"Manchesterism" has, • Built an extra runway at its municipally owned airport for £172m (2001) and is currently building a new terminal. • Built multiple tram extensions that finish early and on budget. • Gone from planning application to open in 4 years for a new arena.

Triple lock, more defence spending, sticking to Reeves' fiscal rules- Be good for Burnham to articulate what he'd do differently to Starmer

The NI data was the clincher for me in starting to block deniers of the economic cost of Brexit. So clear in the data and the models. An economist's dream of a very clean natural control. ukandeu.ac.uk/levelling-up-b…

This is a good read and I didn't realise how much Northern Ireland has overperformed post-Brexit. NI economic output up 12% since Q4 2019 vs 5.2% for UK.

We already know Manchester needs new underground stations- Their construction & through running lines to meet them need funding now, otherwise the city's growth will be choked by it's infrastructure business-live.co.uk/economic…

I find this “defence as an engine for growth” stuff v tiresome. THERE ARE FEW THINGS LESS EFFECTIVE TO SPEND MONEY ON IF YOU WANT ECONOMIC MULTIPLIERS/LONG-TERM PRODUCTIVITY GAINS ETC. Capital expenditure on: transport infrastructure energy grid/generation housebuilding digital infrastructure/connectivity investment in skills training are absolutely foundational for future growth. We’re talking about depriving these areas of £££ so that we can give more contracts to Raytheon & BAE for shitty equipment that doesn’t work/is unsuited to modern warfare. We’re fretting over our ability to protect bases in Bahrain, defend the UAE from attack (for some reason) & send frigates to Cyprus, when we can’t build infrastructure outside of London, can’t stop daily dinghies arriving on the Kent coastline, we’ve effectively legalised petty criminality, & we’ve seen 0 real wage/productivity growth in ~20yrs. I’m all for targeted defence-industrial investment that’s GENUINELY leveraged to NATIONAL production/regional manufacturing jobs/NATIONAL resilience etc.: 👉Shift £££ from maintaining foreign bases/overseas deployments to domestic supply chains in post-industrial areas, making drone equipment, conventional weapons etc. 👉Supporting R&D in advanced materials, AI systems, microchips, satellite/space technologies etc with dual military/civilian uses 👉Boost cyber defences, national cyber resilience & attack capabilities 👉Drive to energy independence via nuclear, O&G, AND renewable investment; drive to food security I’m not, however, prepared to forgo much-needed investment in civilian infrastructure & the public realm in order to placate the Sensible Realists™️who insist the most pressing issue facing the country is the fact that we can’t punctually deploy the Royal Navy to the Gulf, or that we’re “losing our influence” on the “world stage”, or that we, a rich island NATO member in the Eastern Atlantic, apparently can’t defend ourselves from a country 1500 miles away that’s unable to hold territory in a poor, corrupt, Russian-speaking, Russian Orthodox region of a non-NATO neighbour, full of people who used to vote for pro-Kremlin oligarchs. It’s insane, frankly.

"Decline is a choice". It’s a phrase having a moment. One of the most famous theories of *why* nations decline was made by Mancur Olson in 1982. He argued stability was a drag. Without exogenous disruption societies silt up with lobby groups that throttle growth. To update one corner of his theory I build a database of the 80,000 lobbying associations that exist in Britain today. The rate of formation has inexorably accelerated since the 1970s. New piece on the endogenous production of red tape 👇

Truly depressing to think any Labour MP thinks this is the best use of public money given the state of the public sector & the intergenerational social contract We're seeing @AndyBurnhamGM 's worst traits on show this week

Any party that wants to make the supply case needs to show the public that our current housing stock is simply insufficient. We can talk about prices, but maybe the more understandable example is the growing number of young adults trapped living with their parents

Short-sighted, feckless, foolish. The quickest way to understand why things have gone so astray in this country for so long is to understand that we have failed to make capital investments for a long period of time.

Feels a bit corrupt personally

Might be the dumbest move any government could make

Because it has higher taxes to start with, having raised them in the 80s while Thatcher cut them, and used those higher taxes and lower debt to invest heavily in the foundations of growth such as transport and R&D giving it an economy that today is over 30% stronger than Britain.

Why would we do this when it would mean UK students paying more?

Again, too centralised- It serves London Bring it under the control of the GLA and the Mayor of London (and grant it the borrowing powers required to invest in new infrastructure so we can meet housing demand)

Political equivalent of nuclear fusion