an absolute must-read from @jamesmeek.bsky.social in @lrb.co.uk. it illuminates the cultural, political, and economic cross-currents that define the present more clearly than anything else I've read this year. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4....

lol

Found when sorting an old drive. I still, very occasionally, say 'not many badgers in the House of Lords' and this is why:

Not a fan of the Taliban or Peaky Blinders, love the crossover

Sure, we're the weak and decaying ones...

Brilliant @jamesmeek.bsky.social piece in @lrb.co.uk on the failure of British industrial strategy - indeed of British industrial capitalism - and how that collides with the rise of reform in North East rustbelt town Blyth www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

column maybe coming on this but I don't hugely care about what 61-year-old Farage got up to at school? and I think that Fleet Street finally gunning for him is symptomatic of a culture where the gotcha/scoop factor matters so much that hidden past actions are seen as worse than current, public ones

Brilliant choice of Misha Glenny for In Our Time! He interviewed me at the Vienna Humanities festival a few weeks ago and he had the perfect wide-ranging interests and intelligence. As a fan of IOT I am cheering. www.bbc.com/mediacentre/...

A brilliant if bleak piece by @jamesmeek.bsky.social - well worth setting time aside for. You can feel democracy fading as you read it.

This thread is simply amazing, please share

(Away from UK politics news for a couple of days, tap in) British Economy Booming Under Labour, Say Tories, Chancellor Must Resign (tap out)

I mean

Issue 47.22 is now online, featuring: @jamesmeek.bsky.social on the green energy transition and North-East England Clare Bucknell on Robert Frost @jwmueller-pu.bsky.social on American post-liberalism and Maureen N. McLane on Claire-Louise Bennett’s new novel. Read online at www.lrb.co.uk

In keeping with the Pope's anathema on clickbait, I offer this article about Reform, Jeremy Corbyn, Shakespearan railways, batteries, jobmaking and the Northumbrian town of Blyth

I guess it’s a compliment that the top story on BBC London’s TV/online output today is a direct lift of a month-old London Centric story? But once again the BBC is consistently the worst news outlet for actually remembering to credit others.

A lot of commenters have internalised the Trump-Putin delusion that Ukrainian resistance is 'Zelensky's war' and his corruption-related weakness is a good time to get him to end it. In fact the Ukrainians angriest about Ze & corruption are generally those most against giving Russia this much

One way of getting Trump’s world view is that he only sees three kinds of people: squatters, tenants, and landlord-developers. Palestinians, Ukrainians, Greenlanders, Canadians, are squatters. Armies are bailiffs. Putin, Trump and Prince Salman are landlords. Israelis and Europeans are tenants.

Reassuring how easy it is to tell that the spate of fake book club emails I've been getting 'offering' to read 'my book' are AI-written. Beware the niche scam

When I arrive at the party

Everyone I have spoken to in Ukraine’s top offices and parliament as well as civil society says knives are out for Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s polarizing chief of staff and architect of his system of power. Great time to re-read my FT Magazine cover story on him: on.ft.com/4macDWE

'We'll break our pledge, but we'll tell you to your face that we haven't'

I swear to God this guy was ahead of me in the queue at Toad bakery today and he looked so head in the clouds but he took the last pain au chocolat

Brilliant, place-grounded essay from @sachahilhorst.bsky.social about Reform powering on through its seemingly irreconcilable contradictions

It was odd that Ukraine’s main response to the mass destruction of its large conventional power stations by Russian strikes last year seems to have been to repair them so they could be destroyed again

Great and brave reporting by the upstart startup Sheffield Tribune. A reminder that the internet is still available for the proper reporting of ‘local’ news if you do it right

Nigel Farage, man of the people. (Courtesy @chrisgiles.ft.com)

On the left, the refurbished Lincoln bathroom. On the right, picture I took in Saddam Hussein's palace in Basra in 2005.

This story is jaw-dropping. "Chinese-run facilities have recently been discovered in the Philippines and the desert outside Dubai. In 2022, Chinese scammers took over the shuttered Seaview Hotel on the Isle of Man...". @alexclapp.bsky.social www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... @lrb.co.uk

Trump style makes me think of its antecedents, which makes me think of Napoleon III, which makes me think of Flaubert, which makes me think of this from Julian Barnes in the new LRB

My creative process www.worldofmoose.com/collections/...

Having read this none the wiser why the Met chases these petty crims in helicopters instead of following the stolen phone which is literally telling you every second where it is

Ed Luce watching democracy die in the United States of America

"If you wanted to design a policy that would cause human misery and be about as popular as typhoid in a jacuzzi, it is difficult to imagine how you could do better than this. This is a more extreme policy position than, say, the BNP’s 2005 manifesto"

Milei looks like all the cast of Are You Being Served in one

Omg Portland REALLY understands the mission. Pass this on. We need this movement nationwide 🔥🔥

I don't know where this revisionism has come from about the suffragettes - people saying "if the suffragettes were around today, they'd be considered terrorists." The suffragettes were arrested and tortured, sexually assaulted and beaten by the state. They *were* considered terrorists!

Are the childhood transgressions of bullies, dodgy business people and trolls not classified as 'neurodivergence' because society deems it normative, or is it that educators are cowed by controlled, self-possessed, confident aggression and deceit in a way they aren't by autism & hyperactivity?

I wrote about Artificial Desire www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Great description of the anarchic consumerist authoritarianism of our day

Essential reading from @petergeoghegan.bsky.social

The outrages and atrocities fall like leaves, uncountable, ungathered; we're left with a residue of powerlessness and shame Pic by Abed Rahim Khatib. In Gaza, the body of one-month-old Majed Mohammed Zarab, thought to have starved to death, is brought to his funeral

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.

Morning everyone.

Loath though he is to alienate floating racists, perhaps Starmer could rouse himself to condemn a violent fascist rally teeming with people who want him overthrown and/or killed

Today people went around my neighborhood in north east London spray painting St George’s crosses onto people’s homes. Many of these houses have non British people living in them. This is getting very dark, very quick.

Democrats Cannot Just Buy Back the Working Class www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/o...

look, it might not have worked with the public, but at least it was the wrong thing to do morally

On the same day in the Telegraph:

Such a wonderful fragment. Rewatching for the infamous coffee twist 3 mins in and it sparked so many thoughts. There was an idea when McDonald's opened in Moscow that it showed why democracy was best, turns out it just showed the tyrants the missing piece they needed www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLsJ...