Marios Richards

Could England 'flip Orange' in the next GE? No.

But you're the only party that could credibly put in a bulk order of <anything> for each MP and expect to only be out by single figures after the next GE.

Lib Dem 'strategy staff' has to be *least stressful* posting - across English parties

- remind people you exist
- make disappointed noises about Kemi
- make occasional soft Conservative noises
- make some light liberal criticism of Labour, but otherwise friendly vibes to other 'progressive parties'

To the tune of "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love"?

I suspect the position most likely to get you punched in the face is not "he didn't exist" - which concedes the faith-based position that this guy had a really unique, exceptional story even before gained his Jedi lvls - but "yes, I'm sure there were between 5-50 of those in that 20-30 year period".

See also arguments the historicity of the bible as a basis for inferring geological time from genealogies.

As a bog standard Brit, I am *not remotely* conversant enough with the bible to follow the intellectual history of criticism of that biblical reading tradition.

I think (not a contradiction of the OP thesis) that this is a reaction to the tradition of biblical apology that stresses the human story of Jesus as the really important part.

Even if that's all you want to communicate, easier and more accurate to point at a *horde of Jesi*. It's not like the area was short on cults, internecine conflict or the Romans shy about crucifying people.

Tldr; I think *power* matters - and it's absolutely something a zero-sum quantity you can steal - but I don't think that's true of identity.

There are plenty of big issues worth thinking about the possible future dissolution of United Kingdom but I don't think whether you express your British/English identity with a Social Liberal accent "I'm so conflicted!" or an Authoritarian "I'm not at all conflicted!" is one.

Being uncomfortable/apathetic about English/British identity *is* an English/British identity - there's no way to swim outside the ocean.

The flipside is that so will voters/residents.

I really don't think it matters how many articles neurotic left-wingers write in the Guardian about how they feel about England.

FWIW, I don't think this matter so much because I don't think this is the dynamic.

The Far Right (or, if reality aligns with polling, the Right) will do what they want with "English identity" regardless of the facts/what other parties/random voters do.

Yes - but as US campaigners trip over themselves to explain to Brits, they are notionally setup for more hyper-targeting.

I'm not personally convinced, but they at least claim to have the infrastructure for that which begs the question of whether they have adequate security.

> Will try and respond fully

I kind of think you already did in that briefing paper!

(I think there's something in that last riff, but I was well off topic at that point)

In contrast, 'Delivery' is stuff you very much *do* need to constantly message on - continuously droning that this is a competent government with a plan that can be trusted to fix stuff.

If you don't do that, you'll spend the £££ and get no/limited political capital out of it.

Your options for repositioning your party *cannot go through* the political compass but only round and only from where you are.

E.g. as a Lib-Left party if you want to move closer to Reform's Auth-Left flank you need to consistently stress Ec Left stuff not say how much you hate immigration!

The problem with (i) is that this isn't how you reposition - you can't do it one issue at a time, you can't do it within each issue (contra Yglesias, optimising your trans policy to maximise key voter appeal ... changes nothing about where people position you).

The problem here is that they got the process backwards.

E.g.

(i) we'll position ourselves close(r) to those voters on values with a bunch of announcements on imm/trans rights/anything we can think of!
(ii) we'll Do Delivery on Economics on the DL and wait for the kudos to roll in when it lands!

I'm glad I'm not the only one! Well, not *glad* per se but ...

It all feeds into a strong bias in the media to avoid thinking about policy and governance when talking about government policy.

I'm trying to push myself to write something up on this.

I think - beyond and beneath all the other issues - there's a serious misunderstanding about 'spatial models' (e.g. party/voter positions on the political compass) and party positioning and Yglesias-style "public att. x policy optimisation".

(Jason Mantzoukas obviously still has a lot more gravitas even while playing Derek)

Spitulation

(Most obvious around Trump discourse, you can see people finding that they struggle to even think when the capacity to act is unavailable. As in, it's 10 times easier just *to think about Nixon's acts* when you have the grounding that He Had To Step Down to fall back on.)

I think this is one of the cases where the *inability to socially act* backs up creates a *problem with social thinking*.

As in, if we could *Do Something* then we wouldn't be struggling with a growing bayesian belief network.

But also just the inability to say "Look, it's actually very bad if someone is trying to poison the UK by pouring toxic biosamples into the water supply, even if they're maybe ineffective - we do not, in fact, need causal analysis to say 'Do Something'".

There's also a layer of "people struggle with Attempted X", both because they discourse wobbles down pointless side alleys the moment *intentionality* is raised (ah, but what *did* Putin intend? Did he hope to fix a result - or merely cast suspicion? We must freeze, paralyzed until we can resolve-)

As in, you're looking at a homogeneous group of people judging "someone's gran" further down a curve than "a professor of political science at a leading university".

Also an issue that there are two cases, with very different necessary effect sizes (2% of the UK population >> .02% of US population)