anti capitalist musings

The rest of the blog

An image of a contract torn in half
Football

When Is a Contract Not a Contract?

When star forwards can down tools before the season starts and still win the move, a “contract” is just a polite fiction. Isak and Igamane are the canaries in the coal mine.

Britain

Planes That Will Never Take Off

Planes will never take off, but every promise of mass deportation erodes rights, normalises cruelty, and casts the mob as the voice of the nation.

A realist oil painting shows a Joan of Arc–like figure in medieval armour standing amid urban chaos. Flames engulf the street, sending black smoke into the air as police and emergency vehicles appear in the background. She raises a banner with a red cross high above her head while holding a sword at her side
Britain

The Free Speech Martyrdom of Lucy Connolly

Keir Starmer’s law-and-order theatrics have handed the far right its new saint: a self-styled free speech Joan of Arc—except this saint didn’t want to be burned, she wanted others to be.

Britain

The Law, the Hotel, and the Vanishing Migrant

Paul Bristow cites the Epping Forest ruling to demand hotel closures for asylum seekers, but offers no plan for what follows. The Conservatives built the hotel system; Labour inherits it; local politicians weaponise planning law while migrants disappear from view.

Keir Starmer

Dawn Raids and Banned Placards

The arrest of a part-time cleaner for sharing Facebook posts backing Palestine Action shows how Britain’s response to Gaza has drifted from foreign policy into domestic repression.

Britain

The Provincial Mussolinis

Farage brings the noise, Starmer brings the law. The country falls apart to the sound of flags snapping and doors slamming while capital quietly clears the till.

A realist oil painting shows a Joan of Arc–like figure in medieval armour standing amid urban chaos. Flames engulf the street, sending black smoke into the air as police and emergency vehicles appear in the background. She raises a banner with a red cross high above her head while holding a sword at her side

The Free Speech Martyrdom of Lucy Connolly

Keir Starmer’s law-and-order theatrics have handed the far right its new saint: a self-styled free speech Joan of Arc—except this saint didn’t want to be burned, she wanted others to be.

Grainy black-and-white, newspaper style showing the silhouette of a police officer facing a crowd, holding up a blurred mugshot. Camera flashes from photographers in the background illuminate the scene, casting stark light and deep shadows, evoking a sense of public spectacle and mob judgment.

Back to the Mob

Publishing a suspect’s ethnicity isn’t transparency, it’s a gift to the mob, a state-sanctioned dog whistle that trades justice for headlines and hands Reform UK exactly the ammunition it craves.

Nigel Farage: The Performance Artist of British Punishment Politics

Farage isn’t offering a plan, this is performance. His “law and order” blitz isn’t costed, credible, or connected to reality. It’s the politics of punishment as spectacle: build more prisons, shout louder, deport faster, sentence longer. No thought to the broken justice system, no answers on prevention or rehabilitation. Just another culture war front for a party with no economic programme and no interest in governing.

A stylised graphic illustration of a modern red London double-decker bus on Route 24 to Pimlico, set against a backdrop of classical city architecture and a London Underground sign. The image uses a bold 1968 protest-era colour scheme of red, beige, yellow, and black, with minimalistic, flat shapes evoking vintage political poster design.

London Is Not Over—You Just Don’t Belong in It

Matt Goodwin’s claim that “London is over” isn’t analysis, it’s a panic attack in column form. Behind the talk of pints and train delays lies the same tired script the Mail rehashes every few weeks, just in time for its readers to rage over their cornflakes. Crime becomes a cipher for immigration, anecdote stands in for data, and the city’s diversity is framed as an existential threat. But what really offends Goodwin isn’t decline—it’s that London no longer looks or sounds like him.

A stylised graphic in a 1968 protest-poster aesthetic shows a hooded figure silhouetted in black, arms outstretched, standing before a fiery red and white explosion. The background is highly textured with grainy, distressed effects. In the bottom right, bold red and black block capitals read: “BRITAIN’S POGROM LOGIC.”

Britain’s Pogrom Logic

The mob lit the match, but it was the right-wing press that soaked the ground and stood back to watch it burn.

Pencil drawing inside prison

No More Cells

They say prisons are overcrowded, as if the cages are too small. As if the problem is spatial. As if all we need is a few more acres of razor wire and reinforced concrete and the crisis will vanish. But prisons aren’t full because we lack space. They’re full because we lack imagination.

Authoritarian Realism

Kristi Noem’s visit to El Salvador’s mega-prison wasn’t about enforcing policy, it was about staging power for the camera in a theatre of authoritarian realism.