Liam Stanley
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liamstanley.bsky.social
Liam Stanley
@liamstanley.bsky.social
580 followers 240 following 82 posts
I teach and research politics and political economy at the University of Sheffield. I am currently researching global culture wars, the radical right, and neurodiversity politics.
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liamstanley.bsky.social
I've written an essay on the politics of neurodiversity, drawing on the vital books by @drrobertchapman.bsky.social and @dr-nicky.bsky.social. I hope it will serve as a primer for anyone new to the topic (and maybe prompt questions for those who know it well)

journals.lwbooks.co.uk/newformation...
February 5, 2026 at 9:27 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
I found this article very illuminating on the resource geopolitics underpinning the Venezuela crisis

drilled.media/news/guyana-...
When U.S. President Donald Trump first ordered strikes on Venezuelan ships in September, it was purportedly to intercept drug traffickers. Three months later everyone, including the president himself, acknowledges the role Venezuela’s oil and its fraught relationship with U.S. oil companies over the years plays in the United States’ invasion of the country. But Drilled reporting shows that U.S. oil majors don’t necessarily want back into Venezuela’s declining and decrepit oil fields so much as they are eager to protect their interests in neighboring Guyana, home to one of the world’s most productive oil fields, which Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has aggressively been trying to claim as his own over the past decade.
January 6, 2026 at 11:20 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
These are not the same things: one is a barely intelligible ramble and the other is a coherent but bullshit political statement. If these claims of “eccentric” behaviour are going to work, politically, then it might be important to distinguish between the two.
October 6, 2025 at 7:05 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
This is such a weird article that mixes up the kind of bombastic exaggeration that is a core part of Trump’s personality with genuinely unhinged examples of odd behaviour.
October 6, 2025 at 7:00 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
Anyone interested in the green transition ought to check out this brilliant new article by Chris Saltmarsh, published today in @ripejournal.bsky.social

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Article title: The Chinese road to decarbonisation: China’s party-state capitalism in the political economy of fossil energy phase-out Author: Chris Saltmarsh Abstract: While blind spots around climate change and China in the literature are now being plugged, there remains an imbalance between emphases placed on green energy build-out versus fossil energy phase-out in the political economy of global energy transition. China’s paradoxical energy economy raises the puzzle as to whether the structures of China’s party-state capitalism render it capable of successfully confronting the fossil fuel industry, just as it has scaled green technologies. This article historicises China’s fossil economy, identifying a unique potentiality for fossil energy phase-out arising from its idiosyncratic post-revolutionary development trajectory. The prominence of the CCP in China’s party-state capitalism contrasts with the West’s basis in profit-seeking market forces. This divergence underpins distinct power resources to dominate carbon-intensive industries and ideational resources to legitimate the social upheavals of energy transition. In practice, fossil energy phase-out is far from pre-determined as the potentiality rests in an ongoing struggle between corporate and political objectives within the regime as well as the uncertain responses of domestic populations and international actors. Regardless, scholars and practitioners alike should now understand China as standing alone in the world system as a geopolitically ascendent, continent-sized, post-revolutionary party-state with unique capacities to lead global energy transition.
September 18, 2025 at 11:07 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
Quote of the day courtesy of Bismarck.
September 17, 2025 at 10:17 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
As a frequent reader of kids books, I wouldn’t have guessed frog as the most he/him gendered animal
August 15, 2025 at 8:30 PM
liamstanley.bsky.social
From Hannah Arendt’s introduction to this Benjamin collection
August 7, 2025 at 7:47 PM
liamstanley.bsky.social
This Kafka quote is like a punch to the gut
August 7, 2025 at 7:46 PM
liamstanley.bsky.social
From When the Clock Broke by @lioneltrolling.bsky.social
August 1, 2025 at 11:11 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
This anecdote about David Duke’s 1991 run for Louisiana governor might as well just be lifted directly from the Simpsons
August 1, 2025 at 11:10 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
There’s also a possibility that austerity enters into the picture through the New Labour question. Go back 10 years ago and most voters blamed Labour for austerity.
July 30, 2025 at 2:09 PM
liamstanley.bsky.social
The Second Cultural Cold War: Old school propaganda meets the networked interdependencies of today
July 21, 2025 at 9:33 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
After the George Floyd protests in 2020, many corporations made statements in support of racial equity, some of which also pledged funds. I wondered how much this all added up to and the answer it seems is a staggering £340bn.
A chart showing that since May 2020, companies have committed about $340 billion to fighting racial injustice.
July 16, 2025 at 12:31 PM
liamstanley.bsky.social
Prediction: One unfortunate side-effect of the recent boom in autism diagnoses is this kind of cynical ploy becoming far more common
July 9, 2025 at 10:11 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
New article on “the looming crisis of British Politics”. We draw on the British political economy tradition to look at how three intersecting crises of fiscal capacity, territory, and decarbonisation spell trouble for the British state.

doi.org/10.1057/s412...
Title and abstract for academic article, available from https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-025-00280-x
March 27, 2025 at 8:27 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
Who would have guessed that an article on the Russian invasion of Ukraine would end with a paragraph that includes discussion of dominant parenting styles in the UK and US?
March 5, 2025 at 1:14 PM
liamstanley.bsky.social
Fair play to the Guardian, this got a little laugh from me
February 21, 2025 at 6:55 PM
liamstanley.bsky.social
As is Adam Tooze’s latest chartbook
February 17, 2025 at 11:13 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
This kind of thing is not going to go away. It’s going to become a major part of Anglospheric politics.
February 13, 2025 at 11:59 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
Just accepted and being published soon
Money, territory, decarbonisation: The looming crisis of British politics Liam Stanley, Dillon Wamsley, and Joseph Ward Abstract: From the 2008 crash to the cost-of-living, the UK has seemingly spent the past two decades lurching from one crisis to the next. While the field of British politics has made strong contributions in analysing these developments, this article shows the benefits of a different perspective. To do so, we draw on the under-acknowledged but vital scholarly tradition of British political economy, which provides tools to understand the underlying forces and contradictions that drive British political and economic development over the long-term - thereby producing a different conception of crisis to that implied in the frames of reference of the British politics literature. Developing this political economy approach, our thesis is that British politics faces unique challenges compared to other Western liberal democracies due to the peculiarities of its long-term political and economic development. We support this argument by focussing on three central challenges that all states face but that are especially acute for the UK: fiscal capacity, territorial integrity, and decarbonisation. Analysing how these challenges are likely to overlap and compound one another, we conclude the article by sketching out future scenarios for renewed legitimation crises of the British state.
February 12, 2025 at 12:24 PM
liamstanley.bsky.social
Trying to work out what it means that Trump uses the same “easy way or hard way?” technique that I use in parenting
January 22, 2025 at 7:22 PM
liamstanley.bsky.social
Today I learned that “Horton Hears a Who!” by Dr Seuss is in fact a very political book
January 22, 2025 at 10:21 AM
liamstanley.bsky.social
A reminder for anyone attending this week’s BISA virtual conference: I’m chairing this plenary session on the global rise of the far-right this afternoon with some great speakers and scholars. Do come along!
January 15, 2025 at 1:36 PM