Science Fiction Book Haul #8

Thanks to not feeling it writing-wise lately, I've accumulated loads of (mostly vintage) science fiction paperbacks since the last post outlining my acquisitions. Instead of trying to wade through them all in some sort of order, I'm going instead for the most recent clutch: those I picked up from visiting Stoke-on-Trent today.

Without any further ceremony, starting from the bottom we have Paul McAuley's Gardens in the Sun. This is second in his Quiet War quartet and deals with the aftermath of the events in the first novel, The Quiet War. No spoilers here in case you haven't read that, but it made my top ten of last year's best SF reads. Imagine a near-future solar system that has become something of a powder keg, and there's real tension between the earthly powers and the outer colonies. If this sounds a little bit like The Expanse, that's because - I'm convinced - this series "inspired" the later mega hit. Except this is much more intelligently and better written, with great characters, and no silly, pulpy elements. The Quiet War is on my best science fiction of the 21st century list, and I've got no reason to believe that this sequel won't live up to its predecessor.

Next up is Mack Reynolds's Earth Unaware. In case you didn't know, Reynolds was for many years a leading cadre of the US Socialist Labor Party and was expelled for fostering illusions in capitalism or some such. Therefore, much of Reynolds's work has a sort-of Marxist/utopian bent to it. Of his books, the first I'd heard of this one was when it presented itself on the shelf in front of me. According to the blurb, a self-proclaimed prophet and, its words, "his sexy young daughter" use telepathy to wean the human race off the mass media. Does no television mean instant revolution? The answers to this question lie within this slim volume.

My bad with the Heinlein. I originally picked this up as a Baen omnibus with The Menace from Earth a few weeks ago. Ooops. The Green Hills of Earth is a short story collection from early on in Heinlein's career. They centre on a blind engineer who's a poet and a musician, and goes about the solar system singing, performing, and fixing things. I've had tricky times with Heinlein in the past, and only one of his books so far - Citizen of the Galaxy - have ticked the okay box for me. Perhaps I'll find this collection more agreeable.

John Brunner's The Long Result has some good news and some bad news. The good? Racism is dead. The bad? It's now applied to species other than humans. Earth had colonised two extra-solar worlds when we're approached by intelligent folks from Tau Ceti. They want to set up a meeting, but the extremist The Stars Are For Man League want to sabotage the occasion to demonstrate humans are the galactic top dogs. Obviously, a very clever move destined to go entirely to plan, and with the desired outcomes. Not normally considered a major Brunner by those conversant with such things, but even that would rank this book above the usual fare.

The Fog! A horror book! Or, to be more exact, an SF-based horror book. This James Herbert classic has some meaning for me. When I was a nipper, my Dad had a book case full of horror paperbacks at the top of the stairs. Herbert was his favourite author, and this was among the collection. I never read it, but do remember someone bringing their dad's copy into junior school and reading aloud the grim gym scene. Over the years, I've got through a handful of his books - the last one being '48, an alternate history after which Hitler has unleashed a deadly plague. That was great fun, as have been all the other Herberts I've read. This version - the 1979 printing - is, I think, the same one Dad had. Maybe he's still got his library in the loft?

A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt is also another book with some meaning attached. I remember my mum buying a random collection of paperbacks from the local primary school's annual May Fayre. Among them were Larry Niven's Ringworld, the 70s film tie-in of Dracula, James Herbert's Sepulchre, Nikolai Tolstoy's The Coming of the King, and this. I read it and found it more interesting than the, to my 14-year-old mind, frankly weird Ringworld. Christopher Sim is a legend who fought off the alien Ashiyyur while Earth and the main colony planets were twiddling their thumbs. But what if this is a load of nonsense? It's undemanding stuff, and made me a bit of a fan of McDevitt's work. Unfortunately, my original copy was let go during a huge book clear out we had. So there is a vague, vague chance that the copy I picked up today could be the same one from back then.

Our next one is Edmund Cooper with Seed of Light. I still haven't read any Cooper, despite owning several of his books. Somewhat noted for being a grump and not a fan of feminism, the SF Encyclopedia says that this title, from the late 1950s, is a touch optimistic. The Earth has been wrecked through environmental catastrophe and war, but the launching of a generation ship marks the possibility of a hopeful new beginning. We could all do with that.

I took a risk with Fritz Leiber's Gather, Darkness! considering how much I disliked The Big Time. Originally serialised in 1943, the blurb supposes a fantastical society in which science is suppressed and everyone is at war. Magic is in frequent use, and devils and angels are in the mix too. Yet not even a theocratic dictatorship can defy the laws of social dynamics forever, and a revolution breaks out that brings the edifice crashing down.

The last book is also holds some meaning. Before computers grabbed me, I was dipping my toe into role-playing games. But without enough interested friends, solo adventures were the way to go. As a fan of the Choose Your Own Adventure line, my mate Jay lent me a Fighting Fantasy game book and from that point I was hooked. I assembled a collection of the first 39 books, plus the Sorcery! quartet, the original rule book, and the two source books about FF monsters and Titan, the fantasy setting for most of the series. I still have them all and most are in very good nick. Anyway, I remember there being a trilogy of straightforward novels written by different authors from the FF stable. They followed the adventures of the strangely-named Chadda Darkmane and began with Steve Jackson's The Trolltooth Wars. Itself a rare book, I was able to happen upon it several months back. It turned out to be terrible, even for a kids' book, and has one of the worst endings I've ever read. But of the two sequels, I knew nothing. Until I chanced upon Marc Gascoigne's Shadowmaster today. The concluding book of the trilogy, Chadda teams up with FF recurring character Yaztromo the wizard to see off the forces of chaos. As the middle book typically goes for about £120, I don't fancy my chances of randomly picking it up cheap like I did with this today. But still, it's nice to add something to my own FF range.

Those are my latest pickups. Have you bought anything new and interesting lately?

The Consequences of Defeat

Trump's dire threats to obliterate Iran, as we know, did not come to pass this time. Instead, we had the pattern we've now grown accustomed to. Big threats and violent language followed by complete capitulation. And to be sure, the US has completely caved in faced with an Iranian strategy it did not understand and could not meet. Their 10-point plan has been accepted by Trump as the basis for negotiations in Pakistan this weekend. Despite their being no different to what was "unacceptable" to Washington a week ago.

The truth of the matter is before this crime against peace, the Strait of Hormuz was open. It no longer is, subject to a fee. Iran have shown, regardless of the threats, regardless of the thousands dead, that they can exert control over passage and will do so should the terms of the ceasefire be breached. Hence why it has closed the waterway again, following Wednesday's outrages in Lebanon. But for Trump, political realities are stood on their head. The greatest strategic defeat since the 2nd World War has to be spun as a beautiful thing in the President's ever-green world. Look! We took out their military! Look! The ships are moving again. Unfortunately for Trump and the Republicans, loyal supporters can see the prices at the pumps shooting upwards and the grocery basket weighing heavier on their bank balance. Even the most gullible find it hard to swallow lies if they cost them more today than it did yesterday.

Trump's colossus with the feet of clay moment has upset the world balance of power. The US's declinist trajectory vis a vis China and India has sped up as a much smaller and less powerful country has faced Washington down, and won. The consequences for this are two-fold. Opponents of the US are likely to be emboldened. Or, to be more accurate, less fearful. The brute strength of American arms can no longer dictate outcomes. And secondly, the foundation of US leadership is fraying as its range of subordinate powers, including the UK, slip the leash and start acting more independently of it. We see this with the bilateral talks several West European countries have arranged with Iran as they seek preferential passage through the Strait for ships sailing under their flags.

Nothing says this more than the reaction to Israel's terror bombing of Lebanon on Wednesday, which as of writing has claimed 303 lives. Israel have tried arguing that their operations ostensibly against Hezbollah are not covered by the ceasefire, and they were initially backed up by the US. But throughout Thursday, there has been a steady stream of countries criticising Netanyahu and contradicting the American line. Keir Starmer said the attacks were wrong and "should stop". Australia has said the ceasefire should apply to Lebanon "as well". Brazil has said Israel risks further destabilisation. This builds on the joint statement put out by EU leaders, plus the UK and Canada. With everyone else going one way, Israel has offered talks with Lebanon - seemingly with the US nod. If only the Europeans were as assertive with Israel two-and-a-half years ago. They may have prevented a genocide.

As the American alliance system starts to fray, where does this leave Trump? Lashing out at all and sundry. He's taken to complaining about NATO, again, and continues to drop heavy hints that the US will withdraw from the alliance. An act that requires two-thirds majority approval from Congress, following a 2023 law. Having failed so utterly overseas, and with a budget targeting the living standards of ordinary Americans, Trump and his helpers will be looking to cook up another circus. More super high profile ICE raids? Loud complaints about this Sunday's Hungarian election? For Trump, little over a quarter into his presidency he's already looking at re-running the outrages from his first year, but with diminishing audiences. There are few options open to him to try and bolster his party's support, beyond egregiously and obviously trying to fix elections. Nothing is going Trump's way, and with all this there is still the Epstein scandal waiting to unveil the full depths of his depravity.

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"A Whole Civilisation Will Die Tonight"

"A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will." The genocidal words of Donald Trump, the President of the United States. For days Trump has promised a buffet of war crimes, with targets including bridges, power stations, energy infrastructure, and desalination plants. It goes without saying that residential areas and "soft" institutions, like schools, hospitals, universities, are likely to be in the firing line as the Pentagon designates them semi-military in nature. Just as the Israelis did for the entirety of Gaza.

Trump has promised escalation before, and not delivered. His civilisation-ending rhetoric fits the usual pattern of making extreme, and in this case blood-curdling statements, to monstrously browbeat opponents into submission. Unfortunately, what makes a cataclysm possible is the US government's refusal to understand Iranian strategy. Because Tehran is not responding how Trump and the State Department expects them to, this makes the carrying through of the threats more likely. Even if the US unleashes hell, Iran's position is unlikely to change. It will continue to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz, and it will continue to humiliate the Americans and Israel by striking back. Even more dangerously, the relative restraint Iran has shown toward Gulf state oil refineries and desalination facilities could be gone. Iran alone isn't facing catastrophe.

This brings to head a crisis of US constitutionalism as well. The US and Israeli war on Iran is an illegal war, a conflict that fits the UN definition of war of aggression and an understanding endorsed by the US itself. Attacking civilians occurred at the outset, with the murder of 168 people, including approximately 110 school girls at the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in the first wave of American bombings. The administration has done nothing to hide these crimes, and explains its actions as big power bullying. They openly, cynically tell the truth of themselves. But with a declaration of genocidal intent, the consequences of the war should rebound sharply on domestic politics. The 25th amendment allows for the provision of the removal of a president "unable" to discharge their duties, and indeed the Democrat leadership have called on the cabinet to oust Trump. The Republicans, however, are now the face of open, illusion-free, and unaccountable oligarchical power. And there is little chance those cabinet members, who are on the hook for war crimes too, would accede to the pleas for political proprietary. JD Vance, who would take over from Trump, is spending this crisis campaigning for Hungary's Viktor Orban ahead of this Sunday's election. The only Republican to have joined with the Democrats is Marjorie Taylor Greene.

As with the Greenland crisis in January, what the West and significant sections of the US itself are seeing for the first time is how the state operates as a (declining) global hegemon. How it threatens, how it bares its teeth, how it rains death with no regard to the rules of war on its opponents. Iran's every refusal invites a response that tears away not just the liberal democratic veils US power has hitherto dressed itself in, but shows up the emptiness of American constitutionalism itself. If Trump can't be checked, cannot be removed over his stated intent to murder an entire country, how then can he ever be removed? In that question lies the fundamental, and possibly terminal crisis of US legitimacy abroad. And at home.

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On Trashing MPs

Friday's Graun article from Hannah Spencer upset some people in politics. Reflecting on her first few weeks in the Commons, she suggests MPs - above all Labour MPs - are out of touch. And it struck a needle into a raw nerve. Stafford MP Leigh Ingham called it "insulting and oversimplistic" and accused Spencer of making "populist slurs" and "feeding anti-trust in politics". Economics prof Jonathan Portes thought it was "deeply depressing". His conclusion is that it was "lazy soundbites and bad economics".

Spencer is not wrong, though. If any of them read beyond the headline, I imagine these lines sat awkwardly.

I don’t think that’s something most MPs understand – not really. They might think they do, they might say they do, but they don’t properly know what it’s like; how it feels in your bones.

And

The Labour government has finally bowed to pressure and is set to bring in new measures this month that it says will help people with the cost of living. But the reality is its plan isn’t good enough.

That much is true, but if anything Spencer is too kind to the honourable members. Today, for example, changes to Universal Credit means that applicants for extra support for disabilities face lower payments than those already receiving them. The projected saving for this is £1bn over the next three years, a sum so low that one can only conclude the cut is being made for punitive reasons. Something the government themselves admit, albeit behind the usual rubbish about "increasing the incentive to work". It begs the question that if MPs are "in touch" like they claim to be, then why was this allowed through following the disability cuts rebellion last year. Have costs gone down for people living with severe impairments?

There are several things that work to estrange MPs from the electorate. Their salaries and perks put them in the top one per cent of earners. They are flattered and feted by parliamentary and party hangers on, and important people enjoy treating them. Like the £3k of hospitality our hardworking Leigh Ingham enjoyed from Google at last year's Glastonbury. The experience of dealing with constituents has a similar effect. Most come seeking some form of assistance, and so the MP has a 'power-over' position from the start. This can lead to a certain arrogance. I.e. A belief that they know what people want better than anyone else, particularly the weirdos that come to branch and constituency meetings. And, in some cases, contempt for constituents' concerns. This forms an insulating barrier against everyday life. And enables so many to get sucked into the doings and frequent dramas of Westminster - the work they want to do as opposed to the stuff they have to do.

This can be mitigated, and it's worth remembering that left wing MPs, though not immune to customary entitlements, do better than most. Not because they're superhuman or uniquely moral, but usually thanks to the strong links they have with their local party, community groups, trade unions, and social movement mobilisations. Whereas the freebies, business lunches, and VIP trips give those who avail themselves of them an altogether different grounding. And readies them to cater for the interests of those who must be kowtowed to.

Spencer then is absolutely right to call MPs out of touch, because their realities are far removed from most ordinary people's. Everyone knows MPs live a rarefied life, and it's farcical to pretend otherwise.

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The Blow Monkeys - Digging Your Scene

A top tune to see the weekend off.

Fly Me to the Moon

As of Saturday evening, Artemis II is more than half way along its sally to the Moon. The crew's journey is full of firsts. The furthest human beings have ever travelled from the Earth, the first time a woman, an African-American, and someone other than a US citizen have travelled beyond the orbit of our world. A truly historic mission and one prefacing, at least on paper a landing and then building a permanent base. Unfortunately, what might described as a noble endeavour is somewhat overshadowed by baser events. And when Donald Trump speaks to the astronauts, he's unlikely to gift posterity a dignified address.

Space has long been big business, and it's about to get larger. Elon Musk's SpaceX is due to go public, with a $1tn share issue. This success tells the real story of space industries. Like pretty much every major technological leap this last century, the state has taken up the slack of providing the basic infrastructure and demand to build up new markets. It's not for nothing that Musk is known as history's greatest welfare recipient. Take, for example, the discussions around the replacement of the International Space Station. NASA's partnership with Vast speaks to this model. It trains the company to provide the services it requires, will "sell" them some in-orbit store facilities and supplies, and buy back from them their "scientific samples". This is with a view to, later on, the company providing its own modules for attachment to the ISS that NASA will then rent from them. At each step, there's a guarantee that while employees run risks riding up and down on rockets, no capital shall come to undue harm.

What's the point? The commercial attractions of low and high Earth orbit lie in satellite communications, spying, and scientific payloads. Space tourism as a viable business proposition seems a long way away yet. The space race commentary favoured by the BBC and most mainstream outlets try and evoke something of the US/Soviet space race, albeit with America now facing off against China. But there's more than bragging rights at stake. In the immediate term, permanent presences consolidate national claims over near-Earth space, which is why this particular race is more than two superpowers facing off. India celebrated its own successful Moon mission a few years ago, implying to its neighbours that if they can manage that, it will have a similar technological prowess where weaponry is concerned. Thinking about space's place in the state system should not be overlooked.

Perhaps, in the longer longer term, assuming space stations and colonies become self-sufficient and the significant physiological consequences of living in zero and low-gravity environments is navigated, then perhaps they will provide viable markets for asteroid mining and Luna-based resource extraction. And that could prove to be an attractive outlay for Earthly capital. But that could be a century or more away, and none of us will be around to see it. Except techbro biohackers like Bryan Johnson.

Unfortunately, the existence of the space programme has a stronger relationship to something fundamental to capitalism: waste. And the example of American capitalism is the most egregious. As a global system that has drawn more countries into its rule than at any other time, capitalism churns out a surplus so large that the resources exist to feed everyone, provide safe drinking water and sewage systems, housing, clean power generation and delivery, and so on. It doesn't because it is a class system. Everything, including the expectation that business in general should turn a profit, is subordinated to the maintenance of the class relations that makes this possible: the wage and private ownership. In the age of obscene oligopoly, the realities of class are so obvious that whole sections of establishment politics have given up trying to prettify or hide wealth concentration and its consequences. It is too large, too visible to excuse. And so, instead, we get openly authoritarian parties whose chief, open interest is maintaining these class relations. Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, the AfD in Germany, France's National Rally, and between them the Tories and Reform in the UK are part of this trend.

What has the gravitation pull of capital got to do with space exploration? Since the official inauguration of the civilian US space programme in 1958, space has been an outlet for wasteful spending. That is, by creating spending priorities unconnected to maintaining the standard of living and social infrastructure, governments generate a cost pressure that eats up resources and helps them manage the politics. The military are traditionally the chief beneficiary of this arrangement, and money thrown in this direction can be justified by the bogey of foreign adversaries. The US Department of Defense, in 2026, is set on swallowing 15% of the federal budget. The White House want to increase this for the year ahead, to be funded by cuts to useful spending like social security, health, and education. And, topically, taking an axe to NASA as well. The idea, as per the class politics of small state conservatism, is to divert resources away from social programmes that actually build things so as to manage the demands on the state and, in many cases, discourage them. In an age of sharpening uncertainty with rising prices and wages barely able to keep up, the military and threats from abroad are the Trumpist means for ruling out solutions and heading off expectations. We need to take your food stamps away because the Pentagon needs driverless ground attack vehicles.

As such, this is where space funding fits in. For the state, especially one as colossal as the US, it's chicken feed. But part of the class politics of wasteful spending nonetheless. For Musk and Jeff Bezos, their private space programmes are, after luxuries, their main preoccupation. They have a class interest in funding rockets and Moon landers, because spending money beyond derisory sums on social programmes or bumping up the salaries of their hundreds of thousands of employees cedes a smidgen of economic power to the workers and tilts the capital/labour balance that little bit away from them. That's why Musk, for instance, hates philanthropy. So Amazon-branded space suits are in. Amazon-branded breakfast clubs are not.

That said, given the swingeing cuts Trump and his hyper-class conscious cronies want to make to NASA, it appears - in line with their vandalism of US R&D generally - that having a civilian agency accomplish one of the greatest feats in scientific history is too risky for them. It could open the box to hope, to the wider propagation of scientific literacy and an interest in what might crudely be called intellectual subjects, and on top of that the radical suggestion that resources should be put into things that stretch our imagination, our capabilities, and could promise a better tomorrow. A thrust somewhat at odds with the miserable preoccupation with maintaining an indefensible status quo. For while space spending is wasteful spending, unlike throwing money at smarter guns and smarter bombs, it can lift our vision not just to the horizon of the possible, but beyond it.

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Five Most Popular Posts in March

Lower posting frequency made for a quieter month on the blog, but what piqued the interests of most visitors to this corner of the internet?

1. On Anti-Green Hysteria
2. On Labour-Green Defections
3. Labourism and Social Conservatism
4. Slipping the Leash
5. Angela Rayner's Alternative

Smashing into first place is the realisation that, despite apparently seeing off Jeremy Corbyn and Corbynism, the left and the aspirations and interests it speaks to have not gone away. Now the Greens are the vehicle of this coming politics the establishment are losing their minds. Again. Sort-of-related to this are the issues arising from would-be Labour defectors to the Greens. Apparently, some MPs want guarantees that they would be selected again for their new party - exactly the kind of careerist entitlement one might expect from Labour right wingers. The problem is the Green Party constitution can't guarantee it. If they want selection, any newbie MPs would have to work for it. In at third was yet another stroll down the well-trodden Blue Labour path, this time in riposte to yet more idiocy from this quarter. Making waves at four was the shocking news that Keir Starmer hasn't followed Trump into war with Iran. Though, by happily allowing British bases to be used for bombing raids and supply runs, Iran are not appreciating that nicety. And coming in last was Rayner's "outspoken" criticism of the government's record. We must be getting close to the local elections and the window for a leadership challenge.

Selecting the post deserving an additional plug is easy. It's last night's discussion of Jean Baudrillard's (Nietzschean) approach to terrorism and how the Islamic Republic are pursuing a symbolic strategy against which the US and Israel cannot possibly win.

April has plenty of things happening. Being caught in a writing funk for a while now, last month I started several posts but gave up early on. But after last night's offering, which took far longer than normal, I'm hopeful that the energy and inclination will present itself. Even outside of the news there's plenty of interesting things happening - not least the transformation of the Greens, Reform's hiccups, the continued decline of the Tories, on and on it goes. As the philosopher Gillian Rose used to say to her postgrad students, "Speak! Or the idiots will speak."

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Iran's Baudrillardian Strategy

As the third gulf war drags into its fifth week, neither the end nor the end game are anywhere in sight. Big bets on the stock market before Trump makes an announcement are now routine. And the President's remarks are as incoherent and contradictory as ever. "We're talking to nice people in Iran" one hour, the next is a threat to smash power stations and destroy desalination plants. He says negotiations are ongoing, while Tehran denies any such dialogue. The bombs keep raining down from Iranian skies, while in return their ballistic missiles and drones prick Israel's Iron Dome hype and thwart US defences to make life at 13 of its regional bases difficult. Here, Keir Starmer castigates the Tories and Nigel Farage for wanting to drag the UK into this war, while at the same time the US Air Force is using these islands, as well as Cyprus and Diego Garcia for "defensive strikes". Airstrip One is very much part of the conflict.

It doesn't take much to bamboozle Trump, but the White House and military planners cannot grasp why Iran is still fighting. The boasts about annihilating the navy and air force are noisy brags, but do contain some truth. Conventionally speaking, Iran cannot hold a candle against the firepower America and its Israeli satrap can field. So why aren't they surrendering? Why aren't they keen to cut a deal? Why haven't Iranians taken to the street to depose the regime? Instead, Iran is absorbing the punishment, following through with promised retaliation, shouting its defiance, and trolling Trump with Lego memes. He was expecting a gift-wrapped victory, as per Venezuela, or perhaps an Iraq-style collapse into barbarism. Something that could be sold at home as mission accomplished and, for the Israelis, the elimination of the one regional power that goes some way to matching them. None of this has happened, nor is it likely to happen.

The inscrutability of Iran, its refusal to play by the White House's rules of war is not new. It was something dissected with precision by Jean Baudrillard over 20 years ago in his famous essay, The Spirit of Terrorism. Written in November 2001 and reflecting on the September 11th attacks, much of what he diagnosed then carries over to the Iran war and the country's - apparently baffling - resistance to overwhelming force.

On the spectacle of the attack on New York, Baudrillard wrote the destruction of the Twin Towers fascinated and appalled because of their position in the global order. It symbolically embodied American-led globalisation. But, at the peak of its power, order begot an internal will to disorder, a dream of destruction fed by the conveyor of Hollywood disaster movies. As he put it, "Very logically - and inexorably - the increase in the power of power heightens the will to destroy it." (The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays, pp 6-7). Entertainment was meant to exorcise this suicidal impulse through pyrotechnics and special effects, but instead of dampening it down it readied us for catastrophe, almost to the point of desiring the spectacle of disaster. The West was primed for September 11th long before it happened, and the spectacle of the attack was captivating precisely because it showed the mortality of the world's greatest military power. Trump, as a television man, understands the superficiality of the spectacle. Burning Iranian cities and cratered infrastructure is dazzling to him, and plays well to his base. But far more fascinating are the military reversals - the banned footage of Iranian missile strikes across the Gulf states, the hard-to-find smashing up of US military bases, of Israeli cities mourning their dead and counting the cost of demolished districts.

The spectacle of one's own defeat goes beyond the furtive hunt for concealed imagery. It's seen in the endless reams of punditry. The discussion of how, come what may, Iran can exert its control over the Strait of Hormuz. Of how targeted bombing taking out leading regime figures, past and present, has solidified the Iranian position. How Trump's war is spiralling into global economic chaos. How, despite the severe asymmetry in the respective militaries, the US is on the brink of a catastrophic strategic defeat. The talk is of nothing else. The spectacle is as much about the tarnishing of Trump's star power and how he can lie his way out of the calamity. Like all good reality TV, the audience wants his actions to rebound back on him in abject humiliation.

What makes this more acute for Trump and the US is that Iran are refusing to abide by their rulebook. Baudrillard talks about the singular character of large scale suicidal terrorist attacks. In a system of generalised exchange, which American-led globalisation is, this kind of terrorism cannot be "exchanged" - there is no equivalent of it. 20-odd years ago pundits characterised the domestic terrorism in Europe, be it of separatist/nationalist provenance or rooted in political extremism of the left or right, as entirely understandable. Their goals were within the horizon of the modern, if not theoretically possible within the prevailing system. But suicidal Islamist terror was not. The very thing Western societies try and deny - death as a rude tragedy, as the worst thing that could possibly happen to any of us - lies at the heart of its fundamentalist nemesis. This itself is an inevitable outcome of the free, unhindered, and unbalanced operation of global capitalism since the end of the Cold War. Baudrillard argues that the duality of struggle, of good and evil, or capitalism and communism, are as interdependent as they are opposed. When one triumphs over the other, as the principle of good has in the operation of our system, and capitalism has versus its other, the defeated party becomes disarticulated but autonomous. Resistance to and the rejection of globalisation assumes an unpredictable virality, of which Islamist terrorism was one example. And one that, because its existence lies in the inherent contradiction of the system's victory, appears anywhere and everywhere against which the most powerful society in existence appears impotent.

The virality has moved on since then, but the character of Islamism has not. The Islamic Republic is now the repository of this logic. Iran's defiance attacks the logic of an order based on the positivity of life. By propaganda and by deed, the Iranian state is willing to stake its lives and those of its citizens in what amounts to a symbolic challenge. It knows Iran cannot possibly win a military confrontation, but through sacrificing itself while inflicting damage on the US, Israel, and the Gulf states, it assumes the monstrosity of terrorism, of an implacable and fundamentally other foe that will not yield. Faced with such an implacable opponent, of seemingly suicidal defiance, the US is powerless. It can commit troops to a ground invasion, carry on the bombing, see through the promised destruction of civilian infrastructure - but because the Iranian state will offer up any number of lives to maintain this position, the US is doomed to defeat. For Baudrillard, as it was for the 9/11 terrorists the same applies here. For the Iranians are in a duel with the Americans, it is very personal. Their maximalist demands - reparations for damages, closure of American bases, sovereignty of the Strait - dovetail with the "internal" Western desire. Both want to see the US humiliated, not liquidated. Hence Iran's responses to missiles and bombs are missiles and drones, its counter-violence is governed by a symbolic logic, not the operational calculation of x airfields destroyed, and y soldiers and civilians blown up. Trump's empty boasting about victory secured followed swiftly with fire and brimstone is the usual bombast that ordinarily keeps his opponents unbalanced, but Iran has rejected this logic. And that is why underneath it all, panic is the mood among White House insiders, the military, and their allies abroad.

Trump then is looking for the exit ramp, and nothing he does now can look like a victory. More killing and more unnecessary destruction is, sadly, entirely likely. But the strategic defeat has already happened. Iran knows this, and so does the rest of the world.

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Quarter One 2026 By-Election Results

This quarter 60,251 votes were cast in 35 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 22 council seats changed hands. For comparison you can view Quarter Four's results here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Q4	+/- Q1 25	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	33	10,756	17.9%	+0.9	-4.2	326	+1
Labour	29	9,437	15.7%	+4.3	-6.2	325	-8
Lib Dem	32	9,397	15.6%	-5.1	-2.2	293	+1
Reform	34	15,211	25.2%	-4.1	+8.5	447	+8
Green	28	9,060	15.0%	+5.5	+7.4	324	+1
SNP*	2	1,693	2.8%	-0.8	-3.8	904	0
PC**	3	970	1.6%	+0.5	+1.2	808	+1
Ind***	28	2,410	4.0%	-2.3	-3.3	323	-4
Other****	9	1,063	1.8%	+0.0	+0.6	118	0

* There were two by-elections in Scotland
** There were three by-elections in Wales
*** There were five Independent clashes
**** Others this quarter were Advance (161, 57), Derbyshire Community Party (50), Flint's People's Voice (79), One Leicester (636), Scottish Family Party (35, 25), TUSC (16), and UKIP (2)

A couple of things worthy of note this quarter. The Greens, unsurprisingly, have scored the party's best ever quarterly aggregate score. The surge in the party's support isn't just a polling phenomenon or a parliamentary by-election one-off, but it would be nice to see it pick up seats akin to Reform's ability to do so. And the second is Reform itself, this being the first time they've dropped vote share since the general election. Again, the poll decline appears to be real. Not great news for Nigel Farage fans when council by-elections disproportionately turn out the party's core vote and they're registering falling support.

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Local Council By-Elections March 2026

This month saw 20,741 votes cast in 15 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 10 council seats changed hands. For comparison with February's results, see here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Feb	+/- Mar 25	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	15	4,241	20.4%	+2.3	+0.2	283	+2
Labour	11	2,474	11.9%	-8.9	-9.2	225	-1
Lib Dem	14	3,710	17.9%	+7.5	+3.3	265	-1
Reform	15	6,176	29.8%	+9.8	+13.7	412	+4
Green	14	3,184	15.4%	-0.2	+6.2	227	0
SNP*	0						0
PC**	0						0
Ind***	9	954	4.6%	-1.5	-2.4	106	-4
Other****	1	2	0.0%	-3.6	-1.9	2	0

* There were no by-elections in Scotland
** There was one by-election in Wales
*** There was one Independent clash
**** Others this month were UKIP (2)

After a run of falling numbers, Reform come out on top again with the kind of vote tally Labour and Conservatives can only feel nostalgia for. Though in the current politics, the Tories will be happy with a net gain of two councillors. Labour meanwhile turned in one of their worst aggregate by-election performances ever, but managed to drop only a aingle seat - earlier in the month winning one off Reform, only to lose two to them by the end of March. But the biggest loser this month have been the Independents, who saw them cede seats to the right wing parties. Again, this month seems to hold up my thesis that the rise of Reform and the move to five-party politics is pressing Indie-minded voters, as well as people who might have had a punt at a seat in the past. Lastly, the Greens have maintained their improved positions in this poll. Which isn't bad, considering council by-elections favour the right thanks to the tendency of these contests turning out older voters.

April is normally quiet as parties try and hold back vacancies to local election polling day. This year is no different, with 10 contests to look forward to. But, interestingly, four of them are Reform defences. I imagine those contests will be watched more closely than usual.

5th March
Braintree, Coggeshall, Ref gain from Ind
Durham, Murton, Lab gain from Ref
Sevenoaks, Hextable, Con gain from Ind
Stroud, Thrupp, Grn hold
Tamworth, Spital, Ref gain from Lab

12th March
Cotswold, The Beeches, LDem hold
Liverpool, Aigburth, Grn gain from LDem
North Kesteven, Sleaford Westholme, Ref gain from Ind
Vale of White Horse, Abingdon Abbey Northcourt, LDem gain from Grn
Westmorland & Furness, Penrith South, LDem hold

17th March
Pembrokeshire, Milford Hakin, Ref gain from Ind

26th March
North Lincolnshire, Axholme Central, Con hold
North Lincolnshire, Brumby, Ref gain from Lab
Sevenoaks, Halstead, Knockholt & Badgers Mount, Con hold
Vale of White Horse, Stanford, Con gain from LDem