications...
This weekend's Sunday Times profile is getting a lot of attention, but the concern that No10 lacks a "theory of power" is the most important bit.
The big bureaucratic states which developed countries built in the 20th century have made many of them (including Britain) ungovernable in the 21st.
The Regulatory Policy Committee is one of the most important public bodies. It’d be a big mistake if @rcolvile.bsky.social is right and the Government are planning to scrap it.
I wrote about why the RPC is the most important quango you have never heard of here open.substack.com/pub/restate/...
New hard edged law:
no column or analyst note is ever allowed to contain a phrase like "whether X or Y happens remains up be seen/only time will tell".
Literally the most empty-headed non thought you could possibly commit to paper.
All governments say they want “better regulation”.
An easy way for them to do that is to give more powers to the Regulatory Policy Committee - the most important quango that most people have never heard of.
I’ve written about it at @re-state.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/restate/...
It’s a shame to see standards sliding backward on open competition of roles in the senior civil service.
The Re:View is out! 🎉
This week, Director of Policy and Research, @stkaye.bsky.social unpacks the Government’s latest move in the devolution agenda, as the MHCLG seeks to “fill in the map” of England with a new wave of Strategic Authorities.
👉Read it here: bit.ly/4auVwuB
London needs a chief executive, not an ambassador.
For my column in CityAM this week, I've written about how our research @re-state.bsky.social shows the Mayor of London is under-powered and needs to level-up so the city stops punching below its weight.
www.cityam.com/london-doesn...
V exciting to have shifted our @re-state.bsky.social blog, Re:Think, to Substack.
Even more exciting to have such a corker for a first post from @jo3hill.bsky.social dissecting why mission government has failed 👇
substack.com/home/post/p-...
Four our first Re:Think blog on Substack, @jo3hill.bsky.social has written about why 'mission government' seems to have failed, why it matters, and what should come next.
restate.substack.com/p/why-missio...
Why 'mission government' failed.
For our first long read on Substack, I've written about why the Government's philosophy of missions has sunk without a trace, why that matters, and what comes next.
restate.substack.com/p/why-missio...
Always nice to read about the @re-state.bsky.social team’s research on my commute!
Huge day as we launch our first paper of 2026 - a deep dive into how to fix London's government!
London has 33 boroughs. Paris has 20, Berlin has 12, New York has just five. This matters because in London the boroughs hold all the power & they are too fragmented to act city-wide.
It's time to change that. Our report 'Capital at risk', calls for centralising power in London.
We've moved to Substack! Our popular newsletter, the Re:View, and our blog Re:Think are now both hosted on the platform.
If you don't subscribe, this is the best place to go for big-picture ideas about remaking public services.
First up this week, @stkaye.bsky.social on govt policing reforms.
