Toughing it out: Starmer, Putin, Trump

Toughing things out isn't quite the same as playing for time, although the latter (an intellectually very dull strategy, but often effective) can be part of it.  One reason it can work for the obdurate party is that an awful lot of opponents have read their Sun Tzu and are hoping to gain their victory by manoeuvre and psychology alone, i.e. without bloodshed - which involves the incumbent vacating the battlefield before any clash of main forces.

Well, the other side has a vote in these matters, which all parties need to remember.  We have three prominent examples in play right now.

Starmer.   We've long suggested that Team Starmer has every intention of toughing it out, and in the last couple of days he stated he would contest any leadership election that might be forced upon the Labour Party.  Quite obviously, yer Burnhams and yer Steetings are hoping he'll be driven away without a fight, perhaps out of sheer embarrassment.  Note that Burham said last week that IF there's a contest (and IF he's an MP), he'd stand.  That's a man waiting for a coronation, not one armed with a pre-drafted letter in 81 copies.  

And there's probably quite a few Labour MPs who don't want to be put on the spot, too, when the Whips come round with nomination papers and thumbscrews.  Well, who knows what a few more weeks and Mandy-scandals will bring for TS - but since 'shamelessness' is his second name, he can probably hold on until the last minute.  So there you go, boys: you're gonna have to winkle him out.

Trump.   Obviously not in such imminent political peril; but he sure ain't enjoying where he finds himself vis-à-vis Iran and world opinion generally.  (WTF did they go ahead with that Beijing visit for - I mean, either of them, Trump or Xi?  Literally nothing achieved.  At least, though, it doesn't appear Trump gave away the farm this time, which was the danger.  What might he do to cajole Xi to go ahead with the planned Washington visit, though?) 

Anyhow, in what's clearly an orchestrated effort, there has been a splurge of "Trump really knows what he is doing" articles - a demeaning task for the poor writers involved because manifestly he hasn't a f*****g clue.  I'd spotted a few in UK media, and thought it was empty sycophancy: but US contacts tell me it's been a blizzard over there.  The joke is, one of the oft-repeated lines is that Trump is pursuing clearly-stated Original War Aims - and then they cite different ones!  Of course, there have been so many to choose from, sometimes all in the space of a single morning in Trumpworld.  Does it all make the Donald feel happier?  Who can tell.   

Putin.  Ah yes, Li'l Volodya again, with two more humiliations in the past few days: the Ukrainian bombing of St Petersburg, literally casting a dark cloud over the SPIEF-fest; and the Armenian elections, which he had convinced himself had been sufficiently 'influenced' as to give a pro-Moscow result.  (This comes after Victory Day, Hungary, Iran, Cuba, Syria, Azerbaijan, etc etc - and of course the Chinese gas sale debacle.   Not to mention the casualties ... we've done this all before.)

But no: he's refusing to engage with Zelenskyy's insolent letter, and maintaining that Russia is on the path to inevitable total victory & fulfillment of his Original War Aims - however fatuous that sounds to, err, absolutely everyone.  So as we order industrial quantities of popcorn for the months ahead, let's just poke a little more fun by recounting what happened during SPIEF under that dark, oily pall.

• the WiFi failed
• overseas visitors were provided with VPN and SIMs so that they could access WA, etc (banned and 'blocked' in Russia)
• the useless Max messenger (the mandatory replacement for soon-to-be-banned-altogether Telegram) received its official launch - and promptly disappeared from the AppStore
• journalists were asked not to take photos of the lavish parties 
• ditto of the hookers provided for delegates
• residents had their hot water switched back on for the week (in St Petersburg the hot water provided by municipal district heating schemes is switched off in summer), presumably so they could present a fragrant atmosphere in the street 

But still he's not for turning ...[1].  These world leaders, eh? - they're so ... tough.

UPDATE:  reporting within Russia has it that the cyber aspects of Putin's personal security regime have been switched off.  This makes protecting him in some aspects more difficult: but has been occasioned by acute fears stemming from the ease with which Israel was manifestly able to track Iranian and Hezbollah leaders.  As we know, Putin is a physical coward [2] who seriously hopes to live to be 150.  But just because he's paranoid - aspects of which are noted by the FT - that doesn't mean 'someone' isn't out to get him.  (But probably not Mr Z.)

ND

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[1]  Tellingly. however, in occupied Ukraine the Russians are seriously digging in - vast underground citadels being built.  They clearly envisage the need to defend what they now hold, rather than feeling confident of pushing ever further forward into the territory they assert is theirs for the taking, as Putin reckons is happening right now.  It's readily understandable, not least because Ukraine has rendered vulnerable every movement of vehicles and rolling stock, across the occupied territories and a significant swathe beyond, seriously incommoding Russian logistics.  Summer shortages of oil and even water in some of these areas will be acute.  It's truly hard to envisage how the much vaunted Russian "2026 Offensive" will materialize in any manner worthy of the name.

[2]   Let's get ahead of the "how do you know this?" trolling, with (a) his obvious blind terror of covid  - back to SPIEF again, anyone allowed to attend his address & press conference in person had to go through rigorous covid testing, even in 2026 (and he wasn't going to kiss them anyway); and  (b) seemingly, a new-found terror of hantavirus (sic!).  It has seriously been floated in Russia that the Special Military Operation should be brought to a conclusion swiftly, because of ... wait for it ... the risk of hantavirus running riot among front-line troops.  WTF?  There's only one reason why that sort of arrant nonsense appears: it's because someone who wants a prompt end to the SMO knows which of Putin's buttons to press.

2 surprisingly interesting reads: Zelenskyy - and AEP!

A couple of worthwhile calls on your time today.  Let's take the lighter one first.

From the mercurial AEP, whose regular output on energy-related issue is Pollyanna-ish net zero bilge, a lengthy take-down of the deep impracticalities of the putative AI boom as it is currently envisaged.  The energy aspect is of course one major strand; cooling-water is another, and the emptiness of "OK, well we'll just build our own gas-fired power plants instead".  And then the financial implications!  Somewhere in there (or maybe it was BTL), though, there is a hint of how things may progress in subtler ways.  If AEP is correct on the brick wall of physical limitations to AI's currently-planned trajectory, it'll need to be a subtler approach.   Otherwise ... bubble is bubble.

From Zelenskyy; an open letter to Putin, suggesting face-to-face negotiations - which is worth reading in full, not just some newspaper summary.

At the very least, this is a useful and pretty comprehensive tour d'horizon from the Kyiv perspective, and a summary of just how many cards Mr Z holds right now.  Interestingly, though, whether by design or accident it's also pretty insulting to Putin.  Maybe Z has inadvertently overdone the projection of the (current) strength of the Ukrainian position - which you might argue he was always going to do at the start of a putative negotiation.  Well, but better done in the proposed face-to-face meeting, hmm?  

Or maybe (since, at his best, Z is pretty sharp) the intended audience is Trump and the ROW anyway, if he knows Putin has no intention of negotiating with Ukraine anyway.  Remind the Donald that Z does actually hold several cards right now.

Or maybe, like the "permission" graciously given to Putin for his 2026 Victory Day parade (another sharp slap from Z), it's purposefully intended to humiliate Putin on the eve of today's big St Petersburg address to the SPIEF - if indeed he deigns to turn up in person after the impressive warning shots fired in that direction earlier in the week.

Or maybe it's to bring to Putin's attention the long list of things he doesn't seem to know - cat among the pigeons.  Putin's people say he "is being briefed" on the Z letter.  Yeah, they'll be dead keen not to let him read the original in full - they lie to him consistently about the true situation on many fronts, and wouldn't want him firing off the obvious supplementary questions.  And they may well succeed, since by repute he never so much as touches the keys of a laptop, still less knows how to log in or access the www for himself.  Old-fashioned red telephones for L'il Volodya ...

ND

Burnham's by-election

Watching Burnham's by-election purely as a spectator, I have no feel whatever for what's happening on the ground (rarely do the pundits either, these days).  But one or two things stand out rather clearly: things that might not have been expected even just a month ago - which just goes to show.

>  Burnham makes a pretty unconvincing King Across the Water / saviour of the nation.  He comes across as an odd combination of entitled, nervous and petulant.  Is he simply going to win anyhow?  Who can judge?  Voters only make up their minds on vague feelings of what 'seems right'.  

>  Restore looks distinctly as though it could upset Reform pretty badly.  I wouldn't ordinarily cite Brendan O'Neill, and it's larded with phrases I wouldn't use, but this is a pertinent essay:  "the Your Party of the right" is spot on, as is "his bit-part role in the chronicles of our times will be an entirely inglorious one".

For me, both these thoughts have relegated another couple of potential talking-points, namely the embarrassment for the Greens over their initial nominee; and the chronic inability of Reform ever to find unexceptionable candidates (let alone exceptional) - even for high-profile set-pieces like this.  Think what it'll be like for both these arriviste parties at the GE!

If Restore does indeed trip up Reform on this outing, I suppose it might just be the urgent incentive Farage needs to square Lowe away in good time before the next GE.  Otherwise he will be spending a lot more time with that £5m nest-egg.

Burnham, if it is indeed to be him this time, must I suppose be hoping that, once elected, Streeting will pull the trigger as promised.   But maybe he won't!  And if not, can that obscure woman who threatened to do it a few weeks back really muster the numbers?  Would it look a bit off, if Burnham himself did it immediately following his victory?  What we may be 100% sure of is that Team Starmer will have been strenuously working over every single Labour backbencher with the usual unsavoury combination of menaces, promises and flattery.  It's amazing how many of a list of 81 can quietly slip away in such circumstances.  Time is well and truly on Starmer's side, given his clear determination to bluster on.

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 both the 'known unknowns' on that little list; and we'll be hearing a lot of them soon.  

A run on popcorn seems like a safe bet.  Anyone updating their January predictions on Starmer's survival this year?

ND

Goings-on in the BP boardroom: WTF?

BP is a genuine puzzle.  How can an enormous company of considerable long standing with some seriously impressive attributes, be so maladroit in its senior appointments?  With the summary eviction of Mr Manifold[1], BP will have had 3 chairs and 5 CEOs since 2020, and a heap of embarrassment.  This is a crazy level of volatility at the top.

It's not a company I have definitive views on; but inevitably I have had loads of dealings with them over my decades in the industry.  (They offered me a job once: but I didn't want to move to Japan.)  Here are some observations.

• Although superficially they might all look pretty similar, big multinational oil companies aren't remotely all operating under the same business model.  We can map out a spectrum.  At one end we have Exxon - fundamentally centred on building and managing physical assets; i.e. engineer-driven, and deeply suspicious of finance & trading activity, which it minimises very purposefully.  At the other end,  BP  - plenty of capable engineers and physical assets, but also exceptionally capable and commercially active traders and finance types.  At these two extremes on the spectrum, the respective P&L and balance sheets aren't very similar.[2]  
• BP has shown itself somewhat prone to accommodating the woke agenda.  The 'Beyond Petroleum' rebrand dates as far back as 2000, under the proto-scandalous John Browne[3], so that until recently the eco-'green' stuff was fairly prominent in the business, almost as much as the traditional 'green stuff'.  They have also made several 'questionable' appointments of females at very exalted levels, IMHO for the sole purpose of having wimmin in senior jobs because at least a couple of them are self-evidently not up to the job.
• More generally, they seem to hire outsiders for top jobs far more than is usual in the industry.  Really confident big companies of long standing place far more trust in promotion from the ranks of their long-term employees - rightly or wrongly. [4]
• However, the boardroom nonsense of all kinds clearly hasn't been at the expense of their trading prowess.  And overall, I have a fair degree of respect for the senior working-level management of the company across the board, who mostly seem to get on with business in an intelligent and competent way.

All that doesn't lead me to any firm conclusions about BP's future.  But the company has been such a major part of the UK business scene for so long, I have to believe many C@W readers will have well-informed perspectives on the company.  So - the floor is yours.

ND

UPDATE:  Someone pointed out to me that I couldn't possibly have been referring to Meg O'Neill, and they were right.  I wasn't.  She's good.

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[1]  Cue the obvious jokes about Manifold sins and wickedness ...

[2]  Shell, incidentally, is pretty much bang in the middle

[3]  Scandal notwithstanding, Browne was a serious oil man.  He called the market correctly in 1997, judging $10 to be the bottom (when the Economist was suggesting $6 was coming) and bought Amoco. 

Arco and BurmahCastrol at the absolute bottom of the market, doubling the size of BP.  That's impressively good business judgment - speculative, but based on solid knowledge, experience and instinct, rather than a bought-in price forecast from some 'econometrics' outfit. 

[4]  The pros and cons of this can of course be argued at length: maybe for another post.

How long can Russia keep this up?

An odd barb sometimes thrown in this blog's direction (from who-knows-what troll factory) is that since Russia's invasion of Ukraine four years ago (four!) we have been predicting the imminent collapse of Russia itself.  Well, we haven't.  Ever.  In fact, right from the start we have said that ultimately there's nothing to stop Putin taking Ukraine if he really wants to - which, if anything, was far too generous to L'il Volodya and his ramshackle army.  Further, we've always remarked that the Russian capacity for enduring privation and general suffering should never be underestimated. 

But it is beginning to look as though Putin's stamina is waning.  There are so many straws in the wind: in no particular order -

• the 'victory' parade, hugely-reduced in scale and betraying obvious fears for its security, to the point where Putin could be humiliated (the word used by Russian milbloggers) by Zelenskyy's gracious 'permission' to go ahead with the parade
• widespread and debilitating fuel shortages, courtesy of Ukraine's remarkable drone campaign ...
•  ... which, incidentally, has - yet again - blithely crossed one of Russia's stated nuclear red lines in terms of its scale ("the massive launch / take-off of aerospace attack weapons ... and their crossing of the state border of the Russian Federation")
• Russia's re-engagement with US negotiators, with the usual risible sabre-rattling
• the background PR planning for a sudden 'declaration of victory' - even based on today's status quo, if necessary
• serious domestic discontent at frequent blocking of the www and the (supposedly) imminent closure of access to Telegram, all in the name of 'security'
• internal dismay at the Hungarian election result, adding to keenly-felt impotence over Syria / Cuba / Venezuela
• serious economic issues, macro and micro - see below
• angst over the pitiful battlefield performance thus far in 2026 - zero net progress** in the spring/summer offensive campaign (intended to capture the remaining Donbass territory by autumn: Kkarkiv, Kherson and Odessa are rarely mentioned these days); casualty rates exceeding enlistments; and Ukraine has achieved, at least for now, superiority in the 'battlefield air interdiction' (BAI) stakes, courtesy of its swarms of very smart drones and their equally smart deployment in Russia's immediate rear, over and above the deeper oil refinery campaign 
• etc etc: I could go on.

Oh, and on the global scale, no joy from Xi on the long (very long)-awaited deal for more gas sales to China, a farce that we've often written about here in the past - check the 'Gazprom' tag - another serious strategic disappointment.

Even so, I still don't reckon on near-term "collapse", or defenestration of Putin.  He has plenty of tools to prevent either.  But I do say he's now beginning to think seriously in terms of an off-ramp: and many powerful people in Russia are even more seriously trying to get this to the top of the agenda.

In the midst of it all, the IISS has published this sober analysis.  It doesn't predict imminent collapse either; but it does set out the genuine problems and major dilemma Putin faces.  Between now and Xmas, I'm guessing we'll see recognisable, tangible movement taking place - in one direction or another.

ND 

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** Ukraine has in fact started making systematic small-scale territorial (re)gains all over the front, which in recent weeks have been larger than Russia's own small territorial gains.  On both sides these are to be understood in context: they are trivial in extent - largely infiltration sorties - and essentially opportunist in nature.  But there's a big difference: Russia's are intended, and indeed celebrated, as purposeful steps towards the taking of the Donbass; i.e. they are meant to be strategic.  Ukraine's, by contrast, are tactical spoiling measures - highly disruptive for any coherent Russian offensive this year.  But if they do indeed have that effect, they add up to having an important strategic consequence.