Best Of

William Atkinson's resignation article in ConHome. He's a bit...anguished.

https://conservativehome.com/2025/03/04/living-on-a-thin-line/

The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay

He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.

Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.

We do not. We are dying on our feet.

That’s the problem.

So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.

It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.

Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit

You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.

My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.

I've faced much worse.
My 10 year old daughter came home from school the other day concerned because people had been telling her Putin was going to drop a bomb on Britain. Which he might. But is struck me that for my childhood, the threat of annihilation was the constant background noise. As was discussed earlier, the USSR's plans for the destruction of the world were so comprehensive they even made time to wipe out New Zealand.
Objectively, today is a far better time to be alive than the early 80s.

I remember being scared witless by The War Game and Threads.

@leon often accuses us of being centrist dads, but in reality he is a centrist granddad. He reminds me of those oldies who always say it was better in the good old days. It wasn't. Not by a long chalk. I grew up in a house without a bathroom and an outside loo and no central heating and where we were constantly reminded of nuclear destruction and smog and rationing was a recent memory of my parents.

The good old days were not good compared to any time since.

...

Not entirely true given new Trump sanctions on Russia. It is more a question of where the territorial boundaries go in a ceasefire, even Trump is not giving Russia all of Ukraine

The US is supplying Russia with intelligence, while doing all it can to undermine the Ukrainians.

"The US is supplying Russia with intelligence" is one step further than I've seen so far. I'd be interested to know if that is being claimed somewhere, as it would be a very big further step over another line by Trump.

A friend who I think is in the know says we
should assume that everything the US knows about Ukrainian operations, morale, and equipment is being forwarded to Russia.

Much as I loathe Trump, I think I have even more contempt for the Republican “mainstream” who have become his willing enablers.

Can’t argue with any of this.

Murphy: Six Weeks In, This White House Is On Its Way To Being The Most Corrupt In U.S. History

https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-six-weeks-in-this-white-house-is-on-its-way-to-being-the-most-corrupt-in-us-history
… I’m a big Boston Red Sox fan. One of the most famous players in Red Sox recent history is Manny Ramirez. Manny Ramirez was a good baseball player, but he had a habit of doing some pretty ridiculous things on the field and off the field that were really detrimental to the team, some really bizarre on-field behavior – cutting off throws from other outfielders before they got to the infield – bizarre off-the-field behavior that disrupted the team. It became so regular that a phrase was adopted among the Red Sox fans: ‘That's just Manny being Manny.’ Over the years it just was accepted that every year Manny Ramirez was going to do a whole bunch of stuff that was really detrimental to the team. And over time, it just kind of became accepted, that that was a fact of life, a way of life with Manny Ramirez. And as time went on, people reacted less hostilely. It barely got noticed in some cases when he was engaged in these detrimental forms of conduct.

“And I tell that story because it stands for kind of a universal concept: when bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior. Even if that behavior is hurting people. Today, the world is littered with corrupt governments, governments where the leaders and the really rich men who surround the leaders – the oligarchs – steal from people…

“Vladimir Putin, for instance, has never had a job outside of government, but he's reportedly worth $200 billion. … They've been doing this so openly and brazenly, they're so public in their corruption in Russia, that it's just accepted. It's just mainstream, the fact that Putin and his cronies steal from the Russian people.

“That's what's happening in America today. And it's heartbreaking for me to say this, but in the first six weeks of the Trump presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption. It's not fundamentally different than what happened in Russia. These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves. And their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption – or, maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works, that government is just corrupt, and so the fact that it's happening out in the open instead of happening secretly, well, it's really nothing new.

“But this is not how government works…

It is now.

It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.

If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.

The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.

A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.

Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.

Orwell pointed out that wars were useful for forcing leaders to engage with reality, keeping them a little bit sane. (We're seeing a little bit of that, in very slow motion, with Putin.) Nowadays, bond markets do much the same.

Even absolute political power, and Trump's political power is pretty close to absolute, isn't absolute power.

Trump might cow his adminstration, the US Congress, the Supreme Court, the media.

The one man he cannot buy off, intimidate, threaten - the one man who can bring down his simpleton economic mess - is Mister Market...

When I went to work in asset management I thought I was selling out - I had no idea that I was actually joining the fight against fascism.

We thank you for your service.

Can’t argue with any of this.

Murphy: Six Weeks In, This White House Is On Its Way To Being The Most Corrupt In U.S. History

https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-six-weeks-in-this-white-house-is-on-its-way-to-being-the-most-corrupt-in-us-history
… I’m a big Boston Red Sox fan. One of the most famous players in Red Sox recent history is Manny Ramirez. Manny Ramirez was a good baseball player, but he had a habit of doing some pretty ridiculous things on the field and off the field that were really detrimental to the team, some really bizarre on-field behavior – cutting off throws from other outfielders before they got to the infield – bizarre off-the-field behavior that disrupted the team. It became so regular that a phrase was adopted among the Red Sox fans: ‘That's just Manny being Manny.’ Over the years it just was accepted that every year Manny Ramirez was going to do a whole bunch of stuff that was really detrimental to the team. And over time, it just kind of became accepted, that that was a fact of life, a way of life with Manny Ramirez. And as time went on, people reacted less hostilely. It barely got noticed in some cases when he was engaged in these detrimental forms of conduct.

“And I tell that story because it stands for kind of a universal concept: when bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior. Even if that behavior is hurting people. Today, the world is littered with corrupt governments, governments where the leaders and the really rich men who surround the leaders – the oligarchs – steal from people…

“Vladimir Putin, for instance, has never had a job outside of government, but he's reportedly worth $200 billion. … They've been doing this so openly and brazenly, they're so public in their corruption in Russia, that it's just accepted. It's just mainstream, the fact that Putin and his cronies steal from the Russian people.

“That's what's happening in America today. And it's heartbreaking for me to say this, but in the first six weeks of the Trump presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption. It's not fundamentally different than what happened in Russia. These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves. And their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption – or, maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works, that government is just corrupt, and so the fact that it's happening out in the open instead of happening secretly, well, it's really nothing new.

“But this is not how government works…

It is now.

It may be what is happening. But if government "works" like this, then the system collapses.

If the rule of law has indeed collapsed, then the entire basis of the American economy, from regulation to contract law is compromised.

The result is that US Asset prices fall from AAA reserve currency levels down to A rating price levels: effectively a 40% price fall. Then there is a permanent increase in US structural inflation as a result of a drastically less efficient economy and much higher borrowing costs.

A shock to confidence on that scale ca not be hidden and it is mot hypothetical. The strong rise in the Euro this week tells you that the bond market is putting the US under notice.

Reality will collide with the witless lies of this appalling administration. In the end I could see the Americans putting the whole lot of them against the wall: Trump, Vance, Musk et al.

Orwell pointed out that wars were useful for forcing leaders to engage with reality, keeping them a little bit sane. (We're seeing a little bit of that, in very slow motion, with Putin.) Nowadays, bond markets do much the same.

Even absolute political power, and Trump's political power is pretty close to absolute, isn't absolute power.

Trump might cow his adminstration, the US Congress, the Supreme Court, the media.

The one man he cannot buy off, intimidate, threaten - the one man who can bring down his simpleton economic mess - is Mister Market...

When I went to work in asset management I thought I was selling out - I had no idea that I was actually joining the fight against fascism.

Depends- is fiscally sound fascism (which I suspect is what some crave) a possibility, or a contradiction in terms?

I suspect it's the latter, at least in the long term, because an authoritarian state is too expensive to feed, but there may be a counterexample.

Fiscal soundness is not compatible with having leaders who are bound by no laws.

William Atkinson's resignation article in ConHome. He's a bit...anguished.

https://conservativehome.com/2025/03/04/living-on-a-thin-line/

The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay

He may be disappointed in that case. But is definitely sounding the alarm.

Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.

We do not. We are dying on our feet.

That’s the problem.

So many people on the right have persuaded themselves that living in a flawed, but free and prosperous democracy, is the worst fate that can befall a nation.

It used to be the far left which was this fucking stupid.

Because your diagnosis of the uk is fucking bullshit

You’re a paranoid rich man, who’s persuaded himself he lives in the worst of times.

My grandparents faced much worse, with a lot more fortitude.

Unfortunately, Leon is “very online”.
It’s simply not mentally healthy.

Leon's life experience is varied but very non-standard.

Posh hotels and restaurants at one end together with druggie squats and being on remand for rape on the other.

Very top 10% and bottom 10% but not much of the 80% in the middle.

Its what made him for many years an interesting PBer but it does detach him from the ordinariness of the average life.

There's not much NOOM in the 9 to 5.

The most interesting people tend to be found in the richest 10% and the poorest 10%, everyone else is just muddling along

No, there are interesting people everywhere.