But then of course there's Events ... Mandy, Trump, who-knows-what. Starmer already has a long list of self-serving one-liners to fend off the 'known unknowns' ...
That was C@W last week: and right on cue, Events have struck. Was Healey's resignation really an unknown unknown? No: for several weeks past, meejah political correspondents have been reporting that all was not well with the Defence Investment Plan and that the Cabinet was badly split on the issue.
Given that right now it looks for all the world big enough to be a Final Nail, letting it erupt like this is a capital strategic error on Team Starmer's part: it was foreseeable; they should have made sure it was covered[1]. I'm sure we've all met situations where someone, or some organisation, fatally loses sight of just how big some fairly obvious potential banana-skin really is[2] - and it's not pretty when they step on it. Not quite the same phenomenon as Nicholas Taleb's "picking up pennies in front of the steamroller", but there are some family resemblences.
So now, we must assume that Burnham will campaign even more explicitly as the anti-Starmer insurgent, however implausible. Farage, presumably, will campaign on "it's Labour that is the problem", to be reinforced in the days to come by lurid stories of toxic Cabinet proceedings that the press will be happy to furnish as they get extensively briefed by all the self-interested parties involved. And let's see what 'line' TS comes up with to fend off this one - that'd earn someone his bonus. Or is it just too late for yet another last-ditch defence?
ND
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[1] It seems they were preoccupied "wargaming Andy Burnham's next moves"
[2] In my first commercial employment, I watched in horror as a really good manager I worked for came badly unstuck in that manner. Fortunately, this life-lesson came very early in my career. It was a great relief, two employers later, to work for a firm that operated on the maxim: the bigger the (potential) issue, the better the team we deploy and the more attention we give it. It's truly crazy when a firm draw up a list of 10 issues, and commits one tenth of its resources to each with no thought to the relativities. Or worse: when it gives 30% to the squeakiest wheel, irrespective.
7 comments:
The phrase goes back a fair way before Taleb.
Healey : probably not a Corbynite (he seems to have backed Owen Smith, whoever he is), so possibly not enamoured of the stuff enemating from the Left right now.
'97 intake, in his mid-sixties, so unlikely to fancy the job himself (he might be still going into his 70s), one of the more experienced figures Starmer actually has (had) available.
Curious report that Miliband's budget was earmarked to take the hit for Defence.
I suspect there's another likely runner knocking about who's waiting for the by-election result to make a move. Or not.
No doubt Starmer said 'no shiny new toys, quite the opposite methinks'. Healey took umbrage - who cares.
TBH I don't see the Russians or anyone else attacking UK soil and I think we will do well to keep well away from Donald's chaos. Take a breather for a year or two. Then seeing how the Ukrainians get along the idea of spending big on tanks with crap suspension and Davy Jones-ready ships seems something to consider long and hard. The idea we can protect far away trade routes seems laughable. But we can't get rid of the dead wood among the scrambled-egg brigades - we can't afford the redundancy payouts. Let the grim reaper do his work and make sure fewer get nice cushy seats in future - up or out.
TBH I think Starmer is a lumpen lawyer with no talent - except he does look better than all the rest - Burnham, Badenoch, Farage etc. Not because Starmer is any good, but they are all dire. All our prime ministers fail and we might ask as Admiral Beatty did 'something wrong with our governments today'. My view is our governments have forgotten or are terrified of the word NO. I hope to see a lot more of it.
" My view is our governments have forgotten or are terrified of the word NO. I hope to see a lot more of it."
That ship sailed a long time ago. Once you start giving free money to lots of people who have a vote unsurprisingly enough it gets very difficult to get them to vote to have that money removed from their pockets. Given a majority of the UK electorate are now net consumers of public funds in one way or another, good luck finding a politician who can get elected by telling them they have to earn their own living for a change.
I'm not sure an attack on the UK is entirely unlikely, I mean if Putin wanted to do an escalate-to-deescalate the UK is in a bit of a sweet spot at the moment.
Pop a missile in the middle of Edinburgh, what are we going to do? Start a war over one missile? We invoke Article 5, is everyone going to be willing to go full Rambo and risk a nuclear war?
More likely some negotiations after a short amount of pants-shitting, and when the dust has settled a new grievance for the SNP - "you'd have gone to war over London! We're second class! Independence now!"
Not that I think Putin would take that risk now, as maybe Trump wouldn't be as detached as he claims, but we're not in a position to war-war, and we're a global name.
Trump's mother is a Scot...
but unless the UK seriously prod The Bear even more than they are currently doing, Russia can wait us out while more factories close, social cohesion declines etc etc - same thing China is doing with the US.
(Russia of course has its own social cohesion issues, but they've been multiethnic a lot longer than we have)
OT - Tulsi Gabbard spills beans on US biowarfare labs
https://www.odni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2026/4163-pr-10-26
https://www.dni.gov/files/BIOLAB_Slides.pdf
Simon Jenkins on the vultures circling over TTK
"At this point, the British constitution goes from eccentric to deceptive. Starmer’s “landslide” Commons majority of 174 might have ranked in size only with Tony Blair’s win in 1997, but Labour got just 33% of the popular vote in 2024. In terms of number of votes cast, it was fewer than the election in 2019, when the party, led by his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, lost. Labour’s 411 MPs should have slunk into Westminster with their tails between their legs and a silent nod of thanks to Reform UK’s Nigel Farage as their seats were gained not by a swing to the left but by the split of the vote on the right."
A "conservative" government which handed out three million visas in a couple of years isn't a party of "the right". I knew I was never going to vote Tory again. They made Blair look like an immigration hard-liner.
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