Many of us are frustrated by Labour's stupid economic talk of "black holes", spending "money we didn't have" and likening the public finances to those of a household; the latest idiocy (as I write) being Lucy Powell's claim that not cutting winter fuel payments would have caused "potentially a run on the pound, the economy crashing.”

It might help reduce our blood pressure if we understand why Labour talks such nonsense - and it's a reason that has nothing to do with economics.

It lies in something that might seem like a cliche. Sir Keir Starmer has for years stressed the importance of "playing by the rules". He has written (pdf) of "a contribution society: one where people who work hard and play by the rules can expect to get something back". And in his first speech as PM, he said "if you work hard, if you play by the rules, this country should give you a fair chance to get on."

Note that the phrase is "play by the rules", not "obey the law".

"Playing by the rules" was the essence of his electoral strategy. This was to exploit the first past the post rules to the max, sacrificing votes in Labour-held metropolitan seats in order to pick them up in marginals. And, except for a handful of losses, this worked remarkably well*. Although the party won only just over one-third of the vote it got almost two-thirds of the seats. In playing by the rules it did indeed get something back.

Labour's wider strategy is to play by the rules. These rules are unspoken (for reasons that'll become clear!) so we have to infer them from Starmer's and Reeves' behaviour. Here, in no order, are some.

1. Accept the media's framing of economics.

The media, including the BBC, spoke of the "nation's finances", "black holes" and "the nation's credit card" being "maxxed out" before Starmer became leader. It is of course gibberish. But it's not the job of the media to educate people about economics: POSIWID. Nor is it the job of politicians to educate journalists: "Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig", said Robert Heinlein. Instead, they must operate in the environment as they find it. As Enoch Powell said, "a politician complaining about the media is like a fisherman complaining about the sea." Reeves' language makes sense in this context: she's not even trying to talk to economists but is swimming in the sea of media-speak.

2. Don't challenge the power of capital.

This means more than merely keeping nationalization off the agenda. It also means rejecting policies that even the centre and right might support such as increasing market competition, fighting back against regulatory capture - Ed Miliband recently reacted to Ofgem's decision to raise energy prices as if it were an act of nature rather than a mutable human decision - or serious tax reform. Yes, there's a possibility that capital gains taxes will rise, but it's unclear that Reeves will even go as far as Nigel Lawson did and equalize CGT and income tax rates.

It's in this context that we should understand the party's enthusiasm for public investment. Yes, this would help increase economic growth, if only slightly. But talk of infrastructure investment serves another function. It distracts us from discussing other ways to increase productivity and therefore stops us asking the question: might it be aspects of capitalism itself - such as rentierism, vested interests and inequality - that are holding back growth?

3. Increase profits.

If Labour were consistent about regarding government finances as like those of a household, it would act like a household in insisting upon borrowing at the lowest interest rates possible and looking for value for money. But Labour isn't doing this. Its plan to use PFI will add to borrowing costs and the pledge to increase the share of GDP spent on the military pays no heed to whether this will give us value for money. Both violate basic principles of good household management.

They make sense, however, in the context of sustaining corporate profits. PFI contracts increase those of the financial sector and higher military spending means nice profits for BAE Systems.

This helps explain why Labour doesn't talk about job destruction. Logically, it should do so because when we're near full employment more housebuilders, carers, teachers and doctors must mean fewer workers elsewhere. But where? Obvious possibilities are in a bloated and socially useless financial sector; in bullshit jobs; in the lawyers and accountants sustained by an excessively complicated tax system; or in the environmental and risk pollution industries. To cut these, however, is to threaten the profits of some industries. Hence Labour's silence.

4. Don't engage with the left.

There are good arguments against nationalization or fiscal expansion. But Reeves doesn't make them, preferring to dribble about their incompatibility with fiscal rules. This makes no sense if you think she wants an intelligent debate with the left. But she doesn't. She wants to pretend that the left doesn't exist. That's why she feels no need to engage with other leftist ideas either such as a maximum wage or economic democracy.

5. Let money talk.

Labour has lost 150,000 members since 2019, and the proposal to deprive members of the right to elect Labour leaders would continue the decline.

You might think the leadership would worry about this given that it entails a significant loss of revenue.

But no. A mass party is harder to control. As Phil says, a small party "makes politics easier" for the Labour right. A shrinking party, he says, "will be another step along the road of making Labour a party that can always be relied on, as far as capital is concerned."

Although ordinary people armed with ground truth about the economy, public services and society should not have a say, others should - those with money. The Labour leadership might be squeamish about party members, but it is not about lobbyists - even those with interests one might naively think antipathetic to Labour values such as private healthcare or oil and gas producers.

There's a common theme linking all these rules. It's that Labour must accept and defer to existing power structures. This is why, for example, it thinks a slum landlord a more appropriate MP than one who supports striking workers; why it has resiled from a Leveson II enquiry; and why it doesn't raise obvious questions about the quality of British management. It's also why it talks about reforming the NHS but not the police, despite evidence that NHS reforms don't work and that the police are misogynistic, racist, corrupt and incompetent. It's because reform has nothing to do with evidence and everything to do with deferring to those with power.

What Labour is doing, then, makes sense if we regard it not as engaging in intelligent debate but as playing by a few simple rules. POSIWID, and Labour's purpose is to play by these rules.

Why is it doing this?

One reason lies in Starmer's moral psychology. A clue to this is in the fact that he gave up playing the flute: “If I can’t be the best, I’ll leave it in the cupboard.” This suggests, in Macintyrean terms, a commitment to external goods rather than internal ones; he would rather win ("be the best") than play music for its own sake. And winning means playing by the rules. This, however, can easily shade into fetishizing rules; he regards fiscal rules as a good thing not because they're good economics - they're not - but simply because they are rules.

And here's the thing. Playing by the rules does indeed win the game: Starmer won a big majority by playing to the rules of FPTP. By contrast, Corbyn's attempt to challenge the unspoken rules of politics led to failure. One of the great rules in life is to not start a fight you can't win. Starmer has learned this well. Rather than criticize him for this, the left should ask the question: what conditions would have to be in place for a Labour leader to be able to fight successfully against these rules?

* Perhaps by the good luck of the right-wing vote being split between Tories and reform more than by Labour's strategy, as Phil explains here. 

Now the Numbat has been neatened, you can replace your Jellyfish – if you dare

Ubuntu 24.04.1 is here, which means that users of the previous LTS release, 22.04 "Jammy Jellyfish," will be offered the update.…

We like to think we're in control of our thoughts.

That the ideas bouncing around in our heads are our own - birthed from some mystical cognitive ether, nurtured by our experiences, and shaped by our unique perspectives.

And to be honest, that's mostly bullshit.

How many of your deeply held beliefs can you truly claim as your own? How many are just echoes of your parents, your teachers, your friends, or that charismatic YouTube guru you binge-watched last weekend? If you're honest with yourself, the answer is probably "not very fucking many."

Our minds are more like intellectual sponges than the fortresses of originality we imagine them to be. We soak up ideas, beliefs, and opinions from the world around us, often without even realizing it.

It's a cognitive osmosis that happens whether we like it or not.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. We're social creatures, after all. Our ability to learn from others, to absorb and build upon the collective knowledge of our species, is what's allowed us to progress from cave-dwelling hunter-gatherers to smartphone-wielding space explorers in the blink of an evolutionary eye.

But there's a dark side to this cognitive permeability. Information - and misinformation - are contagious, and our minds can easily become polluted with toxic ideas, half-truths, and outright lies.

We find ourselves parroting opinions we've never really examined, defending positions we don't fully understand, and making decisions based on "facts" that we heard spouted by a "thought leader" (wank) whose only qualification is having abs.

This is where the concept of intellectual sovereignty comes in.

It's the radical idea that we should take ownership of our mental real estate. That we should question, challenge, and critically examine the ideas that take up residence in our minds, rather than letting them squat there rent-free.

Thinking for yourself is hard. Really fucking hard. It's much easier to outsource our thinking to others - to political parties, religious leaders, social media influencers, or whatever flavor-of-the-month intellectual is currently making the rounds on the podcast circuit.

These cognitive crutches are comforting. They provide us with ready-made opinions, pre-packaged worldviews, and the warm, fuzzy feeling of belonging to a tribe. But they also rob us of our intellectual autonomy.

They turn us into mental puppets, dancing to someone else's canned elevator music.

The first step towards intellectual sovereignty is recognizing these external influences for what they are. Develop a healthy skepticism—not just towards ideas we disagree with, but especially towards those we instinctively agree with. Ask yourself, "Why do I believe this? Where did this idea come from? What evidence supports it?"

Intellectual independence pushes us toward the possibility that many of our cherished beliefs might be built on foundations of sand. It challenges our sense of identity and can leave us feeling unmoored and uncertain.

But that discomfort, that uncertainty?

It's a good thing.

It's the intellectual equivalent of muscle soreness after a workout.

It means you're growing, developing, strengthening your mental faculties.

The goal of intellectual sovereignty isn't achieving some state of perfect, unassailable knowledge. That's impossible. There will always be gaps in our understanding, always be room for doubt and uncertainty. We're not logical machines. We're not meant to be.

The goal is not to eliminate our gaps, it's to be aware of them.

To embrace the uncertainty, to revel in the complexity and messiness of reality rather than seeking refuge in simplistic explanations and comforting falsehoods.

The ability to change one's mind in the face of new evidence or compelling arguments is one of the hallmarks of true intellectual independence.

If your beliefs never change, if your opinions remain static year after year, decade after decade, what does that say about your intellectual growth? It suggests that you've stopped learning, stopped questioning, stopped engaging with new ideas. It suggests that your mind has calcified, becoming a museum of outdated thoughts rather than a vibrant, evolving ecosystem of ideas.

Changing your mind isn't a sign of weakness or inconsistency. It's a sign of strength. It shows that you value truth over ego, that you're willing to endure the discomfort of admitting you were wrong in pursuit of a more accurate understanding of the world.

There’s a dangerous misconception that being intellectually sovereign means exposing yourself to every idea, no matter how toxic, irrational, or harmful. Intellectual freedom doesn’t mean being a dumping ground for every thought or opinion that comes your way.

That's what the block button is fucking for.

But we can and should approach different viewpoints with curiosity instead of knee-jerk hostility; be willing to say, "I don't know" or "I might be wrong" more often. Even ideas we ultimately reject might contain kernels of truth or insights we can learn from.

It's all too easy to fall into an us-versus-them mentality. We surround ourselves with like-minded individuals, consume media that confirms our existing beliefs, and dismiss opposing viewpoints without giving them serious consideration. This tribal mentality might feel good in the short term, but it's intellectual poison.

True intellectual sovereignty requires us to engage with ideas we disagree with. Not just to argue against them, but to genuinely try to understand them. To steel-man rather than straw-man opposing arguments. To seek out the strongest versions of ideas we disagree with, rather than focusing on the weakest, easiest-to-dismiss versions.

It's much easier to let others do our thinking for us, to seek out simple answers to complex questions, to retreat into the comfort of certainty rather than grappling with the messy reality of nuance and ambiguity.

But a mind that blindly accepts whatever it's told is not just intellectually stunted - it's vulnerable. Vulnerable to manipulation, to exploitation, to being led down paths that serve others' interests rather than its own.

Intellectual sovereignty is, in many ways, a form of self-defense. It's about developing the mental tools to navigate an increasingly complex and information-saturated world. It's about being able to sift the signal from the noise, to call out the bullshit when we see it (or think it), and to make decisions based on clear-eyed analysis rather than knee-jerk reactions or inherited beliefs.

Intellectual sovereignty enables self-actualization.

It gives you the tools to become the author of your own mental narrative, rather than just playing a bit part in someone else's script. It involves developing a worldview that's truly your own - not in the sense of being entirely original (that's fucking impossible), but one that's thoughtfully constructed, critically examined, and personally meaningful.

This kind of intellectual independence doesn't happen overnight. It's not something you achieve once and then forget about. It's a lifelong process, a constant struggle against our own cognitive biases and the relentless tide of information and misinformation that bombards us daily.

The more you embrace this struggle, the easier it becomes. The mental muscles you develop in questioning one belief make it easier to question the next. The humility you gain from changing your mind once makes it easier to do so again. The curiosity you cultivate by engaging with one new idea spills over into other areas of your life.

In other words, intellectual sovereignty begets more intellectual sovereignty. It's a self-reinforcing cycle, a positive feedback loop of critical thinking and personal growth.

And make no mistake - this growth isn't solely intellectual.

It's emotional and psychological too.

There's a profound sense of liberation that comes from breaking free of mental shackles you didn't even know you were wearing. There's a quiet confidence that emerges when you know your beliefs are your own, hard-won through critical examination rather than passively absorbed from your environment.

No, you won't have all the answers.

In fact, one of the paradoxical effects of pursuing intellectual sovereignty is that you become more comfortable with not knowing. You learn to embrace uncertainty, to see it not as a weakness to be covered up, but as an opportunity for growth and discovery.

Take a hard look at your own beliefs. Question them. Challenge them. Seek out opposing viewpoints not to argue against them, but to understand them. Be willing to change your mind. Be willing to say "I don't know." Embrace the discomfort of uncertainty and the joy of discovery.

Because everyone's trying to tell you what to think, the most radical act is thinking for yourself. It's not easy. It's not always comfortable. But it's the only way to truly own your mind.

And isn't that worth the effort?

The banning of X in Brazil and the arrest of Telegram boss Pavel Durov won’t stop their lies

It was a breaking news alert to lift the spirits and make the heart sing. A tech billionaire arrested as he stepped off his private jet and detained by the French authorities. Happy days!

Because while the UK police have been charging individuals who incited violence online during this summer’s riots, the man who helped to fuel its flames – Elon Musk – has simply tweeted his way through it.

I found an essay last week that dug into some of the dynamics of the “AI” hype bubble we’ve found ourselves in.

It’s well worth your time.

[2408.08778] Watching the Generative AI Hype Bubble Deflate

In this essay, we argue that even as the Generative AI hype bubble slowly deflates, its harmful effects will last: carbon can’t be put back in the ground, workers continue to need to fend off AI’s disciplining effects, and the poisonous effect on our information commons will be hard to undo.

And…

A key question remains for which we may never have a satisfactory answer: what if the hype was always meant to fail? What if the point was to hype things up, get in, make a profit, and entrench infrastructure dependencies before critique, or reality, had a chance to catch up? Path dependency is well understood by historians of technology and those seeking to profit from AI alike: today’s hype will have lasting effects that constrain tomorrow’s possibilities. Using the AI hype to shift more of our infrastructure to the cloud increases dependency on cloud companies, and this will be hard to undo even as inflated promises for AI are dashed.

As it points out, bubbles aren’t harmless. People in tech sometimes talk about the positive effects of the dot-com bubble—how it pushed for a rapid build up of infrastructure—but those positive effects don’t nullify the harm

Broadband is also more general-purpose and distributed, whereas much of the generative model infrastructure build is bespoke (specialised hardware), the exact opposite of what the world needs (bigger data centres), and a massive push towards fragile centralisation.

Just from the environmental and employment perspectives, the generative model bubble is already rivalling cryptocoins in the harm it does to society.

I’m also biased because this bubble is affecting me personally in more ways than one.

One reason why the case against “AI” is as cut and dried as the case against cryptocoins, in my opinion, is that shutting those two sectors down through government action would immediately solve the household energy transition for Iceland, for example.

The maths is fairly straightforward: switching personal transportation over to electricity here would roughly double household power consumption (give or take), with the assumption that current plans to improve public transport pan out.

Iceland doesn’t have that much excess power generation. Already our power companies have to occasionally limit power delivery to heavy users.

Increasing power generation that much requires tough choices: we’d have to ruin the environment some way. We just don’t have that many locations left for hydroelectric or geothermal power plants. Most locations that remain are popular tourist sites – destroying them would be bad for the economy – important ecosystems, or would require improvements to the grid that nobody seems to be willing to pay for. Even if we shut down some of the aluminium smelters, reusing that power elsewhere would be problematic. The Kárahnjúkar power plant is in the middle of nowhere and was purpose-built to serve the aluminium industry. When it generates excess power – which happens – that power is usually wasted because the grid can’t shift it from the region where most of the smelting takes place to the regions that have most of the population.

However, data centres in Iceland are both located near populated areas and are almost exclusively used for “AI” or crypto. You can’t buy regular hosting in these centres for love or money. If you buy hosting in Iceland, odds are that the rack is in a building in Reykjavík somewhere, not in a data centre

And those data centres use more power than Icelandic households combined.

Instead of putting limits to “AI” and cryptocoin mining, the official plan is currently to destroy big parts of places like Þjórsárdalur valley, one of the most green and vibrant ecosystems in Iceland.

That’s why I take it personally when people use “AI” models and cryptocoins. You are complicit in creating the demand that is directly threatening to destroy the environment I live in. None of this would be happening if there wasn’t demand so I absolutely do think the people using these tools and services are personally to blame, at least partially, for the harm done in their name.

There’s a cost to these tools and they’re pushing it onto others.

Back in 2003, twenty years ago, I was helping out on a radio documentary on the construction of the Kárahnjúkar power plant.

For that project, we got permission to visit the site and got a guided tour.

I will never forget the devastation.

And, if my government ends up repeating that destruction, I’m not about to forgive it either.

Liz Truss, Boris Johnson and Russell Brand - the worst of England arrives at the Republican convention

You cannot be a British patriot and support the re-election of Donald Trump.  I am sorry if this bald statement sounds too absolute but there are no grey areas when it comes to the future of our security.

Trump represents a clear and present danger to the United Kingdom and Europe. If British (or French or German) conservatives support him, all the insults thrown by the right at the left from the French Revolution via the decades of communism to the post 9/11 struggles with radical Islam will be thrown back at them. They are traitors, fifth columnists, enemies of the people.

Trump and his vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance have said that they will abandon Ukraine. They will allow Russia to keep the territory it has seized, cut aid and revitalise Putin’s ambitions to rebuild the Soviet empire. Trump’s re-election will provoke the biggest crisis in European defence since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

When Kamala Harris told the Democratic National Convention last week that autocrats were backing Trump she was telling no more than the truth.

“I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim-Jong-Un, who are rooting for Trump. Because they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favours. They know Trump won't hold autocrats accountable—because he wants to be an autocrat.”

As if to prove her point, Russian propagandists  denounced Harris as “crazy” and “a monkey with a grenade” . They denigrated her husband – as “the US cuckold number one" and poured out sexual abuse. Meanwhile, the Russian foreign minister has put it on the record that Vance’s stated opposition to further aid for Ukraine was “what we need.”

Donald Trump may not be the Manchurian candidate but he is the Siberian candidate, and above all else he is Putin’s candidate.

I accept that Conservatives who want to defend their country would have to swallow the liberal triumphalism a successful Kamala Harris campaign would bring.  I accept, too, that it is hard to see longstanding principles and prejudices defeated for the sake of the greater good.

But conservatives of all people used to know that life isn’t fair. Once they boasted of their tough-mindedness and their willingness to make hard choices. Those of us old enough to have endured the Thatcher years will remember that they boasted of little else.

But if Tories ever made hard choices that hurt their supporters, and looking back on the late 20^th century I doubt they consciously did, they have gone soft now. Brexit radicalised and infantilised the right, allowing it to believe in the words of England’s premier babyman “my policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it”, which in this instance means Conservatives can lie themselves into believing that they can have Donald Trump and the defence of Europe.

Speaking of Boris Johnson, he has already endorsed Trump. Of course he has. He lacks the strength of character to do anything else.

The prospect of a Trump victory leaves the “global wokerati trembling so violently you can hear the ice tinkling in their negronis”, he wrote in his all-too-imitable style in January. Obviously, if Trump can do that he must be supported. A Trump victory would upset the BBC and the Economist, Johnson continued, and so and once again it must be a great thing.

The one unqualified achievement Johnson left amid the wreckage of his career was support for a free Ukraine. And yet now he sucks up to Trump and pretends, as he has his cake and eats it, that Trump will somehow convert himself into an ally of Ukraine and Europe.

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Liz Truss also backs Trump declaring him to be the best defence against the “real threat of Western society and civilization being undermined by left-wing extreme ideas.” Even though, in her flitting moment of power she also supported Ukraine.

It is remarkable how little the betrayal on the right is discussed. We now have two former Conservative prime ministers, Nigel Farage, the leader of a supposedly patriotic radical right party, and commentators on the Times, Telegraph and Unherd all supporting a foreign politician who threatens the security of this country. When it comes to a choice between freedom in Europe and owning the libs, they choose owning the libs every time.

Even though, and this is a point I want to emphasise, they are not British libs. Trump is not going to ban abortion in the UK or attack and punish the excesses of the UK left. A Trump administration will purge the US civil service and give jobs to right-wing and far-right-wing cronies, but leave the British civil service untouched.

The UK’s pro-Trump right is living vicariously and getting its thrills by proxy. It is finding wish fulfilment in the politics of a foreign country in much the same way Western communists found happiness in the politics of the Soviet Union during the 20^th century.

And like western communists, they are betraying their country for the sake of a fantasy.

To put that thought another way, we are witnessing the Americanisation of the British right.

Money plays a part and deserves far more attention than it receives. Sycophantic British rightists can make fortunes in the US as long as they kiss Trump’s backside. As so many Republican politicians have found out, you cannot do business on the American right and oppose Donald Trump. Tugging the forelock is the price of admission. There are perfectly good conservative arguments against a corrupt demagogue. But you just cannot make them.

A fair proportion of the earnings of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson come from speaking to US right-wing foundations. American money funds British thinktanks and comment sites. Beyond the money lies the hope of transatlantic reach and fame that the web and social media brings.

In my world of journalism, it is noticeable how few authentically British conservative voices there are. Whether you agree with them or not commentators like Simon Heffer, Charles Moore, Matthew Parris, Fraser Nelson and Julie Burchill are unmistakably a part of our culture. You can’t imagine them appearing in US publications. They could only be British.

They have one more thing in common. They are old. They grew up in a national print culture rather than the US-dominated world of the Web. Now if you read the Telegraph or Unherd you see commentators whose concerns and style of writing are as much American as British. With a few tweaks, every sentence they write could appear on American sites.

It's not that British right-wingers want to legalise the sale of assault rifles and ban abortion. But all kinds of positions that were once commonplace have vanished as the right has Americanised. Conservative Arabism, for instance, and support for the Palestinians has all but gone. As in the US, to be right-wing is to be pro-Israel.

To pick another example, from Margaret Thatcher to Boris Johnson you could find Conservatives who worried about global warming. All of a sudden under Rishi Sunak the concern evaporated like mist under a burning sun.

If I were advising the Tory’s opponents, I would tell them to hammer at the danger the right now poses. Because of blind stupid prejudice and infantile fantasies, it is supporting Donald Trump, a politician the overwhelming majority of people in this country deplore, and who openly discusses undermining our defences.

 It should not just be journalists pointing out that the right is now a threat to the nation it once boasted so often and so loudly about loving.

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