Collingwood 🇬🇧 Profile picture
Jul 11, 2022 10 tweets 10 min read Read on X
This week's issue of #BritanniQ has landed in people's email inboxes. Didn't receive it? Follow the link below to get it every Monday free of charge. What did you miss out on this week? We started, of course, with #BorisJohnson's resignation... [1/n]

bournbrookmag.com/britanniq
...@TomMcTague argued that #Johnson might suffer from Phaeton Complex, and ultimately achieved nothing apart from one big thing. The achievement of nothing infuriated @arisroussinos, who argued in a brilliant essay that this, rather than his sleaze, was his main...[2/n]
...crime. Finally @sullydish said Johnson was useless, but, far from being the avatar for a right wing racist takeover (as many on the hysterical left argue), he actually prevented one. #BritanniQ also guided people to a brilliant @unherd podcast, with @freddiesayers... [3/n]
...@Fox_Claire, @Will___lloyd and @arisroussinos discussed not the gossip surrounding the #BorisOut moment, but its place in the mega geopolitical, economic and social trends shaking the nation.

@BDSixsmith pleaded with God to save us from Tom Tugendhat, and a certain... [4/n]
...@admcollingwood argued that leadership elections play a crucial role in blocking the creation of a genuinely conservative political voice in Britain while running a disdainful eye over the contenders.

We also asked, is Britain defended? The answer, from @simonakam... [5/n]
...@James_P_Snell, @RUSI_org and @WarOnTheRocks was, given the changes in the nature of warfare and the specifics of the British Armed Forces, probably not.

We recommended a wonderful essay by Paul Kingsnorth for @unherd about how the left and big businesses ended up...[6/n]
...in bed together, and then looked at the late Shinzo Abe's legacy with two of the most capacious minds in the public intellectual sphere today, @adam_tooze and @ELuttwak. Both offered invaluable detail, breath and context to the former Japanese PM's politics.

Moving...[7/n]
...on, we took a dispiriting look at education with essays from @Im1776_ and @LD_Sceptics. We then suggested an interesting, low cost solution, based on @ATabarrok's review of a Kenyan study for @MargRev. No doubt the teaching unions would hate it. We rounded off the week...[8/n]
...with a wonderfully curmudgeonly (and uncomfortably correct) essay from @cjsnowdon about his hatred of WhatsApp, and a look at why medieval cities hired musicians as first responders, armed guards and essential workers with @tedgioia.

Finally, we had a little...[9/n]
...chicken soup for the patriot's soul.

BritanniQ has received wonderful feedback so far; every week, people have taken the time to write emails saying how much they enjoy it. If you would like it, free of charge, every Monday, follow the link below.

bournbrookmag.com/britanniq

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More from @admcollingwood

Feb 19
With the Ukraine war all but lost, and the US set to withdraw its forces, Europe finds itself in its weakest strategic position since 1948--and maybe the 16thC. This thread suggests a bold (and leftfield) solution. But can we find an Adenauer, de Gaulle, Walesa or Churchill?

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This proposal points to a way out of Europe's strategic, and long-term economic, problems. Emotions don't come into it. I'll start with two quotes from the great historian A.J.P. Taylor, from his The Course of German History (1945), to show how quickly feelings can change.

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On Germany Taylor wrote: "Their method has always been the same--extermination. Many of the peoples of Europe have, at one time or another, been exterminators. The French... The Spaniards... The English... But no other people had pursued extermination as a permanent...

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Read 43 tweets
Feb 17
A quick note about this story. What could Britain actually provide?

It's my understanding that Britain could not put even a single division in the field. At a push, we could probably manage two brigades, or ~10,000 fighting men. For context, this is probably less than Ukraine assigned for the defence of a small to medium sized town like Bakhmut.

But that's in theory. In practice, we might not even be able to equip them. In a 2021 war game exercise, the British Army ran out of key munitions in 10 days. And that was before we emptied the arsenal for Ukraine.

For years, British land forces have sought to leverage world class, elite light infantry units and best in class special forces as a useful appendage to US beef in the global war on terror. But commando raids, human terrain expertise and counter insurgency optimisation is very different skillset to that needed to defend fixed positions, counter drone warfare and artillery duels on the Pontic Steppe. (Note the complaints from Ukrainian soldiers about the quality and relevance of training they receive in the west.)

It therefore seems unlikely that the UK can offer anything that could seriously slow down the Russians. The only use of British troops might be that when they are destroyed, it puts the US in a "join the fight or lose NATO" position.

In other words, Starmer's statement is either delusional, virtue signalling, or dangerous. Take your pick.Image
Meanwhile, in Germany it's much the same. When Europeans complain about the US excluding then from negotiations, we know why: Europe has nothing to offer, and will just demand US taxpayers continue doing what Ursula, Keir, Olaf and Emanuel want.

For those who didn't quite believe me when I said that it is ludicrous to think we could deploy very much of anything to Ukraine, here's a man with far greater knowledge than I am making the same point. Except he claims the numbers I used are optimistic.

Read 4 tweets
Nov 8, 2024
What have our catastrophic Ukraine policy, @RoryStewartUK's handwringing about the 'values' involved in the US election, and Labour's dangerous support for the losing side in that election got in common?

The Adolescent Mindset: A Thread about the ruination of Britain.

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The negative side of adolescent behaviour is often characterised by lack of emotional control; swings between hubristic triumphalism and hysterical hopelessness; callowness and certitude at the same time; lack of responsibility; thoughtless risk taking; and a tendency to...

2/n
...be passionate advocates for big, distant causes while ignoring more mundane, small issues. We've all known (and remember being) teenagers. They can be engaging and energising, but can also be prone to wild mood changes (the world is my oyster because I'm going on a...

3/n
Read 35 tweets
Oct 25, 2024
Some plants, when attacked by insects that eat their leaves, secret a scent that attracts the predators of the attacking insects. I can't help but think that something similar has happened in politics over the last 25 years. In the 20th Century, politics in the Anglo...

1/n
...world was ultimately a dance between capital and labour. The outcome was various messy compromises, continuously shifting in favour of one side and then the other. The parties and organisations that backed the workers would take bites out of the interests of the...

2/n
...capital owning class (such as redistributive taxes, unionised pay and conditions negotiations, and the provision of social programmes like healthcare and education). Those who owned capital and businesses, and the libertarian/Thatcher/Reagan/paleoliberal political...

3/n
Read 11 tweets
Oct 23, 2024
A bombshell report, by renowned investigative reporter @mtaibbi and former US Senate investigator @thackerpd, could have serious political and diplomatic ramifications for the UK. This thread explains why, and lists the questions that must be asked of the government.

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Messrs Taibbi and Thacker allege that a whistleblower has provided them with documents which show that a charity closely linked to Sir Keir Starmer's election svengali and current Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, has written plans to "kill Elon Musk's Twitter," "trigger... 2/n Image
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...EU and UK regulatory action," and build closer links with the Biden-Harris Administration. The charity, called Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), was co-founded by Mr McSweeney, who also founded 'Labour Together', which became known as a 'party within a party'...

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Read 29 tweets
Oct 14, 2024
Some thoughts on slavery and reparations.

The saddest thing, I think, about the return of the question of whether Britain should pay reparations for the practice of slavery, now centred on the foreign secretary David Lammy, is the way that such a heinous and sickening...

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...practice has been politicised. It is, when one thinks for even a moment about what went on in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the scale of suffering involved, hugely affecting and a stain on our national story. Yet the tone of the debate somehow inures us to the...

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...details of this horror. Nevertheless, it is understandable that Britons are angered by the tone and form of the demands. It is implied that Britain should pay reparations absent of any broadly accepted legal framework, or even international norms, to deal with such...

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Read 18 tweets

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