'You know in the UK they can pick their election. They say 'we're going to have the election next week''. I want to be able to do that. Would that be possible?'

Interesting index of British influence: that it is now a coup for an incumbent British foreign sec to meet a presidential candidate. (Miliband, Clegg, Hague et al met Romney, without much fuss.)

Two BIG job openings at The Economist right now. The first is our Marjorie Deane internship. It's a six month gig in London with our finance and economics section. No previous experience required. Many great colleagues who work at the paper started here. economist.com/finance-and-ec…

A textbook case of Ban It Harderism

economist.com/britain/2024/0…

Our build-an-American-voter interactive is now live! The key finding? The closer you get to God, the closer you get to Trump
economist.com/interactive/us…

High tech eclipse watching

A beautiful Anglo-American cultural moment

Q: Who Found a Way to Crack the U.K.’s Premier Quiz Show?

nytimes.com/2024/04/07/bus…

Valerie Amos seems rather under-priced as the next chancellor. Current head of a big Oxford college (ie unlike rory/May); ex-head of SOAS; ex-UN under sec gen; ex-high commissioner to Australia; first female BAME cabinet minister. Few with comparable insider/outsider experience.

Now 43 knights and 9 dames on the Conservative benches.

Very interesting. Whether a Conservative Party in opposition can adopt the procedural traps Starmer pioneered - the humble address, privileges references Etc - is a big non-barking dog…

Fiscal rules (and headroom against them) are pretty inescapable in conversations about Britain's economic policy. But how do they work, and should the UK even have them?

I wrote on this dry-but-important area, article and quick thread below:

economist.com/britain/2024/0…

In the British government’s hands a statement of the constitutionally obvious—that Parliament is sovereign to legislate as it wishes—has been used to do whatever is politically convenient.

Soon that stance may not seem so smart to the Tories econ.st/3veHtJ8 👇

Seems massively unhelpful to Susan Hall's campaign. How do you rally voters behind her anti-Ulez campaign if govt does it whoever wins?

What happens when you spend a decade weakening the checks and balances of the British state… and then your political opponents take office? A question surprisingly few Conservatives are asking.

economist.com/britain/2024/0…

'The government has recently made it harder for many immigrant workers to bring their families with them. But NHS workers are exempt from the new restrictions—a case of the state creating one set of rules for business and another, more liberal set of rules for itself.'

What happens when you spend a decade weakening the checks and balances of the British state… and then your political opponents take office? A question surprisingly few Conservatives are asking.

economist.com/britain/2024/0…