Streeting will land us with Miliband

I'm off on a short hol, but I leave you with my view - a prediction that has been simmering for 18 months, as you know (check the Mili tag).

• It's clear enough why Streeting might feel his only chance (ever) is to move now
• He may get 80 signatures, but he won't get elected
• Not sure if Starmer will stand and fight - John Major did (and won), but that was different in material ways
• In any case, if Streeting moves, Miliband wins

Have fun.   If I can find some wifi in a few days time, I might join in.

ND

________________

PS: the lefties at Novara are often quite good on lefty stuff, but made a really ridiculous assessment on Tuesday evening.  They said Miliband doesn't fly "because he's been rejected by the electorate before".  FFS!

1. The electorate ain't being consulted
2. errr ... Harold Wilson 1974?
3. errr ... Donald Trump 2024?
4. - plus loads of French and Italian politicians who think nothing of going round for a second bite  

PPS:  Rayner's 11th-hour "exoneration" is pretty damn' convenient, eh???  For Starmer as well as for her.  Sounds to me like the story of McSweeney's 'phone: nobody's gonna believe it. 

Mahmood, fairness, and blunt speaking

Has any politician from any parliamentary party - I include Reform - spoken so plainly and indeed bluntly in Parliament on the topic of illegal immigration and "asylum" as Shabana Mahmood?

The Tories, in particular, must be wondering why they didn't come up with a package of measures along the lines of hers, several years ago.

If Polanski wants to carve out a metro-bedsit-space on this issue for the Greens, well, he'll find it isn't as big in electoral terms as he imagines.  

[Gotta feel a bit sorry for "Your Party": they'd love to be all over this and use it as a recruiting sergeant - but they can't prise their own fingers away from the throats of their comrades long enough to write a press release.] 

Let's see how Labour splits when it comes to a vote.  Plenty of abstentions, but not so many outright 'noes', I'm guessing.  They know what their own constituents are saying: they just hope the matter doesn't get raised in Parliament and polite society.

Both sides claim to be guardians of the British Sense of Fairness.  My very early experience as a junior officer in the Army is that what the middle classes think of as 'fair' can be starkly different to what the workers think.  You can  stub your toe badly on that.

ND

BBC: despite outrages, needs fixing, not scrapping

Cards on the table: I am a big supporter of an idealised concept of what the BBC can be at its best.

But, boy, do they inflict damage on themselves.  The Panorama[1] / Trump thing is a journalistic outrage, as even hardened anti-Trump lefties with concern for the integrity of journalism agree.  The Panorama "anti-semitism in the Labour Party" is another.  Looks like they had (have?) a rogue LGBTIxyz unit of some kind, busily censoring their colleagues.  Their climate / energy offerings are often pure green-blob output.  Etc etc etc. 

And then you get the opposite: the Panorama in 2022 on Drax and its baleful Canadian operations was masterly, with long-running consequences that haven't fully played out yet.

Even thin-skinned Trump should recognise the soft power of the Beeb worldwide, and how many western interests it buttresses.  (Incidentally, what possible damages could he claim to have suffered?)  What would step into its shoes?  Domestically, maybe the better ITV and C4 documentaries.  But abroad?  Just commercial and/or dangerous fake-news dross from very unsavoury sources.  

But I'll end on another condemnatory anecdote, starting with "It was ever thus".  

Many, many years ago when I was heavily involved in local politics, myself and Mrs D were approached by Panorama to be interviewed on the subject of Child Benefit, on our very own sofa at home, as a representative middle-class married couple with school-aged children.  As the evening wore on and they kept asking us the same questions over and over, it became apparent they were hoping we'd express thus-and-such opinions.  But we didn't.  They were relentless, eventually telling us fairly precisely the words they wished to put into our mouths.  Well, we weren't having it; so the extensive footage they'd shot was entirely abortive.

But not the entire evening.  During a break, they asked us if we could put them in touch with other couples in the area, with different profiles to our own.  We mentioned two things: (1) a couple we were willing to sound out for them, who exactly fitted one of the profiles they wanted; and (2) quite separately and en passant, that there was a vantage point up the road from ourselves where some of the most expensive houses in London looked out across a valley, directly towards a huge and fairly rough council estate on the hill opposite.

So what happened?  When the programme aired, whilst Mr & Mrs D did not make an appearance, the other couple did.  And against the backdrop of a camera shot panning from a big house across to the council estate, the introductory voice-over asserted that this was the view from the couple's own front room.  Except that they didn't live anywhere near that vantage point ...  a complete BBC confection.  Shameless, and deeply unprofessional stuff: but I'm sure someone who'd misinterpreted John Birt's "mission to explain"[2] just loved it.     

They shoot themselves in the foot, so many times.  And it seems they just can't help it.  My supportive view of an idealised BBC is, ahem, very idealised indeed.

ND

____________

[1] It's worth noting that 'Panorama' is as much a banner than a BBC department.  Individual programmes they broadcast under that label are generally made by an ad hoc team of independent reporters / researchers assembled for a single programme.

[2] A renowned journo of my acquaintance who'd worked at the Beeb in this era told me how it worked.  Birt's 'MtE' approach was: (a) first, researchers would do a load of rigorous research & analysis on some tricky topic; (b) they'd reach their conclusions on how the issues were to be understood and explained; (c) they'd go out into the world and find interviewees etc to "illustrate" what they'd concluded, creating an explanatory narrative.

How this worked in practice was:  a bunch of people - generally lefties - who had no genuine expertise on the topic, would sit at their desks discussing and arguing for weeks, with a few facts and opinions thrown in.  They'd reach their conclusions essentially a priori from their baleful assumptions and leftist worldview, and write their narrative.  They'd then set out to find and interview (and of course put words into the mouths of) people that were selected as archetypes, often outright caricatures, of the various viewpoints featuring in their narrative, in order to bring it alive for a TV audience.  Then air the programme.

Little or nothing of this process represented genuine, open-minded journalistic research, and at worst was the kind of pre-ordained confection we still see in such outrages as the Trump speech-splicing episode. 

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

Starmer vs ... Whom?

"Decency vs Division" is this week's rallying call for Starmer, with a range of associated wok-ish sub-slogans.  It's suggested by some that he, Reeves and Phillipson are running snide little side-campaigns against Andy Burnham and Lucy Powell: but who is the primary enemy in Starmer's sights?

The obvious, face-value answer is N. Farage: but I don't think so.  IMHO, this whole Party Conference turn is aimed squarely at targets on the Left, in the two menacing shapes of Zack Polansky and the Corbyn / Sultana rabble.  Starmer's first aim now must be to persuade what remains of the left-ish, green-ish sector of the Labour movement that he's sufficiently, demonstratively anti-Farage for them to reckon staying with Labour is the safest option, rather than futile fragmentation into the ranks of the splitters.  A bit like the French are always doing to fend off Marine Le Pen.

Will any of his target audience be persuaded?  It's not clear to me that many will, once the Conference euphoria is over.  He'll be permitting new offshore drilling applications soon; those new runways displease a lot of folk; and it'll be quite hard to row back on his anti-small-boaters rhetoric.  Etc Etc.  OK, Reeves may shortly find a bit of (our) dosh for the two-child benefit cap thing, plus fuel discounts for a couple million more welfare recipients: but he still won't be delivering Gaza from its fate, or doing anything that would seriously piss off Trump.

We'll see.

Incidentally, what's the betting that initially, someone on the speechwriting team actually suggested "Diversity vs Division"?  Before being slapped down, and probably shown the door ...

ND 

Here's why Left will get 0% of 16-year old boys' votes

In two words: Soft Porn.

Well, certainly the Right has its knockers ... 

Fruity humour.  The Right can use it, the Left can't.  Starmer is completely mad if he goes for it.

ND

Votes for 16-17's: very bad politics on autopilot

Well, it was in their manifesto.  But I seriously though it might be one they'd quietly forget.  I happen to know that there are people in Starmer's policy team that think giving votes to 16-17's is a Really Bad Idea.  And it is.

This is the same cohort that progressives traditionally seek to exempt from criminal responsibility or the right to join the Armed Forces.  Would they like to be arrested by a 16-year-old copper?  Or tried by a 16-year old magistrate?

Of course, there's a naive body of progressive / leftist thinking that somehow assumes da yoof is inevitably more progressive than their seniors.  Recent empirical evidence suggests otherwise - in some cases, blood-chillingly so - & thus it isn't even particularly self-serving, though without the slightest doubt it's  intended to be.  Actually what da yoof is, is easily swayed** by whatever is the latest viral TikTok meme, which will naturally come out of nowhere just days before the election, spread like wildfire, and not leave any time for political countermeasures.

And - irony of ironies - it is many, many more times likely to be generated by Andrew Tate (or indeed Nigel Farage) than by Kier Starmer.

So: while we may be sure this looked like a brilliant idea five years ago - a Labour-voting ratchet for all time - it looks utterly, utterly stupid now: Starmer is just going through the motions blindly, on autopilot without consideration of what's going on.  Because of course it comes just as the structure of 'traditional' British politics is being buffeted mercilessly by the four winds.  We don't even need to mention the appalling Tate: has Starmer not realised that any of the Greens, the new lefty party, the Islamist 'independents', Reform - even, just possibly, Ed 'Mr Blobby' Davey - are likely to wipe the floor with him in this age group?

Does politics get any more crass?

ND

[1] I attended a talk by the very thoughtful and erudite producer of a reality TV show (seriously!).  He said that there is a long-running survey conducted by Gallup or one of the venerable polling agencies, that has for decades asked the same batch of questions to each new cohort of young adults.  One of the questions is: in very serious matters where you're in doubt as to what you should do, who do you turn to?  Up until GenZ, the answers have always been:  my parents / older family members I look up to / elders in the community I trust / teachers / people in authority / professional people etc etc.  But not GenZ, for whom the answer is: my friends.  And modern life being what it is, that generally means: whatever meme my friend-group is currently in thrall to.  This is appalling, end-of-civilisation stuff.

[2] A friend of mine gave a talk to a secondary school recently.  Before he went in to the hall, he was begged by the teachers, not under any circumstances to engage with anything from the kids relating to Andrew Tate.  That's how bad this is. 

"... knows one sex from the other ..."

My tiny baby brother

has never read a book

Knows one sex from the other

all he has to do is look

Doin' a-What Comes Naturally**, from Annie Get Your Gun

Well yes.  And we get there in the end (if I may use that phrase) as the Supreme Court makes an intelligent ruling on a key aspect of the trans nonsense.  It remains to unhook the NHS from that lunacy.

There are two aspects to this I find very interesting.  Firstly, not so long ago the mainstream progressive left had been wholly captured by the "Self-ID Trans" madness, so that it was de rigeur to mouth "some men have a cervix / some women have a penis" etc etc.  I had this down as a shibboleth, a marker of progressive belonging, being so deliberately crazy that it took a major effort of intellectual self-abasement to adopt it - like any uncomfortable initiation test.  Yes, in order to be a Catholic in the Middle Ages you had to sign up for literal transubstantiation; and to be one of the Progressive gang, you are obliged to pretend you believe that a trans woman is literally a woman.  Well, make that "are" into a "were", because I don't detect any of that on the mainstream left just now (though still perhaps amongst the Greens?)  Mercifully, it evaporated some time over the last 12 months or so - something to do with the General Election, I'm guessing.  A very big relief to many, we may be sure.

Second, however, is something that seems to be taking its place, and might possibly be around a bit longer.  There seems now to be a reaction of, well, the Supreme Court's ruling is what it is, but the whole matter is so complex and "granular", it doesn't resolve the myriad of practical questions.  The efforts made to make the waters seem as muddy as possible range from the properly nuanced to outright sophistry.

Armed with the SC ruling as a thoroughly commonsense-affirming breakthrough, we can cut through this second-tier crap relatively easily by noting that society often has annoying problems when willful, sometimes rather unfortunate people are determined to behave oddly, noisily and angrily in public.  Can these ever be resolved by the Supreme Court?  Well, no.  It's not the SC's job, but rather, the thankless task of unfortunate school teachers, policemen, NHS staff, HR directors etc etc.  As with stroppy children, be they genuinely disturbed or just playing up, the key is to steer them gently but firmly and confidently into some sensible, pragmatic, quietist outcome.  Easier said than done, I know - but it's the eternal (and hopefully only occasional) lot of responsible adults.

ND

________________

** The film version of this song is slightly bowdlerised: the original contained some fruitier verses 

British Steel [2]: where IS *Immingham*?

As recounted here before, in every energy co I worked for I always took every sensible opportunity to visit the plant - and make my staff do the same.  In an intrinsically physical business, a decent first-hand understanding of the hardware, the people that operate it, and the issues they must deal with, is IMHO damn' important for every one of a multitude of reasons.  (That includes getting the most and the best out of those folks on a sustained and sustainable basis, BTW.) 

With that as one's attitude, one quickly gets to share the disdain of the folks at the plant for those who treat the industrial nitty-gritty as something rather alien that happens somewhere, who-knows-quite-where, but in any case a long way from London & the Home Counties.  Is "Teeside" on the River Tee, perhaps?  It is in this spirit that over the past few days I have caught two different broadcasters offering the following couple of gems:

    "Scunthorpe get its raw materials** from somewhere called Immingham ..."

    "... the port of Immingham, in the North East of England"

That would be, errr, the second largest port by tonnage in the UK - wherever this obscure place might actually be.  Finally and at last, today I heard "... from Immingham, 20 miles to the East".  A simple and correct relativistic formulation which absolves them from knowing where either town actually is.  

Of course it's also somewhat rich to hear Greens and progressives of the non-labourist ilk eulogising belatedly over retaining a domestic, coal-fuelled virgin steel manufacturing capability, for building all that wonderful Net Zero kit, new houses etc etc, doncha know?  Well yes, here at C@W and its BTL friends, we always did know.  Pig-ignorant metro-gits.

ND

_________

** I swear the whole weekend went past without that convenient blanket euphemism "raw materials" being explicated as dirty old iron ore and COAL 

Are they mad? The new legislation on British Steel

Extremely odd things are happening all over just now and perhaps we are becoming inured to disturbing novelty.  In the UK, some might date this to 2015 and the rise of Corbyn, passing through Brexit, in an ever-rising, ever-accelerating crescendo of covid, Ukraine and now the daily lunacies of Trump.

Personally, however, I have rarely been more shocked than when I read this today: 

Emergency legislation allowing the government to instruct companies to keep loss-making steel operations in England open, or face criminal penalties for their executives, were passed yesterday during an extraordinary sitting of parliament.

For context: I bow to no man on the strategic imperative of being able to make steel in this country.  (Obviously, not everyone need agree.)  Nor do I object to swift and decisive use of the levers of power: in fact, more often I am criticising the inertia and lack of imagination of those who hold those levers limply in their idle hands.  

And I don't have the time to read up on the exact legislation in full, which may, I suppose, in the round be less shocking than the above summary suggests.  

But ... criminal penalties?  For an economic "offence"?  Obviously, there are such liabilities upon employers that flout health and safety regulations.  But financial affairs are intrinsically civil matters: are there any other even vaguely equivalent precedents?  The "personal liability" precedent that came immediately to mind to this former councillor was Thatcher's legislation on local authorities: to prevent rogue "socialist" councils like Lambeth and Liverpool from taking the piss at annual budget time, she made the chief finance officer personally liable for balancing the budget, with powers granted to the said official to impose balance if the democratically elected members persisted in mulishly voting for infeasible financial plans.  But these were not criminal matters.  Is Starmer proposing to bang up Chinese nationals ..?  Who was it that thought a sober grey lawyer would at least bring stable, rule-of-law government to the land?

Legislate in haste, repent at leisure.  In the wrong hands this precedent will be a joy to every mad leftist and green in the land.  You pick a piece of policy, and declare it a criminal offence to carry out any act inconvenient for said policy, property rights be damned.  What am I bid for failure to install heat pumps?  "Well, climate change threatens the well-being of everyone on the planet, it's preventing genocide we are talking about here!  It's obviously a criminal matter!!"   You can generate further nightmares for yourself.  Or indeed, generate a few prime candidates of your own for criminalisation!  It needn't only be leftists that play the game: we can all join in, see how they like that.  We are constrained only by the limitations of our imagination. 

Am I alone in my state of shock at all this?  Or do I just need to read the whole thing properly, and calm down?

ND

Labour leadership stakes: rats-in-sack update

It's two months ago since we last looked at the jockeying for position going on in the Cabinet.  At that time we cast our eyes over Reeves (nobody's idea of the next leader, then or now); Streeting (obviously positioning himself actively); Lammy (radiating ambition); and Rayner (also ambitious but actually a joke).  For completeness, we mentioned Khan (permanently on the lookout for the Main Chance); Miliband (radiating competence); and Mandelson (devious and unpredictable as ever).

How do things look now?  The Grauniad has a telling, tearful piece, avowedly briefed by the wimmin: and it's worth quoting a couple of chunks. 

... a female minister spoke directly to the prime minister to complain about the leaks and briefings she saw directed against other women ... including Bridget Phillipson, Liz Kendall, and Yvette Cooper .,. “Cabinet really no longer feels like a safe space for genuine debate,” one minister said ... after weeks of tension felt by some women in the cabinet... Almost a dozen female Labour MPs who spoke to the Guardian said they were unnerved at how female cabinet ministers appeared to be getting the brunt of the blame for issues in government – though there is less sympathy for the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, because of anger over the Treasury’s handling of spending cuts and welfare. Among some of the new intake of MPs, there is a strong feeling that any ultimate successor to Starmer should be a woman – and a resentment of what they see as a campaign to anoint Wes Streeting.

Hahah!  More popcorn supplies, please.  It goes on: 

At the moment [Streeting] has no obvious female rival as the heir apparent. Senior cabinet ministers who did not want to see Streeting win had previously coalesced around Reeves, but her unpopular decisions as chancellor have meant that is no longer the case. Other ministers would back Rayner, but she would face a brutal press onslaught. Among Labour members there is no doubt, however. Rayner is streets ahead of her rivals in terms of popularity with the grassroots ... There is only one cabinet minister ahead of her, who is probably the least likely of anyone around the table to have another shot at the top job – Ed Miliband.

This is not intelligent commentary.  First, selecting the next leader when there's no vacancy is well-known to be an absolute mug's game.  Genuine, nailed-on heirs-apparent are few and far between in British politics (in the past century or more, only Anthony Eden and Gordon Brown).  

Second, Miliband is not at all the least likely to have another shot.  In countries like France and Italy he would be the number one contender in everyone's books: competent (at politics, that is), confident, popular, experienced, sure-footed, intelligent, and comfortably dynamic enough.  And he has the green-left eating out of his hand - potentially deemed a vital constituency when the Green Party is snapping around Labour's heels in such politically volatile circumstances.  That's how he'd be marketed, anyhow. 

A couple more comments.  (a)  You just can't rule out Khan or Burnham.  These guys' ambition and political capital is so great.  Safe seats aren't so hard to find in a hurry: Boris always found one at the drop of a hat.

(b) Having mentioned the Prince of Darkness last time and just out of interest, I have it on good authority Mandelson has already f****d up royally in Washington.  Of course, he's made comebacks in the past from many an appalling situation of his own making, so who knows?  But right now, his political capital is deep in the red.

Oh, and Lammy?  Speaking of in-the-red, he's so far out of the money right now, I almost forgot him.

ND  

Is 'Trumpism' an ideology? Ye-es, but ...

When I first joined the Conservative Party as a teenager, many long years ago, the opening sentence of the rules read thus:  

Membership of the Conservative Party is open to anyone who opposes Socialism and Communism ..."

And there you have it in a nutshell.  Conservatism, and the Right in politics generally, isn't really any kind of ideology - it even has to define itself negatively, by what it's opposed to.  It's essentially an unintellectual, not-very-articulate Burkean tendency.  Genuinely articulate Rightists such as Roger Scruton are few and far between - and they don't have cults, cliques and followers.  Leftists, who really are ideologues and can't envisage any other way of life, spit out words like 'capitalism' as if that, too, is a competing ideology - and that's an ignorant misunderstanding, too.  'Thatcherism'?  Not really: Keith Joseph notwithstanding, Thatcher's was a forceful petite bourgeois tendency on HRT.  'Reaganism'?  Not much up top, is there? - as Thatcher herself said.  'Gaullism'?  Nah - just nationalism.  'Neo-liberalism'?  If anything, an expression of the desire to clear the decks for some fairly aggressive money-making.  Etc etc etc.

So if you'd asked me any time up until very recently, I'd have said that in my political lifetime the Right has been essentially non-ideological.  Frustrating for the Left because, for all their fervour, ratiocination and well-written 5,000-word essays peppered with nicely-turned neologisms, they've nothing intellectual to grapple with except the splitters in the other Leftist factions. 

Until very recently.  Because now, it's quite evident from the voluminous output of what we might loosely call the 'Trumpite' camp, there is thinking going on that is identifiably ideological.

Of course, it's also messily bound up with some entirely mercenary motives; and as with any broad movement, one can readily discern several camps whose varying emphases in their pro-Trump enthusiasms are really quite different - the makings of fissures and splits yet to become a serious problem for The Donald's regime; but that will come.  IMHO it's rather too early to attempt to systematise all this; but it's brewing up to a point where one will be able to.**  There are some early attempts at articulation - here's one - but not perhaps very convincing yet.  (This of course isn't to be marvelled at, because being essentially Right-ish, the whole Trump thing will have a strong tendency to inarticulacy.)   

Meanwhile, as all this is slowly coagulating into something with defined contours we can pin down and gaze at, we face the sobering fact that many of its leading lights in the highest of high places are unhinged, messianic, in a massive hurry, drunk on power, and untouched by normal considerations of prudence.  We need no better evidence than the truly amazing spectacle of grown men in high office, with all the resources in the world should they care to use them with due deliberation, conducting their communications like a bunch of doped-up teenagers on their mobile 'phones plotting a Friday-night fight with a neighbouring crew.  The average County Lines drugs gang isn't as crass in its actions as these high-ranking promoters of the Trumpian Flame.  FFS, what is to become of the 'Free World'?

ND  

___________

** if anyone knows of a good early attempt to do this, or would care to try themselves in less than, say, 100 words, we'd all like to know!

Weekend Reading: Drax / Womens Rights vs Trans

Couple of worthwhile MSM press articles here - unusually good; and for the final one, an unusual source, too.

Drax - the papers are full of Drax at the moment as Miliband has partially caved in to the Starmer / Reeves growth-fixation.  OK, he's reduced the annual amount of subsidy for the Yorkshire tree-consuming monster, but he's extending our payments to undeserving Drax by another 4 years, on spurious grounds ("TINA": well, Ed, there are better alternatives), all for the sake of keeping options open for Drax to build a 'BECCS' plant, maybe, some time in the future of its own choosing, if it gets given even more £££, no commitments made at this time.  That's one helluva costly option, without any certainty of ultimate delivery.  Madness.

Several of the MPs taking a broadly anti-Drax line in Parliament of late, have actually screwed up in what they've said on this fairly technical topic; and the press have not been much better.  Even the FT is all-too-frequently disappointing in such BAU matters, silently and implicitly siding with, errr, BAU (and ad revenues?)  This, though not 100% accurate, is many times better than usual.  Oh, and quite a neat, perky little snipe from Nils Prately in the Graun, too.

Trans - also from the Graun is this, from the increasingly confident feminist pen of Sonia Sodha.  Here's a flavour (my emphasis): 

No woman should be forced to change her clothes in front of a male colleague... Peggie shared her account of what happened with the tribunal last week ... Dr Beth Upton, the [trans] male doctor in question, walked into the [changing] room while she was partially undressed... Upton put in a formal complaint, and Peggie was suspended for bullying and harassment... The greatest responsibility lies with Peggie’s employer, who, instead of making separate accommodations for Upton, expected female colleagues to ignore the fact he is male [sic!]... The attempted justification is that everyone must adopt the minority belief system that someone’s sex is not a scientific fact but a matter of their gender identity, or some sort of gendered soul.  As a personal worldview, that’s someone’s own business, but it is wrong – and, in a work context, unprofessional – to try to force it on others in relation to single-sex spaces, services and sports...

The idea that a man who identifies as female is literally a woman, and must without fail be treated as such, has become a cherished principle for some progressives. Politicians and women’s rights activists speaking against this have been excommunicated from the left. Slowly, but surely, this is starting to change ... Abandoning basic common sense for unpopular policies that put women at risk does not go well for the left.

'Misgendering' the doctor, by name, in print!  Go Sonia, Go Graun!

ND

War to the knife with Greens: Starmer going for broke

Going for growth?  There's every sign Starmer is going for broke - a slew of deeply controversial decisions either made already, or being readied, all in a rush.  Someone's told him it'll be a compelling, critical-mass message for all those would-be investors in UK plc that he's really open for business and will trample down all nay-sayers into the building-site dust.  (And presumably McSweeney has told him that 'all at once' is the best tactic.)

• Support for Heathrow third runway (already signaled explicitly)
• 'Nothing to stand in the way of new nukes' (yesterday)
• 'Likely to grant Rosebank etc oil/gas production licences' (yesterday)
• Extension of subsidies for Drax (Monday, by all accounts)

Everyone has their favourite 'hate' - mine is Drax; & I approve of Rosebank - and there is many a Green (and Red-Green) who hates them all with equal passion.  Perhaps there is someone other than Reeves who loves them all?  The construction industry, I guess, although they get nothing from the Drax announcement because Drax won't be committing to it's putative, ridiculous next-phase project "BECCS" in the near future - in fact, maybe never.

Wow.  Has McSweeney decided there'll be a month of massive sound & fury, followed by the usual amnesia?  Are the lefties who've just had the Whip restored so pathetically grateful, they'll take the required vow of silence?  Will the construction unions come swinging in with big support?

And Miliband ..?  Ah yes, we've mused about him several times.  He's swallowed LHR3.  He is in favour of nukes, and can probably swallow Drax (with much sophistry).  But Rosebank?  Lots of pundits are tipping him to quit over this, but I reckon otherwise: check his performance at the ESNZ Select Committee last month (linked to in an earlier post) - he very studiously repeated the exact wording of the Labour manifesto pledge: no new exploration licences.  Rosebank et al don't need an exploration licence, just a production permit.  I reckon he's swallowed it already, but we may soon find out.  His substantial cred with the greeny-lefties is going to be stretched to breaking-point soon.  What spectator sport this is!

Interestingly, only the nukes on that list above involve government money - and even that has (thus far) been limited to the ill-judged, probably ill-fated Sizewell C.  Everything else will either be private money and/or subsidies levied on energy bills.  So none of these 'announcements' is anything more than permissory.  Performative policy, on the cheap.  May never happen (aside from Drax grabbing the new subsidies with both hands, of course).

So:  let's see if there's a lasting political cost.  Maybe, maybe not.

ND

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Sorry, no links on this post - not easy from a 'phone.  You'll need to google it all yourselves!

Labour headed for serious internal strife

The Starmer government has been trying the patience of Labour members from MPs downwards, ever since the 2-chid allowance and winter fuel payment things, not to mention the freebies.  Their mealy-mouthed stance on Gaza enrages further tranches of their base.  Kow-towing to Trump - and who knows what that might entail - won't go down at all well in many quarters.  But now Rachel Reeves seems to have cut loose altogether, and must surely be moving onto a whole new patch of extremely thin ice.

Growth as a panacea for, well, everything, has a moderately respectable economic pedigree (even if achieving it has seemed to be beyond UK politicians - and there are respectable theories about that, too).  Months ago we noted that the Starmer regime seemed to have come to it fairly late, and there's no doubt it's the only thing that matters now - to Reeves, at least.  It's also top of Starmer's rhetoric just now, but soon he may find he has a few competing priorities to juggle.  And ahead of any ultimate, actual growth-derived economic benefits arriving - a long-term prospect, at best - manic growth-stimulating policies come with a lot of near-term political downsides.

This all comes to a head when, last week, Reeves explicitly said growth takes priority over Net Zero etc.  Well, in that case, we can suggest several cost-saving measures right away!  That's after weeks of "the Cuts are Coming!", which is hardly music to the ears of the rest of the Cabinet - and the Party.  Then, to cap it off, LHR3 seems likely to be given the thumbs-up.  

Apparently, Miliband says he won't resign over LHR - and we know how exceptionally "loyal" he is.   OK, LHR might not technically be within his brief, so he might feel able to let it go.  But, seriously, if NZ is to be downgraded as a priority, there really are several material savings to be made there: Sizewell C is a current cash drain for no immediate gain[1], and numerous other smaller, stupid projects too (hydrogen for heating, this includes you - and many more besides).  Reeves' axe must surely swing in his direction as well as every other.  These cuts and blunt Go-for-Growth bulldozer measures will be pissing off Labour swing voters and NIMBYs everywhere on a big scale - and there's one helluva big, restive, worried labour backbench cohort.

Now I may be getting ahead of myself here, but I feel we see some of the bigger players starting to position themselves for genuine internecine strife.  Streeting is the one who caught my attention last week with his big, heavily-trailed "battle of ideas" speech - a sure sign; and of course Khan is always on the lookout for cues to work his passage back into Parliament and the leadership he fondly imagines is his by right.  They say Lammy is boundlessly ambitious.  Rayner is a joke, of course, but for completeness I feel it must be noted that Miliband is seriously radiating dynamic confidence & competence (that's "radiating", not "actually delivering"), and looks like leadership material [2] if anyone was in the market for it.  In a country like France, he'd have no difficulty in being a candidate to go round again.  Mandelson, of course, is always on expert manoeuvres and his favours are fairly fickle. 

Popcorn time, then.  And sooner than we might have expected.

ND

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[1] Not in energy terms, anyhow.  Of course, many say the underlying purpose of the whole civil nuclear programme is to subsidise the military nukes.  And I persist in viewing it as part of the overall craven France-mollifying strategy which of course involves the Small Boats issue.

[2] If you want to judge for yourself, view his performance at the ESNZ committee in Parliament two weeks ago - masterful stuff.

WFH "costs nothing". WTF? Polly Toynbee is a fool

WFH  -  "It’s free, it’s sensible and it makes workers happy. The government needs to accept that this is the new normal"

Guess which idiot wrote that?  Well, no prizes, it's Polly Toynbee, in a Graun piece entitled Labour has been sucked into the WFH culture war. It should know better. 

We'll let her make her case, as she bewails what she detects as government reverting to neanderthal office-bound working practices. 

... many workplaces have thrived because of it ... A perverse strain of rightwing thought opposes almost any social progress that improves other people’s lives ... Zoom meetings save time and wasteful travel, employers are free to hire talent from anywhere in the country, and employees have escaped escalating property prices in London and steep commuting costs. WFH has been a boon for the climate, too; according to one US study, two to four days of remote working a week lowers carbon emissions by between 11% and 29% ... hybrid working policies [are] key to attracting talent ... people value the ability to work from home two or three days a week about the same as they would an 8% pay rise.  Does [the government] want to be nice to employees, or nasty? ... new employment rights will help civilise working life. Growth-boosting plans to get “economically inactive” people with disabilities or caring responsibilities into jobs will only succeed with maximum flexibility. And WFH, remember, is free, which makes it look like a very sensible policy in a year when large pay rises seem unlikely. 

Setting aside the ridiculously hyperbolic conclusion one is supposed to infer from that deliberately misleading sentence on climate benefits, we can assess the force of what she's saying, before entering the counter-arguments (which, true to her miserable form, she does not acknowledge at all).

Efficiency:  yes, and nobody disagrees, Zoom etc as a facility is a fine thing to have and can make for all manner of efficiencies.  So what?  The telephone has been around for well over a century.  I attended my first "teleconference" in 1986: the resolution of the mug-shots wasn't great, but even then the sound was fine and it had the ability to switch to doc-display mode.  Presumably Toynbee inhabits a tech-free world of Graun chatterers who imagine it was invented in 2020.

And ...  and?    Well, excepting only the "costs nothing" point which we'll return to, everything else in her case is basically "staff like it".  Well, staff say they like a lot of things: more money, extra holidays, free childcare, slap-up canteen lunches, company car, health insurance, non-contributory pension, golfing away-days ...   and they all take their place in a businesslike assessment of how the trade-offs are going to work out.  So let's get to the trade-offs, eh, Polly? 

It's really odd because I would have thought lefties, softies and tree-hugger types would have been the first to acknowledge the absolutely critical importance of direct human contact.  Actually, many of them would.  Humans are designed for face-to-face interactions, it's utterly intrinsic in our makeup.  Whenever this breaks down, inhumanity takes hold.  That's an extreme statement of the case, but in a less dramatic form: you try negotiating a complex deal, or making an important new hiring, by any other means than regular over-the-table contact, F2F.  And over the coffee-break - and over a beer afterwards.  I guarantee that in direct competition with companies that insist on a solid percentage of time spent face-to-face with colleagues and counterparties alike, the company that says OK, WFH, sounds fine to me, just check in online a couple of times a week will lose out very significantly over the long run.  And everyone who is serious about getting things done is coming back to this view, albeit belatedly.

What we are running into is the world of people who advocate that anyone can self-diagnose with PTSD or ME and be "supported" by the state as they skulk in their bedrooms.  That any child who doesn't like school or isn't top of the class needs an individual SEND plan + tutor at school, or can be "home-schooled".  Contrary to what people with this mindset believe, there can't be a high percentage of staff who are truly more productive "WFH" four days a week.  For the avoidance of doubt, there will of course always be some people with genuine PTSD / ME / SEND problems / high unsupervised personal productivity etc etc.  But percentage-wise, not many.  Toynbee is extrapolating from her own working practices and assuming the rest of the world runs like hers: a self-motivated journalist tripping around from home-office keyboard to restaurant-lunch-on-expenses, and back to keyboard again.  The woman is a fool.

So:  "WFH is free"?  Nope, it comes at a serious cost:  net efficiency /  productivity / effectiveness at its most functional and cash-oriented; and erosion of face-to-face human contact at its most elevated.

As with many issues, the key is resolving the trade-offs.  Toynbee, pathetic polemicist that she is, doesn't even acknowledge them.  She is a fule and I diskard her uterly, as Nigel M would say. 

ND

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PS, this is all in the same week as Toynbee writes "Ignore Musk, ignore the critics – you’ll feel the benefit of Labour’s policies in your pocket before long".  What more do we need to say?

Reality dawns on (some) lefties

In a world of echo-chamber opinion-forming, it's always important to keep up with What The Other Side Thinks.  My go-to for what is sometimes called the 'Movement Left'** is Novara Media, a fairly businesslike collective containing its rag-bag share of humourless, mulish identitarians but also some very intelligent people, occasionally with sufficient of an empirical bent to pay attention when it really becomes obvious they are barking up the wrong tree, doctrine or no doctrine.  The recent US election can have that effect on people.

By way of an end-of-year review, their three leading lights (Bastani, Sarkar & Walker) put out this video which I commend to you.  Note in particular the second main section - "Did 'Woke' Die in 2024?" - starting around 25 minutes in.  It contains some pretty trenchant critique of a lot of stuff their general political tendencies would have strongly inclined them towards fairly unreflectively in the past, as they pretty much admit.  Marks the (grudging) acknowledgement of a lost battle in the culture war, I'd say.

The best critiques of those baleful leftist manifestations often come from the more intelligent & reflective corners of the Left itself.  I can also suggest Brian Leiter and Adolph Reed (both American) for more of the same.  Self-professed Marxists all - but smart with it, and contemptuous of what richly deserves contempt.  (Kathleen Stock ditto, but I'm not sure she's a Marxist.)

ND

UPDATE - here's an infinitely more verbose capitulation from the same stable.  Much less honest (1,000 fancy words on "well, of course I never fell for it"), and much funnier, albeit unintentional.  But boy, some of these lefties can't half go on.  You'll pick up some new words, too - if you can struggle through it. 

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** Roughly speaking, comfortably elitist middle-class leftists outside of regular party politics, mostly youngish & protest-oriented, generally woke and prone to 'language-/ thought-policing' - and thus also inevitably further left than anything as boring as Labour itself. 

Guardian Goings-on(2): Better news - and at Beeb too!

Having recently had a go at the Graun for its evident decision[1] to proselytise actively on behalf of a partisan position on contestable energy issues, this is by way of a follow-up suggesting that things might be looking up, both at the newspaper and also at the Beeb.

The paper first.  At the weekend, their rather good columnist[2] Sonia Sodha had this to say: 

Free speech is neither a “nice to have” nor a rightwing project: it is a fundamental tenet of democracy and when it is under threat, it is disempowered minorities who suffer most. Labour needs to stop seeing important free speech protections introduced by Tory ministers as expendable fuel for attacking their predecessors.

And on a quite different topic, Nils Bratley opined as follows: 

... before Drax is promised a penny extra from billpayers, Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, should commission a properly independent review of the business model of burning wood pellets to generate electricity. It should cover both the environmental impact ... and the stupendous subsidies.

I strongly applaud both sentiments.  And both are clearly opinion pieces, which is the honourable way to go for a proper newspaper.

Now for the Beeb.  I am delighted to note that they have genuinely got their teeth into two stories that essentially reflect a proper critique / criticism of Starmer's Labour Party.  The first is the Winter Fuel payments issue, which Reeves and Starmer have strongly signalled they intend to tough out - it's in that category we highlighted of Reasons Aplenty for Ruthless Whipping.  But, patently, they can't be taking any pleasure in the way it's rumbling on.  The awful Alastair Campbell used to say that if an awkward story runs for more than 3 days, you've got a problem.  Well, this one is several weeks and counting, and the Beeb has taken it to its heart in ways that make the problem worse for the government.  As well they might - it's an early unforced error and an acute political test for Labour: but personally I had felt there'd be a longer period where the uncritical pre-election fawning over Starmer would be continuing in that quarter.  Seemingly not[3].  This isn't any more than their charter requires of them, but given past performance it's moderately encouraging.  Credit where it's due.

The send is their gleeful playing-up of the outrageous story of "Parliament's biggest landlord", the reprehensible Jas Athwal MP.  One has to pick through issues like this with caution, but in the background there's the sordid prevalence of a certain type of landlord mercilessly exploiting tenants of the same ethnicity as themselves - "own-country landlord" is generally how the victims ruefully express their plight.  Maybe Mr Athwal's portfolio is not of this profile - but the Beeb evidently knows.  Their ability to report on renters' profiles has however been hampered by the fact that the people they got interviews from were subsequently intimidated into silence, as the Beeb reported, and withdrew permission for their statements to be used.  Reasonable people will doubtless draw their own conclusions.  The Beeb clearly has it in for Athwal - a man parachuted into his seat in Labour's nasty little pre-election deselection campaign - and, often with smiles on their faces when reporting his twisting and turning, seems determined to run him to ground.  Once again, credit where it's due, & plaudits to them for their journalism.  

ND

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[1]  By way of explicit ratification, here's their resident green wingnut George Monbiot: 

"For every pound or dollar spent on ['climate crisis'] persuasion by an environmental charity or newspaper ..."

[2]  Inter alia, she's broadly sound on the baleful 'trans' issue, too.  How much sh*t must she get from the fundies at the Graun?

[3]  Of course, anti Starmer animus can easily come from several angles: many lefties hate him cordially, as much as does anyone with the slightest regards for probity & intellectual integrity

Inchoate protests, inchoate framing

Social meejah doubtless play a role in getting the mob onto the streets; but essentially what's going on is spontaneous and barely organised.  We've seen variants of it before, with "summer riots" in Brixton and other areas over the years, and of course the 2011 "Tottenham" vintage.  On those earlier occasions it was the nastier end of the leftist spectrum that was kinda hoping it contained the seeds of the revolution; but no, just opportunistic hot-weather looting and anarchy.

Starmer (and many others) should be hoping that's what we're faced with now, though a lot of their own rhetoric - which we'll come on to - isn't helping.  One obvious scenario is that in a few weeks time it really is all over bar the backlog at the magistrates' courts, tempered by whatever scope the prison system has these days for exacting 2011-vintage Starmerite-DPP justice.

Otherwise, to be blunt, it carries on until someone gets killed: that's the horrible truth**.  What happens thereafter hinges entirely on the precise circumstances of that dread event: we could all come up with scenarios.

If - and it's not certain - it does carry on, how does it get framed by the London-liberal-progressive consensus?  The two tribes clash not just on the streets (with the Police in the role of King's Champion, maybe also with some lefty violence adding to the mix), but also in the ideo-conceptual space.

We know what the kneejerk left-liberal framing is, because it's all around us.  "Tiny thuggish minority" is the opening gambit, as it was (correctly) in 2011: but they couldn't help themselves moving directly on to "organised by the far right".  And this is where the utter stupidity of the left starts to become plain.

Yes, you'll be able to find some stuff in social meejah that can be labelled "organisation" if you're dumb enough to frame it that way; but what you won't find is a nationwide organising committee - because there isn't one (yet).  There isn't a political party involved, either.  The left cannot understand this - because their world is full of organising committees and micro-parties, and they assume that's how stuff gets started.  (Similarly, they always refer to 'capitalism' as if it is a political movement rather than what it actually is, namely is a feature of human behaviour.)  They really, truly don't want to consider the possibility of political spontaneity from the proletariat: they insist on, and believe in, having monopoly powers over that.  They are itching to have a proper little fascist party to demonise.  While they wait, it's just arm-waving at the notional "far right": they don't want it to be as difficult to deal with as would be Actual Proletarian Discontent.

To the extent any party is even vaguely in the frame, it's Reform (of course). But only peripherally so, because Farage is manifestly keen not to be outflanked by anything whatsoever to his right.  His recent performances scream this so loudly, it ought to be really obvious to anyone.  His strategy is to monopolise the right flank of British politics (whilst staying firmly on the polite side of outright violence), and roll up the Tories from right to left until he has a workable Parliamentary block: he desperately wants to avoid the irritant / potential stumbling-block of there being any genuine 'political' organisation to his right. 

The point is: there's no such thing - yet.  What if the left somehow goads one into being?  It wouldn't  be very good politics because if Reform gets outflanked in that way, eventually it gets subsumed by the Tories as happened with the Brexit Party in 2019: and the 2029 election looks rather different.

But long before 2029 is in view, what happens if a micro-party forms, that is more than just an instantly-outlawed EDL?  The answer is: it starts to have demands, and offers itself as the entity you need to negotiate with if you want the (ex hypothesi) continuing violence to stop!   Which leftist dickhead wants that to be the dynamics of the situation?  

But they just can't help themselves.  In their uncomprehending denial of genuinely widespread discontent that could lead to widespread non-organised action, their doctrine effectively insists on framing its way into having a concrete bogey - of no genuine substance, but possible actual existence in a formal sort of way.  An actual group of people with a name.  A British gilets jaunes, if you like: coherent enough to have an identity (of a rather amorphous and hard-to-treat-with kind).

One interesting potential outcome is that Starmer might act as though he is indeed responding to concrete demands from a putative political entity, and preemptively start trying to appease it with whatever he kind-of guesses its demands might be.  (He won't need to try very hard to figure that out.)  Funnily enough, the marxist left absolutely understands this situation: it never had any difficulty understanding the impetus behind Brexit. 

Right now, however, Starmer seems to be parlaying events into a belated attempt to re-gather the lost Muslim vote.  He has to be careful, because a parallel development is likely to be the formation of Muslim self-defence groups which he'd quickly need to distance himself from, and eventually to act against.

The Tories?  They can sit this one out because of course they have already been outflanked on the right.  Their task is to devise a mirror-image of Farage's strategy: a plan for rolling up Reform from left to right.

Genuine pragmatism from Starmer would be to drop the 'far right' rhetoric (and tell the Beeb to follow suit); give the Police a pay rise; and carry through with the other line we've heard from ministers, which is to draw parallels with football hooliganism - and act accordingly.  Then go gangbusters - literally - on the small boats issue (it's in the Manifesto!).  Get some money into the hands of responsible metro mayors, with significant strings attached.  Oh, and drop all ideas of votes for 16 year-olds.  

ND  

UPDATE:  see the last section of this lefty broadcast for a manifestation the left-tactical debate I'm talking about here.

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** when I was a local councillor I sat for a while on the Road Safety Committee.  Residents were forever coming forward with their demands for additional safety measures, always under the banner "Does Somebody Have To Get Killed Before You Do Anything About This?"  Basically, sadly, the answer is "Yes". 

Great times for the Great Man Theory of History

We should define our terms here, and personally I don't choose to go the whole hog with Carlyle, who claims that the whole of history can be written in terms of the stories of Great Men.  But that overlooks important 'materialistic' or 'economic' insights - such as those of Marx (someone else we won't be going the whole distance with, either ...).  I shall stick to something far more difficult to shoot down, and go with: at certain key points the course of human history is (sometimes) fundamentally determined by the purposeful actions of individuals.

In 2024, what more do we need to say?!  Whether Biden steps down is a decision he seems to have reserved to himself: I see no "economic" factors at work, just a painful case of very human personal vanity.  Whether Trump survived was a matter of chance (it seems), but a Trump presidency will - I think we might agree - set the USA and most probably the world** on a different course than any plausible Democrat victory this year.  (American isolationism has always been there, for more than 200 years, and its triumph over pragmatic internationalism has often been possible but never guaranteed.)  Neither is it a given that Russia would be in the hands of a dictatorial, brooding, fretful revanchist at this hour: nor that China would be in the hands of an all-powerful monomaniac nationalist. 

It seems to me that if one wants to argue against any of this, one has to have a thesis that requires stepping back to so distant a perspective (1,000 years?  5,000 years?) that all meaningful granularity is lost for any but anthropological, almost biological purposes.

ND

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** Some, though not I, hold that a Trump presidency will result in the US being withdrawn from global cooperation on actions related to climate change - with globally damaging consequences.  Interestingly, those folks are often highly materialistic lefty-greens.  If they couple their theoretical materialism with their fear of Trump, it must give them some uncomfortable ideological pangs.  (Of course, the whole of Reality ought to be fairly painful for them at frequent intervals ... )