Starmer is getting cocky

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

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[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"

... etc etc - and that's just the last few weeks.  Then there was Mandelson, the by-election, ...

Asymmetric warfare: another mighty US fail

In keeping with our readiness to slate pathetic Russian military & strategic performance in Ukraine, once again we must even-handedly slate the current US debacle.

Which started (as is widely commented) with a complete absence of anything that could honestly be described as a strategy - just large-scale deployment of powerful forces that may fairly be described as tactically accomplished.  But (as, again, we all know) tactics without strategy is just empty waste of effort - and life.

And materiel!   I'm not going to open a laundry list here, but take it from me, US losses of important kit have been very significant, betraying a complete and utter failure of US doctrinal development for the drone era.

By stark contrast, Iran has clearly been developing - and executing - very appropriate plans for making the very best of its conventionally much, much weaker hand.  It's as impressive in its own way as Ukraine's efforts (- with equivalent lack of guarantees of ultimate success).

We may only hope that the risible, contemptuous (and contemptible) triumphalism of Hegseth & Trump doesn't prevent the US military & strategic community from quietly learning lessons seriously, thinking very hard, and doing the right things, urgently and in depth.  Sadly, we know from the ridiculous UK aircraft carrier debacle (thanks, Gordon), when you've been set on to spend all your money on crazy WW2-type projects like that, and the new 'Trump Class Battleships", such mega-distractions seriously weigh on the ability to do anything else.

On the plus side: we do know that Ukraine has comprehensively figured out this very traditional asymmetric warfare problem, both in theory and in deeply impressive practice: Taiwan may yet have time (though not much) to do likewise: and even the UK + Europe might be positioned to do something intelligent.

But will we?  One unhappy perspective on this might be that Miliband's (and other nations') NZ obsession is the new national distraction that hinders our efforts.  Not a lot of time for this to be set on track.  As Russian subs patrol our cables, pipelines and offshore energy facilities, the analogy with 1938 is very uncomfortable.

ND

The subliminal impact of $4 gasoline

As is well known, the USA as a nation is addicted to motoring.  The "summer driving season" is a major phenomenon in the oil industry, when many Americans think nothing of driving thousands of vacation road-miles.

And various points along the price curve have mythical status.  It used to be considered that "3 dollar gas" was something no President's reputation could survive: a simple metric for consumer inflation as it is felt in the pocketbook.  More recently, "3 dollar gas" has become a semi-ironic [1] nostalgic look into the rear-view mirror: hey Bud, remember when we used to worry about $3?!   [2]

But $4 is now a reality.  I suspect that simple number alone could be a subliminal factor in dishing Trump amongst his regular base of support.

ND

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[1]  To the extent Americans do irony 

[2] To be fair, it was known to hit $6 - in California.  But that state, like NYC, is often thought of as not really America.

AI: crashing and burning foreseen, in plain view

Munching our popcorn (while we still have fuel to heat it up) & waiting for Trump to crash and burn ...

We've discussed before the AI bubble, its seemingly inevitable forthcoming bursting, and the system-crashing potential it might hold.  Well here's something to give anyone pause:

Source:  CHARTR / date from Bloomberg

It's pretty remarkable to me that Uber needed such a long runway - surely its only major assets are software?  Tesla looks pretty outstanding value & commercial discipline[1] by comparison - and Musk was shooting for the moon, with serious hardware involved, as well as software.  

But why am I gazing at the foothills?  Because then we step back and look at the mammoth on the mountain, and  - wow!  What type of revenues do they "forecast" - and persuade investors of - to make that even vaguely sane?  And OpenAI isn't alone out there.  What kind of economy can afford their products on the necessary scale?

Sometimes you have to look at something - a bullion price spike, a US president - and just tell yourself the obvious conclusion is the correct one.  That Is Insane.

And the US economy[2] has been wagered on this?  Hello China - the rest of the century belongs to you.

ND

PS: for something more edifying on AI, try this:

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[1] One would need to interrogate that tapering-off of the black bars: was it Tesla that bought X?  Had greenie car buyers lost faith in Musk even before 2025 and his rogue DOGE behaviour?  

[2] And I'm the one that has said, many times: in the long run, never bet against the US economy ...

Who said this ..? Weekend reading

Two quotations for you, long and short.  Who said these things?

1.  ... a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos; where it exports technology, not terrorism; and where people of different nations, religions, and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence.  We don’t want that.... The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neocons or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities. Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves, the people that are right here, the people that have lived here all their lives - developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions, and charting your own destinies in your own way ... the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves ... it’s something only you could do.   

2.  Despite employing some of the best and brightest analysts in the world, the advice given by the US State Department over the last fifty years could comfortably have been outperformed by a parrot that had been trained to repeat the phrase 'Don't start a war'. 

The first, of course, is Trump.  One could give many more quotations from that speech:  "my greatest hope is to be a peacemaker and to be a unifier. I don’t like war  /  my greatest hope is to be a peacemaker and a unifier  /  far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use US policy to dispense justice for their sins" etc etc, and feel like applauding it.

Ho hum.  Trump talks a lot, and even the scripted speeches like the one above incorporate the usual mendacious, vainglorious narcissism which makes one glad one isn't a US military cadet, forced to listen to him and realise he's the Commander in Chief.  Here are a couple, if you have the time: the first, from May last year, is actually the source of 1. above but this other, from November, is truly embarrassing and has virtually no redeeming features whatever.  The judgmental decline had really set in by then, and it's only linked to here by way of illustration of how bad things are.

Yes, the prescient parrot of quote #2 has been well and truly stuffed.  (It's from a writer called Dan Davies in The Unaccountability Machine.)

ND