THE IRON LADIES: THATCHER AND MERKEL

Angela Merkel signs a book of condolence for Margaret Thatcher in Berlin (Getty Images)

It is not without irony, or perhaps some higher synchronicity, that British Prime Minister David Cameron's series of meetings with European leaders last week was disrupted by the death of Baroness Thatcher, and his visit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to be re-scheduled.

That Mr Cameron should find himself caught between the passing of former British prime minister Thatcher and the present leader of both a united Germany and, arguably, a Europe on the brink of greater union does, however, throw powerful light on modern political history. For whilst our Prime Minister may privately regard himself as "the Heir to Blair", it is surely the German Chancellor who is heiress of the original "Iron Lady's" drive for democratic liberation of the former Communist Europe where Angela Merkel spent her earlier life. That those liberated from Communist rule should now look to a strengthened European Union is, of course, an historical legacy which Baroness Thatcher did not anticipate, and a current political predicament for Britain and Mr Cameron.

MOOCS GOOD FOR LITTLE ENGLANDER'S SOUL

For some years now I've felt more and more like a "Little Englander", or someone lacking a proper view from afar on our shores. This is partly the fault of the British media, notably the BBC, whose coverage of international news is often rather parochial. I'm therefore delighted to have discovered Coursera - www.coursera.org - who offer MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, from some of the world's leading universities for free. Check them out!

CAMERON:CLOUD-CUCKOO-LAND OR LE CARRE?

As a novel for our time, I cannot recommend "A Small Town in Germany" by John le Carre strongly enough, although beware the edition with an introduction by Hari Kunzru as this in my view gives a poor entre to the narrative which follows.

The "small town" of the book's title is Bonn some forty years ago when Britain is conspiring to enter the European Community and Germany is regarded as our key ally. Threatening to jeopardise this special relationship is the supposed defection of a British embassy employee to the Eastern Block, together with the emergence of a new German leader intent on national re-unification.

The book's central theme is  British post-war international realpolitik at a time when the nation appears to be in terminal decline. Against this backdrop, there can be few better literary accounts of office politics, encapsulated in the UK's Bonn embassy, where a combination bureaucratic determinism and internal relationship management wrestle with external imperatives.

As I neared the novel's conclusion, it  occurred to me that our present government may be run along very similar lines, and that David Cameron could have found his literary equivalent in le Carre's Bonn embassy head honcho, Bradfield.

The arch political manager, Bradfield makes UK's  modus operandi clear to the British spy Turner, who has been despatched by the Foreign Office to find the potential defector:

"I'm a great believer in hypocrisy. It's the nearest we ever get to virtue. It's a statement of what we ought to be like.....I did not contract to serve a powerful nation, least of all a virtuous one. All power corrupts. The loss of power corrupts even more. We thank an American for that advice. It's quite true. We are a corrupt nation and we need all the help we can get."

The alternative interpretation of our current prime minister's pronouncements on a range of issues, including private sector investment in infrastructure, is that he has inherited "delusions of Gordon" , or that he dwells in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.

"BRITAIN'S BIGGEST ECONOMIC DISADVANTAGE - OUR PROPERTY MARKET"

The following views are expressed by John Stepek in today's Money Morning, the daily online newsletter of Money Week magazine.

The Governor "and other members of the Bank of England have warned that the Bank isn’t going to rush into printing more money in November. And it’s not just because of the GDP bounce. It’s because he’s not sure it can solve Britain’s problems. 

King reckons – and I wouldn’t disagree – that the basic problem is the banks are still sitting on too much bad debt. The debt needs to be recognised and its value written down (or written off). The banks then need to be patched up. All that needs to happen before banks are willing to lend again.

“In the 1930s, faced with problems of sovereign and other debt similar to those of today, the pretence that debts could be repaid was maintained for far too long. We must not repeat that mistake.”

However, we are repeating it. The trouble is, the “significant writing down of asset values” that King refers to, would involve allowing house prices to fall. In Britain, house prices are the single most important economic indicator, politically speaking. When house prices are falling, governments lose elections.

It’s why public policy, the tax system, and central bank activities, are all horribly skewed towards propping up the property market. Yet with the banks aware that they are over-exposed to an over-valued sector of the economy, they aren’t going to be keen to lend more until the risk is no longer so high.

This unravelling could take a very long time to play out. We can’t expect rampant global growth to help us out. So the Bank of England will continue to have to walk the line between allowing ‘too much’ inflation to get into the system, and keeping rates low enough to cushion those with large debts. That leaves Britain vulnerable to nasty external shocks."

LEARNING TO DEAL WITH PARALLEL NARRATIVES

As the shadow side of the Jimmy Savile story continues to darken the corridors of power, two programmes on Radio 4 yesterday evening explored the issues of parallel narratives and accepted historical accounts.

The first programme about Peter Rachman discovered that the notorious slum landlord was not so much a manifestation of post-war laissez-faire conservatism as a precursor of the main social policies embraced by New Labour during the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Later, "Analysis" brought a discussion of Education Secretary Michael Gove's support for "Cultural Literacy", or instilling children and young people with a core set of facts to counter-balance the current emphasis on core skills and competences.

However, the case of Savile and, indeed, that of Rachman show that dominant narratives and their apparent facts may later be revealed as incomplete. Michael Gove himself recognises this problem and has suggested that a parallel narratives approach is sometimes needed.

Citing the 1950s Japanese film Rashomon, where four people have different recollections of the same event, the Education Secretary has suggested that this cultural format may throw light on the conflicting stories of former Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell and the Downing Street police officer.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF THE BBC? HYSTERIA?

Last year Quentin Letts hosted a rather thought-provoking little series on BBC Radio 4 which asked: "What's the point of...?" various British institutions. The second series was something of a disappointment, possibly due to Corporation dumbing-down. An attempt by Radio 4's "The Moral Maze" to ask the question "what's the point of the BBC?" last week had some interesting contributions and responses from the panel, but the discussion was too short. The role of the BBC, along with other national British institutions, does, however, need to be properly considered, and as a contribution to the - albeit suppressed - national debate, this blog is starting its own series on UK institutions.

I will argue that "Hysteria" is playing an increasingly important role in these institutions, and a desire, conscious or unconscious, to create hysterical responses across the nation to a range of past, present and possible future events. The BBC's response to the crimes of Jimmy Savile is a case in point. Meanwhile, other important news has been sidelined by the Corporation, including its often rather hysterical coverage of events in Europe. This culture of "Institutional Hysteria", as I shall call it, possibly arises from our country having always had a rather incestuous elite, and one increasingly obsessed with money and celebrity. The fact that Savile personified these qualities no doubt goes a long way towards explaining why questions about him may have been raised but were not answered.

THE EUROPE 2020 COMPETITIVENESS REPORT

The World Economic Forum's Europe 2020 Competitiveness Report, published last June, makes for some interesting reading.

Planners and environmentalists should take heart in its advice to the UK, ranked 7th overall but only 12th against green criteria:

"Finally, in order to ensure a more harmonious development process, greater focus should be placed on several dimensions supporting environmental sustainability".

David Cameron and colleagues please take note!

THE PROBLEMS OF BRITISH POWER POLITICS

Several years ago I went to a very good conference on the potential for renewable energy development in Britain. However, whilst broadly sympathetic to renewables, I still had some hard questions to ask, and, because this was a conference for the converted, I felt regarded as the enemy. Fast forward to the present, and I recently attended an equally good economics discussion. On this occasion, it was my use of expressions like environmental advocacy and planning that seemed to cause a noticeable tremor in the room. Nevertheless, the company was rather better tempered.

The major similarity between the two events was a poor understanding of the role of spatial or land use planning, as distinct from Soviet-style centralised economic or energy planning. Now, as someone with an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning Studies conferred by a university economics department, with over twenty five years' experience of spatial planning and project development, I feel reasonably well equipped to explore this important difference. So let me start with land use planning.

In fact, land use planning in the UK - outside Scotland where its strategic importance is still acknowledged - has been largely abandoned in favour of regional spatial strategies (RSS) and local development frameworks. The RSS are also now in the process of abolition. Incidentally, I support the retention of regional planning albeit with a lighter touch. Meanwhile, council-led local planning has become an essentially administrative process, with the hard skills once identified with the land use planner's profession, including architecture, urban design and engineering, largely outsourced to other agencies and, particularly, consultants.

This erosion of planning by successive governments has led to the increasing inability of local plans to fulfil their most important purpose: to direct development to the most appropriate locations relative to its type and scale whilst having regard to existing infrastructure, or probable investment therein, and comprehensive environmental impact assessments. Such direction is, I would argue, especially important for energy planning, and it is the weakness of the spatial planning system and associated environmental regulation in England, most particularly, which has acted to inhibit the development of renewable energy.

To turn now to centralised economic and energy planning, most ordinary people recognise that, notwithstanding the British - or rather English - political penchant for free market rhetoric over the past thirty or so years, this actually disguises an equally strong commitment to central government control, regardless of which parties happen to be in power. The case of nuclear power illustrates this situation very well, for there would be no development of new capacity if this were left to market forces alone. The recent history of nuclear development in the United States shows that strong government financial support is essential.

However, it is not my intention here to consider the pros and cons of different forms of power generation, but to argue that a spatial plan, ideally encompassing the whole of the British Isles and international connectivity, is needed. By such connectivity, I mean a plan which recognises current supply lines and potential future developments, notably international energy super grids. Such a plan would, of course, have to recognise the vital principle of subsidiarity in order to encourage regional and local ingenuity. Similarly, a coherent and long term national regulatory and incentives-based framework would need to be in place to support appropriate investment.

Is an integrated - economic and spatial - planning scenario for energy generation and supply in Britain of the kind I have described a realistic possibility? Perhaps a better question is: can the UK for reasons of economic security as well as environmental sustainability afford not to take this approach? For the "business as usual scenario", where our national politics of power are essentially left to the power politics of day, is no longer viable in an increasingly internationalised energy market where the forces in operation may not always espouse freedom.

RUSSIFICATION OF EUROPE'S ENERGY POLICY

Whilst the British media celebrated Russian President Vladimir Putin's sixtieth birthday at the weekend - Mr Putin is, after all, something of a celebrity - Russia has today opened a second gas pipeline across the Baltic Sea to Germany. An earlier pipeline began operation last year. Mr Putin announced that the new pipeline would `make a significant contribution to the economic development of our countries and the entire European continent".

Europe obtains some two-fifths of its natural gas supplies from Russia, and the continent's energy demand for gas is forecast to grow some forty percent by 2035. The increasing energy dependence of Europe on Russian gas amounts to the Russification of the region's energy policy, a development no doubt cause for celebration on Mr Putin's birthday.

The increasingly close relationship between Russia and Germany is also noteworthy. In German Chancellor Angela Merkel Vladimir Putin has, to reverse Mrs Thatcher's description of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, found a woman he can do business with. Mrs Merkel, does after all, share a Soviet hinterland with Mr Putin, who was himself posted to East Germany by the KGB before the collapse of communism.

So as the Conservative Party faithful gather in Birmingham, Prime Minister David Cameron,  a onetime recruitment target for the KGB during his student gap year according to his own admission, might want to turn his attention eastwards to Europe. For it is very important that those "Little Englanders" amongst the Tories - the gods bless their souls! - are not permitted to distract the Government's attention from important European questions, including Russification of energy policy.

SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE TURNER PRIZE

As the 2012 Turner Prize show of shortlisted artists opens at Tate Britain this week, I feel it's time to reflect on the role of art in society. So here's my mini-manifesto. Visual art should ideally:

• be aesthetically pleasing
• challenge our perception
• have a spiritual value

I found all these qualities in some pavement art outside a major a high street retailer yesterday: a photograph of "Tom's" pictures  is provided at www.donella.posterous.com (due to problems with blogger images).

One of my regrets in middle age is that I failed to submit a spoof entry for the Turner Prize, although I did consider applying to the former Channel 4's series "Faking It" as a conceptual artist.

My problem is not so much with the competition itself as the industry which it has spawned, and the pretentious language used by some artists and those who write about them. In short, the Turner Prize has contributed to the commodification of art and its spiritual devaluation.

SHADES OF GREY AND PEOPLE OVER FIFTY

The launch this week of a Labour Party commission, headed by Miriam O'Reilly and Arlene Phillips, into employment age discrimination against women over fifty comes as BBC news presented Fiona Bruce admits to dying her hair to keep her job. Both O'Reilly and Phillips were cast off by the Corporation from their roles in Country File and Strictly Come Dancing in favour of younger women.

As a woman just turned fifty and with her natural hair colour, including some grey, this is an issue close to my heart. However, the Labour Party's apparent championing of it will not make me renew my membership, lapsed since one Tony Blair became leader in the mid-1990s, because Britain's cult of youth, or rather of a youthful appearance, began with New Labour and the so-called Blair Babes.

For although John Major was only a youthful forty seven when he took up prime ministerial office in 1990, he was already grey and - although we did not know this until much later - the erstwhile possessor of a love life with fellow MP Edwina Currie probably closer to Fifty Shades of Grey than anyone in New Labour, with the possible exception of David Blunkett, would be capable of delivering.

Returning to discrimination against mature women the workplace, the issue, it seems to me, is not so much about age as appearance; although there are those for whom an older person's knowledge and experience are unattractive. However, discrimination on grounds of appearance is not confined to older women or men, and beautiful people may be discriminated against as well as plainer types.

The key issue - and apparent reason why BBC Country File sidelined Miriam O'Reilly, but retained the more mature John Craven - is that one's face fits, not just physically (the requirements of high definition television, for instance), but also, and even more importantly in most cases, metaphorically. Yes, it is fitting in with a younger group of colleagues that employers think older women will not do.

This apparent problem is often ascribed to a belief that older and younger women do not "get on" as well as men of different ages, and tend to replicate domestic roles in the workplace. The female menopause is also cited as an actual or potential risk to workplace equilibrium, although this seems to be able to accommodate the male's midlife changes.

Nevertheless, many men over fifty have been known to experience turbulent mood swings, and possibly even hot flushes exacerbated by spicy food, when challenged by younger, and perhaps more virile colleagues, including uniformed police officers. This fact may throw some light on the case of Andrew Mitchell (see below), and remind us all that, in life, there are indeed many shades of grey.

E-PANTO?: OLD BILL AND BIG SWINGING DICK

Mulling over some plebeian baked beans, laced with chili sauce, I had to acknowledge that my earlier post had all the right ingredients for a new E-Pantomime, as the following synopsis demonstrates:

The Government Chief Whip, erstwhile patron of international development and friend of the global poor - rather like the Big Clunking Fist in fact - has his lunch-time curry spiked by a Tory anarchist, and later that day transforms into "Big Swinging Dick". Asked to use the pedestrian gate, the bicycling minister insults some Downing Street police officers, who then log his deprecations and their account of the incident appears on the front page of a national tabloid.

In the meantime, the minister has resumed his normal persona and has little or no re-collection of the previous day's outburst, but apologises anyway. However, this is not the end of the matter. The shadow High Sheriff of England, the Honorable Mrs Cooper-Balls, is determined to have the minister publicly humiliated for using classist language in the presence of serving police officers. Now gentlemen of both the tabloid and broadsheet press smell blood and a hunt for BSD ensues.

The story then takes on a life of its own as the narrative of "Old Bill and Big Swinging Dick", in which various honest plods take on the dastardly member until order is restored by the civil service.

PLEBS AT THE GATE AND NEW CLASS POLITICS

On one level, I don't know whether to read the "Plebgate" story as a sense of humour failure on the parts of a government minister and the diplomatic police, or a comedy worthy of the Carry On Team.

Mr Andrew Mitchell, or so it is reported, likes to be known as a "Big Swinging D..k", but on this occasion seems to have behaved like a stupid pr..k. So why didn't the police officer in question caution the minister for bad behaviour at the time of the temper tantrum?

Instead, "Plebgate" was written down in the officer's log-book, and then later on the front page of The Sun newspaper. I'm not clear how the story was procured by News International, but I hope that on this occasion the police weren't paid for it.

Enter left Yvette Cooper, shadow Home Secretary, to demand an inquiry which the Cabinet Secretary has declined. Thank goodness, because even morons have more important things to think about!

URBAN POLICY IN THE AGE OF AUSTERITY

Usually sceptical of the think tank sector's increasing output, I nevertheless feel that The Work Foundation may have published an important report this week. Entitled "People or Place - Urban Policy in the Age of Austerity", this report considers the history of urban and regional policy and programmes, including the present government's partial abandonment of these. I say partial because the "Regional Growth Fund" is evidence that they still exist, in name anyway. However, RDF appears to favour more prosperous areas over poorer ones which is certainly a reversal of earlier policy objectives for urban and regional planning. The Work Foundation's report has focused on the situation in Birmingham and the West Midlands. This may be one reason why it has received little coverage from London-biased media.

THE DAVE CAM CHANNEL NEEDS TO WISE UP

Although the Prime Minister is highly intelligent, a natural tendency to talk down to people means that he often manifests a dual public persona, or cross between "Dave the Vague" and "Dave the Wide-Boy". We also know that he can be totally ruthless. Both personae were in play last week as "Dave the Diffident", an unmediated version of "Dave the Vague", which has some similarity to the manner adopted by Harold Macmillan, ruthlessly sacked various ministers and vaguely informed the House of Commons of a "form of review" of "airport capacity" (See below) Meanwhile, "Dave the Wide-Boy" proclaimed that he would "get planners off people's backs" and the nation's potentially dodgy extensions off the ground in a manner more reminiscent of Del Boy Trotter.

In the midst of all this, I had a dream - and I jest not - about being given a lift by former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan around the M25 and environs where some new and rather ugly development was taking shape. The journey ended, however, in an unregenerated inner urban neighbourhood. What could this vision presage, I wondered, except the continuing inability of the present government, like the previous one, to properly tackle the regeneration of Britain's inner city and older industrial areas, particularly in the Midlands and North of England?  I was, nevertheless, curious about the significance of the Bond figure. Upon reflection, I think this was Brosnan as he appeared in "The Ghost Writer", apparently in a role based on that of former prime minister Blair.

I've since reflected that Colin Firth, an actor able to take on tragic and comic roles in equal measure, might one day play Dave Cameron very well. In the meantime, it behoves the Prime Minister to both wise up the content of his public pronouncements, and, given the obvious inferiority of his comic persona to that of London Mayor Boris Johnson (a figure even the creme de la creme of British comedy creators could not dream up), to seriously consider enhancing the No 10 sense of humour department, through the engagement of some new speech writers as well as technical advisers.

INQUIRY'S TERMS OF REFERENCE WILL BE KEY

Following some week long speculation, the Prime Minister yesterday announced that "a form of review" would be conducted in to airport capacity around London. The chairman of this enterprise has been identified as Howard Davies. This must be regarded as a curious choice as Mr Davies was last in the news when he resigned as Director of the London School of Economics in 2011, as a consequence of donations from a charity linked to the former Gaddafi regime in Libya. One can only presume that friends in the right places felt Howard Davies was in need of guaranteed work for the next three years, as the airport "review" is not due to report until after the 2015 General Election. Would that more of us had such connectivity!

Connectivity will also be a key issue for the airport inquiry, as will its terms of reference. Unfortunately, Mr Cameron lived up to his reputation for being "Dave the Vague" when he informed the House of Commons of a review intended to "bring parties together and make a decision about airport capacity". My guess is that the terms of reference will be too narrowly drawn and thereby enable the "Heathrow Hub" concept to emerge as the solution to an ill-defined problem. Due to an inability to manage powerful stakeholder interests, the UK government is seriously impaired when it comes to strategic planning, an incapacity compounded by the appointment of people with questionable credentials for arriving at objective-based recommendations on major spatial projects.

UK GOVERNMENT TO HOLD AIRPORTS INQUIRY

News that the UK Government is likely to announce the creation of an independent commission to consider options for future airport capacity in South East England is, on balance, to be welcomed.

The options would seem to be as follows:

• Restrict capacity/demand manage air travel favoured by Green Party and environmentalists
• Restrict capacity in South East with new high speed rail link to regional airports in Midlands/North
• Heathrow Hub with expanded capacity
• Additional capacity at Gatwick and/or Stanstead
• Additional capacity at other existing airports in South East
• New Thames Estuary airport, for which there are a number of different options

It is important that the above options are considered in the context of the need for integrated transport solutions, including rail access, and the legal requirement for Strategic Environmental Assessment.

Since this blog was posted, The Independent on Sunday has revealed that a mystery consortium is drawing up plans for a new, four-runway airport close to Heathrow, with sites in Berkshire and Oxfordshire potentially in the frame.

VALUING THE 2012 OLYMPIC MEDAL COUNT

With the Russians apparently unhappy about their Olympic medals total, which officially put them in fourth place behind Britain, perhaps the time has come for a new method of scoring the medal count. A gold medal could be worth 3 points, a silver 2 and a bronze 1. This system would put Russia ahead of Britain in the medals count. Alternatively, the country's leaders could reflect on the possibility that Russia's longer term economic prospects might be better not only than Britain's, but perhaps even those of China and the United States, given the right political conditions.

EUROPE WILL BE WINNER OF LONDON 2012

During a year when Euroscepticism is very much in vogue, I'll wage a bet that Europe will be the winner of London 2012. Britain may win the medal count amongst European partners, but the continent looks set to have a majority of countries amongst the top ten performers and is likely to be the ultimate victor of the 2012 Olympics.

So whilst the UK may have beaten its main rival Germany in equestrian sports, with outstanding performances by our dressage and showjumping teams, it is the German horse industry which could secure more international business from the Olympics than our own. This has much to do with the dominance of northern European warmbloods in the sports horse market, reflecting the superior organisation of breeding in countries like Germany and the Netherlands. The German equestrian sector is also particularly well positioned for export markets as shown in their website: www.ghindustry.com

In addition, other European countries will be the undoubted beneficiaries of foreign tourists discouraged from coming to Britain during the Olympic year, at a time when the continent is already providing a greater attraction for the international visitor market. There is also the question of how many Britons will choose to holiday abroad.

So whilst national pride is rightly running high, it behoves British politicians and the media to curb the Eurosceptic spirit which has run riot in recent months, and focus instead on creating a lasting legacy from the London 2012 Olympics which extends well beyond the capital. In this context, the development of a national facility capable of staging the World Equestrian Games is something that requires serious consideration. The UK is currently without one despite being a global leader in horse sports, whereas a number of European countries have long-established centres of excellence, which bring together a major international competition circuit with valuable trade and visitor markets.

TEAM GB: PRE-EMINENT MINI-SUPERPOWER?

The success of London 2012 and Britain's Olympic competitors has inevitably allowed politicians, sponsors and the media to bask temporarily in the glory of a role to which this country's elite most aspire: gold membership of a nation with pre-eminent mini-superpower status. However, this role, like hosting the Olympic Games, comes with a heavy price tag and questionable legacy.

One of the defining characteristics of super-power nations, arguably now the United States, China, Russia and India - based on country-size and/or population as well as economic resources - is increasing polarisation between rich and poor, something Britain, and particularly England, also shares. We also share with the US an increasingly multi-ethic society.

In a Telegraph article of 5 August, the historian David Starkey repeats his thesis of last year that 2011's civil unrest in English urban areas, especially London and other major cities, were predominantly "race riots". Although this contention has been hotly challenged, and the general consensus is that there were a number of contributory factors, Starkey's view is significant, as reflected in the volume of comments on his article.

Coming from a decidedly under-privileged background, as well as being homosexual (rather than gay), Starkey is perhaps better equipped than many to reflect on how poverty and minority-status can make life difficult, and how a good education, at least for his generation and the one which immediately followed it, can help overcome such difficulty.

The problem is that a good education, arguably still freely available up to level 3 (A level equivalent) for the majority of Britons under 20, is no longer regarded as a guarantor of the ability to succeed in life by significant sections of young people in our country. This is perhaps especially true of black adolescent males, and also many white working class ones, the primary targets of Starkey's diatribe.

Yet it may be that these young people, coming from the sharp end of Britain's increasing social inequality and feeling this most acutely, are simply presenting some of the clearest symptoms of the underlying disease. Moreover, it could also be that in an unreconstructed intellectual like Starkey, who is unencumbered by political correctness, that the disease may find some hope of a cure.

For the fine thing about Starkey, in my view, is that, like all traditional pedagogues, he appears to talk down to everyone, great and good included; and whilst castigating some lesser groups as misguided, and others criminal, he does not charge them with stupidity, a criticism he reserves for much of the elite and those intent on dumbing down social discourse.

It is for this reason, I would suggest, that David Starkey may be the ideal person to lead a national debate, which should take place at every level of society, on the advantages and disadvantages of Britain's aspirations - or rather those of our country's elite - for gold position in the global league of mini-superpowers. This might start with an appraisal of the main competitor nations, if there are any.