Best Of

@peterwalker99.bsky.social‬

Tory MP Simon Hoare has given a very vivid quote about Donald Trump's comments on Nato allies, which could actually be used in many contexts about the US president:

"Frankly Trump makes my flesh creep and my stomach turn. Where are his advisors? Where is his nurse? Where is his sense of shame?"

'Makes my flesh creep.....' as do his sycophants. Everyone everywhere is talking about Mark Carney. That's good for Canada. Starmer is just another flunky

I was speaking to my eldest in Vancouver last night, and whilst Carney is rightly congratulated over his speech in Davos, his appointment came in utter relief at the end of Trudeau's catastrophic period in office and one of the reason's Carney is succeeding in Canada is apparently his move to the right in cutting taxes, encouraging business, and veering away from a liberal left attitude

He is also seen as a technocrat rather than a politician

Apparently he was raised in Edmonton, which is the birthplace of our daughter in law and her family who are all originally from Ukraine

@steverichards14

Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’:
“If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit.
In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”

https://x.com/steverichards14/status/2014612676777779396?s=20

If Labour are to win the next election we MUST rejoin the EU. Starmer or Burnham must batter it through. No Referendums. Just a huge parlianentary majority. The full fat version including Schengen. We must put ourselves at the centre of Europe.

Labour have nothing to lose. They are sleepwalking to possible defeat at the hands of Farage. There is no form of REJOIN that would be a worse fate for this country than that.

Rejoin plus Euro means zero chance of Labour re election

Why? The latest polls are 60/40 in favour. After Trump's Shenanigans of the last few weeks I'd imagine it's now even higher. One thing Trump has shown is in this new transactional world anything is possible. Had the UK not left we would be at the centre of one of the worlds great economic powers

The Euro would be a dealbreaker. It’s a shame because I personally would like the Euro but the ship has sailed. The right time would have been at the start to ensure that the ECB was in London.

It's entirely possible to rejoin and not join the euro, without having an official opt out, as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Sweden currently demonstrate. (Denmark managed to have its opt out.)

Bulgaria joined the Euro on January 1st.

And the EU having seen the tricks played to avoid joining it have changed their rules to make avoiding joining the Euro far harder

I see Consumer confidence is slowly improving, though has been negative for ten years*:

https://bsky.app/profile/financialtimes.com/post/3md2xpol6ld2e

And December's retail beat expectations up 0.4% in December.

* What happened 10 years ago to destry consumer confidence? 🤔

Much better borrowing figures yesterday as well: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clymd1pj887o

For the first time, I think, the results are running below the OBR forecast for the year. The damage done by the run up to the budget was horrendous and a completely unenforced error but there is a chance things might just calm down a bit for a while.

Only borrowing £140bn this year, instead of £150bn, really isn’t a win.

@steverichards14

Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’:
“If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit.
In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”

https://x.com/steverichards14/status/2014612676777779396?s=20

Almost at the fiftieth anniversary of Blame Thatcher. How long can they drag it out? I assume this is aimed at the Party Faithful.

The blame attaches more to her successors who adopted bits of her dogma blindly (which obviously includes the Blair/Brown era).

Thatcher undoubtedly made mistakes.
Her policies which directly disastrous for the north of England.

But she also did quite a lot of necessary stuff, and I don't think she did all that much which wasn't capable of remediation, had her successors diagnosed and addressed where she went wrong.
The reason it can still be "dragged out" is that they have never been addressed.

Then there is the difference between Thatcher the reality and Thatcher the myth.

Industrial areas of 1970s northern England were a lot closer to Kes than the 'new Jerusalem'.

Which goes to the heart of it - large sections of heavy industry were dying long before Thatcher became an MP. This was because, when faced with modernisation and the resultant productivity increasse, the unions, management and the governments of the day balked.

This was because, in those days, productivity increases were seen as creating unemployment*. The fact that productivity increases creates more work than is "destroyed" was not generally accepted, outside economists. When you added in a basic nationalism - "People will always buy British".....

*Even well into the 80s, it was considered unremarkable when a trade union official stated that they would only accept productivity improvements as a last resort. This wasn't because he was evil or stupid - he was stating the orthodoxy.

He was stupid though

No - he was wrong. But remember, plenty of people have been wrong for *centuries* on economics. Imperialism was built on mercantilism. Which was wrong - it is cheaper to buy resources from people than conquering their country to take them.

I thought we were talking about unions wanting more money for doing same or less work, where did conquering countries come in.

The Sea of Ideas that the union official swam in were wrong.

Blaming him for that is like blaming a merchant in 18th Century London for advocating Mercantilism.

Wow. Donald's comments about British servicemen has left him rather friendless.

I'm sure Farage will be around soon to explain away Trump's comments as not that offensive really, not if you consider [insert whataboutery here].

Tbh I've heard different but arguably worse complaints that in Iraq, Afghanistan and even ww2, Americans had to dig British troops out from holes of our own making. And for all that we were in Afghanistan, we stayed about five minutes once America pulled out.

Speaking of Afghanistan, it was remarked at the time that we were burning through the defence budget firing our stocks of American-made missiles at American-selected targets, and that it would be cheaper to cut out the middleman.

There was undoubtedly some British hubris around our supposedly more sophisticated and understanding approach to community relations around Basra than the US's "shoot first and think later" approach, which subsequently turned out to be worth diddly squat. But as the power with the large majority of firepower in the Middle East, the US was always going to have to do the heavy lifting and carry the responsibilty for the overall campaign.

I'd be surprised if a coherent argument could be made for WW2. Up to and including D-Day, the contribution from Britain, Canada and the rest of the commonwealth was predominant, and the early episodes of the European war from the Americans somewhere between underwhelming and embarassing. To their credit US command learned fast, and from D-Day onwards they carried the bulk of the fighting. You can criticise the British for ignoring intelligence reports and over-engineering Market Garden; failings in the fields of intelligence and pre-planning where the British usually outperformed the Americans. But not much else of significance?

There are a very good series of youtube vidoes of a US historian talking about the economics of WW2. One figure he pointed out was that whilst the US devoted about 35% of their GDP to the war effort at its peak, the comparable UK figure was just over 55% - up from 7% in 1938

@peterwalker99.bsky.social‬

Tory MP Simon Hoare has given a very vivid quote about Donald Trump's comments on Nato allies, which could actually be used in many contexts about the US president:

"Frankly Trump makes my flesh creep and my stomach turn. Where are his advisors? Where is his nurse? Where is his sense of shame?"

'Makes my flesh creep.....' as do his sycophants. Everyone everywhere is talking about Mark Carney. That's good for Canada. Starmer is just another flunky

The other day we were talking about Neville Chamberlain. My view - which I think others share - is that when Neville Chamberlain made his speech following the Munich agreement, he had a very clear and accurate idea of the sort of person Hitler was and his likely plans; he knew his 'piece of paper' was worthless. He believed (possibly wrongly, it turned out, but that takes nothing away from him) that Germany's ability to fight a war was in 1938 streets ahead of that of France and Britain. He took the (in my view, heroic) decision to sacrifice his reputation to buy the allis another 12-18 months to prepare for the war he knew was coming. But the point is, what was said and known about publicly was very different to what was going on behind the scenes.

The point here is that we - rightly - don't know what's going on behind the scenes. We would hope that Starmer's palliative public pronouncements are being accompanied by a shedload of behind the scenes work to prepare for what comes when the USA leaves NATO. It's not particularly to Britain's advantage to hurry this along by having our elected leaders saying what we really think of Donald Trump. Donald Trupm is saying what he really thinks of other countries, and it's not really gaining America any benefits.

@steverichards14

Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’:
“If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit.
In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”

https://x.com/steverichards14/status/2014612676777779396?s=20

If Labour are to win the next election we MUST rejoin the EU. Starmer or Burnham must batter it through. No Referendums. Just a huge parlianentary majority. The full fat version including Schengen. We must put ourselves at the centre of Europe.

Labour have nothing to lose. They are sleepwalking to possible defeat at the hands of Farage. There is no form of REJOIN that would be a worse fate for this country than that.

Rejoin plus Euro means zero chance of Labour re election

Nobody is suggesting the Euro

Roger is (“…full fat version…”) in the comment HYUFD is replying to!

The reality of Rejoin is

1) We would be asked to follow the process that all applicants to the are do. The politics of Europe will not slow a special exemption - too many countries would get upset
2) So we would be signing up to “full fat” Europe
3) This means signing up for the Euro. Since this would remove a huge chunk of the mucking around with the economy the politicians love, this would be a matter of
I) Signing up to the Euro joining process
II) Never actually meeting he requirements and joining

You're not allowing for any realpolitik there. The reality is that, if the EU believed we were willing to return for good - Farage's enduring toxic influence on our politics remains the principal obstacle - we could return on terms that suited us.

We'd have them over a barrel, eh?

@steverichards14

Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’:
“If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit.
In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”

https://x.com/steverichards14/status/2014612676777779396?s=20

If Labour are to win the next election we MUST rejoin the EU. Starmer or Burnham must batter it through. No Referendums. Just a huge parlianentary majority. The full fat version including Schengen. We must put ourselves at the centre of Europe.

Labour have nothing to lose. They are sleepwalking to possible defeat at the hands of Farage. There is no form of REJOIN that would be a worse fate for this country than that.

Rejoin plus Euro means zero chance of Labour re election

Nobody is suggesting the Euro

Roger is (“…full fat version…”) in the comment HYUFD is replying to!

The reality of Rejoin is

1) We would be asked to follow the process that all applicants to the are do. The politics of Europe will not slow a special exemption - too many countries would get upset
2) So we would be signing up to “full fat” Europe
3) This means signing up for the Euro. Since this would remove a huge chunk of the mucking around with the economy the politicians love, this would be a matter of
I) Signing up to the Euro joining process
II) Never actually meeting he requirements and joining

@steverichards14

Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’:
“If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit.
In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”

https://x.com/steverichards14/status/2014612676777779396?s=20

If Labour are to win the next election we MUST rejoin the EU. Starmer or Burnham must batter it through. No Referendums. Just a huge parlianentary majority. The full fat version including Schengen. We must put ourselves at the centre of Europe.

Labour have nothing to lose. They are sleepwalking to possible defeat at the hands of Farage. There is no form of REJOIN that would be a worse fate for this country than that.

Rejoin plus Euro means zero chance of Labour re election