#political-opinions

#political-opinions

The defeat of Viktor Orbán required not just an ordinary election campaign but the construction of a broad, diverse, and patriotic grassroots social movement, changing politics around the world.

In 2025, the political landscape was transformed when Mark Carney took the helm of the Liberals, leading to a surprising electoral turnaround that few predicted.

Haringey is at the heart of north London: it has leafy, affluent areas beside busy urban neighbourhoods; hundreds of restaurants serving cuisine from all over the world; and great parks and open spaces.

A ProPublica investigation has found that most of these bills are part of a coordinated effort, orchestrated by a constellation of groups that share staff or have funding ties to the prominent conservative activist Leonard Leo.

"A certain kind of person is opting into spending a lot of time on social media, and they may be people who are more disaffected to start with."

The cycle of dread and panic, of being driven to the edge at full speed before someone slams the brakes, harms our nervous systems, and has the potential to break our spirits.

Scarborough attacked Orban as an anti-democratic thug and criticized the administration for working alongside Russia to elect someone who opposes Western liberalism. He stated, 'Let's talk about the collusion that's going on right now between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to elect Orban.'

In the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber noted that sweeping industrialization would transform how societies worked. As small, informal operations gave way to large, complex organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, leaders would need to rely less on tradition and charisma, and more on organization and rationality. He also foresaw that jobs would need to be broken down into specialized tasks and governed by a system of hierarchy,

Populism may well have been the defining word of the previous decade: a shorthand for the insurgent parties that came to prominence in the 2010s, challenging the dominance of the liberal centre. But no sooner had it become the main rubric for discussing both the far left and far right than commentators began to question its validity: worrying that it was too vague, or too pejorative, or fuelling the forces to which it referred.

Collating data from the World Bank and other sources in innovative ways, he argues that globalization in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century was accompanied by then-unprecedented growth of income in both previously poor populations (notably in China) and people at the top of the world's income distribution (especially those in the West). By contrast, relative shares of world income stagnated or were thought to have declined for wealthy nations' middle and working classes, including in the United States.

The principle of intellectual charity is fundamental to constructive political conversations. This principle states that, in any discussion, we should accept the best version of an opponent's ideas, not a distorted version or a "straw man." Exaggeration and distortion of opposing opinions (always present, to some degree, in political debates) have become the standard form of political argument in contemporary America.

I am using the word pragmatism in a specific sense. I am not speaking about being pragmatic as a political tactic; deciding what issues should be given priority and what battles to choose, or a willingness to compromise, or a recognition that there are limits to what can be accomplished at any time. I am writing now about pragmatism in a meaning closer to its philosophical origin in the writings of William James-that truth is not found in abstract principles or beliefs,

The readings in my last series led me to see the genuine hatred conservatives have for what they call variously liberal hegemony, liberal ideology, left-wing ideology, and other names. David Brooks, newly ensconced at Yale and The Atlantic, is just sure it was liberals who caused Trump's wins, with their snotty "knowledge", and "refined tastes". I mocked this nonsense, but apparently Brooks was serious about the super bad feelings his people have about such things.

If Labour wins in what has been an over-50% solid red-voting area since the second world war, that will calm nerves on its febrile back (and front) benches. If Labour loses, heavy blame will fall on Keir Starmer for fixing the party's ruling NEC to bar Andy Burnham's selection, ensuring he couldn't challenge for the leadership without a Westminster seat.