Chris Whiteside's Blog

 

"Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in decision making. The communication and coordination of these scattered fragments of knowledge is one of the basic problems- perhaps the basic problem- of any society." Thomas Sowell

 

"If NATO is lucky, they can join Ukraine." Garry Kasparov

"The best negotiator with Russia is still the Ukrainian army." Marko Mihkelson   Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Estonian Parliament. 

With the news that there will be a by-election in Makerfield, hat tip to Deuxvingarian for thoughts on a new volunteer canvasser Reform UK might get ...   For the avoidance of doubt, this is a joke and I will be there canvassing for the Conservative candidate. POSTSCRIPT Deuxvingarian also suggested an even more effective way for Sir Keir Starmer to sabotage Andy Burnham ... POST POSTSCRIPT   I'm still backing the Conservative candidate

 Health Secretary Wes Streeting has resigned from the government, saying "Where we need vision we have a vacuum, where we need direction we have drift." The above quote is from Streeting's resignation letter.

Kemi Badenoch is the leader Britain needs  

  "There is no lie your opponent can tell about you that hurts as keenly as an uncomfortable truth." (Stephen Daisley , from his article on Kemi Badenoch's response to the King's Speech, see blogpost at Stephen Daisley on Kemi's reply to the King's Speech .)

Treasury Minister Torsten Bell commenting on being rude today compared with Torsten Bell being rude himself last September ...   Hat tip to Jason Groves @JasonGroves1

Journalist Stephen Daisley wrote in the Telegraph that opposition leader Kemi Badenoch "has just shown what a real leader looks like" as she skewered of the government in the debate on the King'" s Speech: "As Keir Starmer’s premiership circles the drain, with his colleagues desperately trying to flush away an election-winner they now regard as an embarrassment, it fell to Kemi Badenoch to tell the Prime Minister and his Government where they had gone wrong. Emily Thornberry protested at being “lectured”, and indeed it was a lecture – a forensic and devastating analysis of a party that had 14 years to prepare for power but has run out of steam after only two. In a sometimes humorous but mostly bracing response to the King’s Speech, the Conservative leader told the Prime Minister: “ Leadership is about having a vision for this country. It’s about having the courage to take difficult decisions, persuading your party that those difficult decisions will pay off in...

"In an era when we are heartily sick of politicians making crazy promises which they cannot keep, it's strange to think the answer is to support ones whose promises are crazier still." Charles Moore , perhaps the best line of this excellent article.

Lord Ashcroft has an important interview with Ukraine's former Chief Diplomat Dmytro Kuleba which has been published on his website and on Conservative Home. Here are some key extracts. "As the war in the Middle East draws global attention away from Ukraine, the Russia-Ukraine war is only intensifying. The spring campaign is now in full swing causing substantial casualties on the battlefield. At the same time, Ukraine has mastered its strategy of conducting deep strikes against Russian oil refineries, forcing Russia’s Vladimir Putin to state over the weekend that the war may be nearing its end and the trilateral talks between the US, Ukraine and Russia may finally be on the horizon. "With the world’s focus increasingly fixed on Iran and the wider region, I sat down with one of Ukraine’s most prominent voices – its former foreign minister and now a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, Dmytro Kuleba – to discuss the trajectory of the war...

 The contradiction at the heart of Reform UK's  welfare policy ...

"Keir Starmer’s speech was sad to watch. With so many resets, even his reset button needs a reset. But I do not take pleasure in watching the Prime Minister flounder. The country needs leadership, not another speech from a man who clearly knows something has gone badly wrong, but still can't explain why. This is Labour’s real problem. It is not just Starmer - all the pretenders jostling for his job do not have the answers either, because they all believe the same things: more welfare, more state control, more borrowing, more regulation. They are busy arguing over who should drive the car, but the truth is they are all heading in the wrong direction. They have no vision for the future. What we need is to get Britain working again. That is why I have proposed an alternative King’s Speech with a a clear plan to reward effort, cut the cost of government, secure our borders, rebuild industry and back families who do the right thing. If Labour are serious about fixing the country th...

From X, referring of the difficulty that to succeed Sir Keir Starmer as PM, the Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, would have to become an MP - which means winning a by-election.  Allison Pearson " I'm looking forward to Burnham finding a 'safe' Labour seat. " Daily Referendum " I doubt Burnham could find a safe seat in DFS. "

1) What journalist Will Hutton wrote about the Labour 2024 manifesto in June 2024 2) What journalist Will Hutton wrote about the Labour 2024 manifesto today

 Rishi Sunak has written this in The Times:

"It was great to attend the big protest on Whitehall against anti-Jewish hate and racism.  It was attended by many British Jews but also many many British friends and supporters who are alarmed as we are by the darkening horizon here.   The Chief Rabbi spoke very well.   The biggest and warmest cheers were when Kemi Badenoch took the stage and her unvarnished passionate support for British Jews and against extremism racism calumnies and violence that the community faces.  She really has shown great leadership and courage here.    Thanks to other speakers from Labour, Liberal Democrats and Reform. Thanks for everyone who came especially non Jewish friends: you are so appreciated." Simon Sebag Montefiore on yesterday's rally against antisemitism.

"With all 136 English councils counted: Reform gained 1,451 seats Labour lost 1,496 seats  Tories lost 563 seats Greens gained 441 seats LibDems gained 155 seats  In other news north of the border: The SNP won 58 seats with a 33% share of the vote (need 65 for a majority).  In the previous 2021 Holyrood elections they won 64 seats with a 44% share of the vote.  So down six seats and 11 percentage points on five years ago.  Not quite the momentum for independence the Nats are claiming. Will be quite easy for Westminster to bat away calls for another Indy ref." Andrew Neil on X (formerly Twitter) today Let's compare with the Peter Kellner table: The figures given by Andrew Neil at the top of this post are seats gained and lost. As a reminder when the pollster More in Common compared votes gained with the polls they found this:

"Labour: losses everywhere. Reform: good gains made by burning thru ~£8mn (10x what you usually spend on locals) yet did worse than last year. Conservatives: progress on last year, losses in counties set to be abolished but best London results since 2006. Read more below👇 in my Telegraph article where I explain why, despite the setbacks, I'm encouraged with our results this week. The Conservative Party is rebuilding steadily, seriously and with purpose. We are not asking people to forget the past but to judge us by what we do next." Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch Link to Telegraph article: The Conservatives’ green shoots of recovery are clear. Judge us by what we do next

"Why would the Tories get into bed with a party with which, immigration aside, they have about as much in common as with Labour?  It would not 'unite the right'. It would be an incoherent mess and disintegrate within about ten minutes." Matthew Syed points in an article in The Times out one of the many reasons why a Tory/Reform pact - which I am certain is not on the cards - would be a mistake.

I am not a huge fan of using local elections as a measure of the strength of national political parties instead of a mechanism for picking the best people to run local services. I am convinced that local services would be run far better and people would have a higher quality of life if they more often voted for the person who would make the best local councillor instead of using the local elections to reward or punish whoever is in government. But if people ARE going to use the local elections as a guide to the state of the parties, they might as well be given the right information to do it. There have been a lot of misleading posts on social media about the "National Equivalent Vote" shares, many of them based on preliminary or out of date numbers, or just made up! These are the final / definitive figures (via @EdConwaySky) 👇 Reform 27% Conservatives 20% Labour 15% Greens 14% LibDem 14% Other 10%