A while back I suggested Team Starmer had decided to tough it out: and I'm now utterly convinced of it. Among several straws in the wind is a flying wooden beam: he's boasting about taking us back into the single market by stealth! This is not a man who reckons he's done for at the end of May: quite the opposite, he visibly exudes the same kind of calm faux-authority over the heads of his pygmy-challengers that he did back in 2020, when he was obviously going to win the Labour leadership 'race'. [1]
Given the fallout amongst the ranks of his former advisers, we must presumably look to Miliband for Team Starmer's current level of brazen confidence; some kind of bargain that runs: you do what I tell you, and if you're still here in June - which you will be - you'll make me Chancellor. [2] Ominously, Miliband knows exactly what he'd like to do with the role.
It doesn't hurt that, even in the midst of endless and ongoing tactical miss-steps[3], Team Starmer have lighted upon a phrase to use in connection with Iran, which they clearly the believe to be highly felicitous: I won't be dragged into this war!
The bottom line is: he currently looks confident, which is 90% of the battle when it's just 330-odd fractious and frightened parliamentary sheep you need to get in line - with the Streetings and Rayners of this world left looking pretty sheep-ish themselves. Yep, Team Starmer have convinced themselves they are going to see the post-May period out, and in some comfort.
And those May elections? Is Reform really going to sweep the board, as sone thought inevitable not so many weeks ago? Well, maybe, but I doubt it. In my manor, they are a complete rabble, feuding like crazy amongst themselves. If by some strange twist of the electoral arithmetic they were to get the mayoralty and/or the council, they'd not have a clue what to do with it: and in the meltdown-process of colourful infighting and manifest incompetence thereafter, they would lose any hope of a decent result come the next GE. Is this representative of Reform across the country as a whole? I'm guessing so.
One might imagine that Greens, equally full of chancers and losers, are just that little bit less likely to blow things completely by way of fratricide in any council where they get power in May. We haven't had Peak Green yet; though I'll hazard a guess we've had Peak Reform. Meanwhile, Starmer struts confidently around his confected B-list gigs here and around the world, and the media portray him in exactly the way Team Starmer have scripted for them. His nerve, his brazen shamelessness, is holding.
ND
__________________
[1] Who remembers Long-Bailey or Nandy now?
[2] Though I still maintain that, the longer he hangs in there, Miliband stands a chance of the leadership for himself
[3] E.g.
- "You can't use our bases ...
- ... oh, actually, yes you can"
- Chagos
- HMS Dragon
- RFA Lyme Bay
- "I need to talk to my team"
"is getting cocky". Is that another of those smutty online hints that Charmless tends to be a naughty boy? Or likes to befriend naughty boys, or whatever the implicit message is? Shame on you all. Just give us the authoritative rumours.
ReplyDeleteI fear you're spot on with the observation about "Peak Reform" - looks to me that the sudden influx of displaced, disgraced, Tories looking for a safer berth has disillusioned many, and that Farage is fighting very shy indeed of taking an axe to our benefits culture. Keep the pensioners onside! If there is a God, then we're going to need its help if Reform failure delivers us to a Labour / Green cooperation - esp if the next GE or the one after throws up a few more Independent MPs from ethnic monoculture constituencies.
ReplyDeleteTrouble is that the Reform leadership is looking like Conservatives 2.0, because it is. Good to see them slagging off Boris though, if ever a man deserved it...
Deleteauthoritative rumours? I wish I had one. We all surely recall that, just before the GE, it was widely suggested that the meejah (and the Tories) had something nuclear on Starmer, but had decided not to play that card when he was quite obviously going to win anyway, and might exact a terrible revenge
ReplyDeleteSo: such powder as exists in that quarter, is still dry
On the subject of 'cocky', the one authoritative rumour I can offer is that the new Cabinet Secretary has a closet chock full of not-so-dead skeletons that are just waiting their moment to start rattling their chains. I suppose the dead weight of the Entire Establishment is, by default, very much on her side (for now), and can also wreak horrible vengeance on a Civil Service worm that turns out of line. Or a newspaper.
Dame Antonia Rebecca Caroline Angharad Catherine Romeo
DeleteAye, she looks a goer. But how does she fit all her names on official forms?
You don't need much space in the hotel register for "Mrs Smith"
ReplyDeleteThe wisdom of Mark Steyn: no bomb has yet been devised that could do the damage to what we used to call Christendom that the last three generations of the western political class have inflicted. We do not need to be nuked; as I wrote all those years ago in America Alone, we are our own suicide bomb.
ReplyDeleteI’m voting Green as a “revenge / sympathy shag” combo. It’s only the local elections so where better else to make a protest vote? Maybe if Labour poll in single digits, for wherever reasons voters expressed their anger and however they do it, it’ll have some effect.
ReplyDeleteOn a similar theme, while Miliband gets a lot of stick, I’m continually baffled by the endless loyalty hydrocarbon lovers show to the object of their affections.
Hydrocarbons are like that kooky, crazy girlfriend most of us have at some point. The one who doesn’t just get too drunk, they OD on a cocktail of anything going and end up in a coma for a week. They don’t just cheat on you, they cheat on you with your brother and then dump you at the alter on your wedding day. They don’t just get fired from their job, they get arrested for embezzlement and expect you to stick by them through the trial. Fools that you are, you’ll probably do so, too.
Why, given everything we have seen, not just now, but our entire lives (I’m on about my seventh or eighth energy crisis) do so many (most if not all here dare I say) continue to hold a candle for such miserable dirty rotten scoundrels as hydrocarbons? Time was, you could probably legitimately say There Is No Alternative and no-one else would have you.
Not now. So why the continued obsession?
I think the nation that sells us our solar panels and electric cars actually gets the bulk of its energy not from hydrocarbons, but from good old C - as in Coal.
DeleteMy understanding is also that both industrial and domestic energy costs in that country are exceeding low, which is why they can sell us windmills, electric cars and solar panels. Alas the wind doesn't always blow, the sun isn't out at night, and we're not full of mountains and valleys like Norway - a good thing as we need food. Storage is an issue.
There's a video going round of a fire in the multi-storey car park at BYD, where they park the test and decommissioned models. Most impressive, like something from Ukraine, with frequent bangs as another battery cooks off. It'll be interesting when all our tower blocks have Tesla Walls.
https://t.me/llordofwar/601264
China's coal share is declining fast. In 2025, coal-fired generation fell (first annual drop in a decade in some metrics), while renewables (especially solar + wind) met or exceeded all new demand growth. Non-fossil capacity now exceeds coal. The energy mix in China is in a very rapid transition. Like all energy sector developments, including the UK, what is the direction of travel, rather than historical norms?
DeleteYour BYD fire is just an anecdote, the fire (you neglect to mention it was in scrap vehicles) is real but cherry-picked and sensationalised.
You have to resort to scaremongering again with battery storage fires. Modern installations follow strict fire codes, separation, ventilation, and monitoring rules. Widespread residential/home storage fires in high-rises are not a documented epidemic.
"So why the continued obsession?"
DeleteBecause 70% of our energy consumption (in all forms) comes from fossil fuels. Plus of course a large % of the things we import are also produced using FF. So our reliance on FF for the lifestyles we have become used to is probably 80% +.
Try removing 80% of the FF derived things/services in your life, and see how you get on. Then come back to us as to how attached you actually are to them. (Warning - all your food is produced with heavy inputs of FF in the form of diesel, fertilisers and agro-chemicals. So you may get a bit hungry).
@Sobers — well, I hope you’ve got deep pockets then, to fund all those products with a fossil fuel dependency. Because you’re going to need them. And that’s only if “things get back to normal” in pretty short order. $150/barrel oil is going to make things a lot worse, if it comes to pass.
DeleteYou are paying this — and paying this you most certainly are — because you insist on perpetuating the squandering of fossil fuel reserves and output not for the tiny handful of essential industrial processes which require them (and once you strip out high grade heat, which blue hydrogen can cover, the hydrogen production being a byproduct of excess renewables output) and fertilisers but on space heating/cooling and transport. These are where the vast, vast majority of fossil fuels are combusted. Uses for which renewable alternatives are readily available and, at current prices, a bargain.
I’m alright. I’ve got loads of money. I can afford it, even if we see $200/barrel. My EV and heat pumps plus BESS have never looked such a good investment.
You, though, and the rest of the hydrocarbon boosters, enjoy your (completely needless) bout of inflation.
Our obsession with hydrocarbons is possibly because modern civilization requires it. I for one like to eat, have a roof over my head, central heating and flushing toilets are pretty good too.
ReplyDeleteI can see you’re still dating my old friend TINA. You’re even beginning to sound like her. Pretty soon, she’ll be buying your clothes for you and saying how much she dislikes your friends. That’s how she rolls.
DeleteTINA likes to tell you she’s TINA and is very keen for you to tell anyone who’ll listen about how TINA this, TINA that.
But the truth is — which you of course know all too well — TINA isn’t really TINA at all.
I suppose Starmer can feel a bit confident given the others are even more useless. I'm relaxed about the single market, thought Brexit was a daft idea. Seems that under the hood so do most Tories.
ReplyDeleteThe US Special Relationship is a bit threadbare, the Greens can enlarge bosoms. A good few folk may have some sympathy for the Green cause - but credibility on economics or anything much not so good. The Tories seem even more lacklustre with squeaky toy Badenoch in front and Tory MK2 headed by Nigel The Spiv who just looks as if he smells.
The fundamental problem is that none has much to offer. Housing has to be kept rare and expensive to keep the banks and the savers and financiers and the nimbies on side. We are a bit pricey for making stuff but good in those niches that remain. Can't afford to lose any more because we can't all be Bain Consultants or Magic Circle lawyers. The rest of us have to make coffee or cut hair or volunteer in a charity shop. There are no whizzy new industries on the horizon and energy going up and up.
Looking at our public institutions I get the feeling a few hundred machine guns deployed for a week or two would do some good. But we must be civilised and stick to Law and the lawyers are half the problem. And Starmer is a lawyer. Bright people have figured there is no money in doing anything useful, get into being a professional burden or nuisance or a no-sayer.
"Housing has to be kept rare and expensive to keep the banks and the savers and financiers and the nimbies on side"
DeleteHousing isn't particularly rare. There's a significant oversupply on the market right now now, because successive governments have maintained tax incentives which keep the price high - no CGT or profits taxation, unlike almost any other asset class you can name. That's in return for making a property transaction expensive (SDLT), rewarding the government. Another factor is Miliband and his nut zero - constantly upping the spec of housebuilding and adding tens of thousands of ££ to the cost of a house - to the delight of the builders / developers who can add stuff at marginal cost and sell it at huge profit..
Let us know if you find yourself bidding against a Somali boat person should you be in the market anytime.
"thought Brexit was a daft idea
DeleteFor most Red Wall brexit voters, a leave vote was a vote against mass EU (or to be exact A6 accession) immigration. I remember my son coming back from an agency job where he was the only non-Polish speaker.
Some Tories claimed to have seen brexit as a vote for buccaneering Randian capitalism. Maybe that's why Johnson and Sunak replaced Poles and Romanians with Africans and Indians, dooming their party perhaps for good.
IMHO, Sobers broadly has the right of it, Clive. You might want to read the works of Kathryn Porter on her blog [ watt-logic.com/blog/ ] & in the DTel, to get a flavour of just how infeasible is rushing ahead with pure capacity of renewables without taking fully into account (and investing heavily for) the systems aspects. Then check the costs involved - either of failing to carry out the systems aspects, or indeed of successfully carrying them out. The latter might be possible - most things are, if you throw enough money at them - but it's hard to argue it would be cost-effective.
ReplyDeleteNotes: [1] Her blog stuff is often heavy reading, but hey, getting down and dirty with the details of this thing is really complex! It's the leftie-greens who imagine it's all really easy. (Her DTel stuff is inevitably a bit populist and abbreviated)
[2] I am not Kathryn Porter(!), though some have surmised; and don't agree with her nuclear fixation - but I sure as Hell agree with 90% of what she writes)
How much cheaper would nukes be if the world dumped the ludicrously anti-scientific method for calculating the risks of low dose rate radiation known as the LNT model?
Delete(There's no contention about the dangers of high dose rate radiation.)
But ND - China's electricity from coal dropped by 1.6% in 2025 ! (It dropped by 6% in 1976 and 4% in 2015 if carbonbrief are correct).
DeleteSo China is burning less coal ! Er ... IEA say
"Meanwhile, China’s coal consumption held steady at 4 953 Mt, with flexible coal-fired power supporting renewables and coal demand increasing for chemical production, offsetting declines in cement and other industries."
Nearly 5 billion tonnes ! "1913, UK coal production peaked at 292 million metric tons" - i.e. maybe 6.5% of 5 billion.
Nowt against renewables, but they need cover, not only for dark and still periods, but for extreme weather events - at least HMG is aware, even if they can't find an expert from north of Oxford. Who cleaned all the recent Saharan dust from southern solar panels, of does the rain just wash them?
To which I can only add that I had to contain a belly laugh that fossil fuel fans are still — still! — making a “yah, but it’s too expensive to switch to alternatives” argument, given everything that’s, erm, going on right now. This was all the more poignant as I’d just a little while ago walked by a petrol station where diesel fuel buyers were forking out 191.9p / litre. The poor bugger forking out the best part of £100 to fill the tank on their van (I took a sneaky peek at the pump display) would have had, I suspect, some choice words about how grateful he should be for all the cost avoidance he’s enjoying by a continued dependency on oil.
DeleteSnarking aside, Porter is excellent and her analysis is very interesting. And no, I’m never going to claim decarbonisation is going to be cheap or especially easy. But as we’ve discussed before, “cost” in the energy industry is a very malleable term. Grid distribution assets, as we seem to be talking about here, are, of course, amortised over many decades, if not a century. The same for generation assets, with a typical 20-30 year lifespan. So they’re fixed up front and a known quantity. Unlike fuel costs for the conventional systems.
As a hopefully interesting counter point to Porter, here is an excellent summary of the problems facing Australia. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-14/debunking-four-myths-around-australias-fuel-crisis/106558264
Australia is literally drowning in fossil fuels. Unfortunately, they’re the wrong sort of fossil fuels at the moment. This is a salutary lesson for those seeking to try to make out the UK can revitalise its own reserves and then all would be well. Hydrocarbons are not a single product. They are many different products with different properties and production processes each satisfying a separate niche. You can be swimming in one product, but in a drought for another. Renewals of these ecosystems isn’t cheap, either.
That’s what I so appreciate about your commentary. It does always cite the nuance of this very framing-specific debate. What we see with so many of the BTL nonsense ends up committing the same sin you rightly draw attention to about any energy transition. They make it seem like it’s a no-brainer to just keep trying to exploit existing hydrocarbon reserves and hope you can keep finding new ones.
It really isn’t. Miliband is very to lucky to have the sorts of enemies we get treated to here in the comments cheap seats. No wonder, if this is the level of his typical opposition, he prevails as he does.
Just as a specific about the Porter article, her partisan advocacy, one-sided causation, omission of climate and energy security trade-offs, and exaggeration of policy as uniquely disastrous rather than a contested ideological choice, do rather typify Miliband’s typical opposition and opponents.
DeleteWe are, I think we can all agree on this at least, talking about CapEx and maintenance for energy systems running into the tens and tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions. Cumulatively the running costs (for fossil fuel generation) run into trillions over the decades. The notion that the fate of such vast sums is — long / long — amenable to the kind of partial, selective and flawed analysis which dominates much of the debate is fanciful. Expect all arguments to get poked and prodded for weaknesses (which is exactly as it should be).
Sorry, missed link
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gov.uk/government/publications/renewable-energy-and-the-effects-of-wind-and-solar-droughts/how-well-do-we-understand-the-impacts-of-weather-conditions-on-the-uks-renewable-wind-and-solar-energy-supplies-html
Tis Spring Time and trees blossom along with Estate Agent boards. Certainly madam, we should get you £800K for your rabbit hutch, just sign here. Four months later, not a peep. Sorry madam, there're an awful lot of overpriced rabbit hutches in this area. No need for more houses, oh dear me no.
ReplyDeleteIn this village there are about 20 houses for sale - widows, widowers, folk want to move on. About 5 boards and 15 watchers. Many have turned up in springtime for the last five years only to retreat like autumn leaves. A few years back the hopefuls were up at about £1.2M, nice enough places, yours for £790K guv. Those on about £350K do sell OK. Bungalows? - snapped up at a premium. Either knock down to build two des reses or grow sideways and up. So the widows and widowers stay put until it is their turn in the box.
Can't see them going very far this year.
@formertory: T'is Spring Time and trees blossom along with Estate Agent boards. Certainly madam, we should get you £800K for your rabbit hutch, just sign here. Four months later, not a peep. Sorry madam, there're an awful lot of overpriced rabbit hutches in this area. No need for more houses, oh dear me no.
ReplyDeleteIn this village there are about 20 houses for sale - widows, widowers, folk want to move on. About 5 boards and 15 watchers. Many have turned up in springtime for the last five years only to retreat like autumn leaves. A few years back the hopefuls were up at about £1.2M, nice enough places, yours for £790K guv. Those on about £350K do sell OK. Bungalows? - snapped up at a premium. Either knock down to build two des reses or grow sideways and up. So the widows and widowers stay put until it is their turn in the box.