A really interesting response to @demofuturist.bsky.social's essay in the latest edition of @renewaljournal.bsky.social

Fantastically clear response on the negative feedback loops democracies can enter into and how things like compulsory voting can help. Really looking forward to the full ep

If you want to know which way the wind is blowing in Labour at any given moment, Wes Streeting’s statements tend to be a good indicator- but this is also testament to the “liberal Blairite” resurgence reported on by @morganj0nes.bsky.social: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

Required reading for social democrats today: A speculative alternative to ideologies of Silicon Valley and the need for such an alternative to contest the here and now open.substack.com/pub/democrat...

This essay was prompted by an article in the latest issue of Renewal, which for anyone concerned by the threat of the far right in the UK, I would recommend reading from cover to cover. A brilliant issue @renewaljournal.bsky.social !

Fascinating response to my essay on social democratic futurism. William argues that we have to contest the deferral of hope into the future by asking more of science and technology in the here and now.

British politics is now just anti-immigration and the wealth tax. Interesting isn’t it that neither of those issues are ones Labour have had any agency framing. Even if they don’t adopt the latter what is their challenge to it? Just getting crushed by both sides

A lot of people are convinced of the damage social media has done to the electorate. But I wonder if it is the politicians who have been most warped by it? Every MP incentivised to be a little demagogue

Rigid, controlling, centralised institutions aren't going to cut it. We need dispersed power, ways of finding common ground and making the most of our disagreements. Good piece on digital democracy.

Really enjoyed this - a useful counter-point my general techno-pessimism, offering a detailed example of how new technology can sometimes be used to improve rather than (as in most cases) wreck the democratic public sphere

Nice to see my piece for Renewal get a little shoutout. I also particularly enjoyed @morganj0nes.bsky.social musings on Andrea Dworkin and the value of “vulgar” feminism

I think it’s clear now woke was pretty good for society in general. Willing to concede it was somewhat bad for art tho

New from me on what we can learn from the digital democracy of Taiwan. This is the story of how a civic movement of hackers and officials created the conditions for tech to serve democratic purposes. In an age where platforms drive us apart the best response is not only defensive but creative

I've spent *weeks* working on this special report for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social on GB News co-owner Paul Marshall – and the astonishing, unprecedented influence network he's built on the UK's right. There's never been anything like it before. www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-p...

So the plan on week 1 of the Reform gov according to Cummings should be to trigger an immediate diplomatic, economic and security crisis by leaving the ECHR, breaching the Good Friday Agreement and the trade agreement with the EU. This is their strategist dawg. Don’t tell me Reform can’t be beaten

Following in Clegg’s footsteps, it is dispiriting that “prime minister” is now a stepping stone to “functionary at an American corporation.” Embarrassing and revealing of how fallen in stature and lacking in vision our political class is

Great article - for communitarians I guess my questions are who is the enemy? What is the controversy? Right now the dominant story on the left is wealth tax and that is going to squeeze out any other “left” issue If you want to tell another story you will have to raise its salience by a lot

One of the great achievements of the post war settlement is to extend the arts, once the province of aristocrats, to most of us But I’ve never been that convinced by the utilitarian argument that the arts make us better judges of morality

“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...

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

I was delighted to contribute to this excellent @uclpolicylab.bsky.social & @powertochange.org.uk essay collection on “Labour and the communitarian tradition”, alongside @ewallis.bsky.social, @mds49.bsky.social, @caitprowle.bsky.social, @kirstymcneill.bsky.social & @andyburnham.bsky.social

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!

Idea for a political strategy: Let’s keep making salient the issue our biggest opponent is strongest on! That will show them…

I do think anyway that this argument amounts to “the government is too incompetent to do proper tyranny” Is that really what protects us?

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

You can be popular with the electorate and unpopular with the party or unpopular with the electorate but popular within the party. If you’re very unpopular with both it’s not surprising people are looking for alternatives!

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 www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nigel-...

Unsurprisingly Shapiro seems to have written more or less the same formulaic Nietzscheslop as every other alt right writer. I wonder if @mattpolprof.bsky.social gets tired of reading it.

Is there a better illustration of the failures of both liberals and leftists than Your Party’s inability to work together and the Labour government grimly staying the course for the iceberg?

How can social democrats offer an optimistic, futurist alternative to the dominant tech ideologies of 'Effective Altruism', 'Anglofuturism', and 'Accelerationism? @demofuturist.bsky.social sets out the beginnings of an approach: (subscribe to read)

Technology can help realise a social democratic future; it is not only a threat. But if we fail to imagine it, those with narrower or darker visions will set the terms

Similar for Labour politics. It’s not like their plans involve a big material impact on people’s lives in the next 3 years. In the absence of that you have to double down on the latter

We've done a great job fighting pensioner poverty. This was the whole plan. I'm really not sure this is a bad thing. Read any old book and elder poverty is rampant and we're beating it. Obviously pensioners have repaid us by GOING FUCKING MENTAL, but that was unforseen.

The cowardice and complacency of so much of the UK political class in the face of what is both an obvious moral evil and a serious socio-political threat is as discrediting as it is dispiriting

Blockbuster issue here. A lot of great analysis on the far right, which seems pertinent right now. Also some interesting ethnography and history. And a social democratic response to various right-adjacent futurisms from me!

The government desperately needs a strategic response to Reform as opposed to a tactical one. This is as good an attempt as I have seen to try to articulate it, grounded in material conditions and clear on the politics

The median social democrat’s ambition is to have a bit less greed and better public services. It’s not enough to contest the future. I argue we need a deeper engagement with tech. We can look to Taiwan as an example of a state using tech strengthening the democratic process 👇

Governing is not just policies it is a chance to reshape how the country understands its own story. How can Labour do that if they won’t oppose the dominant story being told by its enemies? All we are hearing is meek condemnation of violence rather than challenging the story itself

It was a very great pleasure to appear on one of my favourite podcasts, and to talk with David Runciman about the Past, Present, and Future (!) of electoral reform & proportional representation

"those on the right-wing demonstration scene are often not of the maligned, silent majority which some implicitly lionise them as. The most prominent single social demographic which sets the tone of these affairs is in fact the lumpenproletariat" Aaron Wells on the class politics of hotel protests

If you needed more evidence that the online sphere is the vector that sets the news cycle, the BBC is running a special on Charlie Kirk despite basically no one in the UK knowing who he is. He was a pundit. It’s bad he was killed. But why is this worthy of a whole programme? America-brained

Want to understand what has made Pedro Sánchez and the PSOE so successful? Read the essay from the previous issue of @renewaljournal.bsky.social: "Daring to deliver: Pedro Sánchez and the revival of Spanish social democracy"

Given the deputy leadership race, I've been revisiting Bridget Phillipson's post 2019 election piece for @renewaljournal.bsky.social, which I've always thought was an usually interesting and perceptive bit of writing from an MP: www.bridgetphillipson.com/articles/202...

Has chatgpt improved the average speech tho? I get it couldn’t deliver a tour de force but honestly it could raise the median

I don’t mean to be complacent but I’ve seen a lot of posts about how this is a turning point for the US. But it seems more like a reversion to the mean. The 90s-early 2000s was a weird time of gatekept institutions and elite consensus. Outside that US democracy has been frequently violent?

I’d love to know why Starmer keeps deliberately walking into rakes in slow motion… This particular one was visible from a long way off. Did no one suggest to him that it’s a bit risky to back an Epstein chum? Did it not occur to him?

Anneliese Dodds speaking at the @renewaljournal.bsky.social Rita Hinden Lecture tonight. Her talk identifies the "tech bros", and the systems they oversee and interventions they make, as a threat to "free and fair democracy". She argues the left should focus strongly on protecting democracy.

I think there’s some confusion between say/do here. There isn’t much of a story without a policy to drive it. But you can have a policy without a story. It’s not clear a policy that improves people’s lives on the margin = credit to the gov. You need some controversial policies to tell your story