From first hearing it as an 11 year old to seeing it live tonight at Wembley. Linkin Park crushing it.
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James Nation
944 posts
James Nation
@NationJames
Managing Director at Forefront | Lecturer at Stanford | Ex Deputy Head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit and Treasury Special Adviser to Rishi Sunak
London
Joined August 2011
- This is a big problem for the PM. You don’t get credit for foreign policy, however unfair. Spending time in the tea room, remembering MP’s names, fronting up when you sack someone, pizza 1-2-1s with the Cabinet. Easy to scoff but navigating politics relies on these softer skills"You're not gonna hear me criticising him for focusing on those issues rather than having conversations with me". Labour MP Chris Curtis suggests the PM cannot spend as much time with his MPs as some of them might like due to "a difficult and unstable world". #Newsnight
00:00 - Quite something to read a clearly well briefed piece confirming that a Cabinet Minister is ‘set to lose’ their job vs. just speculation!
- Enjoyed this. One question we never got a good answer from Whitehall on was: other counties who are signatories of Aarhus don’t seem to have these blockages. Why not? All power to the gov’s elbow on reform.Revealed - the law you’ve never heard of that stops Britain building - and it’s not even British We explain how an obscure international law used by green campaigners is causing headaches is No10 (who call it “lawfare”) and pushing up costs by £££ news.sky.com/story/revealed…
- Replying to @LukeTrylThink a fourth test is whether you actually see any Gov policy change off the back of it. Like the current debate on phones in schools. But fuelling the conversation without explaining what you will or won’t do off the back of it starts to get a bit mad.
- It was true before yesterday but certainly is now even more so: policymakers need to seriously engage with Richard's work.
- Number 10 tries to smoke out Gavrilo Princip.
- Delighted to join the teamNews: "James Nation joins Forefront Advisers from Number 10 as Managing Director of UK #Politics" @DeHavilland --> read on the #PublicAffairs industry #news page: tinyurl.com/yj7w5jzp
- Replying to @MrHarryCole @Heidi_Labour and @StigAbellSome department somewhere to the treasury on ontology funding: we don’t need to justify it, it exists in and of itself.
- Reminder that public sector net debt was at 80% of GDP before the pandemic as a result of hard decisions. That allowed the gov at the time to go big on financial support during the pandemic, and didn’t hear opposition parties then express worry about the public finances.
- Kind to say so. Was chuffed and surprised to get an OBE yesterday. Obviously plenty to criticise, but all I can say is working with great Treasury civil servants during the pandemic and the amazing civil servants + spads of the policy unit was the honour of a lifetime.Congratulations to @NationJames on very well deserved honour for political services to HM Government #ResignationHonoursList
- Re-upping this. Interesting story today on Labour looking seriously at @lfg_uk ideas. The big test is environmental rules and JR holding back development. Reform those, take the lawyers on, confound expectations, change vibes. The rest is pushing the peas around the dinner plateTwo tests for this: 1) do Labour Ministers feel they have the political space with their own side to order the FCA to backdown on e.g. name and shame, DEI rules; 2) did Natural England get a letter and when can we expect reform of the Habitats Directive?
- Big Budget q now is: will there be any ‘pain’ in the short term? If everything - threshold freeze, spending wheezes, deferred property tax - is backloaded then this will lead to serious credibility doubts.
- Two issues with the treasury spin here: 1) it was clear in October there would be global headwinds; 2) movements in gilts post budget were already enough to wipe (historically low) headroom. Treasury earmarks billions in spending cuts
