It's also not true. While emigration rose, Immigration also fell considerably.

Disappointingly inaccurate headline in the FT. (They had two Black senators during Reconstruction - Colom would be the first in 145 years).

This helps explain my point about this election not being just about gas prices. Voters who saw the economy as the main issue split fairly evenly. Those who put democracy first overwhelmingly voted Democrat.

Here's a stat. With Susan Collins losing in Maine this is the first time ever that the GOP have had no senators in New England. In their entire history.

The *Democratic primary* in Michigan saw more money spent on it than the entire UK general election. Total spending on the whole senate election there = $435 million.

This is just dire. Means decades of uncertainty for people, with every election creating a risk they'll be sent to unsafe countries by a far right government.

Lol YouGov polled "Hang the peados, fund the NHS" and found it gets only 35%. But that's mainly because Reform voters don't want to fund the NHS.

Higher spending on pensions (and healthcare) is a function of higher life expectancy and a more affluent society. It's happened everywhere in the developed world.

It's also just illogical. If it's bad to treat care workers that way (which it is) then why is it OK for lab technicians or others legally here who don't mean the new salary thresholds?

There's a huge amount of noise about the welfare budget "spiralling out of control." This helpful chart shows it's projected to rise by a whole 0.2 points of GDP over the next five years. A myth that will not die...

Going to rephrase a post because it looked too definitive. On the voting so far in Brazil Lula seems to be doing better than expected. A win is much more possible than I expected with 10% of the vote in.

Incredible. Student List are candidates selected by groups of students to form an anti-corruption party. Another youth-led movement overthrowing an authoritarian government in Europe.

Just to cheer everyone up: according to the latest poll Steve Hilton is losing the California governor race by 28 points.

New Ipsos poll has the Democrats leading by 12 points in a generic ballot poll and Trump's approval down to 31%. If you're wondering why he's being particularly vile at the moment.

To give an indication of the problem here's a chart of 12 government agencies around the world and numbers of applications / appeals / complaints etc... The dotted grey line is when ChatGPT was invented.

Think there is a reasonable chance of this happening under a Democrat president, especially if Musk starts threatening them.

The only minor redeeming feature of this foulness is that someone around Trump still has enough awareness of how bad this looks to brief against Musk.

Another triumph for Starmer. I think firing Robbins without cause was the moment Whitehall completely lost faith in him.