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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The Conservative Party's Wake

Labour didn't have a great conference. Following a supposed triumph, the mood was hardly upbeat confident. It was best typified by Keir Starmer's speech, which will only be remembered for an unfortunate misspeaking incident. Still, it was much better than the Conservative conference. Labour were subdued, but the Tories attended a catastrophe.

A quick reminder about what happened in July. The collapse of the Tory position, long forecast round these parts and explored in a certain book (as seen on TV), served up the worst Conservative general election defeat ever. And, even worse, despite Labour's best efforts to make themselves as equally loathsome, it's not obvious how the Tories can make a come back. And that's without the long-term decline of the party being taken into account.

There were two reasonable moments at the conference, and both of them came from the mouth of James Cleverly. He began his stump speech with an apology to the country (albeit not for the crimes committed on their watch), and stood out from the rest of the pack as he pleaded with his party. "Let's be more normal", he said. These were words few, if any of his fellow Tories were interested in heeding.

The two front runners, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick were competing as if the chair of the Federation of Conservative Students was in contention. Jenrick put massive distance between his origin as a soggy Dave/Osborne era briefcase and his latter day manifestation of right wing bat shittery. Before Iranian missile strikes took out Israeli military targets and an oil platform, Jenrick had cringingly paraded around with a 'Hamas are terrorists' hoodie and pledged that the Star of David should be prominently displayed at every point of entry into this country. He would also, following Donald Trump, move the British embassy to East Jerusalem and, for good measure, vote for him if he was able to because "he's a conservative". Not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And it got worse. On Monday night, he accused the SAS of carrying out extra-judicial killings. He did this not to criticise the special forces, but to put across how the European Convention and its protections makes it harder for them to take terrorists into custody. A point that drew criticism from his edgingly less right wing rival, Tom Tugendhat. To top things off, he proposed a dukedom for noted anti-black racist, David Starkey. Tory MP Jesse Norman summed Jenrick's pitch up best: "lazy, mendacious, simplistic tripe".

Kemi Badenoch lived up to her 'Bad Enoch' billing and managed to be somehow worse. Having warmed the cockles of far right hearts over the summer, she went straight into conference with an Telegraph opinion piece arguing "not all cultures are valid". You don't need mega enhanced reading-between-the-lines skills to know what she was getting at. She gave a very tetchy defence of the position on Laura Kuenssberg, demonstrating an inability to cope with the mildest line of questioning. So much for the hard woman bravado about "walking through fire." It didn't end there. Having argued in the morning that "our culture" means valuing women, that afternoon she singled out maternity pay as "excessive" and symptomatic of the "burden of regulation" on British business. She doubled down on this, suggesting the minimum wage is harming employers. More, give us more! Okay. She jokingly said 10% of civil servants should be banged up because of incompetence, leaking, etc. Ha ha. She rubbished migrant care workers, claimed - without a shred of evidence - that conservative-minded students were marked down at university, and we learned her leadership campaign has its (undeclared) base at the home of a wealthy Tory donor. Not that this stopped her criticising Starmer over his fondness for favours offered by Lord Alli.

Among the other conference highlights were the 'Breed for Britain' fringe (also addressed by Badenoch), a long and indulgent conversation between Tim Stanley and Liz Truss, where she was feted like a rock star. Trump endorsement, check. I was right, check. Clash of civilisations, check. Tories lost because they're too woke, check. If the party was serious about clawing back the ground lost, Truss would be dealt a life time ban from conference. And, if this wasn't bad enough, most of the reports from Birmingham suggest the party members are in a chipper mood. Incredible.

Last year, it was obvious that the Tories could go one of two ways. Head right to consolidate their vote after a traumatic wipe out and see off Reform once and for all, or try something different. The answer, even from the "centrist" candidates is that the indulgence of extreme right wing politics and hobby horses is where they want to go. And that's fine. It might solidify their support on that side of the voting spectrum, but it won't make winning back dozens of Labour and Liberal Democrat-held seats any easier. Making the task more difficult if not impossible, it seems few Tories understand their party is on the verge of permanent irrelevance. This was less a conference, more a colourful noisy, unhinged and celebratory wake. And going by the politics offered by the contenders, they're competing not to lead the party but for the honour of lighting its cremation.

What I've Been Reading Recently

Another quarter has been and gone, and to mark the occasion here's the customary round up of all the books I've read.

The Quatermass Experiment by Nigel Kneale
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
The White Mountains by John Christopher
The City of Gold and Lead by John Christopher
The Pool of Fire by John Christopher
No Way Out by Tim Shipman
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
Empire of Two Worlds by Barrington J Bayley
The Sorrows of Young Werther by JW Goethe
Jupiter by Ben Bova
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes by Anita Loos
The Breaking of Northwall by Paul O Williams
Zofloya, or, The Moor by Charlotte Dacre
The Gap Into Conflict: The Real Story by Stephen R Donaldson
Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coetzee
Walk to the End of the World by Suzy McKee Charnas
Mine Boy by Peter Abrahams
Doomtime by Doris Piserchia
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy
A Billion Days of Earth by Doris Piserchia
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert
Candide by Voltaire
Radix by AA Attanasio
Super-Cannes by JG Ballard
Incandescence by Greg Egan
Journal of a Wife by Anais Nin
The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge by Stephen R Donaldson
The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle
Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A Heinlein
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski
Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin
Killer Planet by Bob Shaw
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod
Infinity Gate by MR Carey

Some corkers stand out from this humongous list. Top reads include Mine Boy, the first black South African novel to command mainstream critical attention. Life was hard in the townships, but Abrahams's work is not depressing in the slightest. Au contraire a sense of creeping menace competes with a huge heart that beats throughout the book. A strong recommend. Anita Loos's double bill of short novels was great fun, and the inclusion of contemporaneous cartoons from its magazine serialisation give it a lot of character. You don't have to be into Sex and the City 1920s-stylee to enjoy it. Melmoth the Wanderer is representing as the gothic novel to end all gothic novels. A ridiculous set of nested stories, murder, the Inquisition!, dungeons, melodrama, visions of hell, soul-selling - it has the lot. Very entertaining but for me, The Monk remains the sub-genre's unconquered pinnacle.

Looking into the SF, the two Gap books and its sequels by Stephen R Donaldson don't get much coverage. And now I know why. Take an unimaginative space opera with space pirates, space cops, corrupt officialdom, and gross aliens and use these tired tropes to dress up a nasty little story about the repeated rape, physical abuse, and gaslighting of a traumatised woman. The titular 'gap' of the series refers to the hyperspace jump technology of the universe, but it might equally apply to Donaldson's absence of a moral compass. A gross and unnecessary entry in the SF canon. Much better was Williams's The Breaking of Northwall, the first in the post-apocalyptic Pelbar cycle. It's North America 1,000 years from now. Swords are as advanced as weaponry gets, but social change is afoot and a new renaissance and industrial revolution beckons. It's not a masterpiece but it is well written and entertaining. Also good fun were the two juvenile reads from this quarter. Bob Shaw's Killer Planet can be breezed through in no time: an uncomplicated mystery that, funnily enough, centres around a planet that kills people. The other was the Heinlein. Yes, four books in and I've found a likeable novel by him. Citizen of the Galaxy is a meditation on social responsibility. It has some thrills and spills for its intended audience, but winds up as a courtroom drama. Not the choicest of narrative directions, but it's Heinlein so there you go.

Quick shout out for the third entry from "Shippers" Brexit quartet. Its predecessors were pacey and entertaining, but No Way Out was a bit of a slog. The detail is impeccable, and he does his best to make dry negotiations interesting, but even as skilled a writer as he cannot polish up the dullest of subjects. And finally there are the Tripods trilogy: a set of books I should've read decades ago. They're dated in a boy's own where-are-the-women way, but not horrifically so. A shame I didn't get round to writing about them.

What have you been reading recently?

A Proxy and a Meat Shield

Missile strikes lighting up the sky over another Middle Eastern city. But this was not Beirut or Khan Yunis. It was, instead, Tel Aviv. Almost a year of massacres, indiscriminate bombings, enforced starvation, assassinations, and attacks that included targeting an Iranian consulate and an explosion in Tehran, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu has brought a hail of fire down on his country's head. But for all his genocidal bloodlust, he's not the sole author of this disaster.

Since the 7th October attack by Hamas, virtually every Western power has granted Netanyahu a free hand in the region. The gut wrenching butchery of Gaza had, until recently, garnered nothing but a whisper of protest from European governments. The attacks on Yemen and Syria, the flagrant military actions on Iranian soil, and now the invasion of Lebanon give the impression of a rabid Israel that has slipped the leash of its sponsors. Britain announces a limited moratorium on some weapons it exports, and is castigated by their ungrateful recipients. Germany appeared to slow the flow of arms several days ago, and later denied it was doing so to avoid an establishment backlash. And while Western leaders did their love, love, peace, peace thing at the UN last week Netanyahu took to the stage and peddled the racist rubbish that Israel was waging a war for civilisation. He effectively announced that Iran was next.

The truth is, the West and above all the United States have not reluctantly gone along with but are actively aiding Israel. A fact that is obvious from even a cursory glance at mainstream media sources. Its war aims, the "neutralisation" of Gaza and destruction of Hamas, reducing and, if possible, defeating Hezbollah, and bombing targets in Syria are American war aims. They want Iran's regional influence pared back, and to see it punished for the assistance it has rendered Russia in its pointless Ukraine quagmire. And the State Department, loyally followed by Germany, France, and the UK, have gone about it in the most underhanded way.

The spectacle of a ranting, if not crazed Netanyahu has suited his sponsors very well. With every outrage committed, the Biden administration has cast themselves as the helpless observer from afar. The briefings are on "words exchanged" behind the scenes, of "warnings" and "concerns" that Israel's recklessness could provoke a wider conflagration. While this charade has gone on, Israel has been inundated with Western munitions, and there is ample evidence its intelligent assets and special forces have variously assisted the IDF in their operations. In other words, what we have seen this last year is a reversion to Israel's historic role in the region: as a proxy and as a meat shield for interests beyond its borders. The appearance of Netanyahu's autonomy hides Western complicity. Indeed, it gives every impression that the relation of force is the other way round. That Tel Aviv says jump and Washington and London ask "how high?" The utter cynicism of faux concern and studied helplessness feeds antisemitic conspiracy theories. It positions Netanyahu and/or Mossad as behind-the-scenes puppeteers. And American, German, and British governments are fine with this because they escape immediate responsibility for atrocities committed while seeing their interests served.

At any moment, Joe Biden could have stopped this. He could have picked up the phone to Netanyahu and said no and halted the slide to a generalised Middle Eastern war. Israel is militarily and economically dependent on the good will of the world's hegemon, and would have had a hard time carrying out their colonial campaign of ethnic cleansing and murder by itself. They have done so with American blessing, and it's at America's behest that Israeli bodies will now start piling up.

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