...they really were intended to be a meaningful check on government action when times got difficult, and 'lots of folk want to move now' isn't perhaps the emergency situation that should make us want to re-write it all.

I mean, yeah, the ECHR is not an immutable document (and, indeed, at its framing the British government were very keen it couldn't be relied on outside of Europe for obvious reasons!). Not being able to deport to countries where torture may happen is a product of ECtHR case law. But...

China can’t wreck our defence intelligence, logistics and procurement all in one go.

I mean, I wish would could at least have risen to the dizzying heights of *Merz* and rolling over like this probably doesn’t help it, but the stakes are higher than they are with China, IMO.

*policy announcement

The epitome of policy making that is all about vibes and not connected to any kind of economic strategy at all.

Isn't that what tends to end up happening in quite a lot of total wars?

We are No 3 after Islam and None. And we have no problems at all, apart from with the Nones who do drink, drugs and vandalism in the churchyards.

I sometimes am concerned I worry about this stuff without a good reason, as for now the Hesgeth era DoD seems happy to knock a few beers back and blow up some fishing boats, but I do wonder how much our policy makers would prefer to keep their heads in the sand about a real, fundamental change.

I first learned it according to the text in the 1979 book, so it’s one of the things I think about.

Sound!

We doing separate English and American versions? Or just 1662?

so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood,

I mean, it was good to be working class in, say, the North East between 1957 and 1970, but that was partly because things kept getting better and there was the prospect of them getting better still. Deciding we need to get rid of the ‘better still’ is, at best, eccentric.

Which is ironic, as ‘a good living down the mines’ was the product of massive social and political change, and most people down the mines STILL thought that their sons shouldn’t have to go down pit, in spite of all that. It’s nostalgia for a specific moment in post war politics.

… saying, “I would vote Labour,” and then a greater or lesser proportion of them add a ‘but’ which has something to do with whatever faction has the upper hand in Labour at any given time.

Going to take the unusual step of disagreeing with you there! While the popular view is that the Tories have been really good at finding the policies to appeal 40% of the electorate in any given year since 1867, I think for the last 25 years the reality has been 50+% of the public have been…

And Britain is first in their firing line: the online American right is obsessed with painting Britain as the poster child of immigration related failures, of no-go areas, Muslim mayors and so on.

All nonsense, but it’s the nonsense that’s shaping their foreign policy.

If we were smart, we’d give schools ‘arts premium,’ i.e. money ring fenced for delivering arts education, in the way we do for sport. At the moment, all the arts and culture stuff is increasingly precarious, and we have to start thinking ‘we have to fund this or it’ll look like sport in the 90s’.