In international politics today, the epithet ‘realism’ has become common currency. It carries with it a rhetorical confidence – a name which suggests prophecy of truth amongst alternatives which are deceptions. But as proclaiming a realist position has become something of a fashion nowadays, we must beware the fashion victims; those who don ill-fitting articles because they bear the right label, and wear its most ridiculous accessories without any sense of the motifs and subs

September of last year marked Zack Polanski’s irruption into the highest echelon of British politics. The Green’s new leader, imbued with the gifts of personality, pitch and popularity, bestowed upon the party an attribute they had yet to enjoy – a brand. Polanski has swiftly turned himself into the Greens’ main asset; sharper than his predecessors, more media-savvy, more combative and far less embarrassed by the prospect of harnessing populism for his party’s good. Polanski,

In the aftermath of the Cold War, scholars such as Francis Fukuyama argued that liberal democracy represented the final stage of ideological evolution, famously framing it as “the end of history.”  However, what was celebrated as the final and best form of human government began to buckle under its own contradictions almost as soon as the Berlin Wall fell. “The end” became the starting point for a new political reordering, characterised by the rise of anti-liberal and, eventu

There is a pervasive sense of societal fracture these days. Politics has become defined by dramatic narratives of battle  between the Greens and Reform UK based on story rather than rooted in reality. Culture seems increasingly guided by a furious rejection of tradition, establishment, and imperialist pasts, or a righteous confabulated nostalgia for them. Compare Kneecap with a far-right AI generated rapper , or indeed the culture of the Oscars with the culture of “Looksmaxxi

Following in the footsteps of the Australian government, the UK government recently released its research briefing  proposing a ban on social media for children. The report identifies the rationale behind such a ban, citing obvious harms such as exposure to child sexual abuse images, pornography, sexual content, cyberbullying, self-harm, and violent material. It is perhaps surprising that it is only in 2025 that we are beginning to see meaningful legislation that actually reg

Last month, the BBC reported on a growing cluster of Instagram accounts posting AI-generated images and videos of women with disabilities  – including Down’s syndrome, amputations and even fabricated “conjoined twins” – in highly sexualised scenarios designed to attract followers and direct traffic toward monetised adult platforms. At first glance, these profiles might appear to be little more than another grotesque curiosity of the internet. Yet the phenomenon points toward

19 th  Century Methods for 21 st  Century Problems  Following the abduction of  Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, combined with the National Security Strategy (NSS)  release in December of 2025, the Trump Era of “Gunboat Diplomacy” consolidated as the world watched on with morose horror. The Trump “Corollary,” as it were, is to represent an abandonment of international good faith and an embracing of the world's brutal dictators, Vladimir Putin and many more  across th

The Labour government has been cast further adrift this month, perilously overladen with scandal and factionalism. Whilst I don’t doubt that Starmer will go down with this ship, certain members of his cabinet could survive unscathed, and miraculously so. Certain names and policies scattering the headlines are doing an impressive job of diverting attention away from more subdued and insidious acts of party betrayal. Take Shabana Mahmood, the UK’s Home Secretary, whose vision f

‘For any government official or despot, power over his own people takes precedence over everything else’- Jean Baudrillard   In Terry Gilliam’s Kafkaesque black comedy Brazil (1985), Sam Lowry, a low-ranking bureaucrat, joins his affluent, ostentatious mother, Ida, in a restaurant. Their meal is served - at which point - sudden explosions blast shrapnel across the room, saturating the air with shouting, screams, and smoke. The restaurant has been subject to a terrorist attack

The prolonged war in Yemen, which has been locked in a stalemate for a decade, has now entered a new stage. The Southern Transitional Council (STC), supported by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a major player in the war in Yemen, was able to successfully penetrate the regions of Hadhramaut and Al Mahra , effectively controlling the official borders of the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) – South Yemen. The STC has been the sole representative of the souther

Perhaps the most renowned passage of Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship & The Heroic in History   opens with the decree that ‘a man’s religion is the chief fact with regard to him’, a proposition through which Carlyle elucidates how an individual’s true faith often lies outwith their professed church creed. Separate from the divine teachings of any sect, Carlyle instead argued that an individual’s true religious persuasion lies in the set of core beliefs which they hold

Three years on from a sweeping victory  in the Gorton and Denton by-election, Polanski becomes Prime Minister, presiding over an undefeatable Green Party majority in the House of Commons. The people of Britain feel hope and vindication after prolonged stagnation. It is day one in a new era of prosperity and peace. The UK will begin healing, and all will dance happily around a maypole. This is more-or-less the presented vision of Polanski’s Green Party in 2026. It is a kind an

New Yorkers have now experienced about two months under the new Mamdani administration. Last November, more than a million New Yorkers, including myself, headed to the polls and cast our ballots for Zohran Mamdani. The New York City mayoral election drew significant media attention from within the five boroughs and beyond. Mamdani stood out as markedly younger than his opponents, born in Uganda, and as New York City’s first Muslim mayor. Yet the aspect that drew the greatest

In 2025, British actor Simon Pegg was interviewed in the Criterion Closet , a renowned series where notable people from the filmmaking industry are invited to browse and discuss their favourite movies. One of Pegg’s ‘closet picks’ was David Lynch’s seminal thriller Blue Velvet , a dark and unnerving mystery set in the heart of middle America. Pegg says that his daughter hated the movie when he showed it to her, but then spoke about how he was delighted that she didn’t like it

“The title ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ captures the movie's central paradox: seeing without understanding. Kubrick suggests that power structures are not hidden, but ignored, existing in plain sight within accepted rituals and social norms. The greatest illusion is not secrecy itself, but the belief that we would recognise the truth if it stood directly in front of us .” The other day, I got into a rather heated political discussion with a couple of old friends. We were discussing decli

Few politicians since the turn of the century have taken the world by storm quite like Zohran Mamadani . He seems to have graduated from the Tony Blair school of charming and underproduced campaign videos, swapping the three-piece suits and out-of-date TikTok trends of his peers for genuine, boots-on-the-ground campaigning. And, if you ignore the added benefit of speaking three different languages, it worked. Mamdani was sworn in as the 112 th  Mayor of New York City  at the

Climber Alex Honnold’s recent ascent of Taipei 101  raises a few questions regarding the modern monetised spectacle. On the 25 th  of January 2026, Netflix livestreamed Honnold’s climb with a ten second delay. Without any safety gear, just one error would have resulted in thousands of spectators lining the tower’s base being witness to a catastrophic death. Questions would have been raised over Netflix’s ethical rights to stage and film such an event. Resignations would be in

Across Europe, a striking consensus has taken hold. Quiz a passerby on the streets of Paris, Berlin or London on the state of society and you are likely to hear all too familiar lamentations concerning the declining state of both government performance and social cohesion. The cost of living continues to rise whilst wages stagnate and public services buckle, politics is brittle and the future looks more precarious than the past. This transnational belief , one which has been

Widely accepted international legal norms inject moral norms and ethical considerations into global politics, often rightly so, criminalising violent foreign intervention, crimes against humanity, and more. Presidents and world leaders, most recently Rodrigo Duterte, have been held to account by the International Criminal Court, for example, for these transgressions. Yet, accountability for President Trump’s recent military operation in Venezuela, which violated the sovereign

It’s been a while since women entered the labour market at large, contributing to the depression of global fertility rates to below replacement rate. The extinction of the family has been a major concern in both society and political discourse, especially among right-wing parties. However, solutions such as the infamous  three children per woman goal, considered a solution for declining populations, has bigger implications for development than first meets the eye. Development