James Butler is a contributing editor at the LRB. He co-founded Novara Media in 2011 and hosted its weekly radio show for several years.
The fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017 killed 72 people, 18 of them children. Most died from asphyxiation after inhaling toxic smoke from the cladding on the block, which acted like a coat of petrol on the walls. Some died leaping from the building. Families died together, huddled under beds, having been told to stay where they were. Disabled residents died waiting for a rescue that...
The first time the man heard God, he uprooted his entire life, though he was very old. Then God appeared to him in person, an event which would embarrass later thinkers. God made the man an impossible promise in the shape of a son. His wife was ninety, and she laughed. When the child arrived, it was hardly unreasonable to think it a miracle. They named the child after the laughter.
Then,...
Keir Starmer is now the central fact of British politics. He has achieved an extraordinary majority. His preferences and commitments will shape the country. He has ridden a wave of revulsion at Conservatism into Number Ten. Desire for change wore social democratic dress, but disgust is also anti-systemic: the depressed turnout and the success of pro-Gaza independents, Greens and Reform...
The gambling scandal seems likely to poison the last days of the election campaign and the end of Rishi Sunak’s tenure. It is an appropriate scandal for the last rites of this government: tawdry, sloppy and – most characteristic – small-time.
The intractable sense of exhaustion which attends British politics – not only in this election – is a signal of crisis in its institutions and ideologies.
In the run up to the local elections, and following his recent piece on the care crisis, James Butler joins Tom to discuss some of the other problems facing the UK, and what the two major parties are promising...
James Butler and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite talk to Tom about Britain's new monarch and Prime Minister.
James Butler joins Tom to consider the fall of Boris Johnson, the candidates hoping to replace him, and what the next few years of British politics might look like.
Geoff Mann talks to James Butler about the economic models developed by William Nordhaus and others, widely used by governments around the world as a tool to tackle climate change.
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