Andy

“The fasten seat belts sign is on”. This is a message I received early this morning from one of the UK’s most experienced, savvy and respected financial traders. Someone I have come to know and trust for the last 25 years. 10-year bond yields are now almost 4.5pc - up some 50 basis points over the last month. 30-year yields this morning went above 6pc - a 28-year high. Yet the UK’s political and media class continues to focus on party posturing and folksy rhetoric, ignoring the slow-motion disaster that has been happening on the UK’s sovereign bond markets for at least the last 18 months - a disaster that will inevitably, unless we drastically change course, turn into a fully blown market meltdown. At that point, the UK government won’t be able to borrow enough money to finance our already spiralling debt interest bill. Britain’s financial management will be taken over by overseas technocrats - that will be the condition of additional borrowing, to maintain the basic functions of the state, as happened in Greece and Italy back in the early 2010s and here in Britain 50 years ago this year (when we were forced in 1976 to apply to the IMF for a bailout). The austerity then imposed on Britain would make 2010-2019 feel like a picnic - far, far worse than it would be if we took serious action now to control our public finances. Lower-income households would suffer most - and there would be serious damage done to the UK’s already rapidly-fraying social fabric …. I have been warning about these looking fiscal dangers publicly, in my newspaper columns and elsewhere, since at least early 2024. Doing so hasn’t been easy or fun. I have been dismissed and derided by numerous economists, “economists”, officials and policymakers - as well as lots of journalists. I absolutely don’t want a disastrous 1976-style outcome - which is why I’ve taken the blows and issued the warnings. The state is too big. Public spending is out of control. Our fiscal rules are a convenient nonsense - designed to kick the can of financial reality into the future. We need to get real … and take bold action to tame the growth of spending, push back a now totally over-bearing state and snap the British economy out of today’s high-tax-high-borrowing-low-growth doom loop - the result of myopic, counter-productive policy-making by successive governments for the last decade and more … Other prominent economists who agree with me - ie who are financially-literate, can read a yield curve, have a passing interest in economic history and who understand the dangers of some 80pc of UK government borrowing going on debt interest as it currently is - need to chuck “career risk” in the bin, and start saying publicly what so many of them have, for quite a while now, only had the bottle to say to me in private … Remember: “The fasten seat belts sign is on”

I can’t believe people on council Estates and some without a pot to piss in, are still thinking that #reform are the party of the working person. It’s actually quite hilarious how stupid they are. Reform are a party of millionaires working for millionaires and more

Italy’s position is unworthy of a European partner. When migration is weaponised, Europe answers with solidarity, not selfishness. After 700,000+ arrivals from Libya, Italy received European support, not lectures. Solidarity is not a one-way street.

“It was a telling glimpse of the other side of #Farage – explosive, aggressive, nasty, threatening and bullying. He came across like someone from gangland. It’s the Farage the public rarely sees.” By @MichaelLCrick #Reform #Clacton inews.co.uk/opinion/nigel-fa…

🚨🇬🇧 Meanwhile in England Clip of allegedly Pakistani Men beating young English with Girls with Sticks at this beach over the long weekend. It’s reported a Man was also arrested for using a bladed weapon. This is England now.

Starmer and Hermer Built the Machine Together. Now They Run the Country. In 2007, two barristers worked without pay on a case that would change the legal landscape for every British soldier who had served in Iraq. Keir Starmer and Richard Hermer appeared as interveners in Al-Skeini v Secretary of State for Defence, representing eleven human rights organisations including Amnesty International and Liberty. Their argument was that the European Convention on Human Rights should apply to British forces operating overseas. They lost in the Court of Appeal. They appealed to the House of Lords. They lost again. But the legal principle they had argued for eventually prevailed at the European Court of Human Rights, and what followed was the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, sixty million pounds of public money, seven years of investigations, and not a single prosecution. The soldiers it pursued were, in almost every case, found to have acted properly. Starmer believed in it enough to do it for free. Johnny Mercer, who spent years dismantling the consequences, put it plainly. Starmer had insisted on doing it for free. That is not the behaviour of a barrister following the cab rank rule. That is ideological conviction. Hermer's conviction, it subsequently emerged, was not without financial reward once the machinery was running. Documents obtained by the Daily Telegraph show that having helped establish the legal architecture pro bono in 2007, Hermer then used that same architecture to pursue Iraqi claims against British soldiers at £450 an hour, fifty percent higher than the only other KC involved in the group action. He set his success fee at the maximum level permitted, one hundred percent of his normal rate. The MoD's own lawyers challenged his fees as excessive and said he was too junior to command that rate. He is thought to have earned around six figures from the broader group action. The claims he was pursuing were eventually ruled to be deliberate lies. The soldiers were fully exonerated. Sergeant Richie Catterall had been cleared of wrongdoing by the British Army in 2003 for a fatal shooting in Basra. The Army found he had acted in self-defence. The legal precedent Starmer and Hermer established triggered two further investigations spanning thirteen years. A 2016 inquiry again concluded he had acted in self-defence and found a false document had been created to shift blame onto the military. Catterall was finally exonerated. He told the Telegraph he was gutted that Starmer had helped bring the case against him and that the Prime Minister owed him an apology. Starmer is now Prime Minister. Hermer is now Attorney General, appointed by Starmer personally, elevated to the House of Lords specifically for the role, chosen over Emily Thornberry who had held the shadow brief. The former head of the Army, General Sir Peter Wall, has said Hermer's role in the Al-Sweady claims was tantamount to treason. A former commanding officer of 22 SAS said Hermer must step down. The Bar Standards Board has been asked to investigate. Nigel Farage has reported Hermer to the House of Lords standards commissioner. The Troubles Bill that is now subjecting Northern Ireland veterans to the same lawfare is not an accident of policy. The process that drove Fred, a special forces veteran, to attempt suicide after his medical records were handed to terrorists' families was not an oversight. The machine that cost sixty million pounds and produced no prosecutions was not a mistake. Starmer and Hermer built it together, one working for free out of conviction, the other later working for maximum fees out of the same conviction, and now both occupy the positions from which they can ensure the machine keeps running.

Chile backs Argentina's claim to Falkland Islands in major challenge to Britain gbnews.com/news/world/falkla…

BREAKING: Internal police report admits ‘very serious failings’ over a grooming gang inquiry into victim who claimed she was trafficked into Parliament as a ‘gift’ for a senior Labour MP, then brought to Party Conference for sex with others (via @TheSun) thesun.co.uk/news/38697228/g…