SNIPPETS 8: The Human Handgrenade & Kami-kwasi fiasco... Unexplained by the media she destroyed her own power on Day 1... MISC on UKR, tech...

'... lifeless eyes, like a doll’s eyes...’

Most of this was written before yesterday but yesterday will be no surprise to subscribers…

Sorry for lack of posts. I’ve been in America on the next phase of regime change, very interesting. I’ll post on that by next Friday.

I’ll also post on the Sunak/Fraser Nelson errors on covid. Insiders have picked their side and it’s become entangled with identity. Both Telegraph and Guardian ‘monetise’ their respective nutters by entangling covid arguments with Brexit and party identities. MPs/hacks have formed identity-groups to tweet slogans. So most graduates now find it extremely hard to listen and change their minds. Further, it’s convenient for many players to blame Boris for more than his fair share to hide systemic elements of the failure. But it’s important in principle and for the inquiry to try to stop disinformation spreading so I’ll explain — and outside SW1 there’s a far bigger audience for the complexity, which doesn’t fit with ‘lockdowns good/bad, masks work/don’t, closing borders is obvious/racist’ etc.

Last September-October I advised subscribers:

• Ignore No10/HMT/BoE claims ‘inflation is transitory’ and assume incompetence as usual.

• Ignore No10 claims that supply chains are fine, expect major disruptions and prepare for them, assume incompetence as usual.

• Expect Putin to exploit 20 years of awful NATO/EU policy and European energy policy, and assume incompetent western response as usual.

• ‘Stablecoins’ will blow up and financial markets crack.

• The pundits think it’s extremely unlikely that Boris will be removed in 2022, they’re babbling ‘in power for a decade’, but they’re ~80% likely to be wrong again.

Western institutions have again proved even worse than even the pessimists feared.

Now?

Newspapers and MPs have tried to sell a story that ‘Truss is a serious person, underrated, she’ll surprise people on the upside’ and so on.

Here is the elite insight the Economist gave their Very Serious Global People:

This is Insider delusion. Insiders have to pretend ‘the system’ is not a joke. And if it put a total joker into No10 then it would be… not serious, right? And we’d just be pundits talking drivel about clowns, which would make us … not serious, right? So that’s impossible…

Truss is in a flat spin and won’t recover. The only thing going for her is she doesn’t have to face someone like Obama or Bill Clinton. But Truss is so bad even dud Starmer can win if he avoids Truss-ERG stlye disasters.

I would take further steps this winter to protect from chaos that our institutions can’t cope with and/or generate themselves:

• power and gas disruption

• knock-on effects to other supply chains (food, medicine etc)

• strikes and violence

• no timely A&E in your area (unless you have specific info to the contrary) — across Britain this winter, people will be putting loved ones in their car and driving them to A&E in fear and desperation as if they live in a failed state. (This goes back to the fateful refusal of Boris to fire Hancock and begin a huge national effort on the NHS in summer 2020 when he was warned by me and two Cabinet Secretaries that what we see now would happen if he didn’t.)

And this is before we get to the possibilities of nuclear escalation from the disastrous western response to Russia’s invasion.

And before our Very-Online-Very-Remain Hacks and Academics — blaming Brexit for the Remain-campaigning PM (see below) — get another unpleasant surprise that the Eurozone has not solved its fundamental structural problems, is deeply screwed, and will have its own systemic problems in coming months, exacerbated by its Russia/energy idiocy. It’s already suffering the rise of extremists, as Vote Leave predicted in 2016. This will get worse along with economic stagnation, free movement, crime, terrorism.

And if you look at SW1-twitter today, it’s truly on brand that a) it’s turned out UK pension funds were highly leveraged and vulnerable to blowing up, b) No10/11 were clueless about this crucial fact until some of them called the BoE in desperation, c) SW1-twitter is ignoring exactly how this happened! Only trillions at risk in leveraged positions without the Supposedly Serious People having a Scooby-Doo just like 2007-8. It’s … Brexit’s fault!

Onwards to these Serious People dealing with Putin’s announcement tomorrow…

I wrote in July:

I gave Truss the nickname ‘human handgrenade’ when she worked in the Department for Education. She said this week it was a ‘compliment’ because she gets things done. No. It was because she caused chaos INSTEAD OF getting things done…

Boris is supporting Truss. Why? 1) He thinks it’s the best way to stop Sunak. 2) He knows Truss is mad as a box of snakes and is thinking, ‘there’s a chance she blows, there’s another contest and I can return’.

Over summer I wrote on a few things for subscribers:

• How HMT has some great people but can’t avoid vandalising things, especially British science and the R&D ecosystem, and why it must have less power if you’re serious about productivity/growth/R&D etc (NB. LT has increased its power accidentally, see below)

• Tories and ‘culture wars’

• The difference between voters, members and MPs

• Why Prof Freedman is unconvincing re UKR/political ends

• American oligarchy: Homer Simpson was right

• Culture Wars: Strauss & Chinese ‘engineers of the soul’ on Western decadénce

• How the UK Deep State really thinks about power

• Airpower, drones and UKR

Below some snippets.

I’ll do another AMA after the American blog…