Indeed. A thing which is deeply weird about the government at the moment is how they will do something where you go 'makes sense, this will help you turn things around' and then they will immediately relapse. It's like they're trying and failing to quit smoking.

“The experiment nuances it by showing that the SD could have won support for a pro-immigration platform, if they had moralised their messaging. The study shows that by framing pro-immigration policies as a matter of what is ‘fair’ and ‘decent’, they can compete with anti-immigration messages.”

Imagine you're in a weird romcom where Paul Hollywood is your rival. Do you go "let's have a bread baking competition" or do you emphasise your own relative strengths?

Because that in short has been the central problem with the traditional two's approach to anti-immigration voters and Reform UK.

Oh look, Labour has spent months targeting the wrong voters.

Going to start calling other things that are exclusively British 'European-style'.

European-style 'Greggs'
European-style 'House of Lords'
European-style 'red telephone boxes'
European-style 'Doctor Who'
European-style 'Isthmian Premier Division'
European-style 'Kent'

Here, @timbale.bsky.social does a great job spelling out why virtually every expert on the far right (that I have heard from) rejects “hard right” as terminology for these parties and their ideology. Editors should really stop this nonsense.

For SD Parties this means that as long as their program is economically to the left, it does not matter much to working class voters what it includes culturally e.g. on immigration. In contrast, educated middle class voters will punish a program for being less culturally progressive.

What Abou-Chadi et al. show here is not just that conservative migration positions won't help social-democrats to attract voters, but also that left positions on retirement (that is allowing for early retirement) make social-democrats most attractive (and right positions make them less attracitve).

Just received news that 27 people have been arrested in Parliament Square under the Terrorism Act 2000 for holding signs saying "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action".
This is real police state behaviour.

This is profoundly illiberal. Yvette Cooper has always had authoritarian tendencies but this is outrageous.

The fault and the blame for the damage that may be done by vote splitting lies with those parties that, for completely self-serving reasons, have failed to abolish the disgraceful FPTP system, not those refusing to be cowed into submission. If you're worried about the threat, give us real democracy!

This quite dramatic poll is:

Best ever Scottish Green share polled on all votes (big pinch of salt); not best seat projection due to SNP pressure on proportionality

Worst Conservative share I've ever seen on all votes; catastrophically dire seat projection, first time I've had them single-digits.

This why first-past-the-post is such a terrible system for electing a government.

Full tortuous analogy in my latest Guardian article: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

🚨 Are young women becoming more left-wing & young men more right-wing?
We analyzed 32 European countries (1990–2023).
📊 Some show growing gaps—others don’t.
📊 Gaps tend to be bigger where gender equality is higher.
w/ @hudde.bsky.social
👉 doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

We deserves change. Glasgow deserves change.

I’m fighting to be Glasgow’s newest socialist Green MSP, but I’m not fighting alone.

Vote Ellie #1
Vote Iris #2
Vote Seonad #3

We have a future to fight for 💚

Follow @radicalglagreens.bsky.social for updates.

Given ongoing discussion over where Reform UK supporters in Scotland are switching from, he's a Sankey diagram showing voter flows between the 2019 GE, 2024 GE, and constituency voting intention for the 2026 SE.

84% of Reform UK voters have switched from the Tories or Labour, just 12% from the SNP.

🧵 Where do Reform votes come from?

Following Reform's chunky share in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, it's worth looking at where those votes come from. We're not getting much polling in Scotland lately, but we can check the most recent Survation and Norstat (2nd - 5th and 27th - 30th of May)...

Alongside my Holyrood tracker, I've been maintaining a tracker of independence support across all polls. Given a degree of commentary will be given to the topic in the wake of today's by-election, here's an update:

We have the first, v. narrow, Yes lead since late 2020:

Yes: 46.2%
No: 45.6%
DK: 8%

‘Glasgow special’ but two unelected reps, 2 Labour and one rep from a party that has 1 cllr and is about to lose both its seats.

As usual no greens … despite us being Glasgow’s 3rd party and polling to increase representation on all levels.

Explain to me how it’s not bias?

Not often that one one of my students runs for Parliament (again)! I can confirm Iris will be a great addition to the Holyrood benches

Scotland would only need one little reform to get rid of most disproportionality - move from regional lists to one national list, just like New Zealand does.

New Zealand even has now a higher share of constituency seats in parliament than Scotland does. Still allows for very proportional outcomes.

(The other advantage to moving to a pure PR system is ending the five-yearly manufactured outrage about "tactical list voting" from the same people who are peculiarly quiet about a UK voting system that, by making most votes as worthwhile dropping into a shredder as a ballot box, is rife with it)