davidheniguk.bsky.social
Trade wonk, Brexit bore, globalisation defender, music lover, cricketer, gardener, supporter of mediocre football teams, who knows where the time goes?
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Reckon the Israelis could come up with some dossier in which the reason nobody found WMDs in 2003 was because they were buried in Iran and have just been found in 2025.
Or perhaps they won't bother since they don't seem to care about even flimsy excuses to bomb the hell out of folk.
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To give you an idea of just how dangerous Walthamstow was in the late 90s a few of us once walked into a village pub where we were the youngest people by about 50 years and the assembled patrons were all having a sing-along around a piano... wouldn't get that nowadays...
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Of course this being London one bumps into the slebs all the time. Had an embarrassingly English introduction to Richard Osman once. Sat at a play in front of Paul Weller. Met @cjayanetti.bsky.social. Went to the book launch of @explaintrade.com
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Notwithstanding those in the UK who think we can seamlessly rejoin something or have nothing more to do with them there's no serious alternative right now to building a functioning EU relationship. Let's see where that leads.
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No.
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Why the UK government needs to do a lot of thinking on how it will handle dynamic alignment
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Trump will fail in his various efforts. He won't be King. Globalisation will survive. US elections will survive. The cost to the US will be incalculable. The lawsuits will go on for a long time.
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There will be elections. The US will survive even this. Worry about how our own countries would stand up to such efforts. Not very well.
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Truss was worse than Badenoch, hyperactive without good ideas or an ability to listen, Badenoch is more of an obsessive on a single set of issues that just don't matter to most people.
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As before, there are no easy answers to positively transform UK growth, no growth lever waiting to be pushed, lots of smaller things that can be done cumulatively that may help nudge in the right direction.
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If I'm remembering right, not all trade experts have similarly good stories about getting birds out of their house @samuelmarclowe.bsky.social
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Not every conversation in Chatham House has to be under the rule, not at least when it is a couple of months later.
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Job applications look different in the US.
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Mix obvious landing zones with political will to achieve outcomes that will be acceptable.
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UK government readout on Gibraltar. Another illustration of how Ministers have recently prioritised getting international agreements over the line, sorting out the mess left by predecessors. www.gov.uk/government/n...
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Well something may be happening, along the classic lines of "we can't decide who should check the passports so we both will" which is the classic five-years-in-and-we're-exhausted negotiating move.
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Well yes, but they never want to say "Ministers were believed to be just turning up to sign pieces of paper prepared by officials"
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I'm thinking a parody government announcement generator "73 pence to eradicate all potholes" "407 billion pounds to turn us all into AI automatons" "100 million new social homes" that sort of thing.
Or just perhaps, find a better way to communicate?
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Might find out what any of this actually means in time, other than that Trump is making it up as he goes along.
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Taking advice from the quiet man and turning up the volume perhaps?
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So I suppose the big question for me from this spending review will be whether it brings forward a more purposeful government with accompanying story. I'm not convinced, still too much searching for the magic growth fairy, too much hype of the ordinary.
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Turns out trade policy is a useful predictor because when I wrote down over two years ago what was actually realistic for a better government it was obvious there was going to be no single game changer largely through lack of desire, demand, or boldness.
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There's also now an obvious narrative around the government, albeit one being heavily resisted not least as it doesn't fit "change" or indeed hype, of gradually seeking improvements to fix so much that was broken (there's obviously considerable scope to argue, not enough, not right priorities etc)
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Because even a President awarding himself extraordinary powers is vulnerable to market forces, with globalisation apparently too complex for him to tame using tariffs, and major corporates too powerful. But with many twists and turns doubtless to come...
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If we end up with a 10% US baseline, plus steel and cars higher, and different arrangements for Mexico, Canada, China, that would be close to pre-Trump consensus forecast among the trade fraternity. Plus the threat of more to put on a show / get countries to the table.
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But the negotiations with the US over implementation of any trade agreement will just go on, since Trump doesn't like to be bound by anything. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
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If anything, the mix of populist nationalism and global trade will exacerbate existing trends of larger corporates squeezing out smaller rivals and increasingly evident corruption to maintain position. Which won't help political instability. ecipe.org/blog/globali...