Chris Whiteside's Blog

  As Kemi Badenoch put it, "After 18 months of “standing up to Putin” the Labour govt quietly issued a licence allowing imports of Russian oil refined in third countries. Yesterday Labour MPs voted AGAINST UK oil and gas licences. We are now importing from Russia instead of drilling in the North Sea. Insane."

 

 

Some of the most infuriating, and destructive, people to deal with in a democracy, are the monomaniacs who can never accept that an issue has been decided. This particularly applies to extreme nationalists of any stripe and extreme anti-nationalists opposed to them who cannot treat an issue as decided and when they lose a democratic vote the next day start organising a new campaign  for a new vote to try to reverse the result. There is a difference between a vote on whether or not to break up a particular country or pull a country out of a complex and deeply integrated international union, and an election which puts party A rather than  party B in as the government of a country. In the latter case it is entirely reasonable for people who support party B, or indeed C, D or E,  to campaign to gain or regain office at the following schedule election. It is not right or reasonable for those who lose a referendum to do everything in their power to frustrate the implementation ...

 

"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.