Best Of

Some good opportunities for Starmer to start showing that Labour could be a Party of change and at the same time show some dynamic and popular leadership. If he cant do it now while the right are fighting like rats in a sack and with an unhinged common enemy also of the right then probably time to start looking for a new more charismatic and decisive leader.

Another way of looking at this is: The Tories have finally seen that their only future is to lead the right of centre in people, policy, communications and showing clear difference between Tories and Reform. They only have one right of centre party to overcome and it is full of tricksters.

Labour face a larger challenge: LD, Green, Islamists, Jezbollah, SNP, PC. And the challenge of being in government in hard times. And these are not great times for changing who is PM, which is a messy process anyway.

Tory stock is rising steadily.

GREENLAND CAMPAIGN DIARY. DAY #2

Pvt. Leon has been crying in his bunk for a day and a half because the corned beef in his rat pack was too salty. Pvt. Roberts has been sewn into his sleeping bag by other members of the platoon because he wouldn't stop talking about how a resolution to this conflict could be achieved by liberalising planning regulations in the Greater Nuuk area. Pvt. Malmesbury was captured on patrol by a chalk of US Delta Force operators, they brought him back 10 minutes later under a flag of truce. Efforts to co-ordinate with the local insurgents continue, with Pvt. HYUFD instructing them on how to make Bangalore Torpedoes from fishing rods before he was driven off by a hail of thrown fish heads.

Conditions in the FOB remain habitable despite cold temperatures outside. We are warmed by the immense amounts of IR radiation coming off Cpl. Casino's face after he was issued a rainbow lanyard.

I might shoot them all myself.

Cdr. Dura Ace, Officer Commanding, PB Expeditionary Force, Greenland

Nice ‘n early for today’s Rawnsley:

It is going to be a merciless grapple for supremacy on the right. That is the conclusion I draw from the outpourings of bitterness and bile triggered by the rattery of Robert Jenrick.

“He’s the ultimate careerist and saw his chances of succeeding Badenoch slipping away,” remarks one senior Tory, offering the most widely accepted explanation for his defection. “I’ve put aside my personal ambition,” is the most risibly untrue thing he said last Thursday.

Both his old party and his new one believe they have gained from these events. Mr Farage is calculating that accepting Tories who served in the last government is a price worth paying to compensate for Reform’s glaring lack of ministerial experience, even if their track record is one which he routinely lambasts as a litany of lies and incompetence. Mrs Badenoch’s generally admired handling of the episode has added a dab of lustre to her leadership.

Reform, 10 points ahead of the Tories, reckons it is still in the box seat and expects its claim to be the principal party of opposition to be vindicated with handsome gains in the May elections. Neither the blue corner nor the turquoise one think they have any incentive to parley. “Never!” spits one senior Tory MP. “They’re out to destroy us.” There’s no deal to be done when the fear and loathing is so pronounced. Forget any notions of “uniting the right”. It is going to be mortal combat.

Is the unnamed senior Tory right though? Was it that Jenrick saw his chance of succeeding Kemi slipping away? On Friday morning Jenrick was around 6/4 to be next Conservative leader; any price the rest. Kemi's own stock had risen slightly but Jenrick remained the strong favourite.

Surely the significance is that he saw the Conservatives' chance at the next election slipping away so his route back to power is via Reform and to Number 10 through replacing Nigel Farage.

Same difference, if the point is personal ambition, surely?

The point is he sees Reform winning the election and not the Conservatives.

Good morning, everyone.

I see the moron has decided to place tariffs on allies who don't agree he can unilaterally annex their territory.

It's economic war rather than actual war but with the same effect.

As many pointed out here a year ago, NATO is finished in all but name and Europe needs to start spending to defend Ukraine and (ultimately) itself from Russia.

But I still just don't get why Trump cares about Greenland...

Like I said before, he simply wants the place in the history books as one of the presidents who added a chunk of land to the USA, and probably thinks it will increase his chances of being added to Mount Rushmore. I doubt he cares about the military strategy or even the deeply buried minerals, since it will be many years before he can get any $$$ from them.

trump to Europe: "Give US Greenland or I will make Americans pay more for your goods".

He still seems to think we pay the tariffs rather than the importer.

FTSE100 company and exporter of goods manufactured in Britain to the US, Games Workshop, has absorbed 100% of the cost of tariffs charged on their exports to the US. That represents 2% off their profit margin, averaged over their global sales.

That's less profit returned to investors in dividends, less tax paid to the Exchequer.

The same is true for lots of companies selling goods to the US.

It will depend on the inco terms. Unless DDP then importer pays all duties and tariffs. Most trades to US or out of US, for goods (not services) aren’t DDP.

A commercial decision to reduce prices to offset the tariffs still means the tariff gets paid by the importer (caveat above)

There is also the currency difference to be considered.

Games Workshop stock price is up by over 40% last 12 months. They have had a record year. Warhammer seems popular. If they grow their volume then they can easily make up any lost profit.

GW are opening a Warhammer World in the US in 2027 and already have some of their production over there for the US market. Their exposure to tariffs will be very limited.

They shut down their US production ages ago.

Wargames Atlantic are going to the trouble of shipping moulds back and forth across the Atlantic to do manufacturing on both sides, which I thought was a mad thing no-one would ever do, so perhaps GW will consider it in the future, but they aren't doing it now.

Why ship moulds back and forth ? Why not just make some new ones for local production or if they have multiple sets just transfer some ?

They cannot be their only set. What if they went astray. They’d be screwed.

Also, depending on the size of the moulds, the cost of shipping will be expensive too.

It's getting cheaper to make the moulds but until recently they cost six figures to make each one. GW would spend £7m each year on new moulds and they have a back catalogue going back a couple of decades still in production - so that's more than £100m to duplicate the moulds for a separate production facility in the US.

They have moulds for a couple of thousand different sets of models, though counting them is a bit complicated.

Storing them and ensuring they are maintained too, from my experience.

Surely they would only make duplicate tools for high running volume and as the tools had already been designed once the cost of making a second set would be less expensive than the first and they wouldn’t need to make them all, just the high runners.

Also when they make new tools they could look to refurbish the old tools and transfer them. That’s what I did on a recent project where I sourced some new tools as the old were reaching end of life and we had a budget.

A six figure sum to make a mould. I’ve sourced plenty of injection mould tools in my time. That’s the sort of cost I’d pay for complex interior trim that’s a substantial size with quite a few moving parts and a hot runner. What is involved ?

Tooling really got less expensive in a few phases when it moved from the U.K. to Spain/Portugal then to Eastern Europe and then to the Far East.

Nice ‘n early for today’s Rawnsley:

It is going to be a merciless grapple for supremacy on the right. That is the conclusion I draw from the outpourings of bitterness and bile triggered by the rattery of Robert Jenrick.

“He’s the ultimate careerist and saw his chances of succeeding Badenoch slipping away,” remarks one senior Tory, offering the most widely accepted explanation for his defection. “I’ve put aside my personal ambition,” is the most risibly untrue thing he said last Thursday.

Both his old party and his new one believe they have gained from these events. Mr Farage is calculating that accepting Tories who served in the last government is a price worth paying to compensate for Reform’s glaring lack of ministerial experience, even if their track record is one which he routinely lambasts as a litany of lies and incompetence. Mrs Badenoch’s generally admired handling of the episode has added a dab of lustre to her leadership.

Reform, 10 points ahead of the Tories, reckons it is still in the box seat and expects its claim to be the principal party of opposition to be vindicated with handsome gains in the May elections. Neither the blue corner nor the turquoise one think they have any incentive to parley. “Never!” spits one senior Tory MP. “They’re out to destroy us.” There’s no deal to be done when the fear and loathing is so pronounced. Forget any notions of “uniting the right”. It is going to be mortal combat.

Is the unnamed senior Tory right though? Was it that Jenrick saw his chance of succeeding Kemi slipping away? On Friday morning Jenrick was around 6/4 to be next Conservative leader; any price the rest. Kemi's own stock had risen slightly but Jenrick remained the strong favourite.

Surely the significance is that he saw the Conservatives' chance at the next election slipping away so his route back to power is via Reform and to Number 10 through replacing Nigel Farage.