The Joy of Six 1314

"The policy is less interesting than the politics, simply because the policy isn’t going to happen any time soon- at the risk of saying the most boring thing I’ll ever write on this substack: the Lib Dems are not in government. But for me, this remains an important milestone, because it is the biggest crack yet in the unloved Brexit consensus. The fact Davey feels able to make the shift at this time, tells us something important about the politics of the moment we’re in." Lewis Goodall weighs the importance of Ed Davey's foreign policy speech.

Dan McQuillan fears Labour's AI action plan is a gift to the far right: "Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, has repeatedly stated that the UK should deal with Big Tech via 'statecraft'; in other words, rather than treating AI companies like any other business that needs taxing and regulating, the government should treat the relationships as a matter of diplomatic liaison, as if these entities were on a par with the UK state."

"The problem for Siddiq is not her personal connections to Hasina - no one can help who they are related to, or be judged for having a personal relationship with their relatives - but rather the fact that the Labour MP is herself named in the investigations taking place in Bangladesh." Shehab Khan on the resignation of anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq,

David Zipper argues that gigantic SUVs are a threat to public health and asks why we don't treat them like one.

Pam Jarvis explores the philosophy, psychology and politics of Pooh.

"When the Paramount executives saw the finished product they were appalled and planned to delay distribution. But by December 1968, Paramount had failed to show their annual quota of British films. Their Barbarella was proving a disaster at the UK box office, so they had to replace it with something, preferably British. Two nights after if.... was released in central London, the queues stretched for half a mile." Alex Harvey revisits Lindsay Anderson’s groundbreaking film If....

The News Agents, Peter Kyle and Labour's Mid Bedfordshire by-election campaign

You may have heard Peter Kyle, mastermind of the successful Labour campaign in Mid Bedfordshire, on The News Agents podcast the other day.

He told a moving story about how Labour had won by being respectful to the voters and never mentioning the Liberal Democrats in their campaigning. Whereas the Lib Dem campaign, among many other things, was "filth".

Yet this Labour leaflet from the by-election campaign is almost comical in the way it copies Lib Dem literature. There are the inevitable three things to remember and a bar chart.

Though I haven't seen a Lib Dem bar chart as dodgy as this one for years.

The News Agents is one of the podcasts I follow. Shedding the BBC straitjacket has made Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall happier and more interesting to listen to.

But it's a shame they allowed Kyle to put over such a one-eyed account of the by-election campaign without challenge.

For a good analysis of the by-election and its consequences from a Lib Dem point of view, read Matthew Pennell - that post is also in my latest Joy of Six selection of links.

h/t @TruthMattersToo on Twitter.