Who is funding the fuel protest's online campaign?

Political mobilisation does not scale "spontaneously", and, once that fire is lit, there is no controlling what it burns.

2025 Wrap Up: Moments of the Year

I will be on Virgin Media later this evening for the Tonight Show’s end of year review, and I thought I would share some of my speaking notes with you here.  We’ve been asked to prep our “of the year”s; moment, story, villain and person. I only

Highest percentage and highest number of votes in the history of the Irish Presidency

The results are in; Catherine Connolly won the Irish Presidential election of 2025, gathering 914,143 - or 63% - of the vote. There is a lot of talk of spoiled ballots (including from me) - but - this win is historically comprehensive. Catherine Connolly has garnered the highest percentage

#Aras25 Campaign Roundup

Over the last few months I have tried to dig out and get on the record some of the hidden and more ephemeral aspects of this election. Here is a recap of what we covered.

Meta allows deepfake "election cancelled" content to spread in #Aras25

This video is worrying; it shows a combination of both intent and skill in building out very deceptive content, in a way that resonates with Irish audiences.

Comedy wins in #Aras25 content battle

Aoife Dunne's "Sorry now" video is one of the most subtle yet devastating pieces of political content I have ever seen.

Fine Gael's Attack Video: Áras25 in Content

By burying the lede and handing over airtime, have Fine Gael committed an own goal?

Our first American-style election?

Our politics is a techno-coloured pick-and-mix, this election is a Soviet department store

The financial hit of Jim Gavin bowing out

Fianna Fáil unlikely to get the €250k back from the state they would have if Jim Gavin had run

Is Google rewriting history?

Have the dates on Google's Fidesz ads changed in its ad archive?

Google just erased 7 years of our political history

Google appears to have deleted its political ad archive for the EU; so the last 7 years of ads, of political spending, of messaging, of targeting - on YouTube, on Search and for display ads - for countless elections across 27 countries - is all gone. We had been told

Which news sites are surviving the death of Google optimisation?

3 good reads and some Linkedin news you can use

The first #Aras25 ads are out

What the first political ads tell us about how the campaign might look

News

Is violence an inevitable byproduct of the attention economy?

We need to start looking at this kind of performative violence as an endemic byproduct of the attention economy

Irish Politics

Campaigning likes it 1999 (when it feels like its 1938)

How do you run a political campaign without digital ads? I asked two of our best campaign gurus what we might expect. 

Musk's profoundly ignorant and dangerous intervention in #Aras25

I really, really hope this isn't the start of a whole thing. Elon Musk has tweeted about the race for the Aras in the most profoundly ignorant and stupidly dangerous way possible. The tweet is screenshot below; in it Musk sub-tweets another tweet claiming Simon Harris "ordered

elections

Seven weeks to polling day: what The Briefing will cover

We finally have a date: October 24th. Between now and then, The Briefing will run twice weekly: short, data-led analysis of campaign dynamics, plus curated reads on elections and tech policy. No horse race, just what the campaign reveals about our democracy, our economy, and our digital future.

Why is this Presidential Election so weird?

We've had a load of elections around here lately - we're in our stride - so why does the looming Presidential Election feel so... weird? We're about 10 weeks out (we think - there is still no date) and it feels like both no-one

Data Centres

Irish data centres are facilitating surveillance and targeting of Palestinians, reports The Guardian

Some incredible new investigative reporting from The Guardian revealed today that Irish based Microsoft data centres are likely involved in a population scale Israeli military effort to surveil and plan airstrikes on Palestinians. The reporting is here - it is by Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham. They found that the

Meta “bans” political ads in the EU

Last night - a Friday night, in July - Meta announced that it would “no longer allow political, electoral and social issue ads on our platforms in the EU in response to new regulation”. The first thing I thought of when I read this was that scene from The Office

The pursuit of dirty fingernails

For the last few weeks a group of us from the neighbourhood - parents with kids around the same age - have been gathering on a patchwork of picnic blankets on a designated evening. It is so simple and yet feels like a miracle. Out there in the multiverse is

Europe

A moment of truth for Europe's tolerance of Ireland's tech ties

All going well, I will be on The Tonight Show this evening to talk tech and tariffs. Sharing my thoughts here; please do reply / email me with your own if you think I'm wide of the mark. The tariff triple threat The Irish state faces at least three

The Lookout: two recent good listens on tech stocks

This is the first of a new series of recommender newsletters. I'm starting with two recent podcast listens I've really enjoyed, each looking at the precarious world of tech stock valuations, and reflect on what it can mean for all of us. As always you tell

How to squander an empire

It is easy to look rich if you raid the family silver.