It seems that when the chips are rally down politically the response is not what one expects. The political terrain on the left may be highly fragmented and there seems to be an element of disbelief that all is really happening. Some communities seem passive. Then again …

Good question. A morbid fascination? Or a sense of excitement after watching cop films in your teens? The lights and sound making it sound exotic like ‘America’? The ‘is it someone is unwell’ versus ‘is there a chase on’ question? Or it punctuates our bored mundane experience lives? I like the last.

This is becoming one of the most deregulationist governments you will find. They are pushing an agenda of removing rights and regulations they have no mandate to do. It’s as if the sphere of the economy is separate from labour and employment policy which btw is being minimally reregulated , perhaps

It’s due to the belief that technical competence is all you need. Blair was ‘new managerialist’ and partly neoliberal obsessed but in Starmer that is left to Reeves but he is very much about one dimensional administration and management without any moral or visionary vision. It’s bizarrely nothing.

Kennedy represents the politics of cannibalism. The self destructive stage of capitalism where the little it has established of worth in terms of expert knowledge is devoured from within. It’s an example probably unprecedented in parliamentary democratic history.

What you outside the bureaucratic confines of parties is as important as what you do in you in them. A political party can only be one part of progressive politics. He’s right.