politics | the brilliantly leaping gazelle

October 16, 2026

33:64 presents “Hall and Oates.”

Remember how back in 2002 , the former PM, Theresa Cornfield, warned the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth that they were seen as the “nasty party? The evidence for this was, she claimed among other things, a narrow voter base, lack of sympathy for minorities, internal feuding, and public perception of being out-of-touch?

So what would she call the Greens? Because everything she claimed made the Torys ‘the nasty party’ has been magnified by the Greens. Much has been made of the rapid increase in membership since Repulsion came to power. But less though about who they are. How they all seem to be share not just an incredibly rigid set of beliefs, but also a refusal to accept that anyone has a right to disagree with them. These newer members are less concerned with saving the planet and more with saving one tiny part of it whilst erasing another one. Who are obsessed with demonising one minority, holding everyone in it to be uniquely guilty by association. Complicit in something that only exists in their fevered imaginings of their WhatsApp group chats.

And as for internal feuding? The Greens make one almost nostalgic for the interminable arguments that convulsed the Tory party over Europe during the 1990’s. They seem polite and good natured when compared to the current temper-tantrum being waged against Caroline Lucas by the Greens for Palestine faction. A well known fire-brand, she is accused of being ‘toxic’, ‘divisive and of ‘bringing the party into disrepute.’ Her crime? Not agreeing with them. Not believing that ‘Zionism is racism’. Not believing that the motion to adopt it at the recent party conference should never have been tabled let alone passed, or that the leadership didn’t show any.

The thing is, when it comes to accusations of bringing the party into ‘disrepute’, then the Greens for Palestine group are more deserving to be expelled from the party. I think that they are all too aware of this, so are busy getting their retaliation in first, hoping that she and not them will become the focus. But aside from the recent motion, which should’ve been flushed down the nearest toilet, there is the deafening silence from them about the cancelled presidential elections in Palestine. Not just from them, but from the entire leadership. This represents a more fundamental threat.

One might be forgiven for thinking that for a party whose entire political offering is predicated upon the idea that Israel is the the only reason that there isn’t a ‘Free Palestine’, such a silence might be problematic. One might then also consider why the Greens are so keen to advance the narrative of Israel being the root cause of every misfortune that befalls the Palestinian people? Could it be that their hatred of Israel blinds them to a more proximate impediment to a ‘Free Palestine’?

That the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 20th year of his 4 year term, in cancelling the elections yet again, is more of a threat to the idea of a “Free Palestine than Israel. Or that Hamas, having won the 2006 legislative election, promptly changed the rules and have practiced a non-existent version of democracy in Gaza ever since.

Perhaps thats why the Greens lost in Holborn and St.Pancras. Because they’re not Green anymore. Because the more that they claim to represent a newer way of doing politics, the more apparent it is that they’re just repackaging the worlds oldest hatred. That they seem incapable of championing anything beyond the ideological inconsistencies of their newer members. To be at the mercy of the the very toxicity and divisiveness that some claim Caroline Lucas to be guilty of. To appease it, to pander and legitimise it and to eventually normalise it. Its not Caroline Lucas that is bringing the Greens into disrepute.

They’re doing it themselves.

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October 7, 2026

33:64 presents “Gordon Carrera.”

There’s always a ‘but’.

The ‘Israeli but’ they should call it. Any article, statement other expression of deep sorrow about the Oct 7 genocide by Hamas of Jews for simply being Jews in Israel is qualified by a but. It has become so ubiquitous it seems almost mandatory. That one has to hastily acknowledge such a thing happened in the briefest and least condemnatory of terms before damning Israel for all the sufferings in the war which then followed.

But here’s my but.

Since the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian gunmen at the Munich Olympics and the subsequent hunting down and killing of those gunmen by Israel, no-one can have been in any doubt that the killing by terrorists of any Israeli citizen is considered by Israel to be an attack upon Israel itself and therefore treated as such. And Hamas can’t have been unaware of this. As this report from the BBC – under 3 minutes long and using Hamas’s own drone footage – points out, the attacks by Hamas on the 7th October were well coordinated, using as they did land, sea and air and as such required months, if not years of planning.

After all, people who can operate motorised hang-gliders need some training. More importantly, they need the motorised hang-gliders. A decoy missile attack of over 2,000 missiles requires over 2,000 missiles. They weren’t gathering dust in some nearby lock-up; they needed to be ordered, then stored somewhere before finally being taken the sites where they were launched. They also needed drones to fly over the Israeli border and to be capable of shooting up Israeli surveillance tower in order to blind the Israeli military as to what was happening.

So the sheer scale of the logistical planning involved was simply staggering. Dwarfed only the fact that at no stage when all of this planning was going on did no-one say ‘But hold on, do we really think there’ll be no response from Israel from this. That they won’t see this as act of such barbarity that can only be met with overwhelming military action. And because our forces, munitions dumps and command bases are deeply embedded within the civilian infrastructure of Gaza, such action will necessarily cause the death of those civilians. Oh, we know this ahead of time and are going to do it anyway? Silly me. I forgot that we value Palestinian lives almost as less as we value Jewish lives.? Forgive me. Carry on then, carry on.’

The Mare of London, Sadia Khant seems oblivious to all this. It isn’t conjecture, speculation or hearsay. Hamas themselves made sure their fighters filmed and live-streamed the genocide. But Khant chooses to ignore this. So today, three years after the genocide, he issued a statement which quickly got to the ‘Israeli but.

“Today is also a moment to reflect on the unfathomable suffering and killing of Palestinians over the last three years, both in Gaza and in the West Bank,” Khan wrote. “ The suffering and deaths for which Hamas both instigated and perpetuated.”, he didn’t add.

What he did add, though, was this. “The UK government is right to call out the reprehensible actions of the Israeli government and apply more pressure to keep the prospect of a two-state solution alive.” In what universe were the actions of the Israeli government ‘reprehensible’? How morally deficient must one be to even think that. Perhaps it is the twisted logic of electoral opportunism, calculating that the has more to gain than to lose by saying these things. Because now we live in a country where a mainstream political party openly endorses the destruction of Israel.

How the fuck did we get here?

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October 6, 2026

33:64 presents “Ebony and Ivory.”

I’m in Herne Bay on holiday at the moment. My housemate and I have rented somewhere directly overlooking the sea; beyond the window there’s just the shingle beach and then the sea. Bliss. I could – and do – stare at the sea for hours from our veranda. At its mesmerising surface, the way in which the sun reflecting off it changes its appearance; words don’t do it justice. Well mine don’t. And thats just fine. My opinion is that in even attempting to do so one reduces the sheer scale of all the wonderful wonderfuls that combine to such magnificent effect. It’s something to be experienced, to look upon with awe, a series of majestically transient moments, made moreso because no two pairs of eyes ever see the same thing.

Which is exactly as it should be when you’re looking at the sea. Less so when confronted by a proposition which managed the seemingly impossible feat of allowing to people who were calling for genocide to convince themselves they were unimpeachably moral. Because thats what the Green party recently adopted resolution – that ‘Zionism is racism’ – effectively means, if taken to its frighteningly immoral conclusion. As I understand it – and I’m probably wrong – Zionsism – support for the right of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland (in what we now call Israel) – is basically racist. But being the Greens, the motion went further and called for Israel to be replaced by a single Palestinian state.

The biggest problem I have with this motion isn’t the glaringly obvious one. I mean, how long does anyone really think a Jew would survive in a state controlled by by the death-cult that is Hamas? What Jew who didn’t want their family tortured and raped before being murdered would bother staying to find out? A Palestinian state where Jews and Arabs live together in perfect harmony is so childishly naive it could be a Michael Jackson song.

No, the biggest problem for me is that it legitimises the idea that ‘Zionism is racism’. By the mere fact of having the debate in the first place, regardless of the motions eventual outcome, it made people people take it seriously. The fact that some Jewish Green members are considering mounting a legal challenge to to its adoption only amplifies it. It is no longer a fringe belief, and whilst it is far from a mainstream belief, the more people talk about it, give it credence, some vestige of respectability, only increases the chances of one day it becoming so.

The Greens are a growing political menace, their supporters believing in all manner of nonsenses which are as increasingly unhinged as they are fervently held. Even if the Greens are never anywhere near having actual political power – of the Downing Street kind – they will nonetheless remain a political reality. One that this government seems all too willing to try and placate, appease, and eventually win back, hoping for some electoral advantage. Remember when recycling was something only people who wore tie-dyed clothing and went to WOMAD did? The same kind of absorption could happen, a similar narrow political calculation might be reasoned worthwhile, but a much more terrifying outcome.

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July 3, 2026

33:64 presents “Gerry Mandering”

Here’s a conundrum. Is the right thing to do, still the right thing to do if it is done for the wrong reason? I’ve been atop the horns of that particular dilemma for a week now. And all because the government is re-introducing previous voting system for electing mayors, reverting back to the Supplementary Vote system (SV) that been used up until 2024.

I know that this shouldn’t bother me. That to most people it’s simply a dull procedural matter of no importance and besides, there are more pressing concerns to worry about. But that is precisely why it bothers me so. I’ve never thought politics dull. Every single aspect of our lives is governed by political choices over which we have no control. Politics even decided whether you were born or not.

Did your mother have access to contraceptive advice, let alone have access to them? If she chose to have you, how easy might ante-natal services be to access? How well funded would the hospitals maternity unit be? What about healthcare needs after the birth, the follow up checks, vaccinations, mother&baby clubs? Or could she have had a termination if she chose? If not, then how likely was it that she could choose to have the baby adopted. Everything is political, and so the method by which we choose our politicians is about as important as it gets.

But what is the SV and how does it differ from the first-past- the-post system (FPTP). Well, as the names suggests, FPTP means that whoever wins the most votes wins. As simple as that. There is no threshold, no winning margin required, just coming first is all that matters. SV is a bit more complicated than that. Its a ranked ballot, meaning that voters have the option to rank candidates. If no candidate gets more than 50.1% in the first round of counting, then the candidate with the lowest amount of votes is eliminated but the second choice of the eliminated candidate voters are then added to the tally. As soon as a candidate reaches the magic 50.1% threshold, thats it. It’s an just incomparably fairer.

Does this renewed enthusiasm for proportional representation suggest the end is nigh for FPTP? Is it a long overdue acknowledgement of the fundamental structural unfairness inherent our democracy? A belated acceptance of the notion that every vote should matter? And then if the answer to all of the above is ‘Yes’, then if FPTP isn’t fit for mayoral elections, it follows that it isn’t fit for general elections either.

But that is to forget what happened in 2024. In the space of a month, Reform UK came from basically nowhere to win over 14% of the vote at the 2024 general election. Since then, all political parties have had to adjust to a new political landscape. In the UK, this has been most problematic for the Labour Party. Despite ‘winning’ the 2024 election, it did so with the lowest ever share of the vote in any UK general election, 33% but ending up with 64% of the seats – hence the title of this blog – it was acutely aware that its traditional supporters were not supporting them in the way Labour had always assumed they would. The one word answer is Brexit. For more words, read this blog I posted a few days ago.

So clearly FPTP had its flaws. But canny voters realised that by voting tactically, they could vote in by elections for candidates not on the basis of wanting that candidate to win, but on the basis of wanting someone else not to.This happened in the Caerphilly by election of 2025 and in the Gorton and Denton one in 2026. I wrote blogs on both of them, full of boring statistics to prove my main point. Long story short; that rather than presenting a united front – a defiant coming together of different political tribes in order to defeat a common enemy – which the prevailing narratives were keen to promote, the very opposite was true.

Because in both cases the reason for the winning party’s increase in the share of the vote could be explained almost exactly by the decreases suffered by all three main parties from the last time elections were held there. And it’s not as if lack of voter awareness was to blame for the low turnouts. The media loudly trumpeted the threat that Reform posed.

This to me offers a more plausible explanation as to why there’s been a change back. Even before Andy Capp became Westminster bound, his chances of becoming mayor again were looking slim. Yes, he got 63% of the vote in that election. But only 32% of the voters bothered to do so. And that was two months before the general election. Before Reform had even been a thing and long before all the various ‘Two-Tier Kier’ headlines that were shorthand for political ineptitude and institutional preferences. Instead of doing the ‘hard yards’ and changing political ideology to better align with with the values of the people the party was set up to represent, much easier to change the voting system expressly to deny them that

The last thing Andy Capp needs is for Manchester to elect a Reform Mayor. That would really rain on his parade. Its fine for the people to speak, just as long as they’re telling what he wants to hear.

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June 23, 2026

33:64 presents “Liquid Cool.”

Happy Birthday Brexit. 10 years old today, who would’ve thought it? I hope people still remember and they haven’t forgotten. After all, it’s not easy keeping track of everything, especially when everyone is busy moving on with their lives, inevitably it becoming just another memory. And like all memories, gradually fading away into a vague collection of nostalgic imaginings and wistful regrets.

As if! Brexit is a potent and divisive as it ever was. Possibly moreso. Time isn’t the great healer. Andy Capp proves it. His forthcoming coronation is predicated on appeasing the ranks of disaffected Labour MP’s, and nothing appeases them more than the prospect of ever closer ties to Europe. I know he said to the voters of Makerfield that he’d reversed his previously held opposition to Brexit, but everyone knows he’ll reverse that reversal. He’s a politician. He says what people want to hear.

And whilst I’m on the subject of telling people what they want to hear, it just so happens that ‘The Guardian’ is running this story today. ‘Three in five gen Z Britons would like new vote to rejoin EU, poll finds.

Data reveals 60% of 18 to 28-year-olds would vote to rejoin bloc if given the opportunity’

And a story is exactly what it is, if we understand a story in ‘The Guardian’ about Brexit to be utter bollocks. One of my main gripes about any poll about Brexit that appears in ‘The Guardian’ tends to have at least two things in common. First of all, there is the astonishingly small number of people polled upon which they base the ‘story’. ‘The More in Common study, which surveyed 440 young people across Britain, shows that 50% of gen Z Britons categorise Brexit as a failure.’ But a graph helpfully clarifies that that 50% is actually 50.2%. This illustrates my second gripe; they interview just enough people to get the desired result and then stop. There’d be no point carrying on. If anything, it’d possibly make things worse.

As soon as the magic number – more than 50% – is reached, no more people are asked the question, as doing so only increases the likelihood of that number falling. More in Common knows exactly what ‘The Guardian’ wants the poll to confirm and also knows that the more it gives them what they want, the more it will be asked to do so.‘The Guardian’ also knows precisely what its readers want to read. Well I write readers, but they could more accurately be described as cash cows. And boy, are they milked! I’ve written about this mutually beneficial relationship before.

The more that ‘The Guardian’ promotes narrative in which Brexit was disaster, that the people who voted for it are wracked with guilt and how the sooner we rejoin the better, the more money it is that the readers will hand hand over. It’s certainly lucrative and getting even moreso. Up from £88m in 2023/2024 to £107m in the year to the end of March 2025.

I’ll end by sharing two observations, one serious and the other less so. Hopefully you’ll be able to work out which is which. Firstly, that 50.2% is a much better number than 220.88. Which is what it is. Quite who or what .88 is or even how it exists, don’t ask me. 50.2% of 440 is 220.88.

Secondly, if England lose tonight against Ghana, we all know what ‘The Guardian’ will blame it on…

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June 21, 2026

33:64 presents “Cathy Sheldon.”

Reflecting on Andy Capps victory in the Makerfield by election, I thought of ‘The Joker’ in ‘The Dark Knight. Specifically, the scene where he outlines to Harvey Dent his belief that as long as everything is going to plan, it matters not what that plan is. Just that everyone knows what the plan is and knows that its being its being followed Its quite the observation, as simple as it is irrefutable. Humans love order, infer patterns where none exist, are hard-wired to find comfort in the predictable. Its known, its reassuring, its expected.

This applies to Andy Capp insofar as his victory has essentially been wished into existence by fear. The fear in the ranks Labour Party that Emu is no longer the electoral certainty he was two years ago. That beset by scandals, gaffes, and the unfortunate headlines that they necessarily create, he has been forced into policy u-turns which have only highlighted his liability. MP’s have their jobs, their salaries and future career prospects – both in and out of politics – to consider.

In this context, the plan holds true. We know politicians are ambitious. That their only true loyalty is to themselves. This isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve been here before. We know how it goes. First come the rumours about this, whispers about that and sources ‘close to’, ‘highly placed or ‘influential’ neither confirming or denying the other. Then it becomes an open secret, and soon it isn’t a secret anymore. Then the next thing we know, a Labour MP has stepped down and triggered a by election which could well propel Andy Capp into Downing Street. The names and the methods might change, but the plan, well, we all know the plan and everything’s going according to it.

The plan is both reinforced by and co-written by the media elite. They choose who is to be the hero and who is to be the villain. Unfortunately for Emu, he was chosen to be both. The hero when the when one was needed, before the last general election but the villain – or incompetent fool – quickly thereafter. Actually, I’ve no idea if he is incompetent, just unlucky or a combination of the two. I know as much as you do and what you do comes from the media and the media has a plan. And the beauty of the plan is that it has already done most of its work for it. That reinforcing I mentioned earlier? The scandals and the gaffes that lead to the headlines? There it is.

So the plan nearly always works.And when it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work spectacularly. Brexit was the only time that the plan failed, and the mask fell, all pretence abandoned. The outrage of the liberal media elite when confronted by the reality of a democracy out of their control was a thing to behold. Which is what happens when millions of people give the wrong answer given to a question that those same elites think should never have been asked in the first place. Remember ‘The Wizard of Oz’ when Dorothy pulls back the curtain and see’s that the great and powerful Oz isn’t so great and powerful after all. Or that bit at the end of ‘Singing in the Rain’, where once again a curtain is pulled back to reveal the truth.

Ah, Brexit! It increasingly occurs to me that if Brexit had never happened, I mean if the referendum had never taken place, then something broadly similar to it would have been needed to have been invented to explain away working class disillusionment with the political process. It was easier, more comforting and smugly patronising to explain away the frustration that Brexit revealed as evidence of manipulation, of misinformation and symptomatic of the xenophobic and bigoted tendencies of the working class. As opposed to their realisation that the system was rigged against them; that regardless of the solemn promises that whatever political party made to them since they were old enough to vote, those promises were worthless.

Ten years on from the Brexit vote and every elite one can think of – political, cultural, academic, media, – are just as angry as they were the day after it happened, only know their better at finessing it now. But the plan is back in place. Andy Capp will return things to ‘normal’, which means before Brexit. He says he’s – finally – accepted Brexit, the democratic will of the people, but the only democratic will he’s willing to accept are the ones that further his ambitions. We were promised that the grown-ups were back in the room – according to plan fluffer Andrew Marr after the last general election – and lets hope that this time its true. Otherwise the plan will have to begin all over again.

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March 8, 2026

33:64 presents ‘Lewis Carroll.’

In Lewis Carroll’s “ Through the Looking-Glass”, the White Queen tells Alice that she praises believing ‘six impossible things before breakfast.’ This, she maintains, is a good thing; that it illustrates how the power of power of belief and imagination can make the impossible possible. In the Britain of 2026 however, where objective reality for some is objectionable, the power of belief and imagination causes them to believe more than six impossible things, and not just before breakfast either. All day, every day.

Including today, International Women’s Day. People in the UK, and around the world no doubt, have been protesting their support for the Iranian regime, and decrying the death of Supreme Leader Snoke. These idiots are blinded by their own moral certainty. So invested are they in their belief that everything America and Israel do is evil incarnate and that therefore who they do it to is deserving of their outrage, that their breathtaking hypocrisy escapes them.

The sheer level of contradictions one would need to overcome in order to think such a thing is incomprehensible.. That large numbers of ostensibly sensible people think it is worse. That they imagine that International Women’s Day is a suitable occasion upon which to lament and mourn what Iranian women have been pleading for for years only proves how deluded the protesters are

Under Supreme Leader Snoke, the evil empire of Iran was not exactly known for being a staunch defender of women’s rights. The legal restrictions upon them and the ruthless application of them, defies any rational understanding. Women in Iran, if they even get to see the images of the protesters, can only wonder at the absolute betrayal of people who would call themselves feminists. But who still have no problem putting their dangerous political fantasy before universal principles of equality. Who enjoy the freedoms that living in a Western nation offers, one that has had the Enlightenment and its attendant values woven into society. A society moreover, that derives its laws not from religious interpretations of a book written over a thousand years ago, but from set of laws that are being constantly updated to better reflect the society it serves.

But getting back to Lewis Carroll, the White Queen and the six impossible things. If you believe that women can have penises, that achieving Net Zero is a worthwhile undertaking or that free speech isn’t absolute, then I suppose you can also think that Supreme Leader Snoke’s death is a bad thing.

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March 6, 2026

33:64 presents “Jeremy Bowen.”

As has always been the case, I usually find myself not being in the least shocked by something other people find shocking, but by the fact that they find it shocking at all. The current conflict in Iran being a good example of this. The joint US/Israeli military campaign, one of overwhelming force has been, initially at least, brutally effective. The deaths of basically the entire senior Iranian political leadership and with them the ability of its military to effectively co-ordinate a response, was both long overdue and totally a good thing.

Would that this sentiment be shared by all. However, this is the Britain of 2026, a Britain where a crude Third Worldist narrative has taken hold. One which casts the US is as the origin of all wickedness, Israel the ultimate villain, and consequently anyone or anything opposed to them must be virtuous. The sincerity of those that believe in this nonsense, however is questionable, not least because it also fortuitously allows them to be either ruthlessly opportunistic, conditionally concerned or shamelessly bandwagoning.

By ruthlessly opportunistic, I mean those who manufactured, and then exploited the anger of the conditionally concerned regarding the civilian deaths in Gaza. Broad swathes of the UK media, and quite probably media around the world are guilty of this. Conveniently reducing the many horrors over many decades of a regime that gave religious intolerance a new benchmark, they seek to downplay its well documented barbarism to highlight just how evil the military action is.

If this seems worryingly familiar then thats because it is.The parallels between how the media reported the Israel/Gaza war and the current one in Iran are near identical. Again, that crude Third Worldist narrative, the one that always has America as being little more than a puppet controlled by Israel and consequently their enemies of deserving uncritical support, created the conditionally concerned.

By conditionally concerned, I refer to those who claim to be all kinds of distressed by the deaths of Iranians, just so long as it is the right sort of people killing them. That would be the US and the Israelis. But not if it was the Iranian regime that was killing them. Those deaths, while reported on, did not garner a sustained, relentless and partisan global media campaign. Nor did they trigger widespread demonstrations in major cities around the world.

The many thousands of people who attended these demonstrations, held sit-ins on university campuses and demanded that politicians ceased supporting Israel because of its war in Gaza and civilian deaths were conspicuously silent when the Iranian regime was killing thousands of protesters. The irony of that silence was beyond irony. The protesters in Iran wanted nothing more than to have the same freedoms that protesters busily denouncing Israel enjoyed. But when deaths occurred because of US/Israeli military action, action which the protesters had long been calling for and which the US had promised, only then did Iranian deaths matter.

This brings us to the shamelessly bandwagoning. The charities, the NGO’s and all the others in the alphabet soup of moral certitude and probity who are all plugged into a mutually beneficial circle of criticism. Again, just as in the Israel Gaza war, if these charities and others issue damning reports full of fearful projections, alarming statistics and calls for immediate action, their profile will raise along with their funding. They’ll then cite these other reports as evidence something must be done, only as long as they approve it and can blame others – Israel and now America – if it goes wrong,

Then there are my favourite kind of shameless bandwagoneers, the political ones, who never see a tragedy without seeing an electoral opportunity as well. Which in the light of the recent trouncing of Labour by the Greens in the Gorton and Denton by-election, meant that Emu initially refusing, then reluctantly and since critically supporting the US/Israeli action. This had nothing whatsoever to do with attempting to placate Muslim voters ahead of Mays local elections, so better to prevent the widely predicted disaster.

The Cunning Stunt, who got even more of a trouncing at the same by-election, has pivoted wildly to signal his principled opposition to any such disaster in May. His speech in Parliament on Monday was textbook pleading. He quickly signposted his antipathy towards the regime, but then focused upon who he thought were more deserving of his condemnation; the British influencers and assorted tax exiles in Dubai who wanted to be flown home by the the government.

All of the above, the ruthlessly opportunistic, the conditionally concerned and the shameless bandwagoneers, exist in a perfectly engineered eco-system. One that is constantly propagating itself, sustained by its own imagined moral certainties but which is also oblivious of its inherent contradictions and manifold hypocrisies.

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November 21, 2025

33:64 presents “Kath Viner.”

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I’ve long been convinced that British popular culture has for some years now, been a poor imitation of the American one. An textbook example of this idea was always hamburgers. They had McDonalds and we got Wimpy. Even its name warned of disappointment. Because nothing screamed ‘fast food’ more than waitress service. Now I have an updated example of the same sadsackery, only this one comes with added ‘virtue’.

America now seems to be infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), which effectively views every action committed by President Trump as evidence of something so unspeakably awful that it must be spoken about all the time. Or protested about. But no matter how pathetic I think TDS is, he is at least the President. He has proper power. He can shape millions of lives. He leads a unified government, meaning that every branch of it – him, the Congress and the Senate – are all Republican. He is also the commander-in-chief of the worlds greatest military. He controls a vast nuclear arsenal. He can end billions of peoples lives at the touch of a button.

The most Farrago can do at the touch of a button is change the TV channel on his remote. The leader of a party with a the smallest number of MP’s in Parliament – 5 out of 650 – he somehow manages – in some peoples minds – to be the modern embodiment of Hitler,

So naturally, we have have to make do with Farragos’ Fake Scandals (FFS), which aren’t even proper scandals. The similarities with TDS don’t end there. Both are social contagions and both rely upon worryingly similar methods of transmission. Either passed on via individuals through friendship groups or other social networks, or for much greater propagation via constant repetition on the mass media. And similarly, both TDS and FFS are punishments for perceived ‘crimes’ against democracy.

Perceived of by those who believe in democracy, only it has to be the right kind of democracy. The one in which the right sort of people deliver the right sort of result. And when the wrong result is delivered by the wrong sort of people getting involved in matters best left to others, then the wrong sort of people suddenly became the wrong sort of right; ‘right-wing bigots’ or far right-wing extremists’.

Therefore, according to their twisted, wholly self-serving and corrupted version of democracy, Farrago who galvanised so many into being so wrong, deserves everything he gets. No allegation, no speculative conjecture, no hint of a hint of any impropriety is not so inconsequential as not to be worthy of feverish discussion and opined over.

And nothing is more inconsequential than allegations that when he was 13 – 13 – he made some distasteful comments. At 13 his voice hadn’t yet broken! He was barely a teenager. He was just starting puberty. Yet these allegations are ‘deeply shocking’? Indeed they are. I am shocked that anyone that anyone thought that these were shocking, still less that they thought they mattered.

And that’s my first problem with this. Do people seriously imagine that something boy of 13 is alleged to have said is in any way indicative of the man that boy has become 48 years later. It is alarming that people think it does and beyond ironic that these are the same people who quite happily blame Russian interference for influencing the Brexit vote, completely unaware that they are just as skilfully being manipulated as they believe others were. The motivation of grooming isn’t always sexual.

My second problem is what it says about the media we have and not just that because this isn’t the first time ‘The Guardian’ have tried before to smear him based on decades old here-say about his schooldays. But also because of the calculated cynicism it reveals. ‘The Guardian’ knows full well it’s readers will lap this up because it vindicates their fantasy of Farrago as being a throwback to a world they’d wish never happened. It also allows others to weigh on it, to report on what ‘The Guardian’ is reporting. Very now, very meta. And because of that, it allows Stymied to demand that Farrago to answer those reports.

Which is exactly the point of FFS. Throw enough mud, often enough and unexpectedly enough – who could’ve predicted that things he allegedly said 48 years ago would become a FFS – then some is bound to stick. And hopefully, the more that he’s discredited, the greater the likelihood is that potential supporters of his won’t want to be associated with that kind of mud.

Its also unsurprisingly hypocritical of ‘The Guardian’. Less than a fortnight ago, it gave their newest electoral hope a platform to rail against what he imagines to be his unfair treatment by the press. ‘The right can mock my teeth all it wants – it shows the Greens have struck a nerve.’ He may not have written the headline and probably not the sub-header that followed,’As a politician, I expect opposition and debate. But when it centres on personal insults, not policies, something else is going on.’

But he did write ‘What’s now clear to me, both from the sheer number of attacks and their increasingly wild nature, is that they are a product of a political and media establishment rattled by a party that’s growing fast and willing to say the unsayable: that our country has been hijacked by those interested only in serving the super-wealthy.’

If he really thinks that it is ‘the super-wealthy’ who have ‘hijacked’ our country or that he’s the one saying the unsayable then he’s so green I should rename him Jack Beanstalk. The ‘political and media established’ aren’t in the least bit rattled by him. If anything, the mere fact of ‘The Guardian’ giving him the opportunity to make this claim fatally undermines it.

The fact that FFS is now a staple of British politics proves that it isn’t Jack Beanstalk who scares them. It’s Farrago and what he represents. An ability to divine, articulate and champion the views of a substantial part of the electorate who feel cheated by this version of democracy, The ones who voted for Brexit. The ones who are living with the reality of what that means.

It also amuses me that ‘The Guardian’ which can usually be relied upon to be vocal supporters of an indigenous peoples in their struggles with a political system it believes marginalises them, takes an opposite stance both here and in America.

Although a really cynical interpretation of FFS is that it suits all concerned to let it continue. Farrago can use it to claim he is spearheading a revolt against the status quo, and his supporters can feel vindicated that the more FFS there are, the more worried ‘they’ are by them. Conversely, ‘The Guardian’ has a business model that depends on a endless stream of FFS and TDS stories, so the more they do, the more their readers keep funding them. They too feel vindicated, albeit in an absence parody of virtue.

On and on it goes, the political equivalent of an infinite loop.

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October 26, 2025

33:64 presents “Bob Dylan.”

The defeat suffered by Labour in the Caerphilly by-election would be incredibly ironic were it not for the fact of it being an ominous portent.

To begin with, the irony is that the same electoral discontent that propelled Labour into government is exactly the same as that which caused them to be so comprehensively rejected in Wales. Just as how their victory in the general election of 2024 wasn’t evidence of some long dormant upswell in Labour values amongst the voters, more than that it reflected their collective disenchantment after fourteen years of Tory Government, so to does its defeat last Thursday indicate less of a desire for Welsh independence than to send a message to Stymied.

No matter how much Plaid Cymru (PC) might claim otherwise, their basic shtick to the people of Caerphilly was ‘We’re not Reform’. Which was a shrewd piece of electoral maths. Anyone that might have otherwise have voted for Labour, the Conservative, Liberal Democrats or the Greens would have calculated that tactical voting was far more important than the result of one inconsequential by election.

Because no amount of testiculation can alter the fact that by-elections are the medieval equivalent of the government of the day being dragged to the stocks by voters and then pelted with rotten fruit, eggs and faeces. They prove only how unpopular a government is, which can be discerned from the both the voter turnout and who it was that the voters bothered to turnout for.

Which in this case amounted to 50.43% of them, of whom only of those 47.4% voted for PC of which significant proportion of those were the aforementioned tactical voters. The change in vote share bears this out, the short version being that Labour and Conservative vote share collapsed from the general election and from which PC benefitted.

My point is that this not only highlights voter disaffection generally – as evidenced by by the low turnout – but also a specific disaffection with the options open for them to choose from. If the main reason for your electoral success is from hoovering up ‘x’s from voters who detest another party more than they support your one, then that isn’t good.

It is also ominous because if we consider the success in 2024 of the six Independent Alliance MP’s and the barely over 30% of the vote they got on a roughly 40% turnout, and then factor that in with the collapse of traditional voting allegiances, then its clear that times are indeed a changing. Gone are the old class based loyalties. There was a certainty about them, rooted as they were in tangible differences which essentially boiled down to rich or poor.

Yes they were simplistic but the Britain of 1970’s, 80’s or even the 90’s, were simpler times, there was no hint of just how complicated politics were to become. But whilst the Britain of 2025 is still one of simpler times, it is not the simple one of of recent history, but rather the simple dvision of identity politics.

This is an inevitable consequence of a society that champions, rewards and celebrates an ever greater division based on identity. One that is increasingly partisan, intolerant and self-righteous but also a society which rewards those politicians that seek to fashion that discontent into political opportunity. By perpetuating the very division proclaims it opposes and by fostering more grievances, more reasons for division, they are like political alchemists; they turn impotence, frustration and alienation into electoral opportunity.

With little or no broad policy agenda – other than being opposed to things – and with scant regard for voter engagement beyond their core base and having no upside in remedying that, we are seeing a new kind of politics. Typified by Rasin, who hasn’t just divided along traditional political sectarian lines – left and right – but also among left and far left, and incredibly, those in the far left who don’t share her vision of what the far left is.

But then again, is she all that different to Stymied or The Cunning Stunt? Only by degree’s, not by instinct or motivation. They have spent the last eight years vilifying people who believed in the wrong kind of democracy. Would ideally prefer that it had never happened, traduced and impugned the reasons of the people who caused it to happen and ignored their point of view. How different is her divisive politics to those politicians who can’t accept that Brexit happened?

How is her continual repetition of the lie of there having been a genocide in Gaze not too dissimilar Stymied and Co banging on about the racist, xenophobic or bigoted motivations of Brexit voters? Or her pandering to disaffected former Labour voters, those who imagine themselves progressives or else those who feel more than they think any more cynical than than those politicians who citing Russian interference, manipulation by the ‘far right’ or fundamental ignorance as comforting explanations for Brexit?

It’s all on the same spectrum. I disagree with you and because you’re wrong, you’ve forfeited any right to be treated with the same respect I demand of others. That’s why the tactical voting in Caherphilly was so ominous, not because of what it was so much as to what it foretold. A growing willingness on the part of the electorate not to vote for who they want but to prevent the election of someone they want even less, And along with that, the idea that society should prioritise your grievances, needs and values above any other concern.

Now there’s a cheery thought.

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Tag: politics