Best Of

Perhaps it ought not to come as a surprise that a friend of Epstein sees Russia as "devoutly Christian".

Steve Bannon says the US should ally with Russia:

“Russia is a devoutly Christian nation and was our true ally in WWII.”
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1995893766863892742

The end of the sentence left hanging, but pretty obviously “…not Britain”.

Bizarre though when a. The Soviet Union was the ally, not Russia, and b. It was a communist state that outlawed organised religion.

It is not bizarre. It is a collection of the worlds richest billionaires working out how they can share the most power. Religion and politics are tools not objectives.

It's still rank stupidity, even in that context.
The voice of experience:

https://x.com/Billbrowder/status/1995051199259635921
The Wall Street Journal alleges that the real motivation behind Trump’s eagerness to force Ukraine into an ugly surrender is the idea that a lot of people close to him can make a lot of money doing business and deals in Russia.

If this is true, beyond the disgusting morality of this and the huge geopolitical risks that it creates, none of these people salivating over their future riches are going to make a penny, and perhaps do a lot worse.

I was once the largest foreign investor in Russia and I can say with certainty that the Russians aren’t going to let anyone profit in any way. They will talk nice at the outset to attract the investment, but once it’s there, they will steal, defraud, arrest, torture or even kill to make sure that no American makes any money. I’ve seen it so many times it’s almost universal.

So, this shocking initiative is not only terrible policy, it’s spectacularly stupid business.

Sometimes it takes a post to realise a great truth. Barty is the anti-Doug. Or Doug is the anti-Barty if you prefer. While Barty's libertarianism suggests local govt should be abolished in favour of national, I believe the opposite. If I were arrogant enough to draft a proposal for a well organised society, I'd posit that municipalities should be the primary unit of political organisation, rather than nation-states. I genuinely despise nationalism and would love a political culture rooted in citizenship and civic engagement rather than ethnic or cultural identity. Even so-called "civic nationalists" can't completely escape the taint of at least one of those. Usually both.

I daydream that democracy moves back to the original idea of its classical founders - people would participate directly in face-to-face assemblies at the municipal level to make decisions about local affairs, moving beyond representative democracy toward genuine participatory self-governance. I think representative democracy is cracking up and the only way to save democracy in any meaningful sense is to move back to toward genuine participation. Yeah, theoretically you could do that on a national basis, like a Eurovision vote, endless referenda, but are people really participating, rather than just observing.

Municipalities could form voluntary confederations to coordinate on larger issues while maintaining local autonomy. Economic life would be reorganised around municipal ownership and cooperative enterprises making the local community the fundamental unit of political life while connecting these communities through horizontal networks rather than vertical state structures.

It'll never happen but, hey, it's my ha'penny's worth on how to save the world.

Municipal corporations were a part of the bedrock of Britain's Industrial Revolution.

And in the new millennium, it's notable that outside of the capital (which hoards capital to itself), the strongest growth is in the cities with strongest devolved powers.

Barty's bastardised mashup of centralism and libertarianism has no successful real world analogues.

As a self proclaimed soft Libertarian, although not of the Propertarian bent that Bart seems to espouse I have to say I very much like Doug's idea of bottom up governance. Only those things that cannot be achieved at the lower tier should be elevated to a higher tier.

My only difference is that in this system I still see a place for the Nation State to provide the legal and security framework within which it all happens. That is not something I think can be done effectively or democratically at a Supra national level.

But most decisions being made at a municipal, town or parish level is very much something to be aspired to.

Morning all

This all reminds me of the days of the Alliance and the notion of "realignment". Back then, the SDP members thought the future was the Alliance replacing Labour as the main challenger to the Conservatives and offering a pragmatic, centrist alternative to what was seen as Thatcherite extremism.

The truth was electoral success was coming FROM the Conservatives rather than Labour so others began to wonder if the aim should be to replace the Conservatives as the challengers to Labour's "leftie" extremism.

As we know, internal contradictions, such as on defence, led to the project failing and ending in acrimony and farce.

Reform may desire to end the Conservatives - they many not find it as easy as they believe. The next election is increasingly looking like Reform vs Not Reform (it should be Labour vs Not Labour but that's where high poll numbers gets you) and ironically it might be Nigel Farage who ends up giving Labour a second term. He might actually prefer that if the price is reducing the Conservatives to a meaningless rump.

As I've said before, BOTH the LDs and Conservatives need to think about positioning as the next GE approaches - the LDs cannot afford to be seen to be too close to Labour and, to be fair, Sir Ed is playing that one well while the Conservatives cannot seen to be too close to Reform and, to be fair, Badenoch and Stride are doing their best on that.

The other point to remember is what parties say before an election and what they do after can be and often is very different. You can say you won't do a deal with the LDs two days before an election (as Cameron did) to maximise your vote but you have to game the scenario in which you have to deal with them (the Conservatives did that and did it well, the LDs didn't and paid the price in the negotiations).