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Gaby Hinsliff

@gabyhinsliff.bsky.social

59K followers 710 following 1.9K posts

Guardian columnist & writer, author of Half a Wife, sometimes on telly/Guardian Politics Weekly podcast. No, I didn't write the headline. Event host & speaker https://www.specialistspeakers.com/?p=2705

www.specialistspeakers.com

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 3h

Anyway good luck to everyone who’s gone full circle from ‘everyone must read Dryden’ curriculums (Gove 2010) to ‘bin English degrees’ (Badenoch 2025), hope the years of rote learning poetry felt worth it

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 15h

Fascinating marker of how far the Tory target voter has shifted from ‘middle class parents wanting their kids to go to uni’ to ‘old people who didn’t go and don’t see what anyone else should either’. (Obv there’s a solid case for apprenticeships, but not convinced that’s what this is about)

Times Higher Education (THE) @timeshighered.bsky.social · 16h

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is expected to announce plans to cut the number of UK university places by about 100,000 annually by reintroducing student number controls, reports Patrick Jack #edusky
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/badenochs-number-caps-plan-would-cut-100000-university-places

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 16h

It’s a terrific piece and I’m glad you wrote it

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Reposted by Gaby Hinsliff

Sathnam Sanghera @sathnam.bsky.social · 23h

I've responded to Robert Jenrick's vile comments in @thetimes.com

www.thetimes.com/life-style/c...

I sang Jerusalem with Robert Jenrick at school — he’s wrong about race

The Conservative MP has complained that, visiting Handsworth in Birmingham, he didn’t see ‘another white face’. You can’t judge whether someone is integrated by skin colour, argues fellow Wulfrunian S...

www.thetimes.com

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 16h

WELL

Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 16h

‘Working class girls don’t read’? Jesus wept.

Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 1d

newsflash: you absolutely did not have to be posh to grow up reading Rivals for the dirty bits, you just had to be a teenage girl in the Eighties

Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 2d

REAL patriotism would be leaving a copy of Rivals on every roundabout in England

Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 2d

Nooo not July Cooper! Was banking on her being immortal & thus proving that champagne is good for you. RIP the woman that basically defined an entire generation’s sexuality, gone to warm herself by the Aga in the sky - any horses you pass today should be given a Polo mint in memoriam.

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 2d

Sorry, but you’ve utterly missed the point! Obv they’re not homogenous - that’s why they’re in different parties. May be that by 2029 they have a common interest (not having Farage as PM) but v much not a common party. That’s the problem. You’re just illustrating how hard it is to solve.

Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 4d

Great minds!

Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 4d

What’s even more interesting is that that’s your implication, not mine. This is going to be difficult for all three parties. It means changes in the way all of them operate.

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 4d

Liberals would also say theirs is a very distinct creed and they wouldn’t be wrong, any more than you are: ditto the SNP, Plaid. These parties are not the same or they wouldn’t exist as disparate parties, but they now have a common interest. That’s the problem

Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 4d

Yes. It took a fair bit of not exactly official co operation at local level, which I wrote about at the time

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 4d

Yes, what happens the other side of a unite-to-defeat election Reform is also a big problem

Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 4d

Fair. Stakes are a bit different this time though.

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 4d

This is an absolutely brilliant indication of what I’m talking about

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 4d

And yes I know it’s a long way away, lots of water under the bridge before then etc. But the next election is probably going to be about which bloc - the Lab-Lib-Green-etc left or the Tory-Reform right - unites first in vaguely workable fashion, and how well its voters understand what to do where.

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 4d

If in 2029 we’re looking at a grand coalition of the willing on the left-to-centre to beat Reform, and tactical voting on a mahoosive scale, then the various bits of that coalition will have to work together on some level or they’re just going to eat each other’s votes

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 4d

Heading home from Green Party conference where I listened to (another) party of the left positioning itself as (another) crucial vehicle to fight Reform, & while in some ways it’s good this marketplace is crowded not empty, can’t help feeling that crowdedness may become a problem

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 4d

This is utterly mad, given British movements against anti-semitism have refused to have anything to do with TR for good reason

Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 4d

This Israeli government decision to host Tommy Robinson will widen the growing gulf between the Netanyahu government and the British public, including the broad majority of Jews in Britain (3/4 of whom dsapproved of Netanyahu, before this new link to this anti-Muslim racist UK far right convict).

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 4d

Well, you certainly seem to have failed to read it.

Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 5d

Thanks Duncan. I’d just like to point out that as ever you wrote about it first

Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 5d

They absolutely do, and many parents understand and sympathise with that, while still finding it quite difficult to pay the nursery bill

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Gaby Hinsliff @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social · 5d

To be fair, my in-house student focus group appears to be going on a lot of pub crawls right now but may sadly discover in about two weeks that it has run out of money

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