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Lewis Goodall

@lewis_goodall

Sep 26

Anyone covering/interested in digital ID would be well advised to look for insight on it anywhere but X. Yet another example of where this site/online right opinion is fevered/way off the beat with the public.

Guess who need digital/reliable ID most? Those in poverty.

Right now we have the absurdity of compulsory ID for voting without a hassle free ID system. Madness and unfair to those least likely to have passports/driving licences etc- again, poorer people, younger people etc.

I’m well aware of how hopeless government IT systems/data protection can be. Earlier in the year I helped uncover one of the biggest data loss scandals in UK govt history. But the digital economy/world is a fact, and govts have to respond. Right now it’s a wild west, with the population left to fend for themselves, usually handing vast amounts of data over to unknowable massive Silicon Valley companies. At least the UK govt and what they do with our data is accountable to us, as citizens.

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Lewis Goodall

@lewis_goodall

Aug 29

Polling from @Moreincommon_ on Lucy Connolly

More than half think her sentence was too lenient or about right. Only a third that it was too harsh.

Only 18% think politicians should associate themselves her, while 51% think they should actively distance themselves from her.

Turns out the preoccupations of the online right don’t mirror the way population thinks at large- who knew!

Conservative voters are more than twice as likely to say politicians should create distance between themselves and Connolly (48 per cent), than associate themselves with her (22 per cent).

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Lewis Goodall

@lewis_goodall

Aug 21

https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1958487603243593886

Globally, we're moving back towards an aristocracy of wealth, more akin to the 19th century than the 20th.

Anyone who cares about social justice, about moving away from higher and higher levels of taxation on work, should be very concerned. Time to do something about it.

https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1958487603243593886

Some uncomfortable facts

-The top 10% of UK households hold 57% of all wealth, while the bottom 50% own less than 5%.

-The top 1% alone controls 23% of wealth

-Inheritances are soaring: projected to double from £100bn a year (2020) to £200bn by 2040

-Half of all wealth in the UK is now inherited rather than earned, up from about 25% in the 1970s.

-Children of the wealthiest 20% are seven times more likely to remain in the top 20% as adults than children from the poorest fifth

Meanwhile working people are paying higher and higher taxes on their labour. We need to shift towards taxation on inherited wealth and a reduction in taxes on work and consumption. Both for moral and economic reasons. Let's allow people to keep more on what they do NOT what they inherit.

Lots of people accusing me of being communist. No- it's a liberal argument. On this I'll defer to John Stuart Mill, who wrote this in 1848 and would be dismissed as a "commie wanker" today:

"The principle of inheritance… is chiefly grounded on the duty of parents to provide for their children. But that duty has certain limits; and when these are exceeded, the right ceases. Beyond a certain point, to permit the transmission of enormous fortunes is nothing less than to establish a monopoly of wealth, and is wholly opposed to the spirit of a free and equal society.”

I'm being intentionally provocative when I propose a 100% rate. But I certainly think the rate should be much higher than it is today. It has been before in British history (go back to the 1920s) and in other societies- see Japan, S Korea.

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Lewis Goodall

@lewis_goodall

Nov 6, 2024

For those waking up in US, bewildered in Europe, what happened?

Have been on air for last 12 hours pouring over the data

Here it is

There's no silver lining for Democrats. Trump won everywhere. He's going to win the popular vote. He did better across the demographics. He grew his coalition, better with black voters, Latinos, young voters. The US become less racially divided by party. Harris underperformed Biden virtually everywhere.

Trump improved on his 2020 margin in 2,367 counties. His margin decreased in only 240 counties.

Trump didn't just sweep up in the swing states, and none of them are going to be that close. He closed the gap on Harris in a tonne of blue states. She turned out anaemic victories in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Minnesota. He expanded his margins in red states to take huge generationally big victories in Florida and Iowa. He flipped Miami Dade county, winning a heavily Latino county Hillary won by 30 points by 10. He drove down Harris margins in big urban centres everywhere, including Chicago, New York, Austin etc.

This feels a far more devastating loss for the Democrats, even than 2016.

2016 the Dems had plenty of things to console them. A massive popular vote victory. A narrow electoral college loss in a few places. A rock solid ethnic minority coalition which looked like a solid electoral map of the future. Roe was intact. The Supreme Court was still balanced.

They have none of that now. They're staring down the barrel of a transformed Republican Party and a sustained inability to know how to deal with Trump and Magaism. In policy terms, they also have nowhere to go. In Biden's term they governed exactly in line with their own instincts. It's been soundly rejected by the electorate.

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Lewis Goodall

@lewis_goodall

Oct 23, 2024

Extraordinary intervention from Donald Trump’s own former Chief of Staff John Kelly. The fmr general says Trump meets the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator and has no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.

nytimes.com/2024/10/22/us/…

Kelly says: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Kelly says Trump would not want to be pictured with amputee veterans saying that “it wouldn’t look good for me.”

Kelly confirms Trump spoke positively of Hitler as president.

“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.”

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Lewis Goodall

@lewis_goodall

Aug 27, 2024

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1828362636100042965

Thoughts on Starmer speech

Self-evidently highly political. Little in the way of policy, instead a framing of politics to come.

But there’s a paradox to it all

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1828362636100042965

As predicted, Labour are trying to suggest things are worse than they knew. There’s a bit of truth to that though broad contours of state of economy/public realm were known.

We’re clearly in for more pain. Just like, checks notes, the past 14 years.

That itself is an idictment of a generation of policymakers and politics. Voters might be forgiven for thinking they’ve heard all this before. Indeed they have, since George Osborne in 2010. Ernie Bevin said he wanted to be at the Ministry of Labour til 1990, ie to set the terms of thinking on industrial relations for a half century. It sometimes feels like Osborne will be Chancellor til 2050, no matter bow many times his vision of politics/political economy fails. You have to wonder how much more tolerance for it there’s going to be.

If nothing else, politically it was a huge contrast with the politics of optimism at last week’s DNC- instead now we have things are going to get worse before they get better.

Strongest sections of the speech were his diagnosis of the problems of populism and how Tories fell into that reap. Was authentically him and convincing.

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