The 2nd Anniversary Post

Welcome to 2024 and the third year of Comment is Freed.

This substack has taken on a life well beyond anything either of us could have expected when we decided to try it out over Christmas lunch in 2021. We had thought it would be small side project for occasional thoughts, but it’s turned into a big part of both our lives. There are now 223 posts - totalling around three quarters of a million words - in the archive. It certainly feels worthwhile, with more than 41,000 of you now subscribed, and with most posts getting 40-50k hits.

For this past two years we have held the price of a paid subscription at £3.50 a month (the lowest available) or £35 a year in order to maximise access. Those of you already signed up will continue to pay that price as long as you remain subscribed. On the 10th January we’re going to put the price up to £4.50 a month or £45 a year for new subscribers only. If you sign up before then you’ll get the £3.50/£35 rate for as long as you’re a subscriber. So if you’ve unintentionally let your subscription lapse recently or have been considering signing up now would be a good time.

We’re putting the price up for two reasons. First everyone else is charging more and I’m concerned that makes us look like we’re offering less. We’ll still be at the bottom end of the distribution at the new price, but not quite such an outlier. But the more important reason is that 2024 is going to be a very big year for politics and I want to be able to free myself up from other commitments, particularly in the second half of the year, to cover the elections on both sides of the Atlantic with a degree of obsessive, data-driven, nerdery you’ll struggle to find elsewhere.

What’s coming up

The elections will inevitably dominate politics in 2024 but I still plan on doing plenty of posts looking at policy issues and broader long-term trends, both in the UK and globally. In the next month, for instance, they’ll be posts assessing the costs of lockdowns and my first proper foray into housing policy. They’ll be lots on politics and public opinion too - I’m hoping to trial a new polling technique to get some additional insights into how people think about immigration.

As we get closer to the UK election - which I’m expecting at some point between late October and early December - I’m planning on setting up a separate offshoot that will be available to all paying subscribers (but will avoid bombardment of our international subscribers who want to be spared in-depth coverage of UK elections). They’ll be a lot of polling analysis, reviews of manifestos, and previews for every seat in the country. I will also be covering the key moments in the US election. (There are plenty of other important global elections in 2024 too - Taiwan, India, and the European Parliament to name a few).

Then they’ll be the aftermaths - both here where Labour are likely to want to start with a flurry of activity - and in the US where any number of chaotic outcomes are possible, and the global consequences will be immense.

Dad will continue to cover Ukraine, as both sides look to make more progress than they have managed this year, and with the pressure to find a negotiated way out rising. There’ll be more too on the dire situation in Gaza and its wider consequences. We’ll also be running a series of interviews, interspersed with other guest posts, with luminaries from the world of international relations - starting with Joseph Nye Jr. who has advised numerous Presidents and developed, among many other things, the concept of “soft power”.

Thanks, as ever, to subscribers, who make all this possible. And please keep sharing posts. Word of mouth is ever more critical to our future growth. Plus keep the brilliant comments coming, it adds so much value to posts. I can’t promise that 2024 will be a good year, but it will certainly be an interesting one, and we look forward to talking about it with you all.