Empty Voices

The Conservative party has won a landslide victory. In many ways, this was predictable. Unfortunately, my strong desire for a Labour government clouded my judgement, so I will admit I was surprised to see Johnson win so big. There is already plenty of analysis going on. Many are now questioning the decision to come out in favour of a second referendum, which I now agree was probably a mistake. The commentary from the so-called centrists is, as you would expect, terrible – so there no need to detail it here; it is best ignored. Put simply, there were three main issues which help explain why Labour lost and lost so badly: Corbyn; Brexit; and policy. First, Corbyn is a controversial politician, and controversial politicians only have a limited amount of political capital – especially when the mainstream media is desperate to strip it from you. In simple terms, Corbyn was past his sell-by-date by the time of the 2019 election. Really, after the anti-Semitism controversy, and as t...

If one asks why studying religion matters, one is increasingly likely to hear the response that studying religion matters because classification matters. But what does this mean? The importance of classification is one mainly of consequence – a consequence which derives from the fact that the act of classification is not neutral. For some, this point may seem counterintuitive - this is especially the case if one’s understanding of classification is primarily based on how classification supposedly works in the natural sciences, which seems to be an impeccable objective discipline. However, a closer look demonstrates the act of classification to be subjective, context-dependent and ideological. To illustrate the point that classification is not value-free, we can look at the  Seinfeld  – 90s sitcom –   episode, ‘The Soup’. In the episode, Kenny Bania, a character who throughout the show wishes to be friends with Jerry Seinfeld, who does not harbour similar ambitions, ...