Sir Keir Starmer #3

[moldwarp]

Thank you for this perceptive (and frankly bleeping terrifying!) account of the PMQ fiasco.

And as for this sentence Rayner was...GRINNING! Rayner is a shark. She doesn't give a damn about the country; she doesn't give a gamn about the poor and the vulnerable; she doesn't give a damn about her party or her colleagues. In fact, the worse they perform, the more she sees opportunities to tread on their corpses and get a rung further up the pole.

She's horrendous.

The thing that frightens me is that no one in the Govt really understands how the financial markets work and how their condition is fundamental to the health of the nation. Rule One for governments that want to mess with fiscal rectitude is that the bond market will always win.

So to take just one example, Reeves' little performance yesterday sent the FTSE 100 down 0.1% and the FTSE 250 down 3.1%. Because this Govt has hung their hat on housebuilding, and building in general is percieved as an economic bellwether, the housebuilders fared worse, down 6% on average.

So what does this mean? Contrary to what many far leftists think, a sustained share price denigration is not just an esoteric matter that's nothing to do with them, nor is it only a problem for the Evil 'Rich'. It means that the housebuilders now have to divert more capital to servicing their balance sheets rather than putting it into working capital ie building houses. This means that Labour's 300,000+ new homes a year target has now taken another blow. That in turn will send existing house prices higher, thus further locking the young out of home ownership.

Bond yields have gone up, because Reeves' tears made the market price in her removal, further tax rises (inevitable after the Welfare Bill debacle) and further UK economic decline. As all public sector and state pensions, and most private pensions, are managed by a few blue chip institutions, those funds will also have lost value, so your pension and my pension and everyone else's pension on this thread just eroded. That in turn will push inflation just as we were starting to get it under some semblance of control.

And if you want to know what can happen when there's a full on bond crisis, take a look at what happened to my home country of Greece in 2010 - 2012. The economy ended up contracting 25%. Pharmacists could not stock life saving medicines like insulin because these things are bought on hedged forward contracts directly linked to bond yields (same in the UK in case anyone's wondering). Middle class professionals were on the streets.

Any Govt that does not have people with an adequate understanding of basic economic or fiscal theory has NO BUSINESS governing us. AFAIK this is the first Govt we've ever had where no one on the front bench has that knowledge base.

Personally, I think it could all get very dark, very quickly. Speaking as a Greek - you never think it will happen to your country, because you're a comfortable first world country, right? Economic collapse doesn't happen here. That's what we Greeks said to each other. But it could, and did.

 

[Phil Anne Throw Pee]

Of course Starmer hates women - until the Supreme Court ruling he couldn't even legitimately define one - 'person with a front hole', 'non man'.

I find the criticism of Reeves crying rather depressing though. She's a human being, she may well have been 'up to' attending PMQ's but, as a woman of a certain age, and speaking from personal experience, crying can be sudden, a mixture of hormones, despair etc. It doesn't matter what we think of someone's performance in their job, criticising and cooing over someone in obvious distress is pretty bleep.

 

[TheMiceInTheShed]

The thing that frightens me is that no one in the Govt really understands how the financial markets work and how their condition is fundamental to the health of the nation. Rule One for governments that want to mess with fiscal rectitude is that the bond market will always win.

So to take just one example, Reeves' little performance yesterday sent the FTSE 100 down 0.1% and the FTSE 250 down 3.1%. Because this Govt has hung their hat on housebuilding, and building in general is percieved as an economic bellwether, the housebuilders fared worse, down 6% on average.

So what does this mean? Contrary to what many far leftists think, a sustained share price denigration is not just an esoteric matter that's nothing to do with them, nor is it only a problem for the Evil 'Rich'. It means that the housebuilders now have to divert more capital to servicing their balance sheets rather than putting it into working capital ie building houses. This means that Labour's 300,000+ new homes a year target has now taken another blow. That in turn will send existing house prices higher, thus further locking the young out of home ownership.

Bond yields have gone up, because Reeves' tears made the market price in her removal, further tax rises (inevitable after the Welfare Bill debacle) and further UK economic decline. As all public sector and state pensions, and most private pensions, are managed by a few blue chip institutions, those funds will also have lost value, so your pension and my pension and everyone else's pension on this thread just eroded. That in turn will push inflation just as we were starting to get it under some semblance of control.

And if you want to know what can happen when there's a full on bond crisis, take a look at what happened to my home country of Greece in 2010 - 2012. The economy ended up contracting 25%. Pharmacists could not stock life saving medicines like insulin because these things are bought on hedged forward contracts directly linked to bond yields (same in the UK in case anyone's wondering). Middle class professionals were on the streets.

Any Govt that does not have people with an adequate understanding of basic economic or fiscal theory has NO BUSINESS governing us. AFAIK this is the first Govt we've ever had where no one on the front bench has that knowledge base.

Personally, I think it could all get very dark, very quickly. Speaking as a Greek - you never think it will happen to your country, because you're a comfortable first world country, right? Economic collapse doesn't happen here. That's what we Greeks said to each other. But it could, and did.

This is what terrifies me.

The entire cabinet is thick as . 50% of them know it and don't care, the other 50% don't know it and think they're fantastic! I don't know which half is more dangerous.

Worse, they won't take advice form people who DO know how an economy works, and they won't listen to anybody who doesn't just endorse their agenda with a repeated bleating of the fiscal equivalent go "$ legs good, 2 legs bad". Starmer doesn't like anyone to disagree with him so surrounds himself with "yes" men (as did Johnson - but Starmer's worse because he is as weak as nun's piss) and chops and changes all the time - he's not a leader in any sense of the word.

I totally believe you when you say out will get very bad, very quickly, because I've seen how quickly the country got to this state. I would never have believed that in a million years we would have ended up with a government like this one in the UK. They haven't been in 5 minutes and the country has gone down the toilet already.

 

[moldwarp]

Of course Starmer hates women - until the Supreme Court ruling he couldn't even legitimately define one - 'person with a front hole', 'non man'.

I find the criticism of Reeves crying rather depressing though. She's a human being, she may well have been 'up to' attending PMQ's but, as a woman of a certain age, and speaking from personal experience, crying can be sudden, a mixture of hormones, despair etc. It doesn't matter what we think of someone's performance in their job, criticising and cooing over someone in obvious distress is pretty bleep.

I hear what you're saying, and would like to respectfully disagree for the following reasons:

1. On and off record briefings saying she was very upset BEFORE PMQs started. The swelling in her face under her eyes suggests she was crying a lot the night before. So, yes, in that scenario, she should have taken the decision not to attend PMQs. In her role, intellectual and strategic decision making has to come before emotion. The wise decision would have been not to attend.
2. She's got a Big Job - the second biggest in the country. And she knows, or should know, that effective management of market and fiscal expectations is key to her doing her job well. Crying in the Commons sends out a message to the markets, not a good one. Sending the right message is the second most important part of her job - Gordon Brown writes about this very effectively in his autobiography My Life Our Times (Philip Snowden, Hugh Dalton and Alistair Darling's thoughts and experiences of capital markets management are also well worth checking out, especially Dalton, who was Attlee's Chancellor and who shows a great deal of humility). It's not a post-menopausal old drone like me having a cry in the ladies after a bad meeting with my boss. Some jobs are just on a level where you have to get control of yourself by any means necessary. I wouldn't be happy if a stressed out brain surgeon broke down in tears whilst she was working on a patient in the operating theatre. I would not expect a five star general to break down mid-engagement with an opposing army, no matter how bad the military situation seemed. Christ only knows what course history would have taken had Churchill broken down in the Commons in May 1940 - a month in which he had every right to. And didn't.

There are some jobs where you HAVE to control yourself with superhuman effort. Reeves has one of them. Either she can do it or she can't.

On the basis of yesterday (and indeed her October Budget) I would say she can't. And I do think it's fair to wonder what she'd do in a proper full blown financial crisis.

 

[Phil Anne Throw Pee]

I hear what you're saying, and would like to respectfully disagree for the following reasons:

1. On and off record briefings saying she was very upset BEFORE PMQs started. The swelling in her face under her eyes suggests she was crying a lot the night before. So, yes, in that scenario, she should have taken the decision not to attend PMQs. In her role, intellectual and strategic decision making has to come before emotion. The wise decision would have been not to attend.
2. She's got a Big Job - the second biggest in the country. And she knows, or should know, that effective management of market and fiscal expectations is key to her doing her job well. Crying in the Commons sends out a message to the markets, not a good one. Sending the right message is the second most important part of her job - Gordon Brown writes about this very effectively in his autobiography My Life Our Times (Philip Snowden, Hugh Dalton and Alistair Darling's thoughts and experiences of capital markets management are also well worth checking out, especially Dalton, who was Attlee's Chancellor and who shows a great deal of humility). It's not a post-menopausal old drone like me having a cry in the ladies after a bad meeting with my boss. Some jobs are just on a level where you have to get control of yourself by any means necessary. I wouldn't be happy if a stressed out brain surgeon broke down in tears whilst she was working on a patient in the operating theatre. I would not expect a five star general to break down mid-engagement with an opposing army, no matter how bad the military situation seemed. Christ only knows what course history would have taken had Churchill broken down in the Commons in May 1940 - a month in which he had every right to. And didn't.

There are some jobs where you HAVE to control yourself with superhuman effort. Reeves has one of them. Either she can do it or she can't.

On the basis of yesterday (and indeed her October Budget) I would say she can't. And I do think it's fair to wonder what she'd do in a proper full blown financial crisis.

Disagree with me? You'd better be scared

I also see where you are coming from, but I still think that showing a bit of humanity is never a bad thing. Mental health is woefully misunderstood and underfunded and I do think that the 'stiff upper lip' approach is unhealthy.

Comparing Churchill with Reeves is a bit like comparing apples and pears - he was of a different age entirely, and by all accounts, relaxed with tons of booze and cigars of an evening, a bit unhealthier than having a cry.

Having said all that, and whilst I think showing emotion is healthy, I am a terrible flier and if I was on a flight and one of the cabin crew was crying I would tit myself.....

 

[Theodore]

Cringed my bits off at RR turning up at that press conference with Starmer and Weasel Streeting today. Hair, makeup, beaming smile…. bleeping hell. Do they think we’re stupid or something? Oh everything’s ok because she was rolled out the next day looking ok? The woman is only still in that job to protect him. As Kemi B said, she’s a human shield. How cowardly of him to use her as that.

 

[moldwarp]

Disagree with me? You'd better be scared

I also see where you are coming from, but I still think that showing a bit of humanity is never a bad thing. Mental health is woefully misunderstood and underfunded and I do think that the 'stiff upper lip' approach is unhealthy.

Comparing Churchill with Reeves is a bit like comparing apples and pears - he was of a different age entirely, and by all accounts, relaxed with tons of booze and cigars of an evening, a bit unhealthier than having a cry.

Having said all that, and whilst I think showing emotion is healthy, I am a terrible flier and if I was on a flight and one of the cabin crew was crying I would tit myself.....

I am! I'm scared you're gonna throw pee on me ;-)

Showing humanity is very different to showing vehement distress when you're the Chancellor and the nation's finances, and the Govt's authority, are both in very precarious positions. There's a time and a place. As you rightly point out with your cabin crew analogy.

Churchill started on the booze in the morning in May 1940. He still functioned on it though. Had he broken down publicly, Lord Halifax would've been straight on the phone to Hermann Goering and we both know it. Halifax was all for the peace negotiation deal offered by Mussolini and according to his own diaries was simply awaiting for Churchill to crack. See what I mean? Time and a place.

"relaxed with tons of booze and cigars of an evening, a bit unhealthier than having a cry." - Depends whose health you're talking about. I'm less interested in Reeves' mental health than in the disastrous effect her economic policies have had - see the recent spate of farmer suicides. Now that IS poor mental health.

Also I appreciate this isn't your main point but when you say: "Mental health is woefully misunderstood and underfunded and I do think that the 'stiff upper lip' approach is unhealthy". I have some interest in this as someone who spent 6 horrible weeks on a psychiatric ward in my troubled past, and also as someone with a relative with schizophrenia.

There is no good evidence that talking more about poor mental health and showing the physical signs of mental distress, promote good mental health in those around you. In fact there are some very good studies which suggest that the opposite is true (e.g. Uni of Massachussetts study 2022 and other studies - Jonathan Haidt is well worth reading on this). It's notable that as public conversation about mental health has grown, on media and social media all around us, statistics on the UK population's quality of mental health continue to show a precipitous year on year decline.

Also, I don't think there's any suggestion that Reeves was crying because she has a psychiatric condition.

 

[SharkAttack]

Having said all that, and whilst I think showing emotion is healthy, I am a terrible flier and if I was on a flight and one of the cabin crew was crying I would tit myself.....

I spend entire flights scrutinising cabin crew's expressions. Even the tiniest furrowed brow and my heart is pounding.

 

[fishsticks]

Not that I've any sympathy for Reeves mind you. She's the CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. If you know you're too upset to make it through PMQs, DON'T GO, because if you sit there in tears you should KNOW that the bond market's gonna fall out of bed. Which it promptly did, making my forthcoming trip abroad to see family more expensive, and more to the point, sending our bond yields spiralling and plunging us all further into the slow motion bond crisis we've been spinning into since last October (I mean, at least the imbecile Truss had the decency to make her duck-up quick eh).

THIS. It's not mandatory to attend PMQ's and yes, there probably would've been questions about where she was if she did not attend, however a simple statement regarding "personal matters" would have been adequate. There's no need to air your emotional state on TV for all to see to create some political agenda. Bad day or not, she should have excused herself in my opinion especially knowing what financial impact those few tears could and did have.

(Although, Starmer was most definitely an a and could've shown a tiny amount of concern since there was no WAY he could miss those tears. Not buying it.)

 

[moldwarp]

THIS. It's not mandatory to attend PMQ's and yes, there probably would've been questions about where she was if she did not attend, however a simple statement regarding "personal matters" would have been adequate. There's no need to air your emotional state on TV for all to see to create some political agenda. Bad day or not, she should have excused herself in my opinion especially knowing what financial impact those few tears could and did have.

(Although, Starmer was most definitely an a and could've shown a tiny amount of concern since there was no WAY he could miss those tears. Not buying it.)

TBH it'd have been fine if she'd not attended. As you say, it's PMQs, not a debate or a Bill so it's not whipped. They could've said she was away schmoozing up to the big private equity firms MacQuarie and Blackstone, something that Labour are desperately trying to do as the penny's finally dropped that they've drained the public equity markets and so the only way they're going to get the investment to fix the UK's infrastructure is from global private equity.

Labour and private equity. Funny bedfellows eh. Sure that's why they've quietly dropped their manifesto pledge on higher corporation tax for private equity. Which I've no objection to, I'm all for capitalism and the vastly enhanced quality of life it brings. It's just, if you want to increase GDP and UK employment then surely you'd support the public markets not the private ones.

See there's no joined up thinking with this lot. At all. It worries me.

 

[kev1974]

Cringed my bits off at RR turning up at that press conference with Starmer and Weasel Streeting today. Hair, makeup, beaming smile…. bleeping hell. Do they think we’re stupid or something? Oh everything’s ok because she was rolled out the next day looking ok? The woman is only still in that job to protect him. As Kemi B said, she’s a human shield. How cowardly of him to use her as that.

She is only still in the job because (1) there is literally nobody else, even with all her embellished CV she's the only one that worked at a financial institution for a bit. (2) if she goes she likely will take Starner down with her.

 

[Piff paff puff]

He's said he'll never get rid of her now

 

[Mollywobbles]

He's said he'll never get rid of her now

He lies!

 

[Theodore]

He can’t be seen to reshuffle her. That would make him weak (lol). She would have to resign with some nebulous “personal reason”.

 

[Soapy Dolphin]

And if you want to know what can happen when there's a full on bond crisis, take a look at what happened to my home country of Greece in 2010 - 2012. The economy ended up contracting 25%. Pharmacists could not stock life saving medicines like insulin because these things are bought on hedged forward contracts directly linked to bond yields (same in the UK in case anyone's wondering). Middle class professionals were on the streets.

Any Govt that does not have people with an adequate understanding of basic economic or fiscal theory has NO BUSINESS governing us. AFAIK this is the first Govt we've ever had where no one on the front bench has that knowledge base.

Personally, I think it could all get very dark, very quickly. Speaking as a Greek - you never think it will happen to your country, because you're a comfortable first world country, right? Economic collapse doesn't happen here. That's what we Greeks said to each other. But it could, and did.

And Greece was in the EU and the Eurozone. I know leaving was discussed but not sure it could have happened.
Meanwhile, we're just sitting here on our lonesome, clutching our blue passports wondering why "reset" and "let me be clear" seem to be the answer to everything.

(Did the Greek crisis stretch out over a period of 8-10 years? Feels like we're only at the start of our crisis. Bloody hell!)

 

[moldwarp]

And Greece was in the EU and the Eurozone. I know leaving was discussed but not sure it could have happened.
Meanwhile, we're just sitting here on our lonesome, clutching our blue passports wondering why "reset" and "let me be clear" seem to be the answer to everything.

(Did the Greek crisis stretch out over a period of 8-10 years? Feels like we're only at the start of our crisis. Bloody hell!)

They are starting to recover now. It's truly heartbreaking what Germany did to Greece in 2010 - 2012, Merkel gaily bleeping them over to keep the bond markets happy with Germany. And the EU sat by and gave Greece no help at all, on Merkel's behest. The fiscal and moral evil she committed is something that's not fully understood or even talked about in the UK media. I di not use the word 'evil' hyperbolically. I use it literally. Sure when I go to Athens next week I'll see graffiti in the anarchist artists' conclave depicting Merkel as Hitler. The art's been there for years. Merkel's deeds were disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, Germany's current economic woes and the far right resurgence in Bavaria are pure karma. Sorry. It makes me emotional.

Yanis Varoufakis' book 'And the Weak Suffer What They Must?' is a must-read on the whole episode. The title is a quote from Thucydides one of the greatest historians of all time on how a stronger partner in a trade partnership should treat a weaker one to ensure long term peace and health for all parties. Clearly Merkel never read her Thucydides. Or she did and didn't understand it. Yeah, that makes more sense.

@Theodore yeah it was cringey wasn't it, giving full hostage video vibes. Also made no sense. So we're meant to believe that on Wednesday she had a personal matter so harrowing that she was crying at work, but her boss didn't even give her a day or two off to attend to her personal matter? Or did the personal matter resolve over night? Pray God I could be blessed with such serious yet at the same time easily solvable personal matters! Mine tend to go on over a period of months, you know like ordinary people's tend to do.

This is the problem with this lot. They lie to the public; OK, fine. All as expected. But they have such contempt for us that they can't even be bothered to give the lies some semblance of internal logical cohesion. It's like the last days of the USSR: we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, we know they know we know they're lying, and the lies are stupid but we should swallow them anyway. Because Kier's dad was a toolmaker. Or some such.

 

[TheMiceInTheShed]

They are starting to recover now. It's truly heartbreaking what Germany did to Greece in 2010 - 2012, Merkel gaily bleeping them over to keep the bond markets happy with Germany. And the EU sat by and gave Greece no help at all, on Merkel's behest. The fiscal and moral evil she committed is something that's not fully understood or even talked about in the UK media. I di not use the word 'evil' hyperbolically. I use it literally. Sure when I go to Athens next week I'll see graffiti in the anarchist artists' conclave depicting Merkel as Hitler. The art's been there for years. Merkel's deeds were disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, Germany's current economic woes and the far right resurgence in Bavaria are pure karma. Sorry. It makes me emotional.

Yanis Varoufakis' book 'And the Weak Suffer What They Must?' is a must-read on the whole episode. The title is a quote from Thucydides one of the greatest historians of all time on how a stronger partner in a trade partnership should treat a weaker one to ensure long term peace and health for all parties. Clearly Merkel never read her Thucydides. Or she did and didn't understand it. Yeah, that makes more sense.

@Theodore yeah it was cringey wasn't it, giving full hostage video vibes. Also made no sense. So we're meant to believe that on Wednesday she had a personal matter so harrowing that she was crying at work, but her boss didn't even give her a day or two off to attend to her personal matter? Or did the personal matter resolve over night? Pray God I could be blessed with such serious yet at the same time easily solvable personal matters! Mine tend to go on over a period of months, you know like ordinary people's tend to do.

This is the problem with this lot. They lie to the public; OK, fine. All as expected. But they have such contempt for us that they can't even be bothered to give the lies some semblance of internal logical cohesion. It's like the last days of the USSR: we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, we know they know we know they're lying, and the lies are stupid but we should swallow them anyway. Because Kier's dad was a toolmaker. Or some such.

I had no idea that Merkel had shafted the Greek economy like that! I thought the whole point of the European Union was to ensure fairness and protect everyone.

I'm so bliddy näive about economics.

 

[SharkAttack]

I had no idea that Merkel had shafted the Greek economy like that! I thought the whole point of the European Union was to ensure fairness and protect everyone.

I'm so bliddy näive about economics.

Nor did I. Moldwarp's posts make me feel beyond useless in terms of understanding global politics. (But I love them!)

 

[Piff paff puff]

They are starting to recover now. It's truly heartbreaking what Germany did to Greece in 2010 - 2012, Merkel gaily bleeping them over to keep the bond markets happy with Germany. And the EU sat by and gave Greece no help at all, on Merkel's behest. The fiscal and moral evil she committed is something that's not fully understood or even talked about in the UK media. I di not use the word 'evil' hyperbolically. I use it literally. Sure when I go to Athens next week I'll see graffiti in the anarchist artists' conclave depicting Merkel as Hitler. The art's been there for years. Merkel's deeds were disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, Germany's current economic woes and the far right resurgence in Bavaria are pure karma. Sorry. It makes me emotional.

Yanis Varoufakis' book 'And the Weak Suffer What They Must?' is a must-read on the whole episode. The title is a quote from Thucydides one of the greatest historians of all time on how a stronger partner in a trade partnership should treat a weaker one to ensure long term peace and health for all parties. Clearly Merkel never read her Thucydides. Or she did and didn't understand it. Yeah, that makes more sense.

@Theodore yeah it was cringey wasn't it, giving full hostage video vibes. Also made no sense. So we're meant to believe that on Wednesday she had a personal matter so harrowing that she was crying at work, but her boss didn't even give her a day or two off to attend to her personal matter? Or did the personal matter resolve over night? Pray God I could be blessed with such serious yet at the same time easily solvable personal matters! Mine tend to go on over a period of months, you know like ordinary people's tend to do.

This is the problem with this lot. They lie to the public; OK, fine. All as expected. But they have such contempt for us that they can't even be bothered to give the lies some semblance of internal logical cohesion. It's like the last days of the USSR: we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, we know they know we know they're lying, and the lies are stupid but we should swallow them anyway. Because Kier's dad was a toolmaker. Or some such.

Am I alone in now thinking this was crocodile tears for sympathy because they were in real trouble having to shelve their plans and then people wouldn't be so mad? Seems to have worked

 

[moldwarp]

I had no idea that Merkel had shafted the Greek economy like that! I thought the whole point of the European Union was to ensure fairness and protect everyone.

I'm so bliddy näive about economics.

You're not naive at all. It's simply that the UK, France and Germany view the EU from their position of hegemony, and so possibly that's the only view you've been exposed to.

I can assure you that the nations of central, eastern and southern Europe all have different views - different from each other and different from Brits.

The EU was founded as essentially a trading bully bloc which would funnel money and skills from the weaker east and south to the leaders, UK, France and Germany. Coincidentally, this was the vision Hitler outlines in Mein Kampf (I'm not evoking Godwin's Law here; merely stating a fact.) And like many other long term protection rackets (cf the history of the Mafia in Sicily), the immediate penalties for not joining were worse for these weaker countries than remaining independent. And so they joined. And for a while it all went very well. Especially after 2004, when France, UK and Germany began luring young professionals from the east and south to prop up their own ailing manufacturing and health industries. Basically: Poland trains excellent nurses at Polish taxpayers' expense. The UK and France then nicks them, leaving Polish taxpayers out of pocket and without essential healthcare staff. And Poland is meant to be OK with this. Hmmmm.

But then things started going wrong. The Great Financial Crisis; that wasn't part of the plan. And the STUPID response of quantitative easing meant that fiscal health fell off a cliff, wages stagnated and asset prices shot up. So now you've got the strong western countries driving wages down to get cheap foreign workers, whilst neglecting the training and education of their native workforces, whilst houses get more and more expensive relative to wages. You'd have to be a pretty comatose native population not to eventually get a bit worked up about this. And duly, the Brits, French and Germans did.

QE also keep interest rates artificially negative meaning that all the cheap labour in the world couldn't build critical infrastructure because ain't nobody gonna lend £billions for no return. Ever wonder why we've got no houses and everything's falling apart? Yeah, that.

Then UK left EU. That definitely wasn't part of the plan. They were supposed to continue sitting at the top of the pile along with France and Germany, merrily colonising and extorting eastern and southern Europe. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and Merkel's IMBECILIC policy of making Germany dependent on Russia for energy came home to roost, which is why Germany's now on its knees and the Nazis are marching again in Bavaria. Insert Joker slow handclap gif here for Angela.

NOW, in what I might term a reversal of such beautiful dramatic irony that Euripides himself could've written it, the countries of eastern and central Europe are on the demographic, economic and cultural ascendancy, while France, Germany and UK languish in the dementia care home where old empires go to die. On recent growth stats it's not unreasonable to assume that Greece and Italy are about half a decade or so behind in a stratospheric economic rise.

And guess what? the countries and cultures of central, eastern and southern Europe all have very different ideas from Old Western Europe as to how to run their economies, border controls, fiscal policy and especially DEFENCE. And very soon they won't have to get permission from demented old Grandpa either. And when demented old Grandpa falls into a financial crisis, maybe the new, lively rising Europe will remember how Merkal treated Greece. And respond in kind.

We have Plato; the Germans have Nietszche. Nietszche had a few very interesting things to say about what he saw as the right of dominant powers to control and take revenge on formerly strong, now degenerate powers. It's all there in 'Beyond Good & Evil'. Germany had better get reading.