Capitalists@Work

The great Miliband guessing game

2026-07-12T22:17:02.854+01:00

Well, then: is it to be:

Thanks, Ed, but you're not needed now
Ed, I need you to to stay where you are, it's great job you're doing in keeping the greens onside
Ed, you're my Chancellor - you're the only one who can solve Rubik's Cube
Ed? No no, it's David I wanted on the line

And so we all wait. Meanwhile, however, a couple of big energy decisions must surely be made real soon:

Rosebank (oil) and Jackdaw (gas)
DESNZ capital budget being sacrificed for Defence spending: where does the axe fall?

1. The joke is that the Jackdaw platform has already been built and is out there in the North Sea, fully installed and ready to go; first gas in October if the starting gun is fired this month. Surely, surely that wouldn't have happened without a clear nod from the Treasury? Nobody develops an offshore platform on spec. It really does look as though the formal go-ahead decision is just a formality. Also, the case for home-produced gas is the easier to make, for Mili or whoever has to front for it. (Mili always gets Shanks to front for the decisions he's unhappy about.)

Rosebank is a bit different: it'll be produced via a floating structure / subsea completion. Again, the structure is complete and making its way over from Norway, but the briefing is, that's being done at the producers' own risk. And if it's a 'no', it could be used elsewhere. Also the argument for loacl oil production, though still perfectly sound, has just a couple of extra (low) hurdles to jump: and Mili has staked his colours to the 'No Rosebank' mast - so, a bit of humiliation involved.

What would be even funnier, is if he gets offered the Treasury provided that he green-lights both Jackdaw and Rosebank on his way to the DESNZ door. Does Burnham have a sense of humour? He certainly likes industry and jobs.

2. OK, so the A46 Newark Bypass extension has been sacrificed for Defence spending. Big deal: it was only ever a nice-to-have. Yep, the big capital budgets to be raided will be those of Mili at DESNZ. Now most DESNZ capital schemes are loaded onto electricity bill-payers' bills, the big exceptions being:

(a) HMG's equity contributions to Sizewell C, given that EDF refuses to take equity risk (which we've written about many times)

(b) The farce that is Carbon Capture and Storage - by far the biggest (thus far) at £21bn (sic) of HMT's best pounds, NOT recharged to bill-payers. Very unusual. And very stupid.

I think we can guess which will be the sacrificial lamb, notwithstanding Mili's considerable attachment to it.

More popcorn, please, as I raise a hopeful glass to Burnham's sense of fun.

UPDATE: Right on cue, this from the DTel:

Miliband willing to approve North Sea oil to land job as chancellor - Energy Secretary wants to prove he is a ‘pragmatist’ rather than a ‘zealot’ on environmental policy to help his case for being chancellor

The 'evolution' of the Russian oil and gas industry

2026-07-09T09:48:51.152+01:00

Wind the clock back to 2022 and Russia has the biggest oil and gas infrastructure in the world: the country is sometimes referred to sarcastically as a nuclear-armed gas station. It's fully functional, although not very sophisticated - the amount of wasteful flaring that goes on is legendary (of gas at oil production facilities, and of oil at gas producing locations); and there are few conventional sophistications such as accurate metering and non-return valves. Nonetheless, it's the primary pillar of the Russian economy.

What a target!

Well, Ukraine started setting about it seriously in 2024. To start with, their offensive means being rather slight at that stage, they went for plant in the neighbouring oblasts. Right from the word go, these pinpricks revealed huge, structural vulnerabilities.

Vulnerable ...

Russia immediately realised just how serious it might be, and set about devising counter-measures. They encouraged oil enterprises to invest in small arms (requiring a change in the law) for local defence[1], and experimented with wire cages and steel gantries to create physical barriers - an utterly futile effort because, even if a drone hits a cable ten metres away from its target, it stands a very good chance of rupturing it anyway. We know all this because helpful Russian locals are keen on home videos and social media - and of course good old Google Earth provides astonishingly detailed coverage of most of western Russia, filmed closer to sensitive facilities than is allowed in Western countries!

Then, there's that lack of non-return valves, meaning that a single blazing tank can burn for ten days - there's no way of cutting it off from the pipeline network which then gaily feeds the flames. Oh, and effecting repairs ain't so easy: any component even vaguely sophisticated comes only from western manufacturers and is under embargo - meaning costly and time-consuming black market procurement.

Other palliative measures have been tried. Initially, officials would simply lie about the damage done. There are strict Russian injunctions against publishing photos of these goings-on - hah! To this day, every strike is broadcast to the www in realtime. Then, there are missions by the Orthodox Church, variously to bless oil facilities, to pray for their safety, and to send clerics to attend upon the fire-fighting efforts[2]. Evidently this approach has its limits.[3]

Well. As Ukraine develops ever longer-range strike capabilities, the list of potential targets gets bigger and bigger. And of course their location is known rather exactly, and they can't be moved! Nor, in practical terms, can they be defended. They are being picked off, one by one - the three most noteworthy being perhaps successive raids on the main Moscow City refinery and one close to St Petersberg, plus Omsk. The first two of these prime targets bring the war rather close to home for everyone in those cities with a pair of eyes (and a nose); the third sets distance records (getting on for 3,000 km). And of course, there are serious fuel shortages - in Russia! - to the point where exports have been banned and very large-scale imports are being sought; but the harvest is still under threat, industry is feeling the pinch, and ordinary Russians, particularly in the south and west, are really stuck.

Notwithstanding the Deputy PM's classically euphemistic description of this, ("interruptions in the supply of fuel caused by changes in logistics") even Putin - who likes to keep his hands clean from disasters of all kinds - has been forced to pronounce. Here are his dicta of yesterday:

He called the difficulties with fuel "temporary" and associated, among other things, with "the enemy's attempts to disrupt the vacation season". (Oh yes, the Russian vacation season is uppermost in Kyiv's strategic thinking.)
"The safety margin of the Russian energy system is one of the highest in the world." (Measured by reserves in the ground, presumably.)
"The enemy is trying to create a nervous situation in Russian society." (Trying?)
He called for a speedy decision to subsidize fuel purchases (Not clear where the money will come from for that, but let's see.)
He instructed the speedy deployment of "the capabilities of small and medium-sized businesses in the production of petroleum products".

This last one is very interesting. Sure enough, for a country in dire straits, it's a feasible approach to squeeze a few more drops from what's available. We know from how ISIS conducted its affairs in the areas of Iraq and Syria it once controlled, that home-made micro-refineries are a Thing. And of course Russians are pretty well versed in home-based distillation! All this said, at the end of the day a big economy, and certainly one with a huge defence-industrial base on a war footing and trying to ramp up as fast as possible, needs massive quantities of high-grade fuel that only large-scale, uninterrupted, fully industrial production processes can provide - as 1944-45 Germany discovered.

However laughable micro-refineries are as a 'solution' to Russia's problem, one can't rule out a proliferation of medium-sized plant - given time. But development of this on any scale would be a matter of years, not months, and require skills and components that "medium-size businesses" won't find readily to hand - even if their staff all manage home-made vodka stills on the side. And it would never be able to produce high-grade product. And there would be other vulnerable choke-points to be found in such a newly-diversified system. And individual new targets would be even less plausibly covered by air defences. Etc etc. In sum: this is truly desperate stuff.

[1] As one Russian milblogger put it, "successfully" shooting down a drone with small arms directly over the target is likely to be "a posthumous achievement". Gotta love Russian sarcasm.

[2] In one famous incident, a posse of Orthodox clerics attending a tank blaze after three days of futile fire-fighting to assist with their very best prayers, were killed when the tank exploded. The same fire burned on for another week.

[3] But clerical efforts continue. The Church has been ordered to organise a pilgrimage, starting out at the Omsk facility, Russia's largest (now closed following this week's bombardment), and proceeding to join the dots of refineries all along a route ending in Crimea. Reportedly, the Church has refused to carry out the last bit because Crimea is too dangerous for clerics just now. But the Church has renewed its demands for the raising of tithes, priority for priests in gasoline allocations, and the banning of abortion and neo-paganism. See? Russia is a different world.

Farage takes The Initiative. Hmm.

2026-07-08T09:03:27.849+01:00

So: seeing himself increasingly caught up in a thorny thicket of unwanted and very awkward controversy, Nigel Farage has Taken The Initiative. Well, an initiative.

Long-time readers will know that I place great store on proactive, creative initiative-taking. It's not as common a trait as you'd expect or hope, and that includes most of our "leaders", the vast majority of whom are governed strictly by whatever rulebook and conventions they were brought up with. It's a pretty poor show when Peter Mandelson is the prime example of a relentlessness initiative-taker - always aware of the very many levers that are within grasp, and using them imaginatively. Elon Musk is another.

In its rarity and political importance, initiative-taking shares aspects in common with the ability to strategise. Again, you'll know my views on this and the example I often cite, George "Boy Genius" Osborne. Clearly, the man is a natural strategiser - of the inveterate student-politics kind; and we could add Dominic Cummings and Morgan McSweeney to the short list of UK political thinkers - but that's not enough. What's needed, of course, is good strategy, and Osborne wasn't great at that (never ideal in a Chancellor of the Exchequer). Any old strategy taken from some well-thumbed playbook isn't always enough; and military history is replete with fatally bad strategisers.

And so it is with initiative: Farage needed a good one, and it's not at all clear this is it. What do we reckon?

Desperate bluffing by Putin

2026-07-03T11:26:05.110+01:00

This post will come replete with major caveats in due course, but let's start with the headline. Vladimir Putin is bluffing like crazy over the inevitability of his victory, and will continue doing so for the next three months (until after the upcoming "elections") against the seemingly slender hope that Trump will somehow ride to his rescue and force Ukraine to accept something that can be portrayed as "victory" for Russia. Given that use of nukes is off the table, bluffing plus outright airborne slaughter in Kyiv are practically all he has left.

To sum up:

the Russian 2026 "spring-summer offensive" has yielded miniscule net[1] territorial gains at the cost of phenomenal Russian casualties. All objectives remain unmet.
counting from the front line to St Petersburg and beyond, the Ukrainian medium- and deep-strike campaign, notably on oil and logistics assets, has: seriously incommoded Russian forces at the front (supplies must be brought up by drone and on foot); paralysed transport on major roads in the occupied territories, with critical shortages of fuel - & water - in Donetsk, and Crimea almost under siege; made significant dents in manufacturing facilities of the Russian industrial-military complex across a very wide swathe of the country; seriously hampered telecomms and air movements across western Russia; wreaked colossal damage on the oil industry, with severe shortages resulting (and forcing large-scale imports from Belarus, India and other nations) that must soon have significant inflationary, industrial and food-production consequences; via vast palls of black smoke over Moscow and St Petersburg, demonstrated vividly and demeaningly to the populace that nowhere is safe from highly accurate drone and missile bombardment.
having thus far failed miserably in the planned effort to censor the internet in Chinese style, Putin faces a populace that can see all this quite clearly. Not withstanding the existence of some loyalist diehards that will cling to Putin's infallibility as they did to Stalin's, the greater part of the people, realistic cynics as most Russians are, have clocked it all as being at the very least, not at all what they were sold back in 2022, but in fact starting to impinge on them directly. To call this "unrest" would be to misunderstand how Russia has always been: but it's a near equivalent.
the economy is in a bad way, and short term relief from Iran-war oil prices has been overtaken by those prices falling back again PLUS the abovementioned actual shortage of oil products.

There are very big decisions pending for after those elections, in two categories:

the economy: if nothing changes, really deep measures will be needed;
manpower: if Putin decides to soldier on, even just to the extent of trying to capture the rest of the Donbass (and his stated territorial goals extend a lot further than that), he'll need a very large intake of new conscripts - perhaps a million.

So: given that's all 3 months away, during which time Putin doubtless feels he can (just about) maintain a facade of BAU, he sees little downside to giving the Trump card one last play. Look, we're advancing on all fronts - let me lend you this magnifying glass - and can carry on like this forever! Get that clown to surrender, now - and cash in your Nobel Prize voucher!! Yeah, right. Even Witless-Dumkopf, even Trump himself, have probably spotted the flaws in that line of reasoning.

One other thing, before the caveats. L'il Volodya also shows signs of losing it a bit. It's always necessary to enter notes of caution here because he's been written off as a dying man for years. But in a very high-profile set-piece "interview" he gave recently, he dropped a real Biden of a clanger and declared Ukrainian troops in a town deep inside Russia were only 2 km away from being totally surrounded. He was obviously mistaking it for some tiny Ukrainian settlement he'd been briefed about but forgotten the name of - commentators have made various guesses because it's not entirely obvious which. But this in the full glare of prime time Russian TV. Not a helpful incident.

And the caveats? It's basically the usual one, with a specific twist. It's always wise to assume that there is no limit to the suffering that can be imposed on the Russian people, however cynical they may be. That's one manifestation of "the mysterious Russian soul"[2] that they are so proud of. And I doubt there are any moral limits to the extent Putin is willing to exploit that, even if there might be some political constraints in an internet age. So my opening list of how bad things are in Russia needs to be considered in that light. BUT it cuts both ways: Ukrainians are equally able to take it, as they've proved heroically for over four years in defiance of almost all expectations. Are they crumbling in the next 3 months? No, they ain't. And of course they have the tremendous backstop of EU / UK funding, without which it would have all been up for them some while ago.

The special twist is this: all the evidence points to Putin not knowing in detail what's actually happening. He uses neither mobile phone nor laptop. The military accounts he receives are just the icing on the mighty traditional Russian layer-cake of filing "beautiful reports" at every stage along the chain; and we can probably assume the economic and industrial reports he gets are similarly sugared. It's only occasionally that hard facts seem to get through to him. This all makes it even more likely that he'll play the game of attrition by infinite suffering. Scary stuff.

There is one last fallback for Putin - China: because we all assume Xi won't let him "actually lose the war". But Xi also serves as a restraining influence: he's ruled out nukes in no uncertain terms; and note how the 2024 experiment using 10,000 North Korean troops in front-line roles quietly came to an end without being scaled up, or even just continued.

And "actually losing the war" may not be a relevant criterion: look how badly things have become for Putin with China notionally having his back! I don't think he'll be getting any change from the Donald either just now: a(nother) failed "peace process" is the last thing Trump needs before the mid-terms.

________________

[1] 'Net', because Ukraine has been successfully counter-attacking on a couple of fronts and re-seized territory of its own.

[2] Here's some more of my attempts to illuminate these big cultural differences.

"Manchesterism" - seems like we've been here before

2026-06-29T13:38:29.311+01:00

... and it didn't end well.

"Manchesterism" - not to be confused with Manchester Liberalism - is intended to mean something easily grasped for political purposes: greater interventionism at the civic level. This is supposed, a priori, to have obvious benefits yielding excellent results. Well, maybe, sometimes. The ideal degree of devolution is as long as a piece of string: how many Scots feel their once vaunted education system, or the Welsh their vaunted health service, have benefitted from greater devolved control? Objectively, the results suggest otherwise. And the ludicrous Rebecca Long-Bailey's equally ludicrous 2019 Labour manifesto plans for ultra-devolution of the energy industry (down to the level of units of "around 200 households" owning their own local energy infrastructure) provide the reductio ad absurdum of

And there are reasons to think that Burnham's model isn't what it's thought to be: that he's basically encouraged commercial property development on a significant scale, which can't easily be replicated across the nations. A glance at the pages of every issue of Private Eye and its years-long revelations of naked, industrial-scale corruption on Teesside for the personal benefit of a very small number of individuals, shows that local devolved powers can end up being shockingly abused.

But there's another factor. Remember how Neville Chamberlain came to Westminster as the dynastic hereditary king of Birmingham, with municipalism in that other great city as his calling card. He didn't do so well in the corridors of Whitehall - or of Bad Godersberg and Munich (notwithstanding some recent revisionist versions of events there). Maybe in other nations there is a wothwhile tradition of fine presidents and prime ministers coming up the local government / Big City Mayoral route. But not around these parts.

Do we see any signs that Andy is up to the bigger job? Municipalism is not enough, Mr Burnham.

Starmer goes "with good grace"? We'll be the judges ...

2026-06-22T17:41:02.414+01:00

And so it came to pass. Suddenly, all the fight went out of him.

"I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party ... and I accept that answer with good grace."

Oh, really? Let us be the judges of that. If I were a gullible Labour leftie who'd had higher hopes back in 2020, I'd be fairly bitter. Andy "novelty factor" Burnham will be having all those hopes projected on him now. Good luck with that. I guess he's at least got the advantage that hopes will be set rather lower now. "Hope he doesn't accept too many freebies ..."; "Maybe he believes in something ...".

Spare a thought for Sadiq Khan, who "paid tribute to Sir Keir Starmer as 'a man of great integrity' ". Well, it takes one to know one: pardon me while I mop up this pool of spilled tea. Oh, tragedy: this moment should surely have been Sadiq's - how he's been trying to figure out how he could do a Burnham before Burnham himself pulled it off. So now he'll have to wait for another mainstream Labour meltdown. If the Tories are the model for modern British politics, that'll be along as soon as the latest lettuce wilts. Early GE, anyone?

That said, I'm not sure Khan looks terribly well just now. Let's charitably blame the new haircut. Now, about that critical upcoming NATO summit next month ... what's your foreign policy, Andy? And defence spending? They are all looking at you.

Hattersley: a disarmingly honest old hypocrite

2026-06-15T16:32:16.531+01:00

Well the tub of lard** lasted a lot longer than the lettuce, but now Roy Hattersley's gone.

Over the years he's come to our attention before, and BTL on the previous post one of our Anon's gave us two of Roy's fine pieces of cheery hypocrisy, both from the Grauniad. Another gem worth recalling is something he wrote in his long-running Diary in the same newspaper:

I do not believe that there are young women who get themselves pregnant to qualify for a council house. And even if I am wrong about this, it it to my credit that I don't believe it.

He knew he was in the wrong, but unlike most of these left-ish rogues, he didn't mind admitting it. Refreshing, in its own way, I suppose.

___________

** Oddly, that episode of HIGNFY seems to have been expunged from the www

Hockney - a true master

2026-06-12T14:16:14.112+01:00

With the passing of David Hockney we have lost something precious: a master of his work. I tend to think there are three pre-requisites for genuine artistry: that the artist should first be a complete master of the technicalities - craft before art; that they should have a fine eye (or ear) for abstraction; and boundless productivity. Some might say that Vermeer provides a counter-example to the third of these, but I'd say that's a rarity.

Hockney had it all. His output was legendary, of course: and his technical skills were that of an outright genius. I recall a small, simple drawing he made of a muddy lane, and you could tell that what one was looking at was the indentations in the soft ground of where a pile of logs had been resting until recently at the roadside. As if one was there. This is extraordinary stuff.

Crayon sketch: I did this - in homage - 50 years ago

The quick Guardian obit refers to "his fascination with perspective" but I don't think that's quite right. Mere perspective is old hat: it was a fascination with depth, and how it can be conveyed in two-dimensional media - and in this, he was truly a revolutionary, going way beyond other depth-masters (Monet comes first to mind) in finding new ways to convey what all sighted people with two eyes experience all the time. In particular, he worked on depth in its 4 dimensions, finding tech-facilitated ways to capture and portray the temporal aspect that always arises, because we can often only perceive depth by changing our point of view over an interval of time.

His extremely well thought-out views on abstraction are important, too: and the accuracy of his eye in this regard was never in doubt. In terms of mastery, abstraction and output he was the equal of Picasso (possibly also as innovator), though to different effect as he never really sought to go beyond the figurative. He knew, though, as every good photographer does, that abstraction is at the heart of figurative representation.

Events!

2026-06-11T14:39:32.070+01:00

But then of course there's Events ... Mandy, Trump, who-knows-what. Starmer already has a long list of self-serving one-liners to fend off the 'known unknowns' ...

That was C@W last week: and right on cue, Events have struck. Was Healey's resignation really an unknown unknown? No: for several weeks past, meejah political correspondents have been reporting that all was not well with the Defence Investment Plan and that the Cabinet was badly split on the issue.

Given that right now it looks for all the world big enough to be a Final Nail, letting it erupt like this is a capital strategic error on Team Starmer's part: it was foreseeable; they should have made sure it was covered[1]. I'm sure we've all met situations where someone, or some organisation, fatally loses sight of just how big some fairly obvious potential banana-skin really is[2] - and it's not pretty when they step on it. Not quite the same phenomenon as Nicholas Taleb's "picking up pennies in front of the steamroller", but there are some family resemblences.

So now, we must assume that Burnham will campaign even more explicitly as the anti-Starmer insurgent, however implausible. Farage, presumably, will campaign on "it's Labour that is the problem", to be reinforced in the days to come by lurid stories of toxic Cabinet proceedings that the press will be happy to furnish as they get extensively briefed by all the self-interested parties involved. And let's see what 'line' TS comes up with to fend off this one - that'd earn someone his bonus. Or is it just too late for yet another last-ditch defence?

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[1] It seems they were preoccupied "wargaming Andy Burnham's next moves"

[2] In my first commercial employment, I watched in horror as a really good manager I worked for came badly unstuck in that manner. Fortunately, this life-lesson came very early in my career. It was a great relief, two employers later, to work for a firm that operated on the maxim: the bigger the (potential) issue, the better the team we deploy and the more attention we give it. It's truly crazy when a firm draw up a list of 10 issues, and commits one tenth of its resources to each with no thought to the relativities. Or worse: when it gives 30% to the squeakiest wheel, irrespective.

Toughing it out: Starmer, Putin, Trump

2026-06-08T14:07:46.682+01:00

Toughing things out isn't quite the same as playing for time, although the latter (an intellectually very dull strategy, but often effective) can be part of it. One reason it can work for the obdurate party is that an awful lot of opponents have read their Sun Tzu and are hoping to gain their victory by manoeuvre and psychology alone, i.e. without bloodshed - which involves the incumbent vacating the battlefield before any clash of main forces.

Well, the other side has a vote in these matters, which all parties need to remember. We have three prominent examples in play right now.

Starmer. We've long suggested that Team Starmer has every intention of toughing it out, and in the last couple of days he stated he would contest any leadership election that might be forced upon the Labour Party. Quite obviously, yer Burnhams and yer Steetings are hoping he'll be driven away without a fight, perhaps out of sheer embarrassment. Note that Burham said last week that IF there's a contest (and IF he's an MP), he'd stand. That's a man waiting for a coronation, not one armed with a pre-drafted letter in 81 copies.

And there's probably quite a few Labour MPs who don't want to be put on the spot, too, when the Whips come round with nomination papers and thumbscrews. Well, who knows what a few more weeks and Mandy-scandals will bring for TS - but since 'shamelessness' is his second name, he can probably hold on until the last minute. So there you go, boys: you're gonna have to winkle him out.

UPDATE: this, from the Graun - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/10/keir-starmer-aides-war-gaming-over-leadership-contest-with-andy-burnham

Trump. Obviously not in such imminent political peril; but he sure ain't enjoying where he finds himself vis-à-vis Iran and world opinion generally. (WTF did they go ahead with that Beijing visit for - I mean, either of them, Trump or Xi? Literally nothing achieved. At least, though, it doesn't appear Trump gave away the farm this time, which was the danger. What might he do to cajole Xi to go ahead with the planned Washington visit, though?)

Anyhow, in what's clearly an orchestrated effort, there has been a splurge of "Trump really knows what he is doing" articles - a demeaning task for the poor writers involved because manifestly he hasn't a f*****g clue. I'd spotted a few in UK media, and thought it was empty sycophancy: but US contacts tell me it's been a blizzard over there. The joke is, one of the oft-repeated lines is that Trump is pursuing clearly-stated Original War Aims - and then they cite different ones! Of course, there have been so many to choose from, sometimes all in the space of a single morning in Trumpworld. Does it all make the Donald feel happier? Who can tell.

Putin. Ah yes, Li'l Volodya again, with two more humiliations in the past few days: the Ukrainian bombing of St Petersburg, literally casting a dark cloud over the SPIEF-fest; and the Armenian elections, which he had convinced himself had been sufficiently 'influenced' as to give a pro-Moscow result. (This comes after Victory Day, Hungary, Iran, Cuba, Syria, Azerbaijan, etc etc - and of course the Chinese gas sale debacle. Not to mention the casualties ... we've done this all before.)

But no: he's refusing to engage with Zelenskyy's insolent letter, and maintaining that Russia is on the path to inevitable total victory & fulfillment of his Original War Aims - however fatuous that sounds to, err, absolutely everyone. So as we order industrial quantities of popcorn for the months ahead, let's just poke a little more fun by recounting what happened during SPIEF under that dark, oily pall.

the WiFi failed
overseas visitors were provided with VPN and SIMs so that they could access WA, etc (banned and 'blocked' in Russia)
the useless Max messenger (the mandatory replacement for soon-to-be-banned-altogether Telegram) received its official launch - and promptly disappeared from the AppStore
journalists were asked not to take photos of the lavish parties
ditto of the hookers provided for delegates
residents had their hot water switched back on for the week (in St Petersburg the hot water provided by municipal district heating schemes is switched off in summer), presumably so they could present a fragrant atmosphere in the street

But still he's not for turning ...[1]. These world leaders, eh? - they're so ... tough.

UPDATE: reporting within Russia has it that the cyber aspects of Putin's personal security regime have been switched off. This makes protecting him in some aspects more difficult: but has been occasioned by acute fears stemming from the ease with which Israel was manifestly able to track Iranian and Hezbollah leaders. As we know, Putin is a physical coward [2] who seriously hopes to live to be 150. But just because he's paranoid - aspects of which are noted by the FT - that doesn't mean 'someone' isn't out to get him. (But probably not Mr Z.)

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[1] Tellingly. however, in occupied Ukraine the Russians are seriously digging in - vast underground citadels being built. They clearly envisage the need to defend what they now hold, rather than feeling confident of pushing ever further forward into the territory they assert is theirs for the taking, as Putin reckons is happening right now. It's readily understandable, not least because Ukraine has rendered vulnerable every movement of vehicles and rolling stock, across the occupied territories and a significant swathe beyond, seriously incommoding Russian logistics. Summer shortages of oil and even water in some of these areas will be acute. It's truly hard to envisage how the much vaunted Russian "2026 Offensive" will materialize in any manner worthy of the name.

[2] Let's get ahead of the "how do you know this?" trolling, with (a) his obvious blind terror of covid - back to SPIEF again, anyone allowed to attend his address & press conference in person had to go through rigorous covid testing, even in 2026 (and he wasn't going to kiss them anyway); and (b) seemingly, a new-found terror of hantavirus (sic!). It has seriously been floated in Russia that the Special Military Operation should be brought to a conclusion swiftly, because of ... wait for it ... the risk of hantavirus running riot among front-line troops. WTF? There's only one reason why that sort of arrant nonsense appears: it's because someone who wants a prompt end to the SMO knows which of Putin's buttons to press.

2 surprisingly interesting reads: Zelenskyy - and AEP!

2026-06-05T09:54:08.195+01:00

A couple of worthwhile calls on your time today. Let's take the lighter one first.

From the mercurial AEP, whose regular output on energy-related issue is Pollyanna-ish net zero bilge, a lengthy take-down of the deep impracticalities of the putative AI boom as it is currently envisaged. The energy aspect is of course one major strand; cooling-water is another, and the emptiness of "OK, well we'll just build our own gas-fired power plants instead". And then the financial implications! Somewhere in there (or maybe it was BTL), though, there is a hint of how things may progress in subtler ways. If AEP is correct on the brick wall of physical limitations to AI's currently-planned trajectory, it'll need to be a subtler approach. Otherwise ... bubble is bubble.

From Zelenskyy; an open letter to Putin, suggesting face-to-face negotiations - which is worth reading in full, not just some newspaper summary.

At the very least, this is a useful and pretty comprehensive tour d'horizon from the Kyiv perspective, and a summary of just how many cards Mr Z holds right now. Interestingly, though, whether by design or accident it's also pretty insulting to Putin. Maybe Z has inadvertently overdone the projection of the (current) strength of the Ukrainian position - which you might argue he was always going to do at the start of a putative negotiation. Well, but better done in the proposed face-to-face meeting, hmm?

Or maybe (since, at his best, Z is pretty sharp) the intended audience is Trump and the ROW anyway, if he knows Putin has no intention of negotiating with Ukraine anyway. Remind the Donald that Z does actually hold several cards right now.

Or maybe, like the "permission" graciously given to Putin for his 2026 Victory Day parade (another sharp slap from Z), it's purposefully intended to humiliate Putin on the eve of today's big St Petersburg address to the SPIEF - if indeed he deigns to turn up in person after the impressive warning shots fired in that direction earlier in the week.

Or maybe it's to bring to Putin's attention the long list of things he doesn't seem to know - cat among the pigeons. Putin's people say he "is being briefed" on the Z letter. Yeah, they'll be dead keen not to let him read the original in full - they lie to him consistently about the true situation on many fronts, and wouldn't want him firing off the obvious supplementary questions. And they may well succeed, since by repute he never so much as touches the keys of a laptop, still less knows how to log in or access the www for himself. Old-fashioned red telephones for L'il Volodya ...

Burnham's by-election

2026-06-01T16:37:29.831+01:00

Watching Burnham's by-election purely as a spectator, I have no feel whatever for what's happening on the ground (rarely do the pundits either, these days). But one or two things stand out rather clearly: things that might not have been expected even just a month ago - which just goes to show.

> Burnham makes a pretty unconvincing King Across the Water / saviour of the nation. He comes across as an odd combination of entitled, nervous and petulant. Is he simply going to win anyhow? Who can judge? Voters only make up their minds on vague feelings of what 'seems right'.

> Restore looks distinctly as though it could upset Reform pretty badly. I wouldn't ordinarily cite Brendan O'Neill, and it's larded with phrases I wouldn't use, but this is a pertinent essay: "the Your Party of the right" is spot on, as is "his bit-part role in the chronicles of our times will be an entirely inglorious one".

For me, both these thoughts have relegated another couple of potential talking-points, namely the embarrassment for the Greens over their initial nominee; and the chronic inability of Reform ever to find unexceptionable candidates (let alone exceptional) - even for high-profile set-pieces like this. Think what it'll be like for both these arriviste parties at the GE!

If Restore does indeed trip up Reform on this outing, I suppose it might just be the urgent incentive Farage needs to square Lowe away in good time before the next GE. Otherwise he will be spending a lot more time with that £5m nest-egg.

Burnham, if it is indeed to be him this time, must I suppose be hoping that, once elected, Streeting will pull the trigger as promised. But maybe he won't! And if not, can that obscure woman who threatened to do it a few weeks back really muster the numbers? Would it look a bit off, if Burnham himself did it immediately following his victory? What we may be 100% sure of is that Team Starmer will have been strenuously working over every single Labour backbencher with the usual unsavoury combination of menaces, promises and flattery. It's amazing how many of a list of 81 can quietly slip away in such circumstances. Time is well and truly on Starmer's side, given his clear determination to bluster on.

But then of course there's Events ... Mandy, Trump, who-knows-what. Starmer already has a long list of self-serving one-liners to fend off both the 'known unknowns' on that little list; and we'll be hearing a lot of them soon.

A run on popcorn seems like a safe bet. Anyone updating their January predictions on Starmer's survival this year?

Goings-on in the BP boardroom: WTF?

2026-05-28T08:36:35.181+01:00

BP is a genuine puzzle. How can an enormous company of considerable long standing with some seriously impressive attributes, be so maladroit in its senior appointments? With the summary eviction of Mr Manifold[1], BP will have had 3 chairs and 5 CEOs since 2020, and a heap of embarrassment. This is a crazy level of volatility at the top.

It's not a company I have definitive views on; but inevitably I have had loads of dealings with them over my decades in the industry. (They offered me a job once: but I didn't want to move to Japan.) Here are some observations.

Although superficially they might all look pretty similar, big multinational oil companies aren't remotely all operating under the same business model. We can map out a spectrum. At one end we have Exxon - fundamentally centred on building and managing physical assets; i.e. engineer-driven, and deeply suspicious of finance & trading activity, which it minimises very purposefully. At the other end, BP - plenty of capable engineers and physical assets, but also exceptionally capable and commercially active traders and finance types. At these two extremes on the spectrum, the respective P&L and balance sheets aren't very similar.[2]
BP has shown itself somewhat prone to accommodating the woke agenda. The 'Beyond Petroleum' rebrand dates as far back as 2000, under the proto-scandalous John Browne[3], so that until recently the eco-'green' stuff was fairly prominent in the business, almost as much as the traditional 'green stuff'. They have also made several 'questionable' appointments of females at very exalted levels, IMHO for the sole purpose of having wimmin in senior jobs because at least a couple of them are self-evidently not up to the job.
More generally, they seem to hire outsiders for top jobs far more than is usual in the industry. Really confident big companies of long standing place far more trust in promotion from the ranks of their long-term employees - rightly or wrongly. [4]
However, the boardroom nonsense of all kinds clearly hasn't been at the expense of their trading prowess. And overall, I have a fair degree of respect for the senior working-level management of the company across the board, who mostly seem to get on with business in an intelligent and competent way.

All that doesn't lead me to any firm conclusions about BP's future. But the company has been such a major part of the UK business scene for so long, I have to believe many C@W readers will have well-informed perspectives on the company. So - the floor is yours.

UPDATE: Someone pointed out to me that I couldn't possibly have been referring to Meg O'Neill, and they were right. I wasn't. She's good.

_________________

[1] Cue the obvious jokes about Manifold sins and wickedness ...

[2] Shell, incidentally, is pretty much bang in the middle

[3] Scandal notwithstanding, Browne was a serious oil man. He called the market correctly in 1997, judging $10 to be the bottom (when the Economist was suggesting $6 was coming) and bought Amoco.

Arco and BurmahCastrol at the absolute bottom of the market, doubling the size of BP. That's impressively good business judgment - speculative, but based on solid knowledge, experience and instinct, rather than a bought-in price forecast from some 'econometrics' outfit.

[4] The pros and cons of this can of course be argued at length: maybe for another post.

How long can Russia keep this up?

2026-05-26T11:54:19.920+01:00

An odd barb sometimes thrown in this blog's direction (from who-knows-what troll factory) is that since Russia's invasion of Ukraine four years ago (four!) we have been predicting the imminent collapse of Russia itself. Well, we haven't. Ever. In fact, right from the start we have said that ultimately there's nothing to stop Putin taking Ukraine if he really wants to - which, if anything, was far too generous to L'il Volodya and his ramshackle army. Further, we've always remarked that the Russian capacity for enduring privation and general suffering should never be underestimated.

But it is beginning to look as though Putin's stamina is waning. There are so many straws in the wind: in no particular order -

the 'victory' parade, hugely-reduced in scale and betraying obvious fears for its security, to the point where Putin could be humiliated (the word used by Russian milbloggers) by Zelenskyy's gracious 'permission' to go ahead with the parade
widespread and debilitating fuel shortages, courtesy of Ukraine's remarkable drone campaign ...
... which, incidentally, has - yet again - blithely crossed one of Russia's stated nuclear red lines in terms of its scale ("the massive launch / take-off of aerospace attack weapons ... and their crossing of the state border of the Russian Federation")
Russia's re-engagement with US negotiators, with the usual risible sabre-rattling
the background PR planning for a sudden 'declaration of victory' - even based on today's status quo, if necessary
serious domestic discontent at frequent blocking of the www and the (supposedly) imminent closure of access to Telegram, all in the name of 'security'
internal dismay at the Hungarian election result, adding to keenly-felt impotence over Syria / Cuba / Venezuela
serious economic issues, macro and micro - see below
angst over the pitiful battlefield performance thus far in 2026 - zero net progress** in the spring/summer offensive campaign (intended to capture the remaining Donbass territory by autumn: Kkarkiv, Kherson and Odessa are rarely mentioned these days); casualty rates exceeding enlistments; and Ukraine has achieved, at least for now, superiority in the 'battlefield air interdiction' (BAI) stakes, courtesy of its swarms of very smart drones and their equally smart deployment in Russia's immediate rear, over and above the deeper oil refinery campaign
etc etc: I could go on.

Oh, and on the global scale, no joy from Xi on the long (very long)-awaited deal for more gas sales to China, a farce that we've often written about here in the past - check the 'Gazprom' tag - another serious strategic disappointment.

Even so, I still don't reckon on near-term "collapse", or defenestration of Putin. He has plenty of tools to prevent either. But I do say he's now beginning to think seriously in terms of an off-ramp: and many powerful people in Russia are even more seriously trying to get this to the top of the agenda.

In the midst of it all, the IISS has published this sober analysis. It doesn't predict imminent collapse either; but it does set out the genuine problems and major dilemma Putin faces. Between now and Xmas, I'm guessing we'll see recognisable, tangible movement taking place - in one direction or another.

________________

** Ukraine has in fact started making systematic small-scale territorial (re)gains all over the front, which in recent weeks have been larger than Russia's own small territorial gains. On both sides these are to be understood in context: they are trivial in extent - largely infiltration sorties - and essentially opportunist in nature. But there's a big difference: Russia's are intended, and indeed celebrated, as purposeful steps towards the taking of the Donbass; i.e. they are meant to be strategic. Ukraine's, by contrast, are tactical spoiling measures - highly disruptive for any coherent Russian offensive this year. But if they do indeed have that effect, they add up to having an important strategic consequence.

Jury trials, for and against

2026-05-19T09:37:00.000+01:00

Photo: BBC

A bit of a plate-spinner here, pre-scheduled. I⁴'ve been meaning to open this one up for a while now but, well, events.

So: judge-only trials for criminal offences? OK, Lammy isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer [1] but then again, Justice Delayed is Justice Denied; and the backlog in the courts is appalling. Balancing the system by waiting for victims and witnesses to lose heart (or die) is no way to dispense justice. The guilty go free by default and simple delaying tactics.

But hey, if it's me in the dock, there are circumstances in which I probably want a jury; and I think most people agree. And, although it's strictly irrelevant to the criminal cases I'm most concerned with, I was once party to a massive civil case in the commercial courts which in the USA would have been heard by a jury, and (all parties agreed [2]) would definitely have gone only one way - but here, being heard only by a single judge, it went the other way on a judicial whim over an odd technicality, and required overturning at Appeal.

I reckon we know where the blame lies, not least in the shocking reduction in funding for the CJS by the Tories: and covid didn't help; nor the latitude given to defence lawyers to waste time - one of the juries I sat on (a murder trial) saw some remarkable time-wasting being accommodated, albeit testily, by the judge. Somebody has to address the situation, somehow - under whatever leadership.

So what can we agree on?

truly, the backlog has got to be addressed decisively
we've long ago sold the pass on really nasty terrorist cases (N.Ireland, where the threat to juries is chillingly real - and that might spread across more of the realm in years to come, you don't need me to paint the scenarios)
having sat on three juries, I tremble at the thought of jury trials for complex cases of fraud & the like
hey, I'm an old soldier and know all about summary justice at first hand: it has to be a very serious offence before it gets anywhere near a Court Martial [3]
so like taxation, it's already happened, & how much more in future is all a matter of degree

What else then, does t'readership think on this most critical of issues for a society supposedly built on the rule of law? [4]

____________

[1] And nowadays it seems to be OK to point this out: everyone else does. This has surprised me somewhat. I had several accounts of what a good impression Lammy made in a handful of trips to the USA in 2023/24. But there we have it - by common consent, the man's a laughing stock. Pity he's in charge of this difficult issue.

[2] So clear was this to all concerned that the party which won at First Instance was desperate to have the case heard in England, and they succeeded. Conversely, the other party had tried equally desperately to have it heard in the USA. Some $400m was at stake.

[3] For any US readers, in the British Armed Forces we don't term regimental-level justice a 'CM': it's a term reserved for full military trials with defence counsel etc. (No juries, though: an experienced panel.) At the regimental level or below ('CO's Orders' or 'OC's Orders'), evidence is taken, but it's summary justice, CO = judge-and-jury. As my first Sergeant Major explained, the process is straightforward: "March the guilty party in. Find the guilty party 'Guilty'. March the guilty party out." GP will be invited to elect for CM, but it never happens: Sergeant Major makes sure of that, too. Oh no, son, you don't want that. You definitely don't want that.

[4] I shan't open up an episode of History Corner on you - Henrys I and II, Edward I, and Henry VII

Streeting will land us with Miliband

2026-05-14T07:51:07.183+01:00

I'm off on a short hol, but I leave you with my view - a prediction that has been simmering for 18 months, as you know (check the Mili tag).

It's clear enough why Streeting might feel his only chance (ever) is to move now
He may get 80 signatures, but he won't get elected
Not sure if Starmer will stand and fight - John Major did (and won), but that was different in material ways
In any case, if Streeting moves, Miliband wins

Have fun. If I can find some wifi in a few days time, I might join in.

________________

PS: the lefties at Novara are often quite good on lefty stuff, but made a really ridiculous assessment on Tuesday evening. They said Miliband doesn't fly "because he's been rejected by the electorate before". FFS!

The electorate ain't being consulted
errr ... Harold Wilson 1974?
errr ... Donald Trump 2024?
- plus loads of French and Italian politicians who think nothing of going round for a second bite

PPS: Rayner's 11th-hour "exoneration" is pretty damn' convenient, eh??? For Starmer as well as for her. Sounds to me like the story of McSweeney's 'phone: nobody's gonna believe it.

Stonewall Starmer goes full 'Sierra'

2026-05-12T13:03:00.000+01:00

Not as much fun as you thought?

Having long suggested that Team Starmer fully intends to tough it out - and they had plenty of advanced notice and planning time [1] for this crisis, at least - that's how it still seems, & strongly so, at the time of writing. There's only one oven-ready candidate in the wings, with no "anyone but [Wes]" votes against him: our old pick Ed Miliband.

Team S is pursuing what I call the Sierra Strategy when I'm strategising in business. Recall the Ford jallopy of that name? Having had many years of consummate success with its predecessor, the smart rust-bucket Cortina line[2], Marks 1-4, Ford went for a fairly 'bold' new look. The 'jelly-mould' hatchback found immediate disfavour, and despite the usual launch promotions sales were not good.

Ford had a massive call to make: re-skin and rebrand it fairly promptly with as much commercial dignity as possible, or double down. They doubled down with massive corporate determination. Advertising, deep discounts, promotions of all kinds, a smarter Ghia variant that was half-decent - everything in the marketing man's book of tricks. For several years! Dunno what this campaign cost, or how the counterfactual might have played out: but in terms of sheer brute force to get the Sierra into the top 3 or 4 UK best-sellers, they succeeded. And that's Starmer now.

PS, Miliband is sitting there trying to figure his optimum positioning for picking up the crown when it falls. And a coronation is what he wants: no knife-job. My guess? At the critical moment, he offers Starmer Foreign Secretary and a big Euro-push mandate. Kier, we can both make history together ...

PPS If you think Starmer is stonewalling impressively, just watch Trump between now and the mid-terms. He'll be looking at everything from conjuring a genuine crisis in order to call them off, to calling the results void - and calling out the National Guard in every state that returns a Dem.

_________________

[1] E.g. the timing of the King's Speech

[2] The Mk 1 started life as just the plain 'Consul'. Didn't play ideally, so they changed it to 'Consul Cortina' (as opposed to its predecessor the 'Consul Classic'. See, these Ford guys were always sharp with marketing-based solutions.

Election: while we wait for full results ...

2026-05-09T10:01:00.010+01:00

... here's what happened in my manor (Croydon) in the Elected Mayor stakes:

Yup, at first glance it appears Reform dented the Tories a lot less than the Greens dented Labour.

It was an interesting campaign. The Tory Mayor (whose majority last time was even slimmer) is a solid, worthy and honourable guy, who was dealt a dreadful hand by the outgoing Labour regime that had bankrupted the borough to what I believe to be the deepest degree in the annals of UK local government failures. The least one could say is, he stabilised things: more positively, he made the best of a bad hand, broke some crazy impasses and has made some visible improvements. But he has been subject of a relentless and dishonest sniping campaign (hey, it's politics), not by the official Labour opposition leadership - who publicly paid due regard to the fact it was their predecessors that brought the town low - but by a rather by the young woman councillor who eventually became Labour's (losing) mayoral candidate.

She's a bit of an object lesson. She thoroughly suborned the widely-read local website, Inside Croydon, which started life as a fairly even-handed platform but latterly became her mouthpiece - presumably by her giving it a great deal of her attention including, allegedly (let her sue if she dares), leaking a lot of Council stuff to them. She also ran a fairly adroit social meejah campaign; and put herself about the town bigly wearing bright red coats, to the extent her personal recognition factor was quite astonishingly high for a local politician. She promised all things to all people (naturally) and there were no surprises whatsoever when Labour adopted her as their candidate. Based on all this, very many people - and most certainly Inside Croydon (noticeably reticent this morning, haha) - bruited it about that she'd win easily, in spite of Starmer. After all, the demographics of this "diverse" London borough seem strongly to favour Labour anyway, and we have no history of third parties whatsoever since the last of the "Residents and Ratepayers" candidates were elected more than 40 years ago.

But here we are. How so?

(a) the Tories waged a fairly adroit campaign themselves. (Running as "Local Conservatives" was a good start.) Somehow, on our canvass returns, some bright spark took it upon themselves to classify electors into "anyone but Reform" or "anyone but Labour" - I'm not sure how - and voters got personalised letters accordingly. The "abL" letter was signed by the single most well-known and admired woman in the borough, a long-time Labour stalwart and councillor of 36 years who has for decades been an omnipresent and ultra-personable networker at civic and civic-related occasions, and a tireless, nay saintly, and highly entrepreneurial charity worker. She has long been vocally disgusted at the behaviour of said Labour mayoral candidate-woman, and gave the Tory her glowing endorsement. In a 1,000-vote majority, I'm guessing her backing alone made the 500-voter difference.

(b) as reported earlier, Reform here are, in the immortal words of Father Jack, a shower of bastards, and certainly not sufficiently organised to take a fatal bite out of the Tories. (Farage even cancelled a campaign visit when the infighting made it look to o risky for him.) A better-run Reform effort could have made serious inroads into the vast traditional white working-class estate of New Addington (meriting 5 councillors - that's big) where even the Tories often have success. At the time of writing, we haven't had the councillor results through, so maybe they did; we'll see. But whatever, it wasn't enough to impact the mayoral outcome.

(c) as also written here before (in the context of the 2011 riots) the population of Croydon is quite exceptionally diverse and, unusually, no single ethnic group predominates. If anything, it's black and Tamil, with Hindu and Moslem in the mix: but the latter not in remotely such numbers as make it a Green prospect (there aren't lots of "young unemployed graduates" either) - just enough to take a fair bite out of Labour in a close race. Also, the Tories have long had very decent representation among all these groups (and the Poles) excepting possibly the Moslems - though we did have a very prominent Tory Moslem Deputy Mayor; and the blacks are very split between progressives and deeply, deeply socially conservative (= hostile to LGBTIQX+Y).

So there we have it. A story of just one specific local situation. But it could very well be that local situations will be more of a factor in English politics going forward, than ever before.

More on the overall results when we have them, no doubt.

UPDATE - Croydon remains 'no overall control' - but that's a misnomer in this borough as the executive remains in the hands of the (Tory) elected mayor. Though given that the Commissioners are in, because of the bankruptcy, even he lacks genuine control. Other aspects:

Minimal impact by Reform is confirmed but they did get 2 of the 5 New Addington seats (see above)
Kier Starmer's 20-something niece, parachuted in from absolutely nowhere with the ink still wet on her membership card, secured a seat (involving the deselection of a pretty reasonable Labour incumbent councillor and no selection process at all, needless to say)
Mark Adderley, husband of Nadia Sawalha, is returned as a Green despite being suspended for allegedly antisemitic remarks (and not just a few).

All good Toytown fun.

FINAL UPDATE: here's the map. Geo-explanation (see also above):

the wedge on the eastern side is the mighty New Addington estate: when I was on the council, donkeys years ago, it was Labour's last and final bastion when the 'Falklands Factor' reduced them to a tiny rump. Since then, Labour have retreated to the northern end of the estate - terraces of '60s houses & flats, 'diverse' occupants. The Tories have worked hard on the trad white / mostly houses / right-to-buy southern end: we finally took it a few years ago but now Reform have taken over. The only surprise is, that's about all they managed.
The stripy top north-east sector is Crystal Palace and its lower slopes: it's gentrifying fast, with the result you see. Labour being squeezed out accordingly, into ...
... the western wilds of 'Fort Neaf' (Thornton Heath) and Norbury, where I grew up. NOT gentrified - yet - but look at Brixton!
the rest: essentially aspirational of whatever colour or creed; plenty of successful first-generation wealth and easily recruited for the Tory cause, as can be seen from the colouring. The odd LibDem occasionally sneaks in.

In sum: if the Tories can weather the multi-decade 'urbanisation' of the north of the borough while the gentrification spreads west and south from the top corner, there's no reason to give up on being politically competitive here; and the ghastly 8 years 2014-2022 when Labour had total control and bankrupted the place, could seem like an aberration. Demographics, eh?

And something of a lesson with wider application?

Conjuring Putin's "Victory" out of thin air: a masterclass

2026-05-08T10:04:00.003+01:00

Further to last week's post, Trump and Putin: making up war aims on the fly, I had intended to offer my own suggestions for an "Absolute Victory26" framing within which Putin can declare successful completion of his inane war, and call everyone back home for tea, medals, and of course a proper Victory Parade with real tanks, as opposed to the demeaning Dad's Army spectacle they are reduced to this year.

In the meantime, something much better than my own poor efforts has emerged: a professional Kremlin strategy document [1] entitled "After Victory" on how to allow L'il Volodya his glorious day on the parade rostrum any time he cares to call it quits. What, in bullet-points, are the declarations Russia will make that, they'll claim, add up to absolute victory? It's referred to in the doc as "The Image of Victory" which pretty much captures what these PR men are up to. And it meets my test of "essentially in the bag already", i.e. could be delivered tomorrow, if desired.

I'll summarise here the proposed approach, which is quite evidently the work of some genuinely strategic thinkers:

'De-Nazification' has been achieved by the deaths of so many Ukrainian soldiers [2]
Putin has thwarted the West's plans to expand and prolong the conflict
Victory has been achieved over a much stronger opponent than Ukraine - the "collective West"
No longer will the West provocatively test Russia's strength
The EU has been dealt a major economic blow
There are territorial conquests; seizure of natural resources; a land route to the Crimea and the coast of the Sea of Azov (new holiday resorts!); and the acquisition of millions of new Russian-speaking fellow citizens
A 'humanitarian catastrophe' was prevented in the Donbas: Russia has protected its own
The Russian army is now 'the most combat-ready in the whole world' and has withstood confrontation with '50 countries'
Thanks to sanctions, Russian industry has developed new capabilities and markets
All this without general mobilisation!

Plus some conditional stuff relating to what a deal with the west might look like in terms of a final territorial settlement and sanctions lifted. [3]

It wouldn't be hard to dispute and/or mock some of these if taken at face value - not quite the capture of Kyiv, or the expulsion of Zelensky, or, errrr, unconditional surrender, eh? And this from the heirs of the conquerors of the Wehrmacht at Berlin '45 ...

But that's not the point. In its own right this is serious stuff: I can only applaud the competence of these strategising Kremlin PR-merchants. They should be offering their services to Trump. For a fat fee. A 'Deal', wouldn't you think?

________________

[1] One always needs to ask "are we be played here?" - of course - but this one doesn't have that feel to it at all. There might be one subtlety: the doc is a signal to the West: "see, we have an off-ramp - so let's get round that table and we'll find a way to call it quits". Maybe.

[2] Recall that de-Nazification of the whole body politic was one of only two stated war aims at the outset: so, silent here on regime change, of course. The other was, ahem, de-militarisation of Ukraine ...

[3] They assume Russia gets Donbas + existing gains in the south (parts of Kherson & Zaporizhia), but relinquishes gains in the north (around Kharkiv and Sumy): and that US sanctions are lifted but not EU

Today's elections: a small prediction

2026-05-07T11:54:00.002+01:00

A subject we've touched on before is the stupidity of Starmer thinking that giving votes to 16- and 17-year olds will boost Labour's prospects. Must have seemed a good idea when Team Starmer were plotting back in 2021-2, but the rise of Green and Turquoise tik-tok populism must surely have given them pause, even before we mention Andrew Tate and 'Amelia'.

But of course in Scotland and Wales, teens do indeed get the vote.

I'm betting Team Starmer will be analysing the demographics of today's voting patterns very, very carefully before proceeding with this particular manifesto promise.

(And indeed Team Successor, if Starmer really is for the chop. Though it it's to be the gurning Miliband, he really fancies himself on titk-tok. For some reason.)

Polanski riding for a well-deserved fall

2026-05-04T10:24:00.001+01:00

Whenever "Tommy Robinson" appears in the meejah it is customary to add "whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon". But somehow it never seems necessary to add "real name David Paulden" to mentions of that remarkable political chameleon and all-round showman "Zack Polanski".

Part of this is to do with the meejah's unfailing instinct to be ultra-hesitant when contemplating a hatchet job on a new, rising political star who might one day hold the reins of power; and who even in the shorter term might not be willing to grant interviews etc if they are treated unkindly. Well, Zach certainly qualified for this auto-deference all through his meteoric rise to prominence last year. So of course did Kier Starmer, on an industrial scale, all through 2022-24. Even Farage still gets a bit of auto-deference, and there's nothing new-fangled about him - just his remarkable lead in the polls.

But all these happy honeymoons come to an end. Starmer was rapidly turned on with a combination of fury and glee by even the 'left/liberal' meejah: they knew they'd been duped, and he wasn't long in office before he presented them with plenty of pretext.

And surely, "Polanski" has it coming soon - even when the Greens do well this week.

Because he's quite clearly a ... real piece of work, as well as being as slippery as a greased eel. The Economist recently did a neat, gentle, but highly pointed mini-hatchet job on his being an "ego-surfing" social media narcissist-obsessive, and extremely thin-skinned and vengeful with it. Have a read - there's lots going on beneath the surface there. Clearly plenty in the meejah have got his number and are just waiting.

And there have been other straws in the wind. A while back he did a podcast with the Rest is Politics team where they bounced him with a totally legitimate question on which economists guide his thinking on financial policy. Clearly caught out, he blustered ineffectually - pretty damning for the leader of a would-be major party. Afterwards, Rory Stewart let it be known that in the post-interview wrap-up, "Polanski" rounded on them and said (my recollection here) something to the effect of "Hey, why didn't you tell me you were going to ask that? You know I'm just a showman: I'd have boned up on it it you'd told me".

Is anyone surprised?

And for all his breezy hyper-adroitness on the stump, he's relentlessly digging holes for himself, presumably based on that thin-skinned egoism which seems to come with a strong aversion for being seen to back down. He's lied about, but not totally resiled from, his "bust-boosting hypnotism" past. And note the "not happy about unarmed coppers kicking murderous knifeman" episode of last week: he's crafted a clever-clever faux-apology but is clearly intending to maintain and even pursue the substance of his intervention.

I think we know which of his constituencies he reckons this is a dog-whistle for (with May 7 just around the corner): but he ain't gonna get far with this line of sectarian adventurism before some hefty pushback.

Have a care with the wording of any BTL contributions. I'll let you know if this post gets taken down!

Trump and Putin: making up war aims on the fly

2026-04-30T09:00:00.005+01:00

You don't need to be a second Clausewitz to know that wars of choice should have well-defined goals before even the planning gets underway, let alone the execution[1]. In saying this, nobody is advocating total inflexibility thereafter; but to launch a war without proper goals at the outset is just buccaneering adventurism.

It's a commonplace observation that Trump hasn't a clue what he's doing in the Middle East, beyond representing a vague, atavistic American fixation with Iran, and harbouring a ludicrously and dangerously false equation between Venezuela 2026 and Iran 2026. To the extent he sometimes feels the urge to state one or more war aims, he's issued so many over the hours, days and weeks that it merely goes to reinforce his brainlessness. (To its credit, the intelligentsia in the USA is gradually shaking off its paralysis of 2025 and is ready to call him out in scathing detail - see this from the estimable Ryan Evans.) Already we can offer his Iranian adventure as a perfect illustration of the principle given above: and we haven't remotely seen the full downside potential yet.

But there's another perfect illustration bubbling away somewhere north of Iran, where Putin still conducts his own ill-conceived war on Ukraine.

At the very outset, he articulated two war aims, plus a long list of gripes and grievances. They were: (A) to "de-Nazify" Ukraine's body politic; and (B) to "demilitarise Ukraine". In the same announcement he declared he had no territorial claims on Ukraine (sic), although it's fair to note that at the same time he was asserting that Luhansk and Donetsk were independent countries. And of course he assumed that after his lightning war, there would be a puppet regime in Kyiv, Belarus-style, that would render territorial conquest irrelevant.

[In the runup to the "special military operation" (which was "defensive, in aid of Luhansk and Donetsk"), he had of course demanded that NATO and the EU shun Ukraine, and that the former must withdraw to pre-accession borders. But those were hardly war aims: he hoped they'd fall into his lap at the negotiating table when Ukraine was, errr, defeated.]

Given A and B above, manifestly he has completely and utterly failed even by his own lights; and everyone in Russia knows it. There has been no regime change in Kyiv, whatever childish political label he wants to attach to it. And demilitarisation? Pound for pound, Ukraine now has the best army in the world, a thriving defence industry, world-leading expertise in drone warfare, etc etc; and is reducing a vastly larger force to ruinously costly advances through unimportant hamlets at snail's pace. Oh yes, and on the other side of the front line it is degrading Russia's mighty energy industry to a material degree; periodically grounding its civil air movements; blocking its ports; sinking its ships; and (in conjunction with sanctions) hobbling its economy.

Here's where it gets interesting for the theme of this post. Reports from fairly reliable Russian sources suggest Putin is under tremendous internal political pressure to find an off-ramp before the economy nosedives. Those oligarchs still have some sway, if they conduct themselves cautiously. One major thrust of this exercise[2] is to come up with some - wait for it - War Aims, such as can plausibly be declared duly accomplished. Then it's "home for tea and medals" as we say in the British Army.

What, then, do we imagine his newly-forged war aims will be? It's a serious question, notwithstanding that sarcastic suggestions come quickly to mind.

We'll take both kinds BTL - let's see what we can come up with to help L'il Volodya with Project "Absolute Victory26".

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[1] Long-time readers will know I often laud George HW Bush (Bush Snr) for his adherence to this principle when setting out to evict Saddam from Kuwait, 1990-91. More on that conflict by following the 'Kuwait' and 'Saddam' tags on that post.

[2] Another is to keep plugging away at Trump, trying to persuade him that utter Ukrainian defeat is just around the corner, so why not tell Zelensky to surrender? Yeah, right. I have a feeling the moment for this gambit has passed.

Implausible property development - update

2026-04-21T15:08:00.000+01:00

By way of light relief: readers may recall the saga of the seemingly brainless two-house development in Croydon - a pair of very large, pricey properties, awkwardly situated and with no garages - that were taking ages to shift.

Well, more than a year on from my first report, one of them has sold! To whom, is not at all clear to the passer-by. There's a black SUV on the drive (where else?) at all hours, and no signs of human life. It rather looks as though dust will be continuing to settle in at least six out of the seven bedrooms.

With the other house still firmly unsold (and even dustier), at least our current solo SUV driver has an easy(ish) time of it on the communal driveway. And of course, buyer #1 has picked the house less hemmed-in. For the sake of the developer (or whoever still owns the second one) we must look forward to when a couple of large families with corresponding car fleets are in residence, hopefully reaching a satisfactory motoring modus vivendi on this rather limited patch.

Mandygate: rumbles on and on, getting louder

2026-04-17T10:37:00.004+01:00

And there was Team Starmer getting cocky about how well their man was doing, seeing off Streeting and Rayner and Trump, basking in the glow of "wartime leader" etc - or whatever they thought was the case - and positioning himself confidently to see off the May elections fall-out.

The 3-hour period of utter, and highly uncharacteristic radio silence, after the Guardian story broke[1] and before the barefaced denial was issued yesterday evening, must have been a great time to have a bug planted in the (Chinese) coffee machine in No.10.

They must have been lining up Olly Robbins as the fall-guy - and negotiating his deal. That's not just some middle-management scapegoat, that's Very Big Indeed. A serious human sacrifice to appease the gods of Starmerdoom. Wonder what's in his "early retirement package"?

And - will it be enough?

Interesting to see, in retrospect, just how craftily the earlier Starmer statement was drafted[2]. Did lawyer Starmer - who must, surely, have been told how crucial it was to stick precisely to the script - not know why it was worded the way it was? Is that what we're to believe? Well, flat denial is his only option; so flat denial it must be.

And it's being reported he know about this on Tuesday. 48 hours is a very long time not to come clean: time enough for the leaker (see below) to get to the Guardian, and for the Graun itself to go through the very significant editorial operation that would be needed before dropping something like this. The whole thing explains why No.10 was already said to be planning to prorogue Parliament early this session - no more PMQs this side of May. And "it's understood Lammy didn't find out until Thursday" - hahah! He's obviously (a) completely out of the loop; and (b) as disloyal as all Hell. (OK, I suppose we all guessed that anyway.)

My immediate thought is: how does this play for La Romeo?[3] Is it the making of her, because [perhaps] she wasn't involved when Fondlebum was set on - but now knows exactly where those bodies are buried? You can just hear her opening words in that panicky all-hands meeting:

"Now listen: before we can figure a way out of this, you all need to tell me exactly what happened. All of it. Everything!"

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[1] Hats off to the Guardian, BTW: they've put themselves into the nuclear fallout zone. Their source must be truly excellent - and still out there, hoho.

[2] “The vetting process was undertaken by UK Security Vetting on behalf of the FCDO and concluded with DV clearance being granted by the FCDO.”

[3] I say this because she may well be the last person standing after this is finished. Even then, she's not in the clear: evidently there's that heavy-duty Deep Throat operator somewhere in Whitehall, for the Guardian to get this leak: and she has a shedload of enemies ... [BTL on that link]

Explanatory note to the previous post

2026-04-17T08:42:00.003+01:00

Hi C@W readers - you'll may have tried to open the previous post and found a warning, courtesy of our kindly blog platform hosts. It's safe to click through - we're not advertising anything lewd!

But some bot, somewhere, has auto-identified the topic as worthy of, err, deflecting readership away from. The warning came up about 60 seconds after I posted.

If I find from the stats that nobody is reading the post, I'll experiment with a defused version of the title, to see if that gets it past the censors for wider access.

And later I may post on this whole episode!

UPDATE: have reposted under a different title, and trashed the original post which was getting no traffic.