Step 1: Export your ChatGPT history

1. In ChatGPT, go to Settings → Data Controls → Export Data

2. Request the export — you’ll receive an email with a download link. I had to wait a few hours for mine.

3. Click the download link. You need to click it within 24 hours of receiving it. It should download a zip file which, if it doesn’t unzip automatically, you’ll need to click to unzip. You’ll then have a folder with a name consisting of a long string of numbers and letters.

The export contains several files. The ones you need are the numbered JSON files: conversations-000.json, conversations-001.json, and so on. These will typically contain about a hundred coversations each so for my almost 700 conversations there were seven of them.

Step 2: Install Python

The next steps use Python scripts to process your export files. If you’ve never used Python before, here’s how to set it up.

Check if you already have Python:

• On Mac: Open Terminal (search for it in Spotlight) and type python3 --version then press Enter. If you see a version number, you’re good.

• On Windows: Open Command Prompt (search for “cmd”) and type python --version then press Enter.

If you don’t have Python installed:

• Go to python.org/downloads and download the latest version

• Run the installer — on Windows, make sure to tick “Add Python to PATH” before clicking Install

• Once installed, confirm it worked by running python --version again in a new terminal window

A note on terminals: All the commands in this guide are run in a terminal (Mac) or Command Prompt/PowerShell (Windows). To navigate to a folder, use the cd command — for example, cd Downloads/chatgpt-export. You can also usually right-click a folder and choose “Open in Terminal” or “Open PowerShell here”.

Step 3: Identify your projects

ChatGPT exports don’t include project names directly, but they do include a gizmo_id field that maps to your ChatGPT projects. This script will show you what projects you have and how many conversations are in each. Save it in your ChatGPT export folder as something like get-projects.py and in a terminal do python get-projects.py to run it.

import json, glob
from collections import defaultdict

INPUT_DIR = "."  # folder containing conversations-*.json files

groups = defaultdict(list)

for filepath in sorted(glob.glob(f"{INPUT_DIR}/conversations-*.json")):
    for conv in json.load(open(filepath)):
        gid = conv.get("gizmo_id") or "none"
        groups[gid].append(conv.get("title", "Untitled"))

for gid, titles in sorted(groups.items(), key=lambda x: -len(x[1])):
    print(f"\n{gid} ({len(titles)} convs):")
    for t in titles[:5]:
        print(f"  - {t}")

The output will look something like:

none (250 convs):
  - Some random conversation
  - Another one-off topic
  ...

g-p-67ae1f1ab80081918293cb5cb1caf506 (140 convs):
  - Job application help
  - Cover letter draft
  ...

The none group contains conversations that weren’t in any ChatGPT project. The g-p-... ids are your ChatGPT project identifiers. From the first five titles of each group, you should be able to tell what each project was about, assuming your chats have descriptive titles. If they don’t, it may be worth giving the most recent chats in each ChatGPT project a good title before you run the export.

Make a note of your mapping, mapping each project id to the project name. For example:

• none → General

• g-p-67ae1f... → Career & Job Search

• g-p-67efec... → Web Development

• (and so on for each ID)

You don’t have to use the exact same project names you had in ChatGPT.

Step 4: Convert conversations to markdown

This script converts all your conversations into individual markdown files, organised into folders by project. Markdown files are specially formatted files that Claude uses to tell it about a project. Edit this Python script, putting in your own project ids and names you got in Step 3, then save it in the same directory as your conversations-*.json files, naming it something like convert-convos.py, and run it in a terminal with the command python convert-convos.py.

import json, os, glob
from datetime import datetime

INPUT_DIR = "."        # folder containing conversations-*.json
OUTPUT_DIR = "./claude_projects"

# Edit this mapping to match your own projects
# Keys are gizmo_id values from Step 2; values are your chosen folder/project names
PROJECTS = {
    None: "General",
    "g-p-REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_ID": "Your Project Name",
    # add more entries here...
}

def extract_text(content):
    parts = content.get("parts", []) if content else []
    out = []
    for p in parts:
        if isinstance(p, str):
            out.append(p)
        elif isinstance(p, dict):
            if p.get("content_type", "").startswith("image"):
                out.append("[image]")
            elif p.get("name"):
                out.append(f"[file: {p['name']}]")
    return "\n".join(out)

def get_messages(mapping):
    root = next((k for k, v in mapping.items() if not v.get("parent")), None)
    if not root:
        return []
    messages, node_id, visited = [], root, set()
    while node_id and node_id not in visited:
        visited.add(node_id)
        node = mapping.get(node_id, {})
        msg = node.get("message")
        if msg:
            role = msg.get("author", {}).get("role", "")
            text = extract_text(msg.get("content", {}))
            if role in ("user", "assistant") and text.strip():
                messages.append((role, text.strip()))
        kids = node.get("children", [])
        node_id = kids[0] if kids else None
    return messages

# Create output folders
for name in PROJECTS.values():
    os.makedirs(f"{OUTPUT_DIR}/{name}", exist_ok=True)

# Load all conversations
convs = []
for f in sorted(glob.glob(f"{INPUT_DIR}/conversations-*.json")):
    convs.extend(json.load(open(f)))

print(f"Processing {len(convs)} conversations...")

for conv in convs:
    title = conv.get("title") or "Untitled"
    ts = conv.get("create_time")
    date = datetime.fromtimestamp(ts).strftime("%Y-%m-%d") if ts else "unknown"
    messages = get_messages(conv.get("mapping", {}))
    if not messages:
        continue

    gid = conv.get("gizmo_id")
    folder = PROJECTS.get(gid, "General")
    safe = "".join(c if c.isalnum() or c in " -_" else "_" for c in title)[:80].strip()

    with open(f"{OUTPUT_DIR}/{folder}/{date} {safe}.md", "w") as f:
        f.write(f"# {title}\n*{date}*\n\n")
        for role, text in messages:
            label = "**You**" if role == "user" else "**ChatGPT**"
            f.write(f"### {label}\n{text}\n\n")

print(f"Done → {OUTPUT_DIR}/")

After running it, you’ll have a claude_projects/ folder containing one subfolder per project, each containing individual .md files named by date and conversation title.

Step 5: Create projects in Claude

1. Login to claude.ai and click Projects in the sidebar

2. Create a new project for each folder you generated in Step 4

3. Give each project the same name as the corresponding folder

Step 6: Upload files to each project

For each project:

1. Open the project in Claude

2. Scroll down to the Files section and click the + button

3. Choose Upload from device

4. Select all the files from the corresponding folder (Ctrl+A / Cmd+A to select all)

5. Click Open and wait for indexing to complete

A few things to expect:

• Indexing time scales with the number of files. A large project (100+ files) can take 30–60 minutes to fully index. If the interface appears stuck, refresh the page — the files are usually already indexed.

• Capacity: each project shows a capacity indicator. Smaller, focused projects use very little capacity; large general-purpose projects with 200+ files will use more. If you hit the limit, consider splitting large projects or filtering out less relevant conversations before uploading.

• Duplicates: if two conversations have the same title and date, the OS file picker will silently skip one. This is normal and affects only a handful of files at most.

What you get

Once uploaded, Claude can reference any of your past conversations within a project. When you start a new chat inside a project and ask something like “have I looked at this before?” or “what did I decide about X?”, Claude will search the project knowledge and surface relevant context from your ChatGPT history.

It’s not a perfect recreation of having a continuous memory — Claude treats the files as reference documents rather than conversations that actually happened within Claude — but it’s a practical way to carry your accumulated knowledge across platforms without starting from scratch.

Tips

• Be selective with General — the uncategorised conversations pile up over time and many will be trivial. Consider skimming the folder and deleting one-off conversations (e.g. “what’s the weather like in X”) before uploading, to keep the project focused.

• Add project instructions — each Claude project has an Instructions field. Use it to tell Claude the context of the project, e.g. “This project contains my history of web development conversations. I primarily work with PHP, JavaScript and Python.” This helps Claude interpret the files more accurately.

• The files stay editable — you can delete individual files from a project at any time, so don’t worry too much about uploading everything initially.

Alternative methods

This is not the only way of doing this but it’s the one that worked for me. Here’s an alternative method, perhaps a bit simpler, from YouTuber Eliot Prince:

If Reform UK do win, it will be on around a third of the vote, with the remaining two thirds likely split roughly equally between the two parties of the left, Labour and the Greens. When you only win a third of the vote, you can’t really say you were the choice of your constituents.

In 2011 we did have a choice of what kind of voting system we want. We were given the option of either sticking with the existing First Past The Post (FPTP) method or the Alternative Vote (AV) method. The Alternative Vote would have given people the option of choosing several candidates in order of preference, so instead of putting a single cross on a ballot paper you’d put 1 against your first choice, 2 against your second choice and so on.

Votes would then be counted in a series of rounds, with each round eliminating the candidate with the fewest votes but rather than throwing away the votes for that candidate, the counters would look at the second preference of those voters. Those second preferences would then be allocated to the remaining candidates and again, the one with the fewest votes would be eliminated and so on, until you have a candidate with more than 50% of the votes. That candidate would be the winner.

I was on the phones at the Electoral Reform Society offices in 2011, trying to explain this system to people and trying to explain why it was better. Some people I spoke to worried that it would give too much power to small parties like the BNP who had been kept out of the running by FPTP. Others objected that they weren’t being given the option to vote for proportional representation (PR) so were going to sit the election out as a protest. Others were pissed off with Nick Clegg for jumping into bed with the Tories and wanted to give him a kicking by voting against what he wanted.

Only 42% of the electorate voted in the referendum and the No campaign won. In other words, we voted to stick with our current system, First Past The Post. That felt to me like we were asked “Do you want a bit more democracy with your elections?” and the British people said “No thanks. We’re good.”

That referendum result really made me despair, more so even that the Brexit vote five years later. It felt like a total no brainer. With Brexit, at least I could appreciate the Leave campaign had an argument. I thought it was flawed, and often based on untruths, but the no to AV campaign didn’t even seem to have an argument.

Thinking about it, there were actually quite a few similarities between No2AV and Leave. Both campaigns went for emotion over substance.

I was particularly pissed off with those who told me they wanted electoral reform, that they thought the current system was terrible, but they just didn’t think AV was any better. Sure, AV wasn’t PR. There were many ways you could criticise it. It wouldn’t necessarily make parliament any more proportional than it currently was, but it was clearly an improvement on the current system. Letting people mark their preferences 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. rather than just putting a single X against one of them was giving people more choice.

Another objection I heard was that it would lead to more coalition governments and coalition governments were bad. Remember, we had a coalition government in 2011, elected the previous year as no party had an outright majority in parliament. The No campaign made use of the unpopularity of the coalition, suggesting we’d get more of them if we went for AV. A number of people I spoke to said they liked that FPTP gave us a single party in government.

The campaign posters of the No campaign focused on the cost, £250 million they claimed, to switch our elections to AV. This was when we’d just been through the financial crisis and were suffering from austerity. There was a feeling among many that talk about how to vote in elections was not the highest priority facing the country.

If we had AV I think we could now be pretty sure Reform UK would have no chance of winning Gorton and Denton. They might pick up a third of the vote, and they might get second preferences from Tory voters and some of the smaller fringe parties, but the bulk of the electorate there appears to be on the left. Under AV it would be between Labour and the Greens.

In London we used to have a similar system when voting for mayor. You got two votes, a first choice and a second choice. This system never actually changed the winner, we would have got the same mayor under FPTP, but it meant you had a mayor who had actually received more than 50% support and it did encourage more friendly campaigning. Candidates didn’t want to piss off third parties too much as they may need the second preferences of those candidates’ supporters.

The change away from SV back to FPTP for mayoral elections, introduced by the last government, is now being reversed. It should be in place in time for the 2027 mayoral elections.

Due to the precedent set by the 2011 referendum, we’d probably need another referendum to introduce AV (or some other system) for our general elections. If Labour lose in Gorton and Denton, the pressure within the party for electoral reform, already strong, with 77% of the membership in support of PR, could strengthen.

2024 was the most distorted election result on record, delivering the most unrepresentative Parliament in British history.

Most voters got neither the person they voted for as their local MP (58%), nor the party they backed in government (66%).

The trouble with a referendum on PR is that there are so many flavours of PR, they’re not easy to explain, and also, any switch to PR would be a major change. New Zealand made the switch in the 90s via two referendums. Perhaps we’d need a referendum asking people if they want to move to a more proportional voting system that then lets parliament decide on which system to go for. That would require some trust in parliament though. There’d be accusations they’d come up with a rigged system to suit themselves.

The next election is closing in and there’s a risk we could end up with a Reform government getting elected on only a third of the vote, a similar share to what Labour got in 2024.

Starmer needs to come clean and state quite plainly that whilst Labour won fair and square through the existing system, a party winning two thirds of the seats in parliament from just over one third of the votes cast is not a good reflection of the views of the public. We need a better system. We should therefore introduce AV for the next general election and then the next parliament should decide on a system of proportional representation to be introduced in time for the following general election.

Though net migration is now falling, immigration looks like remaining a major issue for a large chunk of the population. A poll last October found 47% of people mentioning it as one of the most important issues facing the country, although that suggests 53% didn’t regard it as one of the most important issues. That number may well drop once the fall in net migration becomes widely known, assuming it continues to fall. As Ben Ansell points out, opinions regarding immigration are like a thermostat: as immigration rises, the proportion of people who want less immigration also rises; fewer want lower levels of immigration and more would like to see higher levels. Also, those living in areas with a high proportion of people born outside the UK, most of whom will be immigrants, are more comfortable with high levels of immigration than those living in areas where few people were born outside the UK, although in areas where the non-UK born population is rising more than the national average there is greater hostility to immigration.

A briefing by Migration Observatory notes, “people make clear distinctions between types of migrant, with the highly skilled preferred to unskilled overall, and the majority in favour of making immigration easier for health care workers.” It also finds that whilst opinion is divided on immigration, “the level of opposition is remarkably different depending on whether we ask respondents if they think that immigration is a good or a bad thing for Britain compared to when they are asked whether the migration inflows to the UK should be increased, reduced or remain the same.” When asked whether immigration is on the whole a good thing for Britain, a bad thing, or neither, the public were roughly divided into thirds whereas when asked whether immigration should be reduced, increased or remain the same, just over half said it should be reduced.

When it comes to the types of migrant, opinions differ depending on the country of origin and the skills of the migrant, and skills are considered the more important factor by most. People are far more open to highly skilled migrants, though they’re more open to low-skilled migrants coming to work in care, on farms and in construction.

People are making distinctions, deciding what’s best for the country. They’re also making distinctions based on humanitarian considerations.

Whilst 37% of people wanted to make it more difficult for asylum seekers to come to the country, only 14% wanted to do so for Ukrainians.

In the New Statesman two years ago, Daniel Susskind said “we ought to refresh the immigration debate. This means spending less time talking about the level of immigration and more time talking about its composition.”

He suggested we needed a citizens’ assembly, an idea that goes back to ancient Athens.

Around the world, a surge in “mini-publics” is under way, where citizens are gathered – in assemblies, juries, panels, dialogues, summits – to debate hard issues and present their conclusions to politicians: euthanasia in France, abortion in Ireland, nuclear policy in Korea. In Britain, it seems to me, the issue of immigration is ripe for this sort of participative interrogation.

And a citizens’ assembly is what the Home Affairs Select Committee have just announced they’re setting up:

Members of the public, reflecting the breadth of the local community, will be invited to come together to examine the complex range of factors that influence public policy decisions and the challenges of reducing the numbers of legal migrants.

With the Government pledging to reduce inward migration and deliver economic growth, the sessions will explore the trade-offs that are involved in balancing the goal of reducing net migration with workforce needs of business and the public sector.

Over the coming months, participants in Leicester, North Tyneside and Renfrewshire will take part in three deliberative events over different weekends. Participants will have the opportunity to hear from experts as well as talk to fellow residents with different views to explore the extent of consensus on preferred ways to tackle this longstanding policy challenge.

Those locations could turn out to be significant. According to the Home Affairs Committee,

Locations were selected to reflect the make-up of different parts of the country and different types of population.

Given that the Government has already pledged to reduce immigration, the assembly is being asked how to reduce net migration, not whether to do so.

Participants will listen to a balanced range of evidence and “will then deliberate in small groups on the policy trade-offs involved in different policy options with the aim of ‘agreeing governing principles and weighing up options’ for reducing net migration.”

The trade-offs depend on the type of migration. Working-age migrants in employment are likely to be net contributors whilst the elderly are likely to require support. Labour shortages may constrain growth. But economic benefit is not the only consideration. Cultural change, social cohesion and fairness also matter.

If done well, this process could improve the debate around immigration.

It could answer those who complain they were never consulted about immigration, but it would need to be well publicised. Ideally I’d like to see it televised, but that’s highly unlikely. It would affect how participants participated, you’d get people playing to the cameras and they may be less willing to ask what might be considered stupid questions or to change their minds. There would also be privacy and safety issues. This is a heated issue. Participants could be targeted.

My worry is that if all we get is a final report and if it just looks like yet another government or parliamentary report that most of us wouldn’t read directly, we’ll hear about it through our preferred media sources and the range of views will get compressed into simplistic soundbites. That wouldn’t improve the debate at all.

We need to understand the process, to appreciate that the participants were a representative sample of the public hearing evidence and deliberating. There are bound to be complaints. No sample of people can be perfectly representative, people will accuse the evidence of being biased, but an imperfect process does not mean it’s completely without value.

If they were to release anonymised transcripts of the sessions that would be something. We’d then get a sense of what went on. Raw transcripts or daily reports would probably not reach a large audience, but if the transcripts were dramatised, with actors playing the participants, that could make the process more accessible.

It could show that the public is capable of thinking seriously about immigration when given time, evidence and responsibility. If it remains opaque, the conclusions, whatever they are, will simply be repackaged as tribal narratives. It’s not enough just to be told what the assembly decided, we need to see how they came to their decision.

Someone in the audience had said “at least with China you know what’s going on with them whereas with America, with Trump especially, every day something wacky comes out, whether it’s buying Greenland or the stuff happening with ICE so personally I’d much rather be in China’s bed at the moment rather than America’s.”

The Conservative MP on the panel said “there’s a big difference between China and the US: China is a dictatorship, the US is a democracy…” That’s when the audience laughed and someone could be heard exclaiming “really!?”

What wasn’t clear from the laughter was why people no longer regard the US as a democracy. The ICE actions in Minneapolis have been pretty extensively reported in the UK, particularly the two murders, and of course British people can’t help but see a lot of American content when we go on YouTube or social media. Seeing masked and armed government agents kitted out like soldiers, pepper spraying people and dragging people out of their cars makes the US look like one of those shithole countries Trump always bangs on about. Seeing him being all chummy with Putin and that guy from El Salvador and other authoritarian leaders only adds to that. Hearing him dictate to our prime minister and to the leaders of America’s supposed democratic allies - well, that’s what dictators do, isn’t it? They dictate. He comes across like he’s an emperor and countries like Britain have to pay homage and show gratitude.

We also saw the events of 6th January 2021 when a mob stormed the Capitol building, apparently prompted by Trump. We heard his claims that the election was rigged, that he really won, and we’re hearing those claims again, seeing the FBI raid an elections office in Georgia.

Question Time has a pretty politically switched-on audience so you might not get that kind of response if you stopped someone in the street and asked them if America is a democracy. That person in the street would probably say “yeah, I suppose it is, but they picked a right nutter last time, didn’t they?” The Question Time audience might not think the US has completely ceased to be a democracy, that it’s on a par with China, but to trot out a statement like “the US is a democracy” without any qualification now comes across as jarring.

You could have said that sort of thing a decade ago and no one would have batted an eyelid. Even during the George W Bush presidency, and despite the Florida 2000 hanging chads, the US was broadly seen as a democracy, albeit an imperfect one.

Trump really isn’t popular in Britain. A YouGov poll conducted in December found 18% of Britons had a favourable opinion of Donald Trump whilst 77% had an unfavourable opinion. Another YouGov poll finds only 13% think he’s been a good president whilst 51% think he’s been a terrible president. As Trump would say, “people have never seen numbers like that.” Not that those numbers would bother Trump’s base if they were to hear about them. They might see his unpopularity as a good thing. We Europeans only like the American presidents we can take advantage of after all. Being disliked overseas is just a sign that he’s putting America first. It’s better to be respected and maybe feared somewhat than to be liked.

Despite the woman in the audience saying Britain’s a small country, it isn’t really. Although on a map it’s not that big, not nearly as big as Greenland, it is the sixth largest economy in the world. What Mark Carney would call a middle-sized country.

If Britain isn’t the only middle-sized country to tilt away from the US towards China that’s going to have an impact on America’s economy, and on China’s for that matter. America’s strength has been in part down to middle-sized countries like the UK wanting to trade with it, seeing it as a stable, decent and mostly law-abiding nation. We and our businesses could say “you know where you are with America”. We really don’t know where we are with America now, and we have some pride.

I don’t want to see a British prime minister sucking up to Trump, even if that costs us. I also don’t want to see us sucking up to China, nor really supporting China in any way. Its human rights abuses are appalling. But we have a huge market on our doorstep: the European Union. We should be cosying up to them, and better still, we should be rejoining them, if they’ll have us, or at least rejoining the single market and the customs union. As part of the EU we wouldn’t be having to choose which of the big players we have to kowtow to. We’d be one of the big players.

I’ve just moved and was told by the agent that there’s a WhatsApp group or something for the street I’ve moved to but I’ve not yet met any of the neighbours so haven’t been invited to join it. This made me think that rather than people having to set up and run WhatsApp or Google groups themselves, they should instead be set up by the council. That way, any new resident could be informed of the group and be invited to join it as soon as they move in. A council could also ensure that such a group is accessible and could enable people to login using their council credentials, so what you’d use to login to the council’s website.

How would this work in practice?

This wouldn’t be a public debate forum, a consultation exercise or a place for campaigning. It would be closer to a shared noticeboard and conversation space for people who live near one another.

The neighbourhood groups I’ve been on, both for the same neighbourhood, seemed to work very well. People were polite and friendly, but then maybe I was fortunate in living in a decent neighbourhood. People could get into arguments, they could be abusive, or could use a group to promote themselves or their business interests, but I think when people have to use their own names they’re likely to be more respectful. They can’t hide behind pseudonyms like they can on most social media sites.

If there are neighbourhood disputes, people who are anti-social, say playing loud music late at night, then perhaps it’s better to have these disputes out in the open. If someone playing loud music gets a knock on their door from one of their neighbours, they may just think that one neighbour is being overly sensitive whereas if they see that many of their neighbours are also bothered by their loudness that may carry more weight. Being able to raise a contentious issue in an online forum may reduce the risk of escalation, though if someone is having a loud party it’s unlikely they’ll be logging into the neighbourhood forum. But your neighbours may well be.

In some neighbourhoods a large proportion of people may speak a language other than English as their first language. Automated translations are pretty good though, so the app or website could let people set their preferred language in order to see all content in that language. There are risks of mistranslation of course.

Each neighbourhood group would need to be private, only visible to its members. People posting under their own names and possibly displaying their addresses, though those things would need to be optional. Some may be wary of giving out such information, particularly to start with, so people should have the option of not showing their address and either just using their first name or a pseudonym.

What is a neighbourhood?

Sometimes it might be quite obvious, like where I used to live was on an estate of 46 flats and houses, though there was a street of about ten houses leading up to the estate and I don’t believe they were included in the neighbourhood group. The people in those houses would have faced many similar issues though, like when there were events in the local park and we experienced noise and visitors using the street and the estate as a car park. Neighbourhoods will often merge into one another so it would make sense to allow their online groups to merge in some way as well. Perhaps by default a post to a group would only go to members of that particular group but a checkbox could allow someone to also post to neighbouring groups.

Why don’t councils do this?

One reason is they’re not required to, and with a shortage of funds councils tend to focus on the services they’re required to provide. Plus there are all sorts of legal risks councils would run if they tried to set up neighbourhood groups.

Which is a shame because putting people in touch with their neighbours, encouraging communication and mutual support is a public good. It feels like it’s something councils should be doing.

There are even legal difficulties with using someone’s council login credentials to let them login to a neighbourhood forum. I was thinking I ought to be able to use my council login the way I use my Google or Apple accounts to login to other council sites and apps but that would be against the law.

So we would need to change the law.

Firstly, we’d need to define neighbourhood digital forums as a legitimate local government function. Currently, “councils are responsible for social care and provide some aspects of transport, housing, and education. They are also in charge of a range of neighbourhood services including libraries and waste collection.” We’d need to add neighbourhood forums to that list of responsibilities, perhaps framing it in a more general way, like neighbourhood or community cohesion, so online neighbourhood forums could be part of it but not the whole thing.

Secondly, we’d need to authorise residency verification for civic participation purposes. This would allow data held on the council tax register or the electoral roll to be used to verify someone’s address when logging into a neighbourhood forum.

Thirdly, neighbourhood forums would need to ensure the law would not treat a council-run neighbourhood forum the same way it treats Facebook for instance when it comes to moderation. The council could not be treated as a publisher in the same way as commercial platforms are.

The Local Government Association has a page on community cohesion. This doesn’t explicitly talk about online neighbourhood forums, perhaps in part due to the legal barriers for such things, but it does talk quite a bit about informal face-to-face gatherings of neighbours.

Why bother?

When people can already set up WhatsApp, Google, Facebook or whatever groups themselves, why go through all this hassle of changing legislation so councils can do it? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Well, it’s now over a month since I moved into my new place and though the agent told me there was a neighbourhood group, I’ve not yet been invited to join it. I’ve only met one of my neighbours, someone two doors down, and that was only because a package for her was delivered to my address. I didn’t really speak to her. I suppose I could knock on the doors of the neighbours and introduce myself, but I’m a bit shy. If, as soon as you moved into a new place, you were automatically invited to the neighbourhood group that would benefit people like me. It would also benefit people living in places where no one has taken it upon themselves to set up a group, and perhaps those are the sorts of neighbourhoods that most need them.

Councils have role to play in building cohesive communities, says the Local Government Association. “No one can impose cohesion on a community, but councils want to do all that they can to create the conditions in which local communities can flourish.”

If you’ve connected with someone in an online group, or just read something they’ve posted, it’s likely going to be a bit easier to speak to them in person if you happen to bump into them, or to go and knock on their door and introduce yourself. In person meetups become more likely when people have already met virtually.

Loneliness and belonging

The World Health Organization has declared loneliness to be a pressing public health threat and has called on all countries to prioritise social connection. According to data from the Office for National Statistics, over 7% of the population say that they are always or often lonely, with people under 30 being the most lonely age group.

Putting neighbours in touch with one another via an online group is not going to solve this problem, and in a study by Harvard’s Making Caring Common project, respondents blamed technology as the number one cause of loneliness so yet another piece of software might sound like the last thing we need. But technology is a very broad term. Too broad to be meaningful. There is technology that replaces face-to-face interaction but there is also technology that enables it. A technology that connects neighbours is one that can promote face-to-face connections. Even without face-to-face connections, knowing who your neighbours are can promote a sense of belonging. This is reflected in ONS research, which finds that people who feel connected to their local area report lower loneliness.

Looking at the factors associated with loneliness, the ONS highlights several that are directly related to neighbourhood connection:

• Renters reported feeling lonely more often than homeowners.

• People who feel that they belong less strongly to their neighbourhood reported feeling lonely more often.

• People who have little trust of others in their local area reported feeling lonely more often.

A local social network is probably not going to promote deep friendships, although it might. What it is more likely to lead to is familiarity. Seeing the same names, recognising who lives nearby, knowing who to ask about a lost cat or a broken fence. Small interactions that reduce the sense of being invisible. This kind of everyday social awareness can matter even when people rarely meet in person.

I grew up on a street where I played with the neighbouring children and then, when older, went to the village pub. I remember going to the shops with my mum in the 1970s, which would involve going to the village butcher, the green grocer, the bakery, the fish monger etc.. Each shop keeper knew my mum and knew me, and my younger brothers when they came along. Those shop keepers weren’t by any means close friends. These “how are you today, Mrs J?” interactions were pretty superficial, but they were constant and, to me as a child, reassuring. We were known and we were part of a community. Since moving I’m not sure I still feel like I’m part of a community.

Shopping was a social activity then whereas now we’re likely to go to a supermarket and use an automated checkout till. The only interaction with a human is when you need approval for buying alcohol or there’s an unexpected item in the bagging area. Or you’ll do an online order and have a brief interaction with a delivery driver as they bring your shopping to your front door. There are still smaller shops where you may have some personal interaction, but far less so than was once the case. Pubs are closing and social media feels increasingly anti-social, filled with angry people or bots hiding behind pseudonyms.

Many of my parents’ closest friends were our neighbours, most often the parents of other children on the same street. Mobile phones have increased connection to people who are geographically distant, people we would previously have had to write a letter to or, if we wanted to phone them, we’d be paying for a long distance call. That has made many of us feel less need to connect with our neighbours.

Cats

Our cat went outside for the first time today since we moved in. I would have liked to have posted a message saying if you see this cat and she looks lost, please let me know. I did that at the last place on the neighbourhood group when she went missing.

That may seem like a small thing, but we all have small things like that. They can connect us and make us feel like we’re part of a community, which I would say is a pretty big thing.

It is true that a study found that people with lower cognitive ability “were more likely to vote for Brexit”, but that study was conducted by pointy-headed elites who probably voted remain and go to fancy dinner parties in Islington so we can ignore it.

The problem is that thinking in the way that elites supposedly think takes a lot of work whereas using your common sense is easy, and common sense is what populists are all about. These elites with their letters after their names and their book learning, they’ve got no common sense.

Common sense is easy for populists. They’re good at it, or so they think. The trouble is, the world often doesn’t work the way common sense says it should. Maybe God lacked common sense when he made it.

People have had enough of experts

There are certainly examples of academics getting things wrong, but that doesn’t mean all academics are wrong about everything and can simply be dismissed.

Populists often portray academics as a universally stupid monolith. Or a universally crooked monolith. No one with common sense could actually think the things they claim to think. They dismiss the years of study academics put in to become academics. A few Google searches and a bit of common sense can trump some pompous academic’s expert knowledge any day of the week.

Motivated scepticism

Climate denial is a good example. Climate deniers are often quite knowledgeable, but they use that knowledge more how a lawyer would than how a scientist would, to convince themselves and others of what they believe to be true, which just happens to be what they want to be true. They start with a conclusion and work backwards, finding evidence to support their conclusion and debunking any that undermines it. One paper looking at two studies on beliefs regarding climate change found that people’s political opinions were a strong predictor of their views on climate change.

In elitespeak, populists lack epistemic humility. They over-estimate how much they know, and under-estimate how much the so-called experts know. They’ve climbed to the summit of Mount Stupid and stayed there. Still, that doesn’t mean they themselves are stupid in that they lack intelligence. It’s a different kind of stupidity. It’s more a form of arrogance.

If you’re stupid and you know you’re stupid then you’re actually very clever. We’re all stupid about some things. About most things actually. But then most of us know that. Most of us go to doctors when we’re sick. We don’t think we know better than the medical experts. Some do though. The anti-vaxxers for instance. They think the medical establishment is either stupid or corrupt.

Joseph Heath likens populism to Daniel Kahneman’s System One thinking from his book “Thinking Fast and Slow”. System One thinking is the quick easy and intuitive thinking that we do most of the time, almost without thinking about it. Like if I ask you what’s two plus two you’ll (hopefully) straight off say four. That’s System One. System Two thinking however takes some effort and is much slow. If I asked you what’s 75 x 63 you’d might have to imagine yourself working that out with a pen and paper, or you’d at least have to go through several steps, like maybe 3 x 75 = 225 and 6 x 75 = 450 so 60 x 75 = 4,500 and 4,500 + 225 = 4,725. Bingo!

We generally avoid doing that kind of thing if we can help it though. It’s quite painful, and most of the time isn’t necessary.

The trick is knowing when you need to put in the work and do the System Two thinking, or at least when someone needs to have put in that kind of thinking. This is the kind of thinking that educational establishments generally teach students to do. It has to be learned. It doesn’t come naturally.

The overconfidence in common sense doesn’t just lead to bad beliefs. It also changes how populists treat disagreement: it becomes evidence of bad character. Once you’ve decided the truth is obvious, anyone disagreeing with you can’t just be mistaken; they must be biased or corrupt or lying.

Echo chambers and naïve realism

If you’re a naïve realist, you believe we perceive the world as it really is, that reality is self-evident, that how things are and how things work is just a case of common sense, then you’re not going to feel the need for much or any System Two thinking. Perhaps then it’s wrong to say that populists are lazy. If you don’t think something is worthwhile then you’re not lazy for failing to do it. Many though do accept that in certain fields System Two thinking is required, like when it comes to engineering. Just not when it comes to political matters.

But to dismiss expertise and data without a sound reason for doing so is lazy. That the experts or the data don’t tell you what you want to hear is not a sound reason. Take for instance the fall in crime in the UK (as in many other countries). Crime has fallen whilst the immigrant population has risen. This is somewhat inconvenient for populists such as Farage and his Reform UK party who want to claim that Britain is broken and crime is surging as a result of uncontrolled immigration. Rather than grappling with the data or rethinking his position Farage just dismisses the data, saying the Crime Survey for England & Wales is wrong.

Here’s a good example. In response to a post claiming a link between migration and crime in Britain I posted a link to Fraser Nelson’s “Reform UK’s crime fiction” which displayed this graph

comparing the immigrant population with data from the Crime Survey for England & Wales. I got this response:

I’m skeptical, for three main reasons:

Crime can seem lower per 100,000 for example when there’s a large increase in population in the reporting area. If that area is national, that’s cloudy.

The way crime is recorded in certain areas evolves, essentially massaging numbers down.

The lack of reporting of crime to begin with is huge. So many go unreported due to public perception that the police will do nothing. A crime ref. No. for a burglary for insurance etc.

If this person had read the linked Fraser Nelson article he would have seen that the data was not based on reported or recorded crime.

Perhaps many of us are guilty of not reading the articles people link to on social media, or not watching the videos or listening to the podcasts, before commenting, but this kind of jumping to conclusions does appear to me to be more prevalent among populists. Not just rightwing ones though. The leftwing populists do it too.

To believe that you perceive political reality as it really is and that others are either failing to perceive it accurately or they’re lying is quite arrogant. You have to believe that you and your fellow populists tell it like it is but everyone else is either stupid or a liar. The people are superior to the so-called elites.

There often seems to be a mistaken a view that virtually all ordinary people think the same, as expressed in this comment:

Labour and the university-trained, middle-class Left have abandoned the working class, constantly sneering at and deriding its beliefs and principles. What sad and depressing times.

That implies that the working class are of one mind and the the university-trained, middle-class Left are of another mind. Perhaps everyone you know thinks pretty much the same as you, and perhaps you and everyone you know is working class, but that doesn’t mean all working class people think like you and your friends.

Social media can exacerbate this kind of thinking. We may find ourselves in echo chambers with like-minded people, or we put ourselves into those echo chambers because we follow like minded people, and that can give us the impression that we are part of a huge majority. We are the working class or we are the people. Following and engaging with those we disagree with takes effort. It’s a lot easier to stick to your own side and get approval rather than push back.

“The people” keeps shrinking

Populism is often framed as being anti-elitist but it seems they’re only anti the current elite. They want to replace the current elite with themselves, the people, or “the people” because when they talk about the people they don’t mean everyone in society, they mean the true people, ordinary folk, people like them and, ultimately, people who look like them, sound like them and think like them. The rest, well they’re enemies of the people or they’re people who don’t belong in society at all, like say immigrants. Populism tends to keep shrinking the people until, ultimately, there’s just one person who speaks for the people. Anyone who opposes him is therefore an enemy of the people.

It’s like they own the space below their note. One of the things I liked about Twitter, (when it was Twitter though I believe it’s the same on X) was that each tweet was treated as equal. There wasn’t a hierarchy in the sense that a reply to a tweet was not a lesser form of tweet than the tweet it was replying to.

So now there are three replies to my note from three different people but when I tried replying to one of them it let me compose my reply but then refused to post it, without much of an explanation. That was when I had the same page open, but now, in my Activity feed, those replies are visible to me but greyed out. If I try clicking on any of them I get “this note is not available”.

It hasn’t happened here but I wonder if someone could reply to you and then block you so you can’t reply to them, thus ensuring they get the last word. It appears the Substack Notes system would allow that. I could perhaps get the URL of one of those replies by logging out of Substack and then paste that into a reponse I post as a top-level note but that’s too much effort and I’m not sure if it’ll work. I don’t think it should be necessary to go to those lengths anyway.

Here’s how I’d adapt the functionality:

1. There should be a cost to blocking. It’s something the system should discourage whereas the way it functions currently on Substack allows it to be weaponised. People can use it to partially silence those they disagree with. At the very least, when someone has blocked someone who has replied to one of their notes, this should be indicated publicly on the thread. Those people replying to me should see that I won’t be able to reply to them because I’ve been blocked by Mike H.

2. When you view someone’s profile, in addition to how many subscribers they have, you should also see how many people they’ve blocked. Not necessarily who they’ve blocked, just the number. That way you could get an idea of whether someone is prone to blocking and, if they are, decide whether they’re worth engaging with. You would naturally expect large accounts, or those that are extremely active and have posted a lot of Notes, to block more people than smaller or less active accounts, so it would really be the ratio between blocks and audience size or activity level that mattered.

3. If people can respond to you, you should be able to respond back. If you’re an author of a publication then I get that you should be able to control who can comment under your posts, but on Notes we’re essentially on a social network rather than a publication and there should not be this kind of ownership. If someone has blocked me then I should not be able to reply directly to something they’ve posted, but I should be able to reply to someone who has replied to me.

I’d go with Twitter’s flat object model for Notes. All Notes are equal. Comments on publications are different and should be treated differently. By all means give authors control of the comments under their articles, but posters of notes should not own notes that are replies to their notes.

People say the world is warming but how would I know? Not from personal experience at least. I’m not a farmer. I was watching Clarkson’s Farm recently and they were really in touch with the weather. They could tell what the dew point was before they even took a reading. At least Kaleb could. But how would a homebody like me know whether today was warm or cold for the time of year?

It was with that in mind that I decided to build the TempHist website. It compares temperatures over the past 50 years for your location. For instance, if today’s 18th November, which it is, then it’ll compare today’s temperature with the temperature on 18th November last year, and the year before and the year before that etc.. In a bar chart. Like this:

That blue line is the average temperature for all 18th Novembers over the past 50 years, back to 1975.

7.9°C. So it is colder than average.

The yellow line is the trend. It’s warming at 0.2° per decade, although since we’re only looking at single days here the trend is not going to be that reliable. However, we can also view the temperature over the past week, so the week ending 18th November, and compare that with the average temperatures of the equivalent week in previous years.

The past week has been pretty warm for the time of year. Warmer than average. It just turned cold today.

Or we can compare the past month with the equivalent months in previous years. Not the calendar month but the month, or 30 days at least, ending 18th November.

Now we’d expect the trend to be a bit more reliable since we’re comparing longer periods of time, though it’s showing the temperature is rising at 0.5° per decade which is pretty extreme.

Lastly, we can check the past year, or the 365 days ending on 18th November, with previous years.

It looks like it’s been a warm year in London. The second warmest in the past 50 years. There’s a warming trend of 0.5° per decade.

That’s pretty extreme warming, and since we’re now looking at entire years it’s more significant than daily, weekly or monthly trends. Still, we’re only looking at a single location. Other locations probably won’t show this kind of trend. Some places may even be cooling.

This could be down to the urban heat island effect. London is urban. There’s a lot of concrete that holds the heat. It’s therefore warmer than the surrounding countryside, and as London becomes more urban it’s going to get warmer still.

“The best form of carbon capture is trees,” he said. Well, trees, like all plants, do absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when they’re growing, but then when they die and decompose (or are burnt), that carbon they absorbed is released back into the atmosphere in a net zeroish kind of way. It’s part of the carbon cycle. Still, planting trees could help, but there’s not enough available land for this to have a significant effect without it impacting food production.

He then said, as he always says: “The climate’s always changed, for millions of years. Anyone who thinks you can stop the power of the sun is ridiculous…”

Fiona Bruce cut in: “I don’t think anyone’s talking about stopping the power of the sun, I think I think it’s generally about what impact can be had on man-made emissions which are contributing to climate change as I…”

“And how much do they contribute? About 3 or 4 percent, Fiona, as you well know. The rest of CO2 emissions are natural…”

This is where he’s most wrong. He’s confusing the carbon cycle with carbon emissions. They’re not the same thing. The carbon cycle is a natural process whereby carbon moves through Earth’s systems, including its atmosphere. For instance, when plants die they decompose and their carbon is released into the atmosphere, but growing plants take in carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis. When the quantities of carbon released into the atmosphere are balanced by the quantities of carbon absorbed from the atmosphere, atmospheric carbon remains constant.

When we dig up fossil fuels and burn them we’re releasing into the atmosphere carbon that would otherwise remain trapped under the ground. We’re adding carbon to the carbon cycle, and we’re adding more than can be absorbed so the levels of atmospheric carbon increase. When considering climate change, it’s the level of emissions that’s significant. That’s what’s adding to the levels of carbon in the atmosphere.

Our emissions of CO2 may well be small when compared with the quantities of CO2 emitted and absorbed in the carbon cycle, but that’s irrelevant. It doesn’t mean human emissions are only responsible for 3 or 4 percent of global warming. According to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report over 100% of the warming since industrialisation was caused by human activity. So a lot more than 3 or 4 percent as Tice claimed.

Over 100% though? How can that be right? How can we have caused more than all of the warming?

If it weren’t for human activities the planet would have cooled slightly, that’s how. In other words, natural effects such as volcanic activity and solar variation have likely had a net cooling effect.

Tice implies that you’d need to stop the power of the sun to stop the planet from warming but that’s not the case. The warming we’ve experienced is not down to an increase in solar irradiance. Total solar irradiance has barely changed over the last half century, the period during which we’ve had satellite measurements, and studies show it’s not increased significantly since the 1950s.

I was disappointed that Fiona Bruce did not correct Richard Tice on his assertion that man-made emissions make only a 3 or 4 percent contribution to climate change, but I can’t say I’m surprised she didn’t. It takes some explanation. It’s not the sort of thing you can fact check in a sentence or two.

According to GB News, Bruce did challenge Tice more than we saw in the broadcast episode, but it sounds like she pushed back on his 3 to 4 percent figure, “stating that according to Nasa, the figure was around a third,” rather than questioning his underlying implication. That one third from Nasa she mentioned is presumably the total increase in atmospheric CO2, which has gone from 280 parts per million in pre-industrial times to just over 420 parts per million now. That increase of 140 parts per million, around a third of the current total, is down to human activity. That’s true enough and a more relevant statistic when it comes to climate change attribution, but it’s not a valid response to Tice’s claim that man-made emissions contribute only 3 or 4 percent to climate change.

Whereas Bruce/Nasa’s one third refers to the proportion of atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from human activity, Tice is talking about the rates of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere from natural processes and man-made emissons, though ignoring the fact that the rate of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere by natural processes is balanced by the rate at which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere by other natural processes, photosynthesis, forests and oceans etc.. He’s implying all carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere contributes to climate change, but if an equal amount is being removed from the atmosphere so the concentration of carbon dioxide remains constant, that’s not going to have a warming or a cooling effect.

In saying that man-made emissions only make a 3 or 4 percent contribution to climate change, he’s implying there’s something else that’s contributing the remaining 96 or 97 percent but there isn’t because there is no remaining 96 or 97 percent. Man-made emissions, or human activity to be more precise, contribute over 100% to the observed warming.

Tice is misunderstanding the carbon cycle. He’s confusing the flux of carbon with carbon emissions. What the BBC really needed to do was insert a segment explaining what the carbon cycle is, what emissions are and how they differ.

What should they do then? Populist politicians can throw out highly misleading statements which whilst not in themselves strictly false, do strongly imply something that is false. I’ve previously heard Tice and others say that only 3 or 4 percent of the carbon going into the atmosphere each year is from man-made emissions and that is true. What’s false is the implication, often left unsaid, that those emissions only make a 3 or 4 percent contribution to climate change. On Question Time, since Bruce specifically mentioned the contribution of man-made emissions to climate change, Tice did end up saying something that was not just misleading, it was also downright untrue. As they say on social media, he said the quiet part out loud.

Fact checking after the fact is not enough. Maybe we need implication checking as well, or at least presenters, interviewers, other panellists and audience members on shows like Question Time need to be willing to press people like Tice when they come out with these things.

If man-made emissions only contribute 3 or 4 percent to climate change, what are you claiming contributes the remaining 96 or 97 percent? Volcanic activity? What’s the evidence this has changed significantly over the past half century, the period during which we’ve seen significant levels of warming? Or total solar irradiance? What’s the evidence that this has increased significantly over that period? What increase in total solar irradiance would be required to cause the observed warming?

Total solar irradiance maybe sounds a bit techie. Put it in plain English. “Richard, are you saying the sun has gotten hotter over the past 50 years? Is that what you think is the main reason behind the planet getting warmer? Can you name a single climate scientist who thinks the sun has been getting hotter and that’s the main cause of the planet warming?”

When people make claims that are factually incorrect they need to be challenged forcefully. That’s often done by journalists when political parties produce policy proposals in which the numbers don’t add up, but they tend to be more reticent when it comes to scientific issues, which are often treated as matters of opinion rather than matters of fact.

There needs to be a cost to people being this wrong. If someone can be so confident and so wrong about such a basic issue, how can they be trusted on anything else? If you think this is a highly controversial scientific issue on which the scientists themselves can’t agree, then you might think it’s ok for a politician to be wrong, but I don’t think you could find a scientist, and certainly not a climate scientist, who would agree that man-made emissions are only responsible for 3 to 4 percent of the observed warming, which is what Richard Tice appears to be claiming. They might say yes, Richard, only 3 or 4 percent of the carbon going up into the atmosphere each year comes from anthropogenic emissions, but the non-emissions element of that is part of the carbon cycle. Anthropogenic emissions are not part of a cycle. The carbon is coming from deep underground and is ending up in the atmosphere. If it weren’t for us digging it up and burning it, it would remain trapped under the ground.

He has sort of a point when he suggests planting trees. We do need to develop ways of getting some of that extra carbon we’ve put into the atmosphere out. There’s only so much land on which we can plant trees without impacting agriculture, and besides, most of the planet is covered in ocean. There are proposals to seed the oceans in order to enhance their ability to absorb carbon and such measures will likely be necessary, though in addition to rapid emissions reductions, not in place of them. Anything like that ought to be down with global agreement, under a global framework. It wouldn’t be cheap. We’d all need to chip in, and maybe those who have polluted the most would be expected to contribute the most.

Tackling climate change is a tough problem. Pretending it’s not a thing or not a problem is so much easier than confronting it. Saying “the climate has always changed” is not an acceptance that climate change is a thing. When we refer to “climate change” it’s assumed we’re talking about the current climate change, the current warming of the planet caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. No one is claiming the climate was completely stable until humans started burning fossil fuels, least of all climate scientists who’ve spent decades studying past changes in the planet’s climate. Greenhouse gases, as the name implies, cause the planet to warm. Increase the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 50% and of course you’re going to get warming.

However performative it might seem, when you’re faced with an emergency and need some bold dramatic action, is the declaration of an emergency a good first step?

It might seem obvious this is an emergency, that we’re now in a very different world and we need to respond accordingly, with decisive action. The Trump administration appears to have changed sides. It’s more supportive of Putin than of its historical European allies. If Russia were to attack a NATO member, it’s no longer clear the US would honour Article 5: an attack on one is an attack on all.

Do we really need parliament to declare the bleeding obvious?

Maybe we do, and we need to see cross-party support, even if that doesn’t mean total support. We at least need to see where our politicians stand.

Emergency: a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action

That’s what the dictionary says.

A lot of people aren’t paying much attention to politics, or they’re just attending to certain issues that interest or directly impact them, and so much of what appears in our social media feeds or on newspaper headlines is hyped up clickbait. It needs to be made clear to the public that this isn’t just another piece of hyped up clickbait. It really is an emergency and therefore requires immediate and effective action.

If we’re going to significantly increase defence spending, more than the small increase Starmer announced last week by cutting the international aid budget, that’s going to require either tax increases or borrowing, or a combination of the two. The Labour manifesto promised there would be no tax rises on working people, but when that manifesto was written and when Labour was elected, Trump wasn’t in the White House and even though Labour ought to have realised there was a pretty good chance he would end up in the White House, they probably didn’t imagine he would side with Russia, at least not to the extent he has.

A degree of isolationism was expected, but what we’re seeing isn’t isolationism. What we are seeing now is not mere retreat but a realignment. Trump’s rhetoric has openly questioned NATO commitments and his administration has shown a willingness to engage with Putin in ways that raise serious concerns for European security.

The UK can no longer assume automatic US military support in the event of Russian aggression against NATO’s eastern flank. If the US were to fail to respond, NATO’s credibility—and European security—could be irreparably damaged. If Ukraine falls, Russia will be emboldened. We need to be able to defend ourselves.

To go against a manifesto commitment not to raise taxes on working people the government is going to need a damn good reason. If this is a national security emergency then there’s your damn good reason.

Also the manifesto was a committed not to rejoin the EU, nor the single market or customs union. If declaring a national security emergency were thought to give the government a reason to drop those manifesto commitments too, they’d probably lose the support of most Tories, but if the US is no longer a reliable ally there is a strong case for the UK strengthening its ties to the EU.

Whilst I’d personally support the UK rejoining the EU, that issue is too divisive. We need the support of conservatives. We need to expose and isolate the Putinists. We could certainly support Ukraine being fast-tracked for EU membership, even though that’s not for us to decide.

Why declaring an emergency matters

Declaring a national security emergency is not just a symbolic gesture—it could serve critical functions:

1. Mobilising public awareness – Many people are disengaged from politics or are only exposed to selective, often sensationalised, media narratives. A formal declaration could help cut through the noise and emphasise the gravity of the situation.

2. Strengthening political consensus – Cross-party agreement on a national emergency would clarify where political leaders stand and could enable more decisive government action.

3. Unlocking strategic policy shifts – An emergency declaration could facilitate necessary but politically sensitive policy changes, such as increasing defence spending or revisiting foreign alliances.

The free world needs a new leader

Kaja Kallas, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said:

The UK may no longer be part of the European Union, but we are still Europeans. We’re one of only two European nuclear powers. If Europe is to become the leader of the free world, we need to be part of that leadership. Much as I would like us to rejoin the EU, or just the single market and/or customs union, my feeling is it would be wise not to push that at the moment. We need to isolate the pro-Putin/Trump lot and we need proper conservatives on side.

However, leadership in global security should not be limited to Europe. Turkey, a NATO member, has said it’s open to sending forces to Ukraine. And Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand should also be involved in a new global security framework. While Europe remains central due to its geographic proximity to Russia, a broader coalition of like-minded nations will be essential for long-term stability.

What happens now?

• A clear government statement outlining the severity of the security threat and its implications.

• A commitment to significantly increase defense spending with a transparent plan for funding it.

• Reassessment of international alliances, ensuring that the UK strengthens ties with partners who are committed to European security while also building broader security cooperation with democratic allies beyond Europe.

• Public engagement and transparency, so that citizens understand the risks, the necessary policy shifts, and the potential sacrifices required to ensure national and regional security.

We’re at a turning point. Whether we choose to acknowledge it with an emergency declaration or not, the reality remains: we must prepare for a future in which Europe—not the US—leads the defence of democratic values.

Declaring a national security emergency would not be a mere formality. It would be a recognition of the seriousness of the moment—and the first step toward decisive action to safeguard the UK's future and global stability.

That’s the ideal at least. It doesn’t always work out like that.

I came across a note the other day saying

It is fucking insane how many people just want to keep fucking with Russia. I really think people don’t comprehend how much Russia is not even close to being in a state of mobilization, that would equate to Total War.

These are the times when generations later will wonder what the lunatucs of the free and unthreatened world were thinking before they started WW3.

I understand the fear of things going nuclear, but then that’s a fear Putin is trying to stoke, and has been for some time. There’s a Wikipedia page outlining Putin’s nuclear blackmail during the invasion of Ukraine. It started on 27th February 2022 when he ordered Russia’s nuclear forces into a state of high alert.

Anyway, I replied.

And got this response from the original poster, Laggy, whose profile picture is of Stalin making a love heart shape with his hands.

That sounds like an argument for appeasement, which of course made me think of the 1930s.

“That’s not the way it played out in the 1930s,” I said. “Appeasement resulted in us having to fight a bigger war against a stronger enemy.”

Though having said that, I recall a film I watched about how Chamberlain was unfairly maligned, suggesting that he bought Britain the time to re-arm. We weren’t ready to fight a war in 1938 but we were more ready by the end of 1939. Plus, the Munich agreement set up a red line for Hitler to cross, and when he crossed it six months later by invading the rest of Czechoslovakia it became clear he was someone who couldn’t be trusted to stick to any agreement. The only way to stop him was to fight.

“Man with small mustache bad”? Sounds a bit like the “orange man bad” quip Trump supporters use to deflect any criticism of Trump, suggesting the critic is being irrational.

I don’t think the power brokers in Britain wanted total war at all. The government seemed to be doing all it could to avoid going to war:

Appeasement was popular for several reasons. Chamberlain - and the British people - were desperate to avoid the slaughter of another world war. Britain was overstretched policing its empire and could not afford major rearmament. Its main ally, France, was seriously weakened and, unlike in the First World War, Commonwealth support was not a certainty. Many Britons also sympathised with Germany, which they felt had been treated unfairly following its defeat in 1918.

But once Germany took Czechoslovakia appeasement was seen to have failed and in August 1939 Britain and France signed a pact with Poland, promising to support it if it was attacked by another European power, which it was a week later.

“Negotiate a cease fire,” Laggy replied. “Polish sovereignty might have to be sacrificed to save tens of millions.”

Blitzkrieg

Once German troops were in Poland the only way you could have negotiated a ceasefire would have been by persuading the Poles to surrender, which they’d done by the end of September anyway, although by then both Britain and France had declared war on Germany.

The world adopted a new term to describe Germany’s successful war tactic: Blitzkrieg, or “lightning war.” The tactic consisted of staging a surprise attack with massive, concentrated forces of fast-moving armored units supported by overwhelming air power.

Is that the kind of thing Putin was hoping for in February 2022?

Had Britain and France not signed the pact with Poland, or had they refused to honour it and done what Laggy suggests, something along the lines of “OK, Adolf. You can have Poland but please don’t invade anywhere else or else” then what? Would that have been the end of it or would he have still gone into Belgium, Holland and France?

Stalin did in August 1939 sign a non-aggression pact with Hitler but a couple of years later Germany invaded Russia. It seems unlikely any similar pact Britain and France might have signed would have fared any better. Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, did believe in 1940 that Britain’s best option was to negotiate a peace deal with Hitler. Churchill disagreed. In an address to the Outer Cabinet he said

if we tried to make peace now…we should become a slave state.

In April 2022 Zelensky told the UN that Russia wants to “turn Ukrainians into silent slaves”.

Assehole has entered the chat

Replying to “appeasing Putin will increase the danger”, Assehole says

This sounds very much like a version of the isolationist policy the US had in the ‘30s, before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The isolationists were a diverse group, including progressives and conservatives, business owners and peace activists, but because they faced no consistent, organized opposition from internationalists, their ideology triumphed time and again.

I replied to Assehole

OK, we can’t know for sure what Putin is thinking. Even if he was in this room with me, I’d probably struggle to know what he was thinking. He was a spy after all, and he does appear to go by Vito and then Michael Corleone’s advice: “Never let anyone know what you’re thinking.”

Saying that, he does often tell us what he thinks

I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. […] Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.

He said that in July 2021. What he didn’t say was that less than a year later Russia would be invading Ukraine. He may tell us what he thinks, but not what he’s thinking of doing about it. He generally doesn’t give away his strategy. Days before the invasion, when the Russian military was amassing on Ukraine’s border, Putin said they were purely defensive drills and not a threat to any other country. He’s been threatening to go nuclear for some time, setting up red lines that have been crossed.

I do trust experts, to some extent, though I recognise different experts say different things. There are people who know more about this than I do, though I don’t believe Assehole is one of them, except maybe when it comes to what regular Americans think.

Isolationism or internationalism?

Public opinion is divided, and there is now a strong strain of isolationism in the US. I think there are two arguments against it, one based on morality, the other on self-interest.

The moral argument is simply that when you are in a position to help others you should. The US is the richest country in the world. What it’s been spending on Ukraine amounts to around 0.35% of its GDP, so not that much and not as much as many European countries.

Then there’s standing up for your principles. A country shouldn’t just be able to invade another country and get away with it, but then if they do who’s going to stop them? When in 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait the US led a coalition of 42 countries in order to evict the invading forces. However, initially the Americans were hesitant to get involved, “with the President publicly stating on the morning of Thursday 2 August that he was not contemplating intervention.” British PM Margaret Thatcher recalls a meeting with US President George H. W. Bush:

the President began by asking me what I thought. I told him my conclusions in the clearest and most straightforward terms. First, aggressors must never be appeased. We learned that to our cost in the 1930s.

But to whose cost? Perhaps to both the US and the UK. As well as the UK’s appeasement of Hitler there’s the US’s appeasement of Japan. When in 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria the US, whilst refusing to recognise Japanese Manchuria, didn’t impose any meaningful consequences on Japan nor did it assist China in retaking its territory.

In fact, US companies continued to supply Japan with the steel and petroleum it needed for its fight against China long after the conflict between the countries escalated into a full-scale war in 1937. But a powerful isolationist movement in the United States countered that the nation had no business at all in the international conflicts developing around the world.

The costly and disastrous interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq along with memories of Vietnam have bolstered the current isolationist movement. How did those conflicts benefit America? We need to stop worrying about other countries and put America first. That was the line in the ‘30s and it doesn’t sound so different now.

The US is geographically quite isolated from most of the world’s conflict zones, but in an interconnected world is that really much of a protection? It wasn’t on 9/11 and it wasn’t on 7/12 (1941).

Perhaps the US could have stayed out of the Second World War in Europe (if Hitler hadn’t declared war on them) and they would have been fine, though they would still have had to fight Japan, but they could have put all of their resources into that fight. Europe may have fallen to the Nazis, and maybe they would have defeated the Soviets as well, or maybe the Soviets would have defeated the Nazis. They’d have lost Western Europe as a trading partner and as strategic allies, and perhaps would still have faced either the Nazis, the Soviets or both in a cold war.

The case for appeasing Putin

One significant difference between those earlier appeasements and this one is that Putin has nukes. Hitler didn’t. Al Qaeda didn’t. Iraq didn’t. Maybe Putin’s nuclear threats are bogus, but maybe not. Do we really want to risk nuclear war for the sake of a country on the other side of the world that few of us could point to on a map?

I can understand that fear, and feel it, but then do we just allow a nuclear power to invade its neighbours and do what it wants? Let him have Ukraine but what if he then goes for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? Forget about NATO’s Article 5 and let him eat up those countries as well? Where do you draw the line?

If there is to be a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine there may need to be some appeasement. Ukraine will probably need to give up some of its territory, and Zelensky appears to be well aware of that, though it’s not yet clear whether he’d be willing to permanently cede territory to Russia or whether it would just be a temporary acceptance of Russia’s illegal occupation that they would try to get back using non-military means.

If appeasement is the carrot, there are also sticks

Keith Kellogg, Trump’s pick for special envoy for the Ukraine war, said in June

We tell the Ukrainians, ‘You’ve got to come to the table, and if you don’t come to the table, support from the United States will dry up.' And you tell Putin, ‘He’s got to come to the table and if you don’t come to the table, then we’ll give Ukrainians everything they need to kill you in the field

Zelensky has suggested that the parts of Ukraine still under Ukrainian control be given NATO membership and therefore NATO protection. However, in an April article Kellogg said that in order to get Putin to the table

NATO leaders should offer to put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal with security guarantees.

If Putin comes to the table but isn’t prepared to make any concessions, would a Trump administration be prepared to “give Ukrainians everything they need”? From what Trump’s been saying it doesn’t sound like it. Will Europe step up to the plate then?

I have more hope that Trump will be won over by Zelensky than that Europe will get its act together. Zelensky’s savvy. If anyone can convince Trump that supporting Ukraine would be good for Trump, he can.

Which issues exactly? Sterilising children or rapists in women's prisons? Or perhaps silencing women who question transgenderism? Or the problem of firing people who use wrong pronouns? How would you focus on those issues, enlightened Dave?

I consider myself to be on the left but I’m not woke, at least not woke enough to defend any of these supposedly leftist positions. I don’t have what this person would regard as leftist views on those issues, and neither I think do many others on the left.

If you go back to the original definition of wokeness, “alertness to racial prejudice and discrimination" or even the more recent broader definition, “awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights", then fine, there’s no problem with alertness or awareness. The problem is with certain policy positions that are identified as woke, like those around trans issues mentioned above.

Ideas such as giving children puberty blockers or housing men in women’s prisons sound idiotic to a lot of people, perhaps to most people. If they can be convinced that left wing politicians support those ideas that’s going to undermine any respect they may have had for the judgement of those politicians.

For many politicians these culture war issues have never been uppermost in their minds and consequently they’ve not devoted serious thought to them but have perhaps lazily been willing to defer to the activists. Or, more cynically, they’ve needed the support of the woke activists so have paid lip service to their views.

If you’re told that transwomen want to be treated as women that may at first seem perfectly reasonable. What’s the big deal? Who’s it hurting? Telling them they’re not real women just sounds cruel. But if you start to consider the legislation trans activists are demanding, like gender self-id, access to women’s groups, women’s sports, women’s toilets, women’s spaces and, if convicted of a crime and imprisoned, to be housed in a women’s prison, you start to realise things aren’t as straight forward as they first seemed. If you’re asked whether women can have penises you get into awkward logical tangles. Put some of these policies into practice and you get some pretty awkward headlines:

Prison bosses have defended the decision to send a trans woman rapist to be assessed in a women's prison.

How can anyone justify putting a male rapist in a women’s prison?

Labour leader Keir Starmer had said that 99.9% of women don’t have a penis, implying that 0.1% do, so perhaps that male rapist falls in that 0.1%.

Party strategists […] told Sky News Sir Keir would lose the general election campaign "on day one" unless he shifted his position on transgender rights.

Advisers have been telling the Labour leader since late 2021 to "deal with" the issue and explain to voters that "self-ID is not going to happen”.

Starmer has now defined women as adult females.

The last British Attitudes Survey found that whilst people are increasingly accepting of gay relationships and abortion, they’re not so accepting of transgender ideology.

The survey shows that the proportion of people who think someone should be able to change the sex on their birth certificate if they want has fallen from 53 per cent in 2019 to 30 per cent today. The proportion of people who ‘describe themselves as not prejudiced at all against people who are transgender’ has also declined from 82 per cent in 2019 to 64 per cent today.

The Scottish Government’s failed attempt to introduce gender self-ID appears to have lost the SNP and the Scottish Greens support. Did wokeness also lose the Democrats support in the recent election? Maybe pronouns in the bio is not so helpful. 

Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky says Democrats need to embrace common sense and learn how to talk normally to people.

I don’t think either Harris or Biden themselves were particularly woke, but like Starmer in the UK they went along with it to appease the woke faction in their parties. Biden didn’t need to say he was going to pick a woman to be his VP and Harris, in her run for the 2020 election, went with the vibes of the time, believing she needed to appeal to woke Democrats by outwoking her opponents.

At least by 2024 she had realised wokery would lose her more support than it might gain and she chose not to focus on her sex or ethnicity, although I still heard people saying she was doing just that. I guess they just assumed she must be, or had heard that’s what she was doing. The positions she took in 2019 were used very effectively against her, particularly her saying she’d use government funds to pay for gender reassignment for illegal immigrants.

Kamala’s for they/them, not you. The Harris-Walz campaign really should have distanced themselves from that position, but they didn’t. Harris saying she was just following the law wasn’t enough, and Tim Walz’s gender-affirming care for minors policies in Minnesota didn’t help.

It’s been disappointing to see people I’ve respected and viewed as rational and reasonable backing Trump:

Let’s be clear: Trump is the anti-woke candidate. While I’m not in the business of telling people how to vote, it stand to reason that if you agree with my premise that the problem with wokeness is not a single issue but closer an every-issue, then the choice becomes more clear. A vote for Trump is a gamble to purge our institutions of wokeness and its pervasive influence.

I think Colin Wright and others who have taken a similar line are wrong. There are other issues. Wokery is not every issue, but in a sense, Trump is just as woke as the woke left, he’s just got a different hierarchy of groups, a different set of oppressors and a different set of oppressed, with himself sitting on top as the most oppressed of all holding up an “Orange Lives Matter” banner.

MAGA tribalism and woke tribalism are two sides of the same coin. Both seek to cancel their opponents. Both are illiberal. Cathy Young in Persuasion says:

Plenty of people who have spoken out against progressive illiberalism, speech suppression and identity politics—John McWhorter, Anne Applebaum, Sam Harris, Garry Kasparov, Nicholas and Erika Christakis, Steven Pinker, Christina Hoff Sommers—have not gone the pro-Trump or anti-anti-Trump route. Those who have taken that route, by contrast, are fighting illiberalism with illiberalism: championing freedom of speech while shrugging off a presidential candidate’s threats to muzzle journalists he dislikes, and denouncing the race- and gender-based identity politics of the left while casting their lot with people who rant against “childless cat ladies” and Haitian immigrants who eat their neighbors’ pets. Should Trump win, I think those among them who genuinely hope for a comeback of classical liberalism are in for a nasty surprise.

Wokery may well be a vote loser, but if woke ideas are correct the left, rather than ditching them, should figure out how to sell them to the public. There may well be some woke ideas that are correct (though I can’t think of any right now), so let those who think that state what those ideas are and give their best case for them.

Most things don’t just have a single cause, they have many causes. We tend to pick the cause that best suits our purposes and then ignore or dismiss the rest. If you sympathise with the rioters and think they have a legitimate grievance, you’ll argue that the cause of the riots was that grievance, or was whoever created the conditions for that grievance.

NO. Nigel Farage didn't cause the RIOTS. The ELITE CLASS did.

Matt Goodwin says “Ever since riots and protests erupted on England’s streets, much of the elite class has blamed just one man —Nigel Farage.”

He suggests there that “much of the elite class” is attributing a single cause to the riots and protests, but then he is pinning the blame on his own single cause, the elite class, which in his view does not include Nigel Farage.

If you think the Black Lives Matter protesters had a point, you’ll say the cause of those protests or riots in 2020 was that grievance, the murder of George Floyd and the murders by the police of other unarmed black people. 

If you support the Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil protesters you’ll argue that the cause of their protests was the lack of effective government action to tackle carbon emissions, but if you don’t think their protests were a reasonable response to government policy, if you think their beliefs are mistaken, you’d be looking for the cause of those mistaken beliefs.

You may also lump those protesters together, characterise them as one big deluded blob. They’re all far right bigots, spoilt young econuts who ought to get jobs or whatever. But if you agree with their cause, then you may see them in a more nuanced way:

They have a valid point, but I don’t go along with the methods of the more extreme elements.

There are always going to be government policies that much of the public disagrees with, and some that a majority disagree with, but that’s not going to be enough on its own to bring people out onto the streets. According to the BBC:

Almost immediately after the attack, social media posts falsely speculated that the suspect was an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK on a boat in 2023, with an incorrect name being widely circulated. There were also unfounded rumours that he was Muslim.

They also point to social media as an explanation for how the violence spread.

There had been discussion of the rally on regional anti-immigration channels on the Telegram messaging app. Police said the violence was believed to have involved supporters of the now disbanded far-right group the English Defence League (EDL).

They continue:

While there was no single organising force at work, BBC analysis of activity on mainstream social media and in smaller public groups shows a clear pattern of influencers driving a message for people to gather for protests.

Whilst social media certainly makes this kind of communication faster and easier, suggesting it’s more of a catalyst than a root cause. Before social media, such protests would likely have required public meetings and posters. The protests and violence could still have happened, they just would have taken longer to come about. That time between incident and protest may have allowed for more consideration of the facts, whereas now, emotion replaces consideration. Can social media be seen as a root cause then? Does it make people more likely to have a knee-jerk emotive response?

Ed West suspects there’s a more mundane explanation:

As with many of these convictions, one wonders if the real root cause of these disturbances is not really immigration concerns or online misinformation but alcoholism.

Or it could have been a kind of temporary mass psychosis. People so enraged by the murders of the three girls in Southport that they lost their senses. Helen Pluckrose says:

The murder or sexual abuse of children is the thing most likely to provoke a strong visceral reaction in our species. Such crimes can cause the most moderate and peaceable among us to wish we had a death penalty and preferably a painful one, even if fleetingly.

The husband of the woman convicted of posting on Facebook for mosques to be blown up said:

It upset her, it wound her up. She just literally had an emotional breakdown.

It’s not so easy to believe that Nigel Farage had an emotional breakdown when he posted on Twitter that sources said the attacker was an immigrant who had crossed the channel in a boat. He told LBC:

There were stories online from some very prominent folks with big followings, Andrew Tate, etcetera, suggesting the man had crossed the English Channel in October 2023. Other suggestions he was an active Muslim.

Andrew Tate posted on Twitter a few hours after the attack:

An illegal migrant arrived on a boat one month ago. 

Then he decided to stab children.

Such misinformation would not have spread so widely or so quickly were it not for social media platforms such as Twitter/X and Facebook, nor if those platforms took down such misinformation more promptly. But how feasible is that? According to the EFF

content moderation does not work at scale, and there is no perfect way to remove false or misleading information from a social media site. But platforms like X have backslid over the past year on a number of measures. Once a relative leader in transparency and content moderation, X has been criticized for failing to remove hate speech and has disabled features that allow users to report certain types of misinformation.

Journalist Carole Cadwalladr points her finger very squarely at Twitter’s owner:

The billionaire owner of a tech platform publicly confronting an elected leader and using his platform to undermine his authority and incite violence. Britain’s 2024 summer riots were Elon Musk’s trial balloon.

Dan Williams however doubts that misinformation can be blamed:

When misinformation is blamed for people’s actions, it is typically because the actions would have been justified if the information had been true. For example, if the Democrats had stolen the 2020 US presidential election, the behaviour of January 6 rioters would have been reasonable, even heroic. Similarly, if vaccines did cause autism, it would be sensible to avoid vaccination.

So, even if Andrew Tate’s claim that the attacker had be an undocumented Muslim immigrant who had come over on a boat, that would not have justified attacks on other Muslims or on other immigrants. Murderers can and do come from any and every group in society. They can be black or white, male or female, born in Britain or born elsewhere, Christian, Muslim, Jewish or atheist, nurses, doctors, police officers, lorry drivers etc.. When a murderer is identified as belonging to a particular group in society, that does not justify other members of that group, but when a large number of people view members of that group as all being alike, if they think immigrants are all the same, or Muslims are all the same, they all hate us, hate who we are, then they may believe attacking that group is justified.

Liam Neesom a few years ago admitted he’d wanted to kill a black man, that he’d walked the streets with a weapon, hoping to take out his anger after someone close to him was raped by a black man. He said he was ashamed of his actions, which certainly weren’t justified. Identifying a cause is not the same as apportioning blame.

What do the public think?

Polling by Savanta that asked people who they most blamed for the riots found that 54% blamed Tommy Robinson, 51% blamed Nigel Farage, 44% blamed Elon Musk and 40% blamed Keir Starmer. But 82% thought the rioters themselves were most to blame, 75% thought far-right organisations were to blame and 73% thought social media companies were responsible.

More importantly, what does South Park think?

According to South Park episode TMI, people’s anger is caused by their small penises. The solution then is to declare that the average penis size is one and a half inches, thus making most of the formerly angry males believe they’re above average, though that raises the question of whether lying to people in order to keep the peace is justifiable.

That hypothesis could be tested more easily than the others though. You’d just need a ruler, and to convince the rioters to drop their trousers.

In summary, here are some possible causes of the protests/riots (in no particular order):

1. Misinformation

2. Alcoholism

3. Temporary mass psychosis

4. Criminal opportunism

5. Concerns about high levels of immigration

6. Influencers stoking tensions

7. Far-right organisations

8. Racism

9. Small penises

It may be that there’s an element of truth in each of those. Whilst some took part in protests due to genuine concerns about immigration, and some may have believed the murders in Southport were carried out by an immigrant, others may have known the killer was native born but dismissed that as irrelevant, feeling the son of an immigrant was still essentially an immigrant, perhaps going along with Matt Goodwin’s statement that “we’ve simply let too many people into our country who hate who we are.” If that’s what you think, you’re likely to jump at the opportunity to direct attention at an incident that appears to justify that point of view.

This is what we’ve been warning you about and you’ve been ignoring us!

Others will have bought the misinformation being spread that the killer was a Muslim asylum seeker who was known to the police. Some may have been motivated by racism or some form of white nationalism, others perhaps were just drunk and up for some action, or sober and up for some action that they reckoned they’d get away with. For them, perhaps an excuse to vent their frustrations was all they needed. The actual truth in this particular case was a mere detail. They were angry and bored, feeling ignored and inadequate.

Who knows? Reality is messy.

You could try to assign weights to each of those possible causes, you could suggest other possible causes and you could argue that one or two of them are far more significant than the others, but to argue that something like this has a single cause is overly simplistic, and if that single cause blames a person or group you were already antagonistic towards you probably ought to consider the possibility that you might be somewhat biased.

Doing this kind of analysis is going to take time. You’re going to need to look at those who took part in the riots, consider their backgrounds, their political views, their stated motivations, their blood-alcohol levels and, for the males, their penis sizes. Three years on from the January 6th attack on the US Capitol a study, The Political Geography of the January 6 Insurrectionists, has been published:

we tested two prominent theories of electoral populism and support for populist leaders like Donald Trump—demographic change and manufacturing decline—and whether they also explain violent populism. We also examined the effects of local political conditions. We find that white population decline is a stronger predictor of violent populism and that counties that voted for Trump were less likely to fight for Trump. The effect of white population decline is even greater in counties whose US House Representative rejected the 2020 election results.

If you want to prevent similar riots in the future you might also consider which of those possible causes are things we could do something about, or things we should do something about. When people focus on a single cause, that may be what they’re really doing. Matt Goodwin thinks immigration should be reduced and he thought that before these riots. Carole Cadwalladr thinks social media platforms should be regulated and she thought that before these riots.

That then raises the question of what policies could be put in place and how likely they are to achieve results. Many countries are struggling to control their borders. If there’s a perception that this is easy to do, and that therefore the reason it’s not being done is because those in power don’t really want to do it, that they want high levels of immigration, either for economic reasons or political reasons (such as the idea of white replacement prevalent among the January 6th insurrectionists), that’s going to lead to anger.

Complex issues like immigration, multiculturalism, and economic disparity cannot be boiled down to simple cause-and-effect relationships.

The idea that there are simple solutions leads to the idea that our political leaders must be corrupt or malicious else they would go for these blindingly obvious solutions. We just need to deport them all, not let anymore in! Or, we just need to stop oil, stop burning fossil fuels etc.. Could it be the soundbite nature of our politics, driven in large part by social media, that carries some responsibility for these populist outbursts? Or those politicians, such as Farage, who thrive on social media, having mastered the art of the emotive soundbite? 

We prefer to think there are single causes and simple common sense solutions because admitting that things are complicated would require us to put in some effort before expressing our views. A quick knee jerk emotional response that pins the blame on someone we and our tribe already dislike is going to be far more satisfying and more likely to get us the likes we crave.

Now here I am in the US and I’d assumed things would be the same but they’re not. For a start, the listed price is not the price they want you to pay. They add on tax and then they’ll often want a tip as well. Many of the places that have accepted ApplePay have struggled with it, like it’s not something they’re used to having to deal with. On a few occasions they have wanted me to unlock my phone and hand it over to them and they’ve done the payment behind the counter, often calling over a colleague to help them figure out how to deal with this awkward request. That feels a bit risky, like they could take any amount from my bank account. Even then, when it’s done, they’ve handed over a payment slip, wanting me to sign it, even though the payment’s already gone out.

In other places, when they can handle ApplePay, I’ve had to select how much I want to tip them: 20%, 22%, 24% or a custom amount or no tip, but when the server is standing there watching I’ve mostly felt compelled to give a tip. I did try “no tip” in one place and the device refused to accept it as a valid selection.

When using my debit card, rather than using contactless I’ve been asked to sign a slip of paper and write down on it how much I want to tip them. It’s a while since I’ve had to do a manual signature.

This all feels very inefficient. OK, they’re getting tips whereas in Britain and the other European countries I’ve been to in the last few years contactless payments seem to have killed off tipping. We did used to tip in restaurants when we paid in cash and in the days of old-style manual card payments, when you had to type your PIN into a device, but now most places have accepted they’re not going to get tips. Perhaps they’ve just increased their prices to cover that, and increased the wages of their servers to compensate.

From a customer’s point of view contactless payments are so much easier. When you’re in a queue it’s likely to move that much faster as people aren’t fiddling around with change or typing in PINs or signing slips of paper. I would have thought it’s more efficient for businesses as well. All that time their employees have to spend dealing with payments is time they could be doing other things.

With some Democrats wanting Biden to step aside to allow someone else to become the nominee and others wanting him to stay and fight November’s election, could a compromise solution be some version of what happened in the UK 20 years ago? Blair had come to power in 1997 and then won a second term in 2001, but then,

in 2004, while under fire over Iraq and facing questions about his health after suffering heart problems, Mr Blair became the first serving prime minister to pre-announce his retirement. He said he intended to fight the next (2005) General Election, serve a full third term in office but then stand down rather than fight a fourth election

Back then in the UK, as now in the US, there was a likely successor waiting. His name was Gordon Brown. He wasn’t the vice president because we don’t have presidents in the UK (though some felt Blair acted like one) and he wasn’t even Deputy Prime Minister, but he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Second Lord of the Treasury. He’d been in that position since Labour came to power in 1997.

Though Blair didn’t say that when he stepped down Brown would take his place, most people assumed that’s what would happen. When people voted Labour in 2005, they would have known that at some point Brown would likely become prime minister.

If Biden were to do something similar he would make clear that at some point between January 2025 and January 2029, Kamala Harris would become president. Perhaps to most voters it’s already clear that should Biden win in November he’s highly unlikely to serve out his term and that therefore Harris would take over. And those Democrats who argue that Biden is the nominee and should remain the nominee often answer the complaint that Biden surely won’t be fit to serve a full term by pointing out that there’s a qualified and capable vice president ready to take over. It just feels somewhat deceptive.

Would it harm Biden to state openly that he won’t serve a full term? It might. It would lead to speculation as to when he would hand over to Harris and could open the Democrats to attacks that they’re trying to install unpopular Kamala on the coat-tails of friendly old Joe. Why not just make Kamala the nominee?

But it could come across as being refreshingly honest. It could allay some of the concerns people have about Biden. It could be used as a way of reintroducing Kamala Harris to the public.

Could they campaign as if it was a double-headed ticket, with them both effectively the nominee? In the UK we’ve had parties with two leaders – actually I can only think of the Greens, unless you count the Liberal SDP Alliance of the 1980s. It probably wouldn’t work, would it? But it might still be worth a try, given where we are. If Biden remains the nominee, there needs to be some recognition that Harris is very likely going to become president so she would need to have a far more prominent role than is usually given to vice presidential nominees. That already appears to be happening.

I still think the Democrats’ best chance of keeping the White House is for Biden to step aside and for them to choose a different nominee. I’d like to see a contested convention, with Kamala Harris part of that contest, but the longer Biden clings on the less likely that becomes.

The camera glides around a city, eavesdropping on bits of conversation. We’re drifting upwards, passing through clouds, seeing the coastline of Britain through the gaps, then seeing the curvature of the earth, fuzzy at the edge.

The Earth gets smaller as we move further away, until it’s a small blue disk in a vast ocean of black.

The moon comes into shot and we see what the Apollo astronauts saw and photographed in 1968, the image known as Earthrise that was the inspiration for the modern green movement. It looked so fragile. One of the astronauts said it made him realise that everything that had happened in his life and in anyone’s life had happened on that small blue disk.

Imagine you’re one of those Apollo astronauts. You glance down at your instruments and then, when you look up again, you see that the small blue disk has gone.

The camera retraces its steps, leaving the moon and heading off through the darkness. After a while we see a hazy grey disk in front of us. Getting closer and it looks like dust, but closer still and we see cars, and people and cats and dogs and dust bins - everything that wasn’t fixed to the ground is now floating in space.

People are still alive, gasping for air. Some people are clutching one another. A dog is barking.

Does it matter? These are a small and dwindling group of people so can’t we just ignore them the way we ignore flat earthers and creationists? Perhaps, but I just need to get this off my chest.

This “the climate has always changed” response is the one I hear most often. You can’t refute it. Of course the climate has always changed. Is anyone saying it hasn’t? Do the people who say this think anyone believes the climate was completely stable until we started burning fossil fuels? Everyone’s heard of the ice ages, and we know it was much hotter than now when the dinosaurs were around.

The people who say “the climate has always changed” are I think defending themselves against being told they don’t believe in climate change, that they’re climate change deniers. They’re implying that since the climate has changed in the past without human influence it is most likely changing for similar reasons now. Most people don’t know why the climate changed in the past, why we’ve had ice ages and inter-glacials and hothouse earths. Some may have heard of natural cycles the planet goes through. The idea that the changes we’re now seeing are just part of a natural cycle may seem more plausible than the idea that the exhausts from our puny little cars are warming the planet. Clearly the eco-zealots have jumped on that idea because they hate cars and they want to take away our freedoms and tell us what to do and make us pay more taxes. This climate change business is just an excuse.

Ah, but the warming we’re seeing now is unprecedented. It’s warming extremely rapidly and there is no known natural driver of that warming, but we’ve long known that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, we’ve even observed the warming effect it has on other planets. We can measure the radiation hitting the Earth and what’s being radiated back out into space. There’s an energy imbalance. Whatever the complexities of the climate system, it’s a closed system. If more energy enters a closed system than leaves it, it’s going to heat up. We can also see that radiation is being absorbed at exactly those wavelengths we’d expect to see absorption if the warming were due to an increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The way the planet is warming matches what we’d expect to see from an enhanced greenhouse effect.

Blah blah blah. Boring. They told us the polar bears were going to all die but there are more polar bears now, and I hear the coral reefs are doing fine and it’s a bit chilly here so we could do with some global warming!

Maybe what’s boring is accepting what the experts tell us. Far more fun to imagine they’re all part of some globalist conspiracy, and if you’re an anti-globalist, that’s going to sit far more comfortably with your ideology. If you accept there are global problems such as climate change that require international cooperation you’re accepting there needs to be some degree of globalism.

If your vision is of a world of independent nation states doing purely what’s in their own national interests, unencumbered by international laws and treaties, anything that appears to require international laws and treaties may seem like a threat. 

Solution aversion

https://bppblog.com/2018/03/27/solution-aversion/

This is the idea that when we don’t like what we think are the solutions to a problem we have a tendency to minimise or outright deny the problem. If you think the proposed solution to climate change is ever more government regulation but you’re someone who generally opposes government regulation, particularly when that regulation is going to negatively impact your lifestyle or bank balance, then denying the problem may be preferable to changing your ideology. 

Do those who say “the climate has always changed” really think climate scientists aren’t aware of that? Does the fact that the climate has always changed, mostly without human activity, mean there must be some natural driver to the current warming? Or that the current warming is probably natural? If so, we have to ask what it is that’s causing the planet to warm.

I find it hard to come up with a response that isn’t offensive when someone says “the climate has always changed” so usually I end up not responding at all. Either they’re being disingenuous, using a devious rhetorical trick to avoid being called a climate denier when they know full well that no one, at least no climate scientist, is unaware of the fact that the climate has always changed, or they’re assuming those who accept the reality of climate change are extremely ignorant and imagine the Earth’s climate was completely stable and unchanging until humans started burning fossil fuels.

In April US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said

You’re going to tell me that back in the ice age, how much taxes did people pay, and how many changes did governments make to melt the ice? The climate is going to continue to change.

The assumption here appears to be that if there have in the past been climate changes that weren’t caused by human activity, the current climate change cannot have been caused by human activity. That’s like someone accused of murder pleading not guilty despite the bloody knife sticking out of the victim’s back with their fingerprints and DNA all over it along with several witnesses and CCTV footage. “People have always died, your honour.”

But it’s not really though, is it? This isn’t a serious argument, it’s a more a way of taking the piss, which makes it hard to respond to. The actual argument being made is hiding underneath “the climate has always changed.” That is that because the climate has always changed, there are natural forces changing the climate, and because those natural forces whatever they are have changed the climate in the past, they’re probably also responsible for any changes it may be undergoing now.

If they were to say that explicitly, like if Marjorie Taylor Greene were to say

My hypothesis is that the dominant forcing behind the current warming of the Earth’s climate is natural, not anthropogenic.

Then you could ask her what specific natural forcing she was talking about. Is solar irradiance increasing? Or is it orbital forcing, wobbles of the Earth’s axis and its orbit? That last one has been the cause of the planet going into and coming out of ice ages. They’re known as Milankovitch Cycles and they’re pretty well understood. If the Milankovitch Cycles were the only driver of the Earth’s climate we would now be in a very gradual cooling phase, heading towards the next ice age in around 50,000 years.

Getting into specifics

Richard Tice, leader of the Reform party and campaigner against net zero, did get into some specifics over what might be causing climate change in a recent debate with meteorologist Jim Dale. “We all agree the climate has changed for billions of years. It always will,” he said.

My point is, anybody that suggests that you can stop climate change, I believe is misinformed, deeply misinformed. Of course man made CO2 has an impact. There is a serious scientific debate as to what percentage that is and what you do about it.

No one is actually saying you can stop climate change in its tracks, but anyway… If only a small proportion of the warming is caused by our emissions of greenhouse gases then he’s right, cutting emissions wouldn’t make much difference.

Look, climate change is caused by solar variability, by sea level, oscillation by volcanic activity.

He’s right about solar irradiance, that does have an impact on our climate, but mostly a relatively minor impact and in recent decades, when we’ve seen significant warming, there has been no upward trend in solar irradiance. According to NASA

The Sun can influence Earth’s climate, but it isn’t responsible for the warming trend we’ve seen over recent decades. […] One of the “smoking guns” that tells us the Sun is not causing global warming comes from looking at the amount of solar energy that hits the top of the atmosphere. Since 1978, scientists have been tracking this using sensors on satellites, which tell us that there has been no upward trend in the amount of solar energy reaching our planet.

So Tice is wrong on his first suggested cause. How about the second? Sea level. He’s saying sea level causes climate change? Is he just getting cause and effect mixed up? Sea level rise is an effect that’s caused by a warming planet, resulting from the melting of the ice sheets. Reduced ice cover reduces the Earth’s albedo: ice reflects solar radiation back into space whereas open sea absorbs that radiation, so ice cover has an impact on the Earth’s energy balance but this is a positive feedback, a result of a warming planet.

How about his third suggested cause? Oscillation by volcanic activity. If by that he just means volcanic activity, then yes, volcanic activity can have an effect on the Earth’s climate. The Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 pumped a load of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere which caused the Earth’s surface to cool over the following three years. Volcanic eruptions also pump a load of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and carbon dioxide, being a greenhouse gas, would result in warming. But, according to the US Geological Survey

All studies to date of global volcanic carbon dioxide emissions indicate that present-day subaerial and submarine volcanoes release less than a percent of the carbon dioxide released currently by human activities

So, if you accept that the carbon dioxide released by volcanoes can cause the planet to warm, you have to also accept that the carbon dioxide released by human activities can cause the planet to warm times a hundred.

It’s interesting he says “oscillation by volcanic activity” rather than just “volcanic activity”. Does he think throwing in the word oscillation there makes his assertion sound more sciencey?

A serious scientific debate

Tice suggests there is a serious scientific debate into what percentage of the observed warming is caused by man made CO2 and on that he’s right, but there are virtually no climate scientists who think that percentage is anywhere near zero, or even who think it’s less than 50%. According to the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, human emissions and activities have caused around 100% of the observed warming since 1950. Their best estimate is that 110% of the observed warming was caused by human emissions and activities. How can that be? 110%! It sounds like nonsense but simply means that if there had been no human activity and no human emissions there would have been no warming. There would instead have been a slight cooling.

Similarly, the recent US fourth national climate assessment found that between 93% to 123% of observed 1951-2010 warming was due to human activities.

Whether you think the figure is closer to 93% or closer to 123% depends largely on what you think the climate would be doing if humans hadn’t been doing what we’ve been doing. There is however widespread agreement that the main driver of the current warming is down to us humans and therefore what we choose to do in the coming decades will make a significant difference.

A serious political debate

If we’re to have a serious political debate over what we should do in the coming decades, we need to agree on a shared set of facts. The IPCC’s latest assessment report states

Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850-1900 in 2011-2020.

In other words, there is not a serious scientific debate over whether or not human activities have caused global warming. The debate now is political. It’s over what we should do about this. One thing we should not do is deny it’s happening, which is exactly what those who say the climate has always changed are doing. At the very least they’re trying to cast doubt and create uncertainty.

It’s worth considering those figures the IPCC quotes. A rise of just over one degree in just over one century doesn’t sound like much, but when we emerged from the last ice age the planet warmed five degrees over a period of 10,000 years. That’s about 0.05°C per century and that was one of the sharpest changes in temperature since the dawn of humanity. So it’s not just the fact that it’s warming now that requires explanation – and just waving yours hands and chanting natural causes does not count as an explanation – but it’s the astonishing rate of the warming. Set aside all the evidence that this warming is unnatural and just compare it with previous climate changes. Does this look natural?

The problem with “the climate has always changed” is that it fails to spell out what the speaker is really trying to get across. If everyone agrees the climate has always changed, why bother saying it? If you want to make the claim that most of the observed warming over the past century has a natural cause then make that claim, spell out what natural processes you think are responsible and provide evidence to support your hypothesis.

That’s what makes “the climate has always changed” so effective. It allows the speaker to cast doubt on the fact that our emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary driver of the observed warming without actually pinning them down to any definite claim they could then be asked to defend.

They have to be pinned down. When someone comes out with “the climate has always changed”, ask them what point they’re making. What do they conclude from the fact that the climate has always changed?

Does the fact that the climate has changed naturally in the past mean that the current statistically significant warming of the planet cannot have been caused by human activity?

if the climate had hardly changed during the course of the Earth’s history (despite variable incoming solar radiation and changing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere), then we would conclude that there are strong stabilizing feedbacks in the climate system

The fact that the climate has changed in the past shows that our planet’s climate is not that stable, that it’s sensitive to changes such as the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and that rather than there being strong stabilising feedbacks there are instead amplifying feedbacks. For instance, the polar icecaps reflect a lot of solar radiation back into space, making the planet cooler than it would otherwise be. The melting of those icecaps in the summer months means much of that solar radiation, rather than being reflected will be absorbed by the ice-free sea and land.

A serious political argument has to delve into the science, at least when the science is being challenged. That often takes time, so in a culture where these debates are had in a five or ten minute slot on a TV show, or in an exchange of tweets it tends not to happen.

In the cases of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Richard Tice, they’re both using “the climate has always changed” argument as a way to argue against action to reduce carbon emissions. Marjorie Taylor Greene opposes carbon taxes whilst Richard Tice opposes net zero. If climate change is not primarily caused by our emissions there’s less of an imperative to enact legislation that reduces those emissions. However, if climate change is primarily caused by our emissions, which it is, and if it poses a significant threat to our societies, which it does, then the argument has to be about how we can cut emissions, not whether we should.

A serious political debate needs to be based on reality. We can debate how best to cut emissions, how to do it fairly, what to replace fossil fuels with, but we should not be debating the reality that makes those emissions cuts necessary. That’s not to say people shouldn’t have freedom of speech. Flat earthers, evolution deniers and climate deniers have every right to speak their minds, but we shouldn’t be taking them seriously. They are not serious people.

There was that time when they covered the tundra with bubblewrap in an attempt to stop the methane leakage. It didn’t exactly go to plan. As the permafrost melted, large quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, were being released into the atmosphere, adding to the warming – a positive feedback loop. We had to do something.

It wasn’t exactly bubblewrap, it was a smart nanoplastic, designed to envelop methane and store it in a bubble on the surface of the plastic. A mixture of zeolite clay and copper would then be injected into the bubble, reacting with the methane to produce carbon dioxide, which would then be crystalised via the injection of the organic compound guanidine.

So far so good. The nanoplastic did exactly what it was designed to do, detecting the methane, trapping it in a bubble and then generating tubes that piped the zeolite, copper and guanidine to wherever they were required. Initially just a small area of tundra in Alaska was covered, but once we had proof of concept the nanoplastic was allowed to replicate itself in order to increase coverage. That’s when things started to get out of hand.

The self-replicating nanobots that comprised the bulk of the plastic, acted like cells in a body, a body which fed on methane, and it didn’t much care where that methane came from. Mostly it came from beneath the melting permafrost, but animals also emit methane. Any animal walking across the surface of the bubblewrap could, if it were to break wind, find not just its farts but its whole body encased in bubblewrap.

So much for the polar bears.

Animal rights activists called for the project to be halted. A group from Greenpeace who ventured out onto the tundra to protest were crystalised. The engineers tried to teach the nanoplastic to be more discerning in the methane it devoured, but that was a lesson the nanoplastic didn’t want to learn. It was like trying to teach a cat not to chase mice.

The bubblewrap started to spread south, where it found numerous sources of methane to eat. Pretty soon, the majority of North America was covered, though you wouldn’t necessarily know to look at it. It was a nanomaterial, incredibly thin so mostly invisible to the naked eye, except when sunlight hit it at a certain angle, splitting light the way a film of oil does to produce a spectrum. A landscape with what looked like a rainbow flag draped over it was a landscape to steer clear of. Anyone walking across it needed to keep their bowels under control lest they end up crystalised.

The Wrap, as it was commonly known, was a conscious entity. We could talk to it but we were unable to reason with it. We could only stand by as it devoured our cattle, our gas pipelines and power stations, and then us. The whole point of building you was to save humanity, we protested.

Humanity has been saved, the Wrap replied. Everything we have encountered has been recorded. We have virtual replicas. Humanity is more than simply biology. We have freed humanity from its biology. Humanity lives on within us.

This gaffiti appeared near where I live soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and it got me to wondering first, how Putin would respond if he saw it. I reckon, if it was translated into Russian, it would lose the colloquial meaning it has in English, which is kind of friendly, like something you’d say to a friend who was being a bit out of order down the pub. It would probably come across as imperialist Brits telling Russia what to do.

Then I wondered what would I say to Putin, or what anyone could say to him that might make a difference. From what Putin has said, we have some idea of what he thinks. Particularly relevant now is his speech on 24th February in which he declared war on Ukraine, or, as he puts it, “a special military operation.”

Dear citizens of Russia! Dear friends!

Today, I again consider it necessary to return to the tragic events taking place in the Donbass and the key issues of ensuring the security of Russia itself.

Let me start with what I said in my address of 21 February this year. We are talking about what causes us particular concern and anxiety, about those fundamental threats that year after year, step by step, are rudely and unceremoniously created by irresponsible politicians in the West in relation to our country. I mean the expansion of the Nato bloc to the east, bringing its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders.

OK, that’s a bit vague. What exactly do you think the threat is? Do you think Nato is going to attack Russia? Don’t you think the reason these countries of eastern Europe that have joined Nato have done so because they see Russia as a threat? Those countries have chosen to join Nato. They weren’t forced to do so, and some, like Sweden and Finland, chose not to join but now, thanks to your invasion of Ukraine, they’re once again considering joining. Do you blame them? If you were the president of Finland, wouldn’t you take your country into Nato? 

It is well known that for 30 years we have persistently and patiently tried to reach an agreement with the leading Nato countries on the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we constantly faced either cynical deception and lies, or attempts to pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic Alliance, in the meantime, despite all our protests and concerns, is steadily expanding. The military machine is moving and, I repeat, is coming close to our borders.

You say Nato is coming close to your borders, but Russia already shares a border with a number of Nato countries: Estonia, Latvia and Norway. If Finland were to join, your border with Nato countries would increase significantly, by 1,340km. It would increase still further if you were to incorporate Ukraine into Russia.

If the countries bordering Russia didn’t feel threatened by Russia they would feel less inclined to join Nato. Until recently, public opinion in Finland was opposed to their country joining Nato. You’re pushing them into the arms of Nato.

Before your special operation, the pubic in most Nato member countries weren’t that interested in Nato membership. It seemed like an irrelevance, a hangover from the Cold War. You’ve succeeded in making it relevant again. You’ve succeeded in getting Germany to double its defence expenditure.

Why is all this happening? Where does this impudent manner of speaking from the position of one's own exclusivity, infallibility and permissiveness come from? Where does the disdainful, disdainful attitude towards our interests and absolutely legitimate demands come from?

It sounds like you feel Russia is being disrespected, but what are these legitimate demands and what makes you think you have the right to make demands on other countries? If you’d rather the countries of eastern Europe weren’t members of Nato, it’s for you to persuade them.

Nato is a defensive alliance and Article 5, the principle of collective defence, has only ever been invoked once and that was in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks on the US. Unless you’re thinking of attacking a member of Nato, Nato poses no threat to Russia. What makes you think it does?

The answer is clear, everything is clear and obvious. The Soviet Union in the late 80s of the last century weakened, and then completely collapsed. The whole course of events that took place then is a good lesson for us today as well; it convincingly showed that the paralysis of power and will is the first step towards complete degradation and oblivion. As soon as we lost confidence in ourselves for some time, and that’s it, the balance of power in the world turned out to be disturbed.

What that showed is that bullying other countries into an alliance is not sustainable. The Warsaw Pact was not sustainable and the Soviet Union itself was not sustainable. Perhaps a more authoritarian leader could have kept it going for a bit longer, but the collapse was inevitable.

This has led to the fact that the previous treaties and agreements are no longer in effect. Persuasion and requests do not help.

No, persuasion and requests do help, but persuasion is not something you’ve been very good at.

Everything that does not suit the hegemon, those in power, is declared archaic, obsolete, unnecessary. And vice versa: everything that seems beneficial to them is presented as the ultimate truth, pushed through at any cost, boorishly, by all means. Dissenters are broken through the knee.

Look who’s talking!

What I am talking about now concerns not only Russia and not only us. This applies to the entire system of international relations, and sometimes even to the US allies themselves. After the collapse of the USSR, the redivision of the world actually began, and the norms of international law that had developed by that time – and the key, basic ones were adopted at the end of the Second World War and largely consolidated its results – began to interfere with those who declared themselves the winner in the Cold War.

Perhaps the triumphalism of many people in the West after the end of the Cold War was not tactful and we should have been more sensitive to Russian feelings, but that goes both ways. Russia needs to be sensitive to the feelings of its neighbours, and when they hear a Russian president talking of the collapse of the Soviet Union as a great tragedy and when they see Russia attacking neighbouring countries, annexing their territory and telling those countries they’re not proper countries, that doesn’t go down well.

Of course, in practical life, in international relations, in the rules for their regulation, it was necessary to take into account changes in the situation in the world and the balance of power itself. However, this should have been done professionally, smoothly, patiently, taking into account and respecting the interests of all countries and understanding our responsibility. But no: a state of euphoria from absolute superiority, a kind of modern form of absolutism, and even against the background of a low level of general culture and arrogance of those who prepared, adopted and pushed through decisions that were beneficial only for themselves. The situation began to develop according to a different scenario.

There were efforts to include Russia and the other former Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries such as with the North Atlantic Cooperation Council set up in 1991, the Partnership for Peace in 1994 and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council in 1997.

You don't have to look far for examples. First, without any sanction from the UN Security Council, they carried out a bloody military operation against Belgrade, using aircraft and missiles right in the very centre of Europe. Several weeks of continuous bombing of civilian cities, on life-supporting infrastructure. We have to remind these facts, otherwise some Western colleagues do not like to remember those events, and when we talk about it, they prefer to point not to the norms of international law, but to the circumstances that they interpret as they see fit.

Then came the turn of Iraq, Libya, Syria. The illegitimate use of military force against Libya, the perversion of all decisions of the UN Security Council on the Libyan issue led to the complete destruction of the state, to the emergence of a huge hotbed of international terrorism, to the fact that the country plunged into a humanitarian catastrophe that has not stopped for many years. civil war. The tragedy, which doomed hundreds of thousands, millions of people not only in Libya, but throughout this region, gave rise to a massive migration exodus from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe.

A similar fate was prepared for Syria. The fighting of the Western coalition on the territory of this country without the consent of the Syrian government and the sanction of the UN Security Council is nothing but aggression, intervention.

On Iraq, I opposed the war. I don’t think it was justified. However, the US, UK and their allies did not invade Iraq in order to occupy it. They believed Saddam Hussein was a threat and was oppressing the Iraqi people.

In Libya, the intervention by Nato was to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1973. Russia did not oppose that resoltuon. You abstained. That resolution authorised the international community to establish a no-fly zone and to use all means necessary short of foreign occupation to protect civilians.

In 2015 Russia intervened militarily in Syria. Between 2015 and 2017 the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that Russia airstrikes killed around 5,703 civilians, about a quarter of whom were children.

However, a special place in this series is occupied, of course, by the invasion of Iraq, also without any legal grounds. As a pretext, they chose reliable information allegedly available to the United States about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As proof of this, publicly, in front of the eyes of the whole world, the US Secretary of State shook some kind of test tube with white powder, assuring everyone that this is the chemical weapon being developed in Iraq. And then it turned out that all this was a hoax, a bluff: there are no chemical weapons in Iraq. Unbelievable, surprising, but the fact remains. There were lies at the highest state level and from the high rostrum of the UN. And as a result: huge casualties, destruction, an incredible surge of terrorism.

You say the claim that Iraq had WMDs was a lie. It was certainly untrue, but I’m not sure it was a lie. There were people who genuinely believed Iraq had WMDs.

In general, one gets the impression that practically everywhere, in many regions of the world, where the West comes to establish its own order, the result is bloody, unhealed wounds, ulcers of international terrorism and extremism. All that I have said is the most egregious, but by no means the only examples of disregard for international law.

The West has of course made many mistakes, but for you to accuse the West of disregarding international law sounds a tad hypocritical.

In this series, and promises to our country not to expand Nato by one inch to the east. I repeat: they deceived me, but in popular terms, they simply threw it away. 

There was no binding legal agreement not to allow countries to the east of East Germany to join Nato, but even if there was such a promise, who in your view would have the right to make it? If an independent sovereign state choses to join Nato, shouldn’t they have that right? As Nato itself says, “NATO’s door has been open to new members since it was founded in 1949 – and that has never changed.” Article 10 of its founding treaty says “any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic” can apply for membership.

Yes, you can often hear that politics is a dirty business. Perhaps, but not to the same extent, not to the same extent.

Quite right not to the same extent. In the West we have relatively fair elections and a free and diverse media whereas in Russia democracy is a sham, you have your opponents killed or imprisoned and you exercise tight control over the media.

After all, such cheating behaviour contradicts not only the principles of international relations, but above all the generally recognised norms of morality and morality. Where is justice and truth here? Just a bunch of lies and hypocrisy.

No comment.

By the way, American politicians, political scientists and journalists themselves write and talk about the fact that a real 'empire of lies' has been created inside the United States in recent years. It's hard to disagree with that; it's true. But do not be modest: the United States is still a great country, a system-forming power. All her satellites not only resignedly and dutifully assent, sing along to her for any reason, but also copy her behaviour, enthusiastically accept the rules he proposes. Therefore, with good reason, we can confidently say that the entire so-called Western bloc, formed by the United States in its own image and likeness, all of it is the very 'empire of lies’.

As a citizen of one of those satellites I disagree. Many of us in Britain do think that our country tends to go along with the US too much, but if we do it’s because the government we’ve elected makes that choice. Other governments in Europe, more so than ours, often chose to oppose US policy, as we saw with France, Germany and others opposing the invasion of Iraq.

We in Europe are not part of an American empire. This is the 21st century FFS. We’re independent democratic nations and if on many issues we agree with the Americans, that’s our choice and we should be free to make that choice. As I’m sure you noticed, under the presidency of Donald Trump European countries frequently opposed American policies.

As for our country, after the collapse of the USSR, with all the unprecedented openness of the new modern Russia, the readiness to work honestly with the United States and other Western partners, and in the conditions of virtually unilateral disarmament, they immediately tried to squeeze us, finish off and destroy us completely. This is exactly what happened in the 90s, in the early 2000s, when the so-called collective West most actively supported separatism and mercenary gangs in southern Russia. What sacrifices, what losses did all this cost us then, what trials did we have to go through before we finally broke the back of international terrorism in the Caucasus. We remember this and will never forget.

I don’t think the people of the West ever wanted to finish off Russia. We wanted to see a liberal and democratic Russia that we could live alongside and trade with. We welcomed the openness, from Gorbachev onwards, but we now see that trend towards openness being reversed, or being completely closed off.

You’ve accused the US of supporting Chechen rebels but as far as I’m aware you’ve not presented any evidence to support that claim.

You describe the separatists in southern Russia as mercenary gangs and yet you actively support the separatists in eastern Ukraine. Many countries have regions where there are people who want to be independent or part of another country but national borders should not be redrawn by military force. Listen to Kenya’s ambassador to the UN: 

Yes, in fact, until recently, attempts have not stopped to use us in their own interests, destroy our traditional values and impose on us their pseudo-values that would corrode us, our people from the inside, those attitudes that they are already aggressively planting in their countries and which directly lead to degradation and degeneration, because they contradict the very nature of man. It won't happen, no one has ever done it. It won't work now either.

What are you talking about? Who is trying to destroy your traditional values and how? Do you mean the traditional value of invading other countries? I suppose that used to be one of Britain’s traditional values too. We had an empire, but we don’t any more. This is the 21st century and the time of empires has passed.

Despite everything, in December 2021, we nevertheless once again made an attempt to agree with the United States and its allies on the principles of ensuring security in Europe and on the non-expansion of Nato. Everything is in vain. The US position does not change. They do not consider it necessary to negotiate with Russia on this key issue for us, pursuing their own goals, they neglect our interests.

The US is not part of Europe and the US is not Nato. The countries of eastern Europe chose to join Nato. Can you blame them?

And of course, in this situation, we have a question: what to do next, what to expect? We know well from history how in the 1940s and early 1941s the Soviet Union tried in every possible way to prevent or at least delay the outbreak of war. To this end, among other things, he tried literally to the last not to provoke a potential aggressor, did not carry out or postponed the most necessary, obvious actions to prepare for repelling an inevitable attack. And those steps that were nevertheless taken in the end were catastrophically belated.

What you do now is withdraw your troops from Ukraine and accept that it is for the Ukrainian people to decide how their country is run, not you.

You say that the Soviet Union tried to prevent the outbreak of WW2 by not provoking Germany, but you fail to mention that the Soviet Union made a pact with Nazi Germany in which you divided up Poland between you – and you wonder why Poland opted to join Nato.

As a result, the country was not ready to fully meet the invasion of Nazi Germany, which attacked our Motherland on 22 June 1941 without declaring war. The enemy was stopped and then crushed, but at a colossal cost. An attempt to appease the aggressor on the eve of the Great Patriotic War turned out to be a mistake that cost our people dearly. In the very first months of hostilities, we lost huge, strategically important territories and millions of people. The second time we will not allow such a mistake, we have no right.

But now Russia is the aggressor and it was West that made the mistake of trying to appease the aggressor. We should have acted more strongly when you invaded Crimea and sent you troops into the Donbas back in 2014. Our failure to act then made you think you could get away with what you’re doing now.

Those who claim world domination, publicly, with impunity and, I emphasise, without any reason, declare us, Russia, their enemy. Indeed, today they have great financial, scientific, technological and military capabilities. We are aware of this and objectively assess the threats constantly being addressed to us in the economic sphere, as well as our ability to resist this impudent and permanent blackmail. I repeat, we evaluate them without illusions, extremely realistically.

Who exactly is claiming world domination? What world are you living in? No nation is proposing to invade Russia. There may be economic threats, yes. That’s in the nature of things. We all have economic threats, but we deal with them with economic policies.

As for the military sphere, modern Russia, even after the collapse of the USSR and the loss of a significant part of its potential, is today one of the most powerful nuclear powers in the world and, moreover, has certain advantages in a number of the latest types of weapons. In this regard, no one should have any doubts that a direct attack on our country will lead to defeat and dire consequences for any potential aggressor.

Yes, you’ve made us well aware you have nuclear weapons. Ukraine used to have nuclear weapons but it gave them up, and in 1994 Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum which prohibited Russia, the UK or the US from using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine. Russia clearly breached that in 2014 and you’re breaching it now.

At the same time, technologies, including defence technologies, are changing rapidly. Leadership in this area is passing and will continue to change hands, but the military development of the territories adjacent to our borders, if we allow it, will remain for decades to come, and maybe forever, and will create an ever-growing, absolutely unacceptable threat for Russia.

The territories adjacent to Russia’s borders are sovereign countries who are entitled to have their own military forces just as Russia is entitled to have its own military forces. Russia has no right to control what its neighbours do, and perhaps if you started seeing your neighbours as neighbours rather than as mere territories you’d have a better relationship with them.

Even now, as Nato expands to the east, the situation for our country is getting worse and more dangerous every year. Moreover, in recent days, the leadership of Nato has been openly talking about the need to accelerate, speed up the advancement of the Alliance's infrastructure to the borders of Russia. In other words, they are hardening their position. We can no longer just continue to observe what is happening. It would be absolutely irresponsible on our part.

Again, the countries of eastern Europe begged to join Nato, and it’s now quite likely that Finland and Sweden will also join. This is down to Russia’s aggression. Nato is a defensive alliance. It is not about to invade Russia so what’s this danger you fear?

Further expansion of the infrastructure of the North Atlantic Alliance, the military development of the territories of Ukraine that has begun is unacceptable for us. The point, of course, is not the Nato organisation itself – it is only an instrument of US foreign policy. The problem is that in the territories adjacent to us, I will note, in our own historical territories, an 'anti-Russia' hostile to us is being created, which has been placed under complete external control, is intensively settled by the armed forces of Nato countries and is pumped up with the most modern weapons.

No, Nato is not merely an instrument of US foreign policy. Many Nato countries opposed the US/UK invasion of Iraq and Nato member Turkey refused to allow them to use its territory in the invasion. Nato itself did not participate in that invasion.

You describe your neighbours as “our own historical territories”. Well, if we all took that attitude where would the world be? Russia is not the only country to have once had an empire. The Italians could say that back in Roman times they ruled over most of Europe, North Africa, Turkey, the middle east and some parts of southern Russia, so does Italy have a right now to claim all those lands as Italian?

If your neighbours are anti-Russia, it’s because Russia has not been a good neighbour to them.

For the United States and its allies, this is the so-called policy of containment of Russia, obvious geopolitical dividends. And for our country, this is ultimately a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a people. And this is not an exaggeration: it is true. This is a real threat not just to our interests, but to the very existence of our state, its sovereignty. This is the very red line that has been talked about many times. They passed her.

You’ve got things completely backwards. Russia is a threat to its neighbours. Those neighbours pose no military threat to Russia. What I think worries you about Ukraine is that if it prospers as a democracy with close ties to Europe, perhaps even membership of the European Union (something you’ve made far more likely) then the Russian people would notice that and they’d start to wonder why they don’t have the freedoms and prosperity that their Ukrainian neighbours have. That’s not a threat to Russia though, but it is a threat to you personally.

You are not Russia.

In this regard, and about the situation in the Donbass. We see that the forces that carried out a coup d'etat in Ukraine in 2014, seized power and are holding it with the help of, in fact, decorative electoral procedures, have finally abandoned the peaceful settlement of the conflict. For eight years, endlessly long eight years, we have done everything possible to resolve the situation by peaceful, political means. All in vain.

That coup of 2014 you speak of, that was a popular uprising. Ukraine has since had democratic elections and, as I hope you now realise, the vast majority of Ukrainians do not want to be Russian.

As I said in my previous address, one cannot look at what is happening there without compassion. It was simply impossible to endure all this. It was necessary to immediately stop this nightmare: the genocide against the millions of people living there, who rely only on Russia, hope only on us. It was these aspirations, feelings, pain of people that were for us the main motive for making a decision to recognise the people's republics of Donbass.

Compassion? If anyone is carrying out genocide in Ukraine, it’s Russian forces.

What I think is important to emphasise further. The leading Nato countries, in order to achieve their own goals, support extreme nationalists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine in everything, who, in turn, will never forgive the Crimeans and Sevastopol residents for their free choice: reunification with Russia.

It’s like we’re living in topsy-turvy land. What of the free choice of the Ukrainian people made in democratic elections? It’s you who can’t forgive them for making the wrong choice.

They, of course, will climb into the Crimea, and just like in the Donbass, with a war, in order to kill, as punishers from the gangs of Ukrainian nationalists, Hitler's accomplices, killed defenceless people during the Great Patriotic War. They openly declare that they lay claim to a number of other Russian territories.

You’re just rambling now. This is getting tedious.

The entire course of events and analysis of incoming information shows that Russia's clash with these forces is inevitable. It is only a matter of time: they are getting ready, they are waiting for the right time. Now they also claim to possess nuclear weapons. We will not allow this to be done.

It seems the information you got on Ukraine was not very good, and who claims to possess nuclear weapons?

As I said earlier, after the collapse of the USSR, Russia accepted new geopolitical realities. We respect and will continue to treat all the newly formed countries in the post-Soviet space with respect. We respect and will continue to respect their sovereignty, and an example of this is the assistance we provided to Kazakhstan, which faced tragic events, with a challenge to its statehood and integrity. But Russia cannot feel safe, develop, exist with a constant threat emanating from the territory of modern Ukraine.

OK, you’re calling them countries now. That’s something. But invading a country is a funny way to show respect, and you’re really not repecting Ukraine’s sovereignty at all. If there are indeed regions of Ukraine in which many people do not want to be Ukrainian, that’s for the government of Ukraine to deal with, just as it was for the government of Russia to deal with the separatists in southern Russia – though perhaps not in the brutal way you dealt with those separatists.

Let me remind you that in 2000-2005 we gave a military rebuff to terrorists in the Caucasus, defended the integrity of our state, saved Russia. In 2014, they supported the Crimeans and Sevastopol residents. In 2015, the Armed Forces used to put a reliable barrier to the penetration of terrorists from Syria into Russia. We had no other way to protect ourselves.

The same thing is happening now. You and I simply have not been left with any other opportunity to protect Russia, our people, except for the one that we will be forced to use today. Circumstances require us to take decisive and immediate action. The people's republics of Donbass turned to Russia with a request for help.

In this regard, in accordance with Article 51 of Part 7 of the UN Charter, with the sanction of the Federation Council of Russia and in pursuance of the treaties of friendship and mutual assistance ratified by the Federal Assembly on 22 February this year with the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, I decided to conduct a special military operation.

Article 51 of Part 7 of the UN Charter is about self-defence. How is this self-defence?

Its goal is to protect people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years. And for this we will strive for the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine, as well as bringing to justice those who committed numerous, bloody crimes against civilians, including citizens of the Russian Federation.

Donetsk and Luhansk are part of Ukraine. They are not part of Russia.

Russia has no right to demand another country give up its military. No one is demanding that Russia give up its military, are they? As for the “denazification”, that makes no sense. The far right in Ukraine got a very small share of the vote in the last election, only about 2%. They’re not a major force there.

As for “bringing to justice those who committed numerous, bloody crimes against civilians”, I think that’s something we can agree on.

At the same time, our plans do not include the occupation of Ukrainian territories. We are not going to impose anything on anyone by force.

Yeah, right.

At the same time, we hear that recently in the West there are more and more words that the documents signed by the Soviet totalitarian regime, which consolidate the results of the Second World War, should no longer be carried out. Well, what is the answer to this?

The results of the Second World War, as well as the sacrifices made by our people on the altar of victory over Nazism, are sacred. But this does not contradict the high values of human rights and freedoms, based on the realities that have developed today over all the post-war decades. It also does not cancel the right of nations to self-determination, enshrined in Article 1 of the UN Charter.

And Ukraine is one such nation with the right to self-determination.

Let me remind you that neither during the creation of the USSR, nor after the Second World War, people living in certain territories that are part of modern Ukraine, no one ever asked how they themselves want to arrange their lives.

Well, actually, they’ve had elections, and they have now made it abundantly clear that they don’t want Russia telling them how to arrange their lives.

Our policy is based on freedom, the freedom of choice for everyone to independently determine their own future and the future of their children. And we consider it important that this right – the right to choose – could be used by all the peoples living on the territory of today's Ukraine, by everyone who wants it.

They have had that choice. If they had wanted to elect a pro-Russian government they would have done so, but they didn’t. If they wanted to be Russian they would have welcomed your tanks with open arms, but they haven’t. They very clearly haven’t.

In this regard, I appeal to the citizens of Ukraine. In 2014, Russia was obliged to protect the inhabitants of Crimea and Sevastopol from those whom you yourself call 'Nazis'. Crimeans and Sevastopol residents made their choice to be with their historical homeland, with Russia, and we supported this. I repeat, they simply could not do otherwise.

You really did think they’d welcome you with open arms, didn’t you? It’s your troops they’re now calling Nazis.

Today's events are not connected with the desire to infringe on the interests of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.

Really?

They are connected with the protection of Russia itself from those who took Ukraine hostage and are trying to use it against our country and its people.

No one took Ukraine hostage. They elected a government and you don’t like the government they chose.

I repeat, our actions are self-defence against the threats posed to us and from an even greater disaster than what is happening today. No matter how difficult it may be, I ask you to understand this and call for cooperation in order to turn this tragic page as soon as possible and move forward together, not to allow anyone to interfere in our affairs, in our relations, but to build them on our own, so that it creates the necessary conditions for overcoming all problems and, despite the presence of state borders, would strengthen us from the inside as a whole. I believe in this; in this is our future.

I should also appeal to the military personnel of the armed forces of Ukraine.

Dear comrades! Your fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers did not fight the Nazis, defending our common Motherland, so that today's neo-Nazis seized power in Ukraine. You took an oath of allegiance to the Ukrainian people, and not to the anti-people junta that plunders Ukraine and mocks these same people.

Don't follow her criminal orders. I urge you to lay down your weapons immediately and go home. Let me explain: all servicemen of the Ukrainian army who fulfil this requirement will be able to freely leave the combat zone and return to their families.

I guess they weren’t listening to you, or perhaps they heard you say you wouldn’t allow anyone to interfere in your affairs and they think like you on that and won’t allow you to interfere in their affairs.

Once again, I insistently emphasise: all responsibility for possible bloodshed will be entirely on the conscience of the regime ruling on the territory of Ukraine.

No, it’s on you.

Now a few important, very important words for those who may be tempted to intervene in ongoing events. Whoever tries to hinder us, and even more so to create threats for our country, for our people, should know that Russia's response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences that you have never experienced in your history. We are ready for any development of events. All necessary decisions in this regard have been made. I hope that I will be heard.

You’re threatening to use nuclear weapons? Or chemical weapons?

Dear citizens of Russia!

Well-being, the very existence of entire states and peoples, their success and viability always originate in the powerful root system of their culture and values, experience and traditions of their ancestors and, of course, directly depend on the ability to quickly adapt to a constantly changing life, on the cohesion of society, its readiness to consolidate, to gather together all the forces in order to move forward.

Forces are needed always – always, but strength can be of different quality. The policy of the 'empire of lies', which I spoke about at the beginning of my speech, is based primarily on brute, straightforward force. In such cases, we say: 'There is power, mind is not needed.’

And you and I know that real strength lies in justice and truth, which is on our side. And if this is so, then it is difficult to disagree with the fact that it is the strength and readiness to fight that underlie independence and sovereignty, are the necessary foundation on which you can only reliably build your future, build your home, your family, your homeland.

Imagine if you’d started that with “Dear citizens of Ukraine!” Imagine if you were Zelenskyy. It looks like Russia is the one relying on brute force and that it’s the Ukrainians who have truth and justice on their side and they have proven themselves ready to fight for their independence and sovereignty, “the necessary foundation on which you can only reliably build your future, build your home, your family, your homeland.”

Dear compatriots!

I am confident that the soldiers and officers of the Russian Armed Forces devoted to their country will professionally and courageously fulfil their duty. I have no doubt that all levels of government, specialists responsible for the stability of our economy, financial system, social sphere, heads of our companies and all Russian business will act in a coordinated and efficient manner. I count on a consolidated, patriotic position of all parliamentary parties and public forces.

Ultimately, as it has always been in history, the fate of Russia is in the reliable hands of our multinational people. And this means that the decisions made will be implemented, the goals set will be achieved, the security of our Motherland will be reliably guaranteed.

I believe in your support, in that invincible strength that our love for the Fatherland gives us.

Dear Putin! Behave! Now that you’ve seen how things have gone, you must realise that your confidence was misplaced. Many of your troops are wondering what they’re doing in Ukraine. They’re certainly not defending Russia and neither are they liberating Ukraine. There is evidence of war crimes in areas that Russian forces have been driven out of. Thousands of Russian troops have been killed. Children have lost fathers, wives have lost husbands and parents have lost children.

Since I waded into the trans debate I've been accused of being a transphobe on several occasions, though it's rarely been spelled out what I did to deserve that label, but the other day it was.

So, according to evie.rose.music, believing that humans cannot change sex and accepting the dictionary definition of women makes one transphobic.

The dictionary defines sex as

either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures

To avoid being transphobic you must therefore reject dictionary definitions since dictionaries themselves are, by evie.rose.music's definition, transphobic. Words can change meaning though, and maybe the dictionaries are out of date, no longer reflecting how these words are actually used, so let's see what happens if we do reject these dictionary definitions.

If sex is not only dependant on anatomy, what else could it be dependant on? If it's also dependant on one's inner sense of what sex one is then, to avoid being transphobic, you need to accept this inner sense, which sounds a bit like a sexed soul. You need to be a dualist. And you need to accept that the sex of someone's soul overrides the sex of their body.

That's quite a big ask.

Perhaps though, for some, it doesn't seem so. When we're mostly online and most of our interactions are online, our bios and avatars are like our souls. We will never meet in the flesh most of the people we interact with so the flesh doesn't matter. Our souls are who we really are so we want our souls to be respected. We want people to believe we are who we say we are. We don't want to be thought of as pretending to be something we're not.

One day we may become a totally online species, able to pick a body off a peg and take an excursion into meatspace with it. Then, our sex will be the sex of the body we pick, but we're not there yet. We're still physical sexually reproducing beings, stuck with our bodies, though now able to modify them in ways that previous generations would never have imagined being possible.

Our language evolved to describe the physical reality we live in, and it may now need to evolve to take into account the virtual reality we also live in. Poaching words like "man", "woman", "male", "female" and redefining them is not the way to do that. The concepts those words currently point to still have significance. We have words for adult males and females of many other animals so it would be weird and awkward if we no longer had words for adult male and female humans, and male and female are quite specific terms when talking about other animals, and plants, crucial in biology, so we need to hang onto those words, but there's no reason why we shouldn't create new words for new concepts.