Senior leader, scientist & writer exploring how societies learn, why utopias fail, & how democracy evolves through imagination & realism. Views are my own.
London, England
Joined October 2025
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New Essay: Britain has increasingly narrowed legitimacy around one dominant route into respected adulthood, while downgrading practical intelligence, technical capability, and vocational excellence.
A society cannot run on abstraction alone.
open.substack.com/pub/therea…
Multiculturalism did not fail because immigration itself is inherently unworkable.
It failed because integration weakened while migration accelerated beyond the assumptions the system was built upon.
New essay:
therealistandtheutopian.subs…
There’s a tension emerging:
A politics that sees itself as anti-racist, while tolerating language about Jews that would be rejected elsewhere.
That’s not just hypocrisy - it’s a sign the categories themselves are breaking down and need redefining.
therealistandtheutopian.subs…
A blanket ban on under-16s may signal action.
But without enforceability, consent, and viable alternatives, it becomes theatre.
Policy is drifting toward clarity without capability.
The problem isn’t the goal.
It’s the delivery.
open.substack.com/pub/therea…
Some policies fail because they go too far.
Others fail because they cannot stop once they begin.
Assisted dying raises both risks.
My latest essay: therealistandtheutopian.subs…
#RightToDie #UKPolitics
We’re living through problems, but also through the most advanced, safe and prosperous period in human history.
So why does it feel like decline?
Because we experience crises in high definition - and the past in silhouette.
therealistandtheutopian.subs…
#Politics #Society
The 20th century did not invent Marxism’s failures. It made them impossible to ignore.
My new essay examines the weaknesses inside the theory: human nature, hierarchy, incentives, knowledge, power and the fantasy of political finality.
#Marxism
open.substack.com/pub/therea…
Paul Hayward retweeted
People forget that in the 1990s, Britain was the fourth biggest manufacturing economy in the world.
Through the 1990s the number of jobs in manufacturing *increased*.
From 1993 to 1998, British manufacturing employment increased from 4.1 million to 4.3 million. Not unrelatedly, across the same timespan, electricity prices dropped by 22%.
Our manufacturing crisis today is above all an energy crisis.
Paul Hayward retweeted
I am shocked to learn that rent controls in Spain are having exactly the same outcomes as every other attempt at rent controls everywhere else.
Spain froze rents and capped increases at 2%, but rent control is already cutting supply by up to 50% and not improving conditions for renters. Spain should follow Argentina, which ended rent control in 2023 and has seen housing supply rise 180%, reports Cato’s @hiperfalcon.
ow.ly/k7Mx50YztmZ
Paul Hayward retweeted
EXC: Starmer found scrapping jury trials led to wrongful convictions in NI
In report unearthed by @Telegraph his delegation found removing juries from Troubles courts meant cases “failing to secure reliable convictions based on properly tested evidence”
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03…
The Chagos debate isn’t just about a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean.
It’s about how a maritime middle power behaves in an international order where legal norms are increasingly applied selectively…
Read my thoughts here open.substack.com/pub/therea…
#Chagos #UKPolitics
Paul Hayward retweeted
Jury trials give ordinary citizens a voice. The fact that Labour wants to take that away is deeply telling. David Lammy’s attack on jury trials is an attack on democracy itself, says James Kierstead
buff.ly/J1OJEvq
Incredibly sad to learn that Rob Grant passed away last week.
Stoke me a clipper, sir, I'll be back for Christmas 🫡
A vote has now been set on restricting jury trials to tackle court backlogs.
Efficiency matters. But jury trial was never about efficiency - it’s about consent and civic legitimacy.
I explore this tension here:
open.substack.com/pub/therea…
#RuleOfLaw
Britain is debating how to protect children online - but banning social media for under-16s ignores behavioural reality and risks pushing harm into darker spaces.
We need design reform, liability and competence-building, not paternalism. #ukpolitics
open.substack.com/pub/therea…
We argue constantly about #BritishPolitics.
But we rarely ask a quieter question:
What is British culture - and what does it constrain?
If politics sits downstream of culture, then misalignment doesn’t begin with collapse. It begins with friction.
open.substack.com/pub/therea…