American Oligarchs and appeasement

[teamsaint]

We're probably getting too close to party politics and I've no wish to be banned so I'll just say that HoL reform isn't a priority and would waste precious parliamentary time when things like the NHS and cost of living are things that concern voters more. NHS waiting lists are already down (and in winter) while the economy is in better shape than this time last year. HoL reform is something for the next parliament.


Agree about ID cards, by the way.

Be interested to know what economic data shows us in better shape than a year ago ? GDP is struggling along,although the forecasts ( notoriously unreliable) are reasonable if unexciting, retail is badly down and really having a tough time , job adverts are well down on a year ago, although unemployment is just about stable. Commentators almost all agree that the chancellor will have little option but to raise taxes again ,against her wishes, and inflation is heading back up to 3% .
It all looks much the same as a year ago to me.

[Pulcinella]

Ah, yes. By 'getting things done' you meant like getting Brexit done? Though you did say 'at least he's getting things done'.
Judging by this morning's news, it will be interesting to see when the revolution comes which side the military are on.

As far as the Lords is concerned, I'm a pragmatist. It may lack a democratic mandate, but it is more sensible than the Commons. The House of Commons is, if I remember, an 'elective dictatorship'. With universal suffrage in populous states perhaps the best we can hope for is governments which do very little harm.

He could stop dissolution elevations to the HoL for a start!

[kernelbogey]

...Judging by this morning's news, it will be interesting to see when the revolution comes which side the military are on....

Do you seriously take a revolution as a given?

[richardfinegold]

The multi-award-winning journalist John Sweeney, author of the recently-published Murder in the Gulag -- an account of Putin's murder of Alexei Navalny in Siberia and others here in the UK and elsewhere, including 283 passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH 17 -- thinks it more than plausible that Putin possesses kompromat (= compromising material) on the orange-tinted White House occupant, derived from his stayover in Moscow in Nov 2013, revealed by ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele.

I’m not a Trump Defender but the ‘Russia Collusion’ story dominated the first two years of Trump’s first term. It lead to a special counsel investigation led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, cost something like $30M, and produced nothing. Essentially the Brit involved made up everything In his dossier that he tried to peddle to the Hiliary Clinton campaign. The FBI was clearly politically motivated to get Trump. This is the main reason that Trump has it in for the Justice Department and in this case he has some justification. The second reason he hates the DOJ is because of the prosecutions related to the January 6 coup, and in that matter he could not be more unjustified in going after the relevant prosecutors.
It’s more likely that Trump has extreme animus to Zelensky over the infamous phone call that lead to Trump’s first impeachment. It wasn’t Zelinsky’s fault that he happened to be on the other end of a call with Trump behaving illegally, but Trump probably blames him anyway. Trump also resents Zelinsky for not helping him pursue Hunter Biden, who in all probability was selling access to the Ukrainian energy company. Zelinsky also did some photo ops with Joe Biden-kind of a necessary thing considering how much aid Ukraine has received from the U.S.-but of course Trump can only view that through a personal lens

[Petrushka]

Be interested to know what economic data shows us in better shape than a year ago ? GDP is struggling along,although the forecasts ( notoriously unreliable) are reasonable if unexciting, retail is badly down and really having a tough time , job adverts are well down on a year ago, although unemployment is just about stable. Commentators almost all agree that the chancellor will have little option but to raise taxes again ,against her wishes, and inflation is heading back up to 3% .
It all looks much the same as a year ago to me.

There was an article in Bloomberg UK (paywalled) that said that hiring of workers has risen. Interest rates and inflation are both lower than February 2024, and the budget hasn't yet taken effect.

[Serial_Apologist]

Worrying news in New Scientist strongly suggesting compliant self-gagging on climate change by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. America's official body on relating matters, in the wake of Trump's election:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/2469442-noaa-scientists-refuse-to-link-warming-to-climate-change/

[Ian Thumwood]

I hope that Starmer shows some character this week in dealing with Trump. If there is no movement on Ukraine, climate change , continuation of sanctions against Russia, thr 'freedom of speech ' issues , reconstruction of Palestine and criminal charges against Israel, calling for the release of the fascist criminal Lexley Lennon, etc I think there needs to be a shot across America's bow.

I would like to see embargoes on Tesla , a ban on X and then, the temporary expulsion of Anerican diplomats.

Trump’s America has become the enemy of the free world and they must be treated as such. If Trump does not get the message after that , we need to become less ambivalent with China so Trump.will appreciate we are being serious.

[richardfinegold]

The deal that Ukraine has struck with the US regarding mineral rights, including approximately 20 rare minerals critical for weapons and IT, is interesting. I suspect some of the Trump bellicosity towards Ukraine and Zelensky was part of Trump’s usual negotiation strategy.
The deal itself makes a great deal of strategic sense to me. Some of these mineral deposits are in Russian controlled Ukrainian territory. Ukraine has now linked their survival, and recovery of territory, to critical US economic considerations. This should hopefully guarantee US support amongst the isolationist here.
The Ukranians don’t like mortgaging their Mineral Rights, but they are facing existential threats. And if their security improves, they can renegotiate in the future with a more pliant US Administration
The other interesting aspect here is the US embracing the odious Putin, apparently as an attempt to drive a wedge between the Chinese and the Russians. This had been a pillar of US Foreign Policy since Nixon. For US Geopolitical strategy playing these two off against each other may arguably be more important than pleasing the Europeans (I include Ukraine as a European country). Our support for Ukraine has had the unfortunate effect of driving Russia, China, Iran and North Korea into an unpalatable alliance.
Having to endorse the ridiculous fiction that Ukraine is the aggressor is nauseating. However if that is a sop to Putin that will lead to a desirable outcome-namely, him actually killing less Ukrainians-then I can swallow it.
There is a history of this kind of realpolitik with Russia here.. There was the odd alliance of Great Britain and the USSR in the second half of 1941 against Hitler. A quarter century earlier England and France made strange bedfellows with the despotic Romanovs

[Dave2002]

I don’t believe that Zelensky has actually agreed a deal with the US. I certainly hope not based on what has been reported.

[Maclintick]

I’m not a Trump Defender but the ‘Russia Collusion’ story dominated the first two years of Trump’s first term. It lead to a special counsel investigation led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, cost something like $30M, and produced nothing. Essentially the Brit involved made up everything In his dossier that he tried to peddle to the Hiliary Clinton campaign.

The Mueller report can hardly be said to have produced nothing when one of its main conclusions was that Trump campaign officials lied to investigators about their “interactions with Russian affiliated individuals and related matters” and that Mueller further concluded that the Trump election campaign "expected to benefit from information stolen and released by Russia". True, Mueller left open the question of whether Trump's actions amounted to obstruction of justice, but he rather pointedly didn't exonerate the President either, contrary to the statement by Attorney-General Barr when announcing the report's findings -- this before the redacted version was yet to be released.

The Steele dossier, consisting of largely unverified "raw intelligence" memoes, was published by Buzzfeed without Steele's permission, and though its key allegations were treated with caution by Mueller, their main thrust is consistent with the findings in his report. Incidentally, the potency of "raw intelligence" is not to be underestimated, when unverified claims of the existence of "weapons of mass destruction" can be used to start a war.

[oddoneout]

The deal that Ukraine has struck with the US regarding mineral rights, including approximately 20 rare minerals critical for weapons and IT, is interesting. I suspect some of the Trump bellicosity towards Ukraine and Zelensky was part of Trump’s usual negotiation strategy.
The deal itself makes a great deal of strategic sense to me. Some of these mineral deposits are in Russian controlled Ukrainian territory. Ukraine has now linked their survival, and recovery of territory, to critical US economic considerations. This should hopefully guarantee US support amongst the isolationist here.
The Ukranians don’t like mortgaging their Mineral Rights, but they are facing existential threats. And if their security improves, they can renegotiate in the future with a more pliant US Administration
The other interesting aspect here is the US embracing the odious Putin, apparently as an attempt to drive a wedge between the Chinese and the Russians. This had been a pillar of US Foreign Policy since Nixon. For US Geopolitical strategy playing these two off against each other may arguably be more important than pleasing the Europeans (I include Ukraine as a European country). Our support for Ukraine has had the unfortunate effect of driving Russia, China, Iran and North Korea into an unpalatable alliance.
Having to endorse the ridiculous fiction that Ukraine is the aggressor is nauseating. However if that is a sop to Putin that will lead to a desirable outcome-namely, him actually killing less Ukrainians-then I can swallow it.
There is a history of this kind of realpolitik with Russia here.. There was the odd alliance of Great Britain and the USSR in the second half of 1941 against Hitler. A quarter century earlier England and France made strange bedfellows with the despotic Romanovs

Has Ukraine struck a deal or has it simply been presented with what the US wants, and been told to sign on the dotted line? There was an article yesterday in the FT written by the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant which gave no indication that Ukraine had been involved in the process of divvying up the mineral rights nor any mention of protection from Russia. On the latter point the failure of the Budapest Memorandum in that respect would, in any case, cast doubt on any such future proposal. The article also contained some creative versions of post-WW2 history which did little to convince this reader or the 1000 plus BTL commenters of altruistuic intentions.

[richardfinegold]

The Mueller report can hardly be said to have produced nothing when one of its main conclusions was that Trump campaign officials lied to investigators about their “interactions with Russian affiliated individuals and related matters” and that Mueller further concluded that the Trump election campaign "expected to benefit from information stolen and released by Russia". True, Mueller left open the question of whether Trump's actions amounted to obstruction of justice, but he rather pointedly didn't exonerate the President either, contrary to the statement by Attorney-General Barr when announcing the report's findings -- this before the redacted version was yet to be released.

The Steele dossier, consisting of largely unverified "raw intelligence" memoes, was published by Buzzfeed without Steele's permission, and though its key allegations were treated with caution by Mueller, their main thrust is consistent with the findings in his report. Incidentally, the potency of "raw intelligence" is not to be underestimated, when unverified claims of the existence of "weapons of mass destruction" can be used to start a war.

It produced nothing, spin it as you which. If there was anything of substance it would have gladly been given consideration for impeachment

[richardfinegold]

Has Ukraine struck a deal or has it simply been presented with what the US wants, and been told to sign on the dotted line? There was an article yesterday in the FT written by the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant which gave no indication that Ukraine had been involved in the process of divvying up the mineral rights nor any mention of protection from Russia. On the latter point the failure of the Budapest Memorandum in that respect would, in any case, cast doubt on any such future proposal. The article also contained some creative versions of post-WW2 history which did little to convince this reader or the 1000 plus BTL commenters of altruistuic intentions.

So I read that the deal had originally been proposed by Biden’s Foreign Office, rejected out of hand by the Ukranians, and then dropped

[french frank]

It produced nothing, spin it as you which. If there was anything of substance it would have gladly been given consideration for impeachment

This is what Wikipedia says on the matter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report

[Maclintick]

This is what Wikipedia says on the matter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report

All the reporting I’ve read on this, including that in the Washington Post at the time of the Mueller report’s publication, demonstrate what an incredibly high bar has to be reached in order to impeach a president who can use executive privilege to prevent sub-poenaed
witnesses from testifying to Senate and Justice department hearings, and to use the same executive privilege to effectively hide incriminating material from Committee members.

Richard will correct me I’m sure if I’m wrong on this but even if impeachment proceedings are formally initiated a 2/3 majority is necessary in the Senate for a guilty verdict, and that to date no impeached US president has ever been found guilty while still in office.

Impeachment in the UK, upon which the US procedure was originally modelled, is still theoretically possible. Here the impeached individual would be subject to hearings in the House of Lords, and although there were those who sought to institute impeachment proceedings against Boris Johnson for illegally proroguing Parliament, and also Tony Blair for engaging the UK in the Iraq war against international law, the process has effectively fallen into desuetude since the last unsuccessful impeachment of Henry Dundas in 1806.

There are intriguing parallels between the most celebrated case in UK Parliamentary history, that of Warren Hastings, which ran for seven years from 1787 to 1795, and that of Donald Trump, who uniquely is the first president to be impeached twice in his first term. Maybe this would make a good subject for Jonathan Freedland’s Long View. In both cases, the public tired of lengthy investigations and their sympathy veered more and more towards the accused who were both seen as being victims of a witch hunt. Towards the end of the Hastings trial, impeachment fatigue set in and his main accusers Burke and Fox were savagely lampooned, notably by Gillray.