James Butler

Félicitations! *hic*

Are you under the impression things are going well? Win any by-elections recently? Would you say Keir Starmer's approval numbers are looking healthy?

I went to playbook looking for precisely that information and this reminds me why I unsubscribed!

Not much on, you see.

A truly amazing combination of bovine complacency and blind panic at the top of government.

Well I hate to imagine what a *worse* political strategist would do to the polling.

Plus ça change: Bush, attempting to convince Chirac to join his coalition in Iraq, attempted to speak to him as a Christian - arguing that they were engaged in a joint war against Gog and Magog. (Chirac, a Catholic, had to ring up the French Protestants to discover wtf Bush was talking about.)

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi | The dry and the wet burn together ‘The dry and the wet burn together’ is a Persian expression invoked when a fire spreads without discrimination. Once...

‘The Islamic Republic is likely to emerge transformed or weakened in ways not yet visible. But the notion that it would simply dissolve under pressure was always fanciful.’

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi on the US’s war on Iran, new on the blog.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

Obviously British citizens should not forgo protection just because they've holed up in a zero-tax slave state. But we should also make it much, *much* harder for people to shrug off their social obligations like that.

Special exception: Richard Tice and Isobel Oakeshott can swim home.

People who believe in nothing are willing to say anything.

When you've got to tour a migrant camp at 11 but clock in for your volunteer shift on the Death Star at 12.

James Butler | Just Voting The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer has won the Gorton and Denton by-election with 41 per cent of the vote. Progressive...

‘“I don’t think it’s extreme or radical to think that working hard should get you a nice life,” Hannah Spencer said. The speech could once easily have been delivered by a centre-left Labour politician.’

@piercepenniless.bsky.social on the Gorton and Denton by-election.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

(It's a complicated and long story: Bevan in In Place of Fear counsels new MPs that they will feel their speech has fallen flat in that most effective "social shock absorber".)

Stray thought: there's a long and sad story to be written about the decline in esteem the chamber of the House has suffered even among members who sit in it. It should be instinctive to *want* to bring a measure which substantially changes the country's treatment of refugees before it.

UK launches operation to support thousands of Britons in Middle East Officials are understood to be working on plans to evacuate British nationals, should airspace remain closed.

What's happening in Dubai bolsters the argument taxes should be based on people's nationality, not just their country of residence (ie the US model).

If Brits living abroad can expect to be airlifted out by virtue of being British, they should pay some tax towards that.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

(I do think Magnus should have questioned his statements *made while a minister* about motivation given the information re: scope and material of the Electoral Commission hack was already public before the APCO commission.)

Massive accountability gap in British politics -- Simons can go around saying he was "cleared" of breaking the ministerial code, but the investigation can't concern itself with the smearing he commissioned before becoming a minister.

I don't dispute the Home Secretary's power to change terms through regulation, but if it's really as significant and 'existential' a shift as she claims she ought to have the courage to defend it in debate in parliament. She won't, because it's indefensible.

Watto is the epitome of labour machine politics so expecting him to recognise it's a problem is like asking a river to flow backwards

I'm enjoying all the finger-wagging geopolitical instaboffin posts about the difference between Khomeini and Khamenei which nonetheless manage to misspell the latter.

Fwiw Simons's statement is a disgusting repetition of smears against Paul Holden. But if I were a junior minister tethered to a clearly doomed PM I would consider a forced resignation to have a significant silver lining. Frees you up factionally come May...

'Josh'.

James Butler · ‘Need a lord on the board?’: Mandelson and the Lobbyists Why​ did a man whose political expertise was acquired in the departed era of broadcast television maintain such...

‘It is still common to hear people in Westminster talk of the government’s seriousness and focus on delivery. It is hard to square this with its apparent willingness to embroil itself in scandal.’

James Butler (@piercepenniless.bsky.social) on Peter Mandelson’s fall.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I know I keep pointing this out but: if you want immigrants to contribute to British society, integrate across community lines, become engaged civic actors, you actually *want* them to get citizenship, and as soon as possible in fact!

James Butler | Just Voting The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer has won the Gorton and Denton by-election with 41 per cent of the vote. Progressive...

‘The hair’s breadth that appeared to separate the two progressive options – a split vote that might have enabled a Reform victory – turned out to be a chasm.’

@piercepenniless.bsky.social on the Greens’ by-election victory.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

Do they have secret parallel universe polling which suggests there is any support they can afford to lose?

On Politics: The Rearmament Consensus Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · 25 February · 1h 6m

On the podcast: Sam Jones, European security correspondent at the Financial Times, and Anna Stavrianakis, professor of international relations at the University of Sussex, join @piercepenniless.bsky.social to explore ‘hard power’ and Europe's militarisation:

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

It's certainly an interesting choice for a party polling around 18% to decide it wants to *shed* support.

Neither Baldwin, nor his son, nor I have claimed that. That's your fantasy. It's entirely legitimate to suggest that a government can exert diplomatic pressure on a delinquent state by restricting or cancelling training or supply contracts, and impose/tighten end user standards.

My experience of the upper echelons of the Labour Party involved being condescended to by the incredibly thick & unpleasant, & thinking that in any other walk of life you would get punched in the mouth for treating people like that. Impossible to overstate how high on their own fumes they are.