Jeremy's Den: 2025

Don’t half go on a bit, don’t they? Twenty minutes on the one tune? Gimme Take That, flashing lights, a pint of Stella any day. Kidding. This is nice…ish.

(Annie Cabbot, DCI Banks: Strange Affair, 2012)

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

(Martin Luther King Jr.)

Now for something completely different, today's soundtrack is the John Coltrane Quintet, from the live box set The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings. My picks are the two complete sets played on 1 November and 2 November 1961. With the only two surviving tracks from the 5 November 1961 set bookending as bonuses, the stunning 20-minute rendition of "Spiritual" at the top, and the more chaotic 15-minute version of "India" at the very end. You might think there are duplicates, but they're actually not. The John Coltrane Quintet were big on improvisation, so each performance was a radically different incarnation of the same piece. Coltrane also invited guests, so the line-up varied from one night to the next, and even from one piece to the next on the same night. Coltrane famously borrowed many patterns from far outwith traditional jazz, most predominantly Indian music, so he would probably be excommunicated for 'cultural appropriation' by the woke mob today. Fuck them and enjoy that truly visionary stuff.

As you surely know, the images look better if you click on them for larger versions.

The Liberal Party of Canada never had it so good, and is likely to bag a majority of seats later this year. Thank Dog for Donald Trump. Thank Dog too for Justin Trudeau resigning. Kalaallit Nunaat has successfully repealed the first wave of the American invasion, as the uninvited US tourists will be confined to their own military base and denied any licking session with local dogs. Speaking of which, it is quite reassuring to see that YouGov have time and resources to deal with the most serious issues of the day, and not just trivial ones like voting intentions and the Spring Statement. Which they have surveyed just perfunctorily after it was delivered because their whole staff was mobilised on one major issue. Pet rent. This was of course triggered by the righteous outrage at Labour MP Taiwo Owatemi claiming £900 on expenses, after her landlord charged her extra for her beloved furbaby Bella. Which, by the way, is perfectly legal and was validated by IPSA. But it caused such a fracas among cynophobes that YouGov saw it as their duty to poll the Great British Public about the very principle of landlords charging extra rent for pets.

These are quite shocking results coming from a country that takes pride in being a heaven of animal lovers. For once, Labour voters are on The Right Side of History™ here, but Conservative voters should be ashamed of themselves for being so willing to let landlords take advantage of the unconditional love that binds us with our precious wee ones. Even their beloved Tines found it hard to chastise Owatemi, a dedicated dog lover. The issue was even deemed serious enough by The Hipstershire Gazette that they devoted a bespoke survey of their readership to it. All 317 of them. Can't wait now for Jeremy Corbyn using his next slot at PMQs for an Urgent Question on this Great Matter, if he finds a way to spin it as an embarrassment for the government. Not that Keir Starmer and Labour need that, as the trends of voting intentions show that their Ukraine Bounce is definitely fading away, and discontent about welfare cuts is coming back to centre stage, even if not all pollsters see it. More on that later. Some doubts have also been raised about Starmer's determination to stand up to Donald Trump about tariffs and the trade war, which surely also influenced the public's state of mind.

Despite the seriousness of the moment, sone pollsters are still able to both survey the real issues and offer us some moments of glee. BMG Research have just done that, with a variation on the usual favourability polling. They didn't ask their panel if they like this or that politician or not, but if they actually know them, or know of them. Pollsters don't usually do that, as it would undermine the credibility of their favourability polling, and it might ruffle some feathers too within the metropolitan political bubble. Because BMG's findings look like a flank speed crash into the unmoveable wall of reality for some, Especially for the two Greenies, which I find fucking hilarious after all their efforts to make themselves relevant and worth listening to. Looks like sending Carla Denyer to University Challenge was not that good of a PR stunt after all.

It is quite entertaining to see that the triad with the best name recognition are Starmer, Farage and Swinney. Thank Dog the general population know who is Prime Minister and Scots know who is oor First Minister. I would be worried if we didn't. But the poor name recognition of both Ed Davey and Kemi Badenoch is quite a shocker. The Great British Public freely admit they don't have the fuckiest scoobie who the Leader Of The Nominal Opposition and the Leader Of The Actual Opposition are, and that's quite unexpected. Admittedly, Kemi has only had five months to make a name for herself, but it looks like the total forgettability of her bland interventions at PMQs has turned the public's mind blank. On the other hand, Mister Ed has had almost five years to leave a trace in our brains. Five years, that's all he got. What use were all the sailboarding and all the swimming in rivers of shit, then? Last but not least, BMG found that Adam Price has really weak name recognition. I have a hunch that the real reason may be that he hasn't been leader of Plaid Cymru, and thusly got fuck all media coverage at all, for nearly two years now. Who will tell BMG to look up Rhun ap Iorwerth before their next poll?

We all thought at least the Labour Party was supposed to be on the side of working people. Instead it's become the cosy party of the privileged, for the interests of the privileged few, which leaves a political vacuum for Reform and others to occupy. For shame.

(Rosie Duffield MP, 27 March 2025)

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality.

(Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1843)

Now that we have been reassured that a majority of the Great British Public know who Keir Starmer is, it's as good a moment as any to look at what they think of him. I haven't shown you that in a long time, as the first polls after he became Prime Minister we not that significant, but we now have eight months worth of then since his accession, and it has become quite interesting. Starmer was already not really popular before the election, and there was no hint of Starmeuphoria after it. Quite the opposite in fact, as his favourables started crashing down in a matter of weeks, and he has been in negative territory continuously since the Summer Break.

Starmer's loss of credibility and support is also visible in the perennial "Preferred Prime Minister" polls. Most pollsters still survey just the classic Starmer-Badenoch one-on-one, which is obviously not the best representation of the British public's real mood. More In Common seems to be the only ones who got that memo, as they have been polling a Starmer-Badenoch-Farage three-way for months now. Even before Badenoch had become leader of the Reform Impersonators Party and Rishi Sunak was still in the seat. The fun part is that it confirms the public's total lack of interest in Badenoch, who continuously scores just about half of Conservative voting intentions. The worrying part is that both Starmer's and Farage's ratings are pretty close to their respective parties' voting intentions, thusly reframing the narrative just the way Farage wants it to be.

Here too, we see a Starmer Bounce just after the third anniversary of the Russian aggression of Ukraine, and for the short period when the Coalition Of The Willing was taking shape. Then Farage came back with a vengeance, doing what he does best. Wrapping the people's discontent in his own brand of populist demagoguery, baiting the gullible into thinking he is a man of the people who will make all wrongs right. Of course, those with a functioning brain know that nothing can be further from the truth. Sadly, Labour are not in the best place now to paint Farage for what he is, an ally of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump who would gladly give away the NHS to USA-based HMO's, the ones who profit from healthcare being three times as expensive in the USA as in the UK. The electorate's lack of clairvoyance about such basics shows in the current snapshot of voting intentions and the seat projection you can deduce from it, which are fucking disasters for New Model Labour, even worse than a fortnight ago. But if they think that Baldrick Khan's cunning plan, rooted in his fixation on Elton Muck, is the way to go, they're in for a big nasty surprise.

Voting intentions here are the weighted average of the last six polls, conducted between 26 March and 3 April, with a super-sample of 12,833. Just for fun, I have added the results of a recent poll from Focaldata, that offered us a unique insight into the minds of the dreaded Gen Z. That's 18 to 29 years old for now, in terms of eligibility to vote. Thank Dog the 16-17 bracket are not allowed to vote at general elections yet, but they will have grown to eligibility in 2029, so I fear the worst. Interestingly, not all of them appear to be blue-haired TikTok wankers posting pictures of non-binary dachshunds in drag from their parents' basement, as they are not immune to Reform UK's seduction. To a lesser extent than their elders and betters, though, but they are also not as enamoured with the Greens as I spontaneously thought. This poll could even validate the hilariously distorted view of Gen Z peddled by one of The Torygraph's far-right equivalents of Owen Jones, based on the companion study conducted by Kezia Dugdale's employer. Then the unlevelling effect of first-past-the-post is tremendous here, as the Gen Z vote would make Labour immune to any sort of electoral challenge for a generation. It will be interesting to track how they evolve until the next general.

What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?

(Tony Benn)

In obedience, there is strength and tranquillity. It is like the sun after a long winter.

(Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall: Wreckage, 2024)

The Realm's Great Matter these last few weeks was obviously Rachel Reeves' first Spring Statement, the much awaited sequel to her first Autumn Statement, to complete the puzzle of the Budget for the 2025-2026 Fiscal Year. It's manna from Westminster for the pollstertariat, with YouGov and More In Common surveying it before it had even happened, with two polls released on the morning of Statement Eve. YouGov even had enough matter for a second article published on the heels of the first. I'm quite sure that YouGov intended their polls to enlighten us about what we really wanted from the Spring Statement, but I'm not sure they succeeded. Probably because the Great British Public is in total confusion about what they want and expect from the Budget. So, pollsters, don't pretend that you know me cause I don't even know myself. Or about how to manage the delicate balance between taxing, spending and borrowing.

There's a massive hole already here. You can't decrease borrowing as if by magic, without doing anything about taxes and spending, which is the preferred option when you combine the replies about all three topics. Interestingly, most of the political tribes seem to not have really thought it through, as all combinations of preferred options lead to incompatibilities, except the Conservatives who would reduce borrowing by cutting public spending. Too bad it's the exact opposite of what we need to prioritise these days. The confusion becomes even more visible when YouGov mix all three options in a single multiple-choice question, instead of probing views on each separately. Then we literally admit that we have no fucking scoobie how to square the circle between taxphobia, urge to spend and aversion to debt.

This is quite the admission that solving the problem, even with just three variables on the table, is beyond our capabilities. So we should probably cut the Chancellor some slack when she can't come up with anything we like, as she has to juggle with three dozen variables, including her own self-imposed constraints and Donald Trump's mood swings. But there is always the easy way out, which is to indiscriminately cut spending. But there, alas, lies the rub. It's not that we really don't want to cut spending, it's that we think there is nothing left to cut. Or there might be, but cutting closer to the bone would only make matters worse, which is not what we want. Or what the Chancellor should consider. Perhaps we also need more inventive ways to solve the impossible, like resorting to some sort of micro-surgery instead of the machete. That's what the blokes at the Treasury are for, if they ever allow themselves to think a wee smitch outwith the box.

The main conclusion for this is that Rachel Reeves was doomed anyway before she even said one word in Commons on that fateful Statement Day. It was already widely known that she would only double down on New Model Labour's commitment to austerity, so the backlash that followed was predictable and expected. Pretty much everything had been said before and the headlines just wrote themselves, even without Grok's help. Honestly, that made the pre-Statement polling quite irrelevant, and the pollsters should have at least tried to make it more fun with totally weird lines of questioning about very minute items in the Budget. There is also another solution, though it would not appeal to pollsters. That would be not seeking expert informed opinion on the Budget from a country where the situation of the household debt is worse than the national debt. Just saying. Incidentally, there was another pre-Statement poll from Lord Ashcroft, but it turned out it was an odd pick-and-mix of various stuff in Mikey's inbox, that didn't add anything original to the pre-Statement landscape, but touched other issues I will come back to it later. Just be patient.

No one likes the fucking white middle-aged man anymore. Until you need a boiler fixing.

(Ricky Gervais)

I act when others should act, but don’t. Sometimes government has to accelerate. I cannot always wait for the slow grindings of your brain. We have to move in anticipation of events.

(Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall: Light, 2024)

More In Common probed their panel about Rachel Reeves' infamous "fiscal rules", which are in fact not inherited from George Osborne, but her own ideological construct when she invented "securonomics" during her time as Shadow Chancellor. It is obviously just a complete coincidence that the detailed description she came up with totally fits with the canons of austerity and the doxa of neo-liberal economics. Sticking to these fabricated "rules" looks even more out of touch when you consider what happened just last month in Germany, where the Schuldenbremse, the debt brake or balanced budget amendment has been watered down to the point of being de facto removed from the Constitution, to allow for the massive spending needed to restore a proper defence of Germany against the Russian threat. The fun part is that More In Common couldn't resist a wee smitch of fun, showing how easy it is to bait the Great British Public into contradicting themselves in two back-to-back questions. First stage, about the principle of sticking to the fiscal rules.

Of course, we want the government to uphold those rules, because we have been groomed into accepting the false analogy with our household budget as a self-evident truth. Which is just bollocks for more reasons that I have time and space to explain. And don't even get me started on the bizarre logic that wants us to believe that "we shouldn't borrow because, if we did, lenders wouldn't lend" is a rational statement. Lenders always lend, it's in their nature. Think of them not as international bankers, but as loan sharks in £3,000 suits, always ready for their pound of flesh. But this was obviously not the Great British Public's final answer. Watch now. Second stage, with a change of point of view. And the results are reversed. Of course, the government must get rid of the fucking stupid rules because we need more public spending. On anything. No matter what. Can't make that shit up, can we? Only pollsters can.

But that's not the end yet. What better way than proceeding to the third stage, a question that turns the previous two on their heads, and watch will some heads explode like the Master Computer in The Prisoner. Just reframe the questioning into an impossible Catch-22 with two options that have nothing to do with either of the above, and the Great British Public are only too willing to contradict themselves contradicting themselves. Rachel Reeves in the only happy bunny left in The Realm, if she saw this poll. Whatever she does, there is a question in there where the Great British Public approve. Raise taxes, no problem. Spend more on public services, no problem. Do both, no problem. Do neither, no problem. Anything goes so long as you do it quickly because we already don't know what we really want any more. Take what I say in a different way and it's easy to see that this is all confusion.

The biggest flaw in Rachel Reeves' rules is that they are massively hypocritical. One of the key tenets is to not increase taxes, but freezing the income tax thresholds is a tax hike that hits lower incomes harder than higher incomes. Labour denounced it when the Conservatives did it, and now they're doing it again. Are they really determined to make the Liberal Democrats look further to the left than them, as Tony Blair did in the early 2000s? Bragging about relaxing the rules only after we reach a £10bn surplus isn't really helpful. Is Reeves even sure we will ever achieve that? I guess not. I won't even rant again about how Labour have painted themselves into a corner without exits, insisting on enforcing rules that probably made sense fifteen years ago, but don't any more. Even the European Union have relaxed their own sets of like-minded rules, while we are still shackling our hands behind our backs. The worst part is that we are stuck with Reeves for the foreseeable future, as the only plausible replacement would be Wes Streeting, who isn't available at the moment as he still has some quangos to smother, that orbit the NHS in England with no benefit for public health.

The age of persuasion has ended, I think. We have entered an age of coercion. Be careful.

(Thomas Wolsey’s ghost, Wolf Hall: Obedience, 2024)

Can't remember a statement by a Chancellor that has gone down as badly, as quickly, and with almost all parts of the political spectrum, as this one.

(Adam Bienkov, 27 March 2025)

The Spring Statement turned out to be short but not sweet, more like short and sour. Starmer may have thought it was a good idea to tack it to the tail end of PMQs to avoid lengthy debate in Commons, but The Hipstershire Gazette were nevertheless quick to issue feedback that would have meant a 1 on TripAdvisor. Apparently, blaming Liz Truss and Donald Trump jointly, instead of just Liz Truss, doesn't really cut it. This was made even clearer in their later more political analysis, which reaches the same conclusion I laid out before you twice already, that Reeves actually has no option left but raising taxes in six months. This will mean more of the burden for the working middle class if a wealth tax and a windfall tax on banksters still remain off the table despite the obvious political upsides, like avoiding a mass rebellion on the left of Labour. Oddly, YouGov offered only sketchy post-Statement polling, that didn't even touch the content of the Statement itself, as if they had already moved on to more pressing matters like the public's view of ninja swords. But the void was soon filled by Ipsos, Opinium and BMG Research. Ipsos started with an odd question bordering on probing the morality of Reeves' approach by identifying the people it allegedly treats better or worse than they deserve.

There's a bit of victimisation and grievance culture in there, which is not how you rationally assess what is in a budget or what isn't. But not all of it is necessarily false or worth summarily dismissing. I'm note sure of what the people would have answered if you had asked them if Reeves' budget was classist, because we don't talk like that in New Model Labour Britain, but you could easily infer that from the data we have. More accurately, it's counter-classist as it benefits the fat cats more that the street dogs, and the common people have absolutely no reason to be happy bunnies about it. Bear that in mind, and that just 4% of us believe that the Spring Statement is good for people like us. Then enjoy the replies to the next question, that again proves how easily the Great British Public can be baited by cunning pollsters into complete contradiction.

Ipsos tested a list of eleven different measures included in the Spring Statement. Five are supported by an outright majority, ten have a net positive rating. Aye, even the slashing of benefits and the gutting of Universal Credit bag more support than opposition, even if both are on a very thin knife-edge. Only the loosening of rules to allow construction on the Green Belt faces strong opposition. Which reveals a contradiction within a contradiction, as imposing mandatory building targets on Councils has strong support. How you extricate yourself from that will be left to the Councils, who probably do what Councils do best, obfuscate and procrastinate to avoid backlash in the ballot box. Bear in mind this specific measure applies only in England, where they still have local elections every year. But the Great British Public don't have an oven-ready solution to offer Reeves, as they are also confused when asked about the two main levers she has in the toolbox, tax hikes or spending cuts.

Unsurprisingly, Brits are split on this, though we still hate tax hikes a wee smitch more than spending cuts. Thank Dog we don't have a direct democracy as we would make even more shit decisions than in the current representative democracy where 643 MPs, and even fewer than that in most cases, can take the blame for all the shit decisions they make. It's painfully easy to prove that having neither tax hikes nor spending cuts is the purest of all recipes for disaster. It's akin to saying that there's no way we can stop a runaway train, but of course we fucking can, even in Nightsleeper. The key problem is that Labour have totally painted themselves into a corner, a generation ago already, when they acquiesced in the Thatcherite doxa that taxes are bad per se, people on benefits should pull up their socks and all is well that ends well. Starmer and Reeves just went one step beyond, from acquiescence to appropriation, and we definitely have no reason to believe that this is only temporary. The light at the end of the tunnel is just the runaway train coming back to get us.

To make no mistakes is not in the power of man, but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.

(Plutarch)

Too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline.

(Keir Starmer)

BMG Research tried a different angle of attack about the Budget. They tested the public's approach to Rachel Reeves' pet obsession, balancing the books. Which the Spring Statement actually does not achieve because, ye ken, the Conservatives left behind a £22bn black hole, which might actually have grown to £40bn since the last time we checked. Or it may have just been £9.5bn, as the actual amount seems to depend, not on reality, but on how you count the beans. It's just that Rachel Reeves doesn't count them the same way as the OBR, and sometimes even doesn't count them the same way as herself two months before. Don't even try to understand. Let's just say there is a black hole of undefined depth and that we desperately need a way to balance the books to plug it. Then maybe it wasn't such a smart idea to ask the audience, like a Millionaire contestant who has no fucking clue what Taylor Swift's last single was called, because the Great British Public doesn't really know what to do.

Having a 50-50 mix of tax hikes and spending cuts as the preferred option is definitely the easy way out of the dilemma, as non-committal as can be. There is some logic to it, though, if you translate it as "tax hikes for everyone but us" and "spending cuts on everything that does not benefit us". There is some generational divide and political differences here, but no subset of the population is massively leaning towards any kind of really radical measures. But it has a lot to do with what options are on the table, as the replies are far more conclusive when an extra ingredient is added to the broth. Extra borrowing. It does make a difference because we have been groomed to be even more borrowphobic that taxphobic. Quite possibly because nobody cared to explain that there is good borrowing and bad borrowing, just as there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. Borrowing for investment in industrial development vs borrowing to plug overheads in day-to-day expenses, more or less. Anyway, add the borrowing bogeyman to the wording of a poll question and you get a majority choosing to cut spending on public services.

It is actually a wee smitch disingenuous of BMG to reframe the questioning that way, when borrowing wasn't mentioned at all in the rest of the poll. But it is nevertheless interesting to see that it propels support for spending cuts from one third to half of the panel. There are several ways these results can be interpreted. You can be positive and say that public opinion can be enlightened and alter their perspective when offered more detailed information. Or you can be more cynical and see this as more evidence of how polls can manipulate public opinion, and shape it rather than just observe it. The two are obviously not mutually exclusive, as anyone familiar with the Hawthorne effect knows. Or anyone suffering from anatidaephobia. To close this chapter, let's have a look at how the Great British Public assess the positive or negative effect of the Spring Statement on a number of factors, concatenated from the BMG poll more focused on process, and the Opinium poll more focused on people. But it looks like the cons outweigh the pros, whichever angle you choose to look at it.

This is quite a paradox when the public actually approve of a lot of the measures. Then we will have to see what remains of these shreds of positivity once we know the government's 'calm headed' response to Donald Trump's tariff vandalism. Though the prevalent mood seems to favour "plotting retaliatory tariffs", as The Torygraph spins it, and oddly The Islington Gazette too, almost. There is little help to expect from the Conservatives here as Andrew Griffith, the complete unknown posing as their Shadow Trade Secretary called our 10% tariff a Brexit benefit, as we are hit less hard than the European Union. But what does Andy make of the first known casualty of the Tariff War, Percy Pig? We might even escape the worst of that if we submit to the Orange Baboon's blackmail and allow chlorinated chicken in, which would be impossible if we were still in the EU. Just saying. By the way, it would also be legitimate to ask Kemi Badenoch what the Conservatives under her leadership would do differently, and do better. Thank Dog being Leader Of The Opposition gives you a permanent free pass at never answering that question, except during the last six weeks before the next general. The suspense is fucking killing me.

It’s come to something when we’re looking back on the Boris Johnson era as a time of enlightenment.

(John Crace)

The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition to be born in moments of revelation.

(G’Kar, Babylon 5: The Hour Of The Wolf, 1996)

Opinium added another angle to their probing of our deepest thoughts about the Spring Statement. They asked who the public think which party they consider the best at dealing with a number of issues. Which is a classic though not asked very often, but Opinium felt the pulse of the global situation and extended the laundry list to 27 different issues. They didn't ask about all 27 in one go, though, as it would have become tedious very quickly. Instead they split the list into three blocks at different times along the poll, with the most standard list of generic issues first, then a close look at the economy and public finances, and finally the broad spectrum of defence and foreign policy. But their approach isn't flawless as gave their panel the choice only between Labour the Conservatives and a big tent 'neither'. Which is definitely not covering all bases in this day and age and proof is that, on average of all 27 topics, 47% of respondents chose 'neither'. Just imagine how frustrated the millions who want Ed Davey at Number 10 must have felt.

In this first batch, I picked the issues that you might call generic, and that don't directly relate to either economic matters at the heart of the Spring Statement, or defence of foreign policy matters that have become just as pressing a priority. There is already a very disturbing sense of disillusionment here, like in "We've tried both sides an neither worked, so let's try something else next time", the fertile ground for inept populism. This is where the country of my birth was heading before Marine Le Pen fucked around and found out that embezzlement of taxpayers' money is not a human right. This also makes my case again that Labour must urgently switch back to the basics of social-democracy, not persist in wrapping neo-liberal economics in the lipstick of faux progressivism. Even on issues related to defence and foreign policy, the government is not doing that good, when you would have though that being at the core of the Coalition Of The Weighing Their Options might have reinforced their credibility. The Conservatives doing even worse is no consolation, when the alternative lurking in the shadows is Trumpo-Putinism.

It doesn't get better on economic issues, as the Conservatives are even considered better on some topics. It's funny how people have quickly forgotten how Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng totally tanked the economy, cost the Treasury £65bn in one day and made life worse for all Brits with a mortgage. Reform UK are very fortunate indeed that their economic proposals are not subjected to deeper scrutiny, as the public would see how asinine they are, Quite simply because the numbers don't add up between the promise of massive tax cuts and the commitment to massively increased spending on the NHS and defence, and their deliberate choice to make the fiscally privileged even more privileged doesn't work outwith the fantasy world of the discredited trickle-down economics. That's what working people should consider first, instead of whining about Labour not being kind to them. Because we already know that the populist far-right alternative is even worse.

There is still a big unknown on the event horizon, though, what kind of impact will Donald Trump's tariffs have on our economy. It may be quite different depending on what counter-measures we take. YouGov didn't miss that opportunity for a juicy article and had surveyed seven different countries in advance, ready for release just after the announcement. To focus on just the numbers that matter to us, 60% of Brits think tariffs will have an impact on our economy and 71% support retaliation in kind, which is definitely not Starmer's policy. And this attitude will backfire badly if the main concession is to make the MAGAligarchs like Elon Musk tax-exempt in the UK. We've been here before, actually, the last time in 1930 when President Herbert Hoover signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act against the advice of his closest advisers. The trade war that ensued made the Great Depression even worse than it already was, with massive irrecuperable damage to economies worldwide. But don't expect the Orange Baboon to take that into account, or even be aware of the precedent. He may know what a woman is, and has proved it with his assaults on hard-won women's rights, but he hasn't the fuckiest scoobie how the economy works. Or geography, as he is now tariffing penguins and US military personnel 10%. He has also learned jack shit from history, as his main concern is to rewrite even the United States' military history through the prism of white male supremacist revisionism, so let's just brace ourselves for impact.

We are all playing our parts in a story that is told again and again and again throughout eternity.

(Laura Roslin, Battlestar Galactica: Kobol’s Last Gleaming, 2005)

It’s cold as shit here. Nobody told me.

(J.D. Vance, Pituffik Space Base, 28 March 2025)

When Donald Trump unfortunately became President again, he was at a crossroads. He could either sell Ukraine to the Russian Reich for thirty rubles and a mess of borscht. Or he could let Vlad The Butcher fuck around and find out what it means to really piss off an Orange Baboon. I briefly hoped we would witness the latter, but it now looks like it was always pre-scripted to be the former. Trump is totally ready to give the vatniks everything they want, and probably Alaska on top, so long as he can get the MAGA mob to cheer him for achieving his 24-hour-peace in 24 weeks, and grant Elon Muck rights to pillage all of Ukraine's natural resources for free, as enshrined in the USA's latest proposal to turn Ukraine into their mining colony. But YouGov's last poll of the USA shows that their public opinion does not follow. 3% support Russia and 60% Ukraine. Even among Trump's voters, only 5% support Russia and 46% support Ukraine. More significantly, a majority still lean towards continued military aid to Ukraine, even if we know it doesn't really matter if Trump is determined to seal a deal with the Russian Reich for the benefit of the MAGA oligarchs.

The state of international relations is shifting every day now. Mark Carney has chosen to hit back at the United States in a way Justin Trudeau never dared, and even Keir Starmer is feart of daring. The Signalgate scandal even offered Carney a golden opportunity on a silver platter to publicly voice his loss of confidence in the erstwhile ally. The good people of Kalaallit Nunaat have told J.D. Vance to fuck off as nobody wants to see him there but, in true Trumpian fashion, that didn't deter him. This sort of escalation, and that's a real one this time, is just what you can expect from an authoritarian clique that just shot itself in the foot with Signalgate, and is under pressure to come clean and transparent about it. Again, public opinion does not condone their government's aggressive stance, if it matters. 49% have a favourable view of the European Union and 58% see it as either an ally or a friend. 71% see Canada as an ally or a friend. Moreover, they don't want the United States to risk a hostile take-over of either by brute military force.

The question now is whether the Trump-Putin Alliance will be more like the Rome-Berlin Axis of 1936, or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. Who will be the weak link, or who will stab the other in the back first? Europe has to get ready for all possible scenarios, and always remember that strength in numbers is ours. At the summit of the Coalition Of The Willing in Paris on the 27th of March, Emmanuel Macron couldn't hide his glee that Donald Trump is literally pushing the UK into the EU's arms. But he decided to keep it classy and Be Kind™ to Keir Starmer, who got officially anointed as Co-Leader Of The Free World™. You're such a good boy, Manny. I can only hope that these displays of affection will encourage Sly Keir to follow the British public's advice and cuddle back the EU. Even the Conservative voters agree and only the Farage voters have a problem with that, so just ride the wave of consensus.

I totally concur with this. Why try and revive the moribund Special Relationship when we have real friends and allies closer to home? Why remain awkwardly on the fence when the United States are turning into a Putinist banana republic run by oligarchs for oligarchs, sending their eyelinered Vice President to insult and threaten a European ally on their own soil? It is an issue of national security and public sanity to keep a country at arm's length, where some loonies want to make TDS a criminal offence. And where the fake-tanned President exempts the Russian Reich from tariffs he is imposing on the whole planet, while hosting talks to make investments there more profitable for the MAGAligarchs. So let's indulge in papiophobia and meditate on the precedent set, again, by Mark Carney. Its's 'Prime Minister of Canada' again now, no longer 'Governor of the 51st state'. Which totally makes my point that bullies always back down when you show them baws and tell them to fuck off. Seen that, Keir Starmer?

The President said we have to have Greenland. We cannot just ignore this place. We cannot just ignore the President’s desires. This island is not safe.

(J.D. Vance, Pituffik Space Base, 28 March 2025)

Russia cannot have a say in the support we give to Ukraine, nor can it dictate conditions of a lasting peace. Because Ukraine's sovereignty and the security of all Europeans is at stake.

(Emmanuel Marcon, 26 March 2025)

Despite all the nice words and hugging, there was definitely a sense of unfinished business after the latest instalment of the Coalition Of The Willing Summit. Just as if their decisions about Ukraine depended on some signal from the White House. Pun fully intended. There was even a clear sense of them backing down on the contentious issue of the peacekeeping force, despite Macron's erumpent words. Nobody expected it to be a real interposition force, unless it interposed in the same way as the UNIFIL, who has cautiously kept out of the way every time Israel wanted to pick a fight with Hezbollah, or Hezbollah with Israel. It's not even a peacekeeping force any more, it's a 'reassurance' force and that would not make me feel reassured if I lived in Ukraine. Russia doesn't want it. The United States will say what Russia wants them to say. Nobody wants to go there, except France and Great Britain, for now. This could be the beginning of the end for what is the most sensible and powerful option available, that also has the support of a majority of Brits.

That's three polls in one fortnight showing majority support, with only Reform UK voters objecting. Thank Dog the faux pacifists on the left, who are squealing relentlessly about Starmer dragging us into war and sending The Boys to die in a war that isn't ours, have rather little momentum outwith their own echo chamber. Because the majority of the British public are smart enough to know it was never about that, and have little time for the FSB-manipulated sirens of doom. These are no longer the glory days of the CND, when you could chant "Better Red Than Dead" at the door of a free Billy Bragg concert that had been fully paid for by the Soviet Embassy. But it is sadly not enough yet for Keir Starmer to push harder to get it done. More In Common shed more light on this by pushing it one step beyond, asking their panel if they would "personally be willing to sign up to the armed forces to keep the peace in Europe" if it ever happened. And the results are frankly amazing.

At face value, 9% strongly considering it and 18% somewhat considering it may seem quite low, but you have to connect that with the data on the UK's population by age. If we take the patriarchal ageist view that only males younger than 50 would be draftable, that would be 1.2 million strongly in favour of serving as peacekeepers, and another 2.6 million somewhat in favour. More than enough to actually spread the force across all of Ukraine, and not just the frontline area, and totally deter the vatniks from putting just one toe past the ceasefire line. If that wasn't enough already, More In Common actually went two steps beyond, into the unthinkable. The follow-up question, which I guess nobody expected to ever be asked, probed their panel about their willingness "to personally serve in Ukraine, if the UK were to enter a direct war with Russia and required additional soldiers". You may think that everybody took a step back in horror at this question, but it was the exact opposite. More claimed they would volunteer for war than felt strongly about peacekeeping.

Again, a UK-wide average of 17% does sound really tiny. But, again, it is not. If we apply the same filters here as above, with only males under 50 being considered for the meatgrinder, that's a massive total of 2.4 million UK-wide, including 195k Scots, or more than the current active strength of the Soviet Army. Say what you will about the blue-haired TikTok Generation, but not all hope is lost with them, as 24% of them ready to volunteer is a significant 840k, or more than ten times the current size of the British Army. Of course you could object that the heat of the moment showed in your eyes, and that none of this would happen if the unthinkable some day became true. But even so, that sort of reaction to a deliberately provocative poll is quite revealing and indeed encouraging. Sone would see it as evidence that patriotism is not dead, but there is surely more to it. Because it is not just about King And Country and whatnot. It's nothing like the Falklands and an outburst of nationalism, it's more like 1939 and a sense of a greater purpose. It would be wrong to dismiss this as just one pollster choosing to paint it black for the cheap thrills of doom and gloom. Whether we like it or not, it can happen. We all know that Vladimir Putin does not want peace, and German intelligence has renewed its alert about the plausibility of further Russian aggression within this decade. We've been warned and we can't ignore it.

There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost is way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities. It is against chaos and despair.

(G’Kar, Babylon 5: The Hour Of The Wolf, 1996)

Ukraine could agree to talks with Russia if they have a vision of how to end the war, but not with Putin. Putin is afraid of talking to me.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 28 March 2025)

Sometimes I feel sorry for the Boomers, those who learned what real fear is with the Cuban Missile Crisis. They had a whole World Order imprinted in their brains, it fell apart without warning, they had to reframe their thinking within a New World Order, and now that one is falling apart too. I feel sorry for Generation X too, those who learned what real hope is when Nelson Mandela tore down the Berlin Wall, or summat. They had the New World Order imprinted in their brains, now it's falling apart and they don't even have a fucking clue what they will have to reframe their thinking to. I love to think that my people, Millennials, have acquired a greater flexibility of thinking and will adapt more easily to the New Model New World Order. Or maybe they haven't and won't, and I'm the only one Who knows? Anyway, in relation to the New New World Order, I have one leftover from Lord Ashcroft's Ukraine poll I mentioned last time. One that is relevant in the day and age of Trumpian post-truth alternative reality, and boils down to the same existential question, can we trust the United States?

Of course, the answer is a resounding "Fuck, no!", which totally reflects how our view of the Thirteen Colonies has changed in just a few months. This is not an alternative reality, this is a fair and balanced assessment of self-evident facts. Trumpistan will help us only if there is some dosh to be made off it by the MAGAligarchs who bought the Orange Baboon the Presidency, and only if we let them interfere in our democratic processes to get fascist agents of the Russian Reich elected. It would be a fatal mistake for the UK government to believe that we are immune to Trump's blanket hatred of Europe. He is just pretending to cuddle us to drive a wedge between us and the Continent, and it would be cretinously naïve and hugely dangerous to fall for it. Another element of the Trumpian narrative, never short of fabricated fake news to spread on social media, is that Europeans do not pay their fair share for NATO. Most shockingly, and in a very Goebbelsian way, this bullshit has been repeated so often that a fair share of the British public believe it.

This complete fabrication is supported by Trump's propaganda, relayed by every fake-news-bot on Twitter, that the United States contribute 75% or even 80% of NATO. It is quite flabbergasting that such an obvious lie has gained traction, as even my dog could debunk it in three clicks. First, Trump's statistics do not reflect how much various countries contribute to NATO, but what their overall defence spending is, and that is a fucking massive difference when you consider how much the United States spend on a whole array of commitments that have jack shit to do with NATO or the defence of Europe. Broadly, everything directly linked to the Indo-Pacific theatre of operations, which absorbs more and more US military resources thanks to their obsession with China. It is really embarrassing to see the Trumputinist mediatariat peddling that crap, when it is so easily factcheckable from NATO themselves. Aye, that's 16%, not 75 or 80. But the USA's attitude clearly means we have to seek an alternative urgently, and the only credible one is a European Defence Alliance with the European Union. A scenario we massively support, according to YouGov.

It's not even close, 69% to 10%. Remarkably, even Reform UK voters are supporting it, and Nigel Farage must be livid. All these subsidies from the Kremlin for nothing? Can't even keep his voters to heel, ready to sabotage every wee hint of rapprochement with the Continentals. In many ways, the British public's change of attitude towards cooperation with the EU is as momentous as Germany's Zeitenwende, as it is also backed by serious support for Ukraine instead of Germany's proverbial procrastination. Becoming part of a Defence and Security Partnership with the EU makes even more sense after they decided to exclude the United States from their future mammoth defence procurement, and us too for now. This is the only possible course after Trump himself claimed that the USA would only deliver lower-capability variants of their new military products to foreign nations, Or after Lockheed-Martin denied the use of a kill switch on their F-35s in such a convoluted and awkward way that it actually convinced everyone with a brain that there is indeed a kill switch, including aboard those sold to the UK. Starmer has no real choice actually, either go for it now, or remain Washington's poodle forever. This is the only way to preemptively protect us from the very predictable total collapse of NATO, despite Mark Rutte's asinine insistence that Trumpistan is still our friend. Simples.

Basically, for me it's simple. The world is made up of herbivores and carnivores. If we decide to remain herbivores, the carnivores will win and we'll be a market for them. I think it would at least be nice to choose to be omnivores.

(Emmanuel Macron)

I think it’s ridiculous that we are focused on this border in Ukraine. I got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.

(J.D. Vance, 19 February 2022)

Polls conducted in Ukraine by Ukrainian pollsters are few and far between, and also easy to miss as they don't receive much coverage in our media. A valuable source of information is the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, who conduct regular surveys of Ukraine's public opinion on a wide range of issues, in a very similar way to British pollsters. Their most recent survey, released on 1 April, is very significant as it polled the Ukrainian public's views on the support offered by their Western allies, and also their assessment of Donald Trump. I honestly can't say I was surprised by what they found. Ukraine's confidence in the West was massive at the very beginning of the war, when we actually did very little in terms of actual aid but were good at moral support, the kind that costs nothing but makes us feel good. This confidence fell dramatically later, paradoxically when real aid actually took off, but when we also proved we were better at procrastinating than at acting decisively. Faith has been restored since, but not quite to its original level.

We can only blame ourselves if a significant minority of Ukrainians think we are ready to hang them out to dry. They are not cut off from the world, despite Russia's continuous blows to their infrastructure, and are just as aware as us of 'Ukraine fatigue' and the vacillations of Western public opinions who are submitted to the propaganda delivered by FSB-funded influencers and politicians. Clearly, Ukrainians also have no illusion about the Trump variant of the United States and know where their real friends are, in Europe. A huge majority now distrust the United States, but that was not always the case and surely could have been avoided. They even believed that Trump was good news for them, but that was before he actually took charge and it has massively changed since. They know, just as we do, that the Orange Baboon is actually bad news, very bad indeed.

It looks like Ukraine was in fact just granting Trump the benefit of the doubt at first, as they didn't trust him to seek a just peace even in December. He regained some ground in March when he appeared to show some discontent with Putin's attitude, but it will surely not last. There has been too much evidence that his less accommodating attitude to Putin was as fake as his tan, and that he is played like a fiddle by the Kremlin. The vociferous announcement of tariffs was just the last straw, sparing Russia while tariffing Ukraine at the same level as Great Britain. This can only solidify Volodymyr Zelenskyy's position as the level of trust in him has again risen, to 69% in March, still higher by double digits than the level of confidence of the American public in Trump. Another poll from Czech pollster NMS, even puts it at 72% and has surveyed voting intentions at a hypothetical presidential election too. Here's how the sequence of presidential polls looks like now.

The report from NMS is published in Czech only, but your browser surely has the gizmo needed to translate it into English. Mine has. Their voting intentions differ from my chart as they include undecideds and abstainers, so I recalculated them as shares of votes cast only. These results remain hypothetical as the Ukrainian public are still in no hurry to hold elections, despite all the converging pressure from Trump and Putin. 78% think it can wait until after a real peace settlement, even if solid security guarantees are offered in the meantime. I have no doubt that the Kremlin and the White House are fully aware of this, as their attempts to undermine or discredit Zelenskyy have noticeably vanished from their public statements, except from Dmitri Medvedev's deranged vodka-soaked rants. Putin's obvious bad faith and commitment to continuing the war, while planning further aggression against Europe, is even an asset for Zelenskyy now. It strengthens his position as the reasonable voice in the room, and also widens the rift between Europe and the United States as Trump continues to play on Russia's side. Ukraine's prospects are undoubtedly better than after the White House freak show five weeks ago, and Europe's resolve to support Ukraine is their best asset to keep it that way.

I have emphasized repeatedly that none of us trust the Russians. We've been through this before. But we will not play along with narratives suggesting that we don't want to end the war.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 12 March 2025)

Climb out of that rabbit hole you’re stuck in and bugger off down the pub. That’s an order.

(Alan Vaughan, The One That Got Away, 2025)

The SNP and the Labour Branch Office in Scotland still won't find any reasons to be cheerful in this week's batch of polls, as Reform UK is still casting a menacing shadow across our political landscape. The Faragists are still nose-to-nose with Labour for the second place in voting intentions, and the SNP are still stagnating close to where they were at the general. There was a brief ray of sunshine when the obnoxious obsessive witch-hunting fanatic Patrick Harvie announced his retirement from a leadership position, but it was soon marred by the very realistic prospect that the replacement will be even worse, because the Greens have an unlimited supply of cretinous narrow-minded ideologues who know nothing about real life outwith the Edinburgh Bypass. Thanks to the SNP being pretty much formatted on the same ideological lines, and Labour behaving more and more like a pointless headless chicken around here, Reform UK is battling it out quite successfully for the second party slot in Scotland. There is nothing to celebrate either for English Labour in the Kingdom of Northumbria, as they are now outnumbered by Reform UK even there.

You have to wonder if Keir Starmer has chosen the right path of attack, painting the Faragists as Vlad The Butcher's fan club. Polls are quite clear and consistent about the state of mind of British public opinion. Yes, we support Ukraine, Yes, we hate Putin. But no, this is not our main concern. No, this is not the issue that will determine our vote. Especially when the next stage is local elections in England, that are more likely to be the Pothole Elections than a referendum on peacekeeping in Donbas. I've said it already and will say it again, it's the same patterns and the same momentum at work as in the post-industrial wastelands of France a generation ago. You don't see it only if you choose not to see it, which is probably what a lot of the sanctimonious New Model Blairites do. As the old African proverb goes, the more the ostrich buries his head in the sand, the more the monkey will fuck him in the arse. Have we already reached the tipping point where abysmal seat projections in the former Northern heartlands will leave Labour frozen in shock? Or will it kickstart some genuinely smart counter-offensive?

North Of The Wall, the SNP's lacklustre performance means that they would concede two seats to the Conservatives, the two frankensteined from Douglas Ross' former constituency in Moray. But Labour doing even worse means that a fucking lot of seats would also switch back to the SNP, pretty much delivering a mirror image of the 2024 results. Which would probably be the least of Keir Starmer's worries as he would have to face a turquoise tsunami in the North of England. Bridget Phillipson, Jonathan Reynolds, Lisa Nandy, Yvette Cooper, John Healey, Dan Jarvis, Sarah Champion and Kim Leadbeater are predicted to lose their sears to Reform UK, along with another 79 Northern Labour MPs. Labour's salvation will probably not come from them learning from the predicted debacle and upping their game with a return to classic working class politics, because it won't happen. They have to gamble on a complete meltdown of Reform UK, which is a genuine possibility. A lot will depend on their performance at the English locals on May Day. Anything short of an actual tsunami will be considered a defeat, and Nigel Farage will be held to account, no matter how loudly he tries to blame Angela Rayner for rigging the elections with her unfinished reform of local government.

Mushy peas. Yorkshire caviar. Well, they have to be mushy, otherwise they’d roll off the chips. See, we’ve thought of everything.

(Robin Ellacott, Strike: Troubled Blood, 2022)

Don’t be silly. Do you think the world is gonna end on your shift?

(Gwen Cooper, Torchwood: End Of Days, 2006)

It doesn't get better for Labour when we move South to Wales and Mercia. It's much worse in Wales than a fortnight ago, with Labour and Reform UK in one corner, the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru in the other, now neck-and-neck. It is not as extreme as the most recent Senedd polling, that points at a four-way marginal, but it is nevertheless quite a shocker for Welsh Labour after their 2024 landslide and quite good prospects in earlier general election polls. There is and odd mix in the Midlands, summat better for Labour in the East with the Reform UK vote slightly ebbing with voters returning to the Tory fold, but worse in the West where Reform UK are now the first party for the first time in their short existence. There is indeed an existential threat to Labour north of the Severn-Wash Line as they have to fight off Reform UK everywhere and no longer just in select marginal constituencies. Paradoxically, Labour's greatest hope may be that Reform UK gain control of a Council on May Day, prove totally inept at managing it, and reap the fruits of their incompetence at the next general.

Does Labour have the magic deterrent against the steady shift of the Mercian electorate towards Reform UK? The Putin argument is bound to be as ineffectual here as in the North. But Labour could also use references to Nigel Farage's other idol and role model, Donald Trump. The Nige may have tried to distance himself from the Orange Baboon in recent times, but the core ideological pillars of Faragism remain indistinguishable from MAGAism. That's where the inanity of Trump's policies comes in handy, from the deportation of an American citizen to El Salvador in a case of mistaken identity, to the impact of tariffs on American consumers, which has been independently estimated as akin to an additional 4% inflation for the lower quartile of income, but only 1.6% for the upper quartile. If Starmer was not so weary of never offending anyone, even shitheads, that's the message to hammer. Far-right populism does not work for the people, it works for the privileged few. That's one case where I wouldn't mind Labour using the usually abhorrent 'guilt by association' talking point. Trump has provided the smoking gun and silver bullets to hit Farage by ricochet, just use them now.

Then today's seat projections are another case of Labour having no option but counting casualties and retreating to the corner to lick their wounds. That's a headcount of seventeen in Wales, including the multi-tasking Minister of State Chris Bryant, and Junior Ministers Alex Davies-Jones and Nia Griffith. Another nineteen in the West Midlands, half their 2024 intake, including three of their eight Birmingham seats and all three Stoke-on-Trent seats. All Coventry and Wolverhampton seats would resist the turquoise wave, though, so all is not lost yet. Finally we have a cull of fifteen in the East Midlands, again half of the 2024 intake, totally in line with the GB-wide projection. The highest toll is again expected in Derbyshire, with five of its eleven seats switching to Reform UK and three to the Conservatives. Rural Labour is as much in the danger zone as urban Labour in Mercia, evidence that is not a smart choice to piss off farmers and inner city dwellers at the same time, even when you tell them all that it's for their own good, and everybody will reap the rewards just in time for the next general. Which they probably won't now, after the ripple effects of Trump taking the wrecking ball to the world's economy are fully flourishing.

There is nothing to feel cheerful about. The past has more to offer than the future.

(Richard Bellamy, Upstairs, Downstairs: Distant Thunder,1974)

EastEnders gives an accurate depiction of life in London’s East End, in much the same way that Downton Abbey accurately reflects life in South Sudan.

(Jimmy Carr)

The Beautiful South is again both a mighty disappointment and a strong relief for the Labour Party. At face value, it's quite a disaster area, as even the Liberal Democrats are predicted to outvote them pretty much everywhere outwith London and the most metropolitan London-adjacent corners of Southern Danelaw. On top of that, Labour now have to disentangle themselves from the case of Dan Norris, the bloke who was unseated by Jacob Rees-Moog in 2010, and came back with a vengeance, unseating Jake in 2024. Keir Starmer cannot be held responsible for the behaviour of all Labour MPs, but he will surely have to face some embarrassing forensicking at the next PMQs, plausibly about Labour's vetting process. Expelling Norris was the unavoidable first step, and the unavoidable next step is obviously a by-election in the very near future. There is a massive dose of irony in that situation, as both my model and Electoral Calculus predict that Labour would hold the seat despite their massive losses in voting intentions. But, as the Bible does not actually say anywhere, by-elections work in mysterious ways, so the actual outcome has all the ingredients for a unique unsettling upset.

Oddly, the seat projections are not as abysmal for Labour as the state of voting intentions would make you believe. Labour would actually prove more resilient in the South than in the North or Midlands. They are predicted to hold 73% of their seats across the whole South, and still 62% if you exclude London, compared to a GB-wide average of 49%. But there is still room for rude awakenings in the Imperial Capital, with the loss of seven seats, again including Wes Streeting in Ilford. Of course, all the caveats I applied to the wound a fortnight ago still apply. But so does the more important meta-caveat, that Wee Wes is and will be a pet target for the Protest Left. I remain convinced they will go after him, and their only problem will be picking the least vote-repellent candidate from a fucking long list of applicants. Might even be Owen Jones. The current seat projection also says that none of the sanctimonious Greens are likely to be fumigated out of their Southern burrows, sadly. The strong left-wing leanings in all three of their 2024 constituencies are enough to keep them afloat even in the face on an unprecedented charge from Reform UK.

Interestingly, The Islington Gazette recently published a lengthy column by Baroness Hodge of Barking, the politician formerly known as Margaret Hodge, MP for Barking for the best part of her adult life. I won't discuss her merits, or demerits, just throw in a few remarks about what was probably intended as an oven-ready modus operandi of how to beat the crap out of the fash. There is an odd mix of self-righteousness and self-gratification in that piece, coupled with the unsettling background music that she did not actually fight off the most obvious signs of racism, but kind of accommodated them in her own discourse. That's pretty much the subtext of "responding to legitimate concerns" about immigration. There is a massively gaping hole in Hodge's approach though, that most of the 'migrants' in her former constituency are actually Commonwealth citizens who not only have the alienable right to live here, but also the right to vote. I'm not saying that concerns about immigration should be dismissed as not valid and bigoted, as the woke left are prone to do, but that our special relationship with the Commonwealth, the unique-in-Europe last vestigial remains of the Empire, makes that a double-wedged campaign issue for the Labour Party. One to be used with special caution, especially in London.

And so it has come to pass. The future foretold. The dark raven, the eagle and the wolf have laid bare the bones of corpses. Here is the story of the world. Make what use of it you can.

(The Seer, Vikings: Ragnarök, 2019)

Being friendly to the world is what got us in this mess. We're not in high school. We don't need friends. Every country puts their interests first, and when our interests align, we can do business. And when they don't, that's life.

(Jesse Watters, 29 March 2025)

After weeks of totally non-existent suspense, the unthinkable has happened. Keir Starmer has resigned. Naw, mates, just kidding. Actually that's the only April Fools joke I noticed. There surely were others, but they fell flat as the whole of world news now looks like a fucking joke. Well, The-One-Who-Cannot-Be-Named did The-Thing-That-Cannot-Be-Mentioned. Or rather, the bloke we still thought was not totally deranged did the thing we thought nobody would be stupid enough to do. Aye, mates, the aggressively imperialist Trump Tariffs. I mentioned them for ambience earlier, but we now have some more serious stuff to consider. Not Keir Starmer's momentous decision to retaliate more strongly than Canada, because he hasn't made one. Oor Keir has just taken first steps towards doing summat of a yet unspecified nature, which are definitely not giant steps. Coltrane in-joke here, mates, IYKYK. Keir has very sternly warned Trump that there’s a really important moment here that we need to understand. No shit, mates, the Orange Baboon literally shat his pants hearing that. In fact, and more importantly, YouGov have speed-polled their British panel about their spontaneous assessment of the impact the tariffs will have, on the United States' economy first.

The amazing thing here is that 16% of Brits think the tariffs will have a positive effect on the US economy. Including a whopping 40% of the Faragists. Were they drunk as a deer trapped inside BrewDog? Clearly, they haven't looked up the consequentials of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act on Wokopedia. Thank Dog David Lammy has, and then regaled us with enlightened comments worthy of John Curtice. I mean stating the obvious that everybody had already grasped, and still managing to get the details wrong. Dave is right that it is a return to protectionism, but it is not taking us back 100 years. It is taking us back 135 years to the McKinley Tariff. Which Dave would have known if he had been paying attention, as Trump actually name-dropped McKinley as his inspiration. Then YouGov's findings turn to full doom and gloom about the predicted impact on the United Kingdom's economy. It is totally justified when we look at similar past events, which also tell us that the worst will not come from the direct impact of the tariffs, but from the domino-and-ricochet effects like a crash of financial markets, which has already started, or a global recession.

Basic pragmatism says we don't have much room for retaliation in kind, especially if the European Union choses to not go down that road, but prioritises appeasement and negotiations. So far, only Emmanuel Macron looks firebrand enough, and he may soon find out he's alone. Also bear in mind that Trump has the nuclear option against us. Literally. Unilaterally terminating the Polaris Sales Agreement of 1963, which now covers the supply of Trident missiles and all associated gizmos. That would be quite a kick in the baws as we have fuck all fallback option, and never thought we would ever need one. Retrofitting the Dreadnoughts to use French M51 missiles in not impossible, as they are roughly the same size as Tridents, but it would involve massive work, cost billions and delay the whole programme by several years. Which could well push it into irrelevance and make other options, like the conversion to cruise missile platforms, more attractive. But I digress way off-piste, sorry. In the final stage of their questioning, YouGov detected far less negativity in the British public's assessment of the impact of tariffs on their own personal situation. The dominant feeling is that they will have no impact one way or the other.

I think these views are partly justified and partly misguided. Of course we can retaliate individually, refusing to buy any more goods coming from the USA, and that's them telt. Only 13% of our imports came from the USA in 2024, and finding substitutes should be relatively easy. But we must not overlook the imbrication of domino-and-ricochets here. A financial crisis means higher interest rates, instantly impacting all households with variable-rate mortgages, or having to renew a fixed-rate mortgage. Induced turmoil on all commodities markets is also likely to increase the cost of living, and thusly incite consumers to switch their buying habits to cheaper products. It is safe to bet that would result in increased imports from China, which is probably not the direction we should choose. Bear in mind too that even the, in my opinion quite delusional, prospect of a free trade deal with the USA, nullifying the Trump Tariffs, would not protect us from the side effects of a worldwide crisis. And don't even get me started on the plausible rarefaction of certain ranges of imported products, which would result in de facto rationing. Aye, mates, there is no light at the end of the tunnel, that's just your now homeless neighbour burning his furniture for heat, Berlin-1923-style. And it will get worse before it gets better. But Starmer told us that already, didn't he?

We may have to burn a bridge to build a big, beautiful new one to the next generation. America is not handcuffed by history. We dropped A-bombs on Japan and now they're our top ally in the Pacific. Trump knows what we need.

(Jesse Watters, 29 March 2025)

Jeremy's Den

06/04/2025

Softly, As In A Commons Sitting

Softly, As In A Commons Sitting