John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026The more I think about it, the more promising to permanently increase defence spending by 1.5-3% of GDP without raising broad based taxes, cutting spending on anything else, or borrowing more money sounds completely insane to me 230
Reposted by John HandleyDuncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 15/09/2026I do worry that a lot (not all, a lot) of the left somehow lost the ability to talk about the non-macro policy benefits of public spending at some point in the 2010s. The case for the NHS doing more knee replacements or paying teachers more isn’t that it is part of an expansionary fiscal policy. 110217
Reposted by John HandleyResolution Foundation @resolutionfoundation.org · 24/08/2026Is welfare spending ''out of control''? It's estimated to be 11.1 per cent of GDP this financial year. That's just 1.1 per cent of GDP higher than in 2007-08, and total welfare spending has actually fallen by 0.9 per cent of GDP since 2012-13 ⤵️ 12215
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 18/08/2026I was listening to the New Statesman podcast and heard it emphatically repeated that welfare spending is unsustainable for the umpteenth time. I just don't get how the data supports that conclusion at all. Welfare spending in 2030 is only 1% of GDP higher than 2007, >2/3 of which is pensions! 030
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 17/08/2026US productivity more than doubled between 1973 and 2025 while median wages grew by only 35%. Falling labor share and rising inequality each explain about 1/4 of the gap, with consumer prices (PCE) growing faster than output prices (GDP deflator) and growing non-wage compensation explaining the rest. 041
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 06/08/2026lived in: 🇬🇧🇺🇸🇯🇵🇹🇷 born in: 🇺🇸 parents: 🇺🇸🇺🇸 grandparents: 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇲🇰🇲🇰 great grandparents: 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇲🇰🇲🇰🇲🇰🇲🇰 been to: 🇮🇪🇫🇷🇧🇪🇱🇺🇳🇱🇩🇪🇵🇱🇮🇹🇨🇦🇲🇽🇰🇷🇹🇼🇨🇳🇹🇭🇧🇹🇮🇳🇳🇵🇱🇰🇪🇬🇮🇱🇵🇸🇭🇰🇸🇬🇮🇩 050
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 29/07/2026I'm surprised at how popular a proportional property tax is... I really don't see why replacing council tax with a local property tax where councils have power over the rate doesn't have more buy in 120
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 29/07/2026The UK's local government spending as a % of GDP is close to the OECD median of 9%, but it ranks 7th in local government spending on social protection as a % of GDP 152
Reposted by John HandleyJames Bowes @jamesbowes01.bsky.social · 24/07/2026Just exempting care workers would be ridiculous. Basically it would be a case of designing a policy to kick out care workers, panicking when you realise how stupid an idea that is, and then kicking out a load of engineers, scientists etc out of sheer stubbornness. 1236396
Reposted by John HandleySam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 22/07/2026It's driving me insane. The govt spends £1.4 trillion a year. Borrowing estimates are often by tens of billions over a year. But we're supposed to imagine money is budgeted to the last penny. 601445307
Reposted by John Handleylastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 18/07/2026One day someone will accept that social democratic parties modern class basis is an alliance between urban service sector labourers and (typically young) educated professional types. Presumably this will be an electoral advantage just because working on the basis of accurate information is good. 1451075
Reposted by John HandleySunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 18/07/2026One day, somebody in government will notice what the net migration level is hesding to. The fiscal forecast (£24 billion) was based on average net 235k to 2026-29 but that is at least 100k too high, costing £13 billion, or double that if want to reduce immigration visas further. 13279108
Reposted by John HandleyDuncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17/07/2026Worked example. A three bed terrace in central Ashington is currently on the market for £95k. Call that about £500 a month on a 30 year mortgage. Renting a 3 bed on the same street costs £875 a month. 79414
Reposted by John HandleySharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 15/07/2026Labour Right's plan of action: (1) make it harder for people to immigrate to the UK (2) hammer business with a variety of unproductive taxes and costs while simultaneously not raising enough revenue to improve services (3) move right on a social issues (4) ??? (5) growth and electoral success? 511222
Reposted by John HandleyTom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 15/07/2026If the fear is that Net Zero may harm the economy then wait until they discover the impact of net emigration. 320133
Reposted by John HandleySharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 10/07/2026once again, the irony of ASI/AGI guys is that if what they were claiming was true, they are essentially proving the Second International correct in thinking that capitalism does in fact overturn itself automatically into post-capitalism 526034
Reposted by John HandleyDan Neidle @danneidle.bsky.social · 09/07/2026I don't usually write personal stuff, but a few words about my experience of being interviewed by Gary Stevenson. It started with a nice chat, comparing taste in hoodies... then the tone changed. He demanded to know why I'd deleted a tweet criticising him. 43435124
Reposted by John HandleyResolution Foundation @resolutionfoundation.org · 09/07/2026Is welfare spending ''out of control''? It's estimated to be 11.1 per cent of GDP this financial year. That's just 1.1 per cent of GDP higher than in 2007-08, and total welfare spending has actually fallen by 0.9 per cent of GDP since 2012-13 ⤵️ 22829
Reposted by John HandleyYouGov @yougov.co.uk · 03/07/2026Britons tend to feel it's more important for an Andy Burnham government to pursue policies it believes are right than to stick to the policies in the Labour manifesto Pursue policies it believes are right: 48% Stick to manifesto promises: 16% Something else: 14% yougov.com/en-gb/daily-... 56318
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 03/07/2026Labour is up/the Greens are down 3 points in the polls since the local elections 041
Reposted by John HandleyDr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 01/07/2026once again 831941
Reposted by John HandleyAllan Faulds @afaulds.bsky.social · 29/06/2026Not to obsess over decentralisation but I think fundamentally the UK Government's approach to local government reform in England is paradoxically neither small nor big enough, when compared with pretty much any other country outside these (very bad at local government) islands. 5304
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 29/06/2026Community detection and force directed graph layout for local authorities in England and Wales based on 2021 commuting flows 1104
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 29/06/2026The top 10 largest urban areas in the UK according to the OECD city (continuous area of >=1,500 pop/sq. km) and FUA (city + local authorities where >=15% commute to city) definitions 140
Reposted by John HandleyToby Nangle @tobyn.bsky.social · 28/06/2026Among the G7, IMF forecasts UK to have second lowest debt and deficit by 2030 www.ft.com/content/c2de... 710626
Reposted by John Handleyalistair pomegranate 'lappy' percival @lappypercival.bsky.social · 27/06/2026i will say that one way in which i agree AC is worsening climate change is that it has allowed more Americans to live in the South 1103
Reposted by John Handley칠락싱하는중 @lcj-faure.bsky.social · 25/06/2026I dont get this "AC is a new world only technology" take. AC is in basically every building in East Asia and was stated by LKY as a primary driver behind Singapore's economic miracle It's ok to Be Chill 5999
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 25/06/2026The prospect of a Reform government makes me even more convinced that parliamentary sovereignty is not good 110
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 24/06/2026It's really depressing that the Labour right's lesson from New Labour broadly seems to have been 'relentlessly target what you perceive to be the median voter' instead of 'be Keynesian and welfarist instead of statist and authoritarian' 051
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 24/06/2026I'm amazed at how many things these people believe with the sum total of evidence being vibes 020
Reposted by John HandleyDom White @domw.bsky.social · 23/06/2026Three charts, since the UK's fiscal position is in the news (again). Any discussion of this issue really needs to recognise (i) the long average maturity of UK government debt, and (ii) the tightening already baked into the UK government's fiscal plans. (1/4) 22310
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 23/06/2026The BES panel has some cool data on where voters place parties and themselves on immigration and redistribution. Voter perceptions of Labour under Starmer (wave 20) on have moved a lot further to the auth/right than they moved to the lib/left under Corbyn (waves 7-19) 172
Reposted by John HandleyTom James @tacj.bsky.social · 22/06/2026My theory is that voters are surprisingly indifferent to scale, so if you’re going to do something to piss them off you might as well do a *big* (and ideally slightly dull) thing that gives you the potential for impact. bsky.app/profile/tacj... 041
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 22/06/2026I agree that employer NICs was a suboptimal way to raise revenue compared to raising income tax, VAT, or employee NICs, but the fact that they did actually do a big broad-based tax increase on wage income kind of undercuts the argument that avoiding the tax pledge would have made a big difference 220
Reposted by John HandleySam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 22/06/2026Fascinating the extent to which people responsible for billions of pounds base their views on nothing but vibes. 3038952
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 22/06/2026High executive turnover is one of those things that seems bad but is there any actual evidence that it is bad? Italy and Japan had high turnover during both their post-war boom periods as well as their stagnation since the mid 90s 020
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 22/06/2026Rising productivity + a weakening labour market is consistent with both the employment rights + minimum wage + employer NICs is killing low productivity jobs story and a weaker than expected aggregate demand story. I wonder if we have been assigning too much weight to the former vs. the latter 132
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 22/06/2026This is old news already, but I genuinely wonder why someone for whom "raise taxes to spend more on welfare" is a proposition they can reject out of hand would want to join a social democratic political party in the first place 000
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 21/06/2026After adjusting for regional price parity within the US and PPP with the UK, hourly wages in the UK are as high or higher than California up to the median -- but 25% lower at the 90th percentile 1102
John Handley @jwhandley.bsky.social · 19/06/2026The Lab+LD+Green vote share is unchanged on 2024 and the Con+Ref+Restore vote share up by 1 point 010
Reposted by John HandleyNute @nutedawn.bsky.social · 16/06/2026Not the main point but it’s hilarious to me that all of the Labour nostalgic fantasising about their lost coalition is pining for days when that coalition was also woefully insufficient and they lost almost every election 310316
Reposted by John HandleyAlexander Clarkson @aphclarkson.bsky.social · 12/06/2026I've written pieces setting out the case for how the UK would be a happier place if its elites accepted that the most stable outcome for their state is to become Sweden with nukes, but the problem with that take now is that the Swedes are going to hit 3% of GDP for defence a decade before the Brits 514019
Reposted by John HandleyLee Savage @leesavage.bsky.social · 09/06/2026I read the report this morning. I'll have more to say when I have time, but it is largely a series of unsubstantiated assertions, airing of grievances, and basic misreporting of data. But on this one issue, here are the actual median wages of graduates and non-graduates 1215749
Reposted by John HandleyDan Neidle @danneidle.bsky.social · 05/06/2026UK tax has gone up significantly over the last 25 years But the tax paid by the average UK worker has not This apparent miracle was achieved by taxing “other people”: higher earners, capital, property, banks, etc The strategy has run out of road A 🧵 on what happens next. 47560204
Reposted by John HandleyMike Madowitz @mikemadowitz.bsky.social · 05/06/2026I think Ethan is the only one I've seen flag this vibes paper. One of the most striking graphs of the decade--all of a sudden spending completely decoupled from sentiment and correlation has stayed at near zero for years 0125
Reposted by John HandleySam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 04/06/2026DfE pupil data is out today and shows that the number of private school pupils has dropped 5.6% since VAT was introduced. Not 25% like the independent schools council predicted. Or the 50% we saw in some right-wing papers. 5.6%. 851351420
Reposted by John HandleyJack Bailey @jack-bailey.co.uk · 03/06/2026Last year, we shared a paper showing that Labour's accommodation of the radical right did not work. We now have a new version of the paper online: osf.io/preprints/so... 12520285
Reposted by John HandleyArin Dube @arindube.bsky.social · 02/06/2026Apropos of the ongoing debate, here is the PWT GDP per capita figures for both EU-27 and EU-15 countries relative to US. Using current PPP (Krugman), constant national prices (Aghion et al.), and the chained PPP (which I prefer). 1105
Reposted by John HandleyResolution Foundation @resolutionfoundation.org · 29/05/2026Core benefit rates for young people have fallen considerably compared to wages since 2013-14. work incentives have actually increased for young people in receipt of benefits in recent years. So, UC rates are unlikely to be incentivising more young people to remain out of work. ➡️ buff.ly/gABGpwv 13819
Reposted by John HandleyJoel Budd @joelbudd.bsky.social · 29/05/2026I wrote about immigration policy in Britain this week. Britain has shut the door on the most economically desirable kind of migrant. www.economist.com/britain/2026...economist.comBritain has crushed immigration, and harmed itselfNobody seems to have noticed 13272101
