By-election BS: open thread

The 'first draft of history' on this one is quite difficult to essay: the number of variables in play has been quite remarkable, and continues in the same manner.  4-D chess?  Try 5 or 6.  The consequences for Labour, in particular, are complex and highly contingent on many things.  (Could have been even more amusing if Your Party had been at the races - and in future it might just be.)

But we'll all have some early thoughts.  Here are a couple of mine:

• WTF was Reform doing, fielding a prize prat like Goodwin?  Just about the worst candidate imaginable for fighting a working-class / Muslim seat.  And Farage a man with his finger on the pulse?  I have heard only two 'excuses': (1) this was always a big stretch for Reform - something like no. 440 on their list of potential targets, IIRC;  (2) "Farage wanted to slap down a potential leadership rival" (yes, I've seen that surmised on the airwaves - but possibly a hypothesis born of the same bewilderment as my own).
• Obviously this is a Big Test for them / him, but right now I'd say Team Starmer is determined to tough it out.  (No guarantee of success, of course.)
• Polanski will now be striving to get his lovable piss-artist act together properly - which may in turn piss off some of his "support" as he seeks to ditch the "our policy is dictated by Conference and the leadership is only allowed to parrot it" doctrine of the Greens: which can't possibly survive if he's to capitalise on this.

I could go on ... but I said I wouldn't - so over to t'readership.

ND

Mandelson: a nation rejoices

Was there a home or a hostelry in the land where a cheer didn't go up when the news broke?

Not knowing precisely what the law is as regards publicly discussing live (potentially) criminal cases, I'll settle for a few random, unworthy observations.

• Gotta love the way Gordon Brown solemnly offered PC Plod his forensic account of how outrageously Mandelson betrayed him - sorry, betrayed the Nation - when in office just before and after the 2010 GE.  Hell hath no fury ... and it's never difficult to tell the difference between a dour Scotsman and a ray of sunshine.  Etc
• Also enjoyed seeing Mandy crammed into the back seat of ... a Ford Focus!  Of all cars.  With three other coppers.  He won't have sat in a seat as lowly as that for the best part of 40 years!
• Channel 4's "sources close to Mandelson" said that when Andy was arrested but not him, he reckoned the storm had passed.  Well, that's Mandy - always aggressive, shameless optimism in public, as we've said here before.  But - how much sleep did Mandy get, do we think, after Andy was arrested?
• Nobody has much scrupled to disguise the exact location of his "Camden" house (= Regents Park).  Nice house!  

The show rumbles on.  Brightens up a damp February.

ND

UPDATE - now being reported that at 4am this morning, just a short while after PC Plod let him go home, Mandy started briefing against the Met Police!  The modus operandi never changes - take the initiative, brief, spin, attack attack attack ! 

Crossing Putin's Red Lines

It's an observation often made, here and elsewhere, that the Ukraine-supporting West (as well as Ukraine itself) has many times crossed a large number of Putin's soi-dissant 'Red Lines' [1] since he mounted his inept, failed full-scale invasion of that country exactly four years ago tomorrow.  Before and during this string of Putin-prodding acts of lèse-majesté, there was a head of steam building up among the weaker hands that he would respond with nuclear retaliation.  Well, he never has - despite waving his wiener in that direction very demonstratively, several times.[2] 

Well now.  Last week, Ukraine's extremely effective campaign of deep strikes - sometimes very deep - into Mother Russia itself moved into new territory.  In the past they've blown up entire ammunition depots (with explosions registering on earthquake detectors); seriously incommoded the Bear's very large petrochemical industry; and made some telling attacks on selected hi-tech armaments manufactories.  Not to mention the astounding Operation Spiderweb.  Oh, and very probably a handful of assassinations in Moscow.  

But last week they excelled themselves: 

... a FP-5 Flamingo missile strike against the Russian state-owned Votkinsk Machine Building Plant in Votkinsk, Udmurtia Republic (roughly 1230 kilometers from the international border). The Ukrainian General Staff reported that the Votkinsk Plant produces Yars-series intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), submarine-launched Bulava ballistic missiles (SLBM), 9M723-1 type Iskander-M ballistic missiles, and 9-S-7760 Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles.  Russian opposition outlet Astra and a Ukrainian open-source intelligence project reported that the plant also produces Topol-M missile systems and Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM). Geolocated footage published on February 20 shows smoke rising from the Votkinsk Plant.  Udmurtia Republic Governor Aleksandr Brechalov acknowledged that Ukrainian drones struck and damaged an unspecified facility in Udmurtia.

Here's the thing: as part of the sabre-rattling, a couple of years ago Putin updated his public policy on use of nuclear weapons, in a manner designed to convince the West that the threshold for a Russian nuclear response is now quite a bit lower.   The new doctrine states that the use of nuclear weapons is possible in the event of the disabling of critical nuclear facilities, or massive attacks that pose such a threat.

So how does he classify last week's attack?  If he was looking for an excuse to go nuclear - in the middle of the current "trilateral negotiations" - it rather looks as though he might find one.

I say this simply as an observation.  Let's see if we all have further 'observations' in the course of the next days and weeks.

ND

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[1] Too many to list them all, but here are some (NOT including the demands that NATO withdraw from the 'new member states' etc etc made before the invasion):

• No Western arms of any kind to be supplied 
• No MiG 29s from former E.Bloc countries
• No former USSR tanks ditto
• No weapons whatsoever from Germany
• No HIMARs
• No Patriot missiles
• No Storm Shadows
• No Western tanks
• No F-16s
• No strikes inside Russia
• No Ukrainian counter-offensives into territory already captured

He probably would have included "no 6-month incursions into Kursk" - if he'd imagined for one instant that the Ukrainians were capable of it.  (Or given reliable reports by his ever-mendacious military.)

[2] Of course, Xi has told him to wind his nuclear neck in - an injunction that is probably still in force.

Does. Starmer. Never. Learn. Anything?

How would anyone summarise Starmer's most recent month's worth of self-inflicted misery?  Easy: he is accused of severe, sustained failure of judgement on personnel matters - in the face of prior knowledge and warnings.   Oh, and of course disowning responsibility afterwards.  No internalised ethics adviser inside that Max Headroom skull; and no internalised HR adviser either. 

So, when needing a new Cabinet Secretary (and how did that requirement come about, pray ..?) what does he do but pick someone with a track record of bullying accusations[1].  FFS, why?  OK, the Labour wimmin have been braying about the need to break up his "boys' club", but (a) so what?  (b) Sue Gray, anyone? 

Meanwhile, someone on Team Starmer is continuing the "good work"[2] with daily injections of supposedly ultra-pop, and/or left-pleasing "initiatives" - i.e. belligerent statements of empty intent - for Starmer to deliver as a mighty smokescreen for the non-stop string of genuinely damaging cock-ups.  It's not a prime-ministerial look: and it ain't working.

Here's a simple prediction: the meejah has got it in for him to the extent that an editorial edict of "find a story that brings him down" has replaced "stay onside with Team Starmer no matter what" as a standing headline of the newsroom's Orders of the Day.   They'll be doing whatever it takes to find stuff on the Romeo woman, too - given that there are evidently skeletons in her closet.  There'll always be a disgruntled / slighted / insulted / sidelined / bitter ex-colleague out there.  

A race, then, between which of them is turfed out first.  Popcorn supplies are running low.

ND

_______________

[1] Let nobody fall for "there was one complaint (a long time ago in a galaxy far away) ... but no case to answer".

[2] Of course, it may be that McSweeney is still having his instructions chanelled into TS from wherever he's skulking.  Mandy's too - even if from one of Deripaska's yachts.  Well, why not?  They are trusted advisers, no?

When does the AI bubble burst - and what then?

That AI is currently inflating a mighty economic bubble is a commonplace observation.  A vast proportion of US economic growth (as conventionally measured) and stock market value is related to AI.  Every damned company on the planet is trying to portray itself as somehow AI-contributing or AI-powered - and they are frequently getting a gratifying share-price kicker from it[1].  Presumably, the pension industry is pretty addicted by now.

In the real world, the vast and (we are told) exponentially-growing demand for electricity - 100% secure baseload electricity to boot - made by data centres is seriously distorting electric power-system planning for many a nation.  Coming atop the average grid's already torturing itself - and its hapless bill-payers - to accommodate the diametrically opposed demands of a decentralised renewables-based future, this is a serious spanner in the works.  And of course governments everywhere are anxious to play host to new data centres, Starmer's as much as any; and are making this a policy priority.   But the (would-be) data centre builders have twigged that these contortions on the part of conventional grid operators may very probably not prove successful - and thus are talking about joint ventures with nuclear generators and ... sponsoring nuclear fusion development! [2]  Yup, it's a completely irrational bubble.     

But what does that tell us about AI itself?   Not much, beyond the obvious fact that it has gripped the universal imagination to the extent that dollar signs rotate in every businessman's eyeballs.  

Well.  Railways had a mania, and many a railway company went bust.  The technology and much of the infrastructure they built is still evolving and very much in use.  We had a dotcom bubble.  It burst, alright, but it didn't mean the internet was a phantasm.  Enron was a bubble: but it didn't mean the Enron vision for how energy markets should be configured was wrong.  (Even China is trying to figure out how to bring that revolution into its own constipated energy sector.)  Etc etc - these techie-based phenomena are not like Dutch tulip mania: nobody needs tulips, but everyone needs railways / electricity / the www / .... and, probably, we'll continue to want and need the advances that are made under the banner of 'AI'.

So: if history is any guide, it'll be a painful financial collapse; a reshuffle of the runners and riders in the "AI industry" (for those who don't break a leg & are not shot by the vet); and the underlying new tech rumbles on to find a more stable way to become a permanent fixture in all our economies and our ways of life. 

Views?  Predictions?  Timing ..?

ND

UPDATE: a bucket of cold water over certain claims for AI:

________________

[1]  Even Drax, FFS - a floundering, downsizing biomass-burning power company.  

[2]  On the eve of the 2007-09 financial crisis, a high-end energy-specialist VC firm of my acquaintance was looking for opportunities to invest in unsubsidised nuclear powerplant development.  When money is aimlessly sloshing about on that scale, that's when you really know a financial crash is coming soon.

Mandelson, document-release ... and Polly Toynbee

So what to make of the latest state of play over Mandy?

I'd say it's really clear: Team Starmer is utterly determined to tough this out, and they reckon they can do it: their man is no conscience-stricken wimp, likely to flake on them one fine morning.   Grim determination is no guarantee of success, of course: but (a) it is at least a necessary condition of success; and (b) these are scheming, desperate people with a lot of levers available to them.

> the way things developed in Parliament on Wednesday shows that Team S's going-in point was to resist document disclosure, period.  They were thwarted procedurally by the unholy alliance of Badenoch + Rayner, but we know what is plainly their aim: not to release docs. 

> they are 'framing' like crazy to the media, and it still largely gets swallowed whole.  As well as "It's all about Mandelson's lies - to my staff (not me, of course)" and "I wanted to release the docs yesterday" (see previous post), we read: 

• "There will be no leadership challenge, because ... [Rayner = tax dodger, still under investigation // Burnham = disqualified // Streeting = Mandelson-best-buddy // etc]." 

• "PC Plod has a serious point about not prejudicing their investigation / potential charges being brought."   

• "So-oo many docs - this is going to take months and months."   

Etc etc.  Yup, they are going for that oldest, most intellectually dismal, most sordidly shameless  tactic of all: playing for time - and it's often successful.  Let me give you a recent parallel: a case I have been reading up lately from my own patch (energy).  A big corporate - Drax plc - had a run-in with an employee-whistleblower whom Drax fired, and who brought an employment case, early in March last year.  Halfway through the unusually lengthy Employment Tribunal, they settled: by all accounts it amounted to a capitulation by Drax.  Meejah organisations sought release of the court documents - which, had the case continued, they'd have had access to, it was a public hearing.  Drax has stonewalled for nearly eleven months, only finally releasing the docs under a court order at the end of Jan.  And even now, the docs are (a) not the complete set, and (b) in some cases, heavily redacted (on the usual grounds: "commercial sensitivity / privacy / yadder yadder").  In which time Drax has managed to secure 4 more years of juicy new subsidy, and a 40% increase in its share price, from which many execs will benefit materially, in cash.

If a corporation can behave like that, how much more easily can HMG, with all the resources of the State and the added killer pretext of "national security" (see below)?  My prediction: we ain't gonna get anything much before those May elections - and we'll never get anything they truly don't want us to see.  

Which brings us to La Toynbee, whose general run of risible Guardian offerings is occasionally but reliably punctuated with something half-worthwhile.  Here's her latest.  You need to look past the usual fatuous fawning - the idea that Starmer is "a decent PM" (she once idolised Gordon Brown, too - and Tony Blair before him) to get to the blunt & forthright expression of utter disgust at the "send-him-to-the-Tower treachery and treason".  And here's a little nugget (my emphasis): 

... he gave a wretched display of it in the Commons with a fatal attempt to hold back some vital documents on Mandelson’s vetting and appointment. Never mind that it was for sincere security reasons – mainly fear of what abuse of the US president the papers might contain – Starmer failed to measure the ferocity of the storm on his own benches

That Trump angle  -  another subtle bit of Team Starmer framing?  Well, maybe: but it's a neat idea I hadn't seen aired elsewhere.

My prediction stands: many months of Strategic Starmer Stonewalling to come.  Don't change your New Year predictions for 'name of PM on 24.12.2026' just yet awhile.  Meantime - more popcorn!

ND

UPDATE: her Gruaniad colleague Aditya Chakrabortty slaps down La Toynbee's characterisation of Starmer as a 'decent PM'. 

The refrain that Starmer is a “decent” man does not fit his record of deceiving his way to the top of the Labour party, sitting on his hands during the massacre in Gaza or clamping down on protest against it.  

Oh, those feuding Graun writers !

We know the Mandelson "vetting" was a stitch-up

As ever, Starmer had a carefully crafted speech for deployment on Thursday.  He vehemently - very vehemently - wants us to believe that whatever Parliament thought it had secured the day before, it's really all about a catalogue of "Mandelson's lies" which Starmer "had wanted to hand over yesterday" (if PC Plod hadn't told him not to hand them over; yeah, right).  Nice try, Kier; but what your MPs actually want - and won't easily be deflected from - is what McSweeney's role in all this was, blow by, errr, blow.

And what McSweeney was up to is clear enough - orchestrating a sham of a vetting process.  How do I know this?  Because on top of outright secret sources (and who knows what they knew?), within the security services is an OSINT desk - open-source intelligence gathering.  People whose job is to trawl everything available from open sources.  And in this day and age of Bellingcat and the extraordinary online resources they've tapped into and made public, and when you have the resources of HMG, GCHQ etc at your disposal, OS is one helluva resource, properly marshalled.  Be it immediately added that imposing QA on what is found online etc is a very significant analytic task, when all the OS stuff is assembled, tinfoil-hat dross / disinformation / Маскировка and all.  But that's not the point in this case.  What can be said for certain is that whatever was available in OS, worldwide, on Mandelson - and everybody knows that includes, e.g., the Deripaska affair - it was ready to hand within Whitehall.  And cumulatively, it was all anybody needed to know to conclude he was a non-starter for Ambassador by any rational criteria.

Ready to hand - but seemingly not deployed.  In other words - and let's charitably dump this all on the convenient fall-guy - McS ran a sham exercise in which Mandelson was invited to tell whatever lies he liked; and he was then taken at his word, without the security services being tasked to give it the old red-ink marginal annotation routine.  Because if Mandelson had simply given them a big assemblage of lies, they could have demolished it, line by line. 

The alternative explanations - that all his lies were indeed fisked, or even that he simply didn't lie at all - and still Starmer made the appointment, well, that would be even worse for Starmer.  But since PC Plod is conveniently withholding the list of lies, we can only speculate...

ND

Mandelson: endless, shameless optimism of self-promotion

A few months ago we had cause to consider Mandy and his little ways.  "Always plotting, always thinking creatively, always strategising" - even, or perhaps especially, when his back is against the wall [are we allowed to say that?].  Since then, he's been defenestrated from the Washington embassy and caught pissing up George Osborne's side street.  But - the usual modus operandi - he waited for just a short time before he was back on manoeuvres.  As Guido has documented, before the lame attempt to offer Trump-whispering advice in the Speccie, Mandy had been hawking himself around the meejah, and for some reason Laura Kuenssberg and her people decided to gratify him with a big set-piece Sunday interview.  (Why??)  Another carefully-crafted foray; and when he decided his week's work around SW1 hadn't quite had the desired effect, why then it was followed by another crafty tweaking of his tortuous, oblique "apology".  And, as Private Eye noted, for the Mandy of 1998 it was Don't you dare say I'm a gay man!  Now, it's Don't forget to say I'm a gay man!   

Now here's the thing.  These two big self-PR drives, separated by several months, have one significant factor in common (over and above his unvarying MO and the eternal willingness of the meejah to rise to his bait): on both occasions we may be sure he knew full well there was a barrow-load of shit coming his way.  In such circumstances, maybe keep your head down? [are we allowed to say that?]  No, not Mandy: all the instincts are still to get on the front foot and try to shape the agenda. 

And what a barrow of ordure this one turns out to be!  Has there been a bigger scandal since Profumo?  As the hacks trawl the 3,000,000 new docs, more outrageous stuff turns up by the hour - and how much more might there yet be?  

But, you know what?  He'll stay down [are we ..?] for a bit: but somehow there will be a dream of redemption and another foray into the Westminster limelight.  Maybe just a bit longer interval this time, though ...

ND