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.

1/n


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

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

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.

1/n 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

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...

1/n ...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...

2/n

Has anybody tried using X to post fiction? Here's an attempt: a geopolitical future history. Let's see how much engagement/reposts it gets. I've named it after based on a recent panel discussion led by @DavidSacks (see authors note).

2049: Mearsheimer's American Nightmare It was a hot and humid day in June when the Doomsday Clock hit one minute to twenty four hundred. We are undoubtedly even closer to midnight now, but the Institute of Atomic Energy in Beijing has not yet announced an update, and it is that day in June which sticks in the memory – when the Communist Party Central Committee released a statement which made it clear that humanity was on the eve of destruction again, just 23 years since the near miss in Ukraine.

The media here in Britain have largely regurgitated the Beijing view that a revanchist United States is fomenting the crisis in an effort to recapture its lost empire. Perhaps so, but by removing context and history from Washington’s actions, we are left with nothing but a story of a warmongering imperialist American President leading a propagandised people toward war. Such morality tales are seldom good explanations for great power relations.

As is often the case, the seeds of the present crisis were sowed by the last. With hindsight, it would have been wise to have listened to Henry Kissinger. On 24 May 2022, the ancient former US Secretary of State told the Davos World Economic Forum that negotiations between the West and Russia over Ukraine needed "to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome.”

Yet nobody then was close to ready for concessions, and the geopolitical consequences are now well known. First, Russia was driven into the arms of China. While previously the Kremlin had pursued a policy of cautious interaction with Beijing, it was now forced into a much closer relationship.

In effect, Beijing got the deal of the century. It instantly solved its Malacca problem, gaining overland access to almost limitless energy, natural resources and food. It also got its hands on Russian military technology in areas such as jet engines, air defence and submarines. Meanwhile, Russia gained a route through sanctions, geared its economy to a region with far more rapid growth than Europe, and linked itself to a country fast moving up the technology and value added manufacturing ladder.

Perhaps as importantly, China now benefited from a Russia implacably opposed to the US-led Western Bloc. In the decade after the Ukraine Crisis, Moscow was hugely active in expanding and strengthening BRICS and the SCO into counterweights to the G7, currying favour with the Global South, and generally making mischief in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, the broader MENA region, Pakistan, Africa and Latin America, all of which tied down small parcels of US resources and focus that might have been directed at China.

Secondly, Europe was hard hit by the war. Cutting itself off from the most economically rational source of energy, Russian pipeline gas, had led to grinding, slow-motion deindustrialisation and falling living standards. Strikes, protests and rising support for ever more extremist parties destabilised European politics and further worsened the investment outlook.

The American economy was doing better, but socially and politically it was even worse. The 2024 presidential election, between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, was somehow even more fractious than the 2020 campaign. Lawyers were more important than stump speeches and debates. The election did not finish on 5 November 2024; instead, it switched from vote gathering to lawfare, and thence to constitutional crisis.

1/n

For all those not worried about this, I want to help you to think as your opponent -- an important part of diplomacy. Imagine that during the Iraq War 2003-11, China or Russia had provided Iraqi militias with advanced weaponry, plus intelligence, plus targeting...

1/n ...information to attack and kill our troops. How would we have responded? What would the media and political pressure on our leaders to respond have been? Now imagine Russia and China decide that they'll give the Iraqi militias the weapons and targeting to strike Britain...

2/n

As many of you will have read, the @WSJ has published what it claims to be the story of how #Nordstream was destroyed. I'm not sure I buy it, but if I did, it raises extremely important and concerning questions about our intelligence communities, governments and media.

1/n

https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1823898586922295622

First, the story--that the operation was conducted by Valeriy Zaluzhniy, then Ukraine's most senior military officer, despite the fact the CIA got wind of the operation (from Dutch intelligence), and told President Zelensky to stop it, which he ordered Zaluzhniy to...

2/n

This tweet is a MESSAGE, and part of a thread of messages. PAY ATTENTION!

Sending this message was IMPORTANT to me.

What is in the thread below is REPULSIVE and DANGEROUS.

This tweet is a WARNING about that DANGER.

DO NOT SCROLL DOWN. There is NOTHING OF INTEREST there.





Why did you scroll down? Wasn't I clear that you shouldn't? Didn't I even add unnerving pictures to elicit a *feeling* you shouldn't? Yet you're still here. Why? The answer to this question is vital to the safety of future humans, and suggests important lessons for us today.

2/n

I think that all of us on the social conservative side of the debate, all of us who gave been in favour of lower migration and have warned at the consequences of successive governments ignoring the concerns of the majority of Britons, should state unequivocally that those...

1/n ...involved in rioting must feel the *full* force of the law. Rioting is unacceptable, and the government has not only the right but the duty to re-establish control. Furthermore, from a personal perspective, I find the outright racism, the crypto-revolutionary forces...

2/n

Britain's migration policy is an important driver of the protest, riots and ethnic violence that have erupted since the horrific attacks in #Southport. This thread tells the story of that policy, while aiming to provide as comprehensive and objective an overview as possible.

1/n





The story starts with the Nationality Act of 1948. Prior to the Act, the concept of a 'British Citizen' did not quite exist. Britons, like Indians, Jamaicans, or Hongkongers, were subjects of the Crown to which they owed allegiance. The 1948 Act, prompted by the...

2/n

This is a fascinating short thread that is instructive. Read it first. Essentially it argues that for many years politicians have prioritised economic growth on the assumption that that's what voters want, when this proposition isn't clear at all.

A thread in reply.

1/n

https://twitter.com/SteveDavies365/status/1810330516769423714

Mr Davies says he now believes that many people prioritise things other than economic growth; for example, on the left, equality, and on the right tradition and ethnic homogeneity. I think this is right, but it might be less apparent if there *was* economic growth. Since...

2/n

UNPOPULAR HOT TAKE (but I don't care, because now is the time social conservatives must speak the truth). Those decrying sectarianism in politics must think harder. What did we expect? That we could dump the world's cultures in forgotten and dilapidated council estates...

1/n ...and towns in large numbers, and produce by unknown magic Liberal Consumer Britons? That we could hand out passports as though they were pizza delivery menus and yet deprive these people of their say at the ballot box? That we could espouse the sort of liberal...

2/n

In four days, we will likely wake to a new government. Recently, I wrote a semi-viral thread about the way Labour would govern. But what next for the Tories? And how will all this affect our politics & society? More badly than you think. This is a thread about THE DAY AFTER.

1/n

https://twitter.com/admcollingwood/status/1803104439697313995

At first, whatever you think of their programme or their politics (and I am more concerned than most), Labour will be popular. All new governments enjoy a honeymoon period (even May got a short one), and the media and Civil Service will be delighted they're in power.

2/n

In November, long before #zeroseats, even as the media was reporting politics as usual, I wrote a thread on why the Tories were heading for an epochal defeat. Now that this is received wisdom, it's time for a new thread, forecasting how Labour will govern. Be very afraid.

1/n

https://twitter.com/admcollingwood/status/1726947177682133456

The first thing to understand is that there is very little room for a stereotypical Labour spending splurge. In fact, it's more likely that @RachelReevesMP will have to engage in serious austerity. Sovereign debt is near 100% of GDP, and the 2023/24 fiscal deficit was 4.4%.

2/n

This is the problem. A sizable number of Tory MPs think that the whole 'culture war' is made up by the 'far right' (rather than a reaction of the average person to the excesses of the progressive-left after they *won* the culture war and consolidated their grip over every...

1/n

https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1797749626696540626

...node of power in the UK). This group of Tories (who have mostly accepted cultural defeat or were born into the post-defeat world and therefore know nothing different) cannot grasp why the 'Conservative' Party should be involved. I am sad to tell you that this faction...

2/n

I'm unsure @montie has thought this through. The party dumped Feckless Boris for Liz Truss, a destructive fool. Desperate after the mess she made, it was forced into a stitch up to bring in Rishi. Voters would have rightly seen a third defenestration for a third unelected PM...

https://twitter.com/montie/status/1797649191650681152

...as a democratic affront and, worse, a sign that it was amateur hour within the Tory Party. Further, there was *no* consensus candidate behind which the party could have swung, which would have necessitated another full blown leadership contest. Imagine the disgust of the...

Just read this terrifying little column. It's a must read (link below) because it suggests Europe is on the road to war. It's written by the former staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, so it should be reasonably...

1/n ...credible. It argues that the Biden Administration thinks that anything that looks like a Russian victory in Ukraine would be a serious "setback to US security strategy and would be a blow, even a fatal one, to NATO." This is true, but I would add that this is only...

2/n

The Anglo-Saxon chattering class is fiercely critical of the methods 🇸🇻 President @nayibbukele has used to tackle violent crime and gangs in his country. They're wrong to be so *even on their own terms*, for reasons important for our own governance. A🧵 on why. First...

1/n

https://twitter.com/ForeignAffairs/status/1771108598942208015

...let's get some facts straight. The methods President Bukele used *were* extremely harsh. To achieve his goals, rights of association were suspended, as was the right to legal counsel. The period in which a suspect could be detained without charge was extended from 3...

2/n

@benshapiro is trending for arguing that the #pension age should be raised and that the current system is unsustainable. His arguments are, to be kind, bad (even in terms of data/facts), but they are used by UK politicians, too, so let's tackle them in a quick thread 🧵
1/n

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1767634328732013030

The first argument Mr Shapiro uses is that when state pensions were introduced (in the US by FDR) life expectancy was *lower* than the pension age. In Britain, pensions for all through NI were introduced in 1946. Male life expectancy was indeed lower than the pension age...

2/n

🧵 on why I have no sympathy for most political and media figures criticising @georgegalloway after his #Rochdale win -- and why you shouldn't either. Galloway has been criticised for two things: his support for Palestine and his 'divisive' politics. Let's go one at a time.

1/n First, to upset everybody, I don't have any opinion on the Gaza situation beyond that I'd like the killing to stop. I don't even have any opinion on the overall Israel-Palestine feud, beyond that I would prefer that they could live in peace together. This conflict has...

2/n

I know I'm going to upset a lot of people by saying this, but conservatives and the right have picked the wrong cause with Shemima Begum. Yes, what she did wasn't just morally repulsive, but worse: it was traitorous. Yes, she showed no interest in coming back and appeared to... ...revel in the anti-Western medieval savagery of the state she had chosen. Yes, it's possible (perhaps probable) that she isn't repentant or contrite, but is instead just desperate. Yes, we should loathe the often pernicious human rights lawyers and open borders left who have...