Mystified by Sunak's strategy. Stealing Labour's non dom plan was effective politics and gave them a few uncomfortable days explaining how they were going to fund their plans. Pledging to abolish NI holed that attack line and the defence pledge has blown it out of the water.

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Or you could... just give them better pay and working conditions?

Not a huge amount of point in 'forcing' doctors and nurses to stay a few extra years if... they just leave immediately after that. You're just delaying the issue.

Ben is 100% right.
Numbers used in describing increase in defence spending are impenetrable, misleading & internally inconsistent.
Committing to 2.5% of GDP on defence is big and important. There is no need for this profusion of overblown and inconsistent numerical claims.

Not sure the Tories realise how damaging ditching any pretence at fiscal credibility is for them. The appearance of it (if not the reality) was core to their brand back when it had any worth.

Utterly absurd. The entire civil service doesn't cost that much.

The next time the #EuropeanSuperLeague is on the table....in the name of God, go

#FACupReplays #PremierLeague

Flag obsessives hijacking the national symbols again, making it impossible for anyone to celebrate the day. Round balding middle aged men wrapping themselves in flags, getting pissed and screaming at police a nice way to celebrate the richness of English culture is it? Fuck that

Except when it comes to ownership of The Spectator, when he wants Government to intervene.

At this point the UK government might as well announce free money for everyone in 2030 and it would be no less credible than what is being said.

In hindsight?

For decades, steady reductions in the amount spent on defence allowed for extra spending on things like the NHS without a need to increase taxes. In essence, we replaced a warfare state with a welfare state.

The challenge now is that we're going to have to pay for both.

The fragmented cycle of local government administration and reform - from Jack Newman, Sam Warner, Michael Kenny and Andy Westwood's insights paper into local democracy and the accountability challenge: productivity.ac.uk/research/rebui…+

Unfunded spending commitment on top of the already lunatic projections on public spending. Come on, media, don’t let the Tories off the hook on this like you always do.

St George’s Day discourse is the third worst seasonal discourse, after “Fairytale of New York” discourse and “are those Oxfam statistics about global wealth ownership rubbish or not” discourse.

A very reasonable response.

Call me risk averse but it's the minimum I'd expect.

There’s a book to be written on how Sunak got to a place where his Rwanda policy with its unworkable, cruel, expensive, law breaking nationally embarrassing contradictions- Rwanda is safe but it’s a deterrent etc, etc- became his make or break policy in a country where public

As in the last days of the Soviet system, this ‘government’ deploys nationalism and racism because their governing utopia has produced a dystopian caricature of what was promised. Self-regulating free markets are a myth. Traumatised people are real, and deserve compassion.

My thing in FT Alphaville on the Bernanke Review of the Bank of England models and forecast: ft.com/content/f76c54…