+Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America is not unprecedented when it comes to renaming things. I was in Scarborough’s Rotunda museum (dedicated to geology) looking at a 19th century map to find our seaside town being lapped by the waters of the German Ocean. The name changed around the time of the First World War, along with (of course) the surname of the royal family. Does it matter that Trump wants to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America? In one sense not really, America after all is rather more than the United States. On the other hand, we should be worried about what this change connotes, which will be a U.S. undersea resources grab. Never mind supporting Ukraine, maybe Trump anticipates using his position as Commander-in-Chief to order his armed forces into more local invasions.
 
+A couple of days ago Mandelson demonstrated contrition over some remarks he made about Trump a few years ago. He said his comments were ‘ill judged.’ He joins a lot of other Labour back peddlers who desperately want to shake the president’s clammy little hand. But do we really need an ambassador who lacks judgement? I wonder how long Mandy will last in this new job. He has a record of quitting.

There goes a little slice of parliamentary history. The last Tory MP to defect to Labour, Quentin Davies died this month aged 80. He swapped sides in 2007, and so was an immediate fillip for Gordon Brown’s new leadership. The fact that Davies, after the 2010 general election went straight to the Lords of course had absolutely nothing to do with his defection. If memory serves though every Tory who defected to Labour in Blair's time was given a seat in the Lords. Blair surely got as many converts this way as you would find jokers in a pack of cards. Davies I recall was an affable enough chap and what added piquancy to his defection was the fact that he was the MP for Grantham, Thatcher’s birthplace, so it was almost like a repudiation of her legacy. But as she herself said (in so many words) New Labour was part of her legacy.

Apparently the Metropolitan Police have issued the notice (below) to residents in the neighbourhood of the London residence of the Israeli ambassador. She is noted for her hardline views on Palestine—which a great many people, including non-Zionist Jews find extremely offensive. Indeed, regular local demos outside the ambassador’s residence have been led by non-Zionist Jewish groups. Now, for the police to solicit comments on the demos suggests they are fishing for an excuse to close down the demos. Presumably the police have resorted to this tactic because there have been insufficient complaints in the past. Local campaigners are urging residents to tell the police that in a country noted for its commitment to free speech and peaceful demonstrations, these demos are very welcome. One imagines when these demos take place, there is probably less actual crime in the area. All very disturbing. (story from Skwawkbox)​

Below is a map reproduced in the Daily Mirror and created by the organisation Climate Central. The red bits show which areas they predict will be under water by 2050. Build those walls!  Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the east coast of England will be the worst affected, given its proximity to Dogger Bank, which only 10,000 years ago was a lush, habitable landmass. The eastern side of  England is also naturally sinking, regardless of climate change. Apart from creating a new island out of East Yorkshire, it will be seen that Lincolnshire is likely to be the most extensively flooded area in England. Lincolnshire is prime territory for Reform UK, which also means it is an area which nurtures its own breed of reactionary politics, including several numpty councillors quoted in their asylum newsfeed GB News accusing Ed Miliband of ‘trashing’ the local countryside by approving a 500 hectare wind farm, to be developed by  none other than Labour Party mega-donor Dale Vince, millionaire owner of Ecotricity. All power to Vince—thinking ahead he’s found a way of building his turbines off shore before their location becomes offshore. Like Trump, the Lincolnshire numpty councillors don’t care about the day after tomorrow. And really: who cares if Skegness has to relocate to Nottinghamshire?

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The current storm battering the UK is the fifth named storm of this winter. It comes with a record breaking wind, over 100 mph in some places, with red warnings about a threat to life and limb in some parts of the UK. Meanwhile I read on LabourList that a survey of Labour voters suggests that they would prefer the prioritisation of health and not cutting welfare over tackling climate change actions. And of course in the US a madman has decreed the end of civilisation as we know it. Despite nature’s warnings we are therefore still locked into a short-termist approach to the biggest challenge facing humanity. I once described this problem as being part and parcel of the nature of democracy, with politicians’ eyes largely focused only on the next election. But in truth it afflicts all governments of whatever stripe. Dictatorships (and nascent dictatorships) are these days more concerned with the huge distraction activity of territorial expansion and protectionism. Anti-immigration policies fall into this category. Building walls is a long standing human response to the other, which today is not just a tide of fellow humans but rising sea levels threatening coastal cities where billions live. We are headed for the ghetto-isation of the human race on this our only planet, where attempts will be made by the better off to live in metaphorical and real gated communities. Anyone witnessing the Los Angeles fires may now be considering where exactly is safe.
 
The political response is ‘populism’ which tries to assuage people with immediate, unsustainable but simply communicated ‘solutions.’ Rather than addressing the drivers of immigration it is easier (allegedly) to throw up physical barriers and shut out  any type of understanding. Underpinned by racism, spoken or not. These trends are so prevalent and frankly obvious that I am continually dismayed that the level of debate has been dragged down to merely seeking to answer the populists’ blind propositions at their own level. The concept of intellectual debate is for the birds. The only hope it seems for the left (as represented by Starmer)  is a tepid incrementalism which always says this is where we are, work with it. Two steps forward in this scenario is usually followed by three steps back. The fundamentals aren’t changed. This is the quintessential core of the type of conservative thinking known as ‘centrism’ which is ineluctably drawing the human race into the disaster zone. 

Listening to Trumps’ inauguration speech was like listening to a child let loose in the toy store. All those imaginings! Let’s build the biggest rocket ever out of Lego bricks! Let’s push the little police car round the floor whilst making siren noises!  Reality one hopes will kick in—he’ll need more than his relatively small number of political appointees to make any promise come true. It’s been said, ominously, that he will have learnt the lessons of his first presidency. I am not so sure. His talk of territorial expansion, which now not only officially includes Panama but other possibilities extends to Mars. Perhaps Musk wrote that part of the speech. Manifest destiny is on his brain, no doubt nurtured by his property developer’s instinct. It is one reason he holds President McKinley in such high regard, a fellow conqueror. He must be hoping that having survived an assassination attempt, he won’t follow McKinley’s demise at the hands of an assassin.
 
Unless this time he really knows how to pull the levers of power his presidency will be swamped by all sorts of fall-out from his failure to deliver his maniacal promises. Let the Big Con commence.  

It's going from bad to worse. Labour's rapidly declining fortunes need something. Speed? Acid? Anti depressants? According to the ever reliable Daily Express click bait, Rachel Reeves is now suffering from depression over the state of the economy. Perhaps her recent underwhelming trip to China hasn't cheered her up - honestly, a claimed £600 million of extra trade over five years? With a steady determination to piss pensioners off, Labour has now scored a new own goal by kicking the reform of social care into the long grass with a three year 'review' announced by Wes Bleating. This is obviously tied to coincide with the next general election, but Bleating says the delay is to allow time to build a cross party consensus. This is nonsense and he knows it. Tory leader Badenoch has already said it'll take the Tories two years to develop new policies to rebuild her party. With the power of government behind it, Labour doesn't need half baked ideas from the opposition. Anyway, on top of the cancellation of the Winter Fuel Allowance and the abandonment of the WASPI women, Labour has now scored a hat trick of bad news for oldies with their awful predilection for voting. Labour needs more than a drug to fend off the likely Reform nightmare.
 
Labour MPs are muttering about the political lifespan of the current chancellor. One way they could get rid of her is to have some local party member make a complaint about her behaviour. The details needn’t be specified. She could then be suspended from the whip ‘pending an investigation.’ The investigation would of course drag on for eternity, preferably beyond the selection contest for the next general election. This modus operandii has been used so many times against lefty MPs it barely raises an eye brow. 

+An article on the PoliticsHome website is headed ‘Does the Treasury value regions?’ and laments the lack of investment in the north. It points out that, for example spending on transport in 2022/23 in London was £813 per capita compared to just £219 in the East Midlands, which was the lowest. None of this comes as a surprise. Perhaps the explanation can be found in the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alastair Darling’s 2008 Mansion House speech, where he tells the audience of City nabobs ‘I wanted to confirm our commitment to the London Crossrail link, which is important for the future of the City of London, linking it to Heathrow airport.’ (Back From The Brink, p95)  It’s important for a Chancellor of the Exchequer to know which side their bread’s buttered—or think it’s buttered. The Crossrail project, estimated to cost £14.8 billion eventually cost £19 billion.

+A story on the clickbait reports that Liz Truss is threatening to sue Starmer for defamation—if he repeats his claim that she ‘crashed the economy’ - which apparently so destroyed her reputation that it helped lose her seat in the general election. Little more proof is required in my opinion that she is completely bonkers. But hang on. Maybe she’s right in that she wasn’t entirely responsible for the dire state of the UK economy. 14 years of austerity and sucking up to the rich also contributed. Regardless, if she pursued her claim to the libel court she may be hard put to find a jury that would agree with her. I hope she tries.

+First Justin Welby, now Justin Trudeau. Who’s next—Justin Time? Neither it seems really wanted to resign, but were forced to go when they discovered no-one had any confidence left in them any more. In the old days they may literally have fallen on their sword or put a pistol to their temple (no pun intended in Welby’s case). Now things are more civilised, although I wonder how the scramble for power by their detractors will play out—in which institution, the Liberal Party of Canada or the Church of England will honour triumph? In both cases it looks like the victor will inherit a poisoned chalice.
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+I wonder if Donald Trump can spell ‘international.’ It seems that anything that involves that word repels him. He will shortly be pulling the US out of the UN climate change framework; he clearly intends to disregard the WTO; and now he is upending NATO. (Some of this one might actually approve of.) But his understanding of NATO seems slight—now that he is not ruling out military action to take over Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO country. Were that to happen, might not Denmark invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which calls for collective action of its members to repel any aggression against one of its members? Or does NATO permit one member to invade another? Of course, when it comes to these matters rules can always be bent and as usual might is right.

What a co-incidence. We’ve heard a lot from Rachel Reeves about the ‘black hole’ of £22 billion inherited from the Tories. That figure is widely disputed. So how to fill it, if indeed it exists? I’ve just come across this on the Tax Justice Network website, outlining several measures that could raise £50-£60 billion:

‘1. Apply a 1-2% wealth tax on assets over £10 million, raising up to £22 billion a  year.
A small wealth tax applied to those at the very top of the distribution would affect only 0.04% of the population. This makes it much easier to administer than annual wealth  taxes set at a lower threshold, as it would affect only around 20,000 people. It would  ensure that those who have benefited enormously from structural economic changes over  the last decade contribute fairly and create significant revenue for national renewal.’ (Tax Justice Network 15 March 2023)

That’s just one tax possibility.  What has Reeves done instead? In the 2024 Labour Budget ‘The tax rises that will directly impact the wealthy the most are estimated to raise at least 35 billion pounds by the end of this decade, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the government's spending watchdog.' (Reuters, emphasis added) So just £7 billion a year equivalent. In the meantime National Insurance on jobs was put up and pensioners lost their Winter Fuel Allowance. Is further comment necessary?