“Stop Farage” will be the clarion call for Labour at the next GE.

But in Scotland, Wales, & much of England, they won’t be the most alluring progressive option.

The strategy they will adopt to survive may ultimately kill the party.

Me for @unherd unherd.com/2025/10/how-la… On the one hand political journalists can be breathlessly hyperbolic.

On the other hand, this is insane.

Read this. Blair's objective with ID cards is clear: it includes financial transactions.

In other words, the state could, at a stroke, be able to block your ability to buy goods & services. Possibility for previously unthinkable authoritarianism.

institute.global/insights/tech-… Digital ID, plus a fully digitised cash payments system (which I also oppose, for reasons of basic social resilience), creates the possibility for a kind of state power we've never previously imagined.

Starmer’s big problem is very simple.

He told the electorate, his MPs, & himself, that all Britain needed was the ‘grown ups’. Let’s just rewind to 1997!

There was no accounting for 0 productivity growth for 17 years & debt interest payments of £100 billion a year. Zero. It’s not a narrative or story, tho that helps! It’s that there are material limits on a project of vanilla autopilot managerialism from the centre that isn’t austerity.

This was always clear - but he obviously couldn’t say that before a GE. We tried!!

Top day in Runcorn & Helsby. NOTHING beats getting out & talking to people.

If I was Reform I’d be very optimistic. But here’s the thing: even Labour voters in the seat had nothing positive to say about Starmer.

Winter Fuel Allowance cuts = stupidest own goal I’ve EVER seen. The idea that Reform are, at this moment, anything at all without Farage is insane. It’s proof positive that Twitter is a misinformation bubble.

Super interesting.

Norway has 17 billionaires. The UK has a population 12X larger and yet it has...55 billionaires.

Yet Norway has a higher rate of tax and has a wealth tax. Its higher rate of capital gains tax is also much higher (its equalised with dividends). 1/2 Would be mega interesting to read a study about why they don't leave Norway. Sweden has 45 billionaires (!?!) so same question for there too (our population is 6.5X bigger).

Suspect partly a culture of solidarity but also...these countries are actually nice and stuff works. 2/2

Starmer coverage is reminscent of Cameron and pension 'triple lock' when it was introduced.

"Clever politics!" you'd hear.

"But is it in the long term interest of the country?"

"Tanks on Labour's lawn!"

Same now. Nobody has made clear why Chagos deal actually good for UK. Rather than substance of any policies, the costs and the benefits - from the defence spending increase, to the triple lock, to Trident renewal or scrapping HS2 past Birmingham - all political journalists focus on is 'optics'.

Seems a real disease of british media.

A few months ago the head of finance at a Russell group university told me a dozen + universities would go to wall without increase in fees (half of all unis are running deficits!)

So today’s move is not inexplicable. But piling more debt onto young workers is not a solution /1 Scrapping the fees system (which is working for literally nobody - including the taxpayer) won’t be easy. But I suspect it starts with capping interest at 1% (or something similar). And we need to see end of fees system for subjects like nursing before next GE. Should be free /2

The inability to accept the possibility of an English identity is such a gap among progressives. It is a nation, and one that has existed for more than a thousand years. Its language is the world’s lingua franca. I appreciate Britain, & empire, complicate things. But it’s true. 1 Unless you think Lincoln, Norwich and Salisbury cathedral emerged from the earth perfectly formed, then they are expressions of a certain culture. The same with literature, landscape (for better and worse!) etc 2

The conduct of Britain's privately owned water companies is bad - but Thames Water just seems like organised criminality...

They have just been fined £104 million by OFWAT (9% of turnover) - but it's only going to get worse.... Last month they were found to have breached their operating licence after their credit rating was slashed to junk status by rating agencies.

Maximum fine? 10% of turnover...

Meanwhile the company is being investigated for breaches re dividend payments. Likely fine: £40M

I read Reform’s manifesto. In it: forgiveness of student debt for NHS workers, publicly owned equity in utilities & a tax on the online giants to help the high street.

It’s a shift: from re-heated Thatcherism to the continental radical right. novaramedia.com/2024/06/21/nig… In it: a kind of welfarist nationalism more reminiscent of the Law and Justice party in Poland, or Victor Orban in Hungary.

Alongside that, there is a clear effort to champion small business. If Britain really is a nation of shopkeepers, then Farage wishes to be their tribune.

Very obvious that the Labour right are now starting to use exact same campaign techniques against the Greens that they used against Corbyn.

Greens should take that seriously: most of broadcast media is New Labour aligned & very happy to repeat garbage - from Sky to BBC & LBC 1/3 How does it work?

1) They attack credibility/integrity by attacking your social networks & fragmenting them. This works particularly well against those whose pitch is moral virtue.

2) This is done not just by Labour but by favourable parts of media (Sky, BBC) & NGOs

2/3

I wrote for ⁦@novaramedia⁩ about the Dune films, and why they are the most important of the 2020s.

Not only do they show how humanity’s future could resemble its past, but they underscore our relationship to technology is a *choice*. novaramedia.com/2024/03/20/the… The Dune universe is built on a critique of technopoly, and the idea that technological progress can be substituted for human progress.

The Butlerian jihad is a more relevant uprising in a world of machine learning & generative AI than the Matrix or the Terminator.

I can’t quite believe what happened a few hours ago, but on my way to the train station, to head into the @novaramedia office, a man I’ve never seen before screamed my name while passing by and assaulted me. I was punched multiple times. (1/5) Fortunately I was able to pacify him, with subsequent assistance from a passer-by, until the police arrived.

This is someone who knew my name. Fortunately there were multiple independent witnesses, and the man is now being questioned by police. (2/5)

If he gets an invite to speak from them he should presumably… ‘no platform’ them? Nice one comrade! Radical!

I’ve spoken to communists in Sweden and Silicon Valley billionaires. The world isn’t a student occupation.

https://twitter.com/paulocanning/status/1665667845613658112

In 2023 some 50-something men on the left have the same political default as blue haired students occupying universities in 2016. Amazing how quickly it’s happened. No platform for… anyone I don’t entirely agree with!

Does anything demonstrate BBC’s complete lack of editorial confidence when it comes to an under 40 audience as seeing Kirsty Wark ask Mizzy about….Andrew Tate. What on Earth??

Median age is 40 in U.K. BBC news is fast becoming irrelevant for anyone younger than that. Also the Tate interview was utterly crap. Hectoring, predictable questions. Interviewer seemed genuinely underprepared (any gotchas would take hours of proper research watching him and having counter arguments to his replies.)

BBC interviews with Tate & Musk have been abysmal.

You can now watch my interview with @GoodwinMJ on the @novaramedia youtube channel. A few thoughts & an apology.

Firstly, I think it important to interview Goodwin as anti-elite politics are now the shared political fabric of *everyone*.

It's important to interrogate the right's version of that, & hold it alongside left's.

Personally I think an anti-elite politics infused with proper class analysis makes infinitely more sense, & I hope that comes across in the interview. The conservative account is lightweight.

Ed Miliband implies Corbyn is banned for antisemitism, which isn’t mentioned in Starmer’s motion. Decade ago Corbyn was only Labour MP to defend Miliband’s (deceased) dad in media from attacks.

Normal people can’t do this. Politics is a mucky business!

If you want honourable behaviour politics isn’t the right place to look. But Labour is the worst organisation I can think of in terms of gap between how MPs behave & who they think they are. ‘I must be nice, I’m a progressive!’ has no relationship to morals of normal people.

The 'Chip War' is THE essential story of 2023.

It's about gradual deglobalisation, the race for technological leadership, mastery of artificial intelligence, & how, when the rules no longer suited the US, they changed them.

Me for @novaramedia (1/14)
novaramedia.com/2023/03/27/the… For context the 'CHIPS and Science Act', ratified by the Biden Admin, allocates $52 billion to the US microprocessor industry.

Why? Because the US accounts for only 12% of global chip supply. Meanwhile Taiwan is in crosshairs of Beijing... (2/14)

The moment I fully understood the Met police was completely and utterly beyond repair? That it had to be abolished and start over?

It was when I was arrested alongside Ashok Kumar in 2011. Multiple officers were willing to lie to destroy a young man's life (1/10) Ashok Kumar, and I, were at a protest against David Willetts outside SOAS in 2011. Noisy, yes, but no threat of violence.

I saw Kumar being grabbed by one officer (the man in the first image) for no reason. I felt he had been picked because he was the darkest guy there. (2/10)

Some thoughts about our interview with Roger Hallam, founder of XR and Just Stop Oil. It really made me think. (1/9)

I do find it odd that after engaging with public for decades, & gradually getting point across that higher concentrations of CO2 lead to warming temperatures (which most, including me, only passively understand) that some want to say climate change is nothing to do w/ CO2! (2/9)

Any Tik Tok ban is a HUGE deal, but not for reasons stated here.

The truth is that, as with the CHIPS Act, the US now realises it can’t continue to lead innovation, & create worlds most valuable companies, without hobbling China & companies it creates. The significance of this is huge! And is at odds with two central pillar of ideology of last 40 years.

Firstly that free markets are good and create net benefits for all concerned (US clearly doesn’t believe this re strategic industries). And secondly…