🚨 OUT NOW 🚨 Is this Andy Burnham's moment?
👑 MP Karl Turner and @profjanegreen.bsky.social join @alaintolhurst.bsky.social, @siennarodgers.bsky.social and @tomscotson.bsky.social to discuss whether the so-called ‘king of the north’ will make it back down to Westminster
🎧 Listen: pod.fo/e/400299
Very cool job….
Its good. Strength in numbers. Leave the bully outside.
Also we know that people perceive a macro-competence of political parties and leaders (👋 @drjennings.bsky.social @profjanegreen.bsky.social). Trump is generally very unpopular. This will simply affect how he is perceived on single issues.
. @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social Fellow @profjanegreen.bsky.social appeared on BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour to discuss the upcoming Local Elections www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... (segment runs 31:25-37:30)
Things must be really bad for the European far-right narrative (here GB News) when they need to acknowledge that green energy providers (here Octopus) have seen a 36% jump in EV interest since the ME conflict started.
Greater Manchester police can not find evidence of criminal offences during the by-election. It is good they put a significant amount of effort into following all leads.
I see a lot of dodgy bar charts and use of MRP estimates galore
Reckon that’s safe
Yes, but that’s likely in May because these are second order elections and we’re in a process that hasn’t concluded!
The combination of the national and local campaigns will certainly make the former have greater influence in a GE and influence perceptions of the local tactical race in important ways…
We don’t know how many Lab and Con voters of late have been ‘sincere’ voters, so v hard to quantify. We’re not saying ‘more’, just ‘many’, to challenge the idea that this is all going to be tactical. It’s good news if you’re a Green/LD/PC supporter - frustrated for years!
This is spot on and seen in the number of council by-elections that end up being Reform vs Lib Dem. Not so much fragmentation as realignment.
Here we argue that predictions of local ‘chaos’ as a result of fragmentation may be misleading - given the current incentives of FPTP under bloc politics … We may instead be in the middle of a restructuring towards national fragmentation, local two-partyism.
Multi-party politics isn’t necessarily chaotic – we could be moving towards a new local two-party-ism, write @profjanegreen.bsky.social and @martamiori.bsky.social
The tables are now on the @moreincommonuk.bsky.social website. Thank you to More in Common for responding rapidly.
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I definitely didn't mean that!
A consequence of secularisation (beyond loss of community, comfort, mutual support - huge!) is perhaps that people can't empathise with people of faith; they see threat, not that most people of (unradicalised/warped) faith cherish peace, devotion, sacrifice, community, caring for the vulnerable.
They should read Quiet by Susan Cain. Indeed, every introvert should!
Lots of polling out this week, and it is very variable (I think across them three different parties in 2nd place). This is really helpful for understanding the process and for looking for differences in methodology - though differences in sample quality are of course a whole other conversation.
The only issue being I assumed you meant Dad dancing in Downing St and/or falling in love with Martine McCutcheon!
'!f you want to create the conditions for a chaotic and unpredictable reordering of our party system, “the governing party is in office during a sharp price shock that the opposition loudly supported the causes of” feels like a pretty good way to do that.' 👏 @stephenkb.bsky.social
On financial insecurity and Labour's losses:
We showed in Feb 2025 Labour losing young insecure voters to Greens, mid-life/older to Reform: www.jrf.org.uk/public-attit...
And we explain how econ insecurity is a push factor, magnifying other reasons for vote losses: www.jrf.org.uk/public-attit...
This also goes to the current moment in a direct and strangely ignored (so far) way ….
The domestic politics of Iran is NOT fundamentally in who supports whom in the conflict, because an inflation spike would be devastating for Labour!
That’s the massive elephant in the room, guys….
So this debate about Labour needing to move right or left misses the point as Chris is absolutely right to say you can get most voters with a mainstream pitch on social issues (and polling shows SM migration reforms can do that) but economic insecurity/affordability trumps it all.
“Not living, just surviving” “Working to live, living to work” “Nothing left over for the fun stuff” “Feels like I’m going backwards” - versions of this in every single focus group. The sense you work hard, do the right thing blue collar or white collar and still can’t get ahead
Worth reading by @chriscurtis94.bsky.social. Abundantly clear to anyone that spends a cursory amount of time on public opinion that economic insecurity, exacerbated 10x by cost of living crisis is driving political force of our time, fuelling Labour’s woes chriscurtismk.substack.com/p/who-actual...
This is really worth reading, not least as it highlights how the 'Hero Voter' idea has been twisted beyond all recognition in most commentary and Westminster briefing.
