Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
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Economist PhD, formerly taught philosophy at university, dabbles in politics writing, likes maths models, keen on terraforming Mars.
Joined July 2024
"The UK teeters. The will of its politicians to change anything is gone. And we all feel we can do nothing but wait to see what fate has in store."
telegraph.co.uk
Hoping to unlock funds to make everything better, Starmer’s party finds there’s no more tax to raise
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The idea that it would have been worth placing the country under house arrest for several extra weeks if that would have avoided 23,000 deaths is precisely the kind of pathologically mis-guided sense of priorities that has destroyed our economy these past 20 years.+
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"The UK teeters. The will of its politicians to change anything is gone. And we all feel we can do nothing but wait to see what fate has in store."
telegraph.co.uk
Hoping to unlock funds to make everything better, Starmer’s party finds there’s no more tax to raise
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Imagine that if we got everyone to stay at home & avoid meeting anyone outside their own family for a time, that would save 23,000 lives. Save, not just delay. And assume the only loss is those 67m people's fun or other value *during* that time. How long a time would be worth it?
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Might be available for the 5th day of the Ashes test. Will be great to see some quality action!
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It's a little sad that no-one thinks the Tories are important enough to be worth voting against any more.
Tracking our *negative* voting intention (who would Britons vote AGAINST): 🌹Lab 38% (+15) ➡️ Ref: 29% (+7) 🌳 Con: 8% (-2) 🌏 Green: 3% (-1) 🐦 LD: 3% (-1) changes w/ June 2025 So Labour has become considerably more hated in the last few months - the Tories notably less so
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Tracking our *negative* voting intention (who would Britons vote AGAINST): 🌹Lab 38% (+15) ➡️ Ref: 29% (+7) 🌳 Con: 8% (-2) 🌏 Green: 3% (-1) 🐦 LD: 3% (-1) changes w/ June 2025 So Labour has become considerably more hated in the last few months - the Tories notably less so
Every week we ask who Britons would vote for - this week we asked who they'd vote *against* Here's what a negative voting intention looks like: 🌹Lab 23% ➡️ Ref: 22% 🌳 Con: 10% 🌏 Green: 4% 🐦 LD: 4%
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+It's impossible, for example, to imagine such politics supporting a war over an abstraction - such as honour or retribution.
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It's also connected with a total loss of any respect for abstract moral principles. Justice, liberty, dignity, family, aspiration, love - none of these things is held to be sufficiently important to outweigh the obligation to prevent a piece of concrete visible suffering.+
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+That's the kind of thinking that's underpinned so many appalling errors: that any amount of sacrifice of everything else to avoid a piece of concrete visible suffering must be worthwhile. It's a political & moral pathology so widespread & destructive that it ought to have a name
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The idea that it would have been worth placing the country under house arrest for several extra weeks if that would have avoided 23,000 deaths is precisely the kind of pathologically mis-guided sense of priorities that has destroyed our economy these past 20 years.+
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Reminder: the justification offered for the first 3 week lockdown was preventing *millions* of deaths (preventing, not delaying), not delaying a measly 23,000 deaths. People talking in the tens of thousands are talking authoritarian madness.
The reasoning for the first lockdown suggested that ~8 million people were likely to experience pneumonia requiring oxygen or more extensive hospital treatment within a 12 week period, but there were only 170k beds. *Those* are the numbers, not 200k dead let alone a measly 20k.
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FWIW my answer to this is: ~45 minutes. If the government said everyone in the country needed to stay inside for the next 45 minutes cos terrorists were rampaging through the streets & would kill 23,000 people if we didn't, then I'd think that was just about OK. No longer, though
Imagine that if we got everyone to stay at home & avoid meeting anyone outside their own family for a time, that would save 23,000 lives. Save, not just delay. And assume the only loss is those 67m people's fun or other value *during* that time. How long a time would be worth it?
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Imagine that if we got everyone to stay at home & avoid meeting anyone outside their own family for a time, that would save 23,000 lives. Save, not just delay. And assume the only loss is those 67m people's fun or other value *during* that time. How long a time would be worth it?
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NEW: Monthly deficit reached £17.4bn, £3bn above the OBR’s March forecast. Borrowing in the fiscal year to date stood at £116.8bn, running ahead of the OBR’s £106.9bn projection.
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Latest figures out today show borrowing so far this year is £9.9bn more than forecast. That's this year alone! Reeves' 2024 fiscal plans have been eviscerated.
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- folk focused on tech fixes (geoengineering re climate; vaccines re Covid)
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During Covid I found interesting analogies with climate change: - folk who called the whole thing nonsense, regardless of evidence - folk saying stop it at all costs regardless of how realistic that might be - folk after a middle path (Adaptation re climate; Mitigation re Covid)
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Latest figures out today show borrowing so far this year is £9.9bn more than forecast. That's this year alone! Reeves' 2024 fiscal plans have been eviscerated.
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My example of someone who impressed me in this dimension is: @SteveBakerFRSA. I knew Steve was principled & I'd seen he could be pragmatic re Brexit. But I felt his balance of pragmatism & principle during Covid exceeded even my high expectations of him.
Covid was also a real eye-opener in who had principles & understood what sticking to those principles entailed & what might count as reasonable pragmatism, & who didn't.
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