War and peace – PMQs 5th March 2025

At Eton, they call it ‘oiling’. Half an hour in, newbie Labour MP Mike Tapp applied the grease gun ruthlessly:

“These are delicate moments for the country, and the Prime Minister has led with British values, moral courage and decency, as a true statesman, and with skilled and careful diplomacy.”

He continued: “… so does the Prime Minister agree that a united House could help us to achieve a lasting peace?”

He need have had no worries on that score. “We all support him in that effort,” said Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey. “The Prime Minister is quite right,” said Kemi Badenoch, approving the call for guarantees for any agreement on Ukraine. Even Reform’s Nigel Farage seems to be in a cleft stick over the current US policy of disengagement.

Starmer himself, never happier than when flattening the mood, had opened the session with a reference to anniversaries of British military losses in Afghanistan, sombrely naming the victims. Badenoch fell into line on Ukrainian peacekeeping, but worried about the economic burden on us. Would he change course on last year’s Budget? “We were doing so well,” said the patronising PM, who then gave us his familiar boilerplate about the inherited Black Hole and Labour’s “stability”.

Kevin Bonavia (Labour) welcomed the boost for jobs in Stevenage represented by increased defence spending. But now for the autonomous regions.

Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts asked the PM to consider strategic investment in defence and infrastructure, rather than cutting welfare and international aid. Starmer regretted that her party had “voted against £1.6 billion to fund public services in Wales” and said she “needs to explain how that helps her constituents and the people of Wales”.

Chris Law (SNP) deplored the US’ suspension of military aid to Ukraine, its banning of the UK from intelligence sharing with Ukraine, and its proposed lifting of sanctions on Russia “to appease Vladimir Putin – a murderous, lying dictator”. Would the PM release seized Russian state assets to Ukraine? Starmer said he would consider it, but in the meantime, the SNP needed to reconsider its policy of getting rid of the UK’s nuclear deterrent.

There! Devolution: the gift that keeps on giving.

Another SNP member, Seamus Logan, wished the UK to safeguard Scottish fishing interests in “the forthcoming trade and co-operation agreement negotiations” as it resets its relationship with the European Union. This theme was more to Sir Keir’s liking.

Back to the US. Richard Foord (Lib Dems) indignantly quoted Vice President Vance’s remarks scorning peace-keeping troops from “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”. Would the PM remind the US of our solidarity following 9/11 and in Iraq?

At this point, it should be noted that Vance had not actually mentioned Britain and could have been thinking of certain EU countries. More offensive, perhaps, was Professor Jeffrey Sachs, when he spoke last month to the EU Parliament, likening us to Monty Python’s insanely defiant, yet limbless, Black Knight.

While his EU Parliament audience might have smirked, some people might suggest that if we are weak now, it is because we helped buy their freedom with our blood and the nation’s treasure. Nevertheless, in that same YouTube clip, the Professor also provides a vital context to the Ukraine conflict – one that runs counter to the narrative that Russia is simply out to invade and conquer us all.

When David Davis (Con) mentioned the plight of over 100 special forces soldiers facing enquiries over their conduct in combating the IRA years ago, the PM claimed not to have seen the NI coroner’s ruling that put them into this quandary and generalised that “in the interests of everybody in Northern Ireland, of all those who served and all those who are victims, we need to renew our efforts to find a way forward on this important issue”.

Wendy Morton (Con) linked the Ukraine issue to the needs for our food security and to protect farmers. Starmer replied with the customary litany about Labour’s NFU-approved “road map for farming”, the Budget billions allocated to farming (exactly how, no details just now, please) and the assertion that the “vast majority” of farms would be unaffected by the IHT hit.

Sadly, there is not space for all the other worthwhile contributions to PMQs today, but it is interesting that, maybe not for the first time, a controversial and potentially troublesome matter was relegated to the end. Richard Holden (Con) asked whether Starmer would think again before instructing his Whips to block Holden’s Bill banning first cousin marriage.

Sir Keir responded with a brusqueness that may have taken some by surprise: “Mr Speaker, we have taken our position on that Bill.”

The hot potato rolled in the aisle, steaming.

Crossposted from Wolves of Westminster

Ukraine: if you really want to know...

… listen to Professor Jeffrey Sachs’ short, clear explanation:

In which I get banned from Twitter/X

It’s supposed to be a leading free speech platform but there are limits. Unfortunately the limits are patrolled by people of limited understanding.

I was responding to a tweet that showed an advert for people in the UK to go over to Ukraine and join the fight against the Russians. It said experience was useful but not necessary.

This isn’t Spain in the 1930s. You can’t just pick up a rifle and walk towards the enemy. Greenhorns are not likely to survive for long on a modern battlefield. Units have been wiped out when one of their members was stupid enough to use their mobile phone and so pinpoint their position. Drones carrying personnel-killing munitions wander around - I’ve seen a clip of some poor soldier running round a disabled tank to try to escape the drone following him like a hornet, until it got close enough at the end of the first circuit. How the operator must have laughed.

No wonder that combat fatigue dressed groups are scouring the streets of Kiev to kidnap teenagers and press them into military service. Those kids are not the ones who can afford to pay thousands to border control guards to let them out of the country - which may be part of the way how Zelensky has allegedly become a billionaire.

Now they are looking for foolish foreigners who think they can re-create the International Brigade.

So I said it would be simpler just to stay home and sh**t oneself.

Immediate cancellation, which will apparently last for at least a week. I can read, but not post, ‘like’ or comment.

Thing is, you can’t argue with the idiot who has all the power, any more than you can argue with a drone. Clearly they don’t consider context or understand irony, sarcasm and dark humour.

Hey-ho. When - if - I am allowed back on, perhaps I can send this to Elon Musk.

Animations2

 Bill and Ben

Muffin the Mule

Torchy the Battery Boy

Andy Pandy

Twizzle

The Woodentops

The Clangers

FRIDAY MUSIC: For King & Country, by JD

For King & Country, stylised as for KING & COUNTRY and formerly known as Joel & Luke as well as Austoville, is a Christian pop duo composed of Australian brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone. The brothers were born in Australia and, with their family, emigrated to the United States as children, settling in the Nashville area.

https://www.forkingandcountry.com/

for King & Country "No Turning Back" (Official Live Room Session)

for KING & COUNTRY with Carín León – “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” | CMA Country Christmas 2024

for KING + COUNTRY - burn the ships (Official Music Video)

for KING + COUNTRY - Ceasefire - Music Video

for KING + COUNTRY - pioneers (Official Music Video)

Muddy Waters: PMQs 26th February 2025

Starmer is turning into a doubleplusgood duckspeaker. Ask him an awkward question, get a torrent of whataboutery quacking.

Mr Speaker set him up with an easy starter: Dr Luke Evans (Con) facing Sir Keir with familiar Budget teases about the Winter Fuel Allowance, IHT on farmers and the employers’ NIC hit on GPs, care homes and hospices. Answer: the £22 billion ‘black hole,’ money thrown into the NHS and two million extra medical appointments.

It’s like Pelmanism, but where you don’t have to pair the cards.

The PM’s feelings were soothed - not that they had been much ruffled - by a Savlon query from Labour’s Alex McIntyre: would he agree that the Government was ‘delivering opportunity for the next generation’ with breakfast clubs and a bit of childcare funding? Blow us down, he would!

The Leader of the Opposition opened with Ukraine, an issue where (as previously with Brexit) the two sides of the House have an unfortunate tendency to agree, as indeed does the so-called right-wing Press (Peter Hitchens being an honourable exception.)

There was talk of sovereignty and (the time-expired) Zelensky’s right to be at the negotiating table. Later in this session, Dr Neil Hudson (Con) likened Zel to Churchill in that both had suspended elections in wartime. [Perhaps Angela ‘Winnie’ Rayner can light up a Romeo y Julieta to celebrate scrubbing those local council polls? It’s all part of our becoming a People’s Democratic Republic.]

Steve Race (Labour) wanted us to ‘redouble our efforts… to help secure Ukraine’s future as a free, democratic and sovereign European nation.’ Did that last adjective imply NATO membership? Funny how in 1949 it was truly vitally necessary to defend against Communist expansionism but now we need to restrain the growth of a Eurocommunist bloc that, as Mr Vance told it, no longer shares America’s liberal Western values.

Starmer gave muddy replies on spending but Badenoch failed to pierce the murk. She congratulated him on accepting her advice to cut foreign aid but he said he had not even seen her proposal. More embarrassing for him was Diane Abbott’s point that using aid and development money for armaments and tanks increased desperation and poverty and made people less safe; Sir Keir gave the usual kind of response - difficult decision, will do more when we can.

Kemi tried again: how did the PM reconcile his figure of a £13.4 billion increase in defence expenditure with the Defence Secretary’s £6 billion stated that morning? Sir Keir said it was the difference between this fiscal year (2024/25) and (2027/28) - reminiscent of Gordon Brown, somehow. Kemi repeated the query and received a patronising repetition.

She went on to probe whether money for the Chagos deal was coming out of the expanded pot, something the Defence Secretary had failed to say. Starmer’s turbid reply was that the extra spend was ‘for our capability on defence and security in Europe’ - an ambiguous response given he then asserted it was ‘for our capability.’

He continued, ‘The Chagos deal is extremely important for our security and for US security, and the US is rightly looking at it.’ Important, yes; but helpful, that is another matter. Senator John Kennedy has given a crystal-clear exposition of the Chagos business in advance of Starmer’s visit to Washington, remarking that if the latter wants to assuage his post-colonial guilt he should buy himself an emotional support pony. Giving away Diego Garcia with its military base to Mauritius helps China’s power in the Indian Ocean; so much for our security.

Dr Kieran Mullan (Con) eventually got the chance to pose the question again: ‘will he rule out funding any Chagos deal from the defence budget—yes or no?’ He too got an opaque answer: ‘the money yesterday was allocated to aid our capability and is the single biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the cold war.’

Ed Davey (Lib Dem leader) urged the PM to work with the EU to create ‘a new European rearmament bank’ as per the proposal from the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, he who previously had ‘a special place in Hell’ for Brexiteers. Starmer prevaricated.

Jeremy Hunt (Con) weighed in with ‘our biggest single foreign policy priority is the preservation of NATO with America at its heart’ plus the need to ‘spend 3% of GDP on defence within a specified timescale.’ Sir Keir agreed, saying ‘Putin thought he could weaken NATO. He has only made it stronger and larger.’

So important to have an enemy. And to forget a lot of inconvenient history.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster.

Is Starmer a Tractor?

There is a word for someone who acts against the interests of his country. Let’s say he hasn't specifically intended to harm us. Mabe he’s just stupid, what we call a ‘tool.’ In concrete terms he might be compared to a miswielded hammer or sickle, though if the harm he does is on a major scale you’ll need to compare him to a mechanised implement like, oh, an incompetently driven tractor?

Senator John Kennedy explains here very clearly why the British Prime Minister’s proposal to gift the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is disastrous:

Mauritius has zero entitlement to the Chagos Islands and never did have. It’s just that Britain took over both from France in 1810 and administered them from Mauritius. The PM feels obliged to follow a non-binding 2019 ruling by the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands that was backed by its vice-President Xue Hanqin, a former Chinese Communist official.

There is a US military base on the Chagos island of Diego Garcia, which lies strategically situated in the Indian Ocean controlling sea lanes in which the expansionist Chinese Government is keenly interested.

The former President of Mauritius wanted £9 billion over a period of years as compensation for permitting the US and UK to continue to use the base; his replacement wants double that. Ever since coming into office Starmer has been referring to a £22 billion ‘black hole’ in the finances left him by the Tories; yet it does not seem to have caused him any trouble in entering this commitment.

Three weeks ago the Conservatives reportedly accused the PM of “traitorous levels of national sabotage.” If that is so, put him on trial; he loves the law. Failing that, I will restrict myself to call him “tractorous.” Sir Keir, John Deere.

Senator Kennedy suggests that Sir Keir is suffering from post-colonial guilt and should instead buy himself an emotional support pony.

I would go further. I’d say Starmer should saddle it up and ride off into the sunset.

The Middle-Class English Ninny

We were down on the Lizard peninsula and went for a walk to Church Cove.

The church is St Wynwallow, founded by a Breton saint in around 600 AD. It is ‘a place of peace and quiet away from the business of life.’ There is a concession to religion once a month when Evensong is held.

There he hangs, the man who summed up the whole library of Jewish religious teaching in two sentences: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’”

A little further down the hill towards the roaring water was a house made open for a Ukrainian display. Compare the iconography:

Jesus is worshipped in various Orthodox denominations in Ukraine but the Kiev regime banned the Russian version last year and the Russian language the year before. The brave journalist Eva Bartlett details the war crimes committed for years against Russian heritage civilians in the Donbass.

Other than Peter Hitchens, few in the mainstream British media make plain what has gone on in Ukraine and why.

So it is not surprising that there is a house in a hip Devon town whose owner put the old yellow-and-blue in the window to show they were on the right side of History (that fictitious god of the Marxists.)

Later they replaced it with a Palestinian flag.

Only the middle class can be that stupid. They take on an idea given them by the official governmental propaganda machine and will then defend it against all comers, including facts and logic.

If we must deplore democracy it is not because of the less educated but on account of gullible, bloodthirsty, bourgeois English ninnies.

(Photos: author.)

Animations1

 Rex the Runt

Roobarb and Custard

Stressed Eric

Starmer is afraid of change

I can’t be the only one who suspects that Sir Keir may be an example of high-functioning autism. Some would say ‘suffers from’ but it is we who bear the consequences when someone in high authority is not ‘neurotypical.’

There are worse flaws: think of narcissistic psychopaths or messianic dreamers - have we not had such governing us before? Then again, what normal person wants to have - or could attain - the top job?

Children who are ‘on the spectrum’ of autism have difficulties in social communication - not just with words but in their facial expressions and body language. They may not understand others’ minds or grasp underlying meanings in what is said to them. They are instinctively sensed as different by their fellows, who with the cruelty of the conformist young will tend to shun or bully them.

They do have emotions - often they get on well with animals, who are not so tricky. But for them human social intercourse can be like a tourist trying to speak Greek and their rhythm of responses is halting. As a result they can be misunderstood as impassive, unfeeling. Dan Hodges in the MoS reports a senior government official as saying Starmer is ‘a very strange man. There's no empathy there. You try to talk him through the implications of what he's proposing and he goes blank.’

Asperger’s types can be very intelligent but faced with a largely social world that is unpredictable and sometimes frightening or painful they may turn to a model that they can understand and control; not just computer games but - if they have sufficient power - grand schemes with niches for everyone else. In reality the model is bound to be inadequate and the Aspie will be intolerant of ‘square pegs,’ as Adam Smith noted in 1759:

‘The man of system… is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it.’

The rigid thinker fears that dissent threatens his perfect structure, which may break down and explode like the organisations of would-be world masters in Bond films. If challenged he will double down on his carefully planned mission, which would work without a hitch if only everybody did exactly as they were told.

Does this explain Starmer’s insistence that despite strong criticisms of his hapless Foreign Secretary and Chancellor they would stay in post until the next General Election? Or his refusal to budge on the obviously calamitous inheritance tax changes for farmers?

Sir Keir’s project is enormous radical change and is a continuation of the Blairite programme for a constitutional structure that will permanently exclude the ‘forces of conservatism’ - represented by great numbers of people, perhaps the majority if the Brexit referendum is an indication. Great and lasting conflict is therefore built into this machine.

The devolution plan was designed for him by another notorious micro-manager, Gordon Brown, whose own limited tolerance for dissent was illustrated by the ‘bigoted woman’ episode, though at least he didn’t jail her.

It will fail.

One reason is the hubris of imposing a mission statement on us all: ‘The purpose of the New Britain should be grounded in the shared values and aspirations that unite the people across our country.’ There is no such unity and the attempt to impose it will be disastrous. If our political class knew any history they would see how the nation was repeatedly torn apart by attempts to foist on it various forms and structures of the Christian religion, or of kingly governance. Since then we have witnessed the results of Marxism and vengeful ethno-nationalism elsewhere.

Our flexible and evolving liberal democracy is not an ideology but a method. If it works properly it allows everyone a voice and ideas to compete without bloodshed.

Because it does not work properly - because the voting system is so skewed; because the planned scheme of regional governments threatens a proliferation of petty fiefdoms as already exemplified in Scotland and London; because as Mr Vance told Europe ‘you’re running in fear of your own voters’; because the country continues to import potential dangers and further drains on our resources while protestors are squashed - a future civil war in Britain is not unthinkable.

According to David Betz, a professor of war studies at King’s College London, it is already inevitable and could occur within the next five years. He thinks we should now concentrate on mitigating the effects - protecting cultural artefacts, developing regional seats of government (but see above comment on devolution), reviewing the security of energy support systems, nuclear weapons etc against internal threat.

We have to hope he and Elon Musk are wrong.

But it will need someone in charge who is not afraid of change; of changing his mind.

(Also on the Bruges Group Blog)

FRIDAY MUSIC: Eddi Reader, by JD

 In the Hogmanay posts there has usually been a song or two from Eddi Reader. She deserves a post of her own.

Eddi Reader grew up in Glasgow and Irvine, Scotland and it was in those towns that she learned to use music as a vehicle for communicating with others through busking and performing at the local folk clubs. In the early 1980s, Eddi travelled around Europe with circus and performance artists before moving to London where she quickly became a sought after session vocalist. She famously harmonized with Annie Lennox touring with the Eurythmics, after her time with successful punk outfit Gang of Four. It was the short-lived but warmly remembered Fairground Attraction that really brought her into the limelight and to the attention of a much wider audience.

https://eddireader.co.uk/

Eddi Reader - Dragonflies

Eddi Reader - Patience of Angels (Live on Later) HQ

Eddi Reader - Wild Mountain Side - East Lothian Homecoming

Eddi Reader - La Vie En Rose (Jools Annual Hootenanny 2020)

Eddi Reader - In a Big Country (Live HQ)