How should the left view the porn industry?

Can I start with an overshare? I like porn. There, I said it. Now, before you clutch your pearls, let’s acknowledge something: porn, like bars, restaurants, and the music industry, can be an exploitative business. Yet, I frequent all of the above. As do most of us. The world runs on industries that are often deeply problematic, and my moral purity would be far better preserved if I lived in a yurt off the grid. But I don’t. And neither do you.

You’re not the worst person on the left ever if you listen to music from a major label, or occasionally eat at a chain restaurant, or once in a while fire up a tube site to release some tension. However, you should be aware of the practices of the most exploitative companies, such as Tim Martin from Wetherspoon telling all his employees to get jobs at Tesco during the pandemic.

The same applies to porn, an industry that used to have many small publishers but has been taken over by big tech companies and big brands. This has created a power relationship between (sex) workers and employers that anyone who knows anything about neoliberalism will be familiar with.

Critiquing the power of big business

On the left we critique the power of big business. We critique banks, we critique Amazon, we critique Uber. But PornHub? Not so much. Why?

Maybe, it’s because many fear that criticising the porn industry makes them sound like a conservative prude. The left has long prided itself on being the defenders of sexual freedom, the crusaders against repression, the champions of liberal expression. This is all well and good, but does our laissez-faire attitude extend to giant corporations profiting from our collective horniness?

Big tech’s long tentacles

The rise of massive tech platforms has fundamentally reshaped the porn industry, just as it has reshaped journalism, music, and, if you listen to any Millennial or Zoomer, the ability to afford a home. Gone are the days of furtively finding a magazine in a disused railway siding and stuffing it under your mattress.

Now, it’s an all-you-can-stream buffet, algorithmically tailored to your desires (or, more accurately, the desires it has cultivated in you). However, just like Facebook radicalizing your uncle into believing that trans people are coming to abuse the kids his ex-wife won’t let him see, porn platforms use the attention economy to keep users engaged for longer. The results? Extreme or illegal content getting pushed to the forefront.

Shaping desires

PornHub, and other tube sites, don’t just reflect people’s desires; they shape them. As feminist writer Helen Lewis put it:

“Pornhub pushes featured videos and recommendations, optimized to build user loyalty and increase revenue, which carry the implicit message that this is what everyone else finds arousing—that this is the norm. Compare porn with polarized journalism, or even fast food: How can we untangle what people ‘really want’ from what they are offered, over and over, and from what everyone else is being offered too? No one’s sexual desires exist in a vacuum, immune to outside pressures driven by capitalism. (Call it the invisible hand job of the market.)”

So when PornHub’s algorithms nudge users toward extreme or illegal content, it isn’t just fulfilling a demand, it’s manufacturing one. This raises the question: are we defending people’s sexual freedoms, or are we defending the right of surveillance-capitalist platforms to dictate what our desires should be?

 Porn’s not special, it’s just another exploitative industry

Here’s a fun game: take any of the following problems: lack of job security, overpowered big business and the rise of unregulated gig work, and apply them to any other industry. Sounds familiar, right? That’s because these are the exact same problems the left rages against in every other sector. The fact that porn involves sex shouldn’t distract us from the fact that it’s, fundamentally, another industry being warped by the pressures of unchecked capitalism. 

We do hold other tech platforms to account. Facebook and YouTube have faced serious scrutiny over their role in radicalization, misinformation, and content moderation failures. Or they did until they decided they didn’t like this scrutiny and got rid of it by buying a nationalist former president turned presidential candidate. All it cost was allowing the far-right free reign over these company’s ability to shape public discourse, bending the knee to an authoritarian bully and boatloads of cash.

PornHub has somehow escaped the same level of criticism, despite running on the same exploitative business model. It’s almost as if the left, in its eagerness to defend sexual freedom, has forgotten to apply the same scrutiny to the corporations profiting from it.

The PornHub problem

Enter The Children of PornHub, written by Nicholas Kristof and published by the New York Times. It’s a piece of investigative journalism that sparked a moral panic. The article detailed harrowing cases of underage and non-consensual videos being uploaded and monetized on the platform.

No one, absolutely no one, would argue that this is acceptable and certainly PornHub, like most big businesses, have been slow to respond to problems that could hit their bottom line. Increased scrutiny of the vast amount of content that gets uploaded is just not cost-effective. Facebook and Twitter had the same issues, before they decided to embrace far-right propaganda.

However, the problem of these images isn’t just limited to PornHub. In Sheelah Kolhatkar’s article, The Fight to Hold PornHub Accountable, following up on Kristof’s, Mike Stabile, of the Free Speech Coalition, said: “This isn’t a Pornhub-specific problem or an issue where Pornhub is particularly negligent. If you look at the vast majority of child-sex-abuse material being shared, it is not on porn sites, it’s on sites like Snapchat and Facebook. This is about stopping pornography.” Yet so far the outrage has focused on PornHub and not bigger tech platforms whose main stock in trade isn’t sex videos.

Is the problem the internet?

This does raise a thorny question: is this a problem with PornHub, or a problem with the internet? After all, revenge porn circulates on WhatsApp. Crimes happen on platforms across the web, from copyright infringement to drug dealing. Hell, you can order a hitman to kill someone on the dark web. Allegedly. I didn’t look.

So, is the issue here the medium, or the crime itself? PornHub, like YouTube, makes money off its content, and in the attention economy anything that keeps users watching is good for business. Including, as we’ve seen, horrific racism, violence and illegal content.

The same logic that leads YouTube’s algorithm to push people toward far-right conspiracy theories is what drives PornHub’s algorithm to push porn that contains images of underaged girls or content that was ascertained or shared non-consensually. Platforms don’t care about ethics; they care about engagement.

Is this a political issue or a criminal issue?

No one - not even the most sex-postive feminist or pro big business doing whatever the fuck it wants libertarian - would argue that what happened to these women and girls is fine. This one some level means this isn’t a political issue.

I don’t want to dismiss or trivialise the abuse these women and girls suffered by saying there isn’t a power dynamic at work, but everyone is anti-rape and child sex videos. The faults highlighted in Kristof’s article are the result of criminals breaking PornHub’s rules. Surely, this is a matter for the police, not the platform. A crime has been committed.

The worse stories in Kristof’s article are about suicides due to people sharing videos without consent. This could be done on any platform, WhatsApp or SnapChat or PornHub. These are of course tragedies, but is this a problem that PornHub is wholly responsible for?

Making it easier

Yes, on some level. PornHub is responsible because the platform does make it easy (or easier) to commit these crimes due to allowing vast quantities of unmoderated content from unverified users onto the platform. I suppose owning a car makes it easier to commit some crimes, such as bank robbery, but we do make cars harder to access than adding content to a tube site.

PornHub also makes money off these videos, so it has an incentive to keep them out there. In the attention economy, platforms need content that holds users' attention. If extreme or illegal content does this better than normal porn, then the platforms need it to keep people watching the ads they make money from. This is the same problem that YouTube has with the far-right.

Although these are people abusing the system and breaking the platform/company rules, the business models (and power) of big companies and tech platforms make the problem worse. This is what makes this a left-wing political issue.

The moral panic machine

Of course, once a scandal like the one that Kristof’s article caused breaks, it’s immediately co-opted by the usual suspects, groups that have been anti-porn from the get-go. For example, Exodus Cry, who helped Kristof meet some of the sources in his Children of PornHub article. Kolhatkar wrote a detail description of Exodus Cry in the follow-up to Kristof’s article:

“Exodus Cry was founded around 2008 by Benjamin Nolot, a filmmaker and an activist who grew up in Southern California … Exodus Cry has taken aim not only at nonconsensual pornography but more broadly at what it calls ‘porn culture,’ which, it argues, leads to the hypersexualization and objectification of women and makes sex trafficking and other crimes more likely to occur. The group’s tax filings state that it is ‘committed to abolishing sex trafficking and the commercial sex industry,’ which would include legal activities such as producing pornography and performing in strip clubs.”

Exodus Cry wants to abolish the porn industry in its entirety. That includes those nice independent producers of sex-positive and kinky porn that I like. The small batch craft brewery of the sex streaming world. Also, as the name suggests, they're religiously motivated to do this. This suggests that their interest in the victims is more a tool to achieve their goals of censoring the porn industry.

Anti-liberal narrative

Exodus Cry, and other groups like it, are not only against the non-consensual and underaged content highlighted in Kristof’’s article, which PornHub has been slow to take down. They claim that all porn is coercive, objectifies women, and normalises misogyny. These arguments have been echoed by anti-porn feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon for decades.

Exodus Cry isn’t the only Christian right-wing organisation using this narrative to attack the porn industry and get attention in the attention economy via “think of the children” outrage. These groups are using this case to advance their anti-liberal narrative that is anti-LGBTQ+ rights, anti-sex work and anti-porn. That’s all porn.

Again, a problem with big business

While it’s easy to dismiss these groups as pearl-clutching reactionaries, they do muddy the waters of this debate. If you frame the issue as “PornHub is bad,” suddenly you’re playing into the hands of people who want to shut down all porn. That’s not what most of us on the left want. Even the survivors of PornHub’s worst failures aren’t anti-porn. As one survivor told Kristof in his article: “I don’t want people to hear ‘No porn!’ It’s more like, ‘Stop hurting kids.’”

My counter is that mainstream porn does the bad things highlighted in Kristof’s article, just like Stella tastes like shit and makes people violent and the MCU is thinly veiled propaganda for the US military. That doesn’t mean all film and beer is bad. Just the stuff made by big business to cater to the whims of normies.

The uncomfortable middle ground

So, where does that leave us? In a deeply unsatisfying place, frankly. Like your WiFi giving out as soon as you fire up a tube site. Porn, like all industries, can be good and bad. We should absolutely defend people’s right to explore their sexuality or to monetize it.

There’s a right to be a sex worker if you want to. No one should be forced into sex work, obviously, but no one should be forced to work in an Amazon warehouse either. If someone does choose to do sex work, or warehouse work, then they are entitled to the same rights and guarantees of a decent wage and conditions as any other worker. Sex work is work.

The left should recognize that massive corporations are exploiting sexy freedom for profit, often at great cost. The reality is, PornHub isn’t incentivised to protect its workers or its users, it’s incentivised to make money: even if that means looking the other way when illegal content spreads on its platform. 

Sex is good, but unchecked capitalism is bad

Personally, as a porn-consuming denizen of the internet, I feel the left should support the right to make porn as people are allowed to be free and explore their sexuality, but we need to remember these platforms and big businesses are not incentivised to look after their workers or protect the public from dangerous content.

The pressures of big tech, surveillance capitalism, algorithms deciding what we see and aggressive market competition is distorting what is seen as natural sexuality and is creating a situation where large companies are exploiting people.

There were some suggestions to improve PornHub and the industry in Kristof’s article. He wrote: “I don’t see any neat solution. But aside from limiting immunity so that companies are incentivized to behave better, here are three steps that would help: 1.) Allow only verified users to post videos. 2.) Prohibit downloads. 3.) Increase moderation.” None of these will fix everything, but they’d be a start. The problem isn’t porn. The problem is big business, and the solution isn’t to abolish porn it’s to hold it to the same standards we demand from every other industry.

So let’s have some nuance. Let’s criticize exploitative business practices without feeding into anti-sex narratives. Let’s acknowledge that sex is good, but unchecked capitalism is bad. Most of all, let’s remember: just because we like something doesn’t mean we shouldn’t critique it.

With welfare cuts Starmer’s Labour is grabbing the Tory spade and digging deeper

Ah, spring. A time for daffodils, delusion, and yet another chancellor trying to sell austerity with a smile. Yes, it’s the week of the Spring Statement, where the government takes a long, hard look at the state of the nation and decides, with trademark compassion, that the real problem is disabled people getting £8.25 a day to survive.

This time, the cruelty isn't coming from the usual suspects. It's not the Tories sharpening their budget axe, it’s Keir Starmer’s Labour. The "not-as-bad-as-the-Tories-but-still-weirdly-keen-on-acting-like-them" Labour. The party formerly known for representing workers and the vulnerable is now laser-focused on freezing Personal Independence Payments (PIP). Presumably because the real crisis is that people who rely on the state for support aren’t suffering enough.

The Prime Minister, still clinging to the idea that he’s a centrist technocrat and not just a cut-price David Cameron tribute act, has declared that welfare costs are “unsustainable, indefensible and unfair.” Spoken like a man whose entire understanding of fairness begins and ends with a balance sheet.

Doing what the Tories only dreamed of

Yes, Labour. The same Labour that once gave us the NHS, the minimum wage, and child poverty reduction is now delivering soundbites so Thatcherite they may as well be scratched into a bust of Ayn Rand. Rachel Reeves, whose economic strategy appears to be “whatever Tory swing voters in Nuneaton would like,” has declared that it "can’t be right" to write off a generation who are out of work and gasp using PIP. She claims they are using it improperly. Not unlike the way MPs improperly use second home allowances to buy duck ponds and Louis Vuitton laundry baskets.

Then there’s Wes Streeting, seemingly auditioning to win the award of least caring frontline politician - a competitive field - who recently said to Tory MPs that Labour was “doing the things they only ever talked about.” One shudders to imagine what he’ll do next. Deportations by catapult? Means-testing air?

Politically, this isn’t “sensible centrism.” This is George Osborne in a Keir Starmer mask. Osborne once invoked the image of a hard-working person waking up at dawn while their scrounging neighbour slept in and enjoyed lounging on benefits. Starmer’s Labour have taken that metaphor, added a few more contemptuous flourishes, and started broadcasting it on every available frequency.

Speeding up the burying of our collective morality

It’s not just the rhetoric, it’s the policy. Making PIP harder to claim? Even after years of Tory rule have already turned the benefit system into a bureaucratic maze of medical assessments designed to stop help getting to the needy? At this point, Labour isn’t just digging the same hole as the Tories, they’ve brought in an industrial drill and hired contractors to speed up the burying of our collective morality.

Here’s a thought: most people claiming benefits are in work. Most people who are homeless also have jobs. The problem isn’t laziness or fraud, it’s that our economy is a dystopian farce where work doesn’t pay, rent is daylight robbery, and a food shop requires the tactical precision of a military operation.

Yet here comes Labour, crowing about benefit cuts to show they’re tough, and hopefully salvage their plunging poll ratings. Have they noticed that food bank usage has exploded? That scurvy, actual Dickensian scurvy, is back? That people are choosing between heating and eating, and increasingly achieving neither?

Reheated austerity

This is what so many warned about during last year’s election campaign. That behind the fluff of “change” and “renewal,” Starmer’s Labour was quietly committed to a reheated version of austerity. They refused to commit to scrapping the two-child benefit cap. They mumbled sweet nothings about fiscal responsibility. Meanwhile liberal commentators beamed approvingly, reassuring us that this was all just pragmatic politics.

Remember this Polly Toynbee article? The one from last summer, confidently asserting that Starmer’s Labour would lift the two-child cap and rescue the poor from the Tories’ cruelty? A comforting bedtime story for people who think "radical" means a new white paper looking at the issue. Yet here we are: benefits slashed, defence spending up, and not a crumb of radicalism to be found; unless you count radical indifference.

Labour members aren’t happy

The party faithful? Not so faithful anymore. Nearly half of Labour members - Labour members who haven’t quit yet - think the party’s heading in the wrong direction. Which is frankly optimistic, because it assumes the party is heading anywhere at all. They’re just following Tory voters around with a clipboard, asking what they’d like to see next.

Labour isn’t for Labour members. It’s not for liberals. It’s not for the poor. It’s not for people who believe in social justice, dignity, or the wild notion that disabled people shouldn’t have to prove they’re not faking it every six months. It’s for the mythical swing voter in a Home Counties semi who gets a little red-faced when someone mentions trans rights and thinks anyone on benefits should be forced to clean motorway laybys with a toothbrush.

Labour don’t care

That’s the only plan Starmer’s Labour has: be Tory, but with better diction. Pretend there's no alternative. Hope everyone on the left just holds their nose and votes for them anyway.

The truth is, poverty got worse under the Tories because they didn’t care. Now it’s going to get worse under Labour because they don’t either. That’s not pragmatism. That’s moral cowardice, dressed up in a red rosette.

GBP image created by Joegoauk Goa and is used under creative commons.

Behold the smartest people in the room: The Waterstones Dads

Oh, Waterstones Dads. The khaki-clad infantry of intellectual self-satisfaction. You know the type: armed with a stack of Very Serious Non-Fiction about geopolitics, economics, and, naturally, the failures of socialism, they march into pub chats and social media threads alike, convinced that they’re the only ones who see the world as it truly is, because if there’s one thing these midlife epistemic warriors hate more than emotional arguments, it’s fiction.

To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with reading non-fiction. In fact, it’s quite useful if you’re interested in learning about the world. Some of my favourite books are non-fiction. I can strongly recommend Leon Neyfakh’s The Next Next Level, or No Less Than Mystic by John Medhurst, or Dictatorland by Paul Kenyon. They’re great reads and opened my mind in one way or another. 

The problem is that Waterstones Dads don’t just read non-fiction; they treat it like a divine revelation. To them, the truth is simple, obvious, and discernible by anyone willing to sit down with the right books (usually written by authors who are from some kind of think tank who have absorbed the entire cannon of conventional wisdom and have no flair to their prose).

Who are Waterstones Dads?

So, you may be wondering what a Waterstones Dad is. The thing is, you already know. They’re the sort of guy who reads a lot of books with names like The Rise of China and then feels like they are an expert on all things related to the rising superpower, because they have the facts. They are quick to criticise others for having an ideological worldview because what they believe doesn’t end with an ism, but are completely blind to the fact that they are as doctrinal - in a neoliberal way - as an angry early twenty something on campus cosplaying Citizen Smith.

This mindset, that they alone are armed with unfiltered reality while others are blinded by ideology, is one of the most subtly dangerous forces in politics. It leads to easily dismissing anyone who disagrees with you. Why engage with those pesky lefties who want to discuss inequality, capitalism, gender equality, or anything more emotional than interest rates? They’re just *feeling* their way through the world, after all. Unlike you, the intellectual who sees reality for what it really is.

The thing is, everyone thinks they see the world clearly. It’s a comforting delusion shared by conspiracy theorists who believe the Queen is/was an alien lizard and by smug centrists who believe that anyone to the left of Keir Starmer is a Marxist. The difference is that the Queen-is-a-lizard crowd can usually be found ranting on obscure forums, whereas Waterstones Dads are often found in board rooms, current events panel discussion shows and in the profile of “hero voters” who politicians are desperate to pander to.

Open to ideas

Speaking of debate, isn’t it funny how these self-proclaimed champions of open-mindedness are always more open to ideas from the right than from the left? They’ll gladly entertain a nuanced discussion about, say, the merits of free-market deregulation, or why we can’t do anything about climate change (or occasionally why the gender pay gap isn’t real) but suggest that perhaps capitalism has some inherent flaws, and suddenly they’re less open-minded. “Let’s have a debate”, they say, but they don’t listen and never change their minds. Why would they? They already know all the facts.

Their disdain for fiction is where things get truly fascinating. Fiction, to the Waterstones Dad, is nothing more than emotional nonsense. Real learning, they believe, comes from non-fiction, or more accurately the specific type of non-fiction they read. It’s easy to dismiss novels when your bedside table is stacked with titles like The Economist’s Guide to Saving the World with Graphs, or How to Think Like a Very Clever Person Without Actually Trying, or Sapiens, but here’s the thing: fiction teaches you to connect with other people. Whether from the past, the future, or other cultures. It helps you realise that there are more perspectives than just your own.

Empathy isn’t emotional fluff

In a world increasingly defined by division and misunderstanding, empathy isn’t emotional fluff, it's a survival skill. Reading non-fiction might teach you about the mechanics of the economy, but fiction helps you understand the lived experience of what a 9% rise in inflation is like.

It’s one thing to know the statistics about refugee crises; it’s another to read a novel that brings you into the life of someone fleeing their home and facing hostility everywhere they go, like Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. Waterstones dads could use a little more of that perspective. Less Why Nations Fail, more How People Feel.

The smartest guys in the room

Let me be serious for a moment. The title above references the film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. It’s a great, non-fiction, film that is really worth a watch. There are two main things that stand out to me about the film.

First, all these people who thought they were smarter than everyone else - and they had a lot of credentials to prove it, Princeton and all that - made a company that collapsed in contact with reality. Secondly, although many of them made huge amounts of money out of being the smartest men in the room, they were ultimately the stooges of capitalism in that all their efforts made more money for people with even more wealth and power than them.

Understanding the world

Waterstones Dads may think that they’re super smart because they know that if we tax the wealth on billionaires we might also tax the pensions of ordinary workers saving for their retirement - valid point that bears more debate - but ultimately Waterstones Dads, in their semi-detached houses in Leicester, full of books, are far closer in terms of power to students marching for a free Palestine than they are to billionaires like Elon Musk - whose politics they claim to detest but who they ultimately end up on the same side of against the woke socialists.

So, dear Waterstones dads, by all means, keep reading your Very Important Books, but maybe slip a novel in there once in a while, because if there’s one truth worth embracing, it’s that understanding the world requires more than just knowing how it works. It requires knowing how it feels, and for that, you’ll need more than just facts, you’ll need a little bit of fiction.

Has cool really abandoned Left Britannia?

Last year, as Labour basked in the glorious afterglow of a substantial electoral victory, you could almost hear the echoes of 1997. You know, the year when Tony Blair didn’t just win; he practically pirouetted into power, champagne in hand while a Britpop soundtrack thundered in the background.

Back then, the air was thick with the scent of youthful national renewal. Oasis were blasting through the charts and Damien Hirst was busy unsettling the art world with his formaldehyde-filled shenanigans. Out with the old, stuffy, formal, posh, Tory Britain and in with the new, young, cool, working-class Cool Britannia.

Shout out at the Brit awards

Tony Blair even got a shout-out from Noel Gallagher at the Brits, immortalised forever in our collective memory: “There are seven people in this room who are giving a little bit of hope to young people in this country,” Noel proclaimed, before praising his band, Alan McGee and Blair. The strange thing is that this didn’t seem cringe at the time.

Fast forward to today, and what do we have? A political landscape where the only thing remotely “cool” about Keir Starmer is his ability to blend into the wallpaper of a windowless conference room. There’s no sense of a youthful culture sweeping through the land with Labour as its political vanguard.

“Cool has abandoned Left Britannia”

Finn McRedmond lamented in the New Statesman: “Cool has abandoned Left Britannia.” Starmer, with his serious analytical approach and affinity for policy wonkery, is about as rock ‘n’ roll as a PowerPoint presentation on an annual report.

McRedmond describes in his article the lack of powerful cultural voices backing Labour, the way Oasis did in the 90s. The world has changed. Today’s artists are more likely to be found navigating the high rents of London – more akin to a game of Monopoly gone wrong than the bohemian utopia of yesteryear. Trying to be an artist today isn’t like the 90s, where Oasis snagged their record deal after a brief pub opening slot witnessed by McGee. Today aspiring musicians must prove they’ve built a social media following before a label will even glance their way.

Radical art is alive and well

Yet, despite the uphill battle, the artistic spirit is alive and kicking. There are plenty of left-leaning bands like Idles, Sleaford Mods (pictured above), Problem Patterns, and She Drew the Gun making waves, even if they’re not exactly headlining Glastonbury. Fontaines DC and The Last Dinner Party are huge and might not be spouting political anthems, but they’ve made their voices heard on pressing issues like Gaza.

On the big screen there are films like last year’s Kneecap, an angry, raw and politically charged drama about an Irish language hip hop act from Belfast. On the small screen in 2024 we had We Are Lady Parts, which tackles the intersection of homophobia and Islamophobia. I’m sure that there is also radical art being made in the hip hop and folk scenes as well, although I don’t know these genres well.

These people aren’t boosting Starmer. This is a big change for the generally left leaning youth culture set. Jeremy Corbyn had the backing of Stormzy and appeared on stage at Glastonbury. Even Neil Kinnock, hardly the coolest person to walk the corridors of Westminster, had Billy Bragg and the Red Wedge collective.

A “Who’s Who” of the least cool people on the planet

McRedmond, in his article mentioned above, consults the New Statesman’s 2024 left power list and finds it lacking Starmer boosters, which reads like a “Who’s Who” of the least cool people on the planet: JK Rowling, Gary Lineker, and a few others who might as well be auditioning for the role of middle-aged dad in a sitcom.

He writes: “Who are the cultural figures who made the cut? Among those who wield genuine influence on the left, there is JK Rowling – powerful, but hardly an ally of Starmer. Then there’s Gary Lineker, a bleeding-heart liberal who appeals to the centrist dad but is, ultimately, a podcasting baron.” His article mentions: Adele, Ed Sheeran and Harry Styles. No mention of Idles, Fontaines DC or The Last Dinner Party, or anyone less popular than acts that can fill Hammersmith Apollo.

He goes on to say: “The 2020s will be remembered as an era of the apolitical pop star.” This overlooks a lot of the great art, political and otherwise, that is made now. Possibly it’s all too pro-Palestine, pro-Trans rights and anti-Starmer for Labour to embrace or for the New Statesman to cover, so they ignore it.

The key grumpy boomer vote

The problem lies in Starmer’s own choices. He’s appealing to the people who find “woke” a dirty word, cozying up to Daily Mail-reading culture warriors who’d rather complain about Just Stop Oil than actually listen to some music released after 1992. Starmer’s attempt to win over swing voters seems to have come at the expense of the young people who set the cultural zeitgeist.

It’s not that cool has abandoned Left Britannia; it’s that Left Britannia has abandoned cool. This was done to woo the key grumpy boomer vote.

National renewal needs cultural backing, and young people

Or more accurately, the parliamentary and commentary centre-left has abandoned the cultural left because they once told them on Twitter that they should “check their privilege”. The parliamentary and commentary centre-left responded to receiving a minor complaint by accusing all their critics of being the modern Stasi, endorsing more funding cuts for cultural programmes as “fiscally prudent” and cosying up to landlords who are making it harder to be an artist in London.

Starmer is offering a change of management rather than a genuine cultural renaissance. National renewal doesn’t just require competent management; it requires an embrace of culture, a celebration of the arts, and a willingness to engage with the very heart of what makes Britain cool, the culture and politics of its young people.

National renewal requires embracing young people, as Blair did, and not running away from them, as Starmer is doing.

Russell Brand isn’t the only person on the hippy to alt-right pipeline and the left should be aware of this

Ah, Russell Brand. Once a left-wing celebrity, cheeky chappie comedian and new age guru, who edited an issue of the New Statesman. Now he’s a cautionary tale of what happens when fame, conspiracy theories, and a desire to hold onto an online following collide in a perfect storm of social media madness.

In 2023, very serious allegations emerged about the erstwhile spiritual revolutionary as many women accused him of sexual assault and rape. This burned any credibility he had left, but before that he had already dived down a very dark rabbit hole. How did he get from interviews with Jeremy Paxman to being too edgy for YouTube?

The brand we knew

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane, shall we? Back in the heady days of 2013 Brand was an icon for those positioned somewhere to the left of Labour. In the Ed Miliband era - remember those halcyon times - when Labour flittered between attacking the effects of austerity, insisting it was necessary and denigrating student protesters, Brand was a charismatic voice shaking up the Labour-Liberal-Conservative consensus.

He made people on the left think that politics could be radical again; until it became clear that all his revolutionary musings were about as shallow as a puddle of spilt beer, and all this was just the warm-up act for his grand performance as an internet sensation.

Middle-class new age hippyism with a tinge of the paranoid

I’ll admit, I was never a fan of Brand’s particular brand of cynicism mixed with spiritual hand waving, which sounded like it was cribbed from the back of a book called “Pagan Meditations.” His approach always struck me as middle-class new age hippyism with a tinge of the paranoid - “They’re trying to control your minds!” - than a program for social change. He talked as if all it took to topple neoliberalism was for us all to align our chakras.

It’s all well and good to meditate on the state of the world, but I’d rather be wielding a picket sign than chanting about the cosmos at a psychedelic retreat. My previous critiques of Brand are well documented.

The oddly neoliberal politics of spiritualism

It quickly became apparent that Brand was less interested in changing the world and more interested in getting attention. He is, at heart, a tabloid celebrity.

Remember when he was a mainstream comedian and actor, in films such as Get Him To The Greek? Those days seem so far away now. His infamous “I've never voted, never will” quip was nothing more than a cynical, defeatist ploy to be a rebellious enfant terrible, rather than a serious critique of the system. Spoiler alert: it didn’t change anything.

I can understand the appeal of not voting for the identikit mainstream parties, but Brand’s wholesale rejection of everything ended up endorsing nothing. It was oddly neoliberal in the end. Collapse into yourself, disconnect from wider social movements and focus on your spiritual awakening rather than pursuing change. At least Jeremy Corbyn articulated how society could be different, and he ended up inspiring more people.

Going down the alt-right rabbit hole

Brand’s desire for attention made him a tabloid sensation, then a comedian come TV presenter come radio host - remember the whole Sachsgate thing - then a lightweight political thinker, and finally a conspiracy spreading social media personality. For Brand, this journey has led him to the murky waters of the alt-right.

How did we get here? Well, he used his old-fashioned TV and tabloid fame as a springboard to internet stardom, but fame on social media is a different beast to the type of fame you get from shagging models and being publicly on drugs.

To maintain his online reach, Brand must pander to the algorithms that rule our digital lives and control our information diet, feeding them outrageous content like a barman furiously pouring beer at a pound-a-pint night. He’s caught in an arms race with platforms designed to find the most extreme thing that will hold our attention. Be nice to each other and make the rich pay their taxes won’t cut it. Casting doubt on vaccines will.

From pagans to Cottagecore

And here’s where it gets truly murky. In the quest for clicks and likes, Brand has become a veritable buffet of attention-grabbing conspiracy theories. Whether he believes these wild tales or is merely using them to get views is up for debate, but one thing is clear: he’s committed to feeding the social media algorithm demon like a starved gremlin.

The place his politics have ended up reminds me of the toxic blend of ludditeism, belief in magic and anarcho-primitivism of some of the hippy-pagan types I met at university. They distrusted modernity so much they’d have traded their smartphones for a life in a yurt, celebrating the noble savage while ignoring all the conveniences of the 21st century. Conveniences such as modern medicine, sanitation, time saving devices and notions of equality.

This has its very online counterpart in the Cottagecore movement that celebrates the romantic ideal of living in nature and being self-sufficient, whilst ignoring how much back breaking labour is needed to grow enough calories to keep a person alive. When combined with the radicalising attention arms race of social media, this back-to-nature rebellion has been extremified online, creating a strange breed of left disillusionment that’s now playing footsie with the far-right.

When it’s not okay to be contrarian

They’re the type of lefties who doubt vaccines because they’re made by big pharma, think Vladimir Putin is standing up to Western Imperialism, RFK Jr is just asking questions, and that Jordan Peterson is just giving smug liberals a slap in the face.

Obviously, there are important critiques of how big pharma distributes the vaccines it makes, and Western Imperialism wasn’t consigned to the dustbin of history in the 19th century. There is also nothing wrong with following any religion - from Christianity to something new age or pagan - or longing for the romantic ideal of living off grid in a cottage. But a lot of well-meaning lefties have gone from being sceptical of the mainstream media to wholeheartedly and uncritically swallowing whatever the furthest thing from the mainstream media says. Brand is just a high-profile example of this.

For Brand, it’s been a slippery slope from speaking on spiritual matters to cozying up with alt-right ideologies. He’s followed his audience down this rabbit hole, and here we are, left with an online alt-weirdo who seems to thrive on being a contrarian. It’s fine to be a contrarian when you’re winding up an old TV celebrity - although when I heard the Sachsgate clip I thought it was more mean than funny - but it’s not okay when you’re spreading doubt about vaccines.

Riding the algorithm tiger

While I can’t say I ever bought into Brand’s blend of spiritualism and politics, the whole meditate your way to class consciousness thing, I can say it pales in comparison to the darker truth: the allegations of abuse.

Therein lies the crux of the matter. While I may not agree with his philosophical meanderings, it’s far worse to be an abuser. His doubling down and denial are textbook moves for an alt-right celebrity who needs the spotlight, regardless of the cost. Never apologise. Never admit you are wrong. Deflect all accusations as the establishment trying to destroy you. Brand is acting no different to Trump when the allegations about the current president surfaced in 2016.

Why now?

Why bring this all up now? Well, it’s partly because I didn’t get around to writing this in 2023 when the allegations first surfaced. However, it’s mainly because this slightly hippy left to alt-right pipeline is still very much a thing. These allegations might have finally killed Brand’s career, and shredded the last tattered remains of his credibility, but there are still many people riding the algorithmic train, farming radicalising content to the hippy leftie set. They’re just less well known because they didn’t used to be on TV.

I encourage everyone to be sceptical of what the mainstream media says, and what centrist politicians and big business pushes. That includes Meta and Alphabet, via their Facebook and YouTube products, even if you agree with the message someone is spreading via these tech platforms. However, just because someone is criticising your enemy doesn’t mean they’re your friend.

There’s a short walk from ‘maybe alternative medicine has some positive effects, meditation is good for you and my spiritual beliefs aren’t a mainstream religion or mercilessly materialistic atheism’ - shout out to my mercilessly materialistic atheist buddies - to making videos about how Putin is fighting the New World Order.

Keep your wits about you

Keep your wits about you and remember that Putin is still an Imperialist, modern medicine does work, and we would not be better off living a hunter gatherer existence even if it would solve the climate crisis. I shouldn’t have to say this, but I didn’t think people would believe Brand’s “don’t vote for anyone schtick” was anything more than attention grabbing cynicism. Including the New Statesman.

When in doubt, remember to log off occasionally. Celebrities and tech companies are united in their desire to push anything that will hold your attention. Your attention is all they care about. Not whatever it is YOU care about, from the benefits of a vegan diet to the victims of Western Imperialism. Now I’m going to take my own advice and back away from the computer.

Trump is back in the White House and the billionaires are in the Rotunda

Well, folks, it’s happened. Donald Trump’s second inauguration week has passed, and in true Trumpian style, the occasion was as fascinating as it was bizarre.

If the first inauguration was a cacophony of misplaced grandeur, overblown self-congratulation, and a speech about "American carnage," the second is like a reboot of a terrible movie: somehow shinier, with even more dystopian undertones, but soulless.

Let’s start with the surface similarities. The self-aggrandisement remains intact. Trump proclaimed that he’d been divinely saved to “Make America great again.” The far-right weirdos are still buzzing around like moths to a particularly loud and orange flame, hoping to bask in his reflected power. There were industrial qualities of bullshit spouted that went largely unchallenged by journalists. On this level, everything feels oddly familiar.

Billionaires in the Rotunda. MAGA in the cold

But scratch a little deeper, and you’ll see that Trump 2.0 isn’t quite the sequel MAGA diehards were hoping for. There is less talk about reclaiming America from the billionaire class and more talk about making the whole country powerful and respected, which means its billionaires - Trump amongst them - will also be respected.

Back in 2017, there were at least murmurs of reclaiming America from the grip of the uber-wealthy. This time, the uber-wealthy are in the building. In fact, they’re in the Rotunda. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Vivek Ramaswamy all cozied up for front-row seats, rubbing shoulders with their favorite populist-in-chief. Meanwhile, the MAGA faithful, those blue-collar champions of Trump’s “forgotten America” were outside, freezing in the January cold, unable to even glimpse their man speaking.

This isn’t the “American carnage” Trump decried eight years ago; it’s American collusion. The billionaires have swapped their high-tech thrones for something more traditional: a cozy seat of power right next to the president.

The tech bros’ new masculine energy

Let’s be clear, this isn’t just Trump embracing tech billionaires. It’s the billionaires embracing Trump, and more importantly, what Trump can do for them. Take Musk. He’s not just here to throw Twitter tantrums about free speech anymore. He’s here to ensure the government clears the way for his companies to blast through red tape.

Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has been undergoing a transformation so dramatic it deserves its own “Rocky” montage. He’s taken up martial arts, dropped the awkward tech-nerd vibe, and rebranded himself as a right-friendly, bro type.

Zuck even appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast to champion the need for more “masculine energy” in American business, which is playing into the right-wing narrative that the world, and the workplace, has become feminised through the dark alliance of cultural studies academics and middle-aged women who work in HR. This is holding back the men of the world from reaching their potential.

Burning down the longhouse

Just Google “longhouse” if you want to see for yourself. On second thoughts, save yourself the pain of reading the torrent of pseudo-social science bullshit masking a thin veneer of grumpy-man rage at the modern world, masking a thin veneer of misogyny, and take my word for it.

Well, fear not, because Musk and Zuckerberg are here to burn down the longhouse and unleash the free market masculine power to make America great again, and themselves even richer now that they have their man in the White House. Or more accurately, the man in the White House has become their man.

Here’s the kicker: these tech bros don’t just want to join the MAGA party. They want to trash what remains of the system while profiting handsomely. Zuckerberg’s Meta, for instance, has announced it’s scrapping diversity programs and relaxing hate-speech restrictions, because what Facebook really needed was more unhinged arguments in comment sections, now with added slurs and conspiracy theories.

Bro-podcast rage

If all this sounds insane, that’s because it is. The new-right, which is now just the right, is obsessed with women controlling the world when a self-confessed sexual predator - who also tried to overthrow the government - just waltzed into power off the back of bro-podcast rage and no one cares about the things he has said or done, especially to women.

If this is not proof of the fact that men run the world, or at least the wrong sort of men, then I don’t know what is. I’m sorry that you don’t like Karen from HR saying that you can’t use that language in the office, but it’s not the same as living in an inverted version of the Handmaid’s Tale, whatever that weightlifting guy on YouTube keeps telling you, in between trying to sell you supplements and insisting that you read Sapiens.

The forgotten people? Forgotten again

For the MAGA faithful, the shift is … awkward. The billionaires get champagne in the Rotunda while the “forgotten Americans” get cold toes on the Mall. What do they get in exchange? A few juicy pieces of red meat, of course. Trump is all-in on culture wars: he declared there are officially only two genders, renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” and promised to declare an emergency at the southern border. Practical solutions? None. Symbolic posturing? Plentiful.

It’s a neat encapsulation of Trump’s America: the billionaires get richer, and the average Trump voter gets the satisfaction of knowing that non-binary people are suffering more than they are. It’s patriotism by proxy, making America “great” by renaming bodies of water.

Grumbling while LA burns

The right has totally lost it. Take for example the recent fires in LA. As the effects of climate change are getting harder to ignore, conservatives are still whining that the real problems are Democrats spending money on clean energy - How else are we supposed to stop climate change? - with an added side of "climate change is not really a problem".

For example, this recent bit in The Knowledge, repackaging The Wall Street Journal, said:

“If Democrats ‘believe their own advertising’ about the dangers of climate change .. why haven’t they done more to protect against it? … Yet rather than investing in improvements, California’s liberal politicians prefer to spend cash on the likes of green energy subsidies. Last year, the governor’s budget included only $2.6bn for ‘forest and wildfire resilience’, compared to $14.7bn for zero-emission vehicles and the ‘clean energy’ transition. What gives? ‘Rooftop solar subsidies are no consolation for people who lose their homes.’ California’s virtue-signalling green policies won’t make the slightest bit of difference to global temperatures, because their CO2 emissions reductions are ‘dwarfed by increases elsewhere’. It’s time for Democrats to choose which is more important: ‘their climate obsessions or citizens’.”

What’s wrong with these people?

Okay. How are we supposed to stop these fires from happening again without green policies? It’s a microcosm of the right’s lunacy: they’ve won every major economic argument of the past four decades and now rage against the consequences of their own policies. Who needs forests when you’ve got tax cuts for billionaires?

What is wrong with these people? They are filled with hatred for some small green subsidies (and the liberal politicians who pass them) that they must rail against them while homes are being destroyed. Get ready for more of this under the new Trump regime.

A new low for the MAGA show

Detours about the climate aside, where does this leave Trump’s base? Well, they’ll cheer the culture war victories, feel a little tougher because the Gulf of America now exists, and conveniently ignore the fact that their man in the White House is now the billionaire’s man.

Trump hasn’t just forgotten the forgotten people. He handed them a participation trophy and ushered the billionaires into the winner’s circle. The tech billionaires are in charge now, and they’re not here to save America. They’re here to help themselves.

Welcome to the new MAGA era: same circus, shinier tent, and a tech bro at every table. What was that about Trump being the voice of the forgotten people again?

Donald Trump picture taken by Gage Skidmore and used under creative commons.

Another nail in the coffin of democracy as Musk and Farage cosy up

Elon Musk is throwing the geo-political equivalent of a toddler tantrum at the British government and the beneficiaries of this seem to be the far-right. This would be funny, if it wasn’t another depressing nail in the coffin of democracy. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do to stop Musk running Britain’s fragile democracy over with one of his cybertrucks, which will probably catch fire afterwards. 

The world’s richest man is apparently feeling a bit miffed over something the Labour government did - perhaps they didn’t return his DM on Twitter, sorry X - and has turned his attention to UK politics. The idea of a Labour government has sent him into a frenzy. He probably thinks Keir Starmer is woke because he believes poor people should get free healthcare.

The uneasy marriage of Musk and Farage

It seems Musk’s latest hobby is to play superhero for the self-proclaimed champions of “Western values” who want to save Britain from the craft beer drinking, vegan food eating, Guardian reading, woke dweebs. He’s doing this by boosting the people who want to put migrants in concentration camps and bring back hanging. Y’know, the posh lot who claim to be men of the people because they hate trans-people and obsess over the birth rates of different ethnic groups. If I was “the people” I would be insulted by this association.

For those who have been living under a rock (how nice that must be), Musk has been using his control of the discourse, via owning Twitter, and his vast sums of money to big up Reform and Nigel Farage, so that Farage can do to the UK what Donald Trump has done to the states and trigger all the libs in the process.

This plan lasted for all of five minutes, as Musk and Farage fell out after Musk found an even more dangerous far-right figure, one Tommy Robinson, to hand a giant platform to so that he can demonise ethnic minorities. Farage, sensing Robinson’s toxicity to the crucial “racists who don’t think they’re racist” voter demographic, who he hopes to flip from being Tory (or Starmer’s Labour) backers to being Reform backers, engaged in mild criticism of Musk. Farage should have known better, as Musk’s famously fragile ego shattered. The uneasy marriage of Musk and Farage seems to be over before it started.

The fig leaf of concern

All this hot air was in the service of getting more attention for the far-right and internet billionaire edge lords - it’s so hard to tell the difference between them - and increase the strangle hold both have on ailing Western democracy. However, because they can’t say this out loud, they needed an issue to get angry about and this is where the whole thing stops being funny and starts feeling hopeless.

What was the fig leaf of concern they hid their rage hard on behind? Ah, yes, the ever-delicate topic of “grooming gangs” or “rape gangs”.

Now, before we dive into the murky waters of politicised outrage, let’s clear up a few things: there was indeed an inquiry into the infamous gangs that operated in places like Rotherham and Oldham. An inquiry that the previous government chose to ignore the recommendations of faster than a child dismissing peas at dinner time. This government should surely pick up the baton, but that would require something akin to political responsibility, a rare breed these days.

The perfect stick to beat Labour with

Musk and his new pals don’t care about the victims. Not in the slightest. This isn’t a heartfelt crusade for justice; it’s a stick to whack the Labour government with, which is why rape gangs are back in the discourse five minutes after Labour took office. It’s the perfect weapon, as it plays into everyone’s preconception that woke or political correctness is responsible for brown men raping white girls, and after that’s said everyone hits the roof and debate stops. It’s also the perfect tool for claiming all those people who make you feel bad for pointing out the privileges of being white are the real monsters. So, we don’t have to listen to them at all.

The sensible lefties are unable to stop the legions of cynical boomers across the country blaming the presence of plays exploring race in fringe theatres and the use of the phrase “settler-colonial” on BlueSky for all the pain these girls were caused.

Pointing out that this is a conspiracy theory aimed at making beetroot faced Abbot Ale drinkers even more angry at something they already hate anyway to get attention for the far-right just leads to you being called an elitist who doesn’t understand the plight of the people of Oldham, who are currently besieged in Wetherspoons by a Jihadi mob and if you think otherwise then go back to Walthamstow you posh, woke, idiot. This accusation is of course levelled by someone who went to Dulwich Colleg.

The useful idiots of fascists

Well, it’s not true and most people angry about political correctness and rape gangs care nothing for the victims of white rape gangs; that is if they care for any victims. Will you pay more tax for better services to help abuse victims? Will you vote for a party that promises this? I thought not. This is why Starmer couldn’t promise to make anything better, as swing voters would vote Tory to keep their taxes down. These same swing voters are now busy being the useful idiots of fascists. Emphasis on the idiots.

For Musk, Farage and Robinson this is a classic case of political opportunism, dressed up as concern for women and girls. Ironically, Musk, who allows misogyny to flourish on Twitter like a weed in a neglected garden, seems to think he’s the knight in shining armour here. Remember that what Musk want from women is to pop out good white babies while being the perfect victims so that all of society’s problems can be scape-goated on migrants.

There’s a special place in hell for those who feign concern for women only to wield it like a weapon against their favourite targets, especially when their favourite targets are people of colour. Musk, Farage, and Robinson have jumped on the bandwagon of outrage, claiming that the police were too scared to investigate Pakistani men for fear of being seen as racist. This, of course, is a narrative that caters to the perpetually aggrieved; those who can’t seem to differentiate between common decency and “wokeness.”

A weak bully

Their argument goes something like this: “If I can’t yell abuse at someone in a burka, then white children will be raped.” It’s a charming bit of logic that suggests that the only way to protect children is to unleash a torrent of vitriol in the name of protecting Western values from horrible brown people. When sexual violence comes up, it’s as if everyone suddenly forgets the actual victims. Instead, it’s all about blaming political correctness, feminism, and anything else that fits their pet hate.

Musk seems to think he can get what he wants – which appears to be the downfall of the woke Starmer - by aligning with the very arsonists who only like democracy when it serves their agenda. From Trump to Farage, it’s a veritable bully club, with democracy and vulnerable minorities as the victims.

Musk is eager to join them, so that he can be the weak bully who laughs at you when the tough bully pushes you over and makes you eat mud. The Richard Hammond of the group. Musk’s ego is so thin that he must be on the side of far-right rage fiends, as he can’t stand being their target. He probably thinks the far-right is the authentic voice of the people, a thought you can only have by spending too much time online hating on progressives who want billionaires to pay their taxes. This notion is also as stupid as the idea of rebranding Twitter as X.

Another painful tragedy in this long list of misery

So here we are, on the precipice of the end of democracy as the billionaires big up the far-right because they hate the left and fear the right-wing juggernaut they can’t stop or control. It’s sad, really, that the fate of democracy could end because Musk can’t handle a bit of online criticism.

The really depressing part is that the left can’t explain to the man in the street that the Musks of the world really are awful, and they should be nice to people who are different from them, without being accused of being elitist. Maybe I am elitist, he writes in his iPhone on the tube home from a London fringe theatre.

The sad thing is we’re staring into a future world shaped not by the voices that care for the victims, but by those who simply want to beat the angry drum to get more power for themselves. Another painful tragedy in this long list of misery is that it’s working.

2024: The year of volatility

And thus, democracy year comes to a close. What a year it has been. Nearly half the world’s population was eligible to vote, and more than 100 elections took place worldwide. This included elections in eight of the world's 10 most populous nations; Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia and the United States, for those who want to know. 

All this is a tribute to how far we have come as a civilisation in bringing basic rights to the people of the world. The only problem is that the world doesn’t feel like a better place after all this voting.

From Vladimir Putin to Narendra Modi and Donald Trump, the beneficiaries of all this democracy are at best ambivalent about it. The far-right is on the war path across Europe and the centrist governments of France and Germany look likely to topple. There’s a strong chance of the far-right taking control of the political, economic and cultural powerhouses of the Western World. Sometimes I feel that all we can do is watch it happen.

A nominally centre left government

Still, at least the UK elected a nominally centre left government this year. I’m heavily stretching the meaning of “nominally” in that sentence, as Kier Starmer won his huge majority by pandering to the grouchiness of centre right voters on everything from immigration to tax rises. They rewarded him by ditching the Conservatives and giving Starmer a thumping majority. Now he needs to prove that all this pandering was worth it.

Still, the commentators are happy. Tom McTague wrote in UnHerd, that Starmer’s serious-minded Labour will now ditch all that student politics virtue signalling of the Jeremy Corbyn era and get on with helping people. I await with bated breath for evidence of Starmer helping anyone other than himself to a corporate freebie. He had better get on it fast, as his poll rating is falling and his support is thin. Turnout was low in the election, as was his share of the vote. All this is just one of the signs that politics got even more volatile this year.

Starmer’s victory was the least surprising event of the year. After a local election drubbing for the Tories and the Blackpool North by-election delivering a 26% swing to Labour, the third highest swing from Conservative to Labour ever, it was clear that Starmer was going to win big in the inevitable general election. I guess he wanted to get the pain out of the way, so Rishi Sunak announced the election in the pouring rain and barely campaigned as his colleagues slowly declined to stand for re-election.

Voter volatility

It was at least satisfying to see the Tories get a kicking. I stayed up all night to watch them fall to a low of 121 seats, even more humiliating than their 1997 defeat. I enjoyed watching high profile arseholes like Liz Truss and Jacob Rees-Mogg lose their seats and look chagrined. It was also great to see four Green MPs elected. I voted Green after Labour made it clear that they didn’t want my vote or the votes of people who share my extremist values, like feeding children and not dying in a climate disaster.

Unfortunately, five Reform MPs were also elected in a worrying sign of the way things are going. This year’s election showed that voter volatility is higher than ever and that faith in politicians is lower than ever. As voters shop around more and more, we could easily see a big swing from Labour to Conservative or Labour to Reform or maybe even Labour to Greens (hopefully) in the next election.

Meet the new boss. Worse than the old boss

The Tory post-election introspection was about as deep as you would expect from a party of whom many people would be happy if Nigel Farage became a member. They decided that the reason they lost the election is that they weren’t insanely right-wing enough and duly elected a right-wing headbanger as their new leader, who promised to spray migrants with a fire hose of shit. Or something like that.

The Tories appear to be targeting the all-important swing voters who are cunts demographic and want to make no apology or concede any points on the mess they made of the economy, public services and their own reputation. Kemi Badenoch’s vibe is very much: meet the new boss. Worse than the old boss.

Agreeing and then changing the subject

Although, with immigration rapidly becoming the most saliant political issue and high inflation turning voters against incumbents worldwide, there is a good chance that the Tories are not running away to the right and leaving the centre ground to Labour (as Labour hope they are) but are perhaps finding a way to flip swing voters by focusing on socially conservative issues that matter to them.

All this right-wing rage will of course play into the hands of Farage and Reform. With them insurgent across many seats, we might discover quickly that many of the sensible centrist swing voters that Starmer won, and Corbyn lost, can be persuaded to vote for the far-right. Labour must work hard to counter this insurgency, although I don’t think Starmer can stand up to the right beyond agreeing with them and then trying to awkwardly change the subject.

Another win for democracy year

Speaking of electoral gains by the far-right this year, America managed to once again elect a fraudster, sexual predator and fascist. Truly this was another win for democracy year. Let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks that the most sensible approach to politics is to occupy the centre while the other party disappears to the right-wing fringes to scream about birth rates and globalists.

This year, we got to watch Joe Biden decomposing in public, Weekend at Bernie’s style, before eventually he got so bad that even the Democrats decided enough was enough and engaged in a quick bout of regicide. To be fair, Kamala Harris was a stronger presidential candidate, in that she could get through a whole sentence without needing a toilet break.

Borrowing from the Starmer playbook, the Democrats tried to make their ticket as comfortable as possible to moderate Republicans by banging on about Trump being obviously mendacious and playing up that Harris owned a gun and took the border seriously. Still, everyone thought she was woke, because she is a woman of colour from California, and decided that voting for her was the equivalent of a far-left transgender coupe, and voted for someone who previously tried to overthrow the government when he lost an election.

The sensible liberals who lost this election

Despite all the handwringing about wokeness and identity politics losing the election - mainly from the sort of people who would blame a bad snowstorm on the woke agenda - it was clearly the sensible liberals who lost this election. Harris got the endorsement of Dick Cheney, but still suburban Republicans voted for Trump. Maybe some real economic radicalism could have won this election. It certainly couldn’t have done any worse.

This year was also a year of increasing political violence; from several assassination attempts against Trump to a successful attempt on the life of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. As much as I think both people are high profile shits who have brought untold misery to the world, and if there was any justice they would spend the rest of their lives in prison rather than enjoying the lifestyle of the ultra-wealthy, I don’t think political disputes should be resolved with guns.

Extreme measures

This is despite these two high profile awful people meting out a huge amount of institutional violence to millions of people, which is apparently completely fine. Trump tried to overthrow the government, and that’s fine. Thompson denied life-saving treatments to millions of people, and that’s fine. However, organise a protest camp against the war in Gaza on your campus, then you get fireworks thrown at you before the police storm your tent.

At the same time, the nominal party of the American left shrugs at all this pain, passingly acknowledges it, then pals around with Dick Cheney and tech billionaires. Meanwhile the other party screams about Muslims and childless feminist cat ladies destroying Western civilisation, while doing their best to make everything worse. No wonder people are taking extreme measures. There’s literally no chance of anything else making a difference.

Hard to justify

Speaking of extreme acts of violence that are apparently okay, the war in Gaza has entered its second year and shows no signs of stopping. Israel continues to bomb the shit out of Gaza on the pretence that killing huge numbers of children and destroying schools and hospitals is needed to keep their citizens safe. This line is repeated over and over in Western media, as the images of dead bodies pile up on social media.

We tried asking Israel nicely to not show that behind the veneer of Western democracy lurks the cold dark hand of brutal oppression and that given the chance the so-called small “L” liberal states of the world will just kill huge numbers of people if they find it politically useful to do so. However, Israel isn’t listening and there is nothing else we can think to do.

Even the sensible centrists are holding their heads in their hands and saying that all this mass death without an end - now expanded into Lebanon - is getting a little hard to justify at their corporate after dinner speaking engagements, and maybe we should find a way to turn off the murder machine. Although, there are no attempts to actually do something. At this rate Britain and America will be fighting in the Middle East alongside Israel because it’s too awkward to tell them not to start World War 3.

Everything getting worse

Meanwhile the war in Ukraine also shows no sign of ending. This year there were several alarming escalations, including firing missiles into Russia itself. Between this irresolvable conflict and a recent revolution in Syria, the world in 2024 took another step into this new age of global conflict. Maybe 2025 will bring some resolution to these long running conflicts and a little peace to the war weary people of the world, but if I was a betting man, I would put money on everything getting worse.

On the digital front everything also got worse. Elon Musk continued to slide into right-wing extremism, backing Trump and starting fights with Labour MPs because they hurt his feelings and didn’t like the hate party he was at best allowing to happen on X, formally Twitter, currently the biggest smoking shit hole on the internet (which really is a big but awful accomplishment beating out some stiff competition).

The ultra libertarian free speech brigade continues to create spaces for right-wing extremists to radicalise lonely teenage boys by telling them that all girls have become evil so they should join the online Hitler Youth to save Western Civilisation from people who have read a book by Jeanette Winterson.

The worse people on the internet

There is apparently no way of stopping this. Calling people who mainline Andrew Tate content and spend all their time writing angry posts directed at Taylor Swift because she’s not a mum “stupid hate mongers” only makes the problem worse, as the followers of the Führer-elect who are supported by the world’s richest man claim they are the victims of the left-wing hegemony and scrappy underdogs in the fight against it, because Disney made a Star Wars show that had a black woman in it.

Listening to these people’s “concerns” is both deeply tedious and creates the sense of your brain rapidly dying. Pointing out that the worse people on the internet are wrong leads to a tide of hatred coming your way and more claims that head banging right-wing keyboard warriors are the real victims. The tech platforms have done everything they can to amplify these voices to keep everyone glued to their phones to sell more adverts. In 2025 these people will have real power but will still claim that they are oppressed by people who go to museums.

Musk and JD Vance want to be the kings of the people who yell at supermarket employees because they can’t find their favourite brand of all American beer-energy drink, and this is all the fault of a transgender teen in New York - they know because Joe Rogan told them so - and the left is helpless as the richest man in the world and the guy who is the heart beat of a very unhealthy 78-year-old man away from being the most powerful person in the world make all this possible to feed their own already planet size but weirdly fragile egos.

Things can only get better

Oh, and while they’re not doing this, the tech industry is finding ways to hand everyone’s jobs over to AI, because the last round of mass unemployment and deindustrialisation only made Western politics and economics more stable, and everyone happier. Hopefully, a super intelligent AI god will save us from the reign of tech bros because their own conscience and sense of social obligation won’t.

Next year, I will be sitting back and watching with a permanent expression of horror as Trump becomes president again, surrounded by the worst sycophants and enablers he can find. Meanwhile Labour continues to find creative ways to say that now is not the time to make things better, while their poll rating falls and Reform’s rises, all while the climate continues to get worse and worse until we are all drowning under storm surges.

I look forward to the tons of op-eds in 2025 from centrist publications explaining that this is actually a good thing, and that the early 00s good times are just around the corner again. See, Oasis is touring again, and Wallace and Gromit are on TV at Christmas. Things can only get better, right? Right?

The strength to endure another year

I guess I should end by saying something optimistic. What does give me hope is the ordinary people doing what they can with their free time - between handling the social care the state should provide, coping with the cost-of-living crisis and screaming into the void - to make the world a better place.

From organising local community centres for people who can’t afford to keep the heating on, to churches and mosques and temples running food banks, to people protesting about Gaza and keeping the world’s attention focused on the mass murder there, to people organising to protect abortion rights in America or trans-rights here, everything you do, big and small, makes this world a better place. This gives me the strength to endure another year.

Murder is not the answer to America’s healthcare problems, but people are driven to extremes by politicians’ lack of action

Let me begin with the same disclaimer I made in my post about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump: killing people is wrong. We should do politics with words and not guns. This applies to the several countries around the world currently trying to bring others to heel with military force as well as people killing awful CEOs. His death is a tragedy for Brian Thompson's friends and family. However, for the millions of people whose lives have been devastated by his industry’s actions, it feels like grim poetic justice. 

It’s tempting to focus on how this has become a chit in the discourse, the inevitable memes, the schadenfreude of a corporate titan cut down leaving an investors meeting. Beyond the viral glee lies a deeper, more urgent truth: acts like this, however misguided, are born of despair.

The American healthcare system isn’t just broken, it’s a morally bankrupt machine of profit extraction. Health insurance companies rake in billions while denying coverage for life-saving treatments. Families are bankrupted by medical bills for treatments that are free in many other countries. Companies like Thompson's UnitedHealthcare operate with impunity, shielded by politicians who pocket their donations, and a Supreme Court stacked to value corporate rights over human lives.

The system doesn’t work

This system isn’t just cruel; it’s absurdly inefficient. America spends more on healthcare than any other nation, yet its outcomes lag behind poorer countries like Cuba. No one, not even the staunchest defender of free markets, can seriously argue this system works.

So why don’t politicians fix it? Well, no one agrees on an alternative and no one in power is willing to risk the wrath of their donors to pursue one. Democrats acknowledge the problem but offer half-measures, hoping to appease their corporate sponsors while avoiding outright revolt from their base. Republicans, meanwhile, openly pledge to make things worse, treating the misery of ordinary people as collateral damage in their ideological crusades.

The killing of Thompson is a direct consequence of this paralysis. People feel abandoned by their leaders and hopeless about change. When a system produces nothing but suffering and indifference, some will resort to dramatic - and yes, regrettable - acts of protest.

Wall Street vs Main Street

These events also create a challenge for the newly re-elected President Trump. His supporters, like everyone else, suffer under the yoke of healthcare companies. They, too, watch their loved ones go without treatment, drown in debt, or die prematurely. Trump’s supporters want action from the man who has promised to take on the fat cats getting rich from “American carnage” and a victory for Main Street over Wall Street. Thompson is a symbol of the dominance of Wall Street; can Trump improve healthcare for the guy on Main Street?

Most likely, instead of addressing their pain, Trump will distract his supporters with more culture war antics and racist hot air. How much longer can he sustain this charade before his base demand real change? I’m sure many gun toting Trump supporters would like to see some more CEOs shot. Can Trump channel this anger? Or will this be the issue where blue-collar Americans finally wake up to the fact that this billionaire, like all billionaires, isn’t really on their side?

What is the electoral button we push to make things better?

The truth is, killing isn’t the answer. With my sensible middle-aged hat on, I have to say that murder is wrong even for people who have brought untold misery to millions. They should face justice from the law, not extrajudicial killings. This applies to people accused of committing crimes as well as the people who get rich off human suffering. Maybe I’m naive. I’m certainly not holding my breath for lawful justice for billionaires.

The deeper question remains: what is the electoral button we push to make things better? Without politicians offering real alternatives, this despair will only fester, and violent protests will follow.

The American healthcare crisis is a national humiliation, a source of misery, and an emblem of political failure. It cannot be ignored any longer. If this latest incident teaches us anything, it’s that people won’t stay silent forever. They need hope, they need alternatives, and most importantly, they need leaders brave enough to deliver both.

Steve Rayson’s Collapse of the Conservatives shows how Labour benefited from voters’ volatility but may also suffer from it

As the year draws to a close, we look back on a momentous UK general election that reshaped the political landscape. Labour achieved a historic landslide victory, reversing its fortunes less than five years after a crushing defeat, while the Conservatives suffered their worst loss since 1997. Now, as the dust settles, we can begin to comprehend the forces behind this political earthquake.

The most comprehensive exploration of the 2024 election’s outcome comes from Steve Rayson in his new book, Collapse of the Conservatives: Volatile Voters, Broken Britain, and a Punishment Election. This deeply researched account traces the roots of the Conservative Party’s collapse, beginning with Boris Johnson’s tumultuous tenure and the seismic challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rayson meticulously examines the past five years of political upheaval, detailing the factors that turned voters against the Tories and culminated in their catastrophic defeat.

Nothing works anymore

Central to the book is the emergence of a clear political narrative the spread of which led to the Tories’ downfall: “Nothing works anymore because the Conservatives are incompetent and should be punished.” Rayson identifies three core elements of this narrative:

1. Nothing works anymore – the collapse in standards in key public services

2. Conservatives are incompetent – the perception that recent Tory governments have been riddled with mismanagement.

3. The Conservatives should be punished – a voter backlash fuelled by frustration and anger.

Drawing on an impressive array of focus group data, polling, and analytical studies, Rayson paints a comprehensive picture of how voter attitudes evolved. He charts the erosion of the Conservatives’ reputation for economic competence, the rise of Reform UK siphoning off traditional Tory voters, and the growing centrality of migration as a political issue.

Voter volatility

What makes this political moment unique, as Rayson argues, is the volatility of modern voter behaviour. Traditional coalitions no longer hold, with voters increasingly willing to switch allegiances. Rayson quotes pollster James Kanagasooriam’s apt summary of this development: “Political coalitions these days are more like sandcastles—impressive but liable to be swept away.”

From a left-wing perspective, my key takeaway is that Collapse of the Conservatives emphasises that the Tories lost this year’s election rather than Labour winning it. As Rayson notes, Keir Starmer benefited from an electorate overwhelmingly intent on punishing the Conservatives. However, this presents a precarious mandate for Labour. Starmer must now deliver on critical issues, such as NHS waiting times and economic growth, or risk losing support in an era of widespread political distrust.

Rayson underscores this fragility: “Despite its landslide victory in seats, the Labour Party’s vote share was still fragile and the fragmentation of its coalition was visible in the seats it lost to independent candidates and the Greens.” The decline in Starmer’s approval ratings post-election further highlights the challenges Labour faces in maintaining its coalition.

Jenga tower

The book’s final chapters look to the future, particularly the election of Kemi Badenoch as the new Conservative leader. Rayson argues that the Tories face a daunting task in rebuilding trust on economic issues, countering Reform’s rise, and navigating an electorate increasingly resistant to stable political loyalties.

He warns that Labour’s current majority could prove ephemeral: “The Labour government’s majority has been compared to a Jenga tower, which has been raised high by taking blocks out of the foundations. The result is a tall tower with a base full of holes that could collapse very quickly.”

Collapse of the Conservatives is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the political landslide of 2024. However, my main take away from reading it is that despite the many political shocks of the last four years, the volatility of modern politics has not been resolved by this year’s general election and we could be in for many more political surprises in the future.

Collapse of the Conservatives: Volatile Voters, Broken Britain and a Punishment Election by Steve Rayson is out today and can be purchased from Amazon.

Polling station image taken by Rachel H and used under creative commons.

What does the left do now that Trump will be President, again

In the build up to the Presidential election I had heard a lot of talk that Kamala Harris was likely to win, and even win big. At first I was doubtful, as everyone seems to continually underestimate Donald Trump’s appeal, but as the message was repeated I allowed myself to be convinced. I should have trusted my cynicism. 

I won’t list the supposedly crucial factors that would have led to a Harris victory that never materialised. Needless to say, a lot of people now have egg on their face. The Democrats in particular, and liberals and lefties across the world in general, need to have a hard look at themselves.

How did a supremely well qualified and experienced candidate badly lose an election to a ridiculous clown, who is a convicted felon that frequently spouts gibberish and has an authoritarian streak a mile wide? The specifics will come out in the wash, but the left’s complacency has been revealed.

Big problems facing the left across the world

Lots of things have been blamed for Harris’s failure, from swing voters caring more about immigration and inflation than we thought, to the rising cost of living, to incumbents losing elections across the world, to the increasing radicalisation of young men.

All are important, but we can’t point to one issue and claim it alone explains why a dangerous authoritarian has taken control of the world’s largest government machine, army and second largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. No one factor can explain the reason for the avalanche of oppression likely to fall on migrants, people of colour and LGBTQ+ people.

Not just an American problem

Nor can we exclusively claim this is an American problem. The toxic mix of outright hatred, nationalism, anti-establishment bile, and conspiracy theories that Trump peddles also led to the election of five Reform MPs in this year’s UK general election, despite a sweeping victory from a centrist party. Labour’s wide but shallow support could mean that in the next election we see a huge victory for a right-wing Tory leader as well as continual growth in support for Reform.

Liberal and left-wing politics is not connecting with voters. What we’re selling, from tolerance towards migrants and trans people to respect for institutions such as universities or a culture that celebrates diversity, is being roundly rejected by swing voters who are delivering victories for increasingly right-wing leaders. Everything from gay rights, to environmental policy to even diversity and inclusion in the work place is under threat.

Harris owned a gun

We need to be clear about why this is happening. The explanation needs to go beyond whether Harris hugged the flag enough, or shaking our heads and saying that voters just don’t want immigration. Harris owned a gun and was as patriotic as the next American. Also, the point of left-wing politics is to encourage tolerance for people and not shrug when the tide of popular opinion turns against immigration and act as if nothing can be done while the concentration camps for migrants spring up all around us.

Yes, the cost of living and inflation has put a lot of pressure on many people’s livelihoods and they’re looking for a leader who will improve their situation. However, it doesn’t automatically follow that people will then want an authoritarian strongman to engage in mass deportations and military trials for his enemies. The question is not why did people want change? It’s, why do they want the change that a far-right thug is offering?

Tired of being lectured

One explanation is that the honest, god fearing, salt of the earth swing voters are fed up with being called racist, sexist and transphobic just for liking first-person shooters, enjoying Ricky Gervais’s latter day material and not knowing the proper pronouns to use for the young staff in their local TK Maxx. The left should get off its high horse about people who aren’t ultra-progressive and on Instagram. Let’s talk more about wages and less about Palestine.

Then again, what these honest, god fearing, salt of the earth swing voters are angry about - aside from low wage growth, which is as much a problem for New York and London’s young professional social media admins as it is for the manual labourers of Wisconsin and Workington - what really makes them resentful of modern society is that there are now women and people of colour in Star Wars.

The left is also not connecting with the swing voters who never, ever, even for one second, shut up about immigration. We are also struggling to win over the people who are opposed to any change to society, are hopping mad at the idea that people in a city miles away from them are living a life they don’t understand or approve of (and some of these people want to do sports) and boil with rage at the thought that somewhere someone is eating a burrito they didn’t earn.

Swing voters won’t support the woke or a woman

This isn’t 2012, 2016 or 2020. The “woke revolution,” whatever it was supposed to be, is dead and buried. Maybe there was a time when left-wing politicians were concerned with tackling micro-aggressions, maybe around the time of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, but those days are long gone. Even AOC talks about aspiration now, and the Labour Party prefers to pal around with big business instead of student activists. Voters might be put off by lefty politics, but the established parties of the left have got the memo and run in the opposite direction. Yet still it wasn’t enough for Harris to win.

Harris was a cop (well, a state prosecutor) who owned a gun and was a vocal supporter of Israel. She wasn’t a 2010s era Tumblr leftie. Yet still the swing voters, at least enough of them to throw the election to Trump the crooked authoritarian, took one look at a woman centrist, cop, patriot, who owns a gun and said that she is a woke extremist and won’t vote for her. Just being a woman is enough to be considered woke unless you act like Katie Hopkins.

Remember these aren’t people marching with torches chanting “Jews will not replace us.” We’re talking about the average swing voter. Will the world be a better place after the left becomes even more focused on pandering to the prejudices of angry Boomers? Even if the left can get into power, is it worth it if the cost is throwing ourselves wholeheartedly into the arms race of who can be the nastiest to migrants? My answer to both these questions is no, but I have no idea how we are supposed to change things for the better.

What the left is selling

Why didn’t people think that taxing the rich and reducing the huge expenditure of the American government on war was the solution? Why didn’t people in Britain feel that the solution to years of austerity and poor wage growth was some radical redistribution? Because the left hasn’t made an argument that really connects with people. That’s what stops us changing things for the better.

We blame the media, or the Democratic Party machine, or the age of the electorate, or voters being stupid for the fact that left wing policies aren’t seen as the solutions voters reach for in these times of crisis, but the simple truth is that people don’t want left-wing solutions to their problems. They want right-wing ones.

Maybe Keir Starmer is on to something and the only way for the left or liberals to win over swing voters is by putting forward a bland white man who promises no change, but offers to deliver better than the right on cutting immigration and maximising the gains to be rung from our crumbling economic system. Maybe we do win by ditching commitments on climate change and raising taxes, because people hate lefties and the woke so much that there is no alternative.

Continuing downward spiral

In Britain with a new and even more right-wing Tory leader we need to be wary of Trump’s unexpected victory as we could be looking at an unexpected Tory victory in four or five years. The left needs to get better at arguing our position and convincing people to vote for us. This won’t be easy, but the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Then again, I feel sceptical about my own words. I don’t want politics to become even more geared towards people who only believe in two immutable genders, despise any help going to the poor and will not tolerate any change to the ethnic makeup of their country. If we don’t win over these people then the far-right cleans up. However, the only way to win them over is by becoming right-wing. *Cough* Keir Starmer *Cough*.

An authoritarian thug has just been re-elected President of the United States in a result that will be terrible for democracy, the environment, people of colour, women, LGBTQ+ people and anyone opposed to our continuing civilisational downward spiral into oblivion. The left needs to get better at making our arguments or this disaster will only be the beginning of the nightmare we find ourselves in. The problem is, how do we convince the people who don’t want to wake up from the nightmare?

Donald Trump picture taken by Gage Skidmore and used under creative commons.

Kemi Badenoch will take the Tories to the right, which might be bad news for Labour

Well, well, well. After what feels like three centuries of musical chairs at Conservative HQ, the Tories have a new leader, and it’s none other than Kemi Badenoch. She’s stepping up to take on a task so unappealing it makes cleaning a festival porta-loo seem like a cushy gig: rescuing the party after a drubbing at the general election; and by "rescuing," I mean attempting to herd a party that’s simultaneously being gnawed at by Labour on one side, the Lib Dems on the other, and Reform snapping like a rabid terrier at its ankles.

Let’s be clear: Badenoch’s victory isn’t the result of a party engaged in a serious bout of post-defeat retrospection. Labour is gleefully occupying what used to be the Tories’ centre/centre-right turf, and Nigel Farage’s gang of merry contrarians are making serious overtures to the disillusioned right. Badenoch’s job is like being told to reassemble IKEA furniture after a herd of wildebeest has trampled through it, only to find the manual has been replaced by The Daily Telegraph’s culture war section.

Labour, meanwhile, is breathing a sigh of relief. Their worst nightmare wasn’t Badenoch; it was Robert Jenrick. Yes, that guy. No, I couldn’t pick him out of a line up either. Jenrick was the man who looked ready to try something radical: apologising for the mess, admitting mistakes, and pivoting back to the centre. Jenrick, to some, represented the chance for a more palatable, less shouty Tory brand. However, the party faithful decided they hadn’t gone far enough to the right, and Badenoch rode that sentiment all the way to the top.

Looking competent

This logic, baffling to most outside the Conservative echo chamber, is music to Labour ears. “Perfect,” they say, dusting off their 1997 playbook. “You go off and yell about ‘woke’ biscuits and declining birth rates while we get on with the serious business of governance, economic growth, and seducing sensible centrists.” Labour’s plan is to focus on looking calm, competent, and electable, because, as the centrists will tell you, "competence" is what wins elections.

That’s the narrative, anyway: a rerun of the Tories’ wilderness years post-1997. However, if Labour thinks this is a done deal, they might want to consider the unpredictability of politics for the last ten years. Labour assumes the Tories are doomed to repeat their post-1997 trajectory: splinter, squabble, and fade into irrelevance while the grown-ups in red get on with running the country. However, they might be underestimating the resilience of the right.

The key issue is immigration

Here’s the thing about centrist voters: they’re not as allergic to right-wing politics as some might hope. Immigration, for instance, remains a hot-button issue, and Badenoch knows it. Under Rishi Sunak, the Tories lost their edge on immigration, leaving swing voters disillusioned. If Badenoch makes immigration her rallying cry - and let’s be honest, she will - she could claw back support, even from those sensible centrists Labour is banking on.

Let’s not forget, plenty of people voted for Brexit in 2016 not because they thought it was sensible, but because it wasn’t. It was an anti-establishment cry, a collective “shove it” to the status quo. Labour, now looking increasingly like the establishment, risks underestimating how seductive Badenoch’s brand of cultural combativeness could be. There’s a reason Farage still commands attention at the bar of British politics.

Many swing voters defected to Labour not out of love for Sir Keir Starmer’s charming pragmatism, but simply to register dissatisfaction. If Badenoch can recapture their faith on immigration, it’s not inconceivable she could claw back a significant chunk of those swing voters.

Bellicose right-wing culture war rhetoric

This is where things get worrying. By dragging immigration and other far-right issues into the mainstream, Badenoch won’t just energise her base; she’ll legitimise Reform in ways that could seriously hurt Labour. Expect the Tories and Reform to start nibbling away at Labour’s flanks, particularly if Starmer’s government stumbles on delivering economic growth or keeping immigration numbers down.

Labour might console themselves with the thought that Badenoch’s bellicose right-wing culture war rhetoric will alienate sensible centrists, but they should remember how fluid the electorate is. Plenty of people oscillate between Labour, Lib Dems, Tories, and even Reform depending on the cultural winds. Badenoch doesn’t need to win everyone over; she just needs enough disaffected centrists who’d rather gripe about immigration than cheer for a competent but uninspiring Labour government.

I could end up eating my hat

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe in five years, I’ll be eating my hat as Starmer coasts to a second term, having delivered a respectable 2% economic growth and convinced everyone that Badenoch is a swivel-eyed weirdo best left to the fringes. I’d toast to that with a pint of hoppy craft beer and a smug grin given the chance.

Labour would be foolish to bet the house on that. Badenoch’s victory could signal a new wave of right-wing populism that Labour is dangerously unprepared to counter. The Conservatives are down, but they’re far from out. Brace yourselves, Britain, the political turmoil isn’t over yet.

By Roger Harris, CC BY 3.0,

The 2024 Labour Budget: A real left-wing budget? Or rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic

This week, history was made, or at least gently nudged, as Rachel Reeves delivered the first Labour budget since 2010, and the first ever from a woman. Labour has spent years promising that when the time came, they’d show us exactly how they’d fix this nation’s problems. So, no more fence-sitting. No more ambiguity. Now is the moment for bold, specific action.

What did we get? A budget that was less “seizing the reins of power” and more “trying not to spill tea on the sofa while shuffling to the centre of the room.”

The good news. Such as it is

Let’s start with the positives, since I am told optimism is important. There are some good things in this budget, albeit of the “sensible shoes” variety. Workers’ rights have been improved, the minimum wage increased, and the NHS has received a funding boost that will probably keep it limping along for another couple of winters. Housing also got a nod, although probably not enough to make a substantial difference.

Tax rises? Barely. The only substantial increase was on capital gains tax. It was nice to see stamp duty on second homes go up from 3% to 5%, but it’s hardly a wealth redistribution masterstroke.

Meanwhile, corporation tax remains unchanged, presumably so Keir Starmer can keep receiving freebies. Defence spending went up, because of course it did, nothing says sensible centrist government like spending more money on more weapons, while quietly walking past starving children.

A revolution in name only

So, was it all worth it? All the saying that Labour won’t do this that and the other when in power. All the triangulation and the moving to the centre? The ditching of environmental commitments? Saying they’ll keep the two child benefit cap? Was it worth dumping all the left-wing commitments in favour of a budget that can best be described as inoffensively underwhelming? 

Apparently so, if you ask the New Statesman, which gushed that this budget was properly left-wing. Really? Maybe my memory has been scrambled by years of gaslighting by a media that thinks David Cameron is a progressive because he didn’t openly spit on immigrants and wanted to stay in the EU. If this budget is the new left-wing, I’m going to need a new thesaurus, because “radical” clearly doesn’t mean what it used to.

Fixing the nation’s crumbling Infrastructure?

For a country held together with duct tape and misplaced nostalgia, you might expect a bit more urgency from the new Labour government. Britain is still in the grip of social and economic crises: housing is unaffordable, inequality is grotesque, public services are falling apart and this budget does little to address any of it.

Yes, there’s more NHS funding and some increased workers’ rights, but where’s the grand vision? Where’s the bold plan to fix the social contract or rebalance the tax burden? Younger workers still shoulder the heaviest tax load, while wealthy pensioners gently applaud Labour from their second homes. The tax burden continues to favour capital over labour, ensuring that Britain remains a paradise for landlords and hedge funds, but a nightmare for anyone under 40 trying to buy a house.

The growth question

If Labour’s going to win re-election - and frankly, I’m not taking anything for granted at this point - it needs to deliver actual economic growth. Not growth that helps oligarchs add to their yacht collection. Labour needs to foster businesses that create wealth for everyone, not just a handful of hedge-funders laughing into their champagne.

This budget doesn’t even begin to do that. If there was a plan to turbocharge innovation or encourage investment in the businesses of the future, it’s hiding so well that I can’t find it.

The Starmer effect

In many ways, this budget sums up everything about Starmer’s Labour: all the buildup, all the promises, and then … a lot of hot air, leading to something deeply disappointing and almost aggressively dull.

So here we are, with Labour firmly planted in the centre, carefully avoiding upsetting anyone who might write op-eds about fiscal responsibility. Meanwhile, the problems facing the country remain stubbornly unsolved. If this is Labour’s idea of progress, we might as well invest in a good pair of walking boots, because the road ahead is looking long, bleak, and deeply uninspiring.

GBP image created by Joegoauk Goa and is used under creative commons.

With the Labour freebies scandal Starmer has wasted his opportunity to restore faith in politics

I’m not a fan of Keir Starmer, so you’ll forgive me for a little bit of schadenfreude at the scandal that he has found himself in. I’m mainly feeling smug because this is one blow to the Labour Party that cannot be blamed on the left. It happened because Starmer likes free gifts - who doesn’t? – but, apparently, he didn’t anticipate that voters would object to this.

Most people’s jobs come with travel paid for to attend meetings or a free lunch at Christmas - although lots of people earning less than MPs don’t even get these freebies - but Arsenal, Coldplay and Taylor Swift tickets are not the perks of a normal job. They also show that Starmer has terrible taste.

Wasting a once in a generation chance

The sad problem with all of this is it just further alienates voters. We’ve had years of Tory incompetence and corruption, and Starmer promised a fresh start. He had a once in a generation chance to wipe away people’s cynicism about politics by working hard to improve people’s lives. Y’know, the thing he said he would do.

Instead, he’s burned all his goodwill for free football tickets and clothes for his wife. This will make it so much easier for whichever right-wing nutter the Tories choose as their leader to convince voters that all politicians are the same, so they might as well vote for the corrupt toff who will shoot boats of migrants crossing the channel as that will at least make Cynical Chris from Nuneaton feel tough while he’s been ripped off.

Playing politics on easy mode

It’s often said that the Tories play politics on easy mode. That a right-leaning press and the general small C conservative sympathies of swing voters across the country mean that they can fuck up or announce ridiculous things without the same level of scrutiny that ruins the careers of even moderate Labour politicians.

Starmer has been playing politics on easy mode since Boris Johnson detonated his own premiership and everyone decided that they had had enough of the buffoons in blue. Playing on easy mode is what has allowed him to go back on every commitment he made to become Labour leader and face no consequences. This appears to have led to complacency about how all these freebies will be received by Daily Mail readers in Workington, i.e. the people whose opinions matter.

What did these gifts buy?

Starmer has received £107,145 worth of gifts, benefits, and hospitality since the 2019 general election. It’s worth pointing out that Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn received very little, so this isn’t something that every leader of the Labour Party indulges in.

Look at that figure for a second. That is a staggering amount of money. It’s nearly three times what I get paid in a year for my very regular boring office job. It’s certainly way out of the reach of most people, so I can see why everyone is very angry.

Obviously, gifts of this size don’t come without strings attached or at least an audience with the giver. People are right to want to know what form of access or influence these gifts bought. Especially for a new government that has been less than clear about the difficult decisions it will have to make.

The shortest-lived huge majority in history

Starmer can’t keep being complacent and acting as if he’s playing politics on easy mode. The Tories will soon have a new leader, willing to take the fight to the incumbents who aren’t solving all the problems without the need for any sacrifices from anyone. At that point things will get much tougher for Starmer.

If Starmer wants to hang on to his massive majority, then he needs to start acting like everything he does will be used against him. Or else this will be the shortest-lived huge majority in history.

We are still in the Renaissance: How the art, culture and politics of Florence helps us understand how this city has shaped the West and what could come next

Europe, its ideals, its history, its culture and its politics is contained within Florence. There is a lot you can learn from visiting the city and learning about its past and present.

Florence is a European city with a population just shy of 400,000 in the centre of Italy. It’s a very popular travel destination and is known worldwide for its art, history, food, wine, architecture and leather. The word Florence is a placeholder for the city’s history and culture. Hearing or reading the name brings all this complexity to mind, but how do we unpack exactly what we think about when we think about Florence?

The best place to start is with what Florence is best known for: its Renaissance art history. Through these works of art, we can see how the city presented itself in the past and the present.

Art and Florence’s museums

There are some staggeringly famous paintings in the collections of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. This includes works by Sandro Botticelli, such as The Birth of Venus and Spring. Botticelli had a very distinctive style. As well as embodying the emerging style of the Renaissance, his work draws on Mediaeval tapestries and the art of the ancient world.

His paintings convey a delicate beauty, seen most clearly in The Birth of Venus. Although this is a painting of a scene from Roman mythology, the fragile beauty with which Botticelli painted these figures was not a feature of ancient art. It was something introduced to Western art by Mediaeval paintings of the Madonna.

There are many other incredibly beautiful pieces of art that fill the halls of Florence’s museums, which have been made in the city over the years. This includes Venus of Urbino by Titian, a painting so sumptuous that you could almost step into the room it depicts, and Michelangelo’s sculpture of David, the perfect incarnation of Florentine confidence during the Renaissance. The key thing about all these famous works of art is that they show the beauty of the physical world, not the perfection of the spiritual world.

The architecture of Florence

The other aspect of Florence that both shows the beauty of the physical world and is a key element of the Renaissance is the city’s architecture. There are so many beautiful buildings in Florence, it’s hard to know where to start when looking at the city’s architecture. I would recommend beginning with one of the smaller buildings, although it’s no less interesting than the famous landmarks.

The Pazzi Chapel is a small chapel in the Basilica di Santa Croce designed by the iconic Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi. Here is where Renaissance architecture began, as the chapel marks a break with the previously dominant gothic style of religious architecture. The art historian and broadcaster Kenneth Clark (not to be confused with the Tory politician, he spells Clarke with an “e”) described the Pazzi chapel as possessing the architecture of humanism, a building made in proportion to humans. This humanist approach is essential to understanding the art of Florence and the Renaissance.

Of course, the most famous and most striking building in Florence is the Duomo, Florence’s Cathedral; also designed by Brunelleschi, later in his career than the Pazzi chapel. This huge cathedral possessed at one point the tallest dome in the world and is both an artistic and engineering marvel. Its distinctive tall dome is a technical innovation that distinguishes it from the flatter domes of the ancient world, found on the Pantheon for example. The interior is decorated with beautiful frescoes, mainly on the inside of the huge dome.

New architecture drawing on the ancient world

Brunelleschi was the founding father of Renaissance architecture, and the Duomo is his masterpiece. Brunelleschi incorporated elements of Ancient Greek and Roman architecture into his designs. He used porticos, arches and domes, which are Roman, but added Greek columns making Renaissance architecture a fusion of both Ancient Greece and Rome.

This was a new style of architecture for a new Renaissance culture, incorporating elements of the past but to create something new. There was a harmony between the interior and exterior aspects of Brunelleschi's buildings. This was a break with gothic architecture where buildings were made on an inhuman scale, which made people feel small and insignificant next to the power of the divine. By contrast the Pazzi chapel is almost cosy. It’s reassuringly human and its human proportions reflect the dignity that humans are entitled to, which was emphasised in Renaissance philosophy.

Much of Renaissance architecture was inspired by Vitruvius's book on architecture, the only treatise on architecture to survive from the ancient world, where he emphasises that architecture should be based on the proportion of the human body. His views inspired many Renaissance buildings, as well as another iconic symbol of the Renaissance: Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

Humanism as the Renaissance knew it

Vitruvian Man is a drawing, but it unites both Renaissance art and architecture in that it contains the two key philosophical elements of Renaissance thinking: humanism and anthropocentrism.

Humanism, in this sense, is the idea that all human beings have dignity and the right to self-determination and happiness. Also, that there should be a striving for human excellence. It is a belief that the world was created for humans and the existence of humans adds beauty to the world; beauty not found in God’s creation. This isn’t humanism in the Richard Dawkins sense, a denial of God’s existence or his moral authority, but humanism as an emphasis on human exceptionalism.

The concept is best embodied by the Humanist hive in Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota novels. The hive is a collection of individuals committed to human achievement in all fields, from the arts to science to sport, and the fact that the Humanists’ entire society is geared towards advancing human excellence in all fields is a perfect encapsulation of Renaissance humanism. Palmer herself is a historian of the Renaissance, when she is not writing science fiction novels.

What is anthropocentrism?

Anthropocentrism, the other crucial Renaissance value seen in the art of the period, is the idea that humans, and not God, are the philosophical centre of the universe. God is still the creator of the universe, but humans can change it to something that suits them. This is again reflected in Renaissance art’s focus on humans.

These two philosophical concepts are best summed up by Ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras saying that “man is the measure of all things,” which Kenneth Clarke used as the title for his film on the early Renaissance in his landmark art history TV series Civilisation.

These philosophical concepts are the foundation of our modern world. We still put humans at the centre of our culture and politics, despite attempts to suggest that putting the planet at the centre might be more sustainable in the long term. We believe that humans can remake the world and that humans bring beauty to the world.

We are still in the Renaissance

The humanist drive for excellence can be seen today in our attraction to great works of art, or in the hero worship of artists, sports people or scientists. Similarly, humanism’s emphasis on the dignity of people can be seen in our modern concepts of civil rights and social justice.

We are still in the Renaissance, on some level. It was a philosophical shift we have not escaped. Even modernism’s attempts to tear down all that came before to build something better, ultimately led to the concept being layered on top of Renaissance philosophy, rather than replacing it. Our thinking is still governed by humanism and anthropocentrism, which is the legacy that Florence has given to the world.

New writing and new ways of thinking

The stunning culture produced over the centuries in Florence also includes writing. Dante Alighieri lived here and wrote his Divine Comedy in the city. In doing so, he not only changed the Christian understanding of hell, purgatory and heaven, but also created his own world through the power of his writing.

Francesco Petrarch, an iconic thinker and writer of the Renaissance, was also from Florence. Petrarch is regarded as the first humanist and his work spans both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. He was also the first person to read and understand ancient literature and led a revival of the Latin language. As Clarke said in Civilisation, Petrarch championed the idea of a “revival under the influence of classical [antique] culture.”

Renaissance philosophy began with Petrarch and Dante. They came up with new ways of thinking that reached back into the Ancient World, but also responded to the times they lived in. They created the literary and philosophical values of the Renaissance. Philosophy became related to humans rather than God.

Science and philosophy in a religious age

This was still a very religious time, but the achievements of people were seen as the greatest praise of humanity’s creator. Ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras’s pronouncement that “man is the measure of all things” became the phrase that summed up the time, just as Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man was the image.

What we might describe as modern science began through the Renaissance’s philosophical investigations. During the Renaissance philosophers wanted to understand how the world worked. They became less interested in questions like "how many angels are there" and more interested in questions about the world around us.

There was also an increase in interest in ethics, as this was the dawn of the era of humanism. Renaissance values dominated writing and thinking. Even Dante’s writing is less focused on the Mediaeval glorification of God, and more focused on how human life can be better lived (within the context of a divine judgement).

Florence as a modern city

These key people, from Brunelleschi to Dante to Botticelli, helped create the modern world. They are all connected to Florence and all from the early Renaissance, a time where art, writing and thinking reconnected with the Ancient World. Florence was the centre of this movement, and it has left its mark on the city and the world.

Is Florence best summarised by its Renaissance history and the contribution it has made to our thinking? Florence is a modern city with modern amenities, not just old buildings and art. During a recent trip, I visited the area around the University of Florence’s School of Architecture. This is a Shoreditch-like area of the city complete with craft beer bars and casual dining restaurants.

The middle-class culture of places such as this is found all over the world, from Bed–Stuy to Budapest. It was once described as hipster, but it’s now mainstream. It both transcends and embraces local culture. I ate at Nugolo, whose sparse almost industrial interiors and menu featuring unusual modern takes on classic Italian dishes was reminiscent of places I have eaten in London, Berlin and San Francisco. You could pick up this part of Florence and drop it in East London and everyone would carry on as they were.

Hipster culture in Florence

Is this to say that this area of Florence is the same as everywhere else? At least in terms of contemporary culture? Partly, yes. The internet and globalisation have spread a standardised Western middle-class culture - let’s call it Hipster for want of a better word - all over the world and Florence is no exception.

Like most cultures, Hipster culture is not a monolith and in Florence, like everywhere else, it’s adapted to the local environment. It has grown into the city’s culture and not flattened it. Tuscan wines and the region's notoriously good meat are adapted to the modern Hipster tastes.

All this is to say that Florence is not just history, art and things that happened a long time ago. There is a vibrant modern culture to the city, which is more representative of how people live now and is thus a better way to understand Florence.

From culture to politics

Culture is merely one competing means to investigate the nature of Florence as a place. There are many others: sport, language and, of course, politics. I will focus on politics as I know next to nothing about sport.

Shortly after my visit to Florence, Italy had a general election where the far-right politician Giorgia Meloni became Prime Minister. Italian politics has been through a period of severe instability. The turmoil has been so extreme it makes British politics look positively dull. The country overall has become significantly poorer since the 2008 financial crash and people are increasingly angry about it.

All sorts of coalitions have been tried, from an alliance of the populist right with the populists centre (that was the League and Five Star government), to a government led by the self-styled Tony Blair of Italy Matteo Renzi, to one led by former President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi and now this far-right government.

Italian politics is a microcosm of the problems of 21st century Europe. Low wage, low growth, low productivity, an ageing population (Italy has the highest median age in Europe and the second highest in the world, behind Japan), rising populism, extremes of all kinds and a lack of consensus as to how to tackle the problems. Italy has tried everything, but nothing makes a difference.

What can Machiavelli teach us?

When investigating politics, a famous Florentine provides some useful insights. Perhaps the most famous, or infamous, writer on politics was from Florence, Niccolo Machiavelli.

Machiavelli’s writing is foundational for many peoples’ thinking about politics. Rory Stewart quotes extensively from Machiavelli in his book, Occupational Hazards, about being a coalition governor in post invasion Iraq. Machiavelli has a lot to teach us about politics, but it’s worth remembering his writing comes from a world before our modern understanding of the state or our modern politics. The Florence where Machiavelli lived and was buried - I saw his tomb whilst I was there - is almost beyond our understanding today.

Machiavelli is often quoted and often misunderstood. His central point is that politicians should be effective, not nice, and defend the state from external and internal threats. People with a cynical view of politics often use Machiavelli as a justification for strongman rule or brute force. This is an oversimplification. Machiavelli did endorse the use of violence, but he thought a good leader shouldn’t use violence too much, or he will get a reputation for excessive cruelty.

An age of violence

Machiavelli thought a leader should be tough, but not too tough. He wrote that being a good politician is not the same as being a good person. Modern democratic politicians and voters can learn from this. Expecting our leaders to be perfect is too high a standard for them to live up to.

Above all, when looking at Machiavelli and what he can teach us, it should be remembered that he came from a very different time. The level of violence that Machiavelli was comfortable with would be considered extremely brutal by all except the most cruel and bloodthirsty of today’s rulers.

He lived in an age, despite the noble humanist views of the Renaissance, where the sort of violence that would make even the most gore loving horror movie fan vomit, was commonplace. Fear and brutal efficiency were a means to wield power in such a world, but the lessons from such a time should always be viewed in this context.

The dignity of humanism

The far-right is now in control of Italy. It’s worth remembering that the Renaissance, which made Italy prosperous and famous, emphasised humanism and the dignity of all people. How much dignity will the far-right give the people they don’t like? They could stand to learn something from the values that made Italy a leading philosophical and cultural light in the past.

Another way to understand Florence is through my own experience. The knowledge of firsthand experience can be more complex than what we learn at a distance from reading or other research.

Accessibility of art in modern bourgeois society

Renaissance Florence was the beginnings of a recognisably modern city. It was bourgeois and was filled with shops, which is what you find in Florence today. What we experience in our everyday lives in modern towns and cities, a bourgeois and commercial culture, brings us closer to what Florence in the Renaissance was like for the few who lived through the dawn of this new age.

By visiting Florence today, what you can experience of the Renaissance is much greater than what most people living in Renaissance Florence could experience at the time. Our museums make art and culture much more accessible to a wider range of people today than at any point in our past. The Renaissance was limited to wealthy merchants and courtiers, it was not something experienced by the everyday Florentines, but you CAN experience the beautiful art it left behind (for an admission fee).

The glories of the past and the challenges of the present

A place with a history as long and complicated as Florence is difficult to unpack even with a series of tools, including art history and politics, at our disposal. The complexity of such a place defies easy explanation, however, if I were to condense all I have learned down to a hot take, then it is that we should not be so distracted by the glory of the past that we overlook the challenges of the present.

Our liberal humanist civilisation, which was shaped in many ways by the art and politics of Renaissance Florence, is not as permanent as the marble and stone of Brunelleschi’s buildings. It can be broken down and replaced with the type of naked brutality that was the backdrop of Machiavelli’s life.

The election of people like Meloni is a step down the road that leads to destroying the humanism that Florence is famous for, a humanism that gave the world great art as well as the concept of universal human dignity. We tear all this down at our peril.

Defending it or tearing it all down

Let the past of Florence serve as an example of what can be done and let the present serve as an example of how this can all be lost and replaced with something much darker. Italy’s problems aren’t unique to that country; an ageing population, low wages, ineffective governments that don’t solve people’s problems exist all over Europe and the world. We need radical change to address these issues.

At the end of this journey, I’m left thinking of a famous German and not an Italian. Rosa Luxemburg said society faces a choice between socialism or barbarism and this is nowhere more apparent than in Italy. If socialists defend the humanism and dignity of the Renaissance and the far-right is against it, then they are the forces of violent barbarism; the leaders that Machiavelli warned us against.

Civilisation in all its glory existed in Florence, but Italy warns us that if we’re not careful it can all be torn down and replaced with barbarism.

The rhetoric from mainstream politicians on migration caused these riots

I’m actually a little surprised that it took this long for the far-right to start race riots fuelled by social media, considering how much outrage exists on the right and how mainstream politicians have mercilessly stoked this rage. With Daily Mail front pages decrying immigration, Tory Prime Ministers pledging to stop the boats and Nigel Farage and Tommy Robison becoming accepted figures of discourse on the right, it was only a matter of time.

Throw into the mix social media platforms that seem to take as their maxim Mark Twain’s statement that: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoe.” (Although he probably never said that quote.) Then add in horrendous attacks on children, and we have the ideal circumstances for the kind of destruction that has been filling the headlines. 

These riots are a direct result of the increasingly angry rhetoric on the right about immigration, multiculturalism and wokeness. Continually stoking anger plays into the hands of the most violent members of the political fringes. Now the mainstream right has discovered the perils of flirting with the far-right and are quick to distance themselves. This is despite years of them deploying angry rhetoric at migrants, woke snowflakes (by which they mean immigration lawyers) and elites (by which they mean people who read books, not billionaires or Westminster politicians).

The result of stoking white racial anger

Mainstream politicians of the right, and at times the centre, feel that they can stoke this anger to mobilise people to vote for them when they want, before putting the anger back in a box and forgetting about it when they are safely in power. Boris Johnson did this to make himself Prime Minister. There is also an entire ecosystem of right-wing talking heads adding to the fires to get social media attention and have journalists write about them. Witness Farage’s gig on GB News or Robinson turning himself into a social media personality.

Well, you can’t raise the pressure of white racial anger, use it to drive you forwards when you want, and then vent it safely when it gets too much. Racial hatred is not like a steam engine. It tends to explode in unexpected ways, like a homemade bomb. These riots are the result. Solicitors offices set on fire. Migrants attacked. The residents of asylum seeker hotels terrorised. Not to mention police attacked, destruction rained on town centres and people scared.

The tide of people angry about immigration and people of colour has gotten so extreme that even mainstream centre-left or centrist politicians indulge it. Keir Starmer has talked about the need to cut immigration. Ed Miliband had his controls on immigration mugs, Gordon Brown had ‘British jobs for British workers’ and Tony Blair had the rhetoric around bogus asylum seekers. Even Jeremy Corbyn was more interested in talking about NHS privatisation than he was about strongly challenging the discourse around migration.

Standing up to the tide

I guess centre-left or centrist politicians feel that they cannot argue back to this tide. Or they feel it’s elitist to walk into a Wetherspoons in Workington and tell people that they should be happy that people want to flee Syria and come here, it shows this is a great nation, and they will enrich our culture. Freddie Mercury, Mo Farah and all that.

So instead of arguing with these people’s views on race and migration, they pander to it as much as they can stomach and then change the subject. Starmer can crack heads all he wants to show that he’s tough on violent disorder, but without challenging the narrative that led to these riots, nothing will change.

At least we now know where the line is drawn for right-wing anti-immigration shit heads. It’s when you throw bricks at the police. That, mainstream politicians won’t allow. That, they will stand up to.

“Legitimate concerns”

Everyone is acting like a load of people lost their minds this summer, and I have seen these riots blamed on everything from warm weather to not enough football on TV. Almost no one is acknowledging where this anger came from. People didn’t take up race rioting to fill the gap between the Euros finishing and the Premier League resuming - these far-right thugs have been organising along racial lines for years.

They have been exploiting the cover given to them by mainstream politicians and the right-wing press to amplify the “legitimate concerns” about immigration into a movement that wants to make Britain a white nation; aided by social media platforms that give oxygen to extreme attention grabbing content, and easy access to audiences for the type of people who will stoke racial hatred and white resentment to get a following (Katie Hopkins, Tommy Robinson, etc).

Make no mistake: this isn’t about people concerned about migration figures, or migrant’s effects on wages, or Polish corner shops appearing in their communities or grooming gangs, or values, or whatever other reasonable sounding thing they claim their dislike of migrants is about. These riots (and the wider anti-migrant discourse) is about keeping Britain as white as possible in this era of globalisation. The whiteness of the country is not a legitimate concern. The rest is cover for this white racial agenda, or being a useful idiot for it.

Making sure this doesn’t happen again

If Starmer, Labour and those on the right who have condemned these riots want to stop them happening again then they need to stop adding to the pressure that recently exploded by challenging the narrative that migration is always bad and that we should seek to reduce it.

This will be uncomfortable for politicians not used to taking a moral stand (or at least one that they’re sure that the small C conservatives swing voters will support) but it needs to be done to prevent further violence. It’s easy for politicians to stand up to Just Stop Oil, it’s harder to stand up to that guy in Wetherspoons with his “legitimate concerns.” However, that guy is spreading fake news about migrants on Facebook today and might try and burn down a hotel full of people tomorrow.

If we want to stop these riots from ever happening again then we need to stop fanning the flames of racial hatred and white grievance, which is where anti-migrant rhetoric and policies - from the left, right and centre - is heading. The alternative is to see violence like this again. Soon. And worse than now.

Violence, hypocrisy and assassinations. Oh, what a mess we are in

Yet again I find myself watching history unfold on my phone screen on a Saturday night whilst in one of East London’s craft beer bars. This time I am looking at blood pouring from Donald Trump’s head as the Secret Service desperately try to bundle him off stage. He has his fist raised in defiance at the person who took a pot shot at him and the American flag flies above him. It is quite the image. 

My first, slightly drunken, thought is that this is going to lead to an even more severe clamp down on the people who don’t hold the increasingly narrow spectrum of beliefs that the establishment allows. There will be far more scrutiny from police and mainstream media of the views of protesters, Muslims or anyone to the left of Kamala Harris.

Let me be clear: I do not condone someone trying to murder Donald Trump. He’s towards the top of the list of worst people in the world and his toxic effect on politics could be the beginning of humanity’s final tailspin down into fascism or oblivion. We would be better off if he shuffled off the political stage and never appeared in public again. Preferably to count his money and have sex with porn stars, not because he has been shot in the head. I don’t think anyone should be murdered. Not even Trump. 

Violence is everywhere in politics

I could say something obvious, such as “violence has no place in politics” but this would be hypocritical because there is a lot of violence in politics. From the brutal policing of ethnic minorities, in both Britain and the US, to the steep rise in evictions, to war. Violence is everywhere in politics.

That violence is closely entwined with politics is naked in war. The recent war in Gaza and the sensible moderates in the West’s complete inability to restrain the Israeli state in any way, shows that war is unrestrained violence, free of the moderating influences the UN and Geneva convention were supposed to place on it. The idea of a humane and controlled war was a liberal fantasy. War is unrestrained violence of the strong against the week.

This is not to condone any acts of violence. I don’t think we should do politics by shooting each other. I want to get the violence out of politics, by reducing the amount of war, evictions and aggressive policing. Ideally to zero. I’m not condoning violence directed at the people I don’t like. That would be hypocritical. But do you know what’s worse than being a hypocrite? (According to Judith N. Shklar amongst others.) It’s being cruel towards other people, which is what violence is.

Threatening students

Here’s an example of the establishment legitimating violence against people they don’t like. In 1986 it was considered acceptable to threaten students with violence for their planned political action. Warden and Fellows of Wadham College wrote a letter to students planning political action. It stated:

“Dear Gentlemen: We note your threat to take what you call ‘direct action’ unless your demands are immediately met. We feel it is only sporting to remind you that our governing body includes three experts in chemical warfare, two ex-commandos skilled with dynamite and torturing prisoners, four qualified marksmen in both small arms and rifles, two ex-artillerymen, one holder of the Victoria Cross, four karate experts and a chaplain. The governing body has authorised me to tell you that we look forward with confidence to what you call a ‘confrontation’, and I may say, with anticipation.”

If this isn’t a threat of violence, then what is? This is just one example of when it was fine for the establishment to openly threaten people it didn’t like with naked violence of an extreme kind. The type you would find in a war. 

Contemporary relevance

This letter was reproduced in The Knowledge recently (for the uninitiated, The Knowledge is a news email from The Week, which claims to be politically neutral but spends more time praising Trump than Keir Starmer). Presumably reprinting it means the letter has some relation to current events.

How do we interpret this? It’s either a joke or a real suggestion as to how rebellious students should be treated. It’s probably intended to be funny by implying that lefty students (of both today and 1986) aren’t tough enough to fight actual soldiers, so they should just shut up and go back to their books and racking up huge debts that they will never be able to pay back. At this point it’s worth remembering most of The Knowledge’s readers went to uni for free, but enjoy sniggering at students. This is probably why the letter was reprinted.

If we are taking this seriously on any level, it’s worth noting that chemical warfare and torturing prisoners are war crimes in an actual war, which protesting is not. Did they really plan to release sarin gas in the middle of Oxford? Or use artillery for that matter? It seems like a dumb, empty threat to me. Not worthy of reprinting. Also, I don’t think “we have people who can and will commit war crimes on our staff” is the boast Wadham College think it is.

Trumps’ violence

The point is that it was considered acceptable to at least joke about using “qualified marksmen” against student protesters in 1986 (or today, judging by the reprinting of this in a supposedly politically neutral newsletter) but it’s not acceptable to use marksmen against Trump. I don’t think it’s acceptable to shoot Trump, but neither is it acceptable to threaten students with chemical weapons, artillery and torture. Or to imply that all young people are softies because they wouldn’t face down such a threat.

Trump is also an extraordinarily violent politician. He has joked about shooting someone on 5th Avenue. He has used dehumanising language, describing undocumented migrants as “animals,” which is likely to lead to violence. He talks about a “bloodbath” if he doesn’t get elected. He fermented a riot that tried to violently overthrow the government; although we all pretend that didn’t happen and that Trump is just a normal right-wing politician.

One of his white supremacist supporters also killed a woman protesting against white supremacy with his car, another thing we pretend didn’t happen. Trump is not a stranger to political violence, just to receiving it. I’m sure that Trump and his supporters feel that it is acceptable to mete out violence to people they don’t like (from protesters to migrants) and that it’s not acceptable to be violent towards them. Any centrists, or anyone of any political persuasion, condemning the Trump assassination attempt must acknowledge his violence. As this article does.

The people it’s acceptable to be violent towards

Owen Jones is the only British journalist I can think of who has been beaten up. Boris Johnson also once conspired to have a different journalist beaten up and it didn’t stop him getting elected Prime Minister. This shows who is allowed to mete out violence and who should receive violence. As always, the politicians advocating for violence, from Trump to the uncritical supporters of Israel, don’t think they should receive violence but that other people should.

There has always been people it’s acceptable to do violence to and people it’s not acceptable to do violence to. Oil companies do huge damage to the natural world, but when there’s a march the police line up to protect their buildings. I know this from experience. Social media is full of threats to Just Stop Oil activists for daring to inconvenience people and for pointing out that we’re killing the whole world.

Good to know that it is acceptable for Trump to encourage violence but not receive violence. It’s nice to make all this official. For the historians. Assuming humanity continues long enough for people to write history about 2024.

What comes next

If anything, his attempted murder will help Trump win the election. He’s just been officially nominated by the Republicans and chosen JD Vance as his running mate (a man who once described Trump as “America’s Hitler” and will now parrot anything Trump says, no matter how deranged).

At least Joe Biden has done the right thing and decided not to run again. He was too old and would only have thrown the election to Trump. If there is any hope in stopping Trump (and all methods short of assassination need to be deployed to stop him) then it lies in the Democrats, and all Americans who don’t want a dictator, rallying around someone (anyone) capable of stopping Trump winning in November.

Oh, what a mess we are in. American democracy is on the line. Most likely this is just the beginning of more violence to come. Most likely that violence will come from Trump and his supporters. Then it will be politely explained away by centrists as normal politics, while anyone who tries to oppose Trump, and his rising tide of violence, is chastised as the real extremist.

Donald Trump picture taken by Gage Skidmore and used under creative commons.

Starmer has won big. Now what?

Right, I am doing it. I said I would. I’m raising a glass of hoppy craft beer to Keir Starmer for dragging Labour into power and ending 14 years of Tory nightmare. It was certainly gratifying to sit up on election night and watch the Labour results roll in (even though I didn’t vote for them) and see the Tories get a justly deserved kicking. It was especially cathartic to see Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liz Truss, Penny Mordaunt and Grant Shapps lose their seats.

Starmer firmly has his hands on the wheel of power, so now he must use it to improve the lot of people in this country. Especially the homeless, starving children, disabled people unable to access essential benefits, migrants trapped by the hostile environment and people with insecure housing. It would also be good if he did something about low wages, high cost of living, the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and the climate disaster we are speeding towards like a suicidal lemming. With a majority of this size there can’t be any excuses.

Still, hats off to Starmer for winning that big majority. It gives him the power to enact his program, the success of which will be his legacy. There’s no point in there being 400 plus Labour MPs if they don’t use the huge power of the British state to improve the lives of people who have been suffering under 14 years of Tory rule (that’s everyone apart from the very rich). If they do nothing, behave timidly and make excuses, then that huge majority will disappear at the next election.

1997 redux

It is telling that Starmer managed to rack up fewer MPs and a smaller share of the vote then Tony Blair did in 1997. That’s with the Tories detonating the economy, driving up mortgage rates, partying during lockdown, launching the election in the pouring rain, disrespecting D-Day and getting caught up in an election betting scandal. Truly, there has never been an easier election for Labour to win.

What happened was that the Tories lost. And lost badly. Rishi Sunak performed a lot worse than John Major did in 1997, finishing with 44 fewer MPs and a much smaller share of the vote. The voters weren’t as certain that they wanted Starmer as Prime Minister as they were that they wanted Blair in ’97. This is clear from Starmer only getting 1.7% more of the vote than Jeremy Corbyn did in 2019 and on a lower turnout. The only thing that the voters were certain about was that they didn’t want the Tories in power one second longer.

Enthusiasm or lack therefore of

There was little enthusiasm for Starmer during this campaign and most of the passion that did exist was excitement at kicking the Tories out translating into a burning desire to hammer on the button that would most likely eject them from power, i.e. voting Labour.

I don’t know who is excited for a government that will prioritise fiscal prudence, technocratic decision-making and sound management (apart from the people who will work in the new Labour government). If these people do exist, they’re the sort of people who get excited that there is a new U2 album coming out.

Change is needed

Whether we are enthusiastic for him or not, it’s up to Starmer to sort out the state the Tories have left the country in. With his big majority now is the time to make radical reforms. I sincerely hope that the people who have said that Starmer is a secret radical, and is lying his way to power, are right. If that is the case, the evidence should emerge soon.

Starmer could have stood on a platform of action to tackle the country’s problems, rather than promising as little as possible. There has never been a better time to be honest with the electorate about the challenges the country faces and the changes that are needed. Labour were certain to win this election. By how much is what was up for debate. They should have laid out a comprehensive plan to fix the problems of Great Britain.

That’s how Labour are going to win the election after this one. This one they won on “change” and “everyone hates the Tories.” The next one Labour can only win because they made a material difference to people’s lives. This can’t be done easily, so we need to know what the plan is now.

The plan should be socialism

I think the plan should be socialism. In other words, taxing the rich, private companies and assets and using this money to build social housing, create green jobs and rebuild our schools and hospitals. We also need to take bold moves to tackle climate change and inequality, or else all the benefits of economic growth will be swallowed up in mitigating extreme climate events or won’t benefit most people, i.e. those who will vote in the next election.

Starmer is obviously no socialist (despite the right-wing press trying to brand him as one) but he hasn’t even laid out a plan for grand centrist reforms. Even if he doesn’t care about the climate, which he most likely does (Starmer is many things, but he is not an American Republican-esq climate denier, he’s not that dumb) then he knows he needs to raise wages and improve housing, or he will be more of a Gordon Brown than the new Blair.

My centrist three point plan

As Starmer is no socialist here is a centrist take on what comes next that I offer for free to the new Labour government. Point 1: we need high-tech companies to locate or be created in the UK to facilitate the jobs and industries of the future; so that the economy can grow, wages can go up and the state's coffers can swell to spend money on fixing all the other problems from arming Ukraine to rebuilding hospitals.

Point 2: we need to spend the money on the necessary infrastructure and education (especially higher education) to make this happen. This needs to be across the country to address regional inequalities, aka levelling up. Point 3: we need to either raise taxes or borrow money or cut elsewhere to do this. Starmer has ruled out tax and borrowing, and public services can’t take any more cuts.

Starmer should make the argument about raising taxes and borrowing, point 3, to do point 2 so that point 1 can happen. Instead, he’s hoping to do point 2 with tweaks around the edges, so that he doesn’t have to have difficult conversations about point 3 and then hoping that point 1 happens so that we get the growth to do point 2 properly. This seems like a long shot to me.

Honesty with the electorate

To get this done he should have been honest with the electorate before the election, laying out the above (if he isn’t prepared to be more radically left-wing). He chose not to, and he did end up with a big majority, winning places like Lichfield that have been Tory since the constituency was created in 1997.

My preferred outcome is socialism, or using the wealth that we already have to fix the problems of the country. Starmer wants to create new wealth, absorb some of that into the state and then fix the big problems facing the UK.

Pressing the green button

It was hearty to see the Greens do better than I expected. Four Green MPs is massive and, with all the seats they came second, this could be the beginning of a much bigger change. Watch this space to see what happens. Many people on the left were not in favour of what Starmer was selling and wanted something more radical, me amongst them, so they pressed that green button.

Maybe this was because they were confident that Starmer would oust the Tories whatever they did. I think it’s mainly because it's becoming more apparent that the problems of this country need radical left-wing solutions and Labour cannot deliver this.

The rise of Reform

Of course, there are those who want radical right-wing solutions. Nigel Farage and his band of Reform orcs winning a handful of seats is an alarming sign, especially when you see how many votes they got. Many people on the right have lost all patience with the Tories and want a much more aggressively nationalistic right-wing politics to really punish immigrants and other people they despise. This was as much Sunak’s problem as people switching to Labour or the Lib Dems over the Tories’ economic record.

It’s not just far-right knuckle draggers who are hearing the siren call of Reform. There are many people who voted Tory, Labour or even Lib Dem who have strong views on immigration, hate “the woke” and want to angrily hoard the wealth the country has left for “people like them” as the rising tide of global chaos consumes us all.

In a few years’ time a lot of people who just voted for the charming silliness of Ed Davey, or the competent management of Starmer, or the Tory sensibilities of Sunak might be voting for the big angry nationalist Reform party. Or even a Farage led Tory party. Starmer should take heed.

Starmerism or barbarism

Starmer has lots of power but if he wants to see off the challenges of Reform and whatever even more awful thing the rump of the Tory party mutates into, then he needs to get cracking on making people feel better off, whilst also tackling the deep structural issues in this country. Whatever Starmerism is remains undefined, let’s hope it turns out to be the radical change we need or things are about to get very ugly.

Yeah, it won’t be easy, but this election has gifted Labour massive power, whilst also showing that a very dark future might only be just around the corner.

Polling station image taken by Rachel H and used under creative commons.

Why I am voting for the Greens

In 2019 the New Statesman didn’t endorse any party during the December election. They announced this under the headline “Britain deserves better.” Well, nearly five years later I’m here to say something similar, but crucially different.

I’ll come to the bit where I say Keir Starmer and the Tories are basically the same. Don’t worry. First, I want to say something else. Something I believe more strongly.

This parliament, the one since the 2019 election, has been unlike any I have experienced before. Brexit finally happened, then we were hit with a pandemic, the Queen dying, Liz Truss’s five minutes in power, Donald Trump’s capital riots, Putin invading the Ukraine and a whole host of other things. It’s been a whirlwind.

All the beauty and all the terror

Since the pandemic ended and we have come back into the world, I have experienced more beauty than I could have ever imagined when we were locked inside. The collective joy of live music, the intensity of theatre, the communal pleasure of sharing a horror or comedy film with a room full of strangers, all these things I had forgotten. I had forgotten what it was like to sit in the pub with friends or take a train to somewhere new. There are so many beautiful things in the world that my heart swells with joy to think of it.

There is also so much terror. From mass death in Gaza, where civilians are killed in horrific numbers, to rockets raining down on Ukrainian cities, to lives forever ruined by the aftermath of the pandemic, to victims of an ever-worsening climate and ever-increasing racism towards people from outside Europe, this is an age where living can be a terrifying ordeal.

Sometimes I feel like these moments of beauty - finding something genuinely funny or beautiful on Instagram, eating something sweet, or singing along to a song with friends - are amongst the last we will experience as humanity hurtles towards oblivion. I want to treasure every single second of them.

Shared values

Injected into this mix of fear and elation is this year’s general election. Putting an X on a ballot paper once every four or five years shouldn’t be the end of our political engagement. The world is too complex for that. However, everything has been focused down to this one moment and we need to make a choice from a range of parties.

I simply don’t feel that Starmer shares my values. Not socialism - I am a socialist, and he obviously is not - but valuing these moments of heartbreaking beauty in a world of terror. Sometimes I don’t know if I want to cry or sing, sitting on a late-night Overground train. I don’t believe anyone who sees the fragile beauty of this world, and how it is assailed by soul crushing terror, could stand on the platform of minor change and not rocking the boat.

We live on a knife edge. Terror or beauty. Sometimes a better world is so close that I can almost smell it. I see people organising fundraising drives for refugees thousands of miles away that they will never meet because it is self-evidently the right thing to do. I see people striving hard against the cost of living, a government that makes everything difficult for regular (i.e. non-rich) people and indifference to bring a little more joy to their communities, such as by keeping a much-loved bookshop or cafe open. Every day so many people choose beauty, but a few powerful people choose terror and the bookshops close and death reigns from the sky.

Maybe I am wrong

Against this backdrop Starmer chooses indifference. I don’t understand it. We need a rallying cry for a better, more beautiful, world. If not now, then when? All Starmer gives is indifference to terror dressed up as pragmatism.

Maybe I’m wrong about Starmer. Maybe this is all a clever plan to win the necessary support of the angry boomer swing voters, so that Labour can get into power and then radical reform can follow. If this is what happens then I owe Starmer an apology and a vote. As well as an apology to all the people, friends and writers, who say this is the case. I don’t believe it. I may be wrong.

This brings us to the Starmer is just like the Tories bit. From dropping the £28bn green investment pledge, to saying Israel has the right to cut off water and power to Gaza (they don’t), to pandering to widespread hysteria about trans rights, Starmer is so determined to win the support of a pathologically angry boomer in Nuneaton called Steve -  who hates young people, hates migrants, hates trans people, hates ULEZ, hates spending money on making things better and above all hates people who go on protests - that Labour looks a lot like the Tories. It’s just so depressing.

Getting over the line

For what it’s worth, I do think Starmer will be a better Prime Minister than Rishi Sunak or any other Tory. If he drags the Labour Party over the line and into power then I will raise a hoppy craft beer to him and say, “good job, you did it where Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn failed.” Doubly so if the Tories get a massive and justly deserved kicking. In that case it will be a double hopped IPA.

Hopefully Starmer with his massive majority can use the huge power of the British state (whatever the condition of the economy) to alleviate the worst problems caused by the Tories over the last 14 years, from the huge rise in homelessness, to the inhuman levels of child poverty, to the dire shape of the NHS. Then again, without wanting to turn on the spending taps, remove the two child benefit cap or do anything to worry landlords, improvements might not happen.

The issue of the climate

My main issue with Starmer is on environmental policy. This is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced and is the defining issue of the present. The time for radical action has passed and we need very radical action to avert the worst of the climate disaster we are racing towards.

There is a beautiful sustainable world within our reach, where we work less and enjoy life more, but again our leaders in politics and business are choosing climate terror. Starmer needs to be bolder on this issue, which is why I am voting Green: to send a clear message to Labour that more needs to be done and soon.

Getting the Tories out

I have no problem with anyone who wants to vote Labour to get the Tories out. In fact, I salute you for using the choice you have today to make this country a better place. The Tories are awful and they have to go. Voting Labour is the most expedient button to press to achieve this.

My beef is not with Labour voters, or Labour Party members, or even many Labour MPs. It’s with a small group at the top of the party whose view of humanity is so cynical that they cannot make a case for something better, so instead move to the position that will get them into power; even if that involves pandering to prejudice on migration or trans rights.

I am aware of the irony of not voting Labour in an election where Labour is about to win very big. Through backing Corbyn and Miliband, and not Starmer, it’s clear I cannot choose a winning horse. I have voted Labour in only one general election that the party won (2005) and even then, the candidate I voted for lost out to a Tory.

I do like my local Labour MP, Stella Creasy, who has been very good on several key issues, from feminism to the war in Gaza. Her office was vandalised recently, which is a disgusting act of intimidation aimed at someone who is genuinely striving to make the lives of people in Walthamstow better. I’m sorry not to be able to vote for Creasy this time, but it makes little difference as she’s likely to win the seat by about 20,000 votes.

Labour winning without my support

I’m not going to vote Labour and Labour are going to do very well tonight. I guess that means Labour was right to alienate people like me. So be it. Perhaps this justifies everything Starmer, and his pals, have done to drive out people like me and win the vote of Steve from Nuneaton (or at least make him stay home on election day). This is even more the case if Starmer does some good with power.

In my darker moments, I wonder if I am the problem for Labour. Maybe my values - improving the environment, equal rights for trans people, welcoming migrants and wanting a world full of beauty and not that of terror - are so wildly out of step with the average person in the street, who has their own struggles and dreams, that I must be driven from mainstream politics as an extremist. Certainly, lots of people I meet disagree with me and feel the need to tell me I am wrong.

Am I an extremist for wanting things to be different? I still want a world filled with beauty for everyone, and around me I see a lot of people who want terror for people who are different to them. You might say that no one wants terror, but with the glee that people, from friends to writers, have endorsed military actions with massive civilian casualties in Gaza and a hostile environment for migrants trying to find a better life in the UK, I feel confident in saying that some people do want terror. I won’t change or compromise in my love of beauty.

Labour needs to do better

I want to send a message to Labour that they need to do better. There will never be a better chance to be honest with the electorate about what needs to be done to improve the country, now the Tories have completely self-destructed, but there has also never been a better time to make a case for why we can build a more beautiful world, while so many people are suffering and crying out for something better.

It’s not just on the climate, Labour needs to do more in so many areas to help those suffering right now. More than just pointing to growth and hoping that sorts things out. The Greens have some good ideas in their manifesto, such as a no-fault eviction ban, free personal care and cancelling trident. I am voting Green because I want these things and because I want to send a message to Labour that this slide to the right is against my values as a long-time supporter of the Labour Party. Labour needs to do better than its current festival of political cynicism.

I’m tired of being told that we need to be pragmatic by cynical people when the whole world is dying. If anything, the pragmatic thing to do is something bold, something inspirational, something beautiful. Not to just shrug our shoulders and say this is the best we can do.

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

Lack of enthusiasm, forgone conclusions and stirrings on the right: this could be the strangest election of my life

I can honestly say that this is the least discussed general election of any general election of my life. The campaign is nearly done and outside of the major news publishers practically no one is talking about it. I have seen very few people out canvassing and far fewer than normal signs in gardens. I’ve seen the country get more excited about local elections than they are about the first opportunity in nearly five years to kick out the government.

The main reason for this is that everyone thinks this election is a foregone conclusion. Labour were way ahead in the polls from the start of the campaign and the Tories dismal performance so far - starting with Rishi Sunak getting soaked when announcing the election, moving onto his tax claims collapsing, before he offended everyone by leaving a D-Day commemoration event early and finally having loads of Tories caught up in the election betting scandal - has not changed anyone's mind about who to vote for or who will win.

The most interesting thing about this dull campaign, so far, is Nigel Farage unexpectedly standing to be an MP and taking over Reform. People are talking about who will represent one seat, Clacton, after the election more than they’re talking about who will be in Number 10. Everything else has been a walk for Labour, so there is absolutely no suspense at all about the outcome of this election.

“Starmer, I guess.”

Coupled to this is a complete lack of enthusiasm for Keir Starmer. He’s riding high in the polls because dissatisfaction with the Tories has reached epic proportions and the SNP collapsed at the same time. Sunak has done nothing to improve the Tory’s image or dismal record in government and people want them gone. It’s as if the whole country has shrugged it’s shoulders, sighed and said “Starmer, I guess.”

People want change and Starmer is offering as little of it as possible, because a few thousand easily spooked swing-voter Boomers could curb his majority if they think he'll do something crazy like spend money on schools or be nice to immigrants. “Starmer, I guess,” is the best possible result that Labour can get from these people.

The rest of the country has buckled up for the thrilling ride of “more of the same,” with the added bonus of the government being less nakedly corrupt and awful. It’s not exactly the sort of campaign that songs will be written about. It’s not Barack Obama’s hope and change. It’s continuity with minor tweaking around the edges in the hope that this makes things better for everyone. I guess it’s better than the Tories not caring about anyone at all.

Things can only get a bit better

Even the music that we have had during this campaign - “Things can only get better” being blasted at Sunak when he made his electoral announcement - is just recycled Blair optimism and has nothing to do with Starmer.

The most radical moment of the campaign has been Abigail Morris from The Last Dinner Party telling people on stage at Glastonbury that the election is not the end of the struggle if the Tories lose and that we need to keep protesting, signing petitions and boycotting after the election. I wish the Baroque hyper-femme rock band were the leaders of the opposition, instead of Starmer. He probably likes Coldplay.

All this might produce an odd result. Low enthusiasm for Starmer and a general feeling that the election is a foregone conclusion might mean low voter turnout for Labour. Whereas the Tories that are still voting for Sunak are very passionate about the party, and really hate Labour, and will turn out. Plus, they have the motivation that if they don’t vote it will be a huge Labour landslide.

Strange times. Or maybe not

Farage and Reform are also adding to the complications. Reform are a new party, so it’s difficult to judge how well they will do. Sure, UKIP and The Brexit Party, both previously led by Farage, didn’t get many candidates elected outside of European Elections and Farage himself has failed to become an MP seven times.

That said, these are strange times. Anger on the right about immigration, net zero targets, ULEZ and “the woke” has never been higher and support for the Tories from the right has never been lower. A huge number of people might be about to vote Reform, which will happen at the same time as a record low Tory vote and possibly a low Labour vote, driven by either complacency about Labour’s poll lead or lack of enthusiasm for Starmer.

I think polls predicting the Tories being knocked back to 50 seats and the Lib Dems or Reform becoming the official opposition are over excited. There are a lot of shy Tories out there who will be voting. Lib Dems will likely have their best performance since 2010 and Reform might get one to two MPs, but the first-past-the-post system means that these two parties can get record high numbers of votes and will it translate into very few seats, while Labour and the Tories gain from their built in advantages (especially the Tories).

Dark times to come. Most likely

A big Reform vote will hurt the Tories and help Labour in a number of Red Wall seats that Starmer has his eye on. Also, a strong Reform vote and Farage getting into parliament will have a big impact on the Conservative leadership election that will likely take place this summer in a state of despair and panic.

Farage is more likely to get serious power by being welcomed into the Tory Party post election than by his party replacing the Tories as the dominant party of the right. He might even end up being Tory leader by the next election. That’s more likely than 150 Reform MPs being returned on July 4th.

Then again we live in dark times, so I’m not offering to eat my hat on any account as there is a good chance that I end up chowing down on a piece of cheap canvas I bought from a tourist vendor near the Brandenburg Gate.

Radioactive zombie Tories

Strange things are occurring in this election. Starmer is less popular than Ed Miliband was at this point (although, it must be noted he is way more popular than Sunak, and voters preferred Cameron in 2015). Also, Reform voters are especially angry about Starmer and Labour, hating them more than the Tories, which is not good news for Starmer’s program to rebrand Labour as not a Corbyny woke party by plastering the flag over every single election leaflet. The best Starmer can hope from these human stains is that they stay home with Euro hangovers on Thursday. 

Most likely Starmer will win big - although I doubt he will get a 200 seat majority, as some polls are saying, or even a 100 seat majority. Starmer will win, but it will be off the back of a divided right, huge Tory resentment, the belief that his victory is inevitable and little enthusiasm for what Starmer is offering.

He’ll then have to tackle the huge problems of the country to defend his electoral gains, whilst facing a challenge from the right (possibly led by Farage) and the twisted rump of the Tory party that survives this election who, like zombies a nuke has been dropped on, will stumble on with horrible intent made more ugly and more dangerous by the blow that was supposed to kill them. If Starmer can’t summon some enthusiasm from the public to face this threat, then his government won’t last long.