It reminds me that Cooley is a vapid dullard and how nice it would be e to have Anthony Barnett interviewed by someone genuinely interested and at ease with the history of the ideas of the New Left, like Andy Beckett

Was the question 'would you vote against a left authoritarian party' or are those added afterwards? If the former that Reform's voters are hostile to anything called 'liberal' (as many voters MAGA adjacent) and left _except_ when paired with authoritarian (which might explain Starmer positioning?)

In this, like in so many areas of social and political development, the US is a massive international outlier whose outlier status is something USians are often deeply unaware of.

The UK is massively less religious, and much more regulated and has a much higher level of social and financial support. Its so different to the US context in scale too. Yes we have adoption, and no, it shouldnt exist, and no its not perfect by any stretch. But it is very, very, very different.

I dont think thats the caee but equally its clear to me that the UK system is _now_ much much much better than the USA. Baby adoption just isn’t a thing here anymore and hasn’t been since the 1980s. US Adoptee twitter is (rightly) furious about what happened and continues to happen. Not same in UK

Her son is an SNL and Simpsons writer: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Max...

I wasn't named in my mother's obit, written by my brother, but was in my brother's obit written some months later by a cousin. I like the second of these, and choose not to dwell on the first because like most reunion stuff, it's complicated and understanding >>> judging

Can I be added too, please Tony?

I was once at a DCMS reception when Andy Burnham was SoS and he said something similar which resonated. He said DCMS was the department that handled all the things you’d really remember on your deathbed. He clearly loved the job

4/ I do think UK context has much in the way of difference, not least a) only 4 governments, rather than 51 b) involvement of the state in the process much more than the agencies and c) lack of payment in the process d) lack of evangelical christian motivation for many (but obv not all) adoptions

3/ This plays out on places like Reddit too, where US adoption experience is - naturally enough - numerically much more common, but you come away feeling like a these challenges faced by USians are global, when they're not. There's so much that is in common, for absolutely sure...

2/ Layered on this is the way in which Christianity is so culturally and politically influential and how saviourism is so clearly a motivating factor in so much adoptions. It does feel though that the issue faced aren't the same

I squared the circle by cleaving very very hard to the notion that people were 100% products of their environment and 0% heredity and argued my corner passionately leading to legitimate suspicion from others that I wasn't quite right in the head