Category: Academic Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex

A recent voting intentions poll from YouGov, completed on August 26, puts Reform on 28%, Labour 20% and the Conservatives on 17%.

The poll identifies the remarkable lead that Reform has built up over the other parties. The party is leading Labour by 8%, the Conservatives by 11% and the Liberal Democrats by 12%. The Liberal Democrats are now snapping at the heels of the Conservatives, and the Greens are doing much better than they did before the general election.

YouGov Voting Intentions Survey Responses 26th August 2025:

Reform has been ahead of all the other parties since the end of April in successive surveys, so their current lead in the polls is not just a blip. However, there is an important qualification to be made about these results. They are more of a reflection of how people view national level politics than a reflection of how they would vote in their own constituency.

No less than 31% of respondents in the YouGov survey did not identify which party they supported when it applied to their constituency. Some said they would not vote; others that they would vote for another party. Yet more said they didn’t know how they would vote; and finally, some refused to answer the question. It appears that voting intentions are rather uncertain at the present time – something that is true for all parties.

The next election could be four years into the future so a lot can change between now and then. That said, by looking at how voting played out at the constituency level in the general election of 2024, we can get a better sense of which parties are most challenged by Reform as things currently stand.

Competition between parties

If we examine correlations between vote shares for parties in the 632 constituencies in Great Britain at the last election, this indicates how much competition there was between them. If, for example, the correlation between Reform voting and Conservative voting was -1.0 it would mean that on average a 1% increase in the Reform vote was associated with a 1% decrease in the Conservative vote.

If, on the other hand, the correlation between the two was zero, it would mean there was no competition between them at all. The reality lies somewhere in between these extremes.

Correlations only look at support for two parties at a time, and this can give a misleading picture because interactions between support for all five parties can change things. For example, the Labour vote share in constituencies depends in part on the rivalry between the Conservatives and Reform.

If Reform took a lot of votes from the Conservatives, this would help Labour, since Labour and the Conservatives are strong rivals. So, we really need to look at relationships between voting for all parties at the same time to get an accurate picture of party competition.

To untangle these relationships, we need to use a technique which identifies the correlation between Reform voting and support for other parties, while taking into account these interactions. This can be done using multiple regression, the most widely used statistical technique in social science. It adjusts the correlations to deal with this problem.

How Reform votes relate to other party votes:

The chart shows the relationships between Reform voting and support for the other parties in the 2024 election derived from the multiple regression analysis. All the adjusted correlations are negative, which means that the parties were all competitors to Reform. When the Reform vote increased, their vote shares decreased and vice versa.

There were big differences in party competition in the election. It turns out that the sharpest competition was between the Liberal Democrats and Reform, with an adjusted correlation of -0.72. When the Liberal Democrats did well in a constituency the Reform vote was hammered. Essentially this means that Reform just doesn’t appeal to voters in constituencies where the Liberal Democrats are strong.

The second most important competition was between Labour and Reform with a correlation of -0.52. Roughly speaking, when the average Labour vote increased by 1%, the Reform vote declined by half a percent. The third most important competition was between Reform and the other parties (the nationalists and small parties) with a correlation of -0.34. The Greens were in fourth place with a correlation of -0.28.

Further analysis shows that constituencies with many economically deprived voters who are male, define themselves as “English” rather than “British”, and who are more likely to spoil their ballots to protest about politicians are more likely to support Reform.

There are important social and political forces related to deprivation and voter grievances behind the party’s current political success. The Tories and Reform are at each other’s throats in Westminster, but this does not necessarily apply to voters at the constituency level.

The surprise is the weak negative adjusted correlation of -0.13 between Reform and the Conservatives. This means that once all the party contests are taken into account, the rivalry between Reform and Labour was four times greater than between Reform and the Conservatives.

This is because right-wing supporters of the Conservative party see Labour and the Liberal Democrats as their enemies whereas they see Reform and the Conservatives as potential allies. The Tories lost votes to Reform but fewer than many people think.

These results are likely to be a poor guide to what will happen at the next election in 2028 or 2029 since so much could change. But if the current support for Reform holds up, Labour is likely to face a greater challenge from Reform than the Conservatives in that election.

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Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.

– ref. Constituency-level data reveals which parties are most threatened by Reform – https://theconversation.com/constituency-level-data-reveals-which-parties-are-most-threatened-by-reform-264422

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Leonie Fleischmann, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, City St George’s, University of London

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has ordered the Israel Defense Forces to step up the offensive on Gaza City, despite internal and international condemnation.

Amid accusations by the International Association of Genocide Scholars that Israel is committing genocide, some 40,000 reservist soldiers were called-up to report for duty on Tuesday, August 2. An additional 90,000 are due for mobilisation by the end of the first quarter of 2026. But reports suggest that the numbers willing to accept their orders are dwindling.

Israel has mandatory national conscription for those leaving high school for a period of 18 to 36 months, with some exemptions. This is followed by compulsory reserve duty for some units, normally until the age of 40. In the wake of the October 7 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas, 360,000 reservists were reportedly called up for duty, alongside the 100,000 high-school leavers on active duty.

This was one of the largest mobilisations in Israel’s history. There was an unprecedented 120% response rate, as Israelis rallied around the flag and other people not subject to the call-up opted to serve.

After almost two years of fighting, reports suggest that commanders are now struggling to find enough reservists willing to serve. Some calculations show a 30% downturn in reserve deployment. Kan, Israel’s national broadcaster, puts the decline closer to 50%.
Reasons vary among those who choose not to fulfil their reserve duty. A report from left-wing Israeli media outlet, +972mag, calculates that only about 1,500, roughly 1.5%, of soldiers who refused between October 2023 and April 2025 did so out of ideological and ethical concerns.

The majority have refused because they have grown weary of a war that has failed to achieve a resolution nor succeeded in returning the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. Many are suffering from exhaustion, both physical and emotional.

Whatever their motivations, the unwillingness of a proportion of Israeli reserve soldiers to continue to fight poses a potential problem for Netanyahu in his pursuit of eradicating Hamas in Gaza or in conducting wars on other fronts. Simply put, the IDF cannot carry out its operations without sufficient soldiers.

Even if refusal numbers do not reach such a tipping point, their public declarations of refusal carry political clout. Historically, Israelis have refused to serve as a means to challenge the policies of the Israeli government.

A distinction should be made between the smaller numbers of Israeli teenagers who refuse to enlist in the IDF altogether and those who have refused their reserve duty. Some high-school refusers declare themselves as “conscientious objectors”. They tend to do so out of ideological contempt for the IDF and in rejection of the Israeli occupation of Palestinians.

A 2021 refusal letter by a group of high school students spelled it out: “It is our duty to oppose this destructive reality by uniting our struggles and refusing to serve these violent systems – chief among them the military.”

As I discovered in my research on Israeli peace and anti-occupation activism, these teenagers tend to be dismissed as radical anarchists. Reservists who refuse to return to serve are also not well received by the majority of Israeli society, but they are given a degree of support and sympathy because they have already served in the IDF, thus fulfilling their national duty.

As one recent refuser wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times, “refusing to serve is not betrayal of the state. Refusing is the only way to save it”.

Israel’s history of military ‘refuseniks’

The first significant wave of reservist refusal came with the outbreak of the first Lebanon war in 1982. Almost 3,000 reservists signed a petition stating that they did not join the Israeli Defense Forces to “solve the Palestinian problem by warfare”. Some 160 were jailed. A movement called Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit) emerged and has promoted subsequent waves of reservist refusal, and supported those who are imprisoned.

The movement encouraged selective refusal to serve in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in response to the Israeli army’s brutal repression of the first Palestinian uprising in 1987. As Israeli scholar, Benjamin Kidron, noted in his book Refusenik!, they marked a difference between “legitimate” duties of the IDF in defending Israel and “unacceptable” assignments in the occupied territories.

During the second Intifada, beginning in 2000, there was a further wave of selective refusal, with the reservists gaining some legitimacy by “speaking with the authority of having come directly from the field”.

Threats of refusal have also been used as leverage for other issues dominating Israeli society. At the height of the protests against the proposed judicial reforms in summer 2023, 1,000 elite Israeli combat pilots refused to serve until the reforms were abandoned. They cited the government’s plans as a threat to Israeli democracy.

With an increasing number of Israelis taking a public stand against the Israeli government, the wave of soldiers refusing to serve could affect the ability of Netanyahu to continue his assault on Gaza as planned. But as the past two years have shown, Netanyahu has not been persuaded by either domestic or international pressure to abandoned his war on Gaza. It is unlikely that he will change course now.

Leonie Fleischmann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Israel’s ‘refuseniks’: a growing number of soldiers are refusing to serve in Netanyahu’s war on Gaza – https://theconversation.com/israels-refuseniks-a-growing-number-of-soldiers-are-refusing-to-serve-in-netanyahus-war-on-gaza-264707

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Beth Nichol, Post-Doctoral Researcher in Disease Prevention, Northumbria University, Newcastle

Have you ever visited your GP for something specific – perhaps a sprained ankle or a routine check-up – only to find yourself receiving unsolicited advice about your weight, drinking habits or smoking? Sometimes this guidance feels supportive and timely. Other times it can feel intrusive, judgmental or irrelevant to why you’re there.

These increasingly common experiences aren’t accidental. Since 2016, NHS staff in England have been required to follow a policy called Making Every Contact Count, which mandates that healthcare workers use interactions with patients as an opportunity to encourage healthier lifestyles.

While you may never have heard of this term, if you’ve received unexpected health advice during a medical appointment, you’ve probably encountered this policy in action. Similar initiatives exist in other UK nations and in healthcare systems worldwide.

Making Every Contact Count has persisted for nearly a decade because the underlying principle appears sound. Research shows that brief advice – sometimes lasting just minutes or even seconds – can genuinely help people quit smoking, increase their physical activity, or reduce their alcohol consumption.

For the NHS, this approach offers particular appeal. It’s low-cost and allows the health service to demonstrate that it’s moving beyond simply treating disease towards actively preventing it.

When good intentions go wrong

However, the reality often falls short of these noble intentions. Many readers will recognise scenarios where this approach backfires.

A typical example involves someone seeking help for a minor injury who leaves the consultation clutching an unwanted leaflet about weight loss, despite not having mentioned weight at all. Receiving unwanted advice can leave patients feeling lectured to rather than supported, creating feelings of guilt and judgment instead of empowerment.

The frustration intensifies when patients lack the resources to act on the advice they’ve received. Being told to exercise more or eat better foods becomes particularly galling when you’re struggling financially, working multiple jobs or living in an area with limited access to healthy food or safe exercise facilities.

This resource gap reveals a fundamental flaw in the Making Every Contact Count approach. The policy claims it can help reduce health inequalities by encouraging discussions about broader issues like housing and employment, yet, in research my colleagues and I conducted, we found no evidence to support these claims.

Instead of addressing structural inequalities, these conversations risk reinforcing them by placing responsibility on people who may have limited power to change their circumstances.

This problem is compounded by the NHS’s broader shift towards patient “empowerment” through increased choice and responsibility. The latest NHS strategy promises patients unprecedented choice over where they receive treatment, supported by league tables ranking healthcare providers. Patients will even influence provider payments through their feedback on care quality.

While these changes sound progressive, they rest on the false assumption that all patients have equal capacity to exercise choice. Those with internet access, education and flexible schedules may thrive in this system, navigating league tables and travelling to optimal providers.

Yet others may struggle to access or interpret the information, juggle appointments with work and childcare commitments, or face limitations imposed by public transport links. Without careful consideration of how to level this playing field, this policy risks widening rather than narrowing health inequalities.

The challenge lies in distinguishing between true empowerment and victim-blaming disguised as patient choice. Genuine empowerment in healthcare requires several key elements that are sometimes missing from current approaches.

First, conversations about health and lifestyle must be approached with tact and timing. Research my colleagues and I conducted shows that these discussions should occur at appropriate moments and focus on changes patients actually want to make. The interaction should be characterised by empathy, leaving patients feeling heard and motivated rather than criticised or overwhelmed.

Crucially, studies show people resist being told what to do, particularly when it feels like preaching. Instead, they prefer collaborative, two-way conversations that acknowledge their expertise about their own lives and circumstances. This means healthcare workers need skills in motivational interviewing and behaviour change, not just medical knowledge.

Beyond individual responsibility

However, improving the quality of these conversations alone isn’t enough. Making Every Contact Count and similar “empowerment” initiatives must work alongside – not instead of – strategies that provide people with the actual resources needed to live healthier lives. This means addressing housing quality, food security, employment conditions and access to recreational facilities.

True empowerment recognises that health choices occur within social, economic and environmental constraints. A person living in temporary accommodation, working zero-hours contracts or caring for elderly relatives faces different challenges to someone with stable housing, regular income and family support. Healthcare policies that ignore these realities risk perpetuating a cycle where those with the least power are held most responsible for their health outcomes.

The goal should be creating conditions where everyone can be genuinely empowered, because they have the capability to make choices about their life. This requires systemic change that goes far beyond brief conversations with a healthcare professional, acknowledging that individual behaviour change and structural reform must work hand-in-hand to create meaningful improvements in population health.

Beth Nichol receives funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Three Research Schools Prevention Research Programme (Grant Reference Number NIHR 20400 – Prev) and Policy Research Unit Behavioural and Social Sciences (project reference NIHR206124). The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

– ref. When healthcare advice feels like blame – the problem with ‘Making Every Contact Count’ – https://theconversation.com/when-healthcare-advice-feels-like-blame-the-problem-with-making-every-contact-count-263594

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Will Shüler, Vice-Dean of Education and Senior Lecturer, School of Performing and Digital Arts, Royal Holloway University of London

Currently playing to enthusiastic reviews at London’s Wyndham Theatre, Born With Teeth imagines a historic moment in playwriting in which Liz Duffy Adams illuminates how history can be presented from a queer perspective, while revealing precisely how a play actually functions.

Starring Edward Bluemel as the Bard and Ncuti Gatwa as his contemporary Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, Adams’ play imagines the process of the two co-authoring Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3 – which historically have always been attributed solely to Shakespeare.

As the programme note makes clear, linguistic analysis points to Marlowe very likely having contributed to these plays – though of course, there is no hard evidence for the conversations that take place in Adams’ Elizabethan writers’ room.

This imagined collaboration is more than professional, as the sultry poster for the play reveals. While Marlowe is widely thought to have been gay, Born With Teeth builds on the knowledge that Shakespeare was probably interested in both female and male affections. The play contributes to a long line of queer Shakespeare work, including most recently Will Todd’s history, Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare.

Bluemel and Gatwa display a magnetic chemistry and engaging physical presence on stage. The two young actors lead the audience through a rollercoaster of emotion, prompting them to root for the pair to kiss, fight, shake hands and ultimately write a classic trilogy of plays.

By creating this possible past, the imagined sensual co-writing of the Henry VI plays contributes to a queer retelling of history. Queer lives and experiences have traditionally been subject to erasure by historians; imagined pasts are a way of answering this homophobic practice.

My research looks at how imagined narratives provide a way of understanding queer experience and questioning what is “normal”. To queer something in an academic sense means to question any notions of dominance, legitimacy and normality in society. By foregrounding the homoerotic aspects of Shakespeare and Marlowe’s lives, Born With Teeth challenges presumptions of a dominant version of history.

Alongside exploring queer lives, the process of collaborative writing, and the tense religious environment of Elizabethan England, Adams’ play is also about plays themselves. This is an example of “meta-theatricality” – an artistic device of calling attention to the performative nature of a production. Born with Teeth does a clever job of employing meta-theatricality in three ways.

The first instance occurs as Will and Kit discuss their approach to writing the history of King Henry VI. Will is keen to rely heavily on a historic account provided by English chronicler Rafael Holinshed. Marlowe, on the other hand, doesn’t want the truth to get in the way of a good story. Of course, what a historian writes is always a version of the truth (at best), but this early disagreement between the two wordsmiths cleverly functions as almost a prologue to the play.

Will and Kit’s dialogue about writing Henry VI tells the audience the play will not necessarily be providing an accurate history of events – that while this is a play about the past informed by historical accounts, it is nevertheless a piece of theatre whose function is to entertain and invite contemplation.

So any Shakespeare enthusiast ready to call into question the veracity of the play’s events is immediately put right by the very meta-theatricality of Will and Kit’s conversation.

A second example occurs as the arrogant Kit, disdainful of his lesser-known contemporary throughout, begins to acknowledge Will’s artistic talent. In particular, Kit finds it quite powerful that Will has a way of endearing his villains to the audience.

In many ways, this is exactly what is happening within Born With Teeth. Kit is obnoxious, lecherous, threatening and petulant. And yet, his pride becomes him. His flaws are winsome and undeniably charming. In the same way that Kit commends Will’s ability to craft a lovable baddie, he himself achieves by enchanting the audience.

The third and most subtle bit of meta-theatricality – attributable to both Adams and director, Daniel Evans – is the way the characters play to the crowd. During one of their many intellectual sparring matches, Kit critiques Will’s comedic pandering to the pleasures of the pit – the part of the theatre inhabited by “groundlings”, who paid the least to stand and watch the play. Again, this is an instance of Born With Teeth commenting on theatrical practice while employing it.

The play regularly makes Shakespearean references and in-jokes which garner knowing laughter from the audience. For example, when Will comes up with lines that end up in other Shakespeare plays, or mentions how Kit will inspire his King of Cats (Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet), the audience reaction demonstrates their understanding and appreciation of these in-the-know jokes.

One of the biggest laughs comes from dramatic irony, where the audience is aware of something that the characters are not. Kit analyses and critiques some of Will’s scenes, to which the Bard replies: “It’s not like people are studying my writing.”

Of course, the joke is that Shakespeare is indeed one of the most studied and appreciated writers of all time. And so the wink-wink, pandering humour that the play comments on, it also enacts. With its clever exploration of theatrical collaboration and queer desire, there is much to enjoy here. See Born With Teeth if you can.

Born with Teeth plays at the Wyndham Theatre until November 1.

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Will Shüler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Born With Teeth: queer imagining of Shakespeare and Marlowe tale is also a play about plays – https://theconversation.com/born-with-teeth-queer-imagining-of-shakespeare-and-marlowe-tale-is-also-a-play-about-plays-264061

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mehmet Sebih Oruc, PhD Researcher in digital media and philosophy, Newcastle University

It feels like there are so many things constantly vying for our attention: the sharp buzz of the phone, the low hum of social media, the unrelenting flood of emails, the endless carousel of content.

It’s a familiar and almost universal ailment in our digital age. Our lives are punctuated by constant stimulation, and moments of real stillness – the kind where the mind wanders without a destination – have become rare.

Digital technologies permeate work, education, and intimacy. Not participating feels to many like nonexistence. But we tell ourselves that’s OK because platforms promise endless choice and self-expression, but this promise is deceptive. What appears as freedom masks a subtle coercion: distraction, visibility, and engagement are prescribed as obligations.

As someone who has spent years reading philosophy, I have been asking myself how to step out of this loop and try to think like great thinkers did in the past. A possible answer came from a thinker most people wouldn’t expect to help with our TikTok-era malaise: the German philosopher Martin Heidegger.

Heidegger argued that modern technology is not simply a collection of tools, but a way of revealing – a framework in which the world appears primarily as a resource, including the human body and mind, to be used for content. In the same way, platforms are also part of this resource, and one that shapes what appears, how it appears, and how we orient ourselves toward life.

Digital culture revolves around speed, visibility, algorithmic selection, and the compulsive generation of content. Life increasingly mirrors the logic of the feed: constantly updating, always “now” and allergic to slowness, silence and stillness.

What digital platforms take away is more than just our attention being “continuously partial” — they also limit the deeper kind of reflection that allows us to engage with life and ourselves fully. They make us lose the capacity to inhabit silence and confront the unfilled moment.

When moments of silence or emptiness arise, we instinctively look to others — not for real connection, but to fill the void with distraction. Heidegger calls this distraction “das man” or “they”: the social collective whose influence we unconsciously follow.

In this way, the “they” becomes a kind of ghostly refuge, offering comfort while quietly erasing our own sense of individuality. This “they” multiplies endlessly through likes, trends, and algorithmic virality. In fleeing from boredom together, the possibility of an authentic “I” disappears into the infinite deferral of collective mimicry.

Heidegger feared that under the dominance of technology, humanity might lose its capacity to relate to “being itself”. This “forgetting of being” is not merely an intellectual error but an existential poverty.

Today, it can be seen as the loss of depth — the eclipse of boredom, the erosion of interiority, the disappearance of silence. Where there is no boredom, there can be no reflection. Where there is no pause, there can be no real choice.

Heidegger’s “forgetting of being” now manifests as the loss of boredom itself. What we forfeit is the capacity for sustained reflection.

Boredom as a privileged mood

For Heidegger, profound boredom is not merely a psychological state but a privileged mood in which the everyday world begins to withdraw. In his 1929 to 1930 lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, he describes boredom as a fundamental attunement through which beings no longer “speak” to us, revealing the nothingness at the heart of being itself.

“Profound boredom removes all things and men and oneself along with it into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals beings as a whole.”

Boredom is not absence but a threshold — a condition for thinking, wonder, and the emergence of meaning.

The loss of profound boredom mirrors the broader collapse of existential depth into surface. Once a portal to being, boredom is now treated as a design flaw, patched with entertainment and distraction.

Never allowing ourselves to be bored is equivalent to never allowing ourselves to be as we are. As Heidegger insists, only in the totality of profound boredom do we come face to face with beings as a whole. When we flee boredom, we escape ourselves. At least, we try to.

The problem is not that boredom strikes too often, but that it is never allowed to fully arrive. Boredom, which has paradoxically seen a rise in countries drowning in technology like the US, is shameful. It is treated like an illness almost. We avoid it, hate it, fear it.

Digital life and its many platforms offer streams of micro-distractions that prevent immersion into this more primitive attunement. Restlessness is redirected into scrolling, which, instead of meaningful reflection, produces only more scrolling. What disappears with boredom is not leisure, but metaphysical access — the silence in which the world might speak, and one might hear.

In this light, rediscovering boredom is not about idle time, it is about reclaiming the conditions for thought, depth, and authenticity. It is a quiet resistance to the pervasive logic of digital life, an opening to the full presence of being, and a reminder that the pause, the unstructured moment, and the still passage are not failures – they are essential.

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Mehmet Sebih Oruc does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Put down your phone and engage in boredom – how philosophy can help with digital overload – https://theconversation.com/put-down-your-phone-and-engage-in-boredom-how-philosophy-can-help-with-digital-overload-262396