Colm Murphy

@colmpm

Historian of UK and ROI politics and political economy. Senior Lecturer at QMUL and Deputy Director of Mile End Institute ( Book on Labour and 'modernisation' (

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Colm Murphy@colmpm· 18d

(forgot the alt text, sorry)

What it is to be a moderniser is naturally contingent on what is modern; successful modernisers of one era, attuned to one media world and set of public norms and attitudes, will have little in common with the successful modernisers of thirty years later. Will someone who was head of broadcast in the 1990s have what it takes to be director of communications in the 2020s? When they leave, should that person then be replaced by 1997’s deputy communications director? Looking at a Prime Minister less popular than Hamas, the answer would seem to be “no”.

Colm Murphy@colmpm· 18d

Also, I am very sympathetic to this argument, which tracks what I tried to argue in my own book, albeit more on policy, political economy, and strategy than comms.

Colm Murphy@colmpm· 27d

Thanks! That comes from this piece I did for @renewaljournal.bsky.social in 2022 as a postdoc. The final line was that (if Starmer secured a "stable and enduring" government) "then perhaps the constant mercury poisoning since 2010 will have been worth it after all." renewal.org.uk/articles/kei...

Screenshot of opening of Renewal piece, readable here: https://renewal.org.uk/articles/keir-starmer-and-the-philosophers-stone/

Colm Murphy@colmpm· 29d

I do wonder if Reform have actually thought about how they would enforce this in the six counties.

"LOST IN TRANSLATION: Reform UK has proposed an amendment to the government’s Election Bill that would send candidates who use Irish, Gaelic or Cornish on election leaflets to jail. Reform MPs co-signed New Clause 107 to the Representation of the People Bill that would require all election publications to be “in the English language or the Welsh language” only. Five of six Cornish MPs have signed a joint statement of condemnation. The Byline Times has more."

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Jul 13

Sad to hear about Sam Neill. Event Horizon is an all time great.

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Jul 12

Letter in the New Statesman from Jim Denham of Birmingham: "There is no pleasing John Gray, is there? After decades of denouncing "progressivism", the Enlightenment and any idea of human progress, Gray now has a US president who embodies the backwardness and nihilism he craves, and he still doesn't like it. Why does anyone continue to take him seriously?"

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Jul 9

Quite a concentration of drive-by shootings condensed into one paragraph by Geoff Mulgan. www.compassonline.org.uk/wp-content/u...

"But while the diagnoses are not so difficult, the prescriptions are rarer.
Debate now tends to be ultra-incremental (like the work of many think
tanks, keen to meet immediate needs); overly driven by opinion polls
(which, taken too far, is often fatal for political movements); ultra-vague,
like many recent philosophical commentaries (e.g. Michael Sandel)
or the work of radical left figures such as Kohei Saito who promotes
degrowth without even hinting at how it might work in practice; or
much stronger on literary eloquence than strategic insight (like the
writers in forums like the LRB, most broadsheet newspapers and
magazines)."

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Jun 26

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Jun 24

This is a great piece on the problems and insights of Tom Nairn's writings about globalisation later in life, by James Stafford: doi.org/10.1093/tcbh... It includes this wonderful artefact from a bygone era.

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Jun 24

All this looks good, I suppose, but I do hope there is a chunky scene that definitively sets out whether Book 1 or Chapter 12 is the true source of insight that one should draw from The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Jun 14

I hope Hull History Centre won't mind me sharing this lovely letter from Roy Hattersley's papers, on the sad news of his passing aged 93. RIP.

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Jun 12

Here is a quick snap from the @mileendinstitute.bsky.social event last night - damning evidence of my addiction to scare quotes.

Colm Murphy@colmpm· May 17

There are many reasons to criticise Starmer's party, and it was certainly an incoherent project. But to describe the economic policy of a government that has increased borrowing by £100bn and passed the Employment + Renters Rights Acts in this way is risible. www.newstatesman.com/politics/lab...

"He was not so much committed to growth as dependent on it to keep things going, for redistribution was ruled out. His economic policy is fiscal rectitude, support for innovation and “entrepreneurs”, and subsidies for foreign investment in the UK. Starmer’s Party rejects, with grim determination, public ownership even of natural monopolies. These must remain “investible”. Starmer’s Party’s conservatism extended to being deeply Unionist, even in relation to Northern Ireland. It even started to believe in Brexit, and trumpeted minor trade deals just as the Tories had. It aped the Tories and Reform on immigration."

Colm Murphy@colmpm· May 12

We should view these reports - Tribune and LGG, Haigh-Yang and Curtis - as indicative of the kind of economic policy arguments candidates may have in any leadership election.

Colm Murphy@colmpm· May 3

Another classic from Seldon

A screenshot of the headline of this article: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/westminster/2026/05/one-crazy-trick-can-rescue-keir-starmer

Colm Murphy@colmpm· May 1

For May Day, I chose some appropriate reading for the tube this morning: @renewaljournal.bsky.social's latest special issue on the politics of work. renewal.org.uk/journal/volu...

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Apr 21

From 2013. No it wasn't me.

A defaced page in a university library book. After "For Robin", a pencil annotation adds "Hood - for all your help in archery lessons. Down with King John!"

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Apr 17

Pleased that the @ippr.org Progressive Review's special issue on 'abundance', edited by @carsjung.bsky.social, is currently open access. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/25732331... My essay has been described as "satisfyingly blunt realism". See if you agree: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Screenshot of the title and abstract of a piece by Colm Murphy.

Title: "The Unavoidability of Scarcity and Necessity of Political Choice".

Abstract: "Advocates of the ‘abundance’ agenda dream of a bright future, but in the UK its possibility relies on economic sacrifices in the present. The consequent politics are wicked and demand ideologically informed choices about scarce resources."

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Mar 19

"chat, is this good?"

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Mar 10

Reading a difference-in-difference analysis of the effect of mass warfare on taxes. It's fascinating, but, due to its method, unintentionally (?) hilarious. "Another potential concern ... is the possibility that countries select into the war based on its anticipated impact on progressive taxation"

Another potential concern about these estimates is the possibility that countries select into the war based on its anticipated impact on progressive taxation. A few considerations suggest that this is unlikely. First, a large literature on entry into World War I suggests that few initial participants expected the long costly, mass-mobilized war that ensued but rather anticipated a short and decisive conflict.Footnote51 Second, it seems implausible given what was at stake that countries would choose to participate in the war even in part based on considerations about the impact of the war on the progressivity of taxation. Third, at least some accounts suggest that, with the partial exception of the United States, the participant countries in our sample did not select into the war at all, much less as a function of its anticipated effect on progressive taxation. A common account is that the event that precipitated the war was of course a political assassination and the participation of France, the UK, and Canada was not certain until Germany decided to follow the Schlieffen Plan for a general European war that started with a Western offensive.Footnote52

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Mar 3

The obvious follow up question: why did he sign off the letter in the first place then?

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Mar 2

This is a fascinating looking paper by @benjamin-bland.bsky.social, on processes of racialisation in the popular culture of late C20th Britain. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This image shows the title and abstract for a new journal article by Benjamin Bland, published in the Journal of British Studies.

Title: "“I Am Not Anti Black Music But …”: Popular Music, the NME, and Race in Late Twentieth-Century Britain".

Abstract:"Popular music culture has often featured in postwar British history as a site of tolerance and inclusivity, of multicultural exchange and anti-racist activism. This article, while not denying music's intersections with progressive causes, presents a different narrative. I use the pages of Britain's most prominent weekly music paper, the New Musical Express (NME), to demonstrate the important role that music has played in perpetuating wider processes of racialization in the late twentieth century. Surveying contestations over race in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, it highlights the ways in which popular music institutions such as the NME could function as sites of racial formation, reproducing the social power of whiteness even when providing space for what was often referred to as “black music.” The article underlines the degree to which popular music could produce hegemonically white cultural spaces, despite the diversity of musical culture at large. In so doing, it indicates the significance of popular culture for understanding patterns of racialization into the latter years of the twentieth century and beyond."

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Jan 18

My latest article is out in British Politics. I try to account for the distressed confusion gripping the UK government's economic strategy. In honour of the article's namesake, I include a tortured football analogy. It's free to read (open access) here. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

This is the abstract for the article 'Labour's choices: The political economy of Keir Starmer's party', by Colm Murphy. It reads: 'This article explores the dilemmas at the heart of the economic strategy of Keir Starmer’s government by tracking developments in British (centre-)left political economy since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. It first traces the emergence of a shared narrative of political economy circulating among the UK and transatlantic centre-left, as well as some further left and right, over the 2010s and into the early 2020s. Identifying the core diagnoses and prescriptions contained within this narrative, this article situates them in economic, ideological, and political developments since 2008. It then traces the fragmentation of this economic imaginary from 2022. In combination with an unhappy transition to office, this fragmentation has generated a deeply confused and internally contradictory economic strategy in the UK Labour government. This paper then explains this process by placing ideological and political developments in their material and external contexts. A worsening macroeconomic and geopolitical context actively decomposed the constituent parts of the narrative and challenged some of its assumptions; in turn, this revived submerged disagreements within the governing party. The paper consequently argues that while these tensions can be explained partly by ideological closure, they derive to a significant and probably greater extent from institutional and material factors, especially questions of statecraft and the UK’s misfiring growth regime in an increasingly gloomy global context. The paper ends, however, by cautioning against an overbearing determinism. It indicates the remaining arenas for political agency open to the government, should it prove able and willing to act.'

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Jan 13

There are fascinating nuggets in this report on Britain's Political Party Members (co-authored by QMUL's @timbale.bsky.social). The chart of different party members' responses to "I am proud of my country's history" is going straight into my lectures. esrcpartymembersproject.org/wp-content/u...

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Dec 19

p. 442

Chart of currency composition of global Forex reserves 1947-2013. Sterling collapses from over 80% in 1945 to close to 0 after 1975. The dollar rises to between 50 and 80%, bouncing around. The DM was in the teens, and the euro is over 20%

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Dec 19

Between the postwar period and the 1970s, sterling went from about 80% to about 10% of globally disclosed foreign exchange reserves. (Daunton, 2023, p.432) The former number is inflated by the Second World War and the unique conditions that generated, but that really is an enormous change.

Front cover of Martin Daunton, "The Economic Government of the World, 1933-2023"

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Dec 4

I'm skimming through my own book for something tomorrow (an odd experience). Mordred has decided to start eating it.

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Dec 4

Colm Murphy@colmpm· Nov 27

And apologies, re sharing with alt text