Best Of

Afternoon folks

thinking about things over night to do with US withdrawing intelligence support. Should matters deteriorate even further between the UK/Europe and the US then one obvious way in which we could seriously inconvenience the US would be by withdrawing US access to data from Fylingdales.

Along with Thule in Greenland and Clear in Alaska this makes up one third of the US Ballistic Missile Early Warning system. It seems to me that if Trump is going to make threats about not helping in the defence of Europe then we should no longer be helping to defend the US.

After all, if Russia is their new best buddy then what do they need the early warning system for anyway?

Other people will know better than me but isn't Fylingdales essentially a US facility?

No wonder Starmer has to act carefully. We're full of US intelligence and military facilities.
De Gaulle wins again.

Indeed. Post-war we bet big on the US remaining an essentially benign hegemon, resisting the alternative European security solutions on offer. That bet looks increasingly like a disastrous error.

I disagree. Nato did the job it was designed to, as did most other UK-US relationships for many decades. The idea that a bet in the 1940s would last forever is ludicrous; those decisions were taken in the context of their time and the lifespan of arrangements.

To the extent that the *current* UK reliance on the US puts it in an awful position, that's a result of failing to reconsider the arrangements despite the increasingly divergent paths the UK and more particularly US have taken since 2010 or so; repeating mantras of the past without confronting the realities of the present. It's still happening now, more for comfort-blanket purposes than as any useful policy.

We have had at least a decade's warning that the US is not a reliable partner. Trump I should have been sufficient by itself but both Obama and Biden gave their own warnings, at much lower and more subtle levels. We knew a Trump return was highly possible well over a year ago - realistically, four years ago when he was let off his second impeachment. Both Starmer and Sunak before him should have set plans in place to prepare for this eventuality.

But to return to the earlier point, US bases in the UK are a card Britain can play. We should not be afraid to note that it's in our hand, if pushed sufficiently.

What's worrying for me with the "age of the US" coming to an end is that it will be China that inherits the mantle. Whatever one thinks of Trump and MAGA the US is founder upon principles of freedom and that, until recently, has been what they exported to the world. In a world where China is exporting it's values unchallenged the world will become a colder, more paranoid place and feel much less friendly outside of our core allies.

Who are our core allies? The US clearly isn't one.

Australia, Canada, France and Poland in that order I'd say then a bunch of second order allies in Europe.

I would put the Nordics and the Netherlands ahead of Australia and Canada, both of which have much higher priorities than the UK in their own neck of the woods.

All that US propaganda we’ve been fed for 50 years about leadership of the free world, the shining light on the hill, the new world, the land of liberty etc chokes. I couldn’t give less of a toss about their founding fathers or , as it turns out, ineffective constitution.

Personally I would like to see us promote our own story and mythology. For example , the Scottish enlightenment needs to be celebrated, but few have heard of it.

Britain needs to rediscover the period in the eighteenth century when it was the intellectual centre of Europe, and finally shake off Victorian anti-intellectualism ; that"s what's allowed the less advanced, rather than more expansive, part of American mass culture to exert too much of an
influence on us.

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Our distaste, bordering on contempt, for Donald Trump is a remarkably unifying factor across our political spectrum. Surely an organised two minute hate would be appropriate and bring together society's disparate factions?

I find it hard to understand why so many Trump supporters on the UK right - such as Jenrick - now criticise him when it was absolutely clear what he was going to do on Ukraine and tariffs well before November. Were they being opportunistic then or is it now?

We have friends in California who are (or were) Trump voters. He voted Trump because (a) concerns about illegal immigration / crime, and (b) because he thought Trump (as a businessman() would manage the economy better than Harris.

Said friend has a clothing business: he basically supplies big chains with own label clothing that bears a remarkable physical resemblance to that made by more expensive brands.

Before the election, he saw the way the wind was blowing and moved a lot of production out of China, and into Mexico. He's been absolutely poll-axed by the Mexican tariffs: he's genuinely worried he is going to lose his business because his contracts are in the US and his cost of importation just rose 25%, and his customers don't care.

He's still clinging on to the hope that this will all blow over, but he's in wide eyed shock right now that things have gone the way they've gone.

Please find me the smallest violin . Sorry if this sounds a bit flippant and you said they’re friends of yours but I have zero sympathy for anyone who voted for Trump and if they get screwed now I could care less.

I don't just disagree with that; I think it's a massively counterproductive response (not you personally, but in general).

If you don't welcome the conversion of political opponents, or ridicule the admission of mistakes (even the most egregious ones), then you do your own favoured policies a huge disservice.

Our distaste, bordering on contempt, for Donald Trump is a remarkably unifying factor across our political spectrum. Surely an organised two minute hate would be appropriate and bring together society's disparate factions?

I find it hard to understand why so many Trump supporters on the UK right - such as Jenrick - now criticise him when it was absolutely clear what he was going to do on Ukraine and tariffs well before November. Were they being opportunistic then or is it now?

We have friends in California who are (or were) Trump voters. He voted Trump because (a) concerns about illegal immigration / crime, and (b) because he thought Trump (as a businessman() would manage the economy better than Harris.

Said friend has a clothing business: he basically supplies big chains with own label clothing that bears a remarkable physical resemblance to that made by more expensive brands.

Before the election, he saw the way the wind was blowing and moved a lot of production out of China, and into Mexico. He's been absolutely poll-axed by the Mexican tariffs: he's genuinely worried he is going to lose his business because his contracts are in the US and his cost of importation just rose 25%, and his customers don't care.

He's still clinging on to the hope that this will all blow over, but he's in wide eyed shock right now that things have gone the way they've gone.

Nice to see the centrist Dads getting bent out of shape over Ukraine whilst the genocide in Gaza has been met with splendid indifference.

The centrist dads aren't happy with that, either.
The difference is the UK or Europe's ability to influence events. Which, in the case of whatever it is that Netanyahu and Trump are about to do in Gaza, is close to nil.

Note that Saudi Arabia's bid of $55bn to rebuild the place has just been rejected out of hand by Trump. And MBS probably now has more influence in the White House than we do.

I live a very sheltered life. What is a centrist dad? Am I one because I am both a centrist and a dad or is there a special meaning?

If you don't know then you are one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zltpK2KiaQ

Is a centrist dad worse than a centrist mum?

Isn't a 'centrist dad' an anti woke middle aged male with old fashioned conservative views?

Someone like Leon I suppose?

No - that's pretty much the opposite of what it means.

"Centrist dad" was originally a far left term of abuse for social democrat types within the Labour Party, the kind of party members who would turn up to a CLP meeting to vote down Corbynista attempts to replace the sitting MP with some Trot nutter. It has broadened out to encompass a broad swathe of liberal-left opinion, somewhat complacent, enamoured with the status quo, resistant to attempts from both left and right to smash the system. The centrist dad gets his news from Channel 4 News or Newsnight. He likes the Rest is Politics. He cycles to work. He shops at Sainsburys but probably gets an organic veg box in too. He still seethes over Brexit. He wonders what happened to the circa 2000 world that he understood and loved.

Shabana Mahmood’s claim that her Labour government won’t stand for “two tier justice” - with an anti white, anti male, anti Christian bias - has been somewhat undermined this morning as it turns out the Sentencing Council is independent

So she can write to them asking them to change it. But she can’t force them. Unless Labour decides to change the law - which, given that they have a trillion seat majority, they could do tomorrow

But will they?

“One point worth noting on this morning's sentencing story.

Shabana Mahmood has written to the Sentencing Council urging them to change course. But a government source confirms this morning she cannot order them to do so.

So on April 1 a new sentencing regime will take effect which the Lord Chancellor herself has described as a "two-tier sentencing approach".

That seems to me to be massively significant”

https://x.com/hzeffman/status/1897542893814100129?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

I've had a glance at this and it's just a change to guidance on pre-sentence reports, not the sentences themselves. And it happened under the Tories, and is broadly sensible given the longer sentences ethnic minorities get for similar crimes, and taking into account pregnancy, child abuse survivors etc.

What's sad is I just assumed it was going to be a load of nonsense given you were banging on about it. The issue with this is when you do, occasionally, come across a real scandal, it will be much harder to get people's attention.

Well, I made you “glance at it”… and then work out what it is, and what it does, and how it will work, and who devised it (quite a long glance, there), so job done, despite your claims otherwise

And your dismissal of it is ridiculous. This is racist anti-white two tier justice enshrined in law, which could be quite a problem for Two Tier Kier - and Shabana Mahmoud who has claimed this “cannot happen on her watch”

You keep saying Two Tier Keir.

As all of this pre-dates Labour, why were you not saying Two Tier Rishi?

If you actually care about the actual issue?

Trust me, on this I really care about the issue. It’s a fucking disgrace

And FWIW (as I said yesterday) yes the Tories must carry hefty loads of blame for all this. They had 14 years to roll back Woke; they didn’t - they made it worse

And for that they “need to be vomited into the bucket
of bye-bye, and hurled onto the dungheap of doomsday”. My words yesterday. Pithy enough?

OK, so its not Two Tier Keir then is it. Why are you blaming the new government for the failings of the previous one? I get that they aren't acting quickly enough for you on this subject. But *they didn't do this*. And yet you blame them.

But - unless I am misunderstanding, which I may be - they ARE doing this. The legislation that white men must serve longer sentences may have been drafted under the previous miasma, but it is being introduced under this one. And unless they stop it, it's right that we blame this one.

Actually this goes back to what Liz Truss has been banging on about. Independent Quangos that have extremely political agendas that are blissfully unaffected by electoral politics. These bodies need to be abolished, and their basis in law revoked. Nobody voted for this, and a vanishing minority ever would.

What's worrying for me with the "age of the US" coming to an end is that it will be China that inherits the mantle. Whatever one thinks of Trump and MAGA the US is founder upon principles of freedom and that, until recently, has been what they exported to the world. In a world where China is exporting it's values unchallenged the world will become a colder, more paranoid place and feel much less friendly outside of our core allies.

Who are our core allies? The US clearly isn't one.

Australia, Canada, France and Poland in that order I'd say then a bunch of second order allies in Europe.

I would put the Nordics and the Netherlands ahead of Australia and Canada, both of which have much higher priorities than the UK in their own neck of the woods.

No Australia and Canada and NZ are first as we share the King as our head of state with them and our language and similar ancestry.

Then the non US NATO nations, then Japan and S Korea and Singapore then while Trump remains in office the US is the current order of our closest allies

NATO is dead - we haven't yet formally wound it up but as Article 5 no longer applies then the whole concept of mutual defence is over. That then imperils the five eyes intelligence group and so on and so on.

My response to who is first is all of them. UK / Canada / Australia / NZ are the Four Eyes intelligence group. UK is in rNATO as are France et al, with Japan, S Korea, Singapore and others as strategic allies.

With the shuttering of NATO and Five Eyes, we need to rapidly evolve the alliance and that means everyone.

Starmer announced support for Ukraine in a way that boosts our economy. Germany is lifting its borrowing cap and will be investing in ways that boosts its economy. War footing economies can be very effective - many allied economies have been stagnant for a long time. The end of NATO is a political jolt but can also be a positive economic one.

I absolutely hate the fact that I am now ramping the idea that we need to invest heavily in defence. But we do, and we need investment in our economy. Its an opportunity we have to grasp in this new phase of our world order.