James Butler is a contributing editor at the LRB and the host of the podcast On Politics. He co-founded Novara Media in 2011 and hosted its weekly radio show for several years.
Almost no politician writes his own books, and few people actually read them. J.D. Vance is different. Trump’s vice president was a writer before he was a politician, and brought a writer’s vices with him: a titanic but fragile ego, limitless self-interest and thirst for adulation, an unsleeping vigilance for any slight. Hillbilly Elegy, Vance’s first book, published in...
The dodgy financing, the undeclared cash and the association with a flagrant crook could permanently tarnish Farage’s vaunted anti-establishment credentials. We all reach for the familiar when we’re desperate, and for Farage that means engineering a ‘people v. the establishment’ by-election.
People vote irrationally in local elections, at least according to the standards of political scientists. That is, their vote is often motivated by factors outside the purview of local government. The dismal result for Labour in England’s local elections on 7 May was not predominantly a revolt over bin collections. It was strongly related to national revulsion for Labour, and to the...
‘You’re not men. You’re boys. If there was no social media, you would be my concubines.’ One of the weirdest lines of the 2024 US election came from Robert J. O’Neill, a pro-Trump former Navy SEAL who claims to have been one of those who shot Osama bin Laden. Respondents to O’Neill’s post on X, which was directed at a gaggle of young, male...
Consequences are rare in British politics. A well-handled resignation can be temporary. If you’re resourceful enough, exit from Westminster can be parlayed into directorships and consultancies, or the media circuit might beckon. Such soft landings aren’t available to Peter Mandelson, whose long-deserved fall is finally absolute. Mandelson was fired as ambassador to the United...
Andy Burnham recently said that the government is ‘in hock to the bond markets’, and the political turbulence of the past few years, not least the downfall of Liz Truss following her ‘mini-budget’,...
In this first episode of a new strand in the LRB Podcast, host James Butler talks to former Labour MP and minister Chris Mullin, columnist Andy Beckett and journalist Morgan Jones about whether Labour...
James is joined by Tony Wood and Camila Vergara to discuss why the Pink Tide governments in Latin America failed, where the new brand of right-wing politics comes from, and whether the revolutionary...
In the run up to the local elections, and following his recent piece on the care crisis, James Butler joins Tom to discuss some of the other problems facing the UK, and what the two major parties are...
James Butler and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite talk to Tom about Britain's new monarch and Prime Minister.
James Butler joins Tom to consider the fall of Boris Johnson, the candidates hoping to replace him, and what the next few years of British politics might look like.
Geoff Mann talks to James Butler about the economic models developed by William Nordhaus and others, widely used by governments around the world as a tool to tackle climate change.
Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.
For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.