Sure, but not 'pandering to the bond markets', by which I assume you mean increasing borrowing, would just to be to give more money to bond investors, which you don't want to do? (as well as being a drag on the economy and people's wages and increasing the cost of living via interest rates)

This is paying them less and doing the opposite.

End racism and discrimination? I agree this is a no. Plenty of racist rich people out there to show this doesn’t change

Liveable wages, it certainly helps towards that end - more stuff being produced = more demand for labour = price of labour goes up = wages go up.
House prices down? No, but disinflation isn’t great either. If wages go up they can become more affordable if supply increases, which govt can encourage

I mean that’s not accurate (and much less the case in this country than others) but even so, an increase in prosperity for all people, even if unevenly distributed, and an increase in money available for public services and infrastructure, is objectively a good thing.

That’s what growth is…

The stuff around megalothymia and isothymia really gets into the weeds, but the general notion I think is genuinely useful for analysing cultural trends and attitudes since the Cold War, which imo is its greatest contribution.

Hahaha. Absolutely agree and despite his clunky readings I and shaky philosophical grounding (mainly inconsistencies around his analysis of ‘the event’) he does point out something very important about what arose in public perception.

He does cede to your first point, though there is a broad spectrum for systems of (re)distribution under the umbrella of LD. On your last, people are discontent with not having a cause to fight for, so are attracted to backsliding movements that undermine democracy against their own interests.

Derrida makes a decent critique in Spectres of Marx.

Though Fukuyama doesn't emphasise it as much, for Hegel the 'end' in the 'end of history' is meant more in terms of end as in goal or telos — so the final telos of history has been achieved in its discovery, if one believes, as Fukuyama does, that liberal democracy is the best form of government.

He asserts the success of Liberal democracy to be 'the end of history' as it finally solves the internal contradictions of previous systems of government - so we have reached its end in finding it. 'History' is in the Hegelian sense of the development of ideas, not the chronological order of events

Tbf Fukuyama, even in his original essay in 1989 before he wrote the book, does say he expects liberal democracy to not be stable because people have too much of an appetite for the fight of history, and things will change essentially out of boredom. That's what the entire 'last man' bit is about.

Almost always a run down of the right wing papers + the mirror on radio 4. FT and economist never get a mention, and the guardian and even the times only included half of the time.

Labour didn’t really gain in vote share over 2019, the torries just lost nearly half of theirs so it plays into labours hands really - unless reform somehow gain ~20% in the next five years which I highly doubt

I might be being naïve, but I think there’s a good reason why you almost never hear labour challenging reform.
Reform only got 1.7% more of the vote share than ukip did in 2015, and while most on the right will continue to vote conservative, the growth of reform will only split the right further

That’s certainly true, would be interesting to know how much that’s taken into consideration for these sorts of appointments

Incidentally the same school that John Major attended - an ex-grammar school that retained a prefect’s croquet lawn, so I wouldn’t have thought his education has influenced the selection all that much