The politics of being forgotten by Yash Irwin

There is a peculiar humiliation in British politics that does not involve losing an election, being heckled in Parliament or watching Nigel Farage steal your voters. It is being …forgotten.

For Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party, this may be the most interesting political development of all. Her name has not disappeared entirely, of course. She still makes occasional headlines, attacks Reform UK, criticises Labour and attempts to persuade the country that the Conservatives remain a government-in-waiting rather than a political museum undergoing renovations. But compared with the endless political oxygen once consumed by Conservative leaders, Badenoch can sometimes appear to be competing with the weather forecast for public attention.

And that raises an uncomfortable question for the Conservatives: is relative silence a sign of recovery, or irrelevance? The answer, unfortunately for Badenoch, may be a little of both. Her personal standing has improved from the depths reached after she became leader. There are even signs that voters increasingly regard her as decisive and competent. That is hardly a trivial achievement. But the Conservative Party remains substantially less popular than its leader, and the central problem confronting Badenoch is that improving perceptions of Kemi Badenoch is not the same thing as reviving the Conservative Party.

Politics is not a personality rehabilitation programme. The Conservatives have a much larger problem. They lost the 2024 election catastrophically, and since then their political territory has been invaded from the right by Reform UK, while Labour occupies much of the centre-left and the Liberal Democrats continue to make life uncomfortable in traditionally Conservative territory.

Badenoch's instinct has been to fight Reform by refusing to become Reform. That is sensible in theory. Yet the temptation to imitate its language, priorities and cultural battles remains obvious. She has ruled out an electoral pact with Nigel Farage and attacked Reform as a party of grievance. But the Conservatives cannot simultaneously tell voters that Reform is dangerous and spend their time explaining why they are almost, but not quite, as angry as Reform.

That is not a strategy. It is competitive shouting. The deeper problem is that Badenoch's Conservatives have yet to answer the question that matters most: what exactly are they for?

Cutting taxes is not a philosophy. Reducing regulation is not a philosophy. Opposing net zero policies is not a philosophy. Tougher immigration policies are not a philosophy. These may all have political value, but voters eventually want to know what kind of country a Conservative government intends to build.

A party cannot live indefinitely on the promise that everyone else is worse. This is why Badenoch's apparent disappearance from the headlines could actually be useful. Silence can create space for a political leader to develop rather than merely react. If she uses it to construct a coherent economic and social programme, rebuild credibility and demonstrate that conservatism is about more than fighting cultural enemies, she may eventually benefit.

But silence can also become invisibility. The Conservatives should therefore be careful what they wish for. A leader who stops generating damaging headlines may be an improvement. A leader who stops generating headlines because voters have stopped listening is something else entirely.

Badenoch's challenge is not simply to become louder. British politics already has enough noise. Her challenge is to become consequential. That requires turning the Conservatives from an angry opposition into a credible alternative government. It requires convincing voters that the party has learned something from its spectacular collapse rather than merely changing the person standing behind the lectern.

At present, the most dangerous thing happening to Kemi Badenoch may not be that people dislike her. It may be that they are beginning not to care. For a political leader, controversy can be survived. Indifference is much harder.

Muhoozi’s Uganda by Eze Ogbu

Something almost medieval about the political future being proposed for Uganda, the father has occupied the presidential throne for four decades, the son commands the army, and now the son announces that he intends to inherit the presidency. Only the medieval kings had the decency to call it hereditary.

General Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s declaration that he will run for president in 2031 is therefore more than another African election announcement. It is a glimpse of what happens when a republic slowly becomes a family enterprise. Kainerugaba is not merely the son of Yoweri Museveni. He is the son who has risen through the military hierarchy while his father remains president, acquiring precisely the kind of institutional power that makes succession look less like an election and more like an arranged transfer of property.

Kainerugaba has already supplied the public with an extraordinary preview of his political temperament. His social-media career has sometimes resembled the diary of a particularly excitable general who discovered the internet and forgot that national borders are not metaphors. In 2022, he caused a diplomatic uproar by suggesting that Uganda could invade Kenya. Museveni apologised for the remarks and removed his son from his military position at the time. Yet the political rehabilitation was remarkably swift. The general eventually returned to the top of the armed forces.

That is the curious thing about dynastic authoritarianism: consequences become temporary inconveniences when the family is sufficiently important.

Kainerugaba now commands Uganda's military while openly discussing his presidential ambitions. He has even spoken of his father campaigning for him and predicted an enormous electoral victory. Such confidence would be amusing if Uganda were an ordinary democracy. It is less amusing when the aspiring president is simultaneously the country's military chief and the heir apparent of a ruler who has been in power since 1986.

Elections, in such circumstances, risk becoming elaborate ceremonies performed after the important decisions have already been made.

The problem is not simply that Museveni wants his son to succeed him. Political dynasties exist everywhere, including in democracies. The problem is the machinery surrounding the inheritance: the army, the ruling party, patronage networks and a political culture in which opposition can become dangerous and institutions increasingly appear subordinate to executive power.

This is how authoritarianism modernises itself. It does not always arrive wearing a military uniform and announcing a coup. Sometimes it arrives in a tailored suit, carrying a family name and promising continuity.

And Muhoozi is an especially revealing successor because his public persona seems to embody something more volatile than his father's old-fashioned authoritarianism. Museveni represents the veteran strongman: disciplined, patient, calculating, endlessly capable of surviving political weather. His son has cultivated a reputation for impulsiveness, theatricality and provocative declarations.

That combination should concern Ugandans. A dictatorship inherited by a son is not necessarily a dictatorship made gentler by youth. It can become a dictatorship with fewer restraints and more confidence.

Uganda deserves something rather less dynastic: a political system in which the presidency is not a family heirloom, the army does not become a ladder to State House, and citizens are not expected to applaud the inevitable. A republic should produce presidents. It should not produce successors.

The heir and the brother by Cassandra Sparks

There is definitely something odd and more revealing about a future king who cannot speak to his own brother than all the carefully choreographed smiles, handshakes and constitutional speeches in the world.

Prince William and Prince Harry have spent years turning a family disagreement into something resembling a permanent diplomatic freeze. Harry is now back in Britain with his family, yet reports continue to indicate that the brothers remain estranged and have not resumed meaningful communication.

That should matter, not because Britain needs another royal soap opera, but because William is supposed to become the country's head of state.

Of course, nobody should pretend that family reconciliation is easy. The brothers have accumulated grievances, accusations, humiliations and wounds sufficient to fill several royal biographies. Harry has publicly discussed private family matters; William has reportedly regarded those disclosures as a profound betrayal. Trust, once shattered, is not repaired merely because two people share a surname and a childhood bedroom.

But leadership is often precisely about dealing with things that are difficult, uncomfortable and deeply personal.

The future king does not have to forgive everything. He does not have to forget anything. He does not even have to invite Harry back into the institution. But surely he should be capable of finding a private channel through which two brothers can at least talk.

That is not weakness. It is emotional competence. William's defenders will argue that the responsibility lies equally with Harry. Fair enough. Harry is hardly an innocent bystander in this family catastrophe. His interviews, memoir and public accusations have made reconciliation considerably harder. The Sussexes have also built a public identity partly around their estrangement from the institution they left.

Yet William carries a different burden. Harry is not preparing to become king. William is. A constitutional monarch cannot run Britain as though every disagreement were a personal vendetta. The crown's fundamental political function is to represent continuity, stability and, ideally, a capacity to stand above factional quarrels. The monarchy asks the public to believe that its occupant can embody something larger than himself.

That becomes slightly harder to believe when the heir cannot resolve, or even apparently communicate through, the most important family rupture of his adult life.

There is an uncomfortable irony here. William's modernisation of the monarchy increasingly depends upon making it appear more human, approachable and emotionally intelligent. His public image has moved away from the stiff formality of earlier generations.

But humanity is not merely smiling for cameras. It is knowing when pride has become an obstacle.

Perhaps William believes that silence protects his family, his wife, his children and the institution. Perhaps he believes that Harry cannot be trusted. Those concerns are understandable. But silence also communicates something. It says that the dispute has become more important than reconciliation.

And that is where the question becomes larger than two brothers. A king cannot choose his relatives. He cannot choose every crisis that will confront his country. What he can choose is how he responds when relationships become difficult.

Britain does not need a future king who wins every family argument. It needs one mature enough to know that sometimes leadership begins with picking up the telephone.

Ignorance as a governing strategy by Harry S. Taylor

Darline Graham’s much-discussed admission that national security is not her area of expertise would be easy to dismiss as the ordinary stumble of a political newcomer. Politicians say foolish things. Candidates forget facts. Debates produce moments that make campaign advisers reach for aspirin. But in the Trump era, the more revealing question is not whether ignorance exists. It is whether ignorance has become politically useful.

Graham is not merely an inexperienced candidate who wandered into a difficult foreign-policy question. She was seeking a six-year seat in the United States Senate, an institution whose members are expected to vote on wars, treaties, intelligence, military spending and international alliances. Her admission therefore raised a larger question: when did not knowing become something to advertise rather than something to remedy?

The answer lies partly in Donald Trump’s transformation of political loyalty into a substitute for competence. Trump enthusiastically backed Graham despite her limited political experience and acknowledged unfamiliarity with national-security matters. His endorsement helped carry her through the Republican runoff. The message was unmistakable: ideological alignment with Trump could matter more than mastery of the job.

That is not merely a problem for Darline Graham. It is a problem for a political system. There is a respectable American tradition of the outsider entering government. Outsiders can bring fresh eyes, practical experience and healthy suspicion of bureaucratic complacency. Abraham Lincoln did not arrive in Washington as a foreign-policy professor. Harry Truman was hardly an intellectual celebrity. But humility is different from ignorance, and curiosity is different from indifference.

A newcomer who says, “I don't know enough about Taiwan; I need to learn,” demonstrates humility. A politician who turns ignorance into a badge of authenticity risks making incompetence fashionable.

Trump understands this distinction instinctively. His political brand has long portrayed expertise as elitism, preparation as establishment theatre and institutional knowledge as evidence that someone belongs to the dreaded “swamp.” The ordinary citizen is elevated not because the citizen knows everything, but because knowing less can be presented as knowing something more authentic.

It is a clever political trick. It is also dangerous. The presidency and Congress are not reality television. National security does not pause while an elected official catches up. Neither do inflation, immigration, artificial intelligence, climate policy, nuclear weapons, public health or the federal debt. Governing requires learning. It requires listening to people who know more than you do. Most importantly, it requires the intellectual humility to change your mind when evidence demands it.

Blind loyalty destroys that process. The Trump model increasingly asks Republicans not merely to support policies but to demonstrate allegiance to the man who defines the movement. Graham’s victory showed that Trump’s endorsement still carries substantial weight when he chooses to spend political capital and campaign personally for a candidate.

This creates an uncomfortable inversion of democratic politics. Instead of asking whether a candidate is prepared to exercise power responsibly, voters are encouraged to ask whether the candidate is sufficiently loyal to the person already exercising it.

That is how ignorance stops being naïveté and becomes a pattern. The real danger is not that every Trump ally is ignorant. Many are not. Nor is every political outsider incompetent. Far from it. The danger is the celebration of incuriosity, the suggestion that expertise itself is suspicious and that loyalty is an adequate replacement for judgment.

America deserves politicians capable of saying, “I don't know.” It also deserves politicians who immediately add, “But I will learn.” That second sentence is the one democracy cannot afford to lose.

Ian Glim #015 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

A bewildered soul navigating global complexities armed
only with earnestness and a sharp, sarcastic wit.

For more Ian Glim, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The real social-media addiction by Jiro Lambert

The $18 billion settlement between Meta and 48 U.S. states may finally force Facebook and Instagram to confront one of their most obvious problems: children spending too much time on them. A two-hour daily limit, an overnight shutdown, stronger age verification and other protections are hardly trivial. They may even give parents something they have been requesting for years: a technological equivalent of saying, “Enough. Go to bed.”

But there is an uncomfortable question hiding underneath all those restrictions: What exactly are young people being protected from? Apparently, two hours of Instagram is dangerous, but two hours of Instagram filled with lies, manipulated videos, conspiracy theories and digital hatred is somehow merely a content-moderation problem.

That distinction is absurd. The greatest danger of social media is not simply that teenagers scroll too much. It is that while they scroll, someone is constantly trying to capture their attention with whatever is most provocative, outrageous, frightening or emotionally intoxicating. A teenager can spend twenty minutes looking at harmless photographs and then encounter a fake video portraying an event that never happened, a conspiracy theory presented as fact, or a vicious post designed to turn one group against another.

The algorithm does not care whether something is true. It cares whether people stop scrolling. That is the problem. A fabricated video can travel faster than a correction. A lie can acquire millions of views before anyone has checked it. A hateful post can generate thousands of angry replies while a sober explanation receives approximately the attention of a forgotten library notice.

And artificial intelligence is making the problem considerably worse. Fake photographs and synthetic videos are becoming increasingly convincing. Soon, “I saw it on Facebook” may be about as meaningful as saying, “A man in a pub told me.”

Yet regulators remain strangely fascinated by the stopwatch. Of course excessive screen time matters. Children need sleep, exercise, school, friends and the occasional miraculous experience of looking out of a window. But reducing the quantity of misinformation does not solve the quality of misinformation.

Indeed, a teenager could now spend exactly two permitted hours consuming a concentrated diet of political lies, racist fantasies, misogynistic abuse, conspiracy theories and fabricated videos. Congratulations: the child has complied with the settlement while the internet has still managed to poison the information environment.

Meta's settlement does include additional safeguards, and critics have argued that more attention must be paid to recommendation systems and harmful content. But the deeper problem remains remarkably simple. Social-media companies have built enormously sophisticated machines for predicting what will keep human beings engaged, yet society still struggles to demand equally sophisticated systems for determining what deserves to be believed.

That imbalance should embarrass us. A healthy digital environment cannot merely ask, “How long were you online?” It must also ask, “What did you encounter while you were there?”

If regulators are serious about protecting young people, they should stop treating social-media addiction as principally a matter of minutes and start treating the information ecosystem itself as a public concern. Two hours of truth is not necessarily harmful. Two hours of lies can be.

Breaking out through words by Thanos Kalamidas

Richard Stanford’s “Peter Madden and Theatre of Prison” – book review

There are books about prison, and then there are books that seem to carry the atmosphere of prison between their pages; the claustrophobia, violence, despair, boredom and occasionally the extraordinary flashes of humanity that survive behind bars. Richard Stanford’s Peter Madden and Theatre of Prison belongs firmly to the latter category. It is not simply a biography of a prisoner who became a writer. It is a remarkable study of how creativity can emerge from confinement and how, for one man, writing became another form of escape.

I have the particular pleasure of reviewing this book not only as a reader but as someone who s honoured to often communicate with Richard Stanford personally and in many levels. That makes the experience more personal, but it also makes me appreciate the seriousness of what he has undertaken. Stanford has not produced a conventional prison memoir or another familiar tale of redemption. Instead, he has constructed an unusual hybrid of biography, memoir, interviews and screenplay, allowing Peter Madden’s own voice and imagination to remain at the centre of the story.

Madden’s journey is extraordinary. A long-term prisoner, he found himself confronted with the monotonous treadmill of incarceration and the psychological pressures that accompany years behind bars. Yet instead of allowing prison to define the limits of his existence, he began teaching himself to write. The act was both practical and symbolic: if the prison controlled his physical movements, perhaps words could provide the freedom his body could not.

This is where Stanford’s book becomes especially compelling. Madden did not escape prison by pretending it did not exist. He escaped, intellectually and creatively, by confronting it. His writing turned the prison environment, its inhabitants and its demons into material for theatre. The men around him became characters; their conflicts became dramatic narratives; their fears, obsessions and contradictions became something that could be examined rather than merely endured.

The result was a body of work that occupies a distinctive place in prison literature. Madden’s stage plays are not romanticised portraits of incarcerated men. They are darker, stranger and more revealing. He looks directly at the psychology of prisoners and the forces that shape behaviour inside an institution designed primarily to control rather than rehabilitate.

Stanford wisely allows these portraits to speak for themselves. His use of screenplay conventions gives the book an almost cinematic quality, while the interviews provide an immediacy that a conventional biography might lack. We hear Madden reflecting on his past, his motivations and the circumstances that transformed him into a writer. The effect is intimate without becoming sentimental.

Perhaps the most fascinating theme is the paradox at the heart of Madden’s story: prison becomes both the worst and, in an unexpected sense, the best possible environment for the creation of a writer. It is obviously a “living hell”, as the book describes it, but hell provides an extraordinary abundance of human drama. Fear, anger, loyalty, betrayal, loneliness, violence and friendship exist in concentrated form. Madden learned to observe these things and, more importantly, to transform observation into art.

That transformation is the book’s real achievement.

Peter Madden and Theatre of Prison also raises larger questions about what society means by rehabilitation. We often speak about prisoners in statistical or institutional language: sentences, offences, recidivism, release dates. Stanford’s book asks us to look instead at the individual imagination. What happens when somebody whom society has effectively written off discovers that he can create, communicate and make strangers listen?

The answer is surprisingly powerful. This is not an easy book, nor should it be. It deals with darkness without decorating it. Yet there is ultimately something deeply hopeful about Madden’s story. His greatest act of defiance was not escaping physically from prison but discovering that his imagination could not be imprisoned.

Richard Stanford has captured that journey with intelligence, sympathy and a strong sense of drama. His friendship with Madden’s story is never allowed to overwhelm the subject; instead, it seems to have given him the patience to listen closely and the determination to preserve the voice of a man whose experiences might otherwise have remained unheard.

Peter Madden and Theatre of Prison is therefore more than a book about one prisoner becoming a writer. It is a book about the stubborn survival of imagination under circumstances designed to extinguish it.

Madden discovered that prison could take away years, freedom and opportunities but it could not necessarily take away the ability to tell a story. And sometimes, a story is the first door through which freedom begins.

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You can find Richard Stanford’s book HERE!

The exit Trump cannot sell by Dag Hansen

Six months into the war with Iran, Donald Trump has arrived at the most awkward destination in American foreign policy, the exit ramp. There is only one problem. He cannot admit that he needs one.

The war that was supposed to demonstrate overwhelming American power has instead become a test of political endurance. The administration's objectives have shifted, military pressure has failed to produce the clean strategic outcome promised at the beginning, the Strait of Hormuz remains a central problem, and Washington has increasingly turned from bombs to economic pressure and negotiations.

This is not how Trump imagined victory. Trump's preferred political universe has always been one in which every retreat can be renamed a triumph. A compromise becomes a historic deal. A concession becomes brilliant leverage. A pause becomes overwhelming strength. A problem created by yesterday's decision becomes proof of today's genius.

But Iran is refusing to cooperate with the script. That is the great irony of this war. Trump entered it promising that American power would settle the matter quickly. Six months later, Washington is looking for diplomatic doors that it once seemed determined to kick off their hinges. Recent efforts have included indirect negotiations and attempts to find a formula for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, while the administration has increasingly emphasized sanctions and economic pressure.

The transformation is politically revealing. A president who once treated negotiation as something reserved for winners now needs negotiation precisely because the military solution has become insufficient. Iran has been badly damaged, but damage is not the same thing as surrender. The Iranian government remains capable of causing disruption, retaining leverage in the Gulf and making America's continued involvement costly.

This is where the rhetoric collides with reality. Trump can declare victory whenever he wishes. The presidency comes with a remarkably powerful microphone. But declarations do not reopen strategic waterways, replenish depleted weapons stockpiles, erase casualties or manufacture an acceptable political settlement.

And Americans are beginning to notice the difference. The war's domestic political cost is becoming harder to disguise. Support for military action has fallen, while rising energy costs and broader economic uncertainty have created precisely the kind of political environment in which a foreign-policy adventure becomes a domestic liability. Reuters reported this week that only 31 percent of Americans in a Reuters/Ipsos poll supported U.S. military action against Iran.

For Trump, the timing could hardly be worse. The midterms are approaching. Republicans do not need another foreign-policy monument to presidential improvisation hanging around their necks. Voters may tolerate a spectacular military operation. They are considerably less enthusiastic about paying for a prolonged geopolitical experiment every time they fill their cars or buy groceries.

So Trump needs an exit. What he does not want is an exit that looks like one. That distinction may ultimately determine how this war ends. The sensible solution would be diplomacy: a negotiated arrangement that protects American interests, addresses the nuclear question, establishes mechanisms for de-escalation and gives both sides enough political cover to claim something resembling success.

That is precisely what makes it so difficult for Trump. Diplomacy requires accepting that the other side exists, has interests and cannot simply be ordered to disappear.

The mature president would explain that ending a war responsibly is itself a form of strength. The political showman fears that voters will see responsibility as retreat.

But there is nothing dignified about remaining in a war merely to avoid admitting that leaving is necessary.

The real humiliation would not be negotiating an exit. It would be sacrificing more lives, money and credibility because the president is too proud to call an exit what it is: the beginning of wisdom.

Trump created the problem. Now he needs to discover whether he is capable of solving it without creating an even larger one. History is rarely kind to leaders who confuse victory speeches with victories. And Iran has given Donald Trump the one thing his political career has consistently avoided, a problem that cannot be solved by simply declaring himself the winner.

Berserk Alert! #116 #Cartoon by Tony Zuvela

 

Tony Zuvela and his view of the world around us in a constant berserk alert!
For more Berserk Alert! HERE!
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Ant-sized Culinary #014 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

In the bustling undergrowth of Picante Hill, Anton the culinary ant dons his oversized toque and delivers deliciously chaotic cooking wisdom, one tiny misadventure at a time.

For more Ant-sized Culinary HERE!
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The Tory blues by Jemma Norman

There must be moments, late at night, when some of the Conservative politicians who have marched through Nigel Farage’s revolving door quietly wonder whether they have made a terrible mistake. Perhaps they lie awake remembering the old Tory party, the one with its rituals, its grand old men, its conference rows, its Cabinet committees and, above all, the comforting certainty that everyone knew who was supposed to be in charge.

Instead, they joined Reform UK. And now they have Nigel Farage. This is not necessarily a criticism of Reform’s policies. One can agree with its arguments on immigration, taxation or the failures of Westminster without necessarily signing up for the increasingly personalised politics surrounding its leader. The curious thing about some of the Tory defectors is that they appear to have escaped one political personality cult only to discover another waiting at the railway station.

The Conservative Party they abandoned was indeed exhausted. It had spent years eating itself, changing prime ministers, fighting internal wars and treating political survival as a substitute for political purpose. The 2024 election was not merely a defeat but an exorcism. Reform offered an obvious escape hatch: sharper language, fewer inhibitions and the intoxicating promise that politics could once again be about enemies rather than committees.

For politicians such as Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman, Danny Kruger and others, joining Farage could therefore look less like betrayal than migration to the future. Reform seemed energetic while the Conservatives seemed embalmed.

But political movements have an awkward habit of revealing themselves once the honeymoon ends. Farage's political gift is enormous. He understands grievance, television, timing and the emotional vocabulary of people who believe that polite politics has failed them. But charisma has a darker twin: narcissism. A party built around one man inevitably risks becoming an audience for that man's performance.

And there are already signs that Reform is discovering the difference between a movement and a personality cult. Internal criticism of Farage has produced uncomfortable consequences, while quarrels involving senior figures have exposed tensions between the party's populist theatre and the rather more complicated business of building a functioning political organisation.

This should make former Conservatives nostalgic. Not necessarily for Boris Johnson. Certainly not for Liz Truss. And probably not for the endless parliamentary soap opera that preceded the Conservative collapse. But they may discover that boring politics has virtues.

A party with competing factions can be irritating. A party with no competing factions can be frightening. A Cabinet full of people arguing can look dysfunctional; a movement in which everyone eventually learns to applaud the leader can look efficient right up until it becomes dangerous.

The defectors may have believed they were joining the Conservative Party without the Conservative Party's baggage. They may instead have joined something more volatile: a political vehicle whose greatest strength and greatest weakness is the same man.

That is the irony. The old Tories were painfully dull, occasionally ridiculous and spectacularly capable of self-sabotage. Reform is exciting, angry and apparently convinced that history has finally arrived at its front door.

But perhaps, after watching Farage perform his Trumpian politics of grievance and personal dominance, some of the defectors are beginning to miss the old blue benches. There was something reassuring about a political party where the leader could be challenged. Even by his own people. Especially by his own people.