Fool's Gold Card

Two thirds? Is that it? The gold standard will have been attained when everyone in the age range was inside the system one way or another. Apprentices and trainees should enjoy the same benefits as their peers in further and higher education, and vice versa. Higher education should be fully funded all the way to doctoral level, with lifelong access. And the training and other standards for the private sector to match should be set by national and municipal public ownership.

But if we had digital ID, then you would need it to take up a university place or a gold standard apprenticeship, or even to apply, just as you would need it to access NHS Online, and thus your embryos with no biological mother. The people behind digital ID have banned Owen Jones, Rivkah Brown and Matthew Torbitt from the Labour Party Conference on grounds of "safeguarding", the ostensibly deniable way of painting "nonce" on someone's front door. All three should sue.

The Left is very much under attack. As George Galloway tweets: "After Saturday's encounter with the Terrorism Act, on Tuesday the Israeli government has published my photographs with a target circle round my head in an absurd but deadly smear against Greta Thunberg and the flotilla bound for Gaza. A British Palestinian man, Zaher Birawi, who has worked freely in and around Parliament for decades, is fingered as Greta's Hamas handler and mastermind of the flotilla. But his pictures which Israel has published globally are actually pictures of me. For the record: I have nothing to do with Hamas or the flotilla. I have not seen or spoken to Mr Birawi in more than a decade."

This is the work of the same Shabana Mahmood who wants people, all of whom would have lived in the United Kingdom for at least 10 years, to earn indefinite leave to remain by performing both paid and voluntary work to her satisfaction. Two out of five Universal Credit claimants are in work, even though there should be no such thing as in-work poverty, the mere existence of which proves that the economic system needs to be replaced. At the very least, no one with a full-time job should be poor. But many of them are, and they are disproportionately immigrants. Mahmood would kick them out: your colleagues and your neighbours, your partners and your parents, your public service workers and your friends. And she wants your digital ID.

For The Public To Make Up Their Mind

Who was this Hitler Youth, and did he flirt back with Nigel Farage? Ed Dutton is a leading light in eugenics and all that, and the biographer of Jonathan Bowden. But at university, Ed once tried to seduce me after Mass, meaning that I know his little secret. So while I have never flirted with a Hitler Youth, I have rebuffed a Hitler Youth's flirtation.

Delicious though the idea is of the Lord Chancellor's being sued for defamation, David Lammy might reasonably defend himself on the grounds that no one could have taken him seriously, since he was known to think that hormonal treatment could enable a man to grow a cervix, that Marie Antoinette had won the Nobel Prize for Physics, that Henry VII had succeeded Henry VIII, that Red Leicester was the blue cheese served with port, and that speculation as to whether the smoke from the Sistine Chapel would be black or white was "silly innuendo about the race of the next Pope". That there would be some howling error on his digital ID is almost enough to want it. But not quite.

In the entire world, Lammy also invented out of thin air the claim that Hamas had "raped babies" on 7 October 2023. Think on.

Safeguard This

Owen Jones and I have had our differences, but it is a badge of honour that he has been kicked out of the conference of Donald Trump’s Labour Party. The official reason given is “safeguarding”. Owen should sue. Keir Starmer left the stage with someone in a red dress for which we all know that Lord Alli will have been paid, but we are none the wiser as to whether it was Lord Alli wearing the dress. How safeguarded is anyone around a public figure when three Ukrainian rent boys had been charged with arson with intent to endanger life in relation to attacks on his rented out house, his old flat, and his old car?

Will Trump’s praise of Starmer be toned down in response to Starmer’s categorisation of Nigel Farage as “the Enemy”, recalling Margaret Thatcher on the miners, and now as then permitting unrestricted persecution? Not even when Ed Davey freed up a seat at the Banquet did Trump’s recent State Visit involve Farage in any way, and if Trump had minded that, then he would have said something. Fans of both need to face the fact that Trump barely knows who Farage is. Fans of either Trump or Starmer need to face the fact that they came as a pair.

The old Blairites were privately proud of Tony Blair’s personal and political closeness to George W. Bush, and they were in dread of a victory in 2004 for John Kerry, who had been known to lend his house to Gordon Brown, and whom they fully expected to launch a CIA coup in Britain within hours of taking office. Of course, there would have been no troops on the streets. There would have been no need. Bush’s reelection relieved them more than anyone else on Earth. And they said so. Meanwhile, the Bush hero-worshippers on the official British Right were unable to explain their Blair predicament. Today, the British Right’s confusion has doubled, with Trump not only gushing over Starmer, but also appointing Blair to run Gaza. Nigel who?

As for Blair’s willingness to work for Trump, there are a lot of people with whom that should be taken up, notably Matthew Syed, who is being cheered to the skies for having joined the Conservative Party of Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick because it was the Labour Party for which he had been a parliamentary candidate in 2001. Get out of that one, well, an awful lot of people, really. That is right up there with Shabana Mahmood’s need to explain how a policy could be racist on Sunday, but not when announced by her on Monday, although apparently again when denounced from the same stage by Starmer on Tuesday. Mahmood’s version of it was the most for which Farage could have hoped, and must therefore have been what he had wanted all along. Either of them will get my digital ID over my cold, dead body.

Bold and Intelligent?

I first told you on 13 November 2023 that Tony Blair was being lined up to be Viceroy of Gaza. Lovers of Donald Trump, what do you make of his description of Blair as a "good man, very good man", so good that this appointment has now been made?

See also Trump's closeness to Keir Starmer, despite ritual media insistence that there are significant policy differences between them. Like what, exactly? Even Starmer's recognition of Palestine has now turned out all right for both of them, has it not?

British fans of Trump are deluded if they curse Blair and revile Starmer, while supporters of Starmer and Blair are if anything even worse if they despise Trump, who has so far named only himself and Blair to his Gaza "Board of Peace".

When Starmer sacked Peter Mandelson, then Trump said that he did not know him. But none of that bothers Blair. Sleep well.

Culture Clash

Monies will have been set aside to defend the charges against Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh. Dare one hope that those might now be directed to the Palestine Action defendants? Meanwhile, Unionists should consider that the British military veterans James Kirby, James Henderson and John Chapman were unarmed aid workers in Gaza until 1 April 2024, when the IDF bombed them three times to make sure that they were dead. Israel armed Argentina during the Falklands War, and the late Queen Elizabeth II, who visited almost every country in the world including Ireland, never went to Israel because of its anti-British terrorist origins. Accordingly, the Unionist member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for South Down, Brigadier Ronald Broadhurst, had been Assistant Chief of Staff of the Arab Legion during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. This ought to be a cross-community cause.

Not so cousin marriage. The Royal Family would agree with NHS England that that had “benefits” that included “stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages”. And yes, the NHS has a perfect right to comment on such matters, which have significant implications for physical and mental health. But the legality of marriages between first cousins is a product of the Reformation. Its prevalence until the First World War, and as recently as that, was a badge of Protestant honour, since Henry VIII had legalised it when he had wanted to marry Catherine Howard, who was Anne Boleyn’s first cousin, and since although William and Mary never had children, the intention had been that they would, and they were first cousins whose marriage would not ordinarily have been possible in the Catholic Church. Does the Orange Order now wish to ban a marriage such as William of Orange’s? Would the four stripes of Northern Irish Unionist in the House of Commons vote for that ban? Until the Reformation, the Late Roman ban on marriage to the fourth degree of consanguinity had obtained, extended to affinity because in marriage, “the two shall become one flesh”. Catholic Canon Law has therefore always banned cousin marriage, at one time to the seventh degree, although with possibilities of dispensation since the ban was not in the Bible. Such dispensations did the Hapsburgs no good.

This seems to be a Two Cultures thing. Although Charles and Emma Darwin were first cousins who had 10 children, and although Albert and Elsa Einstein were both maternal first cousins and paternal second cousins such that her maiden name was Einstein, the mere thought of this practice is profoundly shocking to scientists. But to people formed by the study of literature and history, then, while that is where it belongs, that is where you will find it routinely. Mainstream British society was educated out of it, and not very long ago, so that can obviously be done. South Asians are hardly unreceptive to education. Between 1979 and 1981, the makers and viewers of To the Manor Born took it as read that Audrey fforbes-Hamilton’s late husband had been her cousin. Although Coronation Street does not, both Emmerdale and EastEnders still feature such arrangements between white characters whose families were supposed to have lived in Emmerdale or Walford since time out of mind, and that seems to raise no eyebrows.

Anglo-Saxons and Scotch-Irish still regularly marry their first cousins in several of the parts of the United States that were most likely to vote for Donald Trump, and they did so as a matter of course into the very recent past. But if the argument is that this was something that certain other ethnic groups did, then it is probably better to treat it as a health education matter rather than a criminal one. After all, that was what worked with everyone else. Nineteenth-century novels are full of marriages between first cousins as the most normal thing in the world, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were first cousins. By descent from that marriage, the King’s parents were third cousins, while they were also second cousins once removed through a different line. But the King is a last hurrah of that sort of thing. His mother was one of the least inbred monarchs ever, and his son and grandson are not at all inbred. Educate people, and it will mostly or entirely die out. That worked with everyone else. Even the Royal Family.

Next up will be weights and measures, with demands for the imperial system alone from people who not only could not calculate according to it, which will not be a new phenomenon, but who were strikingly unlike the previous partisans of that cause. Long ago, I was taught that a gentleman drank champagne by the pint. The only Briton ever to have been President of the European Commission was later known for taking a pint of claret to his desk in the House of Lords to get him through the afternoon. But it turned out in 2023 that only 1.3 per cent of people wanted any extended use of the imperial system, so that was assumed to have been the end of that. The peculiarly British compromise between the metric and the imperial systems is the most lasting monument to this country’s bitterest culture war in living memory, the one between scientists and humanities graduates in the 30 or 40 years after the Second World War.

The question of turning away from the Old Empire and towards Europe was also in the mix, but it was secondary. Much of the Old Empire was going metric at the time, and almost all of it has now done so. Rather, this was and is about whether the weights and measures used in everyday life, and taught in schools, should be the ones used in science, or the ones named in Shakespeare. Only named, of course. The imperial system dates only from 1824, making it barely 200 years old. Far from being Arthurian, it suppressed numerous customary weights and measures across these Islands and the Empire, replacing them with ones that often bore the same names, as certain customary units on the Continent still have names such as livre, but which had most definitely been devised by a committee. Scottish pints and gallons were more than halved. The claim that the imperial system was “more natural” needs to be squared with the existence of different traditional weights and measures, and with the absence of any organic reversion to our own, much less emergence of them. When uncontacted tribes turn up, then do they know the number of yards in a rod, perch or pole?

Britain joined the EU in 1973. New Zealand has had only metric road signs, which there has never been any serious suggestion that Britain might adopt, since 1972. Was that the work of the EU? Although New Zealanders still sometimes give their height in feet and inches, and by convention announce their children's birth weights in pounds and ounces, they have, again since 1972, measured even milk in the metric system, unlike the practice in Britain. By 1973, all schools in Australia were teaching only the metric system. Was that the work of the EU, too? All road signs there converted to metric in July 1974, and all cars made after that year have had only metric speedometers. Australians now rarely even convert their babies’ birth weights into pounds and ounces, and such units are employed for trading purposes only when exporting to the United States. Where there is residual use of imperial units in casual conversation in Australia, then it tends to be attributed to the cultural transmission of American English. But the reason why the American system is different, despite using much of the same vocabulary, is because it is older. Nor does it ring true that the United States went to the Moon using non-metric units. If, for the sake of argument, that were the case, then it was well over 50 years ago. There is no way that the Americans are doing anything remotely comparable in anything other than the metric system today, even if they were doing so in the 1960s, which itself strikes me as highly unlikely.

Unlike, unless I am very much mistaken, any part of what eventually became the imperial system, the metric system was invented by an Englishman, John Wilkins, who managed to be both a brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell and later a bishop in the Church of England. It is not a product of the French Revolution. The first attempt to mandate it in Britain was made in 1818, six years before the imperial system existed. Britain legalised the use of the metric system in 1875. Numerous industries have used nothing else in living memory, if ever. Even leaving aside how long ago Imperial Britain’s industrial zenith was, the bald claim that that was achieved entirely by the application of the imperial system does not stand up to the slightest analysis.

Who could possibly teach the imperial system these days? I hate to advocate for the other side, but Britain is in fact rather good at science. Yet imagine that the imperial system really were to be reincorporated into school Maths. Would you fail if you could not do it? That would be most people these days, deprived of the Maths certificate necessary to progress to further scientific education, for want of competence in a system that was not used for such purposes anywhere in the world. If you could find anyone to do so, then by all means teach it. But even those of us who probably quoted Shakespeare in our sleep ought not to wish to make anything else conditional on it. It is not as if it is Classics.

Yet at the popular level, a remarkably enduring compromise has taken hold. Britain is the only country in the world where the use of two completely different systems of weights and measures, but with only one of them taught in schools, could result in anything other than total collapse. We should cherish the fact that in ordinary conversation everyone gave their height and weight in imperial measures when only the metric system had been taught in schools since before most people had been born. The only problem is the legal ban on selling certain items in imperial measures by name, a piece of domestic legislation enacted by a Conservative Government. By all means let that ban be repealed. In practice, that repeal would change almost nothing. Corporate retail giants would have absolutely no intention of adopting the imperial system, but small traders should be free to use it if customers wanted it. At a significant markup, I expect. Almost no one under 60 would ask for imperial, since almost no one under 60 would ever have been taught it, but let those who wanted it have it. If they could afford it. Good luck to any licensed premises that sought to revert to the old measures of spirits, since those were shorter.

Have you ever had any trouble buying a pint of beer? Our own and so many other traditional weights and measures survive for the sale of bread or beer all across Europe because they are perfectly adequate, and even ideal, for the sale of bread or beer. But they are at least arguably too imprecise for anything much more than that, and an international scientific and technological culture could not function without a universally accepted system of weights and measures. And so on. Let anyone who wanted to do so buy or sell a pound of potatoes, although that is not an arduous thing to do within the present law. The never threatened pint of milk or beer will always be readily available in the Irish Republic, which will never leave the EU.

Ireland stands as a salutary warning to those Raising the Colours. Note what they were saying online about the King, and note what they were not saying, for God to save him or for him to live long, either there or on the streets. They are no fans of the Commonwealth, and the King’s cosmopolitan background has not escaped their notice. Of course, he is a Green at least in a nonpartisan sense (he and his immigrant father practically invented it) and, like Green Parties from the Bundestag to the House of Commons, a supporter of the war in Ukraine. I have always said that the eventual threat to the monarchy would come from the Right, although I had always assumed that that would be because it was blindingly incompatible with Thatcherite meritocracy. As it is, though, these are no beneficiaries of Thatcherism unless one reasonably counted lifelong and intergenerational benefit dependency.

But a British Presidential Election, like any other, would have to have a nomination process. In Ireland, that process has been used to keep off the ballot even Maria Steen, a relative liberal compared to whoever the likes of UKIP, Patriotic Alternative or the Homeland Party, none of them unknown to me, would wish to see as Head of State. Candidates would certainly require nomination by one tenth of the House of Commons, 65 MPs, and very probably by one fifth of that House, 130 MPs. Even in the first instance, in the wildly unlikely event of more than two candidates, then the House would whittle them down to the two who would then be presented to the electorate. Almost certainly, only two parties are ever going to have 65 MPs. Certainly, only two are ever going to have 130. In practice, they would probably arrange to alternate the Presidency between them. Even if the present polls translated into a General Election result, then Reform UK would be no more likely than the Liberal Democrats to nominate Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who is himself an Irish citizen, meaning that Shabana Mahmood could strip him of his British citizenship at will. After all, does he work, and pay his taxes? Does he speak English with the fluency of a barrister who had graduated from Oxford? Does he volunteer in a manner acceptable to her? He has a criminal record. And he lives in Spain, so he would not even need to be deported.

Goodness Gracious Me

The characters who caused the Goodness Gracious Me team the most trouble in their own community, for washing dirty linen in public, were the Kapoors and the Rabindranaths, who insisted that their names were Cooper and Robinson as part of their preposterous presentation of themselves as "English".

And so to Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Zia Yusuf, Ben Habib, and Shabana Mahmood. I have been around brown people like that my entire life. I have also been fighting the fash more than long enough for them to have noticed. And I promise you that they would do to you exactly what they would do to the rest of us.

Not To Defer, But To Resist

Fleur Elizabeth Meston writes:

Ellie Ball, Director of Communications at Dignity in Dying and Compassion in Dying, posted on X recently that “The Lords has an important duty to scrutinise, but it also has a constitutional duty to respect the primacy of the Commons, which has twice backed this Bill. MPs listened to dying people; reflected the public mood. Families up & down the country now call on Peers to follow suit.”

This is a deeply misleading claim. The suggestion that the House of Lords has a constitutional duty to defer to the Commons on a Private Members’ Bill (PMB) is simply false. The doctrine of Commons primacy derives from legislation that comes from a government manifesto or from bills the Commons has insisted upon in two consecutive sessions. Neither applies here. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is a Private Members’ Bill that has not passed the House of Commons in two sessions.

Peers are not obligated to accept a Private Members’ Bill. In fact, precedent demonstrates this. In 2014, the Lords blocked James Wharton’s European Union (Referendum) Bill because many peers rejected its content and principle. They exercised their constitutional right to do so, since, as a Private Members’ Bill, it was not subject to a binding duty to advance, unlike government bills that reflect manifesto commitments.

Ellie Ball’s assertion, therefore, not only gravely misunderstands our constitutional settlement but also misleads peers and the public about what is at stake. The head of comms for Dignity in Dying, known for the “Westminster death tunnel”, appears to lack expertise in parliamentary procedure. Her professional background includes communications work at Macmillan Cancer Support, not constitutional law.

Two further omissions make her comments even more disingenuous. First, less than half of MPs actually voted for the Bill at third reading — 314 out of 650 members. Second, there is no constitutional duty for peers to “respect” such a half-supported PMB. To propose anything different is merely a political tactic presented as if it were a constitutional principle.

Kim Leadbeater MP stated that peers should not block the Bill, saying that the Lords should scrutinise and suggest, not obstruct legislation. Former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer likewise claims that “the norm in the Lords is that you don’t oppose a second reading”. Yet both know perfectly well the House retains the discretion to halt a bill, especially a PMB, if the principle itself is unsound. Lord Falconer is no stranger to voting against Commons-backed bills in the Lords; despite now insisting peers should always defer, he has himself opposed such legislation on several occasions, including attempts to block or amend major government bills passed by the elected chamber.

Leadbeater spoke at a parliamentary meeting hosted by My Death, My Decision and Humanists UK, who advocate for expanding assisted suicide beyond the terminally ill. These groups are clear about their desire to go beyond the supposed safeguards within Leadbeater’s bill. At the meeting, a Dignitas board member used chilling doublespeak, claiming, “Assisted dying is not about ending lives. In fact, it’s about saving lives”.

This appears to be a campaign based on misleading language and tricks. Peers bear no obligation simply to nod this bill through. The duty of the House of Lords is not to Dignity in Dying’s spin doctors, but to the constitutional settlement in our parliamentary democracy, and to vulnerable people who would be placed at risk by legalising assisted suicide.

When the communications head for the assisted suicide lobby spreads misleading claims, it is no surprise that many remain sceptical about the true intentions of the Bill’s sponsors, parliamentary champions, and campaign groups such as Dignity and Dying and My Death, My Decision. Sometimes the greatest act of principle is not to defer, but to resist.

Drive The Money Changers From The Temple

NeilW writes:

The bond market has long been hailed as a vital cog in the machinery of modern economies, a sentinel ensuring fiscal discipline, and a barometer of economic stability. But is this reputation deserved? Recent turmoil in the UK gilt market following Rachel Reeves’s maiden Budget has brought this question into sharp focus. A sell-off in gilts has been framed as the righteous judgment of the “bond vigilantes” sniffing out fiscal imprudence. Yet, this narrative is built on misunderstandings and misplaced reverence for an institution that is neither necessary nor productive.

The Myths of Market Discipline

Let’s break down the received wisdom. We are told that government borrowing is constrained by the willingness of investors to lend. When spending and borrowing exceed some implicit threshold of acceptability, markets “strike back,” driving up yields and demanding fiscal rectitude. According to this view, the UK government’s plans to issue £300bn of gilts this tax year—to cover a deficit augmented by £32.3bn annually over the next five years—represents a breach of that threshold. Bond investors, alarmed by a perceived lack of discipline, have sold off.

None of this is true.

The UK government does not need to “borrow” in any conventional sense. Spending by the government is an act of money creation. When the government credits a bank account, the Bank of England records a corresponding credit and debit on its balance sheet. Taxes operate in reverse, debiting bank accounts along with a corresponding debit and credit recorded on the Bank of England balance sheet. The result is a balancing item in the accounts, which is all ‘government borrowing’ really is - occurring as a natural function of double-entry accounting, not the rapacious whims of financial brigands.

Gilts are not a necessity but a political choice stemming from the outdated “full funding rule.” This policy requires the issuance of bonds to cover deficits, a remnant of an older economic orthodoxy linked to the long-defunct gold standard. In reality, these bonds merely offer investors the option to exchange overnight reserves (which pay the Bank of England’s Bank Rate) for longer-term instruments with a fixed yield.

The Economics of Parasitism

What function, then, do bond investors serve? Advocates might argue they provide discipline, ensuring governments use public funds wisely. Yet this discipline is illusory. The bond yield is simply the market’s expectation of future Bank of England policy rates. Investors do not “set” borrowing costs; they predict them. The entire bond market’s existence rests on the unnecessary act of swapping one type of government liability (reserves) for another (gilts).

Far from being the guardians of fiscal virtue, bond investors resemble the money changers of biblical lore—skimming off the system while adding no value. Their profits are a deadweight loss to the economy. The intricate dance of issuance, trading, and yield curve management consumes resources and employs talent that could be deployed in more productive sectors. Financial engineers who might design systems to combat climate change or improve healthcare instead spend their days shaving basis points off gilt portfolios.

A Political Choice, Not an Economic Necessity

Ending the bond market is not a radical idea but a logical step toward modernising public finance. If the UK government were to eliminate the ‘full funding’ rule, it would continue to settle its obligations just as it has been doing since the 1860s—by directly crediting bank accounts. Private banks would receive the Bank Rate on their deposits held at the Bank of England, and the costly bond issuance process would end.

Critics may raise concerns about inflationary risks or a potential loss of market discipline, but these fears are unfounded. Inflation is determined by the balance between aggregate demand and real economic capacity, not by the actions of bond traders. Ultimately, fiscal “discipline” is a political choice best exercised through democratic means rather than being delegated to unelected financial elites.

Reclaiming Public Purpose

The bond market, far from being an essential institution, is a parasitic appendage—one that has outlived whatever utility it might once have had. By continuing to issue gilts, the UK government perpetuates a system that benefits a narrow class of financial intermediaries at the expense of the broader public. The talents of those currently employed in the bond market could be better used in sectors that address real-world challenges.

It is time to euthanise the bond market—not with malice but with a clear-eyed understanding that its continued existence serves no public purpose. Just as the money changers were driven from the Temple, so must we clear out this vestige of an outdated economic paradigm. The myth of the vigilantes must be dispelled. Only then can we create a monetary system that serves the needs of everyday people.

As Larry Elliott, the best thing in The Guardian, writes:

There are plenty of tough jobs in politics but none tougher than the one just handed to Sébastien Lecornu, the third French prime minister to be appointed by Emmanuel Macron in a year.

Lecornu has been given the nigh-on impossible task of getting an austerity budget through parliament at the head of a minority government facing implacable opposition from parties of the hard right and hard left. Talk about poisoned chalices.

The conventional wisdom is that Macron and his succession of premiers are the only ones prepared to face up to reality, which is that France’s unwillingness to get serious about reducing its budget deficit leaves it at the mercy of the financial markets.

Sooner or later, the bond market vigilantes – the collective term for traders in government bonds – will force the French political class to act. Eventually, the warring political parties will accept the truth of what Margaret Thatcher said in the 1980s. You can’t buck the market.

Britain, so the story goes, also needs to wake up, or else the markets will be coming for us next. There is still a chance to avoid a meltdown, but it requires the sort of action that French MPs have so far resisted. Raise taxes. Cut welfare. Take the axe to spending programmes.

The reason France and Britain have no choice but to do this is because states are weak and markets are all powerful. The bond markets exert their power through their role in buying and selling government bonds. If they sell en masse, the interest rates governments pay to borrow goes up and they can be forced to change policy even when they are reluctant to do so. It has been the received wisdom for the past 50 years that governments should do what bond traders and speculators demand, or risk being crushed by the global financial juggernaut.

There is an alternative narrative, which goes like this. Britain has its own currency and a central bank with the ability to set interest rates. It is not France – and the idea that contagion will spread across the Channel is an attempt by the political right to dragoon the UK chancellor, Rachel Reeves, into actions that will be unpopular as well as pointless.

It is also worth saying that markets are powerful, but not all-powerful. They operate within the legal and institutional frameworks created by governments – and when the going gets tough, they rely on governments to dig them out of a hole.

During the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Covid pandemic of 2020, the markets were only bailed out thanks to the willingness of governments to print money and run big budget deficits. There was no talk of the need for the bond market vigilantes to impose financial discipline back then.

Just as the power of markets is exaggerated, so the power of states is underestimated. What happened in the 1970s and 1980s was that states were shaped by a rightwing ideology which meant, among other things, the removal of curbs on the movement of capital. These restrictions had been put in place for a reason: so that governments could go for full employment, build up welfare states and reduce inequality.

Removing capital controls has been good for big finance and multinational corporations, but has made it harder for governments to pursue domestic economic strategies. States have not grown weaker during the past half century, they have merely served a different class interest.

To be sure, there are times when the markets get it right and governments are clearly wrong. Black Wednesday – the day in September 1992 when George Soros forced Britain out of the European exchange rate mechanism – was an example of that. While a humiliation for John Major’s Conservative government, Black Wednesday allowed interest rates to fall and proved to be the catalyst for a powerful economic recovery.

But the markets are not always right. The idea that austerity measures were needed to keep bond markets happy and thereby create the conditions for growth proved to be a fantasy in the aftermath of the financial crash, and is no more plausible in the France or Britain of today.

Nobody could accuse Macron of being anything other than a market-friendly president. He has cut corporate taxes and raised France’s retirement age. And a fat lot of good it has done him. Under his presidency, the French economy has continued to struggle. All of which means the real lesson for Britain from France is somewhat different from the one trumpeted by the political right.

Reeves is correct to make faster growth her priority, because it will lead to higher tax revenues and fewer people claiming benefits. But sucking demand out of the economy through tax increases and spending cuts will lead to weaker growth and a higher deficit, prompting further demands from the markets for remedial action. Speculation about which taxes are going to rise in November’s budget will probably sap business and consumer confidence.

Labour, like other centre-left parties, faces a choice. It can argue that financial markets are often capricious and destructive. It can argue that uncaging finance has not produced the improvement in economic performance promised by the Thatcherites. It can argue that the whims of the markets should not be allowed to prevent the need for a generously funded industrial strategy. It can argue that by raising tariffs and taking a stake in the US chipmaker Intel, Donald Trump has made the unthinkable thinkable. It can make the case for targeted and transparent controls to prevent short-term capital movements blowing the economy off course.

Alternatively, it can use “you can’t buck the markets” as a justification for passivity and, by doing so, chart a course for eventual defeat. As the parlous state of centre-left parties across Europe shows, timidity will have economic and political consequences.

Called Out For What It Is

What should the new towns be named, and why? Burnham? Not that I am an Andy Burnham supporter, but Steve Reed (Streatham and Croydon North) said the quiet part out loud when he dismissed Burnham as, unlike Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras), "a regional politician". Despite being only one year younger than Starmer, Reed fancies himself as his successor, and is moving against the competition. He might at least be a gentleman about it and name a town after him.

The reaction to Burnham's mildly social democratic musings confirms the failure of Blue Labour. "Economically radical and socially conservative"? Only if the economic radicalism were the privatisation of the NHS. Maurice Glasman has declared in favour of digital ID, which is itself fundamental to that privatisation among many other atrocities. Shabana Mahmood is the Home Secretary. Jonathan Brash and Connor Naismith are on record in favour, while Dan Carden, Jonathan Hinder and David Smith have said it all by saying nothing. Mahmood has turned out to be George Galloway's successful former student with an inexplicable hatred that knew no limit. We all have one of those. And mine is also firmly on the right wing of the Labour Party.

Add to that the fact that at some point in the last Parliament, Blue Labour was hijacked by Morgan McSweeney. After all, what wasn't? I yield to none in my fear of digital ID in the hands of Robert Jenrick or Lee Anderson. But my fear is even greater that it would be in the hands of the people who were already in government. Assata Shakur's politics were hardly mine, but we must hope that she returned to the Faith in her final earthly moments, we must pray for her soul, and we must concede that she had the measure of those who "feel sorry for the so-called underprivileged just as long as they can maintain their own privileges". The problem was that it took her to say it. Where were we?

And where are we, that it has fallen to Starmer, of all people, to point out that the proposal to abolish indefinite leave to remain was "racist and immoral", racism being immoral by definition? No, Nigel Farage is not a racist. No, Reform UK is not a racist party. But this is a racist policy. If Farage, who less than a year ago was saying that Trumpian mass deportations would be impossible, and Reform, which was already ahead in the polls before this announcement, did not wish to be considered racist, then they would need to drop this and anyone who continued to adhere to it. If they did not, then shame on them. But that they have lost the moral high ground to Starmer, shame on us.

Above The Noise

Opposite my photograph as part of the report into the splendid doings of our recently departed and our newly appointed priests, Nigerians both, this letter of mine appears in The Village Voice:

We now have our MP, our County Councillor and our Parish Councillors for years to come. Over to them to ensure that the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Lanchester was held at the correct time, with all traffic redirected along the bypass rather than through the village between 10:45 and 11:30 that morning. People tell me that I am incapable of letting this go. They are right. I am.

Homeland Security?

Sending the troops into Portland is like sending them into Brighton, perhaps to end the dispute between the council and the bin men. But British Governments have acted with extreme physical violence against those whom they had defined as their internal enemies. Keir Starmer's description of Reform UK as "an enemy hiding in plain sight" recalls Margaret Thatcher's description of the miners as "the Enemy Within". He talks of "battle", so recall that hers against them were absolutely literal. Welcome to the outside. You are not Tories now.

Imagine digital ID during the Miners' Strike. Now imagine it under a Badenoch, Jenrick or Farage Government, never mind under whoever might succeed any of those as a Conservative or Reform Prime Minister. By the next General Election, Starmer may have sailed off to enjoy both his tax-free inheritance and, by special legislation with his very name in its title, his tax-free pension. But whoever was Labour Leader by then will be urging a Labour vote to keep Nigel Farage away from the digital ID system that already existed. Here's a thought. Just do not set it up in the first place. Even if Labour won in 2029, then that would only keep those powers in the hands of the people who had yesterday detained George Galloway at Gatwick. At seven o'clock this evening, The Mother of All Talk Shows will be one for the ages.

Putting The Cant Into Cantuar

Lord Carey has said that the Church of England "risked losing its authority by commenting on divisive issues such as migration", on which the next Archbishop of Canterbury ought therefore not to comment. Is there any other Member of Parliament and of the Privy Council to whom Carey thinks that this should apply?

As for loss of authority, how is Carey's abiding presence as a legislator any more acceptable than Peter Mandelson's? Oh, well, same old George Carey, the most prominent of that type which is now rather out of date, a sense in which he continues to exemplify it. I refer to Liberal Protestants with Charismatic backgrounds, who assume that their own experience is theologically normative, and who work from there.

Breaking News

Oh, the GB News “breaking at nine o’clock” story about Keir Starmer was just the Sunday Times inheritance tax one, and not anything to do with Lord Alli. Nor anything to do with the three Ukrainian rent boys who had been charged with arson with intent to endanger life in relation to the attacks on Starmer’s rented out house, his old flat, and his old car. Nor anything to do with Jenny Chapman, whom Starmer gave a peerage, made an Under-Secretary of State, promoted to Minister of State, appointed to the Privy Council, and invited to attend Cabinet, and who, while Starmer’s wife was pregnant, bore him the child who was now supported by Chapman’s Ministerial salary.

Still, that is a story. As a beneficiary of his parents’ estate, Starmer gave them land via a trust, thereby avoiding the inheritance tax that he was using to force working farmers of many decades’ standing who formally inherited their parents’ farms to sell them to giant American agribusinesses. The Lobby will always have known this, but the word has clearly gone out that now was the time to tell everyone else. The Lobby has always known about Alli, the rent boys, and Chapman, too.

The Means of Life

I have no idea why John McDonnell or Apsana Begum would want the Labour whip, but one hopes against hope that the Government may be facing up to the reality that was detailed here:

Calls are being reiterated for the “two-child benefit cap” to be scrapped as evidence suggests it could be a significant factor in many women’s decisions to have an abortion.

The two-child benefit cap was introduced in 2017, affecting households that had a third or subsequent child born on or after 6 April 2017, but it is likely that awareness of its introduction began to influence women’s decision to have abortions earlier in that year.

An analysis of official abortion statistics for England and Wales shows that between 2016 and 2021, the number of abortions had by women who had previously had two or more births resulting in a live or stillbirth (this includes the population of women affected by the two-child benefit cap) increased by 25.96%. At the same time, the number of abortions had by women who had previously had one or no births resulting in a live or stillbirth (this includes the population of women not affected by the two-child benefit cap) increased by only 9.89%.

This data shows there has been a disproportionately large increase in abortions among mothers with two or more existing children over this period.

The results of a survey suggest that the two-child benefit cap was a significant factor in many of these mothers’ decisions to have an abortion.

The abortion provider BPAS surveyed 240 women with two or more children who had had an abortion between March and November 2020. Of these, 59% said they were aware of the two-child benefit cap prior to their abortion.

Of those in receipt of tax credits or universal credit, and therefore most likely to be affected by the two-child benefit cap, 57% “said that the policy was important in their decision-making around whether or not to continue the pregnancy”.

Among those women surveyed, one said “I did something I never imagined I would ever do… But at the back of my mind all I kept thinking is how would I have managed financially… I had to do this”.

Another said “[The two-child limit] was a big factor for me. My husband has lost his job so we are on a very tight budget and when we looked at our finances we realised we couldn’t afford to have another baby”.

Similarly, another woman said “If there was no two-child limit I would have kept the baby, but I couldn’t afford to feed and clothe it … I’ve really struggled to come to terms with [my decision]”.

Cabinet ministers could soon recommend removing the cap, reports say

The two-child policy was introduced in 2017 and “prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for more than two children”.

The calls for change come as cabinet ministers and Whitehall officials tasked with exploring ways to reduce child poverty will reportedly recommend lifting the cap as the most effective method, according to reports.

The recommendations are due to be delivered to the Prime Minister before the Budget in November. The Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said “As the co-chairman of the child poverty taskforce, I am determined that we will make greater strides to shrink the number of children living in poverty”.

“Everything is on the table, including removing the two-child limit. My top priority will be for this Labour Government to tackle child poverty”.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimates that the cost of removing the two-child limit to the taxpayer would be £3.4 billion. However, they say “this is equal to roughly 3% of the total working-age benefit budget; it is also approximately the same cost as freezing fuel duties for the next parliament, or cutting the basic rate of income tax by half a penny”.

According to The End Child Poverty Coalition, the loss of benefits as a result of the two-child benefit cap is worth £3,514 per child impacted in 2025/26. Government data shows that in April 2025, 469,780 Universal Credit households were affected by the two-child limit policy.

Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “We are calling on the Government to urgently scrap the two-child benefit cap”.

“When women discover they are pregnant, they should be met with the practical help and support they need to continue their pregnancy, not told that they will receive less financial support for their next child than for their previous children”.

“The two-child benefit cap was introduced in 2017, affecting households that had a third or subsequent child born on or after 6 April 2017, but news of its introduction likely began to influence women’s decision to have abortions earlier in that year”.

“Official data from the Department of Health and Social Care shows there has been a disproportionately large increase in abortions among women with two or more previous children compared to women who had one or no children between 2017 and 2021”.

“The results of a survey of women with two or more children who had had an abortion suggest that the two-child benefit cap was a significant factor in many of these women’s decisions to have an abortion”.

“Of those in receipt of tax credits or universal credit, and therefore most likely to be affected by the two-child benefit cap, 57% ‘said that the policy was important in their decision-making around whether or not to continue the pregnancy’”.

And Ellen Morrison, disabled members’ representative on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, writes:

A year into Labour’s return to government, disabled people have been left confronting the reality that instead of a new deal rooted in solidarity and dignity, we have been forced to fight a rearguard action simply to hold on to what we already have. The defining battle of this first year has been over social security. Ministers came to office promising to reset the relationship between the state and disabled people after years of Tory cruelty. Instead, their opening move was to propose deep cuts to Personal Independence Payment and to push through changes to Universal Credit that will leave new claimants substantially worse off. The message could not have been clearer: disabled people are once again the first target when the Treasury demands savings.

The scale of the attack was breathtaking. PIP, already one of the most contested and distrusted parts of the system, was set for further restrictions. It took an unprecedented rebellion of backbench MPs, allied with disabled people’s organisations and grassroots campaigners, to force the leadership to back down. At the last minute, the PIP cuts were stripped from the bill. This was rightly celebrated as a victory, but the damage was already done. The leadership had shown its instincts: not to extend support, not to fix a broken system, but to squeeze disabled people further. And even after that U-turn, the government pressed ahead with its cuts to the health element of Universal Credit, creating a two-tier system in which new claimants are automatically consigned to a lower rate of support. International human rights experts have already condemned the reforms as discriminatory and unjustified. That is the reality of Labour’s first year in power.

We were told to place our hope in a new review of PIP, led by Stephen Timms, that would supposedly “co-produce” a reformed benefit with disabled people. But disabled people have every reason to doubt whether this will be meaningful. We know from bitter experience what “consultation” usually means: managed conversations, carefully selected voices, and decisions already made behind closed doors. Trust cannot be rebuilt by repeating the same patterns that destroyed it in the first place. If Labour wants to show it is serious, it should be looking not at inventing yet another review from the top down but at the work disabled people have already done for ourselves.

The Commission on Social Security’s proposal for an Additional Costs Disability Payment shows exactly what genuine co-production looks like. Over years of patient organising, disabled people, people on benefits, unions and allies came together to design a replacement for PIP. It is based not on arbitrary points systems or suspicion, but on the real additional costs disabled people face in our everyday lives. It is rights-based, supportive, and rooted in dignity. The process itself was democratic, with thousands of disabled people feeding in their experiences. The result is a serious, workable plan for a new system – one that would not only support people properly but also rebuild trust in the very idea of social security.

That is what Labour could embrace if it chose to. Instead of forcing disabled people through another bruising battle over cuts, instead of treating us as a budget line to be trimmed, the party could champion a policy written by those who live the consequences every day. It could say: we hear you, we trust you, we will build a system with you. That would be a transformative moment. But right now, there is little confidence that the leadership has any intention of doing so.

This is why so many disabled people feel profoundly let down after Labour’s first year in government. We did not expect miracles, but we did expect better than being targeted as the first victims of a new austerity. The betrayal runs deep. And it is not just about policy; it is about values. The Labour Party was created to stand with working people, with the marginalised and oppressed. To stand for solidarity over scapegoating, dignity over punishment. When a Labour government chooses instead to cut disabled people’s income and to rehearse Tory language about “hard choices”, it is not only hurting us materially – it is corroding the moral foundation of the party itself.

The other flashpoints of the year underline this sense of betrayal. The assisted dying bill, though formally a private member’s bill, advanced through the Commons only because the leadership allowed it to do so. For disabled people, this was another gut-punch: a law that risks normalising the idea that our lives are burdensome and expendable, pushed forward at the same time as support is being cut away. Whatever the intentions of its sponsors, the combination of social security cuts and assisted dying legislation leaves many of us feeling that the government would rather facilitate our deaths than secure our lives. That is a devastating indictment of any party that calls itself Labour.

The deputy leadership election is taking place against this backdrop. It will not solve the crisis of trust, and no one should pretend otherwise. But it does provide a chance to open up a conversation that has been shut down for too long: what kind of Labour Party do we want? Do we want a leadership that continues to triangulate, cut, and ignore members? Or do we want a party that is at least open to debate, to dissent, to being pushed by its base? Bridget Phillipson has consistently defended the government’s welfare policies, even as they entrench child poverty and undermine disabled people’s security. For members who want any chance of shifting Labour back towards its values, Lucy Powell represents the better option.

But the real issue is bigger than any deputy leadership contest. It is about whether Labour will continue down the road of cuts, suspicion and betrayal, or whether it will finally embrace the alternative that disabled people ourselves have put on the table. The Additional Costs Disability Payment proposed by the Commission on Social Security is proof that another way is possible. It is proof that when disabled people are in the lead, we can design policies that are humane, effective and rooted in justice. What we need is a party willing to stand with us, not against us.

If Labour wants to renew itself, if it wants to win back trust, this is where it must start. By ending the attacks on disabled people’s income. By abandoning the cruel logic of “hard choices” that always fall hardest on those with the least. By championing policies that have been co-produced in practice, not just in rhetoric. And by proving, through its actions, that it is once again a party of solidarity.

Disabled members like me cannot endure another year like this one. We cannot be asked to celebrate retreats from attacks that should never have been made in the first place. We cannot be expected to trust reviews designed without us. We need a party that recognises our worth, listens to our solutions, and commits to a future where social security really means security. The Commission has shown what that future could look like. The choice now is whether Labour has the courage to follow.

On The Cards

"BritCard"? How the years roll back, and not in a good way. Tony Blair's computerisation of the NHS was the biggest civilian IT project ever. 23 years later, there is still no sign of it. Set that alongside the cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover. Then ponder the digital ID that was proposed in June by Morgan McSweeney's Labour Together, hence the hideously Noughties name. Announcing it now to deflect attention from the undeclared £700,000 displays undeniable self-belief.

Identity cards have always been a New Labour obsession to rank with NHS privatisation, although that was never to be attempted except in England, with the NHS recognised as the strongest argument for the Union in the other three parts of the United Kingdom. This Government is so bad at politics that it intends to impose the BritCard from West Glamorgan, to West Lothian, to West Belfast. There may be riots in Scotland. There may be worse than that across the Irish Sea.

Although the Coalition discontinued Blair's attempt at this, it had in fact become government policy under John Major and Michael Howard. William Hague speaks for the grandees when he enthusiastically commends it today. Accordingly, Kemi Badenoch sits on the fence, while Chris Philp is positively enthusiastic, as have been several people who were now leading members of Reform UK. Ann Widdecombe was calling for this only three months ago, on exactly the grounds that Keir Starmer now purported to advocate it.

Everyone on that march on 13 September put themselves on Palantir's facial recognition system. The shock troops of the resistance need to come from elsewhere. My old friend Dr Dave Smith is now applying for a judicial review of the failure to call him to give oral evidence to the spycops inquiry. If that scandal received anything like the coverage that it deserved, then digital ID would have public approval below 10 per cent. Dave's Blacklist Support Group is old school trade unionism, crossing over as that does with the justice campaigns around Shrewsbury, Clay Cross, the Battle of the Beanfield, Hillsborough, Orgreave, Grenfell Tower, the Windrush scandal, the Post Office scandal, the contaminated blood scandal, the WASPI women, the wrongfully imprisoned, the nuclear test veterans, and very many more.

A start has been made by Dave's union and mine, Unite, which has declined to nominate either candidate for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. One of them is still a member of this Cabinet, the other said that the Winter Fuel Payment had to be withdrawn to prevent a run on the pound. They are both in favour of the digital ID that would be delivered by the Tony Blair Institute while Blair himself was spending at least five years heading "the Gaza International Transitional Authority". I first told you on 13 November 2023 that Blair was being lined up to be Viceroy of Gaza, now on behalf of a State that would by then have recognised the Falkland Islands as part of Argentina.

No change there, of course, since Israel armed Argentina during the Falklands War, with Menachem Begin seeing that as revenge. Israel is much closer to Javier Milei than even to Starmer, while Liz Truss has said that she would have endorsed Milei as a candidate for Leader of the Conservative Party. His Argentina is the latest Promised Land of the British Right, which always needs a Fatherland somewhere away from the NHS. The real sport will be over Israel's attitude to the sovereignty of Gibraltar, since Spain has also recognised Palestine. Will Gibraltarians be issued with Blair's BritCards while he ran Gaza on behalf of a foreign power that thought that they should not be British? Very possibly. Will Falkland Islanders be in that position? Without doubt. Unless we had stopped this whole scheme in its tracks.

A Heavy Price For A Shocking Error

Peter Oborne writes:

One of the most unhealthy recent developments in British politics has been the emergence of the behind-the-scenes operator.

Tony Blair’s eminence grise was Peter Mandelson. Boris Johnson employed Dominic Cummings - who later sought to destroy his premiership.

With Keir Starmer we have Morgan McSweeney, the Downing Street chief of staff.

Just three weeks ago few voters knew anything much about McSweeney. Now he has been hauled out of the shadows. This is not just an ugly, public spectacle. It reveals the truth about the sordid system of politics which is poisoning public life in Britain today.

The political crisis started with the scandal over links between Peter Mandelson and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. McSweeney had pushed for Mandelson, whom he regards as his mentor, to be appointed ambassador to Washington.

Details have leaked of an angry personal exchange between the prime minister and his senior adviser. Starmer is reported to have shouted at McSweeney: “You are supposed to protect me from things like this.”

Almost at once the embarrassment of Mandelson’s departure was compounded by a second blow to McSweeney’s Downing Street machine.

Paul Ovenden, director of political strategy and a close ally, resigned after it emerged that he was the author of offensive and sexual text messages about Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black woman MP.

The Ovenden departure was forced by a revelation in a forthcoming book by the investigative journalist Paul Holden titled The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney and the Crisis of British Democracy.

And now comes the third and by far the most dangerous development.

Secret and unlawful

Holden’s book will contain allegations of irregularities concerning what he calls “a secret unlawful fund” and more than £700,000 of hidden donations to a think tank run by McSweeney.

These revelations are potentially dangerous for McSweeney. Far more importantly, they may impact viscerally on Starmer himself.

This is because, according to Holden, the purpose of McSweeney’s think tank, misleadingly called Labour Together, was to supercharge Starmer’s path to Downing Street.

Once Starmer was installed in No 10 he rewarded McSweeney by making him Downing Street chief of staff.

The Tory Party is now claiming that new evidence has come to light that “raises the question of whether a criminal offence has been committed”.

In a letter to the Electoral Commission, Tory chairman Kevin Hollinrake makes the devastating allegation that the “funds were used by Labour Together in a sustained political campaign to bring down Jeremy Corbyn and secure the election of Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour Party”.

This is especially significant because official records show Starmer did not declare any support from the group in the official Commons register.

Under the Commons code of conduct, MPs are required to declare support worth more than £1,500 designed to help their “candidacy at an election for parliamentary or non-parliamentary office”.

To put the charges made into plain English, the Tories are in effect accusing McSweeney of arranging a secret slush fund to launch Starmer into Downing Street.

On Wednesday, cabinet minister Pat McFadden dismissed the Tory claims about wrongdoing by McSweeney. He told the BBC Today programme that “the Electoral Commission have looked into that. They’ve said there is nothing to add here. They are the people actually charged with policing the rules around declarations to nations... And they looked into this as far back, I think, as 2021.”

McSweeney and Starmer nevertheless have many questions to answer.

Thus far Downing Street is refusing to answer questions about McSweeney’s time at Labour Together, while Starmer has “full confidence” in his chief of staff.

Whether this confidence can survive the publication of Holden’s forthcoming book remains to be seen. One so far unnoticed aspect of this affair should especially disturb Downing Street.

Serious and dangerous work

Holden is the antithesis of the back-slapping lobby journalist who typically flourishes at Westminster.

His expertise is investigation into corruption. For example, he worked directly with the Zondo Commission on state capture in South Africa to assist its investigations into the money laundering schemes used to hide the theft of state funds in that country. 

This is painstaking, exceptionally serious and sometimes dangerous work: real journalism as opposed to the client reporting that often passes muster at Westminster.

Holden pursues a type of journalism that requires extraordinary dedication, courage and expertise. This should frighten McSweeney and Starmer.

They are accustomed to reporters seeking access who can be fobbed off with a giveaway front-page scoop or a quiet word with their boss. There was a reason why McSweeney placed himself next to Rupert Murdoch at the state banquet for Donald Trump.

Holden cannot be bought. He cannot be bribed. He cannot be intimidated.

I have read his book in proof, and it is unlike any other political book I have read. It illustrates Starmer’s careen from the honourable left to the racist right of British politics - and places McSweeney at the heart of that journey.

It is important to remember that McSweeney - like Mandelson and Cummings before him - has done terrible damage to our public life.

The speciality of their sort of backstairs fixer is manoeuvring, calculation and the pursuit of power for power’s sake. I can’t detect any sense of the public good or deep moral purpose in McSweeney.

He has zero generous vision of the moral purpose of which Labour stands for. McSweeney’s bleak analysis almost certainly lies behind Starmer’s hideous reversion to the racist politics of Enoch Powell, turning barbarously on minorities with talk of an “island of strangers”.

A shocking error of judgment

Indeed the McSweeney/Starmer project can only succeed by preying on divisions and creating new ones. That is the route that McSweeney and Starmer have chosen to secure power.

It would be wrong for me to break confidences about the further revelations which will emerge from Holden’s detailed book.

But it is fair to say that it illustrates how a tiny Blairite clique captured the Labour Party through unscrupulous and despicable means.

The publisher’s blurb promises stories about “hacked emails, anonymous smears, dodgy dossiers, cynical stitch-ups, and staggering hypocrisy”.

I wish Holden well, because his book exposes the unsavoury gang that governs contemporary Britain.

One figure who will be watching developments with personal interest is the deposed Downing Street chief of staff Sue Gray. Baroness Gray was for many years a highly respected civil servant. In particular she was known for her integrity and an old-fashioned respect for due process.

These qualities earned her Starmer’s admiration, so much so that she was his first choice as chief of staff after he became prime minister in July last year.

There followed a brief and one-sided power struggle. After a press campaign against her, characterised by vicious leaks apparently from within Downing Street, Baroness Gray was forced out. McSweeney took her place.

How the prime minister will be regretting that decision!

Baroness Gray would never have allowed Mandelson to go to Washington. She would never have tolerated Labour Together’s slapdash approach to finances.

Starmer would not find himself in the current quagmire had he retained Baroness Gray and steered clear of McSweeney.

The prime minister is paying a heavy price indeed for his shocking error of judgment.

Administrative Error?

Keir Starmer had a Head of Communications? How will Steph Driver make a living now, with that on her CV? And Dave Pares is off to be Director of Communications at the Treasury, to try to spin the Budget, the worst job since the death of Margaret Thatcher deprived someone of the role of injecting Vitamin B12 into her buttocks.

Starmer's Leadership is being openly challenged by someone who has not been an MP for the last eight of Starmer's 10 years in Parliament, while Kemi Badenoch's Leadership is being openly challenged by someone whom she is too weak to sack from her Shadow Cabinet.

And Morgan McSweeney expects us to believe that he merely forgot to declare £739,492 in donations that propelled Starmer to the Labour Leadership. The amnesia among high level political figures is a public health emergency that has concerned me for 30 years.

Or, since it really is self-diagnosed unlike anything that qualified for rather more meagre payments, is it all a benefit fraud? Forgetfulness would be no excuse if you failed to declare an awful lot less than 700 grand while claiming Universal Credit. These are the people who would afflict us all with digital ID, and that when hackers had stolen the names, addresses and pictures of eight thousand children.

McSweeney's vehicle was Labour Together, the slate on which internal Labour Party elections were contested by Mason Humberstone, the Stevenage Councillor who last week defected with great fanfare to Reform UK. Reform is highly likely to take the parliamentary seat of Stevenage from Labour. Think on.

More A Decision For Those People

Is it Andy Burnham season again? He would have been Leader 10 years ago if he had not abstained on the Welfare Bill.

Ben Houchen is a Peer of the Realm, and he is not a former Cabinet Minister. Keir Starmer could neutralise Burnham by ennobling him. Just announce that, perhaps in next week's speech to Conference. Any reaction other than delight would confirm that Burnham was trying to get back into the Commons, to only one possible purpose.

Now, do not take your eye off Ed Miliband. Unlike Burnham, he has not been out of Parliament for eight years. 10 or 11 years after an unexpected but decisive defeat at a General Election, he may yet become Prime Minister without a vote's having been cast by anyone.

Europe’s Boneheaded Sanctions Regime

Thomas Fazi is one of the most important writers in Europe:

“It is time to turn off the tap,” announced European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week, in her 19th attempt to apply pressure on Russia. The latest proposed package of sanctions includes a ban on imports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) from January 2027 — one year earlier than previously planned — and extends sanctions to refineries and oil traders in third countries, such as China and Russia, accused of helping Russia circumvent sanctions.

On paper, this is presented as a decisive step to “cut Russia’s war revenues” and to force Moscow to the negotiating table. In practice, it is little more than the continuation of a policy that has failed time and time again. Russia has not been brought to its knees and has redirected energy flows elsewhere, while Europe has been crippled by higher prices and locked itself into a position of permanent dependence on the United States.

Before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia was the EU’s largest supplier of oil and natural gas. Since then, Russia’s share of EU oil imports has dropped from 29% to 2%, and that of gas from 48% to 12%. Yet imports have not ceased entirely. Two pipelines remain operational: the Druzhba pipeline, which still delivers oil to Hungary and Slovakia, and the TurkStream pipeline, which supplies gas to Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece and Romania. Meanwhile, the EU has rushed to replace Russian pipeline gas with much more expensive and volatile LNG, whose share of total EU gas imports has more than doubled from 20% to 50%. Nearly half of this LNG now comes from the United States, making Europe the most important market for US LNG exports.

The irony is that while the EU boasted of cutting pipeline imports from Russia, it has quietly increased its purchases of Russian LNG, most of which goes to France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. This is simply a matter of economic reality: not only is Russian LNG “significantly cheaper” than American liquified gas, but existing agreements bind European buyers to Russian supplies.

Nothing, however, illustrates the absurdity of the EU’s sanctions regime more than the fact that Europe continues to indirectly import large quantities of Russian oil. Instead of buying cheap crude directly from Russia, as it used to, it now purchases refined products from countries like India and Turkey, which import Russian crude, refine it and sell it back to Europe at a significant markup. In the first six months of 2025 alone, the EU and Turkey imported 2.4 million tonnes of petroleum products from India. Estimates suggest that two thirds of this originated from Russian crude. In effect, the EU and Turkey paid India around €1.5 billion for oil that was Russian in all but name.

This means that Europe is now paying more for the same Russian oil than it did before, while also paying more for LNG to replace Russian pipeline gas. The bloc has thus shot itself in the foot twice: once by substituting cheap Russian pipeline gas with more expensive American (and Russian) LNG, and again by substituting direct Russian oil imports with indirect and more costly purchases from India and Turkey.

The consequences have been brutal. Europe has endured three consecutive years of industrial stagnation. Germany — once the engine of the continent — is now experiencing outright deindustrialisation, with 125,000 industrial jobs lost in just the past few weeks.

Russia, meanwhile, has emerged relatively unscathed, redirecting its exports to Asia and consolidating its partnership with China. From the standpoint of Europe’s long-term interests, the obvious path would be to re-normalise economic relations with Moscow, resume cheap energy imports and work towards a negotiated end to the war. But rationality has long since disappeared from European policy. Indeed, Brussels has doubled down, announcing not only the LNG ban but also a de facto prohibition on any future use of the Nord Stream pipelines, while at the same time sabotaging any peace effort.

The justification, once again, is that sanctions will force Russia to end the war on the West’s terms. The reality is that 18 packages of sanctions have failed to achieve this goal, and the 19th will fare no better. What it will do, however, is deepen Europe’s dependence on the United States.

Indeed, the timing of the new sanctions package was not coincidental. Just days earlier, Donald Trump issued an ultimatum to Nato allies. The US, he declared, would only impose “major” new sanctions on Russia once Europeans had agreed to stop buying Russian oil. He went further, suggesting Nato impose 50-100% tariffs on China and India, both of which he accused of circumventing sanctions. He insisted such measures would weaken Russia’s “strong control” over its partners. Trump even claimed that halting Russian energy imports, combined with heavy tariffs on China, would be “of great help” in ending the conflict.

The logic is baffling. Europe has no power to force China or India to stop buying Russian oil. Tariffs on those countries would fuel sky-high inflation and trigger counter-tariffs that would devastate European exporters, while doing little to change their purchasing behaviour. Even EU diplomats privately acknowledge that Trump’s conditions are unrealistic — as Trump himself likely understands all too well. Yet his demands reveal the transactional essence of transatlantic politics today.

Trump’s ultimatum dovetails with a broader US strategy: to dominate Europe’s energy market. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright made this explicit: “You want to have secure energy suppliers that are your allies, not your foes.” Under Washington’s plan, the US could account for nearly three-quarters of Europe’s LNG imports within a few years. Indeed, ExxonMobil now expects Europe to sign multi-decade contracts of US gas as part of its pledge to buy $750 billion American energy.

Until recently, EU countries resisted such deals, fearing fossil fuel dependence and the undermining of climate goals. But the tide has shifted. Italy’s Eni recently signed a 20-year deal with Venture Global, its first long-term agreement with a US LNG producer. Edison and Germany’s Sefe have signed similar agreements. The result is structural dependence on US gas — which is not only more expensive but also has a far higher carbon footprint than Russian pipeline gas — for decades to come. This is a textbook example of geopolitical vassalage.

But it gets worse. Even as Europe is told to cut all ties with Russian energy, reports have emerged of secret talks between ExxonMobil and the Russian oil company Rosneft about resuming cooperation on the massive Sakhalin project in Russia’s Far East. If confirmed, it would mean that while Europeans are forbidden to buy cheap Russian gas and oil, American companies are quietly preparing to return. The aim, it would seem, is to buy Russian energy cheaply, resell it at a premium and push competitors like Turkey and India out of the game.

But there’s a clear flaw in this strategy. It is hard to imagine US companies actually resuming business with Russia while the war continues — especially as Washington threatens ever-tighter sanctions on Russia and its key partners, such as China and India. Indeed, Exxon’s CEO has denied the rumours. This contradiction highlights the limits of Trump’s transactional approach: the belief that he can neatly separate economics from politics, striking commercial deals with Moscow while challenging Russia’s broader security and geopolitical aims.

All the while, the push to decouple Europe from Russian energy has only strengthened the strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing. Earlier this month, they signed a memorandum to build the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, a $13.6-billion project stretching 2,600 kilometres through Mongolia. If confirmed, it would deliver 50 billion cubic metres of gas annually to China, providing Beijing with a reliable source of cheap energy.

For Europe, this is a disaster. Having voluntarily cut itself off from Russian energy, the continent is now committed to a future of high prices and low competitiveness. Russia, by contrast, is securing long-term markets in Asia. The new pipeline would also have implications for the US as well. Analysts predict the pipeline will cause a “structural shock” to global LNG trade, reducing China’s reliance on seaborne cargoes and undermining US ambitions for long-term contracts.

But this simply highlights why it is imperative for the US to keep its client states as reliant as possible on American fossil fuels. Seen in this light, the war has been nothing short of a triumph for the United States: guaranteeing windfall profits for its energy companies and binding Europe ever more tightly to its geopolitical priorities. Indeed, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that this outcome was part of the rationale all along. After all, driving a permanent wedge between Europe and Russia while securing Europe as a captive market for US energy has arguably been a consistent objective of American strategy for decades.

By adopting sanctions that align with Trump’s demands, Brussels is sacrificing what remains of its autonomy. The result is a geopolitical paradox so twisted that it almost defies comprehension. European governments, trapped by their own rhetoric and by a dogmatic commitment to permanent confrontation with Moscow, have manoeuvred themselves into a laughable position. They have allowed Trump to frame his demands as a perverse quid pro quo: he can present Europe’s economic self-harm and growing dependence on US energy as the price they must pay in order to accelerate their own strategic decline.

Overall, the EU’s energy policy since 2022 has been a textbook case of self-inflicted harm. By cutting itself off from cheap Russian supplies, it has handed the United States a once-in-a-generation opportunity to dominate Europe’s energy market. By embracing sanctions, which have failed to weaken Russia but have devastated European industry, Brussels has turned the continent into a geopolitical pawn. Europe’s leaders claim to be defending values and solidarity; in reality, they are presiding over a process of deindustrialisation and decline, while continuing to dangerously escalate tensions with Russia. Unless there is a dramatic shift, the continent’s future will be one of stagnation and irrelevance — and, at worst, all-out war.