Darren Jones openly admits to him that the tariffs at 10% ARE a Brexit dividend
I had a lot of time for Darren Jones, however you have just proved he is a stupid as the rest of them.
Being done over by Trump to the tune of 10% instead of 20% does not correspond to a win to compensate for losing frictionless trade with the our largest trading partner. This does not constitute a Brexit win.
Our steelworks, JLR factories and Scotch whisky distilleries are still being closed or mothballed. So I'll give you that similarity with Brexit.
I was surprised Darren Jones so openly declared it a Brexit dividend, but I would suggest to Labour supporters that Starmer, Reeves, and the cabinet are moving to worldwide trade deals at a pace that would be impressive if Starmer was a conservative PM
Remember we had comprehensive reciprocal trade deals across the World as part of the EU. It is interesting as Starmer is sending trade missions to St Kitts and Nevis, Canada and Mexico are looking for comprehensive agreements with the EU to counteract Trump.
The answer in this dramatic changed environment is for all countries including the EU to enter into mutually beneficial trade and security arrangements
The question is do we have the leaders to achieve this and in the process sideline the US, as no matter how long Trump is in office the US are no longer trustworthy
Most Lords have achieved success in business, law, academia, the media, science, sport, culture, education, religion, politics etc. Even if the success of some like Spielman is debatable.
Having an appointed second chamber also often leads to better debates focused on the facts not point scoring as is often the case in the elected Commons. Focused on revising not making legislation
No they haven't. Buying former Prime Ministers lunch, lending them the keys to a holiday home, or in other cases running rabid right wing think tanks would get the gig.
ON topic - some will say it’s unfair to judge the House of Lords by the calibre of its members. That’s like judging Glastonbury by the state of the toilets—technically accurate, but missing the point. The Lords isn’t there to lead or innovate or represent. It’s there to exist, immovably, like a stately ghost with an expense account.
And in that spectral drawing room of ceremonial irrelevance, Amanda Spielman isn’t a misfit—she’s practically furniture. The kind that insists you remove your shoes before sitting, quotes Ofsted reports at dinner, and still believes phonics can fix poverty. Her critics cry foul, but that’s only because they haven’t realised the game was abandoned mid-play decades ago.
Look at the recent appointments. We’ve gone from bishops and war heroes to whatever floated past a minister’s WhatsApp at 2am. One minute you’re at a party holding a tray of canapés; the next, you’re Baroness Vol-au-Vent of Southwark. Spielman, at least, has the distinction of failing upwards in a recognisable direction—education, that most British of oxymorons.
So let’s not clutch our pearls. Let’s hand her the ermine, the title, the right to nap through bills on cybercrime. She belongs. Not despite her record—but because of it. In a chamber increasingly defined by its theatrical pointlessness, her appointment is less a scandal and more a reassuring reminder: the great British tradition of rewarding confident mediocrity is alive and well.
Any group of people you appoint to the House of Lords will have disadvantages. Ex MPs can make the chamber political, business people can encourage donation cronyism, celebrities can have too much other stuff going on, worthy charity types can be out of their depth in the legislative process. My view is that we should decide what we want the Lords to do and have an open application process overseen by an independent commission.
It seems then discussion of the Trump tariff policy (which has nothing to do with us leaving the EU) is framed in the context of us leaving the EU.
The stock market perturbations aren't irrelevant inasmuch as they set the economic mood music - they are obviously relevant to those who have stocks. It's been faintly amusing to see Conservatives and Reform supporters tying themselves in knots over this but it's another form of economic imperialism I suppose.
Oddly enough, there are a few silver linings - falling oil prices should reduce costs and there are clear signs interest rates may fall later in the year. Both will be welcome as ways of bringing down inflation and perhaps getting some growth going.
Darren Jones openly admits to him that the tariffs at 10% ARE a Brexit dividend
I had a lot of time for Darren Jones, however you have just proved he is a stupid as the rest of them.
Being done over by Trump to the tune of 10% instead of 20% does not correspond to a win to compensate for losing frictionless trade with the our largest trading partner. This does not constitute a Brexit win.
Our steelworks, JLR factories and Scotch whisky distilleries are still being closed or mothballed. So I'll give you that similarity with Brexit.
I was surprised Darren Jones so openly declared it a Brexit dividend, but I would suggest to Labour supporters that Starmer, Reeves, and the cabinet are moving to worldwide trade deals at a pace that would be impressive if Starmer was a conservative PM
Remember we had comprehensive reciprocal trade deals across the World as part of the EU. It is interesting as Starmer is sending trade missions to St Kitts and Nevis, Canada and Mexico are looking for comprehensive agreements with the EU to counteract Trump.
Seems to me that the EU simply could not countenance the kind of relationship this country wants to have with it, but once it has gone the long way round and established that kind of relationship with other, farther off countries, the way may be open for the UK to have something similar. Depends how long their resentment lasts, I suppose.
It's feeling a bit like post-2016 Alasatir Meeks this morning on here with his regular articles entitled - and I paraphrase only slightly - 'leavers are dreadful oiks, barely human, and I simply loathe them'.
Really, people voted Trump becauae the perceived the alternative as worse. That'sall there is to it. Trump was seen as less out of touch and less extreme than the Democrats. This article, written after his win in 2016, is still relevant - I think it provudes one of the best explanations I've read of the mindset ofTrump voters - written by an urban Dem but one from, and sympathetic to, red America.
Can't help feeling that the HoL is an ever more useless and pointless institution that we really need to get rid of. Does Spielman's appointment change that, even at the margins? Not really. She is indeed pretty typical of the non entities that fill the benches there to so little purpose. Labour missed a trick with their petty attack at the hereditaries, they should have been much bolder. But then, that's really Starmer all over, isn't it?
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
I wonder if this makes the possibility of a few individual trade deals more likely.
Trump needs to show he is behaving reasonably and practically, even if he isn't.
Most Lords have achieved success in business, law, academia, the media, science, sport, culture, education, religion, politics etc. Even if the success of some like Spielman is debatable.
Having an appointed second chamber also often leads to better debates focused on the facts not point scoring as is often the case in the elected Commons. Focused on revising not making legislation
I think it would be helpful if we could unlink the appointed second chamber with the honours system. Too often the main motivation for giving someone a peerage is to recognise their achievement or reward their service rather than because they'll make a good member of the second chamber. We could have chamber peerages which come with a 10 year seat in the Lords and ceremonial peerages which just have the title
It's feeling a bit like post-2016 Alasatir Meeks this morning on here with his regular articles entitled - and I paraphrase only slightly - 'leavers are dreadful oiks, barely human, and I simply loathe them'.
Really, people voted Trump becauae the perceived the alternative as worse. That'sall there is to it. Trump was seen as less out of touch and less extreme than the Democrats. This article, written after his win in 2016, is still relevant - I think it provudes one of the best explanations I've read of the mindset ofTrump voters - written by an urban Dem but one from, and sympathetic to, red America.
People who vote ways that you don't are not,by and large, comic book villains and you don't really understand much by treating them as such.
That's true, but it can be hard when Trump and co are so deliberately crass and offensive. Id say it was an act to distract us by being nasty all the time, but i fear they just revel in being unpleasant, another joy they find from being poweful.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
Sadly my standard Lords reform proposal to prevent ex-MPs and any political donors from getting peerages would not prevent the friends of the 'right' people such as Spielman from getting in.
And whether failure is rewarded with ermine or not, it does seem the case that failure is rewarded in general. Hold a prominent position and even if you are a complete duffer you will get another great post because, well, you held the last one. So just get your foot in the door and all will be well. Like total business failures and fraudsters who inexplicably still manage to become super wealthy after being exposed because somehow losingmillions or even billions still imbues you with the aura of success. Jordan Belfort is still very very wealthy for example.
Having worked around the House of Lords for years I think that ex MPs actually make the most effective Peers. They know the legislative process, are willing to serve on Committees, actually show up and put work in. It's the celebrities and business people who get given peerages that are the waste of space.
I get that but i still think there should be a gap before appointment.
Otherwise it just becomes an expected retirement option, or reward, and although im sure they try they dont adjust mentally to the different role because they never even stopped for a second.
Id be willing to go 5 years or one term, solely to give them a period of political reflection and to demonstrate they still have something to offer.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
I think most want a realignment of nations across the globe, but it will take years and do we have the leaders capable of such a dramatic change ?
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
I wonder if this makes the possibility of a few individual trade deals more likely.
Trump needs to show he is behaving reasonably and practically, even if he isn't.
The House of Unelected Has-Beens is the world's only Upper Chamber (in Bicameral parliaments) with MORE members than its corresponding Lower Chamber.
We hear that fact from people a lot, but i never really get why.
I would agree there are too many and propose ways to reduce it, but just because its the norm is there an inherent problem with an upper chamber being larger?
What is the right number and why? Is the issue actually no set maximum, lifetime appointments which seems more substantive a complaint. Or is the high number open to abuse in any appointed system? Would, say, 700 be fine if elected?
That is a really poor article. The author is claiming universal VAT (which also applies to domestic goods) and universal import duties equate to Trump's tariffs. Don't the US already levy import taxes?
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
I think most want a realignment of nations across the globe, but it will take years and do we have the leaders capable of such a dramatic change ?
The realignment seems like it involves regional powers having free rein in their spheres of influence and a reversion to acceptance of wars on conquest
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
I think most want a realignment of nations across the globe, but it will take years and do we have the leaders capable of such a dramatic change ?
Oddly enough, realignments can happen very quickly - look at 1989 when Eastern Europe aligned itself away from Moscow toward the West, happened in a few weeks.
That is a really poor article. The author is claiming universal VAT (which also applies to domestic goods) and universal import duties equate to Trump's tariffs. Don't the US already levy import taxes?
I’m assuming on Trump’s skewed logic US state sales taxes are also tariffs?
Sadly my standard Lords reform proposal to prevent ex-MPs and any political donors from getting peerages would not prevent the friends of the 'right' people such as Spielman from getting in.
And whether failure is rewarded with ermine or not, it does seem the case that failure is rewarded in general. Hold a prominent position and even if you are a complete duffer you will get another great post because, well, you held the last one. So just get your foot in the door and all will be well. Like total business failures and fraudsters who inexplicably still manage to become super wealthy after being exposed because somehow losingmillions or even billions still imbues you with the aura of success. Jordan Belfort is still very very wealthy for example.
Having worked around the House of Lords for years I think that ex MPs actually make the most effective Peers. They know the legislative process, are willing to serve on Committees, actually show up and put work in. It's the celebrities and business people who get given peerages that are the waste of space.
I get that but i still think there should be a gap before appointment.
Otherwise it just becomes an expected retirement option, or reward, and although im sure they try they dont adjust mentally to the different role because they never even stopped for a second.
Id be willing to go 5 years or one term, solely to give them a period of political reflection and to demonstrate they still have something to offer.
Most Lords have achieved success in business, law, academia, the media, science, sport, culture, education, religion, politics etc. Even if the success of some like Spielman is debatable.
Having an appointed second chamber also often leads to better debates focused on the facts not point scoring as is often the case in the elected Commons. Focused on revising not making legislation
I think it would be helpful if we could unlink the appointed second chamber with the honours system. Too often the main motivation for giving someone a peerage is to recognise their achievement or reward their service rather than because they'll make a good member of the second chamber. We could have chamber peerages which come with a 10 year seat in the Lords and ceremonial peerages which just have the title
I think that makes sense to a degree. In a sense we had that with most hereditary lords no longer sat in the house of peers.
Its also why whilst honours should not (but totally are) bought and sold, selling peerages is much more troublesome given the implicit power a peer has, albeit in a relatively limited way per individual.
That is a really poor article. The author is claiming universal VAT (which also applies to domestic goods) and universal import duties equate to Trump's tariffs. Don't the US already levy import taxes?
I’m assuming on Trump’s skewed logic US state sales tax are also tariffs?
After seeing how he calculates 'tariffs' anything is possible.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
I think most want a realignment of nations across the globe, but it will take years and do we have the leaders capable of such a dramatic change ?
Oddly enough, realignments can happen very quickly - look at 1989 when Eastern Europe aligned itself away from Moscow toward the West, happened in a few weeks.
The next realignment seems unlikely to be so positive.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
I think most want a realignment of nations across the globe, but it will take years and do we have the leaders capable of such a dramatic change ?
It may be quicker than you, or I, think.
Mr Trump burnt down the USA's international accumulated political capital in a fortnight, burnt down his relationships with allies of a century in a month, and has gone a long way to destroying democracy and the rule of law in the USA itself in about 6-8 weeks.
Now he's well on the way to killing their science base, and has perhaps hard wired in a recession beyond the 1930s.
And he has a significant closed-up company of supporters and cheerleaders running him off the cliff.
It may be quick, but may not emerge at the surface - I'm guessing that everyone is playing a double game of substance and marketing. Needs must and the devil drives.
That is a really poor article. The author is claiming universal VAT (which also applies to domestic goods) and universal import duties equate to Trump's tariffs. Don't the US already levy import taxes?
I’m assuming on Trump’s skewed logic US state sales tax are also tariffs?
After seeing how he calculates 'tariffs' anything is possible.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
I think most want a realignment of nations across the globe, but it will take years and do we have the leaders capable of such a dramatic change ?
It may be quicker than you think.
Mr Trump burnt down the USA's international accumulated political capital in a fortnight, burnt down his relationships with allies of a century in a month, and has gone a long way to destroying democracy and the rule of law in the USA itself in about 6-8 weeks.
Now he's well on the way to killing their science base, and has perhaps hard wired in a recession beyond the 1930s.
On today's topics, I've always been in favour of an elected HoL, on a regional basis and by PR. I've come to think that members should have quite a long term..... say ten years, and be eligible for re-election once only, although maybe if they miss a term they should be allowed to try again.
On the question of response to the Orange Septic I remain of the opinion that 'waiting and seeing' for another week or so is the best policy. And then it will turn out that rolling with the punch and living with the tariff we have will be best, as I suspect that the American Congress will get into it's own fight with the President.
ON topic - some will say it’s unfair to judge the House of Lords by the calibre of its members. That’s like judging Glastonbury by the state of the toilets—technically accurate, but missing the point. The Lords isn’t there to lead or innovate or represent. It’s there to exist, immovably, like a stately ghost with an expense account.
And in that spectral drawing room of ceremonial irrelevance, Amanda Spielman isn’t a misfit—she’s practically furniture. The kind that insists you remove your shoes before sitting, quotes Ofsted reports at dinner, and still believes phonics can fix poverty. Her critics cry foul, but that’s only because they haven’t realised the game was abandoned mid-play decades ago.
Look at the recent appointments. We’ve gone from bishops and war heroes to whatever floated past a minister’s WhatsApp at 2am. One minute you’re at a party holding a tray of canapés; the next, you’re Baroness Vol-au-Vent of Southwark. Spielman, at least, has the distinction of failing upwards in a recognisable direction—education, that most British of oxymorons.
So let’s not clutch our pearls. Let’s hand her the ermine, the title, the right to nap through bills on cybercrime. She belongs. Not despite her record—but because of it. In a chamber increasingly defined by its theatrical pointlessness, her appointment is less a scandal and more a reassuring reminder: the great British tradition of rewarding confident mediocrity is alive and well.
I have been writing numerous headers and posts on here about the mediocrity of so much of our governing class for years, rewards for failures, how many of the useless gits get shoved into the Lords and even why it was unfair to expect Welby to resign when he was just following in this great British tradition. And I don't even get a hat-tip.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
I think most want a realignment of nations across the globe, but it will take years and do we have the leaders capable of such a dramatic change ?
Oddly enough, realignments can happen very quickly - look at 1989 when Eastern Europe aligned itself away from Moscow toward the West, happened in a few weeks.
The next realignment seems unlikely to be so positive.
It's hard to know - you could argue the re-alignment of European nations in the late 19th century didn't end well for the continent but the re-alignment post 1945 has served us pretty well.
UK's former chief trade negotiations until a few months ago, Sir Crawford Falconer, has just suggested on Sky that an agreement with the EU and CPTPP would sideline Trump and create an enormous trading block
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
I think most want a realignment of nations across the globe, but it will take years and do we have the leaders capable of such a dramatic change ?
It may be quicker than you think.
Mr Trump burnt down the USA's international accumulated political capital in a fortnight, burnt down his relationships with allies of a century in a month, and has gone a long way to destroying democracy and the rule of law in the USA itself in about 6-8 weeks.
Now he's well on the way to killing their science base, and has perhaps hard wired in a recession beyond the 1930s.
Not really related but a reply on that thread about people expecting too much evidence due to tv (the csi effect) and a common follow up.
also the idea that circumstance evidence = weak evidence. No! A strong chain of circumstantial evidence is about as strong as you can get for e.g. murder short of discovering the perpetrator either in the act or in the possession of a collection of trophies and a detailed diary.
That is a really poor article. The author is claiming universal VAT (which also applies to domestic goods) and universal import duties equate to Trump's tariffs. Don't the US already levy import taxes?
Vat is counted as a tariff by MAGAs because with domestically produced goods you can claim back the VAT on the whole production chain, whereas on imports the foreign producers can't claim it back on their costs. Or something like that.
ON topic - some will say it’s unfair to judge the House of Lords by the calibre of its members. That’s like judging Glastonbury by the state of the toilets—technically accurate, but missing the point. The Lords isn’t there to lead or innovate or represent. It’s there to exist, immovably, like a stately ghost with an expense account.
And in that spectral drawing room of ceremonial irrelevance, Amanda Spielman isn’t a misfit—she’s practically furniture. The kind that insists you remove your shoes before sitting, quotes Ofsted reports at dinner, and still believes phonics can fix poverty. Her critics cry foul, but that’s only because they haven’t realised the game was abandoned mid-play decades ago.
Look at the recent appointments. We’ve gone from bishops and war heroes to whatever floated past a minister’s WhatsApp at 2am. One minute you’re at a party holding a tray of canapés; the next, you’re Baroness Vol-au-Vent of Southwark. Spielman, at least, has the distinction of failing upwards in a recognisable direction—education, that most British of oxymorons.
So let’s not clutch our pearls. Let’s hand her the ermine, the title, the right to nap through bills on cybercrime. She belongs. Not despite her record—but because of it. In a chamber increasingly defined by its theatrical pointlessness, her appointment is less a scandal and more a reassuring reminder: the great British tradition of rewarding confident mediocrity is alive and well.
I have been writing numerous headers and posts on here about the mediocrity of so much of our governing class for years, rewards for failures, how many of the useless gits get shoved into the Lords and even why it was unfair to expect Welby to resign when he was just following in this great British tradition. And I don't even get a hat-tip.
😡
So my photo of the day -
A better point i could not have made myself...but i could borrow it.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
I think most want a realignment of nations across the globe, but it will take years and do we have the leaders capable of such a dramatic change ?
Oddly enough, realignments can happen very quickly - look at 1989 when Eastern Europe aligned itself away from Moscow toward the West, happened in a few weeks.
The next realignment seems unlikely to be so positive.
It's hard to know - you could argue the re-alignment of European nations in the late 19th century didn't end well for the continent but the re-alignment post 1945 has served us pretty well.
Were you happy with the situation 1945-90 (or thereabouts) in Eastern Europe?
'... Precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.'
True of Trump, and before we get too sniffy, equally true of Brexit.
I suspect it may well prove true again in respect of Reform, but we'll see,
Disagree with this.
Plenty of Trump and Brexit supporters voted at least not caring if they would be poorer as long as it sent a message to the libs, not just a precious few.
What would be true is enough Trump and Brexit voters would have switched had they known they would be poorer to ensure that neither could have succeeded electorally.
Was it that that slice of the Brexit/Trump vote didn't care about getting poorer, or that they didn't believe it was possible? In which case, they were sadly mistaken.
In the case of Brexit, there were a lot of supporters who were so comfortable (retired homeowners) that they could afford to send a cultural message. But they needed the downtrodden and desperate slice of the electorate to get to 52%.
This oversimplifies a complex situation. The impossible aspect of the 2016 referendum was that the EU was too many things. It was both a very excellent trade and customs association but also an ever closer political union.
IMHO most people wanted the first, and most people didn't want the second. And this I suggest is true of loads of people on both sides who felt they had to pretend otherwise.
Only Brexit, followed by a Swiss/Norway type deal offered a reasonable balance between the two. This is still the case and should be pursued expeditiously.
This applies across the board.
It's why the weakest argument against any independence movement is "you'll be worse off economically", because economics is not what drives arguments in favour of independence.
At it's most extreme, take someone like Ona Judge, who was a household slave who escaped George Washington's family, to live poor, but free. To a modern economist, that was an irrational choice, as she would have been better off, in material terms, as a slave to the Washingtons than as a free black woman (and that was a point she conceded in interviews).
It's simply that material comfort is not the only thing that matters to people - of all political persuasions.
A more extreme and common version is how "liberators" of countries are revered even after their disastrous peacetime leadership has cost prosperity and even millions of lives. Mao in China, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Stalin (and even now, Putin) in Russia, to name but three or four.
There is still argument about whether the war of 1870 (which he started) killed 60% of the Paraguayan population or more. We know the death rate for men was so high that the Catholic Church allowed multiple women to live with one man, afterwards.
This is an unusually articulate header by @rcs1000
It has a certain prose-style, that I recognise. Almost as if he got serious assistance in the writing from somewhere else. Indeed I am sure he did
I don't know, it seems to be a more polished version of his below-the-line style.
Alistaire Cooke (letter from America) when asked to describe his writing style said 'I try to avoid adverbs and adjectives whenever possible' On thast basis it scores well.
This seems to me to be quite informative about the orientation of JD Vance. It's a rebuttal of the Washington Consensus, and I think middle income countries will have something to say about that.
Vance explains that "the idea of globalization was that rich countries would move further up the value chain while the poor countries made the simpler things."
But he laments that it didn't quite work out this way: as he explains it turns out that poor countries (mostly China) didn't want to just remain cheap labor forever and started moving up the value chain themselves. Which is why, according to him, globalization was a failure.
Meaning that the objective of globalization wasn't to reduce global inequalities but very much to maintain them, to institute a system of permanent economic hierarchy where rich countries would maintain their hold over the most profitable sectors while relegating poor countries to perpetual subordination in lower-value production. https://x.com/walshrac/status/1902634536283901963
Sadly my standard Lords reform proposal to prevent ex-MPs and any political donors from getting peerages would not prevent the friends of the 'right' people such as Spielman from getting in.
And whether failure is rewarded with ermine or not, it does seem the case that failure is rewarded in general. Hold a prominent position and even if you are a complete duffer you will get another great post because, well, you held the last one. So just get your foot in the door and all will be well. Like total business failures and fraudsters who inexplicably still manage to become super wealthy after being exposed because somehow losingmillions or even billions still imbues you with the aura of success. Jordan Belfort is still very very wealthy for example.
Having worked around the House of Lords for years I think that ex MPs actually make the most effective Peers. They know the legislative process, are willing to serve on Committees, actually show up and put work in. It's the celebrities and business people who get given peerages that are the waste of space.
Serious question: what is your impression of the various Bishops as effective HoL members?
I've always noted that they have been very modest with expenses, and noted occasional effective initiatives, but have never observed them working there.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
I wonder if this makes the possibility of a few individual trade deals more likely.
Trump needs to show he is behaving reasonably and practically, even if he isn't.
This is an unusually articulate header by @rcs1000
It has a certain prose-style, that I recognise. Almost as if he got serious assistance in the writing from somewhere else. Indeed I am sure he did
I don't know, it seems to be a more polished version of his below-the-line style.
Alistaire Cooke (letter from America) when asked to describe his writing style said 'I try to avoid adverbs and adjectives whenever possible' On thast basis it scores well.
Orwell’s 6 Rules
From “Politics and the English Language”
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
5 is a bit nationalist (a facet of his character to which Orwell seemed entirely oblivious).
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
I wonder if this makes the possibility of a few individual trade deals more likely.
Trump needs to show he is behaving reasonably and practically, even if he isn't.
Will Trump notice that this deal (Vietnam and the US entering into a free trade deal) won’t achieve his claimed desired outcome (the US no longer having a trade deficit with Vietnam; and/or the US being able to drop taxes because of tariff income)?
Israel really seems to have gone a bit mental. Presumably these are two Labour MPs who are not Labour Friends of Israel and therefore have not accepted the Israeli dollar (shekel). I’m sure Bibi is quaking in his boots after facing the watery wrath of David Lammy.
Kemi Badenoch has said she agrees with the Israeli decision. What a foolsh thing to do. All her MPs will now be asked if they agree with her. I'd be surprised if even Farage would step into that rabbit hole
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
I'm not sure. He's as bull-headed as he is foolish.
When Mr Chump did it first time around - in I think 2018 - they did not come significantly back down again until Mr Biden was in.
(I can't easily find a graph of average tariff rate over time with a clear scale.)
I don't think he will do so voluntarily.
But Congress is probably about to rediscover its purpose. Not its spine; but there comes a point when fear of the electorate overtakes fear of the regime.
That's the problem with disorganised aspirant autocrats. They overreach.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
I wonder if this makes the possibility of a few individual trade deals more likely.
Trump needs to show he is behaving reasonably and practically, even if he isn't.
Will Trump notice that this deal (Vietnam and the US entering into a free trade deal) won’t achieve his claimed desired outcome (the US no longer having a trade deficit with Vietnam; and/or the US being able to drop taxes because of tariff income)?
Do you think he cares about anything other than the win ?
This week we will turbocharge plans that will improve our domestic competitiveness, so we’re less exposed to these kinds of global shocks. We’re building resilience, making Britain a tapestry of thriving economies, maximising local skills, talents and opportunities. Creating wealth in every corner and delivering security for everyone, everywhere. National renewal will take the skills and talents of us all.
We stand ready to use industrial policy to help shelter British business from the storm. Some people may feel uncomfortable about this – the idea the state should intervene directly to shape the market has often been derided. But we simply cannot cling on to old sentiments when the world is turning this fast.
The prime minister will declare an end to globalisation and admit that it has failed millions of voters as the fallout from President Trump’s tariffs reverberates around the world.
A Downing Street official said: “Trump has done something that we don’t agree with but there’s a reason why people are behind him on this. The world has changed, globalisation is over and we are now in a new era. We’ve got to demonstrate that our approach, a more active Labour government, a more reformist government, can provide the answers for people in every part of this country.”
In the meantime Starmer is taking the benefit of Brexit by prioritising trade deals with the US, India and Australia
How is Starmer's post Brexit "deal" with the US going? Ten percent on all imports from the UK compared to zip in the other direction.
The art of the deal.
Well it seems Darren Jones on Sky confirms it is a Brexit divided
And you do not mention the 20% on the EU
"He is hurting us less than the other guy" does not make it free trade. Somebody who is imposing tariffs on the UK is not interested in free trade.
So given we apply tariffs to US goods coming into the U.K. presumably we’re not interested in free trade either ?
One can be interested in free trade while still having other concerns and wanting reciprocity. The test of whether the UK is interested in free trade with the US, and vice versa, is whether we’re moving towards lower tariffs.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
I wonder if this makes the possibility of a few individual trade deals more likely.
Trump needs to show he is behaving reasonably and practically, even if he isn't.
It is, however, worth noting that countries that did previously have 0% tariffs with the US, like Canada and Australia, have also been smacked with major tariffs, and also that there are additional tariffs (on autos and metals) that would also be applied.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
I wonder if this makes the possibility of a few individual trade deals more likely.
Trump needs to show he is behaving reasonably and practically, even if he isn't.
In the meantime Starmer is taking the benefit of Brexit by prioritising trade deals with the US, India and Australia
How is Starmer's post Brexit "deal" with the US going? Ten percent on all imports from the UK compared to zip in the other direction.
The art of the deal.
Well it seems Darren Jones on Sky confirms it is a Brexit divided
And you do not mention the 20% on the EU
"He is hurting us less than the other guy" does not make it free trade. Somebody who is imposing tariffs on the UK is not interested in free trade.
So given we apply tariffs to US goods coming into the U.K. presumably we’re not interested in free trade either ?
One can be interested in free trade while still having other concerns and wanting reciprocity. The test of whether the UK is interested in free trade with the US, and vice versa, is whether we’re moving towards lower tariffs.
So we’re interested but not interested enough to do anything about it.
Let’s see what happens.
I reckon we should just get rid of them and see what happens. Call his bluff.
Anyway EDF have awarded us with free electricity from 8.00am to noon today so the washing machine, dishwasher and dryer are working overtime !!!!!
The Net Zero programme working the way it should, then. The more solar panels and wind farms, the more frequent these events will be.
Someone should point this out to the Leader of the Opposition. And to the other leader of the opposition.
It's funny how BigG was celebrating an easing of Net Zero on the last thread even as he enjoys the bounty of plentiful green energy. We're down at only 2GW gas at the moment on a relatively still day, thanks to 3GW from our closest ally France and 7GW from solar.
The House of Unelected Has-Beens is the world's only Upper Chamber (in Bicameral parliaments) with MORE members than its corresponding Lower Chamber.
We hear that fact from people a lot, but i never really get why.
I would agree there are too many and propose ways to reduce it, but just because its the norm is there an inherent problem with an upper chamber being larger?
What is the right number and why? Is the issue actually no set maximum, lifetime appointments which seems more substantive a complaint. Or is the high number open to abuse in any appointed system? Would, say, 700 be fine if elected?
What drives the numbers in the Lords is lifetime appointment and attempts to fix imbalances in the Lords by appointing more Lords of a different political stripe. So, sure, the large size is a symptom, not the root cause of the problems.
The UK also has a very large lower house. That’s a reaction to the disproportionality of FPTP. A bigger house compensates to a degree for that.
What is the right number? One can observe that many legislatures follow a rough cube root law: their size is (or is proportional to) the cube root of the population.
It's feeling a bit like post-2016 Alasatir Meeks this morning on here with his regular articles entitled - and I paraphrase only slightly - 'leavers are dreadful oiks, barely human, and I simply loathe them'.
Israel really seems to have gone a bit mental. Presumably these are two Labour MPs who are not Labour Friends of Israel and therefore have not accepted the Israeli dollar (shekel). I’m sure Bibi is quaking in his boots after facing the watery wrath of David Lammy.
Kemi Badenoch has said she agrees with the Israeli decision. What a foolsh thing to do. All her MPs will now be asked if they agree with her. I'd be surprised if even Farage would step into that rabbit hole
Surely any country is able to refuse entry to any foreign citizen, for whatever reason.
This seems to me to be quite informative about the orientation of JD Vance. It's a rebuttal of the Washington Consensus, and I think middle income countries will have something to say about that.
Vance explains that "the idea of globalization was that rich countries would move further up the value chain while the poor countries made the simpler things."
But he laments that it didn't quite work out this way: as he explains it turns out that poor countries (mostly China) didn't want to just remain cheap labor forever and started moving up the value chain themselves. Which is why, according to him, globalization was a failure.
Meaning that the objective of globalization wasn't to reduce global inequalities but very much to maintain them, to institute a system of permanent economic hierarchy where rich countries would maintain their hold over the most profitable sectors while relegating poor countries to perpetual subordination in lower-value production. https://x.com/walshrac/status/1902634536283901963
The problem with that plan, assuming that was the plan, was that the people of other countries were as intelligent, potentially as educated, likely as hard working and certainly cheaper to employ as those in western countries.
It was inevitable that the level of their production they would be able to do would steadily increase in value.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
I think most want a realignment of nations across the globe, but it will take years and do we have the leaders capable of such a dramatic change ?
Oddly enough, realignments can happen very quickly - look at 1989 when Eastern Europe aligned itself away from Moscow toward the West, happened in a few weeks.
More like several months, over 1989 and into early 1990… but, yes, that is still quick.
Israel really seems to have gone a bit mental. Presumably these are two Labour MPs who are not Labour Friends of Israel and therefore have not accepted the Israeli dollar (shekel). I’m sure Bibi is quaking in his boots after facing the watery wrath of David Lammy.
Kemi Badenoch has said she agrees with the Israeli decision. What a foolsh thing to do. All her MPs will now be asked if they agree with her. I'd be surprised if even Farage would step into that rabbit hole
Surely any country is able to refuse entry to any foreign citizen, for whatever reason.
So we should also send back any Israeli politician from Netanyahu’s party as they are genocide supporters .
Israel really seems to have gone a bit mental. Presumably these are two Labour MPs who are not Labour Friends of Israel and therefore have not accepted the Israeli dollar (shekel). I’m sure Bibi is quaking in his boots after facing the watery wrath of David Lammy.
Kemi Badenoch has said she agrees with the Israeli decision. What a foolsh thing to do. All her MPs will now be asked if they agree with her. I'd be surprised if even Farage would step into that rabbit hole
Surely any country is able to refuse entry to any foreign citizen, for whatever reason.
Of course they're able to. But as half the Labour Party are 'friends of Israel' and the two women are British Labour MPs it's an extremely foolish thing to do. More so as they belong to the governing party. But as Israel have been shooting themselves in the foot for so long it won't surprise many people.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
I wonder if this makes the possibility of a few individual trade deals more likely.
Trump needs to show he is behaving reasonably and practically, even if he isn't.
Will Trump notice that this deal (Vietnam and the US entering into a free trade deal) won’t achieve his claimed desired outcome (the US no longer having a trade deficit with Vietnam; and/or the US being able to drop taxes because of tariff income)?
Do you think he cares about anything other than the win ?
You’re right: no, he doesn’t. Nevertheless, the internal inconsistencies may catch up with him.
Anyway EDF have awarded us with free electricity from 8.00am to noon today so the washing machine, dishwasher and dryer are working overtime !!!!!
The Net Zero programme working the way it should, then. The more solar panels and wind farms, the more frequent these events will be.
Someone should point this out to the Leader of the Opposition. And to the other leader of the opposition.
It's funny how BigG was celebrating an easing of Net Zero on the last thread even as he enjoys the bounty of plentiful green energy. We're down at only 2GW gas at the moment on a relatively still day, thanks to 3GW from our closest ally France and 7GW from solar.
This is an unusually articulate header by @rcs1000
It has a certain prose-style, that I recognise. Almost as if he got serious assistance in the writing from somewhere else. Indeed I am sure he did
I don't know, it seems to be a more polished version of his below-the-line style.
Alistaire Cooke (letter from America) when asked to describe his writing style said 'I try to avoid adverbs and adjectives whenever possible' On thast basis it scores well.
You are too dim to recognise what is right in front of you
'... Precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.'
True of Trump, and before we get too sniffy, equally true of Brexit.
I suspect it may well prove true again in respect of Reform, but we'll see,
Disagree with this.
Plenty of Trump and Brexit supporters voted at least not caring if they would be poorer as long as it sent a message to the libs, not just a precious few.
What would be true is enough Trump and Brexit voters would have switched had they known they would be poorer to ensure that neither could have succeeded electorally.
Was it that that slice of the Brexit/Trump vote didn't care about getting poorer, or that they didn't believe it was possible? In which case, they were sadly mistaken.
In the case of Brexit, there were a lot of supporters who were so comfortable (retired homeowners) that they could afford to send a cultural message. But they needed the downtrodden and desperate slice of the electorate to get to 52%.
This oversimplifies a complex situation. The impossible aspect of the 2016 referendum was that the EU was too many things. It was both a very excellent trade and customs association but also an ever closer political union.
IMHO most people wanted the first, and most people didn't want the second. And this I suggest is true of loads of people on both sides who felt they had to pretend otherwise.
Only Brexit, followed by a Swiss/Norway type deal offered a reasonable balance between the two. This is still the case and should be pursued expeditiously.
This applies across the board.
It's why the weakest argument against any independence movement is "you'll be worse off economically", because economics is not what drives arguments in favour of independence.
At it's most extreme, take someone like Ona Judge, who was a household slave who escaped George Washington's family, to live poor, but free. To a modern economist, that was an irrational choice, as she would have been better off, in material terms, as a slave to the Washingtons than as a free black woman (and that was a point she conceded in interviews).
It's simply that material comfort is not the only thing that matters to people - of all political persuasions.
That hardly applies to the tariff issue, though. Which is purely economic at base.
In the meantime Starmer is taking the benefit of Brexit by prioritising trade deals with the US, India and Australia
How is Starmer's post Brexit "deal" with the US going? Ten percent on all imports from the UK compared to zip in the other direction.
The art of the deal.
Well it seems Darren Jones on Sky confirms it is a Brexit divided
And you do not mention the 20% on the EU
"He is hurting us less than the other guy" does not make it free trade. Somebody who is imposing tariffs on the UK is not interested in free trade.
So given we apply tariffs to US goods coming into the U.K. presumably we’re not interested in free trade either ?
One can be interested in free trade while still having other concerns and wanting reciprocity. The test of whether the UK is interested in free trade with the US, and vice versa, is whether we’re moving towards lower tariffs.
So we’re interested but not interested enough to do anything about it.
Let’s see what happens.
I reckon we should just get rid of them and see what happens. Call his bluff.
As you noted in another post, Trump wants a win. That implies we should negotiate something that looks like a win to him, which might involve dropping our tariffs. Just dropping them unilaterally might not work, however. Where’s the leverage in a future negotiation if we’ve already dropped them?
The other issue is that there are trade barriers other than tariffs. Trump has said he wants the UK to drop food safety standards. I can see resistance to doing that from UK consumers.
Israel really seems to have gone a bit mental. Presumably these are two Labour MPs who are not Labour Friends of Israel and therefore have not accepted the Israeli dollar (shekel). I’m sure Bibi is quaking in his boots after facing the watery wrath of David Lammy.
Kemi Badenoch has said she agrees with the Israeli decision. What a foolsh thing to do. All her MPs will now be asked if they agree with her. I'd be surprised if even Farage would step into that rabbit hole
Surely any country is able to refuse entry to any foreign citizen, for whatever reason.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
I wonder if this makes the possibility of a few individual trade deals more likely.
Trump needs to show he is behaving reasonably and practically, even if he isn't.
Between the rest of the world, absolutely. Which doesn't help the IS.
Trump will readily get deals with countries that don't matter. But unless he backs down, China appears ready to take him on.
And they are perhaps better prepared for the confrontation than is the US.
Israel really seems to have gone a bit mental. Presumably these are two Labour MPs who are not Labour Friends of Israel and therefore have not accepted the Israeli dollar (shekel). I’m sure Bibi is quaking in his boots after facing the watery wrath of David Lammy.
Kemi Badenoch has said she agrees with the Israeli decision. What a foolsh thing to do. All her MPs will now be asked if they agree with her. I'd be surprised if even Farage would step into that rabbit hole
Surely any country is able to refuse entry to any foreign citizen, for whatever reason.
So we should also send back any Israeli politician from Netanyahu’s party as they are genocide supporters .
Except if Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant or Mohammed Deif come. They should be sent to the ICC.
I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.
He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
....
Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.
According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.
NEW: Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT. In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed- A senior official inside the administration telling me. “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet. Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset. The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.
The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ? No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
I wonder if this makes the possibility of a few individual trade deals more likely.
Trump needs to show he is behaving reasonably and practically, even if he isn't.
Will Trump notice that this deal (Vietnam and the US entering into a free trade deal) won’t achieve his claimed desired outcome (the US no longer having a trade deficit with Vietnam; and/or the US being able to drop taxes because of tariff income)?
Do you think he cares about anything other than the win ?
You’re right: no, he doesn’t. Nevertheless, the internal inconsistencies may catch up with him.
I think the best we can hope for is some face saving climb down and in 2026 the democrats take the house and he becomes a lame duck for the last two years.
Israel really seems to have gone a bit mental. Presumably these are two Labour MPs who are not Labour Friends of Israel and therefore have not accepted the Israeli dollar (shekel). I’m sure Bibi is quaking in his boots after facing the watery wrath of David Lammy.
Kemi Badenoch has said she agrees with the Israeli decision. What a foolsh thing to do. All her MPs will now be asked if they agree with her. I'd be surprised if even Farage would step into that rabbit hole
Surely any country is able to refuse entry to any foreign citizen, for whatever reason.
But Israel as seems to be their current habit lie about their reasons. They said these 2 mps were not part of the official delegation while the government that the mps represent say they were. In fact the Knesset body that oversees these visits also say they were part of the delegation.
In the meantime Starmer is taking the benefit of Brexit by prioritising trade deals with the US, India and Australia
How is Starmer's post Brexit "deal" with the US going? Ten percent on all imports from the UK compared to zip in the other direction.
The art of the deal.
Well it seems Darren Jones on Sky confirms it is a Brexit divided
And you do not mention the 20% on the EU
"He is hurting us less than the other guy" does not make it free trade. Somebody who is imposing tariffs on the UK is not interested in free trade.
So given we apply tariffs to US goods coming into the U.K. presumably we’re not interested in free trade either ?
One can be interested in free trade while still having other concerns and wanting reciprocity. The test of whether the UK is interested in free trade with the US, and vice versa, is whether we’re moving towards lower tariffs.
So we’re interested but not interested enough to do anything about it.
Let’s see what happens.
I reckon we should just get rid of them and see what happens. Call his bluff.
As you noted in another post, Trump wants a win. That implies we should negotiate something that looks like a win to him, which might involve dropping our tariffs. Just dropping them unilaterally might not work, however. Where’s the leverage in a future negotiation if we’ve already dropped them?
The other issue is that there are trade barriers other than tariffs. Trump has said he wants the UK to drop food safety standards. I can see resistance to doing that from UK consumers.
Lee Anderson's been on that one, citing lettuce.
I'm not sure if he's checked how many people don't want US needs-to-be-chlorine-washed chicken (off the top of my head: 80-90%) here, and what this does for his attempted populism.
We'll see how the "patriots" react, and what happens to the different factions of his voting coalition.
ON topic - some will say it’s unfair to judge the House of Lords by the calibre of its members. That’s like judging Glastonbury by the state of the toilets—technically accurate, but missing the point. The Lords isn’t there to lead or innovate or represent. It’s there to exist, immovably, like a stately ghost with an expense account.
And in that spectral drawing room of ceremonial irrelevance, Amanda Spielman isn’t a misfit—she’s practically furniture. The kind that insists you remove your shoes before sitting, quotes Ofsted reports at dinner, and still believes phonics can fix poverty. Her critics cry foul, but that’s only because they haven’t realised the game was abandoned mid-play decades ago.
Look at the recent appointments. We’ve gone from bishops and war heroes to whatever floated past a minister’s WhatsApp at 2am. One minute you’re at a party holding a tray of canapés; the next, you’re Baroness Vol-au-Vent of Southwark. Spielman, at least, has the distinction of failing upwards in a recognisable direction—education, that most British of oxymorons.
So let’s not clutch our pearls. Let’s hand her the ermine, the title, the right to nap through bills on cybercrime. She belongs. Not despite her record—but because of it. In a chamber increasingly defined by its theatrical pointlessness, her appointment is less a scandal and more a reassuring reminder: the great British tradition of rewarding confident mediocrity is alive and well.
I have been writing numerous headers and posts on here about the mediocrity of so much of our governing class for years, rewards for failures, how many of the useless gits get shoved into the Lords and even why it was unfair to expect Welby to resign when he was just following in this great British tradition. And I don't even get a hat-tip.
This seems to me to be quite informative about the orientation of JD Vance. It's a rebuttal of the Washington Consensus, and I think middle income countries will have something to say about that.
Vance explains that "the idea of globalization was that rich countries would move further up the value chain while the poor countries made the simpler things."
But he laments that it didn't quite work out this way: as he explains it turns out that poor countries (mostly China) didn't want to just remain cheap labor forever and started moving up the value chain themselves. Which is why, according to him, globalization was a failure.
Meaning that the objective of globalization wasn't to reduce global inequalities but very much to maintain them, to institute a system of permanent economic hierarchy where rich countries would maintain their hold over the most profitable sectors while relegating poor countries to perpetual subordination in lower-value production. https://x.com/walshrac/status/1902634536283901963
The problem with that plan, assuming that was the plan, was that the people of other countries were as intelligent, potentially as educated, likely as hard working and certainly cheaper to employ as those in western countries.
It was inevitable that the level of their production they would be able to do would steadily increase in value.
I don't even think that was the plan. I think the plan has always been that the main beneficieries of globalisation were the multinational companies. Indeed I think the whole point of globalisation as far as its original architects and instigators were concerned was exactly the opposite of what Vance claims. They saw that the best way to massively increase their markets was to drag Middle Income and Third world countries up to the level of the First world. This is certanly what has been happening with China. No bad thing in itself but it also required a considerable amount of dragging down of First World countries - or at least of the living standards of their citizens. Which again is exactly what has happened.
If Vance didn't know that was the inevitable result of Globalisation then he is even dumber than he looks.
In the meantime Starmer is taking the benefit of Brexit by prioritising trade deals with the US, India and Australia
How is Starmer's post Brexit "deal" with the US going? Ten percent on all imports from the UK compared to zip in the other direction.
The art of the deal.
Well it seems Darren Jones on Sky confirms it is a Brexit divided
And you do not mention the 20% on the EU
"He is hurting us less than the other guy" does not make it free trade. Somebody who is imposing tariffs on the UK is not interested in free trade.
So given we apply tariffs to US goods coming into the U.K. presumably we’re not interested in free trade either ?
One can be interested in free trade while still having other concerns and wanting reciprocity. The test of whether the UK is interested in free trade with the US, and vice versa, is whether we’re moving towards lower tariffs.
So we’re interested but not interested enough to do anything about it.
Let’s see what happens.
I reckon we should just get rid of them and see what happens. Call his bluff.
As you noted in another post, Trump wants a win. That implies we should negotiate something that looks like a win to him, which might involve dropping our tariffs. Just dropping them unilaterally might not work, however. Where’s the leverage in a future negotiation if we’ve already dropped them?
The other issue is that there are trade barriers other than tariffs. Trump has said he wants the UK to drop food safety standards. I can see resistance to doing that from UK consumers.
Lee Anderson's been on that one, citing lettuce.
I'm not sure if he's checked how many people don't want US needs-to-be-chlorine-washed chicken (off the top of my head: 80-90%) here, and what this does for his attempted populism.
We'll see how the "patriots" react, and what happens to the different factions of his voting coalition.
People don’t have to buy chlorinated chicken though. I don’t see the issue. Give the consumer resistance I cannot see it being sold here in numbers to make it worthwhile even if it was allowed.
That is a really poor article. The author is claiming universal VAT (which also applies to domestic goods) and universal import duties equate to Trump's tariffs. Don't the US already levy import taxes?
Vat is counted as a tariff by MAGAs because with domestically produced goods you can claim back the VAT on the whole production chain, whereas on imports the foreign producers can't claim it back on their costs. Or something like that.
That makes it a non tariff trade barrier - which it certainly is. But it's not anywhere near close to the headline VAT percentage (and will vary considerably between industries) - and a retaliatory tariff is an incoherent and self-harming response to it anyway.
Comments
The question is do we have the leaders to achieve this and in the process sideline the US, as no matter how long Trump is in office the US are no longer trustworthy
Just saying.
It seems then discussion of the Trump tariff policy (which has nothing to do with us leaving the EU) is framed in the context of us leaving the EU.
The stock market perturbations aren't irrelevant inasmuch as they set the economic mood music - they are obviously relevant to those who have stocks. It's been faintly amusing to see Conservatives and Reform supporters tying themselves in knots over this but it's another form of economic imperialism I suppose.
Oddly enough, there are a few silver linings - falling oil prices should reduce costs and there are clear signs interest rates may fall later in the year. Both will be welcome as ways of bringing down inflation and perhaps getting some growth going.
https://x.com/589bull10000/status/1908530416778158421?s=61
The House of Unelected Has-Beens is the world's only Upper Chamber (in Bicameral parliaments) with MORE members than its corresponding Lower Chamber.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-14567355/What-tariffs-does-UK-impose-US-goods-Levi-jeans-cars-steak.html
We should cut them to zero and call his bluff.
https://x.com/ArtCandee/status/1908669789058347265
https://x.com/JimBuzinski/status/1908661077480792310
https://bsky.app/profile/janetskwatson.bsky.social/post/3lm3ithcbrs2y
https://bsky.app/profile/gtconway.bsky.social/post/3lm3l5t6evk2e
Otherwise it just becomes an expected retirement option, or reward, and although im sure they try they dont adjust mentally to the different role because they never even stopped for a second.
Id be willing to go 5 years or one term, solely to give them a period of political reflection and to demonstrate they still have something to offer.
Link please
I've read they include tariffs on oranges, jeans and vehicles.
All likely unnecessary, even counterproductive, and presumably holdovers from EU membership.
I would agree there are too many and propose ways to reduce it, but just because its the norm is there an inherent problem with an upper chamber being larger?
What is the right number and why? Is the issue actually no set maximum, lifetime appointments which seems more substantive a complaint. Or is the high number open to abuse in any appointed system? Would, say, 700 be fine if elected?
Its also why whilst honours should not (but totally are) bought and sold, selling peerages is much more troublesome given the implicit power a peer has, albeit in a relatively limited way per individual.
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908574607142977974
Mr Trump burnt down the USA's international accumulated political capital in a fortnight, burnt down his relationships with allies of a century in a month, and has gone a long way to destroying democracy and the rule of law in the USA itself in about 6-8 weeks.
Now he's well on the way to killing their science base, and has perhaps hard wired in a recession beyond the 1930s.
And he has a significant closed-up company of supporters and cheerleaders running him off the cliff.
It may be quick, but may not emerge at the surface - I'm guessing that everyone is playing a double game of substance and marketing. Needs must and the devil drives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEle3pZRqmI
https://bsky.app/profile/joxley.jmoxley.co.uk/post/3lm3322qiuc2y
On today's topics, I've always been in favour of an elected HoL, on a regional basis and by PR. I've come to think that members should have quite a long term..... say ten years, and be eligible for re-election once only, although maybe if they miss a term they should be allowed to try again.
On the question of response to the Orange Septic I remain of the opinion that 'waiting and seeing' for another week or so is the best policy. And then it will turn out that rolling with the punch and living with the tariff we have will be best, as I suspect that the American Congress will get into it's own fight with the President.
😡
So my photo of the day -
That multiple GOP people feel the need to talk up his golf game (and that he is fit and handsome etc) is just parhetic.
*UK is a member of CPTPP
also the idea that circumstance evidence = weak evidence. No! A strong chain of circumstantial evidence is about as strong as you can get for e.g. murder short of discovering the perpetrator either in the act or in the possession of a collection of trophies and a detailed diary.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1908340222926217566
There is still argument about whether the war of 1870 (which he started) killed 60% of the Paraguayan population or more. We know the death rate for men was so high that the Catholic Church allowed multiple women to live with one man, afterwards.
Now the National Hero of Paraguay.
Mar 20
This is actually an extraordinary admission to make for a US Vice President https://x.com/OopsGuess/status/1902396228404674853/video/1
Vance explains that "the idea of globalization was that rich countries would move further up the value chain while the poor countries made the simpler things."
But he laments that it didn't quite work out this way: as he explains it turns out that poor countries (mostly China) didn't want to just remain cheap labor forever and started moving up the value chain themselves. Which is why, according to him, globalization was a failure.
Meaning that the objective of globalization wasn't to reduce global inequalities but very much to maintain them, to institute a system of permanent economic hierarchy where rich countries would maintain their hold over the most profitable sectors while relegating poor countries to perpetual subordination in lower-value production.
https://x.com/walshrac/status/1902634536283901963
Here's the original speech:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAgoUvuyLik
It didn't sound like @Malmesbury either, who surely inspired it.
I've always noted that they have been very modest with expenses, and noted occasional effective initiatives, but have never observed them working there.
Orwell’s 6 Rules
From “Politics and the English Language”
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
5 is a bit nationalist (a facet of his character to which Orwell seemed entirely oblivious).
You’re confusing me for William Glenn.
Not great timing.
https://x.com/billackman/status/1907821384048275964?s=61
But Congress is probably about to rediscover its purpose. Not its spine; but there comes a point when fear of the electorate overtakes fear of the regime.
That's the problem with disorganised aspirant autocrats. They overreach.
We stand ready to use industrial policy to help shelter British business from the storm. Some people may feel uncomfortable about this – the idea the state should intervene directly to shape the market has often been derided. But we simply cannot cling on to old sentiments when the world is turning this fast.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/04/05/keir-starmer-nobody-wins-from-trade-war/
The prime minister will declare an end to globalisation and admit that it has failed millions of voters as the fallout from President Trump’s tariffs reverberates around the world.
A Downing Street official said: “Trump has done something that we don’t agree with but there’s a reason why people are behind him on this. The world has changed, globalisation is over and we are now in a new era. We’ve got to demonstrate that our approach, a more active Labour government, a more reformist government, can provide the answers for people in every part of this country.”
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-to-admit-globalisation-has-failed-as-tariff-war-rages-s00b6wbcj
But I've not been able to find any definitive list and the gov site is both too complex and too confusing.
I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that we're applying tariffs for all sorts of things from all sorts of countries for no sensible reason at all.
Let’s see what happens.
I reckon we should just get rid of them and see what happens. Call his bluff.
The UK also has a very large lower house. That’s a reaction to the disproportionality of FPTP. A bigger house compensates to a degree for that.
What is the right number? One can observe that many legislatures follow a rough cube root law: their size is (or is proportional to) the cube root of the population.
It was inevitable that the level of their production they would be able to do would steadily increase in value.
Which is purely economic at base.
The other issue is that there are trade barriers other than tariffs. Trump has said he wants the UK to drop food safety standards. I can see resistance to doing that from UK consumers.
Trump will readily get deals with countries that don't matter. But unless he backs down, China appears ready to take him on.
And they are perhaps better prepared for the confrontation than is the US.
"Ukraine is under a heavy russian missile attack launched from the Black Sea, with their planes reportedly heading to launch cruise missiles‼️"
https://x.com/BohuslavskaKate/status/1908658484142326055
When is Trump, his minions and his supporters going to realise they are being played by Putin? Or, worse, when are they going to care?
I'm not sure if he's checked how many people don't want US needs-to-be-chlorine-washed chicken (off the top of my head: 80-90%) here, and what this does for his attempted populism.
We'll see how the "patriots" react, and what happens to the different factions of his voting coalition.
Tory frontbencher Richard Fuller taking a *very* different line from his leader, telling @TimesRadio: 'Any MP on an official trip should be welcomed'
https://x.com/JasonGroves1/status/1908814847661289675
If Vance didn't know that was the inevitable result of Globalisation then he is even dumber than he looks.