I am one of the many, many people who knew about many, many allegations against Russell Brand for more than a decade. And I have some things to say. Firstly THANK YOU @RosamundUrwin and everyone for getting this out there. So many people have been waiting for so long for this day Over the next few days and weeks people will be saying they are shocked by the allegations. Don't believe them. Brand was hiding in plain sight, and people chose not to see it because it suited them not to.

🧵In light of the strategy of a certain opposition party that shall remain nameless, I've been thinking about the common mistakes campaigns and parties make in response to what they've heard in focus groups (Source: my work involved public attitudes research from 2016-2022) Let's say you show focus group participants two messages and ask them to pick the best. One is emotionally-led and polarising, and the other is "we need to look at all the facts, and then develop clear and credible solutions to our problems," participants will pick the second.

🧵I have some thoughts about today's National Conservativism conference. When I was running CLASS think tank, we ran a project that broke down the component parts of the hard right's "anti-woke" narrative. You can see how much these themes were running through the conference ⬇️ I've seen some people mock conference speakers for conflating the left with elites, big business and even Margaret Thatcher. But this is a feature not a bug: the point is to make the enemy broad and nebulous, so it can serve different purposes depending on the occasion.