Questions Of The Day (Politics)

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Ukrainian (it appears to be them, despite what Russia says) attack on the Russian fleet in Sevastapol, by a combination of air and sea drones, shows that in the future cheap, light, agile technology will eventually replace expensive, heavy, slow stuff. We are going to get a lot of articles about the older heavy stuff is not yet obsolete and still needed, which might still be true, but the Russians knew a drone attack would be coming and still could not prevent it.

If the slow heavy stuff is to survive, you are going to need mega sophisticated drone defence systems.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

We are now about to see how all this works out in real time. The Russian reprisal turned out to be withdrawing from the Grain Export Agreement (which had already proved to be disastrous i.e. fab for Ukraine, nixville for Russia).

But stopping something firmly established is not the same as preventing it in the first place. When the war started, all Russia had to do was to make vague threats about grain ships in the Black Sea and everyone skedaddled. Now the Russians are facing a Turkish/UN mandated line of ships travelling along easily defended shipping lanes. The Russians probably could stop it if they really wanted to but the stakes are now so high my prediction is they won't even try. It'll be hellishly interesting though if they do.

[Mick Harper]

The state of play

1. Outbound ships are sailing unmolested but in convoy to Turkey. Ukrainian grain exports have reached pre-war levels.

2. Inbound ships are not setting out from Turkey. It is being explained that there are worries over insurance which is ridiculous since even sky-high rates are nothing compared to the value of the cargo and would in any case be covered by the Ukrainians (or others) subsidising them. This is standard practice in wartime.

3. The Russians are not overtly threatening action but contenting themselves with 'not guaranteeing the safety of the ships' at the present time.

4. Both Turkey and the UN (the General Secretary has postponed a trip to the Middle East and is 'working the phones') are in a quandary. Neither can afford to be overtly anti-Russian, neither can afford such a remarkable success be put in jeopardy.

5. A possible face-saving solution would be to announce that, since the Russians are refusing to be part of the trilateral commission that inspects grain ships at the Straits, they cannot be allowed through as per The Agreement. Logistics therefore dictate no further sailings at the present time.

6. If the Russians target port facilities in the Ukraine rather than the ships, everyone can abandon grain exports at the present time.

7. As all this combined will represent a complete victory for Russia, it cannot be allowed to happen. We await developments.

[Mick Harper]

Why does everybody keep saying that 'the poor' have to be protected from this tax rise or this increased contribution or this cut in services? We're people too, we want to play our part in rebuilding the nation's finances. If everyone else is taking a hit, why can't we? It's called egalitarianism and has nothing to do with the general notion of 'from each according to their ability'. That's already been taken care of.

[Mick Harper]

Russia Climbs Down!

In the most extraordinary development in the war thus far (well, it's right up there in a war of extraordinary developments), Russia has formally agreed to re-enter the Ukraine Exports Agreement. There was absolutely no need to do so since the threat of non-co-operation -- either in processing ships at the Straits or threatening to sink them at sea -- seemed to be doing the job, without much push-back from the world community.

Why? Why have the Russians (a) permitted the continuation of an activity which is so much to their disadvantage and (b) accepted such a severe bloody nose in terms of prestige by making such a swift and abject U-turn? It can only be because of push-back. Not from the UN, the Russians have been ignoring ire from that quarter as long as the USA and China have. It can only be because of the Turks.

The Agreement is the one unalloyed foreign policy success of the Erdogan regime (up for re-election next year) and is therefore worth spending diplomatic capital on pushing-back. This appeared to be confirmed in a clip on Al-Jazeera showing a minion interrupting a speech by the leader (not something you see every day, or indeed any day) by handing him news of Russia's démarche, whereupon Erdogan interrupted his own speech to tell the faithful about it. (Though it may have been choreographed, it is still clearly a big deal.)

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Should we be regretting the departure of Gavin Williamson from the Cabinet for the third (is it?) time? I think we should, and on AE grounds. (From any other standpoint we can bid a thorough good riddance to this oafish incompetent.)

He is being sacked for, essentially, being an oaf. This is dangerous. A government needs oafs just like a football team needs tough geezers in the middle of defence, ball-winners in midfield, strikers who can put themselves about up top and a hard man in the dug-out. It's a rough trade. And, more generally, there is no particular correlation between oafishness and incompetence. Norman Tebbit, anyone?

It is not as if Williamson's particular brand of oafishness was disruptive to good governance. His long time deputy in the Whips Office popped up on Newsnight to catalogue Williamson's crimes and couldn't come up with anything that wasn't standard Whips' practice -- and that is a rough trade. The straw that broke his back was an email sent to a colleague saying he would slit the throat of some civil servant if they did x rather than y. Good grief, is this a hanging offence in government today? Doing it used to be but I don't think musing about it should be.

[Mick Harper]

Rishi has been a bit hoist on his 'clean government' petard. There are three ways of dealing with ministerial scandales: 1. Sack 'em at the first whiff 2. Sack 'em when the criticism reaches critical mass or 3. Ride it out come what may (no pun intended).

The first was favoured in the old days of gentlemen club politics. A Labour Min of Ag had to resign because he mentioned a budget measure to a journalist while they were all going into the chamber to listen to the Budget! Gentlemen could be expected to do the decent thing without having to be asked. Remember Cecil Parkinson going because his secretary was pregnant? I can't remember whether he was married to her at the time.

When the 24-hour news cycle took over it became a race between what the tabloids could dig up (or make up, remember David Mellor in his Chelsea strip?) and how long the wife and kids could stand at the garden gate for the photo-op without anyone throwing up. Boris was a great fan of (3) hanging tough, but when a non-entity did something non-entity-ish, everyone had got fed up with the policy and Johnson found himself to be a non-entity.

AE would advise Rishi to mix'n'match but this requires both nerve and judgement so that's out.

[Grant]

I find it extraordinary that no one in this shit-show of a party has the slightest sense of corp d’esprit. The PM has a drink in the No 10 garden - take a photo and send it to the media. The Home Sec is rude to a civil servant - complain to the standards people. Gavin Williamson says he’s going to cut a throat - where’s Newsnight.

Is this the inevitable result of allowing women MPs and the sort of working- class chancers who don’t know how to behave?

[Mick Harper]

The record shows it is allowing men in as MP's that is responsible for most of these mishaps.

[Mick Harper]

Russia Climbs Down (Again)

By announcing (to the Russian people) they are withdrawing from Kherson, Putin & Co are, inter alia, breaking the Russian constitution by giving up Russian territory (newly annexed as it is). They weren't even driven out! Nobody, certainly not the Russian people, cares a fig about the constitution but everybody (especially the Russian people) cares about major military reverses. So the question is: can Putin survive?

This is not something the Russian people can do anything about so it is a question of whether the oligarcho-military complex can -- or wants -- to do anything about it. The one thing oligarchs and generals know is 'better the devil you know', so I'm predicting he survives. But only because of my track record of being wrong.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

I am not questioning the military wisdom of doing it, only the manner of it and the announcing of it.

The car accident bloke had become a bit of a poster-child in Russia, shades of Kirov, the governor of Leningrad, who had begun to out-poster child Stalin in 1934 and whose murder signalled the start of the Purges. Not that I think Putin is built along these lines. Though unsuccessful generals (and too-successful oligarchs) do seem to depart the stage in unusual clusters down on Putin farm.

[Wile E. Coyote]

The big picture is surely this.

1) Ukraine is a big country
2) The front line of fighting is now equivalent to the distance between Kyev and Prague
3) Russia simply did not have the trained manpower to undertake a successful invasion and administration of "New Russia" unless they were welcomed by a significant number of the population, who would help fight and admister the "New cities"
4) This is not an existential fight for Russia, so those newly mobilised 30-40 year olds are not going to be much use. Russia needs fit 18 year olds, who will follow orders unthinkingly.
5) Russia is continually trying to shorten the front line by defensively using rivers etc because it does not have the manpower to attack.
6) We are now 8 months in and Russia is not producing good new kit for its forces, it is buying in Iranian and Korean.
7) If your best hope is that the Republicans win the mid terms, or that the Germans will complain to Schulz that they need two hot showers a day, you are in a lot of trouble.