Thursday, 11 September 2025
Strategy, and a Mandelson 'Masterclass'
Wednesday, 10 September 2025
Trump, Russia, Tariffs, EU ... now Poland
BTL the previous post, anon regales us with this quote relating to a pronouncement from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:
Donald Trump has reportedly asked the EU to levy tariffs of up to 100% on India and China, in order to increase pressure on Russia to end its war in Ukraine.
Well, the Polish situation demands some kind of response; else the next "unplanned" wave of Gerberas will be over Finland and Estonia. And I doubt NATO feels able to do much more than throw an aerial defensive screen around, say, Lviv - based firmly in Poland. Economic measures are all that Europe is really up to at the moment. The "coalition of the willing" is only looking at what it might do in the event of a ceasefire.
There is no doubt Russia is suffering economically just now (not to mention a growing shortage of gasoline and indeed water (sic) in the Donbas): and it might be made to suffer more. But it can suffer more! It's increasingly a war economy; and Russians are like that anyway (see this blog on many occasions).
Tense times. Who needs the feeble distractions of Rayner and Mandelson?
ND
Saturday, 6 September 2025
She's breached the Code (with apologies to Macca)
Yes, the usual apologies to Paul McCartney ...
[four bars of plaintive harp music]
Friday morning at five o’clock as the day begins
One final glance round the smart Whitehall flat
Cursing the lawyers and kicking the cat
She goes downstairs to the limo, clutching her handkerchief
Now for the letter she knows she must write
How did it all turn to shite?
She's (I'm just a working class lass )
breaching (Just a poor working class lass)
the Code (What can you do when you've no old school tie?)
Hitting the road after breaching the Code in so many ways
Starmer snorts as he wanders round in his dressing gown
Picks up the letter the courier brought
Standing in triumph; another great snort
He laughs loud, and cries to Victoria
“Whoopee! - our Angie's gone!
How did she think she could have my job?
Always just shooting her gob!”
She (I did it all for the kids)
was breaching (Nice flat in Hove for my kids)
the Code (I wanted everything money could buy)
Tried to explode the establishment Code for so many years
Sunday morning at nine o’clock she is back in Hove
Making a call to her old comrade Jez
Join his new party? - let's see what he says ...
She's (What did I do that was wrong?)
no judgement! (I didn’t know it was wrong)
None! (Judgement's the one thing that money can't buy)
Couldn't explode the establishment Code after all those tears
Crushed by the Code (bye bye)
ND
Friday, 5 September 2025
Darren Jones: a different kettle of fish
In the right hands, the plumb job in Government is Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Seat in Cabinet. Just below the radar, but enormous power. In charge of government spending - everybody needs to be your friend. The best springboard imaginable: the partial list below is revealing[1].
And now, CSttT Darren Jones has sprung into another such job: CSttPM, no less, invented specifically for him, it seems (and to help dig the Starmermobile out of the rut in which its wheels are spinning idly as the engine races). Yes - Darren, the sharp, confident, facetious smartarse, is in charge of more than just spending now. Let's see what he does with it: because such jobs and such people are in the type of pivotal position that can see significant results along several axes, personal as well as political and practical.
In business, the term once used was "troubleshooter" - a person appointed to get something Big & Awkward done, often away from the corporate centre. Julius Caesar is perhaps the greatest example in history; there's Wellington and Slim in British military annals (and many other besides, of course). Douglas MacArthur: the list could go on. Right now, Putin has Sergei Kiriyenko[2]. It's happened to me three times in my career: being given plenipotentiary powers in the hope I could fix some unexpected, pressing difficulty.
The thing is: you're never sure how things will turn out - with the task itself, and what the Man does afterwards. Caesar came back in triumph from Gaul - and immediately mounted a successful coup. MacArthur had a coup in mind himself. Wellington was a bit more constitutionally correct when he had the whole of Europe at his feet: he still became PM. But Slim just quietly slipped away[3].
The troubleshooter appointment will always be given to someone believed to be capable - that's the whole point - but often also to someone viewed as maverick, which can give rise to the problematic aspect of what happens after the hoped-for success; the unwanted consequence of the Faustian pact. And if he wasn't (identifiably) a maverick before the assignment, well, lots of power and a free hand, sometimes exercised way out over the horizon ... it can turn a man's head. Capable, and hitherto reliable, doesn't always mean predictable.
We shall follow Mr Jones' progress with interest.
ND
____________________
[1] Past CSttT's include: James Callaghan, Geoffrey Howe, Michael Portillo, Alistair Darling, Danny Alexander, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak. (Oh yes, and Chris Philp, whose ambitious little heart nearly exploded at the prospect he had it made, when he briefly held the job.)
[2] If you haven't heard of him, well most people haven't. Aye, there's the wonder of the thing - as Sherlock Holmes said in related circumstances
[3] Zhukov, of course, was effectively banished to Siberia! but the CP has always been paranoid about military leaders: when you need 'em, you really need 'em. But afterwards ...
Thursday, 4 September 2025
Angela Rayner: some observations
The Angela Rayner Stamp Duty thing is manna from Heaven for the floundering, ineffectual Badenoch; and great stuff for Kremlin-watchers as we see Starmer digging mantraps for himself, and Wes Streeting desperately trying to appear compassionately on Rayner's side, even as the whole world knows she's been set up by the Labour faction that is determined Streeting himself will succeed Starmer, possibly even quite soon.
Thus far, the matter has been discussed in rather pedestrian binary terms:
- she's a serial tax-avoider and residence-flipper - and a monstrous hypocrite to boot: or
- her personal affairs & backstory are sad, and legitimately complex (*takes out onion*), and this has led her into an understandable error: but look, she tried to get advice, she's been let down, and it's just all very human.
She wouldn't be alone in this. Some of us are fortunate enough in the education and/or brainpower department to be able to make sense of relatively clear HMRC guidance (and a myriad other potentially overpowering bureaucratic verbiage one might meet in the course of a lifetime, e.g. the reams of forms on probate). But that's just irrelevant for very many folks - however much effort HMRC et al put into wording stuff as clearly as possible - because increasingly few people have any worthwhile level of analytic verbal reasoning.
Of course, the truly troubling bottom line is that this is evidently no bar to reaching some of the highest levels in the land. And as noted before with the ignorant cretins at the top of Reform, this leads to one or both of two dire consequences: (a) very bad decisions by the politicians themselves, and (b) leaving them fully at the mercy of the Civil Service - another source of bad decisions - when their own limited analytic powers are overwhelmed.
In the next day or so we'll look at a politician to which none of the above applies: Darren Jones ...
ND