Louise Haigh's Resignation

There isn't much more to be said about Louise Haigh's resignation, especially when this piece from the Telegraph (outside the paywall) covers all the bases. Her departure wasn't because of a spent conviction from a decade ago. It was the shenanigans that did for her. Leaving aside its digs and insinuations, the paper reports that the axe has hung over Haigh for some time. Apparently Keir Starmer's and Rachel Reeves's noses were put out of joint because Haigh successfully negotiated an end to the Tory train strikes without their say so. And this claim is supposedly proved by Starmer's 60-word response to her resignation letter. But reading on, we see that there were efforts by Labour apparatchiks to get the Tory press interested in Haigh's conviction before the election. What? The so-called civil service of the party working against its political masters? Say it ain't so.

When it comes to the Labour Party, one cannot understand the present state of play without acknowledging the simmering guerilla campaign waged by Morgan McSweeney and friends against anything that smacks of social democratic politics. And with the left either elsewhere or chained up in a box, that means the soft left are now their targets. They are the designated enemy within for two reasons. For some, they are opposed to the soft left for exactly the same reasons the Tories are. Their closeness to trade unions, the (relative) enthusiasm for pro-worker policy, and a belief that politics are about values and that Labour's mission is to improve society somewhat is too much for the grey we-know-best managerialism that dominates right wing Labour thinking. They believe re-election will be won on straightforward delivery, which typically reduces itself to the statsplaining politics of tractor production figures. The same approach that worked so well across the Atlantic. The second reason is the idea that anything smacking of old Labourism is an electoral bromide. Never mind giving the Tory press fresh angles to attack the new government from, most voters themselves - or at least those the Morganiser thinks the party needs on side next time around - don't like better paid workers, fully funded public services, or the idea that life might get better. Because of this, even had Haigh not successfully negotiated a deal with rail workers, Labour's permanent deep party had sharpened its knives and were waiting for the right moment to skewer the former transport secretary.

For all this, it might be that Haigh gets the last laugh. Because she has resigned over tiny potatoes, she has now set the bar for Starmer's ministers where it comes to conduct. For instance, her departure weakens the position of the chancellor. Who, you will recall, has freely admitted to plagiarising "her" book, and has spent the last week on the wrong end of a right wing campaign highlighting inconsistencies between what she said about her career and the actual CV. This means in the future when a difficulty or a scandal presents itself, because Haigh has gone over something inconsequential it will be politically harder for Starmer to defend his ministers. And it also suggests the Tory press will go harder knowing that their efforts has already scalped one career. By caving to the dirty work of the back room boys, Haigh has inadvertently made Labour's immediate political future harder to manage.

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Council By-Elections November 2024

This month saw 94,276  votes cast in 45 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 17 council seats changed hands. For comparison with October's results, see here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Oct	+/- Nov 23	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	45	21,280	22.6%	-4.8	+3.2	473	+7
Labour	43	23,298	24.7%	+2.3	-2.7	542	-2
Lib Dem	40	17,325	18.4%	-2.8	+0.2	433	0
Reform*	31	9,561	10.1%	+4.7	+9.1	308	+3
Green	37	6,102	6.5%	-4.5	-4.0	165	-1
SNP**	15	11,841	12.6%	+8.6	+9.3	789	-4
PC***	0						0
Ind****	20	3,199	3.4%	-1.5	-11.3	160	-1
Other*****	21	1,670	1.8%	-0.5	-3.3	80	-2

* Reform's comparison results are based on recomputing their tallies from last year's Others
** There were 15 by-elections in Scotland
*** There were no by-elections in Wales
**** There were three Independent clashes this month
***** Others this month were Alba (239, 118), Communist Party of Britain (23), Heritage Party (61, 20, 11), Scottish Family Party (83, 71, 53, 51, 25), Scottish Libertarian (15, 9), SDP (33), Socialist Party of Great Britain (22), Swanscombe & Greenhithe Residents' Association (395, 252), TUSC (68, 56, 25), Workers' Party (40). The comparison figures from last year have been recomputed minus Reform's contribution.

Last month was Labour's worts performance in council by-elections since May 2021, so those who care about such things will be glad to see its performance has improved. Still losing a couple of councillors, but if Labour can stay at this level the position isn't as worrisome as last month's results suggested. The Tories, of course, were the runaway winners but polling lower than Labour and losing out on the vote average suggests their position is far from peachy. Especially when older voters are more likely to turn out for these contests. Still, partisans of the Tories will take heart from these small wins so soon after the catastrophe that befell their party.

The Liberal Democrats are holding steady after October's wobbly performance, but Reform are continuing to surge. 10% off 31 candidates is their best performance and largest intervention so far, and likely will be until next May's by-elections coincide with the locals. As they go up, so the Greens' vote share is pushed down. Not a great month after strong performances, but the real test will be if they can continue to do well out of discontent with the Tories now Reform are available as a strong alternative. Also, an unprecedented 15 by-elections in Scotland distort the overall result and see the SNP come in strongly, despite losing four seats to the Tories. If July's result wasn't emphatic enough, the party's performance since illustrates the problems they've got holding together their coalition.

December is going to be a much quieter affair, but as opinion polls these days more closely resemble monthly round ups of council by-elections I don't see any reason to believe the festive outcome is going to be much different to this one.

7th November
Aberdeenshire, Central Buchan, Con gain from SNP
Aberdeenshire, Fraserburgh & District, Con gain from SNP
Aberdeenshire, Mearns, Con gain from SNP
Blackpool, Bispham, Lab gain from Con
Bracknell Forest, Great Hollands, Lab hold
Herefordshire, Bishops Frome & Cradley, Grn hold
Inverclyde, Inverclyde West, Lab hold
Moray, Elgin City South, Con gain from SNP
Wyre, Marsh Mill, Ref gain from Con

14th November
Derbyshire Dales, Calver & Longstone, Con gain from Grn
East Ayrshire, Doon Valley, Lab hold
East Ayrshire, Kilmarnock West and Crosshouse, Lab hold
Edinburgh, Colinton/Fairmilehead, LDem gain from Lab
Greenwich, Shooters Hill, Lab hold
Milton Keynes, Bradwell, LDem hold
Milton Keynes, Broughton, LDem hold
Redbridge, Wanstead Park, Lab hold
Telford & Wrekin, Hadley & Leegomery, Lab hold
Telford & Wrekin, The Nedge, Lab hold
West Lothian, Whitburn & Blackburn, Lab hold
West Oxfordshire, Chipping Norton, LDem gain from Lab

21st November
Dacorum, Bennetts End, Lab gain from Ind
Dacorum, Hemel Hempstead Town, Con gain from LDem
Dartford, Greenhithe & Knockhall, Ref gain from Oth
Glasgow, Drumchapel Anniesland, Lab hold
Glasgow, Maryhill, Lab hold
Glasgow, North East, Lab hold
Gosport, Harbourside & Town, Con gain from Lab
Highland, Fort William & Ardnamuchan, LDem hold
Horsham, Denne, Con gain from LDem
Kent, Swanscombe & Greenhithe, Ref gain from Oth
Rutland, Oakham North East, LDem hold
Sefton, Litherlan, Lab hold
Somerset, Blackmoor Vale, Con gain from LDem
Somerset, Rowbarton & Staplegrove, LDem hold
Swale, Murston, Ind hold

28th November
Barking and Dagenham, Northbury, Lab hold
Barking & Dagenham, Village, Lab hold x2
Enfield, Jubilee, Lab hold
Fife, West Fife & Coastal Villages, Lab hold
Islington, Junction, Lab hold
Sheffield, Woodhouse, LDem gain from Lab
South Gloucestershire, Frampton Cotterell, LDem hold
West Dunbartonshire, Kilpatrick, Lab hold
York, Haxby & Wigginton, LDem hold

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Blocked

Feeling a bit blocked on the writing front to be honest. Which isn't great when a book chapter about the crisis of the Conservatives is due this Saturday. Ho hum.

Past experience suggests that when I moan about "not feeling it" or having "nothing to say", it's enough to uncork the barrel and watch the torrents of words spill forth. Here's to hoping this is one of those occasions.

On the radar of things I'd like to talk about is the gamed petition calling for a general election, calls on Labour to reverse their tax plans, the decision to let Ukraine use long-range missiles on Russia, the further growth of Bluesky as an alternative to Twitter and the long-unusable Facebook, and something on a rather good science fiction novel I polished off recently. If I can't even manage to write a wee comment on current affairs, weightier pieces or bad tempered evicerations of the government aren't about to land.

Anyway, just to let you know I am alive and this place remains a going concern. But in the mean time, any suggestions for getting the writing flowing again will be gratefully received.

Revolt of the Rural Rich

There's been a lot of rubbish written in the right wing press about the budget and the changes made to farmers' inheritance liabilities. Taking to their tractors for a demonstration in London on Monday, there were joined by self-confessed tax dodger Jeremy Clarkson and, among other things, drove one of their machines through a police barrier. Needless to say, Just Stop Oil activists have been handed hefty sentences for less. On the substance of the changes, the National Farmers' Union and its wealthier patrons are acting like the sky's about to fall in. Whereas other analyses, not just those proffered by the government, are in agreement that only a small minority of farmers will be required to cough up under the new rules. This, predominantly, is a revolt of the rural rich.

Thinking back over the future of the Tories last year, I argued that with a Commons wipe out we were bound to see extra-parliamentary movements of the right mobilise against the new Labour government around real and imagined grievances. This happened far quicker than anyone expected in the summer, but it had been glowing and flaring in the embers of the dying Tory government. There were, for instance, the anti-ultra low emission zone protests and the attendant "direct action" of vandalising and ripping up enforcement cameras in London. And we don't have to look too far back in the past to recall the blockade of refineries in 2000 and the Countryside Alliance march a couple of years later. Ostensibly against the ban on hunting with hounds this was a coat peg for a cagoule full of anti-townie grievances. Not all of which were unwarranted.

The coverage of the "plight" of wealthy land owners reminds us whose mouthpiece the media is, but it's a warning. It's easy to mock the likes of Clarkson and James Dyson, for whom their investments in agricultural land is to save their well heeled offspring from a tax bill when their clogs are popped, but what Labour and the left have to be wary of is the capacity of capital to mobilise a wider constituency. Rachel Reeves's taxes on unearned income has already driven the right to apoplexy because she has dared touch the lynchpin of their class power. But this is enough to stir up petit bourgeois layers as well, even though they're not caught by the inheritance tax take nor likely to ever be. For them it's a statement of intent, a declaration that the government might come for their more modest incomes next - in much the same way pledges to raise income tax on the highest earners sends jitters through the next layer down. It plays into their fears, and despite promising to be the most pro-business government ever, there are sections of capital, big and small, that are instinctively worried about a Labour government because of its class basis.

Therefore, as wealthy landowners mobilise their well of concerns - tax, subsidies, minimum prices, DEFRA regulations and inspections, townie arrogance - it's like casting seed onto particularly fertile soil when Labour are in office. Contrast this with how the Tories shafted farmers without any blowback from the right wing press, or self-appointed celebrity friends of farmers, nor much action from the NFU itself beyond strongly worded lobbying.

Labour and the labour movement aren't necessarily helpless, but they are if the ground is ceded to the rural rich. Already, the government have decided to push managerial over political messaging when it comes to controversial issues, a decision that renders it vulnerable in the medium to long-term. But there are advantages to be accrued from driving a wedge, which the inheritance tax changes are, between the majority of farmers and the layer of wealthy land owners. One would be the disincentive of the tax dodging rich to pile up agricultural holdings and encouraging sales, sending the ever increasing value of land into reverse and freeing up more for farming at the expense of land banking. The unionisation of agricultural workers, of which several drives are ongoing, is another, of making the presence of organised labour felt in the countryside - particularly among migrant workers who are often at the sharp end of the most exploitative contracts and employer abuses, could also work against the political influence the rural rich enjoy in their manors.

The art of politics is not just about winning, but demobilising one's opponents and preventing them from taking a lead on issues under your control. The handling of the so-called farmers' protest suggests that the ruthlessness the Labour leadership has shown its internal opponents is conspicuously lacking where those outwith its ranks are concerned. But with only a thin layer of votes to fall back on, if they want to be in for at least a decade to fulfil Keir Starmer's "missions" they're going to have to take this more seriously.

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Hacking the State

Writing in the Sunday Times, Kemi Badenoch has set out her vision of what government would look like if she becomes Prime Minister. The principles, which she calls "reprogramming the state" could be more accurately described as hacking it. Into smaller and smaller pieces.

In her argument, Badenoch does not attack the people who work for the state. Her target is bureaucratic process. Drawing on her time as business secretary, she says the inability to pay out compensation to the victims of the sub postmasters Horizons debacle in a timely fashion was symptomatic of the problems afflicting the state. Every decision has to be backed by x number of reviews, y gaggles of consultations, and z quantities of impact assessments. Attempts to abbreviate the process would find ministerial decisions subject to court challenge and, therefore, more delay. The risk averse culture afflicting the civil service, she concludes, is not a case of the mindset of staff but their experience of having to satisfy all the reporting requirements. These, Badenoch acknowledges, might have grown out of sensible concerns for accountability and transparency but in practice they only lengthen administrative processes and make them more opaque. The more laws that are passed, the more the state grows, the more the prospect of litigation enlarges, and with it the risk averse culture. A perfect doom loop.

If this is her problem ("I made this diagnosis the central plank of my campaign to become leader"), the solution is reprogramming the state. Government must stop rewarding managerialism among ministers, and every level of the state needs looking at afresh - but "box ticking" and "judicial review" must be avoided if the problem is to go away. In all likelihood improving "accountability", Badenoch style, will be the subject of suggestions churned out by the Tufton Street think tank complex. As well as the churn from Elon Musk's anticipated evisceration of the federal state in the US.

There are a few things of interest here. Or rather, interesting absences. If this is the culture of the state and it's so irksome, the Tories had 14 years to change it so why didn't they? Was it a symptom of talking conservative but governing left? Well, no. There were plenty of changes to governance over that period of time, and all of them embedded the Thatcherite settlement further. I.e. The counter revolution that started under her and was consolidated in the Major and the New Labour years, which saw bits of the state sold off, or forced into debt relationships with private finance, or forced to "compete" in internally constituted "markets" with one another. This was consolidated under the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition. To put it another way, the proliferation of performance indicators, targets, "market intelligence", and the requisite legal expertise to go alongside them increased the amount of administrative work required. Neoliberalism is the bureaucrat's friend. But this was in the context in which the coalition government slashed at the state. Form filling multiplied as form fillers were laid off. More work was demanded from a shrinking workforce, and so the system was prone to seizing up. This is the first "inefficiency" Badenoch "forgot" to mention in her article.

The paradigm of this consolidation of neoliberal governance was the vandalism committed against the NHS during the first term of the Tories' long stint in office. Effectively, Andrew Lansley abolished the NHS as was and replaced it with a market, underwritten by state money, in which NHS organisations and "any willing provider" competed for contracts handed out by the hundreds of fund-holding Clinical Commissioning Groups. This meant huge sums diverted from health care to the maintenance of a wasteful and needless internal market, and rampant profiteering as private health concerns won contracts and subcontracted them to NHS organisations, creaming off layers of profit in the process. This was supposed to run autonomously of government and, formally, responsibility for the NHS no longer lay with the health secretary. As it happened, increasingly CCGs and NHS trusts found ways around the market and established cooperative relationships contrary to the designs of the legislation. With the immediate first wave of Covid out the way, the Tories belatedly discovered this and returned sweeping powers to the health secretary - then Matt Hancock - with unprecedented range to intervene and micromanage. The kind of model Badenoch seems to be hinting at. I.e. Ministerial direction unchecked by established procedures and remits to enhance accountability. And how has the NHS looked since this innovation was introduced? Yet another slice of pertinent recent experience from government the leader of the opposition chose not to dwell upon.

Lastly, completely by coincidence her "reprogramming" of the state is consistent with Tory efforts to wind down its capacity to do things. It bears comparison that Badenoch's view is a reskinned version of Jacob Rees-Mogg's planned civil service cull. In short, the state has not failed because of a magic theory of bureaucracy. It has virtually collapsed because under the Tories this was the policy objective. It has been starved of resources, saddled with extra responsibilities, and forced into a governance strait jacket that could only produce sub-optimal outcomes. And Badenoch's answer is to make this crisis of capacity the desired goal of the next Tory government. Her big idea is the regurgitated pap of the recent past, a programme and an agenda that saw the Tories crash to their heaviest ever defeat.

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Trump's Tory Fifth Column

Already a veritable industry has sprung up advising Keir Starmer how his government might cultivate the second coming of Donald Trump. Should he pivot toward America, get the trade deal signed, and attempt to mitigate the White House's dysfunctions and excesses through the offices of the special relationship? Should the Prime Minister seek instead a closer relationship with the EU, considering the tariffs Trump has vowed to impose on imported goods to tackle inflation helped win him the election. Or should Number 10 try both these things at once, as the Bank's former chief wonk Andy Haldane counsels? Wherever Starmer steers to tread, he has something else to contend with: the yapping of the Tories and the other runts of the right.

Despite suffering their worst result ever, what should have felt like a cataclysm has been received by the Tories as a slap on the wrist by the electorate. They were buoyed up by the fact Labour's popular vote was far from spectacular, and have convinced themselves that to win again they have to turn right and scoop up the support lost to Reform while watching Labour combust in government. The consequences of which will take care of the rest. But one way Labour's immolation might be sped up is by the Tories stirring mischief and trying to cultivate difficulties for Starmer vis a vis the White House.

Not content with destroying Twitter, for some time now Elon Musk has criticised Starmer and Labour. For instance, inside the last month he's said Rachel Reeves's closure of the agricultural land tax loophole is "wrong", and of the investigation into the Telegraph's Allison Pearson over an alleged racist tweet said "This is insane. Make Orwell Fiction Again!!”. Obviously ignorant that the probe is under the direction of social media legislation drafted and implemented by the Tories. Nevertheless, this presents them with an opportunity: lever Trump into opposing UK government policy to undermine its credibility and room for manoeuvre at home and abroad.

An example is the "debate" about the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands. In the summer, the government announced it was formally handing the islands over to Mauritius. The United States would sign a further lease with them on Diego Garcia for its strategically useful air base. In other words, to all intents and purposes nothing changes. The Tories, however, are opposed to the transfer despite negotiating it in the first place. And so, the Telegraph reports, Tory peers are looking at blocking it in the Lords so Trump can come in and veto the decision, thereby thwarting China's schemes for the region - apparently. The real reason is to put Starmer at loggerheads with Trump and force a humiliating climb down that the Tories would politically profit from.

This is how it's going to be for the next four years. For all the froth about "sovereignty" that underpinned the "long-held" and "genuinely felt" principles behind Brexit, and the denunciations of "foreign courts" and the European Convention during the Tory leadership contest, this goes out of the window for the Tories and their cultivation of Trump. Yes it's hypocritical and, in conservatism's own terms, arguably anti-British if not treasonous. But this isn't because of ideology, of a congruence of ideas between the Tories here and the extremism of Trump's Republicans. More important is the perceived commonality of interests.

Trump is set on shredding the federal state for the profit of America's oligarchs, and his appointments - as irrational and as crazy as they appear - reflect this ambition. The sum total of all "small state" politics is the same: run down state capacity in everything but law and order and the military, force people to provide for themselves if they can or somehow survive if they cannot, and the horizon of politics is levelled down. Why demand anything from the state if it simply cannot deliver what meagre social responsibilities it has left? This was Rishi Sunak's project, and is now Trump's. Though this being the USA everything has to be bigger. While Labour with Reeves in Number 11 is never going to nationalise the top 100 monopolies nor, for that matter, break with business-centric politics, for the Tories her taxation of unearned income is a step too far. It's not that the people the Tories represent can't afford it, they fret that any measure, no matter how modest, that touches the core of class relations in British capitalism can only lead to more demands. If capital gains tax is increased now, what's to stop if from going up tomorrow? And having implemented one set of tax rises, what's going to stop Labour from introducing more aimed at property, share income, rentals etc. in the future? That way, they fear, lies a shift in the balance of forces that the Tories have done so much to right after the shocks of Brexit, Corbynism, and Covid.

Let's not over egg the pudding. Most of business are broadly supportive of Starmer's modernisation project. But the rump Tory party, the most conscious, far-sighted, but paranoid section of their class worry that Labour might uncork all manner of genies with political consequences that will echo down the years. That's why this government has to be brought to heel. If that means constantly sucking up to and petitioning Trump and his allies to do Britain down, put pressure on diluting or abandoning the mildest of social democratic policies, and showing up this country's claims to sovereignty as a joke, this is what they will do. The national interest, their national interest demands no less.

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Why the Migration to Bluesky Matters

Is this the end? Since the result of the US presidential elections, people leaving Twitter has reached a torrent and those signing up to Bluesky has exploded. 611m active users vs 15m shows the newcomer has a way to go before Elon Musk's plaything is eclipsed, but for many people - the very active users who are the core holding Twitter together - their defection has a disproportionate disaggregating effect. Not unlike those so-called "hero voters", the defectors from the Tories to Labour, that got Morgan McSweeney and friends excited. And if all the interesting content creators are migrating, their following will take wing too.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer billionaire. When Musk took Twitter over, its descent into dysfunctionality was rapid as he ripped out the staff and the infrastructure that made it a viable platform for big business advertisers. Instead, Musk substituted them for the peppercorn income of opt-in subscriptions and AI photo enhancement adverts. A year later, it was clear which direction the site under his stewardship was heading, and now what was previously Twitter's dark underbelly is the side it always shows to the sun.

Some have argued that as far as Musk was concerned, the site has served its purpose. He levered it to hand himself a plum position directing the oligarchical shakedown of the United States, but to argue that this was why he acquired Twitter in the first place affords him too much credit. He tried pulling out of the purchase, and was only able to carry through with it after getting Gulf oil interests and sundry banks on board. One might assume they would like a return on their investment. You could say they have with the most openly ecocidal president ever elected due to take office, but the point is none of this was pre-ordained or part of a master game plan. Like all billionaires and their toys, Musk found a way to get Twitter to serve his class interests, and that's how it will be until forever, or to the time when the site winks out.

No one can be blamed for not wanting a part of this. Even more so seeing as the new terms of service means that in two days' time, all messages posted to Twitter will be tossed into the data-hungry maw of Grok - Musk's AI/fancy plagiarism effort. It looks like I'll be spending a bit more time at the new place. This has, of course, invited some whingeing and moaning about the abandonment of Twitter. Dan Hodges, who if I recall correctly, was the first British politics commentator to marry performative 'just asking questions' stupidity with deep cynicism on the site, chides "the left" on leaving a platform it deemed influential on the outcome of the US election. And then we have Nick Tyrone who reckons the left is ceding Twitter to the right, thereby setting up the conditions for further defeats.

This is to not understand how Twitter is, or rather was, used. For Britain, like for many countries, its appeal was never generalised in relative terms as per Facebook but grew up catering for already connected communities of interest. It was, and for the moment remains essential infrastructure for how politics is done, for communicating lines to take, information exchange, and the breaking of news stories. With the Graun's announcement that it's downgrading its presence, that's the first sign this ecosystem is under pressure. As it and others begin their drift from Twitter to Bluesky, these channels of networked communication will have to spread across and keep a foot on both platforms. In other words, Musk's devastation of Twitter and the corresponding reaction has meant he's made a direct competitor for his site viable and one that can only become increasingly essential to pay attention to as British politics sets more of its shop up there. The "staying and fighting" perspective is therefore obsolete. This is not like the left and the Labour Party, it's a shift in the digital architecture of how politics is done. If you want to carry on getting attention in the attention economy, staying on Twitter only won't cut the mustard from this moment on.

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The Awful Dissonance of Orbital Resonance

When the world is maddening, why not sublimate that anger into a critique of an obscure science fiction novel from 33 years ago? Okay, but as it happens John Barnes's Orbital Resonance did not pass the SF reading public by at the time. Far from being one that got away, it was in the running for a James Tiptree Jr award and a Nebula in 1991 and 1992, was plastered with blurb from the likes of Poul Anderson and Orson Scott Card, and was variously and favourably compared by reviewers with Robert A Heinlein's juvenile novels. That should make for a good, or at least an interesting book, right?

Apart from the the two Donaldsons earlier this year, this is the worst novel I've read since embarking on the SF quest. On paper, Barnes's book sounds intriguing. In the far off future of 2025, the world has been devastated by the "Eurowar", resource depletion, and a megadeath "mutAIDS" pandemic. On the plus side, a new spirit of cooperation is abroad. All nations have scrapped their arms, and an international effort is underway to colonise the solar system with a view to rebuilding society on Earth. Instead of being at loggerheads, humanity is pulling in one direction.

Melpomene is a 13 year old girl whose family has moved onto The Flying Dutchman, a hollowed out asteroid that plies the trading route to Mars. Free from the constraints of Earth, the crew are tasked with building a new society. Families were screened beforehand to admit certain personality types, who would end up raising children best suited for a particular niche in the burgeoning interplanetary society. Melpomene, for instance, finds out during the course of the book that she's being groomed for some kind of mayoral role while Randy, her sort-of boyfriend is primed for the officer ranks. Education consists of constant testing and being shuffled around temporary teams. This applies whether one is taking maths, Earth history, or playing aerocrosse - a low gravity sport where four teams compete but can (and do) make temporary alliances with one another. This, it is subsequently revealed, is to try and build a post-capitalist society by digging out the root of generalised commodity production: individualism. After scrapes arising from bullying, rivalries, flunking tests, and parental tension, the adult crew abruptly decide to get off the ship at Mars and leave - having decided their Earth-bound neuroses were drags on and causing dysfunctions among their children. The kids are so alright they can build socialism without their folks around.

That is all there is to the book. If it wasn't for the aerocrosse scenes, which read like badly bowdlerised and diluted battle sphere scene from Ender's Game, a race her Melpomene's brother wins on the outside of the rock, and the jarring insertion of future speak, this could easily be a twee high school drama. And nothing ever happens. The Heinlein comparisons are understandable (some might day because of his clumsy characterisation), but unlike Citizen of the Galaxy or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, where the SF contrivances are central to the plotting, in Orbital Resonance they read like badly sutured grafts. This could, be forgiven if the rendering of dialogue and relationships were any good, but they're not. The cast is wooden and not believable, and that's fatal if the work wants the whizz bangs of cognitive estrangement to play second fiddle to the exploration of the human condition and character study. Melpomene, as a 13 year old school girl, is probably the least convincing viewpoint character I've ever read.

What really grates is the poor effort Barnes makes to address adult themes. The not infrequent swearing suggests this is not really aimed at youngsters. But piling on the cringe, if not the shudders, is the purient treatment of burgeoning sexuality. A few times Melpomene sees girls her age around her age naked, and Barnes has her pondering when she's going to start developing like her ample contemporaries. If that wasn't bad enough, this clearly pre-pubescent 13 year-old has a couple of masturbation scenes slotted int without any warning The past is a foreign country, not an alien planet. This was not acceptable in the early 90s, so what was Barnes, his publishers, and those who penned the sparkling reviews thinking it was fine to include them? These creepy asides make the book much worse and far from appropriate to the age groups this was aimed at.

There are three more books in this setting, with its sequel - Kaleidoscope Century - containing rape and murder, despite also being marketed at kids. Start as you mean to go on, I suppose. Of course, awful things happen and believable fictional universes often reflect the world to say something about it. Here, Barnes is saying nothing. This is a 198-page trudge through the humdrum lives of school children who never do anything interesting. As if to make up for it, Barnes turns authorial sex pest and we get voyeuristic glimpses a young girl's body. One to leave on the shelf unopened with, by the sounds of it, the rest of his Century Next Door series.

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Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike & Tiësto & Dido & W&W - Thank You (Not So Bad)

This is great, but please explain to me how it took five people to come up with such a straightforward remix of Dido's tune?

Amsterdamned

Since Israel began its genocide against the Palestinians, Western politicians and their slavish media have gone out of the way to prettify the crimes of their client. This has meant bucke tloads of hypocrisy, outright lying, and tanking their election hopes in defence of state interests. But amid the butchery and the cowardly defences of war crimes, there has never been a more distorted, openly propagandistic piece of reporting about and reaction to what happened in Amsterdam last night.

In case you haven't been on social media today, for the last three days footy hooligans attached to Maccabi Tel Aviv have rampaged through the Dutch capital. They have attacked Arab and Arab-looking passers-bys, caved in the windows of buildings flying Palestinian flags, and sought at every turn to provoke fights with locals. At the match they disrupted the minute's silence for victims of the flooding in Valencia, and before and after tore through Amsterdam shouting "death to Arabs!" and mocked the bombing of children in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. And so fists and boots of the away fans were met by the boots and fists of the home end. A common or garden tale of football-related violence from a team that has a far right firm, and no more newsworthy than that. Until it became something else.

On Friday morning, the Israeli press reported the IDF were sending a team to Amsterdam to rescue citizens from a "pogrom". Taking the cue, virtually the entire West European media followed suit, describing shocking levels of "antisemitism" and the "hunting down" of Israelis. This BBC report is typical, describing how "youths" used scooters in hit-and-run attacks on innocent footy fans. The Dutch king typified the one-sided denunciation of the violence, siding with foreign thugs over his subject's right to self-defence. The rest of establishment politics have weighed in, with David Lammy denouncing "last night’s antisemitic attacks on Israeli citizens in Amsterdam." The Holocaust Education Trust invoked the memory of Kristallnacht, a phrase Benjamin Netanyahu also used in an address this evening. To put things into context, the complete twisting of what's happened was so bad that even the Daily Mail couldn't go along with it.

Israel is a dependent of the West, and knows how to play its patrons to keep the flow of weapons and money coming. In the UK's case, while the government has acknowledged that a catastrophe has unfolded they've framed it in such as if they were talking about a natural disaster. They have not attached any blame to Netanyahu's actions, nor the mass enthusiasm there is in Israel for the Palestinian genocide. Having been partners in supporting Israeli operations since it launched its first air strikes, they can't go back on the crimes they are now associated with. Admitting hesitancy in backing Israel on anything threatens to open the damming operation official politics has erected around the aftermath of the 7th October attacks. So far the political damage of supporting Israel resulted in the loss of one Tory home secretary and Labour's underperformance at the general election, including losses to the Greens and the left. The last thing the government and the official opposition want are the full facts splayed across broadcast news programmes, opening up a new avenue of political pressure. The consequences could be strengthening Palestinian solidarity mobilisations and the moving of their complicity in murder up the range of salient issues. Not a place they want to be in because they know it's completely indefensible, which is why they don't bother to try.

Hence they'll be glad Israel has led the way in portraying the aggressors as the victims. It's not as though it hasn't had plenty of practice. And, handily, this exercise in crude propaganda occasioned Israel's announcement that the residents of northern Gaza will not be allowed to return to their homes. What a coincidence. By entirely distorting what has happened in Amsterdam and confecting a pogrom where none existed, Israel benefits from its continuing efforts at equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, and Western foreign policy establishments and their political masters gain from having their support for Israel put beyond reproach. Though, as they know, the desperation of running this sort of interference cannot stand indefinitely in the age of social media. They are putting off today what they will have to answer for tomorrow.

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