🎥IRAN WAR PRIMER Six days on from the start of this war, what have we learnt about the economic consequences? Here's our latest primer. 10 mins. Longer than usual. But a lot to cover in this one 👇 youtu.be/Mv7n3gqOWyI?...

FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

We're living in the timeline when hundreds of millions of years of dead matter was compressed by vast amount of rocks which were pushed by tectonic plates to create this concentration of oil and gas in less than 5% of the global land mass which humans now may burn away in less than 500 years.

I’m struck by how every day the admin is like “whoever could have foreseen these consequences?!” when the consequences thus far — evacuations, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, rise in gas prices, etc. — are all the literal most obvious consequences.

So, in launching a huge bombing campaign on Iran they apparently didn't plan for: - Who takes over; - Interceptor shortages from sustained drone retaliation; - How to defend US bases in the region; - Threats to ships in the Strait of Hormuz; and - How to evacuate Americans with airspace closed.

Why is the Korean economy SOOOOOO affected? Because it imports more of its energy than almost any other country...

Your regular reminder that the UK's North Sea gas production is down by two-thirds since 2000 and is set to drop by another 97% by 2050 – even with new licensing rounds it would fall by 95%

🚨 It looks like the UK government is gearing up to upend copyright law in favour of AI companies, legalising the theft of their work. This is despite creatives' huge protests, and despite previous proposals being roundly rejected by the public. Please spread the word. 🧵 1/4

Absolutely insane story about a middle-aged woman from Hertfordshire who got arrested, shackled, and detained by ICE and held in a prison for eight weeks.... while on holiday... with a valid tourist visa... as she tried to leave the country.

UK: Prince Andrew arrested. South Korea: Former President Yoon sentenced for life. Brazil: Former President Bolsonaro serving a 27-year sentence. USA: President Trump demands $10 billion payout from taxpayers.

The Telegraph has even printed the article in its print edition this morning (albeit somewhat buried at the end of its Business section)

This is what electoral interference in European elections looks like - per the USG NSS strategy last year

Vandalism.

the rollout of the mRNA vaccines was one of the greatest public health triumphs in history and the end result has been the all-around triumph of the antivax movement and I will never get over it

BREAKING: UK govt auction secures 4.9GW new solar at £65/MWh and 1.3GW new onshore wind at £72/MWh, 13% and 21% below the price cap respectively. All due online by 2029.

Note also that Republicans are increasingly seeing Canada and the EU as outright enemies. Incessant propaganda will have that effect.

The official Conservative position is effectively 'climate change is happening, it's serious, but we'll now work to actively make it worse by emulating Donald Trump's strategy of doubling down on fossil fuels even as the rest of the world engineers an historic clean tech boom'.

NEW: Expensive gas still biggest driver of high UK electricity bills, says UKERC "Volatile, gas-linked market prices – not green policies, as some misleading claims have suggested – dominate the real-terms increase in bills since 2021." www.carbonbrief.org/expensive-ga...

Broke: Britain is a two party political system Woke: Britain is now a two bloc, multiparty system Bespoke: Britain is a one party system and that party is Nimbyism.

As European energy dependence on US LNG (and Trump) grows, Ed Miliband and EU Commissioner Dan Jørgensen warn in POLITICO this morning that relying on fossil fuels "leaves us incredibly vulnerable to international market volatility and pressure from external actors." www.politico.eu/article/clea...

This is one of the biggest stories in America, comparable in scale to what’s happening in Minnesota. The largest social media platform is transferred to Trump’s allies and immediately forbids you from saying anything bad about him. Absolutely totalitarian in nature. No different than China.

Europeans after managing to prevent the collapse of NATO for another 1-2 weeks… #Europe #Rutte

In our conservative estimate, 41 percent of Grok’s images — or 1.8 million — were sexualized depictions of women. Separately, CCDH analyzed how many were sexualized images across genders and ages. Their findings: an estimated 3 million images, including more than 23,000 of children.

Trump’s Board of Peace logo is basically the UN logo, except dipped in gold and edited so the world only includes America.

Not sure if my favourite line from this is 'there are windmills all over the place in Europe, and they're losers." or "without us you'd all be speaking German or a little Japanese perhaps". Desperately need a camera on the audience, frankly.

One reason I am gloomy about Britain’s ability to rise to this geopolitical moment is the sheer parochialism and unseriousness of much of its media. The Times, which used to be a serious paper, does not have a single comment piece today on the gravest international crisis in 80 years

Good morning with good news: Plug-in EVs were 59% of China's auto sales in December 2025, with 1.34 million sold! That is up from 48% in December 2024. BEV were 35% in 12/2025, compared to 25% in 12/2024. China may reach 100% EV sales by 2035! cleantechnica.com/2026/01/20/a... #energysky

Mark Carney's speech really is terrific: full text is here and very much worth your time.

Terrible restaurant could close unless people enthusiastically embrace bad food, complains chef.

💥Viktor Orbán’s foreign minister Péter Szijjártó says Hungary is BLOCKING a joint EU statement on Greenland. After years acting as a Trojan horse for Russia and China, Budapest now does the same for Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Orbán ally Andrej Babiš’s Czech government also refuses to back Denmark...

Russia says President Putin has been invited to join Trump’s Board of Peace for Gaza. Astonishing to invite one of history’s most egregious warmongers on to a peace board. The international rules are already in the bin.

Donald Trump has been asked on NBC whether he would use force to seize Greenland “No comment”, the President replied

NEW: Keir Starmer suggests retaliatory tariffs on the US - as the EU is considering - were not the right course. “Threatening tariffs on allies is the wrong thing to do, completely wrong. But a trade war is not in our interests".

Fears grow over Europe’s soaring dependence on US gas imports American LNG was meant to be a safe alternative to Russian gas. That’s no longer a given, with transatlantic relations in crisis

I'm good thanks. I think I probably won't move to the country where the authorities pump out neo-Nazi memes and masked militias roam the streets.

[1/6] A reminder: Europe has cards to use against the US. Lots of them. To cite some examples: - Tighten screws on US digital giants (taxes, fines, even bans) - Export taxes disrupting US supply chains eg pharma - Exclude US firms from European procurement, inc defence ecfr.eu/publication/...

The only way to stop the spiral is to hit the US hard with escalating economic weapons from Europes side. The goal is to raise political costs for Trumps imperial project. Europe can win this game of chicken as there’s real opposition in the US to this Trump hobby.

All key European leaders now said they won’t go along with this. So if the objective was coercion it has already failed. (This is not a US miscalculation- its a very Trumpian one).

Trump says he'll impose a 10% tariff (rising to 25% in June) on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland, because they've sent people to Greenland, until the US can buy Greenland.

We have an ageing population, struggling public services, and climate change. People might want low taxes, no migrants and cheaper energy, but they also don't want to lie in a hospital corridor for hours or have their house flooded. You can win elections with magic thinking but can't govern with it.

Gas prices ripping again for a 5th day straight meaning now pushing towards 30% higher than Thursday last week (front month). A change of weather models kicked it off (US, Europe and China all went colder at once) and then Iran flared up, now I think we might be seeing the below start to kick in.

Political pundit class in the United Kingdom yearns for the days when every story could be a no-facts-only-vibes "what does <latest thing> mean for the political fortunes of Boris Johnson?" blag, and actively resents the way complicated events in the outside world keep pushing them to do real work.

‘War for Greenland is boring, let’s talk about the Tories’ is genuinely the weirdest thing for a former ambassador *to Denmark* to say, apart from anything else

Remind me, when your masked paramilitary thugs are strangling kidnapped immigrants to death in torture prisons, are you still the Good Guys?

I have never felt more pro-European.

This. Greenland defense is a tripwire—putting various European countries’ personnel in harms way in an attempt to deter attack—not an effort to win a war with the US. A real Europe-US war would destroy the world. The goal is to not have one. Which was more than accomplished by a robust NATO. Alas.

“Absolutely not necessary and unaceptable”. www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Q: What did Trump's team say when you told them that you can't just take over a nation? Did they appreciate that perspective? GREENLAND FOREIGN MINISTER: I don't want to say what we discussed in the closed meeting room, but I'd like to have hope for more mutual understanding

When the interior ministry declares its militia to be above the law in terms that equate dissent with treason there really isn’t any question of whether or not we are looking at an authoritarian regime.