#63

:rofl::rofl: won’t somebody think of the optics.

Wonks man.

2 Likes
#64

784×1275 249 KB

2 Likes
#65
3 Likes
#66

Guess we’re just lucky it wasn’t Jo Swinson giving the orders, Baghdad Airport would be a lake of glass

14 Likes
#67

Edit: shiggsy got it first

1 Like
#68

Remarkable that this should happen in an election year.

1 Like
#69

Jess Phillips announcing her leadership bid later today apparently. Sure to be a great success!

#70

:musical_note:All other candidates have inferior potassium!:musical_note:

8 Likes
#71

Nick Robinson’s already criticised her for “taking a sort of Corbyn stand” and “seeming to back the wrong side” over the US strike on Soleimani.

If ever you had doubt that the mass media are not going to back any leader that Labour choose…

#72

I’ve just read the ad, then strayed into Cummings’ blog for the first time.

It’s pretty terrifying stuff. He seems to be thinking at an advanced level about how to drive massive change in government. What’s most scary is that it’s not just ideologically-driven drivel, but he seems to be well-read on the latest academic developments in how things go viral, how change happens, and how mega-projects succeed or fail.

He’s constantly blowing his own trumpet, and drinking his own Kool-Aid regarding the ‘maverick genius’ narrative. But there are some surprising things in his blog. For example, here he basically admits he doesn’t care about Brexit per se, just about change via “high-leverage opportunities” . For example:

“But the fact that Cameron, Heywood (the most powerful civil servant) et al did not understand many basic features of how the world works is why I and a few others gambled on the referendum — we knew that the systemic dysfunction of our institutions and the influence of grotesque incompetents provided an opportunity for extreme leverage.”

I also annoyed myself by finding some of it amusing, e.g.

“a large section of the best-educated have effectively run information operations against their own brains to convince themselves of fairy stories about Facebook, Russia and Brexit…”

The lesson I take from this is not to underestimate the cunt.

2 Likes
#73

This is the world now. He’s nothing special. He just got there first-ish.

3 Likes
#74

The doctrine of disruptive change and marginal gains has an absolute tonne to answer for. We’ve now got a high-level group of technology leaders, Cummings-style hyper wonks and politicians who simply view any disruption as an opportunity to leverage gains. Who cares about long-term goals and social achievements when you can get a marginal benefit to your specific cause?

Oh yeah, these guys have also got all the money and control the media. So, that’s good.

2 Likes
#75

This is his weakness. He doesn’t just think he understands everything better than everyone else, it’s a core belief and he fits events to that narrative.

All of the mistakes he made pre-election have now been justified as “strategic genius” in his mind because they ended up winning a decent majority for reasons that primarily have absolutely nothing to do with him.

7 Likes
#76

Problem is, in this paradigm you don’t have to actually be competent in the changes you bring about - you simply have to have the correct frameworks in place to reap reward from disruption. So, as a disruptor, you can be as hamfisted as you like because the end-state of your disruption isn’t what matters, it’s the action of disruption that counts.

This sort of thing but more advanced:

2 Likes
#77

For sure. All I’m really saying is that he’s less a maverick genius and more a lucky prick who doesn’t actually care about what he achieves or how he does it, so long as he’s seen to be “achieving” it. I would guess that’s why he fits so well with Johnson - their aim in both cases appears to be little more than to stamp something lasting on Britain to leave a legacy.

5 Likes
#78

Yeah it’s total coke mindset, he’s a carpet-bagging locust not a Machiavellian genius. The Tory campaign was a clownish parroting of a simple slogan and crudely mashing all the buttons of power imaginable, it wasn’t some monstrously well-orchestrated operation. Labour will struggle because of the massive structural disadvantage they have, not because the men at the top are just too damn smart.

Once Cummings and his ilk have either been found out or have sucked the marrow out of the bones they’ll just fly off to the next country with a still-intact public sector. Britain is on the brink of being what Russia was in the 90s, which funnily enough was exactly where Cummings was at the time.

10 Likes
#79

Yeah, agreed - it’s like the “self-made millionaires” who believe it’s all their own doing, but ignore the fact that for every one of them there are 99 would-be Alan Sugars who didn’t make it that you never hear about.

Cummings and his pals seem to have looked at Silicon Valley and thought “disruption is how you change things, so let’s be disruptive”, but have ignored the fact that disrupting taxis or hotel rooms is a tiny problem compared to disrupting government, and that the same methods almost certainly don’t apply.

1 Like
#80

Spot on.

3 Likes
#81

I’m going to say “kinder gentler politics” to everyone who ever mentions jess

2 Likes
#82

like. nonstop for the two weeks that she’s running or whatever.