like the queen this thread will never die: in which we ALL resign (ourselves to disgusting miseries to post-boris politics 2022)

Needing to de-carbonise to save the planet (forget that, how about your sorry selves) and this is the response?

Lol.

There's a real chance Labour will face a 1997 situation at the next election: a once-in-a-generation chance to transform the UK. Blair was too cautious. Starmer can't make the same mistakes. Labour must plan for full-spectrum constitutional, political, social and economic reform. https://t.co/z3F90g0dSL

— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) September 27, 2022

Cliffe is demanding more of Lab than Owen Jones who called this speech 'fine'.

Blair wasn't too cautious, those were his politics ffs

willing to grudgingly accept "too cautious" as a widely-understood euphemism for "pissed away a twice-in-a-century chance to change the polical direction of the UK"

anyone believing kier starmer or tony blair has/had any desire to truly transform the country is an idiot or a political commentator "at it". the most they aspire to is making the place ever so slightly better to live in for a slightly widely part of the population than previous.

*slightly wider

the moment starmer gets any push back from the institutions and companies at the top table now he'll cave and apologise for even having had the thought in the first place.

Painfully accurate

If you need to vote for a racist, transphobic, deeply establishment party to assuage some kind of bad childhood feeling about the other team well, good luck with that

Reckon -- as the thread states -- it's councils, DWP, the arts council but if the unemployed increase what then?

Agree with Adam about rising pressure towards austerity, but question for me is where can they actually cut? NHS desperately needs more cash (and they need to build some of those hospitals they promised), she's promised more defence spend. Could further destroy higher education? https://t.co/z5B5SVESAf

— James B (@piercepenniless) September 27, 2022

Fucking hell.

My take on Keir Starmer's #Lab22 speech for @ipaperviews

Briefed as emulating Blair, the speech reflected a clear break from New Labour https://t.co/SbMLzAy8Q3

— Andrew Fisher (@FisherAndrew79) September 27, 2022

xp bit more macro detail/charts from tooze in this newsletter today (doesn't answer the q in that tweet though):

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-155-the-uk-not-keeping

(also some context on kwarteng's academic ideology)

Tooze is a tireless aggregator. Gabor's tweets (which I linked a couple of days ago) are the ones I found most interesting.

Seems naive to think they *need* to build hospitals unless there's a compelling material reason in the bit I didn't read

Who’s going to staff the hospitals?

well quite

Sipping a cuppa and reading abt Lab conf

Newham councillor Terry Paul chaired a fringe event at Labour's conference in favour of the "gig economy" where a Deliveroo senior manager from Scotland was passed off on the panel as one of the firm's riders https://t.co/bpuzdEh6sA

— Kevin Blowe 🏴 (@copwatcher) September 27, 2022

sad. i know terry. i know what he’d say, that if we could make deliveroo a more progressive employer then his constituents would benefit. but it’s just all cut from the same cloth, absurd fantasies about a progressive form of capitalism that have never ever been borne out.

Lol at the two economist types jumping up and down defending the IMF and wanting evidence over this entirely reasonable tweet.

before everyone goes gaga over the IMF statement, remember that killing off the NHS is exactly what the IMF would approve of in these circumstances, and the Tories will draw attention to its support should they decide to do that

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) September 27, 2022

xp: working people can only save themselves. They are on their own.

Bastani's article, of course, doesn't mean he likes or supports KS.

This tweet may be a better example of actual Novara ambivalence.

Labour’s right faction played incredibly dirty, sabotaged any chance of a radical government, and cynically destroyed a lot of good people in the process. But we now have a reasonably social democratic Labour Party on brink of government. Complex emotions!

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) September 27, 2022

Complex emotions?

Also, if an election is 2024, Labour in 2022 is hardly on the brink of government.

Bastani and the Novara lot will support Starmer in the election, and they'll want an invite to the parties in return. They will play down the atrocities committed in return

Genuine Question: Is a points based immigration system necessarily more reactionary than any other form of immigration control? Family reunion and asylum aside, of course. https://t.co/3ZDBFoD3EL

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) September 27, 2022

Even ppl I thought were ok like Fisher are just totally waving the white flag and pretending there is a ghost of Corbyn to some of the policy.

IdontwantalabourgovtIjustwantrevenge.png

A thing about Novara as well is most of its output is so low effort - they have interesting interviews sometimes but most of the time it's basically just leftist talk radio, with the hosts not saying much that you couldn't hear on any amateur UK leftist podcast. Which is fine but they kinda oversell themselves. Seldom see any investigative journalism for instance, which there's a real need for.

they don't remotely have enough funding for that tho -- their model was
(a) enter the mediascape at the pundit-level
(b) build on that
(c, perhaps, one day, when the cash is there) backfill the capacity to make their own news (inc.much-needed investigative deep dives)

(a) has been semi-successful -- ash and james b and the big lad are known names outside the mere twittersphere -- but it comes at a price, which is that clout can only be mantained by having a Provocateur's Take™️ on like 85% of "the day's news" (as determined elsewhere)… and in context the take is going to be being "for" something yr local audience is somewhat against (hence white flaggism etc).

i'm saying it's the structural consequence of a poor strategy (albeit a strategy we all very much enjoyed five years ago when the big lad was saying "it'll go higher" for the exact same reasons = provocateur's clout)

the scientific internet term for (b&c)-fail as the structure of the model is of course "underpants gnomes" (which tbf libcom and others were saying back in 2015)

How is it a poor strategy, when they've grown far beyond what they will have originally expected; bought a studio; are continually hiring new staff; etc?

Even if I didn't like their coverage and opinions (which I often, though not always, do), I wouldn't think they'd shown a poor strategy.

It's gone higher!

perhaps, one day, when the cash is there) backfill the capacity to make their own news (inc.much-needed investigative deep dives)

Hopefully Bastani will be able to channel some of that sweet Unherd cash into this.

Seldom see any investigative journalism for instance, which there's a real need for.

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Came across the odd tweet of internet ppl who said Al-J's Lab files doc could've been made by Novara except that it's just not in the interests for them to be doing so.

Though technically it's probably beyond them too.

fuck SAKE

Heard yesterday, and now confirmed, that the Mirror's party at Labour conference was paid for by the Betting & Gaming Council. The gambling lobby and Labour are old bedfellows. [1/?] https://t.co/0SQdN9cZqJ

— Rob Davies (@ByRobDavies) September 28, 2022

I am not pressing play on that

x-post to pf
it's a failure bcz (b) hasn't led to (c) -- there are media operations that can decide on any given day what "the news" is but novara is not one of them

(c) was needed to justify their now long-ago stories abt why they were stepping out of occupy-style politics into parliamentary electoral politics

it never got high enough and then it stopped going higher

x-post to xyz:
yes it's absolutely beyond them at a production level

to me this is more dispositive that cope-ish left fairytales abt personal ambition or inner meltism; they bet on a model (punditry) that's long on look-at-me rhetoric and short on hardcore factchecking (too expensive) and put themselves at the mercy of currents they can't possibly create let along control

they do fwiw platform the investigative journalism that boils the UK media class's piss - the Al Jazeera doc and the Trojan Horse podcast - so I'm inclined to agree with mark that it's more about technical means than careerism/not wanting to upset their media buddies.

I disagree with Mark S.

No, they can't 'make the news' in the sense of affecting MSM headlines. They've never claimed they could. Would be very surprising if they did.

Yes, they can do what Mark S called c) ie: researching news stories and making their own news. They do this regularly.

I suspect that these disagreements may arise from different ILX posters having different experiences of / engagements with actual Novara content.

Would be very surprising if they did

i don't disagree with this, i don't think it was at all a realistic goal -- the deep point of punditry as the focus of a media operation is that it's cheap to produce and thus likely can't by itself generate the kinds of funds a genuinely political operation would require. at the outset they certainly saw themselves as potentially a much more ambitious political project -- the podcast still bears traces of this ambition (tho it's fallen away towards politics-as-culture and butler's natural LRB-ism)

i have to say i've always been a massive bastani-sceptic and am thus quite easily caught out on details of his positions over the years (pf caught me out upthread): my excuse is that i don't think they matter very much bcz i don't think he matters very much, but others may well find evidence in them that's telling that i've missed (bcz i never bothered looking lol)

the low-level news-following that pf points to is neither here nor there really, it's unremarkable in quality and not much more than a guilt-free aggegator for subscribers who prefer not to get their info digests from more compromised sources -- like the "stats for lefties!" guy, you know the stats have been checked in advance not to blow up in yr face in a particular way but none of them are stats you couldn't access by other means if you put yr mind to it (and applied yr own suspicion-filters)

Just as an example, if you go on the Novara site right now there are three news stories: a piece on the mini budget which is govt press release + assorted reaction tweets, a piece on a greenwashing conference at the Labour conference and a piece about protests at said event. All three of these are towards the bottom of the page, while the top is entirely opinion and analysis. The budget piece is the most low effort journalism imaginable, the other two of a bit more value, and possibly not covered elsewhere, but basically what it boils down to is their news editor being at the Labour conference, talking to a representative of Labour for a Green New Deal and then going to the conference and catching some video of the protesters. It's hardly huge research and, again, it's all padded out with vaguely related tweets. I don't think there's much of a case to be made for this stuff and I think its positioning on the webpage shows they themselves know it.

The claim was that they had a "poor strategy", and seems to be that they have failed in an ambition (for a "political project").

I find this very strange, as over the last 5-10 years they have achieved more than any of us is likely to in our professional lifetimes.

If anyone has, in fact, achieved more, I would be impressed to hear it.

Even if I disagreed with 95% of what Novara said and published, I would still think that as a business and an intervention in media, they were a remarkable success story.

I think a more plausible critique might be "they have succeeded and sold out as 'melts'", which would at least fit better with the actual facts of their expansion and consolidation, though I still don't think it would be very accurate re: what they actually say.

How have Novara changed the media landscape? I see a website and a couple of pundits that go on news shows or write for other terrible publications.

This is not impressive in any way whatsoever.

This is even before the election, where they will try and sell Starmer and pretend he will sneak Corbyn-era policy.

NEW: Bank of England to stage QE style intervention and buy long dated UK government debt. Huge intervention. Implies that if they don’t do so and therefore restore stability “there would be a material risk to UK financial stability.” pic.twitter.com/1YnpjGmP8z

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) September 28, 2022

Wordle 466 4/6

⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜
⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

— Andrew Fisher (@FisherAndrew79) September 28, 2022

I'm told by a city source it's hard to overstate how serious the situation is today. There is concern over the health of pension funds and this is why the Bank of England has acted

— Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) September 28, 2022

lots of bad mainstream UK pol journos: "Kwasi is toast" "Truss will be gone by Christmas" and it's piss funny reading comments like this. Yet she has only delivered what she pledged to do during the eternal leadership campaign while most of these clowns were not talking about how economically illiterate her plans were. No lol, even the US prez was more critical than any of these clowns. I can only assume while some of these dickheads were doing vacuous Thatch fan-fic, they thought her + Kwarteng were going to pull this off.

Wasn't paying attention to Con MPs briefing journos but now a couple are putting their names to attacks on Truss and Kwarteng. That could snowball, though I am just noting it here.

The weird thing is if they announced these cuts in tax in tandem with cuts to government the markets might not have been as fussed. Markets just wanted to see a workable plan that could see repayment to investors.

During Johnson's reign ofc a lot of pals got covid contracts and money but enriching pals and getting the markets involved gets a different level of scrutiny

xp

"Yet she has only delivered what she pledged to do during the eternal leadership campaign while most of these clowns were not talking about how economically illiterate her plans were."

A lot of them were assuming it was big talk to the 'funny' membership. Given how UK Pol journos treat membership of Pol parties as weirdos it's at least consistent.

if they had managed to sell this to the markets with some deadly austerity measures to balance out the books by some tiny %. Then this would have been declared a triumph in the FT/Economist/Spectator.

🚨NEW🚨
On the @bankofengland intervention:
Am told the BoE were responding to a “run dynamic” on pension funds - a wholesale equivalent of the run which destroyed Northern Rock.
Had they not intervened, there would have been mass insolvencies of pension funds by THIS AFTERNOON.

— Ed Conway (@EdConwaySky) September 28, 2022

so the BoE are just going to keep funnelling money into pension bonds for an indefinite period, that sounds like if there isn't some significant compromise here on the tax cuts or even a u-turn then lol .. the job's fucked. I don't like the way Truss and Kwarteng have gone missing. Just want to see them squirming for their lives and trying talk up this disaster. It's no fun when they go missing.