Sam Freedman

6 days ago | samf.substack.com | Sam Freedman

There are ten days to go until the spending review that will define the ambitions of this government for the rest of the Parliament. For a long time, well before they were elected, I’ve been arguing that this would be when fiscal reality finally hit home and the consequences of Labour’s election tax pledges would become clear. But rather than just preview what’s likely to happen I thought I’d try to give readers a sense of what it’s like going through one of these reviews.

1 week ago | samf.substack.com | Sam Freedman |Lawrence Freedman

Every few months we offer paying subscribers the chance to ask us questions on any topic you like. Just stick your questions in the comments section of this post, or if you want to remain anonymous email your question to [email protected]. We’ll post our responses next week.

1 week ago | samf.substack.com | Sam Freedman

This may seem like a premature question. Reform is leading the polls right now but we’re a long way from the next election. At this point in the last election cycle Boris Johnson looked invincible and most commentators thought Keir Starmer was one by-election loss away from resigning. But it is now feasible that Reform could win. That’s not been true of Nigel Farage’s parties in the past.

2 weeks ago | observer.co.uk | Sam Freedman

Across the G20, centre-right parties have misunderstood the roots of the populist revolt against them Without Googling, can you name the shadow secretaries for defence, health and transport? If you got all three, you’ve done better than almost all the MPs I’ve asked in recent weeks. Several baffled Labour backbenchers didn’t even know who they were once I’d revealed the names.

2 weeks ago | samf.substack.com | Sam Freedman

Cardiff University, which has a £30 million hole in its budget as is cutting jobs and coursesBack in the summer of 2023 I wrote a post on the developing financial crisis in higher education. Somewhat naively I assumed that because the current trajectory was so clearly unsustainable that a prospective Labour government would have to intervene quickly to stop things getting worse. They were and are aware of the problem.