Short🧵on one of the most under-discussed facts in British politics: Keir Starmer's age. I think it's going to have a significant effect on the politics of his first term. He's 61 and turns 62 in September. We tend to think of him as younger than that, partly because he hasn't been around long. He became an MP nine years ago.

Last week @civic_future held a two day conference on economic growth and why Britain doesn't get enough of it. It was fascinating, depressing, and heartening all at once. Here's a 🧵of my impressions. The first depressing bit was that we heard a lot of evidence that Britain's economy is really screwed, falling ever further behind its peers. The leading voice of doom was @s8mb, you can read his talk here.

https://twitter.com/s8mb/status/1681292890264449026

It's remarkable that @mattyglesias thinks this (admittedly pretty big) error is the only noteworthy one in a piece which argues that people think men are stronger than women *because female sport exists*

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1571923076320841731

The whole piece rests on very basic conceptual confusions. An actual expert explains why here but stuff like this shouldn't require experts to waste their time on it, because it's *obviously* stupid.

https://twitter.com/stevemagness/status/1571511807419760643

Is there really anybody who read Badenoch's fairly bland defence of free speech and thought 'That's not nuanced enough for me! I'm voting Labour/Lib Dem'? thetimes.co.uk/article/2d5a8c… It wasn't crass or objectionable unless you have a very strong position on this to begin with. When @hugorifkind talks about 'clodhopping into the culture war' he seems to see it from happening from one side only. When Mordaunt said 'TWAW' wasn't that clodhopping too?

I'm not as big a US politics nerd as some on here but this Republican win in Virginia seems...big. Biden won it by 10 points. Youngkin campaigned hard on education and 'CRT'. nytimes.com/2021/11/02/us/… Evidence for @davidshor theory of the Dems' electoral position which is roughly a) It's worse than you think b) Many voters, including non-white voters, think the Dems have gone mad on culture/gender/race.

A few scattered thoughts on "Blair & Brown" now it's over. I really enjoyed it. It didn't tell a new story, but the story it told was deepened by the distance we've all covered since then. And they really brought the best out of the interviewees. 1/n It was a touch hagiographical. I can't believe I'm saying this, because I am a chronic Blair propagandist. But there wasn't much daylight between the story he tells about New Labour and the doc's story. Maybe that's because it's the truth but still, it's a flaw. 2/n

New followers: subscribe to The Ruffian! It's free and it includes some politics, but not too much. In the current edition, I reflected on Mark Lawson's 2003 prediction that Boris Johnson would save the Tories...ianleslie.substack.com/p/making-and-f… It made me think about what kind of presentational style works and what's obsolete

On the principle of buying at the bottom of the market I think this is a good moment to invest in Starmer stock. Seriously.

https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1396057366265843721

The fundamentals haven't changed since his earlier period of popularity. Starmer is 'prime ministerial' in a way the last two Lab leaders were not, in accomplishment and appearance (which matters!). He can plainly 'do the job', the lowest bar to clear.

In this week's Ruffian, some thoughts on the futile row between elites over the Sewell Report. ianleslie.substack.com/p/elite-wars Additional thought: some of the anger was provoked by the report's emphasis on the tangible progress Britain has made on this issue in recent decades, in education and across the board.

But that's *exactly* the opposite of the case, as this very one-sided piece shows yet again. theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2… The article basically assumes Allen's guilt as does the documentary. To me at least the actual evidence suggests a different conclusion. The trial-by-doc format doesn't really allow for 'doubt' at all.

Thread of books I read in 2020, in the order I read them. I had a pretty good hit rate this year: only a few failures (of the book or reader) here, so plenty to recommend. First up Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald. A walk around Suffolk full of stories and reflections on history, apparently rambling but actually tightly controlled. Beautiful, sad, mysterious.

On The Crown debate - if all you have to say is, "Of course people know it's not a documentary, duh" you're playing on easy mode. It's a particular type of fiction - dramatised history - that depends for its force on the viewer trusting that the events it depicts actually happened roughly in the way they present. So no, it's not documentary, but it's not Stranger Things either.