Ultimately, British politics is simple in a way: people don't like the Cameron deal: they don't get as much state as they used to and although they have had substantial tax relief, they don't feel it. Either need to have huuuge cuts in spending and more tax cuts Or raise taxes and spending.

Carlo Ginzburg est mort, annonce la presse italienne. Immense historien, il a su construire une oeuvre originale entre micro-histoire et anthropologie historique qui a considérablement renouvelé la discipline. www.repubblica.it/cultura/2026...

Really pleased to have written this piece in the latest edition of Renewal! As a proud Bristolian, I have often been less proud of how its politics play out. Looking jealously at Manchesterism, I took a deep (& opinionated) dive into the (non)workings of devolution in the West of England…

Love to be receiving emails from faculty and colleges advising me to avoid the city centre tomorrow because the Oxford Union has insisted on pressing ahead with its precious debate that they've invited Tommy Robinson to

Elon egging on migrant’s houses being burned down while his dad has a drink with Tommy Robinson in Moscow hotel bar talking about how Russia is the UK’s ally, at this point I don’t think you can deny that social media has been a net boon both to authoritarian regimes & authoritarians in democracies.

Labour’s days of being unserious are certainly coming to a middle:

Every crime in which an ethnic or cultural minority is the perpetrator used to justify repression or worse of minorities. Every crime in which a minority is the victim used to argue for the idea that ethnic diversity is inherently unstable and should be reduced or eradicated.

Wes' theory seems to be that if you wield the knife then you get seen as a traitor and can't win, but walk around waving a big knife with 'backstabbing knife' written all over it going "hey, I'm not using it YET" you'll be a contender. What??

Labour has done a great deal of damage to itself and the country by making “win over a caricature of Reform voters” and “panicked stakeholder management” its only governing priority. Time to make “win over a caricature of Green voters” and “panicked stakeholder management” the aim instead.

👇British politics has near-completely lost not just the art, but seemingly any expectation that the job of “being a politician” involves persuasion.

Quite apart from anything I really do find the "give Reform a chance" thing you often hear particularly enraging — this isn't a parish tombola, it's potentially five years of nationwide immiseration!

Subsidising energy consumption in the face of both a short-term supply shock and the long-term need to decarbonise. Bad for the economy, bad for the planet, bad for the world's poor. And *if* you favour a wealth tax (I am sceptical but there's a case) spending it on *this" is just idiotic.

I used to think thw German Greens transitioning Germany away from nuclear and renewables and back toward coal was the most anti-green Green Party policy I'd see in Europe, but subsidising fossil fuel usage during the best transition opportunity of our lifetimes gives it a run for its money

Most "we should have fewer universities" takes from right wing columnists should be read as "we should set off a nuclear bomb under our whole method of training skilled workers to assuage my status anxiety because I work in a dieing industry"

The Prime Minister doesn't understand his job. The Chancellor has given up. The Home Secretary has radicalised herself. There isn't a foreign secretary. A government on autopilot into oblivion.

I really hate the - honestly very right wing - framing that it is somehow good to constantly be shocked and offended. This is simply not how the real world works *or should be expected to work*

This was always my biggest issue when I was an active Lib Dem — the transformation of an electorally successful strategy under FPTP into an ideological commitment that often made substantively liberal policy/values secondary to "localism" (ie parochial cowardice)

The nub of so many of this government’s problems is that there is a Keir Starmer where the prime minister should be.

The Oxfam Bookshop on St Giles’, Britain’s first, has earned a reprieve. Oxford City Council has refused permission for landlords Regent’s Park College to turn it into a graduate common room, pointing out that the Local Plan prioritises retail, entertainment, and office uses in the city centre.

Another university getting rid of things you could only ever do at a university and replacing them with stuff a 13-year-old can do on a phone

This whole concept in LOTR is one of my favourite parts of the whole book. “Evil fucks up because evil people fundamentally cannot imagine that others are not motivated by the same things as them” is another theme that feels relevant right now

Some highlights from day 1 of our Turkey trip (15/03): (1) Testament of Epikrates — in awe of the lettering on this lad (2) Stele of Atrastas — funerary stele written in the Lydian language (3) Weeping Niobe rock at Manisa — big ol' rock (4) Akpınar Relief — Hittite relief depicting Kybele(?)

One of the weirder aspects of modern UK politics is "free market" think tankers who have never worked in the private sector lecturing businesses on how they're doing capitalism wrong

I think the key to understanding why parts of the British right have ended up where they are is they self-identify as being more successful than they are.

hate this in general but also what is Labour doing to reopen women's shelters? what is Labour doing to make sure conviction rates for rapes start going up again? what is Labour doing to make sure women feel they can trust the police? what is Labour doing to stop sexual harassers?

My column in today's paper: on banning the under-16s from social media, the trade-offs and assumptions that the ban makes:

So glad we have massively restructured transgender care on based on the works of someone who believes absolute nonsense.

They said "free speech" and "academic freedom" but never believed in either and now in texas you need a permission slip to mention race in class and they're fine with it. Might not have worked if people with large platforms weren't furious about marginal increases of black people in their offices

you are not going to somehow "free market of ideas" Elon Musk out of turning the X platform into a platform for demolishing liberal governance in Europe

With Plato in the Republic I think they're wrong about this; they're simply incorrect about their own self-interest. I didn't understand this until I saw in real life the exact kinda guys he was arguing with, and it's just utterly obvious from the outside that theirs is a pathetic and degraded life.

This is basically the view of the world that Plato sets out to refute in the Republic. One of the core questions asked therein is: why do powerful people think the mere fact of them exercising dominion makes it good for them to do so? Sure, you *can* get away with stuff if you're powerful - so what?

kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life

they're doing it for gender, imo

Since very few people are giving this absolutely GOATed JRPG any love: THEN: Golden Sun NOW: Golden Sun

look we're all making a big bet on AI! and if it pays off as big as we hope, well, it's going to make a handful of people super rich and you're going to lose your job but get to watch mickey mouse fuck geralt from the witcher. if it doesn't pay off well then you get to pay for the bailouts

Be clear, the American far right are coming for British democracy.

twitter being bought and turned into a propaganda machine for fascism, which is directly pumped into every journalist in the world's brain, is one of the worst things to happen in the last few years. we might not survive it.

This is also yet another case which even a few years ago would have been universally recognised as scandalously disqualifying even on the British right. Actual popular views haven’t shifted since then, but British elites have baked their brains on Twitter so they think this repulsive bile is normal

Today in absurd Oxfordshire planning disputes

Maybe - just a crazy idea, but bear with me for a moment! - the reason why the Lib Dems should not “get serious“ is that the UK’s most important media organisation covers politics in babytalk so much of the time?

(I think a lot of the BBC’s written output can likely be explained by them interpreting “need to write for a reading age of seven” as ”need to write for a moron with an adult reading age”.)

That is the point of a university you fucker.

Genuinely, how do I get the job as "guy who makes miniature displays for museums", because I think it would be great

All political tribes can be hypocritical but the right's current level of hypocrisy on free speech is deliberate. It's an assertion of power not a blindspot.

think if you're broadly a centrist and were suuuuuper concerned about attacks on free speech from the left and so you decided to give the right a hearing then you need to realise you were taken for QUITE the ride (and don't really have anyone to blame but yourself)

I have to wonder what the hardware store owner thought of me this morning when I, very obviously an English tourist in a resort town, arrived in his shop to buy a tape measure at 8:30 — can't happen very often, but we do need adequate tools for epigraphy

If I had a penny for every time a British politician had a 4-letter first name that begins with “Ke”, led one of the two largest parties in parliament, and was utterly unsuited to a moment of rising fascism, I’d have two pennies. Which isn’t much, but that I got them at the same time is distressing

This is a step in the right direction, but it isn't enough. The issue here isn't an isolated statement, but that Musk is waging a concerted campaign (in part through exploiting his control of X) to foment ethnic and political violence in the UK in the apparent hope of overthrowing the government.

Paid an impromptu visit to Airai yesterday to get the lay of the land and see if we couldn't find anything As it happens, we couldn't find anything, but interesting to see traces of old structures on the peninsula nonetheless

When Ted Heath sacked Enoch Powell he was acting in the face of a majority in favour. Harold Wilson backed him up and called the speech “evil”. Long past time for Keir and Kemi to do the same.