@piercepenniless.bsky.social
Writes & talks @lrb.co.uk
‘It is possible a large block of former Pink Tide voters are just defecting to the new option, right? These are swing voters in the largest possible sense.’
On the pod, Tony Wood, Camila Vergara and @piercepenniless.bsky.social discuss the Latin American right.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...
Weber: "He who seeks the salvation of the soul, of his
own and of others, should not seek it along the avenue of politics..."
(Temperamentally, I prefer politicians who fear they may be bad to those who are certain they are good; many I otherwise share views with tend to incline otherwise.)
I don't really mind setting an upper bound on the scheme but... (1) WHY is the government spending any time on this tiny thing? (2) why not reform the scheme to broaden it to allow 0% loans for bike purchase more widely? (3) you should want to stimulate demand for storefront bike shops!
13.11.2025 12:24 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0we mention it briefly in the conversation, but you're right it's important. I wonder whether Tony would consider it a downstream expression of other fundamental changes. I think it's an important motivating factor in its own right (as well as a link to reactionary politics in the US)
13.11.2025 12:18 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0one day I will do something fun and gay, but we have to hit our annual misery quota first!
13.11.2025 12:16 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The other is the criminally underread (in English) literary critic Roberto Schwarz, and in particular the title essay in @versobooks.bsky.social 'Misplaced Ideas' on the results of grafting of liberal-constitutional political superstructure to a slave economy. www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...
13.11.2025 12:02 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
I revisited (inter alia) two favourite books preparing for this conversation. You can only really hear them under the surface of the questions, but... One is the Cardoso and Faletto book on Dependency and Development, a really compelling piece of economic history: www.ucpress.edu/books/depend...
13.11.2025 12:00 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Vergara's scepticism about the so-called 'second wave' of pink tide governments - including the constitutional debacle in Chile - is well warranted. Lulismo is having a very difficult second round in power, including the current miserable news out of COP30.
13.11.2025 11:59 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0One important thread in Wood's telling is the role of Vox as a coordinating force for an international hispanidad reactionary, as if Farage were the coordinator of reactionary politics across the former British Empire. Linked to LatAm right's virulent hatred of pro-indigenous policy.
13.11.2025 11:58 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0I keep trying to find an English-dubbed video of the Kirchner '05 speech where Bush looks completely horrified & furious, but it's surprisingly difficult! The wonder of the internet... As TW points out, Argentina is odd - its neoliberal and pink tide turns were conducted by the same Peronist party.
13.11.2025 11:57 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1
You can read Tony's superb dissection of the Latin American new right in the Novermber 6 issue of the @lrb.co.uk - or online here: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
13.11.2025 11:54 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Pink Tide governments inspired the left worldwide. Now strongmen, crypto scammers & sharp-toothed ultra-rightists are taking their place. What happened? Tony Wood & Camila Vergara joined me on @lrb.co.uk ON POLITICS to talk about the long ebb of the marea rosa. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...
13.11.2025 11:44 — 👍 14 🔁 5 💬 3 📌 1Thanks Fraser! V glad to read this
13.11.2025 11:40 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
New @lrb.co.uk ON POLITICS: I speak with @danielagabor.bsky.social & Andy Haldane on bond markets, gilt vigilantes, and the role of Britain's central bank. Instructive and hugely illuminating conversation on finance, democracy, & how we get out of the doom loop.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...
Why are governments are so afraid of ‘bond vigilantes’? Should the Bank of England remain independent? What room for manoeuvre does Rachel Reeves have?
For On Politics this week, James Butler (@piercepenniless.bsky.social) talks to Andy Haldane and Daniela Gabor.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...
New @lrb.co.uk ON POLITICS: I speak with @danielagabor.bsky.social & Andy Haldane on bond markets, gilt vigilantes, and the role of Britain's central bank. Instructive and hugely illuminating conversation on finance, democracy, & how we get out of the doom loop.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...
You can listen (and SUBSCRIBE) to ON POLITICS through any good content distribution nexus, so please do. Thank you for your attention to this matter! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...
16.10.2025 07:47 — 👍 8 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0One thing Alan really is right about: most journalists, academics & politicians who treat the online world as a *supplement* to print & broadcast discourse fundamentally fail to grasp how profoundly media consumption has changed. Politics requires a public sphere & changing one changes the other!
16.10.2025 07:42 — 👍 15 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
I was delighted to speak to Alan Finlayson for the @lrb.co.uk's On Politics. We take on the digital right (and online left), the champions of inegalitarianism, print and social democracy, Farage as influencer and... whether the internet is just right-wing.
16.10.2025 07:41 — 👍 25 🔁 4 💬 3 📌 11
Few of the challenges to progressive politics are really new. But the massive change in the means of communication, and what that does to politics (which has to be conducted through it), really is new and difficult.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...
‘One of the questions that has hung over this whole conversation is about the void at the centre of the Labour party.’
— James Butler (@piercepenniless.bsky.social) on his new On Politics podcast.
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/o...
‘It took the Tories ten years to reach this degree of perpetual crisis; Labour has managed it in fourteen months.’
James Butler (@piercepenniless.bsky.social) on Labour’s problems, from the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...
the dream gig! Couldn't hack the impartiality + gag rules though. After the revolution!
17.09.2025 17:14 — 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0After the revolution, comrades, James Butler will present 'In Our Time'. This will do for now
17.09.2025 16:58 — 👍 36 🔁 5 💬 3 📌 0
‘Keir Starmer is in trouble.’
New on the blog: James Butler (@piercepenniless.bsky.social) on Labour’s problems.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...
Really cool to be on the first episode of this new series, talking about the (unfortunately, sad) state of the Labour government:
17.09.2025 13:42 — 👍 19 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
Launching today: James Butler’s (@piercepenniless.bsky.social) new podcast series ‘On Politics’ goes beyond the headlines and push notifications to get at the real forces transforming our politics here and abroad.
Listen and subscribe now.
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/o...
I admit to being tickled at the thought of my BIG HEAD appearing on your phones as you listen
17.09.2025 12:41 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
That piece also inaugurates a new strand of the @lrb.co.uk podcast, ON POLITICS.
The first episode features Chris Mullin, Andy Beckett and @morganj0nes.bsky.social on just these problems -- hosted by me. Get yours here! www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...
Wrote about the implosion of 'phase two' Starmer's government: the Mandelson affair (volume 3), the cratering numbers, the changing political system, the spectre of Farage and the resurgent right. @lrb.co.uk
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...
