“It’s quite exhausting being an addict. All that running round, raising the money, scoring, meeting horrible people. It’s much lovelier to have lunch with you in a nice restaurant.”
Daily Telegraph owned by Axel Springer is quite Jonathan Coe-plot coded
Brilliant column:
bsky.app/profile/dunc...
Massive UK media scoop - Germany's Axel Springer is poised to agree a shock £500mn deal for the Telegraph in a move that will scupper the acquisition of the UK newspaper group by the Daily Mail. W/ the FT's finest @JFK_America @ArashMassoudi
www.ft.com/content/e5cb...
Excellent column
"Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader with a knack for the kind of populism that will not have you kicked out of a dinner party..." <chef's kiss> @duncanrobinson.bsky.social www.economist.com/britain/2026...
Honestly the contempt I feel for Dubai 'ex-pats' isn't based on class so much as their willingness to embrace a life of luxury and excess in a society propped up by slavery, exploitation and human rights abuse as though they were living in a JG Ballard novel they refuse to understand
This is fascinating, and reminds me of Jilly Cooper's observation that British people specifically detest the class immediately above and below them (eg middle to upper and vice versa) but are fine with a bigger gab (working to upper).
As the class system get flattened, everyone hates everyone else
Rightly so!
And I for one cannot wait
Days getting warmer, sniff of pollen in air. Means one thing: discourse about parks in London being partly closed off for festivals!
Why is Dubai discourse so rich? Class identities all mangled and so everyone thinks they are punching up and letting rip. Full column 🫵 www.economist.com/britain/2026...
What the Dubai expats discourse says about blurred meanings of class in today's Britain:
"Social hierarchy has become an Escher painting, an optical illusion in which everyone is both above and below one another. And so everyone thinks they are punching up. The result is a searing, mutual contempt"
From @duncanrobinson.bsky.social's take on the schadenfreude over the plight of British expats in Dubai www.economist.com/britain/2026...
Time's change
Why is Dubai discourse so rich? Class identities all mangled and so everyone thinks they are punching up and letting rip. Full column 🫵 www.economist.com/britain/2026...
:(
Hadn't clocked quite how Dubai-coded Reform was before this piece www.economist.com/britain/2026...
Good way to think about British politics has been the redistribution of humiliation (ht @cesigno.bsky.social), with everyone in a zero-sum status game. "They're not laughing now, are they?" now the common mantra
www.economist.com/britain/2026... Column on Dubai and how everyone thinks they are punching up
:(
Chart showing real median salaries by graduate status. Postgrads have declined 17%, grads 12% and non-grads by 3%
Since 2007, real median postgrad salaries have declined by 17% and 12% for undergrads (*before* accounting for student loans!). The narrative of the 2010s was dominated by the status-loss of industrial workers, the 2020s might be the decade of disappointed grads
Polling from More in Common shows that Greens and Reform win a higher share of voters who struggle to make ends meet, while Labour and the Conservatives win those who are most financially comfortable
Reform UK and the Greens are hoovering up financially insecure voters. My piece this week looks at the return of Britain's class politics (with a twist) www.economist.com/britain/2026...
Forthisme
The full decant costs are insane on their own merits
What is "deliverism"? Is it dead? And what would its death mean for progressive politics?
This essay (kindly published by @samfr.bsky.social) is my attempt to trace five years of trans-Atlantic debates, to set out what I see as the stakes, and to analyse where these arguments have now gotten to:
If you want a geopolitical safe haven where your imaginative tax arrangements and business models won't attract closer scrutiny just move to Luxembourg
New Bagehot on the paranoid style in British politics and how everyone became a conspiracy theorist
economist.com/britain/2026...
Heard he was gonna get an “undefeated in league and playoff games after 5pm for 27th time” tattoo. Alas
