Joe Cook

Almost everyone agrees the SEND system is broken, but will the plans to mainstream more children fix it? We took Ed Davey to a special school to hear from the children there about what's at stake. With @SamCoatesSky @PaulNasr youtu.be/1zCZfUMKV_0?si…

UK 10 yr gilt yield at 5% is really quite striking. Up from 4.3% at start of March. Perhaps more striking is 1 yr yield at 4.5%, up from 3.5% at start of March, whilst BoE rate still at 3.75%. Our finances always put us in vulnerable position to any shock, especially energy one.

EXCLUSIVE polling for @SkyNews by @YouGov – in the first study of its kind – reveals not only the extent of public concern over how crime is policed and the experiences of victims of crime, but it also asks what police officers think of themselves...🧵

And watch @SamCoatesSky's deep dive into the @YouGov survey results (produced by @JoeCookJ): youtube.com/watch?v=m_dded…

👇Significant polling @YouGov @SkyNews today reflecting for the first time the perception of policing from the PoV of; police officers, the public, & victims of crime @JasonFarrellSky @nmsonline youtube.com/watch?v=-LrrKv… @SamCoatesSky @JoeCookJ youtube.com/shorts/T_3CUMa…

Still think too much of response to Polanski and Farage relies on “well populists can say that/fantasy economics” without properly engaging with the fact that in both distinct and similar ways both of them have narratives about giving people agency/hope things can be better

Exclusive poll: What the police and victims think about crime Screen by @JoeCookJ youtu.be/m_ddedhWztQ?si…

EXC: Watch our special programme with @skysarahjane at 8pm tonight on crime and justice - with YouGov police polling and this interview:

Exclusively for Sky News, YouGov has surveyed both the victims of crime and police officers, as well as the public at large, about our crime and justice system. Our deputy political editor @SamCoatesSky takes us through the numbers ⬇️ Read more 🔗 trib.al/cvQyAQA

Very, very bad news. As I wrote in Material World, Ras Laffan is one of the most important industrial sites not just in the Gulf but in the world. LNG, helium, other products. Massive. Whatever happens next, serious damage to this site could reverberate for months, maybe years.

Sky's @DominicWaghorn is among one of the only international journalists currently allowed into Iran. He witnesses the impact of the war on the ground, as it continues to escalate. ➡️ trib.al/SwaVKGX

As we reported this morning on Politics at Sam and Anne’s, Angela Rayner is angling for a cabinet job post May - this isn’t (at this stage) a challenge for the leadership Listen to the extract:

BREAKING: Qatar says that its Ras Laffan industrial city, home to a massive LNG plan, was hit by Iranian missiles. "Emergency response teams were deployed immediately to contain the resulting fires, as extensive damage has been caused." Note the wording: "extensive damage"

A senior Labour figure says: "Starmer Always Chickens Out".

Officials have been anonymously briefing about the threat of FOI laws to national security in the FT. I've written a blog on Relight My FOI as to why a crackdown on transparency using the vague excuse of China would be a bad move. relightmyfoia.blog/2026/03/18/pit…

EXCL: UK national security adviser Jonathan Powell attended final talks between US and Iran - and judged Tehran's offer on its nuclear programme was significant enough to prevent rush to war @patrickwintour & @julianborger reveal theguardian.com/world/2026/mar…

“We can’t keep loading costs on to this generation and expect them to turn up for us”. Excellent column by Chris Curtis on why Labour needs a reset with younger people. ft.com/content/53f66c…

This week’s YouGov / Sky News / Times voting intention poll has the following headline results: RefUK 25%(+2), GRN 19% (nc). CON 17% (-2), LAB 17% (nc), LDEM 14% (nc), The poll was taken on Sunday 15 March and Monday 16 March, with a sample of 2,329 respondents from YouGov’s online panel. This is the first poll since Nigel Farage and Reform UK publicly challenged YouGov’s approach and the pollster agreed to supply more underlying data about each poll. How YouGov carries out voting intention polls. During the last election campaign in 2024, YouGov changed how it conducts its weekly voting intention polls in an attempt to pick up tactical voting that has become an increasing feature of UK elections in recent years. They have continued to use this methodology since the election. Unlike other pollsters, YouGov’s methodology involves asking their online panel two voting intention questions: first, how they would vote if a general election were held tomorrow and - second - how they would vote in a general election if they were thinking specifically about their own constituency. The results are then put through an MRP model - or to give it its full name, a “multi-level regression and post-stratification” model to turn their raw data into headline voting intention - the figures that Sky News reports each week. YouGov uses these two techniques - a pair of voting intention questions and then putting the results through an MRP model - because they believe this allows them to get the closest to the result of an election held tomorrow. There appear to be significant differences between pollsters in their respective treatment of Reform UK: there are a lot of irregular voters currently telling pollsters they will go out and vote for Nigel Farage’s party in an election tomorrow, and different companies take a different view on how likely this would be to happen in practice. Why Reform UK dispute the methodology In recent months, YouGov has reported lower polling shares for Reform UK than other firms, although other pollsters also reported a decline from their peak, and Nigel Farage’s party has now challenged the pollster’s methodology. They say they believe that the first voting intention question - that makes no reference to constituencies - is a better representation of what is happening in the country, as well as questioning the use of the YouGov MRP model. They point to the pollster Peter Kellner, a one time employee of YouGov, who said that use of a second voting intention question about how a respondent would vote if thinking about their constituency would advantage the Lib Dems over Reform UK. From this week, following the Reform UK challenge, YouGov has agreed to publish the results to the question without the constituency prompt, as well as the one with the prompt which was already automatically part of the data. Nigel Farage is claiming this as a victory for transparency. YouGov’s methodology, however, has not changed and they stand by their approach. So here are YouGov’s raw voting intention numbers this week without a constituency prompt, and before YouGov apply the MRP model: Reform UK 19% Green 16% Conservative 11% Labour 11% Lib Dems 7% SNP 2% Plaid 1% Other 4% Would not vote 10% Don’t know 15% Refused to say 3% These are the numbers that Reform UK say are the “real” figures which each week they are likely to highlight. Note the figure here for Reform UK is the same this week when the question is asked both with and without the constituency prompt - 19%. Who is right? All pollsters use modelling and a range of techniques to generate the headline voting intention they believe best reflects reality. Ultimately, these results can only be tested at a general election, and at these moments, polling companies are judged by clients and shareholders. This wait can be frustrating for political parties, since in between elections polls drive momentum and, at worst, can be used to justify a change of leader. However at the last election, the final YouGov MRP poll put Reform UK on 15%, the exact number they received at the ballot box, and the final MRP was the most accurate by seats of any pollster, with 92% of constituencies called correctly.

Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story This is my account: timesofisrael.com/gamblers-tryin…

@annemcelvoy It's that or an incredibly tall camera person and he's staring at their stomach!

@annemcelvoy He's clearly reading off something that's being held below the camera - autocue/paper - so the eyeline is off. The shot having so much room above his head too means it all just feels hard to engage with what he's saying as he's looking away from the viewer.

Not the most important point but a great demonstration of why not to hold the camera above whatever lines the talent is reading