On Wes Streeting's Weight Loss Injections

It sounds like a scenario straight out of Black Mirror. Unemployed people who are overweight are forcibly subjected to injections that will shed the pounds so they can get off the dole and make them. Unsurprisingly, Wes Streeting has been forced to deny this is the objective of his weight loss scheme that has exercised headline writers this week. On Sunday's Laura Kuenssberg, Streeting said no one was going to be forced to do anything. Instead, he was defending a five-year trial involving a sample of 3,000 people living in and around Greater Manchester. Participants will receive the weight loss drug Tirzepatide, and researchers will track the rates of obesity-associated conditions and the number of sick days they take. The impact on their employment status is but one measurement the project will be taking.

For once, Streeting is telling the truth. This is not an experiment in dystopic social engineering. The trial's plan wants to find out what care packages are most appropriate to those who receive this treatment, as well as tracking the drug's long-term effects. If it works as advertised then it could be beneficial and life-changing, and will have knock on effects where obesity-related NHS care is concerned. In other words, what concerns is less the trial and more the political uses to which this could be put.

For Streeting, there are obvious political benefits. Cutting the £11bn spent on obesity care by making it increasingly superfluous has its attractions. As he said, he hopes the success will speak for itself and encourage others who need it to take the drug, which ties nicely in with his vision of the NHS as a preventative as opposed to a care service. A couple of wins that will finesse his credibility when the inevitable run at the leadership comes. And there is the other side, of making the NHS a guaranteed market for Tirzepatide and other weight loss drugs. But more importantly, as a tool of governance. For Streeting, the Department of Health is really an economic growth department. He talked about this in relation to boosting the life sciences at his Tony Blair Institute speech a week after taking office, but the obvious implication is that he sees his brief as fixing people so they can be fed back into the labour market. This government's number one priority, heard ad nauseum, is growing the economy so decent public services can be provided for. Everything else is subordinate to the aim of our producing profits for other people.

But it's wider than that. Streeting has jumped on this in the same week Liz Kendall said job coaches would be let loose on the mentally unwell to get them out of clinics and into jobs. She argued that getting into work can improve mental health, which is something that Iain Duncan Smith used to often say when challenged about the axe he took to social security. In context, for Streeting, Kendall, and the rest of them, upping the conditionalities of social security and reducing welfare to an authoritarian instrument comes naturally to them. They (mostly) come from modest backgrounds and made it to the top, so why can't anyone else? Hence unemployment is a consequence of individual poor choices or, in this case, infirmities. Get them fixed and the benefits bill can come down. Never mind the fact unemployment is a structural issue and that the people out of work always exceeds the number of vacancies. Whether they're dealing with obesity or mental health difficulties, the onus is on them to sort themselves out and be available to employers. If they don't cooperate? There are sanctions available for that.

There are differences between Labour and their Conservative opponents. Keir Starmer wants to modernise the state. The Tories want to wind it down. But when it comes to the fundamentals of supporting the most vulnerable in Britain (or otherwise), they are one. Compassion and care are words in a dictionary to these people. But there's another C word that comes through loud and clear: cruelty.

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Badenoch's to Lose

I suppose some words should be expended on the Tory leadership contest as the marathon powers into the final straight. Already an uninteresting contest, the shortlisting of Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick for the members' ballot has proven to be the political equivalent of the sleep of the dead. Jenrick says something right wing, Badenoch says something right wing. It's not exactly appealing to the punters. Compare this to the media interest that Labour leadership elections attract. Even the last one, in which Keir Starmer emerged as the early favourite commanded much more speculation and coverage. Remember, this was at the dawn of what the entirety of British politics punditry thought was a decade of Tory dominance. In the scheme of things there couldn't be anything less pressing.

That's by the by. Never let it be said the Conservatives are incapable of learning. Aware of the evident damage and bad feeling the last round of public debates did the party, this time the apparat has thrown every obstacle in the way of a TV clash going ahead. The Telegraph reported that the Tories had set several conditions on it taking place on the BBC. They demanded that the Question Time special's audience be made up entirely of party members, and that they should pay a £10 admission fee to "make sure they turn up". It is well known that studio audiences for public broadcast attract no charge in this country. Furthermore, where Question Time is concerned the production team do try and fill out a politically balanced audience based on voting intention, and the BBC were not going to compromise on this. This was to Jenrick's chagrin. Miles behind Badenoch, he can only gain from a head-to-head. He said he would be "delighted" to debate Badenoch at the BBC. For her part, she said she would abide by the party board's ruling. The cheese is hard for some.

Yet one public debate did take place. On Thursday, GB News broadcast a two-hour long programme. To call it a debate would be a misnomer. Both had an hour each to set out their stall and take questions. There were to be no repeats of the clashes that brought a little colour to proceedings two years ago. The Conservative Home headline said it all: "Two hours of our lives that we’re never getting back". Jenrick opted to go first and spent half his speech banging on about immigration and how we need to leave the European Convention. He set fire to the Tories' record in office, and accused "foreign courts" of letting terrorists into Britain. It's obvious what Jenrick is trying to do. He's hoping muscular posturing will cause the right wing party members - the overwhelming majority - to give him a second look. The problem is that Jenrick's a dweeb. Despite quitting the government over the issue, that looked less like a principled stand and more a contrivance to give his run at the Tory leadership some credibility. But it's fallen flat. Apart from a charisma bypass, he's just not credible on these issues with the membership. They remember his past life as a Dave-era A-lister who was gifted his Newark seat in 2014, and as someone who loyally campaigned for remain in the EU referendum. Then there is the small matter of his being the immigration minister up until last December. That he did his damnedest to make new arrivals feel unwelcome and defended protests outside hotels hosting refugees (well before the riots) counts for nothing. For the Tory membership, he's a briefcase just saying and doing what he thinks will work. Being well inured to dishonest politics, they know a cynic when they see one.

The same can't be said for Badenoch. Introduced to public prominence at the last leadership contest, apart from the culture war cliches she did then have something interesting to say about scrapping the Treasury and spending being a direct competence of the Prime Minister's office. Unfortunately, in the two years since she has become more acquainted with the way the state structures class relations and how central the Treasury-Bank-of-England-City nexus is to the whole set up. Not that the Tory membership care about this. For someone who apparently hates the culture wars, she has fought them with alacrity. As Women's and Equalities minister she has assuredly used the position to oppose a better deal for women, and has come out with clangers about maternity pay, the minimum wage, and carers. And there was the small matter of demonstrating sympathy with far right street thuggery. For the membership though, as a Brexiteer and as a politician who's never been backward about being forward she's the real deal. So during her speech for GB News, she didn't have to flex with attacks on the ECHR and other such performative nonsense. The membership feels Badenoch is one of them, and she is. By way of demonstration, at the end of the GB News "debate" Christopher Hope asked for a show of hands about who the Tory audience would be backing. Let's say the result for Jenrick suggests he can look forward to a Liz Kendall-style outcome.

And so it's Badenoch's to lose. It's difficult to see how she can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, short of an earnest conversion to Corbynism or was found to have previously been in secret defection talks with Labour (why not?). If there is one smidgen of hope for camp Jenrick, the latest poll on what the public thinks puts him ahead of Badenoch. Yes, a massive 14% versus her 13%. Combined, that is less than the 31% who indicated 'none of the above'. I suppose the Tories ought to be thankful for the unseemly power struggles and amateur dramatics that have marked Labour first few months in office. Because if Starmer had had a smoother start and avoided the stupid own goals, this poll would be even worse and the Tories even more of a marked irrelevance where most people are concerned.

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Drawing the Battlelines

At moments an exercise in hagiography, The News Agents' profile of Morgan McSweeney is interesting and worth a listen. It goes into his history and explores, such as one exists, his theory of politics. They characterise him as less Blairite and more old Labour right, because of an apparent concern with working class politics. There is discussion of him as an operator, but his skulduggery is diplomatically passed over. We learn he replaced Sue Gray because she was not political enough. Again, there is no suggestion of untoward shenanigans. Sources need protecting and lthe grapevine into Number 10 has to be maintained, after all.

About McSweeney's politics, he impresses the easily impressed because it's all about winning. And what Labour needs to do now it's won office is make good its promises and deal with the people's priorities. This, the piece argues, is where he believes other centre left governments in Western Europe have gone wrong. For example, their support do not want mass migration and yet that's what they get. The result is their chances going down the tubes and the far right piling on electoral weight. From our point of view, McSweeney is an instantiation of Labourism's most backward characteristics - office for careerism's sake, an absence of the possibility that things might be better, a commitment to a model of leadership that tails, rather than leads, public opinion, and hostility to wedge issues, regardless of how popular they might be. For all the hype, under his political direction Keir Starmer is already treading the same steps that has undone social democratic parties on the continent. It remains to be seen whether the outcome will repeat history as tragedy or farce.

This post, however, isn't just about McSweeney. With the Labour left back in its box and the left outside wondering what to do next, the sort of bickering and jockeying we saw during the Blair and Brown years is never far away the surface. Already, there is disquiet that Starmer passed over time servers to appoint newbies to plum positions. Some are unhappy that key ministerial roles have gone to unelected appointees. With a bloated parliamentary party and only so many jobs to go round, what work might the Devil make for these idle hands once the new cohort have got over the novelty of office? Clearly, Starmer is already worried hence the immediate suspensions following the benefit cap rebellion, and we learned last week about the Labour whips' ham-fisted efforts to curb dissent. Does this look like a strong government confident in its politics to you?

While McSweeney appears not to have a hand in these moves, he does have a side-project that could exacerbate inner party struggle. This can be summed up in three words: stop Angela Rayner. Over the last four years, the apparat has gone out of its way to clip her wings and, to be frank, humiliate her. There was the not-at-all dodgy disposal of Sam Tarry, the blocking of Rayner's supporters from shortlists across the North West, the pettiness of refusing Andy Burnham a platform at Labour's conference, the concealing of information from Rayner and her allies in the cabinet, the endless consultations and watering downs of the workers right agenda she's made her own, and last week's brutal mugging of Louise Haigh. McSweeney and mates are on a mission to keep Rayner from getting the top job. It's partly political: her journey from enthusiastic Corbyn ally to enthusiastic Starmer stooge suggests a fundamental political unreliability. If she becomes leader, her soft left Labourism not only differs from the Milquetoast managerialism McSweeney and Starmer prefer, like Ed Miliband she might inadvertently open the way for a left revival. Then there is the personal. Rayner and her allies have not forgotten nor forgiven the slights against them, and there will be a reckoning if she lands in the driving seat. It follows this preoccupation with Rayner will continue with her being cut out of decisions, her allies presented with trays full of fait accompli, their policies spiked, and efforts at making the party safe for a right wing successor to Starmer. McSweeney is counting on the services he rendered scores of new MPs for when the moment comes.

The beginnings of Labour's new psychodrama is there, and for a man who is reputedly political to his finger tips McSweeney will have a hard time leaving off his vendetta against Rayner and the soft left. What else might one expect now the adults are in charge?

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New Left Media October 2024

A little bit late, but four new projects have come to my attention and it didn't make sense waiting another month to give them a push. So please check them out, they're all worth taking a look.

1. Data Vampires (Limited podcast series) (Twitter)

2. Galaxy Burn, a 40k Podcast (YouTube channel) (Twitter)

3. Marx's Dream Journal (Substack) (Twitter)

4. Red Bird (Bulletin) (Twitter)

If you know of any new(ish) blogs, podcasts, channels, Facebook pages, resources, spin offs of existing projects, campaign websites or whatever that haven't featured before then drop me a line via the comments, email, Facebook, or Twitter. Please note I'm looking for new media that has started within the last 12 months, give or take. The round up appears hereabouts when there are enough new entrants to justify a post!

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One Hundred Days of Sod 'Em

To celebrate its hundred days in office, the Labour Party has produced a neat little site. You can find out "what Keir has done for you so far" by clicking on a region. As I'm back in my home town these days, we find out that the East Midlands can look forward to 1,000 more GPs, councils taking over bus services, no fault evictions, the warm homes plan, and more. What about my previous abode, Stoke-on-Trent - the pearl of North Staffordshire? The West Midlands list of achievements is ... very similar to the East's. There's a bit of local colour thrown in (The Potteries are checked by name), but it's broadly the same. In reality, it doesn't mean much. It's tractor production figures, and this spin cannot go unanswered.

I'm not unreasonable. Even the most radical of reforming governments wouldn't be able to implement its full programme in its first 100 days (coping with capital strikes and facing down a coup might prove to be distractions). Starmer is not offering anything like this. His programme is one for restoring the legitimacy of governmental authority and modernising the state. Tilting the balance away from capital toward labour is definitely not on the cards. We can't well have "working people" getting ideas above their station. The issue therefore is not pace, it's content.

Consider these two exhibits from the last week. Angela Rayner's bill of workers' rights was unveiled (again) a few days ago. And, what do you know, we have yet more watering down. How long before they become purely homeopathic? The "rights from day one" now allows bosses to impose a nine-month probationary period on new employees. Introducing the single status of worker, which had already been weakened to allow for two different statuses "as a step toward one" is ... subject to further consultation. As is the right to switch off from employer harassment outside of working hours, ending pay discrimination, and strengthening parental and carers' leave. A fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families this ain't. And on top of that we have to wait another two years for this to take effect anyway. Labour: never knowingly urgent in helping the workers it was set up to represent.

And then there's the row about P&O ferries. When they sacked 800 workers a couple of years ago to bring in scab labour on much lower wages, it was so outrageous that even the right wing press and Tory ministers condemned them. Nothing came of it, because Tories are always going to Tory. It is verboten to encourage the slightest expression of class-based collective action around workers' interests. As recently as three days ago, Labour was singling out P&O as a bad employer. This was following transport minister Louise Haigh rightly describing the firm as a "cowboy operator". But not any more! In the world of Starmer and the new guru of politics, big business exists and it's there to be kowtowed to. So with the threat P&O's owner, DP World, was going to pull out of a Downing Street business vanity summit and put a £1bn investment on hold, Starmer stuck his foot out and sent Haigh tumbling under the nearest bus.

It's almost a pattern of behaviour. Starmer likes to talk about working people as if they're the salt of the earth, but if they are looking for support from this government and/or relying on them to strengthen their hand in the workplace, he's more interested in salting the earth. Perhaps the Prime Minister would change his mind if P&O workers clubbed together and bought him a spa weekend for two in the lake district.

Over the last hundred days the only thing Starmer and his cronies have fought for with any conviction is their right to trough freebies. We've seen his back office helpers boasting about how they stitched the Labour Party up, the attack on Winter Fuel Payments not to "save money" but to wind back universalism, the renewed fondness for the PFI scam, the decision to not give needy kids immediate relief, and fog-horning from the roof tops about clamp downs on social security support for the disabled and the mentally ill. Labour took office because voters wanted to see the back of the Tories, and an end to Tory policies. Instead, these hopes have been cast aside. We've had one hundred days of sod 'em.

Nalin & Kane - Beachball

Walked by a car on the way to work that was banging out this classic.

The Tories Have Lost the Next Election

Earlier today, the Conservative Party's 121 surviving MPs met to determine the final two candidates who'll go forward to the membership. And, despite having a nightmare of a conference, the parliamentary party selected Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick for this dubious honour. The momentum that James Cleverly showed counted for nought as he crashed out with 37 MPs. Jenrick and Badenoch got over the line with 41 and 42 votes respectively. The contest proper is now joined, ballots close on Hallowe'en (appropriately enough) and the new leader will get announced on 2nd November. There is to be one televised hustings, and that will get shown on GB News on 17th October. That alone tells you about where the Conservative Party is heading.

The result of the final ballot is an interesting one, and will occasion much confusion among "professional" political commentators. On the surface there's a roughly even three-way split. How can the Tories possibly get their act together now? It's because the politics matters the most, and the personalities come second - that's how. The real split is between the third or so who supported the "centrist" briefcase campaign Cleverly headed up, and two-thirds who think off-the-deep-end culture war drivel is the party's route back to the big time. In other words, the populist turn inaugurated by Boris Johnson still hasn't played itself out among Tory parliamentarians. The cheap tricks and scapegoating ploys of the recent past are crack cocaine for these people. The issue is they need a clown to front them for the act to work, and while the politics of Badenoch and Jenrick owe a heavy debt to the Big Top neither have the personality or charm for it to be convincing.

This one-third/two-thirds split therefore means moves toward the centre, and a direct contestation for the scores of seats lost to Labour and the Liberal Democrats becomes much harder. Those soft Tory-curious voters left the party's orbit a while ago, thanks to their weak efforts at addressing the problems their government has caused, and the endless scapegoating and distraction tactics. However, as long argued here the Tories are not "mad" to make a right wing turn. After a crushing defeat in which Reform's campaign was decisive for the loss of dozens of seats, it's simple arithmetic to add their support to the Conservative vote and, hey presto, more votes than those won by Labour. Heading off to the right also apparently solves the crisis of the Tory base. In their imaginary, the party lost votes to Nigel Farage because they weren't conservative enough. The small boats kept on coming, legal migration still went up, and measures designed to deal with them were stymied by "foreign courts". Promising toughness and crack downs is how to win Reform voters back.

But those voters are not interested. Our two-thirds majority forget they went into the general election promising all those things, and Reform still took five seats from them. They might, like Jenrick, say they mean it this time. But here's the difficulty. Johnson was able to build an election-winning coalition because he proved he was serious about Brexit. The tests he passed: defying his rebels, defying the courts, defying the EU, it was all show but it was seen to be done. Something that wouldn't have been possible if Johnson wasn't the Prime Minister at the time, nor if he hadn't led the Brexit campaign in the first place. Farage also, from outside Westminster, was able to demonstrate that he could be trusted on Brexit and immigration. His 25-year political career has thrived because he's done nothing but push these issues. How can Badenoch and Jenrick demonstrate a seriousness of purpose when they both served in Sunak's government and didn't deliver? They can't, which leads them to embrace even more extremism, like soft soaping right wing thuggery, or increasingly desperate stunts. Such as wearing 'Hamas are terrorists' hoodies and saying the SAS undertake extra judicial killings just to avoid human rights paperwork.

What will become of the third of the "sensible" parliamentary party? They will serve in the shadow cabinet of whoever wins. They might even hope to exercise a moderating influence, while manoeuvring themselves into positions of indispensability - just as they did when the wheels came off Liz Truss's premiership. Or some, like our old friend Gavin Williamson, might retreat to the backbenches to support children's charities or join Cleverly in painting Warhammer 40K miniatures. Whatever they do, the defeat of their two banner men is a political defeat for them, and an end to any hope the Tories are going to win the next election.

As previously argued, this is not popcorn time as the Tories set themselves up for five years of irrelevance. Yes, there is humour in the Tories skipping the William Hague stage and going straight for a retread of the Iain Duncan Smith era. But their move to the right can poison British politics further, embolden the extremism of Reform, and encourage racists, bigots, and the self-identified far right to step up their attacks. To give themselves what they think will be a political advantage, the moral vacuity of Conservative MPs means they are gambling with the safety and sense of security of millions of Britons.

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The Stakes of the Tory Leadership Contest

Three down, three to go. The third round of Tory MPs' voting is over. Tom Tugendhat is out, leaving James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, and Kemi Badenoch for the final ballot. The scores on the doors were Cleverly 39 (+18), Jenrick 31 (-2), Badenoch 30 (+2), and Tugendhat 21 (-1). The excitement is palpable. It's almost as thrilling as the last contest.

Those unfortunate to follow the toings and froings of Conservative Party conference should not be the least bit surprised with this outcome. The pol comment consensus, which was right for once, had Cleverly doing well with his speech and capturing momentum. It was the rousing plea of "let us be normal" that won it. Meanwhile, Jenrick and Badenoch suffered self-inflicted wounds and spent vital time staunching their campaigns' lifeblood when they could have glad-handed and schmoozed some more. A reminder that amateur hour is a pastime shared by leading figures of all parties.

Considering the defeated Tugendhat, one can only conclude this was another attempt at jump starting his bid for public prominence. When he entered the 2022 contest, he rhetorically broke with the corrupt legacy of Boris Johnson and promised a "clean start". But the real reason, getting his face known, becoming a player, didn't succeed. As a briefcase Tory, he served in Liz Truss's ill-fated government as security minister and carried on when Rishi Sunak took over. And there he led an undistinguished existence, despite trying to stir the anti-China pot by announcing an investigation into TikTok and its influence. Truly a grey blur, he'll probably be best remembered for his cringe merch than any noted contribution to the Tory party.

So much for the loser, of the three left who might Labour fear the most? Despite the damage done by avarice and unnecessary "tough choices", Keir Starmer is still the beneficiary of popular anti-Toryism and the predicament they are in. If the Tories go right to try and consolidate their base and hoover up Reform's support, that leaves votes toward the centre more or less uncontested. Add to this the antipathy many Reform voters feel towards the Tories, it's by no means certain a strong effort here would put Nigel Farage's concern out of business. But going "centrist" leaves the right flank open for Reform, as well as the door for possible Tory defections. Labour is fortunate because the box the Tories have sealed themselves in is entirely their fault, and their long-term crisis is playing out irrespective of what Starmer and friends do.

Not that left wing Tory watchers have no interest in the outcome. We do. Seeing Jenrick or Badenoch gallop off to the right will only blow more smoke up the backsides of the right wing press, who will be emboldened to go even further right. And because Starmer's Labour is a flimsy construct on an extensive but structurally weak majority, one can imagine the "genius" of Morgan McSweeney will see the government tack right also. The consequence outside of Westminster pantomimes and politics gossip columns will be felt in more scapegoating, a further coarsening of public discourse, more racism, and down the road more of what we saw in the summer. No trust in Cleverly, obviously. He happily supported Johnson, Truss, and Sunak at their racist worst, but a win for him and a defeat for the most demented and politically poisonous section of the Tories might arrest the further mainstreaming of overtly racist politics. Even if only for a brief period. For that reason, one cannot be indifferent about the outcome of the Tory leadership contest.

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What a Gray Day

Back in June, this blog asked a question. What is the point of Morgan McSweeney?. He had made the Labour Party safe for Keir Starmer and his brand of authoritarian politics, and with a 2015-style left wing surge ranging from infinitesimally unlikely to impossible what role awaited him following the general election? Well, he did find purpose. To make Sue Gray's, Starmer's chief of staff, life a misery. And that culminated in her resignation today and her replacement by a victorious McSweeney. She is out, packed off to the nations and the regions office to oversee Labour's devolution plans, and our Morgan gets to cosplay as Malcolm Tucker. Lifetime achievement unlocked.

Despite the hype surrounding Gray, her appointment did not live up to its stellar billing. She was there because, like Starmer, she's a state functionary through and through. She inspired the confidence of the apparat. It telegraphed that, finally, the professionals, the "grown ups", the adults-in-the-room were in charge and the age of overconfident amateurs and chaos agents was done. Let efficient government, smooth government commence with the take over of the state by the state. But things haven't gone that way. If anything, for a new government its disarray has often recalled an administration on its last legs.

Not all of this can be laid at Gray's door. She didn't petition Rachel Reeves to stop Winter Fuel Payments or talk up "the pain" scheduled in the Autumn budget to the point that confidence in the UK economy was severely knocked. And despite the complaints about "Downing Street comms", often repeated from unattributed sources by the New Statesman podcast, freebiegate wasn't a disaster because of inept spinning. It has damaged Labour's credibility and forced Starmer's favourability rating into a nosedive because the Prime Minister won't countenance surrendering the perks of office. Polishing a turd is a messy business. It goes everywhere and makes everything it sticks to stink.

That isn't to say Gray's case is a spotless one. She tried forcing the cadre of incoming spads to accept lower salaries than their Tory predecessors and, in some cases, what they were receiving in opposition. To their complaints she turned a tin ear, forcing an unlikely unionisation effort among a sliver of party staff for whom the words 'solidarity' and 'collectivism' are normally entries in the dictionary. Hence the wave of hostile briefings against her, including the barb that Gray is the only pensioner to have done well out of the Labour government. Not useful to have the operation turning on itself after the gentlest application of media pressure. There are some other wonkish complaints about not having proper transition plans. But, the greatest sin of all was that she did not appreciate that her job was a political one. According to an, again unattributed conversation this time relayed by Sienna Rodgers, an insider said "I think fundamentally Sue Gray is a person with no politics or political experience/nous doing a job that has become very political. And in Morgan [McSweeney] she's got an enemy who is essentially just much better at politics than her."

This is true enough, but who put her there in the first place? It was clueless Keir that made the call. Starmer had enough sense to trust his fortunes to Sweeney during the leadership election and in the factional battles and purges since. But as office approached it appears the understanding that he required a political hatchet man fell out of his head. Perhaps he's made the mistake of snorting his own vapours, imagining that he could do a government and a politics that "treads lightly" on the British people. That once in office, like Macron across the Channel he could pretend to be a Prime Minister that operates above politics. In such a world there is a use for a Sue Gray, but not one for a Morgan McSweeney. Which was why he was initially frozen out. However, Gray's ineptitude and the briefing operation run by camp McSweeney has knocked Starmer off his cloud and brought him down face-to-face with the grubby doings of politics. Albeit pulled off in such a way that the boss doesn't experience it as a humbling. By pinning the blame of everything from freebies to Lord Alli's Downing Street pass to staffing issues and poor spinning on Gray, Starmer was presented with a fait accompli. This was topped off by Gray's decision to fall on her sword for the good of the government. A masterpiece of manipulation for those who get excited by such things.

What now? With McSweeney's people in charge one might expect a more disciplined Downing Street. The impression of a shambles will quickly be replaced by message discipline and rebuttal. Anything that comes out of Number 10 now, as per the days of Dominic Cummings, does so with McSweeney's blessing. That might seem limiting as plausible deniability for "leaks" is reduced, but it enables the PLP to get a read on where their (apparently uncommunicative) leader is going, as well as signalling who's on the up and who's on the way out. Handy for the legions of career-minded MPs. Politically, however, nothing has changed. The opportunity to waste the historic opportunity Labour has remains on track, but that's not what's important. The Labour right's backroom apparatchiks get the goodies they're entitled to, and McSweeney gets to feed his legend - one that should set him up for life. Grown ups, eh?

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The Multiplicities of Infinity Gate

Since Murray Leinster's Sidewise in Time, alternative worlds and speculative history have proven a popular staple in science fiction. It even occasionally crosses over into the mainstream, with 1998's Sliding Doors and the late Paul Auster's 4 3 2 1 being popular examples. With this ubiquity of alt-history shows and thousands of YouTube channels exploring what if? scenarios, in the last 15 years, the diminishing band of commercially successful SF authors have mined this sub-genre seam. Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's Long Earth sequence sees the action stretch across hundreds of thousands of parallel (and mostly empty) Earths. Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Doors of Eden sees multiple alien Earths, whose divergence is based on branches of the evolutionary tree playing out, collide amidst a multiverse-shattering threat and an inconvenient fascistic billionaire. Into this trend of dizzying parallelism comes MR Carey's Infinity Gate.

The first of a diptych that sits between Baxter and Tchaikovsky, and with a passing resemblance to Harry Turtledove's Crosstime Traffic books, the setting is the Pandominion, an empire comprising tens of thousands of Earths. The citizens of this empire are "selves", the generic term for all its sentient inhabitants regardless of their biological lineage (in these timelines, pretty much every mammalian species had a stab at filling the niche occupied by humans). The Pandominion is also a post-scarcity civilisation, having the inexhaustible resources of infinite Earths to draw on. But historical materialist friends of SF will be interested to note this doesn't mean the Pandominion is a classless society. The traffic between the Earths is monitored and controlled by a Moon-sized AI, and this in turn is employed by a capricious bureaucracy. This society observes the formal trappings of liberal democracy, but the reader is left in no doubt where the power lies. The bureaucracy also controls the Cielo, the Pandominion's force of enhanced and power-armoured super soldiers backed by a supply of inexhaustible and impressively destructive armaments. Yet the empire doesn't go in for conquering worlds - it appears every member has been admitted by consent. They exist, like all militaries, to secure the power of the ruling class and as insurance against external threat. Pandominion explorers have discovered around 17,000 scoured worlds. These are formerly habitable realities that, approximately 500 years before the discovery of step technology, were subject to a cataclysm that wiped out all life down to the microbial level. The speculation is this was the outcome of an unimaginably devastating war between realities, and it's part of Cielo training to give new recruits a tour of these tombstone worlds.

But all is not well in the Pandominion's extensive garden. Stumbling on a mining operation by an AI, a stupid incident in which a group of scientists and a small detachment of soldiers are killed sees the bureaucracy overreact and in it goes mob handed. Except the AIs, which are dubbed by their organic enemies as the Ansurrection, are no push overs and are more than capable of meeting and beating the pride of the Pandominion. There is war across hundreds of Earths, and both sides are in a race to build the mega weapons to defeat the others. Could a new scouring being imminent?

So much for the background. The story follows three characters. The first, Hadiz Tambuwal, is a scientist living on a billionaire-funded campus near Lagos. Her world is much like ours, except more polluted and exhausted of resources. Environmental catastrophe is compounded by swarms of earthquakes, and civilisation falls apart amid the poison and the devastation. She's left alone with a life time's food supply, and only an artificial intelligence experiment for company. With nothing else to do she carries on her research, and stumbles on the ability to step into alternate Earths. Finding the first pleasant but empty of civilisation, she mocks up drones and is able to initiate experiments where they step into hundreds of worlds per sortie, looking for any with signs of sentient life.

This is where we're introduced to Essien Nkanika. He's from a Lagos not dissimilar to our own, and has lived right at the bottom of the pile. He's been a slave, a scavenger at the city dump, and as we find him, a sex worker who prowls the bars down town. His experience has made him amoral and utterly ruthless. One night he encounters Hadiz, and they go back to her place in the docklands. Gradually he's inducted into the mysteries of stepping and quickly realises this could be the making of his fortune. If only Hadiz could be disposed of. Unbeknownst to both, their trips between worlds were noticed by the Pandominion and a small unit of Cielo are dispatched to meet them.

The final character is Topaz Tourmaline FiveHills, or Paz to her friends. She lives on Ut, and is a self whose species climbed the sentience tree from rabbits. She has floppy ears and powerful hind legs that enable her kind to run faster than practically any other Pandominion lineage. Also, though she's 19 she is officially designated as a child in her culture until she turns 30. Whether that's a comment on kidulthood and adulting is up to the reader's judgement. The war with the Ansurrection is raging, but Ut seems far away from the fighting. And besides, Paz has just made friends with the new girl in her class. Dulcie Standfast Coronal is, like her, a bit socially awkward and her AI familiar (not dissimilar to the demons in Pullman's His Dark Materials) doesn't appear to have the same functions as everyone else's. With reports of selves being kidnapped by the Ansurrection, might there be something fishy going on?

Spoilers below.

Carey has done an excellent job of producing a pacey, compelling, and interesting narrative with well-rounded characters and consistent plotting. Among its immediate peers in alternative history, it matches Tchaikovsky's Eden and avoids the aimless meandering of Pratchett/Baxter. In verve, the balance of action, and execution it's closer to Peter F Hamilton's space opera, the Salvation trilogy. For a thick book, there's no fat, but neither is there one improbable scrape followed by another. Like the Hamilton its tone is borderline young adult. The swearing, gore, and infrequent but functional sex scenes just about edge it out but there is a cartoon quality to proceedings. Less Hanna-Barbera unlike some) and more anime, or comic strip. Which isn't surprising considering Carey's pedigree. Over-the-top weaponry, especially the machines fielded by the Ansurrection used to butcher the Pandominion's forces lend itself to such an imaginary, but what cements it are the vestigial animal qualities of the selves. In addition to rabbits, Infinity Gate features characters whose species evolved from cats, dogs, hedgehogs, reptiles, bears, birds. I've probably missed a few. If that sounds like The Get Along Gang with guns, attitude, and timeline-hopping technology, you're not far off. A rabbit girl and adorable AI familiar plus power armoured cats wouldn't hurt marketing a film or streaming adaptation to a mass, teen-adjacent audience.

More interesting is the concern for multiplicity and a plea for difference. For all the diversity of selves in the Pandominion, the bureaucracy and the Cielo hold it together in a disciplined unity to keep the polity and, with it, the class power of their worlds intact. There are distinctions made by selves between those who matter - the empire's worlds and its citizens - and those who don't: the worlds, and therefore the civilisations that exist outside of it. They effectively do not exist, a point reinforced by the conditioning/brutalisation of the Cielo's new recruits. There is also a strong distinction between organic and artificial intelligence. The AI helpmeets used on Ut, and the huge computer that enables cross-time traffic are frequently likened to slaves, and there is some discussion of the ethics of stunting machine intelligences at a service level. AI in this culture is a tool with strictly circumscribed parameters. Despite the cybernetic enhancements enjoyed by Pandominion citizens this hard distinction remains in play. This prejudice frames their antipathy to the Ansurrection. AI isn't alive, it is an automaton. They are a form of non-existence that threatens the Pandominion with death, and has to be destroyed.

Through the point of view of Cammy, we learn the Ansurrection is alive as well. But different. They are fractal life forms, and multiplicity is at the core of their being. There are trillions of intelligences in their civilisation, but their individuality is not discreet. They combine, disassociate, copy, and flit between machine bodies. Their life is so different that they have a hard time believing the Pandominion is alive, let alone intelligent. Because selves are biologically discrete and "alone", the Ansurrection cannot fathom what they are - albeit their attacks on its worlds has been enough to designate them a nuisance. Hence the abductions and the infiltration of agents into Pandominion society. The AIs have got no conception of sociality. They are blind to biological multiplicity and brush it aside. The Ansurrection are indifferent to it as they grind up and strip mine worlds. Cammy then becomes Infinity Gate's most important character. Paz and Hadiz are comfortable with the hybridity she embodies, while for the Pandominion she is a target for capture and study.

Valorising multiplicity and difference is the zeitgeist of contemporary SF. It's deeper than mainly white, mainly Anglo-American authors peppering their narratives with queer female protagonists of colour. In Tchaikovsky's Doors of Eden, the solution to the coming death of the multiverse is not to try and save one at the expense of the others - the solution favoured by his fascist, white supremacist baddie - but allowing all the parallel Earths to bleed into one another. Only by embracing and reckoning with difference can we be saved. In Hamilton's Salvation, it's the military defeat of a hive mind monoculture trying to assimilate the galaxy to its religion. Their defeat not only saves humanity, but frees the scores of species they had interred to meet their God at the end of time (very similar to his Commonwealth novels, albeit those aliens, another hive mind monoculture, want to destroy everything else). It's not that variety and multiplicity is simply good, it is life. Therefore, without reading the sequel, Echo of Worlds, we can suppose that the antagonism between Pandominion and Ansurrection is heading one way. This might involve shedding their present forms (indeed, the narration is clear we're following the Pandominion's final days), but integration rather than annihilation is where we'll end up. The embracing of difference, a liberation of the postmodern sublime and the junking of their limiting oneness - or the rhizome and not the tree - waits at the end of Carey's many worlds.

Infinity Gate is not a deep book, but it is typical of the front rank of commercial SF in the 2020s. It is modish while escaping unoriginality, thrilling without being trashy, and cartoonish without the cringe.

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