Brexit. Trump’s election. And George Osborne left the Treasury, and the Conservative Party deemed that deficit reduction no longer mattered, yet it was not so.

After falling steadily by an average of 1% of GDP each year, the deficit then stalls at between 2 and 3% of GDP, before shooting up during COVID, then falling to a higher level than before.

In addition to the headline budget deficit statistics, we see it in item after item, including the civil service:

(A common response is to argue we needed more civil servants because of Brexit. Well, the European Commission employs 33,000 officials, so even if we assume that these needed to be replaced 1:1 in the UK,1 we’ve added more than 100,000 FTE civil servants on top of that).

The number of those on out-of-work benefits:

Or spending on Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in schools:

The same pattern can be seen across budget line after budget line.

The sharp-eyed will note that not all of these series begin going upwards in 2016. As Chancellor, Osborne put in place a number of measures - most notably a four-year cash freeze in most working-age benefits2 that took effect from April 2016 - which ensured spending continued to fall slightly (albeit much less quickly) after he left office, with both public spending and the deficit, as shares of GDP, reaching their lowest in 2018-19.

Some of the subsequent rises also had their source in legislation passed during the Coalition period. The Children and Families Act 2014 is typically cited as the primary reason for the subsequent expansion of SEND spending. But the crucial shift remains 2016: from a government committed to deficit reduction to a succession of governments that were not.

Where spending lines rose unexpectedly under these governments, they were permitted to do so, with no corrective action being taken. Where formerly good stewardship resulted in savings, these were almost always recycled into further spending, rather than into deficit reduction or tax cuts. Public spending now stands at a historic high of around 44% of GDP.

We have lived beyond our means, with debt, spending and taxation all rising - through negligence, through weakness, and through our own deliberate fault. Though we are barely richer than we were a decade ago,3 we have invented new ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ on which to spend the money we don’t have.4 To continue in this way is not sustainable.

In the week running up to the Budget, the 2016 gambit begins from a simple premise: that in most areas of public spending there is no reason why government should be spending a penny more than in 2016, after adjusting for age and population.

What might that look like - and how could we get there?

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But what makes a good secondary school? What’s important - and what is meaningless fluff?

This guide is a systematic breakdown of the quantitative and qualitative factors that are worth considering in choosing a secondary school.1 We’ll look at metrics such as Progress 8 and Attainment 8 and what they really mean, as well as what to look at in Ofsted results. And at the end we’ll briefly consider three of the big ‘category’ choices - private schools, grammar schools and single-sex schools - while recognising that these are not feasible options for all or most parents. In doing this, we’ll be making extensive use of the Government’s ‘Compare School and College Performance’ site - which not only contains a wealth of data, but also links to other useful information sites.2

As this is often a blog about education policy, I want to clarify that this piece is explicitly not about policy, but about making good choices as parents. For example, we might think the Government should not penalise a school for having a challenging intake - but as a parent, you might absolutely wish to take this into account. Similarly, when I discuss grammar schools or private schools, this is without prejudice as to whether or not they should exist, whether they should be taxed, and so on.

What the right choice is will be different for different families - but some choices are better than others, and knowing how to make the best use of the information available can help you make the choice for you, whatever it is you value.

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Meta-Issues

1. Know what you want. Every child is different. By the time you’re choosing a secondary school you’ll have a good sense whether you most need a school that will stretch the brightest - or one that supports the less able.3 Are sports - or music - something which you value as fun, or something you want the school to enable at a very high level of capability? Does your child have a disability? No school is perfect, and it’s good to be clear on what factors you care most about.

2. Know what you are prepared to do. Are you willing to move? Within your town? Within your county? Between counties? Are you able - or willing - to pay school fees? To prep a child for an entrance exam? To attend a church to gain access to a faith school? There are no right answers here - but the more you are willing or able to do, the greater your choices are.

Quantitative factors

Within this section, factors are presented in rough order of descending importance.

3. Progress 8. Progress 8 is the single best measure of how ‘good’ a school is, academically. It measures the average progress made by each child between entry and GCSE, taking into account the prior attainment of those children on entry, and considering 8 GCSEs.4 Because Progress 8 takes into account almost all children in the school, it is more resistant than most measures to ‘gaming’ (eg focusing on children at a ‘pass’ boundary, as the old % gaining five GCSEs at A*-C did), taking into account the performance of children throughout the ability spectrum.

   

   A Progress 8 score of 0 means pupils make exactly the progress you would expect them to. A Progress 8 score of 1 means they make on average 1 grade more progress in every GCSE (so a child who would have got eight 6s at a perfectly average school would get eight 7s).5 A Progress 8 score of -0.5 means they make on average half a grade less progress in every GCSE (so a child who would have got eight 6s at a perfectly average school would get four 6s and four 5s).6 Around 1 in 6 schools have a Progress 8 of 0.5 or higher; around 1 in 30 have a Progress 8 of 1.0 or higher.
   
   Note that because Progress 8 is calculated on the basis of SATs, which were cancelled during COVID, the most recent Progress 8 score is from 2023-24 (which requires clicking through from the main page). It is still very much worth looking at, despite being two years out of date - though worth double checking there haven’t been major changes at the school since then.

4. Attainment 8. Attainment 8 tells you how well the children do academically, on an absolute scale. It is based on performance in up to 8 GCSEs: English and Maths (counted double); three subjects from a bucket of sciences, computer science, history, geography and modern languages; and three ‘wild’ subjects (including vocational equivalents). You get told how well a school does compared to its local authority and to the national average.

   

   For any given level of Progress 8, you’d ideally want your child to be in a high performing cohort. A brighter cohort can learn faster and make more progress, finishing at a higher place.7 High attainment is correlated with better behaviour, which means less disruption in the class, more learning, and less bullying.

5. Travel time. Don’t underestimate how much a long travel time takes out of your child’s life. Choosing a school half an hour away means 190 hours less per year for your child: time that comes out of study, play, extra-curricular activities, (later on) part-time work - or simply sleep.8

   
   There are additional benefits to a school in easy walking or cycling distance. Your child will be able to go to any after-school activities they want, regardless of the commitments of other members of the family, and their friends are more likely to also live within easy distance.
   

6. Stretching the top and supporting the bottom. Progress 8 and Attainment 8 are averages - and can conceal weaknesses at either the top or the bottom. Some schools don’t stretch the top, feeling ‘a 7 is enough’; others don’t do enough to support those who are struggling.

   1. Grade 4 or above in English and Maths is a key indicator for how the school supports weaker pupils. You can find it under ‘Additional entry and achievement measures’ at the bottom of the main secondary page. Nationally, 65% of children achieve this.

      

   2. Number of pupils getting into Oxbridge is the best universal proxy for really stretching the top. Not because Oxbridge is the be-all and end-all (and some pupils who could get in might choose not to apply), but because it’s an indicator that a school can’t really hide from.9 As part of its crusade to cut down tall poppies, the Government has now removed this indicator from the performance tables, but most schools boast about it (and will certainly tell you if you ask). A large secondary school which gets no-one into Oxbridge year after year is failing its top performers - and most likely those just below that level too.

7. Attendance. At an individual level, school attendance is highly correlated to academic performance. While your own child’s attendance is largely up to you (and them!), at a school level, poor average attendance either suggests the school is doing something wrong, or that it has a particularly troubled intake. Neither is something you want for your child.

There’s a plethora of additional data available on the performance site (see below), but unless there’s something very specifically you care about - languages, say - there’s a danger of losing the wood for the trees. The headline indicators above are your most reliable quantitative guides.

Qualitative factors

As with the quantitative factors, within this section, factors are presented in rough order of descending importance.

7. Ofsted Inspections are your single best source of rich, qualitative information about a school’s strengths and weaknesses. The major caveat is that the longer ago one occurred, the greater the risk that it is no longer accurate - particularly if the head teacher, or something else significant, has changed, during that time.

   Prior to summer 2024, Ofsted inspections gave an overall rating and ratings in five sub-areas10, each of which can be Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement or Inadequate.

   

   More recent inspections give ratings in seven different sub-areas, each of which can be graded Exceptional, Strong, Expected, Needs Attention or Urgent Improvement Required.

   

   In both cases, however, I would value Ofsted reports less for the precise rating,11 and more for the detailed information they give you about the school’s strength and weaknesses. This is presented in plain English over 2-3 pages, and is highly accessible:

   

8. Behaviour. Good behaviour is the key to almost everything else in a school. Without it, children cannot learn well as lessons are disrupted. Bullying increases and children are less happy - or in the worst cases, unsafe. Teachers switch from being educators to crowd control.

   Don’t rely on what a school says - almost no school will admit to being lax on behaviour.12 Ofsted directly inspects behaviour (combined with ‘attitudes’ in the old inspections and ‘attendance’ in the new) and you should take what the report says seriously.

   Ask teachers and senior leadership13 what their approach is to low-level disruption, lateness, and missed homework14, and whether there is a consistent approach to behaviour across the whole school. A clear, consistent and enforced uniform policy is a good indicator the school also takes behaviour seriously. And finally, ask parents whose children already attend, who will be able to give first-hand insights as to what it is really like.15

9. Minimising highly disruptive pupils. A single highly disruptive child can seriously damage the learning of every other child in the class - and in the worst case endanger their safety. Although Government policy systematically prioritises the ‘rights’ of that child over the rights of the 29 who wish to learn, a good school will do its best to mitigate the impact on other children.

   This is difficult to determine, for obvious reasons. Beyond strong evidence of good behaviour, helpful indicators to look for include a lower than average proportion of SEND pupils, a school that is willing to permanently exclude children, and policies (and practices) of removing highly disruptive children from classrooms where necessary. If the school has been accused of ‘off-rolling’,16 this should also be taken as a positive rather than a negative indicator.

10. Visiting the school. Don’t be misled by snazzy equipment and shiny buildings - these make very little difference to learning progress. Instead, use the visit to ask the questions that have been raised by your consideration of the data and reports. How does it actually handle missed homework? Does it set or stream - and if so, in which subjects, from what years? Whether it’s SEND, homework, behaviour, music or anything else, this is your chance to dig beneath the surface - and find out the things that can’t be boiled down to stats. One rule of thumb is that if a school can’t explain clearly what its approach to something is - whether that’s stretching high attainers or tackling bullying - then it’s probably not a strong point for it.17

11. Ethos. A child doesn’t spend 6,000 hours in a school without it shaping character. Most schools promote widely shared values such as perseverance, hard work and kindness, but in other areas they may vary. Faith schools - C of E, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish - will of course emphasise their faith, to a greater or lesser extent. Due to the actions of the last Conservative government, all schools are required to promote equality, diversity and LGBTQ+, but how they do this can vary greatly, from broad-based tolerance and respect for others, to a much more ‘woke’ approach; depending on your own values, you may have a strong preference for one stance or the other. Then there are Welsh-medium schools, international schools…the list goes on.

12. Extra-curricular. Far more than a generation ago, good schools will have a wealth of extra-curricular activities they put on, at lunchtime and after school. Most good academic schools will be strong here - but inevitably, some schools will be stronger in some areas than others. If your child has a particular talent, or passion, for a particular area - music, football, drama, coding - then you may wish to take this into account.

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Private Schools, Grammar Schools, Single-Sex Schools

I recognise these options are not available to everyone. Private schools typically require a certain level of wealth;18 grammar schools only exist in parts of the country and the prevalence of single-sex schools - certainly in the state sector - also varies dramatically depending on geography. Nevertheless, many people will have at least one of these options available to them, and it is worth considering how to weigh them up.

Private schools

Private schools do not publish Progress 8 scores. However, based on the statistics we do know - GCSE and A-Level results, Oxbridge entries, etc - and taking into account the differential intake, we can be confident that top state schools are now comparable with private schools in terms of educational attainment and progress.

There are some areas where private schools still typically have the edge:19

• More money spent per child, which means better facilities - sports, swimming pools, science equipment and more. That doesn’t make much difference to learning, but we should acknowledge it is fun and cool.20

• More focus and time spent on sport and other extra-curricular activities (public speaking, etc.).

• Much easier to exclude highly disruptive children, meaning you are simply unlikely to get lessons repeatedly disturbed in the way that can occur in the state sector.21

• Greater willingness to tailor things to an individual child; for example running a GCSE class for 1, or only a very small number, of children.

• Social contacts and connections, particularly in an ultra-elite school such as Eton.

But going private also has significant disadvantages.

• Most obviously, the cost. Average secondary school fees are £24,000 a year, including VAT - that’s around £170k over 7 years for one child or around £340k for two. Even if you can afford it, it’s worth thinking what else you could do for your child with that money - such as investing it to help buy their first home. For comparison, estimates of the premium to live in an Outstanding state school catchment area range from £40,000 - £120,000 - and with that money you are building up equity.

• Universities now systematically and overtly discriminate against private school students, in part due to government pressure on access targets. This means an offer - if one is received at all - may be for higher grades, and fewer options in clearing. Some employers have also started to do this. Your child will also be excluded from other opportunities, such as programmes to find out whether they want to do a subject,22 the otherwise brilliant Axiom programme for high potential mathematicians, and educational opportunities at other institutions - the Bank of England, for example, bars private schools from its educational programmes.

• Impact on family life. Many private schools have half or full days of school on Saturdays - a massive impact. Boarding school, obviously, whether weekly or termly, is an even greater intrusion into family life, which one should be very sure one wants.

There are a number of circumstances where it may be adviseable - if you can afford it - to go private:

• There are no good state schools near you and, for whatever reason, you are unable or unwilling to move.

• Your child is being horribly bullied in a state school and going private is the best way to get them out first.

• Your child has a genuine SEND need which is not being met in the state sector.

• You are moving countries regularly, for example in the armed forces or diplomatic services.

• You are paying for the connections or networks of an ultra-elite private school, such as Eton or Winchester.23

In most cases, however, you’ll be better off buying a house in the catchment area of a top state school, saving some money and avoiding the systematic exclusion/discrimination.

Grammar Schools

This is a much easier question. Unless you are an MP who campaigns against grammar schools, then if you live near a grammar school and your child passes the 11+ you should probably send them there.24

Few people dispute that children - from all backgrounds25 - who attend grammar schools on average do better. The policy debate centres over whether this makes up for the fact that the children who go to secondary moderns on average do worse - as well as whether or not it is socially divisive to split children at 11.

So perhaps more interesting questions here are:

• Should I move to be near a grammar school? Maybe - if you’re confident all your children will pass the 11+. But it’s a school-by-school decision; a lot of grammar schools are very good, but you may also be able to find an equally good comprehensive that is closer.

• Should I move out of a grammar school area, if I think my child is unlikely to get in? Again, maybe. Certainly it’s a risk factor, and you should look carefully at the school where your child will go, and whether you’re happy with that. Importantly though, you don’t have to go on averages: you can look at the actual school. In Bourne, Lincolnshire, for example, the grammar school (where I went) currently has a Progress 8 of 0.68 and is rated Good; the secondary modern has a Progress 8 of 0.58 and is rated Outstanding. In a case like that, both schools are very good, so you don’t need to worry.

• Should I put my child through lots of tutoring to get in? Making sure a child is familiar with the format of the test and has a couple of practices is certainly a good idea - whether you do that in the home or via tutoring; however, my own view is that if a child needs a lot of tutoring to get in, the school probably isn’t going to suit them.26 I’ve no actual evidence for that though, and in reality I guess it’s heavily swayed by what your other options are.

Single-sex schools

Statistically, girls do slightly better academically at single-sex schools,27 while boys do slightly better academically at mixed schools. Again, though, this is a time not to worry about the averages: you will presumably be looking at specific mixed and single-sex schools, so you should just go ahead and compare their Progress 8s, Attainment 8s, Ofsted reports and so on as you would for any other two schools.

More important is the social choice. What are the advantages and disadvantages you see to them spending their formative years in a single-sex environment vs a mixed-sex one? Whichever way you land, how important is this compared to academic and other factors? In addition, if your children are not all the same sex, there is an obvious advantage - in terms of travel, sports days, parents’ evenings, etc - in them going to the same school.

Personally, I come down to a moderate preference for mixed-sex: we live in a fully integrated society, and it’s best for children to grow up in such an environment; however, this isn’t a sufficiently large factor that I’d send my children to a bad mixed-sex school over a good single-sex one.28

What did we do?

This is not primarily a post about me. But after sounding off about what I think is best, it is not unreasonable, dear reader, for you to ask whether I put my money where my mouth is, or whether the above is simply advice for Other People’s Children.

When we began looking seriously at secondary schools we discovered the local state schools we could get into nearby were fairly mediocre (’Good’, Progress 8s of 0 to -0.5), which we were not happy with. The principal options we considered were:

• There were a number of excellent state comprehensives within the county, to which we could move to - the absolute best being some distance away, with other good options being closer.

• We lived (just - a 45 min drive away) within the catchment area of Dame Alice Owen, a top semi-selective school, which we thought Eldest would have a decent chance of getting into.

• We also could have afforded to go private, though it would have involved making various sacrifices.

After some agonising, we rejected Dame Alice Owen on the basis of travel time, and had a preference against going private for the reasons set out above. We ultimately chose to move to the neighbouring town, where we already had some community links, to be 2 minutes’ walk from an Outstanding rated mixed comprehensive, with a Progress 8 of around 0.5, and good performance on the other major metrics.

In other words, not out-and-out schoolsmaxxing, but making a decision that balanced a good school with other relevant family factors. With Eldest having just started Year 8 it is still early days, but to date we are very happy with our choice.

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Thank you to everyone who submitted questions for the recent Ask Me Anything. This time we got questions on the national debt, climate change, AI, what would make me emigrate and blogging, amongst other things.

So without further ado:

Rachael: What are your thoughts on gilt yields being even higher now than after the mini-budget that ousted Truss? Is a 70s-style IMF bailout likely?

We should be a lot more worried than we are. The numbers are only creeping up - and both Government borrowing and the global economic situation should make us worry.

Since the Financial Crisis, we’ve systematically increased borrowing in crises, and then failed to pay it down afterwards.2 Debt now stands at 95% of GDP, the deficit at £115bn a year, of which debt interest accounts for around two-thirds. All kinds of international shocks - from the turmoil in the Strait of Hormuz to Trump potentially imposing a diesel export ban - could add further pressure.

There’s an international dimension to the yield increases, but the UK is now paying more to borrow than countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain.3 What’s worse, the Government shows little sign of being able to deal with this. The previous backbench rebellion on welfare puts hard limits on their ability to rein in those costs, most of which are exploding upwards.4 They’ve pledged not to put up the main taxes of income tax, VAT and NI. Public sector pay is going up at over twice the rate of private sector pay. And even the welcome announcement on the pensions triple lock is (a) delayed until 2030, after the next election; (b) will take years to have savings; and (c) was paired with the vastly more expensive policy of a National Care Service.

As to whether a 70s-style IMF bailout is likely - well, I’m not sure. As Adam Smith said, there is a great deal of ruin in a nation. My central prediction is no: that Burnham and Healey are level-headed enough not to spook the bond markets in the way Truss did.5 But this shouldn’t be taken as optimism. I think we’ll simply continue to see the rates grind non-monotonically but inevitably upwards, with more and more of our taxes spent on interest payments until we learn to recognise that we’ve been living beyond our means and find political leaders able to convince us to swallow the bitter medicine necessary.

Michelle Taylor: How do we preserve the value of humanity and the basis of democracy in the teeth of AI taking over a considerable amount of productivity, and rendering increasing numbers of people unable to produce anything of economic value?

For a number of reasons, in the futures where human decision-making still means something - i.e. not benevolent AI overlords or extinction/doom - I think AI is more likely to function like the steam engine, albeit on a much faster timescale. By which I mean a massively powerful tool for increasing productivity - with massive disruption in what jobs are available - but one which still leaves a lot of human jobs around.

Reasons for thinking this include:

• Unless humans are pets, slaves or dead, someone is going to be telling the agent swarms what to do - even if that doesn’t look much like modern programming.

• A lot of economic activity involves different groups of humans who disagree deciding what to do (for example, where should we build houses?). AI can’t tell us a ‘right’ answer to this.

• Particularly in the physical world, even if AI is strictly better, comparative advantage means humans will continue to find jobs, given the cost of compute, robots, etc.

• Previous transitions - from agriculture and from industry - have shown us that as a society we have a tremendous ability to create new jobs, particularly in services.

Now, I do recognise there may also be real hardship in areas where many jobs are lost rapidly, as there was during de-industrialisation, which could be a real challenge.6 And I hope that - as we did during the Industrial Revolution, and indeed have over the last 30 years - we end up taking some of that greater productivity in increased leisure, whether by shorter working weeks, more holiday or some other means.

But where I think some people are going wrong is looking to put the cart before the horse, whether that’s with 4-day weeks or UBI. Because right now, we’re definitely not in a post-scarcity society: the Government is spending more than we can afford (as discussed above); despite that, many public services face higher levels of demand than they can provide and, at the individual level, people are finding it hard to afford things from housing to energy to childcare to social care. As long as all these are the case, talk about shifting to a lower-work society seems premature.7

I should add that this (great) question helped prompt my last post, about the impact of AI more broadly, which readers can find here.

Firestone: What are your favourite political metaphors?

I remember when I first joined the civil service, I was deeply confused by the concept of ‘Chinese walls’, which I took to mean ‘walls which don’t exist’, given that the two teams between which it was repeatedly said that Chinese walls must be kept talked to each other the whole time. ‘Purdah’, the period of no political announcements in advance of a general election, is a good one. And I once took a picture of a left-wing friend and I standing on the appropriate sides of an Overton Window.8

However, particularly in a world that contains a prominent leader named ‘Trump’, it surely has to be ‘The elephant in the room’.9

Tony M: Under what conditions (political, economic, national issues) would you leave the UK to live elsewhere? And where would you likely go?

I loved living in the Philippines for 2 1/2 years, and could imagine myself taking another such adventure, but I appreciate you’re asking something quite different here.

As to what conditions, I’m quite attached to Britain as ‘home’ - in a rooted patriot sense, in terms of liking living somewhere where amenities such as libraries, parks and pubs are taken for granted, and because all my friends are here. I guess the things that might push me to leave are the standard ones:

• A collapse into dictatorship, and/or China or worse levels of suppression of dissidents.

• Major economic collapse, hyperinflation, etc.

• Widespread, sustained, collapse of law and order.

• My children being likely to be conscripted into a particularly bloody and obviously unjust war.

Where would I go is easier: most likely the US, where I have family, or, failing that, Australia, New Zealand or Canada, for the English language, familiar culture and liberal democracy.

Colin Boyle: On the basis that ecosystem breakdown represents an ultimately existential threat to global civilisation, why do you think that governments have collectively failed to prioritise achieving a sustainable world? What do you think it would take to achieve rapid, global, systemic change?

I disagree with your premise here: climate change is a major threat, but governments have collectively done a tremendous amount to address it.

At headline level, we’ve got the projected temperature rise down from the IPCC’s worst case scenario RCP 8.5 (up to 4-6C of warming over pre-industrial levels; likely to be very bad) to 2.6C, of which about 1.5C has already happened. We’ve invested a tremendous amount of R&D and capital spending to converting our generating capacity and transport networks into low carbon equivalents. As a result, global carbon emissions are levelling off and are already well below peak in almost all developed countries - with countries from the USA, UK to China installing vast quantities of renewables and storage. Electric vehicle sales are climbing worldwide.

And here’s the UK contribution - halving emissions over the last 25 years. And yes, some of this is off-shoring heavy industry, but a lot of it is real:

Now, 2.6C would still be a big deal - and isn’t baked in. If we went really hard, globally, maybe that figure could get closer to 2C; if we slack off, it could be more like 3C. But while neither is easy, anything in that 2-3C range won’t cause anything like a global ecosystem collapse10 or pose an existential threat to civilisation.

One thing that can be confusing about the forecasts is that when the IPCC, or other body, says rising temperatures will cost us XXX by 2050 (2080, 2100), where XXX is a large number, the comparison they’re using isn’t today - but how wealthy we would have been in 2050, in a world without temperature rise, after many years of economic growth.11 Under almost all the projections for the trend we’re now on, the world - both developed and developing countries - continues to get richer. Climate change isn’t on track to make us poorer, just less rich than we would have otherwise been.

I don’t want to minimise the impacts, but equally we shouldn’t overstate them. Over the last few decades, as temperatures have risen to c. 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, life has got immeasurably better for humanity. And I don’t just mean for people in rich countries, but for the poorest in the world. On almost any measure - total living in extreme poverty, infant mortality, life expectancy, you name it - things have got dramatically better, fueled by economic development.

Economic development is our ultimate tool to make people’s lives better - including those who don’t have the luxury of saying it doesn’t matter. And while it’s right to see climate change as a major global challenge, it’s no longer an existential one: rather, it’s one that we’ve risen to meet, and are in the process of successfully overcoming.

Publicsectorlawyer: I was as intrigued by this Substack piece [Rod Dreher, ‘defending James Orr’] & I just wondered to what extent this view is shared by those on the Right at the moment?

I should begin by caveating that I know neither Dreher nor Orr personally, and nor can I speak for all of those on ‘the Right’. I’d add that it is quite hard to know exactly what it means to share the view of the piece, as it appears to take an inordinate number of words to obfuscate around the subject, while being careful to say it is not exculpating him of any wrong-doing he may have done.

However, let us take the title at face value: that it is a defence. My own impression is that this is not a widely shared view and that, rather, the more common view is that Orr and colleagues were foolish and wrong to have been caught in such a sting - though whether one views that with chagrin or delight depends on whether one supports Reform or the Conservatives.

Dreher’s point that this does not obviate the rest of Orr’s life is, of course, correct. If one supported his political ideas, no doubt one would still do so, nor do I imagine it is the sort of crime that would cause a personal friend to terminate all contact. But those in senior roles at the highest levels of national politics are expected to conduct themselves with probity - and to recognise that not doing so will damage both them and their party.

And there is no doubt that the financial scandals over the summer have damaged Reform, who’ve dropped four percentage points in the poll of polls since May.12 People can sometimes see politicians as teflon, but in reality a politician can be immune to one sort of scandal, but badly damaged by another - because it damages their image. Trump often seemed untouchable, but the Iran War has hurt him, both directly with people who voted for ‘no forever wars in the Middle East’ and indirectly, with inflation. People could forgive Boris for infidelity or curtain-gate, but not breaking his own rules during lockdown. And in the same way, people who would shrug off stories about what Farage said in school may still look askance at financial scandals - because it dents Reform’s narrative that they’re ‘not like other politicians’.

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Luke: Are there any UK Government Departments you'd get rid of or significantly reduce the remit of?

People love planning to get rid of Government departments - my former department, DTI aka BERR aka BIS aka BEIS aka DBT aka DBIST was often first in line for the chop - but it solves less than people think it does. The functions will still be there - and no matter how you rearrange the deckchairs, there will always be odd bedfellows and awkward splits.

Far more important is stripping back the size of the state - the civil service has grown every year since 2016 - which involves directly eliminating functions, improving productivity, and legal changes to strip back various duties that require endless paperwork and ‘consultations’ to show that one has ‘considered’ something enough to fend off legal challenge.

Where there is more room to get rid of entire entities is arm’s length bodies, often known as quangos - many of which have also grown substantially in headcount, budget and regulatory output (which puts a direct burden on both business and public services). Some are needed - Ofsted, the Bank of England, the Competition and Markets Authority - but many of those that exist could have their powers seriously pruned back (either ended altogether, or absorbed into Government), and there are plenty of smaller bodies - and a few larger ones - which could simply be abolished.

Heinrich Hyser: What is your ratio of paid to non-paid subscribers? Just curious how that transition is going for you and the substack!

Substack estimates you should be able to convert 5-10% of your free subscribers to paid. I’m currently on about 3%, haven’t been pushing monetisation that hard - and did things like give away c. 60 complimentary subscriptions (not included in the 3%) to close friends and family, which probably wasn’t the most commercially minded decision!

Overall, I’m pretty happy with it:13

• I’m still getting great readership and good growth on the free posts.

• Paywalled posts feel more like the old ‘hobby blog’, with friends and paid subscribers.

• I’m making enough to cover the costs of our annual UK-based holiday, which is nothing to sneeze at.

AbigailAmpersand: Why that landscape for your profile pic and why the Old English feminine name ‘Edrith’ ? Is it just because of the literal translation? I don’t know if you’re male or female but that’s not a question because it doesn’t really matter here. Does the name of your Substack relate to your love of science-fiction and are you doing a kind of ‘world-building’ here?

I did not know it was an Old English feminine name! (I’m male, as it happens).

Both picture and name have a somewhat convoluted pedigree. I originally blogged on a Wordpress site and the theme picture I used had clouds and mountains - so when I switched to Substack I wanted something similar. This particular picture was taken14 on a day in Snowdonia when a group of friends and I climbed Cadair Idris. It’s one of the ‘golden days’ of my life, and is a great picture, so was an easy choice.

The word ‘Edrith’ originated - for me - when I was a student, looking for a name for my home-brew role-playing system. For whatever reason, I landed on ‘Flame of Edrith’, with Edrith as a nonsense word. The first iteration of this website was mainly a place to put my Christmas Quizzes and the games I’d created;15 hence ‘World of Edrith’, and the name stuck.16

Later, I also used Edrith as the name for the world in my fantasy novel, Imperial Visions, and its sequel, Visions in Exile - two fantasy novels, set in an 18th century world. So yes, there was some world-building going on, even if not so much in the blog itself!

More details about both can be found on the Fiction page on this site, and they are available for purchase in paperback and on Kindle here and here.

4

Here’s just one - Child DLA - and similar trends can be seen on PIP, SEND spending and many others.

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“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”

—Orange Catholic Bible (from Dune, by Frank Herbert)

It’s fascinating the number of times books warn us about things that think, but aren’t human. And with the very rapid progress in AI over the last twelve months, it can feel as if we’re on the brink of discovering why.

As Shadow One-Boxing wrote earlier this week:

“AI is making breakthroughs in maths, including solving a Millennium Prize problem (one of a set of seven especially famous unsolved problems, each with a £1m prize attached, so hardly overlooked by humans), something which less than two years ago the average of AI experts’ predictions thought would be decades away. It can write highly constrained yet coherent formal poetry (and I think “ash settles where the cadence dwells” is pretty evocative), and prose that can win prestigious literary competitions. It can identify sounds from spectrogram images and describe them in qualitative terms.

It cracked an unsolved Enigma message from a handwritten image containing some ambiguous symbols/letters, autonomously researching the historical context and coding up an Enigma simulator. Someone asked it to translate the audio dialogue from the classic game Putt-Putt into French for their kid; it extracted the audio files, transcribed them, translated them, generated audio with similar voice styles to the original actors, and put the new audio back into the game. It can complete Portal and successfully play Minecraft and Factorio…

…Seriously, it’s changing extremely quickly; if you’re thinking “lol, they can’t count the Rs in strawberry” you’re like someone reasoning about the capabilities of modern supercomputers based on the ZX Spectrum you had in the 80s, and you should update.”

State of the AI, Shadow One-Boxing

And as someone who’s been lurking on the fringes of the rationalist/effective altruist/AI safety crowd for one, arguably two, decades - I first came across Eliezer Yudkowsky in 2007, on a friend’s atheist blog, and have been reading Scott Alexander since 20161 - it has also been fascinating to watch the mainstream commentariat discover these subcultures over the last couple of weeks, to varying degrees of bemusement, confusion and outrage.2

And yes, some of it is a bit bizarre. The Harry Potter fan-fiction; the focus on shrimp welfare; the polyamory; the fact that they sometimes get together to sing secular hymns to global logistics; the obsession with prediction markets; the discussions of simulations and interdimensional acausal trade. And then people like that are plugged into the bosses of some of the richest and most powerful companies in the world?3

But you know something? The people who’ve got a whole bunch of things right about AI and its progress over the last ten years have earned more right to be heard than the people who were calling it a ‘stochastic parrot’ right up until the day it solved Navier-Stokes.

That doesn’t mean they’ll keep getting things right, or even that they necessarily agree with each other. But they’ve done a whole lot more thinking, in more depth, than most others, and some of it is worth reading - not least because this is what many of the people running our frontier AI companies also believe the technology might be capable of.

So how should we think about AI?

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This is not one of those lists. This list has instead been compiled by the greatly superior method1 of me thinking really hard about it and assuming that my opinion mattered more than anyone else’s.

In terms of criteria, firstly, every book on the list is an excellent read. Some of the books on here may be worthy, but there are no books on here purely for their worthiness. Secondly, every book is one that will make you think, or open your eyes to a new perspective - for that is a core function of science fiction, to explore new possibilities. And thirdly, to whittle the list down to 25, I have taken into account relevance and impact - either to the world of today, or to the genre more broadly.

While the borders of every genre are porous, every book on here has a clear claim to being science fiction. There is no pure fantasy, or alternate history - much though I enjoy those genres, this is not their list.

So, without further ado, let’s get cracking. As is traditional, we’ll do this in reverse order, so you’re kept guessing to the very end as to whether I’m overlooking your own favourites, or saying they’re amongst the best.

25. Blindsight - Peter Watts (2006)

In a world where brain modification pushes people to the edge of what it means to be human, a specialist crew investigate a mysterious alien incursion at the edge of the solar system. The race to uncover the nature of the intruders takes place in parallel with increasing hints of unrest back on Earth, as the novel explores the meaning of identity, humanity and the nature of consciousness.2

24. The Rowan - Anne McCaffrey (1990)

The Dragonriders of Pern may be better known, but McCaffrey’s ‘Talents’ universe, where lonely Primes sit in towers, using nuclear-powered gestalt to flip spacecraft through the void, is equally thought-provoking.3 What if humanity’s entire space-faring ability was wholly dependent on half a dozen ultra-powerful telekinetics?

23. Neuromancer - William Gibson (1984)

The genre-defining cyberpunk novel that originated, popularised or defined many of its conventions, including mega-corporations, cyberspace, ‘ICE’,4 anti-hero hackers and a hybrid Japanese-American culture. The plot can be confusing at times, but more than forty years on, it remains a tumultuous and often prescient glimpse into an alternative future.

22. From the Earth to the Moon and a Trip Around It - Jules Verne (1865)

What if we went to the moon not in a rocket - but fired from a colossal gun? One of the first truly ‘hard’ science fiction novels, Verne’s calculations for the velocity required and travel time were almost spot on - even if his giant gun would have exploded on firing. The Baltimore Gun Club, at a loose end following the end of the American Civil War, decide upon an alternative venture - accompanied, of course, by an irrepressible Frenchman.5

21. Last and First Men - Olaf Stapledon (1930)

A future history, not a novel, Stapledon takes us forward across billions of years as new races of humanity rise and fall - on Earth, on Venus and ultimately on Neptune. Some winged, some more intelligent and some less intelligent, some deliberately designed and some evolved, each have their turn on the stage.

20. Accelerando - Charles Stross (2005)6

Uploaded lobsters, vile offspring and matrioshka brains, this is the ultimate novel of the Singularity - now in focus again, with the last few years’ developments in AI. Told through the eyes of a number of individuals, Accelerando’s ever-quickening pace sees humanity - and the solar system - fundamentally transformed by an AI hard take-off.

19. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham (1951)

What if almost everyone went blind, and sentient, walking, carnivorous plants inherited the earth? This unlikely premise forms the basis for one of the most civilly bleak post-apocalyptic novels, as the protagonist and his companion wend their way across the devastated Home Counties, seeking a safe haven where the remnants of humanity can survive.

18. A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr (1959)

After a nuclear holocaust, humanity has a second go at civilisation - as seen through the eyes of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz, a Catholic monastic order dedicated to preserving knowledge. From an oasis preserving literacy, to a co-equal power in the Renaissance, to its sidelining, in both power and morality, in a new technological age, the Leibowitzians remain steadfast.7

17. The Time Machine - H. G. Wells (1895)

Published a decade before Einstein’s discovery of Special Relativity, Wells’s haunting vision of a far future divided between the pacifist Eloi and brutish Morlocks retains its compelling quality. At under 100 pages, it’s a short read, but no less powerful for that.

16. The Mote in God’s Eye - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (1974)

What happens when you combine Niven’s extraordinary imagination with Pournelle’s ability to actually tell a story that has a plot? You get The Mote in God’s Eye, perhaps the best first-contact encounter with a truly alien extra-terrestrial species ever written, in a richly rendered future setting.8 A rare occasion of a joint-authored novel being better than any that either has written alone.

15. Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card (1985)

With Earth at war with the alien ‘buggers’,9 six-year-old Ender Wiggin is taken to an orbital ‘battle school’, where the most gifted young children are put through a brutally competitive training regime to create Earth’s future top commanders. On one level a gripping boarding school/survival story complete with exhilarating battle matches, on another, something much deeper and more disturbing - on either, an essential read.10

14. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke (1968)

Apes drumming in the dawn of humanity; a mysterious black monolith on the moon; voyages past the moons of Jupiter: Clarke may have got the date wrong, but the voyage of discovery across the solar system is as powerful as ever. ‘I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.’

13. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell (194911)

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Set in a totalitarian, communist, surveillance state, perpetually at war, Orwell’s bleak tale of Winston Smith’s quest for truth remains the ultimate dystopian novel. Others may have been more imaginative, or posed more interesting moral questions - but none can match Nineteen Eighty-Four’s execution.

12. Leviathan Wakes - James S. A. Corey (2011)

The opening novel of The Expanse, the outstanding space epic of the 21st century. In 2350, humanity has spread out through the solar system - and has enough problems already, even before the discovery of the alien artefacts. The Expanse combines the intimate tale of a crew of a small, battered, trading ship, with in-depth and morally complex interplanetary politics, all in a deeply plausible variety of future societies.

11. Contact - Carl Sagan (1985)

A story of science, faith and humanity. Radio astronomer Eleanor Arroway discovers a coded message in a radio signal from Vega, setting off a world-wide effort to decode it. But when the message is found to contain blueprints for a tremendous machine, the questions begin: should we build it and, if so, who should go in it?

10. The Martian - Andy Weir (2011)

    

The ultimate modern hard-science fiction classic: man abandoned on Mars must use all his technical ingenuity to survive. The successor and surpasser of older novels such as Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust, this is a book which will devote page after page to how to grow potatoes, or re-engineer a Mars Rover - and yet keep you gripped throughout.

9. The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson (1995)

A world of nanotechnology and AI, in which nation states have been supplanted by ‘phyles’ - groupings, sometimes ethnic, sometimes regional, sometimes political, of freely associating individuals - the Diamond Age tells the story of Nell, a young girl growing up in poverty who receives an advanced AI ‘primer’, designed to educate and guide its owner into a ‘more interesting life’. A wildly imaginative roller-coaster ride through a provocative future.

8. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein (1966)

   

Future societies, provocative forms of government, new social mores: all of classic Heinlein can be found herein. What’s more, the story itself, of an ex-penal lunar colony striving, with the aid of a friendly sentient computer, for independence from Earth is well-plotted and tightly written.12 There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

7. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (1979)

After Earth is destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass, lone13 survivor Arthur Dent bumbles his way about the galaxy. From the babelfish to the infinite improbability drive, not to mention the eponymous guide itself, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy remains the comic science fiction masterpiece of all time.

6. The Warrior’s Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold (1986)

   

Arguably the best science-fiction author currently writing,14 The Warrior’s Apprentice introduces the brilliant, driven, physically stunted Miles Vorkosigan, primary protagonist of her Vorkosigan Saga, and follows him as he ‘accidentally’ builds himself a mercenary fleet.15 Modern space opera at its finest.16

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5. Foundation - Isaac Asimov (1951)

A novel that shaped the genre, Foundation tells the story of a Galactic Empire in decline, the brilliant psychohistorian who sees a way to minimise the harm - and the lives of those who followed him, living his plan, guiding the new Foundation in its ascent.

4. The Player of Games - Iain M. Banks (1988)

In The Culture, Iain M. Banks created the best, most realised, most compelling utopia ever written - and managed to set gripping stories in it.17 From the hyper-intelligent starships to the widely varying societies, Banks immerses you in his universe - and then makes individual, human stories utterly compelling. In The Player of Games, Jernau Morat Gurgeh must beat the best alien players at their own game of skill in order to engineer a diplomatic incident. This is the story of how he does so.18

3. Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson (1992)

The ultimate story of the colonisation of Mars, from first landing to its subsequent revolt. Terraforming, exploitation, political conflict and emerging new societies - while the turmoil increases on old Earth. Robinson’s use of the First Hundred as both vivid individual characters and stand-ins for the factions that emerge helps to keep the book human, even as his grand narrative unfolds.

2. The Three-Body Problem - Liu Cixin (2008)

From the Cultural Revolution to the far future, The Three Body Problem and its two sequels depict humanity’s encounter with aliens from our nearest star system - and all that unfolds from there. Complex, masterful, deeply Chinese, with outstanding characterisation, imagination and plot, this is the best science fiction of the last fifty years.19

1. Dune - Frank Herbert (1965)

On the fabulously valuable desert planet of Arrakis, young Paul Atreides must escape the political machinations of his enemies, ally with the native Fremen - and struggle with his own destiny. Dune draws the reader into a deeply realised world, with its own ecology, complex society and deep history. Beautifully written, epic yet tightly plotted, with moral complexities at both the individual and societal level, if you read only one science fiction novel, make it Dune. Also contains sandworms.

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Appendix: Five Short Story Collections

The modern focus on the novel can mean that we overlook some of the best of science fiction. The short story was incredibly important to the genre’s evolution, much of which took place through magazines. The ‘Big Three’ of the Golden Age - Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov - all wrote dozens, often of a more consistently high quality than their novels, as did many others, some still remembered and some long forgotten.

So here, in no particular order, are six20 of the best short story collections out there:

• Selected Stories of Philip K Dick - Philip K Dick. I find it hard to whole-heartedly recommend any of Dick’s novels,21 but his short stories are up there with the best. This selection includes the stories on which the films Minority Report, Total Recall and Paycheck were based, as well as many others.

• The Complete Robot - Isaac Asimov. The ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ are Asimov’s greatest legacy,22 and this collection brings all of his robot short stories together - many of which have a new resonance in this age of emerging AI.

• Outer Space, Inner Lands - Ursula Le Guin. Yes, this is the one with The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas in it. Right from the Earthsea trilogy, I’ve never managed to be as captivated by Le Guin as many are, but she’s undoubtedly one of the greats.

• Dangerous Visions - compiled by Harlan Ellison. A deliberately provocative, thought-provoking and ground-breaking collection of originally written stories, published in the late ‘60s, many of these have stood the test of time - and even those that haven’t are worth reading, as a snapshot of a moment.

• The Nine Billion Names of God - Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke’s collection of his 25 personal favourites, this includes some of the very best of his writing, in long or short form.

• Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang.23 The most original, extraordinary, truly novel set of science fiction stories I’ve read as an adult. Includes the story on which the film Arrival was based and seven others, ranging from excellent to outstanding.

So there we go. Whittling down from my long list to 25 was not easy - and there are undoubtedly many others that could contend for a place.24 But this is my ranking of the top 25 - what would yours be?

Reminder:

• I have an ‘Ask me Anything’ running currently - post a question here to have it answered.

• A 25% off sale on annual subscriptions is running to the end of the year.

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Simply ask me a question on any topic you like by leaving it as a comment on this page and I will answer it shortly. Current affairs, books, politics, education, films, favourite vegetable1 - and I will do my best to answer insightfully, concisely or, failing that, entertainingly.

I’m also holding a Paid Subscription Sale. For the rest of this week, an annual paid subscription will be £25 - that’s over 25% off the normal annual price and 40% less than paying for monthly.

For that, in addition to access to future pay-walled posts, you get full access to all archived pay-walled posts, including why private schools lost the middle classes, how Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive is an allegory of Old Testament Israel and whether Mississippi is really richer than the UK.

In addition, if you have your own Substack with over 1000 subscribers and add me to your ‘recommendations’, I will give you a complimentary paid subscription.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

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So, what happened in Year 4?

The blog has continued to grow, albeit at a slower rate. Compared to this time last year I have:

• Just under 2300 subscribers (1250).

• 200,000 page views in the last 12 months (130,000).

• 18 other Substacks recommending me (13).

• Subscribers in 59 countries worldwide (41).

On the slightly less positive side, I’ve only written 47 posts in the last 12 months (compared to 56), falling slightly below my target of blogging once a week on average - so I need to work a little bit harder to get that back up again.

It remains a Tier 3 blog, in my patented blog classification system,2 but much more firmly established within that Tier: a typical post now gets 2000-4000 views, with eight in the last 12 months getting over 5,000.3 I achieved a real breakthrough with the Forecasting contest, getting over 1000 entries, and am greatly looking forward to the results,4 and even managed to get a surprising number of people to enter a quiz about whether we should repeal Murphy’s Law.5

The other major development this year was going paid - something I’d long considered doing once I got to 2,000 subscribers. So far this has gone well, and I’m grateful to all those who’ve chosen to go paid, while also remaining committed to continuing to provide plenty of good free content for the wider readership. As always, I’m grateful to all subscribers, paid and unpaid.

Some of the most successful posts from the last year include:

• Reeves in Zugzwang - a post which remains highly relevant to Healey’s decisions at the upcoming Budget.

• Rage, rage against the growing of the debt - on abolishing real interest rates for Plan 2 Student Loans.

• The Progressive Left has a Rule of Law Problem - how the broader progressive movement has tolerated, abetted and enabled a disregard for the rule of law when it does not fit their ‘values’.

• Discover your right-wing archetype profile - a political personality-type quiz, geared around right-wing archetypes. (You can still take the quiz!)

• Social Media Ban: Responses to 10 common objections - and six ways in which we could tackle broader social media harms.

• On Rejection - on why behind every successful person lies a litany of failures (my most read of all time).

Once again, a tremendous thanks to all who read, subscribe, lurk, comment, recommend and share. And if you’re an avid reader, please do take the time to recommend this to a friend or share on social media - I rely on word of mouth for my audience.

Ask me Anything FAQs

What’s off limits?6

Not much. I won’t answer a question if:

• It would breach a confidence that’s not mine to share;

• It’s so taboo that just writing about it can get you in trouble;

• It’s anything directly to do with my current job.

I’m happy to answer most personal questions, but there may be the odd one which I’ll skirt around.

Can I ask you about something you know nothing about?

Yes, but don’t be surprised if the answer is very short!

How long will each answer be?

I’m anticipating one to three paragraphs, but I reserve the right to vary this.

Can I ask more than one question?

Yes, but I won’t answer more than one question from any given person.

How do I ask my question?

Please write it as a comment below this post.

The general impression of Mississippi in the UK is…not good. So one response to this chart is to say that it is not true - that although the headline figures show an equivalence, after taking into account, for example, the amount you’d have to pay for private healthcare in Mississippi, most people would be worse off.

As it happens, a bunch of my relatives, over three extant generations, live in Mississippi and Louisiana, the next door state - and this summer I went out to visit them. So in this post we’ll be diving into what the stats say - looking beyond the headline figures to consider wages, taxes, housing costs, health insurance and much more, while interspersing this with, as Twoflower would put it, observations from ‘What I did on my holidays.’2

Note that £1 = $1.35.

Core economic indicators3

As of 2025, GDP per capita in Mississippi was $55,800, vs $57,600 for the UK - we have pulled slightly ahead since these charts were made (driven largely by exchange rate fluctuations).4

GDP per capita in purchasing power parity terms is somewhat more difficult to calculate. UK GDP per capita in PPP terms is $64,000.5 The price-parity given for Mississippi vs the US as a whole is 0.87; adjusting the GDP per capita by this gives us $64,100 - or almost identical to the UK.

What about other indicators?

Comparing median household incomes is not straightforward: the US census gives the gross nominal figure, whereas the ONS gives an equivalised disposable figure, and buries the gross figures.6 Median household income in Mississippi is $59,000 - or more than 25% lower than in the US as a whole. Using Stat-Xplore’s 'Weighted median of Household total, gross Income from all sources in year prices' for 2024-25 (which confusingly uses the FRS survey, which is different from the one the ONS uses, but where I was able to dig out gross unequivalised numbers), I get that the UK’s gross median household income is £46,200 ($62,300), giving the UK roughly a 5% advantage here.

While we are primarily interested here in which is richer, not which is more equal, a quick glance at other indicators shows us that the UK unemployment rate is 4.9% vs 3.6% in Mississippi.7

The minimum wage in Mississippi is $7.25 an hour, vs £12.71 ($17.10) in the UK. However, when we look up what people actually get paid, the site ‘Indeed’ tells me workers at McDonald’s make $10-$13 an hour. And Walmart is advertising its basic roles at $14 - $27 an hour - which is a lot closer to UK levels.

Taxation

In the UK, we pay:

• 28% (income tax + NI) on income above £12,500 but below £50,000.8

• 42% (ditto) on income above £50,000.

• Effectively 60% on income between £100,000 and £125,000, as the personal allowance is withdrawn.

• 45% on income over £125,000.

In Mississippi, state income tax is very low, at 0% for the first $10,000 and 4% on everything over that. The bulk of income tax comes from federal income tax:

On top of that, there is Social Security and Medicare taxes, which together are just under 8%, payable on earnings up to $184,000 and with no lower threshold.

At low incomes, taxes are actually slightly higher in the US, driven by the lack of threshold for Social Security. But middle and higher earners pay less, sometimes much less:

• Earning £30,000 ($40,500): UK and Mississippi take-home pay are both around £25k/$33,500.

• Earning £75,000 ($101,250): UK take-home pay is £54,000 vs £56,000 ($76,000) in Mississippi

• Earning £150k ($202,500): UK take-home pay is £91k vs £106k ($143k) in Mississippi.

Unsurprisingly, in reality it is more complex than this; in both countries, there are a range of tax credits available for various things - and Mississippi is notably more generous to households where one partner earns much more than the other. But overall, similar levels at low incomes and increasingly divergent at higher levels is a fair summary.

What about other taxes?

• Mississippi sales tax is 7%, versus VAT at 20% in the UK.

• Fuel taxes are much higher in the UK, reflected in a cost of petrol that is over double that of Mississippi.

• The median annual property tax in Mississippi is $1,221 (£904) compared to an average council tax in the UK of £1,770.

Overall, on any given income, considering both direct and indirect taxes, someone in Mississippi will be paying less tax - and potentially a lot less tax.

Housing

When my grandma passed away in 2020, her house - a four-bedroom house with a spacious garden, in a nice suburb of New Orleans, 30 minutes drive from the CBD - was sold for around $175,000 (£130,000).

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Back in 2016, as a recently minted Senior Civil Servant,2 I certainly believed this. And, what is more, I had evidence for this belief:

• Lots of data showed that, comparing like-for-like, people in the private sector earned more, particularly at senior levels.

• Peers of mine who had gone into the private sector, and seemed to have progresses as far in their careers as I had, were typically earning 25% - 200% more than I was.

• Over previous years I’d seen a number of former colleagues, who seemed to be about as capable as I was, move into lucrative and desirable private sector roles.

So when I decided to leave the civil service, I assumed that finding a new berth would be a doddle.

Over the next 15 months, I applied to around 40 roles, in a variety of types of organisations, getting rejected for each one of them.3 For 6-8, I got through to the interview stage, which involved its own travails - travel, preparation and so on4 - only to ultimately be rejected. As one might imagine, this was not just gruelling in terms of time, but dispiriting, particularly as the process went on, and on, with no end in sight.5

To my relief, after 15 months, I did succeed in getting offered a job: a good one, paying about 25% more than my current salary, with private health insurance6 and involving regular international business-class travel to exotic locations. I duly handed in my notice and departed.

Of course, to my former colleagues - most of whom had not even been aware I’d been searching - I simply joined the ranks of those who had swanned off from the civil service into a higher paying job outside.

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It’s well known that social media presents a false view of the world. People naturally post their best moments: holidays, triumphs, pictures of happy times with friends and families.7 Scrolling through your feed, it is all too easy to wonder why everyone else’s life seems to be better than yours.

In the same way, when one looks at other’s lives, it is easy to see what they’ve achieved. It is far less easy to see the failures and knock-backs on the path that took them there - and to assume that one’s own setbacks mean more than they do.

We all know the famous cases. J.K. Rowling’s rejection by 12 publishers before finding one that would publish Harry Potter. Edison’s multiple failed patents. Andy Burnham’s two unsuccessful runs at becoming Labour leader, before landing the top job. But the truth is that almost anyone you see, at almost any stage in their career, will have only got there by overcoming repeated rejections.

There are, of course, lucky breaks - such as when I got the first overseas job I applied to,8 or when the Minister I’d been closest to as a civil servant got appointed to Boris’s government, and needed a SpAd - giving me my ‘break in’ to the political world. But leaving the civil service was hardly the only time success came after a stream of rejections. Whether applying for internships in university holidays, or moving up the greasy pole, success shows its face to the world, but failure is invisible.

Outside career, the pattern continues. We all celebrate when a friend has a baby - but few will know of the miscarriages and silent grief that may have gone before. If you’re a guy, another time you’ll likely face repeated rejection is in dating.9 Just as with applying for jobs, repeated rejections are no fun. I did online dating in that short, happy time after it stopped being weird and before it became mandatory, and was ultimately fortunate enough to meet my lovely wife of 13 years on it.10 But before that I sent hundreds of messages, went on dozens of dates and even a few second dates, all of which went nowhere, save to provide me with a handful of anecdotes.11

And of course, repeated attempts don’t guarantee success. Some people never do get that promotion / dream job / partner. Before I decided being an MP wasn’t for me, I’d never even managed to get selected for a seat, and while one could argue that I never gave it my all,12 there are many others who did, still without success.13

Nevertheless, the motivational poster is true: you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.14 And while some people have it easier - whether by talent, luck, hard work or connections - very few get to where they want to be in life without exposing themselves to regular, repeated rejection.15

I’ve known too many people who have allowed themselves to be paralysed by the fear of rejection. A brilliant musician in university who wouldn’t go for any (amateur) orchestra which held auditions; a highly talented colleague who wouldn’t put themselves forward for an accelerated promotion scheme, in case they were rejected from it. Too many people give up after one or two rejections, thinking it shows that ‘they’re not ready for that’ - not realising that those who do get there may not have had two rejections, but twenty.

None of which is to say repeated rejection is easy. Whether in dating or career, the repeated blows to your ego can be hard to endure. Even worse, for some16, may be the growing fear, after months or years of knock-backs, that there is no light at the end of the tunnel.17

Different people have different ways of dealing with it. Some people love motivational posters, or sharing confidence-boosting memes on social media - and receiving affirming comments from their friends. For others it may be the support of family, or close friends, who they can confide in, that helps them; for others, it may be a lucky item, a routine, a work-out or ritual that they go through to get back on the horse. Whatever works for you, perhaps most important is to steel yourself for the fact that rejection will happen - and not once, but again, and again, and again - and accepting that when it does, it is not failure,18 but simply part of the pathway to success.

There are a lot of things that play a part in success in life. Hard work, intelligence, grit, social skills, good judgement and more - not to mention luck and advantages of birth. But a willingness to accept rejection is as important as any of them - for without it, even the best combination of talents is unlikely to get you where you want to be.

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15

Unless they are Wally:

“For all the ink that gets spilled on hot-button political disputes, the single most underrated thing in politics is getting the technical aspects of macroeconomic policy right.”

Matt Yglesias

Inflation kills governments. The sight of incumbents around the world toppling after the post-COVID inflation rush was a helpful reminder to anyone who had forgotten. As James Carville famously said, ‘It’s the economy, stupid,’ - and one of the economic malfunctions people really, really hate is high inflation.1

What Yglesias is rightly saying is that monetary policy is hugely important to the economy - and thus to politics. He gives the obvious example of the rise of Hitler, before more speculatively arguing that had the Federal Reserve not preemptively tightened monetary policy in 2016, this might have shifted enough votes that Trump wouldn’t have won the election.

That’s a supposition - though not an implausible one. But what we can say confidently is that monetary policy matters to the economy, and the economy matters for all sorts of reasons. Which is why we should all care about the fact that for most of this decade, the Bank of England has been pretty bad at its job.

The Bank was slow to notice and react to the inflation spike - its headline inflation measure peaked at the highest level in the G7, and fell from the peak notably more slowly. Since then, it’s failed to get inflation down to its 2% target, rarely even getting it below 2%. Growth has also been lacklustre during this period. The performance is notably worse than in the first 20 years of its operation, a period which included the financial crisis.

This is the context in which we are giving the Bank of England a climate change mandate. First introduced in 2021 by Rishi Sunak, it was briefly revoked by Jeremy Hunt in 2023, before being restored by Rachel Reeves in 2024, in line with the Labour manifesto. Over that period, the Bank has published multiple reports on climate change, and recently set out how ‘it has continued to integrate the implications of climate change into the delivery of its mission, across both its policy work and its own operational resilience.’

But, you say, climate change is very important. So isn’t it reasonable for the Bank to have such a mandate?

The issue is one of locus and impact.

The Bank of England has an extraordinarily high level of impact on monetary policy. There is no other domestic institution with more impact. It is simultaneously the Bank’s principal function, and it is the principal actor.

In contrast, the Bank has a very low level of impact on climate change. And there are many, many more institutions, public and private, which have a great deal more impact.

So even if you believe climate change is more important than monetary policy, every iota of time that the Bank diverts from monetary policy to climate change is a net loss - a shift from a high impact function to a low impact function.2

Giving the Bank a climate change mandate is an example of everythingism, to use the term coined by Joe Hill. As he put it, “Everythingism is the belief that every proposal, project or policy is a means for promoting every national objective, all at the same time,” and

As Joe’s essay sets out, everythingism is endemic - and it’s a major reason why the British State is such an underperformer. From housing policy to procurement, it’s slowing things down, impairing performance and driving up costs.

So let the Bank of England stick to its knitting - and remove the climate change mandate.

Monetary policy is too important for everythingism.

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The Stormlight Archive is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is.

Sorry, that’s space. Let’s try again.

The Stormlight Archive is big. Really big. At 2.3 million words across the five main books and two novellas, it’s almost five times longer than War and Peace or the Lord of the Rings trilogy, almost four times longer than A Suitable Boy, three times as long as the New International Version of the Bible and twice as long as all seven Harry Potter books put together, not to mention 500 times longer than this review.4 If written out in a single line, it would stretch 15-18 miles long, or about as far from Reading to Windsor; if each letter was made from lead moveable type, the assembled pile would weigh the same as four African bull elephants.5

And technically speaking, this is simply the ‘first arc’ - a complete and distinct story line - with another, of similar size, planned for the 2030s.

It’s also very good.

Sanderson is one of the masters of modern fantasy and this is his magnum opus: in his own words, “The Stormlight Archive is intended as a love letter to the epic fantasy genre.” World building, characterisation and epic battle scenes are executed with tremendous aplomb, with me regularly staying up into the early hours of the morning to finish a section. He does a particularly good job in gradually ramping up the powers of both the protagonists and the threat, such that the conflict always appears to be in doubt.

The magic system, Sanderson’s speciality, is one of his best: the Knights Radiant, and their enemies, can manipulate ‘surges’ - physical forces, such as gravitation, adhesion, illumination, tension - with powerful effect; with each order of knights having access to two of the surges, this gives considerable variation in how the powers can be combined. There is also a more ‘technological’ element, with stormlight used in ‘fabrials’ that can be researched, developed and used by anyone. Though the initial focus of the books is on combat by means of the ultra-powerful Shardblades, various indications suggest that the society is actually on the brink of the Enlightenment and a Stormlight-based Industrial revolution, elements that become more prominent as the series progresses.

Two things - beyond the core action - particularly stand out for me:

• The world-building. Roshar is a deeply strange world, with the surface wracked by storms, grass that withdraws into the ground when you approach, crustacean-esque fauna, and ‘spren’, spirit-like objects that briefly appear around natural (rain, wind, fire) and emotional (fear, glory, creativity) phenomena. Societally, it also feels like a real world, with a large variety of genuinely different and original nations, cultures and religions, many of which have little contact with each other beyond distant trade.6 This is gradually built up through the series, as well as via ‘interludes’ - short 5-10 page sections about entirely different characters - which are interspersed through each novel.

• The history and foreshadowing. What you are first told about Roshar only scratches the surface - with a tremendous amount later revealed, or initial beliefs subverted. Through means including ‘death rattles’ included at the beginning of chapters, historical fragments and visions, almost all of this is foreshadowed and suggested from the very first book: even if one doesn’t understand it then, on a second reading it fits together as a coherent whole.7

Unsurprisingly, there are flaws. Though its length is part of its strength, there are a few places where things drag: books 3-5 could have benefited from tighter editing, cutting 10-20% off each. At times it becomes preachy on mental health.8 The sudden transition from a war in the balance in Book 4, to losing on all fronts in Book 5 was implausible,9 even if the subsequent execution was done well. I initially thought the ending was also flawed - but we will return to this below.

Overall though, the strengths far outweigh the flaws. It’s a fantastic series, which I would highly recommend to any fan of epic fantasy with a couple of hundred hours to spare.

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Battle of the sexes?

Most fantasy takes one of two positions: either male/female dynamics and class hierarchies strongly model those of an existing historical society (typically Mediaeval Europe); or, more recently, they are assumed to largely mirror 21st century progressive values, despite this being implausible for the society and technology depicted.

The Stormlight Archive does something different: Sanderson depicts plausible highly stratified male/female roles, and a rigid class/race hierarchy, but along entirely different lines to any in Earth’s history.10 He also shows these beginning to buckle, realistically, during the cataclysmic events of the series.11

Vorinism - the religion followed by the nation of the main protagonists and its neighbours - sets out strictly defined roles for men and women. It is a highly martial society, where war is the most honoured pursuit, and is reserved for men, as are disciplines such as politics, commerce and carpentry. Womanly arts include art, music, literature, mathematics and science. Only women are permitted to read (men have a much more limited system of ‘glyphs’), and army officers travel with their wives, who act as their scribes and aides.12

For modesty, women are required to fully cover their left hands. For the upper classes, this involves it being fully bound up in a form of sling; most women, for whom this would not be practical, make do with covering it with a glove.13 Similarly, men and women are required to eat separate foods, with men’s food being spicy and women’s sweet. In wealthier households, this may involve the elaborate production of entirely separate meals; for poorer households, it is more likely to simply involve the addition of a different sauce after cooking.

A strict caste system exists based not on skin colour, but on eye-colour. Lighteyes sit at the top of the hierarchy, with dark-eyes never given authority over them. Within both lighteyes and darkeyes their are ten sub-castes'; movement within these is difficult, but not impossible. Slavery also exists, used for those convicted of certain crimes or prisoners of war as well as the non-human parshmen; ardents (priests) are also technically slaves, but in practice hold significant power.

Someone really, really, really doesn’t like utilitarianism

More than any other of Sanderson’s books,14 morality is a major theme of the Stormlight Archive. Characters debate morality with each other. Major climaxes are resolved as often by moral choices as by physical combat,15 with a character’s decision to return to save one he had no reason to, to reject temptation or to fulfil an oath being the crucial element that turned the tide.

The Knights Radiant themselves gain their powers through an ascending series of oaths - the first for each order being the title of this piece - such as ‘I will protect those who cannot protect themselves’, ‘I will remember those who have been forgotten,’ or ‘I will seek freedom for those in bondage.’ The protagonists struggle to follow codes of conduct, and to adapt and to do what is right in the light of new revelations about their history and their world.

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In particular, two goals that are at least partly in tension are:

• That every academically capable child, regardless of their background, should be stretched to fulfill their full academic potential, progressing to university and beyond.

• That those children who are not academically able are given the opportunity to develop other talents, so that they also can take up productive and rewarding roles in society.

Some things we might do in schools further both aims. It is important for everyone to be able to read, so phonics teaching and a focus on literacy are vital. Good behaviour policies, creating environments where children are safe and able to learn without disturbance, similarly benefit every child. The list goes on.

But there are also trade-offs.

At one level this simply involves prioritisation: where do we put our resources, whether that is money, the best teachers, or government policy focus. But there are also more hard-edged trade-offs. The longer you force every child to take an academically focused curriculum, the more likely you are to ensure no children in the first camp fall through the net. But the more likely, also, you are to have less academically capable children become disengaged with the system entirely, go off the rails and set themselves on the path to long-term unemployment, addiction, homelessness or criminality.1

There is no perfect answer here, only choices.

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An academic success story

Since 2010, under the school reforms spearheaded by Michael Gove, we’ve done a tremendous amount to improve English schools in terms of the first objective. The curriculum was revised to become more knowledge-rich; assessments were made more rigorous, including by reducing the dependence on easily-gamed coursework; and a system of school autonomy paired with tough accountability fostered innovation and then spread it throughout the system.

The results have been impressive. The UK has shot up the international school performance tables (PISA, TIMSS) - and while, like other countries, performance was impacted by COVID, it fell less far and appears to be rebounding more quickly. Importantly, this progress was spread broadly across socio-economic groups, with children on Free School Meals seeing attainment rise at a similar rate to more advantaged groups.2 At the top end, an increasing number of state schools see Oxbridge success rates comparable to those of private schools.3

These are fantastic achievements which must be treasured and preserved.

But at the same time, they did comparatively little for the ‘forgotten third’: those whose talents do not lie in the academic sphere, but still have a tremendous amount to give to society.

While there are a whole bunch of issues in displaying this statistic in a continuous time series,4 we can see that pretty consistently, 35-40% of children in state schools fail to achieve a pass - a C in old money or a 4 today - in both GCSE English and Maths. Given that schools are - rightly - incentivised to try very hard to get children to pass these subjects, for many children this statistic will also represent worse performance in other subjects also.

We can see that this number is also very sticky - over time and across regions.5 Over the last 15 years, despite the massive focus on this issue, it’s fallen by about 5%. That is not nothing: it represents tens of thousands of children per year. But at that rate of improvement, we’ll still be talking about the ‘forgotten quarter’ in the 2050s and the ‘forgotten fifth’ in about 2070.6

That can’t be a reasonable solution to this issue.7

In addition to neglecting this cohort in school, decisions by both parties have also made it worse for them in other ways.

Further Education was systematically cut between 2002 and 2020, with funding falling by over a third in real terms. Well-meaning reforms to the apprenticeship system in 2017 resulted in the number of apprentices for younger people, and at lower levels, collapsing as employers shifted funding towards older, established and more highly skilled workers. The number of vocational qualifications offered was allowed to proliferate and overlap in a confusing way, and (in the ‘00s) false ‘equivalences’ were declared which led to many young people being steered by schools into taking them to game the school performance tables. And more recently, a too-blunt policy meant that young people who had failed their English and Maths GCSE, and had little prospect of ever passing them, were forced into repeated futile and humiliating retakes, rather than being supported into gaining more practical qualifications in numeracy and literacy.8

To try to disguise this, the entry and awarding standards for higher education were allowed to collapse, with 1 in 10 new full-time undergraduate starters now going without a single A-Level, BTEC or equivalent, and the proportion of Firsts going from 13% to 30% in under 20 years. This facilitated a significant increase in the proportion of young people going to higher education - despite the most recent study, using highly favourable assumptions,9 demonstrating that 1 in 4 of those going see no, or negative, financial returns, and 32% showing a negative return when one considers both the returns to the individual and the Exchequer. It was a type of Potemkin social mobility, funneling youngsters into debt-trap degrees, regardless of whether they conveyed any intrinsic learning or led to better career options.

It’s time to focus on the forgotten third

Andy Burnham has pledged to give technical and vocational education the same focus that academic education has achieved, an ambition that continues from his actions as Mayor of Greater Manchester. In a recent announcement he pledged:

The Prime Minister is determined to put technical education on an equal footing with the traditional academic path and to ensure there are ‘no dead ends’ for young people coming out of the education system. This means providing high-quality technical education routes that are valued and respected by students, parents and employers. In a message directly to students, he will say ‘whether you choose construction, coding or classics, you’ll get the skills you need and be given the respect you deserve’.

From age 14 (Year 10), students will have the chance to combine core academic subjects – including English, maths and science - with a high-quality technical education that’s linked to the jobs available in their area. They will be able to spend time with employers and gain real-world experience…

…For too long in this country, students have been told that you must take the academic path to do well and to be respected. The whole school system has been built around it and that has let down young people seeking technical qualifications.

“I want an education system based on parity between academic and technical which gives all young people a clear path in life. From today, Britain will value the hard hat every bit as much as the graduation cap.

“In a fundamental change to the education system, we will introduce new technical education pathways from 14 – prestigious routes that will give students the chance to combine the core academic subjects with the skills, technical knowledge and experience they need to get quality, well-paid jobs where they live.”

As politicians are wont to do, he has talked a lot about parity of esteem. This is understandable, because voters love it and it plays into the sense many people have that everyone is equally endowed with talents, albeit different ones.10 But this is not actually a helpful framing: while highly rigorous vocational qualifications exist and are important, the policy as outlined so far appears to be more focused about providing better lives for the ‘forgotten third’ who are gaining little from the current single academic pathway.11

The blunt reality is that, in a highly technological, information-based society such as ours, outside of professional sport and entertainment, the most lucrative and prestigious jobs are predominantly going to be those that require a high level of academic ability.12 Those kids with the academic ability to become bankers, barristers and brain surgeons will predominantly follow the path that allows them to do so, not take vocational options - and seeking to alter this is folly.

Below that top level, the story is more mixed, with many highly skilled technical careers providing higher earning power than lower paid graduate jobs. Many roles require a mixture of both - such as an electrician who establishes their own business and begins employing others - as well as many other elements and attributes of a person’s personality.

But there are also a great many people who are not succeeding academically and are highly disengaged by the current structure of the education system. They may come alive in the workshop - but then again they may not. Perhaps they do not have a particularly strong natural aptitude in any areas. But nevertheless, we should want - for both their sake and that of the nation - for them to be able to play a productive role in the labour market: holding down a job, supporting themselves and their family, and doing as well as they can. That may be a job such as a hairdresser, care assistant or bricklayer; it may be as a shift supervisor in retail or hospitality; it may be simply a job on minimum wage. What matters is that they are healthily and fruitfully engaged in society.13

Real parity of esteem isn’t about trying to claim that every path is equal, or that all have equal talents. It’s about valuing and supporting everyone regardless of their endowments, supporting them to live good and fulfilling lives: not insisting that everyone must seek to cram themselves into an academic pathway - and throwing on the dung-heap those who don’t succeed.

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Fundamentally, we know how to do this: it involves getting disengaged children out of the classroom and working with employers - on placements, on day-release, or on employer-led activities in a more traditional environment of a school or college. Ideally this should involve learning vocational skills, but at the very minimum it involves teaching children how to be employable - to turn up on time, to deliver in a work-based setting - to re-engage them with learning by showing them its applicability, and to take people off the road to unemployment and inactivity.

This can, and should, also involve - at least pre-16 - continued study of at least some foundational subjects, particularly English and Maths, in some form.

Children aged 14 and above could spend 1-2 days a week in FE colleges, taking vocational options where the facilities already exist, alongside a smaller set of GCSEs. This has worked before and could work again. Alternatively, they could be allowed to go on day release to employers, again for 1-2 days per week, potentially earning a (low) wage while doing so. Burnham’s own MBacc, brigading together technical qualifications and work experience, could be adapted and expanded for national use.

One other type of institution that has demonstrated it can deliver this sort of education at scale are the misleadingly named University Technical Colleges, or UTCs - which despite the name are technically-focused schools for 14-19 year olds, with a strong emphasis on working with employers.

There are currently 44 of them, with the first established in 2010. The programme faced significant teething problems - just as some of the early free schools saw incidents of mismanagement. A number of reports in 2019 found that they were underperforming - which was hardly surprising, as at the time fewer than half were rated Good or Outstanding by Ofsted.

Since then, they have improved dramatically, as they figured out how to consistently deliver high-quality employer-focused education. This has shown up in Ofsted ratings, which are now comparable with the broader state sector, as well as a recent study, which used statistical matching to compare UTCs with local schools with similar demographics, and found that UTC students were more likely to go on to apprenticeships, more likely to be in sustained employment destinations and less likely to become NEETs.14 Clearly not every school should be a UTC - but doubling the number of them, as well as establishing a similar number of UTC ‘sleeves’ - or pathways within mainstream state schools - would place a high quality vocational option within the reach of many more children.

Further Education Colleges and UTCs are far from the only option. Greater work experience, employer placements and vocational options could be delivered in mainstream schools under other auspices. The provisions in the Education and Skills Act 2008 that raised the education leaving age from 16 to 18 can and should be reversed.15 And though some Labour MPs may balk at it, cadet forces in schools could be greatly expanded - particularly in schools with high NEET outcomes. The armed forces have a great track record of providing the structure and discipline some young people need to get their life back on track - not to mention developing skills and trades useful on the return to civilian life.

And yet, it may not work

Despite what I’ve written, there remain significant reasons to be cautious.

Firstly, though the ‘forgotten third’ is a long-standing challenge, the education system is not the cause of the current rise in NEETs. Rather, this has been caused by the dramatic, inflation-busting rises in the minimum wage for younger people, alongside the increase in Employer National Insurance Contribution, which together have increased the cost of employing a young person by over £4,000 in just two years - pricing young people out of the labour market.16

The dramatic increase in ‘day 1 rights’ introduced by the new Employment Rights Act will exacerbate this, making employers less willing to take a chance on anyone without a strong employment record or impeccable credentials. Ongoing aftereffects of the COVID lockdowns, and a SEND, welfare and disability system that strongly incentivises young people to take themselves out of the labour market17 complete the toxic cocktail.

If Burnham misdiagnoses what changes to education can - and cannot - achieve, this may lead the reforms down the wrong route.

Secondly, it is always easier to destroy than to build.

Rather than actually improve things for the less academically able, the Government may simply reverse the academic progress made over the last 15 years - dumbing down the curriculum, making exams easier and reducing accountability. This would return us to a system that serves no-one well - a return to the ‘bog-standard comprehensive’ condemned by Alastair Campbell. There is, lamentably, still a strong strand of thought that believes that if some children cannot pass an exam, the solution is to make it easier for everyone, even to the point of uselessness - rather than to tailor different routes to different abilities.

There is real reason to fear this. Starmer’s Government had already taken steps in this direction under Bridget Phillipson, and Burnham’s new choice of Education Secretary has a worrying track record of criticising rigorous assessments, praising coursework and scepticism towards the knowledge rich curriculum.

If the reforms tend towards this direction, they can and should be condemned.

Thirdly, even if the focus on improving vocational routes is maintained, it will not be easy to deliver this at scale. Schools do not have the funding or facilities; trained staff will be an issue.18 If employers are to deliver work placements at scale, rather than as an act of charity, they must be either compelled (as the Germans and Swiss, who are best at this do) or compensated, which again requires funding. Previous technical education initiatives, such as the previous Government’s T-Levels, or repeated aspirations to increase the number of apprenticeships, have foundered on the Treasury’s dogmatic refusal to compensate employers for providing work-place based training.19

If delivering genuine employer-based learning and release to FE colleges are put in the ‘too difficult’ bucket, it would be all too easy for the Government to fall back on delivering pseudo-vocational qualifications from the classroom, which as has eloquently documented, meant that ‘Between 2004 and 2010, the number of vocational qualifications taken in schools up to age 16 increased nearly 40 times - from 15,000 a year to 575,000 a year’, while ‘the government attempted to enforce equivalence by fiat using equivalence tables…In perhaps the most egregious case, 20% of pupils ended up taking the European Computer Driving Licence, a vocational qualification that was equivalent to a GCSE but that could be completed in three days.’ This, again, would be a tremendous waste of potential.

So there are plenty of ways in which this could go wrong - and good reason to be cautious, and to apply scrutiny.

But the aim, of delivering better vocational routes for the forgotten third, that will support them in to more fruitful roles in society, is one that should be given full support. It may be hard to deliver, but it is essential to do so - we cannot keep writing off 1 in 3 of our children.

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8

We shouldn’t make no-one retake: English and Maths GCSE are very valuable, so there is logic in getting people who’d just missed out to retake; far less so in people who fell far below the level required. About 30% of those who failed the first time go on to ultimately pass (ignore the COVID years), and while we can’t identify those perfectly, getting 100% of students to repeatedly retake really doesn’t seem useful, and may well be counter-productive.

16

We can see this clearly if we compare youth unemployment in the UK and the Eurozone. It wasn’t the education system that changed where the two lines decouple:

• Different ways the Government can help people

• Missing Moral Messages

• The Silliest Argument for Expanding Higher Education

• Politics at its best

Different ways the Government can help people

There are two different ways in which government can help people.

One possibility it can give people things they really want. This could include tax cuts, more benefits, smaller class sizes, shorter NHS waiting lists, free stuff (childcare, TV licenses, prescriptions…), less crime or graffiti in their neighbourhood, freedom to worship, parks and libraries, integrated public transport networks or anything else that a person would be happy to receive. If the government’s stewardship of the economy causes there to be more job openings and pay rises, that should also go in this category.

Items in this category may be right-coded, left-coded, or somewhere in between. And of course, to deliver some of them a government will have to do some things that people don’t like, usually raising taxes to pay for them. But the actual deliverable is something that people genuinely want.

The other possibility is it can do things that it thinks will be good for people. This could include fining parents if they take their children out of school during term time, putting taxes on sugar/alcohol/tobacco, banning things (pornography, gay marriage, guns…), conscripting people into the army, setting out rules on who you can use as a childminder, making rules about cycle helmets or seat belts or anything else that a person wouldn’t choose for themselves, but which other people believe would be for their benefit.1

As before, items in this category may be right-coded, left-coded, or somewhere in between.

Almost everyone believes that some things in this category are necessary, but they disagree about which ones are, and which ones aren’t.2 And the fact that something is in this category doesn’t mean it won’t be popular - the British public love banning things which don’t affect them. But what really matters is their own lives getting better.

Over recent years the national government - whichever party has been in power - has appeared to spend more time focusing on policies which fall into the second category.3 In part this may be because we have been led by Prime Ministers without a strong ideology, meaning the direction is set more by civil servants and stakeholder groups, who tend to prioritise what they think will be good for people.4

This is not working in delivering the outcomes that are making people happy - hence why we are cycling through Prime Ministers faster than a Tour de France rider on steroids.

Andy Burnham, in contrast, seems to have been popular as Mayor of Greater Manchester by focusing on delivering on things that people actually wanted. He inherited a city with a good economy and maintained and continued the policies that would keep it growing; he appointed a good chief constable who cut crime; he implemented some highly visible and valued policies about buses and public transport.

But running a country is a lot harder than running a city - as our previous Mayor-turned-Prime Minister found out.5 Can Burnham repeat his success on a national level - or will it need to wait for his successor, whoever that may be?

Missing Moral Messages

I’ve written before how my problem with much of the modern mass cultural outputs is that the moral messages it conveys tend to be pretty one-dimensional: friendship is good, be kind, value others even when they’re different. Sometimes bravery, in a shallow, MCU superhero sense.

There’s nothing actively wrong with these messages - in fact, they’re pretty good! - but they’re also not very helpful when it comes to living your live well. They’re basically about how to rub along with others, rather than how to make something of yourself in an often difficult world.6

There’s another set of important messages which one can find in books such as those by Louis L’Amour, Robert Heinlein’s ‘juveniles’, Jim Butcher and David Gemmell. They include things such as:

• Life’s not fair, but you should your best anyway.

• If you get knocked down you get back up again.

• If you make a mistake, you put it right.

• You do what’s right, even if it costs you.

• Nothing worth obtaining comes easily.

• Self respect is everything - and it can’t be bought or gained by cheating.

In this passage from Out Law, Butcher’s latest novella, Dresden - the main character, an urban wizard - is talking to an ex-con who’s trying to go straight.7

“Life is hard, man. All of it. Nothing you can do will change that. But you can mostly choose what kind of hard stuff you want in it.”

He frowned. “Like what?”

I eyed him. Tripp was in good shape. At his age, that didn’t happen without effort, so I figured I could start simple.

“Exercising and staying in shape is hard. Not exercising and staying in shape is hard too; it just takes longer to set in. But you can pick which kind of difficulty you want.”

“Huh,” he said.

“By the time you consider everything you’ve gone through, working for Marcone is hard. Making an honest living is hard too. But they’re different kinds of hard. You don’t spend time in the pen when you play it straight. But there’s a lot of boring stuff, and most days, you’re making yourself do stuff you’d rather not do. You get to choose which kind of hard you want.”

“What about the easy life?”

“Maybe some people get that, sometimes, for a while. But people weren’t made for easy. We were made to work and scrap and struggle to make our lives into something better. We aren’t supposed to lie around, doing nothing, for very long. People who get away from that forward drive get weird fast.”

Out Law, by Jim Butcher

Although there is a strong message in these books to help others, there is not the abnegation of self that one might find in books such as What Katy Did or Little Women: characters in these books do want things - a decent life, respect, sufficient money to support themselves - though this is usually framed as things they can earn honestly, and sometimes contrasted with the greed or lust for power of their adversaries.

The main characters of these books are not always good people, either because they have not always been good people in their past, or because they lack the social niceties and graces that would fit into polite society. Being the type of books they are, the messages are also interwoven with a fair amount of action and violence - whether against outlaws, space pirates or demons, depending on genre.

Furthermore, the message ‘stand on your own two feet’ does not mean they are not helped by others - or give help themselves. In contrast, this is consistently presented as a positive thing. It is more that one does not expect handouts - that when life is unfair, one cannot sit back and expect someone to put it right for you, but that one must - while acknowledging the injustice - press forward anyway.

They are hard messages, that could come from the mouths of the Gods of the Copybook Headings. Most of us don’t live up to them all, or even most of the time. But we could perhaps do with more fiction that conveyed these messages, rather than platitudes.

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The Silliest Argument for Expanding Higher Education

The silliest argument for expanding higher education runs like this:

‘You went to university and you want your children to go to university, so how can you suggest restricting it for anyone else?’

It has a certain rhetorical effect, so I can understand why those who care more about persuasion than truth use it, but anyone who truly believes it should know better.

Must a concert violinist, who attended the Royal Academy of Music and hopes their children do too, believe that the Academy should drop its standards and let more people in - so they too can benefit?

Must a Premiership footballer, who attended his club’s youth team, and hopes and dreams that his two-year-old son will follow in his footsteps, believe that the youth team should let in anyone who wants to play - even if there is almost no chance they will go on to make it professionally?

Or we could choose an example closer to home. I went to Cambridge, and hope that my children will go.8 Am I a hypocrite, unless I believe that Cambridge should lower its standards and double the number of places it offers, so more people can benefit?9

Obviously not.

In each case, the value of the institution in question is in its high standards. That is core to what the person who attended them values. And our hope for our children to also attend is a hope that our children will also attain highly - not a wish that the institution degrade itself just to give them a higher chance of attending.

As with Cambridge or the Royal Academy of Music, so with higher education as a whole. The clue is in the name: HIGHER education, providing an academically rigorous education for those who are highly academically qualified. Of course there should be second chances - retakes, the OU, progression from FE - for those who did not achieve their potential the first time, but these should be pathways to allow people to demonstrate attainment of the necessary standards - not ones that remove those standards. And of course there should be other high quality routes for those not academically qualified.10

Those who make the silliest argument commit two fallacies:

1. They implicitly assume HE should be for everyone, rather than something reserved for those with high academic standards. But high academic standards are at the core of HE - the fundamental element that distinguishes it and gives it its particular value. Its degradation - with entry standards down almost across the board, 1 in 10 now going without an A-Level or BTEC equivalent, while Firsts are given out like candy11 - is fundamental to the current crisis.

2. They assume HE is homogeneous, with all universities the same. But why should the fact that I valued my high quality degree at Cambridge say anything about how I value a pack-'em-high, teach-'em-cheap course in business or social studies, with no entry requirements, minimal assessment standards and no currency with employers or postgraduate courses?

The fact is, I would not advise my children - or any other young person I cared about - to enroll on debt-trap courses such as those I described above. In most cases, I would advise them against going to HE at all unless they were on track for CCC or higher at A-Level - in such circumstances other routes are likely to be better. And I would wish neither Cambridge nor higher education as a whole to lower their standards to give my children, nor any other children, a better chance of getting a place at somewhere they were not qualified to attend.12

But meanwhile, the proponents of the silliest argument for expanding higher education will no doubt keep on making it.

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Politics at its Best

I am not naive about politics.

The idea that things would be better if everyone would just sit down together and decide what’s best to do isn’t just wrong, but dangerous: the adversarial nature of politics is essential as a check and balance on the misuse of power.

Different people have very different views on how our society should be run, what is fair, what works and what is right and moral. The lives and livelihoods of millions can turn on these differences. Politics is how we resolve these decisions without violence - and ensure peaceful transitions of power. It must be adversarial: is a struggle for power, not a game, and the stakes are high.13

But at the same time - particularly in a week where a politician has been murdered - we should also remember the human side: that our politicians are almost all good people seeking to make a positive difference, and that they, and their families, can pay a horrendous toll in emotion, abuse, time and sacrifice.

On that note, I thought the final session of Prime Minister’s Questions between Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch showed our politics at its best, revealing the human side of two people who, whatever one may think of their policies or track record, are both decent, well-meaning people who want the best for Britain.

You can watch it here.14

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Also the British Commentariat: Why isn’t [Person X] ahead in the polls right now?

A significant gap has opened up in polls asking what people think of Kemi Badenoch (up significantly) and the Conservative Party’s own polling, which is still stuck in the doldrums at just under 20%.

Over the last couple of weeks there have been a number of pieces written by people over what this means for Kemi Badenoch. You can read a bullish case, by Adrian Wooldridge or a more bearish case, by .

What you’ll get here is a cautious case: not arguing that Kemi is on an inevitable path to victory, but rather that she might be - and that the ground-work she is laying is putting the Conservatives in a better place to build from than more casual observers might anticipate.

Firstly, though, let us clear the air and acknowledge that the Conservatives are not, right now, doing well.1

These headline polling figures are borne out by terrible results at the last two sets of local elections, and reinforced by qualitative data from almost every focus group. Two years after the last general election, many people have still to forgive the Tories, and/or fail to see them as answer for the challenges facing the country.

But we don’t care what the polls say now, we care what they will say in 2-3 years’ time.2 And we all know that to do that, we need to look at not just how things are now, but how they are changing - and how that in turn might change in the future:3

So what reasons do we have for thinking that the Conservative’s fortunes might improve? After first setting out expectations, we’ll then look at the cautious case for Kemi - before going on to look at what could still blow it off track (plenty!) and areas where they could be doing more to gain an advantage.

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Setting our expectations

But first, what does ‘good’ look like? Perhaps history can give us a clue:

• After 1979, Labour did not regain power for 18 years and four general elections.

• After 1997, the Tories did not regain power for 13 years and three general elections

• After 2010, Labour did not regain power for 14 years and four general elections.4

To put it bluntly, we shouldn’t see ‘not winning in 2029’ as a reasonable measure of failure for the current leadership.5 Clearly, winning is the best - but increasing seats and vote share - say to 180 seats - would also be clear progress. This would particularly be the case if this resulted in a hung Parliament (perhaps with Reform the largest party, on 200-250), or a fragile ‘Rainbow’ coalition on the left.6

On current polling, the Tories are not on track for that - and it’s where, at the minimum, they need to be.

But wait a minute: the Conservatives were in an unusually terrible position in 2024 - worse, I would argue, than Labour in 2010 or the Conservatives in 1997; perhaps Labour in 1979 comes close, facing as they did both a parlous country and, soon, a new challenger party in their space.7

They had just faced two major external events - the Covid-19 Pandemic and the energy price shock caused by the Russia-Ukraine war - the combination of which pummelled incumbents almost everywhere. Partygate had destroyed their reputation for probity and, even more damagingly, Truss had blown up their reputation for economic competence. The country were sick of them - and having been in power for 14 years, laid the country’s travails squarely at their feet.

What is more, the years from 2016 to 2024 had been an unequivocal disaster for the right.

I am not a purist - there are many ways to run a successful party on the right. Cameron effectively combined free market economics, cutting spending and pro-choice public service reform with social liberalism; in other countries and at other times the right has focused on cutting crime, controlling the borders or social conservatism.

But in 2024, delivering Brexit aside, the Conservatives had failed on every possible right-wing success criteria - all the while using inflammatory rhetoric which alienated many moderates. As Kemi herself has put it, they ‘talked right and governed left’.

Public spending, tax and the national debt had risen massively, as had the number of welfare claimants. Legal and illegal immigration had both surged to record levels, they had lost control of the Channel border and the courts were in crisis.8 Trans ideology and critical race theory were embedded in both the schools system and public sector organisations, museums and curricula were being ‘decolonised’. The armed forces had been cut to the bone. The regulatory burden on business had steadily piled up, the planning system moved at a snail’s pace and the Government was steadily rolling out new regulatory measures, from the smoking ban to a football regulator.9

As I satirically wrote the day after an election, could a Labour government possibly be worse?10

The surprise is not that a right-wing challenger party emerged; the surprise is that it did not do so sooner. Similarly on their left-flank: much has been written on how Brexit, or opposing ‘woke’, or the Rwanda plan pushed wealthier, graduate voters to the Lib Dems - and this is true - but not enough has been written about the fact that there was no countervailing pull on the economic side. Why vote for a party that has increased your taxes, taken away your child benefit and placed you in student debt - meaning the perceived cost of voting your values with the Lib Dems, Green or Labour is nothing?11

Furthermore, the party itself was hopelessly split:12 shortly before Sunak called the election, he was facing open revolt not just from backbenchers, but from cabinet members, over proposed curbs to student migration that were more moderate than those Labour would introduce a year later, while the party’s right divided into a bizarre ‘Five Families’, the divisions between which one had to squint to see.

All of this presented a monumental challenge for any new leader: not just earning back a hearing from the public, but healing the divisions in a way which could actually underpin a coherent platform for government was a monumental task.

And has Kemi done that?

Again, some honesty: the first 8 months were not a success. Her leader approval ratings steadily declined as the party stuttered like a broken-down car trying to get into motion. Being a party leader is hard - much harder than the job of a Cabinet Minister.

But over that first summer she recovered her mojo, re-organised her team and at some point - perhaps Party Conference, perhaps the response to Reeves’s tax-and-borrow Budget - she began to turn things round.

Her popularity is now consistently well above those of all other leaders except Ed Davey.

When we include Andy Burnham things get a lot closer:

And in a head-to-head against Farage, Kemi comes out on top:

She is getting consistently better at the ‘set-pieces’ required of the Leader of the Opposition, such as Prime Minister’s Questions, and has grown better at media interviews, as well as producing the clips that get shared on social media. Focus groups typically report that people like what they see of her, though aren’t always sure what she stands for while, anecdotally, less political friends say they see far more of her coming through on Facebook, Instagram and similar - and that they often like what they see.

There are still occasional missteps - the most recent significant one was over the Iran war - but these are becoming less and less frequent. After the recent tragic murder of Henry Nowak, Kemi’s clearly articulated compassion for the family and support for equality before the law received the highest approval from the public, ahead of Starmer’s muddled defence of the status quo, while Farage’s attempt to invoke white victimhood came last.

So far, this hasn’t translated to an improvement in the polls. But leader approval rating is an important leading indicator - so it’s an important clue that while the Tories aren’t up now, they might be.

The other traditional indicator of future victory is trust in the economy - and here again the Conservatives are ahead, though not as much as they’d ideally like to be. You can see clearly the Truss Minibudget, where Labour shot ahead, and then the long-slow slog of gradual Tory recovery.

So why aren’t these indicators translating into Tory polling numbers - and why might we believe they could in the future?

The answer to both questions is time. It’s only just over two years since the Tories were voted out of office - and as we saw above, there’s a lot to forgive. It’s less than a year since Kemi started performing more strongly. These things take time to trickle through.

Similarly, public opinion tends to be thermostatic - shifting to the right under a left-wing Government and vice-versa. This can be seen in the vote share of the ‘right bloc’ vs the ‘left bloc’ - where the right’s lead has gone from -17 at the last General Election to +3.7 today.13 Similarly, as writes, a recent poll by Norstat found that 13% of ‘left’ voters from the 2024 election have moved to the right, while only 4% of ‘right’ voters have moved to the left.

But why might we think a continued thermostatic effect would benefit the Tories, rather than Reform? There are three principal reasons: the economy, immigration, and Reform’s travails.

On the economy, we’ve seen a major shift in how the public is thinking about tax and spend - an area where the Tories have an advantage over Reform. In 2019, voters on balance thought taxes were too low and we spent too little on public services, now the balance has swung decisively in favour of taxing and spending too much.14 Indications are that Burnham will shift to the left, and with deteriorating OBR forecasts, we can expect the next two Budgets - just as the last two did - to involve coming to the public for large, tax rises, likely to be in the tens of billions. The Conservatives are best placed to capitalise.

Regarding immigration, net migration has fallen to below 200,000 and is forecast to fall further. Rather like inflation, falling migration doesn’t immediately ameliorate public concerns - the new immigrants, like the higher prices, are after all still here. But over time, concern over migration does tend to be a lagging indicator of net migration levels15 - and, indeed, we can see it falling from its peak in the YouGov tracker. I would not over-egg this: the small boat crisis in the Channel and the inability to systematically deport violent criminals will prevent concerns over immigration falling too far, but the more it shifts from migration to the economy, the better for the Tories.

Finally, there are Reform’s own travails - where views are hardening against both them and Farage himself. The recent donation scandal is cutting through, including with Reform voters.16 Both polling on tactical voting and real evidence, both in Parliamentary by-elections and the local elections, suggests that Farage is a much more disliked figure, and that more voters will vote to keep out Reform - including, at times, for the Tories, than for the Conservatives.17

Of course, Reform are by no means out of the picture - but ‘Word Clouds’ taken last September and this May suggest that while Farage’s reputation is waning, Kemi’s is on the rise.

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But perhaps most importantly, the case for Kemi rests on how she has transformed the Conservative Party. It is here where I most disagree with Sam Freedman:

“Badenoch has done nothing to structurally improve the Tory position. There is no policy agenda beyond pledges to undo Labour taxes rises by cutting welfare. Because the Tory leader seems animated almost entirely by hatred of Labour her positions are always about negating something they’re doing, whether on net zero or private school VAT, rather than setting out a positive agenda of her own.”

The Badenoch Conundrum, Sam Freedman

Adrian Wooldridge is closer to the mark, but even this doesn’t fully unpack the extent of the arduous groundwork that has been successfully undertaken:

“The second thing in Badenoch’s favor is her progress on the arduous job of repairing the Tory party after the Brexit disaster, as both a political outfit and ideological force. She has replaced a discredited gang of operatives in Conservative Campaign Headquarters with competent functionaries and is identifying a distinctive philosophy that addresses people’s worries about opportunity and immigration without being deliberately divisive.”

Britain’s Tories Think They’ve Found a Winner, Adrian Wooldridge

There are three fundamental ways in which Kemi has transformed the party, carrying out the painstaking but necessary work from which an electoral victory could be built.

1. In government, the Conservatives were drifting, hopelessly divided about what they wanted to achieve. On issue after issue they would will the ends but not the means: wanting to stop the Channel crossings but unwilling to leave the ECHR; railing against public sector wokery but unwilling to touch the Equality Act; wanting to lower taxes but refusing to touch benefits or public services; saying they wanted more people doing college courses and apprenticeships and fewer at university, but unwilling to contemplate restoring number controls.18 On each of these issues and more, Kemi has been willing to set out the means - leaving the ECHR, repealing the Public Sector Equality Duty, cutting welfare and reducing university places.19

2. She has done all of this while maintaining party unity. She has been helped, it is true, by the defection of her biggest rival, Robert Jenrick, to Reform - but it was still no easy task in a party that had previously been marked by constant schisms. More centrist MPs such as Jesse Norman have written publicly on why we must leave the ECHR, and it is notable that the ‘centre-right’ pressure group, Prosper UK - composed primarily of members who were strong Remain supporters - has failed to recruit a single MP. While she was heavily criticised for taking time to work through these issues, it is unclear whether she could have moved faster and taken the deeply divided party with her.20

3. She is carrying out significant, detailed, policy work on a wide range of issues - as represented, for example, by the Alternative King’s Speech or the recent paper on reforming the City of London. These are not reviews carried out by external parties, deniable and ignorable, but formal policy documents published by the party. They represent the beginning of a serious programme - and show that she does not just wish to win power, but to achieve something concrete if and when she arrives.

Look, I get that the ‘Ming Vase Strategy’ is all the rage these days. Never say anything that might upset anyone; be deliberately vague about trade-offs and promise nothing but platitudes. It successfully carried Boris Johnson,21 Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham into office. But however successful it may be as an electoral tactic, for governing it proved a foundation made of sand (we will see if Burnham can break the mould…).

It is also not the approach that was taken by the two most successful Conservative Prime Ministers of the last half century, Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron - who, in the midst of crisis, both actively campaigned for what they believed in, and persuaded the country it was necessary:

Effective leaders set out how the country needs to change - and take the country with them. And there is no point in winning power without a working plan to achieve something with it.

Headwinds and countermeasures

So is Kemi a sure thing? Far from it.

Reform continues to threaten to supplant them as the main party of the right. They may be taking knocks, but they’re still leading in the polls. Farage may be down, but he’s not out - and this is a politician with a twenty-year track record of resilience and rebounds, who can literally crawl from the wreckage of a plane crash and go on to dominate politics. Even if Reform has peaked - which should not be counted as certain - a Reform that squats stubbornly22 at 22-24% in the polls could prove fatal to Conservative ambitions.23

The 72 Liberal Democrat MPs have managed to have surprisingly little impact on national policies - but the Lib Dems are local campaigners par excellence, and they have been digging in to those constituencies they gained. Local election results confirm they are entrenching themselves. The Tories must take some of these back - and not enough focus has been given to this.

The biggest new threat to the Conservatives is Burnham, and whether he can change Labour’s fortune. His election is a double-edged sword: it is a second chance for Labour, but if it goes sour the electorate will be even less forgiving.24

I am pretty bearish on his chances: as said above, I do not see evidence he has the answers that will turn the country round, or to alter Labour’s economically harmful policies on higher taxes, damaging employment law and increased spending. As a result, I fully expect him to have to come back each Budget imposing unpopular and damaging taxes.25 But at the same time, he will almost certainly be better at core aspects of the job than Starmer was: building relationships with his MPs, communicating with the public, telling a story of what he is doing - and why.26 This matters - including in being able to get more through Parliament. So the Conservatives should not assume Labour will remain below 20% in the polls.

So it is not enough for the Conservatives to simply wait for Reform and Labour to implode (though this might help). They must do more to convert Kemi’s personal ratings into rising Conservative poll figures. To succeed they cannot choose either right or left; they must win back voters that have deserted the party to both Reform and to the Lib Dems or Labour.

I see three areas where they have the opportunity to be doing much more.27

Firstly, Kemi needs to get all of her best players on the front bench. Some individuals have succeeded in cutting through: Claire Coutinho, Nick Timothy, Andrew Griffith and Laura Trott have all had repeated successes. Behind the scenes, ’s influence has massively upped their game on their policy announcements. But others are not making an impact.

Meanwhile there are too many top performers who are underused. Jeremy Hunt had great success in sticking it to Labour in his short stint as Shadow Chancellor - could he make a return, if not in that role, then in one of the other big economic portfolios, such as welfare or business? Tugendhat is highly respected on defence and foreign policy. Individuals from the newer intake, such as Katie Lam and Jack Rankin, could be given bigger roles.

This is not intended as a criticism of individuals: there are people who would be good ministers in government who are not as suited to the very different challenge of Opposition.28 At this stage in the electoral cycle Kemi knows who the high performers are, and should no longer be bound by other considerations, such as those who she owes a debt to from the leadership campaign.

Secondly, they must be relentlessly hammering home the economic message: Labour is making you poorer. They cannot talk too much about jobs, tax and benefits - repeatedly linking Labour’s decisions to the cost of living, fall in jobs and increase in welfare claimants.29 Kemi’s strongest moment with the public was her response to Reeves’s Budget: this must be built on, and rammed home by every member of the Shadow Cabinet and every advert and communication. Where are the Indebted Baby pictures of yesteryear?

After their record in Government, it was essential that the Tories reset their reputation on immigration and other matters (wokery, etc.). The policies they’ve announced have done this - leaving the ECHR was a vital ‘permission issue’ that provides a core answer to the question, ‘Well, why should we believe you this time’? Repealing the Public Sector Equality Duty is similar. But now these are in place, they should not try to outflank Reform. To win vote share on the right - and win back waverers in the centre and left - they must maximise the salience of the issues they are strongest, which means jobs, tax and welfare, not issues such as immigration where Reform do better.30

Thirdly, they need a much stronger offer to middle class graduates with whom they may not be fully aligned on values. I don't mean BlueSkyers or Green party activists, but moderates, genuine centrists who either stayed home or voted Labour or Lib Dem in 2024.

These voters need to see clearly that they will be better off under the Conservatives: that they will pay less tax, have more disposable income, will find it easier to get a job and will earn more. And to be blunt, for the last 10 years that's not been true. The middle classes have been seen as the cash cow used to fund an ever-burgeoning benefits bill.

They've pledged to abolish interest on Plan 2 student loans - a good, symbolic start on an issue that affects millions. More is needed. I suggest:

• Raising the higher rate threshold to £60,000 - worth £2k to every person earning £60k a year or more.

• Ending the means-testing of child benefit.

• Abolishing the removal of the personal allowance at £100k and the removal of free childcare.

Around 1 in 5 taxpayers pay the higher rate (and this will be a higher proportion of households) - and a much higher percentage of the graduate middle class they must win back. Far fewer earn over £100k - but many of them might hope to one day. Taken together - alongside the existing student loan pledge - they would combine immediate financial gains with a message that the Tory party is back on the side of aspiration.

A situation where most educated, higher earning people vote for parties in favour of large-scale redistribution is fundamentally unstable: the Tories just have to give them a reason to come back.

In reforming the party, addressing its baggage and strengthening her own reputation with the public, Kemi has laid the foundations for a Conservative revival. Now she must build on it.

Ultimately, I do not say it is inevitable that Kemi will win. Only that she might - and that she is the best chance the Tory party has of not just winning power, but knowing what to do with it if they get it.

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This is an oversimplification.

If you don’t pay your taxes, the government will send you a strongly worded letter and begin adding interest to what you owe them. If you continue to not pay, they will start to impose fines. If you don’t pay the fines, they will issue you a court order. If you continue to ignore the court they may prosecute you. If you ignore that, they can send the police to arrest you. And if you hole up in your house with a gun, resisting arrest by force, they will shoot you.1

One mark of a civilised society is that most people pay their taxes without getting involved in regular gun battles with the authorities.2 Even Al Capone went to prison for tax evasion.

But the reason this works is because the escalation ladder is clearly understood - indeed, it is embedded at such a deep level we almost never think about it. If HMRC doesn’t check whether people have filed their tax returns, if fines were ignored, if criminals knew the police would give up if you resisted arrest - then the whole system begins to break down. Not everyone, not all at once - but as soon as some people see that others can get away without consequences, then others will begin to think that they are suckers for paying, and the rot spreads.

Lately, in Britain, we’ve been forgetting that, without consequences, systems collapse. That without the temporary harshness of saying ‘no’, the long-term consequences will be far worse. That the consequences of being ‘kind’ to everyone, all the time, will result in kindness to no-one.

Take the case of shop lifting, where organised criminals have realised that security guards are forbidden from intervening3 - either because of concerns that they might get hurt, or that they might injure the thief. Yes, such interventions cannot be made entirely without risk - but if the thieves know the guards are ordered to do nothing, they can carry out their crimes with impunity.

Or the way in which fare-jumping on the Underground has become commonplace, and frequently tolerated by TFL staff. Public transport is an important common good, but falling revenues from failure to enforce payment against cheats is not ‘compassionate’. It will lead to the deterioration of the whole system - something which will hurt poorer people more.4

There was the recent situation of Wetherspoons, which bans dogs except for assistance dogs, and began asking for documentation to prove this. The response by some organisations was that the policy might be acceptable, but that asking for documentation was not acceptable - in other words, that they might have the policy, but could not enforce it. Yet an unenforceable policy is no policy at all.

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Thanks to a friend, Wakefield Morys-Carter1, this model has now been turned into a Political Compass-style internet quiz - which you can take to find out which right-wing archetypes (if any!) you align with.

Take the quiz here.

The quiz consists of 50 multiple choice questions, each of which will present a proposition to which you have to say whether you agree or disagree. ‘Not sure’ is also always an option.

At the end of the quiz you will be presented with a star chart (you can see mine below!) that set out your archetype affinities, as well as a link to take you to a page where you can read more about the archetypes.

No information will be used to identify any participant. There is an optional demographic page at the end, which we will use to see if there are any interesting patterns in the data2 - however, this can be freely skipped if desired to get to the results.

As this is specifically a quiz about right-wing archetypes, it is likely to be of most interest to those on the political right or centre - but even left-wingers may find in themselves a surprising affinity to one or more of the archetypes!

Take the quiz here.

Once taken, please do feel free to share your results - and this quiz - on social media or elsewhere.

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From the right, the concerns largely stem from classic right-wing views including libertarianism, personal choice and the belief that parents, not the state, should make decisions regarding what their children can do. From the left I am a little less sure as to what motivates the opposition, but it appears to be primarily motivated by concerns that it will be ineffective, that it might stop some children accessing good material, or that it distracts from what they see as more important goals, such as tackling misinformation, taking off harmful content, or getting the Government to stop posting on X.

I would like laws to have an impact. I’m also someone who is normally fairly opposed to safetyism and the nanny state, and supportive of parental choice. At the same time I’m not a full-on libertarian: I think some products should be age-gated (tobacco, gambling), regulated even for adults (cars, guns) or outright banned (drink-driving, heroin).

To put my cards on the table, I believe smartphones in general, and social media in particular, have been a deeply harmful societal innovation, at the ‘hey, let’s put lead in petrol’ scale of innovation. Their affects appear to include contributing to declining mental health, collapsing attention spans, bullying and general unhappiness, as well as contributing to broader crises such as falls in literacy, loneliness, fertility collapse and political polarisation. In some cases this is due to direct harms caused by use; in others, it is because the addictive nature crowds out other, healthier activities such as outdoor play or in-person socialising with others. For some of these, we increasingly have causal as well as correlational evidence; for others, it is simply highly indicative, when one looks at the trend lines across very many different countries going south at the same time.1

Smartphones have sufficient other positive uses such that we’re not realistically going to get rid of them - any more than we did cars, despite the deaths they cause. But the case for social media is much weaker: regulation is needed, and a social media ban for under 16s (and a properly enforced phone ban in school) is a good place to start.

So here are responses to twelve of the most common objections to the ban which set out why I think that, even if it’s not a silver bullet, it’s both necessary, and will have a positive impact.

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1. Australia’s experience shows the ban won’t work. 40% of 12-15 year olds in Australia who had had social media accounts were no longer using it. A 40% drop in people doing a harmful thing is a big impact. The proportion not using it will increase in future cohorts as it is easier to persuade people not to start using something than to persuade existing users to stop.

2. This is about culture change, not legislation. Culture and legislation are mutually reinforcing. ‘It’s illegal’ is a strong signal to parents not to let their children use it - and, for some children, not to use it (or at least not regularly). Previous shifts - drink-driving, smoking - saw culture gradually change after legislation was passed.2

3. Parents are responsible for their children, not the state. They are, but we already age-gate many products, from alcohol and tobacco to films and video games. Social media has a particularly strong case for state intervention because it’s hard for parents to act alone. If 95% of children are on social media and use it to socialise, keeping your child off has real downsides; if only 50%, or 20% of children are on it, these downsides greatly diminish.

4. We should be focusing on removing bad material, not banning platforms. There is no way to have ‘harmless’ social media for children in its current form. Yes, some content is very bad, but many of the damaging impacts are caused by the nature of the medium, and repeated exposure to - in themselves - harmless content, not by specifically harmful content.3

5. Social media causes harms to adults, too. Yes, it does - and we can come to that. But children are more vulnerable, the civil liberty concerns are much smaller when it comes to children, and there is a much higher public consensus for action regarding children - so we should do this now. Many other harmful products where regulation for adults followed began by limiting access for children.

6. Children will still be able to see this material by other means. No doubt they will - but fewer will, and those that do will see it less often. The availability and frequency matter a lot. In the old days, a 14 year old could sneak his older brother’s top-shelf magazine, or watch an 18 when his parents were out; this is far less harmful than an endless stream of porn or violent content delivered via social media or short-form video.

7. These sites are useful for study / other purposes. The ban is on social media, not the internet. Many other sites for study and other purposes exist and can be easily found and accessed by those who want to use them for this purpose.

8. Without social media, children who feel isolated/bullied/have abusive parents won’t be able to find others to support them. Again, we’re banning social media, not the internet. The kids who really need it can find other routes.4 Ultimately, this is a trade-off: overall, social media is a major vector of cyber-bullying and abuse, as well as a source for radicalisation into all sorts of extreme cults - far more kids are being exposed to or being drawn into harms than are using it for escape.

9. Enforcing this will require IDing every adult. Many sites already carry out age-verification without using ID.5 They do it by face-scans, or by scanning documents which are then deleted after verification. Plus unless you’re very unusual you already give your identity online to your bank, multiple online retailers and dozens of other sites, so let’s get real about the added risk here.

10. This will reduce the pressure to act against social media in other ways. Possibly - but this is an argument of the form ‘accepting civil partnerships will make gay marriage less likely to happen’ or ‘if we tax cigarettes we won’t get an advertising ban’. Those arguments were wrong - and this one is likely to be too. If the harms caused by social media to adults are as significant as you think they are - and they are - then it won’t prevent further regulation.

The objective of the ban isn’t to stop every under 16 year old from using social media - an unrealistic goal - but to stop most of them using it, and for those of them who are using it to use it less.6 And for both of these numbers to improve, over time, just as was the case with under age smoking or drink-driving.

As an addendum, I’m aware that there are people who think the entire focus on children is a right-wing plot to deflect from wider social media regulation. I set out in (5) why it makes sense to start with children.

But to demonstrate good faith, I’ll say here that yes, I agree that regulation of social media more broadly would be desirable, and give some examples of measures I think would be worth considering.

I am, it is true, deeply sceptical that the answer lies in giving a regulator a duty to (or mandating tech barons to) censor certain materials, not because, as one person said, I ‘can’t tell the difference between pro-ana material and political discussion’ but because I don’t trust the regulator - or tech company - to rapidly move from the first into the second.7 I also believe it is the innate harms of the platforms, rather than the content, which cause the most harm, so these measures focus there.

These are all initial thoughts rather than fully fledged out ideas; they are not intended to be an exclusive or comprehensive list; furthermore, some may not work in practice, or be less useful than they seem as we gain a greater understanding of how social media causes harms. But they are a set of starting suggestions.

1. Ban continuous scroll. Appears to one of the most addictive features with no downside in banning it.

2. Require a 20s delay before playing any video. Would make essentially no difference to watching TV episodes or films, but would effectively nuke short-form video.8

3. Require all platforms to have the default feed as people you follow, in chronological order. Reduces algorithmic effects.

4. Any platform that uses an algorithm more complex than ‘people you follow in chronological order’ to be treated as a publisher, and held to account for content. As above, but more robustly.

5. Require users to use real names. Much of the worst content is produced by anons; it would also make it easier to hold people to account for things that are banned in real life, such as libel or incitement to violence.

6. Require all platforms to provide a suite of user tools. This might include hard blocks, ability to detag yourself or restrict ‘quote tweets’, and community notes.

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I’ve always said I’m not very into poetry.

I’m sure that’s true, compared to some people. I don’t ‘get’ a lot of poetry and have always found it hard to memorise, compared to songs.1 I rarely pick up a book of poems to read.

But when I had children, it turned out there were a surprising number of poems I realised wanted to introduce them to. And that process, it turned out, made me read them with greater appreciation, revisiting old friends and sometimes discovering others, unknown, by familiar authors.

Below are twenty poems I return to, that for various reasons send a tingle down my spine.2 A short extract of each - from the beginning, middle or end - are included. I hope you enjoy.

In alphabetical order.

1. The Destruction of Sennacherib - Lord Byron

This was in the post that prompted mine - but how could I leave it out? One where the sheer beauty of the language causes shivers.3

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

…

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,

And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

2. Duck’s Ditty - Kenneth Grahame

One of the rare ones I know by heart, I would recite to my children as babes, to get them to sleep. Its words conjure the world of the River Bank, with Mole, Rat, Otter, Badger and, of course, Toad.

Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails,

Yellow feet a-quiver,

Yellow bills all out of sight

Busy in the river!

3. Excelsior - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have a beautiful picture-book copy of Hiawatha’s Childhood which I love, and my children have also.4 Yet it is that ‘banner with that strange device’ which with its mystery has wormed itself into my brain and stuck there.

The shades of night were falling fast,

As through an Alpine village passed

A youth, who bore, ‘mid snow and ice,

A banner with the strange device,

Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath,

Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,

And like a silver clarion rung

The accents of that unknown tongue,

Excelsior!

4. The Gods of the Copybook Headings - Rudyard Kipling

If is the classic choice, and it is indeed glorious. The Female of the Species is the funniest. Now Chil the Kite, Buddha at Kamakura and Recessional all have their case to make. But as I make my way through middle age, and look at the state of the world, it is increasingly The Gods of the Copybook Headings that return again and again.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man

There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.

That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,

And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

5. Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll

The quintessential nonsense poem - and another I know by heart. As an aside, excellent French and German translations can be found in Hofstadter’s Le Ton Beau de Marot.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

6. The Jumblies - Edward Lear

How pleasant to know Mr Lear! His longer poems have always had greater appeal to me than his limericks - and again, aided perhaps by a gloriously illustrated compendium that both I and my children have enjoyed.5

Far and few, far and few,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,

And they went to sea in a Sieve.

7. The King’s Breakfast - A. A. Milne

Beloved volume, packed full of beloved poems. How could I choose just one? But choose one I must, and there is really no other contender.

The Dairymaid
She curtsied,
And went and told
The Alderney:
"Don't forget the butter for
The Royal slice of bread."
The Alderney
Said sleepily:
"You'd better tell
His Majesty
That many people nowadays
Like marmalade
Instead."

8. The Lady of Shalott - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Between this and The Charge of the Light Brigade it was a close thing, but ultimately this won out.6 Very long, and very beautiful.

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack’d from side to side;

‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried

The Lady of Shalott.

9. Lepanto - G. K. Chesterton

I discovered Chesterton as an adult rather than a child - which was a glorious thing to discover! The Donkey packs a tremendous punch in its 16 lines, but there is something particularly wonderful about an epic poem about something that took place in (relatively) modern history, rather than ancient myth.7

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,

Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,

Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,

The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,

The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,

That once went singing southward when all the world was young,

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,

Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,

Don John of Austria is going to the war,

10. The Listeners - Walter de la Mare

I can remember reading this as a young child and desperately wanting to know more than the few, haunting, lines of the poem reveal.

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

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These are not very useful numbers to know in daily life. But thanks to having done a physics degree, so embedded are they in my brain that I still remember them 20 years later, long after I’ve forgotten how to do a contour integral.

When reading the news - or doing policy work, or journalism - one will, however, frequently come across a bunch of numbers, often very large, that one has to put in context. Is £20 million a lot? How about £20 billion? How many schools are there, anyway?

What follows is a list of 50 basic facts to have at your finger tips that, if you know them2, will help you to make sense of the news and of public policy more broadly.

All figures have - deliberately - been rounded for ease of committing to memory. They are accurate enough to get a handle on something or - with the addition of an ‘about’ - to say on the radio, not to plug into precise calculations.

Population

1. The population of the UK is 70 million.

2. The population of England is 60 million.3

3. The population of the United States is 350 million.

4. The population of India is 1.5 billion

5. The population of the world is 8 billion.

6. London > Scotland > Wales > Northern Ireland.

Demography

7. Life expectancy is about 80 years.

8. Total Fertility Rate (children born per woman) is 1.4.

9. 1 in 6 of the population belongs to an ethnic minority – or 1 in 3 of children under 18.4

10. 1 in 5 of the population is aged 65 or over.

11. Net migration last year was 170,000.5

Economy

12. The GDP of the UK is £3 trillion.

13. 0.1% of GDP is £3 billion.6

14. National debt is 95% of GDP.

15. The deficit is 5% of GDP.

16. Tax as a share of GDP is 35% – 40%.7

17. Spending as a share of GDP is 40 – 45%.8

18. Median salary for a full time employee is £39,000.

19. Minimum wage is £12.71.

20. The state pension is £12,500 a year.

21. 35 million people are in employment – 80% of them in the private sector.

22. Unemployment stands at 5%.9

23. Prices have roughly doubled since 2000.

24. The richest 1% pay 25% of income tax; the richest 10% pay over half.

Public services

25. There are about 25,000 schools in England – with about five times as many primary schools as secondary schools.

26. There are 9 million pupils in school.

27. A quarter of these are eligible for Free School Meals.

28. About 6% of children are in private school; about 2% are home educated.10

29. About 1/3 of 18 year olds go straight to higher education – with over 40% going by aged 21.

30. There are around 200 hospitals with an A&E department in England.

31. The NHS waiting list has 7 million cases on it.11

32. The median time to wait for an elective treatment is 3 months.

33. Around 10 million crimes are committed each year.

34. There are approximately 100,000 people in prison.

35. On average, it takes a year between an offence being committed and a case concluding in the Crown Court.

Housing

36. There are 30 million households in the UK.

37. About 2/3 own their own home.

38. About 1 in 6 live in social housing.

39. The average house price in the UK is £250k - £350k.12

40. 200,000 – 300,000 houses are built each year.

Energy

41. Peak electricity demand is 45GW.

42. We get about:

· 30% from wind

· 25% from gas

· 10% from nuclear

· 15% imported

43. The energy bill for a typical household is £1500 - £2000 a year.

Public Spending

Of the £1,400 billion (£1.4 trillion) spent by Government each year, we spend:

44. £200 billion a year on the NHS.

45. £175 billion on pensions and pensioner benefits

46. £150 billion on working age benefits

47. £60 billion on schools

48. £40 billion on defence

49. £0.1 billion on MP salaries…

50. …and £110 billion on debt interest

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Simple to explain, it clearly communicated their values: what they stood for and who they were against.1 It was also massively popular, with even 2024 Tory voters being almost evenly split on the policy.2

Even better, the policy was absolute catnip for right-wing commentators, who simply couldn’t stop talking about it. These ranged from the comically unsympathetic Telegraph case studies, on the lines of, ‘Oh no, if this goes through we might have to give up one of our three annual ski holidays and trade in the second Ferrari for a Porsche’ to earnest analytical studies arguing that Labour had slightly overestimated the money it would raise.3

Whatever the genre of criticism, it served no purpose but to raise the salience of one of Labour’s most popular policies - plus the fact that every minute that Bridget Phillipson spent being asked about VAT on private schools was one in which she wasn’t being asked about her (non-existent) policy on tuition fees.

I deliberately avoided talking about this subject until it had happened - I had no wish to do Labour’s campaign work for them, and there was clearly no chance of averting it. But with the policy now in effect, it’s time to have a clear-eyed look at how the independent sector created an open goal for Labour - and how they could regain their lost support.

But how did it get that way?

On a purely personal basis, it’s notable that I, as a middle-class professional in the Home Counties, with a household income in the top 10% of the country and plenty of friends and acquaintances in similar situations, can think of just three families I know who are sending their children to private schools.4 Indeed, while I oppose the VAT policy, it’s out of principle - those parents are already paying twice for their education - rather than from any personal stake in the decision.

For that matter, while Phillipson’s VAT raid has now caused a rally round the flag effect, when I was a Tory SpAd, the interest in private schools amongst Conservative MPs was surprisingly low - certainly lower than it was in grammar schools, or faith schools. I’m not saying any of them were opposed to them, they just weren’t a big deal.5

So how did private schools so comprehensively lose the middle classes?

There are three principal reasons:

1. Fee inflation

2. Phasing out of full scholarships

3. Failure to combat university discrimination

1. Fee inflation

The IfS finds that average school fees have gone up, in real terms, 20% since 2010 and 55% since 2003. Longer term studies suggest that fees have gone up in nominal terms by 5% a year since the earlier ‘90s, meaning they’ve almost doubled in real terms since then.

This isn’t pure greed.6 Private schools are in competition with each other, which creates a natural arms race. And the large injection of state-school funding under New Labour, followed by the improvements in quality under the Conservatives, have meant stiffer competition from the (free) competition.

But to keep fees rising above inflation year-on-year, through weak growth and a cost of living crisis, was abject folly. With average fees standing at over £15,000 per pupil - plus extras7 - the days in which a mid-ranking civil servant, a good journalist, a clergyman or an MP could consider sending their children private are long gone - unless they have private means or a high-earning spouse.

Of course, it’s not that in the past all people in these would have sent their children private.8 But the fact that they could made all the difference: people in these roles would have seen private schools as a valuable component of their options, even if they never took it up - and, as such, valued them.9

Similarly, by raising their prices so high, private schools have made themselves irrelevant to the segment of people who might not quite be able to afford it - but hope they might be able to, some day. People can be optimistic about their future earning potential - but only up to a point.

By narrowing their clientele to bankers, city lawyers and accountants, private schools may have increased their revenue - but it turns out that broad-based support for an institution can’t be built on such a narrow base.

2. Phasing out full scholarships

Very few private schools these days offer full academic scholarships on a non-mean-tested basis. An informal survey of a dozen or so private schools found few offering more than a 25% fee remission. Full fee remission is now overwhelmingly confined to bursaries for pupils from low-income families.

Private schools made the shift from means-blind scholarships to means-tested bursaries at the behest of social mobility charities and campaigners. Regardless of the merits of the two options, what private schools failed to recognise is that there was no amount of bursaries they could offer that would appease these campaigners, or persuade them to stand by them against attacks.10

But by removing full scholarships for the middle classes, private schools made themselves irrelevant to a huge chunk of their potential customers. Particularly with the aforesaid increase in fees, a 25% reduction still leaves them unaffordable to most in the top half of the income spectrum. But the chance to win a full scholarship, if your child is bright enough? Ah, suddenly the school enters your landscape.11

A private school wouldn’t have to offer many scholarships to have a big impact on middle class awareness. We used to (just) live in the catchment area for Dame Alice Owen, a semi-selective state school that’s regularly ranked one of the best in the country. There was endless talk about people wondering if they should apply, if their children would get in, studying for the exam, tutoring for the exam - and this for a school that offered 65 academic places in a catchment area containing upwards of half a million people. The vast majority of people who talked about Dame Alice Owen never had children who went - but they felt they might, so it was part of their landscape.12

A few means-blind scholarships from a private school would have the same effect.13

There’s a section in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe after Aslan has offered his life in exchange for Edmund’s, where the White Witch says:

“Fool, did you think that by all this you would save the human traitor? Now I will kill you instead of him…but when you are dead, what will prevent me from killing him as well? And who will take him out of my hand then? Understand that you have given me Narnia forever, you have lost your own life and you have not saved his.”

Her Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia, Chatelaine of Cair Paravel, Empress of the Lone Islands, etc.

By switching out scholarships for bursaries, private schools lost those who might have supported them - but did not gain new friends.

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It is, of course, correct to say that the Ancient Greeks did not envisage her to look precisely like this. Homer describes her as ‘white-armed’, with other ancient writers similarly suggesting lighter colouring. But for anyone looking to precisely determine Helen of Troy’s ‘correct’ ethnicity, her semi-divine egg-born status should be a clue that they may be asking the wrong question.1

The Aegean of Greek mythology was far from an ethnically homogeneous arena, with the troops in defence of Troy coming from as far afield as Africa and the shores of the Black Sea - and other Greek adventurers ranging far afield, from Colchis to the Pillars of Hercules.

And while Helen was not black, there is at least one well-known Greek heroine who was canonically, explicitly, unambiguously black: Andromeda, daughter of Cassiopeia, bride of Perseus and Princess of Ethiopia.

Here’s how she was depicted in the 1981 film, Clash of the Titans.

And here’s how she was portrayed in the 2010 remake:

None of these casting choices matter - any more than it matters whether, when you go to see a production of Hamlet, he looks like an authentic Mediaeval Dane, or that Macbeth looks like an ethnically pure 11th century Scotsman.2 When it comes to Shakespeare or the great myths and epics, we’re not watching them for the realism, but for the archetypal stories and legends that have shaped our culture over the centuries.3

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If you want the canon to survive and thrive, you have to reckon with the fact that the UK and the US today are multiracial societies. A third of the children in the UK are non-white. Do you think Shakespeare and Homer are going to remain cultural pillars if you tell a third of the class they can never play Hamlet, or Odysseus, or Helen, or Juliet?

The same goes for other things. If we want things to stay the same, some things are going to have to change. That means, in most cases, colour-blind casting becoming the norm. Both Miss Honey and the Master of Jordan College were white in the books, but there is no problem with them being black in the recent film / TV series. A black primary school teacher, or a black Master of an Oxford College, do not in any way break our suspension of disbelief. Dune did it brilliantly, with the broader Imperial society being - as one would expect - multiracial - and the Fremen broadly looking plausible for people who’d lived thousands of years in a desert. We should be relaxed, in most cases, about ahistorical proportions of non-white people in depictions of the New Victorians.

But if we’re going to embrace this as a society, we also have to be honest about the small number of circumstances when it doesn’t work - and not gush, coo and suspend all judgement just because a production has used a non-white actor. The approach of some identitarians, in which casting becomes an arena in which ethnic minority actors can do no wrong, while arbitrary guardrails are placed around what white actors can do, won’t wash either.

If a show is going for high levels of strict historical realism, then that has to include race, if our suspension of belief is not to be shattered.4 Shogun got it right here, with the Japanese characters looking Japanese and the European actors looking European. And we shouldn’t be afraid to say Wolf Hall got it badly wrong in its second season.

The same goes for realistic biopics of historical characters5, particularly recent figures, or those where race was essential to their lives, such as Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King.6 (Theatre, as opposed to film and television, is and always has been far more flexible, and should remain so. The audience demand for verisimilitude is much lower).

And while I’ve praised some fantasy/sci-fi works such as Dune and His Dark Materials, the Wheel of Time did less well. Having Padan Fain and Siuan Sanche be black was fine,7 but for the Two Rivers, an isolated, rural area, to be highly multi-racial jarred. The characters from there are country bumpkins emerging into a much wider world;8 there’s a significant plot point about one of the characters looking as if he doesn’t come from there; and there’s even a story-arc in a later book in which the region takes in large numbers of immigrants and becomes more cosmopolitan! To compound it, having done the rest of the world with colour-blind casting, they then made Shienar homogeneously ethnically East Asian, a peculiar decision which made the previous incongruities stand out more.

Most importantly we need to stop the nonsense of calling out people for not being precisely ‘the right shade of black’, or Jasmine in Aladdin being Indian-origin rather than Arabic9, or a Jewish actress not being a good fit for a role that was canonically half-Mexican, half-Jewish.10 The idea that actors can only play someone with the same identity characteristics is nonsense and wrong - they’re actors, and that’s what they do: act.11 Most roles should be open to anyone, and where that’s not the case, what matters is avoiding suspension of disbelief for the audience.12

Ethnically gating the canon only serves the interests of the philistines who wish to tear it down. Those who are only too ready to declare great works ‘problematic’, or ‘Eurocentric’13; who speak of ‘decolonising’ the curriculum or the arts. There is a legion of such small-minded, small-souled, individuals, who have wormed their way into positions of influence in our schools, our universities, our government bodies and our cultural institutions.

But though they have had great success in seizing the commanding heights of our cultural establishment, the wreckers face one insuperable problem. New-fangled pap, selected for its ideological purity or the identity of its author, can’t hold a candle compared to the works the iconoclasts seek to denigrate.

There’s a reason why audiences still throng in their millions to see Shakespeare, why Hollywood has given a top director hundreds of millions of dollars to make a blockbuster, or why the remakes and retakes keep coming.

Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships isn’t good only because she’s a great writer, but because she’s retelling, with both great faithfulness and originality, timeless myths that have been told again and again over two thousand years, such that most of us, going back generations, would have familiarity with.

Hamilton isn’t only good because Lin-Manuel Miranda is a musical genius, but because the ideals of the American Revolution are noble and inspirational, and the founding fathers, collectively, a set of brilliant, impassioned and heroic men with the courage to make their dreams a reality.14

These are songs to echo through the ages, sung and resung by voices anew.

I care about the Western canon not because it is necesarily better than any others, but because it is ours.15 Because it speaks timeless truths. Because old things that have endured should continue to do so. And because more than ever, in a society that is becoming more diverse, and buffeted by social and technological change, we need shared narratives, shared stories and shared culture that we can hold in common.

If you care about the canon, your problem shouldn’t be with those such as Nyong'o or Miranda who wish to seem themselves within it.16 We are all17 adoptive, not natal, heirs to the legacy of Greece and Rome, through the actions of those in the Renaissance and Enlightenment who chose to centre it.

Western Civilisation is an idea18, not an ethnicity - and it is open to all those who choose to embrace it.

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