Politics & Economics

Prediction Markets

Geoff Mann

22 October 2026

Beneath a list of current bets on whether there will be a coup in this or that country by a certain date, Polymarket answers the FAQ ‘Why use Polymarket for coup predictions?’ with the response: ‘It cuts through the noise. You get an unbiased view of what thousands of traders think will actually happen, often more accurate than polls.’

Read more about What’s the truth? Prediction Markets

Midterm Chicanery

Aziz Huq

22 October 2026

O n​ 13 August, Donald Trump’s paper ballot for the Republican Party primaries in Florida arrived at the offices of the Palm Beach County supervisor of elections; it was the second vote he . . .

The Russians are coming

Tom Stevenson

8 October 2026

A t Narva​ in north-east Estonia, Hermann Castle, a reconstructed Teutonic fort, sits directly opposite Ivangorod Fortress on the Narva river. The two castles are only about 150 metres apart, but . . .

Funding Reform

Peter Geoghegan

8 October 2026

W hen​ the former Conservative Party treasurer Alistair McAlpine died in 2014, he was hailed as the most successful fundraiser in modern British political history. His approach was simple: ‘I . . .

Ghost Fleets

Laleh Khalili

8 October 2026

O n​ 16 June, a yacht flying the Red Ensign and a Russian frigate called Admiral Grigorovich approached each other in the English Channel, around twenty nautical miles south of the Isle of Wight . . .

The World since 7 October

Adam Shatz, 24 July 2025

 The inability of Western powers to condemn Israel’s conduct – much less bring it to an end – has made a mockery of the rules-based order that they claim to uphold.

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Bolsonaro’s Brazil

Perry Anderson, 7 February 2019

By comparison with the scale of the upheaval through which Brazil has lived in the last five years, and the gravity of its possible outcome, the histrionics over Brexit in this country and the conniptions over Trump in America are close to much ado about nothing.

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Let Them Drown

Naomi Klein, 2 June 2016

Environmentalism might have looked like a bourgeois playground to Edward Said. The Israeli state has long coated its nation-building project in a green veneer – it was a key part of the Zionist ‘back to the land’ pioneer ethos. And in this context trees, specifically, have been among the most potent weapons of land grabbing and occupation. 

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Where will we live? The Housing Disaster

James Meek, 9 January 2014

The government has stopped short of explicitly declaring war on the poor, but how different would the situation be if it had?

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What I Heard about Iraq: watch and listen

Eliot Weinberger, 3 February 2005

In 1992, a year after the first Gulf War, I heard Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, say that the US had been wise not to invade Baghdad and get ‘bogged down in the problems of trying...

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Moderation or Death: Isaiah Berlin

Christopher Hitchens, 26 November 1998

In​  The Color of Truth*, the American scholar Kai Bird presents his study of McGeorge (‘Mac’) and William Bundy. These were the two dynastic technocrats who organised and...

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Why Fascism is the Wave of the Future

Edward Luttwak, 7 April 1994

That capitalism unobstructed by public regulations, cartels, monopolies, oligopolies, effective trade unions, cultural inhibitions or kinship obligations is the ultimate engine of economic growth...

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The Morning After

Edward Said, 21 October 1993

Our peoples are already too bound up with each other in conflict and a shared history of persecution for an American-style pow-wow to heal the wounds and open the way forward. There is still a victim and a victimiser. But there can be solidarity in struggling to end the inequities, and for Israelis in pressuring their government to end the occupation, the expropriation and the settlements. The Palestinians, after all, have very little left to give.

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Maastricht and All That

Wynne Godley, 8 October 1992

A lot of people throughout Europe have suddenly realised that they know hardly anything about the Maastricht Treaty while rightly sensing that it could make a huge difference to their lives....

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Diary: Bristol goes Green

D.K. Renton, 8 October 2026

Alsayed Al-Maghrabi, a Labour councillor of Palestinian ancestry, quit Labour for the Greens. He told me he had joined Labour only because of Jeremy Corbyn and began to doubt whether he was in the right...

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Short Cuts: J.D. Vance’s Conversion

James Butler, 13 August 2026

The most obvious question is not whether J.D. Vance believes what he claims to believe, but why, if he believes it, he acts as he does. Halfway through Communion he quotes, without irony, a recovering...

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Those who look for the cause of today’s resurgence of Neets in a more recent global shock, the Covid pandemic, need to explain why British youth seem to be suffering a worse pandemic hangover than...

Read more about Young People Are Different: What do Neets need?

‘This looks absolutely rubbish’: Palantir and the NHS

Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin, 23 July 2026

A decade ago Palantir was largely unknown in the UK. It now holds public contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds in everything from financial regulation to local government. Yet behind the company’s...

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Canton Kitty: Seafaring

Laleh Khalili, 23 July 2026

Seafaring is a bundle of contradictions. It is highly skilled labour, yet mostly invisible. Lower ratings of seafarers are housed together, six or eight to a claustrophobic cabin, yet they are chronically...

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The Cult of Longevity

David Runciman, 23 July 2026

We don’t have a politics of what works so much as a politics of what older citizens won’t notice. All human beings are risk-averse but we get more risk-averse as we get older. Now that older...

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Diary: In Venezuela

Armando Ledezma, 9 July 2026

I wanted to visit La Guajira to learn about the US airstrike on Venezuela but also to see genuine resistance. Under attack from the US, who better to turn to than a people who have preserved their languages...

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Short Cuts: Stealing from the SNP

Dani Garavelli, 9 July 2026

Peter Murrell squandered the SNP’s reputation on £42,660 worth of Amazon packages and a necklace from a Shetland jeweller that Nicola Sturgeon thought was a sweet gift. Outside the court,...

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For years politicians had taken it for granted that they could profit from the grey economy of French politics. Sarkozy’s mistake was to take it too far. He was unable to spot the difference between...

Read more about Does he still jog? Sarkozy’s Prison Diary

Marwan Barghouti enjoys unparallelled popularity and is often described as Palestine’s Nelson Mandela. Like Mandela, he’s far from perfect, but his activism, his writings and his long imprisonment...

Read more about ‘I would never release him’: Marwan Barghouti and Palestine’s future

Leap in the Dark: Irish Unity

Patrick Cockburn, 9 July 2026

What would happen if these two very different societies were united, when their institutions and attitudes have evolved in such different ways? What are the political, economic and social advantages and...

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At Dungeness

Susannah Clapp, 9 July 2026

Here is an antidote to current traps and poisons. People who rescue rather than attack, who move in a physical, not a virtual, world, who don’t morally triage others. Who put themselves in danger...

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Burnham’s Political Economy

William Davies, 9 July 2026

Whatever rash remarks he may have made about the bond markets or spending commitments, Andy Burnham understands something that Keir Starmer grasped too late: the unaffordability of everyday life has become...

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Big Ag

Hester van Hensbergen, 25 June 2026

In​ 2018, the German company Bayer bought the US agrochemical giant Monsanto, inheriting not just its vast portfolio of seeds and pesticides, but also thousands of lawsuits alleging that glyphosate,...

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The beautiful game has never looked more beautiful on the pitch, or more ugly off it. We strain for the sake of our consciences to sequester the two, but Gianni Infantino’s Fifa has made that impossible.

Read more about ‘I wouldn’t pay it either’: World Cup Wallcharts

War on the Shia: In Lebanon

Zain Samir, 25 June 2026

In the 1960s, Lebanese society was divided between those who saw armed resistance against Israel as a national duty and those who believed it would inevitably lead to the country’s destruction....

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Slavdom: What Russians Want

Greg Afinogenov, 4 June 2026

Unlike 20th-century communism or fascism, contemporary Russian ideology does not have a clearly articulated manifesto or creed, but has been formed through successive smaller ideological conflicts. Putin...

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Gavin Newsom describes himself as an ‘accidental politician’. The San Francisco mayor Willie Brown anointed him as his preferred successor, though the decisive factor was probably his ability...

Read more about ‘Gavin, Gavin, we love you!’: Will Newsom run?

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