Just digging into recent @yougov polling and found a fascinating reproof to Boris's conference speech - even Tory voters want more housing built! (second column)
It's true that the numbers fall when you change the question to 'in my local area', but it is still a majority - and much, much tighter among Tory voters than you would expect from the rampant Nimbyism on stage.
(Anecdotal side note: it is worth flagging that the true blue activist crowd at our @CPSThinkTank fringe meeting with @jacob_rees_mogg went near-unanimously for more housebuilding when he asked for a voice vote.)
Another interesting finding that should be better-known - voters really want house prices to fall! Finding true across all social groups. People are completely aware of the damage they are doing.
In fact, telling people it will cause house prices to fall is one of the best ways to get them to support more housebuilding...
Of course, in fairness to Boris, people really do oppose building on greenfield. But that's partly because they read it as 'green field' rather than 'often quite scrubby land'
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What many people within Labour seems to be assuming is that they have some kind of financial/policy wiggle room. They don't. (1/?)
Here are the assumptions the OBR was making in its March forecast. The numbers have already deteriorated substantially - in particular gilt yields (up), GDP (down) and inflation (up). And they may get far worse yet.
But even under those sunnier assumptions, the public finances were still being run on a wing and a prayer. In particular, to pay for her initial spending splurge, Reeves pencilled in neo-austerity for the back half of the parliament - effectively, real-terms departmental cuts.
Now the dust has settled from the local elections, it's time to talk about vote-rigging. In particular, the way in which a sinister force has been manipulating British democracy in council after council, year after year. That force? The goddamn alphabet. (1/?)
Here are the top six candidates from the ward where I live, Battersea Park in Wandsworth. Notice anything? They're in perfect alphabetical order. The same happened when I checked out another ward where a friend was standing, Wandsworth Town.
The effect is just as noticeable when the parties aren't bunched together. In Furzedown, for example, the leading four parties went ABC, ACB, ABC, ABC. What are the chances?
If migrants are net contributors, why are so many in poverty? Me for @thetimes on how Emily Thornberry blew up the Left's case for mass migration times-comment.com/thornberry-mig…
Quick summary: Thornberry cites @IPPR analysis showing that of 4.3m children in (relative) poverty, 1.5m are from migrant families. Of the 309k children affected by ILR extension, 130k could be in poverty by 2029 thanks to being denied access to benefits for longer.
@IPPR But this (of course) blows up the argument about contribution! In fact it's an explicit argument for us to do more to subsidise new arrivals, even though the risk of subsidising huge numbers of non-contributors was the big justification for ILR reform in the first place.
There are lots of reasons to be depressed about how the British state is run. But as per my @thetimes column, the story of the deregulation programme is the ultimate ‘there are no ninjas’ eye-opener. (1?)
Exactly a year ago, @Keir_Starmer stood up and promised ‘fundamental reform of the British state’. This included cutting compliance costs for businesses by a quarter. But there was a problem.
Whitehall did not know how much those compliance costs were. It wasn’t even clear, at the time of the speech, what exactly the PM meant by ‘compliance costs’.
Have written my column on one of the most interesting political essays I've ever read, because it argues that essentially everything modern British politicians think about political and economic strategy is completely wrong. (1/?)
The full thing doesn't seem to be available online, but its core argument over 35 pages is, essentially, that voters are not idiots - that if you do tough, necessary stuff and explain it, you will end up in a better place than via relentless short-term pandering.
Douglas - Labour finance minister in NZ in the 1980s - basically out-Thatchered Thatcher. He argues that the stuff voters ended up hating was always where the govt chickened out - and that sweeping action is actually safer than small steps, because it outflanks vested interests.
Striking findings from @NatCen on migration. View that it is a cultural/economic negative has risen sharply post-Boriswave, but overall levels still not as negative as pre-Brexit. But there has also been huge polarisation... (1/3)
As @Sirjohncurtice says (this is screenshot from Zoom), those on right are even more -ve about migration than previously - but those on left still think it's broadly a good thing.
@Sirjohncurtice Obviously overall all the polling shows people think migration has been way too high - and as @Dominic2306 says don't even realise how high it's been - but what is new is this wide and widening gap b/t left on right on whether migration is a good thing full stop.