Starmer and his shameless way with words

I'm not entirely sure why we bother, but it seems GE 2024 ('25?) has kicked off with Starmer's "6 first steps".  Just for completeness:

1. Deliver economic stability:  empty.  Only on the list - at the top - as some kind of pro forma finger-crossing anti-Truss-style-meltdown incantation. 
2. Cut NHS waiting times:  they all say that, and always have done.  Doubtless some number-juggling possibilities, otherwise it can't in practice be delivered by anything short of vast sums of money a la Blair government.
3. Launch a new Border Security Command:  empty.  A trivial opportunity to give highly paid jobs to a handful of ex coppers etc.  Will impress nobody, & certainly not the people-smugglers.
4. Set up Great British Energy:  empty.  Is any Green even vaguely satisfied by this as a commitment to anything they really care about?  Whatever happened to "the climate emergency is the #1 top priority for all of mankind, trumping all others" etc etc?
5. Crack down on antisocial behaviour:  empty.  Can't be delivered.
6. Recruit 6,500 new teachers:  empty.  There are 567,000 teachers in the UK.  Assuming an average career of 25 years, that means approx 20,000 are recruited annually in any case.  Tweak those assumptions as you like, but 6,500 is still an empty number.

Aside, then, from #1 (purely for the finance sector) the rest are empty words corresponding to polling data on popular priorities.  NHS > immigration > climate > ASB > education.

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Anyhow, as literally everyone has spotted, Starmer has cheerfully reneged on everything he's ever said.  His entire strategy rests on "looking the part" = sober white man in suit.  (POCs in suits, clearly in vogue recently, don't really seem to have made much of a mark in any part of the UK, though I suppose Khan would beg to differ and he may have a point.)  Starmer's reverse-ferret word-gaming is shameless enough to impress any spin doctor anywhere, and as a complete aside, I noticed a really cute one last week.  One of his biggest faux-pas of recent times came last October when he very deliberately said Israel had the right to cut off food, water and electricity to Gaza.  Last week he had this played back to him and he "welcomed" the opportunity to remind everyone that he'd immediately corrected the misunderstanding that he could ;possibly have meant what he said: he had of course meant the right to self defence, as he'd immediately made clear.  

Except, we know that wasn't what happened.  In fact, for several days afterwards, his people were instructed to hit the airwaves with highly equivocal explanations of what he'd said that didn't in any way represent an immediate and clear correction: and well to the fore in this sophistry was Emily Thornberry.  And it was she, last week, who popped up with more of the same, because she now has a clever argument that he was right all along!  It goes like this:  he was speaking only a couple of days after 7 Oct.  Israel had just commenced anti-Hamas operations, and as a purely temporary tactical military expedient, cutting off electricity etc to your enemy is perfectly OK.  So what he said was OK, too!

Amazing.  How long will these people get any benefit of the doubt whatsoever in government?  The Left hates them deeply: the Greens soon will; and you can see why.

ND      

Where will the engineers come from?

Recently we aired the thesis that the oil & gas majors (Exxon, Shell, BP, Total, Equinor et al) have effectively given up on net zero and, with greater or lesser degrees of 'green camouflage', intend to be sure of their share of many more decades of mainstream hydrocarbon business.  Shell was Exhibit 'A'.  Now we read: 

Shell to close Chinese green power generation business            Decision comes amid wider Western exodus from communist country

Warm, fuzzy  ...  pic: Octopus Energy, of course! 
Their London HQ really is like that

That's interesting for another reason.  The other day I met a senior Shell bod who told me they can't recruit UK or US new-graduate engineers for love nor money.  They can't even retain the ones they've got.  Apparently, GenZ kids don't much want to be engineers anyway; and those that do, want to save the planet in some cosy, purple-Octopus manner.  I'm guessing these kids hope this all comes to pass without their being made to do Hard Sums, too. 

So: to which universities does Shell go with its recruiting campaigns these days, then?   Ans: those of the Far East, almost exclusively.  It's not just the source of underpaid care workers and nail-bar slaves, then.

The Greens hope(d) to winkle the oil & gas cos out via ESG & investment boycotts, but that doesn't seem to be working as planned.  If Green indoctrination starves them of home-nation staff, but can't prevent bright, diligent, mobile Chinese / Malay / Vietnamese / Filipino engineers from filling their ranks, a decade from now, those oil & gas companies are going to have a very odd profile.

Perhaps the Army could also recruit there, too?  The Gurkhas have always been enthusiastic recruits.  And I bet you wouldn't need to worry about all that pronoun nonsense that's infected the Armed Forces these days.

ND

Trade war with China, hmm?

"The EU has restated its readiness to launch a trade war with China over imports of cheap electric cars, steel and cheap solar and wind technology, with Ursula von der Leyen saying the bloc will “not waver” from protecting industries and jobs after a meeting with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, on his multi-day tour of Europe ...

If she's serious, the cost of (inter alia) net-zero programmes across Europe will go through the roof: and in principle at least, that's non-discretionary spending.  It'll be made all the more acute by the forthcoming Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.  I presume it would also be the final nail in the coffin of German exports to China.  And who'd have any euros left over for Ukraine?  It's quite a bluff, if that's what it is.

If she means it, well all I can say is: assuming the UK would somehow get swept up in this rather than being a lucky beneficiary of ramped-up Chinese dumping, then not for the first time in recent years, I will be very glad of my substantial hedge against inflation.  (No, not gold - that's against Bad News.)

Incidentally, you gotta smile at the nasty conference-hall-style chair Macron gave Xi at the Élysée.  That wobbly table looks rather egalitarian, too ...   He gave Trump a much nicer time.

ND

Trouble at t'campus: where is this going?

I was a teenager when the anti-war protests hit US universities (and Grosvenor Square) and there was one of those historically quite frequent Paris uprisings.  It all seemed fairly apocalyptic at the time, with an undercurrent of Marxism & Trotskyism and something of a 'radicalisation' of a cohort of youth.  University-educated youth, that is, which in the UK at that time was a fairly modest percentage of the whole.  Large books are written on the impact this had - which wasn't nearly as much as its instigators hoped; certainly not as radical or instantaneous as they expected, even if it might have set off some kind of decades-long Gramscian process.

When I was at the university myself in the '70s, things were still fairly 'robust'.  There were pro-IRA meetings in pubs (with the occasional actual IRA man in attendance) and a readiness to resort to occupations of buildings, street-skirmishing, fist-fights etc on a fairly frequent basis.  I recall a spectacular (and very well-organised) pitch battle between the Trots and a visiting band of National Front: a set-piece medieval contest.  The 1980s seemed to put an end to this, and a curiously placid thirty-year period has ensued where very little campus violence has happened at all**.

Well, if the USA is its usual harbinger of trends, this might all be about to end.  In America there's no mainstream political outlet for pro-Palestinian sentiment (not even Bernie Sanders), absent which something ad hoc is bound to occur.  And there's a fairly violent anti-anti reaction, seemingly from off campus.  As happened in the '60s, it falls to an out-of-touch Democrat to preside over this, so a statesmanlike resolution seems unlikely and matters will fall to the frequently less-than-impressive local authorities.  The university authorities also seem fairly clueless as to what to do.  And elections loom.

Any lessons for us?  Well, Starmer is dead set against having the 'official' Labour Party offer any sort of mainstream political outlet for pro-Palestinian sentiment; and the university authorities are fairly clueless ... so we're also in a position where revolting students - in a vastly bigger overall student population than 50-60 years ago - are left to their own devices++.  Oh, and yes, elections loom here, too.

There are many dimensions to this but one that interests me particularly is: how does it play out in the GE?  Will the malcontents all vote for Galloway's party?  The Greens?  I just can't see a political pressure-valve for pro-Palestinian students, or indeed anyone with those sympathies.  Or maybe we find there aren't so many malcontents at all.

The 'traditional' student rebel never wanted a mainstream political outlet anyway, as a matter of pride.  They wanted to hate The Man in all his besuited manifestations.  Maybe, then, they are quietly happy at their rebellious work today, and will just graduate in due course to get on with the rest of their lives.  Could be a few smashed windows in the meantime, however.  Oh, and no statesmanlike resolution from Prime Minister "DPP" Starmer, either.

ND 

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** Oddly, though, the little dears are so permanently petrified (of whom?) that there are key-pad locks on every door, where once everyone came and went as they pleased.  I have various fairly regular contacts with undergraduates and sometimes over a drink they will say - it seems your generation had more fun than we do ..?   I think they are right.  It's sad.

++ I haven't been to Germany for a while but from a distance it looks like many of the same factors are at work there, too.  France?