Their disinterest in fellow bugmen is really a lack of imagination and curiosity. The lack of creativity is what I really try and highlight here. open.substack.com/pub/democrat...

I was struck reading this excellent pamphlet from @ewallis.bsky.social on the minor communitarian tradition how much overlap there is with open source tech ideals. It’s not a perfect marriage but I think an interesting fusion could be possible. At the very least it is a direction to explore imo

I would also look for inspiration to Taiwan’s digital democracy and open-source communities that are consonant with social democratic values

Accelerationism most commonly found in Silicon Valley is a council of despair that we can’t shape technology. Social democrats have to reject this - we have many times collectively influenced its path

Other movements like Anglofuturism have started to become influential in Britain. A Victorian inflected fusion of elitism and innovation would fall far short of the richer, more just future we could have

A rationalist future is ultimately likely to be one that militates against the values of plurality and democracy, even if the impulse to reduce suffering is one we share.

Technology can help realise a social democratic future; it is not only a threat. But if we fail to imagine it, those with narrower or darker visions will set the terms

I have some points in the piece on what I think the criteria is for this to work. And I think you have to be careful of optimising only for controversy. But I think in the modern environment for this Labour government it is one thing that is missing and necessary to shift opinion

In the time the government has, it needs to utilise the main advantage of incumbents which is the power to initiate. They can set the terrain on which politics is fought if they had a sense of the landscape that might advantage them over opponents.

But isn’t there evidence that Labour’s support amongst Labour voters especially has collapsed? And some proof “island of strangers” speech damaged them by switching off their base without convincing anyone else.

That suggests the gov’s story as much as material conditions has impacted their decline

Labour mainstream are right that the government is wildly out of step with its base. No this is not a good approach to attract median voters - if you still think that nothing can convince.

But a radical change of course still comes up against the same spending constraints and a jittery bond market

The root of a talented communicator in politics is the ability to defend a world view. To reframe challenges on your terms. How many times do we need to learn that adopting the rhetoric of opponents backfires 👇

How many times do soc dems need to learn the lesson that accommodating the right doesn’t work?

This is more or less what I predicted in this piece - why the island of strangers speech was a total misreading of the political terrain: renewal.org.uk/blog/why-lab...

One of the main legacies of Trump will be much more memetic Democrats.

But you have to choose which path: dark lib or joyful left

Bluesky, what if we listened to the guy who might actually win? What if we tried to build a coalition capable winning?

In this house we are woke and English

The trouble with today’s Nietzscheans isn’t that they’re shocking. It’s that they’re predictable. Uncreative. The so called bugmen have so much more to offer open.substack.com/pub/democrat...