Robert Jenrick - Dutch No Master

Last week, there was a Europa League football match hosted by Ajax Amsterdam; their opponents were Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv. So far, so procedural, except that after the match, accusations of anti-Semitism were made, together with talk of a modern-day pogrom. Supporters of the visiting side were portrayed as victims. And then those accusers fell silent.

Why that should be was not hard to see: as Ian Fraser put it, “A pogrom is an organised massacre of an ethnic group e.g. of Jews in Russia and eastern Europe in the late 19th & early 20th centuries. The photo shows an Israeli football hooligan tearing a Palestinian flag off a Dutch person’s home in the 21st century”. It was not the only piece of bad behaviour by those supporters.

Ori Goldberg summed up the mindset that led to talk of pogroms: “Israeli football fans go on a rampage in Amsterdam, tearing down Palestinian flags and shouting racist slogans … Then, of course, we are surprised. How is it that when we do such things we suffer the consequences? How is it that we are attacked? How is it that the Dutch police doesn't recognize that we are on a mission for peace, that we are good while they must be bad?”.

There was more. “Events last night in Amsterdam are presented as a ‘pogrom’ here in Israel. We do not occupy the same plane of existence as the rest of you. Our actions have no implications. We can never be the cause of anything. Everything happens to us. Only we are real. Murderous solipsism”.

Ben Sellers pointed out that supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv had been involved in violence in Athens a few months ago. Rafael Shimunov confirmed “They're engaging in [the] theater of ‘victimhood’, supporting a historically violent, racist fanbase who came to [the] Netherlands to assault and incite violence against Arabs, then flipping it to claim the reprisals and anger in return are simply targeting Jews”. And then came Robert Jenrick.

Jenrick, a deeply immodest individual with much to be modest about, had already tried his luck as he dribbled “Meet Jason Hoganson. Jason was jailed for hitting his ex-girlfriend. Keir Starmer let him out early. Within hours of his release, the police got another call, saying he’d assaulted her yet again. Now he’s on the run. Who could have seen that coming?” Maybe Jenrick could.

Especially as the Labour “40% of sentence” early release excludes crimes such as that described. Hoganson had been released after 50% of his sentence had been served, a move introduced by the previous Tory Government, of which Jenrick had been an unswerving supporter.

Having demonstrated his less than consistent relationship with reality, Jenrick then turned to the disturbances in Amsterdam, claiming “These weren’t ‘clashes’. It was a modern-day pogrom. And another warning to the West about the consequences of mass migration and failed integration. Wake up before it’s too late”. The BBC’s report was not good enough for him.

That’s the same BBC report that resorts to using the infamous phrase “on both sides”. The responses to Jenrick’s crude Islamophobic opportunism showed that this was a campaign destined to not necessarily to his advantage, with comments such as “You’re an idiot”, “You’re a nutcase”, and “You lost to Kemi Badenoch. Best sit this one out” standing out.

No use waiting for Robert Jenrick at Barking. He’s beyond there already.

Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by becoming a Patron on Patreon at

https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton

So Farewell Then US Democracy

We may not like the verdict passed by voters in the USA, but it is their right, their call, and their majority preference that Combover Crybaby Donald Trump be returned to the White House for another term as President. What creative propaganda was fed to the electorate we may never know. What we do know is that Trump is not fit to serve a burger and fries, let alone his country.

His all too recognisable mental decline has been on view for some months. His mind is failing him, and those who have backed him to the hilt with their millions know it. They know he is not up to the job. Yet they supported his re-election; Trump is easily flattered, and his business empire almost bust. He gets some praise, some money, and his backers bend the USA to their will.

It is easy to look two years forward to the 2026 midterms, and reason that all will be corrected as the GOP loses waves of House and Senate seats, thus bringing into play those checks and balances for which the Constitution is rightly famous. But Trump has also told his fans that they will not have to vote ever again. He showed you who he was; believe him the first time.

For those in the USA who will suffer the bigotry, the misogyny, the uncaring authoritarianism, some did warn us, like Mehdi Hasan: “People - including top US journalists, perhaps especially top US journalists - don’t quite get how bad it’s going to be. How beyond term one it’ll be. How bad the Musks and RFKs will be. I don’t think even I fully accept how bad it’s going to be and I have been shouting how bad it’s going to be for years”.

Here on the other side of the North Atlantic, though, the problems will be very simply trade and defence. Trump is threatening swingeing tariffs on anything coming into the USA. Maybe NAFTA will not survive. So countries in Europe, inside the EU or not, will have to learn to do without that market.

That is, of course, easier said than done. But it must be done. It will not be easy to do, especially as, more or less at the same time, European countries that had seen the USA as The Great Protector, the one country that underpinned the NATO alliance, will have to learn to look after themselves, singly or, more likely, collectively. Which probably means via the EU.

Those countries will include Ukraine, as Trump has repeatedly voiced his backing for the gangsterist régime of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, and his disdain for the Government in Kyiv. US aid for Ukraine will wither away; either Europe allows the country to be annexed by Russia, or does something to prevent that. Trump’s USA will not ride to our rescue this time.

So where does that leave the UK, with its Government, headed by someone formerly so enthusiastically pro-EU, but now implacably opposed to closer ties with the European Club? Keir Starmer has to realise two things here: One, there is no point cosying up to Trump, who couldn’t give a crap about him. And two, he can’t ride the European Club horse and the Special Relationship horse at the same time. He has to choose one, and only one.

He must also learn to shut out the howling of our free and fearless press at even the mention of closer ties with the EU. Because he has little choice, when faced with an isolationist USA, but to mend fences with the EU, and forget his repeated refusal to countenance rejoining the bloc. In this, Trump and his gang have unintentionally done the UK a great service.

In the meantime, he will fulfil his promise for the USA to engage in no more wars, and instead keep those wars within his own country - a war on women’s rights, a war against ethnic minorities, a war against anyone opposed to his power grab, and a war against the freedom of speech he falsely promotes.

And those countries that have embraced neoliberalism can, in the meantime, reflect on its failure to deliver Trump’s opponents the White House. We might usefully consider re-reading The General Theory Of Employment Interest And Money, whose embrace saved the West from revolution after World War 2, while The New Great Dictator gets on with laying waste to the USA.

Europe needs to look after itself. And the UK has to choose - wisely.

Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by becoming a Patron on Patreon at

https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton