Beleaguered: PMQs 2nd April 2025

Before the session began the Speaker read out a statement of his recent visit to the Ukrainian Parliament. He and other European assembly Speakers were there for the third anniversary of the Russian massacre at Bucha. He took with him messages of support from the Commons and the major English parties. The PM also referenced Bucha in his opening remarks. Later the Lib Dem Leader commended Starmer for his ‘commendable leadership over Ukraine.’

The consensus is dangerously comfortable and exclusionary. Nobody mentioned the ECHR’s ruling last month that Ukraine had failed to prevent the massacre of ‘anti-Nazi activists’ at Odessa in 2014; or the 14,000 killed by Ukrainian forces in the Donbas before Putin’s invasion. It is not even clear who in Parliament understands the white-hot hatreds at work in Ukraine, where Stalin killed millions in the Thirties; or that Russia today is not the USSR, which was a Communist bloc set on world domination; or the risks we run in stoking conflict with a nuclear power that could easily finish us with an EMP as Peter Hitchens has pointed out.

Our foreign relations are in further difficulties. The Chagos Islands giveaway is still a hot issue and was the subject of another ‘urgent question’ from the Opposition straight after this session (the USA seems unconcerned, perhaps mistakenly - China takes a long strategic view.) Attempts to stave off the impact of President Trump’s tariffs have been complicated by our lamentable record on free speech - though less so than the EU’s, it turns out.

The PM is clearly aware of a creeping crisis. He is fond of evasion and stock responses but his phraseology gives the game away. Today he said ‘national interest’ five times and ‘calm and pragmatic’ three times (and ‘calm’ once more after that.)

Calm was needed: the Lib Dem Leader urged a ‘coalition of the willing’ (including the EU and Commonwealth) against the US tariffs and Sir Keir replied that he had to keep options open.

Nevertheless the NIC hike was going ahead, whatever the objections from the other side - and as before, Mrs Badenoch was caught on the PM’s fork of not wanting it yet being unwilling to say she would reverse it. Again, he noted that the Conservatives were complaining about council tax increases that Labour had promised to freeze, but they themselves had allowed increases in twelve of their post-2010 years in power.

Sir Keir came under fire from another direction. Ayoub Khan (Independent, Birmingham Perry Barr) said that the piles of uncollected rubbish in Labour-run Brum were ‘so large that they can be seen by satellites orbiting in space.’ For him, it demonstrated that Labour were unable to govern. However Khan omitted to mention that a major factor in the Council’s financial problems leading to the bin strike stemmed from a court ruling upholding women’s entitlement to equal pay, backdated and costing £760 million.

It was the chance for a classic socialist point but the PM failed to exploit it. Instead he gave a familiar recitation on increased NHS appointments, the rise in the national minimum wage and ‘record investment into this country, growing the economy.’ The first is a service improvement but the second a potential threat to employment and the third, if Starmer’s dealings with Bill Gates and Larry Fink are a factor, potentially a matter of concern: what is left to sell off?

Ed Davey gave an example of what happens when we sell national assets to foreigners. In 2022 the American private equity firm KKR bought a 25% stake in Northumbrian Water, steeply increased consumers’ bills and last year dumped almost a million tonnes of raw sewage into a conservation area. Now it wanted to buy into Thames Water. Starmer said the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 addressed some of the issues ‘but we will go further.’

Returning to Ayoub Khan, it seems he himself is not aiming for socialist equality but special treatment. For example, he and many of his co-religionists seek to influence our foreign policy respecting Gaza - a convert to Islam very nearly unseated Jess Phillips MP on that issue in last summer’s General Election. (Labour’s Jayne Kirkham also called for the restoration of aid and supplies to the Strip, as well as an investigation into the killing of aid workers there last year.) Another Birmingham MP, Tahir Ali (Labour), has been campaigning for a new airport in Pakistan. Since 1689 our Constitution has been based on national sovereignty, but internationalism is raising its head once again.

The Labour Party has its hands full trying to hold onto this vigorously universalist element in its ranks, which is a growing one: a 2017 study by Pew Research estimates that by 2050 Muslims may comprise up to 17% of the UK population. The Tories may be half-dead, yet how long will it be before Labour too are ‘Yesterday’s Men?’

There is still a little life left in the Conservative dog: only yesterday and at the last moment, but thanks to the efforts of Robert Jenryck MP, the Sentencing Council suspended its advice to judges to offer ‘two-tier’ justice to miscreants. Maybe one day the ‘protected characteristics’ general challenge to impartial law will be overturned.

Another sign that Labour’s juggernaut may swerve slightly came in last week’s PMQs when Kim ‘Reaper’ Leadbeater MP, already backtracking on the timetable for implementation of her ‘assisted dying’ bill, sought an assurance of continued support from Starmer. He carefully noted that there were ‘different views’ on the issue, identified her ‘as the Bill’s promoter’ and said he would work with her as he would ‘for every private Member’s Bill that passes Second Reading.’ One feels a gentle distancing in progress.

There were so many other items put on the PM’s to-do list. Claire Hanna (SDLP) wanted an assurance that the digital services tax would not be cut, so as not to pander to Trump’s ‘bullying’. Gavin Robinson (DUP) wished the PM to resist EU ‘retaliatory action’ on imports to Northern Ireland. Tim Farron (Lib Dem) asked for help to end the poverty of hill farmers and to maintain the landscape. Mrs Elsie Blundell (Labour) wanted skilled jobs for her Mancunian ‘grafters’. A North Devon hospital was still in need of long overdue repairs, said Ian Roome (Lib Dem.) Thousands of Scunthorpe steelworkers were facing redundancy, said Martin Vickers (Con). Greg Smith (Con) said increased costs created by the Government were causing layoffs at a local chocolate-maker (out came the ‘£22 billion black hole’ in reply.)

All this and more. Uneasy lies the head that wears the cloth cap.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Niamh Crowley, by JD

Niamh Crowley is an Irish violinist and was a child prodigy, appearing on television at the age of five (see final video below.)

She began her musical training at the age of four and attended the Royal Irish Academy of Music for eleven years. She continued her studies in Violin and Piano at the Royal College of Music, London.Niamh works regularly with the National Symphony Orchestra, RTE Concert Orchestra, and the National Sinfonia. She is an experienced recitalist and has performed concertos with many orchestras including Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the RTE,Concert Orchestra and Saint-Saens Violin Concerto in the National Concert Hall, Dublin.

http://homepage.eircom.net/~samusic/about.htm

Not a Theme Night - Muinera (Niamh Crowley and gang)

Not a Theme Night - Fiddle Faddle (Niamh Crowley)

Not A Theme Night - Glór Shligigh (Niamh Crowley)

Song for Guy (Niamh Crowley and Kieran Quinn)

Niamh Crowley performs 'Csárdás', a piece she also performed on The Late Late Toy Show as a child.

A Rat Writes

 

‘Oo does ‘er think she is, slagging off us rats?

We’m doin’ a service to the public, cleanin’ up the mess out the black bags. Good as a job in town, as the wife’s uncle used ter say.

If ‘er wants to criticise chobblin’ she can ‘ave a go at David Lammy what spent seven thousand on biscuits.

Yampy cow.

Fog of war: PMQs & ‘Spring Statement’ 26th March 2025

The PM “is not answering the question about discipline in schools … [and] did not answer the question about compensating schools for the jobs tax,” said the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch.

“[Sir Keir] did not answer the point on the digital services tax,” said the Lib Dems’ leader Sir Ed Davey, who wanted him to rule out scrapping it.

“[Starmer’s] answer had nothing to do with my question,” said Sir Julian Lewis (Con), “which was to ask why the Government are ordering the permanent sealing of Britain’s only two shale gas wells.”

The PM goes through the motions at question time, simply as a tedious obligation. Objections can be ignored; just put up a smokescreen. The grand strategy has been set and there is no turning back.

David Starkey calls Labour’s approach “magical thinking“, believing in the power of words until they collide with hard reality. The increases in the minimum wage and employment protection legislation, plus the NIC hike, were intended to improve the lot of working people, but they also incentivised employers to lay off staff and not take on more.

Like WWI generals, the Government has decided not to retreat and regroup, but go for ‘one more push.’ They will not repeal those previous measures, but in the hope of making the books balance, they will cut welfare benefits.

The sad consequences are predictable. When Labour’s Sojan Joseph asked how a blind constituent could get a job, the PM spoke of money invested in help programmes and “the right to try work guarantee” – (yes, ‘try’). When the SNP’s Stephen Flynn, himself previously disabled, asked Starmer to explain to children of the disabled “how the Labour Party making mum and dad poorer will lift them out of poverty”, he got some sympathy and another attack on the Scottish Government.

Bradley Thomas (Con) had another doomed go at modifying damaging Government policy. The NIC increase was going to cost Acorns hospice an extra £416,000. Would the PM exempt hospices from this burden? Starmer dodged into talk of additional funding for equipment, etc., and when greeted with Conservatives’ cries and groans, snapped that they “would have a lot more value if they started their questions with an apology for crashing the economy in the first place”. So there.

Yes, rhetoric trumps logic – as it did in Sir Keir’s response to Sir Julian Lewis’s question on capping shale gas wells that might be needed in an energy emergency. The PM focused on the drive for renewable energy in the aspiration to “independence and the next generation of jobs and to lower bills”, without considering the possibility of failure. He celebrated record investment in this so that “a tyrant like Putin cannot put his boot on our throat”.

Thank goodness for bogeymen: Starmer had opened the session by welcoming in the gallery a delegation from the Bring Kids Back (from Russia) initiative, founded by his khaki-sweatshirted pal Zelensky. The PM’s Scottish Labour friend Blair McDougall called the abductions ‘an act of pure evil’, and Starmer concurred – “sickening”. Hate is the chilli in Labour’s cuisine; it masks duff ingredients.

Yet if only this Government could succeed! The country has been let down for such a long time. The PM may prevaricate in these weekly verbal confrontations, but it is also easy for him to counterattack the Conservative Opposition, whose previous incompetence and voter betrayal have led us to this pass.

Since there is little else that she can come at the PM with that does not invite the reply ‘your lot got us into this’ or ‘your lot did the same’, Ms Badenoch’s theme this time was education. She asked why had Labour voted against banning phones in schools, which disrupted lessons? It should have been relatively easy to do if, as the PM said, most schools did so already (but he was wrong, said Kemi). Denying the accusation that he was “ideological” (!), Starmer ducked the shot and diverted attention to the need to control the content accessed by young people, in school or out.

Censorship is a can of worms. Sir Ed Davey was keen on media regulation, too, citing the currently popular TV drama ‘Adolescence’, which portrays a white British teenager (it would have to be, one supposes) seduced by online material into committing murder. The narrative may additionally imply a false justification for further suppressing opinion, something now in progress with the new Online Safety Act that is already chilling political comment threads.

Would the PM “guarantee that British laws on tax and social media will be written in this House, and not the White House?” asked Sir Ed, adding a little anti-American spice to counterbalance today’s anti-Russian sentiment. The PM welcomed the Lib Dem leader’s illiberal support, saying: “We need to see whether we can go further on this issue, because there are concerns about whether the measures go far enough.”

But the House was waiting for the main event: Rachel Reeves’ post-PMQs supplementary ‘spring statement’ (aka Daffodil Budget?) that was coming less than five months after the first unadmitted disaster. She reaffirmed “our commitment to deliver just one major fiscal event a year” after this one, for now it would put us back on course, as the Office for Budget Responsibility seemed to confirm in her welter of optimistic statistics.

We shall see. ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy’, as the saying goes, and there are more contacts with reality to come. The spring offensive has yet to claim its full toll of casualties.

Crossposted from Wolves of Westminster

FRIDAY MUSIC: The Neville Brothers, by JD

The Neville Brothers were an American R&B/soul/funk group, formed in 1976 in New Orleans, Louisiana. They were four brothers; Art (1937–2019), Charles (1938–2018), Aaron (b. 1941), and Cyril (b. 1948).

The group formally disbanded in 2012 but reunited in 2015 for a farewell concert in New Orleans. Charles Neville died of pancreatic cancer on April 26, 2018, at the age of 79. Art Neville died on July 22, 2019, at the age of 81. A cause of death was not provided.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neville_Brothers

The Neville Brothers - Bird On A Wire

Neville Brothers - Yellow Moon

Healing Chant

LINDA RONSTADT - 'Don't Know Much' (feat. Aaron Neville) 1989

The Neville Brothers - Don't Take Away My Heaven (Live at Farm Aid 1994)

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

FRIDAY MUSIC: Lindisfarne

Trying to unravel the origin of Tyneside folk/rock band Lindisfarne and their link to founder member and principal song writer Alan Hull is enough to give anybody a headache so I will not even try. Instead I will just let you work it out for yourselves from these various links if you are so inclined:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011vbk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Hull
https://www.lindisfarne.co.uk/

Sadly Alan Hull died in November 1995 at the age of 50. To those who knew him his early death was not exactly a surprise given his rather unhealthy lifestyle. He drank too much, he smoked too much and consumed too much greasy and fatty foods. The drink and the greasy food all featured in the lyrics of his songs usually in a humorous way. And his love of Newcastle United makes this week an appropriate time to celebrate his and Lindisfarne's music after the 'Toon' won their first domestic trophy for seventy years. At last, let's hope it is not another seventy years for the next one!!

Lindisfarne - Run For Home (Top Of The Pops 1978) (Remastered)

Lindisfarne Meet Me On The Corner

Lindisfarne"Lady Eleanor" 2003

Lindisfarne - Fog On The Tyne (NRK Tenmag 1972)

Coming home Newcastle (with lyrics)

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.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Maria Muldaur, by JD

Maria Muldaur (born Maria Grazia Rosa Domenica D'Amato September 12, 1942) is an American folk and blues singer who was part of the American folk music revival in the early 1960s. She recorded the 1973 hit song “Midnight at the Oasis” and has recorded albums in the folk, blues, early jazz, gospel, country and R&B traditions.

https://mariamuldaur.com/bio

Midnight at the Oasis

Don't you feel my leg

Live in concert....

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