@pjthinker
Professor of Political Theory Former Head of Department of Government and PVC Education London School of Economics Author Against Post-liberalism: Why Faith, Family and Flag is a Dead End for the Left, Polity Press 2025
The social media video with which the White House has promoted its attack on Iran is, even by the standards we’ve come to expect from the Trump administration, grotesque on a level that still manages to be flabbergasting.
✍️ Sam Leith
Article | spectator.com/article/trum...
another excoriating column via Janan Ganesh in the FT
www.ft.com/content/d975...
Great piece 👆👆👆
Eagerly awaited 👆👆👆
“First Among Equals: Visions of Equality Before Egalitarianism”
Teresa M. Bejan
www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...
MAGA's rhetoric of western civilizational emergency is so weird. They look at ICE arresting grandmothers and they see the ancient Greeks defeating the Persians or the Franks stopping the Islamic invaders in 732.
Everyone else sees ICE arresting grandmothers.
newrepublic.com/article/2076...
5/ And on the Strait of Hormuz, they had NO PLAN. I can't go into more detail about how Iran gums up the Strait, but suffice it say, right now, they don't know how to get it safely back open.
Which is unforgiveable, because this part of the disaster was 100% foreseeable.
4/ Ok, so what ARE the goals? It seems, primarily, destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories.
But the question that stumped them: what happens when you stop bombing and they restart production?
They hinted at more bombing. Which is, of course, endless war.
3/ Second, they confirmed "regime change" is also NOT on the list. So, they are going to spend hundreds of billions of your taxpayer dollars, get a whole bunch of Americans killed, and a hardline regime - probably a MORE anti-American hardline regime - will still be in charge.
2/ Maybe the lead is that the war goals DO NOT involve destroying Iran's nuclear weapons program. This is, uh...surprising...since Trump says over and over this is a key goal.
But then of course we already know air strikes can't wipe out their nuclear material.
I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public.
I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.
1/ Here's what I can share:
Details of my book launch are now available - everyone welcome. It will be hybrid for those not in London and recorded.
www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/events/...
UUK President on radio. Stunningly poor on #r4Today - no clear message. It’s all very difficult is a poor message to take to a news show. 👆👆👆
![LET'S NOT PLAY FRISBEE WITH THAT POET ANYMORE.
[This is a comic strip, with a poem laid over it. On each panel a new line of the poem is written. The scene is a park, in the summer. A man in a trenchcoat - implicitly Philip Larkin - stands folorn, motionless, looking at people throwing a frisbee. It becomes apparent as the comic progresses that they are trying to play frisbee with him. He stand stock still for the whole comic, watching the frisbee as, panel by panel it soars closer and closer to him].
After contemplating the approaching frisbee for two silent panels, Philip begins his thoughts:
Unloosed, unheralded,
You soar toward me
Across the dying afternoon.
bright disc of childhood,
Long since thrown wide
Of Youth's green imaginings,
Your slow declining arc
Figures a sky-written truth:
We will all succumb, and soon
To earth's hard oblivion.
[The frisbee hits Philip on the head with a resounding DONK. He falls backwards, to the ground.
[Ends]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4m3we4apbjayclzcnhwe3pfp/bafkreibpyscry7bddmufqnk7wsfuxsflv4fkn4brwvkzxqurjkz7z67yoi)
LET'S NOT PLAY FRISBEE WITH THAT POET ANYMORE. [This is a comic strip, with a poem laid over it. On each panel a new line of the poem is written. The scene is a park, in the summer. A man in a trenchcoat - implicitly Philip Larkin - stands folorn, motionless, looking at people throwing a frisbee. It becomes apparent as the comic progresses that they are trying to play frisbee with him. He stand stock still for the whole comic, watching the frisbee as, panel by panel it soars closer and closer to him]. After contemplating the approaching frisbee for two silent panels, Philip begins his thoughts: Unloosed, unheralded, You soar toward me Across the dying afternoon. bright disc of childhood, Long since thrown wide Of Youth's green imaginings, Your slow declining arc Figures a sky-written truth: We will all succumb, and soon To earth's hard oblivion. [The frisbee hits Philip on the head with a resounding DONK. He falls backwards, to the ground. [Ends]
Let's Not Play Frisbee With That Poet Anymore
He has lost interest in Iran…
… and far beyond anything Corbyn wanted which was nationalisation and higher welfare spending. This Blue Labour radicalism is nowhere near what these Labour backbenchers think it is - tough on immigration and liberal social mobility.
To be fair to actual Blue Labour thinkers like John Milbank or Adrian Pabst (opposed to Glasman) they have very detailed policy and institutional proposals none of which are remotely close to Labour’s manifesto and most of which on the economy would be dismissed as revolutionary…
Especially ha ha if Kruger and Orr succeed in using Reform as a vehicle for replacing the Tory party with a more ‘Christian Nationalist’ party of the right with US money - Trojan Horse on the right for the future post Farage and Badenoch. See where Katie Lam ends up…
“Our government is treating the suffering of the Iranian people as a backdrop for our own entertainment … But, in the end, we lose our humanity when we are thrilled by the destructive power of our military. … The longer we remain blind to the terrible consequences of war ...
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/views/lives/...
Obituary for one of LSEs most notable alumni and a gentle reminder of our own local Libya scandal. I was on LSE council at the time of the non-existent gift. We never actually received the money (what a surprise) but we reimbursed Libya anyway…
…I look forward to @thomascharrayre.bsky.social PhD / book and or other publications on this topic …👆👆👆
A fascinating piece on ‘philosophical Conservatism’ - from @thomascharrayre.bsky.social - especially for those interested in post-liberalism and adjacent morphologies of conservative thinking. Lots to engage with, but once again a surprising reminder of how closely this converges with real politics
You can listen or read my discussion with @MateusMBruno
We say two or three very interesting things about why the conservative intellectuals that went through the thirties and WWII feel so different from the conservatives from the 19th century or today!
I have many friends now from academia and professions who were 11+ failures (sorry no names) - the Grammar system was a failure and that’s why it was abolished. My hostility to Grammars is the one policy issue I agree with Gove and David Willets. 50 years on from abolition it is a dead end…👆👆👆
Exactly, exactly - the facile bring back Grammar school tribe never address the reestablish secondary moderns side of the equation. I missed failing the 11 plus as it was abolished in West Sussex before I would have taken it.
So Farage is going to build a lot of new Schools - either Grammars or Secondary Moderns and pay for the bussing of kids between them? No he isn’t for same reason the never did it under Thatcher, Major, Cameron, May,Johnson, Truss or Sunak. Far too expensive and won’t happen. Total non-story…👆👆👆
"Just because diplomacy means we’re not allowed to say out loud that Trump is mad, you shouldn’t actually behave as if he’s sane. The man is a random headline generator with nuclear weapons." Les mots justes comme d'hab from @roberthutton.co.uk.
thecritic.co.uk/the-dumb-dum...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGJX...
A great discussion of post-liberalism with John Milbank inspired by the great genealogy presented by Jacob Williams and Joao Pinheiro da Silva. All in the wonderful environment of the Centre For Theology, Law and Culture at Pusey House.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGJX...
A great discussion of post-liberalism with John Milbank inspired by the great genealogy presented by Jacob Williams and Joao Pinheiro da Silva. All in the wonderful environment of the Centre For Theology, Law and Culture at Pusey House.
This should concern regulators - the super wealthy distorting democracy. If mega wealth is dominant owner of all media we do not have a free press but the plutocratic distortion of the public realm. 👆👆👆
