Jonathan Hopkin

@jonathanhopkin.bsky.social

7K followers 3.9K following 5.9K posts

Professor of the Political Economy of Europe at LSE. Interested in democratic representation and inequality, worried about the survival of democracy. Author of Anti-System Politics (OUP, 2020). Also random thoughts on football, cycling, the weather etc .. more

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Jonathan Hopkin is Professor in the European Institute and the Department of Government of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He obtained a PhD at the European University Institute in Florence, and lectured at the Universities of Bradford, Durham and Birmingham, joining LSE in 2004. He teaches comparative politics and political economy, and has published in the areas of political parties and elections, political economy, inequality and welfare states. .. more

Political science 69%

Economics 17%

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Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 53m

Had I been born a few years later I would have probably studied something else

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 53m

Re-reading Juan Linz and realising that I really don’t care for most of what passes for political science since I was a graduate student

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 57m

By emphasising disposable income the IFS is therefore, not for the first time, passing off ideological preference as policy evaluation

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 57m

Apart from anything else, higher disposable income would not give voters any means to improve their access to healthcare, fund social services, lift children out of poverty or fill potholes

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 57m

Raising taxes is all else equal going to reduce disposable income. As others have argued (eg @chrisdillow.bsky.social ) that is largely the point

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 57m

Yes disposable income is stagnant because instead of borrowing more to finance spending that voters have clearly indicated that they want, which the IFS would be even more unhappy about, the government is raising taxes

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 57m

Nothing is going to make the IFS happy apart from shrinking the state www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Households face 'dismal' rise in spending power, says IFS

Average disposable income is set to grow by

www.bbc.co.uk

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 1h

Post-budget update: could be worse

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 1h

Yes I guess that tall column on the left is the one that shouts loudest

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 1h

Update post-budget: it’s occupying the centre-left space in economic policy but spending a lot of time pretending it is on the far right

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 1h

Now back to the farmers’ protest in Westminster

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Jesse H. Kroll, American Library Association , and 2 more Ben H. Ansell, Jesse H. Kroll, American Library Association, Jonathan Hopkin, Lisa Diedrich

Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 1h

Combatting poverty and hunger in this city will take every single one of us. Myself included.

Reposted by Jonathan Portes, Ben H. Ansell, Will Jennings , and 6 more Jonathan Portes, Ben H. Ansell, Will Jennings, Steve Peers, Andrew Scott, Leigh Sparks, Simon Wren‐Lewis, Jonathan Hopkin, Christina Pagel

Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 3h

Headline on The World at One just now:

"Sir Keir Starmer has denied putting the Labour Party before the country by ending the two-child benefit cap".

Can we please go back to reporting the actual news, not someone's partisan take on it?

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 3h

Also funny dissonance between popular view that migration costs voters money and OBR view

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 3h

Yeah clearly b******s

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 4h

I wonder what doing more of this kind of thing from the very start and downplaying migration would have done to their standing in the polls? Hard to see how it could be worse

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 4h

We’ve all done it

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6h

I still don’t see an alternative to democratic socialism that isn’t fascism but maybe that’s my lack of imagination

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6h

The default theory of the economy is some form of liberalism, and the limits of that have been well understood for over a century but nobody has come up with anything new to replace it

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6h

The economics of buying these kinds of properties is insane. We are talking serious wealth. The financial gap between new buyers and old in London is gigantic

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6h

Planning was the democratic interpretation of communism…

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6h

You would think! Of course they must have thought of that, right?

a woman wearing a headband and ear muffs is looking at a man .

ALT: a woman wearing a headband and ear muffs is looking at a man .

media.tenor.com

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6h

It took me a while to get used to the fact that in Italy a judge’s sentence is just a starting gun

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6h

The lack of a jury is compensated by infinite rounds of appeals which increase costs (at least in French legal origin countries)

Reposted by Jonathan Hopkin

Lewis Goodall @lewisgoodall.com · 6h

NEW: Net migration falls sharply to 204,000 in the year to June.

That’s a fall from 649,000 in the year to June 2024. It is a drop of nearly 80% from its 2023 peak.

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6h

Yeah it’s bound to. Already 1.95 is a common asking price

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6h

Say more?

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6h

Ah now I need to

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6h

A bit like crime. It’s been going down for decades but voters just need one anecdote to remind them how afraid they are

Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 6h

Only a sixth of the public know that immigration is now falling (significantly) from its peak levels. It is a challenge to the politicians and the media to do their distinct jobs more effectively by communicating this, so we can have a more informed debate
www.britishfuture.org/immigration-...

Immigration falling but public still thinks it is going up – new research - British Future

Findings from the British Future/Ipsos Immigration Attitudes Tracker into what the public thinks about immigration for work, study and asylum

www.britishfuture.org

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6h

One thing worth considering is that we’re orphans of communism. The existence of an alternative idea underpinned debate on economics for over a century. We’re unanchored intellectually now

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