These are my notes from Political Tech Summit 26. I have focused on those sessions I attended. The technology support presents what looks like AI written summaries of the sessions which were mainly panel sessions. I have quoted from these summaries and in one case sought to re-summarise using another LLM. I have tried to humanise the text so that the article remains in my voice but also informs you of what happened. For more, see overleaf ...
So McSweeney is permitted to resign ‘from government’ and in his apology seeks to constrain his downfall to his support for Mandelson as US ambassador. His departure gives Labour the opportunity to find its heart again as McSweeney did so much to remove it, building a party that as Martin Forde predicted, in his inquiry report, where factional loyalty counted for more than public service.
Clive Lewis writes on Facebook, saying, among other things,
… That mindset hollowed Labour out. It replaced a party rooted in working-class life with a professional political caste fluent in donor networks, private dinners and elite reassurance, while communities were told to accept decline as the price of ‘responsible’ government. Politics became about managing optics and markets, not challenging vested interests or redistributing power.
McSweeney’s departure changes none of that on its own. Unless Labour confronts the culture that rewarded closeness to wealth, blurred ethical lines and treated democratic accountability as an inconvenience, this will amount to little more than damage limitation.
Remove one operator and the system that produced him remains. And unless that system is dismantled, Labour will continue to lose its moral authority, its social base, and ultimately its right to govern, leaving the ground clear for forces far worse to exploit the wreckage.
The whole piece is worth reading.
I agree with Clive, this is an opportunity, one that was always coming, to turn the government and the Party round. The Party bureaucracy and elements of the PLP need clearing out, without it, my Party’s future looks very dim.
Richard Burgon, also says, that this is only a necessary first step. …
I went to an exhibition at the Deutscher Historisches Museum, called the Road not Taken. It examines seven turning points in German history and asks what might have happened if they'd turned out differently. They say, "It brings actual turning points face to face with what might have happened if it if it were not for various factors - prevented by accidents, averted by misfires or other kinds of shortcomings -are explored:" They start in 1989 with the peaceful revolution in the German Democratic Republic and end in the year 1848, when Germany first tried to attempt a democratic awakening.
For more, including an image of the poster and a video of an agamograph, use the "Read More" button ...
Are we moving closer to joining the EU? It's been quite an eventful month, culminating in Wes Streeting’s call for the UK to join the EU’s Customs Union. This article looks at the current state of thinking of HMG on negotiations with the EU, comments on the velocity and direction of travel, contrasting the red lines vs the numerous programme adoptions, recent polling evidence that a majority of people in the UK now want to rejoin, the House of Commons vote on rejoining the customs union, and the announcement of the UK’s rejoining Erasmus+, the EU’s student exchange scheme. It concludes looking at a Guardian EB piece questioning if British Politics is fit to survive the current challenges and the Labour Party’s abysmal response. The full article, is overleaf, use the "Read More" to see it ...
This is quite a long article on sortition and politics, provoked by "Your Party"'s decision to use sortition to choose, some or all of their founding conference delegates. The article reflects on the comments of others and my experience working with Citizens' Assemblies. For the whole essay, use the "Read More" button. ... /p>
On 1st September, 2025, Yvette Cooper made yet another immigration policy announcement, most startlingly, prohibiting, refugees, who enter the country irregularly from bringing their family with them: reported by the Guardian & BBC. We should bear in mind that there are no legal routes for refugees to enter the country and they have the right to claim asylum here,
In addition there’s a growing mood music inside the Government to amend, or leave the ECHR; this demans originates from the Tories and Reform and is entering the Labour Party via the parasitic Blue Labour current. It’s now being repeated by cabinet members.
We should all bear in mind that the UK is currently a good citizen as far as the ECtHR is concerned, it only appeared three times last year, and only lost once, and that was to the Daily Mail in a dispute about libel costs.
The ECHR and the UK’s Human Rights Act are designed to protect citizens that’s you and me from oppressive governments. If it’s a problem to governments, then they can easily solve their problem by behaving decently.
The Labour Campaign for Free Movement is campaigning for a motion on immigration, refugees and asylum to go to Labour Conference 25. I have set up my #lab25 conference.
Here is what the Guardian had to say,
Today, is the 21st anniversary of starting this blog. The first article called “Online at last” is still available.
Back then I promised or hoped that some of what I put here, about IT issues, business and Computer Games (including Baldur’s Gate 2) will be interesting, innovative and useful. I also expect to just put some simple stuff up; stuff that does not warrant a web page, maybe I’ll x-ref my amazon book reviews and put up some that I don’t expect to publish elsewhere. I doubt I’ll be writing about either cooking or DIY. [It took a while but for various reasons I took up both although usually publish my thoughts and research on these topics a separate subsite. ] I am still writing about games too.
I catalogue the history of the site on my History & Aims page. It’s gone through phases, and today is mainly about politics and technology and technology regulation. The more personal stuff is currently posted to the wiki, and the technical stuff is often previewed on my linkedin blog. I usually cross post to Medium, where I can be followed, if you are a member and would like to follow me there.
I wrote a piece on the Peter Principle and Creative Incompetence on my LinkedIn blog.
The Peter principle, suggests that people are promoted to levels of incompetence. I the article I argue that this is aggravated by the fact that management values management and often values task and financial management more than people management skills.
The overpromoted are often unhappy and the insightful are either lucky and work for organisations that seek to avoid these traps by recognising and rewarding individual contributors or employ a strategy of “creative incompetence”. …
This article is a summary, I say, over the last week, at GMB Congress, three reasons to rejoin the EU or at least the single market have, in my opinion, been exposed. These are the highlighting of the GDPR as defence against AI, the second is the new EU Pay transparency directive, together with the EU's AI Act. The full article is overleaf ...