What was the big political issue you remember from your youth?
The Good Friday Agreement. The democratic possibility that our whole island will be free of yer army and kings, and all that shit the rich Normans poisoned ye with.
What would your leadership style be – who do you admire in politics, or generally, as a leader?
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There was a mayor of Bogotá in Colombia called Antanas Mockus in the mid-’90s. He used humour and public participation to change behaviour, believing people respond not only to laws or money but to social norms. For instance, there was huge corruption, law was breaking down to the point that people weren’t adhering to basic rules of the road. Lots of pedestrian deaths. Mockus replaced traffic wardens with mimes, who would mimic the behaviour of jaywalkers. The fun, humour and slight embarrassment actually led to a reduction in road deaths. I admire that experimental approach, government as something creative, evidence based and capable of changing culture.
Who would you call on the red telephone that could connect you with anyone, and what would you want to tell them?
I’d ring someone like Peter Thiel [founder of Palantir] and tell him that I had a dream about him burning in hell. I’d pick him because he seems like a bit of a lunatic. I’d try to coax him into repenting before it’s too late and to dedicate his time on earth to saving it. Hieronymus Bosch used to do that; his mad paintings of hell. He’d present them at dinners to rich people to freak them out about eternal damnation. Except it wasn’t altruistic for Bosch, his pal was a bishop and the rich people would pay him to keep them out of hell, and Bosch would get a kickback.
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Who would you award a knighthood/damehood to?
Royal ritual is a form of public hypnotism. It uses solemnity and the performance of seriousness to conjure a feeling of permanence around inherited power. It makes royal entitlement feel like the weather. Something natural, inevitable and unchangeable, rather than an arbitrary arrangement and therefore capable of being abolished.
I’d take that knighthood and give it to a snail, because of its role in the calcium cycle. I’d give the knighthood to a wasp, the big stripy butcher priest of the ditch, cutting death into smaller deaths and turning the nutrient cycle. I’d give it to a nettle, the canopy of the muck, who provides a home for worms and slugs and all the wonderful creatures that we ignore.
When the Queen died, the world remained the same and the British people left marmalade sandwiches at the gates of the palace to rot. If wasps or snails died, we’d all die, it would be over. They are our royalty.
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What’s your big idea to save the world?
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Stop what the new billionaire class is doing. They are displaying extraordinary class solidarity. Using concentrated wealth to shape politics, media ownership and the rules of the economy in ways that protect their own interests.
The rest of us need an equivalent solidarity, stronger unions, collective bargaining, public ownership and democratic institutions powerful enough to resist private wealth becoming political power.
How would you reach across the political divide?
I’m less interested in reaching across a political divide than asking who benefits from maintaining it. If both sides are being shaped by private money, then the divide can become elaborate theatre while the underlying economic settlement remains untouched.
I’d rather build solidarity around material interests. Ye have it in droves in yer working class history. Read
about the old working men’s clubs. Unfortunately, they were often marred by racism towards Irish and black people. But ye had them, and the co-op model, mutual societies. People pooling money, putting it back into their community, owning things together and building institutions that served them rather than extracting from them. What would that look like in 2026? Who’s going to have a go at that?
How would you encourage people to vote/become more engaged with politics?
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First, you need to become aware of why voting can feel pointless. Under neoliberalism, governments can change while the deeper machinery keeps humming. If people vote again and again and their rent, wages, services and security barely improve, you will get disengagement and that hot-headed feeling of frustrated hopelessness. Only in that environment can a load of silly pricks in balaclavas march on Dover and not be laughed at. It’s theatre. It’s distraction.
Politics has to become material again. Strong unions, public ownership, collective bargaining, democratic institutions with enough muscle to stop private wealth becoming private government. That there is the current zeitgeist, you can’t chat about voting without understanding that. It would be like trying to place a bet on a professional wrestling match.
If answering these questions has convinced you to stand for election, what’s your slogan?
No, f off.
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