'Wealth Tax' hoves into view. Discuss.

The green-left has long hankered after a 'wealth tax', using Gary Lineker as their human face / shield.  Gary Stevenson - a rum cove if ever there was one - happily works himself up into a semi-coherent rant-frenzy on the topic at the drop of a hat, as every TV producer knows: he's a form of walking click-bait.  And now all these people are (like so many lobbyists) projecting their fantasies on Young Andy.

But for all the charlatanism and carnival nonsense, there's something in it.  There's nothing clever about passively allowing the entirety of the new economic magnate class to blag and bully its way into global personal tax immunity - not to mention immunity for their hi-tech rent-seeking enterprises.  We all know these people have the best lawyers, own most of the meejah of all kinds + a large number of venal politicians, and are ruthless with it.

Before opening the floor to y'all, I have a couple of random inputs to offer.

1.  HMRC:  a badly underpowered, broadly unaccountable, ramshackle organisation that fosters an opaque world of thriving tax evasion on the one hand (sheer inability to get to grips with the complexities of 2026, and the depth of fraud it can only sit back & ignore), and injustice on the other, meted out to an unlucky sub-set of taxpayers it randomly does get its teeth into. 

It is my strong contention that the sheer complexities inherent in a tax on total assets, would defeat HMRC right from the get-go.  In the process, however, the opacity, fraud and injustice would multiply several-fold, with the high likelihood of serious political and even economic fallout.

2.  Real estate:  the one taxable asset class that doesn't suffer from crippling complexity is of course Land.  Our good friend, the very much lamented Mark Wadsworth, spilled much virtual ink promoting Land Value Tax, the high-level theoretical attractions of which are really obvious.

This thing is as long as a piece of string because we have a low-level form of land tax already - the Council Tax[1].  It has long been my contention that George 'Boy Genius' Osborne (who is as much to blame as Gordon Brown for the present state of our economy) missed a massive trick when, in his first "all in it together" budget, he failed to create a dozen new Council Tax bands.  At a stroke[2] he would have raised a bunch of £££ and injected a bit of justice at the start of his destructive "austerity" regime.  And all for near-zero effort: it would have leveraged a pretty efficient existing tax structure at minimal cost and next-to-no unintended consequences or evasion.  In 2010 he could do whatever he decided; but from the word 'go' and over the following 5 years it turned out that he was indeed as useless a chancellor as we've ever had.  

Big topic, to which I reckon we'll be returning quite soon.  Over to y'all.

ND  

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[1] Recall that Heseltine invented and implemented it in just a few months.  Him and his instantly available army of estate agents.

[2] see [1] above.  Implementing new bands would take even less time.

No honeymoon for Burnham: very revealing

Yesterday furnished us with a very significant clue.

In a post several weeks ago I described the then by-election candidate's demeanour thus: 

Burnham makes a pretty unconvincing saviour of the nation. He comes across as an odd combination of entitled, nervous and petulant.

Obviously, I'm still fishing around for a good understanding of the man, who's been out of the national gaze for a long time.  He is without doubt an unusual party leader and PM.  For example, I believe I'm correct in saying he's the first post-war leader of either of the two trad Major Parties not to have come directly from the ranks of the existing Cabinet / Shadow Cabinet (need to check Alec Douglas Home).  Of those who went to an English university at all, he's the only one from Cambridge.  

He seems to have a degree of decisiveness, of cut-and-thrust, maybe even a bit ruthless (more so than Sadiq Khan, clearly, who also plotted the same strategy for becoming PM but fell at the critical hurdle, somewhat to my surprise.[1])   He is obviously also ambitious, and always has been.  And an extremely personable guy, who commands affection (we'll find out about his command of loyalty as time goes on).  But although these things are good and even necessary, it's not necessarily sufficient: there's also that streak of domesticity, in the sense of not-really-made-for-the-global-league.  Like one of those really good, popular sportsmen (I'm thinking rugby, soccer, cricket) who makes a huge contribution for his club team, is absolutely idolised by the supporters of that club, but never makes it as an international - and you sort-of know why.   The step-up to test match sport is a big one, and not everybody can make it.

I could go on (as you know), and certainly will over the coming months.

Anyhow, to yesterday's big clue.  We all saw it in realtime.  His Big First-Day Announcement, the removal of VAT on electricity, is duly wheeled out.  What a brilliant quick-win, a declaration of intent!   To be 'funded' by scrapping[2] digital ID - even better!!  And then, only 12 hours out of retirement, along comes Darren Jones who torpedoes it in the space of a single tweet.  In Burnham's Brave New World of No More Hostile Briefing!  Hahahah.

But here's the thing.  Starmer got away with sheer murder as regards adverse media coverage, for many months before the last GE, and many weeks thereafter.  But HMS Burnham, being torpedoed having barely left harbour, instantly became the main headline across all meejah!  

The difference?   The meejah instinctively feared Starmer: he has the air of a potentially very vindictive person (with a track record to boot).  With the position he commanded from about 2023 onwards, nobody was about to piss on his shoes - not until they knew they'd got him cold (on the freebies thing).  But we see very clearly - On Day One! - that even with Burnham's massive Parliamentary majority, and popularity, and the gallons of early-days goodwill sloshing around, the meejah - including the Beeb - have no fear of retribution at all.

Is this just a function of Labour's weak position in the polls?  I don't think so.  No, it's a judgement on Young Andy's personality.  That he likes to be liked is a commonplace observation.  But the meejah mob sees something else: it reckons he's soft.  We're in the territory young officers are always warned against when getting a bit too matey with their soldiers.  If you become One Of The Boys, very soon you'll be Just One Of The Boys.  Respect gone.  Doom.

Andy (mate!), it's a crisis: remember these words.

And now ... Listen great things... We must straight make head / Therefore let our alliance be combined / Our best friends made, our means stretched. / And let us presently go sit in council / How covert matters may be best disclosed /And open perils surest answered. ... For we are at the stake / And bayed about with many enemies / And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear / Millions of mischiefs.    

ND

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[1]  So he may indeed be as ill as he looks

Miliband - guessing-game over!

So Mili neither gets the Treasury, nor keeps his manic mission at energy.  Safely dispatched to places over the horizon.  (What must David M be thinking?)  Please don't put him in charge of another COP.

I feel his first mission should be to China, to investigate Uighur slave labour in the open-pit neodymium mines and solar PV factories; to deliver a lecture on dumping tactics with special reference to 'green' manufactured products; and to initiate a detailed study of the carbon content of said 'green' goods.

I stand ready to join the Labour Party and enter the House of Commons to take up the reins at DESNZ.  With the new government being such accomplished masters of the snap by-election this shouldn't be a problem.  A peerage will do, if needs be.  But I fancy Rosebank and Jackdaw will already have been approved, while they await my arrival for some more complex decisions that require attention.

ND    

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UPDATE:  Gotta love this from Guido - 

Is there a funnier post for Miliband than one that requires extensive use of the government jet?

The great Miliband guessing game

Well, then: is it to be:

• Thanks, Ed, but you're not needed now
• Ed, I need you to to stay where you are, it's great job you're doing in keeping the greens onside
• Ed, you're my Chancellor - you're the only one who can solve Rubik's Cube
• Ed?  No no, it's David I wanted on the line

And so we all wait.  Meanwhile, however, a couple of big energy decisions must surely be made real soon:

1. Rosebank (oil) and Jackdaw (gas)
2. DESNZ capital budget being sacrificed for Defence spending: where does the axe fall?

1.  The joke is that the Jackdaw platform has already been built and is out there in the North Sea, fully installed and ready to go; first gas in October if the starting gun is fired this month.  Surely, surely that wouldn't have happened without a clear nod from the Treasury?  Nobody develops an offshore platform on spec.  It really does look as though the formal go-ahead decision is just a formality.  Also, the case for home-produced gas is the easier to make, for Mili or whoever has to front for it.  (Mili always gets Shanks to front for the decisions he's unhappy about.)

Rosebank is a bit different: it'll be produced via a floating structure / subsea completion.  Again, the structure is complete and making its way over from Norway, but the briefing is, that's being done at the producers' own risk.  And if it's a 'no', it could be used elsewhere.  Also the argument for loacl oil production, though still perfectly sound, has just a couple of extra (low) hurdles to jump: and Mili has staked his colours to the 'No Rosebank' mast - so, a bit of humiliation involved.

What would be even funnier, is if he gets offered the Treasury provided that he green-lights both Jackdaw and Rosebank on his way to the DESNZ door.  Does Burnham have a sense of humour?  He certainly likes industry and jobs.   

2.  OK, so the A46 Newark Bypass extension has been sacrificed for Defence spending.  Big deal: it was only ever a nice-to-have.  Yep, the big capital budgets to be raided will be those of Mili at DESNZ.  Now most DESNZ capital schemes are loaded onto electricity bill-payers' bills, the big exceptions being:

    (a)  HMG's equity contributions to Sizewell C, given that EDF refuses to take equity risk (which we've written about many times)

    (b)  The farce that is Carbon Capture and Storage - by far the biggest (thus far) at £21bn (sic) of HMT's best pounds, NOT recharged to bill-payers.  Very unusual.  And very stupid. 

I think we can guess which will be the sacrificial lamb, notwithstanding Mili's considerable attachment to it.  

More popcorn, please, as I raise a hopeful glass to Burnham's sense of fun.

UPDATE:  Right on cue, this from the DTel: 

Miliband willing to approve North Sea oil to land job as chancellor - Energy Secretary wants to prove he is a ‘pragmatist’ rather than a ‘zealot’ on environmental policy to help his case for being chancellor

ND

The 'evolution' of the Russian oil and gas industry

Wind the clock back to 2022 and Russia has the biggest oil and gas infrastructure in the world: the country is sometimes referred to sarcastically as a nuclear-armed gas station.  It's fully functional, although not very sophisticated - the amount of wasteful flaring that goes on is legendary (of gas at oil production facilities, and of oil at gas producing locations); and there are few conventional sophistications such as accurate metering and non-return valves.  Nonetheless, it's the primary pillar of the Russian economy.

What a target!

Well, Ukraine started setting about it seriously in 2024.  To start with, their offensive means being rather slight at that stage, they went for plant in the neighbouring oblasts.  Right from the word go, these pinpricks revealed huge, structural vulnerabilities.

Vulnerable ...

Russia immediately realised just how serious it might be, and set about devising counter-measures.  They encouraged oil enterprises to invest in small arms (requiring a change in the law) for local defence[1], and experimented with wire cages and steel gantries to create physical barriers - an utterly futile effort because, even if a drone hits a cable ten metres away from its target, it stands a very good chance of rupturing it anyway.  We know all this because helpful Russian locals are keen on home videos and social media - and of course good old Google Earth provides astonishingly detailed coverage of most of western Russia, filmed closer to sensitive facilities than is allowed in Western countries! 

Then, there's that lack of non-return valves, meaning that a single blazing tank can burn for ten days - there's no way of cutting it off from the pipeline network which then gaily feeds the flames.   Oh, and effecting repairs ain't so easy: any component even vaguely sophisticated comes only from western manufacturers and is under embargo - meaning costly and time-consuming black market procurement. 

Other palliative measures have been tried.  Initially, officials would simply lie about the damage done.   There are strict Russian injunctions against publishing photos of these goings-on - hah!  To this day, every strike is broadcast to the www in realtime.  Then, there are missions by the Orthodox Church, variously to bless oil facilities, to pray for their safety, and to send clerics to attend upon the fire-fighting efforts[2].  Evidently this approach has its limits.[3]

Well.  As Ukraine develops ever longer-range strike capabilities, the list of potential targets gets bigger and bigger.  And of course their location is known rather exactly, and they can't be moved!  Nor, in practical terms, can they be defended.  They are being picked off, one by one - the three most noteworthy being perhaps successive raids on the main Moscow City refinery and one close to St Petersberg, plus Omsk.  The first two of these prime targets bring the war rather close to home for everyone in those cities with a pair of eyes (and a nose); the third sets distance records (getting on for 3,000 km).  And of course, there are serious fuel shortages - in Russia! - to the point where exports have been banned and very large-scale imports are being sought; but the harvest is still under threat, industry is feeling the pinch, and ordinary Russians, particularly in the south and west, are really stuck.

Notwithstanding the Deputy PM's classically euphemistic description of this, ("interruptions in the supply of fuel caused by changes in logistics") even Putin - who likes to keep his hands clean from disasters of all kinds - has been forced to pronounce.  Here are his dicta of yesterday: 

He called the difficulties with fuel "temporary" and associated, among other things, with "the enemy's attempts to disrupt the vacation season".  (Oh yes, the Russian vacation season is uppermost in Kyiv's strategic thinking.)  

"The safety margin of the Russian energy system is one of the highest in the world." (Measured by reserves in the ground, presumably.) 

"The enemy is trying to create a nervous situation in Russian society."  (Trying?) 

He called for a speedy decision to subsidize fuel purchases  (Not clear where the money will come from for that, but let's see.) 

He instructed the speedy deployment of "the capabilities of small and medium-sized businesses in the production of petroleum products". 

This last one is very interesting.  Sure enough, for a country in dire straits, it's a feasible approach to squeeze a few more drops from what's available.  We know from how ISIS conducted its affairs in the areas of Iraq and Syria it once controlled, that home-made micro-refineries are a Thing.  And of course Russians are pretty well versed in home-based distillation!  All this said, at the end of the day a big economy, and certainly one with a huge defence-industrial base on a war footing and trying to ramp up as fast as possible, needs massive quantities of high-grade fuel that only large-scale, uninterrupted, fully industrial production processes can provide - as 1944-45 Germany discovered.

However laughable micro-refineries are as a 'solution' to Russia's problem, one can't rule out a proliferation of medium-sized plant - given time.  But development of this on any scale would be a matter of years, not months, and require skills and components that "medium-size businesses" won't find readily to hand - even if their staff all manage home-made vodka stills on the side.  And it would never be able to produce high-grade product.  And there would be other vulnerable choke-points to be found in such a newly-diversified system.  And individual new targets would be even less plausibly covered by air defences.  Etc etc.  In sum: this is truly desperate stuff.

ND

[1]  As one Russian milblogger put it, "successfully" shooting down a drone with small arms directly over the target is likely to be "a posthumous achievement".  Gotta love Russian sarcasm.

[2]  In one famous incident, a posse of Orthodox clerics attending a tank blaze after three days of futile fire-fighting to assist with their very best prayers, were killed when the tank exploded.  The same fire burned on for another week.

[3]  But clerical efforts continue.  The Church has been ordered to organise a pilgrimage, starting out at the Omsk facility, Russia's largest (now closed following this week's bombardment), and proceeding to join the dots of refineries all along a route ending in Crimea.  Reportedly, the Church has refused to carry out the last bit because Crimea is too dangerous for clerics just now.  But the Church has renewed its demands for the raising of tithes, priority for priests in gasoline allocations, and the banning of abortion and neo-paganism.  See?  Russia is a different world.  

Farage takes The Initiative. Hmm.

So: seeing himself increasingly caught up in a thorny thicket of unwanted and very awkward controversy, Nigel Farage has Taken The Initiative.  Well, an initiative.  

Long-time readers will know that I place great store on proactive, creative initiative-taking.  It's not as common a trait as you'd expect or hope, and that includes most of our "leaders", the vast majority of whom are governed strictly by whatever rulebook and conventions they were brought up with.  It's a pretty poor show when Peter Mandelson is the prime example of a relentlessness initiative-taker - always aware of the very many levers that are within grasp, and using them imaginatively.  Elon Musk is another.

In its rarity and political importance, initiative-taking shares aspects in common with the ability to strategise.  Again, you'll know my views on this and the example I often cite, George "Boy Genius" Osborne.  Clearly, the man is a natural strategiser - of the inveterate student-politics kind; and we could add Dominic Cummings and Morgan McSweeney to the short list of UK political thinkers - but that's not enough.  What's needed, of course, is good strategy, and Osborne wasn't great at that (never ideal in a Chancellor of the Exchequer).  Any old strategy taken from some well-thumbed playbook isn't always enough; and military history is replete with fatally bad strategisers.

And so it is with initiative: Farage needed a good one, and it's not at all clear this is it.  What do we reckon?

ND

Desperate bluffing by Putin

This post will come replete with major caveats in due course, but let's start with the headline.  Vladimir Putin is bluffing like crazy over the inevitability of his victory, and will continue doing so for the next three months (until after the upcoming "elections") against the seemingly slender hope that Trump will somehow ride to his rescue and force Ukraine to accept something that can be portrayed as "victory" for Russia.  Given that use of nukes is off the table, bluffing plus outright airborne slaughter in Kyiv are practically all he has left.

To sum up:

• the Russian 2026 "spring-summer offensive" has yielded miniscule net[1] territorial gains at the cost of phenomenal Russian casualties.  All objectives remain unmet.
• counting from the front line to St Petersburg and beyond, the Ukrainian medium- and deep-strike campaign, notably on oil and logistics assets, has: seriously incommoded Russian forces at the front (supplies must be brought up by drone and on foot); paralysed transport on major roads in the occupied territories, with critical shortages of fuel - & water - in Donetsk, and Crimea almost under siege; made significant dents in manufacturing facilities of the Russian industrial-military complex across a very wide swathe of the country; seriously hampered telecomms and air movements across western Russia; wreaked colossal damage on the oil industry, with severe shortages resulting (and forcing large-scale imports from Belarus, India and other nations) that must soon have significant inflationary, industrial and food-production consequences; via vast palls of black smoke over Moscow and St Petersburg, demonstrated vividly and demeaningly to the populace that nowhere is safe from highly accurate drone and missile bombardment.
• having thus far failed miserably in the planned effort to censor the internet in Chinese style, Putin faces a populace that can see all this quite clearly.  Not withstanding the existence of some loyalist diehards that will cling to Putin's infallibility as they did to Stalin's, the greater part of the people, realistic cynics as most Russians are, have clocked it all as being at the very least, not at all what they were sold back in 2022, but in fact starting to impinge on them directly.  To call this "unrest" would be to misunderstand how Russia has always been: but it's a near equivalent.
• the economy is in a bad way, and short term relief from Iran-war oil prices has been overtaken by those prices falling back again PLUS the abovementioned actual shortage of oil products.

There are very big decisions pending for after those elections, in two categories:

1. the economy: if nothing changes, really deep measures will be needed;
2. manpower: if Putin decides to soldier on, even just to the extent of trying to capture the rest of the Donbass (and his stated territorial goals extend a lot further than that), he'll need a very large intake of new conscripts - perhaps a million.

So: given that's all 3 months away, during which time Putin doubtless feels he can (just about) maintain a facade of BAU, he sees little downside to giving the Trump card one last play.  Look, we're advancing on all fronts - let me lend you this magnifying glass - and can carry on like this forever!  Get that clown to surrender, now - and cash in your Nobel Prize voucher!!  Yeah, right.  Even Witless-Dumkopf, even Trump himself, have probably spotted the flaws in that line of reasoning.

One other thing, before the caveats.  L'il Volodya also shows signs of losing it a bit.  It's always necessary to enter notes of caution here because he's been written off as a dying man for years.  But in a very high-profile set-piece "interview" he gave recently, he dropped a real Biden of a clanger and declared Ukrainian troops in a town deep inside Russia were only 2 km away from being totally surrounded.  He was obviously mistaking it for some tiny Ukrainian settlement he'd been briefed about but forgotten the name of - commentators have made various guesses because it's not entirely obvious which.  But this in the full glare of prime time Russian TV.  Not a helpful incident.

And the caveats?  It's basically the usual one, with a specific twist.  It's always wise to assume that there is no limit to the suffering that can be imposed on the Russian people, however cynical they may be.  That's one manifestation of "the mysterious Russian soul"[2] that they are so proud of.  And I doubt there are any moral limits to the extent Putin is willing to exploit that, even if there might be some political constraints in an internet age.  So my opening list of how bad things are in Russia needs to be considered in that light.  BUT it cuts both ways: Ukrainians are equally able to take it, as they've proved heroically for over four years in defiance of almost all expectations.  Are they crumbling in the next 3 months?  No, they ain't.  And of course they have the tremendous backstop of EU / UK funding, without which it would have all been up for them some while ago.

The special twist is this: all the evidence points to Putin not knowing in detail what's actually happening.  He uses neither mobile phone nor laptop.  The military accounts he receives are just the icing on the mighty traditional Russian layer-cake of filing "beautiful reports" at every stage along the chain; and we can probably assume the economic and industrial reports he gets are similarly sugared.  It's only occasionally that hard facts seem to get through to him.  This all makes it even more likely that he'll play the game of attrition by infinite suffering.  Scary stuff.

There is one last fallback for Putin - China: because we all assume Xi won't let him "actually lose the war".  But Xi also serves as a restraining influence: he's ruled out nukes in no uncertain terms; and note how the 2024 experiment using 10,000 North Korean troops in front-line roles quietly came to an end without being scaled up, or even just continued. 

And "actually losing the war" may not be a relevant criterion: look how badly things have become for Putin with China notionally having his back!  I don't think he'll be getting any change from the Donald either just now: a(nother) failed "peace process" is the last thing Trump needs before the mid-terms.  

ND

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[1] 'Net', because Ukraine has been successfully counter-attacking on a couple of fronts and re-seized territory of its own.

[2] Here's some more of my attempts to illuminate these big cultural differences. 

"Manchesterism" - seems like we've been here before

 ... and it didn't end well.

"Manchesterism" - not to be confused with Manchester Liberalism - is intended to mean something easily grasped for political purposes: greater interventionism at the civic level.  This is supposed, a priori, to have obvious benefits yielding excellent results.  Well, maybe, sometimes.  The ideal degree of devolution is as long as a piece of string: how many Scots feel their once vaunted education system, or the Welsh their vaunted health service, have benefitted from greater devolved control?  Objectively, the results suggest otherwise.  And the ludicrous Rebecca Long-Bailey's equally ludicrous 2019 Labour manifesto plans for ultra-devolution of the energy industry (down to the level of units of "around 200 households" owning their own local energy infrastructure) provide the reductio ad absurdum of 

And there are reasons to think that Burnham's model isn't what it's thought to be: that he's basically encouraged commercial property development on a significant scale, which can't easily be replicated across the nations.  A glance at the pages of every issue of Private Eye and its years-long revelations of naked, industrial-scale corruption on Teesside for the personal benefit of a very small number of individuals, shows that local devolved powers can end up being shockingly abused. 

But there's another factor.  Remember how Neville Chamberlain came to Westminster as the dynastic hereditary king of Birmingham, with municipalism in that other great city as his calling card.  He didn't do so well in the corridors of Whitehall - or of Bad Godersberg and Munich (notwithstanding some recent revisionist versions of events there).  Maybe in other nations there is a wothwhile tradition of fine presidents and prime ministers coming up the local government / Big City Mayoral route.  But not around these parts. 

Do we see any signs that Andy is up to the bigger job?  Municipalism is not enough, Mr Burnham.  

ND

Starmer goes "with good grace"? We'll be the judges ...

And so it came to pass.  Suddenly, all the fight went out of him.

"I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party ... and I accept that answer with good grace."

Oh, really?  Let us be the judges of that.  If I were a gullible Labour leftie who'd had higher hopes back in 2020, I'd be fairly bitter.  Andy "novelty factor" Burnham will be having all those hopes projected on him now.  Good luck with that.  I guess he's at least got the advantage that hopes will be set rather lower now.  "Hope he doesn't accept too many freebies ...";  "Maybe he believes in something ...".

Spare a thought for Sadiq Khan, who "paid tribute to Sir Keir Starmer as 'a man of great integrity' ".  Well, it takes one to know one: pardon me while I mop up this pool of spilled tea.  Oh, tragedy: this moment should surely have been Sadiq's - how he's been trying to figure out how he could do a Burnham before Burnham himself pulled it off.  So now he'll have to wait for another mainstream Labour meltdown.  If the Tories are the model for modern British politics, that'll be along as soon as the latest lettuce wilts.  Early GE, anyone?

That said, I'm not sure Khan looks terribly well just now.  Let's charitably blame the new haircut.  Now, about that critical upcoming NATO summit next month ... what's your foreign policy, Andy?  And defence spending?  They are all looking at you.

ND

Hattersley: a disarmingly honest old hypocrite

Well the tub of lard** lasted a lot longer than the lettuce, but now Roy Hattersley's gone.

Over the years he's come to our attention before, and BTL on the previous post one of our Anon's gave us two of Roy's fine pieces of cheery hypocrisy, both from the Grauniad.  Another gem worth recalling is something he wrote in his long-running Diary in the same newspaper:

I do not believe that there are young women who get themselves pregnant to qualify for a council house.  And even if I am wrong about this, it it to my credit that I don't believe it.

He knew he was in the wrong, but unlike most of these left-ish rogues, he didn't mind admitting it.   Refreshing, in its own way, I suppose.

ND

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** Oddly, that episode of HIGNFY seems to have been expunged from the www

Hockney - a true master

With the passing of David Hockney we have lost something precious: a master of his work.  I tend to think there are three pre-requisites for genuine artistry: that the artist should first be a complete master of the technicalities - craft before art; that they should have a fine eye (or ear) for abstraction; and boundless productivity.  Some might say that Vermeer provides a counter-example to the third of these, but I'd say that's a rarity.

Hockney had it all.   His output was legendary, of course: and his technical skills were that of an outright genius.  I recall a small, simple drawing he made of a muddy lane, and you could tell that what one was looking at was the indentations in the soft ground of where a pile of logs had been resting until recently at the roadside.  As if one was there. This is extraordinary stuff.

Crayon sketch: I did this - in homage - 50 years ago

The quick Guardian obit refers to "his fascination with perspective" but I don't think that's quite right.  Mere perspective is old hat: it was a fascination with depth, and how it can be conveyed in two-dimensional media - and in this, he was truly a revolutionary, going way beyond other depth-masters (Monet comes first to mind) in finding new ways to convey what all sighted people with two eyes experience all the time.  In particular, he worked on depth in its 4 dimensions, finding tech-facilitated ways to capture and portray the temporal aspect that always arises, because we can often only perceive depth by changing our point of view over an interval of time.   

His extremely well thought-out views on abstraction are important, too: and the accuracy of his eye in this regard was never in doubt.  In terms of mastery, abstraction and output he was the equal of Picasso (possibly also as innovator), though to different effect as he never really sought to go beyond the figurative.  He knew, though, as every good photographer does, that abstraction is at the heart of figurative representation.

ND

Events!

But then of course there's Events ... Mandy, Trump, who-knows-what.  Starmer already has a long list of self-serving one-liners to fend off the 'known unknowns' ...

That was C@W last week: and right on cue, Events have struck.  Was Healey's resignation really an unknown unknown?  No: for several weeks past, meejah political correspondents have been reporting that all was not well with the Defence Investment Plan and that the Cabinet was badly split on the issue.

Given that right now it looks for all the world big enough to be a Final Nail, letting it erupt like this is a capital strategic error on Team Starmer's part: it was foreseeable; they should have made sure it was covered[1].  I'm sure we've all met situations where someone, or some organisation, fatally loses sight of just how big some fairly obvious potential banana-skin really is[2] - and it's not pretty when they step on it.  Not quite the same phenomenon as Nicholas Taleb's "picking up pennies in front of the steamroller", but there are some family resemblences.

So now, we must assume that Burnham will campaign even more explicitly as the anti-Starmer insurgent, however implausible.  Farage, presumably, will campaign on "it's Labour that is the problem", to be reinforced in the days to come by lurid stories of toxic Cabinet proceedings that the press will be happy to furnish as they get extensively briefed by all the self-interested parties involved.  And let's see what 'line' TS comes up with to fend off this one - that'd earn someone his bonus.  Or is it just too late for yet another last-ditch defence?  

ND

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[1]  It seems they were preoccupied "wargaming Andy Burnham's next moves"

[2]  In my first commercial employment, I watched in horror as a really good manager I worked for came badly unstuck in that manner.  Fortunately, this life-lesson came very early in my career.  It was a great relief, two employers later, to work for a firm that operated on the maxim: the bigger the (potential) issue, the better the team we deploy and the more attention we give it.  It's truly crazy when a firm draw up a list of 10 issues, and commits one tenth of its resources to each with no thought to the relativities.  Or worse: when it gives 30% to the squeakiest wheel, irrespective. 

Toughing it out: Starmer, Putin, Trump

Toughing things out isn't quite the same as playing for time, although the latter (an intellectually very dull strategy, but often effective) can be part of it.  One reason it can work for the obdurate party is that an awful lot of opponents have read their Sun Tzu and are hoping to gain their victory by manoeuvre and psychology alone, i.e. without bloodshed - which involves the incumbent vacating the battlefield before any clash of main forces.

Well, the other side has a vote in these matters, which all parties need to remember.  We have three prominent examples in play right now.

Starmer.   We've long suggested that Team Starmer has every intention of toughing it out, and in the last couple of days he stated he would contest any leadership election that might be forced upon the Labour Party.  Quite obviously, yer Burnhams and yer Steetings are hoping he'll be driven away without a fight, perhaps out of sheer embarrassment.  Note that Burham said last week that IF there's a contest (and IF he's an MP), he'd stand.  That's a man waiting for a coronation, not one armed with a pre-drafted letter in 81 copies.  

And there's probably quite a few Labour MPs who don't want to be put on the spot, too, when the Whips come round with nomination papers and thumbscrews.  Well, who knows what a few more weeks and Mandy-scandals will bring for TS - but since 'shamelessness' is his second name, he can probably hold on until the last minute.  So there you go, boys: you're gonna have to winkle him out.

UPDATE:  this, from the Graun - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/10/keir-starmer-aides-war-gaming-over-leadership-contest-with-andy-burnham

Trump.   Obviously not in such imminent political peril; but he sure ain't enjoying where he finds himself vis-à-vis Iran and world opinion generally.  (WTF did they go ahead with that Beijing visit for - I mean, either of them, Trump or Xi?  Literally nothing achieved.  At least, though, it doesn't appear Trump gave away the farm this time, which was the danger.  What might he do to cajole Xi to go ahead with the planned Washington visit, though?) 

Anyhow, in what's clearly an orchestrated effort, there has been a splurge of "Trump really knows what he is doing" articles - a demeaning task for the poor writers involved because manifestly he hasn't a f*****g clue.  I'd spotted a few in UK media, and thought it was empty sycophancy: but US contacts tell me it's been a blizzard over there.  The joke is, one of the oft-repeated lines is that Trump is pursuing clearly-stated Original War Aims - and then they cite different ones!  Of course, there have been so many to choose from, sometimes all in the space of a single morning in Trumpworld.  Does it all make the Donald feel happier?  Who can tell.   

Putin.  Ah yes, Li'l Volodya again, with two more humiliations in the past few days: the Ukrainian bombing of St Petersburg, literally casting a dark cloud over the SPIEF-fest; and the Armenian elections, which he had convinced himself had been sufficiently 'influenced' as to give a pro-Moscow result.  (This comes after Victory Day, Hungary, Iran, Cuba, Syria, Azerbaijan, etc etc - and of course the Chinese gas sale debacle.   Not to mention the casualties ... we've done this all before.)

But no: he's refusing to engage with Zelenskyy's insolent letter, and maintaining that Russia is on the path to inevitable total victory & fulfillment of his Original War Aims - however fatuous that sounds to, err, absolutely everyone.  So as we order industrial quantities of popcorn for the months ahead, let's just poke a little more fun by recounting what happened during SPIEF under that dark, oily pall.

• the WiFi failed
• overseas visitors were provided with VPN and SIMs so that they could access WA, etc (banned and 'blocked' in Russia)
• the useless Max messenger (the mandatory replacement for soon-to-be-banned-altogether Telegram) received its official launch - and promptly disappeared from the AppStore
• journalists were asked not to take photos of the lavish parties 
• ditto of the hookers provided for delegates
• residents had their hot water switched back on for the week (in St Petersburg the hot water provided by municipal district heating schemes is switched off in summer), presumably so they could present a fragrant atmosphere in the street 

But still he's not for turning ...[1].  These world leaders, eh? - they're so ... tough.

UPDATE:  reporting within Russia has it that the cyber aspects of Putin's personal security regime have been switched off.  This makes protecting him in some aspects more difficult: but has been occasioned by acute fears stemming from the ease with which Israel was manifestly able to track Iranian and Hezbollah leaders.  As we know, Putin is a physical coward [2] who seriously hopes to live to be 150.  But just because he's paranoid - aspects of which are noted by the FT - that doesn't mean 'someone' isn't out to get him.  (But probably not Mr Z.)

ND

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[1]  Tellingly. however, in occupied Ukraine the Russians are seriously digging in - vast underground citadels being built.  They clearly envisage the need to defend what they now hold, rather than feeling confident of pushing ever further forward into the territory they assert is theirs for the taking, as Putin reckons is happening right now.  It's readily understandable, not least because Ukraine has rendered vulnerable every movement of vehicles and rolling stock, across the occupied territories and a significant swathe beyond, seriously incommoding Russian logistics.  Summer shortages of oil and even water in some of these areas will be acute.  It's truly hard to envisage how the much vaunted Russian "2026 Offensive" will materialize in any manner worthy of the name.

[2]   Let's get ahead of the "how do you know this?" trolling, with (a) his obvious blind terror of covid  - back to SPIEF again, anyone allowed to attend his address & press conference in person had to go through rigorous covid testing, even in 2026 (and he wasn't going to kiss them anyway); and  (b) seemingly, a new-found terror of hantavirus (sic!).  It has seriously been floated in Russia that the Special Military Operation should be brought to a conclusion swiftly, because of ... wait for it ... the risk of hantavirus running riot among front-line troops.  WTF?  There's only one reason why that sort of arrant nonsense appears: it's because someone who wants a prompt end to the SMO knows which of Putin's buttons to press.

2 surprisingly interesting reads: Zelenskyy - and AEP!

A couple of worthwhile calls on your time today.  Let's take the lighter one first.

From the mercurial AEP, whose regular output on energy-related issue is Pollyanna-ish net zero bilge, a lengthy take-down of the deep impracticalities of the putative AI boom as it is currently envisaged.  The energy aspect is of course one major strand; cooling-water is another, and the emptiness of "OK, well we'll just build our own gas-fired power plants instead".  And then the financial implications!  Somewhere in there (or maybe it was BTL), though, there is a hint of how things may progress in subtler ways.  If AEP is correct on the brick wall of physical limitations to AI's currently-planned trajectory, it'll need to be a subtler approach.   Otherwise ... bubble is bubble.

From Zelenskyy; an open letter to Putin, suggesting face-to-face negotiations - which is worth reading in full, not just some newspaper summary.

At the very least, this is a useful and pretty comprehensive tour d'horizon from the Kyiv perspective, and a summary of just how many cards Mr Z holds right now.  Interestingly, though, whether by design or accident it's also pretty insulting to Putin.  Maybe Z has inadvertently overdone the projection of the (current) strength of the Ukrainian position - which you might argue he was always going to do at the start of a putative negotiation.  Well, but better done in the proposed face-to-face meeting, hmm?  

Or maybe (since, at his best, Z is pretty sharp) the intended audience is Trump and the ROW anyway, if he knows Putin has no intention of negotiating with Ukraine anyway.  Remind the Donald that Z does actually hold several cards right now.

Or maybe, like the "permission" graciously given to Putin for his 2026 Victory Day parade (another sharp slap from Z), it's purposefully intended to humiliate Putin on the eve of today's big St Petersburg address to the SPIEF - if indeed he deigns to turn up in person after the impressive warning shots fired in that direction earlier in the week.

Or maybe it's to bring to Putin's attention the long list of things he doesn't seem to know - cat among the pigeons.  Putin's people say he "is being briefed" on the Z letter.  Yeah, they'll be dead keen not to let him read the original in full - they lie to him consistently about the true situation on many fronts, and wouldn't want him firing off the obvious supplementary questions.  And they may well succeed, since by repute he never so much as touches the keys of a laptop, still less knows how to log in or access the www for himself.  Old-fashioned red telephones for L'il Volodya ...

ND

Burnham's by-election

Watching Burnham's by-election purely as a spectator, I have no feel whatever for what's happening on the ground (rarely do the pundits either, these days).  But one or two things stand out rather clearly: things that might not have been expected even just a month ago - which just goes to show.

>  Burnham makes a pretty unconvincing King Across the Water / saviour of the nation.  He comes across as an odd combination of entitled, nervous and petulant.  Is he simply going to win anyhow?  Who can judge?  Voters only make up their minds on vague feelings of what 'seems right'.  

>  Restore looks distinctly as though it could upset Reform pretty badly.  I wouldn't ordinarily cite Brendan O'Neill, and it's larded with phrases I wouldn't use, but this is a pertinent essay:  "the Your Party of the right" is spot on, as is "his bit-part role in the chronicles of our times will be an entirely inglorious one".

For me, both these thoughts have relegated another couple of potential talking-points, namely the embarrassment for the Greens over their initial nominee; and the chronic inability of Reform ever to find unexceptionable candidates (let alone exceptional) - even for high-profile set-pieces like this.  Think what it'll be like for both these arriviste parties at the GE!

If Restore does indeed trip up Reform on this outing, I suppose it might just be the urgent incentive Farage needs to square Lowe away in good time before the next GE.  Otherwise he will be spending a lot more time with that £5m nest-egg.

Burnham, if it is indeed to be him this time, must I suppose be hoping that, once elected, Streeting will pull the trigger as promised.   But maybe he won't!  And if not, can that obscure woman who threatened to do it a few weeks back really muster the numbers?  Would it look a bit off, if Burnham himself did it immediately following his victory?  What we may be 100% sure of is that Team Starmer will have been strenuously working over every single Labour backbencher with the usual unsavoury combination of menaces, promises and flattery.  It's amazing how many of a list of 81 can quietly slip away in such circumstances.  Time is well and truly on Starmer's side, given his clear determination to bluster on.

But then of course there's Events ... Mandy, Trump, who-knows-what.  Starmer already has a long list of self-serving one-liners to fend off both the 'known unknowns' on that little list; and we'll be hearing a lot of them soon.  

A run on popcorn seems like a safe bet.  Anyone updating their January predictions on Starmer's survival this year?

ND

Goings-on in the BP boardroom: WTF?

BP is a genuine puzzle.  How can an enormous company of considerable long standing with some seriously impressive attributes, be so maladroit in its senior appointments?  With the summary eviction of Mr Manifold[1], BP will have had 3 chairs and 5 CEOs since 2020, and a heap of embarrassment.  This is a crazy level of volatility at the top.

It's not a company I have definitive views on; but inevitably I have had loads of dealings with them over my decades in the industry.  (They offered me a job once: but I didn't want to move to Japan.)  Here are some observations.

• Although superficially they might all look pretty similar, big multinational oil companies aren't remotely all operating under the same business model.  We can map out a spectrum.  At one end we have Exxon - fundamentally centred on building and managing physical assets; i.e. engineer-driven, and deeply suspicious of finance & trading activity, which it minimises very purposefully.  At the other end,  BP  - plenty of capable engineers and physical assets, but also exceptionally capable and commercially active traders and finance types.  At these two extremes on the spectrum, the respective P&L and balance sheets aren't very similar.[2]  
• BP has shown itself somewhat prone to accommodating the woke agenda.  The 'Beyond Petroleum' rebrand dates as far back as 2000, under the proto-scandalous John Browne[3], so that until recently the eco-'green' stuff was fairly prominent in the business, almost as much as the traditional 'green stuff'.  They have also made several 'questionable' appointments of females at very exalted levels, IMHO for the sole purpose of having wimmin in senior jobs because at least a couple of them are self-evidently not up to the job.
• More generally, they seem to hire outsiders for top jobs far more than is usual in the industry.  Really confident big companies of long standing place far more trust in promotion from the ranks of their long-term employees - rightly or wrongly. [4]
• However, the boardroom nonsense of all kinds clearly hasn't been at the expense of their trading prowess.  And overall, I have a fair degree of respect for the senior working-level management of the company across the board, who mostly seem to get on with business in an intelligent and competent way.

All that doesn't lead me to any firm conclusions about BP's future.  But the company has been such a major part of the UK business scene for so long, I have to believe many C@W readers will have well-informed perspectives on the company.  So - the floor is yours.

ND

UPDATE:  Someone pointed out to me that I couldn't possibly have been referring to Meg O'Neill, and they were right.  I wasn't.  She's good.

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[1]  Cue the obvious jokes about Manifold sins and wickedness ...

[2]  Shell, incidentally, is pretty much bang in the middle

[3]  Scandal notwithstanding, Browne was a serious oil man.  He called the market correctly in 1997, judging $10 to be the bottom (when the Economist was suggesting $6 was coming) and bought Amoco. 

Arco and BurmahCastrol at the absolute bottom of the market, doubling the size of BP.  That's impressively good business judgment - speculative, but based on solid knowledge, experience and instinct, rather than a bought-in price forecast from some 'econometrics' outfit. 

[4]  The pros and cons of this can of course be argued at length: maybe for another post.

How long can Russia keep this up?

An odd barb sometimes thrown in this blog's direction (from who-knows-what troll factory) is that since Russia's invasion of Ukraine four years ago (four!) we have been predicting the imminent collapse of Russia itself.  Well, we haven't.  Ever.  In fact, right from the start we have said that ultimately there's nothing to stop Putin taking Ukraine if he really wants to - which, if anything, was far too generous to L'il Volodya and his ramshackle army.  Further, we've always remarked that the Russian capacity for enduring privation and general suffering should never be underestimated. 

But it is beginning to look as though Putin's stamina is waning.  There are so many straws in the wind: in no particular order -

• the 'victory' parade, hugely-reduced in scale and betraying obvious fears for its security, to the point where Putin could be humiliated (the word used by Russian milbloggers) by Zelenskyy's gracious 'permission' to go ahead with the parade
• widespread and debilitating fuel shortages, courtesy of Ukraine's remarkable drone campaign ...
•  ... which, incidentally, has - yet again - blithely crossed one of Russia's stated nuclear red lines in terms of its scale ("the massive launch / take-off of aerospace attack weapons ... and their crossing of the state border of the Russian Federation")
• Russia's re-engagement with US negotiators, with the usual risible sabre-rattling
• the background PR planning for a sudden 'declaration of victory' - even based on today's status quo, if necessary
• serious domestic discontent at frequent blocking of the www and the (supposedly) imminent closure of access to Telegram, all in the name of 'security'
• internal dismay at the Hungarian election result, adding to keenly-felt impotence over Syria / Cuba / Venezuela
• serious economic issues, macro and micro - see below
• angst over the pitiful battlefield performance thus far in 2026 - zero net progress** in the spring/summer offensive campaign (intended to capture the remaining Donbass territory by autumn: Kkarkiv, Kherson and Odessa are rarely mentioned these days); casualty rates exceeding enlistments; and Ukraine has achieved, at least for now, superiority in the 'battlefield air interdiction' (BAI) stakes, courtesy of its swarms of very smart drones and their equally smart deployment in Russia's immediate rear, over and above the deeper oil refinery campaign 
• etc etc: I could go on.

Oh, and on the global scale, no joy from Xi on the long (very long)-awaited deal for more gas sales to China, a farce that we've often written about here in the past - check the 'Gazprom' tag - another serious strategic disappointment.

Even so, I still don't reckon on near-term "collapse", or defenestration of Putin.  He has plenty of tools to prevent either.  But I do say he's now beginning to think seriously in terms of an off-ramp: and many powerful people in Russia are even more seriously trying to get this to the top of the agenda.

In the midst of it all, the IISS has published this sober analysis.  It doesn't predict imminent collapse either; but it does set out the genuine problems and major dilemma Putin faces.  Between now and Xmas, I'm guessing we'll see recognisable, tangible movement taking place - in one direction or another.

ND 

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** Ukraine has in fact started making systematic small-scale territorial (re)gains all over the front, which in recent weeks have been larger than Russia's own small territorial gains.  On both sides these are to be understood in context: they are trivial in extent - largely infiltration sorties - and essentially opportunist in nature.  But there's a big difference: Russia's are intended, and indeed celebrated, as purposeful steps towards the taking of the Donbass; i.e. they are meant to be strategic.  Ukraine's, by contrast, are tactical spoiling measures - highly disruptive for any coherent Russian offensive this year.  But if they do indeed have that effect, they add up to having an important strategic consequence.

Jury trials, for and against

Photo: BBC

A bit of a plate-spinner here, pre-scheduled.  I⁴'ve been meaning to open this one up for a while now but, well, events.

So:  judge-only trials for criminal offences?  OK, Lammy isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer [1] but then again, Justice Delayed is Justice Denied; and the backlog in the courts is appalling.  Balancing the system by waiting for victims and witnesses to lose heart (or die) is no way to dispense justice.  The guilty go free by default and simple delaying tactics.

But hey, if it's me in the dock, there are circumstances in which I probably want a jury; and I think most people agree.  And, although it's strictly irrelevant to the criminal cases I'm most concerned with, I was once party to a massive civil case in the commercial courts which in the USA would have been heard by a jury, and (all parties agreed [2]) would definitely have gone only one way - but here, being heard only by a single judge, it went the other way on a judicial whim over an odd technicality, and required overturning at Appeal.

I reckon we know where the blame lies, not least in the shocking reduction in funding for the CJS by the Tories: and covid didn't help; nor the latitude given to defence lawyers to waste time - one of the juries I sat on (a murder trial) saw some remarkable time-wasting being accommodated, albeit testily, by the judge.  Somebody has to address the situation, somehow - under whatever leadership.

So what can we agree on?

• truly, the backlog has got to be addressed decisively
• we've long ago sold the pass on really nasty terrorist cases (N.Ireland, where the threat to juries is chillingly real - and that might spread across more of the realm in years to come, you don't need me to paint the scenarios)
• having sat on three juries, I tremble at the thought of jury trials for complex cases of fraud & the like
• hey, I'm an old soldier and know all about summary justice at first hand: it has to be a very serious offence before it gets anywhere near a Court Martial [3]
• so like taxation, it's already happened, & how much more in future is all a matter of degree

What else then, does t'readership think on this most critical of issues for a society supposedly built on the rule of law? [4] 

ND

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[1]   And nowadays it seems to be OK to point this out: everyone else does.  This has surprised me somewhat.  I had several accounts of what a good impression Lammy made in a handful of trips to the USA in 2023/24.  But there we have it - by common consent, the man's a laughing stock.  Pity he's in charge of this difficult issue.

[2]  So clear was this to all concerned that the party which won at First Instance was desperate to have the case heard in England, and they succeeded.  Conversely, the other party had tried equally desperately to have it heard in the USA.  Some $400m was at stake. 

[3]  For any US readers, in the British Armed Forces we don't term regimental-level justice a 'CM': it's a term reserved for full military trials with defence counsel etc.  (No juries, though: an experienced panel.)  At the regimental level or below ('CO's Orders' or 'OC's Orders'), evidence is taken, but it's summary justice, CO = judge-and-jury.  As my first Sergeant Major explained, the process is straightforward:  "March the guilty party in.  Find the guilty party 'Guilty'.  March the guilty party out."  GP will be invited to elect for CM, but it never happens: Sergeant Major makes sure of that, too.  Oh no, son, you don't want that.  You definitely don't want that.

[4]  I shan't open up an episode of History Corner on you - Henrys I and II, Edward I, and Henry VII 

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

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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. 

Stonewall Starmer goes full 'Sierra'

Not as much fun as you thought?

Having long suggested that Team Starmer fully intends to tough it out - and they had plenty of advanced notice and planning time [1] for this crisis, at least - that's how it still seems, & strongly so, at the time of writing.  There's only one oven-ready candidate in the wings, with no "anyone but [Wes]" votes against him: our old pick Ed Miliband.  

Team S is pursuing what I call the Sierra Strategy when I'm strategising in business.  Recall the Ford jallopy of that name?  Having had many years of consummate success with its predecessor, the smart rust-bucket Cortina line[2], Marks 1-4, Ford went for a fairly 'bold' new look.  The 'jelly-mould' hatchback found immediate disfavour, and despite the usual launch promotions sales were not good.

Ford had a massive call to make:  re-skin and rebrand it fairly promptly with as much commercial dignity as possible, or double down.  They doubled down with massive corporate determination.  Advertising, deep discounts, promotions of all kinds, a smarter Ghia variant that was half-decent - everything in the marketing man's book of tricks.  For several years!  Dunno what this campaign cost, or how the counterfactual might have played out: but in terms of sheer brute force to get the Sierra into the top 3 or 4 UK best-sellers, they succeeded.  And that's Starmer now.

PS, Miliband is sitting there trying to figure his optimum positioning for picking up the crown when it falls.  And a coronation is what he wants: no knife-job.  My guess?  At the critical moment, he offers Starmer Foreign Secretary and a big Euro-push mandate.  Kier, we can both make history together ...     

PPS  If you think Starmer is stonewalling impressively, just watch Trump between now and the mid-terms.  He'll be looking at everything from conjuring a genuine crisis in order to call them off, to calling the results void - and calling out the National Guard in every state that returns a Dem.    

ND  

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[1]  E.g. the timing of the King's Speech

[2]  The Mk 1 started life as just the plain 'Consul'.  Didn't play ideally, so they changed it to 'Consul Cortina' (as opposed to its predecessor the 'Consul Classic'.  See, these Ford guys were always sharp with marketing-based solutions.