Ben McAllister

Silly stag rutting head to head nonsense

[Steve Akehurst @SteveAkehurst]

What might a ‘cost of living populism’ look like & how would it do electorally for Labour/Burnham?

Some new research via @PersuasionUK

TL;DR such a platform boosts Lab’s vote share by 15ppt (!) to 34% in our MRP experiment. This & anti-Reform squeeze is prob their best hope 🧵

[Ben McAllister @bjmcallister90]

@Jon_Mackenzie https://t.co/CVO5vqbH4h Not an endorsement of the man. Really interesting about the creative state of mind

[Jack Sapoch @JackSapoch]

NEW: Since October 2023, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has released dozens of 3D animations illustrating alleged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian sites

The style is unmistakable: satellite zoom-ins, black & white wireframes, and red-textured houses - a new visual language of war

[Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis]

Believe it or not, I had an old school friend on today’s marches in London. He sent me some photos from the crowd.

We went to middle school together and grew up on the same Eastern District council estate in Northampton.

I asked him why he was there. He gave me two answers:
1.“The government doesn’t listen to us.”
2.“I want to feel proud of my country again.”

He wore a Union Jack, not a St George’s Cross as he said that one had been hijacked by racists.

He wasn’t there for Hopkins, Musk, or any of the professional ‘grifters’ as he put it. He was there to feel part of something bigger, though he admitted there were a lot of, in his words, “assholes” there.

He’s an electrician. He’s smart. He’s not racist, but he’s not “PC” either. He’s not a fan of Keir Starmer but he also believes Farage would be a disaster.

Oh yes, he’s a bundle of contradictions! But aren’t we all?

I don’t know what ‘box’ we put him or the millions like him in. And I think pretending they’re all racists or fascists would be a massive mistake.

Some were. But not all.

This is about something bigger than immigration slogans or GDP numbers. For decades we’ve hollowed out our national life, underfunding and undermining the very institutions that once brought us together.

Karl Polanyi, writing in The Great Transformation, argued that when markets are “disembodied” from society, when land, labour, and life itself are treated as commodities
society pushes back. He called this the “double movement”: people seeking to protect themselves, to reclaim dignity and meaning when everything solid seems to melt into air.

That’s what I saw in my friend’s photos. Not just anger, but a demand for belonging.

We’ve replaced collective experience with atomisation. Without getting too nostalgic, programmes like the BBC’s Generation Game once pulled in millions every Saturday night, giving us something we could all talk about on Monday morning. Now we watch Netflix, Disney+, Prime, or Paramount, alone, in algorithmic silos.

Football used to be affordable and rooted in community; now it’s millionaires playing for the profitability of billionaires. The NHS, the post office, the railways - all chipped away, run down, sold off or centralised, leaving people feeling powerless and disconnected.

And don’t get me wrong: some kind of “Hovis Labour” nostalgia for the 1950s isn’t the answer. The country back then was often intolerant, grey, and deeply unequal. But what we’ve built since is a society that gives people little to hold in common, no collective story about who we are or what we’re for.

I reckon that’s partly why my mate marched. Not because he wants to turn back the clock. But because he wants to feel pride again. Pride in a country that is inclusive, fair, and offers a role for everyone. Pride in a nation that has a respected place in the world, tackles grotesque inequality, and gives people something real to believe in.

Polanyi warned that when democracies fail to provide a humane alternative, the backlash can turn authoritarian. This is how fascism grew in the 1930s, not because everyone became a true believer, but because millions felt abandoned and looked for strength, identity, and meaning wherever they could find it.

If Labour and progressives don’t offer that story of renewal, if we don’t rebuild our national institutions, restore collective pride, and re-embed markets within society, the far right will do it for us, in their own image.

And by then, it will be too late.

[Laurie Macfarlane @L__Macfarlane]

Things like homelessness and unemployment aren’t natural or inevitable. They are policy choices

We only seem to realise this during times of emergency (wars, pandemics) — but then instantly forget it

[Laurie Macfarlane @L__Macfarlane]

I spent a year at Ofwat back in 2013 working on price controls

I’m not remotely surprised it’s being abolished - what I saw astonished me 🧵 https://t.co/ievrXFoPNJ

[Judd Legum @JuddLegum]

1. We interrupt this programming for some LEGITIMATELY GOOD NEWS

Violent crime in Baltimore has PLUMMETED to historic lows

How did the city do it?

Baltimore adopted a comprehensive set of "woke" policies, treating violence as a public health issue

[Declassified UK @declassifiedUK]

🚨BREAKING: UN experts have urged the UK not to misuse terrorism laws against Palestine Action.

"Mere property damage, without endangering life, is not sufficiently serious to qualify as terrorism", they write.
https://t.co/QCCbThiC52

[Gabriel Zucman @gabriel_zucman]

The G7 is exempting American multinationals from the global minimum tax. It’s pathetic and scandalous.

[Our World in Data @OurWorldInData]

Transfer fees for money sent home by international migrants were nearly as high as US foreign aid in 2023—

If you live in the same country as your family, you don’t usually have to pay a fee when you send them money.

International migrants face a harsher reality: they pay hefty transaction costs when supporting family back home. Globally, the average fee in 2023 was 6.3%, more than double the UN Sustainable Development Goal's target of getting this down to 3%.

This may not sound like much, but migrants send large amounts home to help with schooling, medical bills, house maintenance, and food. The total sum was nearly three times larger than global foreign aid in 2023. (Here, foreign aid consists of net development assistance from national governments and private philanthropy that meets the necessary conditions.)

Although 6.3% might seem modest, when applied to large volumes of money, these transfer fees amount to tens of billions of dollars.

The chart shows that migrants lost $51 billion in transaction fees in 2023, which is not far from the $66 billion the US gave as foreign aid. That's $51 billion paid by migrants but never received by their families.

With the new US administration projected to cut aid by more than half, aid experts from the Center for Global Development suggest reducing fees could help fill some of the gap. They recommend promoting cheaper transfer options, increasing competition between services, and linking banking systems across countries.

While money sent home by migrants isn’t as targeted to vulnerable groups as aid, most of it flows directly to families in low- and middle-income countries who can use it for what they need most.

(This Data Insight was written by @S_VanTeutem.)

[Tom Calver @TomHCalver]

Apropos of nothing: London is a much safer city than it was 15 years ago

[Gabriel Gatehouse @ggatehouse]

This is a really good, nuanced article about RFK Jr and scientific orthodoxy https://t.co/BVSm1V2IIB

[Rutger Bregman @rcbregman]

Incredibly powerful investigation in Dutch newspaper NRC: Seven of the world’s leading genocide scholars — including renowned Holocaust experts — describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocidal.

And according to them, nearly all of their peers agree.

[Steve Akehurst @SteveAkehurst]

NEW: Who are the voters Labour risks losing to Reform?

How might Labour unite them with the rest of its election winning coalition? How might Reform win them over?

Big new research by @Persuasion_UK out on 'Reform curious Labour' as featured by @greenmiranda in today's FT 🧵👇

[Luke Tryl @LukeTryl]

Winter Fuel comes up in almost every focus group on this Government; so much that I think you could call it this Government’s original sin. Why? Four big themes reasons 1. Trust 2. Concern for vulnerable 3. Contribution 4. Encourages zero sum thinking

[Alex Crawford @AlexCrawfordSky]

Israel killed 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers one by one, UN says. ‘We’re digging them out in their uniforms, with their gloves on,’ https://t.co/3b0rLLKqUv

[Tom Calver @TomHCalver]

NEW: Is Britain really a high tax country?

Our collective tax bill is at its highest share of GDP since the 1940s

But actually, the tax and NI paid by the average worker are at their lowest in decades.

What’s going on?

1/7

[Iain Porter @IainKPorter]

In summary: The 250k net poverty rise in impact assessment is extra to an assumed 150k rise that previous Conservative plans would have created - even they never happened. But DWP has assumed that increase was already on the books and added to it. Real poverty impact is 400k. 7/7

[Paul Hutcheon @paulhutcheon]

Labour benefit changes will plunge an extra 50,000 kids into poverty,
according to the Government’s own impact analysis.

[John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch]

NEW 🧵: Is human intelligence starting to decline?

Recent results from major international tests show that the average person’s capacity to process information, use reasoning and solve novel problems has been falling since around the mid 2010s.

What should we make of this?