The latest polls out yesterday put the Conservatives on 46%, a good ten points ahead of Labour on 36%. Not bad for a government in power, not bad for a government that has blundered through the Wuhan virus and not bad for a government facing an opposition that should be enjoying a bounce. As I predicted, Captain Hindsight is not a leader to win the election in 2024 but to reform the Labour party to give it a good crack at 2029.
That the Conservatives are really annoying not only the comrades but elements of the authoritarian alt-right means the party is getting it right. That the PM is a one-nation libertarian much like myself gives me a good feeling, and gives little traction to an attempted counter-reformation move last week by Hammond, Gaulk and their media supporters. These supranationalist dags of the global corporates could only accuse the PM of being 'authoritarian' - a frankly laughable accusation. Sweeties, a strong and confident libertarian remains a libertarian.
We have a cabinet adjustment due in the autumn and we know already that David Frost is due to take over as National Security Advisor in September. The triumvirate at the heart of change, the PM, Dominic and Michael Gove, will be strengthened. Reform is high on the agenda - the NHS, PHE, the Electoral Commission and the BBC are already scored, and the Integrated Defence Review should be ready to report. So Health and Defence are key cabinet seats to watch.
As Nick Drew has for some time pointed out over at C@W, green energy is now going mainstream. Business is taking it on in a big way. And here again our reclamation of our 200 mile EEZ should stand us in good stead. The shallow North Sea, and in particular the Dogger Bank, most of which is British, make offshore wind an easy win for the UK, to an extent that could surpass our daily grid demand. At night, when we're not using power, it can be used to make Hydrogen, the combustion fuel of the future. And all those empty North Sea wells also in the UK zone give us a fantastic storage potential for CO2.
Green has broken free of the XR cranks and has gone mainstream. And the public, the voters, have also accepted this is the way to go.
In the Culture War, the PM's open refusal to kneel to imagined guilt gets the support of 67% of the British public, and of all libertarians, and leads a pushback against the tyranny of the metropolitan mob. Little Owen Jones, a spiteful and vicious leader of the Cancel culture, may have realised in a Marat-moment that the hate could turn back on him. In 1793 Jones would have been the shrieky hysterical little sans-culotte offering head after head to Madame Guillotine.
For the financial backers of the several attempted blows against the government, you've lost your money. These pushes for power either succeed at first instance or they fade and falter into background attritional noise. The attempted coup around the orchestrated attempts to get Dom came closest, but exposed the key players and marked them for later disposal - to be sidelined into irrelevance, excluded from the circles of power, briefed against and so on.
Of course we've still got the collapse of the global economy and a lethal pandemic virus to crack, but all in all things look good. Many reasons to be cheerful.
32 comments:
I hope that by the time the next General Election comes around the voters can look back on a period of 'steady government' achieving desirable things and not flip flopping (or kneeling) whenever some headline requires that the World Be Changed by Next Thursday.
I also want the long march through the institutions to be sent into reverse, but that will probably takes decades. A few 'examples' might start things off though. Perhaps the departure of some very Senior Civil Servants is an early indicator?
My dream is watching the sour faces on the BBC during the next GE, and their realisation that they'll be for the chop within a few months.
How touching, the idea that Boris' government is in any meaningful way "libertarian".
My dream is, long before the next GE, watching the sour faces on the BBC realising that the chop has happened; and blaming it on everyone except themselves.
Great post, lot to agree with here but sorry "green" hasn't gone mainstream, just the propaganda. Propaganda does not trump the laws of physics or the realities of practical engineering.
Windmill = white elephant. Sorry, but it does. Oh I can see herds of them sweeping majestically across the metaphorical plains, but look carefully at the advocates and cheerleaders, the ringleaders of this "green" circus: Flashy showman, flim flam artists who can beguile the ignorant with powerpoint.
Windmills are a massively impractical and expensive dead end. The north sea will not be a sink for C02, but a massive sink for taxes.
"Green" is not about providing for the society we have, but a beguiling (and I suspect irresistible) charm that - alas - people at large seem to be falling for. A "green" future will be an awful lot poorer and a damn site more controlled which is of course actually the point.
Keep an eye on milk floats though which should get quite interesting in the next few years. The "electric future" (yeh, right) is the elbow to the "green" arse. I know a poor misguided fool who has just taken delivery of a tossler (which cost more than all the cars I've had over my almost 40 years of motoring put together). Never shuts up about it. He's nearing retirement (as am I) and seems to genuinely believe he'll be driving around visiting all those places he's always wanted to and it will cost him pennies (I've long since given up trying to argue)
He's got a "smart" meter too which he's equally enthusiastic about. Perfect example of doublethink?
Excuse my homophonophobia, sight!
"That the Conservatives are really annoying not only the comrades but elements of the authoritarian alt-right means the party is getting it right.
This is not even close. BoJo at the moment would be on the Left of Tony Blair's government. Current monetary policy would be on the Left of Callaghan's government in the late 70s.
The Green policies would be/are welcomed by The Greens.
If they pull off Brexit without sneaky EU control (still hidden in amongst the good news), BBC reform/closure, Covil Service clear out, Common Purpose destruction etc I may adjust my feeling of dire foreboding.
The Green Energy scam is nothing morenthan a license for troughers like Gummer, being boosted by Mr Drew and others, see Paul Homewood for or GPWF for details: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/
If the power is not available 98% of the time, any funds paid to establish scheme to be repaid.
Green Energy is the most efficient way of transferring cash from poor pensioners to landowners and energy corps.
Boris is an authoritarian as thebfarce over muzzles shows, it might jkeep the Karens happy but is one more restriction on trade.
Cummings may be good, but he still thinks it can be managed, central conceit of pending failure.
Learn from the 3 successful men of the last 75 yrs.
What Cowperthwaite in Hong Kong, Yew in Singapore and Ludwig Erhard had in common was they reduced taxes and restrictions on trade, not managed them slightly differently.
Until we copy their successes, we will repeat others failures.
Sir,
you claim to be a libertarian, and right after, applaud to the "green energy" and hydrogen.
these two statements are incompatible.
"green energy" is a nightmare of central planning. it would not exist without ad-hoc taxations, subsidies and regulations that give it an artificial, large advantage against any other form of energy generation.
i have just ordered heating oil. the "CO2" tax makes up for almost 40% of the price of it. i guess i will switch to heat pump once oil will be taxed at 200%. that can scarcely be defined "green energy going mainstream". i would rather call it, coercion at gunpoint.
regarding hydrogen, only a crazy environazi could have come up with something so stupid.
of all forms of energy (assuming hydrogen is one, which is not) hydrogen is the craziest, most inefficient, dangerous, expensive and hard to handle of all. and given the unpalatable choice between the stupidity of batteries, and the stupidity and sheer danger of hydrogen, i would choose batteries any day. that is how bad hydrogen is.
"green energy" has not the purpose of "saving the planet", but to destroy capitalism, and ultimately eliminate every trace of human activity.
A libertarian, Sir?
“At night, when we're not using power, it can be used to make Hydrogen, the combustion fuel of the future.”
From what I have read the big problem with burning hydrogen efficiently in air is that it burns at a very high temperature producing NOxs.
This means that simply burning the hydrogen for domestic boilers or in evs is not acceptable and that fuel cell technology has to be used and this technology appears at the moment to be very expensive – the fcev cars are twice the price of battery evs.
There is also the difficulty of transporting and storing the liquid hydrogen. At the moment there are only a handful of liquid hydrogen filling stations.
Hydrogen fuel cells are however currently far better than batteries for large vehicles such as buses and lorries because of their better power to weight ratio and better where long distances must covered as current batteries degrade quickly if subjected to fast charging.
It is as yet unclear which technology battery or fuel cell will be dominant as we don’t know what technological breakthroughs may occur, particularly in battery technology.
It may even be a mixture – batteries for small vehicles with a local range and recharged overnight at home and hydrogen for larger vehicles which can access liquid hydrogen at larger depots.
I find little to argue with in the comments left by Span Ows and Nessimmersion. Boris has gone in a few short months from a man who might have - just might have - done something useful to reshape the country, into a blithering, authoritarian blunderer who lies exposed as a leader incapable it seems of grasping the big picture.
The country has been trashed; not by a virus, but by the reaction of politicians to it. Yes, yes, I know, they got bounced into a number of huge errors by social media focusing the collective wisdom of criminally unprofessional advisers and of a couple of billion gullible halfwits, but then to compound the threats to civil liberty, social integration, peoples lives and employment and the futures of future generations by focusing on the price of chocolate bars and wanting to stuff doctors' pockets with gold to send people on weight-loss classes is I'm sure just exactly what it looks like - a classic "oh my god I've no idea what to do" displacement activity.
Yes. But until all the institutions that have fallen the long match through them conducted by my generation
(some sought liberation thru' Marx. I preferred and stil do, Mushrooms on that score) whilst we may have a long Tory government, all else under that govt works against it and us.
http://www.newcultureforum.org.uk/assets/books/The_Long_March.pdf
Read and weep. And let your MP know that we are at war.
I see that the heap of luncheon meant in vaguely human form has been reminded by M Barnier that he voted for the very terms that he condemns the European Union for following.
Sorry, Radders, but Mark is quite right.
"Of course we've still got the collapse of the global economy and a lethal pandemic virus to crack..."
No pressure then.
@DiscoveredJoys 11 July 2020 at 07:36
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The Long March is the real battle. Whilst we have a Tory govt, every other institution has been suborned.
Long read, but a necessary one. The culture war is the real battler we face
http://www.newcultureforum.org.uk/assets/books/The_Long_March.pdf
EIGHT ****ing captchas to post this
Green (expensive) energy??? Do me a favour.
We're facing an economic tragedy-in-the-making where savings MUST be made and we're ignoring the cheapest fossil fuel period we've had in decades?
Ignoring the enviro-excuses for going green (since CO2 is not a threat as the lock down has proven to anyone's satisfaction except the exposure via media that it needs - but won't get) why isn't anyone decrying the sheer EXPENSE?
The public are already going to be on the hook for the idiotic destruction of the economy and 'you' seem ok with hanging unnecessary additional taxation on top? WTF?
I may be living a comfortable life (as may 'you') but the vast majority of people who aren't and can't will be left to fork out for something that we don't need and, despite fake information to the contrary, people don't want either.
If this Government want to push a green agenda then they've lost my vote straight away. I suspect this issue may sway a lot of others to that effect too.
Hydrogen leaks, because the molecules are extremely small. Hydrogen bursts into flame.
There will be far more deaths per year from Hydrogen explosions than there are from the current natural gas.
Electrons are very much smaller and lighter than Hydrogen molecules, but they don't leak and they are easy to transport.
Don Cox
"CO2 is not a threat as the lock down has proven to anyone's satisfaction "
I can't see how the lockdown has proved anything one way or another about climate change. They are two completely unrelated things.
Don Cox
Raedwald said:
'Green has broken free of the XR cranks and has gone mainstream. And the public, the voters, have also accepted this is the way to go.'
They really haven't mate. The store of energy in a gallon of refined fossil fuel is truly amazing: it'll take you, and a ton of other bits on wheels, fifty miles easy. That's 8 pints. The latest diesel engines are ten times cleaner than they were were just twenty years ago.
Steve
@Don Cox.
Really?
They claim mankind's CO2 emissions are responsible for the potential (and grossly overly exaggerated and unproven by ANY example) climate changes we are 'suffering' yet during nearly SIX MONTHS of vastly reduced industrial output and even more vastly reduced public use of fossil fuel vehicles, CO2 levels CONTINUE to rise at the same pace.
So how does our REDUCTION in emissions cause an INCREASE in CO2??? Where's the correlation now?
That's how they are related.
We engineers always find debates like this amusing in the extreme, so it may be helpful to outline how engineers go about things. Public projects are nearly always political decisions not engineering decisions. Many clients in actuality, don’t really know what they want, and it is not in an engineering consultant’s interest for a client to make a fool of himself, so we do try and steer clients away from decisions not in their best interest: having said that, government, local or otherwise, is always regarded as fair game because not only do they have deep budgets, it is government who are going to carry the can if things go pear shaped.
Engineers do not have “good” solutions and “bad” solutions, they just have solutions. And solutions are answers to questions called “specifications,” so you really have to go and find out what the question was before evaluating the efficacy of the answer: if the question was “design a plant generating power from burning old French-letters” that is what you are going to get, and it is no use complaining afterwards that that wasn’t what you wanted.
So from an engineering point of view, it is the question that is of overriding importance not the answer: there are always a score of answers, all of which have their pluses and minuses and most of which will work.
So if you don’t like the answer look at the question which generated it. Because that specification will be there somewhere: and it will save a lot of hot-air and ill-informed claptrap.
As the Government's own statistics demonstrate (if Raedwald will permit me) that the virus is really only lethal to the over 80s and to a lesser degree to those 70+ with co-morbidities.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19englandandwales/deathsoccurringinmay2020#characteristics-of-those-dying-from-covid-19
The lockdown was a massive over-reaction to Ferguson's scaremongering model. And continuing with the ridiculous social-distancing micro-management when there is no justification for it, isn't the action of a libertarian.
The Tories lead in the polls is an indictment of Starmer and the rabble behind him. I'm not in the least impressed with Boris and the Comedy Crew they call the Cabinet ..... but even I can see that Starmer and the Woke Rabble would be 5 times worse.
DeeDee99: 148 people died in England in the last 24 hours from Covid 19, and the numbers seem to be going back up. None died in Scotland.
Do you think the Tories' lead in the polls will survive when more people start making these unflattering comparisons, and when further European countries quarantine British visitors?
Starmer may be unimpressive but Boris is making a pretty poor showing.
MOJO for BoJo!
Customs checks 20 miles in from border with France. So does that mean more territory given over, like NI?
I've seen one major plus - our local Labour communes are in a tailspin.
I have watched numerous bodies build up in my city that seem to be beyond any democratic control.
Tax payers' funds are given out to a few of them and they share with many others. It just seems like one big cross-fertilising redistribution exercise.
I would normally be against central government control of local politics but I'm enjoying this not-business-as-normal scenario as far as our Labour councils are concerned.
Of course, the well-rewarded city 'Artistic Director' type send out their cleaners and ticket collectors to front their 'lack of funding' protests, and the plebs look on with complete indifference.
As for Johnson, the Tories, and 'Green' - John Selwyn Gummer, aka Baron Deben, is a very good place to begin.
@DJK
Yes. Not because Boris is doing a wonderful job (it's been appalling) but because Labour has lost all connection with "ordinary" working class people.
So 148 very elderly died with - not of - Wuhan Flu. Sad, as every death is, but not a tragedy. Destroying the economy is the tragedy.
DeeDee and DJK. And just to add, +/- 1600 people die EVERY DAY anyway in the UK. The how, where and why varies.
The graph of all deaths all causes from 1900-2020 really highlights the craziness of what has been done.
Maybe all the people dying of the WuFlu are old and deserved to die anyway. (But what about the equal number left with chronic health conditions including, we now learn, neurological damage?) Maybe in the grander scheme of things the numbers aren't that great.
But the point is that protecting public health is a basic competence of government. Ever since John Snow and the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak, we expect public health to be managed well in the UK. But with a global pandemic like the WuFlu there are plenty of people able to do a quantitative comparison of how well each country is doing, and the UK is doing very, very badly.
Make any comparison you like: England vs Scotland, UK vs Czech Republic, UK vs Germany, UK vs Australia. In every case, except UK vs Brazil, the Westminster government is clearly shown to be not able to manage the basic stuff that everyone else can do. I wish it was otherwise, but it isn't.
When Boris, Gove, Cummings etc are not able to do the basics of government then why should they be trusted to do the other things they claim to want?
How well the UK does compared to other countries is impossible to ascertain unless there is total honesty and transparency over the methodology used to report it.
I have absolutely ZERO confidence in the honesty of UK reporting of the facts - you only have to look at the 'legal definition' of who can be classed as a CV victim to understand that.
I'm afraid Radders has drinking at the Ambrose Evans-Pritchard font of deluded green economics. Mark got it right - 'nuff said.
I would not to be anywhere near where CO2 is pumped underground, even if ground is under water.
Search for Lake Nyos.
Remember, the dreaded CO2 is heavier than air.
Best to just let it diffuse and let plants turn it into food. And release the oxygen.
Burying all the oxygen is not a good idea either. But when it is all gone Gaia can start afresh. Wind the clock back a billion years or so.,
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