Editor: the reader might wonder at the opening paragarph of Mr. Colviles broadside of the NHS. A member of The Gentry opines via a sterotype !
Here’s a very old joke about an Irish yokel giving directions to a tourist: “Well, I wouldn’t start from here.” It’s so old I hesitate to use it. Except that it also happens to be the best possible description of how you’d reform the NHS.
Editor: The NHS has been under attacks by Thaterites and the acolites of her Deity Hayek yet…
An offhand Twitter joke and some pushback I got led me to look up what Hayeks’ The Road to Serfdom says about universal health care. Some interesting stuff on Page 125 of the edition that’s in Google books:
Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance, where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks, the case for the state helping to organise a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong. There are many points of detail where those wishing to preserve the competitive system and those wishing to supersede it by something different will disagree on the details of such schemes; and it is possible under the name of social insurance to introduce measures which tend to make competition more or less ineffective. But there is no incompatibility in principle between the state providing greater security in this way and the preservation of individual freedom.
What might The Reader make of the above? The Reader in regaled by Mr. Colevile’s remaining 1110 word evaluation of the failures of the NHS. Yet what of the following from 1985?
Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) has encountered difficult times under the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. A conservative who shares many of the philosophical tenets that guide President Reagan, Thatcher has sought to force the NHS to make tougher choices. She also has told the electorate bluntly that the health service does not represent a free lunch. Thatcher declared herself pointedly in this regard during the Conservative Party’s annual conference in October 1983. “Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the state has no source of money other than the money that people earn themselves…. Let me take the subject on which there has been so much debate —the health service. People talk about a free service. It isn’t free. You have to pay for it.” Nevertheless, Thatcher and her party colleagues, not unlike all successful politicians in the United Kingdom, seem duty-bound not to be seen as attacking the NHS. After her support of it became an issue in 1982, Thatcher declared at the party’s annual conference that year that the service is “safe in our hands”—a comment that helped her win reelection by a landslide. In 1982, the NHS consumed 6.3 percent of Britain’s gross national product, compared with 10.6 percent for personal health services in the United States in the same year. On a per capita basis, medical care expenditures in the United Kingdom were $390 versus $1,265 in the United States. Rudolf Klein, a professor of social policy at the University of Bath, explains in this essay why so socialistic an instrument as the NHS enjoys the support of the Conservative Party. Klein, a former journalist, has written widely on the NHS and is regarded as a leading British commentator on the health service. His recent book, The Politics of the National Health Service , is a primer on the evolution and status of Britain s most popular social program.
The book is the result of a quest by the researcher and author to answer the question: how much of the UK is owned by the USA?
The answer is difficult to answer (the UK government does not keep statistics), but it is possible to piece together because the US government and European governments do.
The purpose is not to reject American values and democracy, which helped us fight two world wars and keep the peace (mostly, in the UK that is) but to act as
“a call to action to stop further transfers of parts of the economy to powerful and unaccountable American owners and to reset Britain on a course for more economic independence”
Hanton points out the dominance of US business in public discourse. When we talk about “big tech” we mean “US tech”. When we talk about private equity we mainly mean US private equity. When we talk about multinationals, it’s in the main US multinationals.
Plus, when we talk about the ‘special relationship’ and partnership he asks ”What sort of partnership is it with the mightiest superpower in history, which holds an overwhelming stake in the UK economy?”
It is a paradox that having rejected the EU as a strategic partner in the name of ‘taking back control’ the UK has willingly foregone control over vast swathes of the UK economy. It is unusual for countries to allow such penetration of their home markets to a single country, located thousands of miles away.
In table 1 of the book, he compares figures about the sales of US multinationals in the UK and other leading European countries. It’s 25% in the UK but only 5-9% in Italy, Spain, France and Germany. The net result is a significant amount of profit is extracted, and repatriated to the US, and tax is routinely avoided on these sales. 1,256 multinationals with sales of over $850m operated in the UK in 2020.
It’s a further paradox that the US itself will oppose other countries buying and owning strategic industries, whereas the UK government has seemingly willingly presided over the sell-off of the UK economy. Ex-Chancellors and prime ministers earn good money by facilitating this according to the book.
When even Joe Biden endorsed putting America First the possible consequences of a further Trump Presidency must surely call for a re-think.
How does this affect the NHS?
This question is answered in a Chapter entitled “the NHS Cash Cow”. It covers how US multinationals maneuvered to obtain the vast majority of Covid funding for its vaccines when cheaper UK vaccines could have been used.
Half of all Covid contracts went to US companies. The contract for PPE storage was given to a US company in 2018 and was sold in April 2020.
According to the sources quoted in the book however, it was not just around Covid that NHS reliance on US suppliers became evident. Tony Blair’s Labour Government started outsourcing elective procedures in 2002 and the aim, according to the book was to increase private provision to up to 40% of operations. The book states that US companies have obtained the lion’s share of these new and existing contracts for this work.
Three of the biggest UK private hospital operations are US-owned, American suppliers now provide one in seven psychiatric beds, diagnostics supplies come from predominantly US Companies, the major drug companies are predominantly American – as are seven of the top ten medical device companies, including Medtronic, DaVita, GE Healthcare, Stryker, Johnson & Johnson and Cardinal Health.
The US Portman Dental Care organisation owns 350 clinics. In IT, Oracle, Palantir, eMed, Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon are poised to scoop up contracts that can never be removed once the supplier is embedded in the business processes of the NHS.
In the words of Hanton,
“It will be easy for these and other companies to click into the NHS network because it has already been reshaped to fit more neatly with American business models”.
This includes preventative overprescribing of drugs, excessive testing, and excessive intervention according to the ability to pay.
…
Editor: Mr. Colvile is a Political Opportunist and Political Romatic infatuated with Mrs. Thatchers romance with her Hayek, made to measure !
Mr. Ganesh is my favorite flâneur! He can write a feuilleton, the rhetoric of the Sunday Supplement’s decorous chatter, like no other writer in America or Britain. His only possible competition is James Wolcott , once of Vanity Fair. As a person born in Los Angeles, two months before the Bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I long to drive its Freeways, boulevards and streets: and see its skyline as it presents itself from all its possible angles of view.
I recall my mother driving up Alameda, with the City Hall building (featured in the Superman T.V. Show, as The Daily Planet headquarters) in full view, all the way, to pick up my dad, to take him to his second job.Once the tallest building in the skyline -the Industries that lined this street, with railroad tracks all the way, with the strong odor of fuel oil and ozone. Just looking out the window…
Or driving past Al Jolson’s ostentatious grave site at Hillside Memorial Park, Culver City , sick with the flu, in the back seat of my mom’s old two door sedan. On the way to visit Aunt Rela in Culver City, right by the Culver City Airport.
Mr. Ganesh is quite unsurprisingly confines himself to the West-Side, the would-be Hipster’s measuring stick of what L.A. is ! South L.A. , East L.A. , Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Long Beach, and points south to Orange County. Or over the Canyon Streets into The Valley, its Ventura Blvd. an answer to Melrose Avenue? All these are elided from Mr. Ganesh’s essay!
Mr. Ganesh loses my interest, as a reader with his speculation, about the fate of the Metropolis in the Age of Covid -19. Recall Fuentes’ beautiful metaphor/simile of ‘The Great Rotting Meat Pie of Madrid’ ?
I was born in L.A. in 1945 and moved to San Diego in 2007. So I was long term resident. I lived in the City of L. A. moved to Willowbrook, then Lynwood, Downey, Long Beach, Orange County: Costa Mesa, Lakewood and Long Beach again.
Your description reads like what one of those gorgeous Color T.V. advertisements, complete with evocative musical soundtrack, riffing on the latest pop music. Yours, a collection of cliches, that evokes that advertisement, reduced to leaden prose. Or a trailer for a series based on the ‘L.A. Lifestyle’. I can almost hear the voice-over by Robin Leach!
L. A. is a city of neighborhoods held together by Freeways. But make no mistake, each that manifests its own unique brands of provincialism, or race and ethnicity : Fairfax, Watts, East L.A. etc…
I have driven by and around ‘ Frank Gehry’s sumptuously garbled house in Santa Monica’ at least three times. I was a delivery person on the West-Side, for years, and I think ‘garbled’ in the proper term! It is utterly out of place of the vernacular architecture of the other homes. Raw Plywood and cyclone fencing makes it look like a cheap knock off of the Post-Modern Style. His buildings like Disney Hall are monuments to his love of the ‘sumptuous curve’.
In the Calculated/Manufactured Historical Haze of the Ukanian War, what stands out to the Reader of The Economist, is its ever growing Political Hysteria. The Reader need only look to Zanny Menten Beddoes appearence on the Dailey Show of Feb 12, 2024
Zanny Minton Beddoes – The Economist | The Daily Show:
There is a piss poor transcript so the reader is on her own. Yet The Daily Show is or was once about comedy and satire not about Political Propganda!
Editor: Reader turn your attention to this from Feb 28th 2025
Editor: Note The Economist Party Line is consistant over time, whose pitch reaches verifiable intensity and levels off , in a kind of rythemic point and counter point. Trump and JD Vance are the villians of this execise in political/idiological reportage! Reader this turged political melodrama reaches its end, here framed by the first sentence’s political fatalism!
The road ahead for Ukraine is now unclear, but strewn with danger. It seems likely that internal and external actors will increase the pressure on Mr Zelensky to resign, hold elections or both—though how that can happen during wartime without cancelling martial law and thus tipping the country into chaos is not clear. “Getting into a dialogue with Trump in this way doesn’t leave him a chance,” says an opposition MP in Ukraine. “He is going to have to destroy Zelensky now. I worry the price will be our whole country.”
Even deputies from Mr Zelensky’s inner circle agreed that it had been a disaster. Some reasoned the president had been tired, three years into war and a long transatlantic flight. He had been provoked into a manufactured fight. “J.D. was the problem,” said one of them. “Zelensky had to show strength to be credible for negotiations, but the emotions were too much.” A senior Ukrainian security source said Mr Vance seemed to be pleased that the negotiations never even happened. “As a wrecker, Vance had been well prepared,” he says. “He did his thing professionally.”
At the end of the shouting match, Mr Trump quipped, “This is gonna be great television.” The president of Ukraine scowled as he sat with his hands clasped. Mr Vance smirked. His work was done. ■
Editor: For The New Republic to publish a long critical evaluation of ‘The Technological Republic’, after the Clintons, Obama and Biden Neo-Liberalism & War Mongering as deeply toxic as ‘‘The Technological Republic’ this review resembles self-exculpation writ large. !
….
1
And for all Karp and Zamiska’s self-styling as critics of Silicon Valley, much of the book is dedicated to proclaiming the tech industry’s salvific qualities. Only a “union of the state and the software industry,” they claim, will maintain American dominance in this century, and this techno-governmental fusion will require the state to adopt the “engineering mindset” that has fueled Silicon Valley’s world-bestriding success. Karp and Zamiska blandly describe this mindset as involving a “disinterest in theater and posturing,” an “abandonment of grand theories about how the world ought to be,” and, via a quote from the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, a resistance to “sweeping and easy generalizations.” Aside from being meaningless abstractions, each of these qualities is betrayed practically every time Karp gets in front of a camera and utters the words “America” or “the West.”
2
It’s hard to picture him acting otherwise. Mythmaking, bluster, and hype are practically job requirements for the CEOs of the defense tech world. Justifying ever-frothier valuations—as of mid-February, Palantir’s market capitalization was worth about half that of the five traditional defense primes combined, despite it reporting barely 1 percent of their combined revenue last year—requires telling a convincing story about a future world in which your product is the deus ex machina for the potential problems you claim are impending inevitabilities. For Karp and Co., this means boldly announcing that the United States is already in a “hot Cold War” against China; forecasting an impending three-theater conflict with Sino, Russo, and Perso fronts; arguing that autonomous weaponry will soon eclipse the atom bomb in geostrategic importance; and claiming that U.S. superiority in militarized AI will usher in a new Pax Americana.
3
Given these grand pronouncements, it is clarifying to discover that the section of the book that actually describes the virtues of Palantir’s “organizational culture” is laughably prosaic. Palantir employees, Karp and Zamiska say, are encouraged to apply the lessons of a book on improvisational theater to their work, and to digest the insights of the philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s 1953 book on “foxes and hedgehogs.” These supposedly sui generis workplace policies are barely more sophisticated than the standard nostrums of the business press. (“What Startups Can Learn From Improv Comedy,” advises The Wall Street Journal; “Mature Entrepreneurs Know When to Be a Hedgehog and When to Be Fox,” counsels Forbes.) Striking one of the book’s many bathetic notes, Karp and Zamiska write that the best start-ups operate like “artist colonies, filled with temperamental and talented souls,” where status is fluid and nonconformity encouraged. The upshot of this unique structure? “The benefit of it being somewhat unclear or ambiguous who is leading commercial sales in Scandinavia, for example, is that maybe that someone should be you. Or what about outreach to state and local governments in the American Midwest?” This, apparently, is the future we are rushing toward: one where a $200 billion tech company enacts violence in the name of Western civilization while waxing poetic about how building lethal software is just like making great art.
4
Toward the end of the book, Karp and Zamiska pause to linger on an episode that briefly shook the German cultural world of the late 1990s. In a speech accepting a major literary award, the eminent German novelist Martin Walser criticized Germany’s culture of Holocaust remembrance. It was a “moral cudgel,” he argued, wielded by the liberal intelligentsia to repress a newly united Germany’s nationalistic revival. Referring to plans to build the Berlin Holocaust memorial, Walser invoked Hannah Arendt: “Probably there is a banality of the good, too,” he said.
5
What Karp and Zamiska don’t mention in their recounting of this episode is that Karp was a doctoral student at Goethe University in Frankfurt at the time, and that he made the controversy the central case study of his dissertation. As the Harvard professor Moira Weigel noted in a fascinating exegesis of the document, which has yet to be officially translated into English, Karp’s thesis examined how certain speech patterns allow for the expression of taboo wishes, especially those produced by human drives toward aggression. Walser’s speech, Karp argued, performed such a function. By letting his audience express their taboo desire to throw off the yoke of public Holocaust remembrance, he wrote, Walser convinced them that “these taboos should never have existed.”
Editor: It hardly seems to matter in this age, that the reader might tell the gender of a writer of The Economist? Yet I can’t quite shake the feeling that the writer/writers of this Charlemagne essay is of the masculine gender. The regular reader of this ‘News Magazine’ thinks immediately of the team of John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, and their second book The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America of May 24, 2004? I’ll hightlight the main characters , political actors in each paragraph, and I will take certain liberties!
Pararagraph 1: Featuring the murderious Henry Kissinger.
Aside from his gravelly baritone and his attempts at rearranging the world like Tetris pieces, Henry Kissinger is perhaps best known for something he probably never said: that he could never figure out who to call to speak to Europe. A question that was first (not) posed in the rotary-phone era remains unanswered in the age of Zoom. The time for Europe to put forward a single interlocutor for the outside world has come. Soon, under as-yet-unclear circumstances, peace talks over the war in Ukraine may take place. Given what is at stake, Europe desperately—and justifiably—wants a seat at the table. But to be included it will have to put someone up who can stand for photo-ops with Vladimir Putin (representing the interests of his despotic Russian regime) and Donald Trump (representing those of Donald Trump), and perhaps Volodymyr Zelensky (Ukraine). Working out who can’t sit in the European chair, in the eyes of some faction or other, is easy. Coming up with the name of someone who could is tricky.
Paragraph 2: The Economist Hack turns on the blender.
With 40-odd countries that seldom agree on much, the usual answer is for Europe to send multiple people to represent its interests. That will not be an option this time. For better or for worse (mostly for worse), Mr Trump is the guiding force of the talks, the early throes of which have started—without any input or representation from Ukraine and Europe—in Saudi Arabia. If he chooses to include Europe at all, he is unlikely to give it more than one seat at the table. Ukraine has asked Europe find a single name, but stopped short of saying who it might be.
Paragraph 3: The Economist Hack flips through his Roledex! António Costa, has his moment!
The least contentious answer might be to turn to the top brass of the European Union. One of its “presidents” (there are many), that of the European Council, is meant to represent the EU at head-of-state level. But nominating António Costa, the newish incumbent, would isolate Britain, a major source of Ukrainian support whose views could hardly be represented by an EU grandee. A former Portuguese prime minister, Mr Costa is a backroom operator by nature. Taking on the envoy job would hinder his day-job chairing meetings of EU leaders, an emergency one of which is planned for March 6th. It does not help that Trumpians hold the EU institutions in contempt, thinking them a supranational deep-state blob ripe for DOGE. This also rules out Ursula von der Leyen, another EU president (of the European Commission).
Paragraph 4: this is an obvious feint !
An obvious candidate for the Euro-mantle would be one of its national leaders. Once the job would have fallen to Angela Merkel, chancellor of Europe’s richest country and broker of its thorniest compromises for over a decade. But it will take months for her probable successor, Friedrich Merz, to cobble together a coalition following elections on February 23rd, and he has lots on his plate.
Paragraph 5: Macron incompetence in the governance of France: the anti-democatic vote on the Retirement Age & his two appointments Michel Barnier and Francois Bayrou is ignored by The Economist toady! And their are some unintentional comic moment’s near the end!
Europe’s next-biggest country is France. Emmanuel Macron has a strong claim to the Mr Europe job. He dealt with Mr Trump during his first term and, in a meeting with him at the White House on February 24th, showed there was a decent rapport. Like Russia and America, France is a nuclear-armed power with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Mr Macron’s vision that Europe needs “strategic autonomy”, ie, from America, looks prescient given recent events. Political chaos at home paradoxically gives Mr Macron more time to focus on foreign affairs. His major flaw is that hawks in northern and central Europe do not trust him much, least of all on Russia, with which he wanted to open a “strategic dialogue” on security before 2022. Mr Macron has made efforts to engage those countries, and has at times sounded just as hawkish as them—for example by being among the first to suggest that European troops should be sent to Ukraine.
Paragraph 6 : The Economist lackey referees Macron vs. Tusk.
Those who oppose Mr Macron might plump for Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister and former president of the European Council. His country grasps the Russian threat acutely; it spends the most (as a share of GDP) on defence of any NATO country, which plays well with Trumpians. But Poland has ruled out sending troops to Ukraine, and has a sometimes tetchy relationship with its leadership. Mr Tusk unwisely disparaged Mr Trump while he was out of office. He shares foreign-policy oversight with the Polish president, who will be replaced in June and might not share Mr Tusk’s views. The Pole has the opposite problem to Mr Macron’s: western Europeans do not want to give their most hawkish member carte blanche to act on their behalf.
Paragraph 7: The Economist Writer asks the pressing questions? And names the ersatz players!
What of other big-country leaders? Spain is far from Ukraine and its prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is not among its most vocal supporters. Sir Keir Starmer thinks Britain can be a “bridge” with America, but Brexit has left it isolated in Europe. Giorgia Meloni is an ideological ally of the American president. But she has yet to resolve how to be both pro-Ukraine and pro-Trump. Sending a respected leader from a smaller country, like Petr Pavel, a retired general turned Czech president, would once have been a typical Euro-compromise. Mr Trump would no doubt start proceedings by belittling the consensus pick. (“Who is this guy anyway?”)
Paragraph 8: Titled : ‘Arise, Mr Europe’ as if this were a beauty contest. But note that Macron is dubed the ‘sensible choice’ whose political record demonstartes its utter opposite!
Mr Macron appears the sensible choice. He wants the job, and has convened groups of European leaders in Paris already. He made a point of consulting his fellow bigwigs widely ahead of his three-hour chat with Mr Trump this week. Those unsure of his geopolitical instincts could suggest underlings to balance them out. Kaja Kallas, the hawkish Estonian who heads the EU’s foreign-policy arm, would make a fine representative facing the American secretary of state in preparatory talks, say. It is part of Europe’s history and its charm that it cannot easily put forward one person to act for all. But that is the sort of luxury that comes from being primarily a soft power, and these are hard-power times. Europeans must understand that having a single envoy at the negotiating table who flusters some is better than squabbling far away from it.
A YEAR after his headline-grabbing speech in Berlin, in which he called for German leadership of Europe, Poland’s foreign minister Radosław (Radek) Sikorski has launched another bold initiative. In a speech (pdf) near Oxford, he has blasted British Euroscepticism; a condensed version ($) was published in the Times a few days later. The intervention follows the publication of a report jointly written with the foreign ministers of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, which demanded “more Europe” as a response to the crisis. Recommendations included European oversight over the national budgets, bank-supervisory powers for the European Central Bank, a European Monetary Fund for bail-outs and more powers for the European Parliament. (It was also published in the New York Times as an op-ed)
Mr Sikorski comes from a background of hawkish British Atlanticism. As a refugee from Communist Poland, he was a notable figure in Oxford in the early 1980s, belonging to the Bullingdon Club of hard-drinking aristocrats (other members included Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron). Most people from that milieu are more or less euro-sceptic. But many fear that Britain’s position on the sidelines of Europe is becoming unsustainable. Ian Traynor wrote in the Guardian recently:
Berlin for months has been demanding to reopen the EU treaties to facilitate a big pooling or surrender of – depending on your point of view – national sovereignty to facilitate a federalised eurozone, with what amounts to a core European government of an expanding 17 countries that would take on prerogatives over tax-and-spend powers. Britain is well out of that.Last week the European commission signed up to the German blueprint, while unveiling problematic EU legislation making the European Central Bank the policeman of the eurozone banking sector. Britain will have no part of that, either.On Tuesday the German foreign ministry extended the federalising economic policy-making to foreign and defence, along with 10 other EU foreign ministries carefully chosen to reflect the non-UK EU mainstream – small countries, big countries, single currency members and those outside the euro, core western states and newer east European countries. The likelihood is that the 11-country consensus will swell into a majority among the EU’s 27. Britain also stands apart from this. The 11 include Germany and France, the big ones, plus Italy, Spain and Poland – after Britain the biggest EU countries.In short, Britain’s isolation becomes more fixed, while the cross-Channel gap widens to become less than bridgeable. More in sorrow than in anger.
It is in this troubling context that Mr Sikorski (disclosure: a friend of the author of this blog post) made his speech. Poland wants Britain in Europe as a counterweight to the EU’s dirigiste, heavy-regulating countries and to balance German weight and Russian proximity. Despite the betrayals of the past (Yalta, Katyń) it cherishes Britain’s support for Poland’s freedom in recent years. But if Britain marginalises itself, Poland will have to make the best of Europe as it is, and as it is shaping up to be. I was once at dinner with Mr Sikorski and a leading British Tory who chided him over Poland’s impending membership of the EU (it was 2001). “Why is Poland of all countries selling out to Brussels?” said the Tory. “Do you think we should rely on Britain, like we did in 1939?” came the crisp response.
Though his Tory friends try not to hear it, Mr Sikorski’s message is consistently and unashamedly pro-European. He uses words and sentiments that are rarely heard in Britain now (only the Lib Dems are unabashedly europhile, and even they tend to keep quiet about it). He told his audience at Blenheim Palace. “I believe in the logic and justice of the modern European project. And my country, Poland, will do its utmost to help it succeed.”
MORE illegal recordings are destabilising the Polish government this week. The juiciest revelation so far is that the foreign minister, Radek Sikorski (pictured), said in January that he viewed Poland’s alliance with America as “worthless”.
Mr Sikorski’s comments were made in a dinner conversation with the former finance minister, Jacek Rostowski, which was illegally recorded and printed in Wprost, a Polish news weekly. During the often vulgar conversation, Mr Sikorski said the alliance with Washington “is complete bullshit. We’ll get into a conflict with the Germans and the Russians and we’ll think that everything is super because we gave the Americans a blowjob. Losers. Complete losers.”
The conversation took place before Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support for an armed rebellion in eastern Ukraine, which has prompted a noticeable warming in Poland-American security ties. Warsaw has also become more critical of Germany, as the German government has been reluctant to impose tough sanctions on Russia and is lukewarm about shifting NATO troops to central European states worried about the perceived Russian threat.
American officials stated in public that ties with Poland were not affected. “I’m not going to comment on alleged content of private conversations. As for our alliance, I think it’s strong,” tweeted Stephen Mull, the American ambassador in Warsaw. Mr Sikorski said the “government has been attacked by an organised group of criminals. We still don’t know who is behind this.” Polish law forbids the recording of a conversation without the knowledge of the participants.
Wprost did not say much about who made the recordings, writing only that they had been supplied by a “businessman” who dubbed himself “Patriot” when sending along an e-mail with a link to four recordings. Gazeta Wyborcza, a newspaper, reported that waiters at several exclusive Warsaw restaurants frequented by senior officials and businessmen may have been making recordings for about a year and then selling them back to those who had been bugged. The paper said the political recordings had been taken over by someone else.
The scandal is hitting the government of Donald Tusk at a time when Poland has been playing its strongest diplomatic hand in centuries. Warsaw has been a leading advocate of a tough EU response to Russia’s behaviour in Ukraine.
In their conversation, Mr Sikorski and Mr Rostowski also worried that Britain could end up being pushed out of the EU. They talked in cutting terms about fellow politicians and opined that Mr Tusk would make an able replacement for Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council.
Editor: Paragraph 1: The highlighted sentence fragment is pure speculation!
Judged by the din of Russian propaganda and the despair among some Europeans, Vladimir Putin has never been closer to winning his war on Ukraine. Yet three years after his invasion, it is not clear what “win” means. His goals are elusive. His “special military operation” was planned in secret. His government was kept in the dark, as were the Russian people. Mr Putin talks of defending Russian sovereignty, but what happens next depends in part on factors outside his control: politics in Ukraine, Europe’s re-armament effort, and above all Donald Trump. Negotiations with the Trump administration began formally on February 18th in Saudi Arabia.
Editor: Paragraph 2: the highlighted paragraphs are more speculation. The absence of verifiable data is indivative of more speculation.
Mr Trump has no clear plan, and his options range from cutting off Ukraine to ramping up military aid and sanctions. The dance between the American president and Mr Putin took another step in Riyadh, in the first direct meeting between American and Russian officials for three years. They agreed to a nebulous series of negotiations on Ukraine and “mutual geopolitical interests”. Preparations will begin for a Trump-Putin summit, although no date was fixed.
Editor: Paragraph 3: Abundent Speculation wedded the anonimious: says an American official.
These open-ended talks suit Mr Putin just fine. Whereas Mr Trump views them as a way to end a “ridiculous” war, Mr Putin sees them as a stage in a larger conflict, says an American official. The Russian leader calculates he has more staying power than Ukraine or NATO, the creaking Western alliance. Like a poker player, Mr Putin excels in projecting confidence and strength. In reality, though, his cards are not as strong as he would like his opponents to believe, while an end to the war could create complications for him at home.
Editor: : Paragraph 4: the first two sentences are about opinion, not fact. Rekon British sources and A Western official says are neblious blind items!
Any assessment of Russia’s negotiating position should start with the military situation. Its army has performed dismally. The pace of advance is excruciatingly slow: since last July it has struggled to take the town of Pokrovsk, where current losses are staggering. Most of its gains were in the first weeks of the war. In April 2022, following Russia’s retreat from the north of Ukraine, it controlled 19.6% of Ukrainian territory, and its casualties (dead and wounded) were perhaps 20,000. Today Russia occupies 19.2% and its casualties are 800,000, reckon British sources.A Western official says “the two armies are fighting each other because they can’t stop, not because they are really hoping to achieve a decisive victory.”
Editor: Paragraph 5: the first five sentences are unattached to actual data, but are offered, as the standin for that data? Although the final sentences reports on the Russian dissatisfaction with the war?
The attrition of equipment is jawdropping. Consider Russia’s stock of Soviet-era armour, built up over decades. More than half of the 7,300 tanks it had in storage are gone. Of those that remain, only 500 can be reconditioned quickly. By April Russia may run out of its T-80 tanks. Last year it lost twice as many artillery systems as in the preceding two years. Recruiting contract soldiers is getting more expensive. A general mobilisation would be politically risky. Public-opinion surveys clearly show that Russians want the war to end.
Editor: Paragraph 6: three sources: ‘leaked to Reuters’ ‘According to Mikhail Zadornov, a former finance minister’, ‘Kirill Rogov of Re: Russia, a think-tank,’
Russia’s economy has withstood the blow of sanctions thanks to the professionalism of its central bank, high commodity prices and fiscal stimulus. Yet the reallocation of resources from productive sectors to the military complex has fuelled double-digit inflation. Interest rates are 21%, the highest level in two decades. A shortage of labour is chronic. Figures on the economy may not be reliable: the statistics authority constantly revises growth estimates, for example. But a report by the Central Bank and the Ministry of Economy, leaked to Reuters, warns a recession may come before inflation slows. Oleg Vyugin, a former deputy head of the central bank, says the government must soon choose between cutting military spending or galloping inflation. The sovereign wealth fund is being drained. According to Mikhail Zadornov, a former finance minister, its liquid assets have shrunk from 7.4% of GDP to below 2%. Exports, which were $417bn last year, are under pressure from sanctions and lower commodity
Editor: Paragraph 7 Mr. Rogov again and an un-named American Official.
Such vulnerabilities mean some in the West believe this is the worst possible time for America to be floating rapid concessions to the Kremlin. Even if the West cannot grant Ukraine ironclad security guarantees it could maintain sanctions in order to hold Russia at bay, Mr Rogov argues. Yet Mr Trump is focused on delivering on his promise to end the war quickly, not on constraining and deterring Russia for years. “We are finally getting Putin into the position where we wanted him to be for three years. It would be a terrible shame if we allow him to snatch victory from the teeth of defeat,” an American official says.
Editor: Paragraph 8: The Economist as mind readers of Putin? This garnished with carefully selected quotation from Putin!
Mr Putin believes Mr Trump is not just impatient, but manipulable. He has courted the American president with flattery and instant gratification: on February 11th he released Marc Fogel, an American citizen whom Russia arrested in 2021. Mr Putin’s underlying demands are unchanged. These include a non-aligned Ukraine, whose forces are limited in size and in terms of equipment, and which does not host Western troops. He wants recognition that Crimea and four other annexed Ukrainian provinces are part of Russia. Most importantly, as Mr Putin laid out in June 2024, “the essence of our proposal is not a temporary truce or ceasefire” that would leave sanctions in place and allow Ukraine to rearm. Instead Mr Putin wants a “definitive resolution” that would lift the Western embargo on Russia and allow it to reconstitute its army.
Editor: Paragraph 9 : The Post-War American/NATO Party line is recapitulated: ‘American-led post-1945 order’, ‘according to Steve Covington, an advisor to NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe’, ‘“the entire system of Euro-Atlantic security is crumbling before our eyes.” , ‘“is being marginalised in global economic development, plunged into chaos…and losing international agency and cultural identity” , ‘The Kremlin no doubt hopes that pro-Russian right-wing parties, whom Mr Vance admires, will gain in European elections’ Trump’s familiar JD Vance as political scold to the recalcitrant European’s
Even if the hot war ends, Mr Putin will continue to try to cripple Europe and re-establish Russia’s sphere of influence. His goal is to break Ukraine and to dismantle the American-led post-1945 order, according to Steve Covington, an advisor to NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe. As Mr Putin told his diplomats last year, “the entire system of Euro-Atlantic security is crumbling before our eyes.” Europe “is being marginalised in global economic development, plunged into chaos…and losing international agency and cultural identity”. He was doubtless pleased to hear J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, echo this claim on February 15th at the Munich Security Conference. At that event in 2007 Mr Putin first declared his determination to fight the West. The Kremlin no doubt hopes that pro-Russian right-wing parties, whom Mr Vance admires, will gain in European elections.
Editor: Paragraph 10: Under the jejune rubric of ‘Gremlins for the Kremlin’ :The Economist Public Moralists are unable to staunce the flow of their indignation at the beast that is Putin, he the ghost of, or merely the current and very usable iteration of Joseph Stalin: if only their readership knew who he was!
Mr Putin’s highest priority is to stay in power. Getting out of war entails its own risks, including the return of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and a fight among different clans. Mr Trump’s diplomacy has given oxygen to moderates who had silently opposed the war. They lack political power, but these “beneficiaries of peace”—private businessmen, economists and some technocrats–hope Mr Trump and his team can change Russia’s trajectory. Unable to confront Mr Putin, they want to persuade him that cooling the confrontation with the West would not endanger, but enhance his security
On the other side are the “beneficiaries of war”. If confrontation is the foundation of the Putin regime, violence and corruption are its glue. Oligarchic clans benefit from quotas for exporting oil and other commodities in grey markets created by sanctions. (One tycoon likens them to the smuggling schemes run by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.) They will not part with their lucrative franchises lightly. The security services will be searching both for “fifth columnists” who support peace and ultra-nationalists who will see any deal as a betrayal.
Mr Trump is right to want to “stop the killing”. If a ceasefire allows Ukraine to re-build, triggers higher European defence spending and maintains some sanctions on Russia’s creaking economy it could also see Mr Putin’s ambitions fail. Mr Putin, however, is betting that he can fight for longer than Ukraine can, or that he can manoeuvre Mr Trump into a deal that allows Russia to reintegrate into the world economy, renders Ukraine a divided and semi-failing state, and leaves Europe too stunned to defend itself.
My Friend’s at The New Statesman keep me informed about their desertion of the Left, of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw and other prominent members of the Fabian Society! But the current Management tells their story in several iterations, yet their act of betrayal of The Founders ‘Left’ status looks like a toxic riff on New Labour, under the self-serving rubric of New Times, New Thinking!
Editor: The Self-Report :
History
Foundation
The New Statesman was created in 1913 with the aim of permeating the educated and influential classes with progressive ideas. Its founders were Sidney and Beatrice Webb (later Lord and Lady Passfield), along with Bernard Shaw, and a small but influential group of Fabians. The Webbs’ previous publication, The Crusade, had existed to gain support for the Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, and for Beatrice Webb’s National Committee for the Prevention of Destitution. However, it had died after less than two years, when it became obvious that no government would swallow the Minority Report whole, with all its socialist implications. The New Statesman was created to fill the gap.
The Webbs talked, argued, wrote letters and discussed the project with their friends incessantly. They eventually raised £5,000: £1,000 each from Bernard Shaw, Edward Whitley, Henry Harben and Ernest Simon, the balance in smaller sums. Clifford Sharp, who had edited The Crusade, was appointed Editor. The name Statesman was proposed, but this was already the name of India’s largest English language newspaper; as an alternative, the Tory ex-Prime Minister Arthur Balfour suggested the New Statesman, and the magazine was first published on 12 April 1913, with a pre-publication subscription list of 2,300 – and all the auguries against it.
From the first issue, the magazine’s tone of didactic and brisk common sense was set. Whether in pointing out that the weak are not always and automatically the virtuous in international politics, or advocating the advance booking of all theatre seats, the note was one of brass-tacks and no nonsense – in contrast with the high moral tone of the rival Nation. Sharp himself wrote:
Sixteen months after the magazine’s first issue, Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated and Europe plunged into war. A year later, with sales of 3,000 copies a week, the magazine was second in circulation only to theSpectator among the sixpenny weeklies and, in spite of continually upsetting everyone in turn throughout the war years, it emerged with a circulation of 6,000 and its influence immeasurably enhanced.
The Nation and Athenaeum and the Weekend Review
By 1931, with the appointment of a new Editor, Kingsley Martin, the New Statesman was in a position to take over one of its main competitors among the political and literary weeklies: Nation and Athenaeum. The history of the Athenaeum went back as far as 1828. It had a tradition of attracting the very best writers of the age; in the early twentieth century, the Athenaeum could boast such ‘star’ writers as Max Beerbohm, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Hardy, Robert Graves, Edith Sitwell, T S Eliot, Edmund Blunden and Julian Huxley.
However, in 1921, with falling circulation, the Athenaeum was incorporated into the Nation. The younger magazine was also attracting writers of great renown: H N Brailsford, J A Hobson, Harold Laski, Leonard Woolf, David Garnett, G D H Cole and almost all the Bloomsbury Set. For fourteen years, the Nation’s brand of Liberal radicalism flourished. It soon became obvious, however, that it could not continue as an independent competitor to the more left-wing New Statesman, whose growth was contributing to the other publication’s demise. Thus, on 28 February 1931, the first number of New Statesman and Nation (incorporating Athenaeum) was published.
A further title was acquired two years later. The Weekend Review had been established in March 1930 – not a propitious time for founding any enterprise – financed by Samuel Courtauld and edited by Gerald Barry. By 1933, the going was getting increasingly tough for weekly reviews, and its sales of were insufficient to achieve financial viability. After some cliff-hanging negotiations, the New Statesman acquired another title for its masthead – and the famous “This England” and “Weekend Competition” features. The New Statesman and Nation (incorporating The Weekend Review) first appeared on 6 January 1934. It was during this period that, under Martin’s editorship, the magazine is generally felt to have had its first golden age, with its circulation peaking at almost 100,000 around 1959.
Recent History
The Nation suffix was dropped on 6 July 1957, and The Weekend Review on 6 November 1964. Apart from one or two still popular features, the only remaining trace of the New Statesman’s tributaries was in the imprint on the contents page where their names are listed; this note has since been moved to the classified pages at the back of the magazine.
Editors since Martin’s departure have included: John Freeman, one time Labour minister and television presenter and later a British Ambassador to Washington; Richard Crossman, who had been Secretary of State for Social Services in the first Wilson cabinet; and Bruce Page, an Australian born farmer and Sunday Times journalist who tried to make the magazine a leader in hard-nosed investigative reporting.
On 10 June 1988, as the magazine celebrated its 75th anniversary, New Statesman merged with New Society, a magazine covering the field of the social sciences, to form the New Statesman and Society. (The suffix was dropped in 1996). However, despite the merger generally being seen as a takeover by the New Statesman, the first two editors of the combined magazine, Stuart Weir and Steve Platt, both came from the editorial team of the New Society. Another title, Marxism Today, was acquired in December 1991. In April 2013, the New Statesman celebrated its centenary by publishing an 186-page edition, the largest single issue in its history.
New Statesman
Online Newstatesman.com first went live in November 1998, with vote and comment facilities that allowed people across the globe to discuss the issues considered in the magazine. It subsequently introduced a subscriber only service and an exact electronic edition of the magazine available to download hot-off-the-press anywhere in the world.
Relaunched in 2006, newstatesman.com has forged its own identity carrying a raft of original content including blogs, articles and columns – as well as everything we publish in the magazine. The website has facilitated not just a new generation of readers, but a readership that stretches around the world.
Relaunched again in January 2011, traffic to the site more than trebled between 2009 and 2011 and it is increasingly recognised as a must-visit part of the web.
This updated version of a book that first appeared during the 2017 French presidential election—in which Emmanuel Macron prevailed—argues that France has become ungovernable. In the authors’ view, all the major parties in France have given up on the traditional postwar “social-liberal” compromise that combined moves toward fluid labor markets, external openness, and EU cooperation with continued redistribution, social solidarity, and upward mobility. Instead, both left-wing and center-right parties have sacrificed the latter for the former. A center-right “bourgeois bloc” is now pushing this process further, triggering rising inequality and the marginalization of low-wage labor and stoking intense disillusionment and opposition on the traditional left and the far right. Although it is certainly true that in recent decades France has moved toward more free-market policies in some areas, one cannot help sensing that these authors often miss the forest for the trees. Inequality in France today is roughly equal that in Sweden. Its levels of taxation and social spending top the European charts. Its public services—not to mention the five weeks of paid vacation guaranteed for all full-time workers—are the envy of most of its neighbors. If France’s welfare-state model is collapsing, then bring on the collapse!
StephenKMackSD's Blog 