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Mark Jones

@mgjones.bsky.social

960 followers 2.5K following 240 posts

OU philosophy graduate, ACA

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Mark Jones

@mgjones.bsky.social

Ian Dunt is, quite rightly, not happy 👇

The reason for this absence is ideological. The government has become seduced by populism.

There are moments when it breaks free of this trance - the last Labour conference, or those now rare points where Keir Starmer’s vestigial moral sentiment gets the better of him. But Starmer has now broadly submitted to the ideology which he once set out to destroy. No.10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney happily notifies the press that he is spending 90 minutes in private meetings with Maurice Glasman, a babbling sexual neurotic who considers Steve Bannon his ally and progressives the enemy.

November 28, 2025 at 11:52 AM

Mark Jones

@mgjones.bsky.social

Superb interactive map giving a good indication of who pays the mansion tax...

The mansion tax map: where the money comes from taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/11/27/m...

November 28, 2025 at 9:07 AM

Mark Jones

@mgjones.bsky.social

Can we adjust the bubbles to show who the real snowflakes are?

November 21, 2025 at 6:31 PM

Mark Jones

@mgjones.bsky.social

The news from Italy was sufficient for me to convince my bosses to lockdown before the official lockdown - how could Government have ignored it?

The spread of the virus globally and, in particular, the escalating crisis in Italy were clear
warning signs, which should have prompted urgent planning across the four nations.
Instead, the governments did not take the pandemic seriously enough until it was too late.
February 2020 was a lost month.

November 20, 2025 at 5:15 PM

Mark Jones

@mgjones.bsky.social

Labour have lost more voters to DKs, Greens and LibDems than to Reform 👇

Labour at the Margin...
open.substack.com/pub/benansel...

November 12, 2025 at 3:58 PM

Mark Jones

@mgjones.bsky.social

👇

"The Brexiter argument always rested on a fundamentally contradictory conceit: (i) that the EU had become a massive part of our politics, our economy and our lives (true) and (ii) that it would be easy to leave and straightforward to do so without a deal, therefore meaning our leverage was strong (untrue)."

May 20, 2025 at 2:29 PM

Mark Jones

@mgjones.bsky.social

Everything Simon Wren-Lewis says in this seems so obvious it's baffling that Starmer cannot see it 👇

The possible death of the Conservative party is such a momentous milestone in UK politics that you would think the other main traditional UK party, Labour, would be doing everything they could not to make the same mistakes. Yet incredibly Labour seem to have decided to follow much the same strategy that failed the Conservative government so badly. They too are employing rhetoric and making policy that says Farage is right about small boats and immigration. This is alienating parts of their core vote just as the Conservatives alienated its southern heartlands.

May 5, 2025 at 9:25 AM

Mark Jones

@mgjones.bsky.social

Key point 👇

Bluntly, why would other countries want to get closer to, let alone ‘stand should to shoulder with’, a Britain making weaselly deals with Trump even as Trump punishes their economies and even threatens their territory? In the process, any political kudos Starmer has garnered, both domestically and internationally, for his post-Trump leadership on defending Ukraine from Russian military warfare may quickly be lost if he is unwilling to defend the UK and its allies from US economic warfare.

April 4, 2025 at 1:01 PM

Mark Jones

@mgjones.bsky.social

God, if only someone in the Labour administration could remember this👇

March 26, 2025 at 11:09 PM

Mark Jones

@mgjones.bsky.social

Excellent post. Improper balance is something that the BBC have been guilty of many times, and this despite a critical report by Steve Jones into the BBC's science coverage back in 2011. Key paragraph: