Benjamin Thomas

The most recent coverage of her disavowing Nigerian identity would do well to include her 'Yoruba not Nigerian' comments as well. There's an embrace of British identity but also more particular ideas on ethnic and national identities.

not unrelated of course to being a party with liberals and conservatives. This then plays a part in their accommodation to ordoliberal arguments that could be seen as socialisation through Vitalpolitik. The article is really clarifying in how to explain this. It seems I need to read the Novy book.

This is great, will look to cite. When working on the German Christian socialists in the early CDU - admittedly different periodisation but similarities in context - I'm regularly frustrated by their calls for socialisation but struggles to articulate what they actually want to socialise and how -

www.independent.ie/entertainmen...
There's a fair bit of online documentation. It looks like it was Radiohead's first tour after getting signed.

At one point, Radiohead opened for the Sultans.

Next you'll be telling me that Marylebone Cricket Club does not have a privileged seat shaping European monetary policy.

This looks great, I look forward to reading it.

When was Britain last on the right track? a) in the depths of austerity b) amid the prorogation crisis and looming no deal Brexit c) John Major's government d) after the Brexit vote e) the winter of discontent f) when Gordon Brown became PM g) during the pandemic

That's actually helpful, thanks.

Do attempts at neutral and objective analysis of public opinion smuggle in, consciously or unconsciously, the ideological biases of the researcher and their society, with tools shaping results? Surely not!
I want to know why the establishment of the East India Company was not provided as an option.

Similarly, I don't really understand the inclusion of Blair at all. One could make a roundabout argument about PFIs, decline in international standing after Iraq, or the decline of significant opposition to the Tories, but those seem mega contrived. Austerity would be a much better shout.

My next article is in final proofs so I thought I'd tease it by sharing the vignette that the article opens on. Jean-Claude Juncker in Bottrop, 2018.
I remember visiting my aunt and uncle for the holidays, running out of easy conversation topics, and watching this on the news.

It's a thing from the Thatcher era. Thatcher and her people were 'dry' committed conservatives which they distinguished from soppy 'wet' conservatives, mapping onto moderates and genteel types. It's apparently public school (posh private school) slang.

An example from British political history. More the name of a faction than a book, but overlapping.

A nagging thought was about cabinet dissent. The article mentions that many discontented are wary of voicing dissent lest they be briefed against. It mentions dissent but is very vague about the lines of disagreement and forms; the actual attitudes described bear more similarity than difference.

Human rights advocates have plenty of specific policy demands. But is there more the UK could do to defend the system as a whole? For Gearty, Labour’s contortions reflect “the weakness that is at the core of Britain’s standing in the world, which voters can never be told about, because British voters continue to believe that this country is a world power”. The trouble, according to Gearty, is that these contortions only make the problem worse. “Britain has little credibility for three reasons,” he said. “One, it is seen as the child of America, with no independent engagement. Two, Britain is an imperial nation that has not yet addressed what imperialism meant; it still largely believes that it granted independence to grateful global south entities. And three, having left Europe, it has no strategic vision of anything.”

I think Conor Gearty's comments are a particularly good takeaway from the article.

Really interesting piece and it's worth looking at an article mentioned within it, from Starmer in 1995, about human rights (which does have that annoying lawyerly thing of mentioning the views of others but less clearly establishing its own).
www.jstor.org/stable/42950147

I co-organised a conference once where we had the luck of spare budget and opted to spend it on an honorarium for the keynote (who, in keeping with the ethos of the conference, was not a senior academic). The payment did feel like something of a poisoned chalice, given the associated paperwork.

In political analysis there is so often woolly reference to democratic culture and democratic norms (DC&N). Part of the challenge is establishing DC&N, part of it is what to do with anti-democratic political cultures and norms, and part is what to do when 'we' think we have the DC&N but don't.

I'm not sure if Lise was making this link, but there was the whole thing about re-remembering the Victorian era and the 1930s within Thatcherism.

One might also wonder why Vermeule is on the editorial board of the reconstituted Political Philosophy. If you reestablish your journal in 2024, that's quite the choice - although others have commented on other members of the board.

If you've never done so before, check out the register of political parties. The names are fun enough but most also have fun logos as well.
search.electoralcommission.org.uk/Search/Regis...

That's overstating the deviation it. Many of the Owenites were already on a trajectory towards where they ended up in. The SMF was already on a trajectory to the right in the 1990s and Skidelsky has his own history.

I imagine the 2002 Conference speech will get a mention, even if beyond the delimited scope. It was significant in how she positioned herself within the party and her priorities - of course heavily impacted by Brexit and the need to respond to it.

www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/dem...

As @stanleysbill.bsky.social and I wrote recently in @jodemocracy.bsky.social, the Polish government is trapped in a “post-illiberal trilemma” of having to act effectively, swiftly, and yet also legally. Today’s reshuffle reflects this uncertainty.

'This weeks blog is about the topic all academics are discussing: branding. More specifically how some academics are leveraging both personal and institutional branding to maximise impact for consultancy and knowledge exchange activities.'

but it is more specific in its identification that those it orients against have a point but that she both personally doesn't countenance it but an believes that society is better off with these truths left unexplored. A lot hinges on the claimed primacy of the nation/society.

One element of Young's position in the interview is a stated defence of liberalism and liberal democracy but an clear hostility (with very limited attempt at justification) against all activism and scholarship that challenges the priors of that 'liberal' status quo. This is conservatism of a form

The State Management Scheme could be revisited both as a mechanism to produce 'third spaces' but also as a way to supplement alternatives to antisocial private drinking (something of an inversion of the original scheme). Would require a more active state.

There's a reason that the Carlisle Experiment and Thomas Cook should be on the agenda for the renationalisation of public goods and not just water and the railways.