Was there a home or a hostelry in the land where a cheer didn't go up when the news broke?
Not knowing precisely what the law is as regards publicly discussing live (potentially) criminal cases, I'll settle for a few random, unworthy observations.
Gotta love the way Gordon Brown solemnly offered PC Plod his forensic account of how outrageously Mandelson betrayed him - sorry, betrayed the Nation - when in office just before and after the 2010 GE. Hell hath no fury ... and it's never difficult to tell the difference between a dour Scotsman and a ray of sunshine. Etc
Also enjoyed seeing Mandy crammed into the back seat of ... a Ford Focus! Of all cars. With three other coppers. He won't have sat in a seat as lowly as that for the best part of 40 years!
Channel 4's "sources close to Mandelson" said that when Andy was arrested but not him, he reckoned the storm had passed. Well, that's Mandy - always aggressive, shameless optimism in public, as we've said here before. But - how much sleep did Mandy get, do we think, after Andy was arrested?
Nobody has much scrupled to disguise the exact location of his "Camden" house (= Regents Park). Nice house!
The show rumbles on. Brightens up a damp February.
ND
UPDATE - now being reported that at 4am this morning, just a short while after PC Plod let him go home, Mandy started briefing against the Met Police! The modus operandi never changes - take the initiative, brief, spin, attack attack attack !
How would anyone summarise Starmer's most recent month's worth of self-inflicted misery? Easy: he is accused of severe, sustained failure of judgement on personnel matters - in the face of prior knowledge and warnings. Oh, and of course disowning responsibility afterwards. No internalised ethics adviser inside that Max Headroom skull; and no internalised HR adviser either.
So, when needing a new Cabinet Secretary (and how did that requirement come about, pray ..?) what does he do but pick someone with a track record of bullying accusations[1]. FFS, why? OK, the Labour wimmin have been braying about the need to break up his "boys' club", but (a) so what? (b) Sue Gray, anyone?
Meanwhile, someone on Team Starmer is continuing the "good work"[2] with daily injections of supposedly ultra-pop, and/or left-pleasing "initiatives" - i.e. belligerent statements of empty intent - for Starmer to deliver as a mighty smokescreen for the non-stop string of genuinely damaging cock-ups. It's not a prime-ministerial look: and it ain't working.
Here's a simple prediction: the meejah has got it in for him to the extent that an editorial edict of "find a story that brings him down" has replaced "stay onside with Team Starmer no matter what" as a standing headline of the newsroom's Orders of the Day. They'll be doing whatever it takes to find stuff on the Romeo woman, too - given that there are evidently skeletons in her closet. There'll always be a disgruntled / slighted / insulted / sidelined / bitter ex-colleague out there.
A race, then, between which of them is turfed out first. Popcorn supplies are running low.
ND
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[1] Let nobody fall for "there was one complaint (a long time ago in a galaxy far away) ... but no case to answer".
[2] Of course, it may be that McSweeney is still having his instructions chanelled into TS from wherever he's skulking. Mandy's too - even if from one of Deripaska's yachts. Well, why not? They are trusted advisers, no?
So what to make of the latest state of play over Mandy?
I'd say it's really clear: Team Starmer is utterly determined to tough this out, and they reckon they can do it: their man is no conscience-stricken wimp, likely to flake on them one fine morning. Grim determination is no guarantee of success, of course: but (a) it is at least a necessary condition of success; and (b) these are scheming, desperate people with a lot of levers available to them.
> the way things developed in Parliament on Wednesday shows that Team S's going-in point was to resist document disclosure, period. They were thwarted procedurally by the unholy alliance of Badenoch + Rayner, but we know what is plainly their aim: not to release docs.
> they are 'framing' like crazy to the media, and it still largely gets swallowed whole. As well as "It's all about Mandelson's lies - to my staff (not me, of course)" and "I wanted to release the docs yesterday" (see previous post), we read:
"There will be no leadership challenge, because ... [Rayner = tax dodger, still under investigation // Burnham = disqualified // Streeting = Mandelson-best-buddy // etc]."
"PC Plod has a serious point about not prejudicing their investigation / potential charges being brought."
"So-oo many docs - this is going to take months and months."
Etc etc. Yup, they are going for that oldest, most intellectually dismal, most sordidly shameless tactic of all: playing for time - and it's often successful. Let me give you a recent parallel: a case I have been reading up lately from my own patch (energy). A big corporate - Drax plc - had a run-in with an employee-whistleblower whom Drax fired, and who brought an employment case, early in March last year. Halfway through the unusually lengthy Employment Tribunal, they settled: by all accounts it amounted to a capitulation by Drax. Meejah organisations sought release of the court documents - which, had the case continued, they'd have had access to, it was a public hearing. Drax has stonewalled for nearly eleven months, only finally releasing the docs under a court order at the end of Jan. And even now, the docs are (a) not the complete set, and (b) in some cases, heavily redacted (on the usual grounds: "commercial sensitivity / privacy / yadder yadder"). In which time Drax has managed to secure 4 more years of juicy new subsidy, and a 40% increase in its share price, from which many execs will benefit materially, in cash.
If a corporation can behave like that, how much more easily can HMG, with all the resources of the State and the added killer pretext of "national security" (see below)? My prediction: we ain't gonna get anything much before those May elections - and we'll never get anything they truly don't want us to see.
Which brings us to La Toynbee, whose general run of risible Guardian offerings is occasionally but reliably punctuated with something half-worthwhile. Here's her latest. You need to look past the usual fatuous fawning - the idea that Starmer is "a decent PM" (she once idolised Gordon Brown, too - and Tony Blair before him) to get to the blunt & forthright expression of utter disgust at the "send-him-to-the-Tower treachery and treason". And here's a little nugget (my emphasis):
... he gave a wretched display of it in the Commons with a fatal attempt to hold back some vital documents on Mandelson’s vetting and appointment. Never mind that it was for sincere security reasons – mainly fear of what abuse of the US president the papers might contain – Starmer failed to measure the ferocity of the storm on his own benches
That Trump angle - another subtle bit of Team Starmer framing? Well, maybe: but it's a neat idea I hadn't seen aired elsewhere.
The refrain that Starmer is a “decent” man does not fit his record of deceiving his way to the top of the Labour party, sitting on his hands during the massacre in Gaza or clamping down on protest against it.
As ever, Starmer had a carefully crafted speech for deployment on Thursday. He vehemently - very vehemently - wants us to believe that whatever Parliament thought it had secured the day before, it's really all about a catalogue of "Mandelson's lies" which Starmer "had wanted to hand over yesterday" (if PC Plod hadn't told him not to hand them over; yeah, right). Nice try, Kier; but what your MPs actually want - and won't easily be deflected from - is what McSweeney's role in all this was, blow by, errr, blow.
And what McSweeney was up to is clear enough - orchestrating a sham of a vetting process. How do I know this? Because on top of outright secret sources (and who knows what they knew?), within the security services is an OSINT desk - open-source intelligence gathering. People whose job is to trawl everything available from open sources. And in this day and age of Bellingcat and the extraordinary online resources they've tapped into and made public, and when you have the resources of HMG, GCHQ etc at your disposal, OS is one helluva resource, properly marshalled. Be it immediately added that imposing QA on what is found online etc is a very significant analytic task, when all the OS stuff is assembled, tinfoil-hat dross / disinformation / Маскировка and all. But that's not the point in this case. What can be said for certain is that whatever was available in OS, worldwide, on Mandelson - and everybody knows that includes, e.g., the Deripaska affair - it was ready to hand within Whitehall. And cumulatively, it was all anybody needed to know to conclude he was a non-starter for Ambassador by any rational criteria.
Ready to hand - but seemingly not deployed. In other words - and let's charitably dump this all on the convenient fall-guy - McS ran a sham exercise in which Mandelson was invited to tell whatever lies he liked; and he was then taken at his word, without the security services being tasked to give it the old red-ink marginal annotation routine. Because if Mandelson had simply given them a big assemblage of lies, they could have demolished it, line by line.
The alternative explanations - that all his lies were indeed fisked, or even that he simply didn't lie at all - and still Starmer made the appointment, well, that would be even worse for Starmer. But since PC Plod is conveniently withholding the list of lies, we can only speculate...
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 ...
In a hastily arranged, self-serving interview just a day before the axe fell on Mandelson, he delivered what I called the other day his masterclass in the communication arts for which he is famed. Too late, obviously: but look at the clever ways his mind was working, in the attempt to restore the rapidly worsening position. Recall the context: he had already answered once on the subject, on that occasion simply saying he regretted having ever met Epstein. Early last week, however, he knew he'd shortly be confronted with a good deal more to answer for, see below. He just had to attempt to get ahead of it, to prime the audience with a pre-emptive range of exculpatory framings designed to head off what he knew was coming, and give Starmer a few handy words to use / lines-to-take (which Sir Kier duly did at PMQs).
The analysis is in 'fisk' format: the bold text is the transcript of Mandy's answers to some fairly obvious interview questions. I make only the slightest reference to his body-language: an expert on that could have a field day. Watch it for yourself.
"It was over
20 years ago …... much, much too long
ago to count for anything now.
"I find [my
words from back then] very embarrassing to see and to read, but as you say,
they were written before he was indicted.… and you obviously agree with me,
it was simply ages ago.
"But I just
feel two things now. One is, I feel a
profound sense of tremendous sense, a profound sense of sympathy for those
people, those women, who suffered, as a result of his behaviour and his
illegal, criminal activities;Clearly - see below, several times - M has selected ‘tremendous’ and ‘profound’ from the BS lexicon.And sympathy for women, oh yes, he’s on the side of the
angels alright. ... He was a criminal, you
know – we’re plainly all victims here.Sympathy for the women!
"… and
secondly, I regret very very deeply indeed carrying on that association with
him for far longer than I should have done … oh, I don’t know, it was a matter
of years after I met him …M knows – see towards the end of the interview – that this can’t be contained to
“20 years ago”, so he’s making a big, upfront thing of “regrettably continuing
the association”.Association?A conveniently abstract, thin, technical way of framing their relationship.Actually, we know it was
“best pal in all the world”, to whom M was giving advice even after E had
been convicted.
"… and I
regret very much that I fell for his lies; I fell, and accepted assurances that
he had given me about his indictment, his original, criminal case in Florida,
like very many people I took at face value what he said. ... Oh yes, I’m a victim alright – and just
one among a big crowd, too.We all
believed him.None of us rumbled
him.Nobody could have known.None of us.It’s all of us in the same boat.
"With
hindsight, with fresh information, years later we realized that we had been
wrong to believe him – he’s a charismatic, criminal liar, we now see, and I
regret very much indeed; ... Yes, it
was wholly impossible for us – us, I tell you, plural, lots of us - to have known or even have
suspected at the time.Oh, how our
wrongdoing haunts us, our wrongly believing!
"I felt it
like a – like an albatross around my neck since his death in 2018 or 2019,
whenever it was.... see, I don’t even follow these things very
closely.And it’s been awful for me,
awful, I tell you.
"I feel, I
feel a tremendous sense of regret, not only that I met him in the first place...Regret at ever meeting him was what M had
already placed on record some while ago.So now he has to go even further, in order to be seen recognizing clearly that he
needs to confess to even more, errr, regrets!
"…but that I continued the association, and I
took at face value the lies that he fed me and many others.... yes, I regret “continuing the
association”, that thin and technical matter.Oh, and I regret believing that stuff, as any reasonable person
would have done, and indeed did.
[M now shaking
off a suggestion of ‘informal, back-scratching, introducing people’] "It was not a business relationship … He
operated in a financial and business way, way, way above my level.... way,
way above.He was essentially out of
sight, beyond my ken.Nobody at my
humble level was ever in the know about, well, anything, really.
"He actually
was always saying, “would you like to see so-and-so, I’ve got this friend, I’m
having this dinner, would you like to come, alright, he was a prolific social
networker and a political networker, that is true; ... just such a helpful chap, he could arrange
whatever you wanted … oh no, I didn’t mean it like that. Errr, just such a helpful chap: how could I not believe him, or think anything bad of him?
"... but I would
just want to say this to you, er, Harry, ... you don’t mind me letting the whole world
that you and I are friends, do you Harry?And that I’m a down-to-earth, easy-going, ordinary, relatable, pleasant chap?
"… during
all the time I was an associate of his, I never saw the wrongdoing; I never saw
any evidence of criminal activity.I
never sought, and he didn’t offer any introductions to women in the way that
allegedly he did for others – perhaps it's because I am a gay man, you know.... see how open and upfront I am?And very naïve.And very trusting and innocent, like all
gays.And never even looking at any of
the dozens of nubile young women that always seemed to be fluttering around. Allegedly.Never even noticed them, myself.
"… perhaps
when I knew him, perhaps when I was associating with him those years ago with
my then partner and now husband Renaldo, we never, ever saw evidence or sign of
this activity which has since come to light.... definitely.How would we, when
we only had eyes for each other?
"That’s why
I feel so profoundly upset, er, by what has now been revealed about what he did
to women, and why I feel profoundly upset [looking very wronged] that I was
taken in by him and continued my association with him for far longer than I
should have done.Here we ago
again.We have all registered the point
about the new regrets, haven’t we?And
the association thing?
[Conned?] "I lived in London; I’m a Brit; he lived in
New York; he was an American.Perhaps if
I had been in closer proximity … [But you stayed with him!] I did in the early
years, yes, that’s certainly true.And
now I regret it. Now I regret it.... oh yes.Did I mention regrets?You know,
if you regret something, it’s the same as being absolved from it?
I regret
being taken in by him, as many other people do.But it was 10 years later, when he was Federally prosecuted, that people
suddenly learned what he had been up to for all those years. ... a full
decade later! I’d like you to take away
the idea I let 10 years go by between my “association-of-too-long” and the time
when anyone knew anything about anything. And did I mention there were lots of us?
"The Epstein
files?That’s not a matter for me.I don’t believe I am named in Epstein
files.I have no doubt at all that
there’s a lot of um, er, a lot of traffic, correspondence, exchanges between
us, absolutely.And we know those are
going to erm, er, surface, we know they’re going to come out, we know they’re
going to be very embarrassing, Here’s
the meat of the whole thing, and what M has been working up to, why he wanted to be interviewed: he knows a
shedload of shit is coming along shortly, and he needs to get ahead of it. Because it’s going to be “embarrassing” – but
we can all see, he’s embarrassed enough already: as embarrassed as anyone ever
needs to be, so this next stuff won’t really add anything we need to dwell on, ... because look, I’ve already admitted before anyone’s said anything, that I’m
embarrassed!We all are!And being embarrassed is like regretting – it
absolves you of your wholly understandable and really quite minor sins.
"… and they
[sic] know that I’m going profoundly to regret ... Here we go again. BUT - at least he avoids splitting his infinitives, even at this moment of peril. Good man!
"… ever
having met him and been introduced to him in the first place.Yes!
"But I can’t
re-write history.... so it’s deeply unfair of anyone to ask me
to do so: really, very unfair indeed.I’m the victim here, not just of Epstein, but of those demanding I
re-write history.Listen, I’m confessing
to everything I ever did – meeting, associating, believing, trusting, the lot. Yes, that's the charge sheet against me: believing and trusting. That kind of thing.
"What I can
do, what I can do, is express my profound sympathy for those who have were
badly treated by him; and secondly, I can accept, yes, I can accept …... you see, I really am able to be totally
honest and self-critical !
"… that I
continued my association with him for too long.Yawn.Yeah, we got it. Peter, we know you are very
contrite and very absolved.
"I haven’t
discussed it with either the President or the Prime Minister, and I hope I’m
doing a good enough job as Ambassador here in the United States to continue to
warrant his confidence.Errr …
"… All the
information we have about that dreadful, dreadful man, I wish I could remove
that blot [screws up face] he’s like, he’s like a sort of piece of muck
attached to my, er, shoes, which I find very difficult to kick away.But I will do it, I will do it.But I can only do it by first acknowledging
how much I regret having met him in the first place … Drones on ...
Muck on my shoes, eh? There's gratitude for you!
ND
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UPDATE (see also earlier 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
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
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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
BTL the previous post, anon regales us with this quote relating to a pronouncement from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:
Donald Trump has reportedly asked the EU to levy tariffs of up to 100% on India and China, in order to increase pressure on Russia to end its war in Ukraine.
Well, the Polish situation demands some kind of response; else the next "unplanned" wave of Gerberas will be over Finland and Estonia. And I doubt NATO feels able to do much more than throw an aerial defensive screen around, say, Lviv - based firmly in Poland. Economic measures are all that Europe is really up to at the moment. The "coalition of the willing" is only looking at what it might do in the event of a ceasefire.
There is no doubt Russia is suffering economically just now (not to mention a growing shortage of gasoline and indeed water (sic) in the Donbas): and it might be made to suffer more. But it can suffer more! It's increasingly a war economy; and Russians are like that anyway (see this blog on many occasions).
Tense times. Who needs the feeble distractions of Rayner and Mandelson?
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.
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.
A longstanding strategy which is often attributed to (e.g.) Israel is to nurture the reputation of being outright crazy, with the 'benefit' that everyone else thinks: they're crazy enough, they really might do it!
Re-enter Donald Trump, who is already claiming - probably with justification - to have been instrumental in the (putative) ceasefire in Gaza. It's pretty obvious his influence is already being felt elsewhere too, such is his hard-earned reputation for maverick behaviour, no guesswork required. What interests me most is that over the past few weeks he's been showing some serious understanding of just how far this could take him, and just how extensive are the levers of (indirect) power he will enjoy.
Long-time readers will know I often praise Mandelson for having a genuinely broad and creative approach to what can be done with power. There aren't so many with that degree of lateral thinking. We been given glimpses now, as to just how widely Trump is casting his gaze and, allied with his "tariff is my favourite word" weapon, it's pretty revolutionary.
Start with his designs on US territorial expansion, a topic possibly considered dead since the Alaska purchase of 1867. Greenland. Canada! People are already sketching out how it might be done. Then think about Europe. "Unless you guys increase your defence spending, NOW, to 3% GDP, I'm withdrawing from NATO. You have three months to pass the legislation." And so on - no need to give the man ideas.
Perhaps Mandelson isn't such a bad choice for Ambassador after all.
Cheeringly, Mandelson came a resounding 4th in a final field of 5 for the Chancellorship of the university. He had really pulled out all the stops on this, including blow-by-blow briefings to LabourList (who must have groaned, but still published it all through gritted teeth - I expect he indicated there'd be something in it for them. Or issued some kind of threat, he is never slow with the menace**).
Couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke. We read that what he's really going to be doing over the next few years is be Ambassador to the USA. I can just see him now, wheedling with Bum-Steer Kier: "what you absolutely must have, is someone who can effectively negotiate with Trump in the only ways he understands ... What my many US contacts tell me, is that he only respects people who've been in the game for a long time, with a lot of personal money and a track record of dealing with global issues in a transactional, realpolitik way ..."
Will it work? I'm told not: but strange things are happening quite a lot these days.
ND
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** I have told this story before. Many years ago I had an office in No.4 Millbank, a fine Edwardian building you will be familiar with from its roof terrace and staircase because, overlooking the Lords, it also houses the Beeb's Westminster offices and they conduct many a TV news clip or interview from there. At the time, the Labour Party also had a suite there - it was just before New Labour's great 1997 GE victory - and Mandy was in his prime, calling all the shots.
One day I happened upon him in a corridor with a small gaggle of very young Labour staffers. I have no idea what was the context; but in a soft, conversational manner, he berated them thus: "... and if you ever screw up like that again, I will make sure you never work in London for the rest of your lives". Such a nice chap.
That time, he wanted to be on the NEC. Now he wants to be Chancellor of the university. And here it is, spoon-fed to the simpering lapdogs of LabourList:
... a Labour Chancellor could argue in favour of reform. The combination of a Labour Oxford Chancellor and a Labour government could also change the tone of the wider debate around universities... A new Chancellor, alongside a new government, could promote higher education reform for the first time in 14 years.
The lapdogs have helpfully provided links - twice! - for qualified electors to register for the vote. Shamelessly blatant, or what?
The very thought of this makes me feel ill. People went to some lengths to stop Harold Wilson getting this honour, and I suspect Mandy will also not be gratified.
No top-line surprises, then (unless you are the SNP, maybe). Turnout figures in due course - seems it was very low - for purposes of the supplementary Compo question when the full figures are in.
A majority of this kind is always possible under first-past-the-post, particularly with so many heavy-duty spoiler candidates in play - surely, on a scale unprecedented in its depth and extent this time?
Anyhow, all pundits are agreed: Starmer's support is very broad but very shallow. Hard to disagree. One of Drew's Laws of Politics is: the bigger the majority, the less meaningful is the result. Large numbers of dumb voters who simply like feeling they are on the winning side - of which Murdoch is just the ugliest & and most prominent. Conventional wisdom is that it'll be damned hard for Starmer to enforce discipline. (Is there anything Starmer will wish to do that actually requires a majority of that size?) He'll be very happy he stuffed the candidate list with placemen and non-entities, and carefully deselected the identified troublemakers of the left: Mandelsonian power politics in play there.
So here's an open thread, starting with a few random early thoughts of my own.
as regards the long game, the whole thing now comes down to how Farage conducts himself. I personalise it thus because he is and probably will remain a one-man band. If I was him, I would invest in some very comprehensive personal security.
on the green/left/Gazan side: although altogether less strategically interesting than Farage it'll be interesting nonetheless to see how the assorted malcontents - now holding quite a lot of seats - conduct themselves. I actually think Starmer will be happy to have them making extreme spectacles of themselves, as an ongoing reminder to his own people of the merits of his quietist project.
I sincerely hope that each and every Tory MPs who contributed to foisting Truss onto the leadership ballot paper came unstuck yesterday, and will never be heard of again. How could anyone sit in the same building as her for more than 10 minutes and not notice she is stark, staring, batshit crazy? If, as some have said, it was a Johnsonite manoeuvre to facilitate his re-entry, well, for self-centred irresponsibility that's up there with Joe Biden's senile vanity.
wouldn't it be nice if Starmer would now cut Murdoch cold-stone dead at the latter's every blandishment? That's the way to parlay a majority like this.
this isn't anything I thought I'd ever find myself writing: but based on his recent "realist" (I think he means realistic) utterances I actually think David Lammy might make quite a good Foreign Sec. If I'm right, he's gonna piss off the Left even quicker than Starmer.
With Starmer's very recent incarnation as Mr Growth-at-any-Cost - which we must believe was primarily a formulation against the challenge of "how ya gonna do it without borrowing or tax increases?" - the opening for BlackRock et al is plain: and they'll be up his trouser-legs like a rat up a drainpipe before he gets to sit down. Cue the biggest PFI binge in history ...
A point made around here ad nauseam is that Surprise is really important in warfare. Clearly Mr Wagner agrees, and has pulled off a beauty - he and his well-armed, well-disciplined horde. Absolut banditi, as they say in Russia. And Putin was caught absolutely napping: his own intelligence about his "own" forces is significantly poorer than the west's (is he not even monitoring the mobile phones, FFS??). I have waited 24 hours before posting because there was always the possibility of Putin pulling off a decisive counterstroke, but no, the man and his machine are as deeply inept and incompetent as ever.
Let's ask a few questions:
did Prigozhin plan this? Or did he take Rostov on a quiet summer's evening when all Russians are drunk, and turn north in fuelled-up convoys complete with air defence units and tanks on low-loaders, just on a whim? Ans: planned
did Prig know that Putin's airforce at least, has quite enough ground-attack assets to wipe out any concentration of vehicles before it reached Moscow? Ans: yes[1]
did Putin have any faith in his ability to order the wiping out of a concentration of vehicles before it reached Moscow? Ans: no
did Prig have a "very high" expectation of "negotiations" before matters reached that pass? Ans: yes
would he therefore have had some carefully-crafted terms in mind before this all kicked off, for when he found himself dealing with some poor intermediary who was still reeling from shock? Ans: oh yes he would
Prig didn't get where he is today without being transactional[2] and a very bold deal-maker indeed. There's always a deal to be done[3]. He is also creative and comes up with ideas for what can be done with the levers of power, beyond what's routinely done[4] - always to be admired and feared in a politician.
would he also know what he's going to do next? Ans: he'll know a lot better than anyone else - and a lot better than any in Putin's clan know what they're going to do
Yes, Prig has made out like - a bandit. And all in 24 hours. Now? Well he won't want to follow in the footsteps of Wat Tyler, Robert Aske & co. It's to be imagined he has "assets" in Belorussia. Still, you wouldn't put too much money on him celebrating Xmas.
I look forward to the return of our trolls to tell us how this is all part of Putin's masterplan. But the long-suffering people of Russia might find that just a little bit harder to believe than before. Prig has marked their cards for them.
ND
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[1] and so did his troops, which makes it all the more impressive
[2] like, errr, Sadiq Khan
[3] Putin himself has been known to relate how in Russia, big disputes are settled over a big dinner at which both sides come armed to the teeth, but settle down to terms (and toasts). In short, Prig has successfully brought Putin to the table as an equal. And everyone in Russia understands
The bulk of the Left of the Labour Party, having thoroughly swallowed the mendacious soft-focus "I'm really a Corbynite" leadership pitch of Kier Starmer, rapidly became disillusioned (and in some cases, defenestrated) when he started purging the Peoples Party in a singularly calculating manner.
And we know whose are the calculations: it's Mandelson, the preeminent British political strategist of the age.
I feel we may now summarise his 2019 thinking, and estimate his chances of success.
1. Corbyn has done a Thatcher**, potentially sterilising the Labour vote for years to come
2. The only chance of reversing that lies in someone who looks the part (besuited, established), grabs all the levers of power within the party AND ...
3. ... methodically, gratuitously, ruthlessly and flamboyantly takes every opportunity to do Corbyn and his acolytes down (in ways that Hague, IDS and Howard could never do to Thatcher). You don't want an excrescence of people who remind the electorate of Corbyn and, crucially, you don't need them; neither for their pitiful subscriptions NOR as election-time infantry - because elections are lost by sitting governments, and won by clever media strategies funded by big donations, not knocking on doors
And now we come to the reason why this all might come to fruition in less than a single political generation.
4. Johnson is always going to self-destruct: possibly sooner rather than later: the key is to be in position for when it happens
With any luck (thinks Peter) it'll be Johnson who, in turn, sterilises the Tory Party as did Thatcher, for another decade of Mandelsonian influence.
Looks like it's going to work. Still: at least Mandelson is intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, eh?
ND
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** there's many a Thatcherite that has been in 30-year denial on this. They have forgotten, or may never have tried, getting support for the Party during the leaderships of the aforesaid Hague, IDS and Howard. Some things are never forgotten or forgiven by the electorate: Corbyn committed that kind of sin, and so IMHO has Johnson.
From time to time I am moved to observe that Germans, as a rule, have no intuitive grasp of how markets work. Perhaps their postwar social-democrat / Christian democrat tradition is so inherently mercantilist and dirigiste (and, by many lights, successful!) and now so deeply ingrained, that market dynamics pass them by.
At the state level the French 'Enarchists' aren't much better (though you meet far more French business people who know the score). So there's little hope that 2022 Brussels, with no leavening of UK influence, will have the first clue. Here's some up-to-date evidence.
EU leaders pledged to bulk buy natural gas jointly and review the role of the fuel in setting electricity prices as part of plans to protect European consumers from spiralling energy costs ... “Instead of outbidding each other and driving prices up we will pool our purchasing power,” said Ursula von der Leyen
Where to start? We all know where bulk buying and large-scale procurement by state entities leads, and it ain't prone to driving down prices++. (It is prone to monstrous corruption: the mysterious middlemen who will insert themselves in this process when the politicians realise they are totally in the dark in such technical matters, will ensure an extra € or two gets added to the unit price, and is silently shared around a bunch of deeply undeserving individuals. (Libel laws forbid me elaborating, but suffice to say the gas sector has not proved in any way immune from this in the state monopoly days of yore.) It's just one of those things that can be made to 'sound sensible', sort-of, and is promoted by people like Peter Mandelson who has advocated it in the past. But experience tells heavily against it.
The one that really amuses me is "review the role of the fuel in setting electricity prices". Boris - another ignorant prick - has mouthed similar words. Well, review away, fellahs; but I can tell you in a couple of sentences what the answer is. The price of any traded commodity** is set by the cost (or opportunity-cost) of the marginal source of supply (or demand, in some cases), which for most of the time in European electricity is NATURAL GAS. Occasionally it is something a bit more obscure and we get negative prices (something else that has always puzzled German politicians). But the dynamics are exactly the same.
Gottit, Ursula? Great: so you can save that million € being asked for by McKinsey or whomever to answer the question for you. All part of the C@W service.
By the way, this situation is destined to prevail for many years - in fact, decades, as far as anyone can see - however much new 'renewable' electricity capacity is brought on line. The only truly 'dispatchable' renewable source is hydro from reservoirs (as opposed to run-of-river). In practice, biomass can be, too (if it isn't already running baseload because of the vast subsidies involved) - but large-scale biomass ain't renewable: its deemed renewable status is a massive scam.
Of course, Ursula's oh-so-predictable follow-up question is: what can we do about it? Ans: well, you can suspend the laws of gravity for just so long as you are willing to throw money at it. But that's what happens: you waste even more money, and it still comes out the same when, eventually, you've had enough. Gottit? Well no, sadly; probably not.
ND
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++ presumably, as dearieme has wittily observed BTL, "in homage to their success in buying vaccines jointly"
** the physical commodity, that is. Forward prices are set by completely different dynamics.
So last week there was some self-serving Stamer-stuff shared with the Beeb, and our man had his line, and by heck he'd learned it well.
“I could see tonight what people wanted to know was: ‘That sounds good.
It sounds like what I want to hear. But can you earn my trust over the
next few months and years into the next general election in order to
make me vote for you?’ And that is what I will do. I will sweat blood
over those months and years to earn that respect.”
.... "trust must be
earned. And what I heard tonight was that people weren’t saying, ‘I’ll
never trust you.’ What I heard them say is ‘I’ve lost confidence in
Labour, but I could, I could have confidence in the future, but it’s up
to you to win it.’ And that’s what I’ll do, you know, sweating blood for
the next few days, weeks, months, and years in the next general
election."
Now whose fingerprints are all over that form of words? I have a long memory for these things. Way back in 1997 after the GE, Peter Mandelson craved respectability on the Left beyond the confines of his nasty little den on Millbank, and decided to stand for the Labour Party NEC. He did the rounds of the studios in his unctuous way, saying (this is from memory**, but fairly verbatim for all that):
"What I hear people in the Labour Party saying is: 'We know this chap has had a lot to do with the Election victory, we like that, but we think he should be more accountable, we think he should be on the NEC'."
Let's stick our necks out here and suggest that Mr M never heard a single person say that: he made it up. (Certainly, he got somewhere close to nul points in the NEC election that year.) I'm not alone in thinking suspicious things like this: the good lefty folks at Novara media have the same view on a 2021 Mandelson "citation", concerning something he was "told on the doorstep" - while pounding the streets at the recent Hartlepool by-election, no less (yeah, right - mushy peas in hand, shoe-leather almost worn through, dusk falling) that goes as follows:
“One person said to me ‘Sort yourselves out, sort yourselves out. You
picked the wrong brother and you ended up with Corbyn so that’s goodbye
to you. When you’ve sorted yourselves out, we’ll look at you again’. That is what the Labour Party has got to do.”
Yup, pretty implausible again. And I think we may forensically discern the modus operandi. You come up with a fairly subtle, oblique line that serves your purpose (Trust is a wonderful motherhood-&-apple-pie thing: nobody can object to me wanting some of that. I'm going to win back people's trust, starting with this: 'I'm so honest and humble that I admit the Labour Party - that is to say, the previous guy - blew it'.) Next, you ventriloquise it into the mouth of Someone you conveniently met. Then you report it as your having rightfully been given your marching orders: you've listened carefully, you humbly realise they're right: and by golly, that's what you're going to do!
In short: this is Mandelson-playbook format, with Mandelson known to be very much on the case right now; you, KS with your carefully learned and self-serving lines, are Peter Mandelson's stooge; and and I claim my Boy Scout Political Forensics badge.
ND
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** After drafting this I googled on the offchance of finding something corroborative from 1997. And lo! - this, from the Graun...
"people have seen me at the centre of things, doing this, doing that, apparently calling the shots, giving the orders. 'But, accountable to whom?' they ask ... 'Who elected him? Who put him there?' They by and large see me as a force for good in the party and the Government, but they would like to see me be more accountable, and I think they're right".
Oh, it's so perfectly crafted, you gotta love it! "Who elected him? ... so I suppose, well, we'd better, errrr, elect him!"
Way back in 1997, the year in which the first Blair government was elected, Peter Mandelson wanted to be elected to the NEC of the Labour Party. He wasn't popular enough for this to be any kind of shoo-in (to put it mildly); indeed, the Labour Party is fairly averse to johhny-come-lately just turning up and expecting to walk it, first time of asking, onto the NEC. So he called in some of his plentiful markers in the telly-meejah, and pitched to the tame interviewers thus: (I paraphrase, but on the basis of a very clear recollection) "Now what I think Labour Party members are saying, they say - that Peter Mandelson, I don't know much about him, but I do know he had a big hand in getting the party elected, and I like that. But I think he needs to be more accountable to the membership. So I think he needs to be on the NEC, where we can keep a democratic eye on him. - That's what I find Labour Party members are saying." Never short for a bit of self-serving spurious logic, are you Mandy? Two decades on, and nothing has changed. Today, for example, attempting to promote a second referendum he
... put forward a new argument in favour - that it would be helpful to Theresa May too. He explained:
"People know want to make an informed judgment and choice between what is on offer as a result of this negotiation and the benefits we already have in the European Union.
Also I think, if [she] promises a people’s vote, it will strengthen her hand against the Brextremists in her own party. She’s got to turn around to them and say, ‘Look, what I negotiate has got to pass muster. It’s got to gain the support of the British people. So untie my hands, let me negotiate properly, because you’re going to face a public vote at the end of the day.’ And unless she can say that to them, they’re going to continue keeping her hostage ..."
Oh so bloody clever, Peter. She'll definitely fall for that. Anyhow, gives me a chance to re-run one of my digi-gallery. By the way, he never did get on the NEC ...
A brief history, plus some other bits and pieces you won't read about in the meejah and might find helpful in forming a view on Germany's and Gazprom's shenanigans and Nordstream 2 (1) Firstly, it's also about oil - not just gas. The Eastern and mittel-euro countries, including Germany, have long relied heavily on Russia for oil products (indeed, those countries nearest to Russia are almost wholly dependent). Of course, oil as a commodity is very liquid - in both senses: and both senses are equally important. (i) Market liquidity means there is a universally-accepted benchmark for pricing; and (ii) literal physical liquidity makes transportation and delivery much easier than for (e.g.) gas, the latter being dependent on inflexible infrastructure. Both factors make it much more difficult for Russia to stiff their european oil clients than it is for them to play games with gas: everyone knows what the market price of oil is; and it's not difficult to obtain the stuff, and transport it, from anywhere (albeit perhaps inefficiently). Those factors combine to make the situation almost the converse to gas, because oil is easy to steal, and to fence. There is a strong tradition of truckloads of misappropriated Russian oil being sold at discounted prices in eastern and central Europe by highly organised criminals (a bit like ISIS oil to Turkey a while back - and indeed mafia oil in New York City!) In several EU countries, if they were being honest, what they lose on the gas price, they (well, some of their *businessmen*) gain on the oil. I'm guessing we won't see an EC inquiry into that anytime soon. (See also Raedwald passim.)
What does this gas-flow map remind Germans of?
(2) Gas and Germany: it's fairly well-known that back in the late 1970s / early 1980s the USA made strenuous but unsuccessful diplomatic efforts to prevent Germany, France, Italyet al from buying Russian gas at all. This was the era of Cruise, Pershing & 'Star Wars', after all. But Germany (which in those days was more than pulling its weight in NATO) had already decided it was a strategic move, and went for it in a big way. An exceptionally strong *commercial* relationship was forged between the predecessor of Gazprom (then called SoyuzGazExport) and Ruhrgas, a classic German entity of very complex ownership (including Shell, Exxon and BP) and extremely strong *connections* to the German government. Ruhrgas was eventually bought by E.on in 2003 - mysteriously the EC competition authorities did not prevent it and E.on has continued in the tradition of being *very close* to both their own government and Gazprom. No surprises there. When the eastern countries complain that Germany has cut a preferential deal with Gazprom, they (and the European Commission) choose not to highlight the very substantial amounts of what we might call soft finance Ruhrgas and E.on have provided to Gazprom over the decades (obviously, at governmental behest, to say the least). Whether Germany Inc as a whole has made a net return on this colossal *investment* in financial terms - cheaper gas in return for soft finance - I couldn't begin to guess. Maybe they've received a "most-favoured-nation" discount, and maybe some of the eastern countries have been handed a "punishment premium". Frankly, though, if Germany Inc has made an overall financial loss I wouldn't be surprised. Because Germany sees it all as strategic. And, as we know (see recently the Deutsche Einheit) Germany can be willing to pay a high price for what it sees as a strategic geo-political imperative. (3) Overall / rest-of-Europe: putting Ukraine to one side, Gazprom has generally been a very reliable supplier in political terms, i.e. they have kept the gas flowing westwards even sometimes at the expense of cutting off their own citizens in situations of shortage. The reason is easy: hard currency revenues (trade was always better than fighting). As I've mentioned here several times before, it's always been Holland that has been seen as a politically unreliable supplier: they'd always interrupt exports if there was a problem, in order to supply their own citizens in preference.
Not entirely reliable
(Incidentally, Gazprom hasn't been particularly reliable in engineering terms - in fact, their system is notoriously primitive. But their big Europe customers understand this well, and have invested in huge gas storage facilities to tide them over the inevitable occasional hiccup; and everyone's too polite to talk about it much.) Now Germany's dealings with Gazprom have been conducted more-or-less at state level; and while one can describe it as highly corrupt, you could also say it's just high politics (- like BAe and Saudi Arabia). And on the western end of that relationship it's mostly a matter of plumb sinecures taken by Herr Schröder and the like - galling, but hardly the worst thing anyone's ever done, nor even remotely furtive. But in other countries ... well, let's just say that in the case of certain large Mediterranean clients of Gazprom's, the hanky-panky has been rather more venal.
Ever meddlesome
(4) The 'Energy Union': I've written before of my disgust at the acquis-grab that is the European Energy Union. Suffice here to say that for the eastern EU members, right from the start this has all been about getting the EC to deal with Gazprom on their behalves, urged on by the ever-meddlesome Mandelson, needless to say. (The EC has actually been promising all countries everything they want in the energy space, in order to extend the acquis.) Given that the timing of the Energy Union initiative coincided with the height of the Ukranian nonsense, the EC documentation contains some of the most undiplomatic anti-Russian sentiments you'll ever read from a non-Trumpian civil servant, so it's clear the easterners have been making the running and holding the pen. Germany, though, blithely ignores all this crap and motors on with Nordstream 2 unaffected. Let's see how it all pans out. One of those easterners is presumably leaking the Competition enquiry stuff (which was almost forgotten, so quiet had things gone) in order to sabotage Nordstream 2 at a fairly critical juncture. The Danes are nervous of approving their leg of the new Baltic pipeline, but will probably roll over. The Finns have already rolled over (well, where do we think they get their oil and gas?) Yes, it's power-politics all the way. Think the worse of Germany for it? They'll be the judge of their own strategic interests. ND
