@stephenhipkin.bsky.social
Retired economic and social historian of early modern England. Now learning new stuff. Centre-left, Internationalist, and Francophile. Trying to stay positive.
He's not pre-eminent. He's not even eminent. He IS pedestrian, dull and irrelevant.
02.08.2025 12:50 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
To add to this:
www.ft.com/content/f450...
Donald, annoyed that the Epstein subject won’t go away, calls supporters who won’t drop it “weaklings.”
Who says Donald isn’t a master tactician? Calling your supporters weaklings for wanting to see the Epstein List that’s been promised to them for years is some serious 4D chess. You tell them, Donald. You just tell them… 😆
16.07.2025 14:46 — 👍 200 🔁 76 💬 41 📌 5It's a wonder we don't find these people covered in lamb's blood and speaking in tongues when they legislate, they're absolutely off their tits.
15.07.2025 15:38 — 👍 1407 🔁 254 💬 131 📌 10Alexa, show me a slippery slope…
15.07.2025 21:30 — 👍 6 🔁 5 💬 3 📌 0When a writer drones on about 'historically unprecedented changes to society' they have conjured into being, you can be sure they have vanishingly little familiarity with history.
15.07.2025 17:33 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0"Dood-ley", please.
15.07.2025 16:37 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0"Least bad" is a long way from good. Starmer is no stranger to breaking promises (as anyone who voted for him as leader on the basis of his ten pledges can attest) and the gov't needs to raise taxes. It should do so in line with its current mantra: fairness.
09.07.2025 21:46 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Labour should relish the chance to fight the next GE on Brexit.
They can't win if immigration concerns are top. Impossible. Reform will always walk away victors from that encounter.
Force Reform to fight somewhere they're less comfortable instead.
The disaster of Brexit is a perfect battleground.
Blogged: why we shouldn't debate immigration: stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_an...
28.06.2025 09:46 — 👍 89 🔁 33 💬 11 📌 15
In the wake of this week's unedifying spectacle at the Nato summit one can only hope that European and UK politicians take seriously these timely and surely important interventions from @adamtooze.bsky.social
adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...
foreignpolicy.com/podcasts/one...
In the wake of this week's unedifying spectacle at the Nato summit one can only hope that European and UK politicians take seriously these timely and surely important interventions from @adamtooze.bsky.social
adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...
foreignpolicy.com/podcasts/one...
In the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, "He would say that, wouldn't he".
27.06.2025 12:55 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
I wrote about David Goodhart's confused, contradictory complaints about immigrants and London (too skilled and too unskilled, too rich and too poor, all at the same time) in 2013.
What's changed? His writing has got worse and his racism has got *much* worse.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...
50 years ago, David Goodhart and I were fellow undergraduates, and close friends. I can scarcely believe, and am deeply saddened, that the humane person I knew then became the author of a rising tide of risible nonsense culminating in this deeply weird and utterly depressing effusion.
19.06.2025 16:36 — 👍 16 🔁 6 💬 1 📌 0Forest. As a Wolves fan I have vivid memories of Nuno's team doing the double over a City team in their pomp.
30.03.2025 15:26 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0What is abundantly clear, however, is that Ukrainian lives are considered expendable without a second thought in the interest of foreign policy as news-cycle psychodrama.
11.03.2025 18:26 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
I think Gideon Rachman has been reading my mind. Amen to all of this!
www.ft.com/content/724d...
Their core vote - white supremacists - will be undeterred, but 'tis to be hoped that the tide will turn among the credulous but not malignant.
06.03.2025 19:23 — 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0We have got to stop kidding ourselves that appeasing Trump & trying to please him gains us any leverage, any guarantees, any reliable favour.
Trump has chosen Putin and the oligarchy. We must cancel his state visit. @ukstoptrump.bsky.social
"Fine line"? Seriously?
And the tariffs on Canada/Mexico are a fine line between nihilistic economic illiteracy and...what exactly??
news.sky.com/story/trump-...
I would suggest it's high time you stopped believing in the BBC.
02.03.2025 12:07 — 👍 11 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0The UK, France and Germany must now move at pace to establish an integrated common European security defence force and categorically assert Europe's independence.
28.02.2025 18:27 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0Starmer’s grip and grin with Trump ain’t aging very well.
Not saying we shouldn’t have gone to the US, but stark reality is that U.K. needs to massively reverse out of the ‘special relationship’ - as quickly as possible
This is great stuff ...
www.unpopularfront.news/p/talking-to...
This moment from @mrjamesob.bsky.social has gone very viral on TikTok and YouTube since we published. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXF9...
23.01.2025 13:56 — 👍 270 🔁 73 💬 13 📌 3
If it looks like a Nazi, and it sounds like a Nazi, and it acts like a Nazi, it's a Nazi.
21.01.2025 15:52 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0And it's pretty rich from serial-draft dodger Trump.
12.01.2025 19:46 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The unspeakable in pursuit of the execrable.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
A quite extraordinary effusion of utter twaddle. Why on earth is the FT publishing such deranged rantings?
10.01.2025 20:13 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
