When I saw Yvette Cooper working in Opposition in the Commons I saw one of the brightest and most serious of Labour MPs. She has a first class degree from Oxford and an MSc from LSE, so she was a high academic achiever.
I have now watched with alarm as she fails in two of the great offices of state. As Home Secretary given the prime task of smashing the gangs she looked helpless or unwilling to do what needed doing to carry out the wishes of the public. Those of us who gave her good advice based on the failure of the previous government to do more than get illegal migration down a bit looked on in disbelief. She tore up the things the previous government did in its later days that could have made a big difference and then wondered why small boat crossings soared. She allowed an interventionist Prime Minister and Attorney General to set up two tier justice, and let slip action to control anti social behaviour, protesting with menaces and damage, and a wave of shoplifting with violence.
This week saw her act out a farce as Foreign Secretary. She chaired a meeting of 40 countries not including Iran, Israel, the US or the neighbouring Gulf states to Iran to discuss how to open the Straits of Hormuz and the wider trade routes of the Gulf and Red Sea to commercial shipping. This is a crucial matter affecting the lives and livelihoods of all of us and most of the people in the rest of the world. She told us the answer to get the Straits open is de escalation of the war without telling us how she proposes to achieve this. She told Iran they could not levy fees on ships for safe passage as they now seem to want to do.
She did not come up with a peace plan or a single proposal that might be accepted by the warring forces, including the Houthis, Hezbollah, Israel, Iran and the US. She did not tell us when she is going to talk to any of these interested parties or what she is going to say. She did not seek to involve herself or her 39 countries at the meeting in the behind the scenes exchanges of messages between the US and Iran that we are told are happening.
Does she know who is charge of Iran now? Does she have any direct communications with powerful representatives of the Iranian government? What is she proposing the US and Israel should offer Iran to get Iran and her proxies to stop attacking western shipping?
If her idea was merely to draw up a list of countries that might support a peace if the war protagonists negotiate one, how will that help? If she wants to conjure a naval force to help police possible peace who will join that? What risks might it have to run? Is the Royal Navy going to be in a position to spare any ships for such a task when she and her Defence colleague were unable to get a single ship on time to the Middle East or to assist Cyprus?
It is sad to see a great country represented in this way, reducing us to irrelevance and doing nothing positive to create a safer world. Is there no sense of urgency in the UK government over the need to restore normal shipping in the Gulf and Red Sea areas? Given their policy is to make us depend on more and more imports of oil, gas, chemicals and anything to do with oil and gas this is a bad dereliction of duty.
April 4, 2026
This is typical of the government when dealing with an issue. Hold a meeting and achieve nothing
April 4, 2026
Indeed they hold a meeting or make a vacuous speech and they think they have done something!
Evette Cooper did however only read PPE Oxon like Hancock, Cameron, Hunt, Sunak, the bitter Eagle Sisters… then she did some more economics and yet she still joined the Labour Party and supports (I assume) the total insanity of the Labour Parties doom loop economics. Rather an indication that despite her firsts she has not even understood the basics of economics and just suffers from the usual lefty, evil, destructive politics of envy. The agenda is to take money of the productive and hard working and try to buy votes of the feckless. This creates the disastrous doom loop.
April 4, 2026
Those who can do, do. Those who can’t do, teach to persuade others they know how to do. Those who can’t teach become politicians to impose their ideas of how to do on others by force of law.
April 4, 2026
LL,
PPE and also doom loop mentioned twice – a high scoring post.
I suspect Sir John Redwood may have set you up with his second sentence above.
April 4, 2026
Since Cameron we have slowly been reduced to irrelevance. BThe first defence review decimated our armed forces. May negotiated with the EU like we were supplicants rather than a major trading partner running a massive deficit.
2TK is determined to rejoin the EU and pay whatever they ask for no tangible benefit.
Trump has rightly called us out for our lack of military.
I am thoroughly ashamed of what my countries become due ti the woke, spineless charlatans in Government.
April 4, 2026
Nice big international tick-in-the-box
April 4, 2026
It is sad to see a (once) great country – the UK – treated in this way by it’s supposed greatest ally the US.
Whilst the said US is flailing in the mess in which it has embroiled itself and the President is ridiculing himself on a daily basis at least the spurned UK was attempting to show some leadership, and credit to it for that.
Labour are useless but Trump is truly appalling and in just 1.3 years has destroyed his second term.
(Reform member for 2 years now.)
Reply The UK government cannot achieve anything to help without engaging the US, Israel and Iran. None of them at Coopers meeting. No plan to talk to them!
April 4, 2026
You are funny. You demand that President Trump reveals his war plans! When he send you off with red herrings, you complain that he has lied.
How brainless are you, or are you lot on the other side?
Personally I thought Trump, sending Tucker Carlson off with false information to give to the Islamic Regime.
Mrs Balls lacks character not ability.
April 4, 2026
John, those of us watching from the side lines as opposed to those like your good self playing on the field of politics, have concluded a long time back the government’s star players are not up to the task of winning against any organised opposition.
Look at the team, apart from the obvious flaw that they all insist on playing only on the left wing many of them including the captain, insist on kicking into their own goal. Miliband the far left winger has excelled himself getting his name on the score sheet for (the other side) at least five times in this first half. The chief striker schooled in her art by the unions she once led is on the bench, thankfully, for all concerned. Meanwhile the centre half Reevsey, keeps falling into black holes and hasn’t yet made it into the oppositions half let alone get near to scoring. As for Cooper? I think she lacks the Balls to achieve anything.
For many of us we are desperate to hear those immortal words, “they think it is all over….it is now”
Even the team bus is broken down, having hit another bump and endless pot holes in the road, the steering is completely disconnected.
April 4, 2026
Good morning.
What we are witnessing is a government and a nation desperately trying to look relevant in world politics. And you know how far you have sunk when, the only thing you think will give you any relevance is some sort of membership with that dying entity, the EU.
No change there then.
April 4, 2026
The only thing she might be able to smash is eggs for breakfast.
April 4, 2026
Yesterday Mrs Gold and I took the Tesla for a rather smug drive to the Suffolk coast – to take the sea air, go for a walk and find a local pub for lunch. Fortunately, we are on a very cheap overnight fixed rate with our energy supplier of 7p/kWh. Which works out at just under 5p per mile
We were struck by just how much the price of diesel has risen since the Iran war started – prices in the range £1.83 to £1.89 per litre, depending on the location. There were noticeably less cars on the road, despite it being Easter, however the police were out in force with their radar speed traps, looking to nick the unwary driver.
Fortunately the government controls the price of household energy with their price cap, so other than folk who are inexplicably still driving ICE cars, as a country we have kicked the can down the road – hoping that Trump’s war will end soon. Which doesn’t look likely because neither Trump or Netanyahu will admit defeat
Within two years another 8.5GW of renewable capacity will come online, coupled with significant upgrades to the national grid. The rising numbers of EV’s on the road and home battery storage will quickly soak this up – reducing the cost of driving and providing extremely cheap domestic electricity.
Reply You must be relieved we can always burn gas in a power station so you can recharge your car. We never have a day when no gas is used for electricity.
April 4, 2026
Indeed a very cheap off peak electricity deal – must be less than cost (subsidised by others due to market rigging) I assume?
Have you worked out what the finance costs and depreciation costs of your Tesla is perhaps as much as £1 per mile for what are typically fairly low mileage cars?
Have you also considered all the fossil fuels used to build you car and battery and the wind farms and to connect up all these widely scattered renewables about 180 times more wiring is needed! Plus the extra tyre wear and road damage as you car is far heavier?
Evette joined Brown’s Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, before being promoted to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in 2009. Brown destroyed pensions and sold the gold see the excellent book Gordon is a Moron for his many other disasters. I assume she supported all his other destructive lunacy!
April 4, 2026
To get a cheap off peak electricity deal you have to pay an enhanced rate for day use.
April 4, 2026
Ah.
April 4, 2026
I guess also he should be paying modern slavery reparations as part of that car battery price.
April 4, 2026
Well King Midas ‘folk who are inexplicably still driving ICE cars’.
Those probably with low income, pensioners, on benefits, immigrants, with a grasp of physics relating to oil/gas conversion to produce electricity, many who worry about journey range risks, indeed more who will not wish to pay exorbitant charge rates. And probably more who examine the cost/benefit analysis of the upfront investment, the diminishing returns and the concern about dealing with dead batteries in such a short term of use.
Hope that helps add to your poor knowledge.
April 4, 2026
My cycle trip into town this morning will probably just require about 0.5kWh, using energy my bathroom scales tell me I have in excess. Smug squared.
If I took my diesel car, it would be more like 10kWh, and more than the wife and I draw from the mains in a day.
Meanwhile, the supermarket stocks are maintained by a fleet of diesel lorries, so both you and I are depending on the burning of fossil fuels for our daily lives, even if it so happened all the country’s electricity was being derived from renewable energy sources.
April 4, 2026
SG why are you paying for electricity, I though you had solar panels and battery system?
April 4, 2026
using it for smelting some gold pieces into bars?
April 4, 2026
SG : “Within two years another 8.5GW of renewable capacity will come online, coupled with significant upgrades to the national grid. The rising numbers of EV’s on the road and home battery storage will quickly soak this up – reducing the cost of driving and providing extremely cheap domestic electricity.”
Are you implying that “within the next two years” we will have “extremely cheap domestic electricity”? Even if this were to be true, which I doubt, electricity cannot produce the chemicals we need for our existing fleet of ices, aircraft, ships, fertiliser, pharmaceuticals, plastics etc. which are currently use 80% of our energy requirement.
April 4, 2026
SG : “Fortunately, we are on a very cheap overnight fixed rate with our energy supplier of 7p/kWh. Which works out at just under 5p per mile.”
Renewable electricity is parasitic electricity. It cannot exist without fossil fuels. Renewable electricity only exists because all the necessary infrastructure (wind turbines, solar panels, steel, concrete, cabling, transformers, batteries, heat pumps, evs etc etc. plus all the metals and minerals) required are produced cheaply using cheap fossil fuels in China, a state BTW described by our security services as “hostile”, using often slave labour for mining and production and at the same time ignoring the environmental damage caused by both mining and the leaving of enormous toxic tailing lakes from their production. Furthermore, renewable electricity requires massive additional amounts to be spent on both national and local grid upgrades and requires fossil fuelled generation for both grid stability (to prevent an Iberian style blackout) and backup until DESNZ find a way to keep the wind always blowing and the sun always shining. All these additional costs are never included as they should have been as recommended by Professor Sir Dieter Helm in his “Cost of |Energy Review” for the government. In fact the ERoEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) is so low for renewables they are incapable of reproduction without the use of fossil fuels. So they are not sustainable
April 4, 2026
7p per KWH. But 1 KWH should give you 4 miles so under 2p per mile! Unless you have a huge car and just drive it in racing foot to the floor fashion!
April 4, 2026
Fewer cars.
April 4, 2026
@ JR – Reply
On March 25th, gas provided a trivial 2.3% of the UK electricity demand, with wind+solar producing 74%, nuclear 10% and imports via the interconnectors 9.6%
It’s quite likely that renewables, nuclear, biomass and the 5GW of battery storage (equivalent to several large CCGT power stations) will power the UK in April without any fossil fuels for the first time since 1882. 144 years ago.
NESO will argue that this disproves the fossil fuel lobby narrative that a grid system that is overwhelmingly reliant on renewables will not work. No winter blackouts. No enormous hikes to energy bills. Stonking British built turbines, the size of the London Shard, dotting the N Sea instead of oil rigs.
Energy bills are coming down this month even more – as more old tech synchronous condensers come on line.
Rock on Nigel
Source; The Times 04 April
Reply Great capacity to delude your self. Renewable electricity last year provided 10% of our energy. Good luck with food supplies without diesel trucks and ships to get it to us.
April 4, 2026
I like a bit of detail Goldie……please tell me what % of the 24 hour day wind+solar produced 74%.
Always willing to listen to a convincing argument – lay it out for me?
April 4, 2026
Will be daytime round midday when some solar and electricity demand is fairly low as most lights are off. In the depth of winter with high demand and virt. No solar however!
April 4, 2026
To reply: rather less than 10% when properly accounted for as the “renewables” need loads of fossil fuels to build maintain and connect and forcing gas to back up make that run less efficiently too. Wind and solar need about 180 times more wiring!
No such thing as renewable wind, solar, wave, bio comes from nuclear fusion on the sun, geothermal from nuclear reaction in the earth core, tidal from slowing the earth rotation… long lasting but non are “renewable”.
April 4, 2026
SG : “Fortunately, we are on a very cheap overnight fixed rate with our energy supplier of 7p/kWh. Which works out at just under 5p per mile.”
How is this price feasible from renewables please? The weighted (by installed capacity) average price of the operational offshore wind CfDs is £149/MWhr. The previous ROCs are even higher in price. And I don’t think DESNZ have yet solved the problem of how to obtain power from solar panels at night?
April 4, 2026
It’s not “inexplicable” why people are still driving petrol and diesel cars.
1. They can’t afford a new EV and if you buy one 2nd hand you’re probably buying trouble
2. The insurance cost is prohibitive
3. They can’t charge at home
4. Charging points are few and far between outside metropolitan areas
5. If you can’t home drive, charging is prohibitively expensive
6. Range anxiety
7. Prohibitive repair costs / new battery costs
8. Risk of them going up in flames
9. The Government is already starting to tax them (and it’s only going to get worse)
10. They do nothing to “save the planet.” The environmental impact in the Congo is appalling.
You’re welcome.
April 4, 2026
My local garage in Wokingham are unable to service EVs because their insurers refuse to cover them for the many risks. As with so many things designed to make everyone fearful in recent years, the evidence of benefits tends to disappear upon close scrutiny.
April 4, 2026
Indeed. Not only trouble on second hand cars. Finance costs and depreciation alone can be £1 a mile so if the electricy per mile is quite cheap say 4p a mile with no tax on it unlike petrol and diesel?
April 4, 2026
SG. I hope you carry a fire extinguisher and hope you’re not thinking of part exchange shortly. I think you’ll find you have a rapidly diminishing investment.
April 4, 2026
and when you suffer a roadside breakdown fault good luck with the jumper cables, and a ‘bump start’.
The wait for a tow truck to crane it up won’t take long.
April 4, 2026
Welll … if he’s waiting for an electric tow truck – might be some time.
April 4, 2026
ICE vehicle fires in the UK amount to 50 a day unnoticed, whereas a BEV fire always makes the news.
April 4, 2026
and ratio of ICE to EV is?
April 4, 2026
Fire extinguishers alas do not really work on EV battery fires!
April 4, 2026
Come back with the same self satisfied smug post when the power cuts start hitting us.
April 4, 2026
At the risk of poking Lifelogic to wax lyrical on the educational qualifications of MP’s, but since Lord J has brought it up, lets look at the recent MP’s alma maters:
Blair – – Oxford
Brown — Edinburgh (well, he is Scottish)
Cameron — Oxford
May — Oxford
Johnson — Oxford
Truss — Oxford
Sunak — Oxford, Post Graduate
Perhaps there’s a clue here as to where we should NOT find our national leaders or politicians….
Reply Margaret Thatcher was both a great PM and Oxford educated. The concentration on people’s study 18-21 does not tell us much about how good a PM they might become. My education taught me much more after leaving Oxford when I got experience of running businesses and trained myself as an investment analyst.
April 4, 2026
Correction,
Sunak — Oxford
Starmer — Oxford, Post Graduate
April 4, 2026
Margaret Thatcher – Oxford, Research Chemist – loud applause- then Barrister, oh dear. But she did not let that get in the way of very good ideas.
April 4, 2026
Is it a generational issue? MT lived through WW2, no doubt a major influence on her life and outlook. Her’s seem to be the last generation to take national service seriously, not just a stepping stone to fame and fortune.
April 4, 2026
Starmer read law at Leeds I think after rather poor A levels in Music, Maths and Physics and this at a good school.
April 4, 2026
Being academically bright sometime bears no relationship at all with practical ability to achieve anything through people or in a complex project, or in the woolly uncertain and unpredictable world of real life, or even with an ability to analyse situations and perceive root causes of problems and potential solutions. Many good scientists are hopelessly impractical. I have observed all this this first hand in both the Navy and civilian life. Belief in an ideology overcomes all objections raised by rigorous analysis. Socialism has failed everywhere it is been tried and every time it has been tried. Socialists dominate education and always blame the failures ot their ideologies on others – ordinary sensible people who don’t respond to socliast dogma.
It now seeks a new lease of life through its unholy alliance with Islam, an alliance based on nothing but shared hatred.
Socialism is a failed ideology. Its consignment to the dustbin of history is long overdue.
April 4, 2026
PS this was meant to be a stand alone comment, not a reply to Lifelogic.
April 4, 2026
No science, maths or engineering unless you count the appalling Theresa May’s Geography! PPEx3, law, classics, history.
April 4, 2026
Geography ? Ah thats when she first got attracted to the EU.
April 4, 2026
any response Lord Redwood?
April 4, 2026
Read chemistry, not this PPE rubbish.
April 4, 2026
reply to reply….good to see you recognise the minor role in Oxford unis in developing the all-round abilities required.
April 4, 2026
Being a high academic achiever doesn’t necessarily mean someone is decisive, competent in running an organisation and capable of delivering a project/objective.
Not ONE of Starmer’s Cabinet (and hardly any of Labour’s MPs) have ever worked in a senior capacity in the private sector, let alone started and run a business. Nearly all of them are former academics; charity workers; public sector “jobsworths” or trade union representatives.
The only thing Cooper seems to be competent at, like Lammy and Two-Tier himself, is humiliating this country on the world stage.
April 4, 2026
Exactly. Why would anyone who understands human nature and real economic join or stay in the Labour Party?
“a high academic achiever doesn’t necessarily mean someone is decisive, competent in running an organisation and capable of delivering a project/objective.”
Indeed Dennis Healy got a double first in Greats at Oxford but gave us 98% income tax before going cap in hand to the IMF! Some ideas are so stupid that only “intellectuals” can believe them.
April 4, 2026
LL : “Indeed Dennis Healy got a double first in Greats at Oxford but gave us 98% income tax before going cap in hand to the IMF! Some ideas are so stupid that only “intellectuals” can believe them.”
For many years I thought this too. But I am now convinced that their actions are not through incompetence but are deliberate. Whether it be Healey bankrupting the country, Brown selling off our gold at a rock bottom price, having announced the sale in advance, or now with Miliband pursuing de-industrialisation to sabotage our energy and destroy our national security under the guise of a decarbonisation policy to “save the planet” from their totally false CAGW story. For socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor.
April 4, 2026
Fabians, with an Agenda.
April 4, 2026
Perhaps? Very dim or actually of evil intent?
April 4, 2026
There is no doubt that Mr Balls has more about him than Mrs Balls.
April 4, 2026
When you understand that Cooper has been actively involved with the Fabians throughout her political career and she has held various roles within the Labour Party, reflecting her commitment to its values and principles, it makes sense that she doesn’t want to smash the gangs. Fabians believe in open borders and equality for all. She aims to give our money and country away to foreigners.
Until we have a change in government, our country is doomed.
April 4, 2026
We gave up on peaceful diplomacy several governments ago. War (diplomacy by “other means”), both overt and covert, is being waged by us in Ukraine, Russia, the Gulf.
There is no point in “jaw, jaw”, when we are at “war, war”. These military actions in farflung places are offensive ones on our part. We had no need to get involved.
April 4, 2026
You happy to do without energy and food?
Courageous.
April 4, 2026
It seems ‘NO’ is the short answer.
Reliance on imported energy suits their long term aims – they see it as a good lesson for us to get us used to not always having vast amounts of electricity or gas on tap, because that is the way the future is going for the UK.
So despite her academic abilities it seems the Foreign Secretary is out of her depth in whatever role she gets. I’ve long noticed with socialist female MPs the lack of talent being overridden by vitriolic pointless speeches and a tendency to play on their gender.
April 4, 2026
Yes, it’s a tell when they flaunt their sex in place of their lack of ability.
Mrs Thatcher never did that, indeed she never addressed her ability – she just acted and let her action tell the whole story.
She was a VERY rare woman.
April 5, 2026
+9999999999999999999999
April 4, 2026
I always use soccer or cricket as analogous to this situation; just because you know the rules doesn’t make you a great player, or indeed able even to kick or hit the ball.
Here we have the classic case in point.
April 4, 2026
Am afraid we’re going to have to decide on which side we are in this war – then to do this we have to shout out loud who the agressors are but alas with the strength and influence of the Jewish Lobby in Britain I think that’ll be out of the question. Almost every politician who matters here and in the US is a card carrying friend of Israel – Britain is screwed.
Reply Are you saying Iran and its proxies have not been aggressive? The UK national interest does not require us to back uncritically one side in what is a multi sided war – Israel, US, Iran,Hamas, Houthi,Hezbollah, Guff States etc. War aims of several of these unclear. Our bases and personnel have been attacked by Iran and we need to defend our people and assets.
April 4, 2026
It’s more a case of having to decide whether we can do anything at all. Do we participate in a multi-national force to secure the Straits of Hormuz, or do we just sit back and accept the economic damage of the loss of oil and gas supplies?
April 5, 2026
Ever heard of the Haganah the Irgun or the Stern Gangs? so now tell me that the Palestinians started this Middle Eastern trouble
April 4, 2026
Yvette Cooper is a former WEF Young Global Leader, as indeed are her husband Ed Balls and Ed Miliband (such information about YGLs from the UK being somewhat difficult to track down). This may serve to place her Oxford 1st and her LSE Masters into perspective: not so much a case of knowing a lot but not understanding how to apply it, more a case of consciously applying that knowledge in an unhelpful manner.
April 4, 2026
It would be interesting to know how many of the WEF YGL’s in the UK were/are Fabians.
Cooper, Balls and Miliband all are. As is Two-Tier and about a third of the Cabinet and Labour’s current MPs.
April 4, 2026
The Gulf Straits stayed open because Iran and the Gulf States both needed passage for their oil and gas products. Now Iran is closing passage to the Gulf States but allowing its own and allies ships through. The answer is for the US and European navies to block Iranian ships until they stop attacking others. The IRGC needs the money to rebuild.
April 4, 2026
@Stred. Might involve seizing Chinese ships. That could have unknown consequences.
But on the fun side, France has reportedly just done a deal (its blocking a motion at UN security council) with Russia, China and by extension Iran, to ensure French (or France-destined) ships can go through. Do we get back to fighting the French at sea? Starmer would wiggle even more, the channel migrant tap would be opened up…
April 4, 2026
I meant to add, if you block foreign ships from carrying Iranian-bought oil those foreigners may challenge the blockade.
April 4, 2026
The UK couldn’t fight France at sea because they out the wrong engines in our boats and the one aircraft carrier that works hasn’t got any missile defence.
April 4, 2026
eye for an eye …..attack an Iranian tanker for every one they attack, including en route to China instead of India.
April 4, 2026
They’re not “allies” ‘ ships. They’re ships whose owners, whether in France, Japan, Oman or elsewhere, have accepted the new reality in the Gulf. The US no longer runs the show, Iran does, and Iran will set the terms for who gets through the Hormuz strait. Yvette Cooper isn’t allowed to acknowledge this, so no wonder she’s floundering.
April 4, 2026
I don’t think you are following this war very closely.
April 4, 2026
To be honest I’d forgotten she was Foreign Secretary. Foreign policy is determined entirely by Starmer and Jonathan Powell and advised by Lord Hermer – no room for anyone else to get involved. She is also literally invisible as Starmer likes to do all the foreign travel himself. If she had any self-respect she’d not work under these conditions.
April 4, 2026
The Rwanda scheme was a failure for legal and cost reasons, £700 millions for 4 refugees and counting. You might prefer Ms Badenoch to machine gun refugees on the beaches. Make good election footage.
We don’t do gunboats any more – surface ships being floating bullseyes. Perhaps we can send our shiny new laser gunship and see if it works.
Reduced to waiting for the Americans and Israelis to calm down a bit then we can pick up the pieces. Starmer may not be much good but he is bright enough to keep well clear of this one – and hope the petrol does not run out. We do a good job of diplomacy but no point getting our fingers burned on this one.
April 4, 2026
Lots of elements at play today. The get together by the weak was part of the narrative just to be seen to do or say something – what is called a talking shop.
Then we have a small parochial election that counts for nothing – a government in denial, head in the sand, lost but with 3 more years in front of them. So they can ignore everyone and everything.
As for the Navy the Armed Forces the situation there is more than a generation of neglect, with the whole of Parliament failing in it duties of keeping us safe and secure. Parliament not ensuring resilience and self-reliance, a Parliament in neglect of purpose. That situation is laid into the laps of the egotists calling themselves MPs from all Party’s. Hiding behind percentages of GDP, and in denial of what is needed. We are seeing what it is like having a Local Council acting out a pretence, only understanding the need to take orders from the unelected unaccountable elsewhere with no comprehension of how to govern & manage a Nation on behalf of the people they pro-port, and it is just pro-port to represent. They are like lost children crying for ‘mummy’
April 4, 2026
Being academically bright sometime bears no relationship at all with practical ability to achieve anything through people, or in the woolly uncertain and unpredictable world of real life, or even withan ability to analyse situations and perceive root causes of problems and potential solutions. Many good scientists are hopelessly impractical. I have observed this first hand in both the Navy and civilian life. Belief in an ideology overcomes all objections raised by rigorous analysis. Socialism has failed everywhere it is been tried and every time it has been tried. et socialists domeinate education and always blame the failures on non-socialists.
April 4, 2026
Governing countries is a practical trade so academic qualifications are of less importance in it than personal qualities such as energy, resilience, strength of character and sound good sense. Among the very few competent statesmen Labour has produced was Ernest Bevin, who had such attributes in spades and left school at 11.
All socialist politicians face the same problem of making an idealistic political philosophy work in the real world. Yvette Cooper may possess a sackful of degrees but her serial failure is hardly a mystery.
April 4, 2026
Bevan might have learned more at school by 11 than university graduates today. However he failed to comprehend that the NHS, which he expected to shrink as the health of the population improved, was weighted to become the unwieldy mess in the exclusive interest of it’s employees that it has become.
April 4, 2026
“Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has come under fire after handing £50,000 to The Guardian’s charity.”
Is that why we have ‘independent, impartial’ Quango’s as the watchdogs? Then whose money?
April 4, 2026
“She told Iran they could not levy fees on ships for safe passage as they now seem to want to do.”
We used to hang highwaymen. Time to reinstate it.
But you’d think a bunch of lawyers like Starmer and Hermer could work out that the straits are dealt wih in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and may not be obstructed in any way by the coastal states, and these states are prohibited from charging for the use of these designated passages. It seems that international law is only of concern to Starmer’s Gang when it can be abused to Britain’s disadvantage.
April 4, 2026
You’re right, Peter, but who enforces the Law of the Sea? It’s a UN convention, and Iran might want the UN to first condemn the illegal war of agression being waged against it, before agreeing to drop charges. They claim these are being imposed as reparations paying for the damage suffered In this war.
We get back to the pointlessness of the UN, failing yet again to do what it should do, and its ideological obsession with Agenda 2030, which the current fossil fuel shortages will help to promote. Miliband has of course jumped at the opportunity.
April 4, 2026
The war is not illegal.
April 4, 2026
My point is that the UN says it is illegal. Under the United Nations Charter, a use of force by one state against another is lawful only if it is authorised by the UN Security Council or if it is a necessary and proportionate act of self defence. Neither was the case. The UN upholds the Law of the Sea AND the illegality of making war unless attacked. You can’t argue for one but not the other.
April 4, 2026
Exactly so.
April 4, 2026
Worryingly, the above discussion illustrates what ineffective Prime Ministers of both parties our democratic process has produced for decades. I believe that we need to examine the process – I would advocate moving to direct democracy (Switzerland is an example) and rather than legislating for it in the first instance (which will take forever), one or more political parties could introduce it as the process for interacting with members.
April 4, 2026
Yes John I thought the same the FS looks lost and irrelevant
April 4, 2026
Unlike yourself, Lord Redwood, I have never met Yvette Cooper. But as someone who ran a business with 120 locations in the UK and 6500 staff, I have long thought she was useless. In any intelligent government,Cooper would never even be a junior Minister. She was a weak Home Secretary, and is now an even weaker Foreign Secretary. But mediocrity starts at the top, with the PM. If the PM is a dud, and he is, then he will appoint weak, dud Ministers so as to avoid any challenge to his position.
If even a war in the Middle East and in Ukraine cannot galvanise them to seek self-sufficiency in energy, and cut spending to fund serious increases in defence spending, then we are under a government of third rate idiots!
Which they prove on a daily basis. There is an interviewer on LBC radio who has shown the ignorance of several Ministers who don’t know basic information about their jobs! It is a shambolic government, going nowhere.
April 4, 2026
“Given their policy is to make us depend on more and more imports of oil, gas, chemicals and anything to do with oil and gas this is a bad dereliction of duty.”
If we were at war such a policy of de-industrialisation disguised as decarbonisation to save the planet would be seen to be far worse. Possibly even considered to be treachery as it could be argued to be aiding and abetting the enemy. Is this the reason that Sir Keir Starmer is so keen to say that we are not at war?
April 4, 2026
“Given their policy is to make us depend on more and more imports of oil, gas, chemicals and anything to do with oil and gas this is a bad dereliction of duty.”
Ed Miliband’s luxury belief that the UK’s de-industrialisation (pretending to be decarbonisation) is necessary to save the planet and hence telling us to use expensive, scarce and unreliable renewable electricity when we clearly need fossil fuels instead to survive is akin to Marie Antonette’s alleged utterance “Let them eat cake”.
April 4, 2026
“Given their policy is to make us depend on more and more imports of oil, gas, chemicals and anything to do with oil and gas this is a bad dereliction of duty.”
Professor Sir Dieter Helm, Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford, who wrote in 2017 the government’s “Cost of Energy Review”, ends his 24/02/2026 podcast #83 entitled “The Energy Security Gap” thus: “The reason why there are so many opportunities to improve our energy security is because it is very hard to conceive of any energy policy which could be making us LESS energy secure and LESS helpful as a policy towards the defence of the realm, the primary requirement of any government before anything else is considered.”
April 4, 2026
I have absolutely no idea why the King is going over to America at this time – such a visit at this time will only go to highlight the differences between us.
April 5, 2026
On the face of it because Two-Tier has severely damaged “the special relationship” with the USA. His previous choice as British Ambassador was an absolute disaster and the only person considered capable of improving the situation is the King, who has more diplomatic experience than any other member of the Establishment and is seen as the only individual capable of repairing the damage.
Secondly, because the visit has been planned for a long time and scrapping it now would probably be the final nail in the coffin of “the special relationship.”
We have to hope that Trump uses the opportunity to educate Charles on the idiocy of so-called renewable energy and destroying the British economy on the altar of the Net Zero SCAM.