Benjamin Thomas

The workload implications of requirements for ethics applications as standard was a core consideration for the committee during my stint.

Having been on an ethics committee in a politics department in the past 5 years, it's common these days to not just have advisors guide students away from work requiring a full ethics application but also to have streamlined ethics forms/processes for simple student research.

conditional and subject to subsequent tripartite negotiation on whether to adopt or weaken this legislation. A focus on the decision-making of trade unions directly shifts attention from the real locus of power and the real story here, which is in Westminster.

context we are in. That is the Government narrative. The Government was elected with a clear manifesto commitment to day one protections and would have a clear and legitimate electoral mandate to impose those on capital - it is a 'labour party'. It is absurd to suggest that this commitment was

conditions or facing the prospect of industrial action, in a context where it is illegal under current trade union laws for trade unions to collaborate in pursuit of a shared political goal, it is entirely understandable that trade unions would settle for incremental reform. But that is not the

Not a comment on this article specifically, but I have been manifestly disappointed in how commentators have adopted the Government's framing of the day one protections backtrack as a story about trade union pragmatism. In a case where trade unions have to decide between a partial improvement of

oppose a the politics of more bourgeois progressives from the standpoint of 'real (masculine) labour' - as advocated by those not doing that labour but sniping from the side-lines. If Western economies and employment have shifted from production to services, it's an unavoidable concept.

I think there's some useful underlying analysis with the PMC. There's value in looking at underlying fractions within class analysis (to think about white collar workers as a subset of workers) and to think about where managers fit between capital and labour - but it is so often a vulgar way to

It's not insightful to say Mamdani does not offer a revolutionary political programme (duh) but it is worth reading together the coalitional politics he represents, the promises and constraints of the political programme he looks to advance, and then return to a class analysis of NYC and beyond.

Marxism and Antitrust: A Provocation How should we understand the relationship between Marxism and antitrust? To what extent do these traditions involve conflicting methods and assumptions? And, despite their differences…

Finally, @gabrielwinant.bsky.social on antitrust as the political economy of small producers, with limits for what it can offer workers. (Part of an excellent symposium I am trying to grapple with - well worth reading) lpeproject.org/blog/marxism...

Although someone better informed could say something about the overlapping rise of contemporary NYC DSA and bodega culture on social media. There's a recurrent opposition to big business and the little guy, but this is hard to explain through the PMC lens.

Then compare to Mamdani's post yesterday about his commitments to small business owners, a strata of petit bourgeoise often distinguished from the PMC. Small business owners are important in Mamdani's economics and rhetoric. bsky.app/profile/zohr...

Is DSA the class party of the PMC? Five Marxist perspectives on Zohran Mamdani’s electoral coalition

I felt a bit of material analysis coming on so I'd encourage you to read together three texts on Zohran Mamdani's politics.
First, @dmk1793.bsky.social in Renewal writing from a materialist lens on Mamdani as professional managerial class politics .
renewal.org.uk/blog/is-dsa-...

Didn't Potere al Popolo! try to do some innovation on this front as well? Likewise not a model of electoral success.

ial direction, fit alongside electoral campaigning changes that compel a form of professional campaigning, which all hurts specific competencies of MPs, ministers and party leaders. It's a whole conjuncture shaping candidate development before we even think about fitting in party leader selection.

I appreciate you have a bugbear about members electing party leaders. I think it is important to place emphasis on this point. Changes in the discursive culture in the chambers, go alongside changes in public administration, where managerialism and a reduced scope of the state, and with it minister-

There's a lot of thoughts out there on how Thatcher caused a realignment and created a new generation of middle class Tories but I want to gesture as to how her rise was a product of an existing shift. It also points to an era where some Tories were young and exciting - which is very incongruous.

Might be of interest to @asheinze.bsky.social @duncanmcdonnell.com or @psayoungpol.bsky.social. @timbale.bsky.social or @jamesbarr.bsky.social are welcome to claim credit or identify whose arguments I am interpolating/butchering - it's probably not original.

I only bumped into the connection while looking at Pirie and Butler's bibliographies while trying to explain St Andrews libertarianism so I didn't really get any deeper than what you found. But it's feels like something that could go somewhere.

Benjamin Thomas - Conservative Students Students and the Modernisation of the Conservative Party 10 November 2025 In my last post, I discussed Conservative students involved with the European Democrat Students in the late 1970s and early 19...

A bit longer than my other digressions, and with a few more citations. In keeping with the focus on younger and student Tories, there are appearances from (relatively) young versions of Philip Norton, Maurice Cowling, Richard Rose and Patrick Seyd. www.benjaminjthomas.net/musings/cons...

I did a write up on some thoughts I've been playing with on the influential role of student activists in the Conservative Party from the 1950s to the 1970s, which I think is a story that often goes missing in accounts of Conservative modernisation (although my thoughts here are probably derivative)

As Lars identifies and is an expert, the connection to draw is between the politics of IQ, race and neoliberalism.
I'd also be interested in the sociological overlap between Mensa, neoliberals and libertarians both materially and culturally for both individualism and attitudes towards the poor.

The Adam Smith Institute on Race Explore the controversial history of the Adam Smith Institute's views on race, IQ, and intelligence in this revealing archival research from a groundbreaking neoliberal study.

Was writing this week and came across a fairly surprising finding, that the IQ society Mensa was basically a front for the St Andrews neoliberals/Adam Smith Institute. Fortunately, @lcornelissen.bsky.social already wrote this up recently.
keeping-up-with-the-neoliberals.beehiiv.com/p/the-adam-s...

the political rhetoric of 'working people', which tries to do some of the work of socialist strategy for the PMC without raising the political valences of socialist language but which I think also ends up losing analytical power with the lack of explicit class analysis.

I'm inclined towards 4, which aligns with my broader analysis of Labour ≠ working class takes, but I find it less compelling for explaining the weaker support at the bottom incomes. I'm unconvinced of both the vanguard and the false consciousness claims. I do wonder what this suggests about

I encourage you to look into DJ Horsegiirl, who does exist.

But now I feel like I'm on a different footing when I see discussions about doomerism in politics. We cannot lose hope or accept doom, they say, no matter how bleak the odds look or what we observe, because things cannot improve otherwise. Which strikes me as profoundly weak analysis.

A common dinner party conversation topic for me used to be my thoughts on determinism in philosophy, that while hard determinism is interesting, I refuse to countenance it, because if it were true, my accepting it would make no difference, I couldn't choose to accept it anyway.

On the final day of the New York City Mayoral election, a reminder of this excellent history article on New York, Curtis Sliwa and the history of popular neoliberalism.
It's open access to there's no excuse not to give it a perusal.

The basic problem facing the American right today is that the young radical critiques of the U.S.-Israel special relationship are substantively correct but unlike the left the modern right cannot use the language of universalism and hence you get the antisemitism.