Pip Gradgrind

A boring old social democrat who likes cricket, public transport and books.

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@steamedhamms McFadden probably the “safe pair of hands” selection.

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@shivmalik @Sam_Dumitriu I hope not, Shiv. But these areas show very little signs that they will ever make the necessary changes to stop that, despite keen central government support. Leeds, Manchester and elsewhere are, instead, very pro-development and happy to see new homes.

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@thomasforth Wow. The Midlands is even more striking than the north east/NI/Wales. This cannot go on much longer.

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@redrumlisa 500 people!! It clearly wasn’t buzzing by any measure when thinking about the number of people who chose to live there.

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@TorstenBell @tomelleryrees Are you not both switching between residency and occupation based metrics? Lots of deprivation in inner city Manchester, but it’s also where well paid jobs are for people (generally) living in the other districts.

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@redrumlisa You’d do well to find too many of them tbh. 500 people living in the centre of the nation’s second city is not a positive sign.

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@AaronBastani Bring back awnings!

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

Agree with a lot of this. Labour needs to put forward a new covenant between state and citizen, recognising the rights and obligations we owe one another. Only criticism is pitting graduate against apprentice. We need a politics that brings them together and views them equally.

[Dan Carden @DanCardenMP]

Tony Blair's essay is a serious contribution. The party is drifting. Just Labour ends in the comfort zone, a place the country is sick of, and that ends in defeat.

There is some common ground on policy reform: on welfare, on the North Sea, on illegal immigration, on growth before redistribution, on the planning system.

But he stops short of the project he says he is looking for.

The age he describes, China rising, supply chains weaponised, a more dangerous world, demands an active state. It demands an industrial strategy with the muscle to build, make and defend. Not incentives and partnership. Direction.

And it demands a politics rooted in the country as it actually is. Family. Work. Place. Nation.

That project has a name. It is Blue Labour. It is radical in the way he claims to want, and it answers the legitimacy problem his Radical Centre cannot. Efficacy is not legitimacy.

His essay names three actors. The state, the private sector, the voluntary sector. The citizen is missing. Treated as a recipient of services, a unit of human capital, a problem on a welfare roll. Never as someone with a contribution to make. That is why his politics will always feel like something done to people, not something done with them.

Homes for Ukraine was one of the best designed policies of recent years. The state set the frame, the councils did the checks, the contracts were in place. But the policy only worked because the British people did the work. Ordinary households opened their doors to strangers on a scale this country has not seen in generations. No essay about Britain's future can be written without what the British people give to it.

A smaller welfare state is the right goal. But you get there by asking more of citizens and more of the state in return. Work, training, a stake in your community on one side. Decent jobs, real opportunity, services that function on the other. Not sanctions on people the system has already failed. Dependency is not dignity. Contribution is.

This is where apprenticeships matter. They were once a relationship. A trade, a master, a young person, a place. The apprenticeship levy turned them into a tax credit for big companies and a way to rebadge graduate training. And we never gave them a home. University students have campuses like palaces. The young person learning a trade would be lucky to get a portakabin. It tells you what this country values. A young person learning a trade from someone who knows it is worth more than anything the corporatised version delivers.

Across economic and social policy, the challenge is to rebuild the relationship and place, so that dignity can be restored.

There is a challenge here for the progressive class as well. People have come second to their causes. The working class were told their concerns could wait or that they were wrong, and when they refused to wait any longer they were called the problem. A party that puts its causes before its people will keep losing them. Causes do not rebuild politics. People do.

Naming the drift is not the same as ending it. A list of policies is not a story about the country and its people, and what we owe each other. That is what the country is waiting so desperately for.

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@DanCardenMP @cgdav135 Support a lot of this, Dan, but I think you get close to pitting the graduate AGAINST the apprentice. Both are getting screwed, we can have a politics that brings them together and a society that puts them on an equal footing 👍🏻

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@GarethKaneLD @ElectCllrsUK One successful candidate suspended for antisemitic social media posts SO FAR.

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@AaronBastani Must have had the loft converted/insulated well? Ours is 1900 and last night was horrendous. Loft being done soon, thankfully!

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@AscendedYield Slop posting again. Athens and Porto have similar overnight stays to Liverpool and Manchester. Both have overnight levies.

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@GarethDennis @TheGreenParty lol - hope he’s not attached to his deposit

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@ObserverUK @FennellJW @RSylvester1 Utter drek sorry. Burnham wins with the members at a canter.

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@GarethKaneLD Any update on this at all?

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@AaronBastani @michaeljswalker Josh clearly more intelligent than c.90% of No10 staff since 2024. Get him in!

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@AscendedYield Reducing regional inequality is not beyond our comprehension. We know how to do it, we just choose not to. Give city-regions powers over planning, skills, investment and revenue raising, support with transfers at first, and see subsidy requirement reduce over time.

[Pip Gradgrind @PipGradgrind]

@AscendedYield How does this tally with the relative growth of Scotland and Greater Manchester since they had increasing powers? As Britain has centralised more and more, those areas without powers have become increasingly reliant on internal transfers from London and the South East.