This is a thread on why Britain is likely to lose the Falkland Islands, probably within the next 25 years, but by 2065 at the latest. We could theoretically avoid this, but will probably not take the necessary steps, so lose them we will.

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https://twitter.com/BenObeseJecty/status/1971108114989551681

First things first: it is unlikely we will be faced (on a strategically relevant time frame) with the prospect of losing the islands militarily. We might be militarily weak, but since the 1982 war, we have bolstered defences of the islands, centred on RAF Mount Pleasant.

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This Sunday evening, a thread about our lying political elite, about global conflict, about why you are probably manipulated, the reason you have been manipulated, and why you should stop accepting this and demand answers. This is a story that spans the globe, but...

1/n ...it starts at a football match in Edinburgh on 3 August 2024. Local team Hearts were playing Glasgow Rangers. At the match, a Rangers fan unfurled the banner pictured below. It caused such anger that Rangers felt it necessary to publicly condemn the fan and promise...

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In the last thread, I showed how Britain went from being a nation of British culture to a multicultural nation, how that makes the integration of migrants impossible, and why that's been particularly bad for Britain. Now we'll look at the solution.



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https://x.com/admcollingwood/status/1937927643912892510?t=bJLHue2s7l5XG3CN3mCTfA&s=19

The basic equation is: immigration in too high numbers equals the creation of ‘communities’, which equals zero chance of integration, which equals the government throwing in the towel and adopting multiculturalism, which equals the importation into Britain a range of...

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Controversial thread for this evening.

It's about why immigrants CANNOT integrate; why it is therefore probably UNFAIR to ask them to integrate; and what is the only likely solution.

I think you'll dislike it; I do myself. But it's the truth.

But before the solution...

1/n ...we need to understand why it is now unfair to demand that immigrants integrate and assimilate. And to understand that, we need to look back and find out why we moved from an implicit policy of integration to an explicit policy of multiculturalism in the first place.

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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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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. 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.

https://x.com/KitKlarenberg/status/1891225168195797258?t=oQGtDKt3aL8cSX9ukHgFMA&s=19

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...

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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...

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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...

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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...

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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%.

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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...

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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...

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