Zelo Street

Sunday, 21 June 2026

So Welcome Back Andy Burnham

In the end it was not even close: Thursday’s by-election in the constituency of Makerfield resulted in a resounding win for Labour, which, following the humiliation of Gorton and Denton, had allowed Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to stand as their candidate. The much-vaunted Reform UK challenger, Rob Kenyon, came second, but well over 9,000 votes adrift.

The limited company headed by Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, which had scored more than 50% of the popular vote in the area earlier this year, in a round of local elections that had proved disastrous for Labour, managed a mere 35% to Burnham’s 55%. Rumours continue to suggest that Farage may not be long for the Reform UK leadership. Likewise Keir Starmer for Labour.

Because that was the real, not always stated, reason for Burnham’s return. The current Labour leader is merely the figurehead of grotesquely corrupt Labour Together. He lied to get the top job. His “handler” Morgan McSweeney boasted - or others boasted on his behalf - that Labour Together had worked to deliberately throw the 2019 General Election. Membership has plummeted as a result.

And that is where a Burnham leadership comes in, or so many in the wider Labour movement will be hoping. There were lots of activists turning out for his campaign, but the problem at a General Election, or round of local elections, is that covering the wider ground becomes less easy as party members become less willing to turn out, and there are less of them in the first place.

Whether or not Starmer contests a leadership election is less important than the fact that his time is up. Burnham’s election should have told him that. Some in the current cabinet are telling Starmer to set a timetable for his departure; others will join in, fuel the momentum. That is not the difficult part for Burnham. Making the Labour Party electable nationwide once more - that’s the hard bit.

There are some Labour MPs who should not be in Parliament. At all. Peter Kyle is one of them: only last week, it was revealed that one of his constituents had contacted him to express her horror at events in Gaza. His office contacted the cops. THEY CALLED THE COPS ON A CONCERNED CONSTITUENT. After a whole year, the case was thrown out. The constituent was awarded costs.

That alone should be an immediate resignation issue. No waiting for the next General Election, no hanging around. Maybe Kyle disagreed with her. That is no excuse to call the cops. Staying with Gaza, the Government’s authoritarian crackdown on dissent is losing them support. Their backing for the Israelis is losing them yet more. Burnham cannot deflect or equivocate here.

Nor can he paper over the gaping cracks in the Government taking its heads off the ball. While Starmer and his colleagues have banged on about anti-Semitism, criminalising middle-aged women, the real threat - the far-right and their fellow travellers trying to make mass deportation of non-white British citizens respectable - have mainly evaded attention. That has to stop.

Paranoid wacko Rupert Lowe - too barking even for the Farage Falange - is now claiming that non-white citizens, whom Lowe likes to claim are all of Pakistani heritage, have over the years raped around a quarter of a million women and girls. The figure is based on a guess. It is the most grotesque exaggeration. Where are the Starmer stumblers? Absent elsewhere.

Demonisation of minorities, and especially Muslims, has been allowed to take hold, and, indeed, has become fashionable within the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press. If anything is making the streets less safe, it is this whipping up of the mob. Where is Starmer’s challenge to the racist, fascist and dishonest far right? As before, it is absent elsewhere.

Andy Burnham needs to take on board Galbraith’s definition of leadership: “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership”. Living standards. The NHS. A decent environment. And not authoritarianism.

Burnham must offer not only honesty, but vision. And hope that tomorrow will be better than today for all those have-nots. No pressure, then.

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Sunday, 10 May 2026

New New Labour - No Scooby, No Future

Endless calls for activists to turn out, endless calls for members to donate, endless calls to give support one more time to a party that had already alienated so much of its core constituency. The result was as predictable as it was inevitable: New New Labour took, as the Norwegian commentator put it, one hell of a beating in the latest round of local elections.

And so continued an inevitable decline, the next peeling back of the rotten onion. First had come the gloating revelation that, while activists were getting serious amounts of abuse on the doorstep in the 2019 General Election campaign, those who subsequently took charge of Labour were working behind the scenes to throw the contest. And then there was Keir Starmer.

The new party leader sold himself to the membership with a manifesto on which he then reneged. He lied his way to the Top Job. Then came changes designed to keep the left from taking power ever again. Starmer told party members that if they didn’t like that, the door was open and they could leave. Left-leaning departures were compared to fleas being “shaken off”.

Could it get worse? Sure thing: revelations about the behind the scenes presence of one Peter Mandelson chased away more members, persuaded yet more to stay at home or be absent elsewhere when the call for canvassers, leafletters and phone bankers came. Mandelson’s appointment as UK ambassador to the USA opened yet another can of worms.

But, came the Mandelson faction’s response, the left had nowhere else to go, no other place on the ballot paper to mark their cross. This was their clincher, the cornerstone that allowed them to kick out the left, tack to the right and capture all those social conservatives. But, as Captain Blackadder might have observed, there was only one thing wrong with that: it was bollocks.

Worse, Starmer had scored a monumental own goal when a report he commissioned - from Martin Forde KC - was effectively shelved and dismissed. Bad mistake: the report described a “hierarchy of racism” within the party. So no-one should have been surprised when Nels Abbey noted that “Black and Brown Britons appear to be done with Labour”.

Tacking right, being tough on alleged anti-Semitism while appearing to take all other racism and bigotry less than seriously, all came back to bite New New Labour last week. Social conservatives voted for Reform UK, latest vehicle for Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. Many diverse communities, especially in London, voted en masse for the Greens.

Our free and fearless press’ demonising of Green Party leader Zack Polanski had little effect. Their lack of Reform UK scrutiny was so, so telling: Farage and his pals are an Establishment party. The rest of the Establishment gives the game away by giving Reform UK a free pass, right down to the party fielding, and getting elected, an actual Holocaust denier.

The attacks on Polanski and the Greens - trying the anti-Semitism smear while publishing anti-Semitic caricatures of Zack - have convinced no-one. Labour using Steve Reed - who had to apologise for calling a Jewish businessman a “puppet master” - to deploy smears against the Greens would be comical, were it not so jaw-droppingly stupid, so utterly tragic.

And contributing in no small measure to Labour losing more than half the seats it was defending is the uncritical support of the Israelis bombing, shelling, sniping, rocketing and otherwise burning alive tens of thousands of people, and not only in Gaza and the West Bank. The attempts to smear any criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitism” aren’t working. Because it isn’t.

The conclusion is as before: the Labour Together cancer must be cut out before it kills a once great party stone dead. The Greens need to push back - as aggressively as it takes - against the anti-Semitism smears, because New New Labour is good at one thing, and one thing alone - dirty tricks.

Keir Starmer and his cabal have taken a huge Parliamentary majority and wasted the freedom it gave them to be a genuinely progressive force, a force for good. Now they are falling apart. No-one should be in the least surprised.

Wednesday, 1 April 2026

Israel Loses Labour Yet More Support

The Labour leadership, and their cheerleaders in our free and fearless press, remain in denial when their disastrous showing in the Gorton and Denton by-election gets aired. This has extended to supposedly senior Labour figures going on the record to back the claims of Reform UK Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage that it was the Scary Muslims™ voting en masse.

Sinking to the level of the far right will, with the inevitability of night following day, cause yet more former Labour voters to go elsewhere. Now, with a round of local elections coming up in May, has come another Red Team foot in mouth episode so serious, and so revulsion inducing, to remind even more voters that they may be best advised abandoning Labour. For good.

Once again, it is the behaviour of the Israeli Government and its armed forces, together with a hopelessly weak and inadequate response from Keir Starmer and his cabinet faithful, that has come riding to the assistance of the Greens, and maybe even the Lib Dems. Israel has brought back the death penalty. But only for Palestinians. To be handed down by military courts.

That’s the same military courts that have a conviction rate of more than 97% for Palestinians who are brought before them. There would be no appeal against sentencing. Some Knesset members wore little noose emblems to the vote, demonstrating their detachment from basic humanity. Then they broke open the sparkling wine after the vote went in their favour.

Some of the pro-Israel social media brains trust have loudly denounced criticism of an act that goes way beyond what happened in Apartheid South Africa, adding that the new law is “only for terrorists”. This display of stupidity misses the ability of the Israelis to beat confessions out of their detainees, and if those detainees die during interrogation, too bad, eh?

So, death penalty, but only for Palestinians. What should the response of the UK Government have been? What would a Government in touch with its people have done? What would a cabinet still clinging on to a little basic humanity have done? What would Nietzsche have done? Sadly, the Starmer gang does not operate on that lofty intellectual plane.

Instead, we have Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper whimpering “My statement with France, Germany and Italy on our united opposition to Israel’s death penalty law. The death penalty is wrong and we oppose it around the world”. No summoning of the Israeli ambassador. No cutting off of arms sales. No sanctions. No withdrawal of intelligence support for Israel.

That, together with Labour having to field activists, leafletters and canvassers across a rather greater number of campaigns than they did in Gorton and Denton, and, indeed, without all those who have already said goodbye to the party after realising the cabal in charge of it worked to throw the 2019 elections, and lied to get Starmer the Top Job, will lose yet more votes.

What looks even worse to many voters is seeing the Israelis bomb, rocket, shell, incinerate and just execute civilians at will, while none of those in the Labour Friends of Israel group, in public at least, admit that enough is enough and they are quitting their affiliation. After all, the last one to do that was Rupa Huq, who was subsequently smeared with allegations of anti-Semitism.

False allegations, mind, but a reminder to those who accepted donations from steadfast supporters of Israel that it’s not free money. Anyone who thought there would never be a quid pro quo needs to give their head a wobble. The Greens, on the other hand, have unequivocally condemned Israel.

Their leader Zack Polanski put it directly: “This is Apartheid. It's morally disgusting - and comes at the same time as Israel is committing an ongoing genocide. To see the Labour Government defend Israel repeatedly will horrify the British public - it cannot go on like this”. The anti-Semitism smears are, as a result, being deployed against him and his party. But it isn’t working.

Nor will Labour’s local election campaign be working. And nor will the cadre of client journalists turn that around. The establishment keeps on giving Israel a free pass. The voters do not. Labour’s future looks grim. Deservedly so.

Saturday, 28 February 2026

Labour’s Gorton And Denton Shame

And so it came to pass that one of those inconvenient Parliamentary by-elections came along, but this should not have proved an insurmountable task for Labour: the constituency, Gorton and Denton, had been held back in 2024 with a vote share of over 50%. Moreover, Labour had the services of Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham on offer as a candidate.

When incumbent Andrew Gwynne stepped down on health grounds, there was little thought that Labour would not only lose the seat, but lose half of that vote share. But that would have been to underestimate the Labour Together cabal now in charge of the party: there is no task that this bunch of clowns cannot royally foul up, and foul it up they did. Royally.

The die was cast early on: Burnham’s offer to run as the Labour candidate was vetoed by a paranoid leadership: if someone genuinely popular were to become leader, what might follow? Being of independent thought, listening to the voters, making a centre-left party a genuinely centre-left party, doing away with the authoritarian control freakery. This could not be tolerated.

So it was that an ideologically acceptable candidate, Angeliki Stogia, was selected. The public were told that only Labour could beat the Reform UK hopeful, professional bigot Matthew Goodwin, representing the limited company of self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. And it was with representing those opinion polls that Labour began to unravel.

At that point, it was a three-way fight, the third party involved being the Greens, whose candidate, Hannah Spencer, was a plasterer and plumber. In other words, she was a working class woman who worked among the working class. Once upon a time, Labour would have been happy to have folks like her representing them. Not any more. Her presence was ignored.

This, though, was only the start of what developed as a series of smears and other dirty tricks, most of which were eagerly lapped up by the larger part of our free and fearless press, who in turn showed their appetite for low-grade client journalism and guaranteed that the wider electorate will trust them even less, if such a thing were possible, when future contests come around.

It got worse: Labour then leafletted the constituency with a bogus tactical voting claim, going against the genuine tactical voting analysis that indicated voting Green was the best choice. And on election day, a van toured the constituency, and was allegedly parked rather adjacent to at least one polling station, with a smear so blatant as to smack of desperation.

“To all voters … do not listen to these people. Do not vote for the Greens. They want to legalise all drugs and teach our children to use drugs including crack and heroin and let our daughters be used for legal prostitution … No Green madness in our community” it told. Bridget Phillipson later claimed that Labour had fought a “positive campaign”. I’d hate to see a negative one.

So Labour lost. Worse, they came third behind Reform. In turn, there were claims of “sectarianism”, which is code for Scary Muslims. Yes, those followers of The Prophet were so sectarian that they supported a white woman whose party leader is a gay Jewish man. The press was its usual disgusting self, seeing the establishment rejected and whining accordingly.

Keir Starmer was as bad, if not worse. Labour claimed George Galloway was somehow responsible for the Greens’ success. This was tosh. Starmer called Ms Spencer, more or less, a divisive extremist. He claimed - leading a party whose membership is in significant decline - that the Greens could not replicate their success country-wide. Be careful what you wish for, eh?

So much whinging, so many hostages to fortune, and even from the Labour leadership, so much racist dog whistling. They lost, and lost badly. Voters now have “somewhere to go”, to borrow Peter Mandelson’s happy phrase. And all that leadership can do is to claim they’re listening. When they’re not.

Once again: the Labour Together cancer has to be cut out, before it kills a once great party stone dead. Otherwise they will keep losing. That is all.

Monday, 9 February 2026

So Farewell Then Morgan McSweeney

In the end, not even the architect of supposedly making Labour electable again - by the masterstroke of scoring 560,000 fewer votes in 2024 than when the party, so the media establishment narrative goes, was totally unelectable back in 2019 - could save his own skin, not after the revelations concerning Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein.

So it was that Morgan McSweeney fell on his sword, to the great relief of all those who wished he had never wielded it at all, and the thinly disguised pleasure of all those Labour activists who had to take the abuse on the doorstep during the 2019 campaign, knowing now that McSweeney and his cabal were at that same time working to throw the election.

It was to the yet further relief of all those Labour members who took Keir Starmer at his word when he made his pitch for the Labour leadership, who were lied to in order to get them to back McSweeney’s chosen candidate, the reasoning of The Great Mastermind being that they, like all those voters, would have to return to Labour as they had no other political home.

But, sad to say for the Labour Together clique, the deeply unpleasant McSweeney departing the stage is not going to be the end of it. Not only that, the rest of that clique, especially its most visible representatives, know it, but being of less than perfect courage, are lying low right now, while their hero and his “allies” brief our free and fearless press in a rewriting of reality.

Especially mirth-inducing has been Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham claiming “Allies of Morgan McSweeney say he was not responsible for Peter Mandelson’s appointment, contrary to the narrative pushed by Labour’s soft-left”. Narrative, well-sourced, pushed by the real world, more like. Starmer took the decision to appoint Mandelson, but McSweeney was the cheerleader.

It got worse, with “a colleague” adding “an incalculable loss to the government that has devastated those who know how much he has done for Labour. How fitting that his final act in government is to take full responsibility for others’ mistakes, as he has done for years”. Like he took responsibility for Sue Gray. And Angela Rayner? Nah, someone else briefed against her.

Worse, and oh so tellingly, McSweeney’s resignation statement tells that he is stepping down from The Government. But as Downing Street chief of staff, he was merely a political appointee, a salaried staffer, unelected by any constituency of actual voters. OH WHAT A GIVEAWAY! And thus the assertion that Starmer was not really running the show was confirmed.

What happens next? Steve Howell is another focusing on Labour Together: “McSweeney has resigned, but his collaborators are still there. Labour has no chance of a political recovery unless it completely clears out the discredited Labour Together faction, including [Steve] Reed, [Pat] McFadden, [Wes] Streeting, [John] Healey, [Shabana] Mahmood and Starmer himself”.

Any advance on those names? Martin O’Neill has another: “Now that Morgan McSweeney has 'resigned' as chief of staff, if the Labour Party has any hope of restoring any of its reputation, others figures who were close to Mandelson and did his dirty work also need to be removed. Josh Simons also has to go”. Simons, it seems, commissioned the surveillance of critical journalists.

Pamela Fitzpatrick has another very interesting name to add. “In June 2023 I was trying to make a complaint to Lords Standards about Mandelson’s close association with known peadophile Epstein. Meanwhile Luke Akehurst MP was inviting Mandelson to be guest speaker at a Labour First Dinner”. Careful there, you don’t want to be accused of anti-Semitism!

So will McSweeney’s departure be the end of it? Almost certainly not: if Labour does not just lose the Gorton and Denton by-election, but comes third in a formerly safe seat, and has a seriously bad round of local election results in May, Starmer will be out, if he hasn’t walked already. And no amount of spin, on the subject of how much more electable he is, will save him.

McSweeney is out. Starmer will soon follow him. Just rejoice at that news.

Thursday, 5 February 2026

So Farewell Then New New Labour

How would the Labour leadership seek to rebuild bridges with all those activists who took so much abuse on the doorstep during the 2019 General Election campaign, only to find that the cabal now leading the party had been working to throw the contest? How would they heal the wound of Keir Starmer deliberately lying to get himself elected to the Top Job?

What would a rational and sensible leadership have done? What would a pragmatic and responsive top team have done? What would Nietzsche have done? Ah, but New New Labour does not operate on that intellectual plateau. Hence the revelation that Starmer’s minder Morgan McSweeney was himself being guided by none other than Peter Mandelson.

Mandelson, so utterly devalued by his past, was involved with vetting prospective parliamentary candidates for the 2024 General Election. As if his being appointed UK ambassador to the USA was not unwise enough in itself, the ultimate political slimeball was there once more behind the scenes.

But it was not the UK’s free and fearless press that exposed the extent to which Mandelson had infiltrated Labour, the reality of his closeness to the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, or his willingness to allegedly pass the most confidential of information to the USA’s best-connected child abuser. That has come as a result of releases of The Epstein Files in the USA.

So many of those within the media establishment were gushing their praise of Mandelson when he was given the plum job in DC. So many of them were more than happy to socialise with the Prince of Darkness. So many of them, like so many senior Labour MPs, now claim they didn’t really know what Mandelson was like. Except they did, or they were totally naive.

Anyone with brain plugged in and a hole in their backside knew of the all too close friendship between Mandelson and Epstein. And that Mandelson, for instance, stayed at Epstein’s pad in New York City during the time that the latter first spent in jail. So the He-Lied-To-Us-Which-Means-We’re-The-Real-Victims-Here schtick is total baloney. It won’t bring alienated Labour activists back into the fold. Nor will it take the heat off Starmer and McSweeney.

As things stand, Labour can wave goodbye to the Gorton and Denton by-election. Wes Streeting can wave goodbye to any chance of becoming Labour leader - another media establishment creation, someone the media likes, but who is disliked by many of the voting public. It’s likely that without Starmer and McSweeney both walking the plank, it’ll only get worse.

Starmer is now saying he’s really, really, really sorry. He’s apologising profusely to Epstein’s victims. But it’s not Starmer who pushed for Mandelson to be given the DC job. It’s McSweeney. And for all those disillusioned activists, those who have left the Labour Party in their droves, this will not cut it. The sleazy, authoritarian, intolerant cabal running the party has to go.

Without their ground game at election time, Labour are finished. After that by-election comes a round of local elections. Shortage of foot soldiers means another horrendous set of results looms large. Removal of those who shat on Sue Grey, may have been not unconnected with Angela Rayner resigning, and who removed so many prospective candidates, is the only way out.

That means Starmer has to go. And working the PM from the shadows, Morgan McSweeney has to go, too, together with his cabal on Labour’s NEC. The media establishment has to tell this rabble of creeps that they will no longer accept the whisper-in-the-ear-drip-of-poison briefing. The Labour Together cancer must be cut out before it kills the party stone dead.

Senior Labour MPs, many in and around the media establishment, and those who have bankrolled those now slowly killing a once great party, need to take a long look in the mirror and realise that they have become the problem. The public is through with the lying, smearing, gaslighting and sleaze. They’re not the masters of the universe. They’re not even very naughty boys.

They’re just a stain on the body politic. And it’s time to wipe it clean.

Thursday, 22 January 2026

Trump Is Gaga - Say So, BBC

There has been a marked reluctance at some media outlets to call out the deteriorating mental state of Combover Crybaby Donald Trump. He rambles incoherently, has difficulty walking in a straight line, seems disoriented, forgets names and places, mixes up names and places, and lies as often as he draws breath. So it was when he rocked up in Davos this week.

He gave a speech, but for The Donald, just reading out what has been written for him is never enough. The off-piste moment was never far away, and so it came to pass. This is, verbatim, part of his shambling delivery.

“But equally importantly, we're cracking down on more than $19 billion in fraud that was stolen by Somalian bandits. Can you believe that Somalian, they turned out to be higher IQ than we thought. We say these are low IQ people. How did they go into Minnesota and steal all that money? We have, you know, they’re pirates, they're good pirates, but we shoot them out of the water just like we shoot the drug boats out.” Drug boats in Minnesota?

There was more. “They're not pirating too many boats lately, do you notice? When they go out into those boats, they want to take over a billion and a half dollar tanker, load it up with oil, and they say, ‘We're going to blow up your boat, they have powerful weapons.’ You hit the side of the boat, you blow the whole thing up. The insurance companies are petrified, so they say, ‘Just give them the boat, we'll give them money instead.’” Eh? Er, do go on.

“And I don't do that. We blow them right to hell out of the water. We see them going out, we blow them out of the water. We don't have any pirates so much anymore. We do. They won't be there long. We've cut down with the hitting of the boats that are loaded up with drugs, including submarines.”

So not in Minnesota, then. And there was yet more. “Can you believe they actually buy some, they call mini subs. Very fast. They're meant for drugs. We've knocked out to them the Democrats. They were fishing. You have ruined somebody's fishing. We can't, I would say, a submarine is not a fishing boat. You don't fish. But we've knocked down drugs by water. The oceans, the sea, by 97.2%. Think of that.” Anyone still hanging on in there?

Because he wasn’t finished. “And I actually say, ‘Who the hell are the 3%?’ Because I would not want to be piled in one of those boats. We knocked them down and now we're going to start on land. We're going to knock it all out. The land is the easy part. What we did on sea is incredible. And that's our great military.” He’s not all there. But not all media outlets are saying so.

Tom Nichols at The Atlantic was saying so. “No one can be watching this Davos speech and reach any conclusion but that the President of the United States is mentally disturbed and that something is deeply wrong with him. This is both embarrassing and extremely dangerous”. Aaron Rupar added “Trump is now confusing Greenland and Iceland”. Three times.

Adam Schwarz noted “Trump in Davos, Switzerland: ‘Without us, right now you'd all be speaking German’. German is the main language of Switzerland”. Vatnik Soup concluded “While his entourage is in Davos and nobody is controlling his output, you can clearly see Trump as he is: A demented old man in cognitive decline. A mad king. Listen to this and tell me this couldn’t be any elderly man rambling in a nursing home”. So what of the BBC?

Faisal Islam’s report from inside the room did not make any mention of Trump’s incoherent rambling. It did talk of the speech taking a dark turn, but not of the disbelief among those watching. What happened? Has there been another of those words behind the scenes from Robbie Gibb?

We are told that “Trump is shaking the world order more than any president since WW2”. There is a fact check of his “free-wheeling speech”, together with its “contested claims”. The Corporation’s website tells “US allies won't forget Trump Greenland crisis”. But his clear cognitive decline is seemingly off limits. It should not be. Trump is not fit to be President.

As in, yet more unfit than he was at the beginning of his first term. He’s declining before our eyes. Tell us, BBC. That’s what you’re there for.

Sunday, 18 January 2026

Zack Polanski And Anti-Semitism

The Green Party, in no small measure because of its new leader Zack Polanski, is advancing in the opinion polls. One recent survey suggested that Keir Starmer could be vulnerable to losing his seat to a Green opponent. And then, by total coincidence you understand, the nudges and winks began, the first signs of a concerted attempt to pin anti-Semitism on the Greens.

But here a problem entered: Polanski is Jewish. What to do? Fortunately for anyone needing to see the direction of travel, help was on hand from the so-called “Anti-Semitism Czar”, “Lord” John Mann, who is hot on the slightest hint of anti-Semitism, providing someone explains it to him first, nice and slowly. “Lord” Mann suddenly decided to go after Polanski.

In doing so, he revealed the Modus Operandi: “he refuses to deal with antisemitism in his own Party”. Owen Jones spelt out what is likely to happen next. “Expect the state to try and do over the Green Party on bogus claims of institutionalised antisemitism. This could involve John Mann, and certainly the EHRC … whose Commissioners are handpicked by the government”.

And for those whose first thought is to dismiss Jones’ take as a step too far, he added this: “You might think that trying to crush the only political party led by a Jewish person on grounds of antisemitism is just too ludicrous to pull off. But I would not put it past them”. After all, as he observed of “Lord” Mann, “He's not Jewish, and he is lecturing the only Jewish party leader on antisemitism”. Mann, meanwhile, got a little tetchy with Polanski.

“Perhaps you can identify which antisemitism you have dealt with inside your party as leader? And every manifestation of antisemitism that I have chosen to ignore”. Well, apart from not defending Polanski against the recent cartoons showing him with A Really Big Nose, there are other instances.

Like now disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson authoring a novel which “was also criticised for depicting Jews as ‘controlling the media’ and being able to ‘fiddle’ elections, an evidently antisemitic trope”. Like Jacob Rees Mogg referring to Oliver Letwin and John Bercow (who are both Jewish) as “Illuminati”, an old anti-Semitic trope.

Like Suella Braverman talking of “Cultural Marxism”, a Nazi-era anti-Semitic slur. Like Priti Patel using the phrase “North London Metropolitan Elite”. Maybe I failed to notice “Lord” John Mann’s interventions in all these instances. Nor did I notice “Lord” Mann being on the case of Reform UK Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage over recent allegations.

But all those instances were from the right, while Polanski is most definitely on the left of the political spectrum. Moreover, he “has stated that he believes that the Gaza war is a genocide and should be treated as such by the UK government”, thus drawing to the Greens an increasing number of voters who empathise with the plight of the Palestinians and are critical of Israel.

On top of that, “He has expressed the belief that the British government conflates Jewish people with Israel, and that this ‘makes [him] feel less safe as a Jewish person’”, which will infuriate those running the Labour Party, some of whom actively undermined former leader Jeremy Corbyn in an attempt to throw the 2019 General Election.

Polanski has said he could not imagine supporting a coalition Government led by Keir Starmer, which will also infuriate the pro-Starmer cabal. But having “Lord” Mann going after him is risky, especially as “Mann faced criticism for allegedly perpetuating racial stereotypes against Romani people and travellers in a booklet he produced on antisocial behaviour in 2007”.

No matter, “Lord” Mann has carried on taunting Polanski, playing the victim and suggesting a meeting. File under pointless. But, as Mrs Beckermann tells Charlie Croker in The Italian Job, it wasn’t an accident. Whether it is low grade clowns like “Lord” John Mann, or the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press, the smearing of Zack Polanski will get worse.

The Green Party leader needs to learn from what happened to Corbyn. Because Mann has let slip that this is what is intended for Zack.

Monday, 5 January 2026

Labour Weasels On Venezuela

Combover Crybaby Donald Trump, the living and still breathing definition of an amateur human being, has ordered the armed services of the United States to, effectively, invade Venezuela, which is a sovereign state. Added to this minor breach of international law, he has had the country’s President, Nicolas Maduro, kidnapped, along with his wife.

This is in addition to several acts of piracy upon the high seas, where oil tankers that had loaded up in Venezuelan ports, along with their cargoes, were boarded and seized. Could the charge sheet get any longer? Don’t ask: Maduro has been put on media display, in a flagrant breach of the Geneva Conventions. Worse, Trump did not get Congressional approval beforehand.

But he did consult with the oil industry, so for him, that’s all right, then. He has decreed that the USA is going to “run” Venezuela, which may interest those who remember the chaos in Iraq, when the USA decided to “run” that country. Whichever way you slice it, this is illegal and corrupt behaviour several times over. Which brings us to the international community’s response.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro - whose country is in the line of fire, remember - was unequivocal: “A clan of paedophiles wants to destroy our democracy. To keep Epstein's list from coming out, they send warships to kill fishermen & threaten our neighbour with invasion for their oil”. China has demanded that the US release Maduro. So has Iran.

So, New New Labour, what is the UK Government response to be? How would a confident Government, sure of its interpretation of international law, respond? What would a statesmanlike Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues do? What would a seasoned human rights lawyer, like Keir Starmer, have done? What would Nietzsche have done?

Sadly, the New New Labour Government, so quick to approve the Israeli removal of water and electricity supplies to Gaza in another display of collective punishment, does not operate on such a lofty intellectual plane, and so the response, when it eventually came, was craven in the extreme.

Here’s Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper: “The UK has consistently rejected Nicolas Maduro’s legitimacy, and called for a peaceful transition of power in Venezuela. I have spoken to our Chargé [d’Affaires] in Caracas, and travel advice has now been updated to advise against all travel to Venezuela … As the Prime Minister has made clear, we support international law”. So you’ll be condemning the US breaches of that international law, won’t you?

As if you need to ask. Instead of any kind of condemnation, Mike Tapp, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Migration and Citizenship, has appeared before the inquisition of Sophy Ridge of Sky News, where he was asked if he would condemn any move by the Trump gang to annex Greenland. “We’re not going to give a running commentary”. Christ on a bike. And it got worse.

He couldn’t say Trump should not invade Greenland? “Diplomacy is delicate, which means we're not here to give a running commentary in the news”. It’s not an intellectually demanding call. Flagrant breaches of international law should be condemned. And what of the UK’s Prime Minister?

Here it comes, per the Guardian. “I want to get all the material facts together and we simply haven’t got the full picture at the moment - it is fast moving”. Meaning he spewed out a word salad of excuses rather than show a hint of backbone. Also, he needed to talk to Trump first. And there we all were believing that the UK was a sovereign state. Silly us, eh?

Steven Swinford of the Murdoch Times has, since then, asserted “Britain will refrain from criticising the US over the capture of Maduro amid concerns about angering Donald Trump”. Airstrip One Redux. He wants to seek closer relationships with the EU, but with his tongue firmly up Trump’s arse, the EU might not want to know. Diplomacy is delicate, dontcha know?

What will it take for New New Labour to get it? Invasion of Greenland? Invasion of Colombia? Handing Ukraine to Putin? Voters who have left Labour will not be returning if this is the level of leadership on show.

Monday, 22 December 2025

And So This Is Christmas

The world is now a more dangerous, more unequal, more unjust, more authoritarian, and more uncaring place. Peace is in short supply, except in the fevered minds of more of those Here Today And Gone Tomorrow Politicians. And you can forget goodwill. Where it will end we know not. But end it will, with the grim certainty of night following day.

Christmas tree in Lisbon's Praça do Comércio

Centre stage is the most corrupt régime of any modern and allegedly democratic nation, that of Combover Crybaby Donald Trump. This only occasionally coherent, rambling, terminally vain, and obscenely unpleasant being is about to start a war with Venezuela. Over oil. It will not end well for the USA. Meanwhile, Trump is driving the economy off a cliff.

Those cheering him on are an increasingly compliant media, and the ranks of the obscenely overmonied, who care about themselves, and not about the 98% who are becoming poorer by the day. The political and media class in the UK also cares, mostly, about itself, and not about the 98%, but imagines itself to be in touch with those hard-working people it likes to talk about.

But it isn’t: our media elite likes not-even-one-dimensional politicians like Wes Streeting, somehow unaware that the voters dislike him intensely. The media class likes political operators like Morgan McSweeney, unable or unwilling to confront the reality of Labour’s poll numbers, and that half Labour’s membership has got fed up and left since Keir Starmer became leader.

Fewer members means fewer people to canvass, leaflet, persuade uncommitted voters, and get the vote out. There were hints of that problem in the 2024 election results. Voters know that they are being taken for mugs by New New Labour; many are backing Reform UK and its self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. But here a problem enters.

The UK had a congenital liar, racist bigot and con man as PM before, and look where supporting the disgraced Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson got us. Farage, like Johnson, and like almost all the others in the political and media class, does not give a flying foxtrot about the proles. Some in that media class also treat their audience like so many mugs.

Santa driving his tram. Ho ho ho

Who might exemplify this approach? Step forward Gammon Broadcasting News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) to freely pump misinformation, and, indeed, disinformation, to an audience that can no longer tell fact from fiction. GB News’ approach was deliciously busted recently when their “host” Carole Malone, another deeply unpleasant being, was caught defaming live on air.

Sadly for Ms Malone, she had defamed Doria Raglund, whose better-known daughter is the Duchess of Sussex. The “please don’t sue us, we didn’t mean it, honestly” on-air sort-of-apologies were a thing to behold. But a serious point had been made: this illustrated the contempt in which the media class holds ordinary people. A contempt which has been exposed elsewhere.

And that is in the reportage, and associated punditry, concerning the actions of the Israeli Government and its armed forces, mainly in Gaza, but also in the illegally occupied West Bank, Syria and Lebanon. This time, though, smearing those opposed to slaughtering tens of thousands of human beings as anti-Semites is not working. Because the public can see what’s going on.

This, in turn, brings us back to Starmer and the Labour Together cabal that put him in power. They treat the voters with contempt, and are clueless as to how they get those voters to return. Meanwhile, the Greens make steady progress under Zack Polanski, because he is listening to voters, and cares about them. So it is that we reach Christmas 2025.

With a media and political class, many of whom want to pursue policies that will make the 98% yet poorer. A Government like so many rabbits caught in the headlights. An electorate battered by harsh reality, and a tsunami of bad faith media actors. And little prospect of improvement any time soon.

Feliz Natal e Boas Festas, as they say here in Portugal. Eat, drink, be merry, and hope for an end to the period of elite stupidity. That is all.

Monday, 17 November 2025

Labour’s Loves Long Lost

So with the Government polling well behind Reform UK, a limited company under the control of self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, and now also polling behind a revitalised Green Party, someone in the Starmerbunker has clearly decided that action must be taken to attract voters back to The Red Team. So what is on offer this week?

Shabana Mahmood ...

What would the Labour Party, of which Harold Wilson said was “a moral crusade, or it is nothing”, offer voters? What would a sensible and inclusive party have done? What would Nietzsche have done? Sadly, Labour no longer operates on that intellectual plane. Moral crusades are out. Dog-whistles are in. Performative cruelty and aping Reform UK is also de rigueur.

And so it came to pass that Shabana Mahmood, recently elevated to Home Secretary, told how she was going to be tough on migrants, if not on the causes of migrants. Asylum seekers will only be able to remain in the UK temporarily. If their country of origin is deemed “safe”, they may be deported. And their jewellery may be confiscated to pay towards their accommodation.

This, Ms Mahmood has told, is the only way to see off “dark forces … stirring up anger”, which is not only muddle-headed, but total horseshit. All the changes will do is to embolden the far-right to try and drag migration policy further in their chosen direction. It will not move Labour’s poll numbers, well, not in an upwards direction. Reform UK will profit; so will the Greens.

What else is on the menu? This from the BBC: “Those granted asylum will have to wait 20 years to apply to settle permanently. Previously, they could begin this process after five years … Human rights laws around how the right to family life is interpreted in migration cases will change”. Yes, New New New Labour is going to get tough. Really tough. And it’s really pointless.

If the asylum system is not working, as Government sources are suggesting, then there is stuff all use blaming the poor souls who have endured warfare, prejudice, and the danger of crossing the Channel in an inflatable boat. The system should be overhauled so it works, asylum applications are processed promptly and the amount of accommodation needed reduced to a minimum.

... and her real boss

Instead, the jewellery grab has been confirmed by A Home Office Source: “We will not seize items of jewellery at the border - we aren’t coming after anyone’s sentimental items of jewellery. But where people have a large number of high-value items, we would expect them to contribute to the cost of their accommodation”. No seizure at the border. But maybe somewhere else.

Well, one hates to go full Neil Kinnock, but here we have A Labour Home Secretary of Pakistani heritage - A Labour Home Secretary of Pakistani heritage - scuttling round newsrooms issuing deportation threats and signalling a weakening of Human Rights legislation. Farage and his fellow bigots will think that all their birthdays have come at once.

And it is they who will claim credit for New New New Labour coming over all tough. While Reform UK’s poll numbers may not improve as a result, those voters leaving Labour for the Greens will continue to sap the former’s numbers as they boost the ratings of the latter. Whoever dreamed up this reprehensible set of measures has damaged Labour badly. Very badly.

So it should come as no surprise that increasingly well-regarded Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is not the only name being touted as a replacement for the beleaguered Keir Starmer. Angela Rayner, a genuinely caring and effective politician, is another name in the frame. The only counter of the Morgan McSweeney cabal is to suggest Wes Streeting.

Who is so popular that he almost lost his seat at the last General Election. Thus the cluelessness of McSweeney and his acolytes: while hacks in and around Westminster like Streeting, very few others do. Moreover, McSweeney’s only successes thus far have been in breaking the rules, plus smearing his own party leadership, and throwing the 2019 General Election.

With him effectively in charge, Labour is doomed. No change there, then.

Sunday, 19 October 2025

Maccabi Tel Aviv And No Anti-Semitism

Here’s the BBC scene-setter: “The government has said it is ‘doing everything in our power’ to overturn a ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attending a football match in Birmingham and is exploring what additional resources could be required. On Thursday, Aston Villa said the city's Safety Advisory Group (SAG) decided that fans of the Israeli club should not be permitted to attend the Europa League fixture on 6 November over safety concerns”.

What, then, was the problem? “On Thursday, West Midlands Police said it had classified the fixture as ‘high risk’ based on current intelligence and previous incidents, including ‘violent clashes and hate crime offences’ between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv fans before a match in Amsterdam”.

Dead right there had been hate crime offences. Like the Maccabi Tel Aviv “fans” chanting “Death to Arabs … we will win, we will win, let the Israeli army win … fuck the Arabs … we will take your girls, who love to party … when we rape them, we will shout ‘today is death’ … you’re the whores of Arabs … we are ashamed of you … we will fuck you … and then drink your blood”.

In addition, let us not forget, to the physical violence meted out by said “fans”. Taking all of that to Birmingham, finding a few non-white taxi drivers to rough up, going looking for brown people to kick, it does not require much application of the grey matter to see why the decision was made.

But whoever was speaking for Starmer and his beleaguered Government, this was merely an excuse to claim it was all about WAAAAH WAAAH WAAAH ANTI-SEMITISM! BBC again: “‘No one should be stopped from watching a football game simply because of who they are,’ a government spokesperson said.” Meaning what? And, right on cue, Heeeeeeere’s Keir! Go on PM: “we will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets”. This is total crap.

But This Was The Word, and so it came to pass that new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood declared “Antisemitism is a stain on our society that shames us all. Every football fan, whoever they are, should be able to watch their team in safety. This Government is doing everything in our power to ensure all fans can safely attend the game”. It’s not about anti-Semitism.

Aston Villa has a significant Jewish fanbase. They are, as with all other Villa fans, allowed to go to the match. It’s NOT about anti-Semitism. It’s about being able to safely Police a “high-risk” fixture where the visiting “fans” have significant previous for violent and racist behaviour. This simple fact was not allowed to enter the out-of-touch world of the Pundit Establishment.

And who would like to, er, kick off for the assembled hackery? How about Michael “Oiky” Gove? “Jews not welcome in Birmingham: official”. Conflating Israelis and “all Jews” is an anti-Semitic trope, as per the IHRA definition. Who else would care to fall into this trap? Have a guess.

Yes, the Mail’s not even slightly celebrated blues artiste Whinging Dan Hodges, and his missing question marks: "The Maccabi Tel Aviv ban has become the acid test for this government. Are Jews going to be properly protected on the streets of Britain”. Conflating Israelis and “all Jews”. That’s real anti-Semitism. Well done Dan. Open mouth, insert boot.

And while Tim Shipman of the Murdoch Sunday Times, Kevin Schofield of the HuffPost, Jon Sopel of LBC, and Camillas Tominey and Long were valiantly attempting to toe the establishment line and gaslight the public, the pollsters at YouGov brought bad news: despite the “agree with what we say or you’re an anti-Semite” line, a majority of the public agreed with the ban.

By a majority of 42% to 28%, with Labour supporters registering a yet bigger margin of 47% to 22%. As Rivkah Brown put it, “Politicians and pundits can scream until they're blue in the face that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans are innocent victims of flagrant antisemitism, but the British public knows what's up”.

The public does indeed know. It’s an operational decision by those in and around Birmingham and Aston Villa. Once again, Starmer loses the room, and so do a worryingly high number of journalists. Do better, folks.

Thursday, 16 October 2025

Oh Tommy - Now Threatening MPs

Infamously, Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, now self-appointed Oberscheissenführer of Reform UK, claimed after the 2016 EU referendum that the result had been achieved “without a shot being fired”. As so often with the far-right, he was lying: Labour MP Jo Cox had been murdered by a Britain First supporter. And Ms Cox was not the only MP to be killed carrying out their duties.

Tory David Amess was, like Ms Cox, murdered at a constituency surgery, as recently as 2021. Both killers were given whole life sentences. Which brings us to yet another incoherent self-pitying outburst from Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, in response to an MP doing nothing more than asking a question in the House of Commons.

Daisy Cooper, who represents the constituency of St Albans, which returned her to Parliament last year with a vote share of 56.6%, used Prime Minister’s Questions this week to pass adverse comment on Lennon, which, given she enjoys Parliamentary Privilege, and Lennon is so supportive of free speech (ho ho ho), one might think would not cause him a problem.

Here’s what she said. “The far right, hate preacher Tommy Robinson, who is currently on trial for allegedly refusing to comply with counter-terror Police, claimed that his legal costs are being paid by Elon Musk. It is outrageous that a man who has so much control over what people read online every day could be funding someone who stokes far right extremism on our streets. If this was Putin, the Government surely would act”.

Daisy Cooper MP

So what say the great champion of FREEZE PEACH to that? As if you need to know. “WHAT A DISGUSTING PIECE OF SHIT!!! This lying (citation needed), censorious (lie), authoritarian (even bigger lie) masquerading as a liberal democrat is none other than the Deputy Leader of her party”.

Lennon’s schtick is that Ms Cooper has not posted sufficiently, or perhaps that should be “not in accordance with his requirements” about Grooming Gangs. About which he later claimed “the fact that the MAJORITY of 'grooming gangs' are in fact MUSLIM”, which is another lie.

Ms Cooper maintained her stance in an interview with Andrew Marr on LBC. Which only sent Lennon off again. “CALLING OUT THIS LYING, SLANDERING PIECE OF SHIT FOR WHO SHE IS … I don't give a shit about you, you're a crybully and filthy smear merchant … What a piece of filthy shit she is … Her 'values' have led to the industrialised rape and enslavement of generations of British children”. Another one to keep.

Because that last sentence is actionable. And it gets worse: above a video clearly showing Ms Cooper’s Commons intervention, he sniggered “We have them rattled [Elon Musk] just wait till I get my not guilty verdict”. And another one to cut out and keep: that is a nailed-on threat against the MP.

Those of us who have had this SOB rock up on their doorsteps in the dead of night know what that means - either he’s going to attempt to confront Ms Cooper, or he doesn’t mind if one or more of his followers confronts her, or both. Thus the asymmetrical application of free speech in Lennon Land: he can have it, and get away with anything he says, but anyone exercising it to pass adverse comment on him is a legitimate target for intimidation.

So complete is Stephen Lennon’s commitment to keeping women safe (ho ho ho) that he has no problem with threatening, defaming and intimidating them, merely for exercising the same free speech right that he claims to support. But then, he was lying about that one, too. Ms Cooper is probably going to have to step up the security around herself and her staff.

Not that Brave Tommy gives a shit about the consequences of his self-pitying rantfest. In addition to him being a bully, a liar, a racist, and a serial player of victimhood, he’s also a stinking hypocrite. He would be little more than a tiresome irrelevance, except that he is also a malign influence on others, some of whom may take his rant as a green light for more intimidation.

It’s high time that Lennon’s little wild west show ended. This time for good.

Sunday, 28 September 2025

Morgan McSweeney Pisses Down His Leg

So the Labour Party Conference is once more upon us, but not, for those running the party, at the moment they would have chosen: not much more than a year after being returned to power, poll ratings remain stubbornly low, and stubbornly behind Reform UK and its self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, with internal dissent never far from the surface.

And it is the manner in which potential and actual dissent is being addressed that shows us just how shameless, clueless, and detached from reality those who run the Labour machine have become. They think they’re still the bees’ knees, while all too many of their potential supporters have stopped listening.

At this point, a message from the distant past arrives. Lyndon Johnson’s observation “Did y’ever think ... that making a speech on ee-conomics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else” should be ringing out long and loud in the ears of Morgan McSweeney and his cabal. What they’re doing seems hot to them, but not to anyone outside their magic circle. Rather, it does no more than invite ridicule.

The Labour whip has been restored to John McDonnell and Apsana Begum, fourteen months after it was removed because they declined to back the two-child benefit cap. No, it doesn’t show a new generosity of spirit. But it does remind the world how authoritarian and intolerant Keir Starmer and his coterie of hangers-on became, and so soon after the election. Another fail.

Not even the blessed Tone was so intolerant of dissent. But the Blair years did produce policy proposals that went down like the proverbial cup of cold sick, one of which was ID cards. That’s the same ID cards that became so unpopular by the early 1950s that they were binned. Blair’s attempt, in 2006, to exhume them failed. But that has not dissuaded the McSweeney cabal.

Because now, it’s going to be DIGITAL. As the BBC report tells, “It is a way of proving your identity, and your right to work in the UK, using modern smartphone technology”. It is also, whisper it quietly, a way of getting every opposition party, from the Tories to Lib Dems, Greens, Independents and even Reform UK, lined up in forthright opposition. It’s another fail.

What it will not do is to “stop the boats”, the slogan by which Farage and his pals live their political lives. Far more useful, and better for everyone concerned, would have been to establish safe routes for refugees, and giving them the ability to claim asylum either in their own countries, or elsewhere outside the UK. Boats stopped, Farage deflated. So why not?

Because, sad to say, there seems to be a desire to fight Mr Thirsty on the latter’s chosen patch. WRONG. And when it comes to the kind of dissent that could derail the Starmer and McSweeney project, it gets worse. This has been superbly illustrated by their response to concerns that Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham may challenge for the Labour leadership.

So how has Labour’s ruling cabal addressed the potential challenge? What would a sensible, confident and collegiate leadership have done? What would Nietzsche have done? Sadly, this cabal does not operate on that intellectual plane, and the leadership has sunk to sending photoshopped images of Burnham as Liz Truss into the Internet. That’s a seriously bad fail.

Burnham has significant ministerial experience. His tenure as Mayor of Greater Manchester has included ending bus deregulation across the county, together with price capping to make travel more affordable. Adding local rail services to the “Bee Network” is the next step. Positive change. What has the McSweeney cabal done? Slagged off and undermined its opponents.

And coming over the horizon is Paul Holden’s book “The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney and the Crisis of British Democracy”. Which McSweeney and his pals will doubtless slag off and brief against. Because it seems hot to them, whatever those in the world outside New New Labour might think.

Worse still, Labour membership is in serious decline. Many may never return. Not while those who worked to throw the 2019 election are in power. Hint.

Saturday, 27 September 2025

Nigel Farage - Lying Beyond Barking

Our free and fearless press, and to their continuing shame our broadcast media, cannot get enough of Reform UK and its self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, failing to do the kind of job one might have thought journalists should be doing: holding this serially dishonest, bigoted and revoltingly slimy individual to account.

The failure to call out Farage and his increasingly thuggish coterie of aspiring insurgents is exacerbated by the utter failure of Keir Starmer’s team to provide any kind of narrative around which a coalition of voters can coalesce, in turn exacerbated by the shortage of Labour members willing to go in to bat for those who, by their own admission, worked to throw the 2019 election.

Into this vacuum has come Mr Thirsty. So has he shown leadership, any kind of responsibility? You jest: responsibility is far, far away as Farage declines to distance himself from Combover Crybaby Donald Trump’s flagrantly wrong claim that women taking Tylenol (Paracetamol in the UK) during pregnancy could cause autism. This is total and unadulterated crap.

Instead, we get the customary Farage fudge, saying he doesn’t know if the claim is true, meaning that his all too easily persuaded followers will start to believe that there really is something in Trump’s baseless ranting. Stoking the paranoia among the Reform UK faithful is Farage’s own flat-out whopper, claiming that Mayor of London Sadiq Khan wants to introduce Sharia Law.

Khan’s number one priority today is a rather more humble one: to oversee the introduction of the Bakerloop express bus service, the first stage of persuading central Government, along with business leaders, to back extension of the Bakerloo Line from Elephant and Castle to Lewisham. He has no intention of introducing Sharia Law. And Farage knows it.

But there he is, allowed to pitch this ridiculous suggestion live on LBC, courtesy of Nick Ferrari, and back it up by asserting that he knows Sharia Law is coming because a taxi driver told him. It sounds plausible enough for his followers - already on a hair trigger on the subject of Scary Muslims™ after years of variously peddled bigotry - to believe.

It gets worse: taking his cue from another deranged Trump whopper, that Haitian migrants to the USA were eating cats and dogs (they weren’t), once again, away goes Farage. Those scary brown people coming to the UK were eating carp and even swans! Ever tried to catch a swan? Clue: swans are more than capable to seeing off anyone so minded.

Worse still, anyone thinking that Mr Thirsty’s latest claims are so ridiculous that they might even drive away some of his supporters have been disabused of that notion by polling showing the distinct possibility that, were an election to be held in the immediate future, Reform UK might even be able to garner sufficient support to score enough MPs to govern on their own.

That should frighten the somnambulant media establishment into waking up and starting to put Farage on the spot, as they do for any other politician. The signs are not good, however: long-term Farage ally Nathan Gill has just pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery by a foreign state (Russia). He is expected to be jailed. Wall to wall media coverage? Nah. Crickets.

Gill is not just any old Farage hanger-on: it was he who introduced the 2019 intake of (then) Brexit Party MEPs to the European Parliament, prominent among them one Claire Fox, unrepentant terrorist sympathiser who, let us not forget, was not held to account for her support for the “armed struggle”. Instead, there were softball media appearances. There, there, eh?

In any case, Farage can bat away criticism by telling his followers that the MSM lies. Look over there at the real liars! And the MSM has a proud history of lying in pursuit of its smear campaigns, and elsewhere. He can also bat off Labour criticism by telling his followers that Starmer and his acolytes lie. And he is, once again, right. Because they do. But that is no excuse for inaction.

One small bright spot: the SDP-Liberal Alliance hit 50% in the polls in early 1982. The following year, they scored just 23 MPs. All is not yet lost.

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