Best Of

The French want Russian assets frozen in France to be exempt from the reparations loan. Fuxsake, this is never going to happen.

Didn’t a bright spark say during the American Revolution that “we must hang together or surely we will hang apart”.

Unfortunately, as ever, national concerns in Europe take precedence over the good for the continent. France with their protectionism, Spain and Ireland with their obsession with Gaza over the real threat, Hungary and Slovakia with its leaders beholden to Putin. At least Germany has made the post Merkel switch to reality and the Baltic, Poland and Scandinavia/Nordic nations are being pragmatic.

We will likely fudge spending and end up with an approach that isn’t optimised for the real threat.

Putin knows all this and even though he would be on a hiding to nothing if he tried to roll into Poland and the Baltic when his army is incapable of winning in Ukraine as it is but he will play a long game and benefit from disunity and selfishness.

Britain probably not best placed to advise others on European unity, unfortunately.

That sounds like the whole history of European 'unity' with each country looking for its own advantage over the other members of the Union

Oh sure, and the French are the absolute worst but I think it takes a certain lack of self awareness to think that a country that has done more than any other in recent years to weaken European unity and advance Putin's divide and rule strategy has any credibility in this space.

In terms of defence Britain has done far more to strengthen Europe than any of the traditional EU major players. You only have to look at the JEF or the Mutual Defence Pact that the UK signed with Sweden and FInland prior to their accession to NATO. This is proper practical stuff rather than just talking about it. And it cannot be hindered by the pro-Russian elements within the EU.

India is about to start producing drones for Russia's war in Ukraine. Europeans are desperately talking about peace to keep in with Trump, but the peace talks seem to be only a diversion to stop Europe from using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine's fight for survival.

The situation feels really bleak, and reportedly Starmer was the driving force behind pushing the target data for NATO's new 5% spending target out to 2035, so the British PM is a main component in the axis of denial in Europe that is holding it back from grasping the reality of the precarious position Europe is in and of taking decisive action to turn things around.

What's the good news?

Starmer should take a leaf out of President Trump's book and warn Modi that any drones will trigger the immediate cancellation of all Indian visas. He won't, of course. Something something international law.

Partly, but mostly realpolitik that we aren't the USA and even the USA struggles with its demands from countries the size of India.

Actually Britain and America are equally important for the Indian diaspora. Russia, on the other hand, is not.

Good luck convincing Modi to take orders from Starmer.....

Modi depends on a lot of NRI money and the UK has a huge and fairly enthusiastic support base for Modi. Banning all types of work and student visas as well as suspending the new trade deal would be appropriate IMO. Maybe even putting up restrictions on visitor visas. I say this as a British Indian so it brings me little joy to suggest such measures but supplying Russia with drones that will be used to kill people in Ukraine is beyond acceptable and we shouldn't accept it. Even if it means our tourist and education sectors suffer for a while.

The French want Russian assets frozen in France to be exempt from the reparations loan. Fuxsake, this is never going to happen.

Didn’t a bright spark say during the American Revolution that “we must hang together or surely we will hang apart”.

Unfortunately, as ever, national concerns in Europe take precedence over the good for the continent. France with their protectionism, Spain and Ireland with their obsession with Gaza over the real threat, Hungary and Slovakia with its leaders beholden to Putin. At least Germany has made the post Merkel switch to reality and the Baltic, Poland and Scandinavia/Nordic nations are being pragmatic.

We will likely fudge spending and end up with an approach that isn’t optimised for the real threat.

Putin knows all this and even though he would be on a hiding to nothing if he tried to roll into Poland and the Baltic when his army is incapable of winning in Ukraine as it is but he will play a long game and benefit from disunity and selfishness.

One of my fears is that Ukraine cannot keep up this intensity of warfare indefinitely, and that as the support from Europe falters, they may reach a breaking point before Russia does. And then, when Russia wants to have another go at Europe, they will benefit from Ukrainian industry and the Ukrainian people that they have coerced into fighting for them.

Europe reeks of a desperation for peace. It only emboldens Russia to push for more.

IMHO, enough of Europe is willing to back Ukraine so as to enable them to keep fighting. Of course, we need to do more than that. Just turn on the taps, in terms of supplying money and munitions.

Reposting this from the end of the last thread, as I think the endgame of whether or not Europe stands up to the Trump administration's attempt to sell out Ukraine, and our future security, is rather nearer in time even than the next change of Tory leader.

Necessary reading for any remaining apologists for the geostrategic nonsense the US administration is currently perpetrating.

WARNING: LONG THREAD 🧵
Dear Americans,
Your political and media class has sold you a very convenient fairy tale for decades - the tale of how your tax dollars pay to defend freeloading Europe.

While it's an emotionally satisfying narrative, it's also wrong.

THE U.S. DOES NOT SUBSIDIZE EUROPEAN DEFENCE.

You are not running a charity, you are running an empire. And empires are costly.

Your forward deployments, your bases, your carrier groups, etc. - they are the pillars of a global security architecture that mainly serves you: to protect your trade routes, your currency, your corporate supply chains, your ability to project force anywhere on the planet in hours and days, not months.

Let’s walk through this like adults, and not emotional toddlers, shall we?..
https://x.com/BiankaB12/status/1997407679556485515

If, as seems likely, we're going back to 'spheres of influence' geopolitics, then Europe (for which I primarily mean the UK and the EU) have two choices:

1) Accept being a part of the US's sphere of influence. That's probably looks much like the status quo for the UK or France, but looks far more perilous the further east you go. As it would be up to the US and Russia to agree the boundaries between their respective spheres of influence.

2) Demand that Europe is collectively has it's own independent sphere of influence, and that we are willing to defend our boundary from Russia's, assuming no help or support from the US. In which case, I'd question why we'd continue to host bases from the US.

Not allowing Ukraine to be forced to capitulate to American demand is a key first step to establishing option 2 as our future.

Reposting this from the end of the last thread, as I think the endgame of whether or not Europe stands up to the Trump administration's attempt to sell out Ukraine, and our future security, is rather nearer in time even than the next change of Tory leader.

Necessary reading for any remaining apologists for the geostrategic nonsense the US administration is currently perpetrating.

WARNING: LONG THREAD 🧵
Dear Americans,
Your political and media class has sold you a very convenient fairy tale for decades - the tale of how your tax dollars pay to defend freeloading Europe.

While it's an emotionally satisfying narrative, it's also wrong.

THE U.S. DOES NOT SUBSIDIZE EUROPEAN DEFENCE.

You are not running a charity, you are running an empire. And empires are costly.

Your forward deployments, your bases, your carrier groups, etc. - they are the pillars of a global security architecture that mainly serves you: to protect your trade routes, your currency, your corporate supply chains, your ability to project force anywhere on the planet in hours and days, not months.

Let’s walk through this like adults, and not emotional toddlers, shall we?..
https://x.com/BiankaB12/status/1997407679556485515

Reposting this from the end of the last thread, as I think the endgame of whether or not Europe stands up to the Trump administration's attempt to sell out Ukraine, and our future security, is rather nearer in time even than the next change of Tory leader.

Necessary reading for any remaining apologists for the geostrategic nonsense the US administration is currently perpetrating.

WARNING: LONG THREAD 🧵
Dear Americans,
Your political and media class has sold you a very convenient fairy tale for decades - the tale of how your tax dollars pay to defend freeloading Europe.

While it's an emotionally satisfying narrative, it's also wrong.

THE U.S. DOES NOT SUBSIDIZE EUROPEAN DEFENCE.

You are not running a charity, you are running an empire. And empires are costly.

Your forward deployments, your bases, your carrier groups, etc. - they are the pillars of a global security architecture that mainly serves you: to protect your trade routes, your currency, your corporate supply chains, your ability to project force anywhere on the planet in hours and days, not months.

Let’s walk through this like adults, and not emotional toddlers, shall we?..
https://x.com/BiankaB12/status/1997407679556485515

Where the Americans do have a point is that the do not owe us anything and we have been very content to sit under their umbrella. Of course it suited the Americans too when confronting the USSR but the key was always their interests, not ours. Now that they have lost interest in Russia (except as a source of bribes, natch) we have to look after ourselves. Which is fair enough but also a somewhat uncomfortable adjustment.

The Americans have zero point at the moment, and to pretend we should treat their attitude with any sympathy is absurd.

If they were saying as you do that we have to look after ourselves, then it would be a betrayal of an alliance which has lasted since shortly after the end of WWII. It would be a massive detriment to both them and us, but if they are so determined, then fair enough, so be it.

But they are not saying that.

They have abandoned any pretence of funding Ukraine; they have made it clear that they will not materially participate in any postwar security guarantees; but they nonetheless are trying to dictate what is in effect a partial surrender on Russia's terms - while simultaneously trying to cut commercial deals with Putin.

That would destroy Europe's security for a generation. We should not be allowing that.

FPT:

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

What do they know about growth? They spent the best part of a year talking down the economy and were surprised that confidence collapsed.

If they do it, the aim wouldn't really be "to boost growth" but to polarise the electorate and try to build a coalition based winning as many of the 48% as possible.

They probably will. As I've said before, many times, Starmer was a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in opposition and he's now a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in office.

He will end up neither trusted nor respected, so it might not even work no matter what he does.

Spare us the insulting language, Casino.

It's time you recognised that Brexiteers and their project are deeply unpopular. You shat the bed for all of us. Time to be a little less dismissive of those who want to change the sheets.

I don't read any insulting language in Casino's post - am I missing something?

I read his post simply as a rather cynical one that Starmer may well benefit from a tack towards the EU, despite being rather disliked, but that he might be so disliked by that point that people won't be willing to hold their noses.

I for one would put up with a pretty crap next few years policy-wise if a closer economic and security relationship with the EU was on the ballot next election.

Yes, some people have never made their peace with the result, and the push for Rejoin—in whatever packaging—still owes as much to wounded pride as to policy. For a certain set, the Leave vote wasn’t just wrong; it was an affront to the natural order in which they are always ‘right.’ Losing to people they openly despise is something they still haven’t processed. The irony is that the pomposity and arrogance that turns so many off remains entirely invisible to the because, in their minds, ‘the facts’ excuse everything - in fact, they provide an excuse for it. That in turn drives a vociferous reaction.

But the politics of 2025 aren’t the politics of 2015. That world isn’t coming back. A pro-EU tilt might help Starmer consolidate his core vote, but it risks bleeding plenty of Reform-facing marginals.

He’d shore up his presence in Parliament, but it’s not a route to another majority.

I can't speak for others but I think you do your opponents a disservice by referring to wounded pride.

Amongst those I spend time with (mostly teachers, and most were on the Remain side) Brexit doesn't really get talked about any more.

But I do think you are putting blinkers on if you only talk about pomposity and arrogance and discount the much more rational view that we have harmed ourselves economically and in relation to our security by divorcing from Europe just at the moment when other reliable global partners have imploded.

As a Remainer I dread the idea of British politics being consumed by Brexit again, and I still think there's a lot that can be done in Britain to help the British economy.

However, the evidence is beginning to stack up that isolating the British economy from the single market is having a cumulative and growing impact that needs to be addressed in one way or another.

But I think it's right to say that Starmer is likely to be more motivated by political positioning than economics. If he was motivated by economics there's a lot he could do that would be less contentious.

It isn't at all. It's not even close to being one of our main problems, as GDP growth charts show since 2008.

It's a big thing because VALUES. That's it. The economics is viewed to be a useful stick to sidestep this.

I think the domestic British market is too small, and global trade is trending to become less free, and this is why being divorced from the single market is a problem for Britain establishing industries in new technologies.

I wouldn't say it's the biggest problem, but I think it's probably a big enough problem that you can't just ignore it. Some unreconciled Remainers will attempt to use the problem to push for rejoining, when there are other potential ways forward that have a better chance of winning majority public support.

Obviously hard-core Leavers may make a value judgement that the economic costs are an acceptable price for freedom, but I never thought Britain wasn't free as an EU member, so I don't accept that value judgement.

That may be what you think, but there is a distinct lack of evidence to substantiate those thoughts.

Britain is not the sick man of Europe, Germany is.

Britain has outgrown the Eurozone, despite Brexit.

The idea we would have outgrown them even more, if only we were shackled to their low growing economy, is entirely theoretical and without an iota of actual substantial evidence.

How on earth do you get the idea that Britain has outgrown the EU.

There is a really simple test as to the strength of a country, you look at the exchange rate.

In 2015 flying round Europe I got €1.40 to £1. After Brexit in 2017 I got about €1.25. Last year it was €1.18 and today it’s about €1.13 (or it was). Heck in Prague a Happy Meal (we needed the loo and Mrs Eek need some quick protein) a Happy Meal cost £6

Two beliefs on the populist right;

1 Britain's GDP performance since 2016 has been fine and Brexit wasn't a problem.

2 Britain's GDP has been artificially inflated by the immigration spike.

They can't both be true.

Who said its been fine? Its been better than Europe, but Europe's hasn't been fine, which is why we were right to leave that failing institution.

2 is easily resolved by looking at per capita data.

Germany GPD per capita:
2016 $42,961; 2024 $55,800; 29.9% up

Eurozone GDP per capita:
2016 $35,232; 2024 $46,274; 31.3% up

UK GDP per capita:
2016 $40,988; 2024 $52,636; 28.4% up

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2024&locations=DE-GB-XC&start=2016

Appreciate the effort everyone but using data is the most ridiculously weak economic analysis you'll ever come across. There is absolutely no way you can prove this point either way without coming up with some kind of counterfactual where the UK stayed in the EU, and given we've had COVID and Ukraine since then, this is very tricky indeed.

And from when do we even start modelling this? When the chance of Brexit appeared in the first place, and investment decisions started to change? When we voted to leave? When we left? When we sorted out delays at Dover? What indicators do you use - trade volumes? GDP per capita? Do you weight by sector? - Germany is much more dependent on energy, manufacturing etc etc

Happily, we do have some economists having a stab at it taking all this into account. I'd much rather go with their assessment than this facile, juvenile nonsense.

Clearly exiting your biggest market is going to decrease trade and make the country a less attractive place to invest in. So it's a question what number you put on your loss. Economist models converge on a 6% to 8% figure but if you find that precision spurious, you could just say the loss is significant but not disastrous.

FWIW I don't think the economic loss is the biggest problem with Brexit.

The issue with this analysis is that it ignores all of the actual reasons many of us voted for Brexit and would do so again.

I would far rather be in a solid economic block with the rest of Europe, but that is not on offer without them sticking their oar into many other areas. For others (though not me) open borders is also an issue.

Those factors may not matter to you, but they matter to the plurality of the British public who will never see us join the EU, and are visible to the member states who would resist even bothering to start negotiations. Even Starmer’s modest current proposals are getting close to the point that Badenoch and Farage could kill them by promising to repeal in three years and making it look like it wasn’t worth the effort to member states.

The analysis is an as objective as possible statement of the economic impact of Brexit. It's perfectly valid to say the economic cost is a price worth paying for reasons that make sense to you.

The apparently firm consensus now is that Brexit was a mistake. Which I believe is the real problem because there's no similar consensus what to do about it. I think If Rejoin was easy we would be on a path to rejoin already. But it's not for a host of reasons, so we're in a situation where most people think Brexit a big mistake, aren't happy living with the mistake, but don't know what to do about it.

A good place for us to start is to stop listening to anybody who was in favour of it.

Not sure ignoring people who disagree with you is the greatest way to persuade them to change their mind. The whole point of democracy is that different people can have different but valid opinions.

They can do but sometimes people are just wrong. If you keep believing people who lie and don't understand how the world works don't be surprised if you keep making bad decisions.

If only our politicians down the decades had trusted the democratic process instead of being afraid of the people, it's very likely we'd never have left.

Well we trusted the democratic process in 2016, and now we are in the wilderness.

If you only believe in democracy when your side wins, you don't believe in it at all.

So you agree that the public should be allowed to change its mind?

Of course it should. That’s democracy. But most people seem to think that the state of the nation has been hugely hit by Brexit, when Covid and Ukraine have dwarfed the Brexit shadow. They also seem to imagine that re entry is the salve for all our issues, just as some others said leaving was the salve of all our ills.

The fact is that Brexit has failed. The public know this. We are poorer. Investment has declined. Trade has become more difficult. We are weakened on the international stage. Europe has been harmed just as our mutual enemies gather strength and our erstwhile allies walk away. And British political discourse has been scarred, as the Brexit campaign opened the door to the kind of open racism that I thought we had escaped. How much longer will the Brexiteers force the younger generations to pay for this stupid decision?

Brexit has succeeded, our politicians now have nowhere to hide from the decisions they make. That was its raison d'etre.

The fact we have grown by more than Europe has, "despite Brexit", just demonstrates there has been no economic self-harm from leaving that bloc either.

Not in fact a fact, as I demonstrated earlier.

You were incorrect earlier. You chose the date of the referendum to today - that’s not the date of Brexit but a choice designed to maximise the likelihood of you being able to make your preferred case

Well that's rich, given Barty chose, er... 2010 and then 2018. Not to cook the books at all, oh no.

The impact of the Brexit referendum was felt right away.

I gave a logic for the dates I chose and it was not to cook the books, remotely. To measure the change of an effect you need to choose a date before the effect begins, 2016 data was wildly distorted so is a flawed starting point as too would be 2020 (due to Covid) etc.

If I'd wanted to cook the books, I would have chosen 2011 as a starting date, but I did not.

You can choose any other appropriate date and its the same, because reality is the same. From before Brexit (implementation/referendum) to date the UK has grown by more.

Indeed looking back the past 15 years, the UK has grown by the most from 10/15 starting points, Germany from 1/15 and the Euro Area from 4/15.

2015/16 is distorted by German data collapsing and the UK supposedly being richer than Germany per capita, data not seen before or since, which is patently false.

I've lost the will to enter more spreadsheet data tbh.

One thing that puzzles me, though, about all these figures is they all (UK, Germany, Eurozone) indicate reasonable GDP per capita growth over the past 10--15 years, whichever date range you use.

Why then is the general mood so low and the population so pissed off?

Greater equality is a double whammy: it makes people feel poorer and it makes them feel it isn't worth it to work harder. What we need to make people feel better is bigger pay differentials.

WTAF are you talking about?

The issue is much more that inequality has grown so large numbers haven;t benefitted.

I'm talking about the problem of wage compression. The difference between the pay someone can expect at the bottom of the scale and the pay someone can expect at the median (which increasingly means a graduate job) is getting less and less.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-04-02/uk-minimum-wage-may-have-passed-a-tipping-point

FPT:

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

What do they know about growth? They spent the best part of a year talking down the economy and were surprised that confidence collapsed.

If they do it, the aim wouldn't really be "to boost growth" but to polarise the electorate and try to build a coalition based winning as many of the 48% as possible.

They probably will. As I've said before, many times, Starmer was a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in opposition and he's now a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in office.

He will end up neither trusted nor respected, so it might not even work no matter what he does.

Spare us the insulting language, Casino.

It's time you recognised that Brexiteers and their project are deeply unpopular. You shat the bed for all of us. Time to be a little less dismissive of those who want to change the sheets.

I don't read any insulting language in Casino's post - am I missing something?

I read his post simply as a rather cynical one that Starmer may well benefit from a tack towards the EU, despite being rather disliked, but that he might be so disliked by that point that people won't be willing to hold their noses.

I for one would put up with a pretty crap next few years policy-wise if a closer economic and security relationship with the EU was on the ballot next election.

Yes, some people have never made their peace with the result, and the push for Rejoin—in whatever packaging—still owes as much to wounded pride as to policy. For a certain set, the Leave vote wasn’t just wrong; it was an affront to the natural order in which they are always ‘right.’ Losing to people they openly despise is something they still haven’t processed. The irony is that the pomposity and arrogance that turns so many off remains entirely invisible to the because, in their minds, ‘the facts’ excuse everything - in fact, they provide an excuse for it. That in turn drives a vociferous reaction.

But the politics of 2025 aren’t the politics of 2015. That world isn’t coming back. A pro-EU tilt might help Starmer consolidate his core vote, but it risks bleeding plenty of Reform-facing marginals.

He’d shore up his presence in Parliament, but it’s not a route to another majority.

I can't speak for others but I think you do your opponents a disservice by referring to wounded pride.

Amongst those I spend time with (mostly teachers, and most were on the Remain side) Brexit doesn't really get talked about any more.

But I do think you are putting blinkers on if you only talk about pomposity and arrogance and discount the much more rational view that we have harmed ourselves economically and in relation to our security by divorcing from Europe just at the moment when other reliable global partners have imploded.

As a Remainer I dread the idea of British politics being consumed by Brexit again, and I still think there's a lot that can be done in Britain to help the British economy.

However, the evidence is beginning to stack up that isolating the British economy from the single market is having a cumulative and growing impact that needs to be addressed in one way or another.

But I think it's right to say that Starmer is likely to be more motivated by political positioning than economics. If he was motivated by economics there's a lot he could do that would be less contentious.

It isn't at all. It's not even close to being one of our main problems, as GDP growth charts show since 2008.

It's a big thing because VALUES. That's it. The economics is viewed to be a useful stick to sidestep this.

I think the domestic British market is too small, and global trade is trending to become less free, and this is why being divorced from the single market is a problem for Britain establishing industries in new technologies.

I wouldn't say it's the biggest problem, but I think it's probably a big enough problem that you can't just ignore it. Some unreconciled Remainers will attempt to use the problem to push for rejoining, when there are other potential ways forward that have a better chance of winning majority public support.

Obviously hard-core Leavers may make a value judgement that the economic costs are an acceptable price for freedom, but I never thought Britain wasn't free as an EU member, so I don't accept that value judgement.

That may be what you think, but there is a distinct lack of evidence to substantiate those thoughts.

Britain is not the sick man of Europe, Germany is.

Britain has outgrown the Eurozone, despite Brexit.

The idea we would have outgrown them even more, if only we were shackled to their low growing economy, is entirely theoretical and without an iota of actual substantial evidence.

How on earth do you get the idea that Britain has outgrown the EU.

There is a really simple test as to the strength of a country, you look at the exchange rate.

In 2015 flying round Europe I got €1.40 to £1. After Brexit in 2017 I got about €1.25. Last year it was €1.18 and today it’s about €1.13 (or it was). Heck in Prague a Happy Meal (we needed the loo and Mrs Eek need some quick protein) a Happy Meal cost £6

Two beliefs on the populist right;

1 Britain's GDP performance since 2016 has been fine and Brexit wasn't a problem.

2 Britain's GDP has been artificially inflated by the immigration spike.

They can't both be true.

Since 2019 (the year before we actually Brexited) GDP growth has been better in the UK than in Germany, France or Italy. Only a little compared to Germany but a lot compared to France and Italy.

Now personally I have argued since long before the referendum that we should be in the EEA. I even made bets on it on here, losing the money I won on the Brexit result to Richard N. on the EEA destination. I still believe that so I am not opposed to closer economic ties. But if you are going to have this debate then it should be based on reality and what is practical with our relationship with the EU. Not on the sort of fanciful rubbish being pushed by people like Lammy.