For those of us who remember East Berlin in the 1980s this, from Tesco in Milton Keynes 40 years later, looks eerily familiar. Although the colour photography is superior.
It’s what happens when ideologues set about systemically wrecking the prosperity & well-being a country.
Russia’s in the news again. As is the re-emergence of a fantasy, from Germany & France, of a western “reset” with President Putin. The UK has been guilty of the same. So has the US. President Biden looks to be clearer sighted. No more wishful thinking, please. A (long)🧵 /1.
That requires a realistic assessment of Russia as it is, not as some members of the Euro-Atlantic Alliance might hope it to be. And clarity about what needs to be done, & how, to protect & promote Alliance interests. /2.
Understand what you’re dealing with. Russia is run by the people who own it. Principally an elite of a few dozen people, largely dominated by ex-KGB officials with a world view formed during Soviet days. Vladimir Putin is at the apex & calls the shots. /3.
.@DavidGHFrost appeared before @TomTugendhat & @CommonsForeign yesterday, together with one of his most senior civil servants, the Director-General of the EU Secretariat in the Cabinet Office. You don’t need a body-language expert in order to understand how it went. /1.
President Biden’s visit, & the newspaper front pages which accompany it (next tweet), bring into sharp focus the realities of current geopolitical power 👇
The Chancellor, PM & even the Bank Governor can, if they wish, propagate the fiction that UK govt deficit spending in GB£ creates “debt” which needs to be “paid back”; that they’re not in complete control of the interest rate; that a necessary requirement for controlling …/1.
… inflation is interest rate rises; & that huge, non-inflationary deficit spending is not only entirely available to them but also essential, if we’re to look after the well-being & prosperity of the UK population.
They can pretend all that. /2.
But they’d be dissembling. Or just plain wrong. Take your pick.