Britain's university system, built in large part after WW2, was one of most important elements in a state project to modernise the UK economy. From Thatcher onwards successive governments have tried out various kinds of market-mimicking governance and now the sector seems to be in full-blown crisis.
They will be as loudly and confidently wrong in future as they have been in the past: they have no incentive to change, and I am afraid their foolish fans will love them for it. Because the message is always, you're OK, the world is as it should be, and what you feel is true, is true.
Plain Lincoln@plainlincoln.bsky.social · 4mo agoWould everybody who once solemnly intoned that Starmer was 'forensic' please just sit down and be quiet until 2030 or so?🤔
Sathnam Sanghera and Jim Pickard are both professional opinion-formers working for the most influential newspapers in the country.
A group of very rich people have realised that they can mobilise non-voters through targeted ads, platform influencer subsidies, and a paid-for ground game: the hope is relatively modest investments can be turned into massive payouts via preferential access to policy-making after the 2029 election.
Rob Ford@robfordmancs.bsky.social · 4mo agoReform mobilising non-voters looks to be a big story from this year’s locals. As so often, non-voters are the “dark matter” of politics - rarely discussed but so numerous they even mobilising a small slice can have big effects. Particularly in low turnout local elections.
Mainstream discourse about the right-wing media refuses to explain this to audiences in plain terms, because that would be to admit that the media aren't simply in the business of making money or serving the public: they also aspire to wield power through their influence over voters.
Lupita Nihongo@otsumamiboy.blacksky.app · 4mo agoRight wing propagandist outlets should be viewed less as money losing endeavors than investments that pay dividends in other ways.
This is by far the most interesting post-mortem of the local elections. 1. The panellists don't find time to discuss the Green Party's showing. 2. Finkelstein suggests that Labour and the Conservatives should give up trying to win outright in FPTP www.podbean.com/media/share/... …
How Labour Suffered An Historic Defeat
Labour has taken a hammering at elections in England, Scotland and Wales, with Nigel Farage calling it an ‘historic shift in British politics’ - does this add up to the end of the two-party system, an...
podbean.com
It bears repeating, but: the idea that the Green Party or the left in general is a kind of Islamic/Bolshevik conspiracy to undermine and destroy the Reich has a very specific historic pedigree, and it’s not one that anyone should be politely accepting as a suitable point for debate.
We can look forward to some extraordinary contortions by the liberal centrist wing of the Thatcherite uni-party, as they explain at the next election why they cannot in good conscience support the Green Party, and must, reluctantly, recommend voting for Reform. observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
Reform plans ‘ideological purge’ of Whitehall | The Observer
Fears the party will pack civil service with ‘believers’ rather than the brightest and the best if it wins election
observer.co.uk
I had a fun conversation with @alanrenwick.bsky.social of the UCL Constitution Unit about the horizon of constitutional reform in the UK, which explored the subject from the perspective of Hobbes' account of sovereignty and its implications for popular rule ... 1/2 www.podbean.com/media/share/...
Restructuring The Constitution: A Hobbesian Thought Experiment
Constitutional reform is a recurring theme in UK politics. Debates regularly surface about changing the electoral system, reforming the House of Lords, or redefining the role of the courts. These conv...
podbean.com
It's very welcome that the leading body promoting cooperative values is calling for "mutual features" to be introduced at the BBC, including a randomly selected Members' Council, which will be empowered to create bodies to oversee other aspects of its operations and governance.
Co-operatives UK@cooperativesuk.bsky.social · 6mo agoWhat if the BBC was owned by the people who fund it? We’re proposing a member-owned BBC where licence fee payers become members with a real voice in how it's run. Independent. Accountable. Owned by the public. Support the idea before the consultation closes today 👇 buff.ly/OdtHYx0 #BBC #Coops
Stop saying a new party is impossible, and build a new party. In the UK we have the same godawful voting system and, sure, maybe the federal level is shut off, but don't tell me you can't take over a single state and use it to tell the rest of the country exactly how they're being scammed.
Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 6mo ago18 Senate Dems just voted to confirm Trump's NSA director: Baldwin Coons Cortez Masto Fetterman Gillibrand Hassan Heinrich Hirono Kelly King Peters Reed Rosen Schiff Shaheen Slotkin Warner Whitehouse
Feels like this is something that the Green Party should go in on hard: elements of the ancestral constitution are good and worth preserving, and the Green Party should embrace and defend them.
Caroline Slocock@carolineslocock.bsky.social · 6mo agoA reminder of how jury trials can preserve civil liberties. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-engl...
It's amazing the contortions that the supposedly progressive and sensible sections of the mainstream media will put themselves through, in order to exonerate and excuse the reactionary, racist and duplicitous sections of the same industry. www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-...
How rightwing rhetoric has risen sharply in the UK parliament – an exclusive visual analysis
In the past five years, MPs’ attitudes in the House of Commons towards immigration have swung harder to the right than at almost any other time in the last century
theguardian.com
Getting a lot of replies from Americans today about how Labour’s woes portend doom for the Democratic Party, if they don’t mend their ways. I think that’s right, in one specific way: both wanted so badly, for so long, to claim the centre ground as the party of mean-as-fuck Business Win authority…
This is a very serious blow to the Charter renewal process. It isn't too late for the Department of Culture Media and Sport to work with the BBC on a consultation that is public, both in the sense of having adequate publicity, and of being open to us all.
Equity@equityuk.bsky.social · 6mo agoWhy we're boycotting the government's BBC Charter Survey: 👉Absence of workforce consideration 👉Limited detail and scope 👉Possible use of AI to aggregate responses, likely to generate overly simplistic conclusions Read what we're calling for instead 👇
Feels quite urgent that (at a minimum) we look at individuals and institutions with significant influence over politics and public opinion and ask if they (1) democratic (2) anti-democratic or (3) trying to pretend that everything is fine, actually. Keep (1) and drop (2) and (3) immediately.
flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · 6mo agoTalking openly about this in public too, so I think it’s time to ask ourselves what we collectively want to do in response to a billionaire class that is not embarrassed about declaring themselves kings.
The major media won't move decisively against Farage et al. The urgent questions become: 1. How do we build an information infrastructure that can reach large audiences, with a post-Thatcherite, anti-fascist programme? 2. What does it look like, what institutional actors can and will create it?
Aurelien Mondon@aurelmondon.com · 6mo agoExactly. And that's the point, it's not hard at all and yet it's not done. We know exactly how to stop the resurgence of the far right but there is clearly no appetite amongst those who could do most to shift the balance quickly
As it happens I wrote a commentary on this in 2016 - pointing out that Corbyn's Labour Party had to make the choice Tawney set out. Now it's for the Greens to decide: administrators of the system, or creators of Tawney's (long delayed) socialist commonwealth? www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemoc...
The choice before the Labour party
Does Labour wish to fight for a better deal within the system, or change the system?
opendemocracy.net
Political Quarterly@politicalquarterly.bsky.social · 6mo agoThe choice facing the current Labour party bears similarities to the choices facing it in the 1930s. From our archive: R.H. Tawney asks: Does Labour wish to fight for a better deal within the system, or change the system itself? politicalquarterly.org.uk/blog/from-ou...
I've written something on Lisa Nandy's rhetoric of popular empowerment and her record in office. It speaks to a broader problem on the contemporary centre left: politicians seem to think they can say whatever they like, and act completely differently. modernmediatheory.wordpress.com/2026/02/18/r...
This by @martinoneill.bsky.social is a damning indictment of Labour's degeneration at the hands of the Labour Together clique. tribunemag.co.uk/2026/02/smea...
Labour Together’s Smear Operation Made This Government
The Labour Together spying scandal shows how Britain’s mainstream press looked the other way when dirty tricks were deployed against the Left — allowing a culture of surveillance and paranoia to take ...
tribunemag.co.uk
If Labour Together had limited their intelligence gathering to anti-corruption campaigners and independent journalists the major media wouldn't have batted an eyelid. But they went after People Who Matter, when it's already open season on the Labour Together crew, and well, here we are.
Now would be a really good time for the “real Keir” that some are claiming exists, to stand up and say yes we’ve had quite enough of this authoritarian Blue Labour tripe, thanks Shabana you can pipe down now, no we won’t be appealing.
Amnesty International UK@amnestyuk.bsky.social · 7mo agoBREAKING: government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action under terrorism law ruled UNLAWFUL This matters for everyone. For years, the right to protest has been under sustained and deliberate attack. Thousands of people have been arrested for something that should have never been a crime.
Stirring stuff from Nandy here. But as Culture Secretary she has dropped her commitment to mutualise the BBC, which would have empowered ordinary people in the way she claims to want. In 2020 BBC mutualisation was a central plank of her leadership campaign. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
The confusion and drift in Labour in 2018 and 2019 makes more sense if the leadership were trying desperately to prevent a big chunk of their appalling MPs from running for the exits to a new party, a British En Marche, no less. (On Marsh in the AI transcription, which is probably accurate.)
flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · 7mo agoFascinating stuff from Tom McTague here in the New Statesman. I have questions: Has it been common knowledge that Tony Blair et al spent the late Brexit years scoping out creating a new Macronist party? Was anyone else aware this was happening? Who put up any money required for this stuff?
This is true: Starmer was going to go, regardless. But as usual the political journalists are doing everything in their power to obscure the politics of the situation by focussing relentlessly on tragic flaws, surprise resignations, dramatic interventions, all of SW1's moth-eaten stagecraft.
Jeremy Gilbert@jemgilbert.bsky.social · 7mo agoThey want you to believe Starmer's going because of Mandelson. He isn't. He's been on the way out since summer because the polls are disastrous because half the Labour base have gone to the Greens for entirely political reasons. This is why Starmer will go: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...