Ian Bruff

So for Starmer, the party which gives a shit about literal shit in our rivers and seas are the extremists. Run that argument by me again...

Exactly the same for my aunt, who's been Labour since forever until now

Essential reading

“A simulacrum of charismatic authority tending towards shabbiness, decay and deformation.” Russia four years after the disaster a wall displays a directions towards a padlocked bomb shelter thousands of kilometres from Ukraine, February 2026. In a wide-ranging interview for Die Zeit a few weeks ago I said: ‘for most, a nati…

A new post summing up what I got wrong and right, four years into the Russian war on Ukraine. Some musings on the problem of prediction, on main problems of not taking economic forces seriously enough, and lots more. postsocialism.org/2026/02/25/a...

Electro-Capitalism Ours is the age of transition: from fossil capital to electricity capital. The future that emerges will be determined by the fierce struggles of the present.

✍️New essay for @the-breakdown.bsky.social which attempts an analysis of the energy transition as one between two competing fractions of capital - fossil and electric - and the conflicts and struggles which will lead towards an 'electro-capitalism' (or not!)

www.break-down.org/electro-capi...

The historical, political and cultural significance of Peter Mandelson Jem and Alan get deep into the historical significance of Peter Mandelson, his career and his recent fall. What has the Epstein case revealed about the ideology of our ruling elites? Why did Mandel…

The Meaning of Peter Mandelson. Me & @profafinlayson.bsky.social on the fall of Mandelson and why he ever mattered. Is the Long '90s finally totally over? Would we rather be ruled by the actual Sith than guys who hang around with Steven Pinker? It's all here:
culturepowerpolitics.org/2026/02/17/t...

ABSTRACT The Recovery and Resilience Facility of the European Union (EU) provided member states with funds to counteract the economic consequences of the pandemic and required the submission of national action plans. The EU developed guidance on how member states should apply for and use these funds, directing applicants to include a gendered analysis. While there is significant variation in the levels of gender awareness within the national plans, the Irish plan is notable in that it lacks any substantial engagement with gender considerations. Using document analysis and policy maker interviews, this article examines the causes and outcomes of this disengagement, exploring this puzzle of a lack of gender sensitive economic policy-making in Ireland. We examine why, despite direction from the EU, those charged with Ireland’s economic policy framework omitted any significant consideration of gender. Drilling down into a specific example of how gender considerations were marginalised in economic governance, we argue for understanding more about how the interpretive or cognitive lens that policy makers apply reinforces long-standing norms about what matters. We contribute to feminist political economic analysis of the EU and national policy-making, highlighting where the blockages to gender equality lie.

Why is it so hard to translate high-level committements into actual policy changes when it comes to gender equality?

Check out our newly published article - ‘It would have slowed down the work’ – the challenges of gender sensitive economic policy

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Student loans show that hard policy choices will only get harder The debate over university funding is a good example of the intractable challenges facing the UK government

This take on recent history of UK universities omits the 35% cut in academic salaries, the booming bureacracies, the managerial incompetence, the dodgy governance, the obsession with new buildings, and the debts and disciplinary convenants. Otherwise, it's spot on.
www.ft.com/content/131f... via @FT

PwC somehow more lucid on AI and education than most university leaders these days

New online workshop: Towards a radical highway geography - Berlin and the remaking of city logistics in global capitalism

When: 26 February, 6pm CEST

Where: bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

With author @soederberg1.bsky.social and discussants Darragh Golden and Laura Stegemann

See you there!

Returning to work this week after 3 weeks of lockout has been stressful to say the least! Please support us @sheffielducu.bsky.social to challenge Sheffield Uni's punitive approach before it becomes more widespread across the sector. Link here: linktr.ee/SheffieldUCU

The wonderful @maltelaub.bsky.social and I are hosting a workshop on the theme of Austerity Militarism at EWIS 2026 in Izmir! If you are working on these themes then please consider submitting an abstract! We'd love to see you there.

The link to submit is here: eisa-net.org/ewis-2026/ab...

Is there such a thing as a functioning Starmer, though?

Why is Keir Starmer so unpopular? Britain needs a leader willing to break with the legacy of Thatcherism

They want you to believe Starmer's going because of Mandelson. He isn't. He's been on the way out since summer because the polls are disastrous because half the Labour base have gone to the Greens for entirely political reasons. This is why Starmer will go: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

I'm teaching on Southern Europe in a few weeks' time on my European Capitalisms module, so I will be making sure to say this! Compare and contrast to Italy/Spain, for instance

I'm glad you've said this, as that was my interpretation as well but I couldn't be 100% sure. Seems like the Guardian projected Le Pen onto Chega

“I’m mad I can’t understand Bad Bunny’s lyrics because they’re not in English”

my brother millions of metalheads around the world have been happily listening to incomprehensible Finnish shrieks and Japanese death grunts since we were teens, you’re just boring and racist

PAPER ALERT! 🔥How can we use theories of care to understand how games can help us care more for the future in the face of climate change? Carien Moossdorff and I investigated 287 climate-related games on they engage with care for the future. Now in FUTURES! Link below! #games #climate #futures

By the time Starmer is replaced this summer, we'll have had two wasted years, in which a country crying out for transformation instead got more of the same, or even worse where environmental legislation is concerned, and a high possibility of Farage running the next government.
Thanks Keir.

Two points. 1. There was Epstein merch? 2. This seems to have been taken in 2009. Epstein was first convicted in 2008, meaning that Mandelson is sporting convicted paedophile merch.

Common Pressures, Uneven Trajectories: The Variegated Europeanisation of Wage Regulation Institutions The debate on whether national industrial relations (IR) are experiencing convergence is a long-standing one. Recently, scholars argue that we are witnessing a neoliberal convergence of national IR, ...

I'm happy to share this article, which is now out in open access in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, and seeks to contribute to the debate on neoliberalisation & europeanisation of industrial relations
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Geographies of subsumption - Thomas Cowan, 2026 This article draws on heterodox scholarship on capitalist subsumption to revise core approaches within Marxist and critical geography. The article argues that a...

New publication! In this paper I draw on heterodox marxist engagements with subsumption to revise core approaches within marxist geography. Subsumption provides us with a dynamic tool to rethink capitalist property, uneven development and difference. Do reach out for access!

doi.org/10.1177/2043...

Wes Streeting saying on Today that Mandelson is ‘not the man we thought he was’ but the trouble is, he is exactly the man we thought, just on a much worse scale than almost anyone thought. And there is an alternative world where none of this is this govt’s problem, because they never gave him a job

Imagine Mandelson is under a lot of stress right now so just as well his husband is a trained osteopath.

That was exactly my feeling in 2022! You do get out of this rut, honest

“Gramsci used to say 'Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will'. What he meant is: understand how the bloody system works.” - Stuart Hall, born Feb. 3, 1932

The thing is, you didn't have to be Nostradamus to see it. You just had to be independent of the ultra-rich. Unfortunately, the great majority of the media is in the plutocrats' pockets. So the people pointing it out are shunned. In 2009 I tried and tried to get the BBC to pick this up. But ...⛔🤐

103 – Beyond Neoliberal Urbanism? Are we seeing the emergence of a new conjuncture for urbanism? The final part of our mini series asks whether authoritarian neoliberalism has created the conditions for a more illiberal and distinct t...

🎧Final episode for @urbanpolitical.bsky.social in our series on authoritarian urbanism w/ @jluger.bsky.social, Miklós Dürr, Ayşegül Can & Oksana Zaporozhets

We discuss whether contemporary urbanism continues to be 'neoliberal', and how the leading tendency is towards something more autocratic:

We're recruiting 2 PhD candidates in human geography here in Uppsala, one position focused on urban/housing issues and one in political ecology.

Please spread the word/repost etc. Being a PhD student in Sweden is a good gig.

CfP for #EWIS2026 is open until 11 February and @jward232.bsky.social and I are looking forward to submissions from across politics, political economy, sociology, and beyond. We are especially interested in papers from ECRs. Get in touch if you have any questions!