Monumental but meaningless

Ai Weiwei’s art is monumental but meaningless

Ai Weiwei, I suspect, would like me to feel guilt, and as I walk out of his new exhibition, guilt is what I feel. Not, though, over my complicity in Britain’s imperial deeds, or our more recent adventures abroad, both of which Ai invokes while studying the murky legacies of the West.

Rather, I’m guilty about the prospect of giving two stars to Button Up! Ai himself can take it: now 68 years old, he’s perhaps the world’s best-known living artist, a Western poster boy for resisting the Chinese regime – he lives, at least some of the time, in Britain – and his name alone should generate healthy ticket sales.

Button Up!, too, mounted in a single vast space at Manchester’s Aviva Studios, and described as Ai’s “largest site-specific exhibition to date”, is neatly presented – even, occasionally, stark. No blame accrues to the proverbial village, from curatorial staff to specialist artisans, who’ve brought it all into being. The problem, from top to bottom, is Ai Weiwei.


It may be meaningless and it seems to be woke, but it does display the art of governing supposedly educated minds.


It is not, then, the facts in themselves that strike the popular imagination, but the way in which they take place and are brought under notice. It is necessary that by their condensation, if I may thus express myself, they should produce a startling image which fills and besets the mind. To know the art of impressing the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of governing them.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

On Being Burnham

It’s an odd thing to do, but I’ve been wondering what it is like being Andrew Murray Burnham. Not really possible of course, but there are some obvious aspects which would apply to almost any prominent political figure.

For example we have personality, intelligence, upbringing, education, career and so on, all the usual factors which make us what we are. We have a deep personal experience of these. Anyone on the political stage is also subject to personal constraints and influences which we understand but most of us don’t experience directly, but in different contexts we get to know it via working life.

Apart from family and friends, we know that Burnham will have been moulded by the Labour Party, its history, structure and baggage, plus political colleagues and their aspirations. Then there are charlatan colleagues who won’t be colleagues if things go wrong or other opportunities beckon. Add in media contacts ranging from barely trustworthy to wholly untrustworthy. Then we have advisors, pressure groups, a range of officials plus a fringe of shouty obsessives who wave placards in public places.

A list of political constraints and influences would be enormous, but where is the space for an individual with an individual personality? The only available spaces are away from the political theatre, but they will still include a few political cronies who never quite leave the theatre.

What does the ambitious political actor have to offer apart from a willingness to play a role, and preferably a major one? In the case of Burnham, this seems nothing but his ambition and his fortuitous situation as a known and very ambitious Westminster outsider promoting himself with the chummy diminutive ‘Andy’.

Voters need more than personal ambition from political leaders, but so far Burnham seems to be offering nothing else. “I want to be Prime Minister” seems to be it.

Rodney's Milestone

Families worse off than before Starmer came to power

Households are now worse off than they were before Sir Keir Starmer came to power, new figures show, breaking one of the Prime Minister's key pledges.

Families' disposable incomes fell by 0.5pc between July 2024 and March 2026, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), highlighting Labour's failure to tackle the cost of living crisis.

It serves as a blow to Sir Keir as he prepares to leave No 10.

After winning the 2024 election, the PM pledged to "deliver a milestone of higher living standards", with success determined in part by rising real disposable household incomes per person.

Hardly a crisis, even if we assume 0.5% is measurable, but it doesn't seem likely that Andrew Murray Burnham will improve on this milestone.

Yet if Burnham has the imagination to tell us from the beginning that everything will be crap under his regime, then this will have an obvious advantage for him - it's what we are expecting anyway. 

Plan for Change II

Andy Burnham tells Scots he offers 'change' from 'broken' Westminster politics

Labour’s Andy Burnham has said he will bring “change” to Scotland as he told people north of the border that Westminster is “broken”.


Presumably this is changed change, a complete change from the other change Keir Starmer promised.

At the moment and whatever the rhetoric, it may be worth assuming that parachuting Burnham into this rather odd political situation was merely a way to remove Starmer while other potential challengers keep their powder dry. 

If so, then Labour MPs don't necessarily expect Burnham to have much chance of steering their party towards a worthwhile political position for the next General Election. Get rid of him once his approval rating falls through the floor seems more likely. A third time lucky approach perhaps.

Either way, let us hope we make it to the next General Election.

Political Theatre

Burnham latest: Labour MP unveils 'No 10 North' in 10-year policy plan

Andy Burnham has confirmed plans to create a “No 10 in the North” as part of his 10-year vision for a “new era” in Britain.

The Labour MP, who is expected to replace Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister next month, declared plans for a “rewired Britain” through devolution as he lamented his generation of politicians for failing to be “good enough” to create change in the country.

Speaking at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, Mr Burnham was met with raucous applause as he outlined a vision of reindustrialisation, a high street renaissance and the “biggest council house building programme since post-war period”.


This is political theatre.

But we know that, we've seen the play too often.

Yet the Labour Party and much of the media seem to have decided that more arm-wavy political theatre is to be an antidote to the grey incompetence of Keir Starmer.  

Hmm - even at this stage Burnham, comes across as no more convincing than Starmer. Assuming he is successfully parachuted into the role of UK Prime Minister, the indications are that he will resemble the man he replaces quite closely apart from the rhetorical tone - he won't know what to do. 

There isn't much Burnham can usefully do anyway, not within the confines of Labour Party baggage and there is not the slightest indication that he knows how to escape that, or wants to. More of the same but worse is the message so far.

Blog Stats and Honking Beeb

For anyone wondering why some of the posts in the Last Seven Days column on the left are rather old, it seems to be AI data centres scanning the blog and bumping up the viewing stats.

This has been going on for some time, so much so that I’m wondering if I should make up an imaginary Derbyshire village such as Thrippleford and give it a famous dairy which makes the connoisseur’s favourite cheese – Honking Beeb. 

Will Thrippleford and Honking Beeb soon become part of the online world? We’ll see.

Lots of other mischievous possibilities come to mind, but I’ve still no idea how many real people are viewing the blog apart from those who leave comments.

Realism v Magical Thinking

Robert Bradley Jr. has a useful MasterResource piece on what he describes as a sea-change in US energy policy as realism overtakes magical thinking. 

 
Affordability In, Renewables Out (again)

“The EV bust in the U.S. is front-page business news. The domestic battery industry is following suit. The demise of the U.S. rooftop solar industry, despite subsidies, is now all about litigation to get out of long-term contracts. Add the EV school bus bust.”

A sea-change is occurring in energy policy as realism overtakes magical thinking. But you would not know it from the social media ‘denialists’ (thousands of climate-related professionals) who claim that

• Wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels (some highly dubious studies say so, but government is required for on-grid additions)
• Recent social/wind/battery additions are high (government play: continuing IRA-PTC-ITC subsidies in the U.S.; UK/EU subsidies; central planning edicts)
• Wind and solar are inevitable (no, the fossil fuel era is still young with a global boom under way)

The whole piece is well worth reading, especially here in the UK while we are stuck with Mad Ed Miliband.  

If these intermittent power sources were cheaper, would you buy it without a utility grid to back it up? Would you want to pay less for a vehicle with a trick motor? Want to pay for another vehicle to act as a battery if the primary vehicle stopped running? I doubt it.