Mamdani, charisma and the Left

The whole Mamdani phenomenon is quite exceptionally interesting, n'est-ce pas?  The Left, Greens and progressives generally, everywhere, are hoping upon hope they can ride on his coat-tails to woke victory.  Can it be Polanski?  And yet ...

Generally, the real politicos of the Left hate the idea of needing to depend on personality-centred leadership.  Magnetic charisma is even worse.  These objections are doctrinal for them, and, you suspect, visceral, too.  The Revolution comes, not when an individual galvanises gullible voters, but When Economic Conditions are Right, and the working masses rise up as one (along with the less-than-charming, less-than-working bedsit brigade).  Of course, the sainthood conferred upon Lenin rather goes against this; and "whoa, Jeremy Corbyn" / Magic Grandad; but ...  

The fact is, even ordinary-grade charm is dangerous, never mind outright charisma.  The Blairs and the Johnsons (and even the Mandelsons) of this world glide through life asserting their exemption from ordinary constraints, and getting what they want.  When we get to Clinton, we are talking weapons-grade, Elvis-level powers, particularly over women.  (I've no intention of getting into Godwin territory.)

When working for a US multinational, I once attended a management conference in the States.  On one occasion we were addressed by a speaker who had a novel but pedestrian consultancy-type idea to sell - a lens for categorising & analysing problems according to some classic 2 x 2 matrix of his devising.  His ideas were worthwhile, but - objectively speaking - no more than just something to digest, hoist on board, and deploy where useful for a bit of an additional insight.

The thing was, he was as charismatic as all Hell (and the Devil is really quite charismatic).  In the coffee-room afterwards, the discussion - amongst supposedly professional people, mostly senior engineers, went (or rather, gushed) like this.

- Wow!  Wasn't that great?!  I heard him say X, and Y.  I really agree with that.

- Yeah - best we've heard all week!  I heard him say A and B - that really resonates with me.

And so on.

Now with my cynical but quite useful Oxford training in philosophy and logic, I was mentally at one remove from all this the moment the guy flashed his enigmatic smile at us.   And, if you'll forgive the arrogance of my reckoning I can offer an 'objective assessment', I can assure you he said none of X, Y, A nor B: some of the supposed pronouncements attributed to him were mutually contradictory!  What he did do, was absolutely enthrall his audience, who then individually projected onto him everything each of them wanted to hear when their emotions were roused.  Amazing stuff, this snake-oil: believed to cure all known conditions.  Harmless, on this occasion ... but we all know where this sometimes goes.

Let's watch Messrs Mamdani's and Polanski's careers with interest.  

ND

More weekend wisdom: understanding Russia

A favourite endeavour of mine.  And this video is really worth watching.  Periodically, we have visitors around here who side with the pro-Russia narrative to a really striking degree.  Well, watch and learn, from someone - Serhii Plokhy - who is genuinely expert.  (Yeah yeah, he lived in Ukraine as a boy.  So what?  Check out what he says, & then read it up for yourself.)  And finish it off with the block quotation at the end of this post.

We might all note, in particular, Plokhy's comments on how Russia can, at the same time, be performing really badly in Ukraine (see this blog passim since 2023) but also be a genuine threat to Europe.  So often we get - from Aaron Bastani in this vid, and from some of our trolls BTL commentators here - "well, they can't be both".  Well, maybe they can: see what he has to say.  And the corollary is both chilling, and food for serious thought for our lamentably substandard political leaders.

Note also how the good Bastani keeps learning things he should maybe have already known, and is consequently amazed by - in this vid, and in others of his excellent interviews.  You might wonder why I regularly cite and link to Bastani's Novara Media, a bunch of supposedly irredeemable progressive lefties, as they would see themselves.  Well, the highly articulate** leadership triumvirate of this bunch are, on their better days, definitely open to argument; and their slow, inchingly slow march to the right since 2017 has been amusing and instructive to watch.  They might even, somewhat reluctantly, admit it.  Bastani in particular is quite clearly a social conservative, and more so with each passing year (marriage, a family, home ownership, and moving out of London can have that effect ...)

[Their problem is, they have so much empty space in their heads where some genuine knowledge of the real world should be, that they - particularly AB again - are inclined to swallow almost anything they are told by people who seem to know.  Their suckering by Gary Stevenson, "once the no.1 [self-styled] trader in the world" (my arse) is highly amusing: and AB has also been well taken in by, e.g., Brett Christophers and that old hippy-rogue Dale Vince: he laps up their stuff in a culpably uncritical way, because it's all so new to him & he has no relevant frame of reference or ability to reality-check it.  All that said, they present some really thought-provoking stuff and, as I said, some of it clearly rubs off on them.]

Ho hum.  Just watch the video when you have 90 mins to spare.  And for good measure, let's add the following, from the remarkable commentator Kamil Galeev, which fits very neatly: 

The Soviet American war was supposed to be fought to somewhere to the west of Rhine. What you got instead is a Soviet Civil War happening to the east of Dnieper.  If you said that the battles of the great European war will not be fought in Dunkirk and La Rochelle, but somewhere in Kupyansk ... you would have been once put into a psych ward, or, at least, not taken as a serious person. The behemoth military machine had been built, once, for a thunderbolt strike towards the English Channel. Whatever remained from it, is now decimating itself in the useless battles over the useless coal towns of the Donetsk Oblast

You would understand the course of this war much better, if you consider that on February 23, 2022, Putin considered Ukrainians as Russians. Perfectly integratable, assimilatable and draftable.   Take control over Ukraine, and increase your Russian population by over 1/3.   Now the next generation of Russian leaders will not see Ukrainians as Russians anymore. The integration of Ukrainians into Russia proper will not be seen as either possible, or even desirable. It will be seen as a hostile foreign country, and a hostile foreign population.   So, this may be the most important final result of this war. The unity of Soviet world, only partially affected by 1991, is now firmly and irreversibly shattered. Too much blood spilled, too much mutual hatred & suspicion arisen. Return to how it used to be is no longer possible

That said, recall Plokhy's salutary point above:  all this can be true, and yet Russia can also still be a threat to Europe.  Make that 'is'.

ND

______

** Again, on their better days

Budget compo: and, yes, Miliband - again!

With the Budget looking to be one helluva political set piece drama, it's time for C@W to predict the content.  She's gonna do something big, but what?  Over to you all.  Compo question: which levers will Reeves pull?  

(I have always reckoned that simply adding more bands at the upper end of the Council Tax meets all the political and technical tests: it's fast, 'progressive', virtually impossible to dodge.  If that isn't one of her measures, she's even madder than previously thought.)

AND of course it all leads to heightened leadership speculation.  AND as you all know, I have long championed the notion that Miliband's prospects are a great deal better than most people say - in that Doomsday aspect, if not for keeping his job under Starmer.  Right on cue, here's Guido: 

The Times picks up on rumours that Ed Miliband is a viable replacement for Starmer come the PM’s defenestration. As Guido reported back in September the Energy Secretary went on major manoeuvres after the PM tried and failed to remove him from post at the Phase 2 reshuffle. He is blamed by senior figures in Labour for a series of inflammatory briefings whose aim is to undermine Starmer. No surprise then that with Keir’s possible end on the horizon someone has decided to start whispering Miliband’s name in hacks’ ears…

I agree.

ND

Weekend wisdom: interview with Martin Wolf

Here's something that's worth an hour of anyone's time: an intelligent(ish) interview with the super-intelligent Martin Wolf, FT, doyen of economics commentators and billed here as the World's Top Financial Journalist (a title he disowns, BTW, claiming only tangential knowledge of finance). 

Mostly, it's a case of listen, learn, reflect: Wolf is impressively thoughtful, not least on the matter of what's genuinely uncertain in our present stressed circumstances.  But there were a couple of things he expresses serious interest in, which I'd push back on:

• Citizen's assemblies.  Yeah, but who gets to run them?  You know perfectly well that a cleverly framed set-up will get any answer that's wanted by the establishment that commissions them**.  I mean, seriously, this is bonkers.
• Workers' representatives on Boards: he thinks Germany has done well with this.  Hmm.  I have some experience, via a lengthy consultancy gig I undertook in Germany, with an archetypal large German co.  The workers' board member was given a nice office, and frequent, carefully curated 'briefings' on all manner of topics.  He was a nice enough cove, completely out of his depth.  Those carefully selected mangers giving him the briefings said he barely understood any but the most basic topics, and was a pushover.  Maybe that was exceptionally helpful to the co in question!  But I doubt it's what Wolf means.

He also seems to be warming to proportional representation.  Well, too big an issue to dilate upon here, save to note that, barring some political event not even dreamed of right now, the next GE will be conducted in genuinely uncharted electoral waters.

Enjoy.

ND

_________

** Fair enough, I once reviewed in detail the output of a CA on use of biomass, which was (I consider) fairly well set-up with balanced opening presentations, and which clearly surprised the organisers as to how strongly the majority was against tree-burning (which as not the answer they wanted).  HOWEVER, the official take on it mis-used the actual voting data.  Having failed to rig it, they still tried to bias the one-liner takeways.  And you know they'd have rigged it even more determinedly for a sequel.  You'll all keep voting until you give the right answer.

White elephant houses [still] for sale

The amusing and long-running tale continues of the luxury 7-bedroom Croydon houses being offered with no garages and profoundly awkward vehicular access - at, errr, £1.65m apiece.

Well, they still haven't sold - despite the steeply-inclined driveway being nicely paved now, and one or two other cosmetic finishing touches being added (saplings, gates, handrails on the steep concrete steps, see these recent pics).

Steep prices, steep driveways  -  & no garages 

But they are now also being promoted by yet another estate agent - which specialises in marketing properties intended for buy-to-let.  

Can multiple occupancy and asylum-seekers be far behind?  They wouldn't have seven cars to go with the seven bedrooms ... (at least, not until they've "joined the labour market") and would be glad of the five bus routes that pass the front door, some of them 24/7, on the busy A232 'Red Route'.

ND