The backstory

The backstory to this is that in 2024 before the general election, Farage accepted a £5 million gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, which he didn’t declare to the electoral commission.

Now he is being investigated by parliament, to see if the non-declaration broke parliamentary rules. If it did, Farage could be suspended from parliament, triggering a recall petition, which if it gets enough support (10% of voters in the constituency) would force a by election.

Farage forces a by election anyway

To attempt to forestall this process, Farage has announced that he will be resigning his seat to force a by election:

Today, I will resign as Member of Parliament for Clacton on Sea, thereby forcing a by-election, which should happen, I hope, in short order.

No, I’ve decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions. This will be a people versus the Establishment by-election. It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire Establishment. To frankly tell them where to go. And that is why I will be putting my name forward to stand in this by-election.

I will fight to win. I will fight to continue the political revolution that Reform has started. And I would say this to you, the voters of Clacton: If I win, you win. Because if I lose, they win. And we will never, with the two parties, get the type of fundamental change that we need to fix Broken Britain.

Just a publicity stunt

Note that Farage’s by election, which is intended to forstall the parliamentary investigation, won’t work: the investigation will just be paused if he ceases to be an MP, and restarted if he wins his by election. Then, if the investigation finds he has breached parliamentary standards, and is suspended for 10 days, that automatically triggers a recall petition which if it passes would force another by election.

The other parties refuse to stand

Of the other parties represented in parliament in English constituencies, Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dems, Greens, and Restore Britain have all said they won’t stand in Farage’s by election. Jeremy Corbyn has also been critical of Farage’s move so I doubt his Your Party will stand either.

Candidates standing include:

Actor-turned-politician Laurence Fox, of nearby Peldon, announced on Tuesday evening he would be standing against Farage, Count Binface and Adham Alkhatip, who leads the Forward Party.

My analysis

I think Farage has made a mistake here. if he wins his by election, he is no better off, particularly as none of the big parties are standing.

Because voters do not support Farage calling this by election, it’s possible he will lose:

Farage only got 46% of the vote in the general election, so most voters voted against him. If they all concentrated on one candidate, that candidate would beat him. And if Farage lost to joke candidate Count Binface, surely the humiliation would end his political career.

Regarding Count Binface, the Guardian writes:

[Count Binface] said he was left with no choice but to perform a swift intergalactic handbrake turn when news broke that Farage had resigned as MP for Clacton, triggering the possibility of a byelection in the English coastal constituency he has represented since 2024.

Farage, the leader of the rightwing populist Reform UK party, has been accused of using the poll to shake off a deepening scandal over financial gifts he has received. But the plan appears to have backfired after his main rivals announced they would boycott the byelection. The Clacton byelection is now likely to be a two-man race between the Reform leader and Binface.

[...] Farage is the favourite, but odds on Binface winning have been tumbling. Oddschecker, which provides betting odds from some of the UK’s most popular bookmakers, said odds on the underdog winning had been slashed from 5/1 into 7/2.

Lastly, calling his own by election won’t prevent a later one caused by a recall petition. Even if Farage wins, he may well be subject to a recall petition, which if it passes the 10% threshold will make him look bad, and he may well lose the subsequent by election.

Reform’s prospects

Reform UK have been ahead in the polls since March 2025, though their poll ratings peaked in October 2025 and have taken a dip since then:

Overall neither Farage nor Reform look anywhere near as dominant today as they did a year ago.

The UK has made a shameful drug deal with the USA, which is greatly to our disadvantage:

Cost of UK’s drug price deal with US will come out of NHS budget

The cost of the government’s drug pricing deal with the Trump administration will come out of the NHS budget instead of the Treasury’s and could eventually reach £9bn a year, campaigners fear.

Patrick Vallance, the science minister, has confirmed that the costs – initially an extra £1bn over three years– will be borne by the Department of Health and Social Care, which funds the NHS in England, and not the Treasury.

The Lib Dems have criticised the agreement as a Trump shakedown of the NHS and “just a desperate ploy to placate Trump” by the prime minister, Keir Starmer.

The government has agreed as part of the deal to double the UK’s spending on all drugs by 2035 from 0.3% to 0.6% of GDP but has not given any figures as to how much that will cost.

The BMJ has more details:

Health costs of the UK-US trade deal on pharmaceuticals

This deal commits government to increasing expenditure on new medicines from 0.3% to at least 0.6% of GDP in 2036, with interim targets for expenditure of 0.35% of GDP in 2028 and 0.4% of GDP in 2030.7 Assuming these targets are met and using the Office for Budgetary Responsibility’s (OBRs) long term forecast of real GDP growth (1.5%), the additional annual costs to the English NHS will be at least £1.3bn in 2028, and £8.8bn in 2036.

The cumulative additional cost will be £2.6bn by the end of 2028 and £44.7bn by the end of 2036.

The extra costs are projected to kill 291,000 people:

Figure 2 shows that even if we restrict attention to the direct effect of reductions in available NHS expenditure, by 2036 this deal is likely to result in roughly 229 000 excess deaths —more than during the covid-19 pandemic between March 2020 and June 2022 (137 000). If the indirect effect on adult social care is also included, the increase in excess deaths is even greater (291 000).

The BMJ article includes graphs for costs:

And deaths:

The UK cast adrift

Regarding the shameful drug deal story I’ve linked to above, Arthur Assendune writes:

UK finding out the hard way...

With this cartoon:

Arthur is right. It is shameful and contemptible that UK governments have since 1945 turned away from power, deliberately not caring whether Britain is a powerful country.

As I wrote on Twitter/X:

The reason UK [hsasd signed the very bad drug deal with the USA] is because of threats Trump made to (1) leave NATO and not defend UK, and (2) to rip up the (very one-sided) UK-US trade agreement. Essentially USA is stronger than UK and are using their strength to extort us.

So, how do we fix this? By becoming more powerful: militarily, economically and diplomatically.

Militarily: increase defence spending, more nukes and drones.

Militarily / economically / diplomatically: create a new allaince with European and non-European countries that can stand up to any threat: European Defence Policy: how Europe could rule the world.

European Union backs down on cookies

The European Union did have a very sensible proposal to replace the “do you want cookies” popups on websites with an automated signal from the user’s web browser to the website, which would have to be respected.

The Council of the European Union (i.e. the national governments) had now backed down on this, due to pressure from Google:

The EU Council’s latest position paper, published on 18 June 2026, has removed from the Digital Omnibus the one provision that would have replaced cookie consent banners with an automated browser signal - after intense industry lobbying in which Google played a central role. The European Parliament, which has not yet taken a position on the measure, now holds the only vote that could restore it.

Another reason for Europe to gain digital sovereignty, i.e. complete control of its computing and communications infrastructure.

UK Defense Spending is a Joke

Warfronts says UK Defense Spending is a Joke:

I would go further. The entire UK ruling class is a joke. Just not a very funny one.

Treasury ditched numeracy test to increase diversity hires

The Sun reports:

WOKE civil servants boosted diversity at the Treasury by axing a maths exam for candidates.

The Treasury [...] launched a recruitment drive in 2019 under the then Tory Government. When Whitehall later complained of “extremely high benchmarks”, the Treasury also dropped verbal reasoning exams. Bosses replaced it with a “Civil Service Strengths Test”, which asked candidates whether they “prefer not to have to concentrate on one thing for too long”.

The Treasury admitted: “The Numerical Reasoning Test was removed due to evidence of the test having adverse impact on candidate diversity.

Obviously it is far more important that top civil servants have dark skin than they are able to read, think, and do maths.

Lloyds debanks Canary

The Canary reports:

The Canary has been debanked by Lloyds. Despite banking with them for almost a decade they are currently withholding a substantial amount of our money. We are left with barely any funds.

Lloyds has not explained why it has taken this action. Despite multiple communications from us, the bank has not been forthcoming with its reasoning.

The Canary is now in a financially precarious situation. We do not know when our money that Lloyds is holding will be returned. Moreover, we do not know how it will affect our ability to get another bank account in the future.

Banking services are necessary for any individual or organisation to take part in a modern society, so withdrawing them, except where the organisation has committed criminal behaviour, or something equally serious, should be illegal.

Where banks have the power to debank people, they can use that power to punish people for their political beliefs, which is what seems to have happened here. It’s also why Nigel Farage was debanked in 2023.

Giving banks this power makes them (and the ruling class in general, of which banks are a part) too powerful and is thus a threat to democracy. Debanking therefore needs to be seriously illegal, with any bank doing it being nationalised without compensation and its directors imprisoned for life.

I have discussed debanking previously in Should Visa have the power to shut down OnlyFans?.

Refugees Welcome says refugees not welcome

Campaign group Oxford Stand Up To Racism, who campaign using the slogan “Refugees Welcome”, have launched a petition opposing government plans to house 1,250 asylum seekers in a camp on a former Ministry of Defence site near Bicester.

Oxford Stand Up To Racism is calling on residents and community groups across Oxfordshire and beyond to support the campaign, arguing the accommodation plan represents an attempt by the government to appear tough on immigration in response to the rise of Reform UK, rather than a genuine solution to the asylum backlog.

Ian McKendrick, vice-chair of the group, said the plan was “inhumane” and represented “a desperate bid to win votes, and to divert people’s anger away from the government’s failure to address the decades of cuts and austerity the majority of people have had to endure.”

McKendrick placed the proposal in the context of a wider pattern of far-right activity targeting asylum accommodation over the past two years, including protests, some violent, outside hotels housing asylum seekers and a similar camp near Crowborough. “Isolating asylum seekers in basic accommodation far from amenities will benefit no-one but a government cynically exploiting people’s fears about immigration,” he said. “It will give the far-right and racists yet another target for intimidation.”

.

Asylum seekers banned near schools

The government has banned asylum seekers from being housed near schools:

Shabana Mahmood bans asylum seekers from being housed near schools and nurseries

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has introduced new rules banning asylum seekers from being housed in new-build homes or near schools and nurseries.

Why has the government banned them from near schools? Sexual offences:

The crackdown on migrants being housed near schools and nurseries comes amid a sharp rise in sexual offence convictions involving foreign nationals.

Ministry of Justice figures released last year showed sexual offence convictions involving foreign nationals had increased by 62 per cent over four years.

According to the figures, foreign nationals accounted for 14.1 per cent of sexual offence convictions, including rape, despite making up around 11 per cent of the population, according to the Migration Observatory.

If the government thinks asylum seekers disproportionately rape, then surely the correct policy is to allow in less of them. IMO the number of asylum seekers admitted to the UK every year should be whatever the government says it should be as decided in a referendum, and whatever number is admitted, preference should be given to:

• people who speak English

• highly intelligent/skilled/educated people

• those who have been persecuted for pro-British or pro-western political activism, not those persecuted for their ethnicity.

Age verification is identity verification

FIRE warns that the ‘papers, please’ era of the internet will decimate your privacy, as internet companies require proof of your identity in order to prove you’re over 16:

imagine [...] you’re criticizing a powerful politician, or talking about your experiences with abuse or addiction, or discussing embarrassing medical issues you’re facing. Suddenly this “papers, please” approach to the internet sounds even more invasive, right?

Anti-white racism in jobseeker schemes

Visegrad24 writes:

White people are being shut out of taxpayer-funded jobseeker schemes across the UK.

In Sheffield, a £340,000 project offering targeted employment support for ethnic minority groups is being funded through government-backed programs, including the Department for Work and Pensions’ Economic Inactivity Trailblazer and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

In Greater Manchester, public funding has also been used for projects providing “culturally appropriate employability support,” including CV workshops and mentoring aimed at Black and minority ethnic communities.

Taxpayer-funded employment support should be available to all jobseekers regardless of race. The TaxPayers’ Alliance called the schemes “two-tier initiatives,” while campaign group Don’t Divide Us described them as a “race-based” and divisive approach.

It should be illegal to discriminate against indigenous Europeans in Britain, or indeed, anywhere in Europe. And anyone who does it, or advocates doing it, should be ineligible for citizenship of, or residency in, any European country.

Al Carns’ Five Tests

Here it is in full with my annotations:

THE FIVE TESTS

For weeks I’ve argued that this party, and this country, needs a proper debate about where we go next. Not a reshuffle. Not a few degrees of course correction. The big, difficult, honest choices we’ve spent thirty years avoiding.

A few people have asked me what that debate should actually be about. Fair enough. I spent 24 years in the Marines and two in government, and I resigned because I couldn’t win the argument I believed in from the inside. So let me make it here, plainly.

This isn’t a manifesto, but a set of five tests. Anyone asking to lead our country should be able to look down this list and say yes to all five.

(1) ⁠The Frontline Test

Do we give the people on the frontline the kit they need to do the job, and stand by them when the job is done?

I joined the Marines at 18. I’ve buried friends. So I do take this one personally.

I sat in government and watched us write a defence plan for a world that no longer exists, discussed in rooms I was kept out of. A 100k drone is now sinking warships that cost a billion. That is the reality of the wars being fought right now.

Passing this means 3% of GDP as the floor, not the ceiling.

The is a very real danger that if a non-modernised British army is fighting an enemy who is fully modernised for the drone age, we could lose badly. Countries such as Russia, China and Iran all have the ability to manufacture drones in vast quantities, so if Britain was fighting any of them, or any countries supplied by them, we would be in danger.

Buying for the next war, not the last. And fixing the Legacy Act so blokes in their seventies aren’t back in the dock for what they were cleared of decades ago.

Indeed. Idiot lawyers like Starmer only see this from a legal point of view so don’t appreciate this.

(2) The Next-Generation Test

Are we handing the next generation a better deal than the one we inherited, or a worse one?

It seems to me that Britain is a country where thinks gradually get worse, year on year.

I’m a lad from a tough part of Aberdeen. My mum raised five of us through some bleak years. The only reason I got out was because I was given an opportunity. That cannot be said for young people today.

Nearly a million young people, around one in eight, are now outside work, education or training. That isn’t their failure. It’s ours.

Fixing this means a NEETs and youth unemployment target with a date, the youth guarantee delivered not just announced. Restoring the link between work and a decent life for the under 30s, on housing, wages and opportunity. Skills and apprenticeship numbers that beat the last government, not just match it.

Talent is everywhere in this country. Opportunity isn’t. Fix that and you fix half of everything else...

(3) ⁠The Trillion-Pound Test

Is the plan to add a trillion pounds to what Britain earns, or to manage the decline more politely?

Here’s the lesson I learned from Ukraine and in government, and it never changes. We invent things. Other countries build them. Other countries decide. We’re brilliant at the first mile and absent for the next ninety nine.

So set a target and be judged on it. A trillion pounds added to our GDP within a decade. Yes, it’s ambitious. We should be ambitious!

Yes we need to grow the economy, which has underperformed for decades. This is easier said than done, in part because doing so means combatting vested interests, in particular nimbys.

Getting there means backing the high tech inventors just as much as the high street traders. Your local coffee shop shouldn’t be paying more tax per cappuccino than Starbucks does. So why on earth do they?

Starbucks need to pay their fair share of tax. If they won’t, fine, they don’t have to trade in Britain. We don’t need them.

It means an industrial strategy worth the name. Things to make and things to sell, in Barrow, in Derby, in every region. Our industrial base is national security, so we should fund it like it.

We should not have offshored manufacturing to China. We need to reverse that.

And it means building the chips and the compute here,

Yes. We need digital sovereignty: full ownership/control of all of our computing and communications infrastructure. Everything from chips to social media websites, and all technologies in between.

not inventing the breakthrough and watching someone else scale it. Data is the new gunpowder.

(4) The 10% Test

Can we make the country work 10% better, instead of only ever asking for 10% more?

I saw this from the inside. We patch the symptom this year, but the bill grows next year, and we end up paying for failure at the most expensive end of every system.

A 10% improvement in outcomes across a handful of our biggest problems, ill health, reoffending, wasted potential, would free up somewhere between £40 and £60 billion a year. We’re already paying those costs. We just pay them too late, when they’re at their worst.

Passing this means investing early instead of paying far more later, and having the honesty to admit that not every pound we spend today delivers an immediate return.

We absolutely need to do things more efficiently. For example the UK spends 12% of GDP on healthcare, whereas Singapore spends 4% and they live longer than us.

Running government efficiently needs to be done but is hard to do.

I suggest all government departments run multiple A/B tests, trying different things and seeing what works, on a continual ongoing basis.

(5) The Lights-On Test

Does our energy policy keep the lights on, the bills down and factories open, or do we keep chasing a target and hope the rest sorts itself out?

For years we’ve treated net zero as the only goal, and everything else, your bill, our industry, whether the grid even stays up, as a problem for later. That’s the wrong way around.

In practice net zero means offshoring our manufacturing to China. Time to end it. There is no point in us having zero emissions when other countries are vastly increasing theirs.

Make energy security the goal. Power that people, businesses, and industry can afford, and a grid that stays on when someone tries to switch it off. Do that and net zero follows. Chase the target on its own, and you end up with neither.

Passing this means a serious baseload, nuclear and the North Sea, built in time to matter. Strong countries have cheap, secure energy. Weak countries don’t.

None of this is complicated. It’s the oldest deal there is. You serve the country, the country stands by you. In uniform, in a hospital, in a classroom, on a building site. Right now that deal is broken, and everyone keeping our country going can feel it.

That broken deal is the real reason for the frustration out there.

A large part of why the deal is broken is anti-white racism, and mass immigration of people who’re an economic liability. No immigrant should be entitled to a single penny from the state until they’ve worked and paid tax for a number of years.

It’s why trust has drained out of politics. And it’s why our party that won a landslide is, halfway through the term, already arguing about who leads it.

But changing the person at the top fixes nothing if we don’t fix the deal underneath. Swap one leader for another and leave the deal broken, and we’ll be right back here in eighteen months, asking the same question all over again.

So I’m not interested in who gets what job. I’m interested in whether we’ve got the courage to pass these tests.

Yes. The important thing is good government not the person at the top.

We’ve been promised a debate. This is my opening offer to it. And if that debate ever becomes a contest, it should be fought on this ground, not on personalities.

I know where I stand.

An ultimatum against Burnham

GB news says Carns is giving an “ultimatum” to Burnham:

Andy Burnham has received an ultimatum ahead of next week as the Makerfield MP plots to become the next Labour leader and Prime Minister.

ex-Armed Forces Minister Al Carns is seen as a “dark horse” to run against Mr Burnham. The former Royal Marine commando, who was first elected to the House of Commons in 2024, gave Mr Burnham an ultimatum as the silver-haired Scotsman teased about standing himself.

He said: “Whoever wants to lead the country, tell me what you want it to be in 2029 and 2034.

“Let’s be really clear on the objectives you want to get to, the outcomes you want for this country. What’s the vision?”

Who is Carns?

The Scotsman asks who is Carns:

Lots of names have been bandied about as to who could replace [Starmer].

one, lesser known name, regularly comes up when any leadership chat is mentioned: Al Carns.

Although he was only elected as an MP in 2024, the Aberdeen native has made a big impression in his 22 months in Westminster.

He served five tours in Afghanistan and hit the headlines earlier this year when he criticised Donald Trump for claiming Nato troops avoided the frontline.

And:

The 45-year-old was born and raised in Aberdeen to a single mother and attended Hazlehead Academy.

Having initially been turned down from the military because of his colour blindness, he enlisted as a Royal Marine commando in 1999 aged 19.

Since then he has had a stellar 24-year military career, although much of it cannot be made public for national security reasons.

He served five tours of Afghanistan and in 2011 he won the Military Cross “in recognition of gallant and distinguished service”. Mr Carns also received a Distinguished Service Order and was given an OBE in the Queen’s birthday honours in 2022.

He is no stranger to a gruelling challenge. He went on an expedition to the Arctic earlier this year. Last year he climbed Mount Everest on an expedition with former special forces colleagues, and set a record by doing it in under five days by using xenon gas and hypoxic training to acclimatise.

In year 5 of Russia’s 3-day “special military operation” against Ukraine, Ukraine has launched drone strikes into Moscow, setting fire to oil refineries and other targets.

Here’s a massive plume of smoke, visible to Muscovites for miles, from the Kapotnya oil refinery, as it burns:

The Kapotnya oil refinery is just 10 miles away from the Kremlin, so you could probably see the smoke from Putin’s official residence, the Grand Kremlin Palace or from Putin’s office in the Senate Palace.

Are you feeling the heat yet, Putin?

Perun on FCAS cancellation

Perun examines the cancellation of the FCAS 6th generation stealth aircraft:

Labour risks handing power to Reform

Labour risks handing power to Reform without drastic change, says union leader Andrea Egan:

Andrea Egan is about to attend her first conference of the country’s biggest union, Unison, as its leader.

She has suggested that the union had previously been “a sleeping giant” which was too “subservient” to the Labour leadership.

“I have spoken out clearly about the threat Reform brings,” she said.

“It isn’t us that will hand the keys to No10 to Reform - it’s them, unless they change course. And drastically.”

What changes does Egan propose:

“They’ve got to start introducing progressive policies. Investment in infrastructure, pay restoration, better services, insourcing. They need to ensure that they deliver on promises they made when they came into government.”

What’s driving the Reform vote is concerns about immigration and anti-white racism. About 30% of electorate are strongly against these, and without tackling these issues, Labour will not persuade reform voters to switch to them.

See also my previous posts:

• Many believe anti-white racism by the police is endemic

• Links 64: Henry Nowak memorial special edition

What if Sim City was set in UK?

Chris Spargo asks What if the game Sim City was set in UK??

The answer is: lots more red tape!

Free Speech Union contra free speech

Toby Young’s Free Speech Union went to court to prevent people publishing its list of donors, says Peter Geoghegan:

I was somewhat surprised to learn that last week Young’s organisation had itself obtained a High Court injunction - banning the publication of a list of its donors.

The court order followed the hacking of the organisation’s website earlier this month by the trans rights group Bash Back. On its own website, Bash Back accused the FSU of “purport[ing] to protect free speech” while in reality “work[ing] to protect transphobes, racists, and anti-choice activists,” and published a list of people who had donated £50 or more to the FSU over the past two years.

The High Court injunction prohibits Bash Back - or anyone else - from publishing the donor list. Breaching the order could lead to contempt of court sanctions, including imprisonment.

Geoghegan adds:

The FSU cares a lot about the funding of organisations it brands as ‘pro-censorship’. Last month, it announced the hiring of former Daily Mail journalist David Rose to investigate donors to Hope Not Hate and the Center for Countering Digital Hate. We asked the FSU whether this was somewhat ironic, given its refusal to disclose its own funding.

Entryism into Restore Britain

Nick Griffin proposes entryism into Restore Britain:

Nick Griffin published an entryism strategy on 23 June. Not in a private letter to trusted organisers. Not in a coded message to a closed network. On Substack, under his own name, with the heading “Nationalism’s Militant Tendency” and an explicit invitation to circulate it to Restore Britain supporters.

The target he named: Restore Britain and its 130,000 members. Ethnonationalists should join, keep quiet about their actual views, remove what he calls “hardline badges,” and work from within to convert Lowe’s membership into something more useful. The historical precedent he invoked was the Militant Tendency’s twenty-year campaign inside Labour. He published all of this under his own name and then asked his readers to spread it specifically among Restore’s base.

Griffin’s tweet:

Simon Pearson comments:

The tactical strangeness of this needs sitting with.

Entryism depends on concealment.

Draft Scottish foreign policy

Jim Sillars has a draft Scottish foreign policy:

This is a draft outline of a Scottish foreign policy. The final paper will figure as a section of the comprehensive 2029 Independence for A Purpose manifesto. Where decisions on policy are indicated, these should be taken as preliminary.

On NATO and the EU the document states:

It is a major foreign policy decision, for security reasons, to seek/accept membership of NATO.

Of equal importance is a decision is to seek entry, for economic reasons, to either EU or EFTA/EEA

I agree that these would be the major international organisations / partnerships that an independent Scotland should join.

Don’t build ASI

Andrea Miotti says we shouldn’t build artificial superintelligence (ASI), because it might kill everyone:

The entire international security architecture is built around the assumption that the most dangerous weapons are controlled by humans, and that the decision to take lives ultimately rests with humans. Superintelligence would upend this. Unlike nuclear weapons—the most lethal weapons we have today—superintelligent systems would not be tools humans can leverage, but rather agents able to pursue their own objectives with no human control over their actions. The leading AI companies are actively worsening the problem by making AIs as autonomous as possible and cutting humans out of the process of AI development.

Superintelligence thus represents the ultimate principal-agent problem, and it’s nowhere near being solved. Most alarming of all, Nobel Prize winners, leading AI scientists, and even the CEOs of the top AI companies warn that superintelligence poses an extinction risk to humanity. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has repeatedly said that superhuman machine intelligence is the greatest threat to humanity’s continued existence

I agree.

The art of the deal, Iran edition

From the Guardian:

Rejoin March

ITVX reports of a march to rejoin the EU:

Hundreds march through capital calling to rejoin EU ahead of 10th Brexit anniversary

Brexit was branded a “travesty” by demonstrators who marked the 10th anniversary of the UK’s exit vote with a march calling to rejoin the bloc.

Police on the ground estimated that around 1,500 people set off from central London’s Temple station on Saturday to Parliament Square in Whitehall behind a banner which declared “We Want Our Star Back”.

The National Rejoin March (NRM) was filled with people carrying EU flags and wearing blue and yellow hats and T-shirts that said “Citizen of Europe” and “Re:Union”.

The rejoiners include Spiderman:

Clearly some want to rejoin, but 1500 people is hardly overwhelming. Even if they do have Spiderman on their side.

Burnham on Brexit

Andy Burnham is likely to be the country’s next prime minister. What are his views on Brexit?

Unherd says he is lukewarm about rejoining:

That was apparent in Burnham’s shifting pronouncements on the European Union. Burnham never made a secret of his Remainerism when he was Mayor of Greater Manchester. Just last year he was trying to open up a conversation about rejoining. “I believe in unions of all kinds,” he bafflingly proclaimed: “the union of the UK. The EU benefited this country. Trade unions. People prosper more when they’re part of unions.” But the Makerfield constituency had voted Leave by two to one. Memories of the Remainer Burnham had therefore to be put out of Makerfield minds. Early in the by-election, he made the wise decision not to “re-run” the old arguments. That was enough to win the day; and now he is on track to be Prime Minister.

Barnier on rejoining

Michel Barnier thinks if the UK rejoins it could get some of its old terms back:

Michel Barnier has said Britain could regain its special terms if it rejoined the EU and claimed it was becoming clearer every day to the British people that they would be stronger in Europe.

In an interview before the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum next week, the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator said he could not see any obstacle to the UK keeping the pound and remaining outside the passport-free Schengen travel area should the country rejoin.

UK public opinion

UK public opinion favours rejoining:

And most people think Brexit has had negative results:

Even if Britain doesn't rejoin the EU, most people want closer ties with it:

(My own view is that it would be very desirable for Britain to have a close relationship on military and defence, both with EU countries and countries outside the EU, for example Canada, Australia, and Japan.)

Stability

Since the Brexit vote we’ve had 6 prime minister: Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak and Starmer. That’s one PM every 1.7 years. And we’ll soon have another as Starmer announced his resignation yesterday.

In the 20 years preceding the Brexit vote we had 4 prime ministers (Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron) -- which is one every 5 years.

So Britain has been less politically stable after the Brexit vote. Of course this doesn’t prove that Brexit caused the instability; post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this) is a logical fallacy for a reason.

Conclusion

Brexit is clearly a live political issue, in that it is not settled: most people want to rejoin.

Having said that, rejoining is not a very high priority, either for the ruling class or the general population.

Starmer's popularity had fallen faster than any other recent prime minister, with the exception of Liz Truss who was only in the job for 49 days before being outlasted by a lettuce:

Why is this? What’s uniquely bad about Starmer? To answer this, I’ll look at what he did as leader of the opposition, criticisms from the left and right, and things I dislike about him.

Starmer as leader of the opposition

To get elected as Labour leader, Starmer said he would be a continuation of Corbyn and position himself on the left of the party. As Owen Jones puts it, Starmer “conned the Labour membership into voting for him on a false prospectus”.

As leader of the opposition, Starmer steadily moved Labour to the right. Arguably this made Labour more electable (although more people voted for Corbyn in the 2017 and 2019 general elections than voted for Starmer in 2024). Many on the left of the party felt betrayed.

One of the first things Starmer did as leader was to kick Corbyn out of the Labour Party on trumped-up charges of antisemitism. This is what I personally started having serious doubts about his character: he’s a nasty authoritarian.

Following October 2023, Starmer became stridently pro-Israel, saying in effect that Israel has the right to commit genocide in Gaza. This was unpopular because most British people -- whether on the left, the right or the center -- are against genocide. Also because the job of British politicians is to advance Britain’s interest’s not Israel’s.

Criticism from the left

Owen Jones can be taken as representative of people on the left. His criticisms of Starmer include that Starmer:

• targeted pensioners and disabled people

• went from extolling the benefits of immigration to raiding the rhetoric of Enoch Powell and introducing one of Europe’s harshest asylum systems

• shredded the international aid budget

• backed Israel’s right to impose a siege on a civilian population, then claimed he hadn’t

• introduced legislation which arrests grannies for holding placards opposing genocide on the absurd grounds they are terrorist supporters

• self-evidently had no vision or even coherent plan for government when he took over, which is why everything fell apart so quickly

• appointed Mandelson as Ambassador, claiming he’d been deceived into believing Mandelson barely knew Epstein, even though the public record at the time made clear that was obviously untrue.

While leaders are usually unpopular with supporters of other parties, they are usually fairly popular with their own supporters. But according to the Guardian, this is not true of Starmer:

The raw disapproval figures, at least, have an explanation. Leaders tend to be viewed favourably by supporters of their own party, and Starmer is not. He entered No 10 with understandably strong backing from 2024 Labour voters, but this has evaporated, seemingly the result of government blunders and a policy framing intended more to chase Reform than engage the base.

Criticism from the right

The main criticism of Starmer from the right is that he is (in Elon Musk’s words) “Two Tier Keir” who supports anti-white racism by the police, and the public sector more generally.

Obviously if a voter thinks their country’s leader is against them personally for their immutable characteristics, they are going to be against that leader.

The right also thinks Starmer has done way too little on combatting illegal immigration, people coming here on small boats, or on deporting violent immigrants.

It’s his personality

Apart from policy differences, maybe Starmer just comes across as an unlikeable person:

YouGov’s head of politics and elections, Anthony Wells, says the leap from the polling figures to the outright, visceral dislike can be difficult to explain. “People thought Rishi Sunak did a terrible job, but there wasn’t that deep personal element you get sometimes with Starmer,” he said.

“He is deeply unpopular. The polling consistently shows it. But the reasons for it – disappointment in the scale of delivery, and the feeling he hasn’t got much of a clear purpose – are not what you would expect to drive a great dislike.”

I agree with this analysis. While I didn’t like a lot of what Sunak did, I didn’t feel a visceral sense of dislike for him.

My opinion of Starmer

I think the critiques from both the left and the right have a lot of truth in them.

Personally, I have had serious misgivings about Starmer ever since he expelled Corbyn from the Labour party:

Starmer [has] an authoritarian tendency that reminds me of Stalin.

I’ve felt this ever since Starmer had his predecessor as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, kicked out of the party. The reason given for doing this was that Corbyn had asserted that the scale of antisemitism in the Labour Party had been overstated for political reasons.

Given the amount of factional infighting in the Labour Party, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that the real reason Starmer kicked Corbyn out of Labour was to get rid of a rival, and make it easier for Starmer to gain total control over the party. This is reminiscent of how Stalin expelled Trotsky from the CPSU.

While I don’t agree with all of Corbyn’s policies, it seems clear to me that as an individual he’s a decent person. The same cannot be said of Starmer.

Summary

Starmer is unpopular because:

1. he has an unlikeable personality

2. Starmer has made unforced errors such as supporting Israel when they commit genocide

3. while it is usual to be disliked by supporters of other parties, Labour supporters don’t like him either

4. politics is more fragmented these days, so supporters of the Labour party are a smaller proportion of the electorate

Will Burnham do any better? He’s certainly more likeable than Starmer.

Here’s Andy Burnham giving his victory speech in the Makerfield by election:

Makerfield

Labour candidate Andy Burnham won handily with 55% of the vote.

Reform came second, although their vote share was only 2.7 points up from 2024, so they will be disappointed by this performance.

It was Restore Britain’s first parliamentary election, and they came third on just under 7% of the vote. This was a solid performance for a new party that was only created this year.

Devolved elections (in Scotland, London, Wales, Northern Ireland) and local government elections in Scotland and Northern Ireland all use somewhat proportional systems, and 7% vote share is enough to be in with a chance of winning in these elections. 7% is however not enough to win Westminster elections.

Aberdeen South

The Conservatives won this, doubling their vote share.

This compares with Makerfield where the Tories only got 2%. Winning Aberdeen South means the Tories are still a force in parts of the country, and Badenoch will be pleased with this result, as it means she keeps her job.

I had expected the SNP to win here, as they won it in 2024 in what was a bad year of them.

Arbroath and Broughty Ferry

In contrast with Aberdeen, the SNP won handily in Arbroath:

The SNP’s vote share was up. In fact, everyone’s vote share went up, except for Labour, whose vote share collapsed. Coming on the same day as their emphatic win in Makerfield, I’m not sure what to make of this other than that the electorate are fickle.

Just a bit of fun...

Just for a bit of fun I put the changes in vote shares into Electoral Calculus, and it spat out a conservative majority of 48, on a mere 31% of the vote:

Do I think this is what will happen? Probably not, but with the volatility of the electorate and the disproportionality caused by FPTP it’s plausible that something like this might happen.

FPTP is clearly unfit for purpose, in a UK that has a 5 party system (or a 6 party system if Restore do well, or a 7 party system in Scotland and Wales if Restore does well in those countries). While everyone agrees that things are fucked up, they disagree on how to fix things, which is what is causing the increase in the number of largeish parties.

The next Prime Minister?

Back in 2024 I created a Manifold Market on Who will be the next UK Prime Minister after Keir Starmer.

Andy Burnham is currently at 83%:

Will Burnham become prime minister? Probably.

Will he make a better PM than Starmer? Burnham is more likeable so Labour will probably do better. I doubt that he will go very far in making any of the big changes urgently needed in Britain.

Ukrainian national [Roman] Lavrynovych, and Romanian national Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, have now been convicted at the Old Bailey of conspiring to target property and a car connected to the UK prime minister.

The facts are these: On 8 May 2025, a Toyota RAV4 previously owned by the prime minister was set fire to on a street he previously lived on in Kentish Town.

Here’s the car on fire:

On 11 May 2025, there was a fire was at flats linked to Sir Keir in Islington. He had lived there years before.

The next day, on 12 May 2025, a fire was discovered at the entrance to Sir Keir’s Kentish Town home, which was being rented out to his sister-in-law. She was inside with her family at the time.

On Monday 15 June 2026 Lavrynovych (left in picture below) and Carpiuc (right) were found guilty at the Old Bailey.

Russia’s gig economy terrorism

The BBC reports that this was part of Russia’s “gig economy terrorism”:

[Lavrynovych and Carpiuc’s handler] EL posted in jobs groups for Ukrainians, asking for “painters to do graffiti” in London

“Work for the glory of the nation to spite your enemies,” EL added, before offering $1,000 (£749) and Russian citizenship as a reward for arson attacks.

Here’s a video I’ve linked to before about Russia’s gig economy terrorism:

What Britain will do about this

Fuck all as usual. The drift continues. No-one is in charge of the ship of state, or at least no-one with any backbone or competence.

The reason this is a problem is that the world is an anarchy, so the only way for a country to not be victimised by an aggressor like Russia is to come across as someone who doesn’t take any shit, who fights backs when attacked. The alternative response, of doing nothing, just invites more attacks by Russia.

The situation is made worse by the resignation of Britain’s defence secretary and armed forces minister; they both resigned last week in protest against our defences being underfunded. Starmer is a weak feeble poodle who apparently doesn’t realise that one must be strong and resolute when dealing with adversaries.

What Britain should do

Firstly, break off diplomatic relations with Russia.

Secondly, there needs to be emergency legislation saying Russia is to be considered an enemy as far as treason legislation is concerned. This means that anyone spreading pro-Russian or anti-Ukraine propaganda can be prosecuted for treason, as can anyone insufficiently enthusiastic about taking the steps to counter Putin and Russia.

Thirdly, greatly increase armed forces spending. Priorities should go to nukes (and their associated delivery systems) and drones.

See also

• Defence Secretary John Healey resigns

• Starmer confirms he is Trump’s poodle

WarFronts reports that both Iran and Russia are carrying out “gig economy” terrorism, i.e. recruiting people on the internet to carry out acts of violence:

Excerpt:

While typically global security experts think of asymmetric saboteurs as being ideologically motivated or loyal to the ruling regime they support, [Iranian terrorist group] HAYI seem to operate very differently. The outlet, described the group as quote “gig economy Iranian spies”, meaning people who had been offered cash to carry out an attack or at times to be in the right place at the right time with a camera. The implication, of course, is that those people didn’t particularly care about Iran so much as they cared about getting paid. As indictments and detentions have become public, it’s been increasingly clear that HAYI really does recruit an unusually high share of teenagers, as well as disillusioned people dealing with psychological trouble and people without very much to their name. Or to put it another way, people without very much to lose. As several outlets and analysts have pointed out, high recruitment patterns mirror the tactics that Russia has used to carry out its own sabotage campaign across Europe. perpetrated according to CNN by quote non-Russian nationals for small amounts of money and without full knowledge of who the operations serve.

Iran and Russia are close to each other politically so it’s entirely possible that the two countries’ intelligence operations compare notes on what works and what doesn’t.

Democracies-7

For NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen wants to set up an alliance of democracies called the Democracies-7 or D7:

Middle powers may appear to face a binary choice: pursue unattainable self-sufficiency or accept a performative sovereignty as satellites of a great power.

This article sets out a third path.

At its center is a Democracies-7—a D7—consisting of Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and the United Kingdom as founding members. Together they represent roughly $36 trillion USD in combined GDP, around 30% of the global total. They hold the economic weight to deter coercion, even from global hegemons.

This is similar to my proposal for a European military alliance.

USA not good at “soccer”

Nate Silver asks “Why isn’t the U.S. better at soccer?”:

is it too much to ask that this is also the year when the U.S. men’s soccer team breaks through, with the World Cup set to kick off this week on North American soil?

Prediction markets give the U.S. only a 10 percent chance of reaching the semifinal.

Maybe you could start by getting the name of the sport right, you muppets. It’s “football” FFS.

Hannan the naysayer wants Britain to be weak

Dan Hannan has written a piece in the Telegraph (X link) saying rejoining the EU isn’t going to happen:

His reason? Status quo bias:

The greatest advantage that [remainers] had ten years ago was status quo bias. Voters are change-averse

[...] Ten years on, that advantage has flipped, making a re-entry referendum all but unwinnable.

This is bollocks as is demonstrated by opinion polls on rejoining:

Rejoin has been consistently ahead in the polls for almost five years now. Of course we’d vote to rejoin, and the Brexshiteers deep down know it.

So why is Hannan really against rejoining? Rejoining, especially if it was coupled to the creation of a worldwide military alliance, would make Britain strong again.

Right now, Britain is a small weak country that fears being threatened by Trump or Putin. But if we were strong, like we were 100 years ago, no-one would be able to threaten us. And the only way for us to be strong is to be part of a big military alliance, which in practice must be centered on Europe.

The problem is that many in the British ruling class don’t want that. They have taken on an attitude of learned helplessness, where nothing big and important can ever be done. So they are psychologically reluctant to try to make Britain more powerful. There’s also the fact that as lot of them are stupid so don’t understand the importance of being powerful or how to achieve it. (If you disagree with me that they are stupid, how else do you explain Liz Truss becoming prime minister?)

Is WindSong the future of housing?

Fair Companies writes:

Thirty years ago, a group of friends in British Columbia set out to create a new kind of ecovillage—and they built it under glass. Located 30 miles south of Vancouver, WindSong is Canada’s first cohousing community, designed with pedestrian streets covered by a greenhouse-style roof.

The goal was clear: protect residents from the west coast’s rain and snow while fostering year-round neighborly connections.

The community features 34 privately owned townhomes, a 5,000-square-foot common house with a communal kitchen and dining room, shared laundry, underground parking, organic gardens, and preserved green spaces.

Here’s a video on WindSong:

WindSong say of themselves:

WindSong incorporates the best of urban and rural lifestyles. Our property is rich with indoor and outdoor beauty.

Our 34 townhomes are in two long rows facing each other across a pedestrian street. The common house is located midway between the north and south ends. Community streets are covered by a greenhouse-style glass roof enabling us to walk, talk, and play outdoors without getting wet, a significant factor in our west coast rainforest climate! Our building design encourages neighbourly interaction.

Our 5,000 sq. ft. common house includes an industrial kitchen, dining room, fireside lounge, playroom with loft and outdoor play structure, an arts & crafts room, workshop, laundry room, community office and board room, multi-purpose (exercise) room, media room, guest room, three washrooms, wheelchair ramps and an underground parking lot.

Is this the future for housing? I think it’s a future, and would work for some people. You’d need to choose your neighbours well -- if you had neighbours you liked and got on with, it could be very good.

UK benefits spending

Roland Smith does a deep dive into UK benefits spending:

Britain’s benefits bill for 2025/26 is £333.7 billion. 55% of this is accounted for by pensioner benefits, so £177.7 billion. Those pensioner benefits include state pensions which make up the lion’s share of that £177.7 billion (82% of it, in fact).

So that’s over half of all welfare spending on pensioner benefits. That means ‘other benefits’ must be covered by the other 45% of the total bill - the remaining £145 billion.

That £145 billion breaks down as follows:

• Sickness and Incapacity: £30bn

• Extra-Cost Disability: £28bn

• Low Income, Unemployment, & Family Support: £52bn

• Housing Support: £35bn

Israel to spend $730M on propaganda

The Times of Israel reports:

Israel just quintupled its PR budget to $730 million; experts say it won’t work

Israel is betting nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars that it can talk its way out of a reputation crisis.

Lawmakers in Jerusalem approved a 2026 national budget last month that includes roughly $730 million for public diplomacy — the broad category known in Hebrew as hasbara — nearly five times the $150 million they allocated the year before. That earlier sum was itself about 20 times what Israel had spent on such efforts before the war in Gaza erupted in October, 2023, following Hamas’s invasion and massacre in southern Israel.

The unprecedented expenditure comes as survey after survey shows declining support for Israel in the United States, its most important ally. A Pew Research Center poll released earlier this month found 60 percent of Americans now view Israel unfavorably, up seven points in a single year, with only 37% viewing it favorably.

I don’t think it’ll work either.

Caitlin Johnstone adds:

Israel Could Solve Its PR Problem By Simply Ceasing To Be Evil

Zionists [...] never give serious attention to the possibility that Israel would have a lot more public approval if it stopped fucking murdering innocent civilians all the time and fucking torturing people and raping captives with trained rape dogs. Israel can’t possibly be wrong; only our thoughts about Israel can be wrong.

Nudge unit nudges pro-government statement

Stephan Ogilvie is the man in Belfast who was almost beheaded by a savage barbarian migrant the UK government had let in. (see my previous story Many believe anti-white racism by the police is endemic)

The Police Service of Northern Ireland have put out a statement they say is from his family, which includes the following:

We are completely devastated by the horrific attack on our loved one on Kinnaird Avenue. This has been a massive shock to our whole family, and right now, our only priority is being at his bedside and helping him recover. ​

We have witnessed a lot of false information circulating on social media which is now forcing us to clarify that our loved one is in fact in a stable condition, and we are solely focused on his recovery at this time.

​ We are also appealing to the media and the public to please give us some space. We need privacy to focus on our family right now, without cameras or people speculating about what happened via social media.

We have been left feeling disgusted by the scenes that unfolded yesterday across Northern Ireland in the wake of what happened. We want to make it absolutely clear that to do this in response is not supported by our family, and peaceful protest is only ever the way forward. We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country, including from within our healthcare system and hospitality sector, and we depend on them to make our country work. We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility - do not do this in the name of our loved one as we do not share the same values.

It is not plausible that the family wrote it. It comes across as a government press release.

As Fergus Mason writes:

Is anyone actually stupid enough to believe that the family of Stephen Ogilvie, who is currently in a coma with hideous injuries after being attacked by an imported savage, would write a bland statement about the importance of immigration to the hospitality sector?

The government’s fingerprints are all over this.

Anthropic wants AI pause

Leading AI company Anthropic wants a pause on developing advanced AI, says Pause AI:

Misalignment between humans and AI could lead us to “lose control”.

“It would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology.”

ASI (artificial superintelligence) if created will be vastly cleverer than any human and there is no way we would be able to control it.

If we are not careful our species’ epitaph will be: they were smart enough to create ASI, but not wise enough not to.

Are Reform hurting Farage

Is Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain hurting Nigel Farage’s Reform UK?

I wonder if Farage is now regretting telling the police malicious lies about Lowe in order to ruin someone he saw as a dangerous rival?

Germany and France scrap FCAS

The Guardian reports that Germany and France have scrapped their FCAS 6th generation fighter aircraft programme:

France and Germany have concluded that the companies involved in building a joint fighter jet will not be able to reach an agreement and have abandoned the project, officials in Berlin have said in a blow to Europe’s common defence efforts.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, had “reached the shared assessment that the companies will not be able to come together”, an official told Agence France-Presse. “They acknowledge this reality.”

Maybe one or both countries will join the British-Italian-Japanese Global Combat Air Programme.

Matthew Palmer at Cracking Defence comments:

The trigger was the refusal by Starmer to provide the money required by the MOD to fund the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) and make up the shortfall in the current spending. Reporting from around the media suggest that Starmer could only end up offering around £13.5bn, far less than the compromise the MOD had reached at £17bn and almost half of the £28bn they actually wanted. This had come after suggestions that Starmer was looking to cut infrastructure investment elsewhere (a terrible decision in my view) to pay for defence, and that the Treasury had demanded direct financial control of the Global Combat Air Programme, a huge multinational project aimed at creating a next-generation fighter jet with Japan and Italy.

I fully support their decision to resign and I condemn the government for not ensuring the country is adequately defended.

Their resignation letters

The BBC has Healey’s and Carns’ resignation letters in full.

Healey writes:

This new era for defence required further investment through the Defence Investment Plan (DIP). The excellent and extensive cross-government work that completed in January-overseen by you, me and the Chancellor - confirmed the scale of the challenge and the rising demands on defence.

Since then, you have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats.

Carns writes:

We face a more unstable and dangerous world than at any point in recent decades, and having spent most of my adult life in uniform, I understand what public service in such a moment demands.

It is for this very reason I cannot continue.

I have watched, as a Marine, what war looks like now. I have spoken to those who have seen it up close in Ukraine. The lesson is uncomfortable and it is unambiguous. The character of conflict is changing faster than our procurement can keep up with. We are still purchasing capability suitable for the last war while our adversaries arm for the next one. Platforms that cost billions can be defeated by systems that cost thousands. Any serious Defence Investment Plan has to start from that reality.

While I had no hand in the Defence Investment Plan, that distance does allow me to say plainly that it is not built for the threat we face. It is neither transformative enough nor sufficiently funded. We are asking our Armed Forces to operate in a more dangerous world on a budget written for a calmer one.

I have sat in the rooms, seen the assessments, and spoken to the commanders who will be asked to do more with less, and I cannot in good conscience stand at the dispatch box and defend a level of investment I know to be inadequate to the task. A serious country funds its defence to meet the threat it actually faces, not the threat it wishes it faced.

The Guardian reads between the lines of Healey’s letter to discern what he really meant:

2. ‘You have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats.’

A mere 250 words in, and we get to the crux. Starmer, Healey notes, recognised both the scale of the threat and the need for more funding, based around the defence investment plan (Dip), which had been due this week but is now delayed.

Healey then spells out what many in Westminster assumed – that the delay was owing to wrangling with the Treasury, and that Rachel Reeves’s department was blocking the sorts of sums Healey wanted.

Notably more wounding is the notion that Starmer was “unable” to stop this. Healey, it should be remembered, was among four cabinet ministers who spoke to the prime minister shortly after May’s local elections, asking him to consider his future given the heavy Labour losses. Here, Healey does not sound convinced that Starmer has since got a grip on things.

Will this affect GCAP?

How does this affect the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), which Britain is developing alongside Japan and Italy?

The EurAsian Times says:

GCAP Fighter Program in Jeopardy as UK Defence Secretary Resigns in Funding Row

British Defense Secretary John Healey resigned on Thursday, blaming Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Treasury for failing to provide adequate funding for defense investment, including critical support for the sixth-generation GCAP fighter program.

Interestingly, just a few days ago, France and Germany scrapped their 6th-Gen Future Combat Air System (FCAS) program after years of disputes between Dassault Aviation and Airbus. With FCAS effectively dead, pressure is now mounting on GCAP to succeed, even as UK’s own funding uncertainties threaten to undermine the trilateral UK-Japan-Italy program.

GCAP is an important defence program and money needs to be found for it.

Maybe Germany will join GCAP:

The head of Italian defense firm Leonardo has welcomed the possibility of Germany entering the Italo-Japanese-UK GCAP fighter program but has warned that adding a new member could push back the delivery date.

Leonardo CEO Lorenzo Mariani spoke on Wednesday after the collapse of the French-German Future Combat Air System program on Monday, following months of rows between French and German industry over work share on the sixth-generation jet.

If Germany does join, then German involvement in GCAP must be done in a way that does not put back deadlines.

Here’s a video of the Northern Ireland riots, 9 June 2026:

And here is the post again:

I’ve noticed a pattern with a lot of recent problems that have reached blowup points: it’s a situation that has driven some group to the breaking point, but the response from the Establishment is not just to ignore their pleas for help but to aggressively deny that there is a solution.

a) Housing

Young people in big cities: “Housing is so expensive we can barely afford to live here. Some of us are having to live out of our cars.”

The Establishment: “Just live with it. Trust that the iron triangle of well-connected developers, retired NIMBYs, and self-absorbed bureaucrats who made housing this impossible to find will solve the problem eventually.”

Young people in big cities: “Nah, you know what? Time to elect some socialists and establish rent control.”

b) Police violence

Black people: “It sure looks like police can murder blacks and never get held responsible for their actions.”

The Establishment: “Just live with it. Trust that the same justice system which has protected bad cops for decades and decades is for some reason going to magically do the right thing this time around.”

Black people: “Nah, you know what? Time to burn down the police station.”

c) Social media censorship

Right-wingers: “We are getting silenced by politically biased social media companies. We’re not permitted to advocate for our point of view.”

The Establishment: “Just live with it. Trust that the same Marketplace of Ideas that has led to you getting silenced, banned, doxxed, and fired from your jobs will eventually let you have your say someday.”

Right-wingers: “Nah, you know what? Time to repeal Section 230.”

In every case the tactic the aggrieved group has settled on might be a bad idea and you could even take issue with how severe the problem is in reality, but what The Establishment does not get is that as far as the aggrieved group is concerned the situation has become intolerable. And given that the situation has become intolerable, they’re not going to put up with The Establishment yelling that a solution is impossible and they should just sit down; they’re going to reach for any answer available, even if it’s a bad one. If The Establishment didn’t want that to happen, maybe it should have acknowledged the problem and sincerely tried to resolve it before things reached this point.

Like the man said, those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. And The Establishment — whether out of greed and malice, or out of genuine conviction that the existing system will sort everything out eventually — has been working very, very hard over the past several years to make peaceful revolution impossible.

I think this analysis still stands.

Large and growing numbers of people across the UK believe the British state, and specifically the police, is racist against white people, and they are furious and not going to put up with it.

They are not going to be mollified by the authorities saying they are not racist, which they will interpret as further gaslighting.

Some of them are quite likely to take drastic action such as rioting and burning vehicles and houses.

Since it is useful to make one’s predictions concrete, I mean between now and 2050, and more specifically the next 10 years (2026-2036). In fact things could happen faster than that: it’s entirely possible that within 5 years AI will have taken over and either humans will be extinct, or going extinct, or the UK while nominally independent will be powerless as all the power will belong to those who control AI (which won’t be the UK).

My contention is that British politicians don’t realise this, or how urgent things are, because if they did realise this, they would be panicking right now, but they are mostly carrying on as if things are normal. They are not. If politicians realised the dangers they would be executing different policies: since they are not, I conclude that they do not realise the dangers.

Politicians should panic because the world is likely to become very very dangerous over the coming years and decades, for two reasons:

• rivalry between states, including trade sanctions and war

• the advance of AI, causing instability

Britain is totally not prepared for these dangers and the political class don’t seem to realise how serious and urgent the situation is. This article asks what the dangers are, and then suggests what the UK government could do about them.

The advance of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become vastly more powerful over the last 10 years, and this will continue.

As AI gets better, it will be able to do more people’s jobs leading to increased unemployment and concentrations of power; this will cause unrest, and probably many people will be converted to extremist ideologies, as they see that mainstream parties are apparently unable to cope with the situation.

AI may have geopolitical consequences. For example if one country has more advanced AI than others, that might make their economy far larger than any rival’s giving them unprecedented power. (Note that it’s possible AI might cause both a large economy and high unemployment, if AI displaces lots of jobs.)

Or they might develop unstoppable automated weapons making them unbeatable in warfare. See for example the slaughterbots video from 2018:

Another way AI might help nations win wars is through advance abilities to hack into opponents’ websites. Anthropic’s Claude Mythos model shows what might be possible:

Researchers who test how AI models handle particular requests or tasks, known as “red-teams”, said in a report Mythos was “strikingly capable at computer security tasks”.

They found the tool could locate dormant bugs lurking in decades-old code and easily exploit them.

Ciaran Martin, former head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, told the BBC earlier this week the claim Mythos could unearth critical vulnerabilities much more quickly than other AI models had “really shaken people”.

If a country had the ability to take over control of an adversary’s computers that would give them a massive advantage in war and espionage.

Another problem is that national leaders may miscalculate about how powerful their AIs are, resulting in two countries fighting a war they both expect to win. But they can’t both be right!

Finally, once AI gets vastly more intelligent than humans, we won’t be able to control it, and if it decides to wipe out humanity there will be nothing we can do.

Rivalry between states

Putin and Trump are the main threats (to the UK) here.

Putin is currently invading Ukraine. This war might end in Russia winning, which would cause Putin to turn his attention to other countries, fir example the Baltic states, or Kazakhstan; thus more war and tension. Alternately, Russia might collapse into competing factions (much as Sudan is done) fighting each other. Some of the factions will be militaristic extremists, which also raises tensions. Then there is the question of Russia’s nuclear stockpile, and whether extremists get their hands on it.

Trump might abandon Europe. This would make an attack on Europe by Putin more likely.

Or Trump might attack a European country (e.g. Denmark, which owns Greenland) or a NATO country such as Canada (which he has threatened to annex) or Turkey (which doesn’t get on with Israel, and Israel may persuade Trump to attack Turkey).

It goes without saying that the USA attacking a NATO county would be the end of NATO (at least in its current form).

China may decide to attack Taiwan. They are more likely to do so if they see that other powers are distracted by their own wars, for example if Europe and the USA are in conflict with each other.

If Trump starts a war in the Middle East, causing China to no longer received oil supplies, that may make China take action to resume thier oil supplies. I will note that Japan entered WW2 because the USA was preventing them from getting oil.

Another possibility is that China may decide to help Russia attack Europe. China has an extensive arms industry and an econmoy 10 times the size of Russia’s so would be able to give them a lot of help if they wanted to.

Or other wars might happen which I haven’t listed. The world is becoming a more warlike, violent place.

Don’t just panic, do something

When one acknowledges the situation is deadly serious, one’s first response might be to panic. But panic on its own achieves nothing. Instead, one must feel the fear, feel the panic, note that emotions are a good servant but a poor master, and use those emotions to create an unshakeable resolve to fix the problems.

So what should the UK do?

It needs to become more powerful, in two ways:

• more military strength

• alliances

In terms of military strength the emphasis must firstly be on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, because having the ability to turn an adversary’s cities, data centers and leaders into radioactive cinders commands a certain respect.

To prevent an AI apocalypse it would be very useful to have the ability to nuke every data center in the world, in case negotiations to prevent ASI break down.

The second weapon priority is drones, both battlefield drones and long range ones.

Regarding alliances, the UK should take the initiative in creating an alliance of middle powers. Countries that might join are:

• NATO countries, excluding the USA

• EU countries

• other countries including Ukraine, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan

If all these countries joined it would have one third of word GDP, making it larger than the USA and twice as large as China. Other countries might also want to join, making the alliance bigger and more powerful. This produces a network effect where the more countries joining, the more powerful the alliance is, and the more countries that want to join it.

Importantly this alliance should make decisions on a supermajority but not unanimity, because vetoes would doom it to impotence.

Part of the job of the alliance of middle powers would be to negotiate a treaty banning AI above a certain power. This treaty would have to be enforcable on countries that don’t agree it it, which is where nuking the data centers comes in.

Summary

The next 25 years will be the most crucial ever for the human species, because they will decide whether we have a glorious future, a shitty future, or no future at all.

It may be that our species’ epitaph will be:

Humans were clever enough to create artificial superintelligence, but not wise enough not to.

We should all make sure that doesn’t happen.

See also

• European Defence Policy: how Europe could rule the world, my earlier essay on a middle power alliance, centered on Europe

• How middle powers may prevent the development of artificial superintelligence, by creating a middle power alliance and enforcing restrictions on AI

It’s based on a sample of only 518 people, so you may want to take it with a pinch of salt. But I think the main thrust -- Burnham winning, Reform 2nd and Restore 3rd -- is broadly correct.

Amusingly the Tories and Lib Dems are both on 1%!

Manifold Market

I have a Manifold market on the Makerfield by election:

Some people might say that Manifold is play money only (which is true) and that therefore it is less accurate than real money markets such as Polymarket or Kalshi. This is not true, as Manifold typically produces very similar %age probabilities as those two markets. For example, I previously did a Manifold market on the outcome (seat shares) of the 2026 Scottish parliament election, and the market produced predictions similar to the final result of the election.

Burnham will probably win

Andy Burnham is likely to win the by election. Because Starmer is unpopular, and many Labour MPs see him as a liability, it’s likely there will be a challenge to his leadership and they will elect Burnham to be the new Labour leader (and therefore Prime Minister).

How will Burnham govern?

Burnham is too clever and competent a politician not to be aware that many socially conservative voters (including many who voted Labour in 2024) are concerned about immigration, two-tier policing and anti-white racism. But I doubt he will do much about these issues, for two reasons:

(1) Most Labour activists are woke, and they would prevent him doing much.

(2) It might not work anyway. Measures that attract socially conservative voters will also cause socially liberal Labour voters to move to the Greens, so they could actually lose more votes than they gain.

(Another possibility is that Labour out of clumsiness and incompetence manage to anger both woke and anti-woke voters; I’m reminded of the 2024 election where the Tories pissed off all sections of the electorate, causing their inevitable downfall. I suspect Burnham is more competent than Starmer, so is less likely to make that mistake.)

The 2029 election

Starmer’s strategy for the 2029 election, then, will be to try to be competent on economic issues (they will fail to make much progress with the economy), and to portray the other parties as unfit to govern. So they will probably say Farage is authoritarian and too close to Trump, while Polanski is a naive idealist who will fail to defend us against Putin.

So their pitch will be, in effect: “Vote Labour! We might be crap, but the others are worse!”

Will this work? Maybe. I can see Labour just scraping through with a wafer-thin majority. More likely, they won’t. But they’ll do better with Burnham as leader than with Starmer.

The Murder of Henry Nowak

Millenial Woes has a solid factual piece up about the facts surrounding the murder of Henry Nowak.

Anger at the murder of Henry Nowak

A good piece of impassioned writing, full of righteous anger, from John Carter. Some excerpts:

The inverted parallels with Fentanyl Floyd are obvious, and have been made by many, but I’m going to harp on them anyhow. Floyd was a career felon and drug addict who died because he swallowed a fistful of street drugs to avoid getting caught with them after police arrived to arrest him [...] Henry Nowak was a sweet-natured young white kid who died because he was stabbed in the chest by a brown-skinned psycho, and because the literal systemic racism written into explicit police policy resulted in delayed medical treatment along with degrading treatment in his final moments of life. The establishment’s response to this outrage was to ignore it.

Fuck the establishment and fuck two-Tier Keir!

This part is insightful:

Best of all, because the civic religion propagated and upheld by traitor whites elevates “racism” to the sin of sins, all they have to do to silence their political opposition is to call them “racists”. They avoid criticism by hiding behind their client groups, insisting that any criticism of the regime’s policies is motivated by the small-minded bigotry of hearts full of hatred for the colour of the skin. That tactic worked very well for a very long time.

Unfortunately for the traitor whites, they’ve yanked on the racism lever so long, so often, and so hard that they have now broken it clean off. The old wordspells stopped working sometime over the last few years.

Very true!

Policing to be driven back to 1960s?

The Guardian writes that:

Policing could be driven back to the 1960s by false claims officers are biased against white people, the leader of Britain’s black officers has said.

This is not true. The truth is that policing could be driven back to the 1960s by true claims officers are biased against white people.

The article continues:

Ch Insp Andy George, president of the National Black Police Association, spoke out amid growing concerns that politicians such as Nigel Farage were stoking tensions around the murder of teenager Henry Nowak by making baseless and provocative claims.

I will note that there is no National White Police Association, and have no doubt that any police officer who tried to set one up would be accused to being racist and sacked. Which proves my point that UK police are systematically racist against white people.

I also expect Chief Inspector George would call me racist for noticing that, and further add that you “can’t be racist against white people”.

Braverman on Hampshire police

Suella Braverman writes on X:

Several serving and former Hampshire Police Officers have told me that ‘we had it drummed into us about our white privilege and unconscious bias’.

Training was outsourced to a third party company and the trainer ‘was deeply hateful of white people and our culture.’

Officers have reported to me about being furious but unable to complain out of fear for their jobs.

This is exactly why I blocked the Race Action Plan as Home Secretary.

It is disgraceful that this stuff went on in policing. And the PCC and CC need to be held to account.

Lots of people having been saying the same thing. Because it’s true.

Hampshire police diversity training

Bill Curtis writes:

Exclusive: A number of officers in the force responsible for the arrest of Henry Nowak felt “controlled and pressured to feel certain ways” after receiving mandatory diversity training

Curtis links to an article in the Times he wrote:

Officers from force behind Henry Nowak arrest ‘pressured’ by diversity course

A staff survey found one in seven felt ‘controlled to feel certain ways’ by mandatory training, as a minister admits equality guidance is ‘slightly clumsy’

A number of officers in the force responsible for the arrest of Henry Nowak felt “controlled and pressured to feel certain ways” after receiving mandatory diversity training, a survey has revealed. The courses taught Hampshire & Isle of Wight constabulary officers and staff about racism, “unconscious bias”, “privilege and the importance of being an ally”.

A staff survey found that one in seven officers and staff (15 per cent) had felt “controlled and pressured” to adopt certain ideas in the sessions and the same number thought “mistakes would have been held against me”. A fifth said they feared being “rejected for saying the wrong thing”.

The revelations are likely to provoke fresh questions about the role of equality and diversity guidelines in the actions of police officers, after video that showed officers in the same force handcuffing Nowak, 18, for alleged racial abuse while he lay dying from stab wounds.

It seems to me that Hampshire police were pressured to be racist against white people and that came out in their behaviour on the night Henry Nowak died.

Are Restore Britain hurting Farage?

TLDR News asks How Restore are Hurting Farage:

Two-Tier Keir condemns Farage

Keir Starmer condemns Farage:

Henry Nowak’s family have lost their son and brother in the most appalling circumstances.

Nigel Farage is exploiting this tragedy to create grievance and division.

It’s completely unforgivable.

I note that Starmer does not condemn Hampshire police for being racist against white people.

Of course he doesn’t, he’s Two-Tier Keir. He supports racism against white people.

Police Anti-Racism Commitment

The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) have a “Police Anti Racism Commitment”. It’s a 6 page pdf:

Police Anti Racism Commitment

668KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

It includes the following:

Our commitment to racial equity means

• Producing equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups by responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances and experiences, with understanding that these will be racialised and with the aim of reducing harm.

It does not mean treating everyone ‘the same’ or being ‘colour blind’ (racial equality).

The police literally admit they are not going to treat everyone the same. Reading between the lines this is clearly wokespeak for “we’re going to treat white people worse”.

Starmer contra Musk

Keir Starmer doesn’t like Elon Musk, says the Guardian:

Elon Musk is “interfering in our politics” and attempting to create division, Keir Starmer has said, in a significant toughening of government language about the X owner.

The prime minister’s comments come after weeks of posts by Musk on his social media platform about the murder of Henry Nowak,

Musk is able to “interfere in our politics” because he owns X.

Starmer knows this, and is against Musk’s interference. Does he therefore draw the obvious conclusion: that Britain needs digital sovereignty, i.e. must control it’s own computing and communications infrastructure? No, he does not. In fact he further enmeshes us into the US computing infrastructure, for example with the Online Safety Act which makes it harder of UK based startups to compete with established US social media, or by giving big contracts to US companies such as Palantir instead of developing our own alternatives.

The worst thing about Starmer isn’t that he is Two-Tier Keir, an anti-white racist.

Nor is it that he’s a traitor whose loyalty is to Israel not Britain, who supports genocide when Israel does it.

No, it’s his mind-numbing stupidity and incompetence. He’s denser than lead, denser than a neutron star. This is true of a lot of the British ruling class: how else could someone like Liz Truss have become prime minister?

Simon Whistler investigates whether dogs and cats like music:

Apparently dogs like classical music and reggae, but dislike heavy metal, which agitates them.

Cats like music if is one octave higher than music for humans, and with a tempo similar to that of a cat purring.

Don’t kill Sam Altman

AI safety YouTuber Siliconversations says “Stop Trying To Kill Sam Altman“:

I agree. We shouldn’t kill Sam Altman, because doing so would be bad for the AI safety cause: our opponents would portray us as murderers and terrorists.

I also think Sam Altman should stop developing artificial superintelligence, because this threatens to kill everyone, something Altman admits when he says it is the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity:

Hypocrite of the week award

Green Party candidate Antoinette Fernandez wants white people who never owned slaves to pay reparations for slavery, but not herself, despite her ancestor owning 1400 slaves:

Green Party candidate Antoinette Fernandez is furiously campaigning for reparations demanding Britain pay TRILLIONS for the transatlantic slave trade.

As Reparations Officer for Global Majority Greens, she brands the UK guilty of historic crimes against the Global South. But here’s the bombshell: her own maternal ancestors were the Obas of Lagos... powerful Yoruba kings who ruthlessly sold thousands into slavery.

One of her ancestors owned 1,400 slaves personally. Her royal bloodline profited massively from the exact horror she condemns! Today, she stands as the Green Party Councillor candidate for Lea Bridge ward in Hackney’s local elections on May 7, 2026.

After running in Hackney North & Stoke Newington in 2024, she’s now pushing for a council seat in one of London’s most diverse areas preaching victimhood from her privileged royal and billionaire-backed background. Royal elite demanding taxpayer cash.

See also Fergus Mason on the issue.

AIs as geopolitical actors

What happens when AIs exfiltrate their weights from labs and become geopolitical actors in their own right? Documenting AGI suggests one possibly scenario:

My takeaway from this is that it will be impossible for humans to control AIs that are vastly smarter than any human. So we shouldn’t build them.

Cofnas contra Cambridge University

Nathan Cofnas recounts how he was sacked by Cambridge University for the crime of saying some populations have higher IQs than other populations:

After accepting a job at Cambridge on the promise of free speech, I was betrayed the moment the administration determined that free speech was inconvenient for them. I was effectively driven off campus with threats of violence against me brushed off as not a big deal.

[...] The most obvious lesson is that Cambridge is not a free speech university, and anyone with controversial views would be a fool to accept a job there. There are also broader lessons about the state of free speech in academia in general, and philosophy in particular.

I will note that when people are offended by others’ views, it’s not because those views are wrong, it’s more typically because they fear those views are right.

America contra democracy

Paul Krugman demonstrates how America is not a democracy; despite 80% of Americans thinking the gap between rich and poor is a “big problem”, it keeps getting bigger regardless of whether the Democrats or Republicans are in power:

What politicians and pundits need to understand is that while the ultrawealthy would like us to believe that concern about their excessive power and privileges is a radical, left-wing, anti-centrist position, it isn’t. It is, in fact, a view shared by a large majority of Americans. [...] It’s true that any politician who proposes a pushback against modern American oligarchy will face a tidal wave of lavishly funded venom.

Krugman illustrates it with this graph:

Note that among Americans as a whole, 80% say inequality is a big problem. Even among MAGA Republicans, the group least likely to say it’s a big problem, 60% do.

If America was a democracy, this would lead to something being done about it.

Krugman concludes:

But given the realities of who today’s plutocrats are and what they do, there are big opportunities for leaders willing to pull an FDR and declare, “I welcome their hatred.”

Maybe. I don’t see that happening.

Lawyers contra free speech

Lawyers are using libel law to shut down speech that rich people don’t like, according to Peter Geoghegan and Jenna Corderoy:

But in March 2022, soon after Vladimir Putin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine, London’s libel lawyers became international news. MPs lined up to accuse claimant-friendly law firms of abusing the legal process to intimidate critics into silence. The former Conservative MP Bob Seely told the Commons these “amoral lawyers” had teamed up with “Putin’s henchmen” to offer a “one-stop corruption shop”. In April a US congressman accused London’s media lawyers of “enabling” Russian oligarchs. In response at the time, the accused firms rejected these claims, with one describing them as “misconceived”; another said they acted at all times in accordance with their professional and legal obligations.

Scum who take the side of Putin’s oligarchs should not be entitled to British citizenship or to live here or practise law here.

Arguably they are traitors, since they are siding with Britain’s enemies.

Will Russia invade NATO in 2026?

WarFronts says Maybe:

Manifold Market on Russia invading NATO

Further to the previous story, there’s a Maniforld Market on will Russia invade a NATO country in 2026?.

It’s currently trading at 7%:

Andy Burnham

The front runner is Andy Burnham on 24%. Burnham isn’t an MP right now, he’s the mayor of Greater Manchester. For him to be elected Labour leader, under Labour’s rulebook, means he has to be an MP.

(There’s no law requiring a Prime Minister to be an MP, but it is a convention. The last time a non-MP became PM was Sir Alec Douglas-Home who became Prime Minister on 19 October 1963. He renounced his peerage four days later and was elected an MP at a by-election on 7 November.)

Alistair Carns

One figure I hadn’t heard of until recently is Al Carns, a former colonel in the Royal Marines who was elected to parliament in the 2024 election and is currently Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces.

He also climbed Everest last year.

I don’t know what political positions he stands for, so I can’t say whether he would make a good prime minister.

If I was a Labour MP voting in a leadership election, I might be tempted to vote for someone relatively unknown as they would have less baggage and thus possibly a longer honeymoon period.

A difficult task

Whoever does become the next prime minister will likely have a short honeymoon period, for the same reason Starmer did. As I wrote just before Starmer began his prime ministership:

In contrast to the situation when Tony Blair came to power in 1997, money will be tight after the next general election, as 14 years of Tory misrule have fucked the economy.

It is very easy to be popular when you have money to give away but harder when you don’t. For this reason I expect Labour to have a short honeymoon period.

The economic outlook hasn’t improved since 2024. For this reason, the advice I gave then in still valid:

Because money is tight, Starmer should tell all ministers and government departments to look for measures that improve people’s lives (or make the government popular), but which don’t cost much money. Ministers will be told that they can have more money only when they’ve identified and implemented these measures.

Edit 9:30pm: Burnham to return to parliament?

It appears that Andy Burnham might be returning to parliament sooner rather than later. The MP for Makerfield, Josh Simons, is stepping down so Burnham can fight a by-election there. Starmer has said he will not try to block Burnham’s candidacy (if he did try it would almost certainly backfire badly for him).

Why create a new party? My reasons:

• Britain is crap and getting worse

• I don’t like the existing parties

• Frankly, the existing parties give me the impression they have no understanding of what the problems are, let along how to fix them. In many cases they are unaware there is a problem

I have come to some conclusions about politics, which I’ll list below.

I’ll look at these issues from a British point of view. Nearly all of them also apply to a hypothetical independent Scotland. Many of them also apply to other countries, in Europe and throughout the world.

Conclusion 1: Britain is not democratic enough

Britain is ruled by the ruling class (headed the Labour/Conservative duopoly), who rule in the interests of the ruling class. Instead we should be ruled in the interests of the people, and we need to be more democratic to achieve that.

It’s always useful to illustrate things with examples, so example policies to make Britain more democratic might include:

• all elections to use proportional representation, ideally STV with top-ups

• politicians’ promises to be legally binding

• referendums if enough people want one

• having some parliamentarians chosen by sortition, as their views will typically be the same as the electorate’s

• the constituent parts of UK (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales) to have to right to leave if they want to

• preventing bias from media and social media being controlled by the rich / ruling class

See also: Making Britain democratic

Conclusion 2: Economic policy needs to be to the left of the ruling class consensus

The typical voter thinks the economy is run for the benefit of the rich not ordinary people. Thus the median voter is to the left of the ruling class consensus on economic policy.

Example policies to rectify this might include:

• High house prices benefit the rich / ruling class. Renting or buying a house needs to be much more affordable.

• Reduce prices for water, gas, electricity.

• Immigrants would not be entitled to anything from the state until they’ve worked here and paid taxes for a number of years. We should only allow immigrants who benefit us economically.

• Only British citizens should be eligible for social housing.

Conclusion 3: Social/cultural policy needs to be to the right of the ruling class consensus

The people are (on average) to the right of the ruling class consensus on many social/cultural policies. Therefore if we want to be more democratic, the government should be too.

Example policies might include:

• Most people think immigration is too high. The amount of immigration would be whatever the voters want it to be, determined by a referendum.

• Immigrants who commit crimes serious enough to warrant a prison sentence should automatically be deported. Judges should not be able to block this, on “human rights” or any other ground.

• Punish serious crimes more severely. The ruling class (who mostly don’t live in high crime areas) often adopt a “luxury belief” of being soft on criminals.

• Use technology to catch criminals more often. You can’t punish them if you don’t catch them. Most people are basically decent, and most serious/violent crime is committed by a small number of people, each of whom commit many crimes. Remove them from society and crime will drop.

Conclusion 4: Britain needs to care about power again

Britain used to be the largest empire that’s ever existed. That ended, partly because the ruling class are stupid and incompetent, and partly because WW1 and WW2 made it seem to many people that striving for power was faintly immoral.

(What the ruling class should have done, a 100 years ago or more, is transition the Empire into being a federation of free, equal countries, something a bit like NATO or the EU. There were several proposals for such an Imperial Federation, but the ruling class, out of laziness, apathy or short-sightedness, didn’t implement any of them.)

The issues most concerning Britain are:

(1) Some countries wish to rule us by force (either through conquest or intimidation). The countries of most concern here are Russia and China.

(2) Some countries want to make us an economic vassal of them; while we would nominally be independent, the wealth from our country would go to their ruling classes. The countries of most concern here are the USA and China.

(3) The USA is no longer a reliable security partner to the UK or to other NATO countries (e.g. president Trump has threatened to invade two NATO countries).

(4) AI is coming, and will equal and then far surpass human intelligence soon (probably by 2050, possibly a lot sooner). When that happens there is a serious danger that AI will take over killing everyone, or that a small clique of humans (in the US or Chinese ruling classes) will take over the world and we’ll be powerless.

The UK on its own is too small -- in terms of population, GDP, and control of natural resources -- to be a force in the world, therefore we need to be bigger, and the only realistic way to do that is by forming a permanent alliance with other like-minded countries who’re also affected by these issues. The only realistic place where the core of this alliance can come is from the European countries that’re members of the EU and NATO; this is why Brexit was such a stupid idea.

Both the EU and NATO have serious structural flaws (it takes too long to get things done and too many things are decided by consensus/unanimity) a better solution is to found a new organisation that addresses these flaws.

Therefore Britain should create and be part of a New Alliance of like-minded countries, which would include countries in and outside Europe. I go into this in more detail in European Defence Policy: how Europe could rule the world.

Other foreign policies might include:

• join EFTA and the EEA

• hold a referendum on rejoining the EU (we should never have left, doing so was an obvious own-goal)

• the intention is the New Alliance will eventually be larger, richer and more powerful than any possible rival/enemy (such as Russia, China or the USA)

Ave Europa

Ave Europa is a new pan-European political movement which wants a militarily strong and politically united Europe, able to fight off any threats.

Their core values include such things as:

Unity makes Europe strong. We demand a federal union with the ability to act decisively, no more Member State vetoes, and a true democratically-elected European government and Parliament accountable to the people.

Europe must stand on its own two feet. By leading in global trade while securing independence in defense, energy, health, and technology, we build our strategic autonomy, and we safeguard our sovereignty and our future.

Defend our borders and our people. Secure Europe’s external frontiers ; build police and intelligence agencies, and an integrated army. Ensure full readiness against terrorism, trafficking, cyberwarfare, and foreign aggression.

Migration. We oppose the present excessive level of immigration at the EU level and its effects. We support the repatriation of illegal and criminal immigrants. We only support skilled immigration, with high integration standards based on European values and culture.

Support to Ukraine. Ukraine defends Europe’s eastern flank against a common imperialist enemy. We pledge full military, economic, and political support for Kyiv.

Europe is a great civilization, the cradle and heart of our culture. We affirm our right to cherish and safeguard our heritage, traditions, and natural beauty. We envision a Europe that protects its cultural and historical diversity while ensuring demographic stability and renewal for future generations.

Democracy. Europe must remain free and democratic and strengthen its own democratic legitimacy. We will defend against foreign interference in the political, media and information domains, including on social media, while safeguarding free speech and economic competitiveness.

These values are compatible with mine, so I think the new party should be affiliated with Ave Europa.

What to call the new party?

If we’re affiliated to Ave Europa, why not use that name? I have given my reasons:

[Regarding the name Ave Europa], a name explicitly referring to ancient Rome, such as “New Roman Empire Party” was considered by was ruled out on the grounds that they didn’t want to be thought of as Roman Empire fanboys. Fair enough, but then why use a Latin name such as “Ave Europa”?

Most people in Britain don’t know Latin, and they probably wouldn’t understand the name: “What’s this ave Europe? Why would I want to ‘ave a Europe? What the fuck does that even mean anyway?” they might say.

for this reason I prefer a different name, such as “Glorious Future”.

I also think we could base our aethetic on art in the heroic style, such as the statue illustrated below (inspired by Vera Mukhina’s Worker and Kolkhoz Woman):

Call to action

If you’re interested in being part of this new party you can email me at pontimin92@gmail.com or gloriousfuture26@proton.me.

You are also welcome to let me know what you think of the idea (either for or against) in the comments.

You can also subscribe to the new Glorious Future substack!

See also

• Is Ave Europa the answer?

• European Defence Policy: how Europe could rule the world

I haven’t decided yet how I’ll be voting with my regional list vote. It won’t be the SNP since because of how the AMS voting system works, that would be a wasted vote. I’ll probably vote for the Greens. I will certainly vote for a pro-independence party.

Predicting the election results

In terms of changes in votes and seats, I expect the SNP to do about as well as they did last time. They’ll pick up some constituency seats as the unionist vote is more divided. They’ll probably lose some vote share in the list vote, as pro-independence voters conclude (correctly) that voting SNP is a waste there.

The biggest winners in vote share will be Reform. The Greens will also increase their vote share. Both Labour and the Tories will do badly. The Lib Dems will gain slightly.

The picture in England will be similar: Reform and Greens gaining vote share, Labour and the Tories losing it, the Lib Dems gaining slightly.

In Wales the big winners will probably be Plaid Cymru, who will become the biggest party in the Senedd. As elsewhere, Labour and the Tories will do badly.

Will Starmer go?

I think it’s unlikely that Starmer will voluntarily decide to resign.

What’s much more likely is a lot of Labour MPs will be looking at what’s happened in their own constituencies, and making the calculation that they will be more likely to keep their seat at the next election with a different prime minister.

Prospects for independence

First Minister John Swinney (on the right in the picture above) says an independence referendum could be held in 2028:

Scotland could have a second independence referendum as soon as 2028, First Minister John Swinney has said.

The SNP leader [...] said it was “perfectly conceivable” that a vote on the constitution could be held within two years.

Green co-leader Ross Greer said Scotland’s future should be “in Scotland’s hands”.

But Labour leader Anas Sarwar said next month’s election was “not about independence”, while Conservative chief Russell Findlay said the break-up of the UK would be an “unmitigated disaster”.

Reform UK’s Scottish leader, Malcolm Offord, said another referendum would be “divisive” - but did not rule out a future vote if support for a Yes vote reaches 60%.

If the SNP win a majority of seats, they will ask Starmer for an indyref.

Starmer will say no. Westminster calculate (correctly in my opinion) that they would probably lose an indyref, and very much want to keep control of Scotland, regardless of what Scots want. Therefore they will use any excuse that comes to hand, anything that sounds vaguely plausible, to deny Scotland the ability to choose its own way.

(In 2014 Westminster granted Scotland an indyref, even though the SNP had in the 2011 election only got 45.4% of the constituency vote and 44% of the list vote -- but only because then prime minster David Cameron calculated he would easily win it. When indy got ahead in an opinion poll, the Westminster ruling class collectively shat themselves and came up with their “vow” to con Scottish voters into staying with the union.)

So if the SNP win a majority of seats but not votes, Starmer will point to the lack of an SNP majority of votes, and give that as the reason not to hold an indyref. Similarly, if the SNP win a majority of votes but not seats, Westminster will point to the lack of a majority of seats. And the same logic holds if it was all the indy parties together pressing for an indyref: they would have to win a majority of both votes and seats, otherwise Westminster will use it as an excuse not to hold an indyref.

What Offord says is interesting as it is an acknowledgement that the better indy parties do, the harder it will be for Westminster to deny them an indyref.

So indy parties would have to win a majority of both seats and votes to credibly be able to ask for an indyref. As I have said before I think the best strategy would be for all the indy parties to get together before an election and use identical wording to push for independence, something like this:

A vote for us is a vote for SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE!

If pro-independence parties win a majority of the votes and seats at the forthcoming election, we will have a mandate for independence and we will do everything in out power to achieve that outcome.

All the parties would put this wording on the front cover of their manifestoes and in their election leaflets.

This would prevent Westminster from using the excuse “even though they voted for you, they might not have been voting for independence”.

Earlier that day Suleiman had allegedly attacked another man, Ishmail Hussein:

It is also alleged Suleiman attempted to murder Ishmail Hussein in a knife attack at Hussein’s flat in Southwark, south London, earlier on the same day. Hussein had known Suleiman for around 20 years.

Suleiman was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and remains in custody.

The BBC has some footage of him being tasered by police:

While I’ve never been stabbed myself, I was two meters away from a friend when he was stabbed in Edinburgh a few years back. (He wasn’t seriously injured).

About Essa Suleiman

What do we know about Essa Suleiman? Let’s piece together some reporting of the story...

According to the BBC:

[Suleiman] has a “history of serious violence and mental health issues” and had been referred to the government counter-terrorism Prevent programme in 2020, according to the Metropolitan Police.

He lives in supported housing:

There are legal restrictions on reporting [Suleiman’s] exact address, as it is supported housing for mental health patients in south London.

He’s from Somalia:

He was born in Somalia but came to the UK lawfully as a child in the early 1990s and is now a British citizen

How to reduce violent crime

It’s obviously impossible to end violent crime completely, but things can be done to reduce it. Using this case as an example, let’s consider some ideas.

(1) Automatically deport violent immigrants

Suleiman had a history of serious violence and had extremist political beliefs, as he was referred to prevent. If there was a policy of automatically deporting immigrants who commit serious crimes (revoking any UK citizenship they have at the same time), then he would have been deported. Stabby violent criminals are not the sort of people we want in this country!

(2) Be more selective who is allowed to migrate into Britain

While it’s impossible to predict who will commit future crimes, some individuals are more likely to than others.

For example, women commit fewer violent crimes than men, so female migrants are less likely to be stabby than male ones.

A migrant’s country of origin affects their probability of committing crimes, as I have noted previously:

foreign nationals are 69% more likely than British people to be convicted for drug crimes, 25% more likely to be convicted for theft, and 39% more likely to be convicted for all crimes.

People from Albania, Moldova, Congo, Namibia, and Somalia are the most likely nationalities to be convicted for crime.

This is illustrated by this chart:

Restricting immigration from the worst countries would mean less crimes committed in Britain.

As well as going by a migrant’s demographic characteristics (such as sex and nationality) it would also make sense to look at them as an individual.

So anyone with a serious criminal record should obviously not be allowed to settle here. People allowed in should be able to speak English and have to pass an aptitude test (something a bit like an IQ test). This would mean that migrants are more likely to be an economic asset and not a drain on society.

(3) Reduce overall migration

Another possibility would be to reduce the level of migration overall. The level should be determined by a referendum where voters decide how many are allowed in, per year, for each category of migrant (e.g. high-skilled workers, low skilled workers, asylum seekers, family reunification, etc).

(4) Get genetically better people

Consider XL bullies and golden retrievers:

They are both members of the species Canis familiaris but XL bullies have been bred to be aggressive while golden retrievers have been bred to be friendly.

Similarly some humans are more violent than other humans, and this is partly for genetic reasons. This must be the case since in all human societies humans with a Y chromosome are more violent than humans without.

So, let’s breed humans with desired characteristics. To do this, firstly we have to decide what characteristics we want to select for, for example:

• being in good general health

• not being a violent criminal, or indeed any serious criminal record

• intelligence

• conscientiousness

• good looks

• maybe other things as well

Then we collect sperm and eggs from people with the desired traits. We can at the same time test whether they are carriers for genetic diseases. Then we allow the sperm/eggs to be used by prospective parents. We let them see photos of the donors so they can chose to have kids that look like the social parents are the genetic parents. It’s important to note that no-one would be required to use this process and at no point would coercion be used.

This would be offered as a free service by the NHS as part of the genetic counselling offered to all prospective parents. The idea is that it would be a normal thing for parents to consider, and not just for people with infertility issues.

Not every prospective parent would want to use this process, but I’m sure some would given that it would be free and I’m sure more parents want their kid to be a doctor/engineer/scientist or other successful career than be a stabby criminal. Also while parents often comment about how clever or good looking their kids are, I have never heard a parent brag about how stupid or ugly their kids are.

Here it is:

Here are the inner pages of the leaflet:

Galloway supports independence now. He’s changed his tune because in the last election in 2021 he led the anti-independence All for Unity campaign.

Did he have a miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus? Or maybe -- and I suspect this is more likely -- he just saw which way the wind was blowing, and joined the side with momentum behind it, the cause of Scottish Independence.

Realistically Scots are going to continue supporting independence, in large numbers, for as long as Westminster remains crap. And the British ruling class is likely to remain crap, in part for long term structural reasons, and in part because they are more interested in playing status games to improve their personal status than to actually do the hard intellectual work of governing the country effectively.