Best Of

Whether Phillipson, Powell or whoever wins the Labour deputy leadership it is basically a non job.

The winner will not be Deputy PM, that will still be Lammy who replaced Rayner in the role, nor will they even be Labour Party chair.

So as Blunkett said what exactly is the point of being Labour Deputy Leader in government other than a cheerleader for members and the provinces?

I suspect that there is a job to be done; represent the members to the higher echelons of power. In this situation I suspect Powell would be a better choice, although Phillipson, it might be argued, can put the case in Cabinet.

The best job description I have heard is to represent the membership by speaking plainly inside the circle of trust, whilst not being publicly embarrassing or factional.

The same person said that they thought that Angela Rayner and done that, and that Emily Thornberry would be a good candidate.

That was from someone who is not Labour (actually left of current Labour) but wants a progressive Govt.

Starmer under pressure over Mandelson appointment, Sky headline. This is kinda big moment in British Politics. Sometimes stories start in the background, but become slow burners to the big fire.

Kemi is about to forensically dissect Starmer at PMQs about what he did and didn’t know about Lord Yum Yum before appointing him UK Ambassador to the United States. Starmer must carefully negotiate this without telling lies. If Starmer lies about any of this, if he was told something but denies he was, it will bring him down as well.
Let’s get our noses on what sounds like a lie from him as he faces PMQs.

Mandy is definitely the big issue of the day. Kemi will look truly statesperson-like focusing on that, if she does.

Another worrying thing about the drone incident is that we were using F35s to shoot down cheap drones.
And we didn't even manage to shoot them all down.

If another European country were facing the kind of mass attacks that Ukraine faces, that simply isn't sustainable for much more than a couple of weeks.

In a world without the US element of the NATO guarantee, what, in our current capacity, is to prevent Russia threatening or blackmailing some of the smaller European states ?
It's not as though international norms will do that.

This is what I keep thinking - what is the point of NATO article 5 if America are no longer underwriting it?

In fact what is NATO without America?

According to the https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php military power rankings, NATO without the US still contains the 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 14th, 17th, 21st, 27th, 28th and 30th strongest countries in the world. NATO without the US combined has the second largest aircraft carrier fleet in the world (after the US). If you add up the number of active military personnel, NATO without the US comes in second (after China).

But it's my understanding that in things like key weaponry, intelligence, surveillance, command and control, it's America and American capabilities that makes NATO what it is.

That need not be the case.
Europe has its own AEW capability; several different military aircraft manufacturers; ditto missile manufactures; ditto armoured vehicles.

Trump has clearly demonstrated that over reliance on US kit represents a strategic risk. We should take more of an Israeli attitude to buying from the US: anything we don't have full and unrestricted control over shouldn't be an option.

Obvious comment, I know, but this should have started ages ago rather than waiting for the US to elect a hostile cowboy president. But things rarely happen that way, do they. When you have a situation that works for you, you just carry on with it until something forces you to change.

The west has been in denial for decades. We could not see a threat that required a large military force, partly because it was convenient. China was relatively friendly, and provided us with loads of plastic crud. Russia was giving us oodles of cheap oil and gas. Who else was there that would require a Cold War style military?

The peace dividend we have been spending since the early 1990s ignored one simple fact; that countries can turn from friendly to foe within a few years. In WW1 Japan was firmly aligned with the UK; twenty years later we were enemies.

Yep. Otoh we've had the benefit of the peace dividend. It was understandable to want and take one after the horror of WW2 and the tense decades of the cold war. The best way to prevent war is to prepare for it, they say, and there's truth in that. Equally if everybody is always preparing for war you can be sure you'll get one. So it's not straightforward to my mind. Although this one is, we have to help Ukraine fight off Russia.

The error is that we didn't recognise in 2008 (Russian invasion of Georgia) or 2014 (First Russian invasion of Ukraine) that the situation had changed.

Christ alive, Tony Robinson/Baldrick pimping his new book on Today about Alfred the Great says that people think there is a pure line of Englishness but that Alfred made up this idea of Englishness Alfred and “his mates” were all German and then they go on to discuss the importance of accuracy.

Only a minority of idiots think that the English have some purebred status and Alfred and his mates weren’t German.

GermanIC thiough is entirely correct, intermarriage aside. Presumably the -ic was lost somewhere along the line.

The Angles and Saxons had been in England since the 5th century. By Alfred's time that's 300 years given or take some decades. Many, many generations. They would have felt that this country was there's as much as any true born Englishman today.
I guess he's making a classic luvvy point and falling rather wide of the mark.

Agreed: I'd also add:
1) Some studies have suggested that the east of Great Britain has been Germanic in language and genetics for rather longer than that even.
2) While pre-Viking Anglo-Saxons wouldn't have considered themselves as one nation - because the concept of a nation then was quite different, and depended much more on loyalty to a given lord rather than shared culture - they would certainly have recognised cultural (and, importantly, religious) affiliations with other Anglo-Saxons (which were not necessarily shared with the British - i.e. those who spoke Welsh and followed the Celtic church, nor with the Vikings, who spoke Scandinavian languages and were pagan).
3) The process of gradually removing the viking rulers from the east and north of modern-day England was a nation-building event: Englishness came to be defined by it. This is not unique to England: there are countless examples of nation-building in opposition to what a nation is not.

Essentially: Tony Robinson's point is trite - a barb in disguise as a serious point.

I'd recommend looking at the POBI study: https://www.peopleofthebritishisles.org/

Essentially much of South East and Eastern England is genetically quite homogeneous. Devon and Cornwall are much more distinct as are the Welsh Marches. Northumbria and Cumbria have greater ties to Scotland.

I think sending cruise missiles into Russian drone factories would be a proportionate response to their drone attack on Poland last night, and would make it unlikely Russia would attack NATO with drones again.

If we brush it off at no big deal they will attack again and escalate further.

I think a direct missile attack on Russia would be a massive escalation.

(Snip)

You are falling into the trap of calling our potential response a 'massive escalation', whilst seeming to ignore what the Russians did last night was itself a 'massive escalation'.

And we see this time and time again: in the minds of some, the Russians are allowed to escalate, and we are not.

It's time we did so.

We should match not escalate

You don't respond to a military threat with a tit-for-tat action.

You remove the threat.