if you'd like to have me on *your* podcast to talk about Equator and how Keir Starmer sucks, let me know
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/1...
24.02.2026 22:13
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if you'd like to have me on *your* podcast to talk about Equator and how Keir Starmer sucks, let me know
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/1...
I know they do things differently in the lobby but this sort of sourcing drives me absolutely nuts. If Mandelson won’t give you comment on the record just write that he declined to comment. You don’t need to launder his excuses through a lens of deniability
“It is energising to witness the founding of an explicitly left-wing publication – of all things, a magazine! – with such a sense of political purpose and intellectual vigour.“
A very nice piece by Mark O'Connell about the launch of Equator:
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...
In Equator's first free Zoom event Melinda Cooper and Quinn Slobodian discuss the revelations of the Epstein files, and what they tell us about the obsessions of America's elites.
Time: Thursday, 26 February, 7 PM ET / Friday, 27 February, 11 AM AEST
Register: www.eventbrite.com/e/epstein-fa...
I love China and hip hop so I was an easy sell but I can't recommend this @equatormag.bsky.social piece enough. It is so hard to get good essays in English about life in China; this one is about so much more than music (though it's got that too)
After jailing Imran Khan two years ago, Pakistan’s military establishment has tried to erase him from public life. @osmansamiuddin.bsky.social travelled to Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore to report on this bizarre effort to disappear the country’s most famous man.
www.equator.org/articles/the...
NEW: Allies of Keir Starmer say Andy Burnham will not be allowed to stand - and one well-placed source suggests an all-BAME shortlist could be used:
Amazing how they just say this stuff out loud now. I assume they understand people can see them saying it.
This week's big new Equator story
The Hidden Imran
by Osman Samiuddin
The cricketing legend is Pakistan’s most famous man. Can the state make him vanish?
www.equator.org/articles/the...
Find out more at equator.org
The true essence of Starmerism: smug grandstanding about how he's not grandstanding. (Recall his pre-prepared response to a protestor at his conference speech in 2021: "Shouting slogans or changing lives, conference?")
“People are emboldened in part by the weakness of the regime, but also because society has been brimming with energy from both previous national protests & daily claim-making by nurses, teachers, truck drivers, farmers, pensioners, oil workers & many others. These protests don’t exist in a vacuum.”
Even five years ago, I would have scoffed at this suggestion. Reza Pahlavi hardly represented a serious political movement. I still don’t see a well-articulated, let alone coherent, political project, but we have to acknowledge that something has shifted and a return to Pahlavism has become meaningful to many Iranians. I can’t give you percentages, but we see it in urban areas and across many classes. That said, this is a reflection of the lack of viable alternatives to the Islamic Republic. At every turn in the past decades the Islamic Republic has cut off avenues for participation, representation, and for imagining a new political future. At the same time, it has violated the moral economy that was one of the core tenets of the revolution – that wealth and development was for all.
From this weekend's @equatormag.bsky.social newsletter, an interview with Arang Keshavarzian on the scale and significance of the protests in Iran: www.equator.org/articles/ira...
A question we can't stop asking is whether Trump is radically novel in American history or just a revival of the most reactionary past. This essay by Nikhil Pal Singh provides a new understanding the nature of Trump's hybrid regime: call it Homeland Empire
www.equator.org/articles/hom...
New genre of Binmenism (cf @danhancox.bsky.social ) slop has dropped: nostalgia for watching tv in the nineties
BREAKING Chinese spies only people brave enough to move to world's most dangerous city
New Substack from me - on "the battle for the soul of this country", fascism and UK rap's Flag Play danhancox.substack.com/p/i-think-i-...
“Everyone wants Ukraine to be a nation of heroes – but no one wants to talk about the violence required to sustain armed resistance to Russia’s invasion.”
A powerful new essay for EQUATOR by the Ukrainian writer and photographer Yevgenia Belorusets equator.org/articles/the...
New @equatormag.bsky.social: @naomiaklein.bsky.social on how the Surrealists transformed the wreckage of history into revolutionary art – and what their example can teach us about the fight against fascism today www.equator.org/articles/sur...
this piece, recommended to me years ago by @shainin.bsky.social , has always stayed with me www.ftrain.com/wwic
Important and remarkably timely piece by @trillingual.bsky.social in @equatormag.bsky.social www.equator.org/articles/ins...
For the @equatormag.bsky.social newsletter, I talked about how I reported my piece on the BBC and Gaza, and what's at stake in the current crisis. You can read/sign up below - Equator is a brilliant and necessary new magazine, so give it your support!
www.equator.org/articles/ins...
Equator is founded on our conviction that these storied titles of the Anglophone West cannot be internally reformed, nor redeemed by their periodic U-turns and belated mea culpas. The time has come to create something new.
We have just published Equator's editorial declaration — our commitment to build something new. Read more and be a part of what comes next: equator.org
The end of the West is not the end of the world.
EQUATOR: a new magazine of politics, culture, art.
** If you haven't signed up to our mailing list, do so at equator.org **
trump’s numbers are tanking and there is a palpable desire in the electorate for a real alternative and yet the only money in democratic politics is for doing starmerism
A group of high-profile writers is launching a new magazine called Equator “to challenge the reigning assumption that global events should be narrated by and for the West,” according to a description shared with Semafor. Its founding team includes Pankaj Mishra, Mohsin Hamid, Nesrine Malik, Samanth Subramanian, and Suzy Hansen, with editing by Guardian long reads creator Jonathan Shainin. “In a post-American era, the task of a new magazine is to engage the rich variety of this historical moment on its own terms, without compulsively asking ‘What does it mean for the US?’” the nonprofit outlet, which is primarily based in London, will ask.
Our new magazine, Equator, is officially out in the world — and here @equatormag.bsky.social
Sign up for preview emails, donate, and get tickets to our launch event in London: equator.org
I think a key UK political science question is how the current government can shoot itself in more feet than it actually has. And for theorists the issue is how to characterise a form of rule in which the government shoots itself in the foot, then puts the foot in its mouth and shoots it again.
Indeed. Far too much worrying about Polanski, about Farage, about the Ipsos' issues index, about individual polling, and not enough on 'how can we deliver election-winning budgets and spending rounds in 2027-8 and 2028-9'.
In Britain it's always 1933 (if we need to sell arms to someone) or 1942 (if we want to increase the Barratt Homes profit margin)
How it started How it's going
