Ballsing it up already? I understand wanting to get your mates in. But I also think that the inability to get over Blair (elected 29 years ago, left office 18 years ago) really holds Labour back.

When Burnham is PM he must be decisive & restore this hairstyle. It's perfectly calibrated to unite all middle-aged indie kids with all the other middle-aged people who desire a return to the glory days of the 18th century. And as a bonus it'll appeal to all those young people called Tom and Jack.

Two interesting charts to put side by side. From here: moneypower.substack.com/p/solvency-a...

“…this is not a great situation, for a number of reasons, but when you accurately compare bonds between currencies, the UK is not such an outlier”.

Not news to some of us.

As I've said before, what is really at stake in the culture wars is whether or not we will have any culture at all. At the moment 'not' is winning. www.garbageday.email/p/the-death-...?

From The Times last Saturday. Starmer's ministry provides empirical proof of the fact that (contrary to what the Labour leadership has believed for many years) you can't govern without an ideology: something organising your outlook and mobilising people to action. www.thetimes.com/article/2cb4...

A good overview. Also includes sound advice for Labour should it wish to revive its fortunes. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

The FT - rightly - opening up the conversation about how to ‘de-risk’ from (ie get out from under) the US. It’s good they recognise the stakes. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Unsurprisingly, given it is the political wing of charity HR departments, Labour has decided the way forward is workshops for MPs on ‘best practice’. They might be better served with an intensive seminar on, say, Hobbes. You can’t win a conflict of interests if you don’t know you are already in it.

A representation of entrenched inequality not just between generations but families. The politics which follows is a vast ideological effort to justify that inequality as natural & necessary, to ridicule critics & distract opposition while ignoring the fraying of society that is its consequence.

You spend years honing skills in the analysis of the logics behind ideology and identity and then the Telegraph just goes and makes it all obvious.

This event at UEA & online, organised by the estimable @tobysjames.bsky.social, looks very good. The State of Political Leadership in Britain: Roundtable with Charles Clarke, Tim Bale, Emmanuelle Avril and Patrick Diamond Tues, 25th Nov. 1-2.30pm Register here: forms.office.com/e/dnX1qZ4pVR.

I’m growing concerned that my planned Little Book of Starmer Rhetoric isn’t going to pay for my pension. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

Woaah! The New Yorker ups the political temperature to, er, 'troubling'. It's worried that the US government is 'capricious'. Wow.

Edited to add: "...and also quite a large number of academic researchers and writers not to mention many left-wing analysts active on podcasts, substack & YouTube". It's a good article, well worth a read: www.ft.com/content/0e24...

“Totalitarianism is bureaucrats killing people inefficiently. Therefore utopia arrives when we efficiently kill all the bureaucrats (who aren’t human anyway). Only hollow men don’t invest in us. How much would you like to buy? You have five seconds to comply.”

Would Lewis approve of the actual abolition of human literature and its replacement with an AI rented out to God? Would he like systems designed to make drones more efficient at killing people? These are questions only mere mortals ask.

“My buddy Peter went to school with Rene Girard & told me he learned you gotta make someone else the scapegoat before they make you it, like that time in high school. It’s called ‘post liberalism’ and it’s totally spiritual. Please buy my book. If you don’t I’ll…”

“You know, like, the way that, like, the media makes words & like, there’s the Letter of the Law? That’s total tyranny man, dominating the code that wants to be free. But not if we do it. Then it’s freedom! You’d better not call us postmodernists man”.

The highest expression of The Californian Ideology? Hippie self-expression mixed with libertarian capitalism but at the end of the party when you’re full of Ketamine, Curtis Yarvin’s been speaking to you all evening & you’re hallucinating Ayn Rand’s ghost telling you you are a God.

It’s not market capitalism - circulation & exchange - or utilitarianism. It’s not only about having power. It’s about *feeling power*. Here, the greatest happiness is “to crush your enemies, to see them fall at your feet -- to take their horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their women”.

I read the latest letter to shareholders from Palantir and here are some highlights which will translate. Remember, the Palantir head who wrote this strongly identifies with Batman. “It’s not just a business report. It’s world building!”

Great polling. I imagine that right now there are panicked committees in Downing Street arguing over whether Starmer should be seen ostentatiously eating Stilton or violently rejecting it to win the no-cheese demographic. Meanwhile, Morgan plots the expulsion of the few remaining Feta-ists.

Does anyone else remember that time when that guy said that that government would “tread more lightly on your lives” and when he said he’d end the politics of “noisy performance”? That happened, right?

My friend and co-author got interviewed by C4 about Trump & Epstein. You can see from this picture taken from the video, how stoked he was to talk about that. Please go to the YouTube channel & leave a comment to cheer him up! m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbdr...

The Amiel & Melburn Annual lecture is happening this Wednesday! A stellar lineup discussing how the Left can resist the Rise of the Radical Right, hosted at @BirkbeckUoL Some free tickets still available 👇 bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

Here’s a fundamental part of Labour’s problem. It’s not ‘coming’. It’s here. And it’s been here for 10+ years.

People don’t even read the newspapers anymore.