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Great post. The temporary doom loop is, to my mind, worth paying for in policy terms. US & Danish consumers get a callable bond with interest rate risk insurance (cf UK 1990s repossessions). @robarmstrong.bsky.social was mistaken on this recently; issue in US is no portability, not the call option.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 8h

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Oh goodness, yes! The Box of Delights, I had forgotten but the sleepless nights it inspired just came back to me.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

It’s got to be: Brendezvous

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Great column. The early phrase that Gordon Brown “remained troubling committed to economics” made me laugh.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

@robertshrimsley.bsky.social has a jolting/amusing early line in his excellent column today on the state of Labour and the Conservatives. Gordon Brown “remained troublingly committed to economics” 🙂 giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Burnham’s wake-up call to the right

giftarticle.ft.com

Burnham’s wake-up call to the right

Those who oppose big-state socialism have never been more in need of a strong Conservative Party and rarely further from having one

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Yes, the UK economy and society is clearly structurally so much more similar to European economies than the US (scale, labour law preferences, social security preferences). The opportunity is to copy the high productivity European economies (eg NL, DK). (Btw, that’s not just a 2010+ issue)

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

That is an excellent “quietly positive” take.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Strong agree. I just recently re-read Pride & Prejudice. It’s brilliant in many ways. Also, clearly, a rom-com.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

That’s actually quite a sweet story. I remember John Healey as a junior minister, he was as very diligent, interested in the detail of policy, good to his civil servants, and somewhat in awe of Gordon Brown - understandably given how Brown was master of HMT at the time.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I’d forgotten about that report. Surprising from Howard Davies. Not left UK in a great place on airport strategy.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

John Kay wrote a damning outline in the FT years ago of why economically the case was very poorly analyzed (forecasting capacity 60 years forward; ignoring hub & spoke; etc). Bad that UK still hasn’t developed the more useful strategy.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Hmmm. Intangibles. Lower output per hour. Then: dunno.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This was excellent. I can’t believe how much time I (and many many others) spent looking at why UK productivity had collapsed vs other OECD countries. Of course it’s a survey issue.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This was excellent. I can’t believe how much time I (and many many others) spent looking at why UK productivity had collapsed vs other OECD countries. Of course it’s a survey issue.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Good point. Must be hundreds of thousands (more?) of people.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Great thread. The “English” ethnic identity historically is much wider than a narrow mythical Anglo-Saxon lineage. It’s not conservative to change that.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Really interesting. Ethnicities are imagined communities, just as nations are, just with older creation myths and heritages. It feels like “English” mustextend more widely than imagined Anglo-Saxon lineage, given centuries of successful assimilation (Huguenots, Dutch, Jews, Germans - to name a few)

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Good article. Made me want to minimise my idle AI usage (and limit screens for kids) . And re-read “ And Then there were None”

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Reposted by Andrew Lodge

Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 21/09/2026

Do it, you cowards Hard to do worse than that time with the old game when I was almost last

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

A Colossus of Rhodes, straddling New York harbour.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The JP and FR comparisons are useful in showing where UK does well. But they don’t mean that low investment by UK is excusable. Economists find that France loses productivity growth due to its restrictive labour laws. Similarly, JP lost due to ageing population and restrictive immigration.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Agree, though the 1970s weren’t great either (but less bad than 2008-2020). We’ll see if the cohort born in the 2010s bucks the trend. If consistent growth doesn’t return, that cohort may well be different.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

What’s fascinating is that each generation believes that life was best in the case before they were born, and the first decade of their life. This is consistent globally in developed countries, and across cohorts. So we all hark back. www.ipsos.com/en/is-life-g...

ipsos.com

Widespread nostalgia for the old days, with many saying things were better back in 1975

Is life getting better? In a new 30-country Global Advisor survey, Ipsos asks the public to assess how life is in 2025 compared to their perceptions of life in 1975.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The thing the kids are most impressed by is when I mentioned the extensive food at Slaughter & May (the govt’s lawyers in GFC). The rest: don’t really care.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I feel the same way. Explaining the GFC period to my kids is anyway hard (“all the banks were collapsing; it’s a time when govt is v important; I slept on a couch in HMT multiple times; don’t worry it won’t happen again… prob for ages”). But colleagues in their 20s - it can be similarly alien!

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

This is astonishingly geeky trolling.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Great phrase, “pub bores in private jets”.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Great phrase, “pub bores in private jets”.

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Reposted by Andrew Lodge

Mark Carney @mark-carney.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

L’Europe et le Canada sont forts séparément. L’Europe et le Canada sont encore plus forts ensemble.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Great thread. It is hard to overstate how angry and hurt many Canadians are, certainly in Ontario.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

That would give more autonomy. But it would be a more expensive way to raise debt? Quasi-government bond issuance is probably sovereign credit, but trades at a spread to gilts. Is the autonomy worth the extra cost? Why not just get the Treasury to give ringfenced long-term capital?

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

… we saw in 2006-7. Everyone thought it might he a bubble but (asChuck Prince, Citigroup CEO said): you don’t want to leave the dance floor when everyone is dancing. Very similar to climate change, risk is too far off. Insurance companies have longer-term horizons, think more about catastrophe risk.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

… and risk management is a part of that. But it’s on the risk issues which are relevant to the debt contract (eg mismanagement, poor business model), and catastrophic risk isn’t much included. Equity investors won’t look much at that too. It’s also the “everyone is on the dance floor” problem 2/

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Interesting. The short answer I think is: financial institutions won’t do this on their own, but would participate in an industry self-regulation initiative. Banks really do (need to) follow what is profitable on the 3-5 year horizon. Lending bankers focus on will the debt be repaid eg cash flow… 1/

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Crazy take by the WAPO editorial board.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Agree on this. Feels like a recent thing. Maybe the reduction of the cost of polling makes it cheap/easy/lazy?

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

@jemima.bsky.social is right here, amazing lack of empathy.

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Andrew Lodge @andrewwj.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

John Finnemore (the writer, who also plays a character in Cabin Pressure) is super. If you haven’t listened to John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme yet, you’re in for a treat with seven series.

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