Mandelson: endless, shameless optimism of self-promotion

A few months ago we had cause to consider Mandy and his little ways.  "Always plotting, always thinking creatively, always strategising" - even, or perhaps especially, when his back is against the wall [are we allowed to say that?].  Since then, he's been defenestrated from the Washington embassy and caught pissing up George Osborne's side street.  But - the usual modus operandi - he waited for just a short time before he was back on manoeuvres.  As Guido has documented, before the lame attempt to offer Trump-whispering advice in the Speccie, Mandy had been hawking himself around the meejah, and for some reason Laura Kuenssberg and her people decided to gratify him with a big set-piece Sunday interview.  (Why??)  Another carefully-crafted foray; and when he decided his week's work around SW1 hadn't quite had the desired effect, why then it was followed by another crafty tweaking of his tortuous, oblique "apology".  And, as Private Eye noted, for the Mandy of 1998 it was Don't you dare say I'm a gay man!  Now, it's Don't forget to say I'm a gay man!   

Now here's the thing.  These two big self-PR drives, separated by several months, have one significant factor in common (over and above his unvarying MO and the eternal willingness of the meejah to rise to his bait): on both occasions we may be sure he knew full well there was a barrow-load of shit coming his way.  In such circumstances, maybe keep your head down? [are we allowed to say that?]  No, not Mandy: all the instincts are still to get on the front foot and try to shape the agenda. 

And what a barrow of ordure this one turns out to be!  Has there been a bigger scandal since Profumo?  As the hacks trawl the 3,000,000 new docs, more outrageous stuff turns up by the hour - and how much more might there yet be?  

But, you know what?  He'll stay down [are we ..?] for a bit: but somehow there will be a dream of redemption and another foray into the Westminster limelight.  Maybe just a bit longer interval this time, though ...

ND

Strategy, and a Mandelson 'Masterclass'

Being able to do strategy has something in common with being artistic, mathematical, sporty, philosophical or a natural leader.  Most people could be made a little more adept at the associated skills and practices - maybe by good schooling or training, maybe by growing up around people who genuinely have the attribute - but fundamentally, becoming really good at any of them is a no-hope matter for most people.

That said, being a natural at any of these things doesn't mean being naturally good at them.  It just means: being able to swim in that pool.  And many swimmers in the strategy pool turn out to be bad strategists.

Lots of situations and organisations need strategy: and there's a tendency to grab at anyone who seems to be a swimmer in that pool, and/or for people who can to thrust themselves forward.  But really good strategists are few and far between: so it's not infrequent for a mediocre, or even poor strategist to be directing things, and it not even be realised for quite a while.  What's needed is the leadership to say, decisively, "yes, we need a strategist - but not a crap one".  Obviously, Starmer is no such leader.

Among high-profile genuine, but deeply flawed UK political strategists of recent years I would number George Osborne (often lambasted hereabouts for being no more than mere student-politico grade); Dominic Cummings (whose only thought after the very successful 2019 election campaign was "turn government upside down" instead of "deliver actual results from Brexit", making him just a self-indulgent blue-sky obsessive); and of course Peter Mandelson.

Like many of this kind, Mandelson is really interesting.  Long-term C@W readers will oft have seen me praising his political creativity and deep understanding of how the levers of power can be used in imaginative ways.  I don't resile from any of that.  But throughout his well-documented career, he has made gigantic mis-steps galore, often rebounding directly and very personally upon himself, notwithstanding his ability sometimes to deliver superb strategic advice to those he is gazing up to at the time, from the, errr, grovelling position he adopts.  

His actions in advancing his own cause or defending his won position - often when seriously up against it - have frequently been purposeful and genuinely adroit, albeit pretty transparent to anyone paying close attention (and sometimes to the whole world).  I could list many examples; and particularly enjoyed his very clever handling of what he knew was going to be a ghastly series of revelations the moment the latest Epstein cache hit the media.  Getting ahead of it as best he could; lots of well-chosen exculpatory themes, remorse, blame upon others, "being too trusting", willing to be open & honest about it all, "bigger boys / nasty lawyers dropped me in it" etc etc.  Ultimately a doomed effort, of course, but a miniature masterclass.  (I might even come up with a fisk of his recent performances.)

So: Mandelson - good or bad strategist?   My summary would be: technically brilliant; genuinely creative; mostly succeeding when taking on a difficult task on behalf of / at the behest of someone else; oddly lazy in his own cause (a bit paradoxical, admittedly - but I could elaborate: and it's a trait I have noted in others).

It's a big topic.  Other first thoughts?  

ND   

_______________

UPDATE (see also next post):  it now transpires that, having first been confronted by Bloomberg with his past emails, and a list of questions, Mandelson sent them promptly to the Sun - hoping that a preemptive 'friendly' Sun leak would be less devastating than what Bloomberg might do.  OK: unsuccessful - but what a bold stroke (possibly repaying a favour?).  Always plotting, always thinking creatively, always strategising    

EDF and its nukes: "we're sh*t, and we know we are'

As so frequently stated hereabouts since forever (since 2007, to be precise), the whole point of French energy policy is to have someone else pay for France's humungous nuclear decommissioning liabilities. 

Now they'd like "negotiations" over Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C to be merged into one big financing deal.  Well, well.  

First of all, what "negotiations" are needed over HPC, pray?  We already have a definitive financing deal: a binding contract that clearly has EDF on the hook for the stonking cost overruns.  (Its alternative is to walk away: such is that inane deal, struck by the dickhead Osborne and signed by the fragrant May, that EDF is under no obligation to finish the thing at all.)  Do contracts signed by the French mean anything?  Silly question.

Second, why would we buy a second nuke - of the very same design - from the same imbeciles who clearly acknowledge they can't finish the first, under a different deal structure where we are on the hook for the inevitable overruns?

Is there any point in telling Starmer and Miliband to grow a pair - maybe just one pair between the two of them?  EDF are shit project managers; and successive governments have been shit negotiators.  Each deserves the other.

ND 

Reforming the Council Tax in Wales: good luck to them

Apparently the Welsh are intending to 'reform' the Council Tax.  Of the 3 options under consideration, one is feeble: simple revaluing all properties.  The 2nd changes the weighting within the 9 existing bands: lower weighting at the lower end, higher at the higher (i.e. slightly more progressive).  The 3rd is the most 'radical': move to 12 bands, also with a weighting shift.

To me, this third option is a real no-brainer and one Osborne should have done in that brief 2010 window when he could have done almost anything he chose and, quite appropriately, his slogan was "all in it together".  Clearly, from his deeds of commission and omission, he never meant that; and the opportunity was lost. 

I'd go further: extend the number of bands almost indefinitely.  We all know the Council Tax is a wealth tax, so anyone who proposes to have palpitations at the very thought of such a thing, can emigrate now on principle.  Ditto progressive taxation.  All these things are matters of degree.  Gratuitous regressivity is nothing to be proud of.

I am sure there are some complexities over estates of such massive dimensions that any proportionate Council Tax would be likely to wipe them out in cash-flow terms (as happened with the first efforts at Estate Duty more than a century ago, under governments a lot less liberal than any post-war government).  OK, then - just 20 bands.  The point remains the same: the current system is ludicrous (hey, it was thrown together by Michael Heseltine on the back of an envelope one weekend!): defensible in only the most weaselly terms.  As are many existing schemes when you look at the detail and the consequences, of course - that's life, that's politics.  No need to stay with them when there are easy fixes, though.  

It will be interesting to see how this goes for the Welsh.

ND

Government introduces its stellar defence procurement skills to energy sector!

+ + UPDATED + +   - see below

Defence projects are the bane of the taxpayer's existence.  (Along with NHS IT projects, PPS procurement etc etc etc).  Astonishing delays, budget over-runs, faulty products - all followed by rinse-and-repeat with exactly the same contractors.  Learn nothing; repeat; and get the same results.  Never fails.

And now we have HMG's pathetic attempts to get a new generation of nukes up and running.  I say 'new', but the EPR is by now a pile of discredited and distinctly old crap.  And yet, conned by EDF, stitched up by George Osborne, bullied by Francois Hollande and betrayed by her own personal weakness of character, in 2016 Theresa May signed up for the Hinkley Point 'C' contract, the exact terms of which we may never learn: but we know enough to say they are awful.  All the optionality - and it's very great indeed - lies with EDF.  What's more, EDF knows that if it huffs and puffs and lies a bit more, it can get unilateral, favourable changes to this one-sided contract that are even further in its favour.  For example, not long ago it obtained a three-year relaxation to the back-stop date for start-up, from 2033 to 2036.  That's for a project it initially said would start up by year-end 2017! (sic)

So after this week's update from EDF, where are we now?  Start-up-date maybe 2031 or 2032 ... cost, well anyone's guess really, but wildly higher than any number floated before.  And this just days after HMG put around £2.5 bn cash (that's c.a.s.h., upfront, not just a high HPC-type electricity price) into Sizewell 'C', the next monstrous would-be product of EDF's nuclear fantasy.  The big difference with SZC being that, unlike HPC where EDF has to swallow the over-runs, with SZC the taxpayer will do that because EDF has no intention of taking on any construction risk at all.  And Boris signed up for that (not just May, then, who's an airbrained git).  

Did I say EDF has to swallow the over-runs on HPC?  Well, thus far, that's what the contract says and that's how it looks.  But, lo!  The contract doesn't commit them to finish the project at all !  They just don't get to sell that pre-priced electricity if they don't.

However, we can all picture the scene.  It is 2034.  HPC looks sort-of finished, but beneath those big domes and concrete silos, vital bits are not yet ready - and EDF knows full-well they ain't gonna be finished by 2036.  So there will be no juicy, HMG-underwritten, 35-year electricity contract.  They've been cap-in-hand to President Le Pen for more money, but she's sent them away empty-handed.

They know what to do.  "Get Starmer in here" they shout, and he's duly brought in to hear their story.  

"Look here, Starmer, we've run out of money.  But you need the electricity really badly, right?  This HPC delay, and the parallel delay at SZC, have already scuppered your energy strategy, which assumed that BOTH plants would be up and running by 2030! (aside: hah!  that Ed Miliband, eh?  Sucker!!)  You've had three years of patchy blackouts already.  So: we need another, errr, let's say £4bn - well, make it £5bn, what's that between friends, hmm?  Now.  Cash.  And then - we PROMISE - we'll be up and running by Xmas 2037, just, errr, 20 years late.   And we'll have another little meeting - about SZC - next month.  Whadya say?  You don't really want to leave this thing standing here like a radioactive white elephant, do you??"

Watch and wait...

ND

UPDATE     ... but you won't be waiting for long!  See this story - published after I wrote the above post.  You (maybe) read it here first

The Limits to Financial Responsibility

Every capitalist is in favour of financial freedoms: it's fundamental.  Every conservative is realistic about human failings.  Both statements need qualifying; but they are not irreconcilable.  They do, however, add up to limits at the 'freedom' end of the continuum.  Bracing and salutary as it may be to give financial responsibilities to as many people "as possible", there is little point in conferring freedoms where they will inevitably be abused on a scale to be of general disbenefit.  

It's a scalar matter, and there is no merit in striking purist, polar attitudes.  We don't, for example, allow people to sink their pensions into the shares of the company that employs them; nor drive cars without insurance.  There are all manner of constraints on banks etc.  

Another very sensible restriction is that placed on local authorities before 2012, preventing them from getting into commercial ventures (beyond some very tightly limited, essentially de minimis cases).  Heaven knows, I was a local councillor for a number of years and saw at first hand the limitations of a large proportion of my fellow elected representatives - and indeed those of full-time council officers, notwithstanding the genuine specialist skills many of them possessed.

Then along comes G. Osborne - complete with his student-politics talent and deeply unrealistic political attitudes - with his Localism Act, which turned LAs free to enter more or less any contract they fancied.  And away they went, not least in my own home town of Croydon, bankrupt thanks to crazy commercial schemes (mostly in property, in that case).  Croydon, however, is not the subject of today's story.

It's Warrington, another council I've written about before which, in 2019, bet the farm on shares in a distinctly ropey-looking small energy company, "Together Energy".  (How the Together management pulled that one off, one can only speculate: but the words "due diligence" don't quickly come to mind.)  Remember that by that time, Nottingham and Bristol city councils were very publicly staring disaster in the face with their own hopeless energy ventures, "Robin Hood Energy" and the less imaginative "Bristol Energy", so it was already pretty well understood that there was many a deep pitfall down that path.

But no, Warrington Council parted with £18 million of its residents' money for the shares, plus more in loans and guarantees, and then more loans and more guarantees ... and still Together went bust, just this week, when Warrington wasn't willing to allow matters to go even further - as was obviously always going to be the case eventually.  To make matters even more poignant, Together Energy even bought (with hard cash) the residential customer portfolio of Bristol Energy along the way.

Now tell me, Osborne, what possible contribution to the Public Good is represented by allowing such things to happen, as they inevitably have.  Does it teach other councillors a lesson?  Evidently not: Bristol and Nottingham were foundering in the full glare of publicity when Warrington got started.  Fact is, councillors and council officers are proven wholly unfit to be allowed to embark on commercial ventures: and that's a fairly restrained way of putting it.

The challenge of striking intelligent balance in policy-making is endless.  Right now, this one is badly out of kilter.

ND

Scrapping Sentinel: Massive Government Mistake

My special subject being aired now.  For the past 12+ years, the RAF has operated the Sentinel R1, a very capable and sophisticated piece of surveillance kit that all you one-time aircraft spotters will know about, and the rest can read more here. 

The Sentinel has been of extraordinary value to HMG, in ways that will not find detailed expression in the public domain but you can readily imagine.  (Start by searching on Operation Shader to get the general idea.)  Osborne, that f*****g 'genius' whose entry in the history books will be 100% damning, decided to scrap them for cost-cutting reasons but Cameron was persuaded (well, begged by our allies) not to follow through, so they were given a 5-year life extension.

But now their last mission has been flown, and there's no 1-1 replacement in sight.

I despair. 

ND

Nuclear ain't free, either: EDF in Big Trouble

One of our recent visitors queried my offhand comment that EDF was in Big Trouble (BTL on the "Negative Prices" piece).

Easy:  EDF is essentially a price-taker, but its costs are by no means all sunk - see CU's piece on oil price and comments thereupon.  OK, EDF has some short-term hedges in place (forward sales at fixed prices, in their case) but the very large bulk of its very long future outlook is naked exposure to the market price of power, which ain't gonna be healthy.  (EDF's outlook has to be long - the longest of any European energy producer - because it amortises its stuff over many decades at a very low discount rate.  Only holders of pure, essential infrastructure like National Grid could contemplate longer outlooks and lower discounts.)

The traditional model of most power generators in competitive markets is built not on absolute prices (naked exposure), but spreads - the differences between e.g. electricity and coal prices ("dark spread") or electricity and gas ("spark spread").  They are margin businesses: buy fuel, sell electricity - when profitable.  (Large-scale hydro power is much more complex, economically, but need not detain us here.)  Market prices will be set by something approximating the marginal plant on the system at a given point in time.

Then along come wind and solar, with their sunk costs and near-Zero short-run marginal cost - no fuel!  They would be price-takers, too, were it not for the massive subsidies they traditionally received.  Increasingly, however, they do trash the market price for everyone else (see "negative prices" as before) - that's zero-marginal-cost-plus-sunk-capital-cost for you.  

Here's the thing.  For some purposes - specifically, political and PR purposes - nukes have enjoyed billing themselves as having "zero marginal cost", too.  "Electricity too cheap to meter" in the words of the old slogan.  But it's bollocks.  They have monstrous ongoing costs to cover, of which the cost of fuel is broadly irrelevant.  It's maintenance, safety, plant life-extension and, crucially, decommissioning that loom large in their low-discount future perspectives.  And for EDF these things are (a) vast, and - the most important point - (b) not even remotely fully funded.  If they were fully funded they could be viewed as sunk.  But they ain't - not even close.

So ultra-low electricity prices are catastrophic for EDF and, in turn, for the French state.  Yes folks, EDF is Too Big To Fail. The French are obliged to essay the biggest can-kicking exercise in Europe.  Longtime readers of this blog will know that shortly after we started up I opined (in 2007) that French policy was all about getting other people (the EU, the UK ...) to pay for EDF's astronomic decommissioning bill.  Everything that's happened since has reinforced the point. 

That very much includes the suicidal madness that is Hinkley Point C, one of the primary reasons Osborne, and May in her turn, deserve eternal opprobrium.  The scale of UK subvention that we've committed to over 35 years, to buy the output of this plant at truly ludicrous prices will put a serious dent in our economy.  Ultimately, May is excused through weakness of intellect and will. 

But Osborne?  Osborne seemed to believe in an ever increasing electricity market price (the only conceivable rationale for HPC).  He is a cretin, and how he managed to come by a reputation for political genius is one of those enduring mysteries.

What's to be done?  Well for one thing, don't let's repeat the entire disaster by paying EDF to build Sizewell C! (which was firmly in the pre-covid political calendar, hopefully now on ice).  And for HPC?  We mave have to resort to the Semtex option ...

ND

Loyalties

It's all rather difficult, n'est-ce pas?  On the one hand, well, Huawei?  Really?  I know I said back in 2016, darker deeds than the Nissan deal would flow from May's desperation: (Nissan: The Shape of Things To Come) - but Huawei? 

Still, a complete failure to understand its significance is all of a piece with May's utter solipsistic stupidity.

On the other hand:  Williamson.  One could get quite extravagant with the epithets here, so let's just say: a man whose overall maturity makes Osborne look positively statesmanlike.  "No one will be sorry to see him go" - a bit of an understatement.  (Oh, my mistake: May will be sorry to see him go, apparently.  By their acolytes shall ye know them ...)

And finally, Mordaunt!  Who in 2018 regaled us with her opinion that "trans women are women".  Maybe that came with some qualifying nuances: but this is not a string of words I expect to hear from, well, anyone with claims to native English-speaking adulthood and the power of reason.  

Still, being a naval reservist is nice.  We must clutch at such straws as we find.

ND

Brexit & the Arnhem Fallacy

How can it happen?  When one of the best-known maxims on strategy is, errr, so well known?   No plan survives first contact with the enemy.  Or in Mike Tyson's vernacular: every sucker has a plan - 'til he gets punched in the mouth.  Yes, it's very well know indeed.

Makes no difference, of course, when the strategists are tired or stupid or distracted or whatever it is that undermines good judgement.  I give you the Battle of Arnhem (1944).  Operation Market Garden was conceived in a fearful rush - fighting in Normandy was still being conducted in the last week of August, and yet the Netherlands, two whole countries further on, was being invaded from the air by 17th September.  Actually, the plans were based broadly on several previous airborne ventures that were never launched, so they didn't start entirely from scratch.  However, any plan needs to be crafted specifically for the precise circumstances at hand.

And by Heaven they screwed up.  Many will be familiar with the episode in detail, and here's not the place to retell the whole story.  However, one massively salient (no pun intended) feature was that no account was taken of how the Germans might respond.  The enemy was deemed to be a passive entity to be taken by surprise, brushed aside and more or less left in the role of a lamely protesting spectator.

But the German army was never quite like that: its powers of recovery, reorganisation and tactical response were astonishing, legendary.  They'd been doing it to the Allies all up Italy and across the Eastern front for a year or more.  And of course at Arnhem too: they responded, adroitly, resolutely and successfully.

I bring all this up because it's been highly relevant all through the Brexit fiasco, and continues to be so even at the death.  Every player - May, ERG, Official Labour, Starmer's private operation, any number of backbench cunning-planners - they all announce something that cannot be delivered unilaterally; that necessarily involves the enemy.  And Selmayr is quite capable of reacting, in his own interests, to whatever comes his way.  Parliament can pass all the motions it likes about renegotiating the deal, removing the backstop, delaying the Big Day, etc etc.  But it makes no odds if the other side has different ideas.  Even (as I understand it) 'unilaterally' revoking Art 50 is a qualified matter:  it may not restore the status quo ante, and might come with bells and whistles (e.g. - can't invoke it again any time soon; must be 'genuine' etc).   And even that's only an Opinion:  yet again, the enemy may have a surprise for us if we try it.

Hence I reply to 'Andrew' who noted BTL the other day a snippet from Alphaville: 

"...a theoretical non-payment of pre-committed EU funds by the UK would lead to an immediate funding gap for Commission programmes. Borrowing is not an option for the EU due to the terms of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. An emergency budget renegotiation meanwhile is possible but extremely politically complex, and unlikely to offer an immediate solution" 

"So much for weak negotiating position", said Andrew: but I fear that's to fall into the trap again.  Suppose May assumes that's a knock-dead gambit on our part and pulls the plug on the first payment of the £39bn (due quite soon).  We know exactly what would happen.  We'd wake up next morning to find a headline stating that actions had been taken overnight under some emergency power that Selmayr had invented for himself, and that the Commission was content to pursue the UK through the international courts at its leisure.

A comment I made ages ago on George 'Boy' Osborne (equally aposite to Frederick 'Boy' Browning) is that being by nature a strategist is all very well; but what is needed is good strategists.  Do we have any?  I've seen absolutely no sign of one.

ND

Nuclear Winter

I am on record as musing that there will be no more nukes built in the UK - including, just to make it interesting, Hinkley Point C.  News that Moorside has fallen by the way (*until someone else steps into Toshiba's shoes*, yeah, right) is clearly grist to that mill.  

However, the government's arithmetic on electrification of just about everything forces them down the nuclear road.  So all attention will now be on what they will come up with for the remaining "prospects" (Wylfa, Sizewell, Bradwell) by way of a financial package.  The counter to my negative hypothesis is of course that with enough government money you can indeed suspend the laws of gravity - for a time. 

But one has to suppose the developers will insist it is up-front money next time.  Which brings us back to Hinkley.  EDF has certainly been beavering away - the civil engineering is moving along purposefully.  But, famously, although the French screwed a handsome electricity price out of George Osborne, they don't get to trouser it until the beast is up and running.  And never mind all that dredging, earthmoving and concrete: construction of the Hinkley reactors is nowhere near being started. 

Hinkley Point C: mud, concrete, but not much else

In short, the sunk costs of Hinkley, whilst by now probably a couple of billion (they'd sunk nearly one billion before they started any work at all) would not be ruinous for EDF if they decided it wasn't worth the candle.  Obviously, Plan B would be to steam round to our resolute Prime Minister and demand some cash, threatening that Plan C would be to walk away: seeing how *helpful* she was back in 2016, when Hollande wagged his finger at her.

Still, it's not clear this would succeed a second time, not least because unless they get motoring, the chance to browbeat May could disappear forever.

ND

Polly Toynbee is (Sometimes) Right

... about once a decade, I suppose.  She's an odd mix.  On the one hand she has a dreadful propensity to write up in the ever-gullible Grauniad whatever rubbish she's been told over a congenial lunch one-to-one with someone she's girlishly in awe of.  Her cavalier attitude towards easily-checked facts once spawned a small industry under the banner of Fact-Checking Pollyanna.  

On the other, she is capable of painstaking (if not actually painful) feats of empirical research, e.g. taking on menial jobs for months at a time to find out what's really happening somewhere, in order to write a book with some serious underpinnings.  She's an interesting contradiction; and the psychology of all this is a real puzzle.

Anyhow: she's had one of those once-a-decade moments (as usual, in the Graun). 

Squalid prisons are just the start. The entire justice system is in meltdown ... From the police to legal aid to the courts, savage cuts mean a nightmare is unfolding largely out of public view 

You scarcely need to read the article.  She's right, of course.  My own vantage-point on this is a friend in the CPS, whose stories from the front are frequently quite appalling.  Plus, of course, we all have the reports of our own eyes. 

And we know who's at least partly to blame: yes, the woman who was Home Secretary for six long years.  It's plain that (in her manifest cowardice, by now so transparent she is the laughing stock of Europe) she bowed all too readily to the budget constraints demanded by Osborne, and concluded the only priorities to be maintained were (a) counter-terrorism and (b) various crazy social policies inflicted upon the police.  Both she and Osborne richly deserve to languish in one of our choice prisons, doing some Toynbee-style first-hand research for themselves.

Recall the 2011 riots:  does anyone imagine they could be handled again today?  Even then it was wholly unsatisfactory for the first few days: but at least, on Cameron's insistence, a mighty and unrelenting effort was mounted to run to ground as many of the miscreants as possible over the following months.  Today?  Well, we may find out.  As one of our perceptive BTL commenters wrote in 2011, on that occasion there was no officer-class of motivated malcontents in evidence to coordinate the street-scum: but what if there was?   

Seven years later and it's not just in existence, it has a positive virtual Sandhurst of its own.  We may be grateful its titular leader is the utter plonker he is; that his No.2 holds no popular attraction whatever for the voters at large; and that Diane Abbbottt is a national joke.  That said, imagine her as Home Secretary ...  well, we may find out.

ND

George Osborne: a Rhetorical Question

I was amused to see this piece, with its plaintive headline: 

Why is George Osborne always supporting the EU against Britain?

Come on, we know the answer to this!  He is an unutterable four-letter man, and a shameless one to boot.  He is firmly of the view that at some point in his future the serried ranks of the Conservative Party will dispatch a delegation to his door who, upon bended knee, will beg him to become their leader and PM.

I hope to live long enough to see him realise this ain't gonna happen.  If the Party still exists in any shape to command a Parliamentary majority, it will be because Someone Else has successfully taken charge, at which point No-one Else Need Apply.

Trouble is, Osborne's quite a bit younger than me and he'll probably go to his own grave still awaiting that knock on the door.

ND

Fox, Crabb Gone - Hopefully Osborne Too

So CU called Fox right: he's gone, and Crabb too.  We're down to May, Leadsom and Gove, with the Fox and Crabb votes - now adrift - being directed at May.

Can we please hope this means May will feel sufficiently confident as not to need Osborne in any shape or form?

ND

The 'Genius' that is Gove

Now hang on a minute here.  Gove is no genius.  Apt commentary on Gove comes in a brilliant 2012 Stephen Collins cartoon in the Grauniad, of which this is a detail:

Stephen Collins / COLiLLO.com

It doesn't end well.  

Remember that in the Westminster bubble, 'Nudge' is considered a work of profound political philosophy: and for being an afficianado of said inane book George Osborne was considered wise beyond his years.  The bar for genius in that parish is set very low.

(All the talk seems to be of how Gove stabbed Boris in the back.  Might it not be that he put a gun to his head ..?)

I love reading the Labourites prosing on about how the Tory Party is in meltdown and that now is a time for capitalising on this (instead of what they are actually doing, viz mass self-immolation).  Nope: the Tory Party, a very serious power-minded entity, is seriously about the business of Choosing A New Leader, a post which naturally attracts the toughest and most ambitious in the termite-nest.  Might it be bloody?  Yes.  Will it be protracted?  Not particularly.  Will it end with everyone dead on the floor?  Assuredly not.

Will the party re-unite to win the next election?  Most probably.  Because if it's done adroitly, (a) Tory deserters to UKIP will come back into the fold - quite quickly, in fact;  and either (b) Labour will insist on opposing Brexit and be finally wiped out by UKIP or (c) Labour will do whatever it takes to win back its UKIP defectors, in which case ...

ND

UPDATE: in the comments, our good friend Kev asks:  Do we allow cartoonists to influence which leaders we choose? 

What a great essay title!  Beware, you may get the essay ...

Victory Parade

We’ll all remember where we were. I’d been hors de combat all night (at a hospital bedside), but at 3 am found myself on a night bus, where a fellow night rider was calling the results off his phone. Nothing conclusive by that stage but when I went to bed at 4 am there was the first hint of dawn over the horizon from the north east - literally as well as figuratively. 

So now, a triumphal parade of the victors and the captives-in-chains 

• Cameron 

Nothing became him in office quite like the leaving of it. He obviously came to his senses big-time in the early hours: and you gotta take your hat off. The delay in invoking Article 50 is a minor masterstroke (see Eurocrats below), echoing Michael Howard in 2005.  So much time, for so many Events to happen, for so much initiative to be deployed.  The weapon has been forged: no need to use it for a single, ill-thought-out stroke.  If Cameron continues to play the game with that degree of clarity over the summer, he’ll be well regarded for it. 

• That old C@W favourite, ‘Strategic’ Osborne 

Manoeuvred himself right up his own fundament. The fatuous ‘punishment budget’ stunt suggests a conversation that probably took place 14 days ago ...
 
DC: You told me Fear would work, but it bloody doesn’t. We’re even having to wheel Brown out now! If this goes pear-shaped, you’re toast. Pull your finger out, matey! 
 GO: Errr, yes, OK, I’ll get cracking 

Now he’s not even among the Runners & Riders. Will have to play a Treasury blinder over the summer if he’s not to appear in history as the lowest form of political life. Or maybe leave it all to Carney … All those years of kowtowing to the Chinese, to underpin his 2020 government. All that promotion of Hinkley Point (EDF must be a screaming short trade). All those pathetic Tory backbenchers who grovelled to him. Toast?  Dust. 

• Sadiq 

Clearly a bit of an operator. While the Benns and McDonnells and Hodges and Abbbottts and (eventually) Watsons are jerking off in various Westminster committee rooms and recording studios, Sadiq is actually angling to play serious power politics in a sphere of his own. Creativity-plus-initiative is everything at times like this. King over the water? It worked for Boris, and Julius Caesar. (But not for Ken. Or General McArthur.) 

PS, I did say that Sadiq was the price of Brexit … 

• Momentum 

The McDonnell strategy is playing out. (1) protest undying loyalty to the Sainted Jeremy and his mega-mandate … (2) … in the certain knowledge this is a doomed cause; no need to be seen with a knife when every other bugger is wielding one (3) rouse the Momentum hordes into a frenzy of ‘keep-the-2015-flame-alive’ passion (4) watch Jeremy expire in revolutionary martyrdom with several blades between his shoulders (5) ride to glory at the head of the Momentum Massive (6) win the snap election of October 2016. Easy.  Actually, he must know that scenario isn’t remotely a shoe-in: but hey, what better chance does an old fully paid-up Stalinist have? 

PS what’s Watson up to? Sorry, I have no intelligence on that: but it is obviously designed to thwart (5) above. 

• Boris 

Clever old Boris.  (Unless he offers Osborne a deal.)

• MPs 

On one theory, there is a clear all-party majority of Remainder MPs. Parliament works by formed factions that command working majorities. If they were all as pro-EU as (say) Damian Green, one might imagine a functional Parliamentary Remain Party being created that could do, well, whatever it wanted in that cause (even appoint a PM and government of its own). If they were all really pro-EU. And if there was any serious natural leadership in evidence. 

There’s the flaw: because I reckon the majority of MPs are careerist tossers to whom the above strategy isn’t worth the candle. They’ve all got battles to fight within conventional existing-party frameworks, not least including de-selection (or being KIPpered) at the next election if they don’t get with the Brexit programme. 

Leadership? Heseltine fumes from the wings but, errr … But I suppose there may be some MP out there we’ve never really noticed. Could be interesting. Probably not.

• Eurocrats 

Behaving as badly as ever, they learn nothing, they can’t help themselves. And, if we are correctly informed, they are about to open the sluice-gates on a pent-up flood of ‘sensitive’ measures they were holding back until, errrr, now. Good luck with making us feel buyers’ remorse when we watch you opening your doors to Turkey and banning our toasters.

Hint: there is no more BAU. If you haven’t spotted that, Merkel will be taking you by the elbow some day soon. Or the goolies. She’ll get the point across somehow. 

• Sturgeon 

Thrashing around a bit, actually, in her proactive and articulate way. She really doesn’t want to negotiate separation terms with a confident new Tory PM, or to row off in her little boat into a world of $50 oil. And the Eurocrats may not offer her anything tasty on a plate: their instincts are not to trade with cessationists; just like the taxman won’t trade with you in hypotheticals. They’ll still be busily admitting Turkey and banning toasters. One other thought: if the Scotties are really pissed off, I’d say the prospect of copping the Euro will NOT be a major deterrent next time around. 

• UKIP 

Interesting. Is their work done, do they go home now? The new PM had better hope not, because if the Tories get their act together, while the ex Tory Kippers will be drifting back, the Labour Party will still be haemorrhaging in that direction. Making that October election all the easier. 

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Yes, quite a dawn. One that cheered up the hospital patient no end. 

ND

'Strategical' Osborne Hits the Hinkley Buffers

Sorry to keep coming back to the Hinkley fiasco, but it really is quite an extreme (not to mention amusing) example of several phenomena, all in the one train-wreck.  In no particular order ...

Can-kicking:  one of the key aspects of Hinkley is that in its physical manifestation - i.e. as a producing power station (putative) - it has been viewed as consequence-free within the usual political time-horizon.  It was always going to take more than one parliament to build the wretched thing so Osborne was able to take the approach of 'paying for it' via an ultra-inflated electricity price that wouldn't kick in until that distant day when production commenced, by which time the price of other energy could be, well, it could be anything, really.  OK, in the meantime there is the minor matter of millions in legal fees etc, but that's small(ish) beer.  Kick that can!

Hubris:  of course in its political manifestations there have always been much more imminent aspects.  Osborne reckoned there was a triumph to be had if (a) Hinkley appealed to the Chinese as an icebreaker for their own nukes to follow, a down-payment on the relationship he wants for when he's PM four years from now, and (b) it could be heralded as the dawn of a new age, proof of political will, marquée project, big swinging dick etc etc.

Kinda depends on it actually going ahead, though ...

Suspending the Law of Gravity:  as I often say, you can suspend the law of gravity - but only if you are prepared to throw enough money at it.  And guarantees backed by an AAA government plus a couple of AAs are worth a heap of money.  But: when the music stops, you fall to earth, every time.  And Hinkley just doesn't fly.   

Naïveté in Whitehall:  but less so elsewhere.  In the red-white-and-blue corner over here we have the endlessly ignorant and gullible politicians + civil servants of Whitehall who know nothing of industry, finance, commerce, negotiation etc etc - in fact, the whole real-world package, it's just plain missing from their repertoire.  In the red-white-and-blue corner over there we have the shameless, unscrupulous, highly adroit members of the French diplomatic machine and politico-industrial complex who think nothing of lying, lying and lying again.  We'll build you four new nukes if you'll just let us buy British Energy.  The first will be up and running by 2017.  All we need is a guaranteed floor on the carbon price.  The first will be up and running by 2019.  Oh, and a guaranteed electricity price of £45/MWh.  The first will be up and running by 2020.  Well, make that £50.  The first will be up and running by 2021. No, actually £80.  The first will be up and running by 2022.  OK, if you twist my arm, £92.50.  Index-linked.  For 35 years.  The first will be up and running by 2023.  Oh, and a stack of indemnities ... did I mention, the first will be up and running by 2025? 

The Strategical Genius that is Osborne:   we do rather keep coming back to this, don't we?  On the one hand, it's clear enough he does indeed think in a rather 'strategical' sort of way: he knows what chess is, he's thinking several moves ahead, he has long-term goals and a game-plan, he can often trip up political opponents (of all parties) who can't see beyond the end of the next gin and tonic.  In the land of the blind men, the one-eyed man can sometimes score a few easy points.

But thinking strategical-type thoughts isn't enough - eventually they have to be good ones.  This is doubly the case, because the arrogant and ambitious would-be strategical genius frequently projects himself into a Position of Power, where the stakes are high.

And in the cockpit of Power, sooner rather than later one comes up against the two-eyed man.  That's the sort of person who's often to be found in such places.  Playing Big Boys' games.

Yes, you're a strategist alright, George, OK?  We've noticed, and we've acknowledged it.

But you're crap.  And that's been noticed, too.

ND

Energy Policy Goes Mainstream!

Guardian cartoon: detail.  (c) Steve Bell

It is not every day of the week that an energy topic becomes the subject of a major cartoonist's big OpEd piece  -  but today the great Steve Bell runs with Hinkley Point!

Yes, his Hinkley Point white elephant, lumbering and puffing as it is under George Osborne as jockey, nevertheless represents a "dead cert to win Grand National" as it powers ahead of the more worthy nags in the well-bent race.  Yes indeed, the fix is in.

But not to everyone's satisfaction evidently, as EDF's finance director Thomas Piquemal resigns in disgust at the stupidity of it all.  The EDF unions are pretty unhappy about it, too - they know EDF will need to sell down and slim down if it is to raise the dosh for its share of the Somerset monster, at the same time as completing the EPRs it's already started, rescuing Areva, and extending + decommissioning its vast French fleet.  Bon courage with all that, mes braves.

The French and UK governments would like it to be known that this doesn't change anything.  Indeed, they allow their whisperers to intimate that M.Piquemal was a hindrance they are glad to be shot of.  The City will be the judge of that.

The statement from Dave's mouthpiece - "President Hollande said himself on Thursday afternoon that it has the full support of the French Government" - was a bit loaded, I thought.  But Hollande is an ideal candidate for the opprobrium that may be about to follow, as and when reality bites home.

But, actually, it may never do so.  You really can suspend the law of gravity - for so long as you are willing to throw money at it.  Given the start-up date has already slipped 8 (that's eight) years - now 2025 and counting - Hinkley's electricity output doesn't feature directly in anyone's thinking.  So the primary ongoing costs of this endless farting-around are lawyers' fees and reputational damage.  Eventually, I suppose, the Chinese will get pretty pissed off at being associated with this shower, at which point any attraction of Hinkley for 'Genius' Osborne evaporates.

ND

Victims of $36 Oil, Home & Abroad

PMQs is an opportunity for MPs to get into their local papers; so fair play to Andy McDonald (Lab, Middlesbrough) for bemoaning the demise of 'Five Quarter Energy', a company from his part of the world, whose goal he said "was the extraction of gas from coal deep under the North sea ... totally decarbonised"(!)  To be fair, Cameron was poorly briefed and thought the question was about Carbon Capture & Storage, and he replied with a defence of the government's righteous decision to pull the plug on CCS.  So McDonald was pissed off with the answer he got.

An easy mistake to make, though, because Five Quarter had been thrashing around all over the place trying to find something vaguely to do with gas-on-Teesside.  They've taken down their website now, leaving just a "last-one-to-leave-please-turn-off-the-lights" notice: but in the past two years they have claimed to be working on:

• underground coal gasification
• a 1,000 MW gas-fired power plant (sic) 
• an 'LNG decarbonisation plant' (whatever that is)
• ... and CCS (hence the PM's confusion)

In short, they had no real idea what they wanted to do (except that it would be "totally decarbonised"), which is no way to raise money.  But, according to McDonald, "the Government failed to provide a supporting statement to secure foreign direct investment".  
 
Sorry Andy: even gullible foreign investors aren't taken in by pitches as scatter-gun as Five Quarter's.  Price of oil = $36.  Say no more.

Actually, right now there is no end of direct foreign investment prospecting going on in the UK.  I can report that wherever there is a remotely plausible UK energy infrastructure project or asset in prospect, teams of Chinese and Korean would-be investors are crawling all over it.  Whoever has been out selling the UK in the far east - Osborne, I suppose - has done a decent job.  At the very least, a bunch of airlines, hotels, taxi drivers and *ahem* consultants are doing very nicely from it.  Whether these orientals end up actually investing ... well, the jury is out.  I see the French have just deferred their decision on Hinkley again - another project with Chinese interests. 

Still, $36 puts the mockers on many an energy project.  Today I heard an argument (from a sage and senior energy executive) that was new on me: the prospect of war in the Middle East speaks to an even lower oil price.  Now traditional reasoning was that war would mean the price went up - disrupted supplies, etc.  But yer man was arguing that wars cost money, so Saudi and Iran would need to keep pumping out ever more of the black gold.

I take this as just a way of articulating the fashionable, deeply bearish sentiment.  Still - even lower than £36 ...

ND

Generating Electricity by Fantasy-Power

Towards the end of last year, as part of the Green Crap Purge George Osborne Amber Rudd withdrew the £1 billion pot allocated for encouraging the development of Carbon Capture & Storage, one of the great moonbeams-from-cucumbers schemes of our time.

Now it so happens that all scenarios for achieving the UK's official daydream of Full Decarbonisation by 2050 depended upon a chain of reasoning as follows:  "most heating needs to be electric", followed by "most transportation needs to be electric", followed by "there must be lots of genuinely CO2-neutral** biomass power generation";  then - because as eny fule kno we will needs a heap of gas-fired power plants, and maybe even some coal plants to generate those quite staggering quantities of elelctricity "there needs to be lots of CCS": and all finally, triumphantly anchored by "the residual CO2 from non-electric transportation - you know, aircraft and such - needs to be offset by biomass-PLUS-CCS",  which is of course CO2-negative! ('net negative emissions' in the jargon).

Thus, our 'decarbonised' energy future was being built on some inescapable logic plus the manifestation, well before 2050, of the unicorn of CCS.  Economically viable CCS, to boot.

So, the government having cruelly withheld the billion, they can be blamed for the disintegration of the entire chain!  And they will be, from now until 2050, I should imagine.

When do we get to register that CCS is a non-existent deus ex machina for *solving* an insoluble problem?  That it is an ontologially-challenged concept?  That it is a pure fantasy? 

ND

__________
**as opposed to burning mature trees a la Drax, which is anything but CO2-neutral as the greenies are slowly coming to realise.  Sorry, Drax