New post: Over the next year there a series of European elections where the radical right could gain more power than ever. How will this play out? We have 30 years of evidence that tells us they will struggle. Obituries for liberalism are premature. samf.substack.com/p/the-stra…

A problem all radical right parties tend to have. Reform included.

This is just one of the problems Le Pen would have in power...

Interesting analysis by @Samfr of the extra difficulties Far Right parties across Europe have in a) actually getting into power, b) governing constitutionally, c) governing without disappointing their supporters. But this still damages democracy & society! samf.substack.com/p/the-stra…

New post: Over the next year there a series of European elections where the radical right could gain more power than ever. How will this play out? We have 30 years of evidence that tells us they will struggle. Obituries for liberalism are premature. samf.substack.com/p/the-stra…

Radical right always fail after getting power, if they maintain the democratic institutions. They simply can't deliver what they promise The best way to ensure that a right wing doesn't only win elections, but gets a mandate to do the radical changes is to offer it an enemy 1/2

To give an indication of the problem here's a chart of 12 government agencies around the world and numbers of applications / appeals / complaints etc... The dotted grey line is when ChatGPT was invented.

There's been a lot of talk in the last few weeks in edu circles about whether the trad education movement has failed, what it needs to do next, etc. This article is just the latest in a succession of examples that shows how us edu-trads have not been nearly as successful as we hoped in altering elite consensus on education. We have obviously seen with all the Labour party policies that we completely failed to convince Labour. But actually, it's not like we've really convinced the Conservatives either. This is Dan Hannan, major figure in Brexit, major figure in Conservative politics, presumably has some idea of who Michael Gove is - and here he is in the Telegraph confidently asserting that we no longer need to know things because we can look things up. (The ironies in this piece abound, by the way. He argues for lessons in spotting bad bogus arguments at the same time as building an article around the argument that memory doesn't matter any more. He argues that "identifying improbable claims" is a generic skill that can be taught in the abstract, at the same time as claiming that handwriting and geography are obsolete. He says that you can always just look up what you need, whilst signally failing to look up any of the evidence on the role of long-term memory...I could go on.) I wrote a few weeks ago that there was some evidence journalists at the Financial Times were waking up to all the evidence on cognitive science, its implications for schools, the international test evidence. But the elite understanding of this is a very thin layer, absolutely skin deep. The mass of second-hand dealers in ideas are still distilling their frenzy from Romantic pedagogy. Depressing. I honestly don't know what else we can do. We wrote the books. We had the debates. We built the schools. We aced the tests. And then it turned out nobody cared. Right now it is definitely a bleak time to be a trad. It feels like we are on Athelney Marshes, beset by vandals without and dissension within. BUT we have to keep the faith. Reality is an undefeated champion. Despair is a sin! What we do works! It may well be that for now, the New World with all its power & might etc., is going to have to step in to save our bacon for a bit. Maybe the momentum is shifting to @ehanford and Sold a Story, @rastokke and Chalk & Talk, @jettybe3 , etc. We have got to dig in. As Declan Rice said, it's not done!

Increasingly feels like the world is in a state akin to a modern Seven Years War. Separate but related conflicts across the globe but no single primary adversary on either side to cement coherent strategies and stable alliances

Latest post looks at the consequences of Trump’s disastrous war with Iran. Not only is Iran keeping oil prices high, but Saudi Arabia now faces a strategic predicament as it struggles to cope with the resurgent Houthis without much help from the US. (£/free trial), samf.substack.com/p/trumps-g…?