Britain’s Reform UK party does not exist. It’s fake. Made up. A bogeyman to scare Tory MPs and make them go to bed on time economist.com/britain/2024/0…

If you are in America, Amazon is flogging my book for the almost insultingly cheap price of $9 at the moment. A deal!

amazon.com/Carmageddon-Ca…

Inside the UK’s failing plans to ‘level up’ left-behind towns via Financial Times
on.ft.com/4d71pyu

'But as Farage owns 53 per cent of Reform UK Ltd...he is able to remove Tice as a director or take the decision to unilaterally dissolve the organisation, marking him as the party’s ultimate kingmaker.' Great Financial Times dive by Rafe Uddin into Reform UK

ft.com/content/4059c9…

👻 👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻

This will be news to our local branch of Reform, who have been ingeniously recruiting old people through the use and relentless advertisement of pub quizzes

Excellent piece by Duncan Robinson.

'Reform UK [is] something more powerful than a small political party: it is a nightmare'.

And as Karl Marx pointed out, nightmares can weigh very heavily on the minds of the living.

Duncan Robinson Teenagers drinking is good, keeps them off their phones

Really good piece that gets to the heart of my frustration with coverage of Reform. They are fundamentally hollow, but retain enormous power because they fit with an interesting narrative for the governing party and wide chunks of the press.

Mike Bird Be the Britain that East Asia thinks you are (cultural giant) and that Russia/Iran think you are (malevolent superpower) and that continental Europe thinks you are (legendary boozers).

Good bit of moral panic about teenagers drinking today. Lovely stuff

Chinese woman charged in UK with criminal possession of crypto: ft.com/content/67824c…

Exclusive by Euan Healy and Eri Sugiura

Mayyyybe setting the curriculum around random moral panics isn’t a good idea

Good piece here on fixing the UK's incredibly wasteful VAT regime, which gives away huge amounts of money to the highest spenders in the name of progressivity.

economist.com/britain/2024/0…

This is a great piece. I was pretty taken aback the first time I looked at national identity in the APS and saw that English identity was declining for the entire period that Englishness was most hyped

The best line : 'Oddly, one of the few people to notice the switch from English to British patriotism was Donald Trump, an idiot savant who remarked: “I asked Boris, ‘Where’s England? You don’t use it too much any more.’”'

Captain Tom, Kai Rooney dressed as Captain Tom, Captain Tom Spa Complex, Demolition of Captain Tom Spa Complex