“There are decades where nothing happens; and then there are weeks where decades happen."
You’ve almost definitely heard that before, it’s a great line.
It’s usually attributed to Lenin, but there’s no evidence he ever wrote it. According to Wikiquote, the first misattribution was this anti-war article by George Galloway 23 years ago and no known usage before that. Sounds like something you’d write and think sounds better coming from Lenin. If i ever meet him I’ll ask.
This was undeniably one of those weeks where it’s hard to escape the feeling something significant has changed. Rest in peace Charlie.
What Year Is It?
By Adam Wren @G0ADM
“Firing Peter Mandelson for being a dodgy guy” is now an experience shared by every living Labour Prime Minister except Gordon Brown.
It can’t really have been a surprise, that is what they hired him for, and in fairness he was seemingly doing a decent job. We might have got a good tariff deal when the full details are announced, a state visit from the president, and both Trump and Vance were on holiday here.
Most notably Mandelson was at the centre of the US-UK tech trade deal that due to be signed during Trump’s state visit.
Trump is reportedly bringing along Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, and Tim Cook, the CEOs of NVIDIA, OpenAI and Apple.
Having identified tech as one of the only sectors that’s not been strangled by regulation, the deal is core to Labour’s growth strategy. Mandleson’s departure alone was likely inconsequential, but the assassination of Charlie Kirk, MAGA folk hero, and a man that Trump reportedly treated as a fourth son, might have the US admin delaying or cancelling the state visit to attend his funeral.
A potential delayed trip, the ambassador gone, comes as US-UK relations worsen over free speech issues and an overzealous ofcom attempts to regulate US tech companies. There’s a lot of risk here.
Rules Risk, Hiring Chill
By Camilo @AscendedYield
UK demand for workers is set to fall at one of the fastest rates in the world. The latest ManpowerGroup survey, spanning more than 40,000 firms globally and about 2,000 in Britain, puts the UK Net Employment Outlook for Q4 at roughly +11% (a net hire-minus-fire balance).
It is still positive, but it is also the sharpest slowdown in the 42-country sample. The drivers are familiar: cost pressure on margins, AI reshaping roles, and policy uncertainty ahead of the Autumn Budget.
Capital is sending the same signal from the other end of the pipeline. An industry audit using 48 competitiveness indicators finds that life-sciences FDI into the UK fell about 58% between 2017 and 2023, from £1.9bn to £795m, with the UK’s rank slipping to seventh among peers.
Since 2020, domestic pharma R&D has grown at roughly 1.9% a year versus an estimated 6.6% globally. Boardrooms are acting on that spread. One multinational paused a London accelerator pending clarity.
A planned vaccine expansion at Speke was scrapped after support was cut. The vocabulary is now paused, shelved, uninvestable.
Merck is the clearest datapoint. It scrapped a £1bn discovery centre in King’s Cross and will discontinue UK discovery research, affecting around 125 roles. The immediate payroll impact understates the economic hit.
Anchor labs are multipliers that support supplier contracts, postdoc pipelines, trial capacity, and spin-outs. Removing the anchor thins the cluster. Erosion doesn’t show in a single quarter’s GDP, but it lowers future export chances and weakens the city’s knowledge-economy status.
Similarly, AstraZeneca’s path also points in the same direction. The company has set out plans to invest around £50bn in the US by 2030 and has considered relocating its main listing to New York.
Earlier decisions align with this approach. In 2021, a £320m plant was built in Ireland instead of England. In 2024, a high-impact cancer treatment was not recommended in England, while access to it was accelerated in other countries. In 2025, a planned £450m expansion in Liverpool was cancelled after government support was withdrawn.
This doesn't imply a lack of scientific expertise in the UK; it suggests a business environment that's hard to pin down and secure funding for.
Droning On
By Adam Wren @G0ADM
I didn’t see this reported on much in English-speaking media, but the Ukrainians were very happy to announce that the UK has confirmed a major new package of military aid to Ukraine, with plans to produce and deliver thousands of long-range kamikaze drones over the next 12 months. The pledge was made by UK Defence Secretary John Healey at the latest meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, held in the “Ramstein” format in London.
Healey stressed that the drones would be built entirely in Britain and financed by UK funds, underscoring London’s long-term commitment to strengthening Ukraine’s ability to resist Russia’s ongoing aggression. Reading between the lines, this is also part of a strategy to ‘onshore’ defence production. Labour wants to use the MoD to create an export market and an entire ecosystem of domestic manufacturers for our defence industry.
The move follows a 50-day campaign launched in July to accelerate support for Ukraine, during which Britain supplied nearly five million rounds of ammunition, 60,000 artillery shells, rockets and other munitions, 2,500 drone platforms, and 200 electronic warfare and defence systems.
Britain has already allocated more than £1 billion from confiscated Russian assets for the purchase of critical military equipment for Ukraine. For the first time, the international fund for Ukraine is now surpassing £2 billion.
“A secure Europe requires a strong Ukraine,” Healey declared, directly addressing Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We see your aggression, your new attacks. But you only strengthen our unity with the Ukrainians and our determination to move further and faster to support them.”
It’s DAO Or Never
By Adam Wren @G0ADM
It feels like every other week I’m invited to join some groupchat or Discord where some people are planning to launch a political party or new movement.
These almost always fail because they’re started by techbros that have read one political and/or marketing book and decided to take action. (Usually Ogilvy on Advertising)
“Wow this information about newspaper advertising placements will let us launch a centrist insurgency”
In recent weeks however, Nepal has been gripped by one of the most extraordinary political upheavals in recent memory by one of these types of groups.
Nepali teenagers and young adults in their early 20s began organizing online around issues of economic inequality and government corruption. These small groupchat discussions quickly gathered momentum, with plans to launch a nationwide social movement.
Sensing the movement’s rapid growth, the government attempted to cut it off at the source by imposing sweeping geoblocks on social media platforms.
Outrage quickly spilled from online and into the streets as young people and their supporters staged protests, accusing the government of censorship and authoritarian overreach.
Faced with escalating unrest, authorities reversed the social media ban, a little too late. The protests intensified and spiraled into chaos.
Demonstrators set fire to the Parliament building and the Prime Minister’s residence. The Finance Minister was kidnapped and beaten in the streets, and the Prime Minister’s wife was reportedly killed during the unrest.
What happened next was even more unprecedented. The protestors convened on Discord to hold what they called a “people’s vote” for a new leader.
They chose the former Chief Justice of Nepal’s Supreme Court, a veteran of the 1990 revolution that toppled the monarchy and established multi-party democracy. Declared the “interim Prime Minister” by this digital assembly, he quickly became a rallying point for the movement.
A few days ago the head of Nepal’s army publicly acknowledged the legitimacy of the Discord-led vote.
Military leaders are now reported to be in talks with the newly chosen interim leader to discuss a roadmap for elections and the formation of a transitional government.
Cryptobros for more than a decade have dreamed of a ‘network state’, they’ve built DAOs (decentralised autonomous organisations), bought land in South America to build new cities, and engaged in lawfare against nation states.
Who could have imagined some Nepali teens in a discord server would get further in a few weeks than they ever did, and all without launching a single token?
Still bored?
I appreciate your point about Mandleson actually being quite effective, and although he realistically had to go it's frustrating living in a scandalocracy where press tidbits of political figures are far more important than how effective they are at their jobs