Sam Freedman

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Sam Freedman

One can only imagine the horror the late Iain Banks would have felt on learning his legendary Culture series is a favourite of Elon Musk. The Scottish author was an outspoken socialist who could never understand why rightwing fans liked novels that were so obviously an attack on their worldview. But that hasn’t stopped Musk, whose Neuralink company – which develops implantable brain-to-computer interfaces – was directly inspired by Banks’s concept of “neural lace”.

1 week ago | msn.com | Sam Freedman

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1 week ago | samf.substack.com | Sam Freedman

Today’s post was inspired by reading a new book of the same title by Quinn Slobodian, a Canadian academic, whose last book “Crack-Up Capitalism” I recently recommended in my “Ten Books to Understand the World Right Now”. I’d add this new book to the list too and I’ve made use of it throughout this piece alongside other research. The conclusions are mine.

3 weeks ago | samf.substack.com | Sam Freedman

This piece originally appeared in last week’s Times Literary Supplement. I thought it would be of interest to subscribers and they have kindly agreed to let me reproduce it here. It’s a review of “Get In” by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund but I used the generous wordcount to look at the broader shift towards powerful unelected advisers in British politics. Until recently, the prime minister was the most important person in British politics.

3 weeks ago | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Sam Freedman

The one constant in Labour’s search for a governing strategy has been the idea of “security”. For Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s powerful chief of staff, what most voters want from government is security for their homes and communities—rather than the more ideological policies demanded by party members. For the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, the other key player on domestic policy, security justifies a more active state, whether through increasing workers’ rights or industrial strategy.