It's important to recognise what's new in the Trump/far right convergence around the Portland/Kenosha events. 1/ We've moved from isolated far right shooters to routine weapons carrying by the far right and now to open kinetic vigilantism... newstatesman.com/world/north-am…
2/ Both in Kenosha and Portland, social media call outs resulted in far right counter protests to peaceful and legitimate anti-racism. This is Trump's strategy - and you don't need a conspiracy theory to see the overlap between the aims newstatesman.com/world/north-am…
3/ The strategic goal is to defeat Trump at the polls; it's not about calling off protests, it's about the left in the Democratic Party showing leadership and connecting with them to do the maximum to stop Trump dictating the tempo/framing of the crisis... newstatesman.com/world/north-am…
4/ Trump has strategists who don't care about democracy; the Dems have pollsters and spin doctors as if this is about some reasoned argument. The swing states could be hit with provocations before polling day, and voter suppression will wear a bandana, Kevlar and a QAnon t-shirt
5/ The #TrumpViolence hashtag is a good first response to the new situation, but he won't be beaten with lawyers and some decent videos... it's going to need a massive GOTV campaign and civil resistance to any attempt at a presidential coup...
6/ The core of a resistance movement - to force Trump to accept any Biden victory - has to be strike action. The cops and Fox News can't pick the apples, clean the hotel rooms, unload the ships - and the transition is long enough for strikes to mean something...
7/ Meanwhile what's happening with the deification of Kyle Rittenhouse is akin to the creation of a living Horst Wessel. Not even in Weimar Germany did the right and far right collaborate like this newstatesman.com/world/north-am…
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Global investors are selling US stocks because they know Trump's tariffs will kill globalisation and trigger recession 1/... but why are they selling bonds at the same time? 🧵
2/ ....They're selling US bonds - which they would normally buy as a safe haven - because bonds have become gambling chips for hedge funds who are gambling on massive credit ... as @FT explains
@FT 3/ ... what comes next is financial contagion. After 2008 all banks required to keep a stock of capital to cushion instability ... that's rapidly eroded... sudden stop in trade plus massive losses in financial markets is bound to take down some bank somewhere...
Britain we - and we alone - have a major diplomatic problem. Witkoff, Trump's envoy to RU, claimed on record that the four disputed provinces of Ukraine plus Crimea were "handed over by Kruschev" 1/ We are signatories of Budapest...
2/ Here's what the Budapest Memorandum says. Very clear: that we, the USA and Russia respect the *existing borders* of Ukraine. If Witkoff's position is shared by the State Dept we are, as of now, the sole remaining guarantor of UA sovereignty ...
3/ Trump is already breaching Budapest by using economic coercion against Ukraine ... but if USA has de facto walked away from Budapest then UK has to public reaffirm our adherence to it... it conforms to the Vienna criterion for a Treaty under international law ....
Make no mistake: Putin wants a puppet government in Kyiv and enforced neutrality/demilitarisation for Ukraine. 1/ Having failed to do achieve this through war, he now wants to achieve it through destabilisation... so the prevarication about the ceasefire offer is just for show🧵
2/ As @ZelenskyyUa points out: prevarication and delay is Putin's modus operandi. I'd go further - it's part of the Reflexive Control doctrine he operates against "state victims" which in this instance is the UK/EU...
@ZelenskyyUa 3/ The immediate truce offer was agreed with Trump, designed by the Brits and places Putin in a bind. He cannot insist on conditions - since his own economy is on the brink of destabilisation, and on the front line in Donbas (not Kursk) UA is v operationally effective...
Hegseth's Rammstein speech is a watershed moment for Europe. It means the USA is no longer a reliable ally, even if its democracy survives ... 1/ ... but Hegseth is right on one thing. We now have to spend a lot more on defence 🧵
2/ The FT reports HMG quibbling over 2.3% of GDP on defence and 2.6% - but that's now irrelevant... Trump is demanding 5% and may accept 3.5%... and it's clear what we need to spend it on...
3/ Without the USA as an ally primarily committed to European security, we need Europe to own strategic enablers. Satellites, heavy lift, AWACS, carriers and a reliably independent nuclear deterrent...
UK bond yield opens at 4.9% There is no “bond market crisis” - however, the high and rising yield on UK debt is the result of a long-term loss of confidence after the Truss fiasco and the poor fundamentals left by the Tories and Brexit 1/…🧵
2/ … what’s happening throws Reeves’ budget into a new light. She rightly did a “belt and braces” on fiscal credibility, raising NI to plug the massive gaps left by Hunt - but the bond markets still do not see a growth story. Why? …
3/ ...because key elements of Labour policy are at the design stage: industrial strategy, green energy, workforce... whilel growth is flatlining… and because we have a doom loop built into our policy architecture…
Every stunt Russia has pulled since the US election feels to me like a pre-programmed sequence: the cable cutting, the MRBM attack; destabilisation of Romania, Moldova and now Transnistria 1/ ... hard to know the purpose without intel...
2/ ... at baseline it creates uncertainty, shakes the tree, shows a range of options for escalation... but I keep coming back to Orban's taunt against Zelensky - "this is the most dangerous point of the conflict" - ie a warning of "escalate to de-escalate"...
3/ That was surely an echo of His Master's Voice... while Western governments are refusing to attribute RU blatant attacks. Why? Could be an agreed strategem; could be fear of domestic destabilisation. Either way, Finland has put a stop to that...