Not exactly the political equivalent of splitting the atom

A couple of weeks ago Karl Pfefferkorn wrote an interesting Brussels Signal piece on the unpopularity of Chancellor Merz of Germany and President Macron of France. Interesting because it highlights a common problem with limited, technocrat leaders who isolate themselves from the populations they supposedly serve.


Emperors lost in their Labyrinths, unwilling to listen to the common people

If one factor links the dire unpopularity of Chancellor Merz and President Macron, it is their political insularity. Neither engages freely with their disaffected voters, and neither has a close cadre of advisors willing to present unwelcome news. Macron is a creature of the French elite and has never “pressed the flesh” with the commoners in anything but carefully staged events. Merz retains the grandiose hubris of private capital, but has not cultivated a circle of seasoned confidants to keep him politically grounded. Every leader needs aides willing to dispute the boss and suggest better political alternatives. Merz and Macron prefer to remain cocooned within the trappings of high office, wilfully deaf to the angry complaints of the commoners.

Compare them to Indian PM Narendra Modi. After his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost its parliamentary majority in 2024, it roared back last week with a landslide victory in the West Bengal heartland of the previously dominant Trinamool Congress party. How did Modi engineer this dramatic turnaround? According to the Financial Times, Modi has a “relentless focus on grassroots issues … [and a] determination to stay close to voter concerns.” The Eurasia Group’s Pramit Pal Chaudhuri tells us, “Modi will often bring in people with differing views and have them argue … He is very focused on ensuring he gets dissenting opinions [and] multiple sources of information.” A brilliant innovation: Respond to popular discontent by … soliciting dissenting opinions and staying close to voter concerns. Not exactly the political equivalent of splitting the atom, but apparently far beyond the political skills of Macron or Merz.


The whole piece is well worth reading as we in the UK wait with weary resignation to see if Prime Minister Keir Starmer is ousted by someone cast in the same sequestered mould.

Disaffected voters look for reason to believe in their homeland and a candidate offering their country a claim on the future. Policies without patriotism fail these tests. One suspects that any populist successors to Macron and Merz will not.

Voters Don’t Matter

 From the US, but the UK is no better.

Blotted Out

Starmer's achievements 'blotted out' by political instability, says Harriet Harman

Despite the government turmoil, Baroness Harman says, "the irony is that there are quite a few good things" that have been happening.


Good old Hattie, always ready to say something batty. There seems to be a lot of blotting out going on though, 100 Morrisons convenience shops being blotted out for example.


Morrisons ‘set to close 100 lossmaking convenience shops’

Reports come after supermarket giant launched consultation over job cuts at its Bradford head office

Supermarket giant Morrisons is reportedly planning to shut 100 of its loss-making convenience stores, attributing the decision to mounting cost pressures caused by "government policy".

People can shade themselves in a number of ways

UK-wide NHS 11am 'rule' reminder as 33C hot weather forecast

People are being reminded of an NHS-backed 'rule' to follow as temperatures rise across the UK. The reminder comes as the bank holiday weekend brings heat that could reach around 33C in parts of the country.

With high heat, Brits are being reminded to consider an 11am 'rule' to keep themselves and others safe during hot spell of weather. The NHS says: "Spend time in the shade when the sun is strongest. In the UK, this is between 11am and 3pm from March to October."

People can shade themselves in a number of ways, including spending some time indoors when the heat gets too intense. The home can stay cooler during hot weather by closing curtains, despite that sounding counterintuitive.


A standard fine weather filler but the notion that people need reminding where shade comes from - that raised a wry smile.

It's almost surprising that we weren't treated to a picture of shade. Maybe there was a risk that the media AI system might come up with something like this -

 

Dear Leader

There is a Korean saying that if you tell a lie one hundred times, even the person who made up the lie will eventually come to believe it.

Jang Jin-Sung

Dear Leader is Jang Jin-Sung's fascinating account of his defection from North Korea. Disturbing of course, but well worth reading.

Jang Jin-sung is the pseudonym of a North Korean defector and former elite propagandist who served as a state poet under Kim Jong-il before escaping to South Korea in 2004.[1][2]Employed in the United Front Department of the Workers' Party of Korea, Jang composed officially sanctioned poetry extolling the Kim regime, which granted him privileged access to Pyongyang's inner circles and the moniker of poet laureate.[1][3] His defection followed a personal crisis involving unauthorized possession of South Korean media, prompting a clandestine border crossing via China that exposed him to risks of recapture and execution.

The book primarily covers the Kim Jong-il regime, describing the bizarre nature of the regime and Jang's defection with a friend across the frozen Tumen River to China. It's an interesting account because in spite of his young age, Jang was an elite propagandist, in North Korean terms life was good. 

What seems to have pushed him into defecting was partly his unauthorised use of South Korean literature, but also a fascination with the outside world. As a propagandist he came to know the outside world in a way which was strictly forbidden to North Korean citizens. Another motive for defecting was the fanatically restrictive nature of all North Korean art, literature and music, his main interests in life.

Anyone who composes a work that has not been assigned to the writer through this chain of command is by definition guilty of treason. All written works in North Korea must be initiated in response to a specific request from the Workers’ Party.

Jang gives Byron's poetry as an example of his access to literature beyond North Korea, part of a policy of disguising the source of North Korean propaganda covertly circulated in the outside world.

The book was the Collected Works of Lord Byron. As part of North Korea’s ‘Hundred-Copy Collection’, the print run of this book was restricted to one hundred copies. In North Korea, the circulation of foreign books is restricted in this way so that only the ruling Kim and his family, his closest associates and select members of North Korea’s elite have access to them. Each of the books in a hundred-copy set has a stamped number on the first page to show which of the hundred copies it is.

Before encountering Byron’s poetry, I had thought that adjectives such as ‘Dear’ and ‘Respected’ were a special form of pronoun in the Korean language reserved for Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Along with ‘Great’, which is always seen in one of the terms referring to Kim Il-sung as ‘Great Leader’, I had assumed that these adjectives were names just like Kim and therefore etymologically and purely Korean.

Britain has no sense of its own interests

 

Wes Tries Noble Spite

Wes Streeting pledges wealth tax as he prepares for Labour leadership bid

Former health secretary Wes Streeting has set out plans for a wealth tax that would see capital gains tax equalised with income tax.

Mr Streeting, who had made clear he intends to stand in any leadership contest to replace Sir Keir Starmer, said the current system is not fair and penalises work...

Mr Streeting said: “A member of my family is a cleaner in Lancashire. She pays a higher tax rate on her salary than her landlord pays for the growing value of the home she lives in.

“She slogs her guts out, he puts in far less effort, yet the state rewards him more than her.

“And we wonder why people are angry.

Wes comes across as being just as unreliable as Starmer but more creepy. That took some doing, even for an ambitious politician.