Polly Toynbee: stopped clock, sometimes right

Something else I returned to was a Graun article by La Toynbee, which broadly makes a lot of sense. 

For baffling reasons, soon after the general election a government with a sky-high in-tray of problems embarked on a gigantic local council reorganisation no one knew about. It didn’t feature in the manifesto, nor in the local government secretary Steve Reed’s conference speech last week – but England has plans to axe unknown numbers of local councillors – some estimates put it at nearly 90%. The white paper outlining these plans actually boasts that there will be “fewer local politicians”, pandering disgracefully to the general scorn for politics ... For all the talk of localism and connecting to neighbourhoods, these are the unheralded foot soldiers of democracy. It is councillors who run political parties and much that binds their communities. Few people ever join political parties, yet the whole tottering democratic system relies entirely on those who do. Running the council and becoming a councillor is part of party members’ purpose and motivation. Abolishing so many will diminish democratic engagement over time

For once, she's right - it happens a couple of times per decade.  This is awful.  The "baffling reason", we must suppose, is Starmer's centralising tendency, coupled with his complete lack of political hinterland or general grass-roots experience.  

ND 

Putin 'apologises': an interesting development

Returned from a couple of weeks away to find interesting news on several international fronts.  One little-noticed development that particularly caught my eye is that Putin has publicly "apologised" to Aliyev for the shooting down of an Azerbaijani airliner last year, and acknowledged formally for the first time that Russian air defences were what caused the disaster.  When it happened 10 months ago, Putin commiserated over the event - well, he kinda had to, it happened over Russian airspace, FFS - but said only that Ukrainian drones had been in the area.  Ever since, Aliyev has been demanding full acknowledgement, apology, punishment of the guilty, and compensation; and only now does he get just the first two of these, along with a statement that the details are still being looked into.   The inverted commas around "apologised" are required because of course it was done in the most ungracious, weasel-like manner.  (Needless to say, the Russian 'patriotic' media space reckons Aliyev is seriously out of order for having the temerity even to mention the matter, and should be subjected to a Special Military Operation of his own as soon as, errr, resources allow.)  

Why apologise now?  We need to take into account something else that happened recently - when Putin went to Beijing for the VJ-Day 80th anniversary celebrations.  Xi engineered things so that as Putin was going into a reception, who should he meet at the door but Aliyev, and was forced to shake his hand as though Aliyev was receiving him into the occasion.  Being bounced like this went down exceedingly badly in Moscow: it was widely viewed as a humiliation for L'il Volodya.  

Which it was.  On massive international occasions where diplomatic choreography is everything - particularly where China is involved and symbolism is paramount - nothing like that happens by coincidence.  Putin was set up then; and afterwards presumably taken aside and told to get on with the public apology.  Much as Moscow likes to big up Putin sitting next to Xi, one couldn't but notice who was sitting on the other side ...  Yep, it was Jong-Un the Wrong'un.  That's Xi saying to the world: meet my two surly stooges - the guys who are wholly beholden to me.

Putin has never been forgiven by China for invading Georgia during the 2008 Beijing Olympics - a truly monstrous breach of protocol.  It would have been against the rules even during ancient times: the Games marked a truce across the whole of Greece.  But for proud, prickly China, it was an outrage.  In the Jan 2008 C@W annual predictions compo, I forecast the invasion but with one erroneous detail: I said it would be after the Olympics.  I mean, what kind of idiot would do it during ..?

ND

Starmer vs ... Whom?

"Decency vs Division" is this week's rallying call for Starmer, with a range of associated wok-ish sub-slogans.  It's suggested by some that he, Reeves and Phillipson are running snide little side-campaigns against Andy Burnham and Lucy Powell: but who is the primary enemy in Starmer's sights?

The obvious, face-value answer is N. Farage: but I don't think so.  IMHO, this whole Party Conference turn is aimed squarely at targets on the Left, in the two menacing shapes of Zack Polansky and the Corbyn / Sultana rabble.  Starmer's first aim now must be to persuade what remains of the left-ish, green-ish sector of the Labour movement that he's sufficiently, demonstratively anti-Farage for them to reckon staying with Labour is the safest option, rather than futile fragmentation into the ranks of the splitters.  A bit like the French are always doing to fend off Marine Le Pen.

Will any of his target audience be persuaded?  It's not clear to me that many will, once the Conference euphoria is over.  He'll be permitting new offshore drilling applications soon; those new runways displease a lot of folk; and it'll be quite hard to row back on his anti-small-boaters rhetoric.  Etc Etc.  OK, Reeves may shortly find a bit of (our) dosh for the two-child benefit cap thing, plus fuel discounts for a couple million more welfare recipients: but he still won't be delivering Gaza from its fate, or doing anything that would seriously piss off Trump.

We'll see.

Incidentally, what's the betting that initially, someone on the speechwriting team actually suggested "Diversity vs Division"?  Before being slapped down, and probably shown the door ...

ND 

The veterans problem in Ukraine

Following on from the earlier post on Russia's fairly comprehensive plans for its future tsunami of troubled veterans, we now turn to Ukraine.  The situation looks potentially to be much, much worse.

On the one hand, whatever the 'outcome', Russia will still be there and Ukraine will not be able to stand down its army.

On the other, its overall manpower problem has been dire from Day 1.  If Zelensky has dropped any balls at all, the biggest has been his failure to crack on with a proper conscription plan: so Ukraine has been fighting the war with men (and women) predominantly of age 30+, some a lot older still, when everyone knows that (infantry) warfare is a business for 18+.  Those 30+'s have fought magnificently - much, much better than the Russian rabble** they have faced - but there is a limit.  Meanwhile, back on the home front, a large percentage of the remaining male population has been (a) bribing the local commissar to keep themselves out of the recruiting office, and/or (b) skipping abroad.  There is only so much that can be delegated to a fleet of drones, across a battlefield as large as Ukraine's.

The demographic problem resulting from this is acute, and can only get worse; and I haven't seen much sign of it being addressed.  Well, there's a helluva lot else going on.

The precise details of how this plays out will depend upon exactly how the current conflict is "frozen".  There are of course many scenarios - too many to legislate for every possibility.  There are just two strands I think will feature in any case.

1.  For many years forward the EU (and prob the UK) will be sending huge amounts of cash to Ukraine for civil reconstruction and societal rebuilding (a dismal proportion of which will be swiftly embezzled, as has been the case throughout) - it's the only thing the EU really knows how to do;

2.  There will be very many violent men roaming the world, offering their services as mercenaries or enforcers for organised crime, either as thugs or as expert hackers and drone operators.  As regards the thugs, go back to the first post: that's what happened after Russia / Afghanistan; it's what galvanises Putin; and that was small beer by comparison.

Per the earlier post again: at least Putin is thinking about it.  He has that luxury.  It will take a worldscale genius to solve Ukraine's manpower issues: and if no such person emerges, the legacy will be long and baleful.  Brave, brave Ukraine deserves something better.

ND

_________________

*  I first met Russian soldiers in the flesh in 1985 at a conference in Potsdam.  They were an unutterable rabble, the officers and men of the proud Soviet Army.  The officers wandered around in public with their tunics raffishly unbuttoned and their hats at rakish angles, a parody of caddish behaviour.  The men were pathetically thin and unsoldierly in their ill-fitting, coarse uniforms and bizarre outsize flat caps.  And this was 3rd Shock Army, the tip of the spear!  Forty years on, nothing much seems to have changed: it was troops like this that were humiliated in just a few weeks in Feb-March 2022, and driven off the field in full rout during Ukraine's Kharkiv counter-offensive in the September of that year.

Russia plans for the return of 'troubled' veterans

Among many dire woes of various kinds, the combatants in the war in Ukraine each have a massive problem brewing: what to do with their armies when fighting ceases.  Any nation does, and always has had.  The details are different in each case: I'll look at Russia in this post.  

The objective diagnosis is this: hugely disgruntled Russian soldiery returning from their 10-year adventure in Afghanistan 1979-1989, brought with them many personal problems, and were not well looked after.  They in turn caused no end of social problems themselves, many of the most violent, brutal and criminal  kind.  Putin knows all about this from his KGB days, in even more detail than every Russian citizen knows anyway.  There will be even more returnees from the 'Special Military Operation' (SMO); and thus far, there has been no large-scale demobilisation (perhaps for this very reason).  Even so, those few who have returned, on leave or wounded or just deserters, have been causing all the expected problems.  This is not least because when they are serving in the SMO their pay is substantially better than anything they'll return to - often their reason for signing up in the first place.  The towns from which they hail (mostly quite a long way from Moscow ...) are trembling at the thought of this happening on a large scale.

Zhukov: definitely not wanted by Stalin in 1946
photo: MoD Russian Federation  Mil.ru

Coupled with this is a particular Russian problem: its post-Tsarist leadership has always feared the military.  Communist parties always do, the world over: doctrinally, they recognise no higher power than the Party - but they have obviously also spotted that large numbers of men trained in violence are themselves potentially a rival source of power to be reckoned with.  Lenin's first actions on taking power were (a) to strike a peace with Germany, quickly followed by (b) disarming the army. Shortly after WW2, Stalin (who had of course eviscerated the Russian army officer corps in the 1930s) dispatched Marshal Zhukov, undisputed victor of the Eastern Front, to effective banishment (ironically, to the Odessa Military District), such was the Marshal's popularity and stature.

Irrespective of the details of whatever outcome in Ukraine, Putin - shaken to his core by Prigozhin just two years ago - knows he has to deal with this comprehensively.  Phase One, as noted above, is probably just to avoid demobilising at all for as long as possible.  Phase Two is the "Time of Heroes" programme being rolled out, that will reserve a range of sinecures in civic society (in government, deputy mayoral posts etc etc) for veterans of the SMO.  Now, word is coming out that veterans will be packed off en masse to build new infrastructure and enterprises in ... Siberia!  (And Murmansk, which is just as cold.)  The pay won't be great but it will be a job ...  As one Russian cynic has it:

"Veterans have already fulfilled the most important task of the state - to fight our enemies. Who, if not them, should perform new tasks, be ahead of everyone in this matter? Veterans, current and future, let's be honest, in civilian life, many of you will not be able to earn as much as in the army. Resettlement in Siberia will be an excellent (and for some, the only) way for you to find yourself in a peaceful life," 

 ... oh, and it won't be anywhere near Moscow.

Still, at least Putin is thinking about it strategically.  Unlike so many other aspects of the SMO.  Well, au fond, his training was KGB.

ND