If a week is a long time in politics, in tech – particularly on a real-time microblogging platform like Twitter – it is something like an eternity. A week ago today Elon Musk made huge cuts to Twitter’s staff, leaving half of the company’s 7,500 workers out of a job. The decision wasn’t entirely unexpected – and nor was the madness we’ve seen since. Musk seems to relish being an agent of chaos: to use the tech bro term, he’s a “disruptor”, and unapologetic about it – because he thinks it gets things done. In that sense, there are parallels between him and another radical revolutionary brought in to shake things up and kickstart a new era: Liz Truss. And just as ...

When Alexis de Tocqueville was 25 years old, the French government sent him to America to study the prison system. What began as a study of jail cells morphed into a nine-month epic road trip that criss-crossed the new country. He mingled with Americans from all walks of life (including President Andrew Jackson) and then wrote one of the best works of political science, Democracy in America. De Tocqueville was particularly fascinated by what he described as Americans’ “infinite art” at forming associations to solve common problems. In the America of the 1830s, citizens came together to hold village parties, build churches, distribute books and hold bake sales to fix schoolhouse roofs. The associations were the building blocks of a folksy democracy ...

Suddenly, and shockingly, in the wake of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous “mini-Budget” at the end of September, we are being told that a dramatic return to austerity is needed to plug a “black hole” in the public finances (whose value has been put at anything up to £70bn). Spending cuts similar to those imposed by George Osborne in his first term as chancellor are being mooted. After the lost decade of the 2010s, which academics at the University of Glasgow estimated to have led to over 300,000 excess deaths, this almost beggars belief. Yet the first round of austerity wasn’t rammed through by wild-eyed ideologues, high on Hayek, but well-groomed Sensibles such as Osborne and his chief adviser, Rupert ...

Felicitous news if you are one of the 11,000 people made redundant by Meta yesterday, or the 3,400 people made redundant by Twitter this week, or indeed one of the “hundreds” of people at Salesforce who are likely to lose their jobs shortly: one Silicon Valley company is actually expanding its offering. Zoom, the video platform loved and despised in equal measure by those banished from their workplaces by Covid, announced a range of new features at its already quite frightening sounding “Zoomtopia” conference this week. They include integrated email (because employees spend “almost four hours a week… flitting between apps”, a press release cheerfully pointed out), a “virtual coach” that gives salespeople “a practice environment to hone their pitch and obtain feedback”, ...

Ahead of the 8 November US midterms, the narrative went like this: Democrats focused on democracy and abortion; Republicans talked about crime and inflation. Democrats, conventional wisdom went, needed to do a better job of talking about the economy and about issues that matter to the working class. Democrats should, of course, improve their messaging on the economy (and where possible, improve the economy). Democrats should, of course, try to alleviate pain for working-class people, and should communicate how they are doing so to voters. But it also needs to be understood that abortion is an economic issue. Abortion is an issue for the working class. The Democrats, in reminding people that Roe vs Wade was overturned by Republican justices on the Supreme ...

On 4 November, Arts Council England announced the almost 1,000 cultural organisations in its latest portfolio. The list made headlines. “The Arts Council has put ideology over the success of British culture,” ran one in the Telegraph. The Guardian noted that the portfolio saw “arts funding diverted away from London”, which would result in the relocation of English National Opera – leading the Spectator to bemoan “the war on opera”.  It’s true that the portfolio marks a significant shift in government funding for arts and culture. As a result of this pivot, the north is now finally level with London in the number of National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) funded by the Arts Council, and the regions are growing in capacity. The new portfolio commits 21.8 per cent more ...

Boris Johnson’s resignation honours confirm that he is a one-man walking argument for House of Lords reform. Having already ennobled various donors and acolytes he has handed titles – and a lifelong presence in the legislature – to even more of his closest supporters. Following in the ermine-clad footsteps of controversial Johnson nominees such as Evgeny Lebedev and Peter Cruddas are a host of his most loyal MPs and aides, including one reportedly still in her twenties. The appointments are a crass form of patronage, offering a lifelong chance to vote on laws (and draw an income) in return for having shored up Johnson’s shaky premiership. They are hardly surprising moves from the former prime minister, who was always one to ...

Midterm elections are meant to be bad for the party in power. Midterms are definitely meant to be bad for the party in power when inflation and gas prices are high and the president isn’t popular with voters. Midterms shouldn’t be good for the Democrats when the Republicans have had two years since the 2020 presidential election to make it more difficult to vote in certain districts and to try to redraw electoral districts in their favour. And yet, though many went into the midterms on Tuesday night (8 November) expecting a Republican landslide, as of Wednesday morning we still do not know who will control the Senate or even the House, which Republicans were supposed to win easily. Democrats held ...