Does Trump know how to play Putin?

He's already winding him up mercilessly.  The context is that Putin's very substantial and prickly pride has been deeply wounded by being flatly ignored and personally banned by the entire western world for several years, and that his travel and international interlocutors are constrained to China, Iran, North Korea and, errr, back to China again.  He is absolutely desperate to be out on the World Leader circuit again, as fast as possible.  And in his optimistic moments his hopes are high.

Now, nationalist Russian sentiment is aggrieved - and is certain Putin is also angry - that Trump has failed to recognize with sufficient gratitude that Soviet Russia won WW2.  They say Putin will assuredly give Trump one of his "history-lesson" rants whenever they do finally get to talk.  He is given to rants of this kind: lengthy and rambling with a mind-numbing effect on audiences.  Nobody outside of the aforesaid China, Iran and N.Korea is trained to "listen attentively" to these things any more: the days of Fidel Castro at the podium are a distant memory.  

And in Trump, they have truly misread their man.

For all his gargantuan failings in many departments, Trump has a colossal amount of low cunning in the matter of personal encounters and human psychology.  Both he and Putin have made vast capital from their differing abilities in human engagement, so they both operate psychological theories of a kind.  But mano a mano?  When dealing with anyone other than meet-the-people walkabout audiences, Putin self-evidently relies on pure menace and intimidation - he even considers this a matter for pride and the TV cameras - a very Russian thing.  Look at the merciless, gleeful, premeditated way he literally set dogs on Angela Merkel, a well-known cynophobiac.  It'll be water off Trump's back: the man doesn't give a toss for such things (and probably won't even grant a face-to-face meeting).  But having already been baited, can we see anxious, urgent Putin going for everyone else's Plan A, viz abject flattery?  Really?

Both Putin and Trump are of course themselves the subjects of endless psychological analysis and speculation, professional and amateur.  But you know who can play them both?  Well, maybe Xi, who has the luxury of considering his chess-by-post moves very carefully, and never needs to make a move he's not totally comfortable with.  But Xi is unlikely to hold the key to restoring Li'l Volodya's fortunes in the Big World of Global Prestige.

The relevant answer is ... Zelensky.  If you've seen one or other of the lengthy TV documentaries on the man, you'll be in no doubt whatever that the little comedian / showman / war leader is absolutely masterful in his personal dealings - with whole crowds of foreign politicians as well as one-on-one encounters.  He, too, has had a very long time to ponder the arrival of Trump, but his conclusions and plans for this critical juncture will have been a lot more adroit than the twisted frettings of Putin.  I'd rate Zelensky's chances quite highly of making a bit of strategic hay over the next couple of months.

On the other hand I doubt very much that Putin's upside scenario  - Transactional Trump the famous isolationist, wants a quick PR win, and gives me everything I want - will play out anywhere other than in his most optimistic dreams.  The downside - still in the global naughty corner come summer, Ukrainian drones still falling nightly on my oil refineries, and another trip to Pyongyang in the diary - looks a lot more likely.  

And Zelensky will still have a ghastly, grinding war on his hands.  Perhaps with a few more weapons in the armoury, though.  And Xi will continue to sit there quietly at his own global chessboard, planning his Taiwan campaign.

ND

"50 new gas-fired power plants for Germany" - and UK?

"German opposition leader vows to build 50 gas-fired power plants if elected", the story goes.  This is Merz, leader of the CDU and potentially Germany's next Chancellor (although see the 2025 Predictions compo).  50 is hyperbolic[1], but the point remains: Germany is hugely lacking in natural energy resources and, having bizarrely closed all its nukes on Merkel's whim, can't remotely rely on its large but actually not very impressive fleet of solar and wind power.  (Solar?  This is N.Europe.  Wind?  It has only a very small coastline, and that's in the wrong place.  Coal & lignite?   In abundance - but not "green", of course.)

So where would the gas come from?  Well, "imports": but lack of detail on this is just one element of the hyperbole, and his statement isn't any kind of practical plan.  But the point remains: the more wind & solar in a power fleet, the more strategic, long-term[2] backup power is required.  Right now, batteries aren't even remotely candidates for this, and won't be within a realistic planning period.   Pumped-storage hydro is great but in limited supply.  Imports of electricity are what Germany relies on right now but the Scandinavians are getting pretty testy about this - it plays havoc with their own markets - and may well pull the plug. 

Which brings us to our own shores.  Large-scale build-up of solar and wind - check.  Growing electricity demand (after more than a decade of decline) - check.  Declining nuclear capacity[3] - check.  Reliance on imports which might not be a practical proposition indefinitely - check.  So: continued, nay, growing need for gas-fired backup - check.  Even Little Ed Miliband realised this before the election, and now plans to retain the full 30-35 MW of our existing fleet[4] in his feeble "100% decarbonised by 2030, oops, make that 95%, it's what I always meant, it's the same thing" non-plan.

Here's the thing: these things are easy for a politician to say but that's not enough.  Capital plant can't equally easily be made to stand around doing nothing all year, but spring into life with ultra-high reliability on the odd, unpredictable occasion it's needed to be in action for a week or so.  That's not how the world works.

To be fair, HMG has gone one step further and has come up with a new subsidy for which backup gas-fired plants would qualify - but that's only the financial aspect.  The practical and physical aspects are legion, not least because if Mili's plans for decarbonising home heating progress[5] the overall scale of gas infrastructure[6] will be diminishing materially, and it would be comprehensive extant infrastructure paid for by someone else (as it is at present) that a rarely-used gas-based backup system would parasitically depend upon.

Yet another facet of the infeasibility of Miliband's plan.  He gave a very upbeat (and in fact, rather good - in political terms) performance in front of the Select Committee last week, and one can easily see how Labour MPs who don't understand the subject matter (evidently including Starmer and Reeves) would be inclined to view him very favourably and trust him implicitly.  But it's all destined to hit the rocks of hard reality at some point.  When?  I'm not sure.  Meantime, a heap of subsidy-contracts are gonna get taken by some players - and paid for by us.

ND

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[1] ... but music to the ears of hard-pressed Siemens!

[2] In this context, 'long-term' means weeks.  Batteries are only good for hours - which is very useful for some purposes, but not for Dunkelflaute

[3] Hinkley Point C start-up is a distant prospect, and the existing fleet is in decline, even if its life is prolonged to the max and the ONR throws safety considerations to the winds

[4] Numbers vary from document to document

[5] His targets won't be met, of course, but the gradual replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps is inevitable, even if at infinitesimal pace.  Ditto EVs

[6] By 'infrastructure' I mean not only the pipelines, storage facilities and LNG import terminals, but also the commercial and 'soft' aspects associated with there being a vast amount of gas sloshing around the UK all the time & particularly in winter:  lots of long-term supply contracts, gas traders, commercial, engineering & tech expertise, market liquidity etc etc - in other words, a thriving, extant gas industry of critical mass.   

Trump: using the levers of his very great power

A longstanding strategy which is often attributed to (e.g.) Israel is to nurture the reputation of being outright crazy, with the 'benefit' that everyone else thinks:  they're crazy enough, they really might do it!

Re-enter Donald Trump, who is already claiming - probably with justification - to have been instrumental in the (putative) ceasefire in Gaza.  It's pretty obvious his influence is already being felt elsewhere too, such is his hard-earned reputation for maverick behaviour, no guesswork required.  What interests me most is that over the past few weeks he's been showing some serious understanding of just how far this could take him, and just how extensive are the levers of (indirect) power he will enjoy.

Long-time readers will know I often praise Mandelson for having a genuinely broad and creative approach to what can be done with power.  There aren't so many with that degree of lateral thinking.  We been given glimpses now, as to just how widely Trump is casting his gaze and, allied with his "tariff is my favourite word" weapon, it's pretty revolutionary.

Start with his designs on US territorial expansion, a topic possibly considered dead since the Alaska purchase of 1867.  Greenland.  Canada!  People are already sketching out how it might be done.  Then think about Europe.  "Unless you guys increase your defence spending, NOW, to 3% GDP, I'm withdrawing from NATO.  You have three months to pass the legislation."  And so on - no need to give the man ideas.   

Perhaps Mandelson isn't such a bad choice for Ambassador after all.

ND

WFH "costs nothing". WTF? Polly Toynbee is a fool

WFH  -  "It’s free, it’s sensible and it makes workers happy. The government needs to accept that this is the new normal"

Guess which idiot wrote that?  Well, no prizes, it's Polly Toynbee, in a Graun piece entitled Labour has been sucked into the WFH culture war. It should know better. 

We'll let her make her case, as she bewails what she detects as government reverting to neanderthal office-bound working practices. 

... many workplaces have thrived because of it ... A perverse strain of rightwing thought opposes almost any social progress that improves other people’s lives ... Zoom meetings save time and wasteful travel, employers are free to hire talent from anywhere in the country, and employees have escaped escalating property prices in London and steep commuting costs. WFH has been a boon for the climate, too; according to one US study, two to four days of remote working a week lowers carbon emissions by between 11% and 29% ... hybrid working policies [are] key to attracting talent ... people value the ability to work from home two or three days a week about the same as they would an 8% pay rise.  Does [the government] want to be nice to employees, or nasty? ... new employment rights will help civilise working life. Growth-boosting plans to get “economically inactive” people with disabilities or caring responsibilities into jobs will only succeed with maximum flexibility. And WFH, remember, is free, which makes it look like a very sensible policy in a year when large pay rises seem unlikely. 

Setting aside the ridiculously hyperbolic conclusion one is supposed to infer from that deliberately misleading sentence on climate benefits, we can assess the force of what she's saying, before entering the counter-arguments (which, true to her miserable form, she does not acknowledge at all).

Efficiency:  yes, and nobody disagrees, Zoom etc as a facility is a fine thing to have and can make for all manner of efficiencies.  So what?  The telephone has been around for well over a century.  I attended my first "teleconference" in 1986: the resolution of the mug-shots wasn't great, but even then the sound was fine and it had the ability to switch to doc-display mode.  Presumably Toynbee inhabits a tech-free world of Graun chatterers who imagine it was invented in 2020.

And ...  and?    Well, excepting only the "costs nothing" point which we'll return to, everything else in her case is basically "staff like it".  Well, staff say they like a lot of things: more money, extra holidays, free childcare, slap-up canteen lunches, company car, health insurance, non-contributory pension, golfing away-days ...   and they all take their place in a businesslike assessment of how the trade-offs are going to work out.  So let's get to the trade-offs, eh, Polly? 

It's really odd because I would have thought lefties, softies and tree-hugger types would have been the first to acknowledge the absolutely critical importance of direct human contact.  Actually, many of them would.  Humans are designed for face-to-face interactions, it's utterly intrinsic in our makeup.  Whenever this breaks down, inhumanity takes hold.  That's an extreme statement of the case, but in a less dramatic form: you try negotiating a complex deal, or making an important new hiring, by any other means than regular over-the-table contact, F2F.  And over the coffee-break - and over a beer afterwards.  I guarantee that in direct competition with companies that insist on a solid percentage of time spent face-to-face with colleagues and counterparties alike, the company that says OK, WFH, sounds fine to me, just check in online a couple of times a week will lose out very significantly over the long run.  And everyone who is serious about getting things done is coming back to this view, albeit belatedly.

What we are running into is the world of people who advocate that anyone can self-diagnose with PTSD or ME and be "supported" by the state as they skulk in their bedrooms.  That any child who doesn't like school or isn't top of the class needs an individual SEND plan + tutor at school, or can be "home-schooled".  Contrary to what people with this mindset believe, there can't be a high percentage of staff who are truly more productive "WFH" four days a week.  For the avoidance of doubt, there will of course always be some people with genuine PTSD / ME / SEND problems / high unsupervised personal productivity etc etc.  But percentage-wise, not many.  Toynbee is extrapolating from her own working practices and assuming the rest of the world runs like hers: a self-motivated journalist tripping around from home-office keyboard to restaurant-lunch-on-expenses, and back to keyboard again.  The woman is a fool.

So:  "WFH is free"?  Nope, it comes at a serious cost:  net efficiency /  productivity / effectiveness at its most functional and cash-oriented; and erosion of face-to-face human contact at its most elevated.

As with many issues, the key is resolving the trade-offs.  Toynbee, pathetic polemicist that she is, doesn't even acknowledge them.  She is a fule and I diskard her uterly, as Nigel M would say. 

ND

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PS, this is all in the same week as Toynbee writes "Ignore Musk, ignore the critics – you’ll feel the benefit of Labour’s policies in your pocket before long".  What more do we need to say?

AI and government: what could go wrong?

That's about it, really.

Blair has obviously got at Starmer.  "AI Superpower"?   Well, if government has anything to do with it, AI Superpower, my arse.

Civil servants are crap at tech stuff (inter multa alia) and picking winners - look how many iterations of 'government portals' etc they go through, before eventually they get websites that actually work.  Then, they put everything online and make applications for stuff self-certifying, so that the slick system they've come up with is robbed blind by scammers.  We know this.  Do we need to rehearse the PO scandal, NHS databases, etc etc etc?

We also know that the UK is capable of being a superpower in all sorts of techie arenas: FI cars; computer games; FinTech;   ... errrr ...   And we haven't jumped with both feet to hobble AI with regulations, unlike the EU.  But electricity, there's the thing: the next generation of data centres will be ferocious power-hogs.  The US will take this in its stride (well, maybe not California) but we are looking shaky right now: Jan 8th was nearly blackout time, and data centres can't be doing with that.  Starmer has obviously been told about this one because he's muttering about SMRs - maybe he hopes the Big 7 will pay for his energy policy at the same time as gladdening his heart with multi-billion AI-related investments here.

The answer has to be: (a) facilitate it, planning-wise; (b) leave it alone; (c) buy, for government use, good products when they become available and are fully tested.  But for pity's sake don't pay for the DWP to be the beta site for some piece of premature vapourware.  Because that's what this all looks like.

ND