🧵NEW: Britain’s broken. But none of us can agree how - or why

Thanks to 50 years of the @IpsosUK issues tracker, I’ve looked at the UK’s biggest woes over time

It shows our concerns are becoming increasingly detached from personal experience @thetimes
thetimes.com/article/8d7d29… It’s easy to be down about the state of the country.

But it is worth reflecting that many of the problems that dominated in the 70s, 80s, 90s - trade unions, inflation, education, even Europe - now barely register

NEW: Why ending the two-child limit on universal credit won’t stop child poverty

Child poverty in Britain is stubbornly high - particularly among large families - but a range of factors are to blame…

@thetimes

thetimes.com/article/1a73ad…
First - how can child poverty be at record levels, when living standards have improved drastically since the 60s?

It is true that today’s children - even adjusted for inflation - are much materially better off than their parents / grandparents. But…

🧵 NEW: Why are salaries so much higher in the US than in Britain?

Both nation’s economies are going in very different directions - but there is more to headline differences than meets the eye…

@thetimes @KeiranSouthern the-times.co.uk/article/f8099f…


Using OECD headline figs for mean annual incomes, the differences are stark: £41,000 here, vs $77,000 in the US - about £61,000 in simple currency terms…

🧵 Using most conventional measures, the city of Doncaster is no more “full” than the rest of Britain, contrary to the claims of one of its MPs

Yet it raises the interesting Q: why are local perceptions of migration often at odds with the data? @thetimes thetimes.co.uk/article/5944ec…




Doncaster - like most of Britain - feels stretched. I had a good chat with @NickFletcherMP about some of those pressures. But looking at the data, I struggled to find a measure in which Doncaster was more “full” than the average town

🧵NEW: What’s wrong with young men?

Many under-25s are quick to reject traditional ideas of masculinity.

But new data suggests young men are even more reluctant to show emotions than their parents

My @thetimes analysis, and a short thread…

thetimes.co.uk/article/95af24…
Back in 2010 @TonyPorterACTM introduced the “man box” as a helpful way of looking at how masculinity restricts male behaviour

In short: don’t cry; don’t express weakness; don’t be a woman

How alive are those stereotypes today?

🧵NEW: Who deserves a pay rise the most?

They present a united front – but in reality, unions are competing for spoils, esp in the public sector.

And as the data shows, those with the best case are not always the ones shouting the loudest... @thetimes
thetimes.co.uk/article/voters… Pay has been stagnant since the financial crisis, with especially poor growth in the public sector

But plot the real-term wage growth of striking workers on a chart, and it's clear teachers and nurses have had a particularly rough ride...

🧵 NEW: Can private healthcare really save the NHS?

The Tories want to "turbocharge" private hospitals to make them take more NHS patients and cut waiting times. Yet history – and the data – shows it is no silver bullet

@thetimes
thetimes.co.uk/article/can-pr… Since Labour's reforms of the early 2000s, the private sector already treats a number of NHS patients

Those numbers have risen since the pandemic – and private hospitals say they can do more. The NHS, meanwhile, has taken a while to return to pre-pandemic levels of activity

🧵 NEW: How do we solve the nurse's pay crisis?

Nurses have finally had enough – but the government is not budging on its 4.75% offer. How do we fix this mess?

Enjoyed writing about a subject close to my heart (my mum's a nurse of 30+ years!) @thetimes
thetimes.co.uk/article/nighti… For decades, nursing has suffered from being thought of as a "vocation" which people "enter as a calling". Modern nursing has to rely on huge amounts of goodwill from staff who work in difficult conditions

Perhaps as a result, nursing strikes have more support than others...

🧵 NEW: What social class are you?

In modern Britain, it probably has little to do with your income – or even the kind of job you do. Yet prejudices remain as strong as ever

Analysis in today's @thetimes
thetimes.co.uk/article/the-ne… How do we measure class? Income used to be a good barometer – Blair's "we're all middle class now" was a reference to growing affluence among middle earners, after all

Yet polling from @JLPartnersPolls shows nearly *half* of those on high incomes believe they are "working class"

🧵 NEW: The economics of striking

In name, the government and unions are battling over pay. Yet beneath the surface is a war of attrition: strikes are expensive.

How long can unions – and their workers – afford to go on?

With @venetiamenzies @thetimes

thetimes.co.uk/article/how-lo… What do unions spend their money on?

Most pay a form of strike pay, usually about £50 a day. This December about 1.6 million working days will be lost to striking – a fraction of the number in the 70s and 80s – but nonetheless costing £50-80 million plus

NEW: The rise of the local MP 🗳️

Chances are, your MP was born down the road. Local representation has never been stronger.

But there are downsides – especially now that the government needs to get things done. In today's Sunday Times @thetimes

🧵

thetimes.co.uk/article/mps-ar… First, a word on the ultimate 'parachute' candidate. When Churchill lost his seat in Manchester in 1908, he was immediately invited to stand in Dundee.

His welcome was mixed: suffragette Mary Maloney followed him round the city with a giant bell, drowning out his speeches...

NEW: How does Labour win a majority? 🌹

With memories of the 90s, some think an election win is in the bag – but history shows they cannot be complacent.

I looked at the voters Labour needs to woo to stand a chance in 2024, in today's @thetimes

🧵📊
thetimes.co.uk/article/what-d… The polls – and circumstance – do look promising for Labour. "History suggests that any government presiding over a financial crisis doesn’t survive at the ballot box,” Professor John Curtice tells me.

Yet unlike Major after 92, and Brown after 08, the Tories have a new leader

🚨 NEW: Undersea Britain 🗺️🔌🐟

How cables and pipelines connect us to the world – and leave us vulnerable. 97% of the internet flows underwater: could saboteurs cut us off?

Big @thetimes data project w/ @CjtClover @mkeith @ryanleewatts @venetiamenzies thetimes.co.uk/article/how-we… The very first undersea telegram cables were laid in the 1850s. They were flimsy, and broke regularly.

The first major attempt to lay one under the English Channel probably ended because a French fisherman accidentally hauled it in with his catch... 🎣

NEW: Who are Britain's 9m benefits claimants – and is our system fair?

Some MPs believe benefits are too high. Here are some facts about the UK's welfare system. A thread 🧵📊 @thetimes

1/12
thetimes.co.uk/article/the-re… It's the myth that won't die. When C4's Benefits Street first aired in 2014, many Tories were enraged that people on benefits were able to afford luxuries like "widescreen TVs"

Last week Suella Braverman said Benefits Street culture was still a "feature" of modern Britain

2/12

NEW: Will we ever trust politicians again?

Barnard Castle, Paterson and Partygate eroded our trust in government. Can it be repaired – and does it matter?

In today's Sunday Times. A thread... 🧵 @thetimes thetimes.co.uk/article/will-w… Generally, we are a pretty trusting nation: 75% of us trust “most people”, according to the @OECD

But there is something about politicians that makes us roll our eyes. Prof John Curtice speaks of a baseline distrust of government – which may not be a bad thing

🚨 NEW: Is this the end of the full-time family doctor?

GPs say the job is no longer feasible full-time. Every morning patients are stuck for hours on hold. Many are put off booking appointments.

What went wrong with primary care – and how do we fix it?
thetimes.co.uk/article/is-thi… Doctors have traditionally been on the side of the patients.

When the NHS was being built in the 1940s, Nye Bevan wanted to make all GPs state employees: they hated the idea. Eventually he gave in, and they were allowed to keep their independence.

NEW: If the Tories lose Wakefield on Thursday, one reason will be that women are set to vote 2 to 1 against them. Why are women in Britain becoming more left wing – and why didn't it happen sooner?

My analysis in tomorrow's @thesundaytimes

1/8
thetimes.co.uk/article/how-wo… It wasn't always that way: for most of the 20th century, women were more likely to vote Tory.

In fact, in the 1910s some liberals were wary of giving women the vote, fearing it would give the Tories a clear advantage. It was only in 2017 and 2019 that the pattern reversed

2/8

NEW: For the first time in decades, the number of young women not working to look after family is starting to rise

As 1/3 of women barely break even after returning to work, Britain's childcare costs are pushing women out of work

@PregnantScrewed
thetimes.co.uk/article/held-b… For years, the number of women not working to look after family at home was falling – a trend that even accelerated during the start of the pandemic

Now, though, that trend may be reversing

NEW: What if we'd done nothing about Covid? No lockdowns, no social distancing, no furlough scheme?

For @thesundaytimes I imagined an alternate reality in which Britain took no action to stop the spread, and just waited for a vaccine
thetimes.co.uk/article/what-i… For a long week in March 2020, it looked like Britain might be going it alone

Then a now-infamous paper by Neil Ferguson pointed out that if we let most people in Britain catch it – and if it had an infection mortality rate of about 1% – then 510,000 people would die