Solid Workers

Before fire ripped through Notre Dame Cathedral, the building was in a pretty parlous state . It gave an impression of grandeur and baroque beauty, and attracted the admiration and affection of millions. But behind the scenes, up close, chunks of masonry were disintegrating and dropping off, and water had ingressed into 19th century patch up work, disturbing the integrity of the building. The work that was, until Monday evening, meant to correct this was piecemeal and underfunded, above all reliant on the kindness of strangers . A decayed superstructure serves nicely as a metaphor for the state of liberal democratic politics. In 1964's British Political Parties , the classic study of British politics by Robert McKenzie, the state of the then Conservative Party is surveyed and he finds the party outside of parliament utterly dominated by the MPs and, above all, the leadership. If you were a member of the Tories in the early-mid 1960s, you had the chance to rub shoulders with arist...

If you are a Tory supporter, this week's polls make for grim reading. Following Survation - the only pollster whose findings should be taken with more than a pitch of salt - all the rest are posting leads for Labour of between one and nine ( nine! ) points. Things look especially catastrophic in the latest offering for YouGov on voting intentions in the European elections. As noted in discussing the Newport by-election , second order elections (all elections that aren't a general election, basically) tend to a flatter results profile as different issues and, in some cases, different electoral systems are in play. The common outcome are more potent challenges from fringe parties that depresses the share of the two main parties. With that caveat in mind, YouGov puts Labour on 24%, which is the same achieved by the party back in 2014. The Tories are on 16%(!), with Nigel Farage's Brexit Party on 15%, and UKIP on 14%. The Liberal Democrats, Greens and CHUKa bring up the also-ra...

Broadsheet litcrits consider Glamorama among the blackest of Bret Easton Ellis's sheep. It's over long, it's repetitive, it goes nowhere, it's needlessly graphic, and dwells too hard on the superficiality of consumer culture like so many novels have done. For a novel heavily and self-consciously laden with mid-late 90s fashionistas, getting panned as unoriginal and derivative upon publication is pain indeed. Yet this is to miss a trick. Glamorama is a novel of its time, like all novels are, and was absolutely tethered to the contemporary zeitgeist . The 'critique of consumerism' argument is as lazy and a superficial a take as the culture Ellis sends up. What species of criticism is this? Of the shopping sucks killjoy-leftydom variety? Or a wearisome conservative worry about materialism (in the conventional, bourgeois sense) displacing real meaning and connection? This is why, read in their context, Ellis's novels are so compelling. They eschew the earnest...

A great return to form.

Let's be quite clear about Julian Assange: he's a pretty awful character. Few but the most blinkered would disagree with Judge Michael Snow's description of him in court this afternoon as "a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest". And there are the politics too. Despite his status as a cause célèbre /poster boy for a section of the left, his views are anything but. Look how Assange has reciprocated their solidarity by hobnobbing with Nigel Farage and supporting Donald Trump . Not the kind of person the left would normally locate on their side of the barricades. But ah, Wikileaks. Undoubtedly Assange and his associates did the world a favour by publishing secret documents and diplomatic cables, including graphic evidence of war crimes by the United States army in Iraq - earning him the undying enmity of the foreign policy establishments in the US and the West. So yes, it is a disgrace that the US are attempting to extradite him on spurious coun...

Brexit's not going well, is it? The right wing press give voice to the tortures of the Tory backbenches. Imagine their pain, feel their agony. They achieved their heart's desire, a vote affirming their dream of leaving the European Union. And for the best part of two years, their Prime Minister has strung them along. At the height of her powers in 2016 she declared for a hard Brexit, and the Brexit hardcore squealed with glee. And immediately after the election, Theresa May gave her parliamentary party all the assurances that nothing had changed. Brexit was about "controlling our borders", kicking the European Court of Justice out of UK law, dark blue passports, back off Brussels, and signing new trade deals . These fantasies all appeared within reach and, well, May kiboshed them. Not only does her deal cede a great deal of leverage to the European Union should the UK fall into the backstop arrangements, parliament has repeatedly reminded the ERG that their favoured s...

Brexit doesn't have to suck the life out of everything else. Well, not when there's a brief interregnum in proceedings anyway. And besides, Hellfire - a beloved slice of early 90s nostalgia - is suddenly on point with its narrative of taking wing against a robotic tyrant and its works. Code the evil Super Mech as either Theresa May or the Brussels machinery, Hellfire is a game whose ideological coding can suit everyone! Okay, clumsy segue side there's absolutely no special reason for a reflection on Hellfire to appear now or at any time, except as writing for writing's sake. Shall we get to it? For those unfamiliar with the 16-bit console wars of almost 30 years ago (sniff), the MegaDrive had its Super Nintendo rival licked on shooters. With the odd notable exception , Sega's machine was overflowing with space-based shooting action. You could put it down to a paucity of original thinking, just as nearly every other game released on Nintendo's eight bit system...