The Prime Minister: Britain’s Most Powerful Person Who Technically Has No Legal Existence | From First Among Equals to Sofa Government: How the Office of Prime Minister Became Whatever the Incumbent Decides It Is
The British Energy Crisis, Net Zero, and the Politics of Not Being Cold in the Dark | North Sea Oil, Offshore Wind, Nuclear Power, the Energy Price Shock, GB Energy, and the Transition From Carbon That Is Simultaneously Urgent and Politically Complicated
The British Education System’s Hidden Architecture: Selection, Setting, Streaming, University Access, and the Mechanisms That Reproduce Advantage Below the Policy Radar | Grammar Schools, Within-School Setting, Russell Group Access, Clearing, Degree Classification, Graduate Premium, and the Education System That Appears Meritocratic and Functions Selectively
Local Government: The Tier of Democracy That Central Government Treats as a Regional Office | Councils, Metro Mayors, Austerity Cuts, Statutory Duties, and the Slowly Dawning Recognition That the State Cannot Be Run Entirely From Whitehall
Europe Unveils Bold New Plan to Rethink Europe, Identical to the Last Eleven Plans By Harriet Collins, UK Today LONDON. Europe announced this week that it is, once again, at a crossroads, a location it has now occupied continuously since roughly 1957, which makes it less a crossroads than a permanent address with a postcode. To mark the occasion, leaders unveiled a bold new plan to rethink the European project, which…
London Cycle Superhighways Now a Battleground of Righteous Fury | Cyclists, drivers and pedestrians united only in mutual indignation
The British Welfare State: A Monument to Post-War Ambition Currently Being Maintained With Reduced Funding and Managed Expectations | Beveridge, Bevan, Austerity, Universal Credit, and the Ongoing Argument About What the State Owes Its Citizens
The British Education Inequality: What School You Attend Is the Most Reliable Predictor of Where You End Up | Private Schools, Oxbridge, Grammar Schools, Pupil Premium, Attainment Gaps, and the Evidence That Britain’s Education System Reproduces Rather Than Reduces Inequality
Left-Wing Politicians Volunteer Their Verbal Output to Britain’s Fertiliser-Starved Farmers in Nation’s Most Generous Offer Since the Corn Laws Westminster Finally Discovers a Resource It Has Been Overproducing Since 1997 — Bullshit! In what political historians are already calling the most consequential agricultural policy announcement since the introduction of set-aside subsidies, a coalition of left-wing MPs has stepped forward to offer British farmers something Westminster has never once been short…
The British Monarchy’s Finances: Crown Estates, Sovereign Grant, Duchy of Lancaster, Duchy of Cornwall | How the Royal Family Is Funded, What It Costs, What It Earns, and Whether Any of This Makes Constitutional Sense
British Parliament Announces All Legislation Will Now Be Written in Emoji: “Words Are So 2020s” | MPs Confident That Unicode Can Express Complex Policy Without Ambiguity
Collectivist Egalitarianism: Height Is Unfair And Will Be Discussed | Nobody Should Have Anything Anyone Else Does Not, Including Cushions
The Police, Courts, and Criminal Justice: The System That Is Always in Crisis and Never Quite Reformed | Stop and Search, Court Backlogs, Prison Overcrowding, Probation Privatisation, and the Remarkable Persistence of a Justice System That Functions Despite Everything
NHS Waiting List Drops Dramatically After Patients Forget Why They Joined It Health Secretary Hails ‘Cognitive Efficiency’ as New Pillar of Healthcare Reform The NHS has achieved its most significant reduction in waiting list numbers since the pandemic, with health officials confirming this week that approximately 340,000 patients have been successfully removed from the backlog after simply forgetting what was wrong with them. The Department of Health called it a…
Anti-Capitalist Statism: Every Vending Machine Is A Suspect | The State Alternative To Crisps Is Coming Soon
Limited Government Conservatism: Politely Asking The State To Leave | The Houseguest Who Rearranged The Kitchen
The Lib Dems: The Party That Is Always About to Break Through and Never Quite Does (Except When It Does) | Alliance, Ashdown’s Revival, Tuition Fees, Coalition Collapse, Corbyn Bounce, Swinson’s Revoke, Davey’s Recovery, and the Eternal Position of British Politics’ Third Party
Glossary of UK Constitutional and Political Terms — Every Word You Need to Understand British Politics and Several You Will Wish You Had Never Encountered | From Addled Parliament to Writ of Summons: Over 150 Terms Defined, Contextualised, and Occasionally Interrogated for the Contradictions They Contain
Parliament and the Media: How Broadcasting, Digital Technology, and Social Media Have Transformed Democratic Visibility | The Televising of Parliament, Hansard Online, PMQs as Television, Twitter Politicians, TikTok Campaigns, and the Double-Edged Sword of Democratic Transparency
Classical Libertarianism: Liberty Is The Only Honest Verb | Leave It Alone, With A Smile And A Long Paragraph
The Tory Leadership Graveyard: Every Conservative Leader Since 2016 and What Finished Them | Cameron’s Referendum, May’s Brexit, Johnson’s Parties, Truss’s Budget, Sunak’s Election, Badenoch’s Inheritance, and the Party That Keeps Selecting Leaders It Subsequently Destroys
The Treasury vs. Everyone: How Britain’s Finance Ministry Became Its Shadow Government | Spending Reviews, Fiscal Rules, OBR Forecasts, and the Department That Has the Final Word on Every Policy the Rest of Government Wants to Pursue
Public Ownership Maximalism: A Ministry For Pubs | Privatisation Is The Daily Mistake, Nationalise The Kettle
Technocratic Redistributionism: A Microsimulation For Every Sorrow | If The Data Shows It, Politics Should Catch Up By Friday
Stalinist Central Command: The Five-Year Plan Hits Tooting | Tractor Statistics As A Love Language
British Foreign Policy Since Brexit: Global Britain, or Just Britain, Trying | The Integrated Review, AUKUS, CPTPP, the Atlantic Declaration, and the Art of Rebranding Reduced Influence as Strategic Autonomy
StickySpanner.co.uk: Britain’s Official Website for Things That Don’t Quite Work Five Observations Before We Begin (Or Possibly After a Short Delay) Britain can build a bridge across an estuary but cannot make a printer talk to a laptop in Croydon. Scientists believe the two devices are “aware of each other but not on speaking terms.” Every British boiler breaks only when a child has shampoo in their hair. This has…
The Scottish National Party: How to Build a Movement, Win a Referendum You Lost, and Then Lose an Election You Should Have Won | Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf, John Swinney, Independence Strategy, Police Investigations, and the Party That Governed Scotland for Seventeen Years and Ran Out of Road
The Future of the United Kingdom: Will It Still Exist in 2040 and What Would It Look Like If It Does? | Scottish Independence Trajectories, Welsh Nationalism, Northern Ireland’s Border Poll, English Nationalism, Federal Options, and the Constitutional Scenarios for Britain’s Next Twenty Years
Brexit: Britain Tried to Divorce Itself and Forgot to Hire a Solicitor | The Day the United Kingdom Voted to Take Back Control of a Process It Had Never Actually Lost
