Christopher de Bellaigue

Author of the Golden Throne and the Lion House. Award-winning journalist and founder of the Lake District Book Festival

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

Took a slight detour to Barrow-in-Furness – Britain’s "unhappiest town" where decline & revival sit side by side: empty streets, rising dissatisfaction & booming defence industry. Barrow - surprisingly - is integral to NATO's nuclear capability. https://t.co/EaW2h0WOac @unherd

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

If you are in Oxford come and see this wonderful exhibition by Iranian artist Bita Ghezelayagh, proof that creativity is the only answer to barbarism. https://t.co/OBMk1RrlQI

[UnHerd @unherd]

IS BARROW STILL BRITAIN’S UNHAPPIEST TOWN?, by Christopher de Bellaigue (@bellaigueC)

In 2014, Barrow was designated the unhappiest place in the UK. Its Covid mortality rate was among the highest nationally, and, in 2024, it came fourth in the league table of deaths from suicide, drink and drugs — the so-called ‘deaths of despair’. That same year, just 34% of Barrovians sitting English and Maths GCSE gained a five or above, 12% below the national average.

It’s the quintessentially left-behind former boomtown, lying at the end of the Furness Peninsula — ‘Britain’s longest cul-de-sac’ — at the entrance to Morecambe Bay.

Many and varied, in the declinist telling, are those responsible for the town’s current woes: successive political authorities, both Labour and Conservative, for starting development schemes that ran out of money and left unfilled holes in the town’s fabric; property speculators for buying up hundreds of houses and dividing them into bedsits, in the process preventing young Barrovians from getting onto the housing ladder; a gang of feral youths for terrorising pensioners.

Yet unlike almost every other British town with an industrial past, it also has an industrial future. A big chunk of the increased military spending that Sir Keir Starmer unveiled last year will be spent in Barrow, bolstering Britain’s fading pretensions to global significance. Extra cash has also been secured for health and roads. Is this enough to restore the Barradise which residents have been promised?

Read more below ⬇️

https://t.co/FE3AfORTNn

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

3/ Iran isn’t in danger of falling apart -- the true danger is not disintegration, but implosion.
Read the report 👇
https://t.co/zz9YrZqHVS

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

🧵
1/ My latest for UnHerd:
In this war without direction, no one has a clue -- not those who think the Islamic Republic is “toast”, nor those who admit they don’t know who they’re dealing with. 👇
https://t.co/zz9YrZqHVS

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

2/ The assumption that Iran will collapse misunderstands what it is —a state that replaces fallen generals and politicians quickly and without fuss and capitulation becomes more unthinkable the longer the casualty list.👇

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

🧵
The Islamic Republic is unlikely to survive. But its fall will not be neat, quick, or bloodless. Trump should think hard before promising Iranians his help — and mean it if he does — or he too will have blood on his hands. 6/6

My latest for @unherd
https://t.co/COEbIsYCtm

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

🧵
The United States has moved advanced warplanes and ships to within striking distance of #Iran. Donald Trump promises attacks “far worse” than last summer’s 12-day war – even as negotiations resume. 1/6 🔽

 My latest for @unherd
https://t.co/COEbIsYCtm

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

🧵
We have seen this already. Last month’s protests – born of hunger, radicalised by exile rhetoric and false hopes of rescue – ended with thousands gunned down in Tehran and across the country. The promised help never came. 5/6 🔽

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

@SaidKhanafira You're right on one level: the armed forces are loyal, there is no armed opposition. This isn't Syria. But the slaughter of recent days is the mother of all pyrrhic victories: the regime as currently constituted has run out of road.

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

6/ My latest in the @FT about the missed chances that destroyed the Islamic Republic — and what may come next.
#Iran
https://t.co/q7MN21zidJ

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

1/“A state whose sole objective is its own survival — a state at war with its people.”
Iran has reached this point amid reports of thousands of civilians killed by their own security forces. ⬇️
https://t.co/q7MN21yKob

#Iran

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

5/ The annihilation of Iran’s reform movement explains why people now chant the Shah’s son’s name – and even welcome US bombs. Not out of nostalgia or subservience, but because all other paths have been closed. ⬇️

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

7/ My latest for @unherd — on why Khamenei is likely to fight to the end, and what that means for Iran’s uprising.
@Chattysalerton
https://t.co/4j5gzdXCQ5
#Iran

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

1/ Iran has entered a new phase of unrest, marked by wider participation and the erosion of long-standing taboos. The old assumptions are obsolete which will have a huge bearing on what happens in the coming days. 🧵
https://t.co/4j5gzdXCQ5

[Christopher de Bellaigue @bellaigueC]

6/ Regimes fall when the men with guns defect or lose their will to fight. That moment has not arrived. But behind the blackout, a country of 90 million is entering a volatile new phase. ⬇️