Seeing The Light

There was something going on. Traffic was slow and we could see a small crowd near the island, yellow banners and placards, people walking among cars with handouts.

Was it an industrial dispute?

Funny place to have it, at Birmingham’s Five Ways. Long time since there was any manufacturing so near the city centre.

I wound down the window and took what looked like a newspaper - nice quality newsprint. It was the latest edition of The Light.

The front page article was headlined “Were 55,000 killed by NHS?” and included this startling graph:

I’ve seen medical execution at first hand, and wrote about it two years ago. The dying ward was brightly lit, the nurses cheerful - not rushed off their feet as in other hospital areas. In their heads they will have been doing the right thing, otherwise they would not have told me so calmly that they were withholding fluids from my friend; that is, letting him die of thirst while so heavily sedated that he couldn’t complain if he wanted to, while his organs were collapsing.

I didn’t ask what the drugs were, but like as not it was the cocktail I call “M+M” - midazolam and morphine. There’ll be a lot more of this when Kim Leadbeater MP’s assisted suicide Bill becomes law; already Parliament is snipping off safeguards.

Back to the protest. It takes a lot to make white middle-class people (for that’s what they appeared to be) take to the streets.

The Light is a reactionary publication. The r-word is one of those that stops you thinking - it carries associations with other terms such as '“far right”; but it simply describes a reaction and there’s a lot to react to now, and with rational justification. The current issue also discusses digital ID, Net Zero, combatting official misinformation, lawfare and so on.

And the reaction to these reactionaries?

If you look around the internet you’ll find that quite a lot of Nazi propaganda has been preserved for study, so we can see how a religious and law-abiding people could be turned into bloody-minded lunatics. It wasn’t just posters, newspapers and rallies, it was movies too; fiction as well as slanted documentaries.

We have the same today, though in different causes, and run by people who once again think they are doing the right thing - just as German policymakers and influencers thought of themselves, four generations ago.

Now we are in the age of the internet, so the struggle goes on there too, to corral diversity of opinion. The people are in danger of getting out of control!

Twitter/X used to be full of right-thinking gauleiters and now works far better since 80% of its employees were laid off; so well in fact that many of the righteous have decamped to alternative social websites so as to avoid being contradicted. Scratch a hippy, find a fascist, as the saying goes.

However Wikipedia is still going strong. I use it a lot but when it comes to contentious subjects you quickly feel the iron fist in its velvet glove. I looked up The Light and the result should be permanently retained for future generations to wonder at: “The Light is a… far-right and conspiracy theory newspaper… which primarily claims the COVID-19 pandemic was a hoax…”

The pseudonymous writer warms to his theme with every kind of boo-word (“far-right” appears 13 times!) and throws in the kitchen sink with a side panel: “Part of a series on Antisemitism.”

Read the latest issue and decide for yourself how far it resembles Julius Streicher’s “Der Stürmer” (published weekly, 1923-1945.) But that’s not the idea of the Wiki article, which clearly wishes to poison the well so thoroughly that no-one would come near it because of its stink.

The trouble with the Leftists is that they seem to have little idea of what real fascism is like. My mother could have told them.

Mum grew up in East Prussia in the 1930s. A keen reader, she entered the school library one day to find big gaps in the shelves, which had been cleansed of Jewish and socialist writers. The history teacher was sacked and replaced by the janitor. The teachers all joined the Party, knowing which side their bread was buttered (I seem to recall the Inner London Education Authority was like that vis-à-vis Labour in the 1970s), and tried to browbeat Mum into following suit; she resisted, since her father (a gentleman farmer) despised Nazis as low-class scum and forbade her. The children - wretched conformists, as the young usually are - fought her in the playground, but she was athletic and beat them. But everywhere, propaganda, as the National Socialists fixed the foundations of the country’s economy and society.

Golly, if we tried hard we could draw some parallels! Even our farmers are targeted these days. And the new education Bill is a piece of work - you may even not be allowed to keep your children out of State indoctrination centres. The new Online Safety Act, with its ill-defined terms, is already scything through social media comment threads; pub landlords will have to police customers’ banter.

Dylan said it as long ago as 1964:

In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand 

At the mongrel dogs who teach 

Fearing not that I’d become my enemy 

In the instant that I preach

A blood-boiling incident

A black family driving from Atlanta, Georgia to Chicago to attend a funeral is stopped by highway police in Tennessee. The reasons given are that the car has tinted wndows and was proceeding in the overtaking lane.

The incident escalates into their five children being taken into care with the authorisation of a local judge…

In a subsequent call that was recorded, Judge Perry then called Coffee County Sheriff’s Department Investigator James Sherrill on his cellphone to discuss removing the children.

“Well, the problem is mama is not going to give them up without a fight,” Sherrill told Perry. “If we get in the middle of this, there’s going to be a damn lawsuit for sure.”

Perry then suggested arresting Clayborne for disorderly conduct, then assured the deputy, “You won’t get in a lawsuit because … I’ve got judicial immunity.

“Verbal order good enough?” Sherrill asked. “Absolutely,” Perry replied.

Not so, and it did indeed lead to a lawsuit. Attorneys for the children’s mother say that Children’s Services officials,

after the children were removed, then tried to “cover their tracks” by submitting false and inaccurate paperwork to make it look like they had submitted a petition to the judge before he issued his verbal order.

They also cite prejudicial ex parte emails between a DCS lawyer and the judge the day before the family had its first hearing in which the lawyer characterized the plaintiffs “as racists, as violent and aggressive people” and advised the judge on how to keep the family from suing in federal court.

The article here in Atlanta Black Star is written carefully, but it is tempting to draw uncomfortable conclusions about how the law and officialdom work in practice. Consider also the case of the Debelbots.

Universal exports: PMQs 19th March 2025

The Speaker began by welcoming his guest – the Mongolian parliament’s Chairman – as an observer in the Gallery.

Dashzegviin Amarbayasgalan is the 43-year-old social democrat who swept into power in 2016 at the head of the Mongolian People’s Party. His small (3.3 million people) country is developing ties with various ‘third neighbours’ (after China, its largest trading partner, and Russia).

An important element in Mongolia’s economy is its giant Oyu Tolgoi copper mine, being developed by a subsidiary that is majority-owned by Rio Tinto. A 2020 report by the (Dutch) Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations says that the relevant trade agreements have not been as beneficial for the government as they might have been.

We too are caught between two big neighbours – in our case, the US and EU. Perhaps our visitor may find something instructive in our attempts to remain standing on our own two feet, despite external influences and internal political machinations. For our part, it will be interesting to be involved in that part of the world: don’t make waves, Bond, and bring the kit back in one piece this time!

The Prime Minister opened his remarks by saying had spoken to President Zelensky last night and reaffirmed “our unwavering support for the people of Ukraine”. However, when the Lib Dems’ Lee Dillon called for the seizure of Russian assets as a “punishment” for “Russian aggression”, Sir Keir replied that it was “complicated”, which is true not least because the UK and US have still not declared war on Russia. Only nine months ago, President Putin called the West’s diversion to Ukraine merely of the interest on those assets a “theft” that would itself “not go unpunished”.

Starmer also expressed his concern about the IDF’s resumption of hostilities in Gaza – which were prompted by Hamas’ continued holding onto hostages – a “grave breach” under the Genevan Conventions.

He concluded with a salute to the passing of Group Captain John “Paddy” Hemingway, the last surviving pilot of the Battle of Britain. If readers wish to appreciate the cold dread of those days, of duty performed without any confident expectation of personal survival and national victory, they should read the wartime short story ‘There’s No Future In It’ by ‘Flying Officer X’ (H E Bates.) What has war cost us? Yet Left and Right are still banging the drum…

Also, the Centre, if that term can properly be applied to the Lib Dems, whose leader is Sir Ed Davey, associated himself with Sir Keir’s remarks. After a failed attempt to secure the PM’s support in the Commons later that afternoon for a tabled exemption from the NIC rise for the NHS and care providers, Sir Ed turned to the subject of hare coursing, thus flying the Lib Dem flag for rural communities and their wider battle against local crime. Was there a hint of ironic condescension in Sir Keir’s thanks for “raising this important issue, which is a matter of deep concern”?

As usual, much of the session was devoted to a list of needs, many of them inadequately addressed by the Opposition during their fourteen years in power. For example, as Labour’s Lauren Edwards said, there was not enough skills training for young people. However, while wishing to reset our relations with the EU, Starmer dodged Helen Maguire’s (Lib Dem) call for “a UK-EU youth mobility scheme”: “We will not be returning to freedom of movement” – a bridge too far, as it were.

The catalogue of wants continued: research into brain tumours in children; how to ‘make work pay’; immigration; knife crime and insufficient numbers of police; eating disorders and other mental health difficulties for young people; the young homeless (this from Scottish Labour’s Chris Murray, which allowed the PM to castigate the SNP for cutting its affordable housing budget); the dwindling access to banking services; how to manage the energy transition role of the Grangemouth refinery and safeguard employment there; compensation for those harmed by infected blood when receiving transfusions; violence against women and girls.

This and much else would take so much money! The Greens’ Carla Denyer pressed for a wealth tax, as though the flight of the rich was not already obvious; Sir Keir reminded her that her party’s manifesto implied extra borrowings of £80 billion, “which would have done exactly what Liz Truss did to the economy”.

Reform’s Lee Anderson received scornful noise when he said he came to the House hoping for “sensible answers” and got only “glazed expressions and waffle”. His question about Net Zero and its putative effect on Earth’s temperature duly attracted more dubious waffle from the PM about growth, jobs and the economy, with a side helping of contempt for “a party that fits in the back of a taxi”. Yet perhaps Starmer’s gofers might try to do more than draft smart-alec ripostes…

… as well as lazy wallpaper replies. When Kemi Badenoch asked why we were having an emergency Budget, she had the customary litany about inward investment, wages going up faster than prices (as though that did not contain some seeds of national financial difficulty) and – yawn – the £22 billion ‘black hole.’ The Opposition Leader countered with ‘growth down, borrowing up, destroyed business confidence’.

She would not be drawn on whether she would actually reverse the NIC increase, but when the PM said he had put in more millions for hospices, she was sufficiently on top of her brief to point out that the extra cash was for buildings, to which Sir Keir responded that he had “already set out the position in relation to hospices” – hardly a debating triumph on that point, but with his army behind him, who cared?

More telling – and perhaps that is why it was saved for the fag end of PMQs – was Diane Abbott’s question about the morality of cutting benefits for up to a million claimants, “the most vulnerable and poorest people in this society”. Sir Keir “paid tribute” to her and said the issue was “difficult”, but was “not prepared to shrug [his] shoulders and walk past it”. How does that work as an answer? Oh dear – time to go.

Get any tips, Mr Amarbayasgalan?

Crossposted from Wolves of Westminster

Consequences: PMQs 12th March 2025

Try asking Grok ‘When did questions at UK PMQs cease to be spontaneous?’ For it has come to resemble an am-dram living-room script-reading session. Ministers no longer have to fear the short, awkward questions of a Tam Dalyell.

The consequence of the present arrangement is that it gives the upper hand to the PM. He can answer with phrases chosen almost at random from his staff’s jargon generator, or simply drop a hot potato as he did last week with Richard Holden’s Bill banning first cousin marriage.

The steaming tuber this week was on a related matter, the 2021 murder of Sir David Amess MP by Ali Harbi Ali, the son of Somali immigrants. It was briefly served up by Kemi Badenoch who hoped the Prime Minister would agree that ‘getting the response to his murder right is vital not just to his family but to our democracy’; naturally Starmer did. Disappointingly, Kemi had nothing to add to the Home Secretary’s written response two days ago to Amess’ family that it was ‘"hard to see how an inquiry would be able to go beyond" killer Ali Harbi Ali's trial and recently published Prevent learning review.’

Actually not hard, one would think, bearing in mind that another case three years later, that of the Southport mass-killer Axel Rudakubana, was also one in which multiple referrals had previously been made to Prevent (review here) without success. Old lessons still not learned?

Once again, the Spud-U-Don’t-Like was relegated to almost the end of the session, where Andrew Rosindell (Con) pleaded with Sir Keir to reverse the no-inquiry decision so that the ‘related failure of the Prevent programme’ could be considered. Predictably the PM ignored that last and - with a sorrowing tone - said he would answer the ‘heartbroken’ Amess family’s questions that afternoon.

The elephant in the room is unmissable but nobody in the Debating Chamber is rude enough to point it out. Yet if the Labour Party thinks that by tactical negligence it can hold onto and control supporters from a restive and numerically growing minority it is surely mistaken. Reform’s disarray, if it continues, may suit the established Parties but will merely allow unresolved issues to compound until they come to a head, a consequence something all of us would wish to Prevent.

Worse than the blind official eye is the cross-party collusion to undermine the impartiality of the law. Andrew Snowden (Con) asked whether the Government’s adoption of the Sentencing Council’s recommendation to take into account the ethnicity and religion of offenders proved that the PM ‘has been two-tier Keir all along?’ Another own goal: Starmer reminded him that the proposal had been drafted in 2024 and welcomed by the Conservatives.

Similarly when Labour’s Shaun Davies said that the Tories had just tried to revive the Rwanda deportation plan the PM gloated that they had been running ‘an open borders experiment’ and then wasted £700 million removing four ‘volunteers’ whereas Labour had already ‘removed 19,000 people who should not be here.’

The opening question came from the Lib Dem’s Mike Martin, who spoke of the Russian abduction of Ukrainian children and asked Starmer to confirm that ‘British peacekeeping troops will be deployed to Ukraine only if the peacekeeping deal includes both the return of Ukraine’s children and Putin’s prosecution,’ the arrest warrant for the latter having been issued by the ICC in 2023. It’s not clear from this whether Martin was trying to forestall the insertion of British peacekeepers into Ukraine but in any case the PM generalised his response into a wish for ‘a lasting, just settlement for peace.’ The history of that conflict is a can of worms carefully left unopened, though all can see the terrible consequences.

However Russia must remain our eternal enemy - Classicfm’s news today took pains to reveal that the captain of the cargo ship that rammed the jet-fuel tanker off the Yorkshire coast is Russian. We look forward to early public revelation of all criminals’ nationality and ethnicity in future.

Starmer’s replies to Badenoch were of the usual spin-the-wheel nature. Kemi spoke of soaring nursery fees; Sir Keir boasted of breakfast clubs and how dare she ‘denigrate’ them. Was trash uncollected in Birmingham as well as what Starmer spoke across the Dispatch Box? Why, he countered, wages were up (without saying whose, or how many were still in work to receive them.) Was his Budget killing farmers? Lo, it provided for £5 billion over two years (for ‘sustainable farming and nature recovery.’)

Yet had not the Sustainable Farming Incentive just been ‘scrapped, or withdrawn’? Left hanging, that might have been a Carman-like poser, but no, Kemi pootled straight on to remarks on the trashing of the economy, which allowed Sir Keir to wheel out the 11% inflation under the Tories and his old friend the ‘£22 billion black hole.’

We have to take a longer view on this dire performative political wrangling: our national ruin began in August 1914. Despite the occasional refreshing shower the pond has been steadily drying out since then and the fish are biting each other’s tails. We live with the consequences, economic, demographic and social, of war and war fever.

Prehistoric civilisations - wiped out in the Younger Dryas?

An intriguing video on the evidence for much older civilisations that may have been wiped out in a global cataclysm some 12,900 years ago.

US: Future History

Looking back forty years, a writer in 2060 remarked on the tumultuous rise to power of a radical figure in US politics:

‘What he offered above all was a fierce, unreflective determination to halt America’s slide into ruin and to restore its prominence in the world. This was such an unlikely prospect that he had to couch it in dream-like terms: “Somewhere ahead lies greatness for our country again; this I know in my heart.”

‘Trump’s election heralded the start of a new era - an era that would be harsher, more divisive, but ultimately more prosperous and less chaotic than the one that had gone before.’

In reality the writer is John Preston and the quotation is adapted from his 2016 book on the Thorpe scandal; substitute Mrs Thatcher for Trump and the UK for America.

Mrs T’s reforms were met with screaming resistance and she herself a bitter hatred that endures to this day in certain quarters.

Now we see the same in the US. It is almost as though Trump’s opponents are praying for his utter failure, blind to the fact that this also implies further turmoil and decline for their own country.

For my part, whatever the President’s personal flaws, I hope that he and the US will succeed, particularly in three areas:

• To cease involvement in foreign wars that do no good abroad or at home
• To maintain the integrity and security of the United States against unnecessary, illegal and potentially dangerous immigration
• To improve the life chances of poorer Americans by protecting their living standards against foreign competitors who enjoy lasting structural economic advantages

There is also the need to cleanse the Augean stables of America’s institutions that have become partisan and corrupt, so undermining trust in authority and the cohesion of the Republic.

Aside from wishing to see peace, justice and freedom in the US as I would wish it everywhere else, I have an interest to declare, in that my family’s future lies with the descendants of my brother, who took American citizenship years ago with my enthusiastic encouragement.

Doubtless Mr Trump’s administration will make mistakes, as all its predecessors have done, but unless his opponents actually hate and despise the common people they should work as a loyal opposition to deter and correct damaging errors.

Britain has not always enjoyed such luck. While there was a need to introduce supply side reforms and to combat doctrinaire Communist subversion, Mrs Thatcher was persuaded to courses of action that (for example) inadvertently weakened our long-term industrial capacity and disrupted our system of occupational pensions. It also took her some time to understand the true nature of the European Union. Who was advising her, when and why? Leaders must remain constantly aware of the dangers posed by flappers who have their own agendas.

Can America stand united again, or will it continue to be a perilously divided house? ‘A republic, if you can keep it,’ said Benjamin Franklin.

Shared with the Bruges Group blog

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

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.)