Britain
The Fire That Started at the Hotels Will Spread
Scapegoating migrants is just the start. When politics legitimises fear and blame, the mob never stops, and neither does the cycle of persecution.
The rest of the blog
Scapegoating migrants is just the start. When politics legitimises fear and blame, the mob never stops, and neither does the cycle of persecution.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Robert Jenrick’s Union Jack pantomime isn’t patriotism; it’s a confession of weakness. A dying political class turns to flags and ladders because it has nothing left to offer but theatre.
By sanctioning International Criminal Court judges and prosecutors, Trump’s America has openly declared that empire stands above the law. Europe and Britain now face a stark choice: defend the court’s independence, or accept a world where justice stops at Washington’s door.
The Alaska talks were not a breakthrough but a trap. A “peace deal” that rewards Russian aggression is appeasement by another name. Ukraine’s fight is for survival, and any settlement must be on its terms—not Moscow’s.
JD Vance went to Greenland to play imperialist. He left rebuked, ridiculed, and unwelcome, a fitting emissary for a decaying superpower.
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.
Pete Hegseth’s rise to Defence Secretary marks the moment Christian nationalism stopped playing insurgent and started running the world’s most powerful war machine.
Trump doesn’t defeat his opponents; he casts them, turning liberal conscience into spectacle, and transforming critique into the very script that keeps him centre stage.
While Trump governs and the Democratic Party fragments, Sanders and AOC offer mass therapy disguised as mobilisation, nostalgia in place of a plan.
Michael Lewis has always been at his best when writing about finance, exposing the absurdities and myths of capital. Who Is Government? is a departure, an obituary for the administrative state, told through a series of essays by various writers.
Twenty-two years ago, millions marched against the invasion of Iraq. I was one of them. We were right; the war was wrong. And yet it happened anyway. That was the moment I realised: marching doesn’t cut through when empire’s at stake.
Trump’s second presidency isn’t just an assault on democracy; it’s the moment the dominant class decided elections were no longer necessary.
If Joe Biden was condemned as “Genocide Joe” for arming Israel during its war on Gaza, what do we call the man who not only restocked its weapons but signed off on the latest assault?
This review explores how Richard Beck’s Homeland and Lewis Lapham’s Age of Folly reveal the profound domestic and global consequences of America’s response to 9/11, from creeping authoritarianism at home to declining influence abroad.