🚨 Plenty is going on in SW1 tonight as Sam Blewett outlines in Playbook this morning.

👉 If you can't make it in person, however, you can sign up to see Anand Menon speak with Sir John Curtice tonight via the link below!

🌟ukandeu.ac.uk/events/unlocke…

In preparation for Macron‘s Sorbonne 2.0 speech tomorrow, here’s again a thread on Scholz‘ Prague speech two summers ago:

🗣️ The Rwanda Bill is to become law - but what is the policy and what happens next?

👉 Our expert on this issue Dr Joelle Grogan spoke with the BBC today to answer viewer questions about how it will work in practice.

This is a big spending commitment (an extra 0.5% of GDP will be approx £17bn by 2030).

Notably, there's no sign that overall spending plans have been topped up. So it's implicitly coming from other areas.

Unprotected public services now face cuts of around 4% p.a. after 2025.

Here is the key point about today's announcement on defence spending.
The overall spending 'envelope' was set in the Budget, and hasn't been adjusted. With no more spending overall (and no tax rises) that can mean only one thing: bigger spending cuts elsewhere.

Many thanks to Lord Howard of Lympne & Patrick McLoughlin for supporting me today on my introduction to House of Lords. Also to my family, friends, and to Charles Moore, Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 and former colleagues.

🎙️ Podcast: Arsene Wenger arrived in parochial ‘90s England looking like a lab technician in bad clothes. He left 22 years later as a meme. In between, he was the most innovative football manager in the world, who built one of the Premier League’s best teams.

Listen to Part 1 -

The long term fall in defence spending as a fraction of national income is what has allowed us to expand our welfare state. Reversing that fall is going to be painful, especially as pressures on health and pensions increase.

Express 'analysis' of Polish politics ahead of Sunak-Tusk meeting is simply sublime

Worth adding how many people in Washington praise the current Ambassador, the operation she's put in place, their links with both major parties etc. Changing in Jan, given the US electoral cycle seems dodgy policy as well as cynical politics

Immigration: what should Labour do?

My essay for Social Market Foundation argues (sharply) falling legal migration over next few years, combined with public opinion that is more positive (especially for work/study migration) offers an opportunity for a more constructive approach (1/12?)

It's only a '£75 billion increase' over 6 years if you assume that spending would otherwise have been frozen in cash terms for 6 years - i.e. only if the government was, until today, planning to breach its NATO commitments. This is such an unhelpful way to present the figures.

Germany's president is on a state visit to Turkey, and took with him a 60kg kebab and a Turkish-German kebab shop owner from Berlin as an expression of the strength of intercultural relations.

A lot can happen over chai 🫖☕️

British High Commissioner-Designate, Lindy Cameron meets the team at #UKinIndia .

And in case it wasn't obvious - we're super thrilled!

Bloody Southampton. Useless.

Tom Baldwin And I highly recommend buying the book much for everyone interested in history, identity and our national story to think on! bloomsbury.com/uk/england-978…

The genius of university professors lies in their ability to convince the public that others are really in charge.

this was a great panel and excellent discussion .. watch again on UK in a Changing Europe #Youtube channel.. thanks to minette batters Carmen Hubbard Alan Matthews

Make a pledge you won’t be in any position to deliver on. Then attack the next government for failing to honour it. Cute.

Expert panel, plus me. How could you resist?!