LONDON — The Liberal Democrats used to watch their rivals indulge in messy factional squabbles with glee. Now they are scrambling to project an image of unity.

Britain’s third-largest Westminster group could hold significant power after the next election if no party wins a majority of MPs and Prime Minister Andy Burnham is casting around for a deal.

But for now, the focus is on weathering an internal storm in the centrist outfit. MPs rallied around their leader Ed Davey this week at a marathon four-hour meeting — held days after one of his frontbenchers resigned in an ill-fated attempt to oust the party chief.

The botched coup comes as the Liberal Democrats try to answer a more existential question: what are they actually for and how do they make an impact in Britain’s fragmented political landscape?

POLITICO’s Poll of Polls shows the Lib Dems coasting along. After getting 12.2% in the 2024 general election — and bagging a record 72 members of parliament as a result — the party has slipped down, polling between 9% and 11% since Andy Burnham became prime minister. 

POLITICO explains why Lib Dems are now openly discussing Davey’s future; how much danger he is in; and exactly how the man known for a cheery demeanor and eye-catching paddle-board stunts could be capsized.

1) Why is Davey’s future in the headlines?

The surprise resignation of the Lib Dems’ Treasury spokesperson Charlie Maynard a week ago triggered the latest round of soul-searching about the leader’s future — but the grumbling goes back a bit further.

Maynard’s resignation followed costly tax-cutting pledges from Davey at the party’s conference in September and came hot on the heels of sharp responses — including from 2024-intake Lib Dem MPs Tom Gordon and Vikki Slade — to the way Davey defended an existing guarantee on state pensions. Some MPs believe the party isn’t adequately representing younger voters by opposing changes to the so-called triple lock, now targeted for reform by Burnham.

The immediate threat looks to have receded. Maynard’s resignation has gone down badly among a host of colleagues.

One Lib Dem frontbencher — granted anonymity to speak about internal matters like others in this piece — said the “vast majority of us think it’s beyond ridiculous and are really angry.” A second frontbencher said it was “bang out of order” for colleagues to brief internal policy discussions to the press.

2) So he’s safe?

Not quite — fizzled plots like this have a habit of still bringing grumbling to the surface (just ask Theresa May)

There remains frustration among some MPs over Davey’s perceived failure to exploit a gap in British politics opened up by voters’ deep dislike of Keir Starmer’s Labour government after the 2024 general election.

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  Labour Party

  Labour Party
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  Reform UK

  Brexit Party (relaunched as Reform UK in 2021)
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  Conservative and Unionist Party

  Conservative and Unionist Party
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  The Green Party of England and Wales

  The Green Party of England and Wales
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  Liberal Democrats

  Liberal Democrats
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  Restore Britain

  Restore Britain
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  Scottish National Party

  Scottish National Party
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  Plaid Cymru – The Party of Wales

  Plaid Cymru
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YouGov’s Anthony Wells explains that the party was stagnant “during a period where the Starmer government came in, became extremely unpopular [and] lost a huge amount of support” that “didn’t go to them.”

He contrasted this with how the Lib Dems gained traction in the 2000s when the Labour government was in big trouble. The Lib Dems are normally good at grabbing “the low-hanging fruit of unpopular left-of-center governments.”

“They haven’t nailed their colors really firmly to any mast,” says Wells. “They have been something to all men — and it means they may have suffered in comparison to people like the Greens under [leader] Zack Polanski, who’ve been much clearer about what they stand for.” 

Removing a Lib Dem leader remains reasonably easy — though a crunch meeting of the parliamentary party on Tuesday suggests there currently aren’t enough MPs to actually trigger a ballot of no confidence, let alone win one. 

Eighteen MPs (25% of the parliamentary party) would need to push for a vote of no confidence to be held. An absolute majority — 36 MPs — would then have to vote no confidence in Davey for a leadership election to be triggered. 

Davey could stand in that leadership election if he could secure nominations from 10% of Lib Dem MPs and 200 members from at least 20 different local parties. 

Unlike in the Conservatives, where a leader cannot be challenged again for a year after they win a no-confidence vote, Davey would be given no such grace period if he survived — meaning another ballot could take place just months after he saw off a coup attempt.

3) What’s the view from Davey world?

The arguments in the leader’s favor appear to have won out — for now.

For one, he has a record of winning. Davey can point to having taken the party to its largest number of constituencies in its modern form by focusing on a fight-by-fight, seats-first strategy. The 2024 campaign prioritized targeted campaigning in specific areas, rather than seeking a higher national vote share that doesn’t translate to a high number of MPs.

Loyal allies have come out to bat for their embattled boss this week. Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper, seen as a possible future leadership contender, said there’s a “real sense that we need to come together as a group” to stop the Tories and Reform UK “from forming the most right-wing government in our history.”

Subtext: let’s not mess around and let our real enemies in.

A third frontbencher told POLITICO Davey doesn’t “just have the support of the parliamentary party — there clearly aren’t anything like enough MPs to trigger a vote of no confidence.” They said Davey changing his top team earlier this year by appointing James Holt as director of political strategy and Ruth Younger as chief of staff “just needs time to percolate.”

4) So can Davey just keep calm and carry on?

Maybe.

Wells believes the party doesn’t “necessarily need to do much” to hold its current crop of seats at the next election — and that a middle-of-the-road approach against flashier, potentially more divisive opponents — might actually work in its favor.

While “their brand may be less distinctive, it also means they’re more coalition-able,” Wells says. He points out that there’s already much less objection from Labour about working with the Lib Dems compared to the Greens, who Burnham this week threatened to can local power-sharing agreements with amid a row over anti-semitism.

“There is a strategic advantage to them in terms of not offending people, but there’s also a strategic weakness in not defining yourself very clearly,” he says.

Sam Francis contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — The bloc’s next seven-year budget suffered a €159 billion cut from the Commission’s original proposal, according to a new plan unveiled Saturday.

The Irish presidency of the Council of the EU, which is steering the talks, proposed cutting around 8% to the bloc’s total budget from 2028 to 2034 to appease a German-led camp demanding major cuts.

The Irish negotiating document, or negobox, envisages cuts of €122 billion in current prices from the previous negobox presented by the Cyprus presidency in June. It sets the scene for fraught discussions among the EU’s 27 leaders during a summit next week.

The bloc is split between frugal countries demanding cuts of several hundred billions to the nearly €2 trillion proposal on the table and a rival camp of southern and eastern states, known as the Friends of Cohesion, opposing reductions.

In a concession to the Friends of Cohesion, Ireland shielded farmers’ subsidies and regional payouts, that account for half of the total budget and are politically sensitive, from any cuts.

Instead, the bulk of the reductions came from foreign aid which was cut by €38 billion; competitiveness which was axed by €75 billion and the EU’s administrative costs which were reduced by €10 billion.

Dublin also scrapped a rainy day fund, known as the “EU Facility cushion,” that allowed the European Commission to deploy cash to tackle unforeseen emergencies throughout the seven-year budget cycle.

Ireland’s Minister of State for European Affairs Thomas Byrne, who leads the negotiations, defended the proposal as a balanced compromise between 27 countries.

“We protected … the traditional policies of the Union, which are very important for the European Union and the single market. But we also very much look to the future,” Byrne told reporters.

However, Ireland’s proposal is unlikely to satisfy the frugals, who have warned against disproportionate cuts to new EU-wide priorities such as competitiveness, defense and development funding.

“The Irish proposal is a disappointment and not even close to a landing zone. The steep increase in MFF spending compared to today is unaffordable and financially not viable at all. By favouring policy priorities of the 20th century the proposal fails to prepare the EU for the 21st century,” an EU diplomat said.

They added: “This negobox is no basis for an agreement among member states. We urgently need more financial realism and less financial La La Land.”

Germany and its allies criticized the previous Cyprus Council presidency for cutting only €32 billion in the last negobox in June.

The new negobox will also be a hard sell to the European Parliament.

“The Irish Presidency has delivered little progress, no meaningful new solutions and a weaker budget,” the European People Party’s budget negotiator Siegfried Mureșan wrote in a statement shortly after the proposal was published.

He added: “Parliament is not bluffing: the budget proposed by the Irish Presidency will not receive our consent.”

The EU’s 27 ambassadors will react to the negobox during a meeting on Sunday, where they will also prepare the leaders’ discussion on Thursday.

Governments are racing to agree on a budget deal among themselves by the end of the year, before elections in France, Poland and Italy threaten to disrupt the negotiations.

Tax tweaks

The Irish presidency made no major changes to a package of five new EU-wide taxes, or own resources, that were proposed by the Commission last year to generate a total of €66 billion for the budget.

This comes as a disappointment for countries such as France, which had been pressuring Dublin to add the European Parliament’s proposed levies on digital giants, online gambling and crypto firms to the negobox to increase the potential revenue.  

Some of the Commission’s ideas — including a corporate tax, known as CORE, and a levy on polluting firms (ETS) — have been challenged by EU governments for more than a year of negotiations and are seen as unlikely to come to fruition.

Despite pressure to drop the most criticized options, Ireland has kept the five taxes on the table and merely suggested technical changes to overcome opposition.

It suggested phasing in ETS contributions for poorer countries that are overwhelmingly hit by the tax, and increasing EU budget contributions from a levy on carbon imports that is accepted by most governments.

Tensions on own resources will come to a head during Thursday’s leaders’ discussions. The president of the European Council, António Costa, said he intends to “fix” a package of potential taxes that are acceptable to governments during that meeting.

This article was updated.

BRUSSELS ― EU governments expect the proposed size of the bloc’s next seven-year budget to be slashed by €100 billion to €200 billion from the previous plan announced in June, 12 EU diplomats told POLITICO.

Ireland, which holds the presidency of the Council of the EU and is steering the talks, will unveil the proposal on Saturday, setting the scene for fraught discussions among EU leaders at their summit next week.

The bloc is split between so-called frugal countries — Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and others — that want to slash several hundred billion euros from the nearly €2 trillion proposal on the table, and a rival coalition of southern and eastern countries, the Friends of Cohesion, that opposes the cuts.

Dublin is expected to cut the budget by between €100 billion and €200 billion as a goodwill gesture to the German camp, the diplomats said. However, the Irish plan to shield agriculture and regional spending from major cuts as a concession to the Friends of Cohesion.

At next week’s summit, EU leaders will react to the latest numbers, known as the “negobox” because it gives governments something to negotiate on, and signal early whether an agreement is possible by the end of the year.

Governments are rushing to secure a deal among themselves before national elections in France, Poland and Italy in 2027 threaten to derail the negotiations.

As a neutral broker in the discussions, Ireland hasn’t publicly disclosed its intentions on the negotiating document. 

Dublin’s European Affairs Minister of State Thomas Byrne told the European Parliament earlier this week that EU member countries have made “substantial progress” toward an agreement. But he warned: “we cannot satisfy everybody.”

Germany and its allies criticized the previous Cyprus Council presidency for cutting only €32 billion in the last negobox in June.

Ireland’s looming cuts

The frugals’ calls for budget savings have ignited fears among the Friends of Cohesion. 

The 17 countries — including heavyweights Italy, Spain and Poland — issued a joint statement last week opposing cuts to agriculture and cohesion. 

In a concession to this camp, Ireland is expected to propose budget savings in other policy areas. Governments are bracing for major reductions to the Global Europe fund, the EU’s €200 billion pot of development aid and external relations cash, and the €410 billion European Competitiveness Fund to boost the bloc’s industrial capacity. 

Cuts to administrative costs, with €118 billion earmarked for the EU’s institutions and staff, are also popular among EU governments, though they will yield fewer savings.

However, frugals have warned against shielding agriculture and cohesion from a smaller budget. They argue instead that more money should be steered away from traditional priorities towards new challenges such as defense and competitiveness.

“We are very concerned that Ireland would decide to smash funding for research and external action, which is a major issue for development, our economic interests and migration,” said one EU diplomat, granted anonymity like others in this article to speak frankly about their expectations for the sensitive negotiations.

Tax game

Another sensitive issue is EU-wide taxes — known as “own resources” — to finance the budget and reduce national contributions.

In 2025, the European Commission proposed five new levies that are expected to generate €66 billion per year. During negotiations, governments opposed levies that would overwhelmingly affect their economies.

Several European governments lobbied Ireland to remove a corporate tax, known as CORE, that is unpopular across the bloc. But Dublin is expected to refrain from doing so, and keep the Commission’s five levies in the negobox.

To make CORE more palatable, Dublin might exempt small and medium enterprises from the scope of the levy. It could also make tweaks to a tobacco levy that is opposed by many.

Instead, the European Parliament’s proposed taxes on digital levies, online gambling and crypto firms are expected to be left out entirely from the negobox.  

An EU diplomat criticized these incremental changes as “disappointing and minimal.”

Today's links

• Post-political: What a "leftist" is.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: MSFT x OSCON; Parental spyware; "Resurrection Man"; Brexit do-over petition; Workplace email spying; Record label internet death penalty; News should be cheap, free and chaotic; "Jughead".
• Upcoming appearances: London, Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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Post-political (permalink)

There's plenty of reasons to be skeptical of centrists who bemoan "political polarization" and call for a politics that abandons the "tribalism of left and right."

Obviously there's the false equivalence: on the right, you have fascists who want to send masked, armed goons into the streets to beat, kidnap and murder your neighbors. On the left, you have calls for higher taxes, unions, environmental impact reviews for data-centers, and an end to the genocide in Gaza.

"Leftist extremism" is moving some zines around:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/24/prairieland-texas-ice-protests-zines

Right wing extremism is attempting the overthrow of the government, murdering brown people in gulags, and the earth's richest man slaughtering the world's poorest children for the lulz:

https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths/

"Horseshoe theory" (the idea that the far right and the far left actually bend around to meet each other) is bullshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/26/horsehoe-crab/#substantive-disagreement

The reality is that the right and left have large, substantive disagreements that are matters of life and death. Anyone dismissing these as "tribalism" doesn't know what "left" and "right" mean. At best, they have mistaken a collection of cultural signifiers – pronouns, MMA, brands of beer – for politics.

Mistaking cultural signifiers and identity markers for politics is centrism's most dangerous pathology, the thing that makes centrism the handmaiden of the right. If you think identity markers are politics, then you'll be tempted to think the answer to a world run by 150 rich, white, cis straight guys is to replace half of them with women, POCs and queer people. The difference between the left and the right isn't the identities of the ruling class – it's whether we have a ruling class at all.

I collect definitions of "right" and "left." There's Corey Robin's definition from The Reactionary Mind, that conservatism is the belief that some people were born to rule, and others to be ruled over, and that any attempt to elevate the latter group to positions of power (through civil rights movements, affirmative action, etc) will result in dire misrule and disaster:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/22/all-day-suckers/#i-love-the-poorly-educated

This explains how the right can encompass white nationalists (rule by white people), Hindu nationalists (rule by high-caste Hindus), libertarians (rule by bosses), imperialists (rule by military aggressors), etc. It also explains the right's obsession with learning the racial and gender markers of anyone involved in a plane crash or other disaster: "See, the oil tanker was being piloted by a DEI hire when it crashed into that bridge!"

Another important definition is Wilhoit's Law:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/26/sole-and-despotic-dominion/#then-they-came-for-me

This one hardly needs explanation in this era of "it's not a crime if the president does it," where Alex Jones can owe billions to the parents of dozens of murdered children and somehow not have to pay or give up his assets:

https://www.status.news/p/infowars-the-onion-alex-jones-ben-collins

But when it comes to a "post-politics that is neither right nor left," the definition I turn to most often comes from science fiction writer Steven Brust, who once told me:

"Left" and "right" have had the same meaning since the French Revolution. If you want to know if someone is on the left or the right, ask them, "What is more important: human rights or property rights?" If they say "Property rights are a human right," then they are on the right.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/16/wage-theft/#ppp

That's it. That's the crux. If you think that property rights are a tool for achieving human rights, then you're on the left. You might support the right of farmers to block attempts to expropriate them via eminent domain in order to build a data center, or the right of people to not have their homes or devices searched by cops, or a library's right to own and archive digital books, even if the publishers insist that ebooks are never "sold," merely "licensed."

If property rights are a tool to achieve human rights, then property rights can be set aside when they impede other rights. Human beings have the right to health care, which is why we should have taken away the pharma companies' patents and copyrights, ending vaccine apartheid and letting the poor world make its own vaccines:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/25/the-other-shoe-drops/#quid-pro-quo

Human beings have the right to shelter. If your town has a million empty homes and a million homeless people, there's an obvious solution. At the very least, you can tax the shit out of empty homes to discourage the creation of derelict, empty blights:

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/owners-homes-left-empty-more-28622796

Human beings have the right to food. If a cartel claims that you may not legally sell your 100,000lbs of nectarines, you can just give them away and tell the cartel to fuck off:

https://apnews.com/article/california-farmer-nectarines-lawsuit-patent-4f7bc8ab185e8b9cbdd6d6ad4f2aabd1

As Brust says, this fight is as old as the French Revolution. It's literally the plot of Les Miz ("In days gone by, I stole a loaf of bread in order to live").

Note that this framework leaves plenty of room for disagreement among leftists: we can disagree about who should get taxed and how, when a company should be ordered to destroy its ill-gotten loot and when that loot should be divided up among its victims, and what to do about empty houses and homeless people. We can disagree about reparations, about collectivization and co-operatives, about land reform. Very (very!) few leftists want to abolish property, but to be a leftist is to agree that property is only ever a means, and never an end.

In systems thinking, we are counseled that the most profound and durable changes come from shifts in paradigms, from which all rules, laws and arrangements flow:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/12/donella-meadows/#paradigmatic

"Left" and "right" represent two radically different paradigms. The right's paradigm is that property rights are human rights, which cashes out to "property rights are the only human right." If property rights are a human right, then I can burn down my orchard and laugh as you starve outside the gates. If property rights are human rights, I can leave an apartment building empty while you freeze to death on its sidewalk. If property rights are human rights, I can fill my factory with death-traps and insist that the workers I kill freely chose to assume that risk (as economists would say, they have a "revealed preference" for being killed at work):

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/30/players-of-games/#know-when-to-fold-em

Leftists view property rights as a tool, like laws, or regulations, or polls, or voting. Used well, these tools can produce prosperity for all. But "voting" and "laws" aren't good unto themselves. The Swiss practice of voting on whether your neighbors qualify for citizenship is barbaric:

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-38595807

Good regulations and laws are good, but simply passing any law is stupid and gets you into terrible trouble, even if the stupid law you've passed is designed to solve a real problem:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/23/destroy-the-village/#to-save-it

Viewed as tools, property rights are perfectly useful ways of achieving the primary purpose of a civilization: to safeguard the human rights of its people. Viewed as ends unto themselves, property rights are a terrible danger to our civilization and species.

If you believe property rights are tools, then you can pass laws banning corporations from electioneering:

https://sos.mn.gov/media/3k4hu2if/minnesota-election-laws-statutes-and-rules.pdf

If you believe property rights are human rights, then you end up supporting unlimited dark money spending in elections:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-621_h315.pdf

If you believe property rights are tools, you can order landlords who want to ban their tenants from installing balcony solar to fuck off. If you believe property rights are human rights, then landlords can force their tenants to pay every dime the fossil fuel industry demands of them. "Property right as tool" allows you to defend a farmer's right to install a wind-farm, and still, to block a data-center from installing a gas turbine on its own land.

"Post-political" movements are made up of people who don't know what politics are. A "centrist" is ultimately a rightist, because the foundation of rightism is the supremacy of property. It is the ideology that breeds hereditary aristocracy ("property is a human right" means that it's a violation of your human rights to expect you to work for a living if you emerged from a lucky orifice). It's the ideology that breeds oligarchy.

Politics aren't a bunch of cultural signifiers or identity markers. Politics aren't about who rules – it's about whether we are ruled at all, or whether we are free.

(Image: Lewis Clarke, CC BY-SA 2.0, modified)

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Hell Is Other People https://locusmag.com/feature/commentary-cory-doctorow-hell-is-other-people/

• Incarcerated People Lose Treasured Media When Prisons Change Tablet Contracts https://truthout.org/articles/incarcerated-people-lose-treasured-media-when-prisons-change-tablet-contracts/

• Jay Rosen’s Internet Archive: an Introduction https://pressthink.org/2026/07/jay-rosens-internet-archive-an-introduction/

• Zohran Mamdani on the Promise of America https://jacobin.com/2026/07/zohran-mamdani-independence-day-address

• The official website of Nand to Tetris courses https://www.nand2tetris.org/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Why Microsoft was invited to OSCON https://web.archive.org/web/20010701102931/http://www.oreilly.com/news/osconint_0601.html

#25yrsago The Extent of Systematic Monitoring of Employee E-mail and Internet Use https://web.archive.org/web/20010711204804/http://www.privacyfoundation.org/workplace/technology/extent.asp

#20yrsago BPI: We should be able to cut off your Internet https://memex.craphound.com/2006/07/10/bpi-we-should-be-able-to-cut-off-your-internet/

#20yrsago Technology for parents to spy on kids https://web.archive.org/web/20060711084212/http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/09/BIGMOTHER.TMP

#20yrsago Dale Bailey's "The Resurrection Man" https://memex.craphound.com/2006/07/09/southern-gothic-science-fiction-collection/

#10yrsago A law prof responds to students who anonymously complained about #blacklivesmatter tee https://backspace.com/notes/2016/07/law-professors-response-to-black-lives-matter-shirt-complaint.php

#10yrsago UK government rejects Brexit do-over petition with 4.1m signatures https://web.archive.org/web/20160709101514/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-government-rejects-eu-referendum-petition-latest-a7128306.html

#10yrsago New Zealanders raise millions to buy beach and donate it to the public https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-36759321

#10yrsago Jughead: Zdarsky’s reboot is funny, fannish, and freaky https://memex.craphound.com/2016/07/10/jughead-zdarskys-reboot-is-funny-fannish-and-freaky/

#5yrsago Biden's Right to Repair will include electronics, too https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/10/unnixing-the-fix/#r2r-plus-plus

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• London: Idler Festival, Jul 11
  https://www.idler.co.uk/festival/

• Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
  https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales

• Sydney: The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Aug 23-24
  https://festivalofdangerousideas.com/cory-doctorow/

• Melbourne: Enshittification at the Wheeler Centre, Aug 25
  https://www.wheelercentre.com/events-tickets/season-2026/cory-doctorow-enshittification

• Brighton: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8
  https://brightondome.org/whats-on/LSC-cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/

• London: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle's Picadilly), Sep 9
  https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/enshittification-cory-doctorow-riley-quinn

• South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
  https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• Can AI be Saved From Capitalism? (Everyday Anarchism)
  https://www.everydayanarchism.com/192-can-ai-be-saved-from-capitalism-cory-doctorow/

• Lawfare Daily
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1KIwaYRs1g

• How to Think About AI (Organized Money)
  https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/how-to-think-about-ai-with-cory-doctorow

• Breaking Points
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJmUbkRqXeE

• A.I. Enshittifies Everything (Slate)
  https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next-tbd/2026/06/cory-doctorow-thinks-a-i-is-overvalued-and-overrated-and-still-a-threat

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Latest books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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