Every quarter I do a brief update on the substack, about how things are going, and what will be coming up over the next few months. Welcome to the 7,000 of you or so who have signed up since the last update, we’re nearly up to 30,000 now. Thank you to all of you and especially those paying, you make it possible for us both to spend significant amounts of our time on this.
One of the big drivers of sign-ups on substack is being recommended by others and we now have over 100 substacks recommending us for which we are very grateful. The biggest referrers over the past few months have been David Aaronvitch’s new substack and Mick Ryan’s Futura Doctrina on contemporary war – both of which are well worth your time.
Those of you who are new can find out more about us on our about page and check out our archive of around 150 posts here. But the quick version is I (Sam) write about UK policy and politics, following a career in and around Westminster. My Dad Lawrence, covers international relations, strategy and war, following a (longer) career as a leading academic in war studies, during which he has written books on strategy, command and many other things.
News
I’ve said before that one of the great benefits of substack over a traditional newspaper column is it allows you to develop themes across multiple pieces. That in turn has led to me getting a contract to write a book for Pan Macmillan called “Failed State: Why Britain’s Institutions are Broken and How We Fix Them”. It grew out of ideas developed on here and the conversations with readers that followed from them. As I write it over the rest of the year I will keep exploring themes in posts – it’s very much a collaborative project that benefits from the insights we get in the comments and by email.
We’ve tried a few innovations over the past few months. The introduction of monthly guest pieces seems to have gone down well and we’ll be continuing with that – with the second piece from Nick Butler, on climate change, coming soon. We tried a video version of the Q+A which got positive responses, but also some asking that we do it on audio instead. We might try an audio version next and then compare. It was certainly better for us to get questions in advance instead of trying to type furiously while they came in live. I’ve also written a couple of pieces based on polling from focaldata (on Brexit and perception of the parties) and will be doing more with them in the future.
Substack has just launched a “notes” feature. This looks a bit like twitter, but without Elon Musk messing everything up, and I think I will initially use it for short follow-ups to posts. A good way to discover other writers that might be of interest too.
Coming soon
Over the next few months I will be continuing to mix more policy in which the politics. Including more on the NHS as my project on its current challenges, with the Institute for Government and the Health Foundation, nears completion. I’ll also be doing a couple of pieces on education at some point including on the increasing mess of our university system. And some more general pieces on how policymakers can break free of the stultifying stranglehold of the media management cargo cult discussed in my last piece. They’ll be politics too with a preview of the UK local elections coming shortly, followed by an analysis of the results and what they mean for the general election next year.
Dad will keep doing his Ukraine updates, which continue to be amongst our most read pieces. He’ll also be doing some more posts on broader questions of strategy – including one on the rise of Apple to follow on from this one on Moore’s Law. While following the political and military aspects of the war takes up most of his time, he intends to pay more attention to the challenge posed by China, and the different approaches to it being followed by western countries, as well as developments in the Middle East.
Thanks again for all your support – comments and emails as well as subscriptions.
Speaking of political messes, how about a guest article on Northern Ireland's politics and Brexit? If memory serves, a minority British Conservative government in need of DUP support, played no small part in the current post-Brexit impasse.
You could call it Schroedinger's Border
Hi Sam. Congratulations on the book - it sounds like it will be very worthwhile.
I've got a request - for a piece on the Covid-related GCSE and A Level (and other qualifications too? Not sure what Covid did to BTECs etc) grade inflation and how OFQUAL and the exam boards might ever be able to get back to 2019 levels. (And maybe whether that's even a good thing to aim for. )
I must admit a personal interest (my son is doing his A Levels next month) and because my ear is to the ground I think I'm picking up the beginnings of another pushback against the stated aim of returning to 2019 levels of As and A stars; on Mumsnet and elsewhere I can see the rumblings beginning. And really, how can this process ever be 'fair', whether it's a cliff edge or increments? Even if we wait ten years, there will always be cohorts who can quite reasonably say that they're being comparatively disadvantaged.
But I think most of all I'm interested to know whether you think another U-turn might be on the horizon, motivated by the short-term urge to avoid pissing off this year's cohort of parents.