Ahaha sending thoughts and prayers Jill

But think how it feels for us poor lone Australians!

Well it was nice while it lasted.

This draws on lots of analysis from my fab colleagues @amberdellar.bsky.social @stuarthoddinott.bsky.social @njdavies.bsky.social in the full Performance Tracker www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

Because we do basically say it’s not good enough! Yes they’ve made some progress, but if they’d been more prepared in opposition they could have made much more. Doing better than the Sunak gov on public services frankly isn’t a terribly high bar to clear.

Totally agree with you on the importance of sorting those, and housing problems are a massive source of demand on other services as well. But I do think the fair funding review is progress in the right direction and more than was achieved under Sunak.

I’m definitely not suggesting it’s all been fixed! There are still serious problems and financial distress. But they have made some progress, as my colleagues argue here: www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

Sunak’s spending plans on public services after the election were also totally undeliverable. It wasn’t remotely feasible that service spending could be cut in the way those plans implied given how bad performance was — and the NICs cut made things even worse.

The current gov hasn’t acted on adult social care, but they’ve stabilised these other immediate crises and grasped the nettle on some really tough long-term policy problems: criminal sentencing, local government finances, children’s social care.

The government should have firmed up its broader plans on English devolution and police reform — to say nothing of coming up with a plan for Wales! — before moving PCC powers to strategic authorities, and aligning police force boundaries to match.

There are reasonable arguments for judge-led trials, especially in long and highly complex cases. But the government isn’t making those arguments! They’re simply throwing up their hands and saying the system can’t cope with the level of demand — but the data suggests that’s not true.