Much has happened since I last wrote to you. Much will probably happen again between writing, printing and whenever it might appear online. The hints growing throughout the Eighteenth Brumaire[1] have largely come to pass. The first and most overwhelmingly positive thing to gather is…
The antifascist majority…
Has not only been vindicated in numerous elections[2] but a set-piece antifascist mobilisation, called by a group called the Together Alliance[3] easily dwarfed the previous year’s Unite the Kingdom fascist rally by attracting half a million attendees[4]. Throughout 2025, the MSM tried to portray the Reform Party as a political inevitability. So far, in 2026, the people have begged to differ. The return of Andy Burnham to parliament is a case in point.
Andy Burnham: a land of contrasts
The modern-day Andy Burnham is a fairly appealing mainstream figure though, admittedly he doesn’t have much competition. Not so long ago he very clearly called for an end to neo-liberalism[5], describing trickledown theory as bunk, promoting his brand of regional government as an antidote[6]. Until his recall to parliament, he had been the Metropolitan Mayor[7] of Greater Manchester since 2017. Metro mayors are directly elected leaders of combined authorities in England. They were created as half-useful counterparts to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies, part of the UK’s current devolved settlement. Some metro mayors have been fairly successful on their own terms. Burnham was one of those successes, albeit a double-edged success.
In 2020 Burnham’s admin successfully integrated Greater Manchester’s various public transport services under a body called Transport for Greater Manchester[8]. This was not public ownership but public oversight. As such, from 2022, Burnham had been able to cap full-day and single fares, while extending services.
Balance this against the Burnham administration’s 800 million pounds of public loans that largely went to a building firm called Renaker. One hundred and forty million went into building luxury apartments[9]. This is the classic council tax revenue trap. In modern Britain, even under better social democratic local government, the bitterness of gentrification is only slightly sweetened by things like integrated public transport.
But this, and the fading memory of what social democracy once actually achieved, meant, at the beginning of this year, Burnham was one of the most popular politicians in Britain, largely due to being not actively hated. Among the wider public, if he’s known for anything, it’s his visible exasperation, during a press conference, at finding out by text message, a Covid-19 support grant to Manchester had been unilaterally cut by to third of its original amount[10], summing up many, many people’s frustration at the second, utterly miserable lockdown imposed by the Johnson government. He talks and acts like a normal human being, when most politicians play at being a Norm-al Humon Being[11]. There is a word of caution to be had though.
A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walk into a bar, the Barman says…
“What’ll it be, Mr Burnham?” He may have come a long way in his career, but there are clear and present reasons to be wary. Burnham first made it into parliament in 2001. Very soon, he voted for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. He also voted against establishing an inquiry into these wars[12].
Following the 2005 general election, he was promoted to Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, a junior role, but he got to ride the hobby horse of the Labour Right, promoting a bill for mandatory ID cards that, ultimately failed but has never been forgotten about[13]. Thanks to this, he failed up to become Minister of State for Delivery and Reform in the Department of Health (aka facilitating private finance in the NHS). By 2008 he had become Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. His bright idea was to regulate internet content with controls paralleling TV censorship[14]. This is also relevant today as the UK government is extending its existing purview over adult websites, to a social media ban on under-16s[15] (meaning direct government gatekeeping over access to social media) and is possibly looking into banning VPNs, allowing it to gatekeep even search engines[16].
This is all from quite a while ago though. Since then he has run in two Labour leadership elections, failing both times. In 2015 he announced he was a member of Labour Friends of Israel[17], declaring the BDS movement to be ‘spiteful’. He may not be a member of LFI today. An ex-chair of the organisation is his proposed chief of staff[18]. What cost him, in 2015, was refusing along with all other candidates, except Jeremy Corbyn, to oppose a bill capping welfare to some of the most vulnerable people[19].
For a man offering a clean break with the past, he is smuggling a lot of people from the past into his brave new world. We’ve already met (in the footnotes) his proposed Chief of Staff, James Burnell. A former cabinet colleague, David Miliband, is apparently optimistic about a return to frontline politics, via the House of Lords[20]. When Miliband[21] was foreign secretary, he was very heavily implicated in the kidnap and torture of three British citzens in MI6 black sites[22]. Ed Balls, former Shadow Chancellor[23], current comic relief on morning television[24], may also be given a political Indian summer.
The man who stepped down, allowing Burnham to become a bye-election candidate was Josh Simons[25]. Josh had only been an MP since 2024 and was already very junior government minister[26]. His resignation may have been a spectacular act of altruism. It may have also been to bury the small but growing scandal of Simons’ relationship to ACPO Worldwide[27], a PR firm engaged by a Blairite lobbying group called Labour Together in the run up to the 2024 general election[28], to gather compromising information on two Sunday Times journalists. Josh Simons was a director of Labour Together at the time. He apparently doesn’t have a formal role yet, despite being a Burnham campaigner, but is in line to get some kind of job[29] working in policy.
Before we get back onto the significance of the Makerfield campaign and vote[30] there is a really obvious danger being stored up. We have been here before[31] with a campaign promising change, to be delivered by a system utterly resistant to change, led fierce partisans of that system. Keir Starmer may now be utterly, viscerally hated by people from all walks of life, he at least won a contested leadership election.
The Makerfield election campaign
Learning from its earlier calamity in Gorton and Denton,[32] Labour leaned heavily on Burnham throughout the campaign. The abiding slogan was ‘Vote Andy - for us.’ Burnham’s personal themes were trust in politics, economic renewal and devolution of power: his strongest suits. As well as putting on a functioning, enthusiastic canvassing operation, Labour upped its social media game, aping a number of tricks from Zack Polanski’s Green Party, fan accounts, meme sharing and particularly the walk-and-talk short video.
The only higher profile message, the one which concentrated minds, was the promise to take Reform on. All successful campaigns, from Caerphilly, the Gorton and Denton, to the devolved elections, have been won on this promise. Burnham took Makerfield for Labour against the run of national polls, polling over 50% of total votes cast[33]. ‘Not even close’ doesn’t do this result justice.
It also helps that…
Fascists are such spectacular losers and weirdos…
Rob Kenyon, the Reform candidate in Makerfield has a Wikipedia page[34]. Thank goodness, otherwise we would know nothing about his varied and exciting career so far. In a mere 41 years, so far, Rob has been:
A plumber
A gas engineer
A laboratory technician
A lance corporal
A muay thai practitioner
A novelist
A local newspaper columnist
A matchday commentator
A fighter pilot
An operating thetan
A table tennis wicketkeeper
A lover to the Russian Queen
OK, I made the last four up but, while building up this quite astonishing list, he’s found time to be a practicing fascist. His outwardly professed views are a fairly typical fascist mess, equally against potholes, privatisation and ‘mass immigration’. No wonder, when he was interviewed during the bye-election campaign, Rob struggled to say what he even liked about Reform’s policy platform[35]. He also struggled to justify his historic social media comments and associations, and, man alive, what a bunch of comments and associations they were.
It turned out he was Facebook Friends with people like Gary Raikes[36], Alex Eversfield[37] and Robert Baggs[38]. It turned out his Twitter feed saw him recycle content from Carl Benjamin and Eva Vardlingerbroek. He used the platform to speculate about the 2024 Southport Murders[39]. Most damaging, I suspect, it turned out there was a long, long (monotonous) history of sexist posting[40], crowned by comments comparing abortion to murder[41].
The point is, this was a must-win election for Reform. In terms of candidates, the best they could apparently muster was this charmless, compromised and dimwitted man[42]. The modern fascist cadre in Britain is poor. Makerfield was not the first occasion this was proven either.
Matt Badloss…[43]
Reform selected[44] a former research academic turned TV pundit to be the candidate in the Gorton and Denton bye-election in February[45].
The vote was prompted by the sitting MP, Andrew Gwynne’s decision to resign on health grounds. The good reason, as opposed to the real reason, was the lingering stink from a silly, Whatsapp scandal from February 2025. There was a series of posts in a group chat for Mancunian Labour politicians, where he made some stupefying and unprofessional comments about fellow MP, as well as disparaging a named constituent, thus:
“Dear Resident. Fuck your bins[46]. I’m reelected and without your vote. Screw you. Hopefully you will have croaked it by the all-outs.”
It was beyond him to imagine that anyone in group chat might be making note of comments like these for political use[47]. He was suspended as a junior minister that year. Gwynne announced his resignation in January 2026, in what everyone suspected was, cahoots with Andy Burnham, to smooth Burnham’s path back to Westminster. Burnham’s candidacy was blocked by the Labour National Executive Committee.
This was Reform’s big chance. This was Goodwin’s big chance. He had left academic research in political science for think tanks and lobby groups, then branched out from the groups to TV[48]. He is currently a presenter on GB News. Goodwin not only thought he could combine his media, academic and political careers, but that they would dovetail nicely, hence this campaign profile in the Guardian:
“When you are trying to attract the attention of someone as elusive as Prof Matt Goodwin, you have to seize your opportunities whenever they arise. Over recent weeks the former academic and rightwing firebrand has been a curiously intangible presence in the constituency whose representation he is seeking: perpetually detectable but not remotely approachable, always visible without ever really being seen…
“By his own account, Goodwin has been out campaigning every single day since his candidacy was announced in late January, although this in itself is a term freighted with ambiguity. To a large extent, this is a campaign conducted for the benefit of the internet[49]: consisting of a handful of carefully curated media appearances, arranged meetings and brief photo opportunities. A black car rolls up alongside a pub or a row of terrace houses; its cargo emerges; photographs are taken; content is captured[50]. By the time it is posted, the candidate has long since been ferried away in his transport, presumably back to the safety of Reform’s headquarters, a corrugated iron hulk on an industrial estate just off the M67.[51]”
We’re into another interesting and usefully extractable fact, such is the extent that popular right-wing politics is fully mediated, it is indistinguishable from content. The modern right loves AI slop[52]. When you think about AI hallucinations stemming from the ‘intelligence’ being unable to differentiate between the data to parse and the prompt to parse the data, it dawns that the blurring of politics with news and social media is inducing a biosociological state of hallucination amongst right wing consumers of AI content.
Matt Goodwin campaigned for posts when Andrew Gwynne could have told him people were more worried about bins. Matt Goodwin (and posts) lost, and then signed off on a wild accusation of Muslim family voting[53].
A jarring change of tone that will, hopefully, soon make sense…
There is a current online left heuristic called ‘Deyankification Now…[54]’ also known as ‘Utter Yank Nonsense’. The antiamerican sentiment is playful rather than operative. The real barb is directed at the British right, which is so captured by the social media attention economy, it can no longer raise any indigenous demands[55].
We’re talking here really of effect rather than cause, but look at who Reform’s members and supporters really are. Both Kenyon and Goodwin are much younger than the typical Faragista. The average age of a Reform member is 61. Nearly half of members are in their retirement. A third more of them are aged 50-64. Though the NRS Social Scale[56] is a wildly problematic way to measure class, six in ten Reform members rank as ABC1. This is consistent with Reform’s popular conservatism, appealing to people who absolutely benefitted from Thatcherism and who still benefit from the ongoing property/rent scam ruling the UK[57].
We touched briefly on the phenomenon of the online right in Escape From Normal Island[58]. In 2023, the Office for National Statistics found that retirees spend the most time and, crucially depth online[59], an average of 43 minutes a day, more than any other age group.
We are talking fairly broadly but, it’s fair to say, the typical fascist is 1) older than average and as a result 2) much more disconnected from the realities of modern-day work and sociality and, following on, 3) though they are not digital natives[60], their most profound social connections are heavily mediated, both by legacy and social media[61].
Is it any surprise the fascists have a dearth of talent, when this is the pool they are drawing from?
Yet more lands of contrast…
An obvious counterpoint to the typical Reform supporter is the typical Green Party supporter. Though not a 1:1 match, the most recently elected Green MP, Hannah Spencer, is a good example.
Hannah was born in 1991. She grew up in Bolton. Her Mother (like Keir Starmer’s mother) was a nurse[62]. Hannah left school aged 16. She attempted A-Level studies but dropped out. Instead of going to university, she completed vocational training to become a plumber, later, becoming a qualified gas-fitting engineer as well. Since 2015, Hannah has been self-employed. Though not really a wage labourer per se, when she was elected to parliament, she became one of a now exceptionally rare breed of MP, experienced in any amount manual labour[63].
Hannah joined the Green Party in 2022[64]. Her only prior experience of activism was in animal rights[65]. She was apparently angered at the wealth divide in the United Kingdom. She liked both the Green Party’s general message[66] as well as its horizontalist organising ethos[67]. This ethos suited her so much, by 2023 she was a successful candidate for Manchester council, winning a previously Tory-held seat.
In 2024, Hannah was the Manchester GP candidate for metropolitan mayor[68]. The campaign she ran combined the themes of cost of living and climate crisis mitigation, encouraging things like retrofitting homes with insulation and promoting active travel[69] across the city. Hannah came fifth, modest perhaps, but won over 40,000 votes across Greater Manchester.
In 2025, Hannah took over leadership of the Green faction on Manchester council. She endorsed Zack Polanski for leader[70]. When the bye-election was called for Gorton and Denton, it was almost natural Green Party members chose her as their candidate[71].
The Green campaign in Gorton and Denton again focused on the cost of living, featuring calls for a Wealth Tax, fifteen pound an hour minimum wage, rent controls and nationalising the water supply. Hannah also before, during and after the election campaign has specifically opposed the UK government’s complicity in the Gaza genocide[72].
The point is not that Hannah Spencer is a wonderful person. She comes from and fully represents a strand of British civil society for which this kind of politics is natural; a given.
The third great fact…
Hannah Spencer joined the Green Party before the 2025 membership surge, prompted by Zack Polanski’s leadership bid, extended by his victory[73]. The GP has been a fairly large organisation for quite a while. Going into the 2015 General Election it claimed almost 44,000 members[74], more than the UK Independence Party at the time and bigger, probably, than the entire extra-Labour socialist left. Since the leadership election last year, Green Party membership has more than tripled. By the time you read this, it may stand at about a quarter of a million. Much more important than sheer numbers is just who has been lending their support.
Green Party members are younger than average. They are more educated than average. They are more urban than average. They are more likely to be in skilled work[75]. Despite being overwhelmingly irreligious, the Green Party is winning a growing minority of Muslim voters, a predominantly working class and urban group of voters who used to weigh in heavily for the Labour Party[76].
This is not all that makes up the Green Party. There is a small but long established base for the Green Party amongst rural, middle class voters. The Polanski boom has however wedded the Green Party to the vital force[77], the living Reality Principle still alive and kicking within Normal Island. Green Party supporters are younger, educated and very much more connected with the world of work. Of course the Green Party, as an institution, cannot handle their potential, but these are the people who can and will try to remake the world as an egalitarian democracy[78], because it’s the only world they can truly prosper in.
Do not answer this question…[79]
Mike Tapp MP
@MikeTappTweets
Replying to @ZackPolanski
Do you support the Palestine Action group?
14:20 · 15 Jun 2026 5.1m Views
In previous Normal Island Episodes we have ended on the previous kind of note, but all is obviously not well in the land of regular everyday normal people[80].
The emerging antagonist across these pieces in the British state itself, There have been phase changes in the UK constitution in living memory. In 1945 the welfare state was founded. In 1979, it was overthrown and the Neoliberal state was built on its ruin. In 1997, the Blair government (arguably) started a half-reform. It not only brought the Northern Ireland peace deal home, it began a series of democratic devolutions, first to the (non-Anglo) constituent nations then, through metropolitan mayors, to English regions. Whether these reforms were offered bad faith or ill-conceived (because the neoliberal basis of the state was not only untouched, it was strengthened by the New Labour government[81]) it doesn’t matter now.
The potential mutual ruin of the Great Recession of 2008 was palmed off onto the working class, through the foundation of the Austerity State in 2010. Just as libertarian theories of society strongly suggest a fascist state, austerity economics compels the UK[82] to insulate itself from all forms of democratic ‘interference’, while the people themselves are being held down and robbed.
There’s lots to say, perhaps a whole essay in itself, about how NATO states are presently enfascinating themselves[83]. The UK is no exception to this. With the exception of the rotating cast of colonel blimps being invited onto news programmes to feed warmongering gibberish into popular discourse[84], there is rarely a notable face, let alone a recognisable name willing to stake their career on open militarism. There is no practical, earthly reason for Russia to invade the United Kingdom. You are meant to think, at length and in detail, about this deep unlikelihood while politicians drain more and more of the public purse[85] into an industry that, despite being ‘underfunded’, contributes 5.5% of global CO2 emissions…[86] you know, to an actual existential threat.
Muscle memory…
Military Keynesianism is somewhere in the muscle memory of NATO states even now. The more refined version of that theory[87] linked this phenomenon to Rosa Luxemburg’s Accumulation of Capital[88].
Looked at in aggregate, the circuit of capital (M-C-M) becomes an outwardly growing spiral, i.e. capital is accumulated, when there is a non-capitalist periphery for that circuit to grow into. Classically, this is the non-capitalist hinterland being brought into the circuit by imperialism and colonialism[89].
The World Wars were a systemic, crisis response to the closing of the spiral. The following Cold War was an exercise in what-if-we-kept-this-response-going. The dominant capitalist and state capitalist nations diverted portions of what would have become expanded investment, constant and variable capital, from the means of production into the means of destruction, a new, ersatz hinterland. This worked for a long time but, capitalism, being global, combined and uneven, developed a new set of contradictions on this basis[90].
This geopolitical set up had enough flexibility in it, after the oil shock in 1973, to be converted from a system of capitalist stabilisation to a system of tribute. Be in no doubt, when the United States maintains 750 military bases in over 80 countries[91], when banks globally hold around 58% of their reserves in dollars[92] and 31% of US government debt (or $9.2 trillion) is held internationally[93], this is a system of imperial tribute.
The current US administration is using this system as the chief lever to change politics around the world. The extended fusion of the NATO state with military, financial and digital capitalism is propelling politics rightward, enfascinating everything it touches.
Seven words you cannot say…
Going back a step, Mike Tapp[94] versus Zack Polanski is simply fascism bearing its fangs at democracy. There are seven words which, if you utter them within the purview of the British state, can send you to prison for fourteen years.
The proscription of a certain direct action organisation is not about public safety. It’s definitely not about rule of law. The case of the Filton Four[95] more than[96] proves it[97].
The whole Seven Word Saga was embarked upon so powerful gentlemen like Mike Tapp could smirk at people like Zack Polanski or, more specifically, so a ruling class that has forgotten how to maintain hegemony, not just lost the argument but lost what argument is for, can hide behind intimidation and force.
When the state, economics and civil society fuses under conditions of capital accumulation democracy dies[98]. I am a state cap leftist. I can be as ecumenical as you like but this next bit is non-negotiable. The disaster of the Soviet Union (and despite its many achievements, it ultimately was a disaster, even if you only backdate the calamity to 1991) was rooted in the law of value[99] being untouched, with state property dominant while the working class was tired, dispersed and decimated after the civil war. Democratic input, even simple economic struggle could not be tolerated under state capitalism, every civil challenge was a threat to the state. If Britain is the late capitalist Soviet Union but even more dour and dysfunctional[100], then we are facing more or less the same conditions.
The people are necessarily alienated from the state, democratic input is necessarily curtailed. The right to strike has been massively circumscribed for decades[101]. The right to free assembly, already well within the government purview thanks to the 1986 Public Order Act, has been devolved to the whims of the local plods[102]. The government fights most years to curtail local democracy[103], as if it hadn’t already been reduced to pointlessness by the council tax, grant caps and financial gearing. The right to trial by jury is in the government’s sights[104]. Even away from the Seven Word Saga, defendants in direct actions cases are often being denied to conscientious motivation as a defence in court cases[105]. A green paper[106] has been published by the UK government[107] that, if put into action, would further enclose the internet and make the informal practice of shadowbanning and algorithmic suppression of ‘untrustworthy’ news sources a legal obligation on digital platforms[108].
(The motion beneath the) perfect standstill
Whither the Burgerkrieg auf Normal Island? The UK economy is at near perfect standstill[109]. The state is busy hammering the repression button, the only thing it knows works… and it’s not so sure it works.
As of me typing the sentence[110] Andy Burnham has taken office and, while he has taken the long knives to Starmer era figures like Rachel Reeves[111] and David Lammy[112], he has put John Healey, whose resignation from the Starmer government (over the lack of military spending, would you believe it) prompted its final death spiral, in as Chancellor of the Exchequer[113]. Expect more guns than butter. He also may yet put Starmer era health secretary[114] Wes Streeting in charge of the guns[115]. Shabana Mahmood, whose main ideas as Starmer’s Home Secretary were 1) what if we concentrated asylum seekers into some kind of camp[116] and 2) what if the plot to Suicide Squad was real[117] will remain as Home Secretary[118].
So, first point, the ruling class is not being renewed and revivified by a Labour government. A Burnham government, over a Starmer government, is fundamentally the same group of diminished people with the same paucity of ideas, beyond ‘we need to do this better…’ Of course you do, guys.
Secondly, the right is not offering an alternative the ruling class can call on. Reform is not breaking through the 25-30% of the population, centred around the downwardly mobile[119] petty bourgeoisie. Their cadre is dimwitted even by past standards, and so mentality warped by the internet such as many are trying to push the murder of Ann Widdecombe, a former junior government minister from thirty years ago and minor talking head from morning television, as ‘Britain’s Charlie Kirk moment[120]’.
Nigel Farage meanwhile is feeling the heat. His strengths, such as his intimate connection with far right dark money, are turning into weaknesses. He resigned his seat as MP for Clacton in order to prompt a bye-election he could then win, a self-coup. He did this because of consistent questions about his accepting a five million pound gift in 2024 from a cryptocurrency investor called Christopher Harborne. Initially it was nobody’s business[121]. Then it became an election expense (undeclared of course)[122]. Harbourne was known an associate of George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster[123]. Then it turned out Farage was an associate of George Cottrell[124]. They were quite familiar with each other, in fact[125].
Never mind though. The bye-election means a parliamentary investigation into the affair is suspended and after he, presumably, wins he will be able to pit the verdict of the people against the verdict of the law[126]. Except, in a rare victory for lower case normality, every other mainstream party has refused to put candidates forward. On the 13th of August, Farage will face off against a parade of independents, cranks and right wing clowns[127], led by the ringmaster, Count Binface, a novelty candidate and IRL shitpost[128].
Third: the normal people of Normal Island are the majority and, as we discussed at the beginning of Burgerkrieg… are quick learners and are coming into their own. They are still dispersed amongst a variety of parties and movements. An attempt to gather them into an hegemonic bloc has recently failed[129].
Such is life. The old world is dying. The new is struggling to be born. Now is the time of Normality. Keep it real, comrades.
Endnotes
[1] I love it but, what a lot of clunky sentences it has: https://www.locustreview.com/online/the-eighteenth-brumaire-of-nigel-farage
[2] Bye-elections in Caerphilly, Gorton and Denton and Makerfield as well as elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments.
[3] https://www.togetheralliance.org.uk/
[4] The various organising groups were exceptionally broad. The outlook of the average organiser, as well as attendee was probably left-liberal, comparable to No Kings rallies in the United States. That said, as the greater British state is rapidly closing down constitutional avenues to express squishy liberalism, these liberals are likely getting less and less squishy. Just look at the Defend Our Juries movement: https://defendourjuries.net/.
[5] https://www.cityam.com/burnham-calls-for-uk-to-abandon-40-years-of-neoliberalism/
[6] Which he calls ‘Manchesterism…’ Phew! Steady on, comrade.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_authority_mayor
[8] Otherwise known as The Bee Network: https://tfgm.com/
[9] https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/manchesters-140m-skyscraper-loans-were-34093343
[10] https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/andy-burnham-shares-exactly-what-31253274
[11] “My father was a toolmaker…”
[12] https://votes.theyworkforyou.com/person/10766/policies/commons/labour/all_time/975
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006
[14] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/sep/26/digitalmedia.internet
[15] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/social-media-to-be-banned-for-under-16s-in-landmark-government-move-to-givekids-their-childhood-back
[16] Though, putting up a Great British Firewall, fully controlling the flow of information, would require a state as resourceful as the People’s Republic of China. They may fail. I don’t doubt they will try though: https://cybernews.com/privacy/uk-vpn-restrictions-social-media-crackdown/
[17] A parliamentary group with inconsistent membership and (more than likely) ties to the Israeli embassy, going by investigations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pddH2sfNKNY
[18] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/andy-burnham-appoint-labour-friends-israel-ex-chair-chief-staff-say-reports
[19] Imagine then admitting almost immediately that this means you’re not ready to lead the official opposition: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33608826
[20] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy04k0kd7q4o
[21] In the same Gordon Brown led cabinet Burnham served in.
[22] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/sep/21/mi6-consulted-david-miliband-interrogations
[23] And former meme: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36158172
[24] Just don’t accuse him of being a Labour politician or being married to his actual wife who, in April 2026, was the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, Yvette Cooper: https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/ed-balls-zack-polanski-ofcom-gmb-b1280683.html
[25] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Simons
[26] Under-Secretary for Digital ID: the MP charged with finally catching the dragon most doggedly chased by 21st century Labour governments.
[27] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APCO_(company)#Labour_Party
[28] Also the Israeli arms manufacturing company, Elbit Systems. Elbit is currently at the centre of a legal counter revolution in the United Kingdom, striking against actionists and alleged supporters of the proscribed direct action group, Palestine Action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APCO_(company)#Elbit_Systems
[29] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/23/who-are-andy-burnhams-key-aides-and-allies
[30] These are really dull men.
[31] https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1218519243081252865
[32] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czr4e7ep468o
[33] https://members.parliament.uk/constituency/4165/election/558
[34] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kenyon
[35] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3as4jPN4Qw
[36] A leading member of the New British Union and former BNP member: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reform-makerfield-labour-peter-kenyon-facebook-fascist-b2979919.html
[37] A striking freak from the National Rebirth Party: https://searchlightmagazine.com/2026/05/meet-another-of-makerfield-reform-candidates-fascist-facebook-friends/
[38] Baggs was a BNP candidate in Wiltshire in 2007, briefly a member of For Britain (Morrisey’s chums), he ended up with Patriotic Alternative, a BNP breakaway founded by Mark Collett: https://searchlightmagazine.com/2026/05/another-day-another-of-makerfield-reform-candidates-fascist-facebook-friends/
[39] https://bylinetimes.com/2026/05/20/reading-the-riot-act-reform-uks-makerfield-by-election-candidate-during-the-summer-of-trouble/
[40] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reform-makerfield-byelection-robert-kenyon-social-media-b2997445.html
[41] Quite a lengthy, consistent series of them: https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/reform-candidate-for-makerfield-by-election-calls-abortion-cowardly-murder
[42] This problem of cadre is probably why Nigel Farage resorted to his constituency autocoup in July, something ongoing as I write these lines.
[43] Known to some as MattGPT, on account of his book ‘Suicide of a Nation: immigration, Islam and Identity’ featuring a number AI hallucinations, fake quotes, non-existant sources and wild statistical misinterpretations… He is also known as Matthew Goodwin to his parents and the returning officer of Gorton and Denton: https://novaramedia.com/2026/03/23/matt-goodwins-new-anti-immigration-book-based-on-ai-hallucinations/
[44] It got me wondering how someone becomes a Reform candidate. It seems, on the face of it, it’s much like an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church. You fill out a set of forms online and wait to hear back from the elders: https://pro-worker.reformparty.uk/candidates/apply
[45] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czr4e7ep468o
[46] The constituent was attempting to engage her representative in parliament about the local council refuse collection service.
[47] Gwynne was known as a ‘soft-left’ MP. The TLDR is, imagine someone even more vanilla than a social democrat, that harmless and dull. Nonetheless, since the forced exile of Labour Party socialists, the soft left has become the new endangered species in the PLP.
[48] Mild interest, similar to the AI book farago, Goodwin was employed by an organisation called the Legatum Institute. He left that role quietly in 2023, after his work was described as ‘utter nonsense’ and Legatum was forced to carry out a ‘wholesale re-evaluation of… methodology.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Goodwin#Other_work
[49] My emphasis.
[50] Also my emphasis.
[51] https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/feb/22/reform-uk-matt-goodwin-gorton-and-denton-nigel-farage
[52] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PacaVa3MAg
[53] You could even call it an hallucination: https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2026-03-27/no-evidence-of-family-voting-in-by-election
[54] Popular but particularly associated with well-known Bluesky refugee Zoe Gardiner: https://bsky.app/profile/zoejardiniere.bsky.social
[55] For example, when you see the MP for East Wiltshire, Danny Kruger, talk about a likely civil war if Reform does not prevail at the next general election, you post a picture of Sean Dyche, declare ‘utter yank nonsense’, then go about your day: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/danny-kruger-claims-reform-general-election-defeat-could-spark-british-civil-war-403538/
[56] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade
[57] These very basic stats can be found here: https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/reform-members
[58] https://www.locustreview.com/locust-radio/locust-radio-ep-23-escape-from-normal-island
[59] https://engoo.com/app/lessons/silver-surfing-over-70s-use-the-internet-more/Zd8uYK4zEe6IYLPXezGHgA
[60] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native
[61] This combination of being very online but also new to the subtleties of online culture leaves Silver Surfers vulnerable to impostures like AI slop, clickbait about ‘two tier policing’ and ‘family voting…’ not to mention silly fabrications like Rob Kenyon’s ‘life outside politics’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kenyon#Life_outside_politics
[62] I don’t know if she’s bought her mother a seven acre field yet though: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/i-met-keir-starmers-donkeys-and-they-told-me-something-about-him/
[63] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Spencer#Early_life_and_education
[64] Before the Polanski boom.
[65] Opposition to greyhound racing: https://www.thenational.scot/news/25811159.green-gorton-denton-by-election-candidate-hannah-spencer/.
[66] Who, new to the game in 2022, was going to be energised by Starmer’s Labour?
[67] youtube.com/watch?v=teLHtGPcyxM
[68] Andy Burnham’s fiefdom.
[69] https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/advice/active-travel/
[70] Contemporary to that, she also became national Green spokesperson for migration and refugee support: https://www.instagram.com/thegreenparty/p/DOgFxHXE2re/
[71] Unlike most other parties in parliament, it’s very hard for any Green Party central office to impose a candidate on local organisations.
[72] https://greenparty.org.uk/2026/02/27/hannah-spencer-delivers-stirring-speech-at-first-press-conference/
[73] See here for a basic account of the effect of the campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zack_Polanski#Leader_of_the_Green_Party. We probably won’t have time to go into detail but Polanski is fascinating, as an elder millennial, his political journey was very similar to a lot of his cohort in the 2010. Starting the decade as a truly squishy liberal, he has got harder and harder as time has gone by. You might say his trajectory is somewhat similar to Andy Burnham’s except, of course, Polanski is an actually talented populist.
[74] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_England_and_Wales#Membership_and_finances
[75] See this section for details about and further support for these assertions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_England_and_Wales#Support_baser
[76] https://web.archive.org/web/20250711064752/https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/05/british-muslims-losing-trust-in-labour-over-its-handling-of-israel-gaza-war
[77] A boom much like the one that captured the Labour Party in 2015.
[78] We all know the True Name of that idea.
[79] https://x.com/MikeTappTweets/status/2066526329084796957
[80] Mike Tapp, aka Tapp Brannigan, Home Office Minister and MP for Dover and Deal. When he’s not egregiously using the law to bait elected representatives, he is a prime example of a Regular Guy who likes to post about how Goddamm Normal he is, an example: https://x.com/MikeTappTweets/status/1976600403392262355
[81] The Private Finance Initiative was started by the Major government 1992-97 but massively extended by Tony Blair. The orthodoxy was established that state debt was bad. Under Blair, the state went from a provider to a contractor, engaging companies to build infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads etc and provide services, particularly social care. The state then leased these facilities and services back, at much higher rates of interest than it would take to issue bonds, let alone pay through taxation. After quantitative easing in 2008, the British state was hugely indebted and asset poor. This is the ratchet, especially under austerity, that makes everyone in Britain except large scale asset owners poorer over time.
[82] And states like it.
[83] If you can stomach it, watch this awful but illuminating footage of the aftermath of the EU Parliament voting to formalise refugee concentration camps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_hCiBlvexg. The mask is well and truly off here.
[84] Just an example, not too recent either, but you’re just supposed to accept continual, intrusive, horny nonsense about WW3 as a price to pay for sentience these days: https://news.sky.com/story/time-to-think-the-unthinkable-and-consider-uk-conscription-says-britains-former-top-nato-commander-13056148
[85] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_5%25_NATO_defence_spending_by_2035
[86] https://2025.cedare.org/contribution-of-military-and-war-to-global-emissions-2/
[87] The permanent arms economy: https://www.marxists.org/archive/kidron/works/1967/xx/permarms.htm. More refined, really, because it’s analysis than an aggregate of state-led economic practice.
[88] As an intellectual resource it is equally cursed and blessed (something common with Luxemburg’s ideas). The central metaphor of the work is outstanding though: https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/accumulation-capital/
[89] It is vividly clearly why Luxemburg spent 1912-13, the year before World War One, writing this work in an enthusiastic semi-trance. There was no more hinterland to absorb. A very dramatic crisis was imminent.
[90] It might have been that literally every nation in post-war global capitalism kept the same kind of rearmament going (which sounds a lot like what Trump is demanding in our timeline right now). World War Two though was resolved by two nations, Germany and Japan, being both specifically occupied and disarmed.
[91] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-military-presence-around-the-world-interactive
[92] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex-currencies/092316/how-us-dollar-became-worlds-reserve-currency.asp
[93] https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RS22331
[94] Tapp Branngian.
[95] Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani.
[96] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Filton_Elbit_Systems_break-in
[97] I had written a whole paragraph, careful and nuanced, about this sorry episode, using some professionally-sourced journalism as justification for anything I wrote. I am not a professional journalist. I will let some of that journalism stand it its stead.: https://novaramedia.com/2026/05/12/palestine-action-activists-to-be-sentenced-as-terrorists-in-move-kept-secret-from-jury-and-public/
[98] Three sources this time, from the dearly beloved Starmer regime but… the recent innovation from Kieth Labour has been the added fusion of tech capital to the basic state structure: example 1 https://datacentremagazine.com/news/will-uk-gov-planning-reforms-speed-up-data-centre-delivery: example 2 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/03/22/labour-bypasses-councils-to-build-ai-data-centres/: example 3 https://lowdownnhs.info/topics/accountablility/palantir-the-controversy-the-contracts-and-the-campaign/
[99] The capitalist imperative.
[100] And it is.
[101] https://www.gov.uk/industrial-action-strikes/your-employment-rights-during-industrial-action
[102] As well as your right to free expression, the police can and must take into account organisational staffing levels, and the right of daily business happening without ‘disruption or alarm’. You can protest an ongoing genocide… maybe, so long as you’re so demure you don’t perturb people’s saturday shopping or alarm anyone who might be pro-genocide: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05013/
[103] https://mhclgmedia.blog.gov.uk/2026/02/16/update-on-may-2026-local-authority-elections/
[104] https://www.justice.org.uk/briefings/plans-to-restrict-the-right-to-jury-trial
[105] https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/jul/11/climate-protest-trials-evidence-restrictions-m25-activists
[106] A government consultation document.
[107] https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/watch-this-space-a-new-strategic-direction-for-uk-media-green-paper-and-public-consultation
[108] https://www.owenjones.news/p/the-government-could-silence-me
[109] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/gdpmonthlyestimateuk/may2026#:~:text=Monthly%20real%20GDP%20is%20estimated,growth%20in%20our%20previous%20publication).
[110] July 20th 2026
[111] The former chancellor of the exchequer and the smirking genius behind ‘Q: Bats or great crested news? A: Neither, because I want growth’.
[112] A man who swears he’s best friends with couch-fucker, JD Vance: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clye0jr8wpxo
[113] https://news.sky.com/video/welfare-vs-warfare-state-ed-conway-on-john-healey-as-chancellor-13565396
[114] And haunted sex doll.
[115] https://www.politico.eu/article/wes-streeting-tipped-for-defense-job-under-andy-burnham/
[116] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3kkvkdpw0o
[117] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/01/tech-firms-suggested-placing-trackers-under-offenders-skin-at-meeting-with-justice-secretary
[118] https://www.facebook.com/shabanamahmoodforladywood/posts/it-is-an-honour-to-remain-as-home-secretary-in-andy-burnhams-cabinet-i-may-be-bi/1600235031463587/
[119] And in my opinion also fundamentally deracinated and antisocial.
[120] An example: https://x.com/NicholasLissack/status/2075701371790082461. All together now… UTTER. YANK. NONSENSE.
[121] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0vx2edk0vo
[122] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/15/farage-said-he-would-need-a-million-a-year-to-stand-as-mp-in-2024
[123] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cottrell#:~:text=Cottrell%20was%20federally%20indicted%20on,he%20was%20detained%20in%20custody.
[124] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/19/nigel-farage-admits-george-cottrell-paid-for-filming-and-let-him-use-his-home
[125] https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/news-ge/the-fraudster-who-called-farage-daddy-and-the-mystery-8-5m-property-deal-with-a-guernsey-twist/
[126] https://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/news/parliament-matters-podcast-e150
[127] Including actor, singer, operating thetan, table tennis wicketkeeper and leader of the Reclaim Partly, Laurence Fox. Hereby, this is an excuse to link you to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T82Osd6GmD8
[128] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Binface
[129] A debacle I was briefly in contact with, thankfully only a glancing blow. If you truly want to bore yourself with Britain’s largest political sect, start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Party_(UK)