iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Maybe that's true, I don't know. I know that it's definitely true if we don't try. And it is not really about reforming the current system, so much as getting as much in place as possible for the moment when this system collapses.

Alperovitz is asking the reader to think through what the other choices look like, so no, clearly there are other options.

000

The in common part is vital: we have to be able to share ideas and refine them in practice. If we want to stop fascism we need to stop talking to plausible centrists, and start figuring out how to build working prototypes of democracy in the here and now, as well as the means to share the good news.

But it is the work that matters: if we don't have in common a plan for a democratic future the default becomes a conflict between a bewildered, rules-obsessed centrism and a passionately intense fascism in which, no matter who wins, almost all of us all lose.

130

I've been trying to think through what a democratised public media organisation looks like. And it's frustrating work, because critics can just say, "oh that won't work, ordinary people won't/can't do what you're asking of them" and what can you say? System design is both threatening and fragile.

230

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.com · 17/09/2026

Gar Alperovitz once asked "if you don't want capitalism or soviet communism, what do you want?" We still need to design, and popularise, a democratic successor to capitalist oligarchy. This is not a task for which many of us have been trained, or one than the current order will rush to reward.

1122

Reposted by Dan Hind

To address the threats of the climate crisis, AI (and reactionary tech billionaires), inequalities, failing public services, the rise of fascism etc, all we are being served is more of the same We know there are solutions and we know they are popular but these would require democratic societies

17131

Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

But what if democracy was the very rich friends Labour politicians and operatives made along the way?

0103

Reposted by Dan Hind

On the News Agents, Jon Sopel says that 9/11 made him realise he was “on the side of freedom-loving America”. Podcasts have done a lot through the sheer amount of material recorded to reveal just how storybook a lot of journalists’ analytical faculties are.

1916027

No, no, you had to pick a side and cheer for that one, no matter what. President Bush was very clear on this point.

The centre can live with Faragism, with every appearance of regret and sadness. But a democratic socialist government, whatever its merits, would prove that they were wrong about everything, their whole life, that they were selfish and stupid. And that's obviously outrageous and impossible.

043

Dan Hind @dannyhinduk.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

The centre left and the centre right have been in an existential battle to stop democratic socialism since the financial crisis of 2008. The rise of the far right is a price they are willing to pay, because for them the cure (democratic socialism) is far worse than the disease (Faragism).

145

A balanced package would feature both a Labour and a Green surrogate, perhaps while taking coordinates from a scrupulously independent pollster. But it's almost impossible to imagine Polanski's biographer @russellwarfield.bsky.social being given equal time to Starmer's biographer Tom Baldwin.

042

Dan Hind @dannyhinduk.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

... a former Conservative SPAD who now works for a centrist think tank opines that, while Polanski cut through against Starmer, he struggles against Burnham who is 'a master of social media'. He is also given time to tell us that, if Polanski loses, the Greens might start looking for a new leader.

231

Dan Hind @dannyhinduk.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

The people who put this Channel 4 package about the upcoming H&SP by-election probably have no idea how biased it is. Starmer's biographer gets 25% of the run time to say how great Labour's likely candidate is, and how wacky the Greens are. Then ... www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1uD...

youtube.com

Zack Polanski to stand in by-election for Starmer’s seat

YouTube video by Channel 4 News

193

To be clear, Keynesianism and Thatcherism are both modes for managing a mixed economy - philosophies of government, as I say. But they are different, quite distinct, modes. Thatcherism is extant, and it informs 4/5 major political parties in the UK.

100

So you are saying that Thatcherism is a kind of Keynesianism? I think I can see why you are struggling to understand what I am saying.

110

Britain's university system, built in large part after WW2, was one of most important elements in a state project to modernise the UK economy. From Thatcher onwards successive governments have tried out various kinds of market-mimicking governance and now the sector seems to be in full-blown crisis.

01210

It's standard usage to call Keynsianism a governing philosophy. Here are Backhouse and Bateman in the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics noting that it can refer to a political philosophy or, more narrowly, to an approach to macroeconomic management. It’s a bit odd you don’t know this.

110

My view is Thatcherism is a particular approach to moral and political economy, which replaced Keynesianism, and which is still the governing philosophy of 4/5 parties in OP. I don't see why you find this so hard to understand.

220

The chart you posted shows that UK has higher levels of state expenditure now than in the 1960s. It doesn't show that we're a normal country in terms of state regulation/intervention. But you haven't answered the question, does 79 mark a break with 45 or not? If it does, when did we replace it?

100

They will be as loudly and confidently wrong in future as they have been in the past: they have no incentive to change, and I am afraid their foolish fans will love them for it. Because the message is always, you're OK, the world is as it should be, and what you feel is true, is true.

085

No one is saying that 2026 is the same as 1986, or that Thatcher is telling Starmer what to do from the other side. Do you think Thatcher established a different model of political and moral economy in the UK after 1979? Has that model been replaced since then? What new model has replaced it?

100

that screenshot is perfect, the OP who clearly doesn't understand why town centres are failing, retweeted by a Murdoch employee complaining that the public are deluded idiots who deserve everything they get.

0122

Meanwhile wealthy liberals will wring their hands about the indelicacy of Reform's propaganda, might even realise that they are dealing with a far right project. But they will refuse to support the one electoral project that can beat Reform, for reasons provided by the centrist establishment.

020

This was the MAGA strategy in 2016, perfected after 2024. The challenge for the BBC is to pretend that it isn't happening, and to convince the electorate that a competent centrist establishment is being menaced by populists on the left and right, who are equally bad.

111

A group of very rich people have realised that they can mobilise non-voters through targeted ads, platform influencer subsidies, and a paid-for ground game: the hope is relatively modest investments can be turned into massive payouts via preferential access to policy-making after the 2029 election.

183

I agree that 2007 was an important moment, in that it demonstrated conclusively that Thatcherism had failed, and that we needed an entirely new approach to economic management. But no such new approach was forthcoming: Thatcherism remains in place to the present day.

000

When would you say the country broke with Thatcherism and adopted a different moral and political economy? 1997? 2010? 2024? How does this new governing philosophy differ from Thatcherism?

130

Of course it's very rough and ready and there are many exceptions/qualifications, but partly the story is of a change from seeing self-interest through the lens of (collective) bargaining, union power and political redistribution to seeing it through (individualised) asset inflation.

020

I summarise what I take Thatcherism to be in this thread. In a nutshell it's a variant of capitalism that has transferred an unusual amount of decision-making power out of the state into the private sector. bsky.app/profile/dann...

000

That's what Thatcherism is: it's left the UK an outlier in Northern Europe and very different from the 45-79 UK re levels of state intervention/regulation. As for what Thatcher would have made of the consequences, I'm not sure Keynes would have been thrilled by what Keynesianism became either.

Yes, it's focused on England, I agree: Scotland and Wales and N. Ireland are running on different timescales, with different dynamics. It's not that I am oblivious, honest, it's just that most of what I am saying here is specific to England, and doesn't really apply across the whole UK.

060

(btw I am not a nostalgist for 45-79, the question is what does 2026 call for.)

080

... 1979 was a sea change in moral and political economy on a par with 1945. The old duopoly parties worked within the framework established then in government ever since. The Lib Dems joined in when they had a chance. Reform is an authoritarian attempt to shore up 1979 for a little longer.

2180

4/5 of the parties in the picture accept 1. private control of the allocation of credit and investment 2. private control of housing supply 3. private ownership and control of utilities: 4/5 promote market logics over an ethic of social democratic public service. I work on the understanding that ...

5281

Mainstream discourse about the right-wing media refuses to explain this to audiences in plain terms, because that would be to admit that the media aren't simply in the business of making money or serving the public: they also aspire to wield power through their influence over voters.

095

pro-system media also work very hard to convince those on the left who vote left that they have *absolutely nothing* in common with people who support Reform, that there is no point talking to them, and that there is absolutely no way to win them round.

021