Fisking Peter Mandelson

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     

Strategy, and a Mandelson 'Masterclass'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's a big topic.  Other first thoughts?  

ND   

_______________

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

Trump, Russia, Tariffs, EU ... now Poland

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?

ND  

She's breached the Code (with apologies to Macca)

 Yes, the usual apologies to Paul McCartney ...

[four bars of plaintive harp music]

Friday morning at five o’clock as the day begins 
One final glance round the smart Whitehall flat  
Cursing the lawyers and kicking the cat 
She goes downstairs to the limo, clutching her handkerchief 
Now for the letter she knows she must write 
How did it all turn to shite? 

   She's   (I'm just a working class lass ) 
   breaching   (Just a poor working class lass) 
   the Code   (What can you do when you've no old school tie?) 
   Hitting the road after breaching the Code in so many ways 

Starmer snorts as he wanders round in his dressing gown 
Picks up the letter the courier brought 
Standing in triumph; another great snort 
He laughs loud, and cries to Victoria 
“Whoopee! - our Angie's gone! 
How did she think she could have my job? 
Always just shooting her gob!” 

   She   (I did it all for the kids) 
   was breaching   (Nice flat in Hove for my kids) 
   the Code   (I wanted everything money could buy) 
   Tried to upload the establishment Code for so many years 

Sunday morning at nine o’clock she is back in Hove 
Making a call to her old comrade Jez 
Join his new party? - let's see what he says ... 

   She's   (What did I do that was wrong?) 
   no judgement!   (I didn’t know it was wrong) 
   None!   (Judgement's the one thing that money can't buy) 
   Couldn't explode the establishment Code after all those tears 
   Crushed by the Code   (bye bye) 

ND

Darren Jones: a different kettle of fish

In the right hands, the plumb job in Government is Chief Secretary to the Treasury.  Seat in Cabinet.  Just below the radar, but enormous power.  In charge of government spending - everybody needs to be your friend.   The best springboard imaginable: the partial list below is revealing[1].

And now, CSttT Darren Jones has sprung into another such job: CSttPM, no less, invented specifically for him, it seems (and to help dig the Starmermobile out of the rut in which its wheels are spinning idly as the engine races).  Yes - Darren, the sharp, confident, facetious smartarse, is in charge of more than just spending now.  Let's see what he does with it:  because such jobs and such people are in the type of pivotal position that can see significant results along several axes, personal as well as political and practical.

In business, the term once used was "troubleshooter" - a person appointed to get something Big & Awkward done, often away from the corporate centre.  Julius Caesar is perhaps the greatest example in history; there's Wellington and Slim in British military annals (and many other besides, of course).  Douglas MacArthur: the list could go on.  Right now, Putin has Sergei Kiriyenko[2].  It's happened to me three times in my career: being given plenipotentiary powers in the hope I could fix some unexpected, pressing difficulty.

The thing is: you're never sure how things will turn out - with the task itself, and what the Man does afterwards.  Caesar came back in triumph from Gaul - and immediately mounted a successful coup.  MacArthur had a coup in mind himself.  Wellington was a bit more constitutionally correct when he had the whole of Europe at his feet: he still became PM.  But Slim just quietly slipped away[3].

The troubleshooter appointment will always be given to someone believed to be capable - that's the whole point - but often also to someone viewed as maverick, which can give rise to the problematic aspect of what happens after the hoped-for success; the unwanted consequence of the Faustian pact.  And if he wasn't (identifiably) a maverick before the assignment, well, lots of power and a free hand, sometimes exercised way out over the horizon ... it can turn a man's head.  Capable, and hitherto reliable, doesn't always mean predictable.

We shall follow Mr Jones' progress with interest.

ND

____________________

[1] Past CSttT's include: James Callaghan, Geoffrey Howe, Michael Portillo, Alistair Darling, Danny Alexander, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak.  (Oh yes, and Chris Philp, whose ambitious little heart nearly exploded at the prospect he had it made, when he briefly held the job.)

[2]  If you haven't heard of him, well most people haven't.  Aye, there's the wonder of the thing - as Sherlock Holmes said in related circumstances

[3]  Zhukov, of course, was effectively banished to Siberia!  but the CP has always been paranoid about military leaders: when you need 'em, you really need 'em.  But afterwards ...  

Angela Rayner: some observations

The Angela Rayner Stamp Duty thing is manna from Heaven for the floundering, ineffectual Badenoch; and great stuff for Kremlin-watchers as we see Starmer digging mantraps for himself, and Wes Streeting desperately trying to appear compassionately on Rayner's side, even as the whole world knows she's been set up by the Labour faction that is determined Streeting himself will succeed Starmer, possibly even quite soon.  

Thus far, the matter has been discussed in rather pedestrian binary terms:

• she's a serial tax-avoider and residence-flipper - and a monstrous hypocrite to boot: or
• her personal affairs & backstory are sad, and legitimately complex (*takes out onion*), and this has led her into an understandable error: but look, she tried to get advice, she's been let down, and it's just all very human.

Personally, I suggest there's another strand to this: she's not particularly literate (lack of education, or brainpower, or both) and can't work through the HMRC guidance for herself.  

She wouldn't be alone in this.  Some of us are fortunate enough in the education and/or brainpower department to be able to make sense of relatively clear HMRC guidance (and a myriad other potentially overpowering bureaucratic verbiage one might meet in the course of a lifetime, e.g. the reams of forms on probate).  But that's just irrelevant for very many folks - however much effort HMRC et al put into wording stuff as clearly as possible - because increasingly few people have any worthwhile level of analytic verbal reasoning.  

Of course, the truly troubling bottom line is that this is evidently no bar to reaching some of the highest levels in the land.  And as noted before with the ignorant cretins at the top of Reform, this leads to one or both of two dire consequences: (a) very bad decisions by the politicians themselves, and (b) leaving them fully at the mercy of the Civil Service - another source of bad decisions - when their own limited analytic powers are overwhelmed.

In the next day or so we'll look at a politician to which none of the above applies: Darren Jones ...

ND

Who fares best against Trump?

The Donald is, by his own estimation, a legendary deal-maker and negotiator.  Well, he does get (some) things done, and indeed sometimes gets his own way.  But how much of this is deal-making?  And how good are his deals?  His reputation in the New York real estate sector sucks is, errr, equivocal.

He's been in action quite a bit this year!  So there's something to score: and we can form an early view on his performance as a negotiator up against several prominent counterparties.  

vs China:  Trump is losing, hands down.  The Chinese are playing him like a fiddle, and he's steadily backing down on the tariff war, step by step.  Yet surely, by every standard of US foreign policy as espoused in the past decade by both his and the Democrat party, this is the only game that truly matters.  Sheesh... this really matters!  - did he think he could simply swat Xi aside one spring afternoon while he was mostly busy, errr, earning his Nobel Peace prize, annexing the whole North American land mass, remodelling the White House, peddling his crap merchandise, running feuds against everyone he's ever had a grievance against etc etc etc?

vs Russia:  jury still out, perhaps, but Putin won't be particularly disconcerted by their exchanges to date.  Relative to the extraordinary prior claims made by Trump ("peace in Ukraine in one day!"), and his huffing and puffing about "consequences", the current state of play is pretty demeaning for him.

vs Mexico and Canada:  given how things looked at the start of the whole tariffs round, OK-ish for M & C.  They've mostly stood their ground, and the world hasn't fallen down around their ears by any means.  Makes Trump's early rhetoric look pretty silly - and that's just on trade.  As for annexing Canada ... (I think we can hear the laughter from here - and Greenland probably isn't too worried just now, either.)  

vs India:  jury definitely still out, because India has options.  Trump has dealt his blow - but will he get any pleasure from what happens over the next months and years?  Not at all clear.  How clever is it to send Modi scuttling to Beijing, hmm?

vs Starmer:  surely, 2-1 to Trump.  Starmer has chosen to grovel, in return for some relative 'gains' (negatively defined, which is the only thing we can say) when compared to the EC, see below.  But it has suited Trump to give a little pat on the head to the biggest arse-licker, just pour encourager les autres.

vs the EC:  a seriously bad result for the EU, courtesy of the unelected EC which holds much of Europe's fate in their hands.  Feeble stuff.  A bit of a surprise, given how comprehensively the EC wiped the floor with Cameron and May.  But from this distance, that probably tells us more about them than it does about the EC.

vs Iran:  personally, I can't call this one yet.  Need to keep it in view: could tell us quite a lot.

Crazy man, crazy times.

ND

Drax: criminal charges a possibility

Not before time, the FCA is investigating Drax: 

... covering the period January 2022 to March 2024 relating to certain historical statements regarding Drax's biomass sourcing and the compliance of Drax's 2021, 2022 and 2023 Annual Reports with the Listing Rules and Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules.

Needless to say, this hasn't done anything for its share price.

During the period under investigation, Drax was found guilty of misreporting by the pusillanimous Ofgem which let it off with a £25m fine.  In the context of literally billions Drax has received in subsidies, that's a bad joke.  And Ofgem's entire approach was pathetic, they had more than enough to throw the book at it.  But it means the FCA has a fairly robust platform from which to commence its own work, 

What's it all about?  Au fond, the issue is that Drax gets subsidised thus because it says it is saving the planet by burning trees for electricity - and it isn't.  The entire business model is built on a lie.  Living a lie is never good for integrity, personal or corporate.   In lay terms the FCA will be looking at something rather different to Ofgem which was, notwithstanding the proven misreporting, limited to whether Drax technically qualified for its subsidies.  In essence, their finding was, "even though they don't provide accurate info, we can't be sure Drax is in breach - so we'll carry on paying".  Pretty lame. 

The FCA will be looking at whether Drax has misled investors / shareholders / the market.  Here, as in the States, this can be a criminal offence.  When I was an FCA-authorised player (well, FSA in those days) it was "up to 2 years, and/or an unlimited fine" for executives involved.  In the USA, they actually do bang people up for this - see this earlier blog story.  

Who knows where the FCA will come down?  My own two-penn'orth is that (a) Drax's dissembling about its supposed CO2-reducing impact, & exactly what trees they burn, is probably of only peripheral concern to the FCA; (b) the Risk Disclosures in successive Drax annual reports look distinctly questionable.  They know how perilously they are placed via-a-vis regulatory risk, but it's not clear to me that comes across in the ARs (see for yourselves).  They've also spoken with forked tongue over whether they would be a going concern without subsidies at all.   And being already proven as prone to, err, *mis-speaking* - some entertaining stuff came out at an Employment Tribunal earlier this year - won't help Drax's cause.

My guess is that the CEO's future could be under scrutiny when the Board gets round to thinking about how they've got where they are.  But Miliband still depends on Drax to keep the lights on in 2030 - friends in high places.  That's just about their only plea in mitigation.  And it wouldn't stop a handful of execs being made an example of.  We shall see.

Popcorn, please ...

ND 

“Chance favours the prepared mind”: lithium batteries

Citing Pasteur's famous dictum, this article from a couple of years ago tells the remarkable story of the development to commerciality of the lithium-ion battery.  

And it's a classic illustration of just how messy and random much of science and business can be.  In this case, at least a UK organisation made some reasonable money from it! 

A great read.

ND

Where do they hide the budgets?

In the foothills-of-apocalypse position we now occupy, this may seem a prosaic concern: but where do they hide the budgets?   Well, this was always conceived of as basically a business blog, so we can't take responsibility for solving Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan, small boats, climate change etc.  

Here are a couple of examples.  Firstly, the mighty Afghan refugee cockup.  What do they reckon - £7 billion and counting?  How come no canny forensic budget-bore spotted that one on the HMG books?  Clever old Sir Humphrey, eh?

Second, and you'll permit me my local interests here - I give you Drax plc.  Outwardly just a regular UK listed company going about its chosen mission of incinerating the forests of the world using UK subsidies on the pretence this is helping to solve the aforesaid climate change.   But behind the scenes it has to fight legal action after legal action: that's what happens when you are aggressively living a lie which you've determined to brazen out at all costs.  The other day I happened on some evidence that they are spending tens of millions annually in legal fees for litigation, amounts dwarfing what they spend on their annual statutory audit plus associated consultancy.  The latter, you will find laid out in detail in the Annual Report and Accounts: the former you will not.  The ordinary shareholder would never know.

Finally, and this one won't be even remotely surprising, I've had some correspondence that invites me to believe there is a fairly substantial renaissance getting underway of our nuclear deterrent.  Yes, there are indeed project line-items in the MoD budget for some of this.  But I'm being told it's a fraction of the true total.  Still, this probably goes back at least as far as the two Harolds, Macmillan and Wilson ...  (Maybe those two aircraft carriers didn't cost quite as much as we'd thought?)

Somebody signs off on all this stuff, supposedly with great solemnity and a straight face, with liabilities theoretically involved.  Where's an honest accountant to be found?  On the job market, I suppose. 

ND

Some lawyers know the law: some know the judge ...

Well, someone on Team Trump knows their game: gotta love the symbolism of meeting in Alaska!  Yup, Li'l Volodya / L'il Volodymyr, it's real estate.  Sometimes you wish a former territory was still yours - but sometimes that's just history and we all move on.  Great stuff.

While we await the ghastly prospect of Trump and Putin sitting around the map of Ukraine drawing arbitrary lines (and Putin wetting himself with pleasure at meeting the Great Man again), here's the story I promised you'd get.

*   *   *   *

Many years ago I was working for (*gasp*) an oil & gas company, and had planning responsibility for our ops in a certain African country.  A plum piece of offshore acreage was up for grabs and we wanted it: but another company had a rather more compelling claim.  The acreage was contiguous with a play they'd been working very productively for several years, and their geo-data strongly suggested the oilfield they were producing extended into the new block.  It is technically possible for business to be conducted effectively by two separate developers accessing a single field that straddles a licence-line - you need to negotiate a "unitisation" agreement - but it's messy, not least in primitive jurisdictions (are you allowed to say that? - Ed).  So the incumbent was strongly motivated to pitch hard for the new acreage.  We had some neighbouring acreage, too, which thus far had not yielded any discoveries.  But we weren't deterred: the prize was great.

The minister, replete with tribal hat and fly-whisk, decreed that he would make his determination at the end of a grand meeting where he'd hear each side make its case.  Along came the incumbent with a slick slide-show of all their geo-data: a fine technical presentation that was pretty persuasive - judged on its own terms.

But our chief geologist was a canny Frenchman (Basque, actually - we'll call him Vasco), and this was a Francophone country.  When the incumbent's team had finished their polished performance, he strode up to the table with a large map that he unrolled theatrically and plonked down several paperweights to hold it flat.  It was a simple map of the seabed, with few markings: the lines of the various licence areas; and seabed contours.

Now seabed contours don't have very much to do with what lies thousands of feet beneath (OK: nothing whatsoever).  But they made the plot that was up for grabs look a lot more natural a fit with our existing area, than with the incumbents.  Our man's presentation was short and simple, and he concluded it with a grand, sweeping gallic hand-gesture across the map, indicating the perfect logic of his contour-based argument.  Then he sat down.

The minister pondered all things in his heart, and then rose to the table.  He addressed the assembled host with these words:

Moi, je comprends l'argument de Monsieur Vasco

With this, he grandly replicated the sweeping gesture across the map; turned on his heel; and awarded us the licence.

*   *   *   *   *

I think we can guess what Putin's maps are going to look like.  Heaven help Zelensky on 15th.

ND

Russian strategy revisited

Last year I offered a short account of how evolving Russian practice on the Ukrainian battlefield was starting to show signs of being in pursuit of an identifiable strategy (after two years of unbelievably inept, strategy-free military nonsense); and how that would be viewed - highly critically - through the lens of classic Soviet military doctrine.  The current state of the Trump-triggered "negotiations" makes it useful to revisit that account, and add a bit more salient detail from that Soviet playbook.

Recapping: under Soviet doctrine the offensive should be mounted on a series of broadly parallel axes, simultaneously, across a fairly wide front.  A graphic analogy might be swinging forcefully into the opponent with a heavy club featuring several long, protruding sharp nails.  The desired 'phase 1' effect is inflicting direct damage, plus pinning the enemy into position with much reduced ability to manoeuvre to right, left, or even backwards.  The doctrine prescribes several subsequent phases to deal with what remains, and straighten the line between the multiple puncture-incursions made in phase 1.

That's if the action lasts beyond the first several days of phase 1.  We didn't extend the account in that earlier post: but taking matters a stage beyond the initial phase, the Russians foresaw a contingency in which NATO, reeling from the initial, puncturing blow but for whatever reason unwilling to escalate to nukes, called for a 'freeze' and negotiations.  In such a case, the Russian claim on territory would essentially be delineated by just that straightened line, obtained (more or less) by joining the dots between the furthest point reached of each of the breakthrough axes.  Obviously, there would be some finessing: if they'd over-reached on one axis, they'd be only too happy to 'concede' along that line and fall back to something handily defensible.

Then ... rinse and repeat on a rachet basis twenty years later, or whatever.

The Soviet critique of Russia's performance 2022-25 would be simple: beyond Day 1 back in Feb '22, where's the shock?  The whole strategy is predicated on massive firepower and speed, see the earlier post[1].

However ... perhaps all these lessons have been learned, and Russia intends its 2025 summer campaign to culminate in just such an offensive.  It's not difficult to conceive the current state of play on the  Kharkiv front as being shaped for such a development, and even posit the precise axes that would be involved.  Ditto the front south of Ukraine's 'fortress belt'.

And Trump looks just the man to sit with a map, extend his stumpy finger, and offer Putin the territory east of a straightened line of his own devising [2].  I'd judge Putin's dream outcome for 2025 would be an offensive like the one surmised above over the next several weeks; then a sit-down with Trump and a big map before the autumn rains begin.  Militarily, anything oversimplified in geographical / topographical terms could be an utter disaster for Ukraine.  Out on those open plains, largely devoid of the hills and forests we automatically think of in Western Europe, the only inherent primary obstacles are water-courses, towns and strongpoints.  Failure to factor in the precise geography of the water-courses in particular, and as a defender you're sunk. 

Well, Putin can dream.  Let's see what kind of Soviet-style offensive his army can muster in the next few weeks.  I doubt Stalin would be particularly impressed.  

ND

_________________

[1] Also upon the 3rd of the triad: manoeuvre - see that earlier post - absence of which would be another major criticism of Russia's current venture.

[2] I'll tell another story on that theme next week

What does von der Leyen / Trump 'deal' say about EU?

The French and Germans don't seem best pleased about what she's done, and we can see why.  There might be several theses or lines of thought on this.

1. It's easy to portray it as craven, but it's solid realpolitik, and shows the EC** in a good light: their strategic priorities (bind USA into European defence / maintain support for Ukraine / stay on reasonable talking terms with Trump) were clear and they did the necessary in a decisive & fairly expeditious way. 
2. It's an existential triumph for the EC qua bureaucracy-priesthood, not only on the basis of 1 above, but because von der Leyen's people roundly ignored the national governments and have got clean away with it.  German & French vetoes?  They're history.
3. It's a tactical triumph for those wily EC negotiators: their preferred stratagem is to grind down the other side by dragging negotiations out into endless detail / prevarication / cherry-picking / make-believe governance issues (see Brexit); but when faced with an emergency, they still came up with the goods.  Knowing that Trump just lurves Big Numbers and of course Done Deals, they've "committed" to bizarre amounts of imports from the USA, and there isn't a cat's chance in Hell that these commitments can be honoured.  But the Dumb Donald goes home with his triumph (his own people certainly ain't gonna tell him he's been suckered - and maybe he knows it anyway but just loves the immediate optics)  and life carries on.
4. It suits DE and FR to bellyache and blame von der Leyen, but they know there was little alternative, and have let her do the deed - & front for it.  (But where, ultimately, does 'strategic bellyaching' lead?  Surely, only an ever-growing Euroscepticism across the whole continent?) 

Some of the above are perfectly mutually consistent.  Any other views?

ND

______________

** I.e. the very real Brussels priesthood, not the abstract political entity known as the EU

Enter the Commissars

I return from a hol to find ... the Commissars Commissioners that are to run Croydon have been installed, and already started calling the shots.  Some background.

In the late 2010s Croydon, a marginal borough that has yo-yo'd between Tory and Labour since the 1960s, fell into the hands of a baleful Labour regime.  At the time we had the "Cabinet" system in place and the Leader of the Council, a paradigm case of the 'four-letter man' as my father would have termed him, ran both his cabinet and indeed the whole borough as a personal fiefdom.  Well, when you have a dictator, you'd better hope his judgement is good.  This man's judgement was appalling (for present purposes we needn't get into the cronyism and third-world-style corruption that went with it) and he duly bankrupted the borough - literally.  (Total incompetence married to property speculation, you won't be surprised to learn.)

In order to clean this out politically, residents petitioned successfully for a switch to the "Mayoral" system: the resulting referendum was a resounding win for the new system and in due course a Tory was elected Executive Mayor.  I've recounted some of this story before, and this chap  & his regime turned out to be more diligent and dynamic than I'd feared might be the case when I wrote about it last.

But his task was always gargantuan, since most of the (remaining) council services are required to be provided by statute, so where can seriously big cuts be found, and debt repaid?  The brough remains technically bankrupt, though "essential services" are being maintained, as the law requires.

Anyhow, whether for procedural or narrowly political** reasons, Starmer's government has decided to send in the commissioners.  This is a baleful development.  We live in an age where democracy seems to be falling out of favour, but experience of the alternatives might cause some to revisit that argument.  If not elected governance, what do you get?  Dictatorship, or commissioners at every level.  The priesthood.  Unelected; unaccountable; un-ejectable.  

More from South London in due course.

ND

________________

**Several leading Croydon Labour movers and shakers currently hold positions in Starmer's coterie, and the suspicion must be that they plan this as a maneouvre to get a Labour mayor elected in the borough next year. 

Naming Corbyn's New Party

So old gaffer Corbyn is inviting suggestions for names for his and Zarah Sultana's new leftie-Islamist micro-party.  He wants it to be "short, inclusive, and effective in bringing people in".

First thoughts must surely be:

• The People's Popular Front for the Liberation of Bedsitland
• The Popular Front for the People's Liberation of Bedsitland
• The Bedsitland People's Popular Liberation Front
• The Popular Liberation Front for the People of Bedsitland

One of those should surely be inclusive: they all cover the main ground.  But he's right that 'short' is also probably necessary to be effective in the age of TikTok when attention-spans, not to mention reading ages, might not run to a name with nine words.  We all remember how effective "Respect" was.

Bearing that in mind, and other salient factors, on balance I feel they should go with

• 'Splitters'

That has a nice, catchy ring to it, plus some deep and relevant political baggage for those of an historical bent.  Come to think about it, that's probably Sultana under that fetching black garb - and indeed Jeremy himself in the final few frames of this famous Party Political Broadcast ...

ND

Working From Home. WTF, is this still an issue?

A fear of being ordered back to the office is having an impact on workers’ wellbeing, according to a poll, after a string of companies issued return-to-office mandates. More than a third (38%) of workers surveyed said recent news stories about companies hardening their stance on office attendance had negatively affected their wellbeing 

Is this still an issue?  Stay flexible, certainly, and make best use of technology.  That said, get everyone back into the office ASAP, for the bulk of their working time.  How else are the youngsters to learn, whatever is their trade?  How else is proper human contact and continuous learning at all ages - the bedrock of practical human existence - to be maintained?  We are social animals**, and let no one think otherwise; nor any right-thinking organisation that proposes to survive as a viable, thriving, enduring enterprise. 

Anyone wedded to wholesale homeworking is begging to be AI'd out of existence, and rapidly, too.  On a purely Drawinian basis, any organisation continuing to tolerate it is not destined to flourish.  

Or it's a government department, of course ...

ND

_________________________

** OK, we all know exceptions ...

UK Biobank - quite the national jewel

Many years ago at dinner I was sitting next to [shameless name-drop alert] Elliot Richardson.  We were talking about the limits of the proper roles for government, and he suggested that one of the few legitimate activities government could engage in was the mass collection and provision of fundamental data, using the powers to collect data that only government ever really has.  UK Biobank, though now essentially privatised under Oxford University, might be though of as one such public endeavour.

For those who've never heard of it, it was set up 20 years ago, with private sector as well as public sector stakeholders from the start.  But its links with the NHS are so central to its work, I think it's fair to describe it as a public venture.   500,000 initial volunteers in the age-range 40-69 went through a day's initial screening on all manner of bodily parameters, with occasional follow-up studies subsequently (via questionnaire) and - here's the critical bit - ongoing tracking of their subsequent medical histories from the NHS.  It so happens I was one of the randomly-invited pool[1], and have followed developments with interest.  Obviously we are dying off a bit over time (and emigrating beyond the reach of the NHS), but the extant pool is still very large.

Bona fide scholars from anywhere in the world can apply for access to the gargantuan data-set, with details of their proposed study, large numbers of which have been conducted.  A while back I attended a presentation on what can be achieved with such a large database, and it's impressive.  In terms of statistical significant and validity, the difference between a sample of (say) 10,000 on a particular issue is  greater than two orders of magnitude better than a sample of 100.

The latest project has been to conduct very thorough whole-body and cerebral scanning of 100,000 participants, coupled with lengthy cognitive testing on the same day, and two weeks of heart monitoring thereafter.  This is scanning on an industrial scale, and the efficiency of their process was impressive: I've just taken part in that myself.  It was very interesting, and some of it fun, albeit that sadly you don't get given your cognitive results.

The whole thing is highly regarded world-wide, as well it might be.  A few years ago the Chinese mooted doing one of their own, but so far as I know there's been no follow-through.   This is the kind of thing we (still) do uniquely well.   

ND

_________________________

[1] I say 'random', but of course the pool was designed to be a representative cross-section of the UK population. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does politics get any more crass?

ND

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

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

Justice & efficiency: Marten/Gordon & other cases

Tabloid stuff, I know: but accounts of the Marten/Gordon trial make extraordinary reading.  There was a way of handling such people in days of yore: they would be declared Outlaws, and lose the usual privileges afforded to run-of-the-mill wrong'uns by the justice system.  'Scofflaw' is another evocative term, though generally applied to much lesser nonsenses than this one.

Although the judge in the M/G case seems to be an experienced one, it's hard not to feel the court wasn't sufficiently brisk when first confronted with their outrageous behaviour.  The consequence was many more months of the same: (and will there be an Appeal to come?)  I'm no criminal justice expert, but I believe that wholly uncooperative defendants can be tried in absentia - correct me if I'm wrong.  Unsurprisingly, this is only a last recourse.  But if justice requires a degree of accommodation to chaotic behaviour on the party of unhinged or even malicious defendants, well, there has surely to be a limit. 

And Contempt of Court is definitely a Thing.  A couple of years ago I was on the jury for a prolonged murder trial at the Old Bailey (in essence, gang warfare).  One of the defendants in particular was fairly uncooperative (on nothing like the scale of M/G, but he was still clearly taking this piss, and caused some gratuitous delays in proceedings.   One of the (several) QCs involved - there were three defendants - called him an "annoying little bugger", which the judge chose not to hear.  But overall the judge was having none of it and kept fairly good order (until the 'guilty' verdicts were read out, which was followed by a couple of minutes of rather scary mayhem).  

By way of example of what a judge can do: in the case in question, a family member of one of the victims (who were, *ahem*, no angels themselves, though nobody deserves to be knifed to death in the street) was caught filming the proceedings in court!  This, as everyone entering court is told, is strictly a "go straight to gaol" matter, which is exactly what happened: matey was gaoled on the spot.  

Contempt of Court is a Thing - and so is Summary Justice.       

ND

Miliband "tells the truth" (sic)

Yes, it's the Silly Season, and the hot weather has gone to somebody's head.

On Monday ... Ed Miliband is to explicitly call out politicians who reject net zero policies for betraying future generations in an unprecedented update to parliament about the state of the climate crisis, which he is calling “an exercise in radical truth-telling” ... In what is planned to be an annual event, [he] will make a “state of the climate” address to the Commons setting out the findings of a new Met Office-led report that says the UK is already facing extreme weather and its effects. “I feel a deep sense of responsibility to the British people to tell them the truth about what we know about the climate and nature crisis.  I want this to become an annual statement where it’s an exercise in radical truth-telling about the state of the climate and nature."

If he's for the chop, he's decided to go down fighting.  Well, let's see what he comes up with.  I'm thinking we might have something to say about this. 

ND

UPDATE: well, nothing to see here! - what a bizarre outpouring of hot air that pre-briefing was. "An exercise in radical truth-telling", my arse: the much-vaunted "Statement" is completely empty.  (Check for yourself: it's 30 second's reading at most)  Another day in the crusading life of Mili.

AFTERTHOUGHT:  In fact, it's so vacuous, I'm half-inclined to wonder whether he was reined back on something more "substantial" he'd intended to say ...    

Macron's Cunning Plan, parts 14 & 15

So as well as completing the stitch-up over Sizewell and Hinkley (as discussed here many, many times), there's Macron's new "one out, one in" plan for the small boats.

Let's see if I've got this right.

So for every illegal that arrives on these shore that we send straight back, we must grant asylum to a "genuine" one.

But as we know, many of these people keep setting out, over and over again, until they succeed.

So. on a ratchet basis, one single illegal can be 'recycled' endlessly, to offload as many "genuines" from France as they are quickly able to turn him around for another crossing .. .. ?

Oh come on, Starmer can't be that stupid .. can he?  Please?

ND

Blog stats update: tell me this isn't AI-coordinated ...

 OK, here's another graph to go with last time's: this is hourly data at the peak of the recent surge.

• That steady 6k per hour was absolutely typical of several peak days in a row;
• The within-day spread of "locations" from which those hits came was very much as per the table I posted last time.

Given how egregiously high that "readership" was, it speaks to me of both a (prolonged) automated web-crawling episode AND one that deliberately uses "readers" spread across all those locations in a coordinated manner.  In other words, taken as a totality, it's a single "visit".

(It's subsided now, although only to daily levels that would have been rare in earlier years.  This being the case, my decision not to bother trying to harness the surge for ad revenues has not troubled me.)

You gotta admit, all this is somewhat interesting!  So I shall still be looking for an authoritative explanation.

ND 

Extraordinary C@W blog stats: AI 'training' at work?

We had a short review of the increasingly 'cosmopolitan' nature of C@W readership a while back: I set a little quiz inviting guesses as to the 2024 breakdown of hits, to which the answers were, in descending order -  

1. Hong Kong
2. China
3. USA
4. Singapore
5. UK

Well, guess what: since then, the readership stats have shot up, going stratospheric in the last month.  Here's the plot for the last 3 months:

And the countries?

1. Brazil
2. USA
3. India
4. Japan
5. Bangladesh
6. UK

I have an acquaintance who also runs a blog: he's seen something similar, though the numbers are not so extreme and Vietnam features at the top of his list.  The best explanation he can come up with is that the blogs are being used to train LLMs !

Any other suggestions?

Heaven help the "AI" that results from nearly 20 years of C@W.  I suppose we should be flattered ...

ND 

PS: in the circumstances, I thought about re-engaging with Google 'Adsense' to make a bob or two out of advertising to the increased readership.  But (a) the reader-experience isn't much improved by ads; and (b) the small print is so extensive and restrictive, I'll bet Google would rule that we've somehow been artificially boosting readership with bots, and that we wouldn't qualify.

Aren't you grateful?

Starmer's bizarre pleading

For all those inclined to calibrate their psychological assessments of Starmer, the recent (very sympathetic) Observer interview offers quite a lot of input.  Inter alia, we learn he "deeply regrets" his "island of strangers" speech, thusly: 

Starmer insists ... the speech was simply a mistake. “I wouldn’t have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as an echo of Powell,” he says. “I had no idea – and my speechwriters didn’t know either,” he says. “But that particular phrase – no – it wasn’t right. I’ll give you the honest truth: I deeply regret using it”  ... he doesn’t blame his advisers or anyone else except himself for these mistakes ... Starmer says he should have read through the speech properly and “held it up to the light a bit more”. The prime minister also accepts there were “problems with the language” in his foreword to the policy document that said the record high numbers of immigrants entering the UK under the last government had done “incalculable damage” to the country.

Sorry, matey, that won't wash.  For starters, in that speech he also said his immigration policy statement was promoted on the back of it being "right - because it is fair, and because it is what I believe in", Boris Johnson's opening of the immigration floodgates being a "squalid chapter".  Secondly, over the following few days he did the classic Starmer thing of initially doubling down on the first utterence: when quickly challenged on the "island of strangers" language, he emphasised that "well, it is a danger".       

Does anyone, let alone a lawyer-PM, outsource the articulation of "what I believe in, what I think is right" to Spads?  Or, to put the question another way:  what sort of lawyer-PM does this?   

ND

Trump and his solo bomb damage assessment

There's history when it comes to "bomb damage assessment* by top-down diktat" & I'll relate one example closer to home than the Donald's private, untutored convictions about what has happened in Iran.

The UK started WW2 with an outmoded aerial reconnaissance model which (in a different context) we've written about before. 

The original use of aviation in WW1, right from the very first days in 1914, had been for reconnaissance.  The second use was for shooting down the enemy's recce aircraft!  Hence, the received wisdom was that recce results (at first, visual; later, photographic) had to be fought for.  So the RAF's plans before WW2 revolved around a relatively fast armed aircraft - the Blenheim light bomber, operated by Bomber Command, which upon its initial introduction was faster than any biplane then in service with the RAF.  From the very first week of WW2 they started flying Blenheims for recce against German targets, in ones, twos, threes, even in fives and sixes.   Bravely flown as they were, they were shot down in alarming numbers and, sadly, brought back precious few photographs (albeit occasionally of very good quality).  By 1939-40 the Blenheim was no longer up against slower biplanes; and the training of its crews and the cameras it carried were only geared to what would now be regarded as low-level photography.  They were sitting ducks.  

Notwithstanding Bomber Command's legendary willingness to take casualties (and this was even before Bomber Harris took over), the Air Ministry at the top was less sanguine.  These casualties "were not to be borne"... 

Blenheims, "... even in fives and sixes"
Photo, © IWM CH 2992

So of course quite shortly there-after, the suicidally slow and low-flying Blenheims were replaced by Spitfires, flying fast and high, with much better cameras.  But there was another problem, which became apparent after the very first RAF bombing raid of the war, on a German seaplane base on the Baltic coast.  Based on the pilots' accounts, Bomber Command claimed a major success with key buildings having been destroyed.  However, careful analysis of recce flown the next day showed that not a single piece of damage could be identified, and that it seemed the bombs landed harmlessly in adjacent sand dunes.  Continuing the story:  

Such is the bizarre nature of service politics that Bomber Command was allowed to [insist] that only its own people carried out Bomb Damage Assessment - they were determined to mark their own homework.  Eventually they were called up on this too, much to their disgust - as it was proved conclusively that their bombing was not even remotely as accurate as they claimed.  Though his Command's relations with [the newly-established specialist air recce interpretation unit] were often strained, to his credit Bomber Harris personally came to value its accurate output.   

Private BDA conducted by a deeply ignorant politician with a transparent agenda?  The very worst things happen when a powerful leader is grovellingly indulged in all circumstances, whatever he does: and we now have two of them - Trump and Netanyahu.  Not even obliged to exercise normal political caution (not something I'd say of Putin, for example, or Xi).  What will Trump not do in pursuit of his personal gratification?  Aside from the likes of Starmer, Rutte, and the Trump Cabinet, with their demeaning performative "tactical sycophancy", is there anyone left who can offer a defence of Trump and his bellicose, juvenile narcissism?

ND 

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**That's what 'BDA' traditionally stood for.  More recently, the 'B' is being rendered as 'battlefield'.

Advising Starmer on Iran & the legal stuff

An interesting challenge for the Attorney General, one Richard, Baron Hermer - a controversial figure, one-time mate of Starmer's, but rumoured to be for the chop in the first Cabinet reshuffle.  But maybe not just yet ...

UPDATE:  see this, from Guido today.  But you read it here first.

Poor Starmer: so desperate to remain in the kneeling position with Trump, but, oh, the legalities of supporting unilateral bunker-busting.  As we know, Kier is so-o wedded to the international rules-based order of things.  Him a lawyer and all.

And if Trump never really wanted to have his second term characterised by US involvement in Middle Eastern 'forever wars', well, Starmer can hardly be ecstatic about following Blair into the politico-historical dustbin of history by rash association with the wild man of the White House.

So what will Hermer advise, and how "flexible" will he turn out to be.  Remember Blair & Goldsmith?   And the Blairite legacy.  That Iraq thing, eh?   And the big inquiry afterwards.  Wow, that seems a long time ago.   But then again, history rhymes ... (with the usual apologies to G&S)

When I was a lad I made it big
As fixer-in-chief in an Attorney's wig
I cleaned up scandals and I swept up sleaze
And I pandered to the wishes of the Big Big Cheese
(He pandered to the wishes of the Big Big Cheese)
I pandered to the wishes of the Power in the Land
And now I’m sitting here with his balls in my hand

As Attorney General I made such a mark
That he asked me to change my advice on Iraq
I quickly saw the error of my ways
And gave him what he wanted without delay
(He changed his advice without delay)
I told him he could do whatever he planned
So now I’m sitting here with his balls in my hand

Now lackeys all, whoever you may be,
If you want to rise to the top of the tree,
If your conscience isn't fettered by scruple or qualm,
Be guided by this rule and you’ll meet no harm.
(He is guided by this rule and he’s met no harm)
Keep your own head down during Custer’s Last Stand
And you may come away with his balls in your hand

ND

Caption compo: Starmer abases himself

To preempt the official Private Eye front-cover pronouncement next week is obviously lèse-majesté and we should wait patiently - but, come on, this is begging for a caption gag,  just as Starmer is gagging for crumbs from Trump's table.

Have at it!

ND 

Casey & new statutory inquiry: a simple suggestion

Sensitive matters here, all too often treated crassly and/or simply ignored.  May we hope the new statutory commission will make serious inroads?

I'm going to make a simple suggestion for them, with a bit of intro logic first.  

It is widely stated that, among other legion institutional failures, "the authorities" are fearful of considering ethnic and cultural dimensions for fear of stirring things up (and of course getting serious, career-threatening trouble from the 'progressive' direction just for opening their mouths).  Casey documents large-scale non-reporting, and indeed non-collection of data under this heading.  Does anyone really doubt this is a factor?  (There must even be progressives who take pleasure in bringing about such self-censorship.)

Now we know, from a century of study and many centuries of literature, that the average Joe just wants an easy life and is always receptive to danger-signals that might suggest he's going against the grain, in order to get himself safely back within whatever seems to be the prevailing norm.  (Homer Simpson is a beautifully-rendered exemplar.)  Prevailing norm changes?  OK, just tell me what I have to do now, what is the new salute, what the new shibboleth.  It was ever thus, and we kid ourselves if we imagine that brave, resolute stand-outs against baleful prevailing norms are anything other than a minority (and half of them are, frankly, nutters, even if high personal integrity and courage are also occasionally to be found).  

So we can certainly imagine that the justifiable fearfulness of individuals within "the authorities" who have chosen the path of studiously ignoring, in this case, ethnic and cultural dimensions, has in most cases been not necessarily the result of direct formal instructions, but rather their own nervous judgement in the matter, reinforced by nods, nudges, and general institutional wokery pervading their workplace. 

But.  Institutions and bureaucratic instincts being what they are, on at least some occasions somebody towards the top of some organisation or other will have put something in writing.  I view this as inevitable - just as we know someone else will rapidly have told them to delete and shred it.

The challenge for the new commission, then, is: proactively seek out genuinely authentic cases of written instructions on this issue.  Let it be known that you're in the market for whistleblowing, and tap into that other very widespread human aspect: resentment of such instructions, and the instinct to take a few copies or screenshots, and to wait for your moment to reveal the incriminating evidence.  

Now's the time.

ND

UPDATE: nice to see Casey at a select committee this morning, letting MPs have it.  She said - I paraphrase from memory - Nothing I've said is new, and other *colleagues* (looking around the room) could easily have found it out for themselves.  Hopefully the MPs realised she was politely calling them out for the cowardly, pusillanimous grand-standers they are.

"Zonal electricity pricing" - wonkish issue erupting!

This is an odd one: a public furore over obscure, technical matters that are hard for any layman to relate to.  The protagonists very much want you to, however - or to make the politicians believe you will.

There's an excellent theoretical argument - to which I heartily subscribe - for commodity markets to be as geographically localised as possible, so that the prices that arise from them are as meaningfully relatable to the underlying "fundamental" factors (supply, demand, transportation & a plethora of other costs) as possible.   But what's "possible"?  Because there's another critical factor that also needs to feature in any well-functioning market, namely liquidity, which is a massive Public Good (imagine not being able buy essential items, or sell a house).  Too small a market, and liquidity rapidly evaporates (or never develops in the first place) - and there's no hard-and-fast rules for what constitutes "too small".  

The story so far:  When the UK natural gas market first opened up and became actively traded, the precedent was the North American gas market (USA, Canada, Mexico) which we knew for certain was large enough to meet the tests for a viable open market.  But did the UK gas sector, a far smaller economic entity, and operating as an island at the time, have critical mass?  It transpired quite quickly that it did.  Then again, when eventually Continental Europe started actively trading gas, a Dutch hub - brilliantly situated in terms of logistics - turned out to be where the liquidity migrated to, with the UK market, along with every other regional European gas market, still trading actively but, for the most part, as a basis-spread to the Dutch hub.  That's how things go.  In this the Eu gas market ended up bearing a strong resemblance to N.America where around a dozen actively traded gas hubs operate, but with liquidity centered squarely on the Louisiana hub.

In Europe, the story in electricity has been broadly similar, but slightly more fragmented, notably in Scandinavia where countries have multiple "zonal" markets.  There's only one hub, and hence only one wholesale price, in the GB market (N.Ireland is part of the rather small and GB-dependent "all-island" Irish market).  And there isn't really a single, clear-cut main European hub, although the French-German border is often a near substitute.  A couple more preliminary comments:  (a) overall, electricity market liquidity is OK-ish, but often leaves something to be desired - a Bad Thing; and (b) Scandinavia is not really representative of the whole, because it is dominated by hydro-electricity that is usually (outside of prolonged droughts and Europe-wide shortages) extraordinarily flexible, such that certain market actions are readily possible there which are difficult or even impossible elsewhere.  (The same goes for New Zealand which often features in these discussions.)  

It may have come to your attention that a battle royal is raging - and rather publicly, too - over whether the GB market should be split into a set of multiple geographically-defined zonal markets.  In brief, the argument for, is theoretical: that more granular price signals will see better capital investment decisions, specifically, incentivising new power plants to be developed closer to where the demand is - as opposed to "in the North of Scotland" because that's where the wind is strongest and the land cheapest.  This, in turn, would reduce the need for (a) as much Grid infrastructure as must otherwise be developed; and (b) as much costly and inefficient "balancing" action by the Grid as will otherwise continue to be needed.  

The arguments against are pragmatic, including: the threat to already-iffy liquidity of a fragmented and complex new system; the very tangible impact of uncertainty (will it work? and how?) on the cost of capital in a wildly capital-intensive industry; the multi-year time-delay between initiation of capital expenditures in this sector, and actual changes in the overall infrastructure to come into effect; the irredeemably non-economic basis of many decisions that impact on the issue (I ain't moving to the Hebrides however cheap the electricity there might become).  One might add that the Scandinavians have decided they've had enough of their more fragmented systems, too (a big topic).

There are, of course, huge vested interests in play: so we needn't expect a high level of debate.  As the lobbying gets more and more shrill, the arguments get more and more streamlined, down to demeaningly simplistic sloganeering that settles nothing.  It's now just a war for Miliband's Ear, and increasingly for Starmer's, too, as both sides are screaming that there are votes at stake.   

Great spectator sport!  With practical consequences too, down the line.  If anyone wants my view: ingenuity can solve many practical problems, so some of the pragmatic arguments might be resolved by clever market design: but liquidity mustn't be put at hazard - it's too precious.  And that's before you get to the politics of the dreaded Postcode Lottery (which in any case is an argument being deployed by sides!)  Oh, the eternal attraction of doing nothing ...

ND

Commiserations, Dan Cole. Dreadful decision

He deserved much better.  That's about it, really.  It is patently obvious that he was making a genuine attempt at a charge-down (the ref was satisfied with that, at least) and was already airborne,   If Russell wasn't going to take avoiding action (and he needn't), collision was inevitable.  And, as far as one can ever push a counterfactual, it made the difference between the two-point loss and a one-point victory.

Ho, hum, that's the sport.  But on his very last game ...

ND  

Sizewell: another win for French nuclear blackmail

Among the large numbers bandied around by Rachel Reeves was of course well over £10bn of UK money for Sizewell C: and FID is yet to be taken!  Exactly whether this dosh is envisaged as outright cash (as has been the case with the billions already gifted to EDF, even before FID), or dumped straight onto electricity bills, or a combination, I have not yet discerned.  

It's still outrageous - at best a humongous leap of faith, the beneficiary of which is a French concern (and indeed the French state) that has proven itself many, many times over to be unworthy of trust in such matters.  In return for what?  A plant that, even on the most ambitious and optimistic assumptions, could not be generating electricity before the next-Parliament-but-two, and in the meantime will have cost all of us a great deal of non-returnable money.  Who said politicians' horizons extend only as far as the next election at best, and the next headline at worst?

Well of course none of this is to be taken at face value.  They are already pitching for headlines reading "thousands of jobs", although as we know, the hi-tech jobs involved will without doubt be squarely located in France.  The sop of a bit of civil engineering for UK firms - and not even 100% of that, if Hinkley Point C is any guide, which of course it is explicitly meant to be!  If Keynesianism is the guiding theory, you could get a great deal more for your money on vastly more useful civil engineering projects that might actually make some kind of economic return decades sooner than SZC ever could.  Just keeping the money in the UK would be a start. 

And of course there are other short-term considerations, the giveaway being Mr Frog who, on the exact subject of demanding more money for both SZC and HPC (for which, contractually, EDF has sole responsibility) recently stated: "We [UK + France] need to stick together on many subjects - on Ukraine, on all dimensions of our relationship".  We may be sure he really means "cooperation on Small Boats", the carrot of which which the French continually dangle, and then promptly withdraw a couple of weeks later.  Oh, and we must pay for that "cooperation", too.  Such an easy game.

Why are successive UK PMs and Chancellors such soft touches?  Blair, Brown, Cameron, Osborne, May, Hammond, Johnson, Starmer, Reeves ... it's only been Sunak who has ever demurred, and then without any meaningful force.  The rest have all danced to EDF's protracted, staccato jig.  I despair.

ND