Rumours of Another Johnson Comeback

With the Tories staring down the barrel of certain doom, everything they do has an air of unreality about it. Rishi Sunak taking to the steps of Downing Street to denounce George Galloway's election. Jeremy Hunt dishing out tax cuts for the better off as the state continues to crumble. And now the latest Tory story: hopes of a Boris Johnson comeback.

According to the Mail on Sunday, senior Tories alarmed by catastrophic polling are "plotting to replace" Sunak with the former Prime Minister. This is based on private surveys commissioned by Judith McAlpine, which suggests only Johnson can save the Tories from total devastation. She was able to get 50 MPs at a private meeting where the results were unveiled. It's worth noting that nowhere does the article suggest the Tories are in with a chance of winning: they are faced with a choice of bumping around with 200 or so MPs with Johnson and far fewer with Sunak.

How likely is a comeback? Even more meagre than the last one. The piece excitedly talks of getting Johnson back into the Commons as if it's a minor trifle. McAlpine is influential in Henley, which would be the favoured seat, and the current party candidate is an ally. But assuming she was to stand aside to let the boorish bombshell have another crack that won't get him into the Commons before the election. So a bit of a flaw in the plan. And there are more. As Sunder rightly notes, where are the Tories in a position to win a by-election? It's not as if safe seats are safe any more. And a Tory candidate needs the leader's writ to run, which Sunak is not about to extend to a Johnson candidature determined to depose him. And there's a third consideration. For the first time in his life, Johnson is making money faster than he can spend it. Why would he give that up to lead his former party to certain defeat and then five years in boring opposition? It's not going to happen.

But when things are desperate and providence is mocking the party to its face, anything and everything that might promise salvation will be grasped at. Yet there is a glimmer of rationality beneath the cope. The Tories, or rather the Tories pining for Johnson's return haven't completely lost it. Getting him back would almost certainly see the threat of Reform off. By-elections are a better gauge of support than the polls that continually flatter them, but the right flank would be shored up and the damage of split voting negated. And those Tory supporters electing to stay at home when the election drops would come out for the man who, a short time ago, was happy to see their bodies pile high.

It's just unfortunate for the Tories that their would-be saviour has better things to do than save the party that has provided him with a very fine living and a place in the history books as one of the worst Prime Ministers this country has ever seen.

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Jeremy Hunt's Last Budget

The curtain falls on Jeremy Hunt's final budget, and as such this was the most explicitly political of statements. And looking tonight at the BBC's website, it has dished up the message the Tories are hoping to fill the front pages on Thursday: Jeremy Hunt cuts National Insurance and extends child benefit. A headline speaking of munificence and "getting it", designed for the low information punter who catches it in the side eye. As with all things Tory, they're hoping most won't bother with the detail.

And they're right, most won't. Stealing Labour's feeble flagship policy of abolishing nondom status, but then giving moneybags new arrivals four years of tax-free life won't get a negative write up in The Sun. The flat rate cut to National Insurance will see low paid workers save barely £150/year while those who are better off can look forward to pocketing thousands. The extension of child benefit by raising the income threshold might be welcome to some enjoying a higher household income, but it does not match the rise in the cost of living - leaving most parents with zero extra help. Public services will continue to rot as pleas for more resources fell on deaf ears. Apart from the Graun and Mirror and sundry internet-based outlets, none of this shall get coverage. And because they're shielded from critical coverage, the Tories will think they've pulled a blinder.

To be a bit contrarian, they have and they haven't. By re-emphasising their politics of doing bugger all, Labour's tepid response - Keir Starmer took Hunt to task for not cutting income tax - only serves to reconfirm that the Tories' political project since Covid, of downplaying the state's capacity to do anything, has become a consensus the shadow front bench has embraced. As reiterated by Rachel Reeves on Sunday. It also means that Labour's capitulation to their agenda means the measures announced today are so many potential rakes for a new government. When Labour comes to reverse National Insurance cuts, claw back child benefit from better off families, increase fuel duties again, unfreeze booze taxes, spend more on public services, and start taking the green transition seriously, the surviving MPs of the coming wipe out will sit there on the opposition benches reeling off gotcha after gotcha. As if anyone will care for what they say.

The Tories have remade the political terrain in their image, but they're not in a position to profit from it. The triumphalism of John McTernan, writing in the Telegraph, underlines this basic truism. Among the professional middle class, the opinion formers, and the personnel of the state, the recklessness of the Tories have destroyed their reputation as a serious party of government. And among the wider layers, those who have traditionally formed the backbone of mass conservatism, no amount of anti-immigration posturing or pledges to bear down on tax are going to win them back. And the reason why is simple. Despite her pathetic efforts at rehabilitation, Liz Truss gets the blame for hiking up interest rates and crashing the economy. And Sunak cops the flak for doing absolutely nothing to shield the core Tory support from the effects of their folly. Both have used their leadership to slam their feet on the accelerator and driven their party hell for leather down the highway to oblivion.

What will seemingly be the last Tory budget for a very long time doesn't change a thing. By-election disasters for both parties have only reaffirmed rather than challenged their strategies, and the budget's political reception won't change that either. The Tories are doomed and Labour will win. And the rest of us? If we want anything out of the next government we're going to have to fight for it, as has always been the case.

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A Cynical Case of Fiscal Dishonesty

In an incredibly soft ball feature for The Telegraph, Rachel Reeves told the paper she learned all about balancing the books at her mum's kitchen table. I wonder if mum taught her that copying other's people's work was wrong, because the evidence suggests not. Not that the Telegraph were rude enough to mention it, and so Team Reeves will be happy with the results of their handing the Tory house journal "unprecedented access". They wanted to show the human side of our tinny voiced shadow chancellor, and something that would endear her enough to the readers that they might give Labour a punt - and once again assure the interests that circulate in the paper's political orbit that contrary to some of its more excitable articles, there is absolutely nothing to fear. Keir Starmer is as committed to Britain's sacrosanct class relations as Rishi Sunak is.

But because this is the Telegraph, the heavy Thatcher allusions were there. Reeves said she wanted to be known as the "iron chancellor", simultaneously invoking the blessed Margaret and, for those readers who prefer to life in the 19th century, the wily but tough Otto Von Bismarck. And the kitchen table anecdote with mum, her calculator, and the notepad famously recalls Thatcher's brilliant but wholly misleading reduction of government spending to household budgeting. This builds further on the consistent messaging coming from Labour: don't promise, don't ask. Unfortunately, if social media and earnest think pieces are anything to go by too many people think Reeves is genuinely mistaken about how state finances operate. When she attacks the Tories for maxing out the credit card, and Labour now has to be "disciplined" with its spending you can see why anyone with half an understanding about how the state makes money and the way economics works feel like they're banging their heads against a wall. My advice? Relax. It's not you, it's Reeves.

The shadow chancellor is not a stupid woman. She knows the British government can't bankrupt itself. Rather, her fondness for the household metaphor is driven entirely by politics. Cynical politics. It helps Labour bat away the tax and spend attack lines customarily deployed by the Tories and their favoured journals. By caving without a fight to right wing framing, the editorial offices might be flattered into thinking that it is they who will get to set the agenda for the incoming government. Not the members, and not the unions. Which helps explain why we've yet to see much bellyaching about extending workers' rights that, theoretically, Reeves and Starmer remain committed to.

The second reason is central to their political strategy. With Reeves affecting the countenance of a robotic disciplinarian whose commandments are programmed by "the economy", this is a concerted effort to depoliticise economic questions and spending decisions. Hospitals in crisis? Sorry, growth is sluggish - let's get business to help. Below inflation public sector pay rises? There is no money because the Tories sunk the economy. Kids getting taught in crumbling RAC classrooms? Can't replace them any faster because of the fiscal rules. Cut social security? Not my fault guv'nor, not enough tax receipts. It suits Reeves to misrepresent the budgetary position and how state cash really works, so Labour is off the hook when things don't change as fast as they should or don't change at all. And when they condescend to do something, they can toot the over-delivery tune when a public service is patched up. They want to control the agenda and the pace of authoritarian modernisation, so is there any better way of setting up some spurious objective rules that they say they are powerless to change, and must obey come hell or high water? It's a deliberate effort to obfuscate, distort, and make snoring boring the most fundamental political challenges of the day.

Reeves is playing a deeply cynical game as all the Labour right have done. And they can get away with it for now because the election is in the bag. But as we saw on Thursday, when there are controversial issues Starmer et al have no answer for, they will be punished for it. And as these are going to multiply once they're in government, it won't be long before the rust clings to Reeves's steely projection and chews great gaping holes in what the Labour leadership believes is a clever-clever strategy.

Why Reform Failed in Rochdale

Another reason why mainstream politics is tearing its hair out over the Rochdale result was its refusal to follow the by-election script the media had written for it. It goes something like this: Labour wins, the Tories get a pummelling, and Reform does well enough to get touted as a challenger both parties would do well to take seriously. This gives the Mail, Telegraph, etc. license to offer this private company (remember, the "party" is constituted as a business in which Nigel Farage is the majority shareholder) free advertising and to carry on pushing politics further to the right. At the outset, none of the official scribblers or high foreheads at campaign HQs believed Galloway was going to win, or that the independent candidature of David Tully would blow the main parties out of the water. For its part, Reform thought they were in with a shout of scooping up the votes of the disaffected. They were just as much part of Westminster's groupthink.

By selecting Simon Danczuk, the former UKIP-while-Labour, Sun-loving noted sext pesterer MP, the "party" was hoping to capitalise on his name recognition. Buoyed by the decent results in the previous week's by-elections, they had in fact taken the campaign seriously. Activists were bussed in, a professional campaigning operation was set up, Richard Tice was frequently present. And you could be forgiven for thinking the background ratcheting up of Islamophobic rhetoric and more immigration scaremongering would have played to their advantage. But they got considerably less bang for their buck. I suppose Danczuk might be happy that Reform found 1,100 more people to vote for him this time than at his feeble independent challenge in 2017, but overall Reform fell for their own hype.

Having confused being backward and reactionary with "working class" - a category error common among Westminster elites - to find their usual anti-immigration/stopping the boats/abolish tax rubbish falling on deaf ears must have come as a shock. In the end Reform saved its deposit, but came in at 6.3%. This was behind the Liberal Democrats whose campaign didn't extend beyond their candidate and a few local members. The fancy battle bus and glossy leaflets amounted to a heap of crushed expectations. It's little wonder then, failing to find the electoral Red Seas parting for his party, that Tice has been moaning to any media outlet who'll listen that there was "intimidation" and "death threats" on the campaign trail. And, that old canard, there being something iffy about the postal votes.

While Galloway's campaign was a disgrace for pushing cheap anti-trans arguments, it is doubtful if anyone came in behind his campaign because they found his brand of scabbing on this more convincing than the bilge issuing from the Tories or Reform. Rather, "social conservatism" played little to no role in Galloway's win. His victory capitalised on local disaffection about being a forgotten town - hence it was wise for him to reach out to Tully in his victory speech. And because of Gaza. This wasn't just a first order issue for local Muslims. Polling suggests over 70% of people in this country want to see a ceasefire. Even if you're a non-political person, scenes from the atrocities Israel are committing against civilians are making it onto social media feeds across multiple platforms. The latest outrage often makes in onto the news and, yes, the unwillingness of the Tories and Labour to do anything about Israel's behaviour drives their reputations lower, and lower, and lower. To the point where, what a shocker, is affects voting patterns. Who could've thunk it?

If Reform has a purpose, apart from securing seats at the trough for Farage, Tice, and other select hangers-ons, it is to channel anti-political establishment disaffection into the safety of right wing populism. Which happens to present the interests that structure politics in this country zero threat. The same cannot be said of Galloway with his trenchant critique of the international power politics all sections of the establishment are wedded to. That's why they hate him. And having been the first to be elected against the background of an active, mass Palestinian solidarity movement, that's why they fear him too. Reform? They weren't even on the pitch in Rochdale.

Local Council By-Elections February 2024

This month saw 32,120 votes cast in 24 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 11 council seats changed hands. For comparison with January's results, see here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Jan	+/- Feb 23	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	19	9,950	31.0%	+1.8	-0.9	524	0
Labour	20	6,812	21.2%	-7.7	-7.1	341	0
Lib Dem	19	9,270	28.9%	+1.1	+9.3	488	+2
Green	15	2,250	7.0%	-0.4	-1.8	150	+1
SNP*	1	410	1.3%	-2.5	-4.1	410	-1
PC**	2	623	1.9%	+1.9	+0.5	312	0
Ind***	15	2,343	7.3%	+5.8	+3.0	156	-2
Other****	5	462	1.4%	+0.0	-0.5	92	0

* There was one by-election in Scotland
** There were four by-elections in Wales
*** There were two Independent clashes
**** Others this month consisted of Eco Federation (25), Putting Crewe First (128), Reform (50, 237), Women's Equality Party (22)

The plus/minus councillor tallies mask for a scrappy month. Both Labour and Conservatives gained some and lost an equal amount, there was a rare Tory gain from the Liberal Democrats, and the Independents got a thumping. If there are stories to be told, despite the crises afflicting the government it seems its local government base has weathered the worst and is turning in a strong performance. The Lib Dems are not so afflicted, and are also doing well. Labour? At least where by-elections are concerned, the performance is poor. While I am the first to talk about Keir Starmer's shallow support, it's unlikely this is evidence of anything other than just the way the by-elections are landing. Also bear in mind electorates are more likely to turn out in Lib Dem and Tory-held seats than Labour seats for reasons well known and well-studied by political scientists. What may also be of note is the very low score the SNP achieved in a seat defence.

Next month there are only 13 by-elections to look forward to (not counting the mayoral contest in Lewisham). Two of them in Scotland and another three in Wales.

1 February
City of London, Candlewick, Ind hold (unopposed)
City of London, Cheap, Ind hold (unopposed)

8 February
Blaenau Gwent, Ebbw Vale South, Ind hold
Cheshire East, Crewe Central, Con gain from Lab
Gwynedd, Criccieth, PC gain from Ind
West Northamptonshire, East Hunsbury & Shelfleys, LDem gain from Con

15 February
Dacorum, Tring West & Rural, LDem hold
East Hampshire, Four Marks & Medstead, LDem hold
Kingston-upon-Hull, Avenue, LDem gain from Lab
Neath Port Talbot, Briton Ferry East, Lab gain from Ind
Neath Port Talbot, Rhos, Ind gain from PC

22 February
Buckinghamshire, Farnham Common & Burnham Beeches, Con hold
Buckinghamshire, Hazlemere, Con hold
Derbyshire Dales, Bakewell, Lab gain from Con
Derbyshire Dales, Norbury, Con hold
Folkestone & Hythe, Romney Marsh, Con hold
Milton Keynes, Loughton & Shenley, Lab hold
Scottish Borders, Jedburgh & District, Con gain from SNP
Wiltshire, Calne Chilvester & Abberd, LDem gain from Con

29 February
East Riding of Yorkshire, Minster & Woodmansey, LDem hold
East Riding of Yorkshire, Tranby, LDem hold
Horsham, Henfield, Grn gain from Ind
Horsham, Southwater North, Con gain from LDem
Great Yarmouth, Central & Northgate, Lab hold

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Politics after George Galloway's Victory

Following George Galloway's emphatic win in Rochdale on Thursday, a lot of excuses have got thrown into circulation. There were the unique set of circumstances after Labour disowned its candidate. There was the strong local independent. Reform had toured the town's gutters and dredged up the late career of mobile phone sex pest Simon Danczuk. The Greens disowned their candidate too, and the Galloway circus had rolled into town. We're led to believe that had Azhar Ali not made his ill-judged comments, the Labour campaign machine would have steamrollered the opposition and another by-election victory chalked up by Keir Starmer would have been the assured result.

This is fanciful nonsense. As Galloway noted in his victory speech, this is the first time since the war that neither of the dominant parties made it into the top two positions. Labour's vote fell by a record amount, and the Tories also saw a new record set for the largest vote share fall in a Labour-held constituency. A history maker all-round then. There was some faint hope in Labour circles that their erstwhile candidate would sneak through because his suspension came after the postal votes dropped, and he would still be appearing on the ballot with the party name. Hopes that were shredded like so many unread Labour leaflets. With Galloway now sitting on a cushion of 6,000 votes, or an effective majority of 10,000 if you take Labour's hopes of winning it back at the general election into account, there is a distinct possibility he could be around to annoy Starmer for the next five years.

Starmer has seen the polls and been told in no uncertain terms that there would be political consequences for supporting the massacre in Gaza. Indeed, the alarm went off loudly and clearly early last month when Survation reported a collapse in Muslim support. But Starmer has brushed it off. Toeing the US line on Israel is more important to him than responding to loyal supporters that have put him on the doorstep of Number 10. And given his entire project represents the take over of the state by the state, this shouldn't come as much of a shocker.

But what, if anything, does Galloway's galloping victory mean for politics? In the first instance, there will be some fretful Labour MPs out there. The chances of independent left challenges with a similar pro-Gaza, anti-genocide message can't be discounted. Nor can the window of opportunity for the Greens. It could help them secure the retirement of Thangam Debbonaire, and perhaps scoop up Sheffield Central as well. But while it's squeaky bum time for Labour MPs in "exposed" seats, Starmer is determined to press on as is. The reasoning is as straightforward as it is pigheaded. The polls show Labour is on for a thumping majority, therefore dropping a handful of seats at best to the Greens, Galloway, and the odd independent left is something Starmer can live with. For every Rochdale, there are three, four, many Wellingboroughs and Kingswoods.

The business-as-usual approach was reasserted this evening. In what looked like a panicky press conference, Rishi Sunak got out the Downing Street lectern to denounce division and hate in Britain. No, he wasn't talking about his own party but those evil protesters who refuse to quieten down about Britain's complicity in an ongoing massacre. It's a feeble attempt to try and cohere Tory unity around an enemy all wings of his fractured party hate - the Palestinian solidarity movement. Thus Galloway is invoked as a divisive bogeyman, a symbol of the non-existent no-go areas and the nudge, nudge, wink, wink Islamist wave the Tories cynically pretend is sweeping Britain. The protests have to stop. They are a threat to democracy.

Actually, what these complaints about the protests signal are deep anxieties among some sections of the establishment that they represent an unforeseen and unwelcome outbreak of mass political volatility, of which Galloway's election is a symptom. And Starmer agrees with this. As cabinet member after cabinet member have been talking up the threats of terrorism and the "intimidation" of MPs this last week, he's said Labour would back government measures to crank the handle of authoritarianism some more. As if we hadn't had enough from Boris Johnson. But here we encounter a potential problem for Starmer. His own MPs see this as a feeble overreach by Sunak, and so do some of his supporters among the centrist commentariat. In other words, he's badly misread the politics of the moment and runs the risk of damaging his standing among those who are his natural base. Which isn't good when it was looking a touch shaky even before he gave his blessings to Israel.

Going back to Galloway's victory speech, he talked about his victory being the beginning of a movement that could shake up politics. In this he's wrong. What happened in Rochdale is a moment in the shifting plates political struggle whose latest episode began in October. With both party leaders demonstrating their weakness by recourse to authoritarian laws and tone deafedness with regard to the message the protests and the electorate have sent, this is a process that has a long road to run yet.

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Five Most Popular Posts in February

It's that time again. What did the business last month? Let's find out ...

1.The Labour Right's Political Strategy
2. A Rude Reminder
3. The Problems with The Three-Body Problem
4. From Rochdale to Botchdale
5. A Reliably Loyal Servant

If there's an iron law in politics right now. It's that the Labour leadership are compelled to select a (progressive-sounding) policy and see how far they can roll back on it. So frequent is this event that it barely raises an eyebrow any more. Instead, I thought it might be fruitful to look at this internally - from the standpoint of the rubbish they tell themselves. There are three components to their "theory", and it does make logical sense. Albeit in the thin, path-of-least-resistance way we've come to expect from Keir Starmer and crew. Coming in second was the viral-for-five-minutes clash between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lewis Goodall at the misnamed Popular Conservatism conference. Rees-Mogg lashed out after our intrepid hack broke the cardinal rule of politics: he dared suggest there was a relationship between what politicians do and the interests they serve. Shocking. In third comes my comment on The Three-Body Problem, my first SF post of the SF turn to do quite well. Pleasing! The debacle in Rochdale following Labour's disowning of its candidate came next, and bringing up the rear is another mess: the fixing of the SNP's opposition day to prevent a big split in Starmer's rank over Gaza. Where the protection of establishment power is concerned, Lindsay Hoyle is always your man.

Because I'm writing at reduced capacity, there's comparatively little left to afford a second chance. But I'm going to offer a couple of posts more time to shine. As, by the time you're reading this the result of the Rochdale by-election will be known, let's look back at February's two catastrophic by-election losses (for the Tories) and the stabilising effect this will have on Conservative and Labour strategy. And the second is off the science fiction pile, mainly because no one read it. Which is fair enough: it's a review of an obscure book after all.

Next month, there might be a comment on a theory book (what?), and the usual diet of politics and SF. There are sure to be things to write about. As ever, if you haven't already don't forget to follow the monthly free newsletter, and if you like what I do (and you're not skint), you can help support the blog. Following me on Twitter and Facebook are cost-free ways of showing your backing for this corner of the internet.

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Why the Tories Won't Confront Islamophobia

We know the Conservative Party is institutionally Islamophobic. And now there are hard numbers that add to the charge. According to Hope Not Hate's survey of the Tory membership, 58% thought Islam was a threat to the British way of life and 52% believe there are "no-go areas" for non-Muslims in European cities. Which also happen to be governed by Sharia law. Only 19% of members polled had a positive view of Muslims (40% were negative). Others weren't left out of the oh-so predictable results. 45% were negative toward immigrants in general, and 49% weren't keen on Roma. 72% thought immigration was a bad thing for Britain. 45% also believed there was a secret plot by "global elites" to undermine European identity through immigration. There were some differences between age. I.e. The more elderly, the more extreme. And 55% would welcome Nigel Farage into the party.

This makes a mockery of claims that Lee Anderson's rant, and Suella Braverman's lies about antisemitism and Islamist hate marches - repeated at every opportunity - are isolated incidents. When leaks from Tory MP WhatsApp groups feature members saying how they've got a full inbox praising Anderson's racism, what they don't tell you is most of them came from members of the local association. You can only conclude that "moderate" Tories, like Sayeeda Warsi (who happily dished out glib distortions when she was in government), don't go to meetings much.

HnH have showed another reason why the Tories won't take Islamophobia seriously. The Conservatives are thoroughly compromised by racism. Rishi Sunak and the contenders for the post-catastrophe leadership know that if they pressure wash the party stable, all the vermin that thrive in the filth will stream out of the yard and scurry into the cesspit Nigel Farage and the Reform Party have set up over the road. And so Islamophobia and anti-immigration posturing isn't just a strategy the Tories have fooled themselves into thinking is a go-er, they need it to keep their increasingly unhinged party from falling over.

As someone wrote somewhere, the Tories have two big problems if they want to remain a viable party of government. The cohorts of voters opposed to the Tories have this thing called memory. The right wing press often reminds its diminishing audiences of the winter of discontent, but that cuts both ways. The racism, the cuts, the crumbing public services, the strikes, the inflation crisis, fuel bills, Covid mismanagement, these are going to ensure there's a solid block of anti-Tory voters for decades to come. And second, the values, outlooks, and interests of the rising generation of voters have time and again been attacked by the Tories. The party's only way back to government is not doubling down on right wing politics, as bizarrely some on the left also think, but a thorough detox. The racists, the climate change deniers, those who rail against "globalists", they need to be got shot of. And more than that, the Tories have to curb the propensity to rip everything up. Only then when, ironically, they approach conservatism will they make inroads into the people who spurn them today.

This is the choice the next leader has. Lean into the hate and bigotry and secure the continuance of the party as it stands, albeit without much of a future. Or go for a split and recompose the Tories around a moderate centre right politics. Them's the breaks, as Boris Johnson said on the occasion of his defenestration. Whichever way the Tories go, a great deal of pain awaits.

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The Problems with The Three-Body Problem

"They are coming. And there is nothing you can do to stop them." The trailer for the Netflix adaptation of Cixin Liu's (Liu Cixin's) The Three-Body Problem superbly conveys a sense of existential dread. Scientists dead after a crop of mysterious suicides? Count downs (counting down to what?) imposed on the vision of leading physicists? The star field flickering in the night sky, as if portending some hideous, monstrous evil? At a glance Netflix has done a good job capturing the terror that stalks the novel during its best moments. Unfortunately, all of them are crammed into the first 80 or so pages.

Spoilers below.

After eight millions copies sold, plenty of people have said plenty of things about The Three-Body Problem. I'm no different. The seriousness with which the trilogy begins sits uneasily with its daft premise. We open during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Ye Wenjie witnesses her astrophysicist father get beaten to death by a troupe of Red Guards after refusing to condemn the basics of the physical sciences as bourgeois. Dubbed the daughter of a class traitor, she is forced to join a labour brigade felling forests in Inner Mongolia. An accomplished scientist herself, she is betrayed by a close comrade and is found in possession of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Given the choice between a trial and getting drafted into a secret project, Ye chooses the latter. It's gradually revealed that this is part of an effort to leapfrog the West and the USSR by being the first to contact an alien civilisation. And, using the sun to amplify her signal, Ye becomes the first human to communicate with an alien world.

The first section of the book is very good at ramping up the tension as it flits back and forth between Uncle Mao's SETI efforts and the present day mystery of our suicidal scientists. The main guy in the 21st century is Wang Miao, a nanotech specialist working on super strong materials. While taking photos he discovers that, no matter what camera he uses, a count down is imprinted on them. And this only happens when he's the one taking the picture. Spooky. Terrifying. What's happening? And this is when the great pacing stumbles into a drunken stagger. Wang is invited to play a new video game called Three-Body. This is an immersive puzzle solving game in which the player has to save civilisation by predicting the orbital dance of the three suns its planet orbits around. The three-body problem in physics believes this is impossible to compute with certainty as the interaction of the gravitational dance between three objects can only result in a chaotic system. The game ends when one of the suns scorch the surface, seemingly sterilising the world, or when it's thrown out on a long freezing orbit. Wang is able to make some partial breakthroughs in the game and is invited to become part of a select group of players who are on a mission.

There are some real issues with The Three-Body Problem. The writing is flat and the characters wooden. As Matt rightly argues this has more to do with Liu's style, informed by the influences of Clarke and Heinlein than the quality of Ken Liu's translation. The second issue is the physics. Some reviews have gone into great detail about the issues of using higher dimensions to fold a super computer into the size of a proton, which the aliens fire at Earth to disrupt our particle accelerators and harass our scientists. This should prevent humanity from progressing technologically so we could easily see off the colonisation fleet when it turns up in about 400 years. Fair enough, but there's one glaring physics problem that should be obvious to everyone, including those like me suffering from a Maths allergy. In trying to calculate the orbits, it seems Wang - and Liu - have forgot they're computing a four-body problem. The three suns and one planet because, though much weaker, its gravity would tug on all three stars and add to the overall complexity of the system. And if that wasn't bad enough, one particular alignment with the suns see the planet partially ripped apart, creating a small moon that now orbits the home world. We now have a five-body problem. For an author that prides himself on didactic flourishes, this is embarrassing.

The other issue is the aliens themselves. We don't have descriptions of them, save an ability to dehydrate tardigrade-style to wait out the heat and the cold. But we do get a sense of how their civilisation works and it turns out the initial suggestions of eldritch terror was a waste of time. In their communications with us, in the scenes in which their fleet and their multi-dimensional computers are constructed, Liu imagines them no different to us. Their government is a quasi-feudal/totalitarian regime with Bond villain-esque qualities. Via their proton-sized computers, which are quantum entangled with machines on their own planet, the aliens - dubbed the pulpy-sounding 'Trisolarians' - can keep real-time tabs on what the governments of the Earth are doing. I guess because the colonisation fleet is out of sync due to its travelling at a tenth of the speed of light that time dilation and discrepancy between human and Trisolar time, and fleet time will become something the future volumes play with.

The Three-Body Problem has come in for a lot of stick for being an apologia for Chinese authoritarianism as well. Liu has publicly been supportive of the government, and in his The Supernova Era faithfully reflected the party's (then) view of video games as promoters of violence and anti-social behaviour. But such hackish loyalty is not present here. You might say his obvious distaste for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution are very party line, but who - apart from hard Maoist hold outs - would celebrate that as a glorious episode? You could make the case Trisolar civilisation survived cycles of disaster by building an authoritarian regime and forcibly subordinating the individual to the collective. And in the Three Body game (which, you might have guessed, is based on the scenario faced by the Trisolars) there are North Korean mass game-style displays of totalitarian power, but their collectivism is shown to be monstrous and other. Indeed, Liu's critical take on the Cultural Revolution, which got published because in the Chinese edition these scenes were located in the middle of the book and censors were too lazy to read that far, fits in with the tone of his other work. For instance, 2005's Ball Lightning has China losing very badly to the United States in a war and is devastated when it accidentally unleashes a weapon that completely shreds its electrical infrastructure. Liu may publicly toe the party line, but his work, at least what I've read of it, is ambiguous.

That isn't to say The Three-Body Problem isn't a morality tale. You could say it is two. The first is an extreme exploration of the law of unintended consequences. Because of her experiences, Ye nurtures a nihilistic grudge against humanity in general. So when she receives a reply from a lowly pacifistic Trisolar radio operator urging us to not reply because of the danger his species poses, she goes ahead and does so anyway hoping they'd turn up and wipe humanity out. Who knew the Cultural Revolution set our species on the road to subjugation and extinction? The second is an SF staple, and one we've recently encountered: the defence of rationalism. Unlike Le Tellier for whom the threat to reason comes from within, for Liu it's the aliens' computers playing tricks with us by creating nonsense results in particle accelerators, and enveloping the Earth in a two dimensional screen to screw with our perception of the cosmic microwave background. The traitors recruited through Three Body also run disinformation and anti-science campaigns to lower the general intellect. A comment on foreign, and particularly Western (American) cultural imports to China and their dumbing down effects? A warning where anti-intellectual culture could lead? Liu is far from the the first to make such warnings.

For a nowhere-near-as-clever-as-it-wants-to-be novel, there are lots of interesting threads worth picking at. Just be aware that the literary quality isn't great, ignore the poor treatment of one the most famous problems in physics, and the aliens are as unimaginative as anything you'd find in the dullest Star Trek episode. If you can overlook these excruciating issues, you might enjoy.

Jamming the Tory Party Sewer

Every so often, the speed at which politics moves is stunning. In the fall out from the Speaker's unconstitutional blocking of the SNP's motion on Gaza to spare Labour's blushes, a straightforward vote on stopping Israeli committing war crimes morphed into an issue of Commons procedure. From there, we went from a constitutional dispute into being very, very concerned about the safety of honourable members. It was then a hop, skip, and not much of a jump into criticising "intimidation". Or, to you and me, bravely speaking out against demonstrating outside Westminster and protest activity aimed at morally bankrupt MPs. And from there, targeting the supposed culprits of this ghastly behaviour - activist "thugs" and "bully boys". But some just can't stop themselves from going overboard.

In a clunky effort to capitalise on Wednesday's parliamentary mess, Suella Braverman penned an article arguing that Islamists and far left had taken over Britain. "The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now. They have bullied the Labour Party, they have bullied our institutions, and now they have bullied our country into submission", she says. You might ask what she's talking about, because all this exists entirely in her head. If she really believes it at all. As we've seen with Braverman, it falls into a pattern of behaviour. Say things that are categorically untrue, whip up a hate mob if it suits, and try and ride the wave of shit into the Tory leader's office.

Not to be outdone, Lee Anderson took to GB News Friday evening and took matters further. Disagreeing with Braverman, he said "He’s [Sadiq Khan] given our capital city away to his mates ... I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan, and they’ve got control of London." He might not be deputy chair of the Tory party any more, but Anderson is still fulfilling the duties of the job.

From crowing about "nasty" protests against dropping bombs on children to stirring up hatred toward Muslims, the pair of them are absolute filth. And coming in the week where hate crime figures show reported attacks on/abuse against Muslims are up 334% since October, it's fair to say BNP membership is too good for them.

Yet there's still more. Fresh from making a fool of herself at the somewhat overshadowed Popular Conservatism conference, Liz Truss popped up this afternoon palling around with Steve Bannon. She said it was the "deep state" that brought her government down. We've heard this drivel before. How the Bank of England is "woke", and that the Treasury employs more communists than the old Gosplan offices. Nothing to do with her own political stupidity, and the interests she so slavishly championed. While not as egregiously cracked as Braverman and Anderson to be explicit in stirring up racist hatred, the far right tropes are there in Truss's language. As if to underline this, the cover of the US edition of her coming book, Ten Years to Save the West, has "globalism" on its cover - as much of an antisemitic dog whistle as "Cultural Marxism" is.

These are manifestations of the Tory party's death throes as every day brings it closer to electoral oblivion. With no way out of their predicament, the Tories are going with their basest instincts and hoping - and some no doubt genuinely believing - that anti-immigration, anti-Islam and openly racist politics is going to save them. As the polls have shown, their adventured in hate and scapegoating are having no effect whatsoever in restoring their fortunes. So they double down even more. To them it makes sense, seeing as past triumphs could (unconvincingly) be read through a right wing lens and taken as signs of these wretched policies having popular purchase. For everyone else, it looks like the party is having a full on nervous breakdown.

Today's disgraceful display, however, is different. On this occasion all three of these horrors have transgressed the niceties of bourgeois politics. It's one thing to mimic the language of the far right, but quite another to hang around with American far right figures and strongly imply your successor was part of a globalist deep state plot to overthrow them. You can talk all kinds of shit about Islam and Muslims because of this country's hierarchy of racism, but to suggest Sadiq Khan has turned London into a fundamentalist-run hellhole is beyond the pale. And lastly, Braverman can do her unhinged lying turn in the Tory press as much as she likes. But when she says she was sacked because Rishi Sunak is soft on Islamist terror, that more or less draws a far right target on the Prime Minister's head. Will Sunak do anything about these electoral turds, or will he continue to let them jam an already disgusting sewer with a never ending flood of effluent?