The Future of Borders

We are going in the wrong direction.

Biometrics are fine

Most countries in the world now have biometric passports. Biometrics are limited to a digital copy of your face, and they have been used for years to move people across borders securely. Many countries, such as the EU, the UK, and Brazil, exclusively use this method for all of their citizens. The UK even uses this for EU, US, Canadian, and other citizens. You don’t have to pre-enroll. It just works. It means faster borders for everyone so customs agents can focus on actual threats.

I watch British media frequently, and I have NEVER seen an article about how using facial recognition at the UK border has been insufficient to move people across the border quickly and securely. I believe this is the maximum level of necessary security between low-corruption democracies.

However, most countries are going in the wrong direction. The new entry/exit system the European Union is implementing will fingerprint every passenger entering and exiting the European Union in the foreseeable future. It’s not simply a retaliatory action against the United States that does this, but they will do this for all passengers who are not citizens of the EU or Schengen.

I was unaware that the current system was insecure because despite frequently reading news articles from across Europe, I have never once seen a single article discussing how the existing system has let terrorists through. The reason is, it is a solution in search of a problem.

Visa-free Travel is Ending

The future of borders is a world without visa-free travel if the current trajectory continues. Not only do we continue to share criminal records with partners, which is reasonable, but you won’t be able to travel anywhere without getting a visa first. It might be inexpensive, but any document that you need to purchase before traveling and costs money is a visa.

Is the sharing of criminal records insufficient? What is the real benefit of this new system?

All of these are so necessary that they have been delaying the implementation of ETIAS for years now.

Why though? I think it is because the European Union had an election last month. They were likely hoping the new visa system would be put into place after the right-wing lost, but they were unfortunately reelected, so they will rightfully receive the blame once it is in place.

Face recognition at an eGate is enough security to prevent felons from crossing borders. There is no reason to make travel a hassle for the rest of us. Fingerprints are unnecessary since we share criminal records through INTERPOL and face recognition works. We have already prevented criminals from crossing the border, assuming people like Colin Powell are not in charge of the State Department.

If there is no security benefit to such a system, why?

Assault on Freedom

I believe the real reason is to slowly reduce liberties worldwide. We have been eradicating privacy through warrantless surveillance since the 1970s. Increase police budgets. Increase border security with new border guards. But the goal was never simply to crack down on criminals, and mass surveillance is no more helpful to catching terrorists than limited constitutional searches targeting who, what, and where will be searched.

Once privacy is gone, they will move forward with making travel more complex, so fewer people bother with the hassle of more paperwork and more fees when the cost of a flight is already expensive enough—death by bureaucracy.

I do not believe it is simply about corruption, with private companies making loads of money from such a system. There are far more effective ways to defraud your government, namely through the military-industrial complex. But mobsters will do whatever they can to become rich from no work. Legal corruption is their modern strategy.

Once travel is significantly restricted and fewer people travel, they can limit civil liberties further. That is the only political motive I can see for such systems.

How to Reverse Course

The first thing to reverse course is to return to an era of visa-free travel. The only way to do this is to vote. Vote for the most progressive politicians you can and tell politicians we want to, at minimum, go back to the era of visa-free travel. This would still have border guards despite the existence of biometric passports, but at least it wouldn’t continue the decline.

So, first and foremost, support true visa-free travel for citizens of NATO to start.

Once we return to an era of actual visa-free travel, we can also push for using eGates at our airports to increase security and speed up customs for travelers. Our passports have all the information to allow low-risk travelers to speed through customs securely while higher-risk travelers get adequately vetted. The UK already does this process correctly, and terrorist attacks in the UK are no more common than in any other democracy. They are extraordinarily rare. Such a system is what we should aim for as a minimum.

Once we are at the point where customs between NATO members and other low-risk countries is done through eGates, speeding up customs for everyone, we can then talk about extending open border regimes like Schengen to include the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the United States.

But we first need to stop this downward slide towards more travel restrictions.

State of the World, 2024 edition

As we begin a new year, here is a basic overview of global politics.

World Powers

If a country is truly a world power, it must be in the top 10% for GDP, Population, and military strength. For pure power, I’m going to leave out the question of whether a country is Democratic or not. Only six countries are in the top tenth percentile on these three metrics. These are the democracies of Germany, Japan, the United States, and India, and the authoritarian regimes of Russia and China.

Germany, Japan, and the United States perform well regarding press freedom, corruption perceptions, and The Economist Democracy Index. India struggles with corruption and press freedom. Russia and China perform horribly on all three metrics as corrupt, authoritarian regimes.

When looking at only countries, the United States is undeniably the most powerful country in the world. Our economy dwarfs China, and we have far better foreign relations than they do. The probability of a revolution in the United States is 0, while there is still a possibility in China, given the corruption in their society.

If we look at the European Union as a bloc, it is the only other global power.

Japan is still a world power. Germany is the most powerful country in Europe.

If we ignore military expenditure, we see Mexico, Indonesia, and Brazil are large economies. Their \press freedom scores are average, and they struggle with corruption, but are democracies.

There is a wide array of democracies to which the United States and our allies can extend closer relations worldwide. Most of these countries are members of the OECD, which does much good worldwide. We can and should further leverage the OECD to improve the world in the future. I will discuss this in depth below.

In terms of authoritarian regimes which Russia and China can reach out to, most of them are poor. The others are all petrostates which maintain cordial relations with the United States and Europe because we buy their oil. Given the isolation of Iran, it is the only other authoritarian regime of note with the military expenditure to make a real difference worldwide. The others and China are too constrained by trade to be a real threat to democracy. Russia is the only country with an economic situation to be a real global threat to peace outside of proxy wars like in Syria.

Other countries are regional threats, but none besides Russia have the economic, diplomatic, political, and military capability to be a global menace. The US is constrained by our democratic institutions most of the time, to the point where we are hesitant even to send aid to Ukraine.

China will likely not change any time soon, and they have a domestic balance of power.

Russia will see a tumultuous time domestically when they lose their Invasion of Ukraine. The United States and NATO should speed this up by sending as much aid to Ukraine as we are sending to Israel.

 

United States

The United States is the preeminent world power today. We will have our elections in November, which will likely be a close race. The current forecasts show Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania will be the swing states in the upcoming year. Whoever wins Wisconsin will be President.

This is where I am becoming worried. After Trump’s failed presidency, Biden should have a slam-dunk victory. But his polling numbers are very poor, and they have been since the Afghanistan withdrawal. He sometimes fails to get over 50% of the polling sample against Donald Trump in Illinois. Michigan is a toss-up. The problem is the candidates. He even sometimes loses in polling against Ron DeSantis.

Wikipedia polling data

The Senate elections are also a toss-up. Democrats must pick up Arizona while keeping Montana and Ohio to maintain control of the Senate, assuming Biden wins reelection. Republicans will keep the seat in West Virginia. Florida needs more polling, as there is only one poll so far, which showed the Democrat ahead by 1%. We might be able to win in Florida.

Given everything Trump has said and done, this election should be a landslide for Democrats.

Biden needs a big win soon, and that can come as either making clear progress in Ukraine by allowing them to strike Russian military bases in Russia. It could also come through a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and transferring Gaza to the Palestinian Authority.

European Union and NATO

The European is the only other place aside from the United States with the population and GDP to rival the United States. Their GDP has continued to be stagnant since 2008. Besides that, their economy is strong.

There will be a European Parliamentary election in June and national elections in Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Moldova, San Marino, and Slovakia.

No big swings are expected, according to the latest polling in the EU for the EU Parliament. EPP will continue to be the largest party. Assuming no major upsets, France will continue to be mostly represented by the National Rally, and Germany will likely continue to give the most seats to CDU.  Currently, there is a very slim center-right-right wing majority in parliament. The Left, Renew, S&D, and Greens have 351 seats out of 705. Polling shows no signs of any massive changes in parliament.

The European Council has slightly more left-of-center politicians than Parliament as a percentage of the total, with Germany, Bulgaria, and France having left-of-center heads of government. At the same time, their delegation to parliament is majority right wing. other countries mostly match their parliamentary representation.

Despite Austrian opposition, the European Union is working toward letting Romania and Bulgaria into Schengen. The sooner the borders can be fully opened, the better.

I don’t anticipate any groundbreaking changes in Europe this year.

NATO

NATO will continue the way it is. We will hopefully increase aid to Ukraine so they can win the war this year.

Rest of the World

India will have a general election in April and May. Modi is leading in the polls.

Mexico will have an election this year. MORENA’s candidate will likely win.

Many smaller countries will have elections this year as well.

Six countries are applying for membership in the OECD. I don’t know if any will be accepted by the end of the year. I put the odds at 50/50. Expanding the OECD is a righteous goal. Getting better information on what is happening in an economy allows politicians to make better decisions, which helps improve everything. I want OECD membership to come with trade and travel benefits. Start with free trade, a collective security system, and eliminating visas. Eventually, it built towards a single market and elimination of customs between member states by expanding Schengen to OECD members as they met acquis. This is a very long-term but worthy goal. For now, we need to expand OECD membership to all democracies worldwide to improve their statistics departments, which significantly helps development by implementing best practices.

A bunch of authoritarian regimes joined BRICS on Monday. This is not important because they do not have a unified foreign policy. No other BRICS member voted in Russia’s favor in UN General Assembly Resolution ES-11/1 regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Their economies are mostly low-income, and all new joiners are authoritarian regimes. BRICS is not a major force in the world, and they never will be.

Current conflicts

The two largest ongoing conflicts today are the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the War in Gaza. Other large wars are in Myanmar, which saw a collapse of its democratic government a few years ago, terrorism in the Maghreb, and the ongoing Civil War in Sudan.

The wars in Sudan and Burma are due to unstable local governments and are highly unlikely to spill across international borders.

The Gaza War is spilling into Lebanon and Syria now. If Russia wins in Ukraine, it will not be their last invasion of a sovereign territory. The sooner the Palestinian people can be granted citizenship in a recognized state, either of Israel or recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state, and Russia leaves Ukraine, the better. Those are the only solutions to these conflicts. All other paths only lead to more war in the future.

The Syrian Civil War, Mexican Drug War, Yemeni Civil War, and other smaller conflicts continue to brew across the world. The Syrian and Yemeni Civil Wars are proxy wars. These are due to Saudi Arabia and Iran being authoritarian regimes and Russia being involved in Syria propping up Bashar al-Assad. Removing Putin from power will significantly help the Syrian Civil War come to a close. The Yemeni Civil War and the terrorism in the Maghreb will be solved by eliminating financial support from terrorist organizations.

There are solutions to every war in the world today, but some people in power do not want a realistic solution that will lead to peace and freedom because it threatens their power.

Economics

The United States Yield curve remains inverted. Despite this, the economy continues to chug along. We will have a recession someday. No one knows when that will happen.

Unemployment remains low, and the economy is good right now. However, real median household income has declined since 2019 in the United States because of oil price inflation. GDP growth has been positive since the COVID-19 recession.

Regarding global economic output, I expect a continuation of the status quo regarding growth.

Climate change remains the biggest threat to the global economy.

We all need to study ethics

In our nation’s deranged mind…

How many Ukrainian lives are worth the price of gas staying down by 10 cents?

How many grandparents need to die from COVID to be worth the life of one sex offender?

How many girls denied a basic education, placed into forced marriage, and people dead from terrorist attacks are worth the calmness in the minds of Americans worried about endless war?

How many Mexican lives is the war on drugs worth?

How many dead Palestinians are worth the minuscule number of votes Biden will receive from Evangelicals?

Disgusting.

We all need to study basic morality.

Death by a thousand forms

The 2000s were an amazing time to be alive. Flights were less expensive than ever, visa-free travel was common, and democratization expanded worldwide. Democratization has slowed down over the last decade. South America, Europe, Southern Africa, and Southeast Asia have mostly democratized. The world’s dictatorships are mostly in Northern and Central Africa and Asia. Only two countries in Europe are not democratic today.

The world has never been wealthier. The number of people living in poverty is at an all-time low, and global GDP per capita has never been better. The world has never been safer. The world has never been freer.

In reaction to this, the right-wing around the world has realized that they must reverse this trend or face political extinction. They do this through the following actions:

  • Increased violence between Israel and Palestine
  • The Russian invasion of Ukraine
  • Right-wing politicians in NATO are reluctant to help our Ukrainian friends.
  • More visa requirements.
  • Increased surveillance.
  • Auditing of public transit agencies is reduced, leading to waste not just in the US but around the developed world.
  • We have increased police budgets in both the US and the European Union. Black Lives Matter failed in its objectives.

There are certainly more examples of this backlash against the global trend of increasing human rights.

What the right wing is doing is tightening the screws.

Aside from increasing surveillance and border police to catch refugees and restricting who counts as a refugee, the right wing is working on eliminating visa-free travel for as many people as possible. The United States already requires visas from all but four countries. We also have two classes of travel visas: the Electronic System for Travel Authorization and the B visa system. The Bush Administration moved almost all visa-exempt nationalities to ESTA days before Obama was sworn into office.

Canada implemented the Electronic Travel Authorization in December 2013 while Stephen Harper was Prime Minister. They excluded citizens of the United States since we have such strong economic ties. They also excluded ETA country’s citizens when traveling from the United States. I thought it was about security? If it is essential for security, why can ETA citizens bypass the ETA if they have already traveled to the United States? Does Canada trust America’s visa vetting process? I don’t trust my government on this, given how all the 9/11 terrorists were granted visas.

Unless there was no security benefit from visa requirements on citizens from democracies…

Europe is about to do the same by implementing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System. It was originally proposed in 2016 and has been postponed several times since then, not just because of COVID-19.

Brazil is also about to do an electronic visa, which they have postponed several times…

In all of these cases, right-wing governments in the US, Canada, Brazil, and Europe have claimed these visas are necessary for security. If these programs had a real security benefit, why are US citizens exempt from Canada but not Liechtensteiners? Why are Canadians exempt from the US but not Andorrans? Why have Europe and Brazil postponed these “necessary security measures” that were called for by the 9/11 Commission multiple times?

This must be because Danish tourists regularly turn into mass shooters when they travel.

But… that’s not a thing.

Visas between democracies do not provide a security benefit. They increase bureaucracy, hurt the economy, and waste government resources when real problems need to be solved.

Indonesia moved from visa-free access from most other democracies to eVisas. I cannot find any terrorist attacks against Indonesia from citizens of these countries because they did not happen.

That’s our current status, and I believe it is part of the right-wing’s general movement towards curtailing liberties, as we see with Project 2025 and other documents where they lay out their wish lists.

Project 2025 is Project 2001. It has been going on for at least a quarter century.

When the Republican Party is implementing projects like Project 2025, they need to ensure as few Americans meet people from abroad and as few Americans as possible can travel abroad so we cannot compare our current status to that of our allies.

That is why the United States and other democracies have increased visa restrictions over the last 20 years. It was never to fight terrorism. That was always baloney.

It was always so they could get away with their immoral crusade against freedom. That is why they increase visa restrictions against citizens of democracies, not citizens from states like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, which consistently violate international law. It was never about terrorism.

After the fall of the Third Reich, one of the fundamental freedoms laid out by Eleanor Roosevelt and other human rights advocates was the freedom to enter and exit your country. That freedom was the first one Hitler eroded when he came to power. So, we must remember this and defend democracy.

Conversations between citizens of different democracies are essential for our mutual survival. Some demagogues and governments are working to make our systems fail. We must defeat them. We are stronger together.

Since attacks on democracy started by eroding free travel, defending democracy starts with defending visa-free travel.

World super powers

What are the most powerful countries in the world? What would make a country powerful?

This is a fairly simple and critical question if you want to understand global politics.

To be a superpower a country needs to have the following characteristics:

  1. A large population
  2. A large economy measured by GDP
  3. A high average income per household, measured by GDP per capita
  4. Large land area

A country that beats other countries on these four metrics is considered a global superpower.

I was going to put military spending into the function, but with a correlation coefficient of 94% against GDP, it needs to be left out.

However, mean years of schooling correlate most with corruption, and only at a 62% coefficient. But… it has a non-linear exponential relationship with GDP per capita, so again, I am omitting this variable.

I standardized each variable on a scale of 0-1 and then took the average. Sometimes the simplest methods are the best.

The ten most powerful countries in the world are then as follows:

Rank Country Population GDP GDP per capita SIPRI 2022 Total Area Democracy Score NATO Great Power
1 United States 0.987952 1.000000 0.962500 1.000000 0.988764 7.92 1 0.984804
2 Canada 0.789157 0.943750 0.912500 0.917722 0.992509 9.24 1 0.909479
3 China 1.000000 0.993750 0.625000 0.993671 0.985019 2.27 0 0.900942
4 Japan 0.939759 0.987500 0.881250 0.943038 0.749064 8.13 0 0.889393
5 Brazil 0.975904 0.950000 0.643750 0.898734 0.981273 6.92 0 0.887732
6 France 0.891566 0.968750 0.862500 0.955696 0.827715 7.99 1 0.887633
7 Germany 0.915663 0.981250 0.906250 0.962025 0.745318 8.67 1 0.887120
8 Russia 0.951807 0.937500 0.656250 0.987342 1.000000 3.31 0 0.886389
9 Australia 0.704819 0.925000 0.937500 0.924051 0.977528 8.96 0 0.886212
10 Mexico 0.945783 0.918750 0.631250 0.829114 0.943820 6.07 0 0.859901

SIPRI is military expenditure.

The United States is the most powerful country in the world. All but two of the countries on this list are democracies.

If we omit area, only Germany and the United States are in the top 10th percentile for GDP, GDP per capita, and population.

China and Russia would be global superpowers, but their GDP per capita is too low.

The only authoritarian regime (measured by the EIU Democracy Index with a value of less than 4) with a GDP per capita in the 90th percentile is Qatar.

The United States, Germany, Canada, and Australia are the only countries with GDP per capita and GDP in the top 10th percentile. Germany is under 90% in area, Canada and Australia are under 90% in population.

Canada is the only country besides the United States with a population, GDP per capita, GDP, and area above the 80th percentile.

Three authoritarian regimes have great power scores over 0.8: China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.

The least powerful countries in the world are:

Index Country Population GDP GDP per capita SIPRI 2022 Surface area Overall Score NATO Great Power
405 Tuvalu 0.005208 0.005208 0.348958 NaN 0.015625 NaN 0 0.093750
203 Kiribati 0.088542 0.015625 0.239583 NaN 0.119792 NaN 0 0.115885
239 Marshall Islands 0.036458 0.020833 0.385417 NaN 0.031250 NaN 0 0.118490
85 Comoros 0.182292 0.052083 0.130208 NaN 0.130208 3.09 0 0.123698
334 Sao Tome and Principe 0.104167 0.036458 0.250000 NaN 0.125000 NaN 0 0.128906
245 Micronesia 0.067708 0.031250 0.359375 NaN 0.093750 NaN 0 0.138021
390 The Gambia 0.255208 0.078125 0.052083 0.038961 0.182292 NaN 0 0.141927
394 Tonga 0.072917 0.041667 0.401042 NaN 0.106771 NaN 0 0.155599
264 Nauru 0.010417 0.010417 0.609375 NaN 0.010417 NaN 0 0.160156
422 Vanuatu 0.109375 0.062500 0.333333 NaN 0.192708 NaN 0 0.174479

No country has a population and GDP per capita in the bottom 10th percentile.

If we only include countries with no missing values in our dataset, we see the following:

Index Country Population GDP GDP per capita SIPRI 2022 Surface area Overall Score NATO Great Power
167 Guinea-Bissau 0.239583 0.088542 0.088542 0.071429 0.302083 2.63 0 0.179688
391 Timor-Leste 0.218750 0.140625 0.208333 0.097403 0.208333 7.06 0 0.194010
220 Lesotho 0.265625 0.156250 0.171875 0.084416 0.286458 6.30 0 0.220052
59 Burundi 0.557292 0.171875 0.005208 0.175325 0.260417 2.14 0 0.248698
221 Liberia 0.375000 0.145833 0.046875 0.045455 0.473958 5.32 0 0.260417
392 Togo 0.484375 0.203125 0.067708 0.305195 0.359375 2.80 0 0.278646
340 Sierra Leone 0.479167 0.187500 0.057292 0.064935 0.395833 4.86 0 0.279948
137 Fiji 0.192708 0.213542 0.505208 0.110390 0.218750 5.72 0 0.282552
252 Moldova 0.322917 0.250000 0.260417 0.103896 0.296875 5.78 0 0.282552
255 Montenegro 0.171875 0.197917 0.583333 0.168831 0.197917 5.77 1 0.287760

Comoros is the only country in the world where every metric is below the 20th percentile.

Tuvalu has the lowest power score in my dataset. It is not scored on military expenditures because it has no military. However, it ranks in the 34th percentile for GDP per capita.

This is why I believe Comoros is the least powerful country in the world. Its population is small, its economy is tiny, and its people are poor.

While the United States is the most powerful country in the world, I believe Comoros is the least powerful country.

Anglosphere vs Continental issues

The biggest issue in the Anglosphere is the privatization of natural monopolies.

We also have the issue of maximum benefit pensions, just like Europe, except we are delayed by a few decades.

Europe did not stimulate the economy after the 2008 financial collapse, opting for austerity instead. The average income in Europe has been lower than that of the United States ever since.

The timing of the austerity crisis was particularly poor since Europes average age has increased significantly so the working age population cannot support their senior citizens with the same tax rates the baby boomers enjoyed.

If that was not enough, Europe has adopted a stance of regulating technology far more than other major markets, which has hampered productivity growth.

So higher expenditures, lower productivity, which translates to lower salaries on top of the reduced salaries because of austerity. It is not a pretty picture.

The USA starts to look pretty good until you see the cost of housing, which is simply the natural market response of stagnating supply against ever growing demand. You see privatization of natural monopolies which hampers our productivity and increases our base rate of inflation, and we have our own issues to deal with. But at least our productivity kept growing in the 2010s, while Europe doesn’t have to deal with as many private natural monopolies as we do.

So then we approach what would utopia look like?

Imagine a high tech economy with high productivity leading to high salaries. Natural monopolies are publicly owned. The rest of the economy is private. Reasonable regulation without over regulation. The government practices counter cyclical financial and monetary policy. Retirement is dependent on ever growing productivity, not an ever growing population.

Welcome to Singapore?

Nigel Farage is the most powerful man in Britain

Part 4 of my series on the British election.

Nigel Farage has a lot of power right now and has said he will be as annoying as possible. I expect his Reform Party to reunite with the Conservatives by the end of the year, and he will be the next leader of the Conservative Party.

The Tories will fear that if they refuse Nigel Farage’s offer, he will continue to steal votes from them in the 2029 election, preventing the Conservatives from winning until he gets his way.

I do not believe we will end up in a situation where Nigel Farage loses Conservative leadership and Reform UK merges with the Conservative Party. Nigel Farage is a bigot and an extremist. He wants to blow things up.

This decision tree is my hypothesis on what will happen to the Conservative Party in the future:

  • Nigel Farage runs for the Conservative leadership.
    • Nigel Farage wins
      • No electoral reform
        • Conservative Party wins in 2029
      • Electoral reform
        • Conservative Party loses in 2029
    • Nigel Farage loses
      • Reform UK stays independent (electoral reform does not matter)
        • Conservative Party loses in 2029
  • Nigel Farage does not run for Conservative leadership
    • Conservative voters swing to Reform UK (maybe 10% probability)
      • No electoral reform
        • Reform UK wins in 2029
      • Electoral reform
        • Conservative Party loses in 2029
    • Conservative voters do not swing to Reform UK.
      • Conservative Party loses in 2029

The only sure path to victory for the Conservatives is for Starmer to stay as PM, meaning no electoral reform, and Nigel Farage to become the Leader of the Conservative Party. This pattern of minor parties merging into one of the big two parties reverberates across British history and all other countries that use first past the post.

Who is Nigel Farage

https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-politicians/nigel-farage-net-worth/

Nigel Farage is one of the richest politicians in the UK, and that’s only counting his clean money. I am willing to bet he has a lot of money in less-than-kosher accounts across the world, and he saw anti-money laundering rules passing the EU and immediately started playing this act for the last eight years to protect his laundered money.

It makes a lot of sense and passes the probable cause barrier.

Brexit has economically hammered the UK. The only way he would personally and financially benefit from Brexit is if he looked down the barrel of EU regulators, ensuring his bank accounts were from legitimate sources. In every other circumstance, he would lose money by losing easy access to invest in European businesses. However, if he is investing in illegal investments, which the EU now investigates thoroughly, he would have a lot to lose.

So he pushes this xenophobic ultra-nationalist nonsense about “taking back our country” to protect his dirty laundry.

This alone passes the bar of probable cause for the National Crime Agency to ensure that Nigel Farage’s bank accounts are kosher. Because if he does not have illicit funds, why push for Brexit when he did? It does not make sense.

We do know that Nigel Farage accepts “gifts” from other millionaires in exchange for political favors (obviously). https://www.channel4.com/news/nigel-farages-funding-secrets-revealed

The issue is, what has he successfully hidden that the European Union was going to find?

The Labour Party needs to pass proportional representation so this crook does not become Prime Minister.

United Kingdom 2024 recap

Part 3 of my series on the latest United Kingdom election.

Now, I will go through some historical analysis of this election and why Labour won last night.

The election is over, and Keir Starmer is Prime Minister.

Turnout dropped over 7 points versus the 2024 election.

This is Labour’s first victory since the 2005 election and the third-largest Labour majority in history by pure number of seats.

The Conservatives won the lowest number of seats since electoral reform in 1832.

This was the best performance for the Liberal Democrats/Whigs since 1923.

Labour did not win this election because they had a strong platform and a leader who inspired the United Kingdom. Quite the opposite. Labour won this election because the Tories lost 4 million votes to Reform, who feel that Brexit didn’t go far enough. This did not happen in 2019 because the Reform Party (then known as the Brexit Party) refused to run directly against sitting Conservative MPs, postponing the spoiler effect and ensuring maximum Brexit. The big issue now was opposing lockdowns during the COVID pandemic and a spattering of right-wing policies, each one crazier than the last. By moving towards the far right, the far right has only become more emboldened, as always happens in history.

To understand this election, you need to understand Reform.

Response to David Cameron

When David Cameron saw a small group of right-wing crazies in the 2010s, the appropriate thing to do would be to ignore and work with his LibDem coalition to create a stable and moderate government. However, David Cameron is sly, and we know that he agrees with Brexit/Reform on many issues. David Cameron is not the only reason the UK has Brexit. Liberal Democrat leadership gave him legitimacy as PM, and Jeremy Corbyn is himself a Euroskeptic, similar to Reform, and that perfect storm led Britain to the mess they are in now.

David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn’s ideological movement towards the politicians who would later form the Brexit party significantly moved the Overton Window in the United Kingdom to the right.

David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn are weak leaders, and the Liberal Democrats were widely discredited for forming a coalition with David Cameron. No major party leader had both the moral fiber and enough political capital to respond appropriately to Brexit. It was the perfect storm.

Now, if a country like St. Kitts elected a right-wing government that left CARICOM,  you probably would not even know about it since it is a small country with a small economy and under a million people. CARICOM is primarily made up of small countries and does not have global influence. It would not reverberate across the world.

However, the United Kingdom has the ninth-largest economy in the world, is a UN Security Council member, a G7 member, a NATO member, and has a significant military in its own right. It is the second-largest economy in Europe, behind only Germany (excluding Russia), has a highly advanced economy, the 21st largest population (3rd highest in Europe, excluding Russia), and has global cultural influence. What happens in Britain does not stay in Britain.

I expect the increasing isolationism in the United Kingdom is probably a major cause of the global move towards isolationism, with more tariffs and visa restrictions popping up worldwide.

Brexit impacts everyone on Earth.

This election is not so much a victory for Labour but a direct effect of the Conservative Party’s failure to contain its fringe element, which has now become a major political force in the United Kingdom because, at the core, they are cowards.

Voter apathy in Britain is up. This “victory” is the smallest number of votes Labour has received since 2015.

This is way older than Brexit

Honestly, why wouldn’t they be apathetic? There have been 33 elections now since 1900, inclusive. The Tories have only won a majority of the vote three times since the beginning of the 20th century, in 1900, 1931, and 1955. That should have given them control of government for only 14 years. But the Tories have formed a government for 72 of the last 124 years.

Without proportional representation, as they continue to elect absolute clowns like Arthur Balfour, Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden, Alec Douglas-Home, John Major, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak, one would be concerned for their mental health if they did not feel disillusioned by their political system.

Not to say all British Prime Ministers have been utter shit, though many of them have been. Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith, and George were fantastic Liberal prime ministers in the early 20th century. Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill were good Prime Ministers for their era. Clement Attlee created the modern British economy. Harold Macmillan was a liberal prime minister despite being a Tory. He led Britain through economic prosperity in the late fifties and early sixties and supported decolonization. Gordon Brown correctly responded to the recession with counter-cyclical policies.

There have been good times, but there have also been prime ministers who have significantly damaged the United Kingdom.

This was the stage Britain entered into this election. Most Tory prime ministers have been bad for Britain, and the people know it, but since the Labour and Liberal Democratic parties have not merged, getting even a centrist government in the United Kingdom remains elusive under their first-past-the-post election system.

Solution

The solution to this quagmire is simple. Britain needs proportional representation, and the Tories will finally have to earn the vote of Britons instead of relying on a spoiler effect between the Liberal Democrats and Labour.

It’s fitting however, before the Labour Party, there were only four spoilt elections in British history. Since the Labour Party became a major political force in World War I, all but two conservative victories have been spoilt.

Most Labour Party voters support proportional representation.

But Keir Starmer does not.

Labour voters need to switch to the Liberal Democrats, the only left-wing party in England.

If Labour does not fix Britain’s inherently broken election system, the United Kingdom will likely have another Conservative government in 5 or 10 years.

References:

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/how-the-2024-election-could-have-looked-with-proportional-representation/

https://labourlist.org/2024/06/first-past-the-post-labour-proportional-representation/

 

Prime Minister Rayner

Keir Starmer is to the right of Maggie Thatcher on many issues. He is socially aligned with JK Rowling. He will be incapable of keeping his caucus in line because most of Labour is center-left. The UK is looking at a very unstable government while he is prime minister. I think Angela Rayner will be Prime Minister sooner than most people expect. Unlike Starmer, she is a Europhile, pro-trans rights, not a habitual liar, and supports basic international human rights law.

Once Rayner is Prime Minister, the UK will finally return to the good policies it abandoned in 2010.

This is not a crazy idea…

Labour is a big tent party ranging from Euroskeptics like Starmer, who support Netanyahu, to politicians like Rayner, who support a real two state solution and rejoining the European Union. This is not a stable alliance.

We are going to see fierce debates in parliament between Labour MPs who differ fundamentally on the most pressing issues in British politics today.

If the average Labour MP is more like Rayner than Starmer, and at least on Brexit, most Labour voters are closer to Rayner than Starmer, we are going to see some unprecedented changes in the UK parliament.

Starmer’s selection of Rayner is similar to Obama’s selection of Biden as Vice President. When building a cabinet from a big tent party, which is what Labour is, you need to have members of your cabinet from across your party’s spectrum. That is what Starmer is doing. He ran on a platform similar to Rayner, which he abandoned. He had to select a Labour MP similar to most Labour voters to postpone the inevitable backlash from his party against his center-right policies.

Just as how Obama, who was almost progressive, had Joe Biden as his Vice President, Keir Starmer, who is more like the Tories than Liberal Democrats on just about everything, selected Angela Rayner, who is closer to the Lib Dems than Starmer.

This is why even though Starmer’s policies are generally abhorrent, the possibility of Angela Rayner as Prime Minister soon is a cause for celebration.

Broken Apple Pay fix

I have an iPhone, and I use it to pay for Subway.

An Apple update occurred a few weeks ago, and since then, I have been unable to use Apple Pay without Face ID.

The problem was that the update made my default card to pay for transit go to None and I needed to change it back to a card.

Settings -> Wallet & Apple Pay -> Express Transit Card

Select the credit card you want to use to pay for your transit.