Tax in the UK is the highest it’s been since 1945. That’s well understood – but another trend has been largely missed: the number of taxes in the UK is at its highest since the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

The strange death of Labour England In Gorton & Denton, Labour's discrete voter blocs have finally been torn asunder – the white working class escaping to Reform, and the graduates-with-no-future towards the victorious Greens, in alliance with immigrant populations. Social democracy has bifurcated into two new poles of frontman national-populism and its antithesis in Polanski's eco-populism. Perhaps Labourism was just a 20th-century phenomenon, dependent on an industrial base that's no longer there. Perhaps it's had its day, making way for new, polarising political forces on our fragmentary cultural-political landscape. Full piece HERE👇 unherd.com/2026/02/the-green…

America’s political landscape is more complicated than it used to be. Here’s my attempt to depict what I see as the seven broad camps today. Most people I know fall pretty cleanly into one of these circles (each of which has some common ground with the two adjacent circles). Some additional points: - The top two circles (green/yellow) are concerned first and foremost with the rise of illiberalism—disregard for the constitution, cancel culture, mob behavior, political violence. They see liberal vs illiberal as more critical right now than left vs right. In 2020, they agreed that wokeness was bad but today they’re divided on whether Trump or Harris/Biden are the lesser of two evils. - For the middle two circles (blue/red), left vs right is the main thing. They’re not illiberal themselves but tend to focus on illiberalism from the other side while ignoring or condoning illiberalism from their own team. Both skew older and are the main consumers of traditional media, whether it be cable news or newspapers. - The two lower circles (pink/orange) share a strong sense of grievance, place utmost importance on identity, tend to view identity groups (race, religion, sex, etc.) as monoliths, and are prone to believing conspiracy theories that fit with their worldview. Both skew younger, with woke skewing feminine and upper class and groyper skewing masculine and lower class. Both use revolutionary rhetoric, seeing the establishment as rotten to the core, and readily employ illiberal tactics under the belief that desperate times call for desperate measures. Thoughts?

I don't think a single fan of sports, music, or live entertainment in general would say tickets are underpriced.