Hace aproximadamente una década dos investigadores realizaron un pequeño experimento con un grupo de mujeres estadounidenses que no tenían obesidad. Les pidieron que imaginaran que habían ganado unos 45 kilogramos y que describieran cómo se sentirían ante un cambio corporal de esa magnitud. Las respuestas fueron contundentes: terror, aversión, espanto, horror. En definitiva, miedo.
Ese miedo no solo se relacionaba con posibles complicaciones médicas, sino con las consecuencias sociales que anticipaban. Muchas creían que no podrían caminar con normalidad, que se recluirían en casa o que dejarían de ser deseables. Algunas afirmaron que preferirían morir antes que vivir en un cuerpo gordo. Las respuestas revelaban imaginarios profundamente estigmatizantes sobre lo que significa habitar un cuerpo con kilos de más.
He empezado el texto con este experimento por un sencillo motivo. El estudio pone de relieve algo incómodo: quienes más temen a la obesidad suelen ser quienes no la padecen. Y ese temor no se dirige exclusivamente a la salud, sino a la estigmatización que acompaña al aumento de peso.
Estigma y comunicación
La preocupación por el peso corporal no es nueva. Durante siglos, la grasa ha funcionado como repositorio de ansiedades culturales en las sociedades occidentales.
En el pasado, el exceso de peso se interpretaba en clave moral: era el resultado visible de la gula o la pereza. En términos sociológicos se convertía en lo que Erving Goffman describió como una “identidad dañada” y por tanto, en un blanco para ser estigmatizadas.
Con demasiada frecuencia estas formas de estigmatización son reproducidas a través de los medios de comunicación e internet. Además de convertir a las personas con obesidad en un otro, en alguien a quién debemos repudiar o condenar al ostracismo, también son una advertencia para los demás.
Como aseguraron las mujeres del estudio citado al comienzo de este artículo, adherirse a una “buena conducta” es la condición necesaria si no se quiere acabar siendo personas abyectas y no deseadas. No se trata solo obviar factores biológicos o socioestructurales que puedan contribuir a la obesidad, sino en desentenderse de la propia dignidad de las personas que la padecen.
Tanto es así que, por ejemplo, en las aplicaciones para la pérdida de peso esta estigmatización es directa. En ellas el exceso de peso es responsabilidad y culpa de quien lo tiene. La obesidad se presenta como una enfermedad provocada por el estilo de vida. El objetivo de toda persona es llegar a tener un cuerpo delgado, esbelto y tonificado y las apps están ahí para ayudarte a lograrlo.
Una advertencia en forma de estigmatización
En una investigación reciente con colegas (aún en proceso de publicación) analizamos qué personas aparecen en las imágenes que acompañaban noticias sobre obesidad en la prensa.
Esperábamos hallar lo que se conoce como “gordos descabezados”, es decir, personas con obesidad fotografiadas sin rostro en un intento de mantener su anonimato y dignidad, lo que, paradójicamente, acaban deshumanizándolas. También contábamos con ver escenas que reforzaran el estereotipo de las personas gordas. Por ejemplo, consumir comida basura, sentarse en el sofá o ver la televisión.
Nuestra sorpresa vino cuando comprobamos que esos comportamientos aparecían representados por personas con peso normal. La estigmatización ya no se dirigía solo a las personas con obesidad, sino que ponía el foco en el resto.
Más allá del peso corporal
Buena parte del discurso mediático sobre la obesidad insiste en la idea de responsabilidad individual. Se apela a la disciplina y al control de uno mismo. Sin embargo, este enfoque simplifica un fenómeno complejo. La evidencia científica muestra que el peso corporal está influido por múltiples factores: genéticos, hormonales, metabólicos, psicológicos y socioeconómicos.
Ignorar esta complejidad no solo es inexacto desde el punto de vista de la salud pública, sino que además refuerza el estigma de peso.
Numerosos estudios han demostrado que la discriminación por peso se asocia con mayores niveles de ansiedad, depresión, evitación de la atención sanitaria e incluso con cambios fisiológicos vinculados al estrés crónico. Paradójicamente, el rechazo social puede empeorar los indicadores de salud que se dice querer proteger.
El miedo a la obesidad no siempre es miedo a enfermar, sino miedo a la exclusión social. Quizá la pregunta no sea solo quién teme a la obesidad, sino qué es exactamente lo que tememos: ¿el riesgo médico o el rechazo social?
Si el miedo se dirige principalmente al estigma, entonces el problema no está únicamente en el cuerpo, sino en la mirada que lo juzga. Porque cuando se reduce la identidad del otro a su tamaño o peso, la dignidad queda en segundo plano.
No obstante, más allá de los posibles fallos que cometen los medios de comunicación, conviene también subrayar las oportunidades que estos ofrecen para visibilizar el lado humano de la obesidad, comprender mejor a quienes la viven y mirar más allá de la forma o el tamaño de su cuerpo.
Promover una representación más amplia y diversa de los cuerpos, acorde con la pluralidad real de nuestra sociedad, contribuiría a desplazar el foco del peso como rasgo definitorio. De este modo, lo verdaderamente relevante dejaría de ser la talla y pasaría a ser la persona.
Lara Martín Vicario no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.
The Israeli Operation Roaring Lion and the American Operation Epic Fury started early on Feb. 28 when both countries began attacking Iran. Their airstrikes killed Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while striking military targets and cities across the country. More than 700 people have reportedly been killed in the attacks so far.
Iran responded with its own Operation True Promise 4 missile and drone strikes against Israeli and American targets. But it also started bombarding nine other Middle East countries.
Iran’s counterattacks might appear strategically reckless. But they’re sowing chaos across the region and revealing the limits of their neighbour’s defences.
Its newest weapon is a laser system. Iron Beam saw its first combat use last year against drones and small rockets.
But interceptors aren’t foolproof, and they sometimes fail.
Iran’s newest weapons aggravate this problem. Some missiles reportedly carry dozens of small explosives instead of one big one. These little bomblets disperse while falling from the sky to complicate interception.
Additionally, some older shelters were designed only to withstand smaller rockets. On March 1, a ballistic missile with a 500-kilogram warhead directly hit a shelter, killing nine people inside.
Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman have all been assaulted by Iranian weapons. Some 282 missiles and 833 drones attacked those countries over the weekend, and the barrage remains ongoing.
Three U.S. Patriot air defence missiles (rising from bottom of screen) fail to stop an incoming Iranian ballistic missile warhead (descending from upper right).
It’s difficult to predict how long the attacks will continue. Iran is believed to have around 2,500 ballistic missiles stockpiled, including 1,000 that could strike Israel or perhaps Europe. Its drone supply is likely larger, meaning launches could continue for months.
U.S. and Israeli warplanes are actively hunting Iranian missile launchers, but past conflicts show airstrikes alone have little impact on launch rates. Those drop only if ground invasions occur.
It’s likewise unclear how long the American-Israeli bombing campaign will last. U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested four to five weeks, maybe longer.
America’s previous regime change in Iran also didn’t end well. In 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency incited a coup that removed Iran’s elected government and replaced it with a military regime that was friendly to U.S. but unpopular in Iran. In 1979, a revolt ended the dictatorship and installed the current Islamic Republic.
Trump has often favoured transactional diplomatic deals in the past. Whether this conflict moves toward escalation or negotiation remains unclear, but it’s likely he’ll seek do something similar here.
What is clear is that the longer the conflict continues, the greater the human and economic costs are likely to be.
Michael J. Armstrong 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Gregory F. Treverton, Professor of Practice in International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
A group of men inspects the ruins of a police station in Tehran, Iran, on March 3, 2026. AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
When the bombing of Iran began on Feb. 28, 2026, the Trump administration had not informed the American people exactly what it was prepared to achieve.
Was the attack intended to degrade Iran’s nuclear program? Trump had declared that “obliterated” after last June’s bombing.
Was it to show support for Iran’s opposition, as Trump’s earlier “HELP IS ON ITS WAY” posts on Truth Social suggested? A bombing campaign that was bound to kill innocent Iranians, including 175 people at a girls elementary school near a military base, seemed an odd form of support.
I am a scholar and former practitioner of intelligence and national security policy in the White House. I believe there are lessons in effecting political change in Iran that can be taken, ironically, from the very U.S.- and British-led clandestine campaign in the mid-20th century that set Iran on the road to the intense anti-Western and anti-American sentiment that has characterized its government policy for decades.
How does this end?
President Trump has said he wants regime change in Iran but has articulated no strategy for achieving that end.
Strategy is the connection between means and ends. For waging a war, it means asking whether the military means available match the desired military outcome. In trying to effect political change, it means asking whether the instruments employed will produce the desired change.
Mossadegh had moved to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company – effectively, British oil interests. Britain responded with an an oil embargo and a severe economic squeeze on Iran.
By early 1953 the U.S. government, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorized the CIA to prepare a covert plan to remove Mossadegh and restore effective power to the shah, who at the time held a more ceremonial role. British intelligence had been pushing a similar agenda, and the two services collaborated on both the strategy and its implementation.
Men alleged to be communist spies await death before a firing squad in the Ghasr army barracks in Tehran in October 1954. Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
It was composed of three elements. First it funded newspapers and printed propaganda designed to discredit Mossadegh, portraying him as corrupt or sympathetic to communism. The propaganda also promoted fears of instability and communist infiltration.
Second, according to declassified histories, agents staged “false flag” incidents – attacks attributed to communists, for example – to stoke fear and backlash against Mossadegh among religious and conservative groups.
Third, the coup planners attempted to engage influential clerical leaders and organizations to amplify anti-Mossadegh sentiment.
Iranians crowd the main square in Tehran in August 1954 to celebrate the first anniversary of the arrest of former Premier Mohammad Mossadegh. Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
Shaping the crowds on Tehran’s streets proved critical to the operation. The CIA organized demonstrators to pose as pro-shah protesters, including paying individuals to chant slogans and confront Mossadegh supporters.
These orchestrated demonstrations climaxed on Aug. 19, 1953, when pro-shah forces and sympathetic leaders in the Iranian military – with CIA financial and logistical backing – seized key points of the country, confronted Mossadegh loyalists and helped topple his government. Estimates suggest around 200 to 300 people were killed in the chaotic fighting in Tehran.
What might have been, and what might be
The Mossadegh coup occurred in a less transparent world. However – and regardless of how you feel about it – the coup suggests the value of having a strategy to accomplish political change and, beyond Israel, bringing allies along if possible.
So far, Trump has called for the Iranian military and the Revolutionary Guard to lay down their arms. But the Trump administration has provided no guidance on how to do so, or to whom to do so.
Surely, the administration should be able to devise a plan for potential political change in Iran. It has insight from the years it has spent negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran. Recent events suggest the extent of Israeli, if not American, penetration of Iran.
Iranians participate in a funeral in Tehran for Revolutionary Guard commanders, Iranian nuclear scientists and civilians who were killed in Israeli attacks on June 28, 2025. Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In June 2025, Israel conducted covert drone operations deep inside Iran, in concert with airstrikes on Iranian missile and military infrastructure. Mossad reportedly established an undercover drone network and launched explosive drones to neutralize air defenses and missile launchers before the main attack.
The successful targeting of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his close associates in the latest round of airstrikes suggests the extent of likely Israeli monitoring of Iranian communications by Mossad and the CIA.
Crises tend to put pressure on governments to open communications channels, and the take from any successful eavesdropping might be passed to opposition groups to help them organize and avoid capture.
If Israel can smuggle explosive drones into Iran, it should be able to make the satellite internet provider Starlink and its kin available to enable the opposition to better – and more safely – organize.
It is late in the day to emulate the Mossadegh coup with information operations, and it is probably more difficult in an era of ubiquitous social media, not newspapers. But it’s not too late to try.
I believe those brave opposition elements in Iran, who have been killed by their government and bombed by the United States and Israel, deserve no less.
Gregory F. Treverton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – France – By Hugues Plisson, archéologue spécialisé en tracéologie (reconstitution de la fonction des outils préhistoriques par l’analyse de leurs usures), Université de Bordeaux
Obi-Rakhmat rock shelter in Uzbekistan, micro-point hafting and main game hunted around the site 80,000 years ago (artwork courtesy of Malvina Baumann).Malvina Baumann, Fourni par l’auteur
Unretouched triangular microlithic projectile points have been identified from their impact traces in the oldest occupation layers of the Obi-Rakhmat site in Uzbekistan, dating to 80,000 years ago. Their size corresponds to small arrowheads, which are directly comparable to those produced by Homo sapiens during an incursion into Neanderthal territory in the Rhône Valley, 25,000 years later. This new study, published in PLOS One journal, provides a strong argument that could rewrite history on Homo sapiens‘ first settlement in Europe.
The chrono-cultural and anthropological frameworks of prehistory, along with the evolutionary models they inspired, were first created in Western Europe, especially France, in the second half of the 19th century. They were initially linear and Eurocentric: Cro-Magnons (European early modern humans), descending from Neanderthals, laid the foundations for the civilisational superiority claimed by this part of the world at the time. It was not until a century later that the African origin of Homo sapiens, as well as the technological and social features that characterised the Western Upper Palaeolithic (symbolic productions, long-distance networks, and diversified lithic and bone tools and weapons), were recognised.
The earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Australia, dating back around 65,000 years (Clarkson et al., 2017), predates that found in Europe by 10 millennia, while the ways in which our ancestors initially colonised Western Eurasia over 45,000 years ago remain contentious. The temporal alignment of the earliest European Upper Palaeolithic settlements with those in the Levant, which are considered the closest in terms of typology and technology, is still not satisfactory. This is either because the Levantine data comes from old excavations or because it does not fit into the supposed direct lineage. Despite its geographical proximity to Africa, the origins of the Initial Upper Palaeolithic in the Levant are themselves uncertain. This is why the possibility of a Central Asian origin suggested by archaeologist Ludovic Slimak in 2023 (Slimak, 2023) deserves attention.
A site in Central Asia
View from the Obi-Rakhmat rock shelter on the end of the Tien Shan. Hugues Plisson. Fourni par l’auteur
Depending on climatic conditions, Central Asia has served as a corridor facilitating movement between the western and eastern parts of the continent or as a refuge zone. The archaeological record in this region is limited but includes several significant Palaeolithic sites.
Among them is the Obi-Rakhmat rock shelter in Uzbekistan, discovered in 1962, whose latest excavation campaigns were led by Andrei Krivoshapkin. At the south-western end of the Talassky Alatau range of the Tien Shan mountains, at an altitude of 1,250 metres, the settlement provides a remarkably consistent lithic industry, comprising points, large blades, and bladelets across a stratigraphic sequence spanning over 10 metres, dating from approximately 80,000 to 40,000 years ago. This industry was initially classified as part of the Initial Upper Palaeolithic but it appears to derive from the Levantine Early Middle Palaeolithic. The early Middle Palaeolithic, associated with archaic Homo sapiens at the Misliya cave (Hershkovitz et al., 2018), disappeared from the Near East around 100,000 years ago. At Obi-Rakhmat, the skull remains of a child found in a layer dating back ~70,000 years show features considered to be Neanderthal and others to be anatomically modern, a combination that could be the result of hybridisation.
Massive blades but microlithic points
Elements of lithic industry from layer 21 at Obi-Rakhmat: unretouched blades (1-2), large retouched blade (3), pointed retouched blades (4-5), impacted retouched points (6-8), unretouched Levallois micro-point (9), unretouched impacted micro-points (10-11). Hugues Plisson. Fourni par l’auteur
In this context, our international multidisciplinary team has identified tiny, unretouched, triangular projectile points within the lithic debris of the oldest stratigraphic layers. These points were distinguished based on their macroscopic and microscopic impact marks, which were compared to experimental reference data. Due to their small size (less than 2 cm in width and weighing only a few grams) and brittleness, they would have been unsuitable for mounting on heavy shafts. The width of their cutting edges corresponds to the diameter of arrow shafts documented ethnographically for low-poundage bows, consistent with transcultural invariants rooted in physical and ballistic constraints.
Two unretouched micro-points recovered from layer 21 of Obi-Rakhmat. One is intact, while the other is broken and shows scratches resulting from use as a projectile head. The matchstick illustrates their small size. Fourni par l’auteur
A question of ballistics
Thrown piercing weapons are complex systems whose components are not interchangeable from one type of weapon to another, as they meet different requirements in terms of intensity and nature of stress.
The significant impact force of spears held or thrown by hand makes the robustness of the weapon an essential parameter, both in terms of effectiveness and the hunter’s survival, with mass ensuring robustness, impact force and penetration. In contrast, the penetration of light projectiles shot from a long distance depends on their sharpness, because their kinetic energy, which is much lower, comes mainly from their speed, which, unlike mass, decreases very rapidly along the trajectory and in the target. As this speed cannot be achieved by the extension of the human arm alone, it necessarily depends on the use of a throwing instrument. Arrowheads and spearheads or javelin heads are therefore not designed according to the same criteria and cannot be mounted on the same shafts, the dimensions and degree of elasticity of which are also essential in terms of ballistics. Thus, as in palaeontology, where the shape of a tooth reveals the type of diet and suggests the mode of locomotion, the characteristics of a point provide clues as to the type of weapon of which it is the wounding element.
Weaponry specific to ‘Sapiens’?
The tiny size of Obi-Rakhmat’s points cannot be regarded as a default choice, not only because there is no shortage of good-quality lithic raw material on site from which large blades were made, but microscopic examination of traces of use or wear also shows that within this same assemblage there are also much more robust retouched points (15 to 20 times heavier and 3 to 4 times thicker), similarly impacted by use as axial projectile points (the size of spearheads or javelin heads).
Returning to the bibliography and our own work on Middle Palaeolithic tools (Plisson et Beyries, 1998), we found that the presence in the same assemblage of various types of projectile points and inserts, some of which were microlithic and produced for this purpose, is only known at Homo sapiens sites. The oldest documented occurrences are in South Africa in the Pre-Still Bay (more than 77,000 years old) and later cultural layers of the Sibudu cave. In contrast, lithic points damaged by use as projectile heads are rare in the Neanderthal record. When present, they tend to be large and do not notably differ in size, manufacture or type from points used for activities other than hunting, such as gathering plants or butchery. This difference in the design of tools and weapons takes on anthropological significance.
Levallois points from the Um El Tlel site in Syria, from the Late Middle Palaeolithic period in the Levant attributed to Neanderthals. From left to right: graphic reconstruction based on a fragment found embedded in a donkey vertebra, plant knife blade, butcher knife blade. These multipurpose points are 2 to 3 times wider than the micro-points from Obi-Rakhmat. Hugues Plisson. Fourni par l’auteur
Given their respective dates, the distance between South Africa and Central Asia (14,000 km) and the difference in the manufacture of the Obi-Rakhmat and Sibudu weapon heads (unretouched knapped stone points vs. shaped stone points or retouched inserts, shaped bone points), the hypothesis of independent centres of invention is the most likely.
From the foothills of the Tien Shan to the Rhône Valley 25,000 years later
The micro-points from Obi-Rakhmat have no known equivalents in the Eurasian Middle Palaeolithic, except for identical projectile points identified by Traceology expert Laure Metz (Lewis et al., 2023) at the Mandrin site, in the Rhône Valley, France, in a layer dating to approximately 54,000 years ago – some ten thousand years before the disappearance of local Neanderthals. Notably, a Homo sapiens milk tooth was also recovered from this layer (Zanolli et al., 2022. The similarity between the micro-points from Obi-Rakhmat and Mandrin, despite being separated by more than 6,000 km and 25 millennia, is such that they could be interchanged without any detail other than the stone betraying the substitution.
Morphological and functional similarity between the micro-points of Obi-Rakhmat and Mandrin, broken by their use as projectile head. The location and extent of their fracture (highlighted in red and blue and macroscopic detail) are indicative of axial impact. Hugues Plisson. Fourni par l’auteur
Recent work published by paleogeneticists Leonardo Vallini (Vallini et al., 2024) and Stéphane Mazières (Mazières et al., 2025) defines the Persian Plateau, on the north-eastern edge of which Obi-Rakhmat is located, as a population hub where the ancestors of all present-day non-Africans lived between the early phases of expansion out of Africa – long before the Upper Palaeolithic – and the wider colonisation of Eurasia. This resource-rich environment may have provided a refuge conducive to demographic regeneration after the genetic bottleneck of the exit from Africa, interaction between groups and, consequently, technical innovations.
On either side of the Persian plateau (orange box), genetically identified as a refuge area for the concentration and demographic development of first Homo sapiens who left Africa, Obi-Rakhmat and Mandrin share the same micro-projectile points, 25,000 years and 6,000 km apart. Hugues Plisson. Fourni par l’auteur
Obi-Rakhmat and Mandrin may represent two geographical and temporal milestones within the same process of dispersal, as suggested by Ludovic Slimak (Slimak, 2023), characterised by the dissemination of a key technological innovation unique to Homo sapiens. So far unnoticed because they are unretouched, tiny and fragmentary, it is likely that the micro-projectile points for which recognition criteria have now been defined will begin to appear at sites between Central Asia and the western Mediterranean.
Premises for a new scenario of the western peopling by ‘Homo sapiens’
This discovery is stimulating in several ways.
It validates the consistency of the research conducted at the Mandrin site, which came to the conclusion that Sapiens armed with bows made a brief incursion into Neanderthal territory. Several elements of this study had been criticised (Klaric et al., 2024)– which is, however, normal in science when a new proposal deviates too far from established knowledge – but its predictive dimension had not been considered at the time.
The similarity between Mandrin and Obi-Rakhmat’s micro-points cannot be a mere coincidence. It is not only their shape that is similar, but also the way they are made, which requires real expertise, as evidenced by the meticulous preparation of their striking platform and their function. One could debate the appropriate instrument for shooting arrows armed with such tiny tips, the bow being in filigree, or whether it is preferable to remain cautious and speak only of shooting, but this already contrasts with what we know about Neanderthal hunting weapons and their design.
Another remarkable aspect, which is still relatively uncommon, is the convergence and complementarity of data from material culture and from our genetic memory, which did not influence each other given the dates of the respective studies and publications. Together, they sketch out a rewriting of the scenario of Homo sapiens’ arrival in Europe: it was thought that he came directly from Africa by the shortest route 45,000 years ago, but we now discover that he had been established in the heart of the Eurasian continent for a long time, well before expanding in search of more territories.
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Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Warren Mabee, Director, Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy, Queen’s University, Ontario
The joint attack launched by the United States and Israel on Iran began on Feb. 27 and has sparked a fast-moving conflict that could expand across the Middle East.
Iran’s response has already included strikes on U.S. bases in surrounding countries as far away as Qatar and Oman, and has announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, going so far as threatening to set ships on fire if they enter the strait.
The Strait of Hormuz is a 55-kilometre-wide narrows between Iran and Oman, separating the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Sea. It is a particularly important piece of global real estate in terms of the energy sector and one of the busiest and most strategically significant shipping routes in the world.
A map of the Strait of Hormuz. (Wikimedia Commons)
The closure has disrupted oil and gas shipments from the region and rattled markets around the world. Overall maritime traffic through the strait has dropped by 70 per cent since the closure, with 18 loaded and 37 unloaded tankers remaining in the Persian Gulf.
About 13 million barrels of oil per day normally move through these waters — about 31 per cent of global oil shipments. Blocking passage through the strait will certainly affect world oil prices.
Closure of the strait affects major ports belonging to Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Iran itself. For several of these countries, the strait is the primary route through which oil reaches global markets.
On March 2, Brent Crude — the global benchmark — reached about US$79 per barrel before declining slightly, about eight per cent higher than last week’s prices. West Texas Intermediate, the North American benchmark, reached US$71 per barrel — a six per cent increase.
Those price movements are already being felt at the pump. Gasoline prices in both Canada and the U.S. have begun to rise, although not as dramatically as commodity prices.
Increases could persist as long as the conflict continues to disrupt tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Throughout the last 50 years, oil price increases have often presaged an upcoming economic downturn. Some events, such as the first and second oil crises in the 1970s and early ‘80s, led to structural changes in global economies.
Could this happen again today?
Lessons from the first oil crisis
Gasoline ration stamps printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in 1974. (Wikimedia Commons)
The first oil crisis began in October 1973 when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC, later OPEC) put an embargo on oil exports to the United States as a response to U.S. support of Israel.
While the U.S. had the economic wherewithal to be able to import oil from other sources, this action kept global prices high and many other countries suffered from elevated costs. The fallout from the first oil crisis affected the auto sector, the energy sector and energy policy across the U.S.
Today, OPEC nations are not working in close alignment with Iran. Instead, many of these nations — along with Russia and other oil-producing nations — have agreed to boost production by about 206,000 barrels per day in an effort to stabilize markets.
Parallels with the second oil crisis
Today’s conflict in Iran may have more parallels with the second oil crisis. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution led to a drop in global oil production of about seven per cent.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, the largest energy producers are the U.S. (22 per cent), Saudi Arabia (11 per cent) and Russia (11 per cent), followed by Canada (six per cent) and China (five per cent).
Iran’s ability to influence the global market has been reduced while the U.S. role has dramatically increased. The market is therefore less likely to respond with major price increases in the face of the current conflict.
The wildcard in the current situation is the Strait of Hormuz. The largest port for Saudi exports of oil is Ras Tanura on the Persian Gulf, where the local refinery was recently hit in a drone attack.
A total closure of the strait would mean potential loss of at least five million barrels per day in shipments from Ras Tanura, which are unlikely to be taken up quickly by the port at Yanbu on the Red Sea, especially with refining capacity now impacted by the conflict.
Implications for Canada
For Canada, the conflict is likely to lead to higher prices for gasoline and diesel, as well as increased prices for imported goods. Although Canada is a net oil exporter, domestic fuel prices are tied to global benchmarks and reflect international volatility.
At the same time, the Canadian oilpatch often benefits from higher global prices. Elevated prices can boost revenues and investment in the sector, even as consumers face higher costs at the pump.
Expanded connectivity to the West Coast via increased capacity on the Trans Mountain pipeline could allow Canadian producers to supply Asian markets that depend heavily on shipments from the Persian Gulf. However, taking advantage of the opportunity means moving quickly, as other oil-producing nations will also move to fill this gap.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said that conflict will last at least four to five weeks, but potentially much longer. Ultimately, Canada could play a role in helping the world to respond to the crisis.
Whether the present crisis is a short-term shock, or whether it is the beginning of a larger geopolitical event, will depend largely on developments in and around the Strait of Hormuz in the days and weeks ahead.
Warren Mabee receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.
The United States government recently hosted a critical minerals summit aimed at reducing China’s predominant role in the global production of smartphones, weapons systems, lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles (EVs).
The meeting, which included representatives from Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom, is part of a larger structural trend that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently called a “rupture” to the rules-based international order.
At first glance, the U.S. government’s weaponization of tariffs and trade indicate changing dynamics in global trade and the development of critical minerals, advanced manufacturing and emerging technologies. On closer inspection, American efforts to weaken China’s dominance over the critical minerals industry face a more complicated reality and an intricate web of public- and private-sector investment agreements tied to Chinese firms.
According to the International Energy Agency, China accounts for more than 80 per cent of global battery production. The figure jumps to 90 per cent for grid scale batteries that are used to store wind and solar power.
Global battery sales have grown sixfold since 2020, a direct result of falling prices and the competitiveness of China’s low-cost manufacturing model. Over the same period, manufacturing of grid-scale battery systems has expanded 20-fold.
Within this reality, the idea that the U.S. can strategically reduce China’s role in the production and processing of critical minerals appears highly unlikely.
Competition for critical minerals
My research focuses on environmental politics, extractive industries and the expansion of renewable energy value chains in Latin America. I am currently leading a study on the politics of lithium extraction in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Canada and Chile.
Over the past year, the U.S. upped its efforts to reduce China’s involvement in South America, a region that accounts for more than 50 per cent of the world’s known lithium deposits.
In 2025, the U.S. government acquired a five per cent share in Lithium Americas, a Canada-based company that has a long presence in Argentina. In February, the U.S. government announced another deal to acquire a 10 per cent stake in the mining company USA Rare Earth.
In 2025, the White House used the threat of tariffs and a US$20 billion bailout package to negotiate a new trade agreement with Argentina. Meanwhile, the U.S.-dominated Inter-American Development Bank signed an agreement to provide more than US$140 million to improve critical mineral production and processing capacity in Latin America.
However, decoupling China from regional production networks raises deeper questions about whether it makes good business or strategic sense to disrupt a global production network that produces 80-90 per cent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries.
At a time when the U.S. is pursuing an “America first” policy of onshoring the production and processing of critical minerals, China has used joint ventures and public-private partnerships to secure access while offshoring the dirtier parts of critical minerals production.
The Chinese company Ganfeng Lithium has been active in Argentina for about a decade and is currently expanding its presence through joint ventures.
In August 2025, the company signed joint ventures with Canadian company Lithium Americas, expanding its operations in the salt flats of Pozuelos, Pastos Grandes and Cauchari-Olaroz. The vast majority of Ganfeng’s production goes to battery and EV assembly hubs in China and Southeast Asia.
In contrast, China’s involvement in Chile has largely been limited to a minority share in the Chilean mining company SQM since 2018. Under the left-wing government of Gabriel Boric, Chile’s National Lithium Strategy promised to restrict new licences to state-owned copper and mining companies Codelco and Enami.
However, the recent electoral victory of President-elect José Antonio Kast, a right-wing politician with close ties to Chile’s business sector, raises new questions about the future viability of the nationalist policy.
Similarly, questions have been raised about whether the Bolivian government will maintain its state-led model of resource nationalism under the newly elected right-wing government of Rodrigo Paz Pereira.
Chinese and Russian companies have a strong presence in Bolivia. In 2024, the majority state-owned lithium company, YLB, signed a US$1 billion agreement with the Chinese consortium CBC to start developing the Uyuni salt flat. But Bolivia’s lithium production has remained negligible, reflecting longstanding challenges of extracting lithium from the Uyuni salt flat and resolving domestic conflicts over the distribution of profits.
Looking ahead
In theory, the election of right-wing governments in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile should favour the U.S. This is most evident in Argentina, where libertarian president Javier Milei has already established strong ties with the White House and with U.S. President Donald Trump personally.
Compared with Argentina, Chile appears less likely to concede to American concerns about China. This reflects the Chilean state’s dominant role in the global copper market, domestic conflicts over the nationalization of Chile’s lithium sector and the enduring influence of Chinese political and diplomatic interests.
Looking ahead, major questions remain about whether American companies have the willingness and capacity to assume China’s role in the global production of lithium-ion batteries and whether they’ll align themselves with U.S. foreign policy interests. For instance, the U.S.-based Albemarle Corporation is one of the world’s largest lithium companies, but it is publicly traded and owned by multiple investors.
Outside of South America, global lithium production remains dominated by American, Chinese and Australian firms, including Rio Tinto, the Anglo-Australian mining giant that is currently consolidating lithium operations in Argentina and Chile. Almost all have joint ventures with Tianqi, Ganfeng and other Chinese companies.
The North American economy has neither the capacity nor the wage competitiveness to replace China’s role in producing and processing critical minerals for batteries, energy storage systems and EVs.
Reducing China’s dominant role in the global critical minerals industry would entail developing a robust supply chain that can out-compete China’s. Given current economic and geopolitical realities, this seems improbable in the foreseeable future.
Craig Anthony Johnson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
The very next day, the U.S. and Israel launched a large-scale offensive against Iran.
This leaves many wondering: how different would a war with fully autonomous weapons look? How important an ethical decision was it, when Amodei referred to fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance as AI “red lines” that his company would not cross? What do these red lines mean for other nations?
AI chatbots are typically not weapons on their own, but they can become part of weapons systems. They do not fire missiles or control drones, but they can be plugged into the larger military systems.
They can quickly summarize intelligence, generate target shortlists, rank high-priority threats and recommend strikes. A key risk is that of a process going from sensor data to AI interpretation, target selection and weapon activation with minimal to no human control or even awareness.
Fully autonomous weapons are military platforms that, once activated, independently conduct military operations without human intervention. They rely on sensors such as cameras, radars and AI algorithms to analyze the environment, search for, select and engage targets.
Advanced helicopters, for instance, already operate with no human intervention. With fully autonomous weapons, human control and oversight disappear and AI makes final attack and battlefield decisions.
This is concerning, given recent research in which advanced AI models opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases.
The risks of mass surveillance
Frontier AI models can promptly summarize huge data sets and auto-generate patterns to look for signals of suspicious people and activity through even weak associations. In his statement on Anthropic’s discussions with the Department of War, Amodei argued that “AI-driven mass surveillance presents serious, novel risks to our fundamental liberties.”
They can analyze records, communications and metadata to scan across populations. They can produce briefings and lists of people that flag automatically who gets questioned, denied entry into a country, refused a job, etc. These systems create risks to privacy because they can analyze data from multiple sources, such as social media accounts, and combine these with cameras and facial recognition to track people in real time.
AI models can also make mistakes. Even a small erroneous association can scale up dangerously if the system is run over millions of people.
AI models are also opaque: how they analyze data and reach their conclusions cannot be fully comprehended, which adds to the difficulty of challenging the output.
‘All lawful purposes’
The label “all lawful purposes” sounds like a safety limit. Yet, this language means that the government can use AI for all purposes that it deems legal, with few limits in the contract.
This matters because legality is a moving target, laws can change and are often ill-equipped to deal in real time with fast changing innovations, and interpretations can shift.
Anthropic has famously developed an internal lab to understand how Claude works, interprets queries and makes autonomous decisions. Given the opacity of LLMs as well as the speed with which their capacities develop, such efforts matter.
Project Maven with higher stakes?
In some ways, this story is familiar. Technology companies have long been at the forefront of innovation, with great promises of progress but also risks of misuse and negative consequences. The closest historical comparison is Google’s Project Maven in 2018.
Google had a contract with the Pentagon for the company to help analyze drone surveillance footage. Four thousand Google employees protested the project, arguing that surveillance should not be part of the company’s mission. Google announced it would not renew Maven and later issued AI principles that included commitments around weapons and surveillance.
The situation became a landmark case in the power of employee activism and public pressure.
Anthropic’s current situation is in some respects similar to Google’s Project Maven one: it shows a company and its leaders trying to place limits on military uses of AI. It illustrates tensions that emerge when espoused corporate values collide with governments and national security demands.
The Anthropic case is also distinct because generative AI in 2026 is much more powerful than it was just a few years ago. Project Maven was only about analyzing drone footage. Today’s models can be used for many tasks, so the spillover risk is larger.
These events are neither about Anthropic being uniquely principled nor about the Pentagon being uniquely demanding. They are about a critical issue that will keep coming back as AI becomes more powerful: who sets the limits regarding AI use when national security is involved?
If “all lawful purposes” become the default, the guardrails will depend on politics and legal interpretation. For Canada and other nations, the safeguards matter. Ethics cannot be left to contract negotiations and corporate conscience.
These events illustrate the complexities of engaging in AI ethics in practice. AI ethics principles and declarations are important and abound. At the same time, in practice, AI ethics are set through contracts, procurement rules, various parties’ actual behaviour and oversight.
Canada’s defence and public sectors are building AI capacity and Canada operates closely with the U.S. defence and intelligence. This means that procurement language and standards can travel. If “all lawful purposes” becomes the standard language in the U.S. national security market, this could put pressure on Canada and other nations to adopt similar terms.
The reassuring news is that Canada has governance tools in place it can strengthen and extend. The Directive on Automated Decision-Making is designed to ensure that systems are transparent, accountable and fair. It requires impact assessment and public reporting.
But Canadians should be mindful of ongoing developments to check that procurement standards name prohibited uses, to call for audits and for independent oversight so that safeguards do not depend only on particular governments and companies at the top.
Emmanuelle Vaast 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.
In the annual State of the Union address in late February, the US president, Donald Trump, declared: “This is the golden age of America.” In a lengthy and wide-ranging address, the president told his fellow Americans that the nation was “bigger, better, richer and stronger” than ever before.
The US economy, and specifically the cost of living, was the key issue with voters in the 2024 presidential election. Exit polls from key states showed that, among voters who said the economy was the most important issue for them, 90% voted for Trump.
However, results from a more recent poll suggest voters are not happy with his economic agenda. Among the more than 2,500 adults surveyed, 57% said they disapprove of the way the president is managing the economy, 65% disapprove of the way he is handling inflation and 64% disapprove of how he is handing tariffs.
With mid-term elections coming in November, the economy is likely to continue to be a key factor with US voters. So are the president’s bold claims supported by the data?
On the president’s claim that inflation is “plummeting”, he can indeed claim success. At the start of his second term in January 2025, inflation was 3%. By January 2026, this had dropped to 2.4% and is now closing in on the 2% target set by the Federal Reserve, the US’s central bank. The rate of increase in prices is slowing and this should ease cost-of-living pressures for US consumers.
What about the claim that the US economy is “roaring like never before”? In 2025, the economy grew at 2.2%, lower than the 2.8% growth during President Joe Biden’s last year in office but above the average growth of around 2% achieved over the last few decades.
So while “roaring” might be an exaggeration, given there was a 43-day government shutdown in the last quarter of 2025 the US economy is achieving impressive growth. The International Monetary Fund expects the US to grow at the fastest rate among the world’s most advanced economies again in 2026.
Trump is often keen to cite the US stock market as an indicator of how well the country’s economy is performing. In his address he said the stock market had set “53 all-time record highs” since his election.
This is true, and in early February the Dow Jones index crossed the historic milestone of 50,000 points. Overall, the US stock market gained 19% in the period from January 2025 until February 2026. However, analysis shows that when compared to stock market returns from other advanced economies, the US ranks 21st out of 23 countries with only New Zealand and Denmark indices doing worse.
Campaigning in 2024, Trump had pledged to slash energy prices by 50%. In his address, he claimed that reductions in energy prices that were like “another big tax cut” for US consumers.
However, in the 12 months to January 2026, electricity prices rose by 6.3%, more than double the rate of inflation. Natural gas prices rose by 9.8% during the same period. Energy-hungry data centres to feed the AI boom are a key driver of US energy prices and this trend looks set to continue in the short term at least.
Job creation has historically been a key metric with US voters. On this issue the president told his audience there were more Americans working “than ever before”. With around 164 million Americans in work, this statement is true. The US is experiencing population growth, and so it is not surprising that the number of people in employment is rising.
However, the US unemployment rate was 4.3% in January 2026, a slight increase on the 4% rate in January 2025. The US added an average of 49,000 jobs per month in 2025, down from an estimated gain of 168,000 a month the year before.
Economic challenges remain
Tariffs have been the cornerstone of Trump’s second-term economic policy agenda. He even claimed they helped drive US stock market prices to historic highs, although there is little evidence to support this.
There was only a brief mention in his State of the Union speech regarding the US Supreme Court decision ruling against his liberation day tariffs, describing it as “unfortunate”.
The US government is now facing more than 2,000 lawsuits from companies looking to reclaim US$175 billion (£131 billion) in tariffs they have paid since last April. Experts agree that the situation is a mess and the uncertainty around how or whether tariffs will be applied going forward will only deepen this.
It is not surprising that tariffs are unpopular with US consumers. Research from the New York Federal Reserve found that nearly 90% of the economic burden of tariffs fell on US firms and consumers. The Tax Foundation, aou non-partisan thinktank, estimates that tariffs amounted to an average tax increase of US$1,000 per US household in 2025. The US bombing of Iran could drive up oil prices and this may fuel inflation in the coming months.
There are also rising concerns among the president’s Maga base about the potential effect of AI on jobs and energy prices. Polling for the Financial Times found about 60% of Trump voters were concerned about AI’s rapid development and almost 80% believed the technology needed more regulation.
US taxpayers are due to start receiving some of the US$4.8 trillion in tax cuts promised by the president’s One Big Beautiful Act passed in 2025. But with the midterms looming, it remains to be seen how much credit the president will get for this.
Conor O’Kane 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.
Flashing light can do more than illuminate a room. Delivered at specific rhythms and viewed through closed eyelids, it can produce vivid visual hallucinations, geometric patterns, bursts of colour and sometimes even full scenes in people with no underlying illness and no use of drugs.
These experiences are known as stroboscopic hallucinations. They offer a window into how the brain constructs perception and how conscious experience shifts when the signals reaching the visual system are altered.
Eyelids are not a blackout curtain. Even with eyes closed, light can pass through and reach the retina, the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye. If that light flashes at particular rates, it can nudge brain rhythms into the same timing as the light, so the brain’s natural electrical activity begins to synchronise with the external flicker.
This becomes especially pronounced when the flashing frequency overlaps with the brain’s resting rhythms, roughly eight to 12 hertz, or eight to 12 flashes per second. In this “sweet spot”, large groups of brain cells fire in sync, and that coordinated activity spreads across visual areas at the back of the brain.
The brain then interprets these patterns as meaningful experience. When the signal is strong and structured enough, perception can emerge even without an external scene.
Often, people see simple hallucinations: geometric patterns, kaleidoscopic colour shifts, spirals, lattices, tunnels or cobweb-like grids. These have been documented for well over a century and appear consistently across many people. Because they arise from the visual system itself, similar shapes also appear in psychedelic drug experiences, migraine aura, sleep-related states and certain neurological or visual conditions.
Sometimes people report more complex hallucinations with recognisable content such as objects, places or landscapes. In these cases, the brain appears to impose familiar meaning on an unusually powerful visual signal, organising abstract input into something coherent.
From a neuroscience perspective, this is what makes these experiences useful. Hallucinations reveal how the visual brain constructs reality and what happens when the balance between sensory input and internal expectations shifts. Vision is not a passive recording process. The brain continuously interprets, fills in and predicts. Hallucinations show what perception can look like when those internal processes temporarily dominate.
A brief history
Stroboscopic hallucinations have been described scientifically since at least 1819, when the Czech anatomist Jan Evangelista Purkyně reported patterned visuals induced by candlelight flickering through moving fingers held in front of closed eyes.
In the 1960s, the phenomenon entered popular culture through the “Dreamachine”, created by artist Brion Gysin and mathematician Ian Sommerville. A lightbulb inside a rotating cardboard cylinder cut with shapes produced flicker rates that reliably induced hallucinatory imagery in people sitting with closed eyes. Gysin imagined it replacing television, with people gathering to generate inner imagery rather than watch programmes. That never happened, but it captured how immersive these experiences can be.
More than 40,000 people took part. Many drew what they had seen afterwards, generating over 10,000 images. That created an unusual scientific opportunity. Laboratory studies of hallucinations typically involve small samples. Here, we had thousands of visual reports.
Working with colleagues, we used machine learning tools to group the drawings by shared visual features such as symmetry, repetition and curved shapes. This allowed us to identify familiar pattern types already described in scientific research, as well as a wider range of geometric forms that have received less attention.
People’s inner visuals are not random. Similar patterns appear again and again across different people, suggesting they reflect shared features of how the human visual system is organised.
Therapeutic
Following reports of improved wellbeing after Dreamachine sessions, we began investigating whether controlled stroboscopic stimulation might have therapeutic potential, including for depression. Research on psychedelic-assisted therapy, where substances such as psilocybin are used in carefully supervised clinical sessions with psychological support, suggests that aspects of the experience itself, such as feelings of awe or shifts in self-perception, can predict later clinical improvement.
Because stroboscopic stimulation can induce some of these features without medication, it raises the possibility of a more accessible approach.
I am currently involved in a study exploring whether this kind of stimulation can be used safely in people with depression. Initial findings are encouraging, but the research is still at an early stage and focused on safety rather than effectiveness.
Stroboscopic stimulation is also being explored in other areas. In Alzheimer’s disease, for example, researchers are investigating whether synchronising brain activity at specific frequencies might influence processes linked to the disease. Clinical trials are under way, though the field is still developing.
The main medical risk associated with strobe exposure is a photosensitive epileptic seizure. Only a small proportion of people with epilepsy are photosensitive, but the risk is not zero. Responsible research groups and public installations screen participants and use established safety procedures.
Some people may experience milder effects, including headaches or discomfort, particularly if they are sensitive to bright light. A small number report little or no visual effect at all.
The broader scientific interest lies in what these experiences reveal about conscious perception. How the brain produces a unified experience of the world remains one of neuroscience’s most challenging questions. By studying simpler visual components such as colour, symmetry and movement, researchers can begin to unpack how experience arises.
Altering visual input in a controlled way allows us to observe how the mind constructs reality. That helps us understand not just hallucinations, but normal conscious experience itself.
Strange Health is hosted by Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt. The executive producer is Gemma Ware, with video and sound editing for this episode by Anouk Millet. Artwork by Alice Mason.
Listen to Strange Health via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.
David Schwartzman receives funding from the Medical Research Council (UKRI083) and was partly supported by a grant from the UK Government for his participation in the Dreamachine Programme, as part of Unboxed2022.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Hannah Bunting, Senior Lecturer in Quantitative British Politics and Co-director of The Elections Centre, University of Exeter
Hannah Spencer’s win in the Gorton and Denton parliamentary byelection was a momentous victory for the Green party. The party’s first-ever byelection win overturned a large Labour majority and put the general election winners into third place, behind Reform UK.
The Greens are eager to position it as a sign of things to come, particularly in the May elections. Here’s what voter trends in Gorton and Denton can tell us about what’s to come.
Voters continue to turn away from the two main parties
Voters are looking for alternatives to the two main parties. Labour’s vote share halved in Gorton and Denton compared to the general election. With a much smaller 2024 base to start from, the Conservatives went from nearly 8% of votes to fewer than 2%, losing their deposit.
This follows a trend we’re seeing at almost every election, regardless of type or location. In the 2025 local elections, fewer than 40% of incumbents from the two main parties held their seats – a figure that had previously never been below 70%. In council byelections, both Reform and the Greens are fielding candidates in more areas, and taking both vote share and seats from the Conservatives and Labour. Labour and the Conservatives are the only two parties with fewer MPs than they started this parliament with.
Voters deciding late
Constituency opinion polls in the run-up to byelection day showed Labour, Reform and the Greens neck and neck.
But a more striking feature of these polls was how many voters had not yet made up their minds. Even in the final week, an Omnisis poll found that 31% of people who said they would vote were still undecided, more than the reported support for Labour (18%), the Greens (22%) or Reform (20%).
This is an unusually high level of uncertainty so late in a campaign. In normal elections, the rate of undecided voters is typically lower by the eve of polling day. Here, nearly a third of voters were still making up their minds. This compares to 12% two days before the general election, which was itself considered high.
Late-deciding women may have swayed the outcome
High numbers of undecideds may partially explain the late swing to the Greens. We know that women are more likely than men to respond “don’t know” to vote intention questions and to decide later in the campaign. At the same time, there is a gender gap in party support: Reform performs better among men, while the Greens tend to perform better among women, particularly among younger voters.
Levels of undecidedness between men and women differed, with 18% of men reporting they were undecided relative to 36% of women in the Omnisis poll. There were also more men than women, by ten percentage points, saying they would not vote. If those undecided women were less inclined to support Reform and more open to supporting the Greens, then late-deciding voters may well have tipped the balance.
Undecided women are less likely to think that any party represents their policy priorities well. This is particularly unlikely to have played out well for Reform – the party has expressed support for taxing women without children more and repealing the Equality Act.
This contest is a reminder that women voters may prove decisive when large numbers of people are still making up their minds. With the next general election still some way off, and current levels of undecidedness in the electorate high, this is something parties would do well to keep in mind.
Turnout doesn’t always fall
This byelection was the second in the past six months where voters have turned out in higher-than-expected numbers. The Caerphilly Senedd byelection in October 2025 also saw unusually high turnout of 50.4%, a 6.1 point increase on the 2021 Senedd election.
Ahead of election day in Caerphilly, polls had Reform on 42% (up from 1.7% in 2021), Plaid Cymru on 38% (up from 28.4%), and Labour on 12% (down from 46% in 2021). On election day itself, Plaid took the seat from Labour with 47.4% of the vote, to Reform’s 36%, with Labour falling to third place on 11% of the vote.
In Gorton and Denton, the 2024 general election turnout was the 32nd-lowest across the country, at just 47.8% But it fell only 0.3% at this byelection. Taken together, these two contests suggest we may be seeing the beginnings of an electoral trend.
In both cases, voters opted for a party positioned to Labour’s left as the most credible option for stopping Reform. With Reform’s overwhelming success in the local elections in England last year and continued strong headline polling figures, it is possible that we are beginning to see an anti-Reform mobilisation effect. Rather than staying home, voters on the left may be turning out in greater numbers than we would otherwise expect, to back whichever party is best placed locally to prevent a Reform win.
The Labour government has responded to their decline in national opinion polls by positioning themselves against Reform in key areas such as immigration. Yet, with evidence that British politics is developing left v right bloc-style voting, Labour might be unwise to ignore the threat from its own side of the ideological spectrum.
We already saw early signs of this in the 2024 general election itself, when some of Labour’s largest drops in support came in progressive, urban constituencies where the Greens also increased their support.
Some in the party have already taken this lesson from Gorton and Denton, while others, including the prime minister, are counting on the Greens not having the same campaigning resources for general elections.
If women who are answering “don’t know” to polls follow the Gorton and Denton trend, they may be leaning more towards Green than the headline vote intention figures suggest. This should be ringing alarm bells for Labour. The Greens came second in 40 seats at the 2024 general election – all of those were seats Labour won.
Moreover, if Reform are motivating both their supporters and their opposition to the polls, the Greens may be rising as Labour’s alternative on the Left. This was one seat with its own context, so it’s difficult to apply nationally. But we could see a scenario in May where both Reform and the Greens combined overtake the Conservatives and Labour.
Hannah Bunting receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
The research team behind the WhoREPs project on gender differences in “don’t know” responses and their implications includes Hannah Bunting, Ceri Fowler, Lotte Hargrave, Anna Sanders and Jessica C Smith.
Jessica C. Smith receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust.
Lotte Hargrave receives funding from the UK in a Changing Europe.
