Hettie O’Brien

The tragic awfulness of this government is that it has extended a factional war against the left of the Labour Party into a war against almost all the good things we might have expected of it. It cannot respond to the crisis it faces, because its hatred of the Labour left is definitional.

Good luck with what’s next!

sincerely regretting each of the Danish words I chose to include in this book

Reform’s local councils are bringing climate denial into the… Top polling party’s moves to ‘undeclare’ the climate emergency and scrap net zero targets could be a sign of things to come

I keep hearing that the rise of the populist right is one of the biggest threats to the climate. Watching Trump’s second term it’s hard to disagree

So @tbij.bsky.social looked at what councils controlled by Reform UK are doing on climate

What we found was pretty shocking

Yorkshire Water fined over £700,000 for repeated sewage releases Company admits three pollution events that killed fish and insects in Pools Brook country park near Chesterfield

would be nice to think this kind of thing had an effect on the behaviour of such companies, rather than something they simply priced in as a cost of doing business www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Secrets of the shore: the landfill rubbish laid bare by the sea How coastal erosion in Essex is revealing decades of human over-consumption and forcing us to reckon with our past.

back in 2019 i went down to essex to write about how coastal erosion was unearthing landfill that was never supposed to see daylight again. A similar story - but this one has far higher stakes www.newstatesman.com/politics/201...

Just another Monday morning.

Rapid UK coastal erosion throws spotlight on £40bn nuclear plant More than 27 metres of cliff lost over a year in area just 2km from Sizewell C

perhaps building a gigantic £40bn nuclear power plant on the edge of a rapidly eroding coastline where sea levels are expected to rise *wasn’t* such a great idea after all www.ft.com/content/7f09...

Absolutely fascinating piece, this -- with an unexpected, starring role for Ernst Mandel, whose 1972 visa refusal case played an important role in subsequent history of US ideological policing of its border

The billionaire philanthropist making hundreds of Londoners homeless He's the London philanthropist who says he's committed to solving homelessness. So why is Asif Aziz's Criterion Capital rushing to make hundreds of Londoners homeless in the coming weeks?

Really great reporting by the brilliant @pollysmythe.bsky.social on Criterion Capital and the billionaire philanthropist behind “one of the worst mass evictions in our capital’s recent history” www.londoncentric.media/p/asif-aziz-...

On this, really interesting piece on X’s “ideological ratchet” by @jwherrman.bsky.social: the platform is pulling users to the right, even elites who thought they were immune to radicalisation
nymag.com/intelligence...

closest thing you get to a UK McMansion

What a great title for what is promising to be the most interesting book on private equity in some years.

You can read more about it, including some of the things people have said so far - and pre-order! - here: www.hettie-obrien.com

Very excited to share the US cover for my first book, THE ASSET CLASS, which publishes on 9 April (UK) and 23 June (US). I wanted it to feel more like a spy thriller than a business book, so it's full of darkly compelling characters and unexpected twists…

Josh Simons knocking on your door, swivel-eyed, demanding 'are you now or have you ever ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ lived with a left-wing member of the Labour Party?'

I know this feeling all too well!

it's been said before, but i'm still consistently surprised by how many people whose politics are otherwise pretty sound continue posting on X (not to mention the MPs, the train companies, the vital arms of the british state, etc etc)

Epstein Family Values • EQUATOR The billionaire patriarchs of the American far-right want to rule an economy of masters and servants

There are some characteristically fascinating points in this @melindacooper.bsky.social piece about the Epstein scandal, and what it reveals about the "master and servant" logic of the contemporary far right www.equator.org/articles/eps...

Dirty waters: how the Environment Agency lost its way The long read: Having created a watchdog for the environment, the government took its teeth out and muzzled it. Can public outrage rouse the Environment Agency to action?

... and here's a link to the long read it's from: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

this quote pretty much sums up what the Conservatives did to the agency

Dirty Business New factual drama about the muck in our water and a corporate scandal

In Britain, TV dramas now do a better job of holding power to account than most regulators. I spoke to Ch4 while they were making this one about water after reporting on the government's decades-long project to dismantle the Environment Agency www.channel4.com/programmes/d...

Really looking forward to hosting this Q&A with @profafinlayson.bsky.social on Wednesday 25 February - and discussing how the right won the internet (clue: not by being on bluesky)

… which speaks to a much bigger divide between people’s perception of the economy (bad, unfair), and what social democratic politicians keep telling them about the economy (not bad! actually growing!); and how the latter’s inability to grasp the former is why someone like Trump gets elected

…and if those neighbourhoods happen to be places where Trump voters live, it’s no surprise that the administration would want to play to their concerns by banning blackstone from buying suburban (though not apartment blocks, so not democrat-voting inner-city) homes…

…but if the distribution of those homes is extremely concentrated in particular places (eg the sunbelt), people will still feel that private equity owns all the homes. Because that’s what they experience in their neighbourhood…

… which is true! Eg this (from Blackstone’s own calculations) puts their ownership at just 0.06% of all single family homes (that’s suburban homes, for those of you in the UK)

Trump’s home investment crackdown is all about the suburbs Wall Street forgives; voters may not

Fascinating data crunching by Adam Almeida. Whenever I’ve written about private equity buying houses, the response from those companies has always been “but the number of homes we actually own is teeny tiny” www.ft.com/content/4c6b...

I firmly believe Britain is just one (1) competent political leader willing to end all the psycho-drama away from being a well-governed nation state

Hello, I have a new book out in the spring with Picador and I would love it if you could help me spread the word.

IF WE TOLERATE THIS draws on years of work, to help readers understand why British politics is hurtling rightwards and what to do about it.

Pre-orders: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/if-w...