Newspaper Reader.

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May 11, 2026

Morning Call: The edge of destruction

Starmer’s fate hinges on one speech and one disgruntled backbench MP

Ethan Croft and The New Statesman

May 11

Good morning. Keir Starmer will try to save his political career this morning by giving a speech in which he will admit mistakes and say “incremental change won’t cut it”. The most immediate consequence of the speech will be whether it makes Catherine West – the backbencher threatening to launch a leadership challenge this morning – think twice.

West has said she might step down her plot if Starmer shows sufficient rhetorical fire in his belly. But that will be quite a difficult metric for outside observers to judge – and so we will have to wait and see how West responds to the speech. As she told me in an interview at the weekend, her decision to challenge Starmer was done on the fly – she had not read the party rules on launching a contest before announcing) and motivated by a visceral reaction to the results in which one of her best friends lost their safe Labour council seat in North London.

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Editor: There is nothing so full of political pathos as manufactured by The New Statesman, that long ago betried Sidney and Beatrice Webb, with significant support from George Bernard Shaw and other Fabian Society members.

Newspaper Reader.

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Lindsey German

Good morning.



How bad did the election results have to be before Keir Starmer resigned? Worse than the loss of 44 Labour councillors in Newcastle? Or the wipeout of Labour members in the Welsh Senedd? Or the collapse to Reform in the former mining areas of Barnsley and Wakefield? Or the rout of Labour across much of inner London to the Greens, including the latter winning three boroughs outright and sending several more into no overall control?



Starmer’s response has been to say he ‘will not walk away’ – yet that is clearly what voters want him to do. Everywhere, reports from canvassers are the same: whatever the other issues motivating them, intense dislike of the prime minister was high on the agenda. At present his cabinet are publicly rallying round: he will do a big speech on Monday, promising a reset. Already he has announced the appointment of former prime minister Gordon Brown and former interim leader Harriet Harman as advisers. I can’t imagine what good he thinks this will do him.



The simple truth is this: Labour cannot begin to regain votes until Starmer goes. And the longer he stays the more he will strengthen Reform. It is a mark of the inability of Labour politicians to think clearly outside their own narrow factional interests that this truth has not already forced Starmer out. Instead leading cabinet figures and allies of supposed prince over the water Andy Burnham are putting their own interests before the urgent need to get rid of Starmer and they will pay a price. For this result will mark the end of Labour in many areas once regarded as its heartlands. The history of Scotland in the last decade demonstrates that there is no automatic likelihood of the party bouncing back.



And why should it? Labour, founded to represent the trade unions in the electoral field, has been on a long march away from the working class it is meant to stand for. It has presided over governments of privatisers who have seen a working class fall in living standards and done little to change anything. It has seen students forced to pay higher fees and get into debt and done nothing about it. It has allowed employers and landlords free rein, only acting to make the most minimal changes to protect workers. Its ‘solution’ to the housing crisis is to allow developers to build unaffordable houses while doing virtually no council house building. It has also echoed the far right in scapegoating migrants, waving the flag and promising far more money on ‘defence’.



The result? Reform’s right-wing populism has won in many places especially in the old industrial areas where secure and relatively well-paid jobs have been replaced by the opposite, as workers are forced to accept ever worse conditions in companies owned by billionaires. And those repulsed by Reform’s politics are also alienated by Labour’s mimicking of them, so look for alternatives to the left. The Greens and Plaid Cymru have been the big winners from this trend.



One reason that Labour politicians are so incapable of movement in the face of this is that there needs to be fundamental change in its policies – but that isn’t going to happen, because it would mean dismantling decades of New Labour policies. So the decline of Labour and Labourism will continue, surely accelerated by these results, but with its adherents unable to comprehend how and why it has happened.

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Lindsey German

stephenkmacksd.com/

May 10, 2026

This article. published in Philosophy 70 (1995), 243-62 and reproduced here by permission of the Editor, is derived from (but not a transcript of) ‘Better than the Stars’, my 1978 radio portrait of F. P. Ramsey, streamable from http://sms.csx.cam.ac.uk/media/20145. Page numbers after quotations from Ramsey refer to F. P. Ramsey: Philosophical Papers, edited by D. H. Mellor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Cambridge Philosophers I: F. P. Ramsey D H Mellor

Click to access 1995-mellor.pdf

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I should like to let Ramsey have the last word. In the summer of 1929, shortly before he died, he wrote a note on ‘Philosophy’ which Braithwaite published in his 1931 collection of Ramsey’s work [and is republished as Chapter 1 of my 1990 edition of Ramsey’s Philosophical Papers]. Most of Ramsey’s work is within philosophy rather than about it; but this note expresses his view of the subject as well as his attitude towards it and his way of doing it. So here, to conclude, are some excerpts:

Philosophy must be of some use and we must take it seriously; it must clear our thoughts and so our actions. Or else it is a disposition we have to check, and an enquiry to see that this is so; i.e. the chief proposition of philosophy is that philosophy is nonsense. …

And again we must then take seriously that it is nonsense, and not pretend, as Wittgenstein does, that it is important nonsense! … In philosophy we take the propositions we make in science and everyday life, and try to exhibit them in a logical system with primitive terms and definitions, etc. Essentially a philosophy is a system of definitions or, only too often, a system of descriptions of how definitions might be given …

I used to worry myself about the nature of philosophy through excessive scholasticism. I could not see how we could understand a word and not be able to recognise whether a proposed definition of it was or was not correct. I did not realise the vagueness of the whole idea of understanding, the reference it involves to a multitude of performances any of which may fail and require to be restored …

Philosophy is not concerned with special problems of definition but only with general ones: it does not propose to define particular terms of art or science, but to settle e. g. problems which arise in the definition of any such term or in the relation of any term in the physical world to the terms of experience …

[But] it seems to me that in the process of clarifying our thought we come to terms and sentences which we cannot elucidate in the obvious manner by defining their meaning. For instance, … theoretical terms we cannot define, but we can explain the way in which they are used, and in this explanation we are forced to look not only at the objects which we are talking about, but at our own mental states …

I find this self-consciousness inevitable in philosophy except in a very limited field. We are driven to philosophise because we do not know clearly what we mean; the question is always ‘What do I mean by x?’ And only very occasionally can we settle this without reflecting on meaning. But it is not only an obstacle, this necessity of dealing with meaning; it is doubtless an essential clue to the truth. If we neglect it I feel we may get into the absurd position of the child in the following dialogue: ‘Say breakfast.’ ‘Can’t.’ ‘What can’t you say?’ ‘Can’t say breakfast.’

But the necessity of self-consciousness must not be used as a justification for nonsensical hypotheses; we are doing philosophy not theoretical psychology, and our analyses of our statements, whether about meaning or about anything else, must be such as we can understand.

The Cold War Keeps Re-Einveting Itself!

stephenkmacksd.com/

May 10, 2026

Newspaper Reader.

May 10, 2026

Headline: We’re entering a sectarian age — playing to extremes wins votes

Sub-headline: A Green Party activist who responded to a solemn post commemorating the victims of the October 7 attacks with a laughter emoji has just been elected.

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/age-of-sectarian-politics-extremes-gaza-green-party-tq5f5ttf9

Editor: I provide a sampler of Mr. Colevile’ s retorical posturing:

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But one of the biggest stories of the local elections this year — and certainly the most depressing — has been the rise not of MPs but councillors for Gaza. The Henry Jackson Society think tank, which rebranded itself “Sectarian Watch” for the vote count, has been following 171 “Muslim sectarian” council candidates: that is, candidates for whom issues such as Palestine or Kashmir are not a feature of campaigning but the entire core of it.

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And of course, there has been a reaction. The Jewish parts of north London are now monolithically Conservative: in Golders Green, site of the latest antisemitic atrocity, the leading Tory candidate received an extraordinary 69 per cent of the vote. Meanwhile, Rupert Lowe of Restore — the party for those who think Nigel Farage is frankly a bit wet on the whole Muslim thing — has led its local offshoot, Great Yarmouth First, to a crushing win in East Anglia, although to be fair its campaign focused rather more on seeing off the threat of rule from Norwich than the need to re-Christianise the streets.

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As George Galloway repeatedly proved during his parliamentary career, candidates who get elected on an anti-Israel ticket rarely place a high priority on sorting out the bin collections, or dealing with constituents’ other concerns. Indeed, their incentive is to cater even more narrowly than usual to a particular slice of the electorate, even though there are plenty of constituents of other faiths, skin colours and backgrounds who find themselves locked out of local politics.

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And of course this cycle feeds on itself. The more voters defect to the Greens and Muslim independents, the more pressure Labour will be under to pander to the Gaza vote to win them back. And social media definitely doesn’t help, by privileging those with the most extreme views.

Just look at the career of Mothin Ali. When he made that speech, the Green Party promised a full investigation. It must have gone well. Within 16 months he’d won the ballot to be deputy leader.

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Editor: That the pressing question of the ‘October 7 attacks’ against the Zionist Faschist State were the product of a protrated genocidal attack, on the whole of Gaza, aided and abettoed by American money and materiel. Place the self-serving denuded political chatter of Mr. Colevile’s ascription, of the irrelevance of local elections, to the concerns of citizens and their extended families demonstartes an inexcusable myopia!

Newspaper Reader.

Newspaper Reader offers the essentials…

stephenkmacksd.com/

May 09, 2026

Keir Starmer and Britain’s new politics of instability

Labour’s failures in office have opened the way to Reform and other insurgent parties

The editorial board

The Reader might wonder, whether or not, either Micklethwait or Wooldridge, have been brought back by Zanny Menton Beddoes, as experts on wheather Putin is losing his grip?

stephenkmacksd.com/

May 08, 2026

Editor: Reader just by the hyperbolic tone of this collection of paragraphs, this can’t be the measured tones of Micklethwait or Wooldridge, these Oxbridgers would quale at such feline tones!

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IT ARRIVED NOT as an event but as a sensation, felt everywhere at once: Vladimir Putin has led Russia into a dead-end and nobody has a map for what comes next. The first manifestation is a shift in the language used by senior officials, regional governors and businessmen: they have stopped using the first-person plural when talking about the actions of authorities in the country.

As recently as last spring, everything was “we” and “ours”. Mr Putin’s war on Ukraine may be reckless and failing, but it was shared. “We” were inside it, and it would be better for all of “us” if it ended sooner. Now they describe what is happening as “his” story, not “ours”. Not our project, not our agenda, not our war.

His decisions are described as “strange”. Even stranger is the fact that he decides anything at all. It is not only about falling approval ratings. The future is no longer discussed in terms of what Mr Putin will decide, but as something that will unfold independently of him—and possibly already without him.

This shift in language does not signal a rebellion. The authoritarian system can survive for a long time on fear, inertia and repression. It still has a monopoly on violence, but has lost its monopoly on shaping the future. In the past, the regime, for all its lies, had some project it could tout: “restoring statehood”, reasserting itself as an “energy superpower”. There was even “modernisation” before the U-turn to ultra-conservatism and war.

Editor: A change of tone manifest itself: Irony of a kind?

The irony is that Mr Putin started the war to preserve power and the system he has created. Now, for the first time since the conflict began, Russians are starting to imagine a future without him. This is down to a confluence of four factors.

First is the growing cost of fighting. The war in Ukraine was meant to be a special military operation conducted by selected groups who received financial incentives for their trouble, while the rest of society carried on as normal. This model crumbled as the war grew in length and scale. It has led to higher inflation and taxes, neglected infrastructure, increased censorship, endless prohibitions. It is not a national war, but it is paid for nationally—and society is not being offered any purpose in return.

Second is a growing demand for rules among elites who have been forced back into Russia, along with their capital. Previously their property rights were outsourced to the West. They used London courts, offshore structures and international arbitration to resolve conflicts or seek protection. Now conflicts must be resolved domestically, without functioning institutions. Demand for rules grows more urgent as redistribution of assets gathers pace.

In the past three years assets worth around 5trn roubles ($60bn) have been seized from private businessmen and either nationalised or handed to loyalists and cronies, the largest redistribution of property since the mass privatisation of the 1990s. It is not that the elites have suddenly discovered a taste for the rule of law or democracy. But even those loyal to the regime crave rules and institutions that can resolve conflicts fairly.

Third is the change in geopolitical climate that Mr Putin himself helped bring about. Russia sees itself as reshaping the global order. In reality it is a mere catalyst: Russia’s war on Ukraine has accelerated the crisis of Western democracy, the rise of populism and globalisation fatigue. Russia now finds itself in a world where rules are weak and where economic and technological strength and brute force dominate. In the rules-based world, Russia could exploit asymmetries: Europe’s dependence on its gas, its seat on the UN Security Council, the Soviet nuclear legacy. But Europe now buys its gas elsewhere, Russia’s Security Council seat has been devalued with the UN itself, and its nuclear blackmail has undermined the non-proliferation regime, depriving Russia of its status as an arbiter. When the order itself begins to crumble, the benefits of Putinist revisionism quickly disappear.

At the same time, Russia is suffering an identity crisis. For the first time in generations it lacks an external model to define itself against. Historically it defined itself in relation to Europe and the wider West. They were there to catch up with, to fall behind, to confront. That old axis is gone. The West as a single cultural, military and political entity is in crisis. There is no “there” against which one can define “here”. This is not an ideological issue. It is structural. Any development in Russia has to have an internal source of meaning—and the government is unable to provide it.

Fourth is growing ideological control without any balancing dividend. The previous social contract, whereby the state stayed out of people’s private lives while citizens stayed out of politics, has collapsed. In the past the system bought people’s loyalty with convenience, services and consumption. Now all it can offer is repression, intrusion and censorship—of which this year’s internet restrictions are the most striking manifestation.

The issue is not so much repression itself as repression without purpose. An ideology by definition presupposes an image of the future. This one demands discipline without offering one. People are required to be loyal without being told what future that loyalty serves. The political reality does not look desirable even for most of the technocrats involved in its construction. Optimism has been burned out from within.

Running out of moves

All four factors create a situation which in chess is known as a Zugzwang: when every move worsens the position. The system can persist for as long as Mr Putin remains in power. But his every move to preserve and expand it accelerates decay. His instinctive response may be to intensify repression. He may start another war. But these actions would only make things worse. He cannot restore the connection between power and the future. He can only make the rupture bloodier and more dangerous. ■

Newspaper Reader posits that this collection of ‘Economist Chatter’ passed through many, many hands!

Newspaper Reader.

stephenkmacksd.com/

May 08, 2026

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics

Ricky from Council Estate Media

May 08, 2026

Dystopian Times

Sir Keir Starmer killed the Labour Party for Israel

May 08, 2026

The 2026 local elections have delivered exactly the nightmare scenario so many of us predicted for Starmer’s Labour. Yet, bizarrely, some of his closest allies are acting like they don’t understand why voters have deserted them. This isn’t just a bad night at the polls, it’s proof of how hopelessly out of touch the corrupt neoliberals running the country truly are. The Starmer project is collapsing under the weight of its own emptiness.

Labour appears to be on course to lose up to three-quarters of the seats it was defending–potentially 1,900 councillors. The party has lost control of historic heartlands, such as Tameside, Hartlepool, and Wigan, and swathes of the North and Midlands. Reform has made massive gains, but the data shows Labour lost most of its vote share to the Greens.

Zack Polanski has achieved the Greens’ strongest-ever local election performance, despite a relentless smear campaign. The antisemitism nonsense once weaponised against Jeremy Corbyn was not so effective against the UK’s only Jewish political leader.

Exit polls show 42% of 18-34 year-olds backed the Greens, compared to just 28% for Labour–a 14-point swing since the 2024 general election. Working-age families rejected Labour outright and the party only consolidated support among older boomers. Labour is no longer the party of labour.

Professor Sir John Curtice told ITV News: “Labour’s vote share drop is the largest for a governing party in local elections since 2010. The Greens have successfully positioned themselves as the authentic voice of progressive voters concerned about climate and inequality.”

Starmer is now haunted by his infamous line from the campaign trail: “If you don’t like the changes that we’ve made, I say the door is open and you can leave”. Voters have bolted through that open door. Now he stands alone, wondering why his rivals are sharpening their knives. The irony is that Labour has no credible replacement so they are stuck with the liar they helped into power. Starmer deliberately blocked Andy Burnham (arguably the only figure with broad appeal) from becoming an MP.

After 14 years of Tory rule, the public were desperate for genuine change. Instead, Starmer offered more of the same: more privatisation, more austerity, more authoritarianism. The wipe-out was entirely predictable–and for those who warned about it from the moment the Labour right sabotaged Corbyn in 2017, this is a cathartic “I told you so” moment.

The Labour right spent years systematically destroying the left’s influence with no real plan beyond that. Starmer wasn’t just handed the leadership, he was backed by a network of lobbyists and donors who rigged the rules, purged the party, and stole the membership’s power to choose a transformative leader.

Among Starmer’s key backers was pro-Israel lobbyist Trevor Chinn, who quietly donated £50,000 to Starmer’s leadership campaign (a donation only declared after the contest). The Israel lobby funded around half of Starmer’s cabinet. Corporate interests and think-tanks like Labour Together played their part. The plan worked beautifully: the membership was sidelined for a genocidal rogue state, and Starmer’s Labour became a moral vacuum.

While there are many layers to Labour’s unpopularity, the driving force behind Starmer’s leadership has been his unwavering Zionism. He purged critics of Israel, stripped away protest rights, treated pensioners and activists as “terrorists”, censored the internet, pandered to the Israeli ambassador, and continued arms supplies to Israel while pretending otherwise. Who can forget his chilling statement that Israel has a right to withhold food, water, and energy from Palestinians?

A decision was made early on to protect Israel at all costs, depriving the UK of much-needed progressive change. The Israel lobby is more than happy to see Labour die because the Tories and Reform are also on their side. Corporate media won’t touch this story, of course. They’re not even allowed to acknowledge the lobby exists or mention the Forde Report. Instead, they paint Starmer as a decent man in a tough spot who simply misjudged a few things. The truth is the man has no desire to improve anyone’s life but his own. He lied to Labour members to become leader and to the electorate to become prime minister. Even worse, mainstream journalists slapped him on the back for doing so.

Ever since he made his notorious ten pledges, Starmer’s record has been a litany of U-turns and betrayals. He scrapped the £28 billion green investment pledge, cut winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners, kept the two-child benefit cap (until his hand was forced), pushed cruel welfare and disability reforms, and flip-flopped on delaying local elections to avoid humiliation.

Add in scandals like Peter Mandelson’s ambassadorial appointment, NHS and military contracts for Palantir, Trump using our airbases to illegally bomb Iran, and the broken promises on workers’ rights, and Labour’s collapse is no mystery.

Starmer insists he is staying put because the public’s concern is simply the “pace of change,” rather than what he is offering, but everyone across the political spectrum is rejecting him, including the centrists who got behind his People’s Vote campaign.

The principle-free David Lammy repeated the “don’t change the pilot mid-flight” line, but Jonathan Brash is demanding Starmer set out a departure timetable. All Starmer has achieved is transferring the energy and enthusiasm of the Corbyn era to the Greens while handing the far-right a shot at power. It’s clear he would prefer a Reform government to a Green one. He has always attacked the left more viciously than the right.

UK politics is now a four-way split that’s rapidly becoming a new two-party system: Reform on the right, Greens on the left. This is the result of 47 years of Thatcherite failure. If only Reform voters understood their party is also Thatcherite at heart. If only they knew Nigel Farage praised Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget! We still have time to help them understand what they are supporting.

Starmer’s refusal to resign might actually be the best thing for the Greens right now. A snap general election would risk handing Reform a victory. The longer Starmer clings to power, the more he haemorrhages progressive support. A moderate replacement could slow that momentum.

Reform voters recoil when confronted with their party’s actual policies whereas the public tends to agree with Green policies—this means televised debates would favour Polanski over Farage. Another positive factor is that young voters are more likely to vote in general elections than local elections. A higher turnout of young voters means a higher vote share for the Greens.

Clearly, the Greens need more time to build, but this political climate makes a 5-10% surge by the next general election entirely realistic. The local elections are the beginning of a political realignment, one that will either result in socialism or fascism. Take your pick.

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Thank you for reading. All of my content will always be freely available, but if you wish to support my work, you can do so at Ko-fi or Patreon. Likes, shares and comments also help massively.

Political Observer on the political desperation of a shopworn Zionist?

stephenkmacksd.com/

May 07, 2026

Editor: The rules of this game are predicated upon the fact that the reader must first accept the fact that Mr. Stephens plays a kind game here! That game is that Stephens can some how play the role of an objective observer, of Jake Auchincloss, of a particular kind or iteration ? While he is still in fact a Zionist Loyalist, whose desires somewow demonstarte that his flueny somehow denotes actual insights. While not forgettiing the propinquity of Class that features in the Auchincloss and Stephens maufactured relations.

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Among Majority Democrats’ founding members are Abigail Spanberger, the governor of Virginia; Mikie Sherrill, the governor of New Jersey; Ruben Gallego, the senator from Arizona; and Elissa Slotkin, the senator from Michigan.

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Mainly, though, it’s about championing working- and middle-class concerns against the interests of what he calls “an ossified American aristocracy.” And it’s about restoring an old type of patriotism, based on foundational American ideals, against the blood-and-soil patriotism championed by the likes of JD Vance.

In the interviews, I sometimes found myself disagreeing with Auchincloss. But I conducted them to learn things, not to get into an argument. He thinks deep and provoked me to think more deeply, whether the subject was the estate tax or the war with Iran. Our talks have been condensed and edited for clarity.

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Editor: Reader always be aware, of the continuing note of self-congetulation in Stephens intejections/comments. And this exchange between the two as evidence of a kind of … see Auchincloss reply to Stephens comments in italics.

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Bret Stephens: It looks right now like Democrats will do well in the midterms. Does that mean the overall state of the party is improving?

Jake Auchincloss: Yes, but I think what you’re also asking is: Can Democrats extrapolate from the midterms to potential for 2028? And my argument would be no. I think that we should be pretty cleareyed and introspective about that. You’ve written a lot, Bret, about “move to the center, Democrats.” I would complicate that a little bit because I think what you’re saying is move to the center as though there’s sort of a one-dimensional tug of war. And I’d say if we played that game, we’d probably lose in ’28.

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Editor: Does this next exchange between Stephens and Auchincloss even surprise the the reader!

Stephens: You have been, much more so than most of your caucus, outspoken in your defense of Israel’s right to defend itself. Do you worry that the Democrats are becoming an anti-Israel party? And do you worry about the antisemitic current running in at least some parts of the progressive left?

Auchincloss: Yes, about the antisemitic current running in parts of the Democratic left, and the antisemitic current running on the MAGA right. We have a horseshoe phenomenon here. Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes are much more influential in their party than any antisemitic hashtags are in the Democratic Party, and we should be cleareyed about that. It’s unacceptable on both sides, and it needs to be called out by political leaders of their own parties when it happens on both sides.

When I think about antisemitism, in the arc of history, it’s usually a symptom of a failed society, of a rotten society. Whether it was medieval European cities, whether it was 19th-century Imperial Russia, whether it was parts of the Middle East, it’s usually societies that are degrading.

One of the early symptoms of that is the othering of the Jew and the scapegoating of the Jew. And when I think about modern antisemitism, I think of it as a very clear example of the fact that our digital realm has become a failed society. And antisemitism on TikTok and on X, which is where it is mushrooming, is really just an example that these social media platforms have become failed states and failed societies.

Which is why I’ve been directing so much legislation against them about their liability, about their tax profile and, frankly, just trying to drive the pitchforks toward them.

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Stephens: Then what’s the best way of going forward?

Auchincloss: The assertion Democrats make right now is: This war was a failure. We want to insist that any agreement inked with Iran would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate. We say, War Powers Resolution, going to take over the steering wheel from a guy who should not be in charge of war and peace.

Then we have an “ideas primary” for the 2028 presidential contenders on the Democratic side, because we have to have a point of view about how to build back from strategic failure. My core argument would be that it has to be based on knitting together NATO with the Abraham Accords through energy, defense and infrastructure.

Stephens: Say more.

Auchincloss: So you’ve got a few projects underway. One is, you’ve got an air-defense concept of an Abraham Accords air-defense system. [Under relations established by the Abraham Accords, Israel is said to have sent air-defense systems to the United Arab Emirates to defend against Iranian attacks.] That needs to be put on the urgent level where you bring in Ukraine.

Ideally, you actually take the Russian frozen assets, you use them to invest in the Ukraine defense industrial complex, and you help Ukraine monetize its drone and counter-drone capabilities by selling them to the Gulf states to harden their energy infrastructure, which they desperately need.

Then we need to double down on IMEC, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, which was put in place a few years ago. It’s sometimes called the new Golden Road — really the counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Functionally, it’s a series of energy and infrastructure investments that knit together India, the Middle East and Europe.

Stephens: Is part of the idea here a strategy of containment for the newer, younger, more hard-line Iran that emerges from this war as you see it?

Auchincloss: Yes, it’s neutralizing not just Iranian, but I would argue Sino-Iranian influence. In an even bigger context, it is finally making good on President Obama’s pivot to Asia.

It’s basically saying to NATO and to the Abraham Accords, all right, we’re going to work with you. We’re going to invest in you. We want to do all these things with you as allies. But you’re paying for it. And you’ve got to harden yourselves and knit yourselves together because we can’t let China have home field advantage in the Indo-Pacific. We’ve got to be there in the South China Sea. We’ve got to be there in Southeast Asia. And that’s where our focus has to be.

Stephens: Final question. If there is one thing you learned in the Marine Corps which every American should know, what is it?

Auchincloss: Officers eat last.

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Editor: The Reader cannot be surprised by the comments by Stephens nor Jake Auchincloss they are fellow travelers!

Political Observer.

Newspaper Reader on the fact that Starmer is the creature of Tony Blair, and the ever present ‘The Jewish Victionhood Narritive’ !

stephenkmacksd.com/

May 05, 2026

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Newspaper Reader,