Ian Christie

Crace in full Crace-mode.

"...it is now clear her care in the community experiment has failed. She is a danger to herself. It’s almost painful to watch someone so lacking in any self-awareness. Her therapist is doing her no favours by letting her out into the wild."

Neal Ascherson | No Kings England doesn’t know how to say: ‘No Kings.’ Instead, it says: ‘Not this one, but perhaps his brother or his son...

“Here’s a snide way of summarising modern British history: a 400-year campaign by the propertied classes to make the English forget about the 1640s.”

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

I could tell you a joke about Hercules - but it's a bit laborious to be honest.

The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.

Edward O. Wilson

It’s very funny to me that countries are trying to pass laws banning teens from social media until they’re older and can “handle it” as if the last decade hasn’t been about watching rich middle aged men nuke their brains on Twitter and then run the USA via shitpost.

Pretty much an accurate summary of US legal news nowadays.

AI Slop Is Spurring Record Requests for Imaginary Journals The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that artificial intelligence models are making up research papers, journals and archives

The slop is winning

www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-s...

@marchudson.bsky.social bsky.app/profile/owen...
best
Ian

A superb meditation.

And only the second banana superpower.

Interesting that the BBC will call National Rally "Far Right" (in an article about Bardella meeting Farage) - when they would never use that term for Reform. Their policies are very similar. If anything Reform's are more authoritarian.

The daily photo.

By the Natural History Museum, London, Dec. 2019

I can’t help thinking that when, in future, people ask what UK political leaders said as it became undeniable that US saw European liberal democracy as its no1 strategic foe, Starmer and others will regret that the answer is “not much, shuffled awkwardly, looked at their feet”.

A short lexicon of politics A brief guide to understanding political terms.

New substack: a portion of a dictionary of politics: chrisdillow.substack.com/p/a-short-le...

Three more Farage bloc MEPs alleged to have followed Russian asset’s script At least eight MEPs elected for Ukip or Brexit party now known to have been focus of efforts by jailed Nathan Gill

Three more British MEPs in Nigel Farage’s bloc now alleged to have “followed the script” given to Nathan Gill by an alleged Russian asset, according to prosecutors.

At least eight UKIP and Brexit Party MPs were focus of efforts by Nathan Gill

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Or zombie media.

Peter Kellner: The pro-Brexit majority of 2016 has literally died out Huffington Post had gone behind the New World (formerly New European) paywall and emerged with a story about the level of public support fo...

Our government's policy on Europe is heavily influenced by a desire not to alienate dead people.

Paradox of need for *enclosure* of liberal social-democratic institutions & technologies against a globalisation of autocracy. 'Exclosure' against Autocracy Inc.(Applebaum): detachment from US/China/Russian IT & supply chains, & from energy dependence on petrostates.
& with that - Happy Christmas!

3) Assuming UK and EU can hold the line - a big assumption given trends in UK, France, Germany, Czechia etc - then some policy priorities are plain, eg defence. But deterrence needs to go hand-in-hand with active defence, renewal & projection of liberal social democratic values & institutions.How?

2) No sign that this process will end any time soon in overthrow of neoliberal economics or of neolib-plutocrat-fascistic coalitions. Indeed it allows convergence of USA on Russia/China of an Orwellian kind. AI and shared authoritarian worldviews point to a globalisation of this sort of coalition.

Idea for article in 2026...1) Western 'polycrisis' is about pathologies of failed neoliberalism as you show in LSB. But neoliberalism has maintained itself as zombie economics via coalitions with reactionary & techno-plutocratic wings of the right.

Trump and today’s GOP are really all of Putin’s Christmases come at once…

The new National Security Strategy is a propaganda document, designed to be widely read. It is also a performative suicide. Hard to think of another great power ever abdicating its influence so quickly and so publicly. It will be worth following the reactions around the world, not just in Europe.

Reform’s record £9m crypto donation is just the latest offering from abroad | The Observer

Will Hutton
“When the story of the 2024 - 29(?) Parliament is told one of the strangest chapters will be the refusal to close down foreign donations to British political parties”.
What on earth do Labour MPs think their ministers are doing here?
observer.co.uk/news/politic...

Jan-Werner Müller · Caesar wept: Trolling the Libs All post-liberals have at one point or another declared themselves anti-libertarian. Why is it, then, that once in power...

‘What might a post-liberal politics look like? Those lacking a general political theory tend to gesture towards a specific place: Hungary.’

@jwmueller-pu.bsky.social on post-liberal political theory.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Wondering what the longest period between Keir Starmer making a statement about race and Reform that it is not immediately undermined by something done by his ministers or aides has been. Three days?

this is cowardly and also pointless: Labour will never win over the British voters who hate Sadiq because he’s Muslim, and failing to stick up for your capital’s mayor (who is also part of your party!!!) against a foreign leader makes you look really weak

2025 on course to be joint-second hottest year on record Copernicus Climate Change Service confirms average global temperatures for 2023-2025 are now likely to breach 1.5C warming threshold

Second hottest year on record. Average temperature for the past 3 years more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. 10 hottest years on record the last 10 years. It remains truly mind-blowing this is not the biggest story in the world every day. www.businessgreen.com/news/4522952...

"Why don't people trust politicians?"

More on a nearby civilisation in decay.