How can Britain detoxify the immigration debate?
🔗 In a blog for @lsepoliticsblog.bsky.social this week, Lead Researcher Hana Kapetanovic @hanakappy.bsky.social explores the role that public deliberation can play in lighting the way forward on immigration policy: blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...
New blog from me on detoxifying the most toxic of debates: immigration.
In the context of polarisation, epistemic threats, and record high distrust, we need a much more in-depth, nuanced, and informed conversation.
We need public deliberation.
New Demos report on the MP-Constituent relationship.
"We argue that current modes of engagement are unintentionally optimised for polarisation rather than representation, amplifying only the loudest or most desperate voices."
@hanakappy.bsky.social @demos-uk.bsky.social
demos.co.uk/research/a-t...
V much agree with the new Pride in Place Strategy's diagnosis of people feeling out of control - and with a more positive (and real) version of taking back control
"This is our alternative to the forces trying to pull us apart. This is our answer to those who feel silenced, ignored and forgotten."
OPINION PIECE | Abuse, apathy and overload: The democratic crisis within our constituencies
Demos’s Director of Research and Participation, Lucy Bush writes for @thehousemag.bsky.social today on the broken interface between MPs and citizens, and how to set about fixing it. ⬇️
Why is it that MPs feel more overwhelmed than ever by their inboxes and messages from constituents, but most constituents they don't feel like they ever hear from their MP, and have less trust than ever in them?
Find out why & how to fix it our paper published today 👇
demos.co.uk/research/a-t...
👏 We're pleased to see a key recommendation from our 'Taming the Wild West' report reflected in the government's new #IndustrialStrategy. ⬇️
Report author, @hanakappy.bsky.social called for more transparency in public sector procurement - and it’s great to see this principle gaining traction.
🚨 NEW from Demos: DOGE Done Better by Geoff Mulgan 🚨
Amidst the global noise around slashing the “administrative state,” this landmark paper sets out an alternative path to more efficient, effective government. ⬇️
demos.co.uk/research/dog...
#DOGE #GovernmentEfficiency
💬 "Not hearing less from the loudest voices, but more from the quietest ones – including young people, renters and others who would stand to benefit the most from new housing."
Miriam Levin explains the value of early and representative public participation in unlocking #housebuliding.
Read more ⬇️
Our new research suggests this language has actually increased the number of NIMBYs, potentially by as much as 31% since Sep 2024 - demos.co.uk/research/the...
👏 Great to see this new report from the Strategic Planning Group (SPG) on embedding Spatial Development Strategies at the core of England’s planning system.
We’re pleased to see calls for early, inclusive, and representative public engagement, an approach that we've championed in our latest report.
🏗️ The #housing debate is stuck on extremes: #NIMBY vs YIMBY.
But new polling finds most Britons (67%) are MIMBYs - 'Maybe In My Backyards' - open to #housebuilding under certain conditions.
"Only 6% of people in England took the time to object to a planning application in the last year. Even fewer – 3% – made a supportive statement to a planning application.
"The conversation is being dominated by less than 10% of the population."
🗣️ @hanakappy.bsky.social
Our report out today is all about the majority of the public who are going unheard in planning - the MIMBY majority (67% of the pop). Giving them a voice early on, alongside the vocal minority, will mean we hear a more balanced set of views to power up, not slow down, the housebuilding agenda. 👇
Excited to be working on this massive trial of digital democracy in local decision-making!
The new govt has put a lot of stock in its ambitious housebuilding & planning reform agenda. But in doing so, it has gravitated towards less public consultation, not more. There is a third option: better public participation.
But what does that look like? Join our event next month to find out 👇
Demos is on a mission to build a more collaborative #democracy - one that puts people at the heart of policy making. 🎯
We believe this requires greater civic #participation and deliberative methods that centre discussion around people's lived experiences.
1/4
Israel killed 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers one by one, says UN
An excellent blog from my colleague Naema on an important issue!
Excited for this discussion with the Climate Minister on public engagement - really great to see growing enthusiasm for this agenda across Whitehall
Btw merry public sector procurement month to all those who celebrate
Recent @demos-uk.bsky.social work has shown the government's missions are at risk of failure.
In my new article for Public Sector Focus, I look at the role mission-led social value in public procurement could play, while allowing for local variation and innovation.
flickread.com/edition/html...
NEW: updated long-run gap in voting between young men and women in Germany:
Gender divide continues to widen, but contrary to what is often assumed, young men continue to vote roughly in line with the overall population, while young women have swung sharply left.
www.ft.com/content/29fd...
Following the global #AIsummit in Paris, today we have issued an Open Letter calling on the UK government to urgently develop and adopt a citizen-led UK Declaration of Digital Rights & Principles.❗
✉️ Read the Open Letter ⬇️
demos.co.uk/research/ope...
(which they should be allowed to be, even if they were the soundtrack to my working day today)
Funny that these farmer protests are allowed to be noisy & disruptive
A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.
Auschwitz was at the end of a long process. It did not start from gas chambers.
This hatred was gradually developed by humans. From ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.
Auschwitz took time.
Thank you for screaming into the void. Your scream is very important to us.
Unfortunately we are experiencing an exceptionally high volume of screams right now. You may wish to scream into the void later.
After some Blue Sky lurking... it's time for my first post. And what could be more fitting than sharing my new blog on how public sector procurement can help deliver the missions? (Probably a lot of things). But anyway, give it a read: demos.co.uk/blogs/how-ca...
