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Saturday 5 February 2022

UK - You’re Being Trumped

The story of the 2020 United States Presidential Election campaign can be put simply and directly: an increasingly wayward right-wing incumbent, his party shackled to him and his viciously bigoted and damaging demagoguery, and an opposition knowing that they must assemble a winning coalition behind the best candidate to beat that incumbent. Their candidate was Joe Biden; he beat combover crybaby Donald Trump decisively.

How much substance is there behind the façade?

Now, the UK finds itself in a worryingly similar situation: alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has shown himself time and again to be a congenital liar, utterly inept at any business of Government, absolutely without empathy, devoid of consideration for others, increasingly authoritarian and magnificent only in his narcissism. He can carry on until the end of 2024. Unless his party gets rid of him. And the opposition improves.

The problem there is that the Tory Party has swerved right and has mutated into a Brexiteer death cult. Many of its MPs are anti-science, viciously Europhobic, blind to the damage Bozo is doing to their own country, and, backed into a corner by enraged constituents but also the prospect of their own party and our free and fearless press shooting them dead if they dare retreat, are, like the GOP, shackled to Bozo’s lying.

Leaders of the past would not be welcome either in the Republican Party, or by the Tories. Two time President Dwight Eisenhower, like his UK contemporary Harold Macmillan, would today be denounced as a dangerous leftist. Charles David Keeling, whose observations of the advancing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere gave us the Keeling Curve, was a registered Republican. Now his party is the party of climate change denial.

The GOP has decided that the January 6 attempted insurrection was merely “normal political discourse”. It has therefore legitimised terrorism - providing its own side does it. Similarly, Bozo’s abhorrent behaviour is excused by the media establishment: he can do what he pleases and there will be no press blowback. That includes encouraging hatred against people who are not white, and indeed the whole LGBT community.

About that much, unfortunately

Why don’t the Tories just dump Bozo? Sadly, they have the same problem as the GOP: as with Trump, whose grip on reality is so tenuous that he still believes he won in 2020, there is no credible successor. Worse, any MP who shows signs of manoeuvring for position is immediately attacked by the right-wing press, as with Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak today. And dumping Bozo is the only way he will go.

There is no chance this side of Hell freezing over that he will go of his own volition. Nor will his third wife Carrie. They both wanted to be where the power was, and now they have got there, there is no way they are volunteering to let go. So the UK is stuck. Many voters still cling to the belief that Brexit was a great success, that price rises are the fault of someone foreign, and that the Tories are DELIVERING. But their number is rapidly dwindling.

Yet, as with Trump and the GOP loading the Supreme Court in their favour, dismantling voting rights, gerrymandering electoral districts and normalising violent insurrection, the Tories continue to damage their own country untroubled by the prospect of removal. The credibility of the UK is being sprayed up the wall. Or perhaps that should be spaffed.

And that’s without the inept handling of the pandemic. Be afraid. Be very afraid.


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17 comments:

Unknown said...

And the public were gaslight daily by the Centrists, Laura Kuenssberg & RW media that it was Jeremy Corbyn that was akin to Satan..

Ben Lapointe said...

The problem is corporate political donations. Corporations and billionaires will only give to candidates/parties willing to bring policies to their advantage. Which happens to be the exact opposite of what would benefit the rest of us. And by benefiting, I mean not ending up on a planet unfit for life. So, in these circumstances, only a mad, a loon, an idiot or a psychopath will receive political donations.

Anonymous said...

No worries, Tim.

Starmer will save GB....you know, like Blair and Brown did*...Tim, Tim, hello, are you there?...Hello? Hello?......



*Millions of refugees and innocent dead notwithstanding. But nobody cares about that anyway.

Darren G said...

I believe johnson is even trolling his own supporters now with the appointment of Guto Harri.

Remember he was effectively "fired" from cbeebies for taking the knee live on air.

Johnson's core support base hate the taking of the knee. it appears to I educate that johnson does think he is untouchable.

All he has to do to the tories is but labour

Failing that his supporters in the gutter press scream but if Johnson goes so does brexit.


And like sheep will back down every time


Mr Larrington said...

(Sings)
Now Eisenhower, he's a Russian spy
Lincoln, Jefferson and that Roosevelt guy
To my knowledge there's just one man
That's really a true American
George Lincoln Rockwell
I know for a fact he hates Commies 'cause he picketed the movie "Exodus"
- His Bobness, “Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues”, 1962

Anonymous said...

The opposition won't improve, Tim. I suspect you know that very well.

So far the Establishment are relatively happy with the Starmer Quiff Quisling because they know he's politically harmless to them. Murdoch might even end up supporting him in the Murdoch Scum as he did Bliar/Brown. Anything to keep the thieving in place.

If Starmer was a lawyer in the US he'd be a penny-addy ambulance chaser or corporate bagman for an Enron-type scam or even a mob mouthpiece. He has all the "attributes"...cringeworthy, weasel words, mealy mouth phrases, treachery, hypocrisy, payoffs, and outright sabotage. Even Damon Runyon couldn't have invented him or his gang of gobshites. He'd betray you at the drop of a hat...and he'd drop the hat himself.

So Bozo or Quiff Quisling, a political difference of small degree.....or fuck all political difference at all. Visually, one's a nutjob shot from fascist cannon and the other's a greasy-haired, leathery-faced gett in a suit.

That's your "freedom of choice" in 2022. Don't kid yourself this won't end badly. VERY badly.

Arnold said...

According to the Sunday Times an advisor has claimed Bozo said they'll have to send a Panzer division to get him out of No 10.
The Tory party can certainly choose a new leader but is there any requirement for a party leader and PM to be the same person?

Anonymous said...

I don’t like horse face but seems Ashcroft and the media are going all out on operation save fatbollok. “It’s her fault … it’s her fault … look … nasty powermad bitch” in the hope that we small plebs will forget that the man has always been a lying dishonest pile of shit. We know why she’s there, we know all she had to do was undo his flies, but two wrongs definitely do not make a right. They remain two wrong ‘uns. Ask Dom. He’ll tell ya.

iMatt said...

As with the Republicans, the Conservatives or more aptly the Tories are no longer conservative parties.

Take the Tory attitude to 3 pilars of ''Britishness'' they held close.

1) The UK. The Tories call themselves unionists. However, they ride roughshod over the fact that the Scots and N Irish voted against Brexit. They threaten the likes of the NI Protocol with the chaos that'll create, making a united Ireland more rapid. We have the likes of the ghoul Rees-Mogg calling the leader of the Scottish Tories a ''lightweight'', pissing off those in his party north of the border.

2) The monarchy. Whilst hardly a monarchist myself, the Tories claim to hold the institution of monarchy dear. And esp the position of the Queen. Yet we have Johnson and Rees-Mogg lying to Liz Windsor as easy as pie.

3) Law and order. We have had for decades, and indeed as long as most of us can remember, the Tories casting themselves as ''the party of law and order''. And yet we have govt ministers openly suggesting breaking int'l law. Not to mention the oaf Johnson breaking the very same laws he and his govt legislated whilst expecting the rest of us to comply with.

The Tories are no longer 'conservative' as they no longer wish to conserve. They are now pretty much feral.

Unknown said...

2 "quiff quislings" today ? I'm astounded at your moderation.
It's like boycott bingo on test match special. I sometimes wonder if you're actually Tim Fenton himself, indulging in something parodic.

Anonymous said...

There's real danger here that all of this will be dismissed as mere eccentricity. But it is nothing of the sort. It is creeping evil of the sort that overwhelmed Germany in the 1930s.

Perhaps we are unlikely to see outdated salutes, jackboots and serried rows of marching puppets (though the possibility shouldn't be discounted). But the mob who assaulted the US Capitol, and the scatty British version, aren't much different to the brown-shirted Germans who took their country to hell. Not forgetting the public record of US/UK Establishments support for fascist, nazi and falangist horrors. History is beginning to repeat itself.

Every now and then the mask slips and there is a glimpse of the all too real malevolence behind the "eccentricity". For example when the Daily Heil openly urged the murder of Jeremy Corbyn, when an army general threatened mutiny if the 2019 election result didn't suit him, or when Rees Mogg said the Covid pandemic was a financial "opportunity". That was in public. It doesn't take much imagination to consider what those lunatics say in private and among their like-minded groups.

The point is THESE ARE NOT ECCENTRIC ABERRATIONS. There are deep evil political roots to it all. The poisonous growth is all too predictable.

The biggest current danger is an indolent acceptance that it is somehow inevitable, that it is just a passing phase, that the only necessity is a different front man or woman. That is where Britain now stands.

But a few more wrong steps and we will fall into the same abyss as 1930s Germany, Italy and Spain. Yes, without the uniforms and mass murder camps - but would you even bet against that, given the manufactured fearful apathy and loathing of 21st century Britain?

Anonymous said...

@11:30.

If you look at the Labour front bench and consult the internal report you'll find plenty of other Quislings. Some of them with identical quiffs to Starmer. So two mentions is quite modest.

Only here to help.

Stephen said...

Anonymous's - You’re not going to get Corbyn back; Starmer is the best we've got. And Johnson's libellous insult shows that Starmer has rattled him. Yes, Starmer is boring, but isn't boring what you want in politics? And "quiff quisling" is just stupid, the kind of insult the right come up with and then use for the next 10 years.

Anonymous said...

@ 11:32

It's not a question of "getting Jeremy Corbyn back'.

It's about restoring Labour's founding principles. Which political traitors like the Starmer Quiff Quisling and his apologists will never do. He's worse than "boring"... he's a treacherous lying hypocrite.

The last thing this country needs is another dose of Bliar/Brown mass murder warmongering and their red toryism.

And if you don't like the pejorative...tough. It remains an accurate description of that tenth rate bought-and-paid for placeman and charlatan. As is Bozo The Clown for Johnson.

Mr Larrington said...

@Arnold: James Blunt has been calling up his old pals from D Squadron on Twitter to get the ball rolling.

If only Mr Blunt didn’t keep singing at us…

iMatt said...

It seems some commenters here are happy to see the Tories in power in perpetuity. Yes, Starmer has his faults. But as Stephen says, it's all we have right now. Assuming the anonymous posters are on the Left, it seems they are acting the most useful idiots for the Tories.

Anonymous said...

@ 08:41.

It seems to escape your notice that we have had toryism for more than 40 years. And the results are all around you in the social and physical wreckage at home and abroad.

The last thing we need now is more of the same from the Starmer Quiff Quisling Gang. If anybody's a "useful idiot" it's the moronic dupes who put the Quislings in place. Vichy Labour is also applicable.

How easily some people are corrupted!