Josie joined Heater du-Plessis Allan and Trish Sherson on The Huddle to discuss the National Party's dramas over the prime minister.

It’s not just the deranged, nonce-adjacent narcissist in the White House. The oddballs are all over.

The obvious point is that it’s mad. Crazy. Bananas. The harder point is: how does he still have 80% approval ratings among Republicans? And the harder point still: how did it all get so mad?

First, turning away from carnage is natural, like putting a bill you can’t pay in the drawer and pretending it doesn’t exist. Second, here at least, we feel powerless. We are takers not market-makers in the great global game. Third, the firehose of outrage is part of the strategy. No one can remember Monday’s corruption scandal, after Tuesday’s blasphemy, Wednesday’s bigotry and Thursday’s threat. Fourth, the dirty trick of autocracy is the calculus: standing up to bullies is costly. But go along with the corruption and you might get enough loyalty points for a kitchen appliance. It won’t be 6 cents off your petrol though.
Ask Saudi or the UAE. They placed big bets on Trump, gave him a plane, bribed his family, and now they’re getting bombed.

But the fifth reason is the most painful of all: Hungary shows you can fight back. The world hasn’t. It has tried to live with the crazy instead of making a red-blooded defence of the good.

So really, how does the crazy happen? It happens because countries did exactly what Labour is doing here. You become so pickled in careful, so bloodless, stuck in dogma irrelevant to real needs, that people who want something different and better have nowhere to turn.

It happened in the UK, which is how they got the Brexit disaster that is tearing the country apart a decade on. It’s how Starmer’s Labour went from a landslide to fourth and the people have turned to the crazy Trump-loving Reform. It happened in Europe, where social democratic parties are going out of existence.

You don’t beat crazy by being even more crazy, but you also don’t beat it by being bland like a bread roll, hoping to drift into office. Keep doing that, and don’t be surprised if the crazy comes calling.

Josie's Post column

My fellow Catholics believe that Jesus died on Good Friday and rose again on Sunday.

Expert historians look at what we know about how the world works and the way news was spread in Palestine at the time. They conclude that the resurrection could not have happened.

The whole point of a miracle is that it is, well, miraculous. It wouldn’t be a miracle if it were just how Jeff and Job spent their typical Sundays.

To believe the Easter story requires faith. Expertise gets you nowhere. Not to miracles, anyway.

Josie's Easter column for the Post.

Josie joined Heather du Plessis-Allan on Newstalk ZB's The Huddle to discuss graffiti, the US weighs ground troops in the Iran war, and the LNG import terminal.

Man is born free but everywhere we are in supply chains. Rousseau’s point was that we are greater slaves to others than we realise. We are slaves to the quantity of oil and gas getting out of the Persian Gulf.

Iran is not falling apart yet, so it’s hard to see shipping moving freely around the Persian Gulf any time soon.

Nicola Willis is right to focus on targeted support through the tax system. But the Government’s talk of “worst case scenarios” and possible rationing shows they have learnt nothing from the mistakes of Covid, when local fruit shops and butchers were wiped out and supermarkets preferenced.

I have limited sympathy for businesses that did not hedge by buying political risk insurance or options to buy extra fuel if needed. If businesses didn’t know there was a risk that conflict might metastasise in the Middle East, and that fuel supplies might be disrupted, well congratulations. You’re the prime minister.

Josie's column in the Post is here.