“The beatings will continue until morale improves” – Starmer’s gang and their limited cognitive toolkit. Also Trump.

This year I am going to write something short, mostly daily, about what is going on – “2 cents on the Arrived Ecological Debacle” (2cotAED). I have to write it; you don’t have to read it. If you DO read it, feel free to tell me how wrong I am (and hopefully why). Re: the debacle aspect: in 2004 the English writer Sara Maitland  wrote about the “pending ecological debacle.” The expression stuck with me; it’s a debacle because it was foreseen, warned about and was avoidable. Well, it’s no longer really “pending” is it?

Once upon a time I was in an abusive relationship and unable to see straight (to be clear, I was on the receiving end). And someone said to me the classic line “the beatings will continue until morale improves” and I was able to see that the person (a male) being an asshole simply didn’t know any other way to be. This did not help – the only thing that helped was getting away. But I digress.

What strikes me about what is going on is that our “leaders” – Trump, Starmer – are so blatantly and fantastically ill-equipped for the times. It is not clear to me that ANYONE could be properly equipped (the super-wicked problems are piling up, like “progress” in that Walt Benjamin quote about the Paul Klee painting Angelus Novus). But some are further from adequacy than others and these two (and Anthony Albanese for that matter) are stark examples.Both retreat into fantasies of “how things used to work”.

Starmer’s latest crime against common sense is some “Deportation TV” stunt. Because throwing racist meat to the tabloids makes them full, and stops people voting for Reform. Oh yes. Works every time.

The man is empty (the new book ‘Get In‘ by two Times hacks apparently covers this in gory detail.) He is the perfect bland technocrat who thinks that with more beatings morale will improve. Or he doesn’t actually care if it will or not, he just gets a thrill and a sense of power from wielding the whip. What is that old line about “never give power to someone who wants it”?

Alongside the morale line, there’s also “if the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems begin to look like nails.” Check out this astounding statement –

And technocrats hate being told – with evidence – that they are failing (I know this from a decade plus in the trenches with Manchester City Council).

John Maynard Keynes once said, “There is nothing a government hates more than to be well-informed; for it makes the process of arriving at decisions much more complicated and difficult.” (h/t to Diane Coyle, writing in the FT).

That, in my opinion, helps explain what Monbiot is talking about in his latest column – It’s straight from the Trump playbook: Labour is tearing up the machinery of government – on Starmer basically killing off regulators/watchdogs.

Time to dust off Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, I think…

(h/t Sam)

Crystal bollo… sorry, balls

How will it end? Well, with Reform picking up loads of seats in the next local elections (this year and next) and at the Welsh elections, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch getting dumped for a white man who then brings the Conservatives into some sort of (public or private? formal or informal?) alliance or at least entente cordiale with Reform. And that alliance handily wins the 2028 or 2029 election and the UK goes Trumpier.

Of course, this is a ridiculous level of confidence to have. Any number of things can/will happen. The Trump project will presumably have revealed itself to enough people that winning elecions becomes harder? Therefore steal more?

But it’s hard to see any renewal from ‘within’ Labour. It’s hard to see even a competent “centrist” figure like Andy Burnham coming in to save national Labour’s skin (though there are some safe North West seats up for grabs soon).