Benny Wilkinson

How Keir Starmer’s polling became one of the worst in the west – in charts The UK prime minister’s approval is among the lowest at home and abroad

Frustratingly obvious. David Cameron shifted the Tories to the centre to make them more palatable (and still needed a coalition). Voters to the right won't ever vote Labour, and voters on the left won't support a Labour party that only looks to the right. Bizarre. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

10.09.2025 19:55 — 👍 20    🔁 7    💬 2    📌 0

A year on, and it turns out it wasn't enough that the winners weren't Conservatives. We have a Labour party happy to sit in the centre ground vacated by the Tories, doing what a Tory government should be doing instead of what Labour should be doing, and just as paralysed by fear of Reform.

05.07.2025 10:20 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Frederick Forsyth, Day of the Jackal author and former MI6 agent, dies aged 86 Writer used his experience reporting on De Gaulle’s France to plot his thriller, and continued to draw on real-world research for subsequent bestsellers

I finished The Day of the Jackal on Sunday. On Monday, Frederick Forsyth died. In the legion of thrillers he inspired, that wouldn't be mere coincidence. Of course, for a book that popular, it's more unlikely that somebody *doesn't* finish it on any given day.
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

10.06.2025 19:29 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Emerging briefly from hibernation to acknowledge a rare feeling of political optimism. I'll still maintain my streak of never voting for a winning party (or referendum result), but the winners won't be the Conservatives. That's more than enough.

04.07.2024 20:23 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 1

Image of an old metal clock, sitting on a much larger clockface that is weathered and damp, with a large window in the background letting in sunlight. The image is almost black and white, save for some brown colouring in the centre of the larger clock that looks like rust.

“The most it ever seems we know how to do with time is to waste it.”
- The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North (2014)

One of my favourite reads of 2023. Time travel that isn't time travel, with a few people starting their lives over every time they die but retaining their memories.

02.01.2024 06:07 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I'll just post into the void for a while, until I get a feel for if this will stick. Pebble announced it was shutting down within weeks of me making my only post, so hopefully this will go better.

01.01.2024 22:21 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Some 2023 writerly statistics:

Books Read: 63
Words Written: 247,578 across 23 projects
Books Written: 2
Books Published: 0

Five books that are just about ready to publish, with a little work. Feels like that needs to be a goal for the year. Not a New Year's Resolution, but something to aim for.

01.01.2024 20:35 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0