Does a violent overthrow of part of the state count?

Standard prompt to Claude.

Will Self is quite annoyingly good at times, isn't he?

That dug just loved getting battered into the bevvy, didn’t he

Self reflection: but the reason you tend to get a lot of cranky radicalised weirdos around nuclear power, land value tax, or proportional representation; is that studying any of these areas in detail is incredibly enraging.

In terms of "legitimacy", if a party comes to power having committed to PR in its manifesto, then it shouldn't be required to have a referendum on introducing it.

The thing about the "ad hominem" fallacy is if someone who tells a lot of fibs is telling you something, the fact they tell lots of fibs isn't irrelevant to whether you should believe them.

In an extremely weird sort of way the convoluted Burnham to the leadership process — because it requires winning a pretty much straight fight against Reform — might be revolutionary for Labour’s prospects. (Ofc if he loses the by election it’s an absolute disaster)

It’s interesting that rightists have picked up on the fact that FPTP makes it much easier to install a right wing anti-human dictatorship.

I feel I should alert Bluesky to the baby foxes in our yard

It's all terribly exciting isn't it?

Honestly I think the Canadians do this better.

This has always bothered me, even though I do now grudgingly see sense in MPs being the ones to actually select/filter leaders. As ever, I suspect the solution is proportional representation. bsky.app/profile/pick...

I'm seeing a lot of talk about how political party members shouldn't be allowed to pick the leaders, and there are arguments for that, but if members' conference votes are ignored by the leadership and they can't even vote for who their leader is, what's the point in joining a party?

The thing is Starmer *isn’t* actually objectionable in any way that you can tell a coherent story about. He’s just averagely uncharismatic and not driven by any particular vision, so he lacks focus. bsky.app/profile/tacj...

Amazing how humans create legal structures like termites make mounds.

Does Starmer have that dawg in him?

If the UK is going to have to endure the chaos it may as well be with Ed Miliband

A sort of obvious thing about politics is how certain "high salience" things "go across". So George Osborne is rememebered for the "pasty tax", but not increasing VAT from 17.5% to 20%, which is objectively a much bigger deal.

An important constitutional reform: *if* we are to have referenda (referendums?) in the future, they should by convention always implement a specific piece of legislation that parliament has already passed.

Raise taxes. Broaden the base of VAT to include all goods and services. Merge NICs and income tax and raise it. Raise council tax. Institute a land value tax. Idc I just want British people to have less disposable income.

Idk lads I just really, really want taxes to go up.

Why has Westminster politics become so dumb? mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2026/05/why-...

I grudgingly agree, although the importance of the control parties’ internal rules in the constitution is another argument in favour of PR IMO.

Next time I write a letter, I will put a little picture of myself in the corner.

Love that much-vaunted “stability” that FPTP provides.

There is a general challenge that as the state becomes more complex and technocratic expertise becomes more powerful, mere democratically elected politicians find themselves less able to actually influence anything.

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old (Keir Starmer) is dying and the new (Andy Burnham) cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms (Wes Streeting) appear

If I got a whole set of Biggles books handed in to my second-hand bookshop I would also choose this one to put in the window

When I think about labour

But what if... I was to bring back Gordon Brown in an attempt to make myself more popular? Delightfully devilish, Keir!

We should hate more. We should acknowledge the truth that grads in cities are the people who add value to society, both at the sense of generating tax revenue and at the sense of providing essential services like teaching and medicine. We should join the union and vote to radicalise it.

I mean I'm being a bit waffly with "legitimate" here, but FPTP will break when you have three or four parties getting about the same amount, in a way a French-style two-stage *doesn't* break. I think "decision legibility" is a big part of it.

Elsewhere I’ve seen people talking about how what a germ-infested cloaca washing up sponges are.

UK decline and stylised empirical facts mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2026/05/uk-d...

I do now think parties should have some control over the list ordering, and ideally we’d have Australian Senate style above the line party voting as well.

This week's post: UK decline and stylised empirical facts mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2026/05/uk-d... Any story about low growth in UK living standards needs to account for the two or three decades when UK growth was comparable with other major economies.

Please sir, my first past the post electoral system, it is very sick.

There are of course principled arguments in favour of majoritarian electoral systems, but most of the actual people advocating for it are clearly doing so in bad faith.

The fact that Starmer didn't do the simple basic thing of bringing back AV for mayors is so deeply pathetic

Can't decide if "mid-term" is a cringe Americanism or worth adopting because it winds up people who think it's a cringe Americanism. A classic dilemma.

Why are there so *many* councillors? Seems excessive given they can’t actually do much.

You always approach them “cap in hand”, or it agitates the IMF.

A twist on the Thames - by Michael Dnes - Limbostructure limbostructure.substack.com/p/a-twist-on...

A twist on the Thames - by Michael Dnes - Limbostructure limbostructure.substack.com/p/a-twist-on...

Spent a bit of today reflecting on the differences between “individual reforms that won’t solve everything but nudge things in the right direction” and “individual reforms that might sound nerdy and irrelevant on their own but make a lot of sense within a coherent political programme”.