Simon

Erm... maybe the Greens want to look into *why* he left Corbyn's office before celebrating this too much.

This was policy-based evidence-making used to give the backbenchers a soundbite & a challenge (where are you getting the £10 billion from) on the hope they won't spot it is both in 30 years + just made-up

But 2026 immig policy does seem to cost about £7-14 billion by eliminating net migration

Important to seek clarity today on whether Home Office and No 10 will try to defend - or will now withdraw - a false+misleading claim applying settlement reforms to 2022-24 cohort saves £10bn

Not just overspinning lifetime saving in 30 years time
Gvt policy doesn't save maybe £8-10 billion of it!

My latest for @optaanalyst.optajoe.com on the age breakdown of every Premier League squad:

A party that is resolutely anti-bourgeois while being staffed and supported by the bourgeoisie is an intriguing and inevitably impossible strategy.

Anyway good luck attracting those Reform voters who hate you.

I've been meaning to run this analysis for a while: the probability of voting Labour at GE2024 in seats *gained* by Labour was higher for people who were younger, more liberal, on the left economically, more likely to favour immigration, do not think immigration is the most important issue, etc.

Labour lost three by-elections yesterday - all to different parties mobilising disaffected voters on their liberal left flank: Greens (see below), Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru.

Starmer/McSweeney strategy of marginalizing the left flank to go after socially con Reform curious continues to backfire

Not surprising Farage hasn't bothered to announce a health spokesperson - his entire team is populated by politicians who broke the NHS.

They've also forgotten about a foreign affairs spokesperson, but I guess they will take their orders straight from Trump's White House anyway.

Donald Trump and Liz Truss

I just saw this posted (elsewhere) with the heading 'The Slug and Lettuce' and I genuinely guffawed.

Line graph that shows a blue line of # protests since Trump's 2nd inauguration surpassed, showing these to have exceeded 42k by the end of Jan 2026. A green line counts # of protests during the same time period in Trump's first term and just exceeds 10k.

Overall, we have tallied 4x more protests through Jan 31, 2026 than we had through Jan 31, 2018

Flicking through the sims, model gives us a roughly 50% chance of staying up if we finish on 36 points, roughly 90% on 40 points.

Definitely a decent chance of a high bar, model likes our chances of picking up enough points though

Every day some freelance illustrator on here calls for the uk to copy the Irish scheme of a basic income for artists and every time it pmo so bad - like omg dare to dream this should be in place for EVERYONE, for EVERYONNNNNNE

Thomas Frank did nothing to stop the continuing decline of Spurs

Plans to invade Greenland have just been cancelled after this

Gets kind of confusing when you can play advantage and then still be DOGSO though, for sure

Is there not an asymmetry between denial of goal saving (since goal just disallowed for any foul) and denial of goal scoring (we don't give a goal as a football equivalent of rugby's penalty try) so only the latter needs extra punishment

Schedule and red card adjusted xG tables (with optional finishing estimates applied), and upcoming match predictions

Happy hunting.

analytic.football btw

The complete rating history for all teams going back to 17/18, and you can view a single team's breakdown, or compare any number of teams on attack/defence/overall rating

How good the teams are, and how the ratings have changed recently/since the start of the season

Projections for how the table will finish, including mean points, position probability & a view on key races.

analytic.football has got some upgrades, pretty much all under the good stuff.

There's a whole new ratings model, which you can read more about here: simon.football/p/analytic-f...

And a reminder of what you can find on the site 👇

Switch from Nike to Puma this season 🤔

Anton Stach, Leeds 25-26. Midfielder 2.0 radar and shot map.

PS. Not too late to tell the government what you think about their proposed changes to Indefinite Leave to Remain - the public consultation is open until 12th Feb.

www.gov.uk/government/c...

Anton Stach 25/26 Leeds, radar please

From Wayne Rooney playing CM in 2016 to Rice-Wharton-Anderson is quite the arc for England

Someone tell the BBC Chelsea were doing this under Maresca

This race was such a massive swing blowout that Democrat Taylor Rehmet literally won a city called White Settlement

yet another data point for "the standard case for pragmatic electoral moderation would be more compelling if people stopped insisting that transgender issues are an electoral problem for Democrats"