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Philip Stephens

@philipstephens.bsky.social

4.6K followers 270 following 900 posts

Writer, historian, Contrib Ed, FT, Robert Bosch Fellow, Berlin, author These Divided Isles, and Britain Alone (both Faber), British, Irish and European. philipstephens.substack.com, philipstephens.net

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · Apr 17

The book I always wanted to write. How Partition turned the Irish Question in British politics into the British Question in Irish politics. And the extraordinary mix of enmity and intimacy that finally mapped a path to a different future. Now open for advance orders:
linktr.ee/thesedivided...

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 2h

Times/S Times campaign against Jonathan Powell accuses him of “caring about one audience above others: Starmer himself”. Clearly it’s a heinous crime for PM’s national security adviser to prioritise giving advice to, well, the PM..

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 13h

Why does Ireland have one rugby but two football teams?

Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 15h

Tony Blair promises to be as effective in Palestine as Paul Bremer in Iraq ,…

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Yashar Ali 🐘 @yasharali.bsky.social · 1d

One of my favorite moments from Nobel Prize history:

The Nobel Committee couldn’t reach Stanford professor Paul Milgrom to let him know that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics, so his fellow winner, Robert Wilson, went over to his house in the middle of the night to wake him up!

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 1d

No, not missing anything. Peter. Rather naively and glibly Economist assumes that cement mixers somehow inimical to Oslo - when in fact the accords specifically set out a step by step path to build Palestinian state from the bottom up. Assume written by someone who hadn't bothered to read accords

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 1d

I'm confused. The weird Peter Thiel has been preaching that the Anti-Christ and Armageddon are waiting just around the next corner, while the similarly weird octogenerian Larry Ellison thinks he's found the formula to live until he is 150. Who to believe?

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 2d

Sad to say it won’t deter the lazy journalists who see polls as ready made click bait, the polling cos out to make easy money or the professional “analysts” who bestow profound significance on voters’ every cough!

Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 2d

Private Eye offers up an excellently scornful commentary on the relentless polling. It’s become ridiculous and has oversimplified our politics to dangerous levels of stupid and irresponsible.

SHOCK POLL:
NIGEL FARAGE WILL BE PM TOMORROW
IN an amazing poll conducted
by The Pointless Polling Company, it was revealed that voters' intentions
may well change over the next three and a half years and at present it's 100 percent impossible to guess what the next government might look like.
However, 99 percent of journalists
agree that it would be much more fun if we had an election tomorrow and everybody resigned and everything was chaos and Farage had a go at being PM, just for the hell of it, because it was so much fun when
Brexit happened and then the government kept falling every five minutes and we could write endless pieces about (cont. p94)

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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 2d

Private Eye offers up an excellently scornful commentary on the relentless polling. It’s become ridiculous and has oversimplified our politics to dangerous levels of stupid and irresponsible.

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Helene von Bismarck @helenebismarck.bsky.social · 2d

And retweet!

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 4d

Riddled

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 4d

….until we discovered the answers it gave were fiddled with mistakes and misunderstandings

Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 4d

I think a good part of the populist revolt is a reaction against the liberal economic experiment of the 1980s …another good part is a reaction against the social liberalism of the 60s and 70s …in other words Farage is the counterrevolution

Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 7d

Thank you for this

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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 7d

"Milei is amazing. It's Thatcherism on steroids. Cutting and slashing. That's leadership" - Nigel Farage

Milei would be the "template" for my government - Kemi Badenoch

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Rob Archer @robarcher.bsky.social · 7d

A Washington Post poll finds 61% of American Jews say Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, and about 4 in 10 say it’s committing genocide. wapo.st/42kNv8o

Sept. 2-9, 2025, Washington Post Jewish Americans poll

Results from a nationwide survey of Jewish Americans on views of Israel, Gaza and other topics.

wapo.st

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Nathalie Tocci @nathalietocci.bsky.social · 7d

Proud of my country these days. In solidarity with Gaza #FreeGaza #FreePalestine

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 7d

I often wonder what young Israeli soldiers and pilots , many of them reservists, feel when they fire the rockets into civilian areas that kill so many of Gaza’s children …do they see them as necessary collateral damage? Have there been any good articles (in Haaretz?) exploring this?

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Chris Grey @chrisgrey.bsky.social · 8d

Has Labour woken up? Latest post on my Brexit & Brexitism Blog analysing how Starmer’s Labour seems to be taking a firmer line with Reform and Brexitism, rattling Farage, but many ambiguities and contradictions remain: chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2025/10/has-...

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 8d

Today’s opinion poll write ups would be more useful if they all carried a health warning along the lines of …”in 1982 the SDP-Liberal alliance rose to 50 pct in the polls. At the election only a year later its support was 25 pct and it won 23 seats. The Tories won a landslide majority of 144.”

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 8d

Think you missed the point …I my exasperation was not ad hominen

Though I would say …and this is a general not specific point …I would not justify any role just because some people ‘do it for a living”

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 8d

Intention was not to “have a go” at anyone …it’s about the issue not any individual …rather to express exasperation at the constant focus on polls to the exclusion of so much else in the national political conversation …

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Hannah Howe @hannahhowe.bsky.social · 8d

Does any polling company ask the question: who will you vote for in the 2029 General Election?

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 8d

Of course polls have useful information …the problem is elevation to the extent that headline poll nos elbow aside everything else in political discourse …much easier to headline a few poll numbers than try to answer hard questions about the economic/social/ international forces reshaping society

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 8d

I’m afraid analysing polls is now the click bait alternative to serious thought about forces and choices shaping policy and politics …very few analyses attach the huge caveats about swings between early polls and election outcomes …poll respondents know there is not going to be an election today!

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Philip Stephens @philipstephens.bsky.social · 8d

Oh wonderful …another treatise suggesting that polls taken nearly 4 years before a general election should be taken as a guide to the future …surely there is something more interesting to say/write about ?

Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 8d

As Labour conference wraps up, I've done a piece for the Swingometer looking at their record in the polls so far.

Visual summary below...

swingometer.substack.com/p/labour-how...

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