Best Of

Personally, I think Feb 26 will “go down in infamy”.

The U.S., seemingly led by Israel, treacherously junked peace negotiations with Iran and murdered the negotiators. It almost immediately went on to commit war crimes in the Indian Ocean while Israel was given free rein to continue its wars of colonial expansion.

It failed to consult allies, and has - precisely in accordance with predictions by any half-decent Middle East analyst - unleashed a global economic crisis. Supposed allies in the Pacific are now counting down the days left of oil supply.

Basically, it’s signalled that America is ultimately less interested in defending the economic security of allies than promoting the interests of Israel’s kleptocratic regime.

While we are still in the fog of war, I think the long term effect is more profound than you might think: no ally can any longer trust the U.S. I expect to see increasing partnership across the liberal middle powers - Canada, UK, Europe, Japan, Korea and Australia - to find ways of shoring up defence, economic and digital sovereignty.

It’s the end of American power, really.
It will of course retain significant economic heft and the largest military force in the world.

But it will become a rather expensive and useless toy set. Nobody trusts them anymore. They are too fickle, deceitful and cruel.

Voters believe in the Magic Money Tree, and it's partner, the Reform Fairy - where money for X can always be found through vague references to 'reform' or 'efficiency', predicated on the assumption no one has ever thought about making things more efficient before.

And because they do, politicians rely on both, and we'll be screwed.

I’m coming to the view that there are people who would rather be enslaved than see an end to the triple lock.

What a fool Osborne was to create it.

I'm increasingly of the view that Osborne was one of the most short-sighted politicians of the 21st Century.

It's remarkable how many problems he created are now becoming both serious and blindly obvious...

On the face of it, the triple lock doesn't seem a bad way to gradually raise pensions there were pretty low, though of course it could only ever be a temporary measure. But of course temporary measures have a habit of becoming permanent and we're still stuck with the bloody thing. Surely the pension becoming equal to the tax free allowance can be used as a reason to end the triple lock and instead tie the state pension to the tax free allowance?

Voters believe in the Magic Money Tree, and it's partner, the Reform Fairy - where money for X can always be found through vague references to 'reform' or 'efficiency', predicated on the assumption no one has ever thought about making things more efficient before.

And because they do, politicians rely on both, and we'll be screwed.

I’m coming to the view that there are people who would rather be enslaved than see an end to the triple lock.

What a fool Osborne was to create it.

Well there was at least one PBer who pointed that out 15 years ago.

And also predicted that student tuition fees would also end in disaster.

However, that PBer was told that any such problems would be decades away and would be sorted out beforehand.

Before my time but I hope the PBer in question isn't taking this as compelling evidence that whatever he or she is saying in the present day is freighted with any particular significance.

Only time will tell

"The commander in chief was reportedly told that the mullahs might not agree to go gently into the night, but he seems to have waved away such concerns because he was so convinced that the Iranian regime would collapse almost immediately. According to The Wall Street Journal, when General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned the president that a U.S. attack would prompt Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz, Trump “told his team that Tehran would likely capitulate before closing the strait—and even if Iran tried, the U.S. military could handle it.” "

...

"[Putin and Trump] made classic strategic errors. They engaged in what analysts call “scriptwriting”: They decided what they wanted to happen, and then wrote out a kind of script in which their adversaries would dutifully play their part and recite their lines. They also both seem to have ignored the standard war-gaming caution to plan for what the enemy can do, not for what you would prefer that it do."


More from Tom Nichols at:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/trump-iran-war/686470/?gift=otEsSHbRYKNfFYMngVFweBDkBYlSGKPROp7ZY5gr9oU&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

(seems to be a gift article at the moment)

Before the battle of Midway, some impudent juniors in the IJN won the war game of the battle, playing the Americans.

They were told to apologise for their rudeness.

History then proceeded.

The same thing almost happened when Zhukov war gamed the Germans capturing Moscow, and Stalin’s lackeys condemned him. But, Stalin was more in touch with reality than Trump is.

Donald Trump is away with the fairies and a horrible human being, ignorant, imbecilic and cruel, all of these things being blindingly obvious, yet at the same time he is the duly elected leader of a (very) large and (very) prosperous western democracy. There's no precedent for this. We can talk till the cows come home about grocery bills, EDI and other woke excesses, partisanship and polarisation, charisma, Dem mistakes, social media, post truth, Musk, Russian interference, borders etc, but it remains fundamentally inexplicable by the metrics that we are used to dealing in. Anybody thinking they understand it in those terms is imo kidding themselves. To really understand it you'd need to get America on the couch. Create the right therapeutic atmosphere and ask, "Ok, so why did you really do it? You're safe here. Tell me." And then listen.

I've posted this before, and it pertains to Trump's first victory in 2016 - but IMO this is still the best answer to that question - written by someone from red America who escaped to blue America so understands both sides.

https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about

A fairly recent piece of polling that depressed me was that people still wanted to tax millionaires more, even if that meant less tax coming in. I mean the mess the nappy stupidity of it.

Whoever comes in, the public will need to be consciously trained to become more resilient, the way that socialism has consciously trained them (and trains them still) to become ever more helpless and dependent.

One good polling question would be:

Would you prefer to see more / fewer / zero rich people in the UK ?

I see little evidence that the presence of the ultra-rich actually does much for everyone else. They’re too good at avoiding tax. Whereas greater income equality is associated with greater happiness and better health.

So, I would prefer to move to greater equality, by which I mean levels we saw in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when there was still plenty of rich people, and plenty of innovation/growth.

So at least 50% or more of voters want to keep the triple lock and subsidise energy bills during the Iran War. Most voters from all parties want to keep the triple lock, though less than half of Reform voters want to subsidise energy bills. They are divided on increasing defence spending and not yet ready to believe a UBI is possible but not majority opposed and Green voters back it as do half of Labour voters.

Most voters aren't that bothered about students though, more refusing to forgive student loans or bail out universities than not with Green voters again the main exception. Furlough is also not going to be believed as realistic either again

It doesn't matter what voters want, and this is where Starmer and Reeves are about to come up against reality

It does because voters elect their governments, as this poll proves the triple lock is untouchable, most voters from all parties want to retain it.

At most Labour could get away with means testing it that is it

Means testing the State Pension - that would go down way worse than killing the triple lock.

Throw one big increase on the state pension and few would notice the lock has gone, announce means testing (in any form on any part) and your political party will be gone at the next election

As I keep saying -

1) Merge employee NI And IT
2) Protect the basic rate pensioners. Only those on 50K+ will pay more tax initially.
3) Put all the old age benefits in a blender, and make the result taxable.
4) quadruple lock - the pension is the personal allowance and the personal allowance is the pension. This means that for any pension increase the Chancellor will have to raise the personal allowance. Suddenly....

Taxation is the best way to deal with this.

I’m at a loss as to how 1 and 2 would work. The easiest way of achieving what you want is to rename NI and apply it to people who are below the pension age a - so you may as well keep NI out a plateau on it at £50,000 and increase income tax to 42%.

The other issue that makes other changes impossible is that income tax is a delegated tax in Scotland an I think elsewhere (it just isn’t different in Wales and NI).

You merge employee NI and IT

That (at least in the short term) you create a new rate of basic tax for pensioners (below £50K income) that is the old IT rate - so they don't pay the NI extra.

This is simple to administer, since HMRC has DOB on their systems.

But we already have that with NI - you stop paying it on the April 6th after you get your state pension.

So the easiest way to do what you want is to leave it as it is

No. The point is that pensioners over 50K will be paying more tax. And all the others currently not paying employee NI.

Which again could be done by removing the 2% employee NI rate that NI goes to after £967 a week on to income tax to make income tax 42%.

Easily done and that 2% higher rate NI is a relatively recent invention anyway

The idea is to remove employee NI from the board entirely. So no games to play avoiding NI.

Sensible in many ways. However, two things would follow.

1 Better-off pensioners would pay more than now.
2 The headline rate of income tax would be higher than now.

Both of these are electorally as popular as being told to find a stick, sharpen it and then poke yourself in the eye with the sharp stick. (Sharp sticks and eye pokers were both cut in the coalition austerity round).

The problem remains- we all sort of Intuit that fiscal rebalancing is needed in general, but not in particular.

It's about messaging

1) You announce the abolition of Income Tax and Employee National Insurance
2) You announce the Introduction of the Save The NHS, Protect Cute Kittens and Kick Racists In The Goolies Tax.
3) Any opposition to the proposals is framed as you hate the NHS, you want to kill kittens and you like racists.

A friend worked in charity fundraising. She said the perfect charity to fundraise for would be Kittens for Kids with Kancer (except for the initials).

In the subject of KKK I was scrolling Facebook this morning and saw this and for a good moment o thought the chap on the right was dressed interestingly.

"The commander in chief was reportedly told that the mullahs might not agree to go gently into the night, but he seems to have waved away such concerns because he was so convinced that the Iranian regime would collapse almost immediately. According to The Wall Street Journal, when General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned the president that a U.S. attack would prompt Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz, Trump “told his team that Tehran would likely capitulate before closing the strait—and even if Iran tried, the U.S. military could handle it.” "

...

"[Putin and Trump] made classic strategic errors. They engaged in what analysts call “scriptwriting”: They decided what they wanted to happen, and then wrote out a kind of script in which their adversaries would dutifully play their part and recite their lines. They also both seem to have ignored the standard war-gaming caution to plan for what the enemy can do, not for what you would prefer that it do."


More from Tom Nichols at:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/trump-iran-war/686470/?gift=otEsSHbRYKNfFYMngVFweBDkBYlSGKPROp7ZY5gr9oU&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

(seems to be a gift article at the moment)

Before the battle of Midway, some impudent juniors in the IJN won the war game of the battle, playing the Americans.

They were told to apologise for their rudeness.

History then proceeded.

The same thing almost happened when Zhukov war gamed the Germans capturing Moscow, and Stalin’s lackeys condemned him. But, Stalin was more in touch with reality than Trump is.

The Germans (temporarily) capturing Moscow would have been strategically irrelevant.

If the Iran invasion is illegal then facilitating attacks on them by the Americans and Israelis is also illegal.

Starmer out.

It’s a grey area .

Because it’s classed as protecting ships from being attacked so goes down as defensive in No 10 . I wish we had nothing at all to do with any of this but as opposed to the rest of Europe Starmer can’t afford a total rupture with the US administration.

No policy change at all

No RAF involvement.

Attacking Iranian sites that are military and attacking Straits of Hormuz

If Ships start moving oil will be another win for Statesman Starmer.

Ahem

https://x.com/marthamaccallum/status/2035021041353846929

I interviewed President Trump by phone. He doubled down on his anger at NATO and said all we need is “numbers” in the Strait to open it, Iran has nothing left. Also, when asked if Japan gave any assurance of military support given that 90 percent of their oil comes from
the Strait, the President say they have Constitutional restraints but would be there for us if we needed them, saying “Japan is better ally than NATO.” More to come on The Story. 3 pm and on The Five tonight.

He hates NATO but wants them to do whatever he says, whilst also insisting the USA needs no allies for anything ever. Hard to see why things have gotten strained.

But in all seriousness he and Vance will be loving the chance to kneecap NATO more than they already have, and given the level of support he still has among the GOP, a large chunk of america is being permanently poisoned against the alliance, so they are achieving their aim.