Four federal polls have been released since Sunday. One Nation has taken the primary vote lead from Labor in both the Redbridge and YouGov polls and is tied with Labor in the Morgan poll. Labor held a primary vote lead in Fox & Hedgehog.

If the polls are ranked by the overall vote for One Nation and the Coalition, the F&H poll is Labor’s worst, with the right vote at 52%. The right had 51% in Redbridge, 49% in YouGov and 47% in Morgan.

Labor still led One Nation by respondent preferences in all four polls, though only by 51–49 in Redbridge. In F&H, Labor trailed the Coalition on respondent preferences, but led in the other polls. Morgan and YouGov had polls taken immediately after the budget.

One Nation has gained in both these polls from their post-budget editions. The next federal election is not due until early 2028. If the changes introduced in the budget pass parliament, they will mostly be implemented from July 2027.

Analyst Peter Brent suggests Labor may regain ground if the sky doesn’t fall in after July 2027.

Redbridge poll A national Redbridge and Accent Research poll for The Financial Review, conducted May 25–28 from a sample of 1,005, gave One Nation 31% of the primary vote (up four since the last Redbridge poll in late April), Labor 28% (down three), the Coalition 20% (down two), the Greens 12% (down one) and all Others 9% (up two).

By respondent preferences, Labor led both One Nation and the Coalition by just 51–49, a four-point gain for One Nation and a three-point gain for the Coalition. By 2025 election preference flows, Labor led the Coalition by 52–48, a one-point gain for the Coalition.

Anthony Albanese’s net favourability slumped ten points to -19. Treasurer Jim Chalmers also crashed 13 points to -18.

Greens leader Larissa Waters was down two points to -6, Liberal Andrew Hastie down six points to -6, Angus Taylor down two points to -4, Nationals leader Matt Canavan down two points to -4 and Pauline Hanson up one point to net zero.

Read more: View from The Hill: Could One Nation be the unofficial opposition at the 2028 poll? In a three-way preferred PM question, Albanese had 31% (down two), Hanson 25% (up two) and Taylor 14% (steady). By 55–23, respondents thought the federal budget would be bad for the nation rather than good.

By 48–11, they thought it would be bad for them personally.

On issues, the combined score for the Coalition and One Nation led the combined score for Labor and the Greens by 39–28 on cost of living, 35–29 on housing, 55–20 on immigration, 42–25 on economic management, 42–23 on crime and 42–24 on national security.

The left had a 36–32 lead on healthcare and a 40–24 lead on climate change. The right has gained on issues that were assessed in late April.

YouGov poll A national YouGov poll for Sky News, conducted May 26 to June 2 from a sample of 1,471, gave One Nation 29% of the primary vote (up four since the mid-May YouGov poll), Labor 26% (down two), the Coalition 20% (down three), the Greens 13% (steady), independents 6% (up one) and others 6% (steady).

By respondent preferences, Labor led One Nation by 52.5–47.5, a 0.5-point gain for One Nation. Labor led the Coalition by 51.5–48.5, a 0.5-point gain for the Coalition. Albanese’s net approval slumped seven points to -26 with 60% dissatisfied and 34% satisfied.

His net approval has dived 12 points in the last two YouGov polls. Albanese led Taylor as preferred PM by 41–39 (41–38 previously). He led Hanson by 47–41 (50–38 previously). By 46–31, respondents supported One Nation and the Coalition working together to form government.

Among One Nation voters, this was 53–25 support and among Coalition voters 45–28 support. The previous YouGov poll was taken after the May 12 budget, so this poll suggests further damage for Labor and Albanese and gains for One Nation since the immediate budget aftermath.

Fox & Hedgehog poll: combined right vote jumps A national Fox & Hedgehog poll for News Corp, conducted May 25–26 from a sample of 1,700, gave Labor 29% of the primary vote (down one since the late March F&H poll), One Nation 27% (up four), the Coalition 25% (up two), the Greens 10% (down three) and all Others 9% (down two).

By respondent preferences, the Coalition led Labor by 51–49, a two-point gain for the Coalition. This is the first Coalition lead in a poll other than Essential. Labor led One Nation by 54–46, a two-point gain for One Nation.

Albanese’s net approval was down three points to -22, with 51% disapproving and 29% approving. Taylor’s net approval was steady at net zero (29% both approving and disapproving). Hanson was down one point to +8 (44% approve, 36% disapprove) and Chalmers was down five points to -17 (37% disapprove, 20% approve).

Taylor led Albanese as preferred PM by 38–36 (39–35 to Albanese previously). If a teal-style party ran, this poll suggests it would get 6%, with that support coming most at the expense of Labor (down three points to 26% vs the standard question).

There would be no effect on the combined vote for One Nation and the Coalition. Just 28% thought Labor had done enough to deserve re-election while 57% thought it was time to give someone else a go.

But by 44–30 and 45–40, respondents thought the Liberals and One Nation respectively were not ready for government. By 47–19, respondents had an unfavourable view of the federal budget. By 59–20, they did not trust the Labor government’s promise not to introduce taxes on the family home or death taxes in future budgets.

Morgan poll: Labor and One Nation tied on primary votes A national Morgan poll, conducted May 25–31 from a sample of 1,542, gave Labor 27% of the primary vote (down 0.5 since the May 18–24 Morgan poll), One Nation 27% (up 1.5), the Coalition 20% (down three), the Greens 13.5% (steady) and all Others 12.5% (up two).

By respondent preferences, Labor led One Nation by an unchanged 53.5–46.5. Labor led the Coalition by 55.5–44.5, a 2.5-point gain for Labor. By 2025 election flows, Labor led the Coalition by 53.5–46.5, a 1.5-point gain for Labor. Since the budget, One Nation’s support has increased every week in Morgan’s polls.

Morgan had not been friendly for One Nation prior to the budget.

Adrian Beaumont 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/one-nation-surges-to-first-on-primary-votes-in-two-new-polls/

The United States hosted its first World Cup in 1994. Soccer has changed dramatically in many ways since then – on and off the pitch. As the US (with Mexico and Canada) gets set to host the mega-event once again, more than anything, the tournament’s defining change since 1994 is its sheer scale-up.

The scale-up This scale-up can be clearly quantified. The 1994 tournament featured 52 matches across 32 days with 24 teams. By contrast, the 2026 event (the first three-nation World Cup) will involve 78 matches in the US alone, over 39 days. The competition’s 48 teams are divided into 12 groups, with progression to the knockout stage awarded to the top two teams in each group along with the eight best third-placed teams.

In terms of games, the tournament has doubled in size since 1994. The scale-up is not accidental. It has been driven by the twin forces of globalisation and commodification, alongside a deliberate strategy by FIFA president Gianni Infantino to both protect and extend football’s commercial dominance.

Central to this has been expanding the tournament into non-traditional markets, most notably the US – the world’s largest sports economy – thereby generating substantial financial returns and commercial interest. Infantino and FIFA have faced sustained criticism in global media – ranging from controversial symbolic gestures involving Donald Trump to concerns over ticket pricing.

But the broader outcome is clear: the World Cup has become more expansive and commercially powerful than ever.

Read more: Why Trump and FIFA are perfect bedfellows as the World Cup heads to the US At the same time, FIFA has deepened its claim to global reach by incorporating smaller nations such as Cape Verde and Curaçao, whose combined populations are well under one million.

The scale-up rests on two core dynamics. First, more matches mean more broadcast content, and media rights remain FIFA’s largest revenue stream. Expanding to 104 matches significantly increases the value of rights deals, particularly across participating nations.

Second, expansion broadens FIFA’s political base. By granting more countries access, it strengthens the influence of nations previously on the margins of global soccer. Within FIFA’s voting structure, each member association carries equal weight: the vote of powerhouse Brazil counts the same as that of Curaçao, a recent entrant with a population around 150,000.

At the same time, a larger tournament increases the likelihood that major population centres and emerging consumer markets (such as China, India, and Southeast Asia) will participate, further expanding the World Cup’s commercial reach.

The unresolved question for FIFA is one of limits: how far can expansion go before it dilutes the exclusivity and premium value of the World Cup? The World Game in the US Soccer in the US has grown markedly since the 1994 event.

In many ways, this growth reflects the original intent behind awarding the 1994 World Cup to the States. The 1994 tournament was still the best-attended in history, largely due to the use of National Football League (NFL) venues.

It was granted on the condition that a viable professional league be reestablished following the collapse of the North American Soccer League in 1984. Major League Soccer (MLS), launched in 1996, is now firmly established within the US sporting landscape.

The pathway has also strengthened, with college athletes feeding into MLS and increasingly major European leagues, alongside the expansion of secondary professional and semi-professional tiers. Growth has been especially strong in the women’s game thanks to significant new investment.

The US men’s team, currently ranked 16th in the world, could plausibly make a deep run in 2026. As in 1994, matches this year will largely be staged in football stadiums to maximise capacity. Rule changes and technology FIFA’s rule changes are largely designed to keep the ball in play and increase the tempo of matches.

Measures addressing time-wasting – from stricter control of throw-ins and goal kicks to tighter management of added time – reflect this objective. The 1994 World Cup introduced major reforms, including a ban on back-passes to goalkeepers and awarding three points for a win to encourage attacking play.

Looking to the 2026 event, technological oversight will expand, with Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology applied more broadly to decisions such as second yellow cards and corner calls. Player welfare has also become more prominent: after the extreme heat issues of 1994, mandated drinks breaks will be introduced – one in each half around the 22-minute mark.

Substitution rules have also evolved significantly, increasing from two in 1994 to five regular substitutions, along with an additional allowance for concussion replacements. Same game, different scale Since its codification and even in early filmed matches more than a century ago, soccer’s simplicity has been the foundation of its global dominance.

The sport’s continuity bridges generations.

The leading players of the 1994 World Cup, such as Italy’s Roberto Baggio and Brazil’s Romário, could plausibly compete in the modern game, even if today’s players are generally more physically developed.

Ultimately, despite the scale, global reach and commercialisation of tournaments like the World Cup, soccer’s enduring success lies in its consistency.

The game played on the world’s biggest stage remains fundamentally the same as that played in parks, schools and local grounds; simple, universal and instantly recognisable.

Steve Georgakis 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/from-usa94-to-now-how-soccer-has-changed-since-the-last-american-world-cup/

Asia Pacific Report

Indonesia has kidnapped and threatened Mama Yasinta Moiwend (Mama Sinta), one of the Marind tribe women featured in the controversial documentary Pesta Babi (Pig Feast), into denying the film and its message, claims a West Papuan advocacy group.
Pesta Babi, which focuses on the Merauke sugarcane megaproject and was premiered in New Zealand in March, exposes how Indonesia is destroying West Papua’s ancestral forest for profit.
“It is a moderate film, which does not show the real truth — that all West Papuans want freedom and independence instead of colonial ‘development’,” said the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda.

READ MORE: ‘Threat to democracy’ – Indonesian filmmaker slams military crackdown on Papua documentary
West Papuan doco Pig Feast exposes oligarchs, food security crisis and ecocide under noses of military — film review
Other Pesta Babi reports

“Despite this, Indonesia has done everything they can to destroy it.”
Since the screenings of the film in New Zealand and Australia, the documentary has been widely shown in Indonesia and stirred a military crackdown with attempts to block it.
Partners in the production of the film include the Papuan media group Jubi, Greenpeace  and Pusaka, a group committed to “fostering and advancing a just and equitable life” for Indigenous peoples and marginalised communities.
In a series of social media videos, Mama Sinta has publicly distanced herself from Pesta Babi, stating that she was “exploited by the filmmakers”.
She was later presented to a police station in Jakarta, where she filed charges against LBH Papua Merauke, an organisation involved in producing the film. Her family have stated they have not been able to contact her for the past week.

‘Why change her views suddenly?’
“Mama Sinta has clearly been kidnapped by the colonial TNI. Why else would she be in Jakarta, away from the community she has spent her life fighting to protect? Why else would she change her views so suddenly?” asked Wenda.
Against her will, the Indonesian state had forced Mama Sinta to issue a statement retracting her involvement in the film, he said.
“For West Papuans, this is not a new phenomenon. Indonesia has always used any means they can to divide our spirit: bribery, threats, arbitrary arrests, beatings and torture.
“Those who they cannot silence they simply kill.
“Mama Sinta is just like the elders who were forced at gunpoint to vote against West Papuan independence during the Act of ‘No Choice’ [in 1969]. Merdeka remained in their hearts, even if they raised their hands against it.”
Wenda said Mama Sinta would have been afraid of “what would happen to her” if she did not agree to the TNI’s demands.
At a time when violence had ramped up across West Papua, with nearly 40 civilians “massacred in the past two months”, Papuans were aware of the dangers of speaking out.
“This is why she recanted.”
‘Terrified’ of public
“The Indonesian state response to Pesta Babi — from kidnapping its star to violently shutting down screenings of the film — clearly demonstrates their overwhelming fear of being found out.
“Indonesia is terrified that their own people, their youth and students, will discover what their government is doing to West Papua.
“The filmmakers deserve thanks for exposing Indonesia’s ecocide in Merauke. I call on them, and all Indonesian solidarity groups to stay strong: deepen your support for West Papua, oppose your country’s ongoing occupation, genocide and crimes against humanity.”

In an interview with RNZ Pacific last week, the film’s director, Dandhy Laksono, criticised the military crackdown over the documentary.
He said that Pesta Babi had been showing at about 1700 cinemas around Indonesia.
“We have recorded more than 30 incidents of the state apparatus stopping the screening — mostly by military, and then they are also using the civil servants — in the name of public order,” he said.
No public disorder
Laksono said there had been no public disorder from the film in parts where it had shown.
“It’s ridiculous, and thanks to the audience they defend the film quite hard, and they defend their rights to to watch and to absorb the information, about what has actually happened in West Papua.”
Wenda said the crackdown on the documentary was just one small example of Indonesia’s policy of repression in West Papua.
“They are only able to get away with their crimes because they have transformed West Papua into the Pacific North Korea: journalists are banned from entering, along with NGOs like Amnesty and the Red Cross.”
Six years had passed since Indonesia vowed to allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua — “and still they refuse access”.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/indonesia-has-kidnapped-pesta-babi-star-to-cover-up-ecocide-claims-ulmwp/

Gabrielle Henderson/Unsplash Profound changes are ahead for online advertising. At the recent Google Marketing Live event, the tech giant outlined expanded artificial intelligence (AI) systems for digital ads. What will that look like? Picture ads integrated directly into your conversation with an AI chatbot.

Or a discounted price that only you see because an AI system served it based on your browsing behaviour, intent to buy the product, and what’s available locally. And, of course, generative AI tool suites for producing online ads start to finish.

Meta and ByteDance (parent company of TikTok) have similarly accelerated the rollout of their own AI-driven advertising systems. Meta is expanding tools that automatically generate and personalise ad images, video backgrounds, captions and targeting across Facebook and Instagram feeds.

Facebook is offering tools to create personalised ads based on users’ interests and behaviours. Meta Bytedance’s TikTok Symphony suite can generate promotional videos, scripts, AI avatars, dubbed voiceovers, and creator-style content from simple text prompts or product links.

At the same time, ads on these social media platforms are becoming harder to recognise. As one example, Instagram and Facebook recently eliminated their familiar “sponsored” labels in favour of smaller “ad” markers. It may look like a minor interface tweak, but it signals something larger: the steady erosion of clear boundaries between advertising, entertainment, recommendation, and ordinary social interaction.

Dissolving into the flow Social media platforms have engineered ads to mimic organic content. Just think of influencer and creator partnerships, AI-personalised search results, or brands using memes. Increasingly, online ads are less of an interruption to the content you consume.

Instead, they’re designed to dissolve into the flow itself. When companies buy advertising space on social media, ads are automatically disclosed as a commercial message. With partnerships and AI-personalised results, the platforms currently offer limited forms of disclosure.

The result is a blurring of the lines. Products, ideas and political messages are spread through ads that look a lot like all other, non-sponsored content. And the less an ad feels like an ad, the more effective it often becomes.

This is precisely where public accountability starts to break down. For several years, researchers like us, working through projects such as the Australian Ad Observatory and the Australian Internet Observatory, have documented how difficult it already is to observe and analyse online advertising systems.

Our work has examined everything from political advertising and astroturfing campaigns, the marketing of alcohol and unhealthy foods, and the veracity of “green” claims made by advertisers. In many cases, this work depends on relatively simple but crucial forms of signalling.

Researchers need to know what counts as an advertisement, who paid for it, where it appeared, and why it was shown to particular audiences. But those signals are weakening. Blurry and harder to audit A blurred system is harder to audit.

Audiences should be able to recognise when they’re targeted with ads. Without clear ad disclosures, we can’t easily detect or question commercial influence in our feeds and search results. New AI tools intensify this challenge.

Instead of seeing discrete ads in your feed, you might be getting a stream of product suggestions and discounts nobody else sees. This means regulators and researchers can’t even audit them. These personalised, disguised ads could also make product recommendations that are biased and potentially harmful.

For instance, you might be telling an AI assistant that you’re stressed, and suddenly be offered a discount on a case of wine. AI-driven dynamic advertising is highly concerning for products that are unhealthy, harmful or regulated – such as alcohol and gambling.

If ads appear one moment and are gone the next, it’s almost impossible to make sure they comply with relevant regulations. The danger is not simply that users may encounter more advertising. It’s that the underlying commercial and promotional logic and messaging become even harder to see.

Read more: OpenAI will put ads in ChatGPT. This opens a new door for dangerous influence We’re not powerless Australia’s emerging digital duty of care framework offers an opportunity to confront this problem directly.

Much of the current discussion has focused, understandably, on harms such as misinformation, scams, abuse, or risks to children. But opaque advertising systems are also a public interest issue. They shape political communication, consumer behaviour, health information, financial decision-making, and civic trust.

If platforms increasingly profit from blurring advertising and ordinary communication, then stronger positive obligations around disclosure and transparency become essential.

Minimum disclosures for digital advertising on social media should include: consistent and clear human and machine-readable advertising labels across formats and services accessible ad archives for public-interest scrutiny, including AI variations inclusion of meaningful and accurate information about targeting and delivery, and clear identification of AI-generated or AI-mediated advertising, including specifics on how AI was used.

This is not about banning advertising. Nor is it about returning to some imagined “clean” internet untouched by commerce. Advertising has always adapted to new media and will continue to do so. But there’s a fundamental difference between visible persuasion and persuasion that disappears into the infrastructure.

Without clear signals on what is and isn’t an ad, we lose one of the few remaining ways to understand who is shaping the information environments we increasingly depend on every day.

Daniel Angus receives funding from the Australian Research Council through Linkage Project LP190101051 ‘Young Australians and the Promotion of Alcohol on Social Media’.

He is a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society, and QUT Node Lead for the Australian Internet Observatory.

Nicholas Carah receives funding from the Australian Research Council through Linkage Project LP190101051 ‘Young Australians and the Promotion of Alcohol on Social Media’ and Discovery Project DP250102499 ‘The Australian experience of automated advertising on digital platforms’.

He is an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society.

He is Deputy Director of the Australian Internet Observatory and Deputy Chair of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education.

Lauren Hayden 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/online-ads-are-becoming-harder-to-spot-but-were-not-powerless-to-stop-it/

Mick Tsikas/AAP, Hakim/Canva, The Conversation, CC BY New polling this week put One Nation ahead of Labor in the primary vote for the first time, as the party’s latest policy announcements signal greater political ambition.

One Nation recently unveiled its new oil and gas policy at the Australian Energy Producers Conference in Adelaide. It promises “vastly greater returns” to an electorate “rightly unhappy” with the distribution of Australia’s natural resources.

While One Nation’s gas policy is not entirely new, the party’s growing prominence means announcements will attract greater scrutiny. So, what is the party proposing? Embracing government intervention The Norway-style gas proposal is One Nation’s first substantial intervention in current tax and energy policy debates.

It’s a marked shift away from the social and migration issues that have long defined the party. Norway heavily taxes its oil and gas extraction profits. It reinvests the wealth into the world’s largest sovereign fund to spent on social initiatives.

Echoing the Trump administration’s willingness to buy into resource and technology companies, One Nation’s announcement reflects a broader embrace of economic interventionism: where a government actively modifies a free-market economy. The announcement shows a stark differentiation between One Nation and The Liberal Party on the economy.

And it comes at a time when the parties have increasingly overlapped on issues like migration. Liberal frontbencher James Paterson attacked the policy as socialist. He described it as “borrowed from Venezuela and Hugo Chávez”.

One Nation’s policy Despite the splashy announcement, One Nation’s gas policy was not entirely new. Hanson has pointed to a Norway-style sovereign wealth fund as a model for gas revenue policy since at least 2017.

Senator Hanson has also frequently attacked parliament for being “hostage” to multinationals resource companies operating in Australia. In announcing the policy, Senator Hanson committed One Nation to encouraging more gas and oil exploration and production.

Hanson also said taxpayers should get a “fair share” on profits from Australian resources. Key elements of the policy include replacing the current Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, which places a 40% tax on the profits related to the extraction of petroleum, gas and condensate.

Instead, One Nation would give the government the option to take a 30% stake in future drilling projects, with profits directed into a new sovereign wealth fund. It’s not the first time this has been suggested.

Back in May 2017, Hanson proposed One Nation adopt a system of royalties paid on production, saying such a scheme would raise up to $10 billion per year. Tapping into public grievance One Nation’s position sets it apart from both major parties.

Labor and the Coalition hold sharply differing views on energy and Net Zero. But the two parties share common ground on one point: neither supports increased taxation measures on the gas industry, particularly amid global uncertainty caused by the US-Israel war with Iran.

With its policy, One Nation is tapping into real public grievance.

Others, such as The Australia Institute, the Greens, and Independent senator David Pocock have spent years pointing out the same basic unfairness: Australia exports vast quantities of gas, companies profit enormously, and the taxpayer gets very little in return.

But the timing of One Nation’s announcement deserves closer scrutiny. It was not made to a general audience but a gathering of energy industry heavyweights. Reports suggest the announced version was softened after consultations with industry representatives.

Pushing back at the ‘green agenda’ Far-right parties have a distinctive approach to energy policy – they simultaneously cast multinationals as “elites” who take wealth from ordinary people, while advocating for gas drilling expansion themselves. Hanson has adopted US President Donald Trump’s slogan – “drill, baby, drill” – to spruik her party’s approach to fossil fuels.

And she has called on the Labor government to push their “climate change bedwetters” to the side, and expand oil and gas exploration in the interest of energy security. One Nation blames environmental reforms for triggering an energy crisis, which it claims has cost everyday Australians.

Ending net zero is, accordingly, a “massive part” of One Nation’s gas policy, which they claim will safeguard fuel security. Hanson has described One Nation’s policy as “partnering with the oil and gas industry, rather than treating it as the enemy”.

Internal tensions This policy debate risks exposing potential tensions between the federal and state branches of One Nation. Efforts by the South Australian Labor government to repeal a ten-year moratorium on fracking in the south east of the state were blocked by the newly elected One Nation MPs and Liberal Opposition.

The inconsistency between the federal party’s pledge to expand gas exploration and the state branch’s efforts to block it have created headaches for their leader. Hanson distanced herself, dismissing it as a decision for the state branch.

Heading into the next election, One Nation wants contrast with the Liberals on economic interventionism, while setting itself apart from Labor, the Greens and the independents on climate and environmental policy.

It is calculated decision from a party that senses its moment.

Emily Foley receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jordan McSwiney receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Government, and NSW RNA Research & Training Network.

Kurt Sengul receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Government, and NSW RNA Research & Training Network

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/hansons-gas-policy-follows-the-far-right-playbook-attack-elites-and-push-for-drilling/

Workers prepare to burn imported plastic waste at a dump in East Java, Indonesia, in 2018. Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images Picture a pile of trash the size of Manhattan and taller than one and a half Empire State Buildings.

That’s how much plastic waste the world is predicted to be generating every year by 2050 if nothing is done to change course. It’s easy to think of recycling as the solution, but the vast majority of plastic waste now ends up in landfills, or worse.

A large amount of plastic waste gets shipped overseas. In a new study, my colleague and I analyzed what happens when plastic waste is shipped to lower- and middle-income countries, where open burning is a common way of dealing with excess waste.

The result, we found, is pronounced increases in toxic air pollution.

Plastic waste burning and health impacts Between 40% and 65% of total municipal solid waste is openly burned in low- and middle-income countries, largely as a result of 2 billion people around the world having no municipal solid waste collection.

Open burning occurs both intentionally and unintentionally, the latter when open dump sites containing organic waste spontaneously combust due to heat generated as the waste degrades. A worker carries a basket of plastic waste, wood and coconut husks to be used as fuel to fry tofu at a factory in Sidoarjo, Indonesia, in 2025.

Burning waste is a common way to cut fuel costs, but studies have found high levels of microplastics in the tofu from these factories, toxic ash inside the buildings and hazardous levels of air pollution.

Robertus Pudyanto/Getty Images When plastic burns, it releases particularly toxic air pollutants. Fine particles can penetrate deep into people’s bodies, along with gases that include carbon monoxide, styrene gas and hydrogen cyanide. It also releases persistent organic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins.

These particles and gases have been linked to health risks ranging from respiratory and cardiovascular disease to cancer and reproductive and neurological disorders. The ash from open burning can also contaminate soil and groundwater with persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals and other toxicants, creating more chances for people to be exposed to them through food and water.

The global plastic waste trade Large amounts of plastic waste are shipped around the world – some to be recycled and much to simply be disposed of in landfills or incinerated. In 2024, 9.34 million metric tons of plastic waste imports were reported, according to the United Nations.

Where this exported plastic waste ends up has been shifting. In 2018, China stopped importing plastic waste, causing the total amount of plastic waste moving among countries – at least through official channels – to drop dramatically. Between 1992 and 2016, China’s plastic waste imports made up 45% of global imports.

In 2018, the flow moved to other countries, largely in Southeast Asia but also other locations, including Turkey. In 2018, Indonesia became a net importer of plastic waste. The majority of this waste came from Western Europe, Australia and North America.

What happened to Indonesia’s air quality We harnessed data from multiple monitoring systems, including satellite observations and cargo ship tracking signals, to understand where these plastic waste imports went and how much air pollution was released by openly burning this waste.

As of 2020, the World Economic Forum and Indonesia’s government estimated that 48% of Indonesia’s plastic waste is openly burned.

We found that particulate matter air pollution – of great concern for health – increased an average of 3.3% at the locations of large open waste dump sites in Indonesia after China’s ban in 2018-19 relative to expected business as usual, based on data from 2012-17.

We found increases up to 1.68 micrograms per cubic meter.

Based on risk estimates from a global study of mortality associated with long-term exposure to outdoor fine particulate matter, this corresponds to an approximate 1.5%, 1.9% and 3.5% increase in mortality risk from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and lower respiratory infections, respectively.

New constraints on the plastic waste trade In 2021, Indonesia restricted the import of nonhazardous waste to 15 specific ports and in 2025 banned the import of plastic waste altogether.

In mid-2025, Malaysia followed suit, allowing plastic waste only from countries that have ratified the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal – a treaty that the U.S. has never ratified.

For these bans to be effective, these countries must also find ways to contend with illegal plastic waste shipments and paper imports contaminated by plastic waste. Where plastic waste exports went in 2024. The chart does not include waste disposed of within the country where it was produced.

UN Comtrade, Ellen Considine, created with Flourish, CC BY-ND Meanwhile, negotiations for an international, legally binding treaty on plastic waste, started in 2022, have stalled.

In mid-2024 the European Union did pass a new regulation on waste shipments, prohibiting exporting plastic waste to countries outside the group of wealthy countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development from November 2026 to at least May 2029.

The effectiveness of these and future policies at reducing air pollution – and other kinds of environmental degradation – can be evaluated using methods like ours. Ways to reduce plastic waste As of 2021, only 5% to 6% of U.S. domestic plastic waste was recycled, according to estimates from the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and Bennington College.

It is now even harder to export plastic waste to other countries that could “recycle” it.

Part of the problem is lack of capacity: The Association of Plastic Recyclers estimates that current plastic reclamation facilities in the U.S. and Canada could at most increase their plastic recycling by 35% to 44%, depending on the type of plastic, leading to a total recycling rate of 7% to 9%.

Ultimately, both decreasing plastic use and increasing recycling will likely be needed to solve the problem. Beyond consumer choices, packaging reuse – creating packaging and return systems that put the same materials back to work – can reduce the need for new plastics.

Recycling experts call for harmonized design standards to help streamline processing and deliver higher-quality recycled plastics, as well as extended producer responsibility fees or taxes to raise the cost of producing products that aren’t recyclable.

The fees can provide needed funding to scale up recycling and other programs to reduce generation of plastic waste. Since 2021, seven states have enacted extended producer responsibility laws focused on packaging: Maine, Oregon, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Washington and Maryland.

However, it will take time to see the effects. Colorado’s final implementation plan, authorized in 2022, was approved only in late 2025. The first payment of extended producer responsibility fees to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment are scheduled to begin in mid-2026.

Ultimately, reducing and better managing our nation’s plastic waste can help prevent global health harms.

Ellen M. Considine 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/a-lot-of-recycled-plastic-is-being-burned-overseas-and-causing-widespread-pollution-linked-to-health-problems/

Myanmar’s civil war is one of the clearest tests of the international community’s promise to protect civilians. Two decades on from the creation of the United Nations’ “Responsibility to Protect,” that promise has been quietly abandoned.

Myanmar has spent most of its independent life in conflict. Since its inception in 1948, it has struggled to build a political order that can hold together its highly diverse ethno-politico-religious communities. At its core is an unequal relationship between a Bamar-dominated central state and the ethnic border regions.

Military rule has defined the country’s governance. Since General Ne Win’s 1962 coup, the army — known as the Tatmadaw — has governed directly or through proxies. The so-called 8888 uprising of 1988 and the monk-led Saffron Revolution of 2007 were both handily crushed.

Read more: Myanmar military’s ‘ceasefire’ follows a pattern of ruling generals exploiting disasters to shore up control A democratic opening from 2010 to 2015 gave Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy a landslide victory before the military seized power again in February 2021.

The elections the junta staged in late 2025 and early 2026 were widely condemned as neither free nor fair. The Responsibility to Protect Myanmar should matter to anyone who takes the Responsibility to Protect seriously. The edict emerged from the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001, a process tied to Canadian leadership, and was endorsed by UN member states in 2005.

Its premise is simple: when a state cannot or will not protect its people from ethnocide, commits war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, that responsibility passes to the international community (although this is an ambiguous entity in geopolitical terms).

Yet Responsibility to Protect provisions have always been applied selectively. Some crises attract diplomatic energy and intervention; others are treated as distant and inconvenient. A doctrine written for human protection loses its moral authority when it’s applied selectively.

Read more: Why has the West given billions in military aid to Ukraine, but virtually ignored Myanmar? Myanmar exposes this weakness. Its war draws far less western attention than Ukraine or the Middle East. Why is such an enduring and intractable conflict being treated with scant urgency?

The cost is not only battlefield deaths, but the slow attrition of refugee camps, children growing up stateless and unschooled and people denied for years the right to return home or work. The scale of displacement is hard to absorb.

Bangladesh hosts well over a million Rohingya refugees, most in the camps of Cox’s Bazar, with roughly 150,000 more arriving since early 2024 as violence in Rakhine, a coastal state in western Myanmar, intensified in 2025-26.

Thailand shelters more than 80,000 refugees from Myanmar in nine temporary shelters along the Thai-Myanmar border. In addition, it’s home to several million Myanmar nationals or migrants, with the International Organization for Migration estimating around 4.1 million Myanmar nationals residing in Thailand in 2024, including a large irregular migrant population.

These are not temporary inconveniences; they are long-term political failures. Fighting the state The Rohingya are the most visible face of this catastrophe. The 2017 exodus from Rakhine drew global attention, and Gambia’s genocide case has kept legal pressure on Myanmar.

In January 2026, the International Court of Justice held three weeks of hearings on the merits, with a judgment expected this year. But the Rohingya are only one part of a wider conflict. For decades, ethnic armed organizations have fought the state for autonomy or territory, and many are more than armed entities.

As Prof. Imtiaz Ahmed from Dhaka University has argued, some function as “proto states,” meaning they have their own currencies, control over territories and armed forces. Most importantly, the cost of non-resolution is enormous. The five economic and cost-analysis models in the Myanmar Crisis Dashboard show that inaction carries measurable human, regional and economic consequences.

A war economy keeps the fighting alive. Rare earth mining, drug trafficking and online scam compounds did not cause the conflict, but they sustain it. Kachin State has become central to the global rare earth supply chain and UN investigators have traced a multi-billion-dollar scam industry to the country’s lawless border zones.

Read more: Inside Southeast Asia’s scam compounds: A trafficked worker tells of fraud, coercion and torture How to end the conflict If a war economy helps sustain the conflict, ending it means building something that can out-compete it.

That is the premise behind Charting a Lasting Peace in Myanmar, a project funded by Global Affairs Canada and implemented by the organization I direct, the Conflict and Resilience Research Institute Canada. Myanmar needs peace architecture that offers an alternative to war.

One idea is a stabilization and reconstruction plan for Rakhine, among the country’s poorest regions and central to both Rohingya displacement and the wider conflict.

The reconstruction proposals draw inspiration from the post-Second World War Marshall Plan and, more recently, from China’s Belt and Road Initiative Read more: US pressure has forced Panama to quit China’s Belt and Road Initiative – it could set the pattern for further superpower clashes Justice alone has not produced safety or peace for decades.

A reconstruction plan could build a peace dividend, showing that infrastructure, schools, clinics and livelihoods can deliver more than a war economy ever will. Such a plan would rest on three commitments. Displaced people, in the camps and the diaspora, would be trained for work so they are ready to rebuild when conditions allow.

Planning should not wait for a final peace deal; negotiation and reconstruction are separate tracks that reinforce each other. These proposals also need credible backing from donors and regional governments. The risk is that reconstruction money could be seized by the entities who profit from the war.

Designing to guard against that possibility is part of the work. Global effort required Geopolitics cannot be ignored. China holds major stakes through the Belt and Road Initiative and hedges between the military and the armed groups; India has concerns about its northeastern frontier.

The crisis is regional, not just domestic. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, must play a larger part. Its Five-Point Consensus, agreed in 2021, has not resolved the crisis and is now widely judged as a failure, yet it remains the most legitimate regional platform.

The organization’s Institute for Peace and Reconciliation could study reconstruction-based alternatives. Canada has a role, too. It helped shape the origins of the Responsibility to Protect and has funded research on peace in Myanmar.

It can do more by lobbying partners, supporting regional reconstruction architecture and ensuring Myanmar isn’t forgotten. The Responsibility to Protect cannot apply only when intervention is politically convenient. The real test isn’t how loudly governments speak when a crisis is visible, but whether they act equitably when the suffering is slow, distant and inconvenient.

Myanmar is one of those tests.

So far, the world is failing it.

Kawser Ahmed is Executive Director of the Conflict and Resilience Research Institute Canada (CRRIC), which receives funding from Global Affairs Canada to implement the project Charting a Lasting Peace in Myanmar discussed in this article.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/myanmars-forgotten-war-how-the-world-is-failing-the-test-of-the-uns-responsibility-to-protect/

If we do the maths, the target readership for this teen adaptation of Jacinda Ardern’s bestselling memoir A Different Kind of Power were at primary school when she was prime minister. Those were the days when Ardern’s “stardust” – as her particular brand of political magic was described – saw her reach extraordinary heights of popularity, both at home and abroad.

But, as we know from the adult edition of her memoir, Ardern had always struggled with the self-confidence and self-belief we normally associate with effective leadership. Review: What If You Could – Jacinda Ardern (Penguin) Facing down this imposter syndrome informs the new book much more than the various events she had to contend with during her time in office.

Dedicated to “the leaders of tomorrow – who just don’t know it yet”, it is more accessible and immediate, with much less political detail. Ardern always wanted her original memoir to speak to her 14-year-old self, dedicating it to “the criers, worriers and huggers”.

What If You Could expands on that, spinning her life experiences and challenges into a self-affirming guide to following dreams, being strong and ultimately creating a different kind of power. No celebration of impossible standards Deftly adapted by New York-based writer Ruby Shamir, the book spends no time dwelling on COVID.

Ardern’s time working for Tony Blair in London is gone. Leaving the Mormon church is summarised in one sentence. But both books begin with pivotal bathroom moments. In A Different Kind of Power, Ardern is in her friend’s toilet, taking a pregnancy test while waiting to learn if she can form a coalition and therefore become prime minister.

This time, she is in a high school bathroom stall before a debating competition, so nervous she’s cut her finger trying to open the jammed door. Cleverly, these different prefaces are united by the same passage: My whole life I had grappled with the idea that I was never quite good enough.

That at any moment I would be caught short, and that meant no matter what I was doing, I had no business doing it. Instead, Ardern believed she was more suited to working behind the scenes.

She wasn’t tough enough, was too “idealistic and sensitive” for the political front line. And so the passages from the original memoir about her connection with Ernest Shackleton and the heroic age of Antarctic exploration are also gone.

Despite her own achievements – one of New Zealand’s youngest ever prime ministers, a woman in a male-dominated world who gave birth while still in office – the book avoids any celebration of impossible standards. Rather, she turns inward toward the psychological terrain, describing her feelings of being an imposter and the nagging fear of being exposed as a fraud.

Near the end of What If You Could, Ardern speaks directly to “everyone who doesn’t fit the old mould”. She encourages young people to channel the challenges of imposter syndrome into something positive: In fact, all of the traits that you believe are your flaws will come to be your strengths.

The things you thought would hold you back will in fact make you stronger, make you better. They will give you a different kind of power and make you a leader that this world, with all its turmoil, might just desperately need.

Read more: In her memoir, Jacinda Ardern shows a ‘different kind of power’ is possible – but also has its limits Corrective mantras to self-doubt If there is a whiff of the self-help genre here, it is also a welcome change from the kind of inspirational literature commonly aimed at young readers throughout modern history – heroic tales of courage, bravery, physical prowess and intelligence.

Aimed at encouraging good citizenship, often their goal was as much to encourage conformity, service and, if necessary, sacrifice.

More recently, however, books for young adults have tended to focus on individual agency, engaging readers by directly asking “what would you do?” The subjects may still be on pedestals, but the message is that you can follow in their footsteps and change the world.

To that end, each of the 17 chapters of What if You Could has a key aspirational heading that sets out a challenge and guides the reader beyond their own self-imposed limits: what if you could be sensitive and show you care, what if it’s okay not to have all the answers, what if you could face your fears.

The absence of question marks in the book’s title and chapter headings is deliberate. Each serves as a corrective mantra to wash away self-doubt. Ardern affirms the power of traditionally gendered qualities such as being sensitive and caring.

And she grounds her own progressive politics in the language of answering calls for change and doing things differently. Her most personal feelings are explored in chapters about facing your fears, choosing your own path and following your passion, all of which address imposter syndrome and insecurity.

The final chapter echoes a currently fashionable self-affirmation catchphrase, “I am enough”, reframed here as “what if doing your best is enough”. Ardern then returns to those high-school years and recollections of how hard being young can be.

But adult life can be difficult too, she says, so you need to “be kind to yourself”.

No doubt there will be those for whom such notions – “you are not weak, you are human […] you are enough, just as you are” – will be reminders of why they resisted Ardern’s politics in the first place.

But in this time of global conflict, political cynicism and mean-spiritedness, they also represent a graceful, positive sentiment that world leaders – current and future – could do worse than adopt.

Katie Pickles 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/jacinda-ardern-turns-her-own-imposter-syndrome-into-self-help-wisdom-for-young-readers/

Accumulative stone throwing is a rare, potentially cultural, behaviour that has been observed among four groups of wild chimpanzees in West Africa. (Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA Walking through the savanna-woodland landscape of Boé National Park, Guinea-Bissau, you might encounter a tree covered in gnarled scars, with an accumulation of rocks surrounding its base.

The chimpanzees may have left the area, but you are lucky nonetheless, because you have stumbled upon evidence of a rare — and potentially cultural — chimpanzee behaviour: accumulative stone throwing. A compilation of chimpanzee stone throws collected by the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology Pan African Programme.

Video recordings show wild western chimpanzees, usually adult males, throwing rocks at specific trees and repeatedly returning to these trees to perform the behaviour. While throwing, the chimpanzees pant hoot — a loud, long-distance communicative signal — and sometimes repeatedly hit their hands and feet on the tree in a behaviour called buttress drumming.

We have just returned from a field site in Guinea-Bissau where we collected data to help us investigate the social and ecological context of accumulative stone throwing to determine what these chimpanzees are trying to communicate.

Given our evolutionary relatedness to chimpanzees, we hope accumulative stone throwing can help us understand the emergence of complex communication and stone tool use over the course of human evolution. A cultural behaviour Pant hooting and buttress drumming are both part of the male chimpanzee display, suggesting that accumulative stone throwing might represent a modification of this common behaviour.

It is likely a cultural behaviour due to its limited distribution, and because the availability of rocks and trees does not guarantee the presence of an accumulative stone throwing site. Dr. Jane Goodall pant hoots with chimpanzees.

Previous research suggests that accumulative stone throwing is likely communicative or may even have a symbolic purpose, with sites marking important locations within the chimpanzees’ territory. However, we still don’t know what accumulative stone throwing sites might mean to the chimpanzees themselves nor why they do it.

While some primates use stone tools to access food, for instance to crack open nuts, accumulative stone throwing is a rare example of stone tool use in a social context. It has been observed in only four chimpanzee groups in West Africa to date.

Setting up camp We travelled to the remote Boé chimpanzee territory in Guinea-Bissau and based ourselves in Béli, a small village where, in collaboration with local people, the Dutch non-governmental organization Chimbo maintains a compound.

Visiting researchers and tourists can stay here and use a workspace with solar-generated electricity.

From Béli, we cycled and hiked 22 kilometres into the savanna-woodland to establish a bush camp with our two field assistants, Djei Baldé and Balu Séra, and a master’s student from the Great Ape Behaviour Lab, Taylor Tippett.

The Boé chimpanzees performing the behaviour are unhabituated; they are not used to humans, meaning that we cannot observe individual chimpanzees on foot because they will run away. Instead, we collected behavioural data using camera traps and recording devices.

Author Ammie Kalan and field assistant Balu Séra set up a camera trap near an accumulative stone throwing site. (Taylor Tippett) We set up two video cameras at each accumulative stone throwing site and placed the recording devices strategically to capture audio data from the areas around these sites.

Our campsite bordered the Fefine, a large river that flows even in the dry season. In a landscape like the savanna-woodland where water sources are scarce, rivers like the Fefine are important for wildlife and humans alike.

We captured several of our neighbours on cameras set up near the riverbank. Chimpanzee nests On an average day, we woke up around 6:30 a.m. and ate a small breakfast before heading to a set of two to five sites.

There, we replaced the SD cards and batteries on the cameras, made sure the devices were working well and collected any additional data needed, including measurements of the tree and 3D scans of rocks thrown at the tree for later analysis.

Along the way, we recorded observations of chimpanzee nests, feeding signs, vocalizations and sightings.

The video and audio data we collected will allow us to investigate the social traits of accumulative stone throwing, including the age and sex of the stone thrower and the audience (other chimpanzees nearby who might react to the throw).

This information can help us determine what chimpanzees are trying to communicate.

We found that most of the sites first identified by the Pan African Programme, and revisited by our team in 2017, were still in use during our recent trip to the field, meaning that chimpanzees can use these sites for over a decade.

Our campsite featuring a canopy built by our guides. (Taylor Tippett) The threat of bauxite mining As many primate species face threats from human activities, cultural behaviours and the maintenance of rich cultural repertoires can help them adapt to environmental changes and provide support for conservation.

On top of its potential communicative importance and intrinsic value as a cultural behaviour, accumulative stone throwing involves durable primate material culture, the loss of which would constitute the erasure of primate heritage. Unfortunately, chimpanzee habitat in Guinea-Bissau is threatened by extractive industries, particularly industrial mining.

While in the field, we encountered bore holes from bauxite mining exploration. Bauxite mining represents a significant opportunity for economic growth and development in Guinea-Bissau. It can also cause habitat destruction and pollution with severe detrimental effects for chimpanzees, other wildlife and the local people — as it already has in neighbouring Guinea.

Environmental oversight and regulations are much needed, especially given the added challenges of unstable governance in Guinea-Bissau.

A bauxite mining site in 2017 near the village of Sangaredi in Guinea. (Ammie Kalan) By studying and bringing attention to chimpanzee cultural behaviours like accumulative stone throwing, we hope to support chimpanzee conservation and the maintenance of biodiversity more broadly, as well as the preservation of primate cultural materials for future research and education.

Robyn Nakano is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Ammie Kalan receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in the form of an Insight Development Grant which supported the research mentioned in this article.

Previous research on AST was also funded by a National Geographic Explorers Grant and supported by the Max Planck Society.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/why-do-male-chimpanzees-throw-rocks-at-the-same-trees-for-more-than-a-decade-we-travelled-to-remote-guinea-bissau-to-find-out/

The Canadian government recently announced that it will lease a fleet of 10 firefighting aircraft and other support assets to be deployed for the 2026 wildfire season. The plan will see these 10 leased aircraft being managed by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre deployed strategically across the country and made available to provinces as they face intense wildfires.

The new aircraft include four firefighting air tankers, one birddog plane and five heavy lift helicopters, with operating crew and maintenance support to be provided by the leasing companies.

This announcement follows the government’s fall 2025 budget announcement of a $316.7-million investment in Canada’s aerial wildfire-fighting capacity — an announcement that marked an important acknowledgement of a growing national challenge to improving the response to elevated wildfire activity.

After record fire seasons in 2023 and 2025, the federal government is stepping into a domain long dominated by the provinces. This surge model is intended to provide additional capacity when provincial resources are stretched. Increasing the wildfire aerial firefighting asset base is very welcome but remains an incomplete improvement to improving the effectiveness of the aerial wildfire firefighting strategy.

Policy architecture behind this action remains incomplete. Canada’s wildfire aviation system remains fundamentally decentralized. Provinces own or contract their own wildfire firefighting aircraft and rely on the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre to co-ordinate interprovincial sharing when resources allow.

That model worked when fire seasons were staggered geographically. Increasingly, they are not, and wildfires are more intense and fast-moving. In recent years, Canada has experienced multiple Level 5 preparedness alerts, meaning every available aircraft in the country is already responding to fires.

When that happens, there are no reserves left to move between provinces and action may be taken to call for international firefighting assistance. Leasing a handful of additional aircraft may ease pressure, but it does not resolve the structural vulnerability.

Read more: Dealing with wildfires requires a whole-of-society approach Canada needs a national framework What Canada lacks is a clearly defined national aerial response framework.

That framework should establish how federally-funded aircraft are deployed, how they are prioritized when multiple provinces face simultaneous fires, and how they integrate with the emerging detection technologies — including satellite monitoring and long-endurance drones — that can identify fires earlier than ever before.

Without that doctrine, the new surge capacity risks becoming another asset pool waiting for a crisis rather than a system designed to prevent one. Current aerial firefighting strategies focus primarily on support of ground forces in proximity to advancing wildfires on human establishment and infrastructure.

It is, however, important to note that aerial suppression remains most effective in the early stages of a wildfire, when rapid intervention can prevent a small ignition from becoming a landscape-scale disaster. But that requires aircraft to be positioned strategically and deployed quickly — not simply dispatched after fires have already significantly grown.

A national aerial firefighting framework During a recent visit to De Havilland Aircraft of Canada’s new production facility in Calgary, I saw firsthand manufacturing for the next generation of Canadair water bombers. The production rate for this new facility is set for 10 aircraft per year.

European customers have already ordered this new generation of aircraft for delivery through 2030, responding to their own worsening wildfire seasons. Provincial governments wanting to renew or expand their De Havilland waterbomber fleets have been told to expect deliveries through 2031 and 2032.

Yet Canada — the country that pioneered the modern water bomber — still lacks a coherent national strategy for aerial wildfire response. The point is not simply that Canada should acquire additional firefighting aircraft. The point is that Canada must decide what role aerial firefighting should play in a national wildfire resilience strategy.

Should federally funded aircraft focus on rapid initial response, similar to the model used in parts of southern Europe? Should they primarily reinforce provincial fleets during peak events? Or should they form the backbone of a national front-line attack capability that can be pre-positioned across the country as fire conditions develop?

These are important strategic questions. At present, they remain elements of a debate, they remain unanswered. Ottawa’s new funding recognizes that wildfire risk is no longer a purely provincial concern. Smoke from fires can affect millions of Canadians far from the flames themselves.

Evacuations disrupt regional economies. Insurance losses and infrastructure damage ripple across the country. Wildfire resilience has now been recognized as a national public-safety issue. Leasing aircraft through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre is a useful beginning.

But if Canada is serious about preparing for fire seasons, the next step is unavoidable: the development of a co-ordinated national aerial firefighting framework. This should be one that complements provincial operations while ensuring Canada has the capacity to respond when multiple regions face fire at the same time.

The fires are changing.

Canada’s wildfire aviation strategy must change with them.

John Gradek 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/canadas-aerial-wildfire-fighting-plan-is-a-start-but-it-is-not-yet-a-strategy/

Political satire has mocked the powerful for centuries. But in an age of endless headlines, rolling news and social media outrage, satire can often feel strangely powerless. In Georgian Britain, satire had the power not just to entertain the public, but to shape reputations and destroy careers.

Satire meant a scandal could define a politician for decades. Few figures embodied this more completely than Charles James Fox, as my research explores. Fox was one of the most famous politicians of his age.

He was a brilliant parliamentary speaker, early supporter of the French revolution, notorious gambler and political celebrity long before the term even existed. Though technically a Whig (a former political party), Fox transcended party labels.

Admirers celebrated him as a champion of liberty and the “man of the people”. Critics saw him as reckless, corrupt and morally unfit for office. He fascinated the public because politics itself was changing. The late 18th century was an age of expanding print culture, coffeehouse debate and increasingly personality-driven politics.

The boundary between the public and private lives of politicians was beginning to erode. Rumour, gossip and scandal became central to political life in ways that feel remarkably modern. What made scandals like these so politically potent was the rise of the caricature and visual satire.

In Georgian Britain, political scandal was not just reported but also illustrated, exaggerated and displayed for public consumption. London print shops filled their windows with satirical prints mocking politicians, royalty and public figures. Crowds gathered outside to laugh, gossip and debate the latest controversy.

Those who could afford the prints bought and collected them, while others encountered them in coffeehouses and public spaces. Read more: How 18th-century politician Charles Fox mastered personality politics long before Trump and Farage Fox’s public image was shaped as much by scandal as by policy.

Even as a child, he was associated with allegations of corruption surrounding his father, Henry Fox, who had served as paymaster of the armed forces, the sole domestic banker of the army. Henry Fox was accused by critics of enriching himself in office, which led to satirical prints of him being drawn and distributed.

As Fox entered politics himself, the accusations followed him. During elections, he was repeatedly accused of bribing voters with food and drink through his ally Sam House, who was a popular publican and political organiser.

Other rumours claimed Fox had illegally transported labourers into his constituency to secure extra votes. Rumour and infamy The most infamous stories surrounded Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, one of Fox’s most devoted supporters. According to persistent rumours, she canvassed for Fox by exchanging kisses for votes, and, in more scandalous versions of the story, sexual favours too.

The allegations became political theatre, feeding a public appetite for scandal that blurred entertainment and politics. Caricatures were drawn up and shared among the population. But Fox’s greatest controversy came in 1783, when he entered a coalition government with his former rival Lord North.

North was the prime minister widely blamed for losing the American colonies after the war of independence in 1776. Many viewed the alliance as cynical and hypocritical. The deeper scandal, however, centred on the East India Company.

This was the vast trading corporation that effectively functioned as Britain’s colonial arm in India. Fox attempted to reform the company through legislation that would transfer oversight to a board of commissioners appointed by parliament.

Critics accused Fox and North of using the reforms to place political allies and family members into positions of power. Opponents portrayed the scheme not as reform, but as naked political patronage. The controversy proved disastrous.

Public outrage contributed to the collapse of the government after less than a year in office. Because caricatures were visual, artists could ridicule politicians in ways written journalism could not. Fox was regularly depicted as grotesque, drunken or corrupt.

Following the East India Company controversy, critics nicknamed him “Carlo Khan”, portraying him as a despot attempting to seize imperial power for himself. These images travelled slowly compared with modern media, but that slow speed gave them lasting force.

Prints had to be designed, etched, published and physically distributed before reaching audiences. People spent time with them. Scandal lingered in public consciousness for years rather than days. Fox himself recognised their power, admitting that caricatures had “certainly a vast effect upon the public mind”.

Even after returning to government in 1806 as foreign secretary in the Ministry of All the Talents, he could not entirely escape the reputational damage inflicted more than two decades earlier. The speed of scandal Today, scandal moves at a radically different speed.

News cycles turn over within hours, and outrage competes constantly for public attention. Satire remains everywhere – on television, online, across social media feeds and in endless memes – but its very abundance can dilute its effect.

The 18th century reminds us that political scandal is nothing new. Nor is the public fascination with flawed, theatrical politicians. But it also suggests that satire once possessed a greater ability to linger, shaping how political figures were remembered long after the immediate scandal had passed.

For Charles Fox, scandal was not simply a temporary embarrassment. It became part of his identity. That may be the greatest difference between the world of Georgian satire and our own.

It’s not the existence of scandal itself, but the length of time we are able to remember it.

Callum Smith has previously received funding from the AHRC, and the Royal Historical Society.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/when-satire-could-destroy-a-career-the-scandals-of-georgian-politician-charles-james-fox/

Melitas on Shutterstock More than five years after the murder of George Floyd forced institutions to confront racial injustice, it is worth asking what has actually changed.

As an associate professor of forensic psychology, I’ve been considering this question in relation to research – in particular, how universities produce knowledge about the communities that are affected by racial disparities in the UK.

Racially minoritised communities continue to experience consistently poorer mental health outcomes. They are more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act, less likely to access talking therapies early, and more likely to disengage from services that do not feel safe or culturally responsive.

And while universities across the UK have made visible efforts to decolonise knowledge production, diversify research samples and recruit more researchers from minoritised backgrounds, many of the core questions that shape psychological research remain largely unchanged.

Who defines what counts as distress? Is anger framed as pathology rather than a response to racism? Who decides which communities are “hard to reach”? Who determines what meaningful impact looks like? And what importance do we place on the lived experience of researchers?

Whose reality is believed?

Lived experience of a mental health issue can be devalued in favour of clinical, academic and professional knowledge, so that when people describe their distress, these accounts tend to be reframed through clinical interpretation rather than recognised as valid experiences in their own right.

Philospher Miranda Fricker coined the term “epistemic injustice” to describe how certain groups are systematically discredited as knowers. In psychology, this can mean lived experience being dismissed as anecdotal, while clinical or academic interpretations are treated as objective.

When such bias goes unchecked, research questions recycle eurocentric ideas that once pathologised racialised people as “mad”. Research hierarchies do not just shape evidence; they decide whose realities are believed. Quantitative designs that reduce people to numbers are often positioned as more rigorous, while narrative or participatory approaches are treated as secondary by the research establishment.

These hierarchies do not simply reflect preference; they drive funding, shape policy and determine whose realities are treated as credible. In this context, service users may be invited to contribute to a study or help answer a research question.

But if that question has already been defined within institutional and governmental priorities, it probably won’t make any difference. The power that shapes research agendas operates long before anyone is asked to take a seat at the table.

The same dynamics shape the expectations of researchers. Trainees in the Beyond Academia initiative I was recently involved in described tension between bringing their lived experience into their work and conforming to norms of neutrality and detachment.

This reflects a broader assumption within psychology that objectivity requires distance, which quietly preserves existing hierarchies.

From the margins to the centre Beyond Academia was designed to move underrepresented voices from the margins of research to its centre, and to challenge how future practitioners from the global majority approach mental health research in racially minoritised communities – including how to navigate their own lived experiences.

We encouraged them to question dominant psychological frameworks which can, for example, interpret distress as individual dysfunction, rather than as a response to racism, inequality or experience. The aim was to create space to question and rethink whose knowledge is treated as authoritative.

Sharing your own experiences. Posed by models. Fizkes on Shutterstock One trainee researching black men in prison described rethinking their approach. Instead of asking why services were not being accessed, they began to question how those services were experienced, and how their research could increase access.

Confronting this legacy means examining how privilege and historical ideas still shape what psychology recognises as legitimate knowledge, and whether researchers reproduce existing hierarchies or challenge them.

This kind of approach sits within a broader shift in mental health research, which aims to incorporate the lived experience of service users – so-called co-production models, where researchers and communities are expected to work together more collaboratively.

But while research that surfaces previously unheard voices of racially marginalised people is welcome, it does not necessarily translate into shared power over setting agendas, building theories or deciding what counts as impact. All research is shaped by perspective, and theories are developed within cultural contexts.

Far from undermining rigour of the trainees in our initiative, acknowledging the political and emotional dimensions of their work strengthened their ethical practice in systems defined by surveillance, coercion and harm. Community-rooted knowledge There is now a clear need for psychological research to move beyond representation toward power.

One starting point is to rethink what counts as legitimate evidence. This means collective first-hand narratives of distress and experiential knowledge should shape mainstream psychological research, not sit at its edges. This is not secondary science – it is rigorous science.

When researchers are honest about their perspective and work with people who see the world differently, the research is stronger and more useful. If psychology is to remain relevant in diverse societies, it must move beyond viewing certain communities primarily as subjects of study, to being partners in knowledge creation.

Diversifying who enters academic spaces matters. So does diversifying who participates in studies. But unless the discipline confronts who shapes research agendas and whose knowledge is treated as authoritative, inequality will simply be reproduced in subtler forms.

Psychology already has the tools to examine power, bias and social context.

The question is whether it is willing to use them.

Shola Apena Rogers 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/why-researchers-may-be-getting-mental-health-inequalities-wrong/

Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, speaks at an event hosted by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders in Orono, Maine, on May 24, 2026. AP Photo/Robert F.

Bukaty Since 2016, when Donald Trump shattered the Democrats’ blue wall by winning working-class voters across the Midwest, a cottage industry has sprung up on the left dedicated to answering a single question: How can Democrats win back the working class?

The answers come in different forms. Sometimes it is veteran Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders – barnstorming red districts, railing against oligarchy and corporate greed. Or it’s Connecticut Sen.

Chris Murphy, who after the 2024 election declared, “Democrats must reclaim our identity as the party of the working class.” Or the answer comes from a new generation of candidates – tattooed veterans, mechanics, bartenders – whose biography is supposed to do the political work that policy has not.

Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who has become the left’s latest blue-collar savior, put the theory in its most unguarded form. “We are in a form of class war,” he says. “And if the Democratic Party is going to have a future with working people, it needs to pick the side of working people.” How does he define the working class?

“Essentially everybody who isn’t making all their money on an immense amount of wealth.” The theory is all the same: Somewhere out there is a latent working-class majority, held together by shared economic grievances, waiting to be politically reassembled to vote for Democrats.

The New Deal did it – Democrats can do it again. I’m a political scientist who has written extensively about rural and working-class communities. I believe it is an open question whether these reformist Democrats are really interested in understanding working-class voters on their own terms.

Because working-class voters, as they tell us themselves, are not simply waiting to be activated by the right program, the right messenger, the right phrase. “Fight the oligarchy” probably isn’t going to do it.

Working-class voters have a worldview. For 50 years, it has been growing less compatible with the Democratic Party’s – not because working-class voters changed, but because Democrats did. Working-class identity Since the early 1950s, the American National Election Studies has asked respondents whether they think of themselves as members of the working class.

This article uses my analysis of that data.

While a larger proportion of the electorate has obtained a college degree and household incomes have risen, the share of Americans who consider themselves working class has remained remarkably stable: roughly 35% of voters for the past 70 years, 38% in 2024.

Working-class identity is something more durable and culturally grounded than a description of who isn’t a billionaire. It is a specific way of looking at the world. There are conventional ways to define the working class, but they often miss how people understand their own place in society.

In the 2024 American National Election Studies, for example, 21% of those who identify as working class have a college degree, only 5% belong to a private-sector union, and 37% own stocks. Conversely, most Americans without a college degree do not identify as working class.

Working-class voters have never been a predominantly Democratic group – not even at the height of the New Deal coalition. Based on the American National Election Studies self-report measure, the working-class share of the Democratic coalition peaked around 56% in 1960 and has fallen more or less continuously since, sitting at just about 30% today.

Meanwhile, the share of working-class voters who identify as Democrats has been declining for half a century: A majority did so in 1958, but not since. Working-class voters have not become Republicans. Only in 2020 and 2024 – the first time in the survey’s history – did more working-class voters identify as Republican than Democrat, and even then by narrow margins.

The data shows a working class that is politically homeless: estranged from the Democrats, not captured by the Republicans, stuck in the middle with diminishing attachment to either party. Economic abandonment So what drove them out?

A segment of the progressive left has a ready answer: Democrats abandoned working-class voters economically – on trade, wages and industrial policy. Working-class voters responded rationally. Fix the economics and the coalition comes back. Trade is where the argument is strongest.

In 1988, roughly 74% of both Democrats and working-class voters groups favored limits on imports to protect American jobs. By 2024, only 26% of Democrats favored limits, while a majority – 54% – of working-class voters continued to do so. Unlike most Democrats, many working-class communities do not see globalization in their interest.

Running alongside the trade gap is a widening divide over values that no tariffs can fix. What fairness requires In 1984, Democrats and working-class voters broadly agreed that treating people more equally would mean fewer social problems.

A divergence opened after 2008 and accelerated after 2016, with Democrats now 28 points more likely than working-class voters to think we should worry more about equality. In 1986, half of mainstream Democrats and a slightly smaller percentage of working-class voters agreed with the idea that Black Americans don’t succeed because they don’t try hard enough.

By 2024, Democratic agreement had collapsed to 13%. Working-class voters declined too, but to 32%. The gap that opened between them is not primarily a story about rising working-class racial resentment. It is a story about the Democratic Party’s rapid post-2008 shift toward a worldview that places far greater explanatory weight on structural barriers and far less on individual effort and personal responsibility.

Working-class voters, who historically have understood their own lives through a framework of hard work and earned reward, did not shift so dramatically. Alignment becomes division On cultural questions, the pattern persists: Working-class voters did not move right in reactionary revolt.

Democrats moved left. In 1986, similar levels of Democrats and working-class voters agreed with the statement “This country would have many fewer problems if there were more emphasis on traditional family ties.” By 2024 a 25-point gap emerged.

On whether religion is an important part of their life: a near-zero gap through the early 1990s, but 17 points by 2024. On abortion, a 3-point gap in 1980 became 30 points in 2024. Regarding whether immigration levels should be increased, the two groups were virtually identical in 2000 – around 8% support – but by 2020 Democrats were at 48%, working-class voters at 24%.

But even where working-class voters nominally agree with a Democratic policy goal, they don’t trust the institution being asked to deliver it – a distrust decades in the making. How the ‘system’ plays In 1958, working-class voters and Democrats were within 5 points of each other on whether government wastes a lot of tax money.

By 2024 that gap reached 27 points – not because working-class voters lurched toward anti-government extremism, but because mainstream Democrats became dramatically more trusting of government as an instrument of social change. Working-class voters are 17 points more likely than Democrats to say people like them have no say in what government does.

In 2024, 88% of working-class voters and 75% of Democrats said government is run by a few big interests. Both groups agree the system is captured. Yet the Democratic policy response, invariably, is to expand the system. On support for expanding government – from healthcare to jobs to environmental programs – Democrats and working-class voters have diverged dramatically since the 1980s.

By 2024, there were approval gaps of between 20 and 30 points on providing government health insurance, environmental spending and a guaranteed jobs program. On every major plank of the progressive economic agenda, Democrats are now substantially to the left of the workers they claim to champion.

Not all class war Working-class voters have been telling pollsters for 60 years that the political system doesn’t hear them. Democrats, over the same period, have grown more comfortable with the institutions working-class voters have increasingly less faith in.

This distrust is the accumulated residue of specific experiences: deindustrialization that happened on government’s watch, trade deals that economists endorsed and workers paid for, a 2008 financial crisis response that saved the banks and foreclosed on their homes, an opioid epidemic that regulators missed entirely.

To be fair, this is precisely what the new crop of reform candidates say they want to fix. The argument that the right candidate can move the needle is not crazy. Candidate quality matters. Personal trust can substitute for institutional trust, at least at the margins.

But economic grievance politics is a very small slice of what working-class voters are telling us. The data documents a comprehensive, decades-long divergence in how working-class voters and mainstream Democrats understand fairness, government, personal responsibility and social change.

Reducing that to class war jams working-class voters into a prefabricated progressive agenda rather than taking seriously what they are actually saying.

Nicholas Jacobs 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/democrats-dont-get-why-theyve-lost-most-working-class-voters/

MAYA Lab/Shutterstock Around the world, countries are moving towards a more digital way of life. Governments have promoted digitalisation of public services to improve efficiency, cut costs and meet modern demands for speedy responses.

Yet this push for the digital has caught some people by surprise. Many older adults now feel they face another hurdle in living an independent life. Across Europe, digitalisation of services is rapidly changing older people’s lives.

The post-pandemic movement of booking appointments, vaccines and basic services online accelerated things. Banks and insurance companies now operate mainly online, with in-person options getting rarer by the day in many countries. Our recent study focuses on Finland, the most digitalised country in Europe.

Finland’s first national strategy report on digitalisation was back in 1995. This laid the groundwork for online public services, well before initial steps in the UK and other countries, and when using email was not even an everyday experience.

Finland’s ombudsman for older people estimated recently that the country has between 500,000 and 600,000 residents over the age of 65 who lack digital skills, or don’t have enough skills for independent digital tasks, even if they would otherwise be able to cope independently in their day-to-day lives.

This is about 40%-45% out of a total population of about 1.3 million in that age group. However, across political divisions, digitalisation continues to be seen as a self-evident good. Our study involved talking with over 40 older people in Finland, and analysing over 40 policy documents as part of a larger European study.

Many of our research participants in their late 60s, 70s and 80s had a hard time keeping up with technological and software development. With the erosion of person-to-person contact, daily situations involving medical or financial issues meant dealing with chatbots or, after a long wait, with people who could not answer their questions.

As one of our participants put it: It is very difficult to get hold of someone at a bank, for example. Even if I just want to ask something, I have to hold indefinitely, and if I then get hold of a person in the end, they do not know.

On the phone, they always say, that the answer for this or that is available digitally. But then they cannot answer questions I want an answer to. Many of our participants were concerned about how digitalisation of services has proceeded at such a fast pace.

In-person visits to banks and health centres can become very limited, even impossible. Older people are worried about not being able to talk directly with a doctor or nurse in person, or being denied contact with a human when dealing with financial matters.

Information about essential health and social welfare is sometimes only available online.

Older adults have been particularly concerned about the digitalisation of medical appointments. lunopark/Shutterstock Finland ranks highest in Europe on the EU’s Digital Economy and Society Index, which measures states’ levels of digital infrastructure and skills.

Yet according to the Finnish Digital Skill Report 2023, only half of 65- to 74-year-olds have basic digital skills. Of 75- to 89-year-olds, as few as 22% have such skills, and one-third do not use internet at all.

The report also reveals that 89% of Finns help their family members in digital matters. When skills or technology are not up to date, many older people rely on someone else to access vital information or manage their finances.

But not everyone has family or trusted neighbours who can help out. Meanwhile, online fraud has taken new, more sophisticated forms, causing people to lose both assets and dignity – this is of special concern for older people.

Such fears create uncertainty, and, for some, isolation. About 20% of Finnish 65-74 year-olds and about 30% of those 75 and over feel quite or very unsafe in their daily activities in the digital environment .

Debating digitalisation Some may argue that, as some services have been digitalised from the 1990s, how long can people continue to claim they are being digitally excluded, rather than simply choosing not to use technology?

But this view ignores how digital exclusion works. Isolation, ill-health, disabilities, uneven skills, changing software constantly updating and access to devices are all part of older people’s challenges. Learning new IT skills at work is a totally different matter to coping when old, alone or without support.

There is a clear mismatch here between government policy on digitalisation of services, and the reality of people’s lives. The government does not provide digital support for older people. Many non-governmental organisations, as well as some of the larger cities such as Helsinki, do provide some digital assistance and basic training, but the national pattern is patchy at best.

The needs of older Finnish people have not been considered enough in the government’s efforts to digitise services, nor have there been sufficient impact assessments in planning and carrying out reforms. People with lower income or fewer resources, less or no digital access, fewer digital skills, fewer opportunities to learn or less support have experienced severe consequences.

People with no online presence struggle to manage their day-to-day lives and may miss out socially. Our research participants themselves suggested various possible solutions or improvements that would help them, such as maintaining continuous access to face-to-face, offline services and making digital support free and accessible.

These issues are not unique to Finland. But if even people in Europe’s most digitalised country are struggling, it’s likely to be even more acute for older adults in other countries in the coming years.

As one of our participants said: “There are so many that do not really manage.” They need to be supported if we are to bring society fully into the digital age.

Jeff Hearn receives funding from The Research Council of Finland and JPI MYBL .

He is affiliated with the British Sociological Association, and the International Sociological Association.

Charlotta Niemistö receives funding from The Research Council of Finland and JPI MYBL. She is affiliated with Åbo Akademi University.

Hanna Sjögren receives funding from The Research Council of Finland and JPI MYBL.

She is affiliated with the University of Helsinki.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/finland-is-europes-most-digitalised-country-but-older-people-are-still-left-behind/

The Scottish parliamentary election in May saw Reform UK return the same number of MSPs to Holyrood – 17 – as Scottish Labour. This remarkable result – effectively from a standing start – showed that the party is now a force to be reckoned with in Scotland just as in other parts of the UK.

But where did it attract votes north of the border? My analysis examines constituency-level patterns in support for Reform UK, compared with the other main parties. It focuses on three constituency characteristics: deprivation levels, whether it is classified as urban or rural, and centre–periphery location.

The aim is to identify broad territorial patterns in party performance, rather than to draw firm conclusions about individual voters. The figures discussed here are average vote shares across constituencies within each category. In other words, they show the average party result in, for example, more deprived constituencies compared with less deprived constituencies.

This approach is useful for mapping the territorial profile of party support, but it should be complemented with individual-level data before drawing firm conclusions about voter motivations or social characteristics. The first pattern concerns deprivation.

Reform UK support appears to be higher in the most deprived third of constituencies than in the least deprived third. On this dimension, Reform looks closer to the SNP-Green and Labour pattern than to the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, whose support is more concentrated in less deprived constituencies.

This does not mean that Reform voters are necessarily more deprived at the individual level, as constituency-level data cannot show this. But the aggregate pattern is still important. It suggests that Reform is performing relatively better in places where socio-economic pressures are more visible, and where dissatisfaction with existing political options may be more pronounced.

Party support and socio-economic territorial divide Reform performed relatively better in areas with visible socio-economic pressures. Dr Davide Vampa, CC BY The urban-rural pattern points to a distinctive Reform geography. Reform appears to perform best in semi-urban constituencies, rather than in the most urban or most rural areas.

This separates Reform from the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, who perform more strongly in rural constituencies. It is also different from the SNP-Green vote, which is strongest in urban constituencies. Semi-urban constituencies may be politically important because they often combine proximity to major cities with a feeling of distance from them culturally or socio-economically.

These areas may therefore provide fertile ground for parties appealing to voters in places that are close to urban centres, but do not necessarily share fully in their economic opportunities, public investment or cultural politics.

Party support and urban–rural territorial divide Reform performed best in semi-urban constituencies. Dr Davide Vampa, CC BY The centre-periphery divide adds another layer to this picture.

Here, centre-periphery refers to three types of area: Edinburgh and Glasgow as the core of the central belt (Scotland’s main population corridor), other constituencies within the central belt but outside the two-city core, and areas beyond the central belt.

Reform performs better immediately outside the Edinburgh-Glasgow political core than within it. This pattern is again distinctive. The SNP-Green vote is more clearly concentrated in the core central belt, while the Conservatives are stronger in more peripheral constituencies.

The Liberal Democrats display a U-shaped profile across the centre-periphery divide, performing relatively well both in core and more peripheral areas. Reform’s profile is different: it is generally stronger in the periphery of the central belt than in the periphery of Scotland as a whole.

In this sense, its geography is not simply one of rural or peripheral conservatism, but one of places within the central belt but outside its core. In other words, close to where political power is concentrated, but not fully part of it.

Party support and the centre-periphery divide Reform’s vote was strong in constituences that lie close to – but outside – where power is concentrated. Dr Davide Vampa, CC BY The contrast with the Conservatives is one of the most important findings.

Reform UK’s pattern of support looks quite different from the Conservative map. While there may be overlap between the two electorates, Reform does not simply reproduce the traditional Conservative geography. This matters because it challenges the idea that Reform’s support in Scotland can be understood simply as a Conservative splinter or replacement vote.

Its territorial profile points to a potentially broader appeal, particularly in more deprived and semi-urban constituencies. Overall, the results suggest that Scottish party competition is structured not only by ideology or national identity, but also by clear socio-economic and territorial divides.

The SNP-Green and Labour vote is more urban and central, with some strength in deprived constituencies. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat vote is more rural, peripheral and less deprived. Reform UK occupies a distinctive position: more deprived than the Conservative map, more semi-urban than rural, and stronger outside the core central belt without simply replicating the geography of established unionist parties.

These findings remain preliminary. Still, the constituency-level evidence suggests that any serious analysis of Reform UK’s performance in Scotland needs to take these territorial divides seriously.

A version of this article appears in the Scottish Election Analysis 2026.

Davide Vampa receives funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh for the project “Populist Radical Right Politics in Devolved Contexts: The Rise of Reform UK in Scotland in Comparative Perspective.”

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/reform-uk-surged-in-the-scottish-election-heres-where-the-party-picked-up-the-most-support/