Over ten years later, Brexit remains era-defining, indirectly toppling yet another prime minister. Starmer has resigned. A resignation catalysed by the local elections that saw Labour lose almost five times as many voters to the Greens and Liberal Democrats as to Reform UK. Pressure from the pro-EU progressives and centrists was key to the end of the Starmer project, a fact that is at the front of Andy Burnham’s mind as he plans an ascent to Downing Street and has to take o

The biggest item of note in Andy Burnham’s recent devolution speech was his commitment to ‘the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period’. It is estimated such construction will cost the taxpayer up to £13bn a year. This is merely the tip of the iceberg, however. Research released by the Centre for Policy Studies shows the state is already implicitly subsidising social housing rent to the tune of £43bn every year and paying out £36bn in housing benefi

On Friday morning, news broke that one of Britain’s most recognisable political figures, Ann Widdecombe, had died. By mid-day social media was awash with tributes for a woman whose four decades in public life had taken her from Westminster to Brussels, and, most recently, to Reform UK as the party’s spokeswoman on Immigration and Justice. By mid-afternoon, national newspapers had published obituaries, some admiring and others searing in their criticism of a politician who pos

A few weeks ago, racist thugs overwhelmed Belfast. They set the city alight, assaulted the police and terrorised local communities. They claimed to be protecting the women and children of Northern Ireland, but the hypocrisy of these far-right ‘protectors’ is ridiculous. Similar racist riots occurred in 2024, it subsequently emerging that 48% of people arrested in connection to these riots had a domestic abuse conviction. Their outrage is misdirected. 30 women have been murder

The NATO Ankara Summit, which took place over 7-8 July, returned the future of Europe again to the forefront of discussion. When considering the possibility of a reduced US presence in NATO, one trend that has arisen is a turn towards ‘minilateralism.’ Indeed, Galip Dalay of Chatham House wrote that “minilateral models point toward the architecture of a post-American European security order.” Minilateralism consists of small coalitions of states which possess shared threat pe

Where just a few months ago Nigel Farage seemed invincible, his political position has grown increasingly precarious in recent months. Nigel Farage’s decision to not declare a £5 million ‘gift’ from the Thailand-based crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne remains the biggest threat to his momentum. The Reform leader claims to have “done nothing wrong”, but his failure to declare the money he received from Harborne, per rule 5 of the House of Commons code of conduct, prompte

In the last week Andy Burnham, who stands at the precipice of becoming Britain’s next Prime Minister, seemingly ruled out an early general election. Whilst politicians ruling things out certainly doesn’t mean that they are ruled out, it does mean it is not ruled in. A general election is not part of Burnham’s short-term plan. The question remains however, is it part of Burnham’s plan in the medium-term, and should it be. Whilst the answer to the former is one that only Burnha

So here we are. Another new Prime Minister apparent, another undemocratic process in which a political party decides – as an internal matter – the appointee to the country’s top official political position. It is another reminder of the real workings of the UK’s parliamentary electoral system. The seats in parliament which give Labour its big legislative majority were decided in 2024 and it is within this latest 2024 settlement of the political forces in Westminster that a n

The Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) so-called 2024 Presidential Campaign "autopsy" analyses the decisions and actions that led to Kamala Harris's defeat. It is far from a serious analysis of what went wrong in 2024, and who was truly responsible for that defeat. The report discloses five key points demonstrating the disconnect between the Democratic leadership and the political reality they faced. The first consists of blaming then-President Joe Biden (2021-2025) for no

The Nazi Party came to power in 1933 in a Germany devastated by the Treaty of Versailles and Great Depression, and paralysed by a huge unemployment crisis of over 6 million. Six years later it was arguably the greatest power in Europe, tearing across the continent in relentless pursuit of ‘Lebensraum’. What happened in between might therefore be chalked up to nothing less than an economic miracle. It was not. When defining economic success on the regime’s own terms, namely au

Political satire is not hard to come by. A recent example of it, however, on the Green Party’s official Facebook Page, may have cheapened this already-common currency. It’s form was simple and standard enough as memes goes. An animated character is shown faced with a choice between two buttons, the look on their face betraying the difficulty they feel in deciding – the joke being that the choice is meant to be painfully obvious. The subject of the Green Party’s ire in this

In violation of the constitutional conventions that Britain usually holds dear, Britain will endure a long, directionless interval following Keir Starmer's resignation on 22nd June. The election of a new leader, Andy Burnham, who was sworn in as MP also on the 22nd June after winning the Makerfield by-election, is the likely replacement. If Burnham’s leadership bid faces no contest, he is likely to take over in the 17-20th July period, rather than in September, as some have s

Alongside Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher’s Ghosts of My Life stands as his defining attempt to theorise what he perceived to be the cultural malaise permeating British society ever since the end of the 1970s. Published in 2014, 5 years after Capitalist Realism, Ghosts of My Life argues that we are currently living through a “slow cancellation of the future” in which, for a variety of reasons, older generations are more likely to be “startled by the sheer persistence of recog

Nearly 40 years ago, Manufacturing Consent was released by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky to widespread acclaim. The book is principally famous for conceptualising the “Propaganda Model”, explaining how journalistic biases are created and propaganda spread in a market-based media environment. The model explains how consent is manufactured for power-elite decisions in Western societies – not through an elite conspiracy or collusion but as a natural consequence of power accumu

Andy Burnham is about to become Prime Minister. His ambition has never been a secret. Unlike generations of politicians who insisted that leadership had somehow found them, Burnham has openly wanted the job. In another era, that kind of ambition might have been regarded as slightly distasteful. In 2026, it feels almost refreshing. That may be one of the defining political lessons of the past decade. We have entered an era in which voters appear less concerned with whether pol

Whether taking in the news, one’s social media feed, using a software or just holding a conversation, artificial intelligence is now nigh on inescapable. At a social event I recently attended, someone even casually offered me use of their Meta Glasses, its integrated AI feature able to translate the foreign language being spoken at the event. Like most people in the UK, I am suspicious of the promises of AI, particularly of the large US firms driving the so-called AI bubble

It's time to stop thinking about the climate crisis as a problem for the future. If the past week of stifling temperatures in the United Kingdom has shown us anything, it is that global warming is a visceral, present reality. Yet at this very moment, when the effects of climate change are so tangible year on year, political discussion skirts around the issue. Squabbles over North Sea oil have dominated the conversation recently, despite experts having made it clear that arou

It is somewhat rare for an election to proffer signs that are simultaneously encouraging yet brutal for a party in British politics, but the Makerfield by-election proved just that for Reform UK. The result, while confirming that the party has decisively supplanted the Conservatives as the premier force on the British right, nevertheless exposed the possibility that Reform’s rise has itself birthed a coalition capable of stopping it. The encouragement is obvious; Reform amass

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” – Roy Amara, Stanford computer scientist. Dotcom, housing, crypto, and now, AI. The Fastest Scaling in History An asset bubble is a period where the price of an asset skyrockets beyond its intrinsic value before violently crashing. They have plagued economies for centuries. The artificial intelligence industry has experienced what is considered the fastest techn

The inevitable has happened. On 22nd June, Sir Keir Starmer stepped up to the podium outside No.10 and delivered a speech much of the country had been anticipating for months. Once again, the familiar image of a crestfallen prime minister appeared before the assembled press corps and television cameras. Starmer accepted “with good grace” that Labour MPs no longer wanted him to lead the party into the next general election, continuing Britain's recent revolving door of prime m