anti capitalist musings

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Close-up of a British two pence coin, copper-coloured, showing a heraldic lion in a crosshatched frame with fleur-de-lis corners and the words “TWO PENCE” at the top.
Labour Government

Rachel Reeves and the 2p Trap

The chancellor’s proposed income tax shuffle is clever accountancy but toxic politics — a pledge-break disguised as fiscal discipline, and proof that Labour has trapped itself in rules it cannot escape.

An illustration of a red fish (Herring) in profile against a pale background, with the words “RED TERROR” in bold black capitals beneath it.
Charlie Kirk

Red Herring, Not Red Terror

David Frost calls it a new “Red Terror.” The truth is plainer: it’s the Right’s wars, coups and crackdowns that have spilt the deepest blood in politics.

Donald J Trump

The Invention of the Narco-Terrorist

Trump’s latest “kinetic strike” killed three unknown Venezuelans he labelled “narco-terrorists.” The phrase is not law but incantation, a word that strips away humanity and legitimises killing. From Vietnam body counts to Obama’s “signature strikes,” America has always named its enemies into existence, and into death.

Britain

Beyond Creeping Fascism

To call Robinson’s rally “populist” or “right-wing” is to miss the point. Fascism doesn’t require every marcher to be a coherent ideologue; it requires a mass, a scapegoat, and leaders prepared to turn grievance into violence. That is what we saw in London.

Screenshot of a Telegraph article by Camilla Tominey titled “The killing of Charlie Kirk shows just how poisonous Left-wing politics now is,” with the subheading “Speech has consequences – we have once more learnt that lesson from the horrifying events in Utah.” Below the headline is a photo showing two people in jeans holding a poster with a portrait of Charlie Kirk.
Camilla Tominey

Tominey’s doublethink

Camilla Tominey’s sainthood act for Charlie Kirk trades politics for piety. The Right already owns the machinery (press, finance, courts, police) and Kirk was part of the drive shaft. A death certificate doesn’t wash clean a career built on making violence respectable.

Britain

Flatlining Growth, Rising Crisis

The ONS reports zero growth in July. The papers call it “grim news” for Rachel Reeves. In reality, it is the latest entry in a long obituary for British capitalism — a system now sustained only by euphemism, stagnation, and decline.

State of Steel

If you want to build anything, homes, transport, wind turbines, you need steel, and no serious industrial strategy can survive while leaving its production to the whims of absentee capital.

Line drawing of Rising Damp and Porridge start graphics

What We Were Laughing At: Rising Damp, Porridge and the Post-War Delusion

Why were we laughing? From the crumbling walls of Rising Damp to the locked gates of Porridge, from the clenched class tension of The Likely Lads to the surreal paranoia of Reggie Perrin, the golden age of the British sitcom was never just about gags. It was about containment. These were shows about men—white, working class, often thwarted, trapped in rooms they didn’t build but could never leave. They weren’t sitcoms so much as comedies of decline.

Front cover of Haywire by Andrew Hindmoor

Haywire Britain

Andrew Hindmoor’s Haywire offers a quietly devastating account of Britain’s long crisis, from Blair’s stage-managed optimism to Truss’s market-induced implosion, tracing how New Labour’s betrayals laid the foundations for a state that can no longer govern itself.

Managed Decline

Labour promises growth, but all it really offers is cuts, because in the end, that is the only thing it knows how to do.

Not Again

Another boat sinks, more bodies wash up, and Europe’s leaders repeat the same empty promises, yet the boats keep coming, because they must.

Austerity and Missiles

As Putin wages a war without end, Britain prepares for conflict in the only way it knows how, by cutting everything except the military.

Front cover of Munichs snipped to fit.

David Peace’s Munichs

David Peace’s Munichs is not just a novel about the Munich air disaster, it is a novel about how tragedy lingers, how history is shaped in grief and uncertainty, and how disaster, in the absence of instant news, once unfolded in echoes and silence.