Neil Warner

I enormously enjoyed this conversation with David Runciman about the history of compulsory voting, how it came to be adopted in countries like Belgium and Australia, and what it could for British politics today.

Golf courses take up more land than solar farms.

Volume 33, Issue 2 A quarterly journal of politics and ideas, committed to exploring and expanding the radical potential of social democracy.

NEW ISSUE: Renewal Vol. 33 No. 2

Published amidst far-right mobilisation and a Reform surge, the new issue of Renewal (guest co-edited by @sachahilhorst.bsky.social) features activists, journalists, and academics analysing the radical right threat and debating how social democrats can respond

It was a very great pleasure to appear on one of my favourite podcasts, and to talk with David Runciman about the Past, Present, and Future (!) of electoral reform & proportional representation

Switzerland’s US tech ‘whale’ [FREE TO READ] Swiss National Bank has more than $42bn invested in Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and Meta

SNB: SWF

on.ft.com/4noL9xP

Welcome to Rip-Off Britain.

A country remade by privatisation.

Our latest project — Who Owns Britain? — explores how a radical experiment transformed our society and shapes your life.

🧵

This is a government that, for lack of belief in anything else, has basically decided to adopt self-hatred as its ideology

Loath though he is to alienate floating racists, perhaps Starmer could rouse himself to condemn a violent fascist rally teeming with people who want him overthrown and/or killed

Labour’s secret plan to thwart Reform New legislation could unleash a transformation in community empowerment.

Labour has been quietly going quite hard on "community empowerment" – possibly because it's one of the few halfway coherent theories knocking around the party about how to tackle anti-politics. I've spoken to a lot of people about it for @newstatesman.com:

www.newstatesman.com/comment/2025...

The deadly toll on journalists in the Gaza war With foreign media barred, Palestinians have reported alone, facing the ‘most deliberate effort to kill and silence’ them ever

The Guardian has today printed the names, and where possible, images, of all the media workers killed in Gaza, as part of an international day of action involving more than 150 media organisations.
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

I’m very excited to share that my paper “Cleavage theory meets civil society: A framework and research agenda” with @eborbath.bsky.social & Swen Hutter has now been published online in ‪@wepsocial.bsky.social‬ (w/ open access funding thanks to @wzb.bsky.social‬!)

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Others have pointed to the influence of ideational changes in Sweden, and the changing ideas and profile of party experts, particular around finance spokesperson and later finance minister Kjell-Olof Feldt (Andersson, 2006; Kärrylä, 2021; Lindvall, 2004; Mudge, 2018; Ryner, 2002). Feldt’s scepticism towards wage-earner funds was notoriously encapsulated when he was photographed during a 1983 parliamentary debate, on the watered-down funds that were passed under Feldt’s direction, composing a poem that began ‘wage-earner funds are a fucking piece of shit’.

Very few social-democrat-vs-democratic-socialism vignettes can rival Sweden's future finance minister getting photographed in parliament scribbling ‘wage-earner funds are a fucking piece of shit.’

From @neilwarner.bsky.social's excellent recent article: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The political economy of water | Exploring Economics This introductory text explores the political economy of water by defining the subject and examining its key issues.

Thanks for flagging this Neil! Here is the working link: www.exploring-economics.org/en/discover/...

Thanks Gemma, sounds very interesting! Link doesn't seem to work for me?

Organizing this workshop with @solveigdegen.bsky.social and @cominsitu.bsky.social, in case you'd like to join via zoom:

hu-berlin.zoom-x.de/j/6969547647...
Meeting ID: 696 9547 6478
Passcode: 800441

registration here: criticaltheoryinberlin.de/event/democr...

Famine confirmed in Gaza City for first time, UN-backed report says - live updates Israel says

"Never before has the FRC had to return so many times to the same crisis; a stark reflection of how suffering has not only persisted but intensified and spread until famine has begun to emerge...As this famine is entirely man-made, it can be halted and reversed"

FT podcast on Peter Thiel contains some seriously mad stuff from Gillian Tett, who seems to really appreciate how Thiel's "Socratic, intellectual questioning approach" leads him to explore interesting new ideas about how dictatorships are good
shows.acast.com/ft-tech-toni...

Cover of pamphlet entitled Six Years of Labour Rule in Sheffield 1926-1932

In 1926, Sheffield became the first major British city to come under Labour control. Published six years later, 'this little volume shows what was actually accomplished by a Labour Council with socialist ideals'.
www.principle5.coop/wp-content/u...

After Seville | Daniela Gabor COP30 in Belém

"Carbon financiers continue to worry about a future in which Big Green States decide that substantive penalties on dirty finance would rapidly scale up climate finance by redirecting capital flows."

@danielagabor.bsky.social

LIFT THE BAN - SEPTEMBER 6TH

We can now announce that the next mass action to Lift The Ban on Palestine Action will take place on September 6th at 1pm, in Parliament Square.

We are looking for 1,000 commitments before confirming the action.

Register at: www.wedonotcomply.org

Kites for Palestine on the north end of the Isle of Iona

From Oban in west Scotland: "Stop the genocide now"

Politicians want to ‘look tough’ on crime, but locking people up in dysfunctional prisons is not the answer There is something very problematic about the current political approach to crime, repeatedly cramming more into prisons

The Whitaker report 40 years ago
"saw Ireland’s propensity to send people to prison as excessive, but the rate of incarceration today is more than twice what it was"

1/ The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation scheme forces starving Palestinians to scramble for scraps of food, while creating the illusion that sufficient aid is reaching Gaza. Aid cannot be used as a tool to control, punish, or manipulate an entire population.

The only photo I could find on blue sky with the interior of Iona Abbey with candles.

now published:
The Socialization Debate
Revolutionary Confusion after the German Revolution of 1918
Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal
Volume 46, Issue 1, 2025, Pages 93-122
doi.org/10.5840/gfpj...

Awdah Hathaleen Archives - +972 Magazine Awdah Hathaleen is an activist and collective member of Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills. He is an English teacher in his village, having studied English teaching at Hebron University.

A series of more recent articles by Awdah can be found here
www.972mag.com/writer/awdah...

In Umm al-Khair, the occupation is damning us to multigenerational trauma I saw the first bulldozers arrive in my village 17 years ago. Now, after the most brutal weeks in our history, my son will carry similarly painful memories.

Awdah Hathaleen, a young Palestinian activist, was murdered by Israeli settlers yesterday in his village in the West Bank. This is an article that he wrote 8 years ago

yeap, the mighty trade block can only bully Global South countries into unfavourable trade deals.