Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 42m These booming markets do understand that even after his "pause" Trump is still imposing massive tariffs - right? And that his average announced tariff rate now is actually even higher than it was at the time of his "reciprocal tariffs" announcement?
It's as if the markets aren't as clever as they like to claim.
(That's fine. Lots of dumb random moves coupled with a small amount of feedback is a neat way to get a good answer in the end. Evolution, really. But it's a slow process with lots of death on the way.)
In terms of what the Coalition’s “austerity” meant on the ground, over a million local Government jobs went - not in education but across the range of other Services provided by councils which suffered the brunt of cuts.
I’d argue these cuts were hugely damaging and were the source of many of the social problems we face today as well as those coming from the demands of spending on vulnerable adults and children.
2010-11 the cuts were necessary and justified as well as damaging. By 2015 the cuts were neither necessary nor justified, just ideological self harm (imo because it was too hard mentally to change course having committed to something so damaging).
At what point between 2011 and 2015 that change happened is open to debate.
Does this pose a potential threat to Nvidia's business ?
A New Kind of Computer Foreword: This blog post outlines our breakthrough photonic AI acceleration research. This body of work is essential for the future of computing and as a look-ahead at what may come tomorrow. Today, the problem to solve is interconnecting millions of chips, and at Lightmatter, we’re fully committed to addressing that challenge for our customers. https://lightmatter.co/blog/a-new-kind-of-computer/
Labour should just get on with it and nationalise British Steel .
They seem to be messing around trying to find ways to avoid this but it will happen eventually.
We have to rearm. That needs steel. We can't rely on foreign steel in the current crisis.
Nationalise now.
If they won't nationalise Thames Water they're not going to nationalise British Steel.
If they can't do a deal with the Chinese owners to keep it open, then they might well.
Starmer isn't going to have 'closed the last British blast furnace' on his CV if he can avoid it. And there's plenty of support in some surprising quarters for nationalisation, should it come to it.
Especially as, and not a lot of people know this, his father was a toolmaker.
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
The Telegraph is basically establishment conservative not MAGA, NY the home of Wall Street.
Big tariffs on Chinese imports and 10% tariffs on other imports is what Trump campaigned on and has a mandate to deliver
And in itself that would have been fine. Misguided but fine.
What have seen though is a pseudo-random on/off up/down scattergun approach to tariffs, at best whim driven, potentially in pursuit of fraudulent personal gains.
Worse than the tariffs per se is the uncertainty. Markets hate uncertainty.
I think what's worrying them more is the increasing certainty that Trump is actually as insane as was claimed, and those around him are if anything even worse.
Lutnick and Navarro are the maddest two when it comes to economics and trade.
Labour should just get on with it and nationalise British Steel .
They seem to be messing around trying to find ways to avoid this but it will happen eventually.
We have to rearm. That needs steel. We can't rely on foreign steel in the current crisis.
Nationalise now.
If they won't nationalise Thames Water they're not going to nationalise British Steel.
If they can't do a deal with the Chinese owners to keep it open, then they might well.
Starmer isn't going to have 'closed the last British blast furnace' on his CV if he can avoid it. And there's plenty of support in some surprising quarters for nationalisation, should it come to it.
Especially as, and not a lot of people know this, his father was a toolmaker.
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
My contrarian opinion is that the cuts won't be politically damaging at all, to Labour, in the long run.
The usual attack by conservative parties against centre-left parties is that the centre-left wastes money on tax-and-spend policies.
The Democrats lost the election partly because of these types of attacks. The spending on CHIPS Act, Build Back Better, Ukraine assistance etc was used to portray the Democrats as being excessively wasteful & spendthrift. The Democrats added to the potency of these attacks by constantly touting the billions of dollars they were spending on these initiatives.
If a centre-left party demonstrates that it is aggressively cutting spending, then it is actually building valuable political capital to neutralise these types of attacks.
Labour might become unpopular now because of the cuts, but this can be very helpful in the future to build the perception that they are responsible stewards of public finances.
I think this completely wrong.
Labour keep coming out with policies designed to appeal to Reform voters, but increasingly losing those voters to Reform. Reform inclined voters just take the validation and go for the real thing, while left wing voters move to the LDs and Greens. Labour cannot out-Farage Farage, they need to campaign against his toxic nativism.
We will see precisely the wrong conclusion drawn from the forthcoming by-election. Labour will lose to Reform on a low turnout, then conclude that it needs to be more like Reform.
I havent voted Labour for a quarter century and cannot see myself doing so any time soon.
No, it is simply Reform voters don’t believe Labour when they say what they say. Labour posing as Reform lite when in power they just carry on as before is clearly giving a credibility issue.
I live in a very Reform inclined, left behind, area although there are nice parts of it as well as less nice. It is not all grinding poverty, and the discussions on the local FB groups are full of,it. I will be glad when the locals are over.
Labour are trying to win back its voters it’s lost. You clearly are not one, or not one to target, given your voting over the last 25 years.
No, I think we largely agree.
Labour underestimates how much they are loathed by Reform voters so over estimates winning them back.
Similarly Labour fails to recognise that left wing voters do have other options including other parties, but also not voting.
People choose parties to vote for mostly by the vibe of the party rather than a rational balance sheet look at policies. Labour is delivering a confused message and heartless vibe. Reform is all about unicorns and sunlit uplands. Both are certain to disappoint their voters if in power, but only one is in power at the moment, so the promises of Reform beat the reality of Labour in their minds.
Reform will do well here but their leaflets have not told me a single thing they’d do for Durham. It’s all Stop the Boats and Cut Taxes. The only thing they’ve promised is an audit of expenditure to find waste. As much use as labours one into PPE. It will only make the auditors money. It’s crap politics people believe
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
I thought she was broadly right that she doesn't really need to watch Adolescence. But there are ways of saying that which don't come across as frosty, defensive, and rather hostile.
She probably needs to get Corbyn's "stop being so damned tetchy" coach in. He started with that being a real problem in interviews, and it never fully went away, but he did at least listen to the point and tried to manage it.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 42m These booming markets do understand that even after his "pause" Trump is still imposing massive tariffs - right? And that his average announced tariff rate now is actually even higher than it was at the time of his "reciprocal tariffs" announcement?
They’re not booming, they are still down from where they were. They have just recovered slightly.
My contrarian opinion is that the cuts won't be politically damaging at all, to Labour, in the long run.
The usual attack by conservative parties against centre-left parties is that the centre-left wastes money on tax-and-spend policies.
The Democrats lost the election partly because of these types of attacks. The spending on CHIPS Act, Build Back Better, Ukraine assistance etc was used to portray the Democrats as being excessively wasteful & spendthrift. The Democrats added to the potency of these attacks by constantly touting the billions of dollars they were spending on these initiatives.
If a centre-left party demonstrates that it is aggressively cutting spending, then it is actually building valuable political capital to neutralise these types of attacks.
Labour might become unpopular now because of the cuts, but this can be very helpful in the future to build the perception that they are responsible stewards of public finances.
The Dems weren't helped by the coastal liberal lawyer Harris not bothering to visit those new factories the investment had funded.
Kamala Harris tours computer chip factory in Michigan
100% running, and losing, again in 2028. If there is an election.
She wont get past the primary.
I think she actually has a very good chance, because of a possible replay of the situation in the 2020 primaries.
In 2020, the Democrat Establishment got spooked by Bernie's strong showing & then rapidly coalesced behind the strongest establishment candidate, which was Biden.
This might happen again 2028.
AOC, or some other leftist runs, and puts on a very strong showing. The Dem Establishment again gets spooked and decides to coalesce behind the strongest establishment candidate, which would be the ex-VP & previous Dem candidate.
If there is a free and fair election, four years of this and the Dems would win with the desiccated corpse of Al Smith with Eugene V. Debs' ghost as his running mate.
It is worth remembering Harris very nearly won as it was, under pretty difficult circumstances where incumbent governments worldwide were getting absolutely mullered and her predecessor had been forced to quit unexpectedly due to old age (which shouldn't really have crept up on an 82 year old unawares, but hey).
And so far, if anything, their claims about Trump have proven optimistic. Sure, that won't affect the cultists, but they're not the target here. The target are those voters who felt the Dems hadn't done enough for them so rolled the dice on voting Trump again, only to find he's caused their incomes to halve in three months. That's the sort of thing people don't forgive and forget. John Major suffered for it and at least that was an honest policy mistake not an act of naked lunacy.
The big risk they run is that the election won't be free and fair, as Trump has been quite open about his attempts to overthrow democracy and subvert the Constitution. Plus, his control of the courts and state processes means he has the tools to do so. In 2020 there was extensive fiddling via voter suppression and we have already seen that start again in North Carolina.
The midterms will be the first real test. So far the signs are discouraging.
My hope is that the Dems will be so far ahead that no amount of fiddling and voter suppression will save the GOP in the mid terms.
Latest Trump approval poll - Quinnipiac University Approval 41% Disapproval 53% Net -12%
My EMA of approval polls
EDIT: GOP are at evens on Betfair to win the 2028 Presidential election I can't find any market on the midterms.
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
I thought she was broadly right that she doesn't really need to watch Adolescence. But there are ways of saying that which don't come across as frosty, defensive, and rather hostile.
She probably needs to get Corbyn's "stop being so damned tetchy" coach in. He started with that being a real problem in interviews, and it never fully went away, but he did at least listen to the point and tried to manage it.
Was she actually asked about that show?
There was a Labour person on Sky wanting a tax on Netflix to fund British broadcasters. Loved Adolescence - didn't love it being made by Netflix.
In terms of what the Coalition’s “austerity” meant on the ground, over a million local Government jobs went - not in education but across the range of other Services provided by councils which suffered the brunt of cuts.
I’d argue these cuts were hugely damaging and were the source of many of the social problems we face today as well as those coming from the demands of spending on vulnerable adults and children.
2010-11 the cuts were necessary and justified as well as damaging. By 2015 the cuts were neither necessary nor justified, just ideological self harm (imo because it was too hard mentally to change course having committed to something so damaging).
At what point between 2011 and 2015 that change happened is open to debate.
Inasmuch as the incoming Government needed to restore the public finances which had been damaged by a combination of Brown’s profligacy in the good times (supported by the Conservative Opposition) and the financial crisis of 2008, Osborne’s focus of £5 of cuts for every £1 in tax rises wasn’t perhaps ideal.
Indeed, economic performance stuttered for the first half of the Coalition as the economy tried to recover from the shock of 2008.
Should there have been shallower cuts and more tax rises? Many on here will doubtless argue the cuts should have been even deeper but I don’t agree.
Don’t about you, but I’m driving across the Kazakh steppes, under the Tien Shan mountains, towards the mystical and distant Kolsai Lakes, while listening to “the Gulag Archipelago” (abridged)
They have potholes that could swallow Mongol armies
My contrarian opinion is that the cuts won't be politically damaging at all, to Labour, in the long run.
The usual attack by conservative parties against centre-left parties is that the centre-left wastes money on tax-and-spend policies.
The Democrats lost the election partly because of these types of attacks. The spending on CHIPS Act, Build Back Better, Ukraine assistance etc was used to portray the Democrats as being excessively wasteful & spendthrift. The Democrats added to the potency of these attacks by constantly touting the billions of dollars they were spending on these initiatives.
If a centre-left party demonstrates that it is aggressively cutting spending, then it is actually building valuable political capital to neutralise these types of attacks.
Labour might become unpopular now because of the cuts, but this can be very helpful in the future to build the perception that they are responsible stewards of public finances.
The Dems weren't helped by the coastal liberal lawyer Harris not bothering to visit those new factories the investment had funded.
So who is this visiting one such factory in Michigan?
My contrarian opinion is that the cuts won't be politically damaging at all, to Labour, in the long run.
The usual attack by conservative parties against centre-left parties is that the centre-left wastes money on tax-and-spend policies.
The Democrats lost the election partly because of these types of attacks. The spending on CHIPS Act, Build Back Better, Ukraine assistance etc was used to portray the Democrats as being excessively wasteful & spendthrift. The Democrats added to the potency of these attacks by constantly touting the billions of dollars they were spending on these initiatives.
If a centre-left party demonstrates that it is aggressively cutting spending, then it is actually building valuable political capital to neutralise these types of attacks.
Labour might become unpopular now because of the cuts, but this can be very helpful in the future to build the perception that they are responsible stewards of public finances.
I think this completely wrong.
Labour keep coming out with policies designed to appeal to Reform voters, but increasingly losing those voters to Reform. Reform inclined voters just take the validation and go for the real thing, while left wing voters move to the LDs and Greens. Labour cannot out-Farage Farage, they need to campaign against his toxic nativism.
We will see precisely the wrong conclusion drawn from the forthcoming by-election. Labour will lose to Reform on a low turnout, then conclude that it needs to be more like Reform.
I havent voted Labour for a quarter century and cannot see myself doing so any time soon.
No, it is simply Reform voters don’t believe Labour when they say what they say. Labour posing as Reform lite when in power they just carry on as before is clearly giving a credibility issue.
I live in a very Reform inclined, left behind, area although there are nice parts of it as well as less nice. It is not all grinding poverty, and the discussions on the local FB groups are full of,it. I will be glad when the locals are over.
Labour are trying to win back its voters it’s lost. You clearly are not one, or not one to target, given your voting over the last 25 years.
No, I think we largely agree.
Labour underestimates how much they are loathed by Reform voters so over estimates winning them back.
Similarly Labour fails to recognise that left wing voters do have other options including other parties, but also not voting.
People choose parties to vote for mostly by the vibe of the party rather than a rational balance sheet look at policies. Labour is delivering a confused message and heartless vibe. Reform is all about unicorns and sunlit uplands. Both are certain to disappoint their voters if in power, but only one is in power at the moment, so the promises of Reform beat the reality of Labour in their minds.
Reform will do well here but their leaflets have not told me a single thing they’d do for Durham. It’s all Stop the Boats and Cut Taxes. The only thing they’ve promised is an audit of expenditure to find waste. As much use as labours one into PPE. It will only make the auditors money. It’s crap politics people believe
Reform's problem in a nutshell. The things that energise the party (boats, taxes, woke) mostly don't map onto the duties of local councils. And those councils have minimal political discretion anyway, because social care swallows every spare penny and then some. In short, what would a distinctively Reform approach to running the council look like?
It will be bad for Reform if they flop at these elections, but worse if they succeed.
The Telegraph is basically establishment conservative not MAGA, NY the home of Wall Street.
Big tariffs on Chinese imports and 10% tariffs on other imports is what Trump campaigned on and has a mandate to deliver
And in itself that would have been fine. Misguided but fine.
What have seen though is a pseudo-random on/off up/down scattergun approach to tariffs, at best whim driven, potentially in pursuit of fraudulent personal gains.
Worse than the tariffs per se is the uncertainty. Markets hate uncertainty.
I think what's worrying them more is the increasing certainty that Trump is actually as insane as was claimed, and those around him are if anything even worse.
Lutnick and Navarro are the maddest two when it comes to economics and trade.
(You're only saying that because you haven't seen some of the others in action yet....)
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
How much steel does the UK need for 'strategic reasons'?
Most of the extra defence funding, assuming it actually happens, will be wasted to no particular effect.
The only modern defence procurement that consumes a significant amount of steel is shipbuilding. There's about 4,000 - 5,000 tons of steel in a modern frigate and the UK is only finishing one of those every other year. That consumption is a rounding error in global steel production.
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
I thought she was broadly right that she doesn't really need to watch Adolescence. But there are ways of saying that which don't come across as frosty, defensive, and rather hostile.
She probably needs to get Corbyn's "stop being so damned tetchy" coach in. He started with that being a real problem in interviews, and it never fully went away, but he did at least listen to the point and tried to manage it.
Was she actually asked about that show?
There was a Labour person on Sky wanting a tax on Netflix to fund British broadcasters. Loved Adolescence - didn't love it being made by Netflix.
Now might not be a good time to get America thinking about retaliatory taxes on UK services......can we wait until at least 2029 please.......
She added: "While streamers like Netflix and Amazon have proved a valuable addition for the industry and economy, unless the government urgently intervenes to rebalance the playing field, for every Adolescence adding to the national conversation, there will be countless distinctly British stories that never make it to our screens."
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
Isn't that just her being awake? She's always angry and irritated when asked questions. Don't they know who She is? Don't they know how brilliant She is?
I think very few are giving attention to the Tories at the moment. One Nationers are either in despair or hoping for something from Lab/LD, the less thoughtful are either for Reform or have given up on politics altogether in favour of something more sensible like daytime television or growing potatoes.
What the Tories need to do is rethink themselves. They can't out Reform Reform, what they can do is command attention by the top quality of their contribution to public policy, attention to underlying principle. They need 15-20 people who are both extremely intelligent and presentable prepared to do this on the media for years so that when the centre ground voter is ready to receive them again, they are in place.
So far, the populists are useless, and the thoughtful are invisible or dull. So the field is clear for a new generation.
My contrarian opinion is that the cuts won't be politically damaging at all, to Labour, in the long run.
The usual attack by conservative parties against centre-left parties is that the centre-left wastes money on tax-and-spend policies.
The Democrats lost the election partly because of these types of attacks. The spending on CHIPS Act, Build Back Better, Ukraine assistance etc was used to portray the Democrats as being excessively wasteful & spendthrift. The Democrats added to the potency of these attacks by constantly touting the billions of dollars they were spending on these initiatives.
If a centre-left party demonstrates that it is aggressively cutting spending, then it is actually building valuable political capital to neutralise these types of attacks.
Labour might become unpopular now because of the cuts, but this can be very helpful in the future to build the perception that they are responsible stewards of public finances.
The Dems weren't helped by the coastal liberal lawyer Harris not bothering to visit those new factories the investment had funded.
Kamala Harris tours computer chip factory in Michigan
100% running, and losing, again in 2028. If there is an election.
She wont get past the primary.
I think she actually has a very good chance, because of a possible replay of the situation in the 2020 primaries.
In 2020, the Democrat Establishment got spooked by Bernie's strong showing & then rapidly coalesced behind the strongest establishment candidate, which was Biden.
This might happen again 2028.
AOC, or some other leftist runs, and puts on a very strong showing. The Dem Establishment again gets spooked and decides to coalesce behind the strongest establishment candidate, which would be the ex-VP & previous Dem candidate.
If there is a free and fair election, four years of this and the Dems would win with the desiccated corpse of Al Smith with Eugene V. Debs' ghost as his running mate.
It is worth remembering Harris very nearly won as it was, under pretty difficult circumstances where incumbent governments worldwide were getting absolutely mullered and her predecessor had been forced to quit unexpectedly due to old age (which shouldn't really have crept up on an 82 year old unawares, but hey).
And so far, if anything, their claims about Trump have proven optimistic. Sure, that won't affect the cultists, but they're not the target here. The target are those voters who felt the Dems hadn't done enough for them so rolled the dice on voting Trump again, only to find he's caused their incomes to halve in three months. That's the sort of thing people don't forgive and forget. John Major suffered for it and at least that was an honest policy mistake not an act of naked lunacy.
The big risk they run is that the election won't be free and fair, as Trump has been quite open about his attempts to overthrow democracy and subvert the Constitution. Plus, his control of the courts and state processes means he has the tools to do so. In 2020 there was extensive fiddling via voter suppression and we have already seen that start again in North Carolina.
The midterms will be the first real test. So far the signs are discouraging.
My hope is that the Dems will be so far ahead that no amount of fiddling and voter suppression will save the GOP in the mid terms.
Latest Trump approval poll - Quinnipiac University Approval 41% Disapproval 53% Net -12%
My EMA of approval polls
EDIT: GOP are at evens on Betfair to win the 2028 Presidential election I can't find any market on the midterms.
Labour should just get on with it and nationalise British Steel .
They seem to be messing around trying to find ways to avoid this but it will happen eventually.
We have to rearm. That needs steel. We can't rely on foreign steel in the current crisis.
Nationalise now.
If they won't nationalise Thames Water they're not going to nationalise British Steel.
If they can't do a deal with the Chinese owners to keep it open, then they might well.
Starmer isn't going to have 'closed the last British blast furnace' on his CV if he can avoid it. And there's plenty of support in some surprising quarters for nationalisation, should it come to it.
Especially as, and not a lot of people know this, his father was a toolmaker.
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
Might not play well electorally in Scotland.
Why not? Scotland would be even more for nationalising steel than England
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
How much steel does the UK need for 'strategic reasons'?
Most of the extra defence funding, assuming it actually happens, will be wasted to no particular effect.
The only modern defence procurement that consumes a significant amount of steel is shipbuilding. There's about 4,000 - 5,000 tons of steel in a modern frigate and the UK is only finishing one of those every other year. That consumption is a rounding error in global steel production.
"Strategic" doesn't just mean building ships, obvs.
The world seems to have split into two camps: Those who know Trump caved Those who think Trump is infallable
I posted yesterday that there was no way out for Trump. Even if he climbed down and reinstated status quo ante on tariffs, the world won't say "fair enough" and go back to business as usual. Trump is Fucking Mental. You can't do business with America, can't trust anything America says, certainly can't trust America with your money.
All the 90 pause shows the world is that the clown isn't fully in charge of the circus. Which makes forward planning even more impossible unless you plan for the obvious strategy - avoid the circus.
Scary as Trump is, what is far more troubling is the clique of fluffers around him, spinning his brilliance to all who will listen (the main-stream media). There is no acknowledgment that this was a Grade A Fuck Up by Trump. To the obsequious onanisists, this was always the plan.
Yeah, right. How has destroying trust, actively causing long-time friends to go elsewhere, terrifying the bond markets and making the US a far less attractive place to do business ever part of any coherent plan to return America to some form of mythical greatness (back when the genie of racial, sexual and religious equality was firmly stuck in the bottle).
He's also enabled and indeed encouraged corruption on a grand scale.
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
Isn't that just her being awake? She's always angry and irritated when asked questions. Don't they know who She is? Don't they know how brilliant She is?
I think very few are giving attention to the Tories at the moment. One Nationers are either in despair or hoping for something from Lab/LD, the less thoughtful are either for Reform or have given up on politics altogether in favour of something more sensible like daytime television or growing potatoes.
What the Tories need to do is rethink themselves. They can't out Reform Reform, what they can do is command attention by the top quality of their contribution to public policy, attention to underlying principle. They need 15-20 people who are both extremely intelligent and presentable prepared to do this on the media for years so that when the centre ground voter is ready to receive them again, they are in place.
So far, the populists are useless, and the thoughtful are invisible or dull. So the field is clear for a new generation.
Yup. I'm not a conservative and even I can see a gaping hole for a pro-business pro-capitalism give people responsibility and more freedom political platform. Its astonishing that the Tories can't.
My contrarian opinion is that the cuts won't be politically damaging at all, to Labour, in the long run.
The usual attack by conservative parties against centre-left parties is that the centre-left wastes money on tax-and-spend policies.
The Democrats lost the election partly because of these types of attacks. The spending on CHIPS Act, Build Back Better, Ukraine assistance etc was used to portray the Democrats as being excessively wasteful & spendthrift. The Democrats added to the potency of these attacks by constantly touting the billions of dollars they were spending on these initiatives.
If a centre-left party demonstrates that it is aggressively cutting spending, then it is actually building valuable political capital to neutralise these types of attacks.
Labour might become unpopular now because of the cuts, but this can be very helpful in the future to build the perception that they are responsible stewards of public finances.
The Dems weren't helped by the coastal liberal lawyer Harris not bothering to visit those new factories the investment had funded.
Kamala Harris tours computer chip factory in Michigan
100% running, and losing, again in 2028. If there is an election.
She wont get past the primary.
I think she actually has a very good chance, because of a possible replay of the situation in the 2020 primaries.
In 2020, the Democrat Establishment got spooked by Bernie's strong showing & then rapidly coalesced behind the strongest establishment candidate, which was Biden.
This might happen again 2028.
AOC, or some other leftist runs, and puts on a very strong showing. The Dem Establishment again gets spooked and decides to coalesce behind the strongest establishment candidate, which would be the ex-VP & previous Dem candidate.
In that scenario AOC likely wins the primaries as Harris has proved herself an election loser
AOC could win, but the Dem Establishment will be absolutely terrified & will do everything possible to stop her.
A lot of the Dem primary voters, particularly in the South, are quite conservative and might find it hard to vote for a Progressive.
Harris lost them anyway.
If Trump's tariffs lead to price hikes but no major new manufacturing jobs even AOC could beat Vance or Trump Jr anyway
Even then I doubt it.
For those craving a turn towards sanity from the Dems next time AOC would be a turn in the opposite direction.
In normal times yes AOC wouldn't have a hope of winning Middle America or the White House.
However if in 2028 Trump's tariffs have led to recession, higher prices and few extra manufacturing jobs they won't be normal times and the Democrats would have a chance of electing the most leftwing President of the USA in 100 years. Why wouldn't they be tempted to gamble on AOC this time after holding their nose for establishment candidates the last few cycles, 2 out of 3 of whom lost?
Even Corbyn nearly won in 2017 after the Brexit vote and austerity and got a hung parliament despite being written off
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
Isn't that just her being awake? She's always angry and irritated when asked questions. Don't they know who She is? Don't they know how brilliant She is?
I think very few are giving attention to the Tories at the moment. One Nationers are either in despair or hoping for something from Lab/LD, the less thoughtful are either for Reform or have given up on politics altogether in favour of something more sensible like daytime television or growing potatoes.
What the Tories need to do is rethink themselves. They can't out Reform Reform, what they can do is command attention by the top quality of their contribution to public policy, attention to underlying principle. They need 15-20 people who are both extremely intelligent and presentable prepared to do this on the media for years so that when the centre ground voter is ready to receive them again, they are in place.
So far, the populists are useless, and the thoughtful are invisible or dull. So the field is clear for a new generation.
The interesting area for the Tories is the environment. The Greens in the UK are not (politically) very good and protecting the planet can tie in very well with conservative values and has broad appeal to both younger and disillusioned (ex?) Labour voters.
Don’t about you, but I’m driving across the Kazakh steppes, under the Tien Shan mountains, towards the mystical and distant Kolsai Lakes, while listening to “the Gulag Archipelago” (abridged)
They have potholes that could swallow Mongol armies
"Have you ever fired your gun up in the air and gone "ahhrgh"?"
Thoughts and prayers for @TSE IPhone prices ‘risk doubling’ if production moves to US Shifting manufacturing to America will be ‘logistically challenging’, warns Wall Street bank
I'm sure Apple-victims know more about the detail than I do, but aren't most of them made in China by Foxconn using 700k workers paid $1-$2 per hour (and presumably more for technicians etc)?
Where will large numbers of workers come from in the USA? Maybe there will be some when Mr Trump has finished crashing the economy.
It won’t which is why the price will at least double.
Worse Foxconn’s manufacturing is designed to turn on a dime either ramping up production of x (google phone) when demand for iPhones drop.
That takes 30 years of expertise which the US simply doesn’t have and won’t get without shipping people in
I also wonder how many Usonians would be trying to smuggle in iPhones from Canada and Mexico.
And then having to go to ER to have them extracted.
Do apple do a bullet iPhone?
They could have a shot at it.
One of the insights I remember from one of the Colditz books was that the Germans didn't usually bother extracting "arse-creepers" (the ideal being screw seal tubes which were airtight packing for cigars) unless - like one convenience preferring Frenchman - a piece of string was attached for extraction.
The fact more voters think the current Labour government cuts were unfair than the Coalition government cuts unfair could certainly hit Labour and see further leakage to the Greens, even if the division is largely along party lines.
Ironically of course the Conservative government of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak spent more than both the Coalition Conservative and LD government of Cameron, Clegg and Osborne and the current Labour government of Starmer and Reeves
They did spend more - and whenever Tory ministers came on saying "we're spending record amounts on the NHS" I would support them - it was true.
Here is the problem. Your governments were pouring record amounts in at the top whilst simultaneously presiding over front line services so starved of cash that it was dangerous.
Back when we had Conservative governments, that grotesque level of waste and inefficiency would have been jumped on and eliminated - often ruthlessly. Instead, we had the post-Brexit clown show governments where you talked the talk but delivered the opposite of what you said - which is why you got demolished.
We here very little from your party, and what we hear seems to be focused on bathrooms rather than hospitals. A return to basic conservatism has to be found - efficient public services. Remember those? Where did you go so terribly wrong where you champion waste and tie everything up in red tape?
The red wall voters Boris won supported more spending on the whole, Badenoch is more of a fiscal conservative than Boris but that doesn't help much with the red wall.
Public sector and NHS England workers and those on disability benefits were of course better off under Boris than Starmer
It isn't about how much you spend.
It is about what you spend it on.
Your governments were spending record amounts to receive critically cash-starved services. On any measure that is a terrible waste of public money.
Yet I suspect NHS England workers and those on disability benefits would have Boris back as PM tomorrow in a heartbeat now, partygate all forgotten
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
Isn't that just her being awake? She's always angry and irritated when asked questions. Don't they know who She is? Don't they know how brilliant She is?
I think very few are giving attention to the Tories at the moment. One Nationers are either in despair or hoping for something from Lab/LD, the less thoughtful are either for Reform or have given up on politics altogether in favour of something more sensible like daytime television or growing potatoes.
What the Tories need to do is rethink themselves. They can't out Reform Reform, what they can do is command attention by the top quality of their contribution to public policy, attention to underlying principle. They need 15-20 people who are both extremely intelligent and presentable prepared to do this on the media for years so that when the centre ground voter is ready to receive them again, they are in place.
So far, the populists are useless, and the thoughtful are invisible or dull. So the field is clear for a new generation.
Yup. I'm not a conservative and even I can see a gaping hole for a pro-business pro-capitalism give people responsibility and more freedom political platform. Its astonishing that the Tories can't.
In terms of what the Coalition’s “austerity” meant on the ground, over a million local Government jobs went - not in education but across the range of other Services provided by councils which suffered the brunt of cuts.
I’d argue these cuts were hugely damaging and were the source of many of the social problems we face today as well as those coming from the demands of spending on vulnerable adults and children.
Reeves and Starmer have also taken an axe to overseas aid too, which Cameron and Osborne didn't. so that might ease pressure on local government a bit, as well as their allowing them to raise more council tax before needing a referendum
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 42m These booming markets do understand that even after his "pause" Trump is still imposing massive tariffs - right? And that his average announced tariff rate now is actually even higher than it was at the time of his "reciprocal tariffs" announcement?
I think what the last few days has proved for me is that the "Wisdom of the Markets" is a chimera - nobody should have been surprised when Trump brought in tariffs, and nobody should have been surprised that he partially rowed back again a few days later.
Nobody knows what he is going to do, probably including himself. The only investment advice for anyone surely must be to get out of the USA and stay out.
The last few days have also confirmed in my mind that unfettered free market capitalism works about as well as pure socialism.
Labour should just get on with it and nationalise British Steel .
They seem to be messing around trying to find ways to avoid this but it will happen eventually.
We have to rearm. That needs steel. We can't rely on foreign steel in the current crisis.
Nationalise now.
They're terrified of the word. They won't.
Labour is no longer fit for purpose. It has no theory of the world other than "do Thatcherism politely" and "spaff hosepipes of money on stupid Green stuff" (instead of smarter Green stuff)
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
How much steel does the UK need for 'strategic reasons'?
Most of the extra defence funding, assuming it actually happens, will be wasted to no particular effect.
The only modern defence procurement that consumes a significant amount of steel is shipbuilding. There's about 4,000 - 5,000 tons of steel in a modern frigate and the UK is only finishing one of those every other year. That consumption is a rounding error in global steel production.
My immediate reaction to that is 'artillery shells'. Each one requires a small, but weighty, amount of specially-treated steel, but in a war we would need millions of them. A 155-mm shell weighs over 40kg; most of that weight is the steel shell. Let's say 25kg of the shell is the steel body.
So a tonne of steel gets you 40 shells, assuming no waste (and there will be waste...). If we make 100,000 155 shells a year - which is nothing in wartime - then that is 2,500 tonnes of steel just for the 155 shell bodies. Then you have got all the other shell types, missiles, bullets etc which also require steel.
The fact more voters think the current Labour government cuts were unfair than the Coalition government cuts unfair could certainly hit Labour and see further leakage to the Greens, even if the division is largely along party lines.
Ironically of course the Conservative government of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak spent more than both the Coalition Conservative and LD government of Cameron, Clegg and Osborne and the current Labour government of Starmer and Reeves
They did spend more - and whenever Tory ministers came on saying "we're spending record amounts on the NHS" I would support them - it was true.
Here is the problem. Your governments were pouring record amounts in at the top whilst simultaneously presiding over front line services so starved of cash that it was dangerous.
Back when we had Conservative governments, that grotesque level of waste and inefficiency would have been jumped on and eliminated - often ruthlessly. Instead, we had the post-Brexit clown show governments where you talked the talk but delivered the opposite of what you said - which is why you got demolished.
We here very little from your party, and what we hear seems to be focused on bathrooms rather than hospitals. A return to basic conservatism has to be found - efficient public services. Remember those? Where did you go so terribly wrong where you champion waste and tie everything up in red tape?
The red wall voters Boris won supported more spending on the whole, Badenoch is more of a fiscal conservative than Boris but that doesn't help much with the red wall.
Public sector and NHS England workers and those on disability benefits were of course better off under Boris than Starmer
It isn't about how much you spend.
It is about what you spend it on.
Your governments were spending record amounts to receive critically cash-starved services. On any measure that is a terrible waste of public money.
Yet I suspect NHS England workers and those on disability benefits would have Boris back as PM tomorrow in a heartbeat now, partygate all forgotten
Labour should just get on with it and nationalise British Steel .
They seem to be messing around trying to find ways to avoid this but it will happen eventually.
We have to rearm. That needs steel. We can't rely on foreign steel in the current crisis.
Nationalise now.
They're terrified of the word. They won't.
Labour is no longer fit for purpose. It has no theory of the world other than "do Thatcherism politely" and "spaff hosepipes of money on stupid Green stuff" (instead of smarter Green stuff)
You have to wonder how long the carbon capture scheme keeps its funding in the new world order...
She added: "While streamers like Netflix and Amazon have proved a valuable addition for the industry and economy, unless the government urgently intervenes to rebalance the playing field, for every Adolescence adding to the national conversation, there will be countless distinctly British stories that never make it to our screens."
On that regulatory front there are various gaps.
Youtube keeps throwing me pseudo-medical adverts for vitamin supplements and slimming tablets of the sort that are generally, and correctly, banned.
The latest slimming one makes a comparison with "would you withhold insulin from a diabetic". And I thought slimming treatment (at least the injected ones) were prescription only.
That's massively emotionally manipulative - you withhold my insulin, I die.
The world seems to have split into two camps: Those who know Trump caved Those who think Trump is infallable
I posted yesterday that there was no way out for Trump. Even if he climbed down and reinstated status quo ante on tariffs, the world won't say "fair enough" and go back to business as usual. Trump is Fucking Mental. You can't do business with America, can't trust anything America says, certainly can't trust America with your money.
All the 90 pause shows the world is that the clown isn't fully in charge of the circus. Which makes forward planning even more impossible unless you plan for the obvious strategy - avoid the circus.
Scary as Trump is, what is far more troubling is the clique of fluffers around him, spinning his brilliance to all who will listen (the main-stream media). There is no acknowledgment that this was a Grade A Fuck Up by Trump. To the obsequious onanisists, this was always the plan.
Yeah, right. How has destroying trust, actively causing long-time friends to go elsewhere, terrifying the bond markets and making the US a far less attractive place to do business ever part of any coherent plan to return America to some form of mythical greatness (back when the genie of racial, sexual and religious equality was firmly stuck in the bottle).
He's also enabled and indeed encouraged corruption on a grand scale.
That's always been part of his schtick. Although we may discover the scale of insider trading over the past week is off the charts...
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
How much steel does the UK need for 'strategic reasons'?
Most of the extra defence funding, assuming it actually happens, will be wasted to no particular effect.
The only modern defence procurement that consumes a significant amount of steel is shipbuilding. There's about 4,000 - 5,000 tons of steel in a modern frigate and the UK is only finishing one of those every other year. That consumption is a rounding error in global steel production.
"Strategic" doesn't just mean building ships, obvs.
People keep on conflating our production of virgin steel with steel in general, so you get erroneous claims that closure of Scunthorpe means the "end of all steel production in the UK". Most of our steel production (over 90%, I think) is from recycled steel - and almost all steel is reused in some way. We still export a surprising volume and value of high quality steel products.
Even then, most of our scrap steel is exported. The idea is to bring more of that recycling back to the UK, and given massive excess overnight electricity from renewables, this might end up making new electric arc furnaces commercially viable. That would contribute to our security as it doesn't depend on imports of coal or iron ore.
The issue is that there are a few grades of steel which you cannot make anywhere other than in a blast furnace, some of which are essential for military use. But, AFAIK, the MOD does not insist on UK steel for this anyway, and I think most of that is already imported from NATO allies. Scunthorpe is owned by the Chinese, FFS.
My contrarian opinion is that the cuts won't be politically damaging at all, to Labour, in the long run.
The usual attack by conservative parties against centre-left parties is that the centre-left wastes money on tax-and-spend policies.
The Democrats lost the election partly because of these types of attacks. The spending on CHIPS Act, Build Back Better, Ukraine assistance etc was used to portray the Democrats as being excessively wasteful & spendthrift. The Democrats added to the potency of these attacks by constantly touting the billions of dollars they were spending on these initiatives.
If a centre-left party demonstrates that it is aggressively cutting spending, then it is actually building valuable political capital to neutralise these types of attacks.
Labour might become unpopular now because of the cuts, but this can be very helpful in the future to build the perception that they are responsible stewards of public finances.
The Dems weren't helped by the coastal liberal lawyer Harris not bothering to visit those new factories the investment had funded.
Kamala Harris tours computer chip factory in Michigan
So your defence of Harris is that she visited a factory on 28th October ?
Ever heard of the phrase 'too little and too late' ?
Harris should have been at one of those new factories every single day for three months.
What the Dems, and Dem supporters, need to do is to stop denying and defending their mistakes but to accept them and learn from them.
It was not a defence of Harris. It was a debunking of your misinformation. You claimed something that wasn't true. You could be polite enough to acknowledge your error.
I'm not quite understanding the logic that S Korea should pay more for the US to do less for them ?
S. Korea braces for rising pressure to shoulder more costs for US troop presence
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/defense/20250409/south-korea-braces-for-rising-pressure-to-shoulder-more-costs-for-us-troop-presence ...Meanwhile, the Senate’s recent confirmation of Elbridge Colby as undersecretary of defense signals a tougher U.S. stance on China and a renewed focus on "deterrence by denial." Colby, a critic of the Biden administration's "integrated deterrence" strategy — which seeks to coordinate military, economic and technological means across allies — instead advocates for "deterrence by denial," a concept aimed at making adversaries believe that any attack would fail. In this framework, Colby emphasizes that Seoul should take full responsibility for conventional threats from Pyongyang while U.S. forces focus on broader regional deterrence against China...
In the morning, checked out the brand new Silvertown Tunnel via the equally brand new London bus route SL4, then went into town to check out the new entrance to Knightsbridge tube at Hoopers Court, not quite done but nearly there, and then caught the 1702 from St Pancras to traverse two bits of rare rail track way up north, Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions, and Chesterfield platform 3 to Woodhouse via Beighton. Of course, ended up in TSE-Land (ie. Sheffield), but was there less than 20 minutes before returning to London.
On topic sort of, here's a nice new (Chinese!) BYD bus used on the SL4:
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
How much steel does the UK need for 'strategic reasons'?
Most of the extra defence funding, assuming it actually happens, will be wasted to no particular effect.
The only modern defence procurement that consumes a significant amount of steel is shipbuilding. There's about 4,000 - 5,000 tons of steel in a modern frigate and the UK is only finishing one of those every other year. That consumption is a rounding error in global steel production.
My immediate reaction to that is 'artillery shells'. Each one requires a small, but weighty, amount of specially-treated steel, but in a war we would need millions of them. A 155-mm shell weighs over 40kg; most of that weight is the steel shell. Let's say 25kg of the shell is the steel body.
So a tonne of steel gets you 40 shells, assuming no waste (and there will be waste...). If we make 100,000 155 shells a year - which is nothing in wartime - then that is 2,500 tonnes of steel just for the 155 shell bodies. Then you have got all the other shell types, missiles, bullets etc which also require steel.
UK 155mm shell production is being increased, says the Government, "eight fold".
There being, of course, no actual numbers attached.
Unlike the Grand Old Duke of York, President Trump marched his investors down to the bottom of the market and has now marched them back up again.
Apart from being a waste of time, money and effort as the markets will probably end up back where they started (no doubt some have made a right killing), has this been a demonstration of weakness or a display of power?
I suspect the answer is both and neither. Opponents and Supporters will no doubt argue ad nauseam the virtue of their side of the argument.
I’m not sure such periods of instability work to anyone’s benefit.
In any negotiation the real question is what does the counterparty think? MAGA can believe this was a display of power all they like. It doesn't matter to the counterparty (everyone who isn't America).
MAGA can think whatever it likes about the brilliance of their guy and their play. The counterparty thinks "these guys are crazy" and acts accordingly. What really winds Trump up is people laughing at him. Must be unfortunate to have so many counterparties doing precisely that.
Firstly, the crisis is not over, it s delayed. The world´s two largest trading powers are locked in an arm wrestle, and the Americans, by alienating their own allies, are in the weaker position. The stated policy goals of the Trump are unachievable, but even if they were, they are not desirable.
The core fundamentals of the American market have been damaged: stability, the rule of law, lack of corruption, executability of all contracts, even Dollar liquidity- all of these have been called into question over the past week. Then US soft power- the brands, innovation leadership- has also been weakened to the point that consumers around the world are boycotting American products. The rest of the planet now increasingly views the United States as a hostile power, not a leader of the "free world".
All of this has implications that last way beyond the result of one trading session, all of them imply a lower valuation for US assets across the board. The US has endured systemic threats before of course, but not at a time when the financial fundamentals were so weak, nor when there are so many credible alternatives to US financial and economic hegemony.
The most obvious problem in the short/medium term is that the market turmoil triggered a flight from the Dollar. The implications of that for the USD is that it is no longer considered an automatic safe haven. If Trump had not paused his policy yesterday, then the Treasury market would have faced a meltdown and the Dollar would have collapsed. As it is, I believe the "exorbitant privilege" is unsustainable, and increasingly contracts may be settled in EUR (or, to a limited extent in CNY, unless the Chinese move to convertibility).
This week of chaos has dramatically damaged the reputation of the Americans and, although there may be a pause, the reality is that a significant discount now needs to be priced in. That discount may now come in a somewhat more orderly fashion, than in a market crash, but asset allocation to the US will need to take account of the higher risks.
I pointed out the significant headwinds on several US tech valuations a few weeks ago, but the prices are still firmly a Sell. That seems true of the whole US industrial equity market, especially while the tariff position remains unclear. The US bond market should be in principle a hold/weak buy, but the Fed now faces huge problems with potential USD instability, so I would be reluctant to predict anything more than a weak rally there. Trump´s threats to the Fed have been damaged systemic confidence too and so scope for rate cuts is pretty limited.
In a way the US hit the iceberg this week. The fundamental damage is done, but the ship is settling rather than capsizing. Nevertheless at whatever speed, an increasing discount is now going to happen. The only question is the speed and the timing. More to the point, with Trump and his moronic cronies still on the bridge, the US could try to ram the iceberg for a second time.
Don’t about you, but I’m driving across the Kazakh steppes, under the Tien Shan mountains, towards the mystical and distant Kolsai Lakes, while listening to “the Gulag Archipelago” (abridged)
They have potholes that could swallow Mongol armies
Well, I’m doing one of these things. Unsurprisingly the Tien Shan mountains aren’t involved.
She added: "While streamers like Netflix and Amazon have proved a valuable addition for the industry and economy, unless the government urgently intervenes to rebalance the playing field, for every Adolescence adding to the national conversation, there will be countless distinctly British stories that never make it to our screens."
The UK film and TV industries have never been more successful. They have absolutely boomed in recent years as huge amounts of money have been invested in facilities and production. It's one of the few areas of the economy where the best plan might be to simply do nothing.
Labour should just get on with it and nationalise British Steel .
They seem to be messing around trying to find ways to avoid this but it will happen eventually.
We have to rearm. That needs steel. We can't rely on foreign steel in the current crisis.
Nationalise now.
They're terrified of the word. They won't.
Labour is no longer fit for purpose. It has no theory of the world other than "do Thatcherism politely" and "spaff hosepipes of money on stupid Green stuff" (instead of smarter Green stuff)
You have to wonder how long the carbon capture scheme keeps its funding in the new world order...
Amusingly, or otherwise, the Chinese are claiming the lack of carbon capture plans for the Scunthorpe site (the Teeside centre was effectively a political choice by the last government) as a contributing factor towards their unwillingness to continue its funding.
She added: "While streamers like Netflix and Amazon have proved a valuable addition for the industry and economy, unless the government urgently intervenes to rebalance the playing field, for every Adolescence adding to the national conversation, there will be countless distinctly British stories that never make it to our screens."
No, they are right about the problem. Broadcasters are skint, and even foreign co-production money (eg all those BBC/HBO programmes) has largely dried up. Taxing streamers might not be the answer but the question is real.
The SEC is going to come under some pressure on this. Either they do something and Trump comes after them, or they don´t in which case the market will draw its own conclusions.
"Whilst Labour worry about being vulnerable to Reform, I think they are even more vulnerable on their left as voters are unhappy with austerity, something the Greens and SNP could benefit from."
As the rejoiners become more and more bold and confident, Labour are also losing pro european voters to libdem. Starmer is living in the past with his red lines. Even half of reform voters want SM and CU
"Whilst Labour worry about being vulnerable to Reform, I think they are even more vulnerable on their left as voters are unhappy with austerity, something the Greens and SNP could benefit from."
As the rejoiners become more and more bold and confident, Labour are also losing pro european voters to libdem. Starmer is living in the past with his red lines. Even half of reform voters want SM and CU
'Even half of reform voters want SM and CU' Evidence?
Though of course the chances of a Labour majority again on current polls are near zero next time, if Starmer scrapes back in it will be with a minority government propped up by the LDs anyway
In the morning, checked out the brand new Silvertown Tunnel via the equally brand new London bus route SL4, then went into town to check out the new entrance to Knightsbridge tube at Hoopers Court, not quite done but nearly there, and then caught the 1702 from St Pancras to traverse two bits of rare rail track way up north, Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions, and Chesterfield platform 3 to Woodhouse via Beighton. Of course, ended up in TSE-Land (ie. Sheffield), but was there less than 20 minutes before returning to London.
On topic sort of, here's a nice new (Chinese!) BYD bus used on the SL4:
"Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions"
You mean the cross-over from the fast lines to the slow lines?
Now you are getting desperate with your yellow pen!
"Whilst Labour worry about being vulnerable to Reform, I think they are even more vulnerable on their left as voters are unhappy with austerity, something the Greens and SNP could benefit from."
As the rejoiners become more and more bold and confident, Labour are also losing pro european voters to libdem. Starmer is living in the past with his red lines. Even half of reform voters want SM and CU
'Even half of reform voters want SM and CU' Evidence?
Though of course the chances of a Labour majority again on current polls are near zero next time, if Starmer scrapes back in it will be with a minority government propped up by the LDs anyway
"Even some supporters of pro-Brexit parties want closer ties with the EU – Reform (former Brexit Party) voters now back closer ties with Brussels by 42 per cent to 41 per cent, while Tory voters overwhelmingly back closer ties by 67 per cent to 21 per cent."
The SEC is going to come under some pressure on this. Either they do something and Trump comes after them, or they don´t in which case the market will draw its own conclusions.
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
Isn't that just her being awake? She's always angry and irritated when asked questions. Don't they know who She is? Don't they know how brilliant She is?
I think very few are giving attention to the Tories at the moment. One Nationers are either in despair or hoping for something from Lab/LD, the less thoughtful are either for Reform or have given up on politics altogether in favour of something more sensible like daytime television or growing potatoes.
What the Tories need to do is rethink themselves. They can't out Reform Reform, what they can do is command attention by the top quality of their contribution to public policy, attention to underlying principle. They need 15-20 people who are both extremely intelligent and presentable prepared to do this on the media for years so that when the centre ground voter is ready to receive them again, they are in place.
So far, the populists are useless, and the thoughtful are invisible or dull. So the field is clear for a new generation.
Yup. I'm not a conservative and even I can see a gaping hole for a pro-business pro-capitalism give people responsibility and more freedom political platform. Its astonishing that the Tories can't.
In what way aren't they? Kemi opposed the tax rises on business owners and farmers and wants to reduce regulation and spend less.
Though of course your platform sounds remarkably like Clegg's LDs in 2015 who got a resounding 8% of the vote, so don't overestimate the support for pro business, small state, socially liberal parties either
Don’t about you, but I’m driving across the Kazakh steppes, under the Tien Shan mountains, towards the mystical and distant Kolsai Lakes, while listening to “the Gulag Archipelago” (abridged)
They have potholes that could swallow Mongol armies
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
Isn't that just her being awake? She's always angry and irritated when asked questions. Don't they know who She is? Don't they know how brilliant She is?
I think very few are giving attention to the Tories at the moment. One Nationers are either in despair or hoping for something from Lab/LD, the less thoughtful are either for Reform or have given up on politics altogether in favour of something more sensible like daytime television or growing potatoes.
What the Tories need to do is rethink themselves. They can't out Reform Reform, what they can do is command attention by the top quality of their contribution to public policy, attention to underlying principle. They need 15-20 people who are both extremely intelligent and presentable prepared to do this on the media for years so that when the centre ground voter is ready to receive them again, they are in place.
So far, the populists are useless, and the thoughtful are invisible or dull. So the field is clear for a new generation.
Yup. I'm not a conservative and even I can see a gaping hole for a pro-business pro-capitalism give people responsibility and more freedom political platform. Its astonishing that the Tories can't.
In what way aren't they? Kemi opposed the tax rises on business owners and farmers and wants to reduce regulation and spend less.
Though of course your platform sounds remarkably like Clegg's LDs in 2015 who got a resounding 8% of the vote, so don't overestimate the support for pro business, small state, socially liberal parties either
The SEC is going to come under some pressure on this. Either they do something and Trump comes after them, or they don´t in which case the market will draw its own conclusions.
The brouhaha over No 10 insiders having a punt on foreknowledge of the GE date seems awfully distant. What weedy little corruptions we manage here, the UK must do better.
"Whilst Labour worry about being vulnerable to Reform, I think they are even more vulnerable on their left as voters are unhappy with austerity, something the Greens and SNP could benefit from."
As the rejoiners become more and more bold and confident, Labour are also losing pro european voters to libdem. Starmer is living in the past with his red lines. Even half of reform voters want SM and CU
'Even half of reform voters want SM and CU' Evidence?
Though of course the chances of a Labour majority again on current polls are near zero next time, if Starmer scrapes back in it will be with a minority government propped up by the LDs anyway
"Even some supporters of pro-Brexit parties want closer ties with the EU – Reform (former Brexit Party) voters now back closer ties with Brussels by 42 per cent to 41 per cent, while Tory voters overwhelmingly back closer ties by 67 per cent to 21 per cent."
I guess I took a few liberties, but it isn't far off
Given that did not mention restoring free movement with the EEA nor ending our right to do our own trade deals I would certainly say you took a few liberties
The SEC is going to come under some pressure on this. Either they do something and Trump comes after them, or they don´t in which case the market will draw its own conclusions.
As I pointed out, the Head of the SEC is a Presidential Appointment. Trump's nominee is one Paul S. Atkins, who is pro-less-regulation and keen on crypto. I don't know more, other than that his wife is a major Republican Donor.
In the morning, checked out the brand new Silvertown Tunnel via the equally brand new London bus route SL4, then went into town to check out the new entrance to Knightsbridge tube at Hoopers Court, not quite done but nearly there, and then caught the 1702 from St Pancras to traverse two bits of rare rail track way up north, Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions, and Chesterfield platform 3 to Woodhouse via Beighton. Of course, ended up in TSE-Land (ie. Sheffield), but was there less than 20 minutes before returning to London.
On topic sort of, here's a nice new (Chinese!) BYD bus used on the SL4:
"Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions"
You mean the cross-over from the fast lines to the slow lines?
Now you are getting desperate with your yellow pen!
I wonder if anyone has ever tried to walk England's entire Public Footpath network?
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
Isn't that just her being awake? She's always angry and irritated when asked questions. Don't they know who She is? Don't they know how brilliant She is?
I think very few are giving attention to the Tories at the moment. One Nationers are either in despair or hoping for something from Lab/LD, the less thoughtful are either for Reform or have given up on politics altogether in favour of something more sensible like daytime television or growing potatoes.
What the Tories need to do is rethink themselves. They can't out Reform Reform, what they can do is command attention by the top quality of their contribution to public policy, attention to underlying principle. They need 15-20 people who are both extremely intelligent and presentable prepared to do this on the media for years so that when the centre ground voter is ready to receive them again, they are in place.
So far, the populists are useless, and the thoughtful are invisible or dull. So the field is clear for a new generation.
Yup. I'm not a conservative and even I can see a gaping hole for a pro-business pro-capitalism give people responsibility and more freedom political platform. Its astonishing that the Tories can't.
In what way aren't they? Kemi opposed the tax rises on business owners and farmers and wants to reduce regulation and spend less.
Though of course your platform sounds remarkably like Clegg's LDs in 2015 who got a resounding 8% of the vote, so don't overestimate the support for pro business, small state, socially liberal parties either
See also the FDP in Germany. There's a gap in the market, but probably not a market in the gap for a free-standing party.
What has changed is that socially and economically liberal types used to find a home in the Conservatives. It may not have been a perfect fit, but it wasn't intolerable. And now it is.
Unlike the Grand Old Duke of York, President Trump marched his investors down to the bottom of the market and has now marched them back up again.
Apart from being a waste of time, money and effort as the markets will probably end up back where they started (no doubt some have made a right killing), has this been a demonstration of weakness or a display of power?
I suspect the answer is both and neither. Opponents and Supporters will no doubt argue ad nauseam the virtue of their side of the argument.
I’m not sure such periods of instability work to anyone’s benefit.
In any negotiation the real question is what does the counterparty think? MAGA can believe this was a display of power all they like. It doesn't matter to the counterparty (everyone who isn't America).
MAGA can think whatever it likes about the brilliance of their guy and their play. The counterparty thinks "these guys are crazy" and acts accordingly. What really winds Trump up is people laughing at him. Must be unfortunate to have so many counterparties doing precisely that.
Firstly, the crisis is not over, it s delayed. The world´s two largest trading powers are locked in an arm wrestle, and the Americans, by alienating their own allies, are in the weaker position. The stated policy goals of the Trump are unachievable, but even if they were, they are not desirable.
The core fundamentals of the American market have been damaged: stability, the rule of law, lack of corruption, executability of all contracts, even Dollar liquidity- all of these have been called into question over the past week. Then US soft power- the brands, innovation leadership- has also been weakened to the point that consumers around the world are boycotting American products. The rest of the planet now increasingly views the United States as a hostile power, not a leader of the "free world".
All of this has implications that last way beyond the result of one trading session, all of them imply a lower valuation for US assets across the board. The US has endured systemic threats before of course, but not at a time when the financial fundamentals were so weak, nor when there are so many credible alternatives to US financial and economic hegemony.
The most obvious problem in the short/medium term is that the market turmoil triggered a flight from the Dollar. The implications of that for the USD is that it is no longer considered an automatic safe haven. If Trump had not paused his policy yesterday, then the Treasury market would have faced a meltdown and the Dollar would have collapsed. As it is, I believe the "exorbitant privilege" is unsustainable, and increasingly contracts may be settled in EUR (or, to a limited extent in CNY, unless the Chinese move to convertibility).
This week of chaos has dramatically damaged the reputation of the Americans and, although there may be a pause, the reality is that a significant discount now needs to be priced in. That discount may now come in a somewhat more orderly fashion, than in a market crash, but asset allocation to the US will need to take account of the higher risks.
I pointed out the significant headwinds on several US tech valuations a few weeks ago, but the prices are still firmly a Sell. That seems true of the whole US industrial equity market, especially while the tariff position remains unclear. The US bond market should be in principle a hold/weak buy, but the Fed now faces huge problems with potential USD instability, so I would be reluctant to predict anything more than a weak rally there. Trump´s threats to the Fed have been damaged systemic confidence too and so scope for rate cuts is pretty limited.
In a way the US hit the iceberg this week. The fundamental damage is done, but the ship is settling rather than capsizing. Nevertheless at whatever speed, an increasing discount is now going to happen. The only question is the speed and the timing. More to the point, with Trump and his moronic cronies still on the bridge, the US could try to ram the iceberg for a second time.
Excellent. And the market is only trading at July 2024 levels when things were much more stable.
She added: "While streamers like Netflix and Amazon have proved a valuable addition for the industry and economy, unless the government urgently intervenes to rebalance the playing field, for every Adolescence adding to the national conversation, there will be countless distinctly British stories that never make it to our screens."
The UK film and TV industries have never been more successful. They have absolutely boomed in recent years as huge amounts of money have been invested in facilities and production. It's one of the few areas of the economy where the best plan might be to simply do nothing.
I'm not sure that's true. Independent productions, drama schools, etc are all cutting back. We need something like the "Canadian Content" policy. If we don't tell the stories of "us", there won't be an "us" any more.
The SEC is going to come under some pressure on this. Either they do something and Trump comes after them, or they don´t in which case the market will draw its own conclusions.
The brouhaha over No 10 insiders having a punt on foreknowledge of the GE date seems awfully distant. What weedy little corruptions we manage here, the UK must do better.
Part of the reason Trump is so disliked over here is the sheer brass neck of him and his cronies. If Obama, Clinton or Biden had done this they would be doggedly calling it the worst and most corrupt scandal ever. When they do it, anyone who merely points it is a traitor and troublemaker.
In the morning, checked out the brand new Silvertown Tunnel via the equally brand new London bus route SL4, then went into town to check out the new entrance to Knightsbridge tube at Hoopers Court, not quite done but nearly there, and then caught the 1702 from St Pancras to traverse two bits of rare rail track way up north, Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions, and Chesterfield platform 3 to Woodhouse via Beighton. Of course, ended up in TSE-Land (ie. Sheffield), but was there less than 20 minutes before returning to London.
On topic sort of, here's a nice new (Chinese!) BYD bus used on the SL4:
"Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions"
You mean the cross-over from the fast lines to the slow lines?
Now you are getting desperate with your yellow pen!
I wonder if anyone has ever tried to walk England's entire Public Footpath network?
Have a look at Slowways.org They are trying to make it possible using sensible navigating systems.
Don’t about you, but I’m driving across the Kazakh steppes, under the Tien Shan mountains, towards the mystical and distant Kolsai Lakes, while listening to “the Gulag Archipelago” (abridged)
They have potholes that could swallow Mongol armies
In the morning, checked out the brand new Silvertown Tunnel via the equally brand new London bus route SL4, then went into town to check out the new entrance to Knightsbridge tube at Hoopers Court, not quite done but nearly there, and then caught the 1702 from St Pancras to traverse two bits of rare rail track way up north, Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions, and Chesterfield platform 3 to Woodhouse via Beighton. Of course, ended up in TSE-Land (ie. Sheffield), but was there less than 20 minutes before returning to London.
On topic sort of, here's a nice new (Chinese!) BYD bus used on the SL4:
"Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions"
You mean the cross-over from the fast lines to the slow lines?
Now you are getting desperate with your yellow pen!
In the morning, checked out the brand new Silvertown Tunnel via the equally brand new London bus route SL4, then went into town to check out the new entrance to Knightsbridge tube at Hoopers Court, not quite done but nearly there, and then caught the 1702 from St Pancras to traverse two bits of rare rail track way up north, Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions, and Chesterfield platform 3 to Woodhouse via Beighton. Of course, ended up in TSE-Land (ie. Sheffield), but was there less than 20 minutes before returning to London.
Interesting! Hadn't realised there were daily booked workings via the old road...
Saw my first hedgehog for a long time this morning (before dawn).
They are plentiful around here, Morris.
My dogs are fascinated by them, and like to pick them up by the prickles and give them a good shaking. This does neither much good.
Haven't seen one for a few years since we found one drowning in our fishpond. Got it out, tried to revive it and contacted the local Hedgehog Rescue people but it died.
Saw my first hedgehog for a long time this morning (before dawn).
They are plentiful around here, Morris.
My dogs are fascinated by them, and like to pick them up by the prickles and give them a good shaking. This does neither much good.
Haven't seen one for a few years since we found one drowning in our fishpond. Got it out, tried to revive it and contacted the local Hedgehog Rescue people but it died.
Please tell me they came round in a hedgehog shaped van with prickles and blue lights going "nee-naw" that screeched to a halt outside the house?
She added: "While streamers like Netflix and Amazon have proved a valuable addition for the industry and economy, unless the government urgently intervenes to rebalance the playing field, for every Adolescence adding to the national conversation, there will be countless distinctly British stories that never make it to our screens."
The UK film and TV industries have never been more successful. They have absolutely boomed in recent years as huge amounts of money have been invested in facilities and production. It's one of the few areas of the economy where the best plan might be to simply do nothing.
I'm not sure that's true. Independent productions, drama schools, etc are all cutting back. We need something like the "Canadian Content" policy. If we don't tell the stories of "us", there won't be an "us" any more.
The BFI say production spending was up 31% in 2024 over 2023. Sure UK broadcasters aren't doing as well as they'd like, but the overall sector has been doing very well, and most of it is inward investment. It's one of the UK success stories.
If your measure of success is independent films and how the BBC and ITV are doing you can paint a picture that is negative, but if you look at the wider business, which is much bigger thanks to streaming, it's one that we would love to replicate in other sectors of the economy.
In the morning, checked out the brand new Silvertown Tunnel via the equally brand new London bus route SL4, then went into town to check out the new entrance to Knightsbridge tube at Hoopers Court, not quite done but nearly there, and then caught the 1702 from St Pancras to traverse two bits of rare rail track way up north, Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions, and Chesterfield platform 3 to Woodhouse via Beighton. Of course, ended up in TSE-Land (ie. Sheffield), but was there less than 20 minutes before returning to London.
On topic sort of, here's a nice new (Chinese!) BYD bus used on the SL4:
"Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions"
You mean the cross-over from the fast lines to the slow lines?
Now you are getting desperate with your yellow pen!
I wonder if anyone has ever tried to walk England's entire Public Footpath network?
It'd be next to impossible. There are apparently 140,000 miles or RoW (fp's and bridleways) in E&W. In a year's solid walking, I did 6,000 miles with only a handful of days off. So you're talking a couple of decades of solid walking. But the worse thing is it'd be more than that, as there are loads of dead-ends or paths where there is no economic routes you can take without 'wasting' loads of miles. Then there are sections of paths that are not actually accessible, like the one through Alton Towers I mentioned yesterday, or the old flood banks to the east of Snape Maltings in Suffolk.
I've walked nearly 20,000 miles in the UK (from memory...) and there are entire cities I have yet to visit.
Locally, I have run nearly every path and road in a diamond between Cambridge, Royston, Sandy and Huntingdon - excepting the M11 and stretches of dual carriageway with no pavement. There was a vast amount of road running in that, but there are many, many paths and bridleways in an area that is not exactly famed for access.
Reading the article about the Asylum seeker hotel in Windsor in The Times yesterday, it hit me that the small boats really are the crack cocaine of the immigration debate. They’re everything that people who are wary of mass immigration fear, crystallised into one short, sharp hit.
A decade ago, the bogeyman cliche of immigration was six Eastern European men sharing a suburban semi and working on a local building site. Not horrific, but no family really wants to live next to a revolving cast of temporary workers, the foreign element is low down on the list of complaints really. That is nothing compared to 50-60 men under 30, from war torn countries, with completely different cultural attitudes, living in a guest house & hanging around small villages day & night. Because it hasn’t happened where I live yet, I’d never really thought about it, but if a block of flats/hotel near here, a small family oriented village, were used for that purpose it would literally ruin people’s lives.
A PPB from Reform showing/re-enacting the Windsor Hotel case would be pretty effective I think
Saw my first hedgehog for a long time this morning (before dawn).
They are plentiful around here, Morris.
My dogs are fascinated by them, and like to pick them up by the prickles and give them a good shaking. This does neither much good.
Haven't seen one for a few years since we found one drowning in our fishpond. Got it out, tried to revive it and contacted the local Hedgehog Rescue people but it died.
Please tell me they came round in a hedgehog shaped van with prickles and blue lights going "nee-naw" that screeched to a halt outside the house?
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
Isn't that just her being awake? She's always angry and irritated when asked questions. Don't they know who She is? Don't they know how brilliant She is?
I think very few are giving attention to the Tories at the moment. One Nationers are either in despair or hoping for something from Lab/LD, the less thoughtful are either for Reform or have given up on politics altogether in favour of something more sensible like daytime television or growing potatoes.
What the Tories need to do is rethink themselves. They can't out Reform Reform, what they can do is command attention by the top quality of their contribution to public policy, attention to underlying principle. They need 15-20 people who are both extremely intelligent and presentable prepared to do this on the media for years so that when the centre ground voter is ready to receive them again, they are in place.
So far, the populists are useless, and the thoughtful are invisible or dull. So the field is clear for a new generation.
Yup. I'm not a conservative and even I can see a gaping hole for a pro-business pro-capitalism give people responsibility and more freedom political platform. Its astonishing that the Tories can't.
In what way aren't they? Kemi opposed the tax rises on business owners and farmers and wants to reduce regulation and spend less.
Though of course your platform sounds remarkably like Clegg's LDs in 2015 who got a resounding 8% of the vote, so don't overestimate the support for pro business, small state, socially liberal parties either
Deluded.
No factual, elections have proved that parties which are pro business, pro small state, socially liberal and pro immigration have a ceiling of about 10% of the vote. As they are too rightwing economically for the left and too liberal socially for the traditional right
Don’t about you, but I’m driving across the Kazakh steppes, under the Tien Shan mountains, towards the mystical and distant Kolsai Lakes, while listening to “the Gulag Archipelago” (abridged)
They have potholes that could swallow Mongol armies
Saw my first hedgehog for a long time this morning (before dawn).
They are plentiful around here, Morris.
My dogs are fascinated by them, and like to pick them up by the prickles and give them a good shaking. This does neither much good.
Haven't seen one for a few years since we found one drowning in our fishpond. Got it out, tried to revive it and contacted the local Hedgehog Rescue people but it died.
Please tell me they came round in a hedgehog shaped van with prickles and blue lights going "nee-naw" that screeched to a halt outside the house?
I hope you appreciated the Star Trek reference in the header.
Unlike the Grand Old Duke of York, President Trump marched his investors down to the bottom of the market and has now marched them back up again.
Apart from being a waste of time, money and effort as the markets will probably end up back where they started (no doubt some have made a right killing), has this been a demonstration of weakness or a display of power?
I suspect the answer is both and neither. Opponents and Supporters will no doubt argue ad nauseam the virtue of their side of the argument.
I’m not sure such periods of instability work to anyone’s benefit.
In any negotiation the real question is what does the counterparty think? MAGA can believe this was a display of power all they like. It doesn't matter to the counterparty (everyone who isn't America).
MAGA can think whatever it likes about the brilliance of their guy and their play. The counterparty thinks "these guys are crazy" and acts accordingly. What really winds Trump up is people laughing at him. Must be unfortunate to have so many counterparties doing precisely that.
Firstly, the crisis is not over, it s delayed. The world´s two largest trading powers are locked in an arm wrestle, and the Americans, by alienating their own allies, are in the weaker position. The stated policy goals of the Trump are unachievable, but even if they were, they are not desirable.
The core fundamentals of the American market have been damaged: stability, the rule of law, lack of corruption, executability of all contracts, even Dollar liquidity- all of these have been called into question over the past week. Then US soft power- the brands, innovation leadership- has also been weakened to the point that consumers around the world are boycotting American products. The rest of the planet now increasingly views the United States as a hostile power, not a leader of the "free world".
All of this has implications that last way beyond the result of one trading session, all of them imply a lower valuation for US assets across the board. The US has endured systemic threats before of course, but not at a time when the financial fundamentals were so weak, nor when there are so many credible alternatives to US financial and economic hegemony.
The most obvious problem in the short/medium term is that the market turmoil triggered a flight from the Dollar. The implications of that for the USD is that it is no longer considered an automatic safe haven. If Trump had not paused his policy yesterday, then the Treasury market would have faced a meltdown and the Dollar would have collapsed. As it is, I believe the "exorbitant privilege" is unsustainable, and increasingly contracts may be settled in EUR (or, to a limited extent in CNY, unless the Chinese move to convertibility).
This week of chaos has dramatically damaged the reputation of the Americans and, although there may be a pause, the reality is that a significant discount now needs to be priced in. That discount may now come in a somewhat more orderly fashion, than in a market crash, but asset allocation to the US will need to take account of the higher risks.
I pointed out the significant headwinds on several US tech valuations a few weeks ago, but the prices are still firmly a Sell. That seems true of the whole US industrial equity market, especially while the tariff position remains unclear. The US bond market should be in principle a hold/weak buy, but the Fed now faces huge problems with potential USD instability, so I would be reluctant to predict anything more than a weak rally there. Trump´s threats to the Fed have been damaged systemic confidence too and so scope for rate cuts is pretty limited.
In a way the US hit the iceberg this week. The fundamental damage is done, but the ship is settling rather than capsizing. Nevertheless at whatever speed, an increasing discount is now going to happen. The only question is the speed and the timing. More to the point, with Trump and his moronic cronies still on the bridge, the US could try to ram the iceberg for a second time.
It's not clear that the tariffs *have* been paused, by the way. Trump's word is not (yet) law and there's no published Executive Order amending the previous rates yet.
You'd assume that there probably will be, at some time today - presumably it was all so on-the-fly yesterday they didn't have time to draft it with sufficient rigour - but I wouldn't like to be an importer taking delivery of something at a dock right now. Indeed, I'd be inclined not to if legally the import duty is, say, 30%+ right now but will probably be 10% in a few hours.
But really, how is anyone supposed to be doing trade amid the constant yo-yo-ing of tariffs? Maybe that's part of the plan, although pretty daft if so. But then Trump is daft on this. Businesses need stability and assurance to have the confidence to invest and spend. There can be none in the US right now.
Just for PB. I have numerous pairs of those plastic clogs which I use when gardening or just popping out the house, but not going anywhere eg emptying the bins.
I always wear out the right clog before the left clog (inevitably I find out when I get a wet foot). I'm not aware that I walk on one foot more than the other. Initially I kept the left clog hoping next time I would have a right clog to go with it, but all that happened was I found I had a huge collection of left clogs. The only solution would be if I could just buy right clogs (is there a business opportunity there) or find someone who has size 9 feet who wears their clogs out in the other order (again another business opportunity)
The SEC is going to come under some pressure on this. Either they do something and Trump comes after them, or they don´t in which case the market will draw its own conclusions.
The brouhaha over No 10 insiders having a punt on foreknowledge of the GE date seems awfully distant. What weedy little corruptions we manage here, the UK must do better.
Everything's always 100 times bigger and brighter in America inc the various types of political twattery. On shambolic narcissism we had a bash with "Boris". On hubristic incompetence we gave it our best shot with Liz Truss. Really serious entries, both, and stronger than most countries could manage. But no, as per usual, we're blown out of the water by Uncle Sam.
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
Isn't that just her being awake? She's always angry and irritated when asked questions. Don't they know who She is? Don't they know how brilliant She is?
I think very few are giving attention to the Tories at the moment. One Nationers are either in despair or hoping for something from Lab/LD, the less thoughtful are either for Reform or have given up on politics altogether in favour of something more sensible like daytime television or growing potatoes.
What the Tories need to do is rethink themselves. They can't out Reform Reform, what they can do is command attention by the top quality of their contribution to public policy, attention to underlying principle. They need 15-20 people who are both extremely intelligent and presentable prepared to do this on the media for years so that when the centre ground voter is ready to receive them again, they are in place.
So far, the populists are useless, and the thoughtful are invisible or dull. So the field is clear for a new generation.
Yup. I'm not a conservative and even I can see a gaping hole for a pro-business pro-capitalism give people responsibility and more freedom political platform. Its astonishing that the Tories can't.
In what way aren't they? Kemi opposed the tax rises on business owners and farmers and wants to reduce regulation and spend less.
Though of course your platform sounds remarkably like Clegg's LDs in 2015 who got a resounding 8% of the vote, so don't overestimate the support for pro business, small state, socially liberal parties either
Deluded.
No factual, elections have proved that parties which are pro business, pro small state, socially liberal and pro immigration have a ceiling of about 10% of the vote. As they are too rightwing economically for the left and too liberal socially for the traditional right
To be fair, I can believe that. Three of those categories cover me, but I'm very suspicious of the fourth.
In the morning, checked out the brand new Silvertown Tunnel via the equally brand new London bus route SL4, then went into town to check out the new entrance to Knightsbridge tube at Hoopers Court, not quite done but nearly there, and then caught the 1702 from St Pancras to traverse two bits of rare rail track way up north, Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions, and Chesterfield platform 3 to Woodhouse via Beighton. Of course, ended up in TSE-Land (ie. Sheffield), but was there less than 20 minutes before returning to London.
On topic sort of, here's a nice new (Chinese!) BYD bus used on the SL4:
"Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions"
You mean the cross-over from the fast lines to the slow lines?
Now you are getting desperate with your yellow pen!
Chesterfield to Woodhouse??
AKA "The Old Road". Used to be a regular Sunday diversion when I was heading back from the north east to Brum.
Reading the article about the Asylum seeker hotel in Windsor in The Times yesterday, it hit me that the small boats really are the crack cocaine of the immigration debate. They’re everything that people who are wary of mass immigration fear, crystallised into one short, sharp hit.
A decade ago, the bogeyman cliche of immigration was six Eastern European men sharing a suburban semi and working on a local building site. Not horrific, but no family really wants to live next to a revolving cast of temporary workers, the foreign element is low down on the list of complaints really. That is nothing compared to 50-60 men under 30, from war torn countries, with completely different cultural attitudes, living in a guest house & hanging around small villages day & night. Because it hasn’t happened where I live yet, I’d never really thought about it, but if a block of flats/hotel near here, a small family oriented village, were used for that purpose it would literally ruin people’s lives.
A PPB from Reform showing/re-enacting the Windsor Hotel case would be pretty effective I think
In my peregrinations around the UK I used to live near Slough so I've been to Datchet. It is full of upper-class, upper-middle-class and generally well-off people. The culture shock must have been pretty big.
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
I thought she was broadly right that she doesn't really need to watch Adolescence. But there are ways of saying that which don't come across as frosty, defensive, and rather hostile.
She probably needs to get Corbyn's "stop being so damned tetchy" coach in. He started with that being a real problem in interviews, and it never fully went away, but he did at least listen to the point and tried to manage it.
Was she actually asked about that show?
There was a Labour person on Sky wanting a tax on Netflix to fund British broadcasters. Loved Adolescence - didn't love it being made by Netflix.
She was - I don't think it was a very good question, but she just has a problem with coming across as tetchy when she could've said I have a very long list of film and TV recommendations from friends that I'd love to get round to, but sadly I don't get a huge amount of time etc - although I hear it's a powerful drama and well done to all involved.
I don't think the Labour MP's point you describe is that great. There are always going to be some good shows made by broadcasters that aren't the BBC and even that aren't free to air (there's also a load of utter shite on Netflix, to be fair, but they have some good ones).
Just for PB. I have numerous pairs of those plastic clogs which I use when gardening or just popping out the house, but not going anywhere eg emptying the bins.
I always wear out the right clog before the left clog (inevitably I find out when I get a wet foot). I'm not aware that I walk on one foot more than the other. Initially I kept the left clog hoping next time I would have a right clog to go with it, but all that happened was I found I had a huge collection of left clogs. The only solution would be if I could just buy right clogs (is there a business opportunity there) or find someone who has size 9 feet who wears their clogs out in the other order (again another business opportunity)
First world problems eh!
What I find strange is that you can't buy odd pairs of running shoe. They are increasingly high value items and if manufacturers sold them to resellers in pairs but supplied them direct in odd sizes it would give them an advantage for direct sales. I paid a lot for a pair of carbon fibre shoes, I went up half a size as advised, the result being the right is slightly too large. That's obviously better than the left being slightly too small, but why won't Saucony sell me two different size shoes?
Just for PB. I have numerous pairs of those plastic clogs which I use when gardening or just popping out the house, but not going anywhere eg emptying the bins.
I always wear out the right clog before the left clog (inevitably I find out when I get a wet foot). I'm not aware that I walk on one foot more than the other. Initially I kept the left clog hoping next time I would have a right clog to go with it, but all that happened was I found I had a huge collection of left clogs. The only solution would be if I could just buy right clogs (is there a business opportunity there) or find someone who has size 9 feet who wears their clogs out in the other order (again another business opportunity)
First world problems eh!
I think most of us lead with the same foot when stepping out which might explain the extra wear. Check out which foot you use when you next set out on a journey of a thousand miles with a single step.
Comments
(That's fine. Lots of dumb random moves coupled with a small amount of feedback is a neat way to get a good answer in the end. Evolution, really. But it's a slow process with lots of death on the way.)
At what point between 2011 and 2015 that change happened is open to debate.
A New Kind of Computer
Foreword: This blog post outlines our breakthrough photonic AI acceleration research. This body of work is essential for the future of computing and as a look-ahead at what may come tomorrow. Today, the problem to solve is interconnecting millions of chips, and at Lightmatter, we’re fully committed to addressing that challenge for our customers.
https://lightmatter.co/blog/a-new-kind-of-computer/
She probably needs to get Corbyn's "stop being so damned tetchy" coach in. He started with that being a real problem in interviews, and it never fully went away, but he did at least listen to the point and tried to manage it.
Latest Trump approval poll - Quinnipiac University
Approval 41% Disapproval 53% Net -12%
My EMA of approval polls
EDIT: GOP are at evens on Betfair to win the 2028 Presidential election
I can't find any market on the midterms.
There was a Labour person on Sky wanting a tax on Netflix to fund British broadcasters. Loved Adolescence - didn't love it being made by Netflix.
Indeed, economic performance stuttered for the first half of the Coalition as the economy tried to recover from the shock of 2008.
Should there have been shallower cuts and more tax rises? Many on here will doubtless argue the cuts should have been even deeper but I don’t agree.
They have potholes that could swallow Mongol armies
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/10/28/2024-elections-live-coverage-updates-analysis/kamala-harris-chips-00185888
It will be bad for Reform if they flop at these elections, but worse if they succeed.
Most of the extra defence funding, assuming it actually happens, will be wasted to no particular effect.
The only modern defence procurement that consumes a significant amount of steel is shipbuilding. There's about 4,000 - 5,000 tons of steel in a modern frigate and the UK is only finishing one of those every other year. That consumption is a rounding error in global steel production.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg22d99v7qo
She added: "While streamers like Netflix and Amazon have proved a valuable addition for the industry and economy, unless the government urgently intervenes to rebalance the playing field, for every Adolescence adding to the national conversation, there will be countless distinctly British stories that never make it to our screens."
What the Tories need to do is rethink themselves. They can't out Reform Reform, what they can do is command attention by the top quality of their contribution to public policy, attention to underlying principle. They need 15-20 people who are both extremely intelligent and presentable prepared to do this on the media for years so that when the centre ground voter is ready to receive them again, they are in place.
So far, the populists are useless, and the thoughtful are invisible or dull. So the field is clear for a new generation.
Remember Trump is using emergency legislation for the tariffs.
So the measures that were urgent and necessary to meet that emergency have now suddenly become non-urgent and unnecessary.
If US congress and courts properly held president to account for misuse of emergency powers, this would matter.
https://bsky.app/profile/davidallengreen.bsky.social/post/3lmguqrcryk2u
https://electionbettingodds.com/Senate-Control-2026.html
Dems 84% House control, 31% Senate Control.
Anyway, here's a recent report, if you have half an hour to waste.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7317/CBP-7317.pdf
However if in 2028 Trump's tariffs have led to recession, higher prices and few extra manufacturing jobs they won't be normal times and the Democrats would have a chance of electing the most leftwing President of the USA in 100 years. Why wouldn't they be tempted to gamble on AOC this time after holding their nose for establishment candidates the last few cycles, 2 out of 3 of whom lost?
Even Corbyn nearly won in 2017 after the Brexit vote and austerity and got a hung parliament despite being written off
Nobody knows what he is going to do, probably including himself. The only investment advice for anyone surely must be to get out of the USA and stay out.
The last few days have also confirmed in my mind that unfettered free market capitalism works about as well as pure socialism.
So a tonne of steel gets you 40 shells, assuming no waste (and there will be waste...). If we make 100,000 155 shells a year - which is nothing in wartime - then that is 2,500 tonnes of steel just for the 155 shell bodies. Then you have got all the other shell types, missiles, bullets etc which also require steel.
Youtube keeps throwing me pseudo-medical adverts for vitamin supplements and slimming tablets of the sort that are generally, and correctly, banned.
The latest slimming one makes a comparison with "would you withhold insulin from a diabetic". And I thought slimming treatment (at least the injected ones) were prescription only.
That's massively emotionally manipulative - you withhold my insulin, I die.
These and various others need to go.
Even then, most of our scrap steel is exported. The idea is to bring more of that recycling back to the UK, and given massive excess overnight electricity from renewables, this might end up making new electric arc furnaces commercially viable. That would contribute to our security as it doesn't depend on imports of coal or iron ore.
The issue is that there are a few grades of steel which you cannot make anywhere other than in a blast furnace, some of which are essential for military use. But, AFAIK, the MOD does not insist on UK steel for this anyway, and I think most of that is already imported from NATO allies. Scunthorpe is owned by the Chinese, FFS.
S. Korea braces for rising pressure to shoulder more costs for US troop presence
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/defense/20250409/south-korea-braces-for-rising-pressure-to-shoulder-more-costs-for-us-troop-presence
...Meanwhile, the Senate’s recent confirmation of Elbridge Colby as undersecretary of defense signals a tougher U.S. stance on China and a renewed focus on "deterrence by denial." Colby, a critic of the Biden administration's "integrated deterrence" strategy — which seeks to coordinate military, economic and technological means across allies — instead advocates for "deterrence by denial," a concept aimed at making adversaries believe that any attack would fail. In this framework, Colby emphasizes that Seoul should take full responsibility for conventional threats from Pyongyang while U.S. forces focus on broader regional deterrence against China...
In the morning, checked out the brand new Silvertown Tunnel via the equally brand new London bus route SL4, then went into town to check out the new entrance to Knightsbridge tube at Hoopers Court, not quite done but nearly there, and then caught the 1702 from St Pancras to traverse two bits of rare rail track way up north, Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions, and Chesterfield platform 3 to Woodhouse via Beighton. Of course, ended up in TSE-Land (ie. Sheffield), but was there less than 20 minutes before returning to London.
On topic sort of, here's a nice new (Chinese!) BYD bus used on the SL4:
There being, of course, no actual numbers attached.
Saw my first hedgehog for a long time this morning (before dawn).
The core fundamentals of the American market have been damaged: stability, the rule of law, lack of corruption, executability of all contracts, even Dollar liquidity- all of these have been called into question over the past week. Then US soft power- the brands, innovation leadership- has also been weakened to the point that consumers around the world are boycotting American products. The rest of the planet now increasingly views the United States as a hostile power, not a leader of the "free world".
All of this has implications that last way beyond the result of one trading session, all of them imply a lower valuation for US assets across the board. The US has endured systemic threats before of course, but not at a time when the financial fundamentals were so weak, nor when there are so many credible alternatives to US financial and economic hegemony.
The most obvious problem in the short/medium term is that the market turmoil triggered a flight from the Dollar. The implications of that for the USD is that it is no longer considered an automatic safe haven. If Trump had not paused his policy yesterday, then the Treasury market would have faced a meltdown and the Dollar would have collapsed. As it is, I believe the "exorbitant privilege" is unsustainable, and increasingly contracts may be settled in EUR (or, to a limited extent in CNY, unless the Chinese move to convertibility).
This week of chaos has dramatically damaged the reputation of the Americans and, although there may be a pause, the reality is that a significant discount now needs to be priced in. That discount may now come in a somewhat more orderly fashion, than in a market crash, but asset allocation to the US will need to take account of the higher risks.
I pointed out the significant headwinds on several US tech valuations a few weeks ago, but the prices are still firmly a Sell. That seems true of the whole US industrial equity market, especially while the tariff position remains unclear. The US bond market should be in principle a hold/weak buy, but the Fed now faces huge problems with potential USD instability, so I would be reluctant to predict anything more than a weak rally there. Trump´s threats to the Fed have been damaged systemic confidence too and so scope for rate cuts is pretty limited.
In a way the US hit the iceberg this week. The fundamental damage is done, but the ship is settling rather than capsizing. Nevertheless at whatever speed, an increasing discount is now going to happen. The only question is the speed and the timing. More to the point, with Trump and his moronic cronies still on the bridge, the US could try to ram the iceberg for a second time.
https://bsky.app/profile/onestpress.bsky.social/post/3lmgktsrvqs23
Which shows how the rule of law is quickly collapsing in US to be honest.
This will not help persuade businesses to invest. It is one of the US's massive USPs: a country of laws. No longer.
As far as virgin steel is concerned...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/09/deal-to-save-british-steels-scunthorpe-plant-within-sight-says-minister
..Another complication is that the UK government is entering into the discussions without having completed a review of the country’s steel strategy, a significant part of which will be a verdict on whether the UK needs to make virgin steel...
As the rejoiners become more and more bold and confident, Labour are also losing pro european voters to libdem. Starmer is living in the past with his red lines. Even half of reform voters want SM and CU
Though of course the chances of a Labour majority again on current polls are near zero next time, if Starmer scrapes back in it will be with a minority government propped up by the LDs anyway
You mean the cross-over from the fast lines to the slow lines?
Now you are getting desperate with your yellow pen!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/trump-tariffs-brexit-starmer-trade-war-b2725289.html
I guess I took a few liberties, but it isn't far off
https://x.com/EvanAKilgore/status/1910035012054810998
Though of course your platform sounds remarkably like Clegg's LDs in 2015 who got a resounding 8% of the vote, so don't overestimate the support for pro business, small state, socially liberal parties either
Some light reading for you about the origins of the domestic apple in the Tien Shan:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Apple-Barrie-Edward-Juniper/dp/0881927848/
What has changed is that socially and economically liberal types used to find a home in the Conservatives. It may not have been a perfect fit, but it wasn't intolerable. And now it is.
My dogs are fascinated by them, and like to pick them up by the prickles and give them a good shaking. This does neither much good.
Lmao the amount of SPY calls increased by over 10x literally 10 min before the announcement
https://x.com/LinkofSunshine/status/1910091470687830510
Nominative determinism at its finest
If your measure of success is independent films and how the BBC and ITV are doing you can paint a picture that is negative, but if you look at the wider business, which is much bigger thanks to streaming, it's one that we would love to replicate in other sectors of the economy.
Sounds like market manipulation to me. That’s bad.
https://x.com/Out5p0ken/status/1910220382067384825
I've walked nearly 20,000 miles in the UK (from memory...) and there are entire cities I have yet to visit.
Locally, I have run nearly every path and road in a diamond between Cambridge, Royston, Sandy and Huntingdon - excepting the M11 and stretches of dual carriageway with no pavement. There was a vast amount of road running in that, but there are many, many paths and bridleways in an area that is not exactly famed for access.
A decade ago, the bogeyman cliche of immigration was six Eastern European men sharing a suburban semi and working on a local building site. Not horrific, but no family really wants to live next to a revolving cast of temporary workers, the foreign element is low down on the list of complaints really. That is nothing compared to 50-60 men under 30, from war torn countries, with completely different cultural attitudes, living in a guest house & hanging around small villages day & night. Because it hasn’t happened where I live yet, I’d never really thought about it, but if a block of flats/hotel near here, a small family oriented village, were used for that purpose it would literally ruin people’s lives.
A PPB from Reform showing/re-enacting the Windsor Hotel case would be pretty effective I think
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/migrant-hotel-reshaped-village-windsor-immigration-3x395lw9h)
The London-listed company will be bought by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and Stonepeak Partners.
https://www.independent.co.uk/business/gp-surgeries-owner-assura-agrees-to-private-equity-takeover-worth-ps1-61bn-b2730001.html
The creeping privatisation of health, and foreign sales of British assets.
He spent a lot of time in Kazakhstan. I suppose you could call it a search for the Garden of Eden...
Private schools now trump card in race for Premier League talent
As concern around concussion in rugby continues, the middle classes are embracing football and it is paying off at the highest level
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2025/04/10/private-schools-premier-league-clubs-academy-talent/
You'd assume that there probably will be, at some time today - presumably it was all so on-the-fly yesterday they didn't have time to draft it with sufficient rigour - but I wouldn't like to be an importer taking delivery of something at a dock right now. Indeed, I'd be inclined not to if legally the import duty is, say, 30%+ right now but will probably be 10% in a few hours.
But really, how is anyone supposed to be doing trade amid the constant yo-yo-ing of tariffs? Maybe that's part of the plan, although pretty daft if so. But then Trump is daft on this. Businesses need stability and assurance to have the confidence to invest and spend. There can be none in the US right now.
I always wear out the right clog before the left clog (inevitably I find out when I get a wet foot). I'm not aware that I walk on one foot more than the other. Initially I kept the left clog hoping next time I would have a right clog to go with it, but all that happened was I found I had a huge collection of left clogs. The only solution would be if I could just buy right clogs (is there a business opportunity there) or find someone who has size 9 feet who wears their clogs out in the other order (again another business opportunity)
First world problems eh!
- Corrected link: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/migrant-hotel-reshaped-village-windsor-immigration-3x395lw9h
- Archive link: https://archive.is/GaVDI
In my peregrinations around the UK I used to live near Slough so I've been to Datchet. It is full of upper-class, upper-middle-class and generally well-off people. The culture shock must have been pretty big.I don't think the Labour MP's point you describe is that great. There are always going to be some good shows made by broadcasters that aren't the BBC and even that aren't free to air (there's also a load of utter shite on Netflix, to be fair, but they have some good ones).