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Robert Colvile Profile picture
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9 May, 5 tweets, 1 min read
This analysis piece summarising the results from the BBC is just gob-smacking. Here, in order, are their four big takeaways bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi…
1) Time for Scottish independence
2) Incumbents did well
3) Labour still strong in cities
4) Aren’t the Greens great too?
The kindest possible interpretation is that whoever wrote this felt the ‘Tories do well, Labour collapse in heartlands’ narrative had got a bit stale. But someone should surely have thought ‘hang on a minute’...
Even just on the first one, the idea the SNP have a mandate is very debatable indeed. For the national broadcaster to airily proclaim it is... not great.
To be fair the text is far more nuanced - blame probably with whoever wrote the headlines/subtitles.

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More from @rcolvile

Robert Colvile Profile picture
4 May
Given what's happening on Super Thursday, it is worth revisiting this @CPSThinkTank report by @mattwarman, and its extraordinary @DeltapollUK polling findings (1/?) cps.org.uk/files/reports/…
The most obvious point is that no one likes or trusts government - with the disillusionment growing as you go from local to national
But the most interesting point in light of the elections is not the distrust but the ignorance. We asked people which layers of government they thought they were subject to, then matched that against their postcodes. The proportion who answered completely correctly was... 0%
Read 7 tweets
Robert Colvile Profile picture
29 Apr
A quick follow-up to this tweet on household wealth. Much of the increase is house prices, but some is still savings - the savings ratio is at its highest since 1962 (1/?)
A lot of people are expecting/hoping for that cash to come sluicing back into the economy, juicing the recovery. But I'm afraid @CPSThinkTank can offer a warning from history...
As @JethroFElsden showed in his paper 'History Repeating?', on the postwar recovery, the boom in the US wasn't fuelled by people winding down the savings they'd amassed in wartime (because there was nothing to buy/they were in the military)
Read 7 tweets
Robert Colvile Profile picture
25 Apr
I've written my column, inevitably, on Gotterdommerung - and how utterly misguided it was for the PM to pick this particular fight thetimes.co.uk/article/robert…
As I point out, one of the best reasons to worry that Dom would go nuclear is that he has *literally done this before*. After eight months as IDS's director of strategy, he wrote this for the Telegraph
And any idea that he would be loyal enough to the Tory party to stay his hand is probably dispelled by the par that follows (telegraph.co.uk/comment/person…)
Read 6 tweets
Robert Colvile Profile picture
23 Apr
For strategic, diplomatic, economic and above all humanitarian reasons, the UK and other Western countries should be sending vaccines to India by the bucketload. The US alone has huge stockpiles of AZ & J&J it hasn’t authorised.
And yes India has very significant vaccine supply capacity of its own. But it is a vast country and every little helps.
And crucially the US needs to lift its ban on the export of the components India needs to actually make them.
Read 4 tweets
Robert Colvile Profile picture
15 Apr
Really interesting and important new report today from Alex Morton, our housing guru at @CPSThinkTank. A quick thread/summary (1/?) cps.org.uk/research/the-h…
We want and need to build more houses. Cameron-era planning reforms focused on land supply, by pushing for more planning permissions to be granted. But this only translated partially/weakly into more houses being built.
It's often claimed that land banking by the big housebuilders is the culprit. And as Alex shows, they have certainly built up v significant reserves - the biggest housebuilders now have plots equivalent to the five-year land supply for England.
Read 11 tweets
Robert Colvile Profile picture
4 Apr
Have written today about the EU's pandemic screw-ups, and the alarming picture they paint (1/?) thetimes.co.uk/article/vaccin…
The most obvious thing to say (as I do in the column) is that Britain has no high ground on this - stones, glass houses, etc. But the vaccine debacle fits with a worryingly familiar pattern.
As one Brussels veteran says, it's the same pattern as the migrant crisis. Bad thing happens -> cries that the only way to solve it is more Europe -> Commission takes over -> everyone feels virtuous about the European model -> Commission fucks it up -> rats in a sack time
Read 7 tweets

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