James Kanagasooriam
@jameskanag.bsky.social
4.8K followers 160 following 76 posts
Pollster. Chief Research Officer of @focaldata.bsky.social and Honorary Professor @UofGlasgow.bsky.social
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Completely agree. Being able to do nice things without being super rich really is the acid test
George Abaraonye takes hard to nail. It’s interesting for orthogonal reasons. 1/ private fleeting moments blowing up to global scrutiny - a la Coldplay 2/ Oxford’s admissions criteria 3/ political reasoning across left and right that is sociopathic 4/ free speech debate 5/ why is Oxford in the news
Reposted by James Kanagasooriam
🚨 The UK Youth Poll 2025 is here! 🚨

Young people believe in democracy but fear for its future. They want better politics & financial stability.

📊 Read the #UKYouthPoll2025 now: www.ukyouthpoll.com

@focaldata.bsky.social @uofglasgow.bsky.social #Nationwide
Parenting becoming more effort filled is downstream of so many things - the necessity of dual incomes in some areas, housing, atomised living, geographically dislocated families, a public realm that doesn’t have lots of nice free stuff, a culture of individualism over community, declining faith.
My theory is that there is *one* way to raise birth rates, and it is to normalise hands off French-style parenting. France is the only country in the world where the amount of time parents spend on care has fallen rather than risen, and has the highest fertility rate in Europe
Finland has this and low birth rates! I’m not kidding, it is literally a global phenomenon.
I’ve written today for @thetimes.com on how our shortening attention spans are damaging our politics. Another slightly doomery column
Just read this and it’s a pretty astonishing paper download.ssrn.com/2024/10/20/4...
It’s in the telegraph, the national, GB news, the canary. I think Ben’s point is largely correct though - we don’t have a equally politically loaded town square since early Twitter and we’re all poorer for it
The sheer number of non voters towards the lower end of the income spectrum indicates the potential for much higher turnout in a multiparty system
The lovely people @britishelectionstudy.com released the random probaility data which means we can begin to unravel some unanswered questions about turnout in 2024.

A substack to follow but a starter of social class and vote/non-vote. Which party represents the working class? None of the above.
Reposted by James Kanagasooriam
The lovely people @britishelectionstudy.com released the random probaility data which means we can begin to unravel some unanswered questions about turnout in 2024.

A substack to follow but a starter of social class and vote/non-vote. Which party represents the working class? None of the above.
Clearly not a reference to every single person so I’ve deleted the comment. But the selection is interesting. Organically not much happened which is bens point.
Sorry - We’ve got polling on what people *actually do* re community and it’s rather complicated. Study released end of the year!
Yup agreed MICs finding similar to our own. But reform voters aren’t necessarily less community minded. Was responding to the other person - not your comment
This simply isn’t true and not validated by any data.
We don’t ask people using that word - we use less esoteric language (see the blog)
The UK is in a bad place; but it seems campaigners across the spectrum are starting to piece together what might fix our country. Agency.

Substack here open.substack.com/pub/politica...
The global public affairs firm Edelman found this in their global trust tracking and found the U.K. to be toxic and world beating in its levels of grievance.
Once you realise agency is low in Britain you realise how many things suffer from the lack it - growth, productivity, accountability, positivity. At the heart of our political problems is a culture of grievance so wide it captures some of the luckiest people alive
The story of how Britain became a low agency culture is interesting. Lots of candidates. Dopamine culture, the realignment with the centre right tossing Thatchers intellectual legacy, growth in the philosophy of intersectionality, decline of religion (see AA’s concept of grace)
When you frame politics as “what could increase individual and group agency” you start to understand why very different political parties are starting to entertain similar policy fixes…
The groups that stress people’s agency are the ones that have been making waves across labour, conservative and reform. People want to take back control
Our findings reflect work from @moreincommonuk.bsky.social and @luketryl.bsky.social work - agency is likely to be as big a thing in UK politics as the identity / multiculturalism axis over the next 5 years or so