I wonder if mandatory ID cards inevitably with little flags on them tied directly to citizenship will make Reform's plans to round up and deport more than a hundred thousand people easier, or harder?

New on advance access: "Bodies, Tides, Timber, and the Global History of London’s Docks, 1860–1928" by Simeon Koole (@uobrishistory.bsky.social) and @benmechen.bsky.social (@uclhistory.bsky.social) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

We will all know Starmer is truly finished when the press start noticing, for the very first time, that Labour received half a million fewer votes in 2024 than in 2019. Mandleson is probably going to email the Wikipedia entry for the 2024 election to Beth Rigby at any moment.

These are all great points. I’d also add that we should oppose this out of solidarity with people who are here “illegally” and shouldn’t have to live lives that are even more criminalised, precarious and hunted.

Lovely review of Liverpool and the Un-Making of Britain from the excellent Isaac Rose, whose book on the gentrification of Manchester, The Rentier City, is *essential.* statmagazine.org/liverpool-an...

I guess it's hard to know which is worse. Whether this unbelievably juvenile and massively unproductive reading of the present conjuncture/twentieth century history is a take Kamala Harris *actually* believes or whether she just feels its a sensible/smart thing to say. thehill.com/homenews/cam...

The destruction of the present Labour Party?

NEXT WEEK! Come and hear @samwetherell.bsky.social and me chat about radical pasts & radical futures💥

I think a month ago if you told me that it would have seemed pretty much where we were headed.

“Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain” by @samwetherell.bsky.social changed how I thought about my hometown completely. Also helped me learn a lot about the 1945-1979 period in the UK which isn’t covered enough in popular modern history.

You might think the bizarre spectacle of this very clearly unwell man behaving like a deeply weird obsessive oddball, babbling about “sissy porn” on the witness stand, might have made him untouchable for media culture war bullshit purposes. You would be wrong.

But will they acknowledge their responsibility for Palestinian statelessness?

Thinking about Trump's latest postponement of inflation stats. Maybe just as "the economy" was a necessary socio-technical construct of early 20th century imperial statecraft conjured into being by statistical measurement, it can also be un-made in a similar way at the beginning of the 21st...

It's giving this, isn't it?

I’m sure if they were just a bit more “focussed on delivery” then everything will turn out great.

No words.

Gaza City two years apart. Before the ground offensive that began today.

Important to remind ourselves of this as we hear and read words like "revelations" and "emerged" in respect of the Ovenden resignation. It has in fact been common knowledge for years that (a) this is the culture in that faction of the party, and (b) that Starmer is largely indifferent to it.

I see that the widely known fact that the Labour right (along with members of the press) have been making racist jokes about Dianne for more than a decade is suddenly a thing we are allowed to talk about.

Two and a half months apart.

With every week that passes the fact that the Labour Party sent a senior delegation to the US last year to advise on Kamala Harris’s campaign gets even funnier.

It seems so clear that if it weren't for the release of the "birthday book" by a US congressional committee, British journalists and politicians would have just continued happily ignoring what was very clearly in plain sight. news.sky.com/story/no-10-...

"We all knew he was friends with a notorious sex trafficker. We just didn't know he was *close* friends with a notorious sex trafficker" may not be a message that diffuses this situation with grace, being honest.

Hey, look, it happened again!

It’s almost as if the uncritically accepted assumption that all of our lectures must be recorded whether or not we want them to might have extremely serious implications.

“They quote a report by JP Morgan economists, which candidly observes: “We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened…Something will have to change… if the human race is going to survive.” JP Morgan is the top funder of fossil fuel industries in the world.”

Great review by Trevor Jackson of two radically different plans for the turbulence of the coming years. The hollowness of the "abundance" agenda is revealed when read with Malm's account of the enormity of the climate crisis and the conflicts needed to halt it. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

This is an argument about the content of history. But more importantly it’s an argument about where history should be produced and disseminated. Instead of universities and the academy our knowledge of the past will come from YouTube cranks and management consultants curating ambience for capital.

I genuinely hope I don’t retire/get made redundant before hitting my goal of 100,000 unread emails. Call me ambitious.

British politics is basically the outcome of a set of prior hidden decisions about who does and who doesn’t have complete impunity.

Does anyone have the date

I mean this was ten years ago and Starmer two days ago agreed that people should be concerned about their daughters walking near hotels housing refugees.

Myself and the amazing @lauracforster.bsky.social are doing a joint event to launch our books in York. Come to learn about Liverpool, the aftershocks of the Paris Commune and the new kinds of histories our present crisis demands! www.york.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Myself and the amazing @lauracforster.bsky.social are doing a joint event to launch our books in York. Come to learn about Liverpool, the aftershocks of the Paris Commune and the new kinds of histories our present crisis demands! www.york.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

being Prime Minister seems quite stressful, so it must be a relief for Nigel Farage that he gets to run the country without bothering

I mean gosh, I wonder if this might be a greater threat to our “daughters” than the proximity of a small hotel with refugees in it? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

“I should think that is a manifestation of the popular feeling. I would not condemn anyone who said that. I would say that is how people see the situation in Smethwick. I fully understand the feelings of the people who say it. I would say it is exasperation, not fascism.” (Peter Griffiths, 1964)

The Prime Minister effectively saying "I too would be concerned if my daughter walked past a foreigner" really caps off a truly next level dogshit summer of British political discourse.

Interesting. I live near a hotel that is used to house asylum seekers and I have a daughter and I have absolutely no fucking clue what these coked up terminally online divorced morons are concerned about.

I do wonder whether Labour will consider these deranged billionaire fuelled conspiracies legitimate or illegitimate concerns?

Today in insane British food instructions. Time to roast this thin cut of cod in the oven for 26 minutes.

what if the UK had a major political party that appealed to people who didn't love pogroms

This is a massive, unworkable political, economic and technical intervention with enormous and reprehensible ecological implications. Like so much of British politics, though, it is pitched entirely at the level of discourse for a fleeting moment to a distracted and uncritical media eco-system.

Hey, let’s do a quick check on how the totally patriotic, community spirited, open-minded flag guys are affecting York. (This was the Dragon House Chinese takeaway in Acomb yesterday. Everyone who could should order from them this week).

Just finished reading Finn Gleeson's thesis, "Heritage, Politics and Identity in East London, 1973-2008: A New History of Imperial Memory" and a closer reading of @samwetherell.bsky.social Liverpool, the Unmaking of Britain. Both have me thinking much more deeply about Wapping. Very grateful.

Noone gives this take the other way round, do they? No one advises conservatives that calling their enemies communists, extremists, anti-semites, Britain haters etc. "doesn't work" Because political name calling plainly *does* work, if done regularly at sufficient volume with a big enough platform

This year's remembrance day is going to produce levels of madness the scale and intensity of which we are unable, yet, to fully comprehend.

The East Belfast-ification of York continues apace.

Short and sweet chat on my book, how and why I came to write it, whether or not I’m a U.S. historian, and what I’m doing next (with luck!). @uchicagopress.bsky.social thewayofimprovement.blog/2025/08/26/t...