‘Structures designed to diffuse power are utterly inappropriate if the ambition is to deploy hard power.’ www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Happy first day of the Autumn Term! 🍂 This academic year is an extra special one as we are celebrating LSE’s 130th anniversary 🎂 The theme is centred around LSE’s impact, past and present. Look out for celebratory events, freebies, exciting announcements, and much more from October onwards! 🎉

Very sad to hear about the death of Jonathan Lear. So readable and wise. The quote in this article on mourning is wonderful (even if I might disagree that it is exclusively human). dailynous.com/2025/09/22/j...

I try to keep a measure of respect for people whose views I disagree with. I am rarely confident that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to be said even for outlooks that look totally off to me. But I have to say I think Farage is genuinely dangerous - and the BBC really needs to get a grip.

One of the best GOP impersonations ever?

I've written to Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, urging them to join me in condemning Elon Musk's dangerous remarks inciting violence yesterday. As leaders, we must stand together and make clear Musk will face serious consequences for these actions.

The problem is that ‘this is not who we are’ is coming to feel a little empirically unconvincing. It might help if the PM actually stood up and made the case for a liberal, tolerant and inclusive country.

Keir Starmer really needs to move away from his strategy of legitimising the anti-immigration hostility. It's unbelievably dangerous.

Objective data show BBC & ITV bias. Reform featured in 49 bulletins between January-July 2025 whereas Lib Dems(with 72 MPs) were in 18% of bulletins, with 35. Reform referenced in nearly 1 in 5 ITV News At Ten bulletins, but 6% for Lib Dems www.theguardian.com/media/2025/s...

So very sad to hear that my much loved colleague Conor Gearty has died. What a loss to LSE - and far beyond.

Another problem is that UK politics has a serious "pipeline problem". If Starmer keeled over tomorrow, I've no idea who would replace him. I don't even know who the frontrunners would be. There are no experienced, tested candidates in either main party, because UK politics no longer develops that

If you assume Great to be a Good thing, then most things that ppl refer to as such really just means Big.

Radical right accommodation really does not work. New paper out with this exceptionally talented team @katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk doi.org/10.31235/osf...

Congratulations to our brilliant colleague in the LSE Government Department @lsegovernment.bsky.social Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social on being awarded an ERC Starting Grant for his project "Border Change and Local Development in Europe and Beyond"! 🎉🎉 www.lse.ac.uk/news/latest-...

The future. news.sky.com/story/xi-pre...

This is actually the third poll in the last year to show overwhelming public support for an EU-UK Youth Mobility Scheme. It's hardly surprising when polls have also repeatedly shown large majorities in support of full Freedom of Movement, e.g. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I can

Of course the Queen was Remain. You don’t sustain a hereditary monarchy by randomly pulling pins out of grenades for the lols at the urging of a cluster of snake oil chancers.

C’mon America- make it fresh (again).

Nick Thomas-Symonds, "Latest poll, over 60% of the public want a close economic relationship with the EU" "And public support for a Youth Mobility Scheme with the EU is over 70%"

Two points worth noting on the Farage stuff today. 1. The Tories have completely ceded the August opportunity to get publicity when govt slows down to Reform. Nothing to suggest they're not headed fast towards oblivion. 2. Labour look even more lost than before. Paralysed with indecision and fear.

Kukla is explicitly sympathetic with the overall social/political position Preciado defends but is rather less sympathetic with his philosophical approach. My own view would be more Rorty-like scepticism about the politics while simply awe-struck by the approach. For me: an amazing piece of writing.

Newsom’s Twitter troll is genius because pleading and crying in front of an authoritarian does nothing, but pointing and laughing enrages the authoritarian.

I see Trump’s long game on immigration is to turn the US into the type of country that no one wants to move to.

Resources for #philosophy on Bluesky (updated) 1. Feeds bsky.app/profile/did:... – uses #PhilSky & common hashtags bsky.app/profile/did:... – low-traffic announcements feed 📢 2. Starter packs go.bsky.app/kiKSKZ ¹ go.bsky.app/RMuQBg3 ² 3. Lists bsky.app/profile/did:... ¹ bsky.app/profile/did:... ²

The actual conspiracy theory is that multiple women independently lied, with apparently nothing to gain, and much to lose, about Trump’s entanglement with Epstein. katemanne.substack.com/p/the-actual...

Hilarious take down of the Hundred by Barney Ronay. www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/a...

A #philosophy starter pack with decent variety in methods and interests, from armchair #aesthetics to empirical #bioethics. #cogSci #xPhi #philMind #logic #technology #philSci #epistemology #medicine #psychiatry #socialSci #ethics #politicalPhilosophy #law #history #fiction #religion #metaphysics

Take a bow, test cricket.

This may be a significant development for an iconic gallery that has been struggling: southwarknews.co.uk/area/south-b...

Based on an overview of the theoretical literature and historical cases across the globe, we conclude: Understanding populism as a frenemy of democracy rather than just an enemy is crucial for democratic resilience in the future.

GB News average daily audience 80,600 with BBC news channel on 79,700 , Sky News on 67k with the two main BBC news bulletins averaging 2.7 million to 3.3 milliom each daily, so the BBC news peak is more than 40 times bigger

“The hutch”. I first saw it used by Abingdon CC when I played for them in the early 1990s - which was in the wake of a friendly against Warwickshire a few years earlier. I then used it when captaining a match for Brightwell cum Sotwell CC in the 2010s. It’s brilliant. www.wisden.com/series/count...

🆕 Now on Bluesky! 🦋 📗 We are @ecpr.bsky.social's professional journal featuring contributions by and for the #PoliticalScience community #AcademicSky #Polisky #IRsky @ljramiro.bsky.social

Reading Kroeber’s great book on world history. It’s intently empirical but draws heavily on Spengler’s philosophy. Given that influence, it is perhaps odd that he supposes modern European philosophy to have definitively ended by 1900, with Nietzsche the last. webfiles.ucpress.edu/coverimage/i...

This is England!

Great intervention in the UK parliament on the horror unfolding in Gaza, the abject failure of the Labour government to respond adequately to it - and the cowardice of Labour backbenchers not organising to force their own party leadership to change course - by…Kit Malthouse. youtu.be/6EnUE5AYWmI?...

Nothing is still happening. The he joy of test cricket by writer Anjali Joseph @anjalijoseph.bsky.social

President Macron, "Have the problems, the illegal migration problems of Great Britain from 9 years ago been resolved by Brexit?" "No" "British people were lied to that the problem was the European Union"

C’mon America- make it fresh (again).

A wonderful meditation by Anjali Joseph @anjalijoseph.bsky.social on writing about the beauty of each unique life and its own internal multiplicities.

Better order: . . . 6. Bethell 7. Smith 8. Stokes 9. Woakes 10. Carse 11. Archer

Dave’s prediction will be shared by many. If Corbyn climbs on board it could take off. I also think a left alt to Labour-as-a-broad-church makes a lot of sense even if it thins debate in both. Over the long term I imagine a new left party will get about 12%, riding to c20something in its good times.

A conversation I had with Gabriel Gbadamosi for Writers Mosaic (it's about half an hour long, also on Spotify/Apple Podcasts) writersmosaic.org.uk/content/anja...

100 years ago it became clear that the formation of public opinion in democracies is tied to what Spengler called “the dictatorship of money”. The question today is: can social media and “small money” crowd funding genuinely compete against traditional media and “big money” individual donors?

“A sort of world king”. European retrenchment after the second world war of European origin saw it shrink back within the globality that its colonial and trade power had opened up. Will the final outcome of European world-wide-isation still be the formation of an imperium mundi?

Every time someone responds to an obviously normative-aspirational claim ("this not who we are", "this is not America", etc) with some I'm-very-radical descriptive rebuttal ("er actually America has always done <similar bad stuff>") an angel dies. Like, no joke, dead. Direct causal result of this.

I wrote about the challenges posed to our hopes for democracy by the German philosopher of history, Oswald Spengler. There is, I think, an answer to his pessimism, at least in theory - but practically speaking it may already be too late. iai.tv/articles/how...