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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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...
What a day! Assad fled. Saydnaya liberated. Russian power in the Middle East evaporating. Yes there's a vacuum, yes there are competing forces but Syrians now have a chance to shape their own future free of Russian/Iranian imperialism ... and Britain's response matters 1/ 🧵
2/ There is every chance that Syria fragments into three or four chaotic states. That's a function of the "multipolar world" the Putin/Xi acolytes on the far left are so fond of. Multipolarity = chaos is the theme of 2023-4. And Trump saying "stay out of it" is delusional...
3/ The P5 powers could - if Russia/China want to show an ounce of responsibility - work with Turkey, Israel and Lebanon to stabilise the situation. Because if Syria as a state falls apart - its currency, treasury and central bank evaporate - that will be a case study in chaos...
Labour's defence industrial strategy framework is meaty: it learns the lessons from dirigist countries and marks a break from DSIS2021 - some highlights: 1/ The trade unions are at the table - and so are regional employment objectives... unions will be on the sector council ... 🧵
2/ It is frank about what is wrong.
3/ It contains a - ahem - reminder to the fiscal authorities that not spending money on defence is a false economy ...
Jeremy and his merry bunch echoing Putin's talking points - so let's take them one by one: 🧵1/ it is Russia who has escalated. Firing ATACMs and Storm Shadows is both Ukraine's right; both have been used before and changing the targeting is incremental. Yet they make no criticism of Putin firing the IRBM. Why? ...
2/ There is no threat of "all out escalation" between NATO and Russia. NATO is not fighting Russia. Nor did NATO supply the missiles fired at Russia: Britain and USA and France did. This is not a semantic difference. NATO is a defensive alliance ...
3/ " The risk of a nuclear attack cannot be ruled out." Attack by whom? If there's a risk of Russia nuking Ukraine surely JC and the sectarians should protest this. Maybe write to a Russian newspaper? It is Putin's strategy to stoke nuclear fears and they are amplifying that...
Trump's apparent victory has 5 big implications for the UK: 🧵
1️⃣ It can happen here. He will back Farage, the Musk propaganda machine will crank up against Labour; the Tories will remould themselves into Trump-lite Islamophobes ...
2️⃣ The UK needs to become the European leader of NATO, and all European countries need to hike spending on defence and democratic resilience. America is a permanently unreliable ally in this century
3️⃣ Misogyny will enter mainstream politics - and the whole anti-woke cocktail will be normalised by the BBC and alt media - that's proved successful in America. We need to stand up for women's rights across the board