Thanks to Will Stancil for highlighting my piece in Renewal. If you’re interested I’ll be developing these themes further in my new Substack about democracy, technology and the future open.substack.com/pub/democrat...
In piece for @renewaljournal.bsky.social, I suggest Labour conference saw the emergence of two distinct approaches to practicing politics in a broken public sphere: - YIMBYs and Growth Groupers pursue disruption - "progressive communitarians" seek re-connection
The reason the Right are so invested in the myth that the arts have no value isn’t because the arts don’t generate wealth (they do); it’s that studying the arts teaches people to imagine better ways of judging the value of an idea than by counting how much money it makes…
“If pictures of American troops in war zones overseas upset Trump voters, pictures of them 50 miles down the road are not going to do any better. When the culture war escalates into real-world street fighting, people rapidly lose their patience with it.” inews.co.uk/opinion/trum...
Yeah I guess one positive is that all the people fantasising about mass deportations in Britain I think would face rapid loss of support steeper than the backlash Trump has faced if they actually tried. Not that I’d like to see them have a chance to implement it
Not going out of their way to alienate Labour voters really is the bare minimum for a recovery and also an admission that the previous strategy to do so was a total failure
“Indeed, increasing the salience of your opponents’ core issues is a recipe that has repeatedly failed for mainstream parties in combating the far right”
Great piece. Hopefully conference is the start of learning this lesson
How should Labour respond to the radical right threat? Three essays make big strategic arguments: - @caitprowle.bsky.social calls for Labour to go big on community politics - @paulmason.bsky.social calls for a "zero-sum socialism" - @demofuturist.bsky.social calls for a "social democratic futurism"
No one would be talking about Burnham if the leadership had the support of the party. There’d be no space for Andy to be relevant if they’d done even a modicum of work to engage the party on their program - which is in the pits right now!
Keir Starmer in the Telegraph sets out his agenda of combining immigration controls - on illegal working and reducing record levels of legal migration of 2019-24 - with a challenge to the kinds of extremism & prejudice that foresee violent conflict www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09...
I think you’ve misunderstood my point - or I put it poorly.
I meant to argue that that is what opponent’s position amounts to! That we are protected by gov inability to id its citizens (incompetence of the state) as opposed to, say, a democratic culture
“It’s a slippery slope to Nazi Germany.” No it isn’t. As the Germans themselves (and the Spanish, Poles, Romanians etc) all know universal ID not an enabler of authoritarianism, nor is the lack of it a means to prevent dictatorship. They all have universal ID.
That’s a system failure. If all that is possible within the system is marginal improvements you are unlikely to get credit for… people are going to reject the system one way or another
The magical thinking of the government is different tho. It’s “our plans for marginal improvements are going to transform perceptions of this government if delivered”.
Because the OBR has lowered prod expectations they have a shortfall even for this… so they will have to tax to deliver not much
I do feel a bit like I am going insane today, in that the sheer number of 'government sources' going 'Andy Burnham's plans don't add up!', I mean, true, but lads, can we talk about how similar they are to *your* plans?
Predictable - and predicted that Reform would continue the same strategy of doubling down on their base. This will hurt them. They will make controversial policy that will get them headlines but are negatively polarising
Their disinterest in fellow bugmen is really a lack of imagination and curiosity. The lack of creativity is what I really try and highlight here. open.substack.com/pub/democrat...
This comes out in cheap psychological tricks, (flatter the reader as special), in contrast to the writer’s variant of the “bugmen” the term for worthlessness of ordinary people. Every alt right journeyman has their own term
The lack of creativity from most self-selected disciples of Nietzsche really is ironic. I think it is because what really drives the connection is not impulse towards originality but the feeling of being part of an elect
Ben Shapiro's new book "is a perfect encapsulation of Brandolini’s law that the energy required to refute bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than what it takes to produce it."
I think the whole proroguing parliament era during Brexit should have strongly updated people on why trying to fight on proper process does not work against politics
