Dr Matthew Hardy

@[email protected]
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Sustainable urban cyclist, senior lecturer, recovering architect. The Arsenal. EUrophile. Head says #Green, heart says #Labour. #StillEuropean #FBPE 💙😷♥️🇺🇦
Also at @drmatthewhardy.bsky.social
Dr Matthew HardyMay 8, 2025
"we are still in court—now at the Supreme Court—trying to access the most basic information about these talks. Since then, Labour has gone from criticising trade secrecy in opposition to defending it in government. The deals in question have mostly been signed or dropped, yet the public remains locked out of the details.

"So far, the government has spent £227,000 fighting our transparency case"
https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/us-uk-trade-deal-the-long-secretive-transparency?publication_id=1770414&post_id=163117254&isFreemail=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozOTg1ODMxMCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTYzMTE3MjU0LCJpYXQiOjE3NDY2OTUxNDksImV4cCI6MTc0OTI4NzE0OSwiaXNzIjoicHViLTE3NzA0MTQiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.3UX686nvWS6XtndNHdKH2bKhv9cHymA7aAtmbBJTZD8&r=nqava&triedRedirect=true
US-UK trade deal: the long, secretive back story

British government has spent £227,000 fighting transparency on details of Trump trade deals

Democracy for Sale
Dr Matthew HardyMay 3, 2025
"If Labour were listening to what their critics on the left have been saying for many months now, it would respond to the results last night by delivering change with policies that transform the economic situation, and use the wealth that exists in British society to shift the balance in favour of the majority. It would move faster on tackling and adapting to climate change and it would halt the welfare cuts. If it were listening."
https://bylinetimes.com/2025/05/02/local-elections-keir-starmer-nigel-farage-runcorn-byelection-labour-conservatives/?mc_cid=873ee4ad49
Local Elections: 'Keir Starmer's Rightward Shift Is Laying the Ground for Nigel Farage'

Labour's embrace of economic and political orthodoxy is forcing voters to look elsewhere for change, argues Keir Starmer's former adviser Simon Fletcher

Byline Times
Dr Matthew HardyApr 8, 2025
"It is not just that Carney, having served as Governor of two central banks, has a greater grasp of the issues at stake of any current global leader bar none. It is also that as Governor of the Bank of England during the Brexit years, he has direct experience of dealing with dangerously ignorant populists who have somehow managed to grab hold of the levers of power in a G7 country and accidentally trigger a monumental act of economic self-harm against itself."

https://nixons.substack.com/p/what-can-stop-trump-plus-other-critical?publication_id=1933989&post_id=160600235&isFreemail=true&r=nqava&triedRedirect=true
What Can Stop Trump plus other critical issues

Thoughts on how to stop a trade crisis turning into a financial crisis, Carney's bid for global leadership, the rise of American poligarchy, and why imperialism is making a return

Wealth of Nations
Dr Matthew HardyApr 3, 2025

"The US will apparently charge tariffs on exports from Heard Island and the McDonald Islands, a volcanic archipelago near the Antarctic inhabited only by penguins, and from Diego Garcia, a US military base."
🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧


A US tariff pathology is unleashed upon the world https://www.ft.com/content/47c267fd-e981-4c4d-985a-e0934483f1f9

A US tariff pathology is unleashed upon the world

The Republicans have allowed a destructive economic nationalist to lead America into chaos

Financial Times
Show threadDr Matthew HardyMar 27, 2025
Finally, Putin placed the whole set of fraudulent Kremlin narratives in Trump’s gullible head, ranging from the outrageous claim that Ukraine shares equal responsibility with Russia for the ongoing war, to casting Zelensky’s democratic legitimacy into doubt and demanding war-time elections, even though Ukraine’s constitution explicitly prohibits this.
Show threadDr Matthew HardyMar 27, 2025
Second, again with no concessions, the American president gave the nod to Putin’s claims to the occupied Ukrainian territories, and to his demand that Ukraine be barred from NATO. Third, he heard not only that American sanctions would be removed, but also that the US president believes Europeans should do the same.
Show threadDr Matthew HardyMar 27, 2025
Putin has certainly scored several points over Trump, besides the paramount fact of breaking the international isolation. First, he has learned that, without having had to make any concessions, American peacekeeping troops will not be sent to Ukraine – the same gift that Biden made him in December 2021, completely ignoring the importance of strategic uncertainty in geopolitical rivalry.
Dr Matthew HardyMar 27, 2025
Making Putin happy again | Eurozine https://www.eurozine.com/making-putin-happy-again/
Making Putin happy again

The ‘Trump–Putin deal’ again places Ukrainians in a subaltern role. The leaked contract with its fantasy $500 billion ‘payback’ has been compared to Versailles, but the US betrayal recalls nothing so much as Molotov–Ribbentrop.

Dr Matthew HardyFeb 21, 2025
"The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more than 70 years old and applies to a wide range of different technologies. It is really a marketing term that is empty of content as the technology is neither ‘artificial’ nor does it involve any ‘intelligence’."

(Ten reasons not to use AI for development and ten routes to more responsible use - Institute of Development Studies)
https://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/ten-reasons-not-to-use-ai-for-development-and-ten-routes-to-more-responsible-use/
Ten reasons not to use AI for development and ten routes to more responsible use - Institute of Development Studies

The UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer says we should be mainlining AI directly into every part of government and the economy. The Foreign Secretary says he is planning to bring ‘AI into the heart of our work’.  However, there is a great deal of evidence about the harms that AI can cause. Here I outline […]

Institute of Development Studies
Dr Matthew HardyFeb 17, 2025

Sounds familiar?

"one of the first moves undertaken by elected autocrats such as Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Chávez in Venezuela, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey has been to purge professional civil servants from public agencies responsible for things such as investigating and prosecuting wrongdoing, regulating the media and the economy, and overseeing elections—and replace them with loyalists."

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/path-american-authoritarianism-trump

The Path to American Authoritarianism

What comes after democratic breakdown.

Foreign Affairs