Dunge

Could be difficult in Boris’s case.

I’d be interested to hear how you would envision an elected second chamber. The problem to me is this: The House of Commons is there to decide the laws, therefore it’s absolutely right that they’re elected. The House of Lords is there to ratify the laws, to make sure they’re good, just, workable and to use their experience and expertise to check for loopholes. If you say the Lords should be an elected chamber, who runs for election? Do they have a manifesto? Because the very nature of why the Lords is there does not lend itself to manifestos. If you’re in the Lords, you’re there (at least in theory) for checks and balances, not for selling a cause to the public and standing for something. While there could and should be reforms about who gets into the Lords and how, I’m far from convinced that public election is a good idea for it.

It’s felt for some time that the Royal PR teams are relics from a bygone age, focused first and foremost on newspapers and the BBC, and without any insight into social media or modern technology at all. Everything they do these days come across as akin to Wile E Coyote trying to catch Roadrunner.

And Andy King likely on the verge of retirement.

I’m getting mine tomorrow. Basically blocked out next week for it.

Without going into details in what is a second-hand story, I know of a case where a council worker tried to use their position for something they shouldn’t have (let’s say a neighbourhood disagreement), and when it was reported to Peter Soulsby he came down on it hard. There will always be people who are corrupt if you let them but I don’t think it’s endemic within councils. Mostly they’re just people trying to balance a budget and deciding which of people’s wants and needs are the least affordable.

Worth noting in response to Macron’s words from earlier that all the other significant players in NATO - US, UK, Germany, Poland, among others - have said today that that suggestion is not on the table.

I don’t think anyone knows and that’s the problem. It became pointless trying to take anything from Russian words some time ago, and if you want any evidence of that just check Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson. You have to take this administration by their actions. Those actions are: - They invaded Ukraine. - They’re ramping up military production. - They haven’t yet done anything new with their nukes. - There are reports of a plan to reorganise their military on their western border in the long term - ie up to 10 years. Their reasons aren’t clear; their words over the last few years are proven to have very little value outside of creating and sustaining an internal narrative about the conflict. Nobody knows how Putin would respond to various things, and that’s probably the way he likes it. Although the downside for him is that it makes it a lot harder for him to attempt to end the conflict and return to normal if that’s what he wanted. He’s kind of stuck right now, getting slowly less popular as he takes away the rights of his people and sends them to fight and die in a war they don’t really want.

Personally I think it’s clever. You can’t have junior doctor strikes if you don’t have any junior doctors. Problem solved.

I imagine Putin believes there is some sort of high-percentage likelihood that the West’s attitude to their nukes is “nukes for nukes and nukes alone”, ie that a war can be contained to a rule that he sets and the West won’t escalate beyond that themselves. Whether he’s certain of that is another matter, but given the West’s behaviour around Ukraine he’d probably see us as relatively predictable. How he’d see Trump would be interesting as he’s not such a predictable person but he’d have to be encouraged by the recent words and actions of the wing of the Republican Party he claims to represent. So the question for him might be how Europe’s conventional forces stand up against Russian conventional forces, believing he could keep it to that because Europe wouldn’t escalate beyond that. Even so, I think this would be fraught with danger. If you don’t succeed, you have a tough time at home convincing people that going to their deaths is worth it. Does Europe get pushed to the point where the soft outer shell is stripped away and they start thinking their own escalation is worth the risk? Does Europe look to take Ukraine back as punishment? Or Kaliningrad - right now that’s unthinkable, but when under attack, unthinkable things start to become thinkable. If anything like that happens, how does Putin respond? Has his own bluff been called? Problem is, nobody knows quite what Putin’s thinking. Which is what happens when somebody lies so much.

Liz Truss is the next one who’s going to disappear down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, isn’t she? Too big an ego to accept when she’s wrong so will only listen to those who tell her she’s right.

In allowing the tabling of an opposition amendment to a proposal from another opposition party, Hoyle did something that, while within his remit, is highly unusual. As such, the accusation from other parties is that he did it because of pressure from within the Labour Party in order to prevent them the embarrassment of a split down the middle for either the Tory or SNP proposal. Which would be a big thing because the speaker is supposed to be neutral and any suggestion otherwise is considered very serious. That’s what’s going on. There may be some truth in it. But on the other hand the amendment that he controversially allowed is the one that’s been voted through.

Frankly the result of it all suggests that Hoyle was right. Conservatives and SNP both just come across as bitter that they couldn’t use the issue to split Labour.

Plus is could be a tough afternoon in the chamber for Keir Starmer so he and his team might have figured that a quieter PMQs might be for the best.

I wondered whether Starmer had an attack line on Kemi Badenoch ready, then they decided just before it started that going hard on it might backfire because this memo isn’t as damning as the sacked PO guy thought it would be.

Supporting Arsenal

While I agree with the above, frankly it’s nice to have a bit of light news given the state of the world.

If you’re not imagining a T-Rex trying to hold a megaphone up to its mouth and getting very frustrated about it then there’s no helping you.

“Rees-Mogg, J.” Nickname: “The Moggster”

But of a mess up there. I think they’ve tried to offer the benefit of the doubt based on a quick and unreserved apology, but then they’ve been presented with evidence of further incidents. So they’ve annoyed both those to their right who want to see antisemitism stamped out and those on their left who want to see Labour speaking up more for Palestine. Ironically I expect Ali to still win the seat as “Labour’s candidate” although he won’t actually represent them. I also expect turnout to be through the floor though so who knows what’ll happen.

I’m centrist.

The Conservatives always used to say that the Democrats in America were like their sister party. Also - and I say this believing it’ll get shot down - Boris Johnson wasn’t that right wing. Certainly not in terms of manifesto. He’s a habitual liar, a populist and has an ego the size of a planet, but he’s not a right wing firebrand. The likes of Truss and Braverman are another matter.

Biden in particular would lose more votes by supporting Palestine. And it’d be even worse because those votes would transfer across to the main opposition, instead of either staying at home or voting for a third party candidate. Labour recognise the same problem too - any votes that would turn away from Labour for their Palestine stance (not nearly as many as you believe) would be single losses. Any on the other side that went to the Tories would be effective double losses.

I can buy the right wing in America waiting for the opportune time to strike Biden and the Democrats - potentially they might have gone a bit early because the Dems do have time to change candidate, although whether they will is another matter. However, there’s no way Russia would pretend Putin was ill just so they could present him as recovered. He was ill. He may still be ill but on better medication for whatever it is. No leader like Putin is going to willingly and deliberately present themselves as weak at any point. As for Europe potentially picking up the tab or otherwise, I guess that depends on whether you think we’d have any choice. I don’t think anyone (including Putin) knows whether Europe could rely on a Republican government if Russia decided to attack a NATO country.