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.

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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.

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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.

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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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Oh Tommy - Bravely Ran Away

Not much time passes before Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, appears in the news, and usually for all the wrong reasons. His latest appearance is no exception: yesterday evening, emergency services attended a man who had been rendered unconscious, in the vicinity of London’s St Pancras station. We know Lennon was involved. He said so.

Paramedics worked behind a makeshift curtain to return the man to consciousness, while treating his injuries, which had left a large pool of blood on the floor. The victim has been transferred to hospital, where his situation has been described as “serious but not life-threatening”. As the news spread, so did the spin from Lennon’s pals, which did not help his cause one bit.

First out of the traps was Avi Yemeni, a deeply unpleasant individual who “reports” from Australia for Ezra Levant’s far-right propaganda outlet Rebel News. He was quite sure what had happened: “Tommy Robinson was ATTACKED at St Pancras Station … Tommy is okay … The attacker not so much”. But he was lying, as Lennon and his pals later admitted.

That, though, was not the point: what Yemeni did was to get the excuses in as early as possible. That Lennon had laid out the unfortunate individual now - hopefully - recovering in hospital was confirmed on video by The Great Man himself, telling anyone who would listen “he’s come at me, bruv”. In other words, he decked the other bloke. As the BBC account makes clear.

“The British Transport Police (BTP) is investigating an alleged assault at St Pancras station in London … It comes after footage emerged on social media appearing to show far-right activist Tommy Robinson walking back and forth near a motionless man lying on the floor at the station … The clip does not show how the man ended up on the floor”. And the BTP want a word.

“The BTP said its suspect was from Bedfordshire. It added that detectives were continuing to investigate the incident and bring the suspect into custody for questioning … In the footage, a man who appears to be Robinson walks next to the person lying face-down on the floor, near some stairs. A commuter looks to be trying to stop the man thought to be Robinson from moving around and calls for help”. And then came another admission.

This time it was a Twitter/X user who calls himself Mike Hacks, who was trying to defend Lennon, but just happened to drop the ball as he stated unequivocally “A pre-emptive strike is totally legal”. In other words, The Great Tommy decked the other bloke, and he also struck the first blow.

And so it came to pass that Lennon let the world know just how innocent he thinks he is: what that BBC report also tells is that “a 42-year-old male suspect had boarded a flight out of the country in the early hours of Tuesday morning”. Running away before the cops interview him, and well before they have the chance to potentially charge him, and remand him in custody.

Worse for The Great Man, he is supposed to be hosting one of his “free speech” - as in freedom for Himself Personally Now to shoot his mouth off, while no such freedom is given to his critics, who can expect him to rock up on their doorsteps and have their addresses doxxed - next month. If he turns up, he gets nicked, and if he appears via video link, admits he’s a coward.

Worse still, given Lennon’s history of violently assaulting others, the cops might just oppose his being given bail, thus ensuring he doesn’t get to headline his own gig. All the BTP needs to do is to cite the flight risk, because flight is exactly what Lennon just did. May have been to mainland Spain, may have been Tenerife, may have been the Algarve. He’s not beyond the law.

And he’ll soon find that if the Guardia Civil come looking for him, or indeed the GNR if he chose the Algarve, there is only so much aggressive gobshitery they will tolerate before moving directly to having the cuffs applied. This time he’s in real trouble, made worse by him and his pals either lying about it, or owning up that he not only did it, but also threw the first punch.

Stephen Lennon could be back in the UK rather sooner than he would like, and in less than luxurious surroundings. Just rejoice at that news.

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Israel Criticism - Labour Beyond Too Late

Having resisted any change of approach to the continued Israeli assaults on Gaza, the bombing, shelling, rocketing, the gratuitous slaughter of those desperately queuing for aid, the deliberate prevention of aid agencies from getting into the occupied territory, Keir Starmer’s Government has now decided to tell the world that it sort of disapproves of what is going on.

That’s after proscribing Palestine Action, a group practising non-violent direct action, with the all-too-predictable result that scores of peaceful protesters have been arrested, sometimes violently, by Police forces around the country. It comes after the Government continued weapons sales to Israel, and indeed provided aerial intelligence too. So how strong is the disapproval?

Here’s the BBC report: “The UK and 27 other countries have called for an immediate end to the war in Gaza, where they say the suffering of civilians has ‘reached new depths’ … A joint statement says Israel's aid delivery model is dangerous and condemns what it calls the ‘drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians’ seeking food and water”. There is more.

“Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry said more than 100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire while waiting for food over the weekend and that 19 others died as a result of malnutrition … There have been many international statements condemning Israel's tactics in Gaza during the past 21 months of its war with Hamas. But this declaration is notable for its candour”. Do go on.

The statement tells “The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. The Israeli government's aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity … We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food. It is horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid”. How so?

Ah well. Here we encounter the Israelis’ preferred aid distribution solution, the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The Beeb report notes “Last Tuesday, the UN human rights office said it had recorded 674 killings in the vicinity of the GHF's aid sites since they began operating eight weeks ago”.

This from al-Jazeera: “Israeli soldiers have deliberately shot at unarmed Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza after being ‘ordered’ to do so by their commanders, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports … At least 549 Palestinians have been killed and 4,066 injured while waiting for food aid distributed at sites run by the [GHF]”. Target practice. Bit of fun, eh?

One soldier told Haaretz “It’s a killing field”. The BBC reports the Gaza health ministry as warning “33 people, including 12 children, have died in the past 48 hours” from malnutrition. Also, “The journalists' association of Agence France Presse … says the last reporters in Gaza will die without immediate intervention, warning its colleagues are at risk of starvation”.

On top of that, “The World Health Organization (WHO) says Israel's ground offensive in central Gaza has compromised its efforts to continue working, after its facilities came under attack. The UN agency accused Israeli forces of attacking a building housing its staff and their families in the city of Deir al-Balah on Monday and mistreating those sheltering there. Its main warehouse was also attacked and destroyed”. So what of the UK arms sales?

They appear to be continuing, as does the aerial reconnaissance out of Cyprus. So the condemnation of Israel is not much of a condemnation - more a recognition that Labour long ago lost the room on this one, and is now, some might say cynically, trying to appear concerned. When they aren’t.

As Owen Jones, who has been right from the start, has put it this morning, “A tipping point has been reached … Gaza is now starving to death in front of the whole world … Those who facilitated and justified this abomination were given ample warning for 21 months … You have no excuses, and nowhere to hide: you will be held to account for what you've done”.

No-one can claim they didn’t know. No-one will be swayed by shouts of “waah anti-Semitism”. Because they did. And it isn’t. We see you, Keir Starmer.

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Reform UK - Beginning Of The End

A week, as Harold Wilson memorably observed, is a long time in politics, and that this still holds true has been demonstrated by Reform UK and its self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, riding high in the polls and with rather too many of the media class unable, or unwilling, to point out that Farage is a congenital liar, a racist bigot, and a shameless con man.

It was a trip north of the border that proved that Bridge Too Far for Mr Thirsty, as he rocked up to support Ross Alexander Lambie, the Reform UK hopeful for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse. A Scottish Parliament by-election had been triggered by the death of SNP incumbent MSP Christina McKelvie. Our free and fearless press declared the fight to be between SNP and Reform.

Sadly, as Rochdale MP Paul Waugh pointed out, “My former trade got their Hamilton predictions badly wrong. If journalists had actually spoken to voters … they would have known this was a close fight, not an SNP walkover or a Reform revolution … The lazy English media reporting was bad enough but what really shocked me was the poor quality of the Scottish media”.

Do go on. “Putting SNP quotes in headlines as if they were neutral, the class prejudice against a working class guy like Davy [Russell], the confected row over interviews”. As to the BBC also falling short in its reportage, “‘Surprise’ victory … ‘Confounds expectations’ … Confirmation from the BBC that it too went with the herd instead of looking deeper at what people were saying on the ground”. Labour won. Reform came not second, but third.

Worse, Farage was accused of blatantly racist campaigning after Reform put out an advert claiming that Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar “will prioritise the Pakistani community”. Farage was challenged over yet another flat-out lie, and insisted that Sarwar was engaging in sectarianism (no citation).

All of which would have been a mere blip in an otherwise inexorable rise to the top for the Farage fringe. However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, the bad news kept on coming, as Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf threw in the towel, stating “working to get the party elected was no longer ‘a good use of my time’”. And it got yet worse for Mr Thirsty.

Despite his claim that Yusuf “was ‘a huge factor’ in the party's success in last month's elections, when Reform won a by-election, two mayoral races and gained 677 new councillors”, Farage seems not to have tried too hard to stop him going. Many Reform UK supporters may have thought the departure a good thing, as Yusuf was one of those Scary Muslims™ they all hate.

What not too many were pointing out was that Yusuf had donated a cool £200,000 to Reform UK, and had tried to make the party a more professional outfit. And what many others were pointing out was that, having expelled Rupert Lowe from Reform UK before Yusuf resigned, Farage was not exactly excelling in keeping his team together. It was a total shambles.

But not to worry, Yusuf’s role as head of “DOGE UK” would now be undertaken by Farage’s old pal Arron Banks. Except that, two days after Yusuf walked out, no it wouldn’t. Because Yusuf was now back, as the BBC reported. “Zia Yusuf, who resigned as Reform UK chairman on Thursday, is to return to work for the party in a new role”. Yes? Yes yes? Yes yes yes?

“Yusuf will lead what the party calls its ‘Doge team’ which is modelled on the Department of Government Efficiency set up by US President Donald Trump”. And which has also been a spectacular waste of time and money. So what say Nige? “Reform leader Nigel Farage told the BBC he was ‘delighted’ Yusuf had returned to the party and that he will now take on a more public role for the party in a new role, appearing more frequently in the media”.

Reform UK, aka the Farage Fan Club and very little else, is still ahead in the polls. But with the party’s economic policies being derided as “Truss Plus”, and the media beginning to wake up to its shortcomings, don’t bank on that continuing. This is a clown car with its tyres slowly deflating.

Reform UK was for a time, but not for all time. Just rejoice at that news.

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Reform UK And The Rise Of Ignorance

Opinion polls continue to show a rise in support for Reform UK, headed by its self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, with the result that the clueless coterie which is claimed to be running the Labour Party has become concerned enough to take action. Their problem is that the ship has already sailed, and no matter what they do, they can’t out-Farage Farage.

Ignorance is strength!

Reform UK may be a shambolic affair, with no shortage of revelations concerning the views of its newly-elected representatives, usually revealing sneering and vicious racism, coupled with staggering ignorance and an inability to understand that Great Britain and England are not interchangeable terms. This last was exemplified by new Lincolnshire Mayor Andrea Jenkyns.

There had, she argued, to be a way to stop the “Pull to England” which brought so many refugees. Perhaps if they arrived in Scotland or Wales, all would be well. No matter though, her pals at Reform UK have diverted the attention of voters with claims that the councils they now control will ban all that Woke Nonsense, although they probably couldn’t define “Woke”.

Richard Tice (he’s not very nice) has gone as far as to assert that Reform UK councils will crack down on planning applications for new wind farms. His problem is that pre-judging such applications is highly likely to lead to those councils being sued and costing a significant amount of public money in the process. He is also dishonestly blaming Net Zero for, well, anything.

None of this deters the voters, though. Nor does the further ignorance displayed by Tice’s unappealing partner Isabel Oakeshott, who recently trilled “[Reform UK] will go to court to close asylum seeker hotels in [Reform UK] council areas. When it comes to ending this scandal, the party means business”. That would be outside a council’s remit. Still, details, eh?

One might have expected an alleged investigative journalist to have thought that through before shooting off their online mouth, but there’s prejudice to spread and ignorance to feed, so off she goes. One incoming Reform UK councillor didn’t seem to know that you can’t obtain British citizenship without being able to speak English. Others will defend anything Farage supports.

The 3D chess ain't making it

So when the Economist looked at Reform UK’s spending plans and concluded that they would result in a worse fiscal shock than Liz Truss’ infamous intervention, there was the Reform UK brains trust claiming that this was only “The MSM” and they always lied about their hero. Farage is a congenital liar, but there are none so blind as will not see.

So what has Labour’s ruling clique done in response? Tried to out-Reform Reform. This is a colossal act of stupidity: Reform UK is a safe haven for racists, and they are not going to jump ship for Labour merely because they are pretending to be tough on all those migrants, which in practical terms means Scary Muslims™. Still, off they went, to no effect whatsoever.

Bringing the unedifying spectacle observed by Adam Bienkov of Byline Times: “Yvette Cooper gives an exclusive interview to GB News about her immigration plans, during which the interviewer tells her that some of their viewers live near asylum seekers and their ‘children can't leave home’ … No push back from the Home Secretary”. That was bad; Kier Starmer was worse.

One hates to go all Neil Kinnock on the PM, but here we had A Labour Prime Minister - A Labour Prime Minister - scuttling round media outlets saying “We risk becoming an island of strangers”. So close to Enoch Powell’s “They found themselves made strangers in their own country” from his infamous 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech as to make no difference.

Who is driving the Labour bus? If, as has been claimed by those close to The Great Man, it is the cabal headed by Morgan McSweeney, maybe he should be the one defending this disgraceful descent into scapegoating and bigotry. And, as a side order, explaining why Labour can’t leave Mr Thirsty to his racism and just improve voters’ lives. Because that’s what they’re there for.

They thought they were so clever in throwing the 2019 election. But the dirty tricks won’t win voters back. Now they are lost. And ignorance is king.

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Labour Useless And Now Clueless

So the dust has settled after a round of local elections - plus a Parliamentary by-election - last Thursday. The Tories continued their slide towards irrelevance by losing two-thirds of the seats they contested. But, as Robert Peston might have put it, here’s a thing - Labour also lost two-thirds of the seats they contested, too. And they lost that Parliamentary by-election.

Morgan McSweeney - la la la, he can't hear you

That last, in the constituency of Runcorn and Helsby, was gained by Reform UK, the domain of its self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, by a mere six votes. Labour should have had the ground game to hold on to the seat. But here is, instead, the key to where the insular and tone-deaf cabal who run Labour found their past catching up with them.

Just a few more activists helping out, a few more pairs of hands to do the drudgery of leafletting, knocking doors, a few more smiling faces to show the voters, would have given Labour the edge. But it has been made clear to anyone who needs to know that, while those activists were taking a shed-load of abuse during the 2019 General Election campaign, those who now run the party were working against their leadership to throw the contest.

The question those activists asked, and for which there was no credible answer other than to treat them as mugs, as so much cannon fodder, with not so much as the slightest apology, was “Why the fuck should I put myself out for this bunch of shysters?” There has been no credible answer.

So the party was always short of activists. It managed to hold off the likes of George Galloway in Batley and Spen, but that was before the revelation that those not unadjacent to Morgan McSweeney and his Labour Together pals - there’s a name with the ultimate contradiction in terms - had worked to lose the 2019 campaign to the Tories. And we know where that led.

Those same sources then sneeringly briefed their favoured media outlets that party leader Keir Starmer was not really in charge - “we’ve sat him at the front of the DLR” - but they can’t grasp why the voters would choose a party whose leader is a congenital liar. Perhaps it’s because their own party leader does rather too much lying of his own, so what’s the difference?

Instead, we read “Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, will pore over the results … and it likely to conclude that he is right to pursue a ‘blue Labour’ strategy to address the populist threat - a policy which is already starting to be deployed”. This is beyond wrong headed. One need only consider the decisions already made, and which have already failed with the voters.

Winter fuel allowance abolished, changing Inheritance Tax rules for farms, cutting disability benefits, all creating so much negative reaction for so little saving. And all the decisions that could have been taken to benefit the less well off and create economic growth have been ignored.

Taxing the very well off a little more to give those at the bottom of the pile a break - money going from those with a propensity to save, to those who have a propensity to spend - no, can’t do that. Rejoining the EU single market and customs union to get back some of that £100 billion a year Brexit hit on the economy - no, can’t do that. VAT refunds for tourists - er, um, er, um, er, not really. Abolish the two child cap - ooh no, what will the press think?

Nor will the inane catchphrases work without some actual action to back them up. “Further, faster”. Further than what? Faster than what? “Plan for change”, “Delivering change” - the electorate doesn’t see any change. And anyone showing empathy for the plight of the Palestinians is either ignored or told that they are an anti-Semite. So voters go elsewhere. And will go elsewhere.

The Greens gained council seats. So did the Lib Dems. Reform UK gained massively. The Tories lost big time. But Labour did too. The idea that voters would just obediently return to Labour is for the birds. Heck, they didn’t even do that last year: the Labour vote was down on 2019, but turnout was down even further. McSweeney and his pals are alone in La-La Land.

Farage may be a con artist. But voters are not being listened to by a ruling Labour cabal that is very good at smearing, infighting, and damaging their own party as if it were some kind of game. They falsely smeared The Canary as anti-Semitic and Fake News Tee Hee Hee! They shut the left out of power Tee Hee Hee! They got rid of Jeremy Corbyn Tee Hee Hee!

But the lives of millions of folks at the bottom of the pile are not a game. And those millions have the vote. As one Labour MP put it, “It’s all very well for No 10 to say we’ve got to keep delivering. The problem is that it’s the stuff we’ve delivered that people hate”. Labour’s ruling cabal is devoid of ideas, and as a result, the party they claim to rule resembles a dead man walking.

McSweeney and his pals could solve this problem. By packing their bags and leaving the stage - to those who actually give a damn about the voters.

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Party Like It’s 1929

They thought he really knew what he was doing, that he was not out of his depth. They thought he would back off at the last minute, that he didn’t really mean it. They thought that wise counsel would prevail, talk him out of it. They thought that Donald Trump was intelligent enough not to proceed with his tariff plan. They were wrong: another 1929 moment now stalks the markets.

It's the economy, Mr Stupid President

The key difference between The Great Crash of October 1929 and today is that the latter is a direct consequence of deliberate acts by the US President. Trump is indeed out of his depth. He is a monumentally stupid individual embarked on a personal mission of vindictive retribution against the foreigners who he believes have ripped off the USA over many years.

By imposing sufficient tariffs on the rest of the world, he believes goods will be manufactured in the USA, rather than elsewhere. Like the iPhone, perhaps? Except to manufacture that device Stateside would, by one estimate, raise its cost price to at least $10,000. Yet his supporters talk of American workers screwing screws into iPhones. What screws?

You use an iPhone? Check the casing. Maybe look at a rather larger example: where does US plane maker Boeing source all those parts that get assembled into best selling aircraft like the 737? They don’t all come from the States. Tariffs will mean vastly more expensive planes. Or a change in the supply network taking years and costing more. Or a bit of both.

Yet away he went with his tariff plan, which, whisper it quietly, is still with us. The market reaction was as predictable as it was sudden: massive falls in stock prices, beginning on a Thursday, an ominous day to start, given the 1929 precedent. There would, claimed The Donald, be no turning back; moreover, he told anyone who would listen how well it was going.

Markets continued their fall. Even after the weekend, the falls went on, until the 1929 parallel came again. Then, the bankers had sent Richard Whitney to ostentatiously buy up blocks of shares; the market turned around. Now, a fake social media account claimed the tariffs were to be paused, and sparked a rally before being rumbled. Then came the flagrant and open corruption.

The Whitney comparison is instructive: as Galbraith noted, he was “a hero, his achievement was widely celebrated, and he was made President of the Exchange. Not long thereafter, he was off to Sing Sing for embezzlement”. This time, no-one will be off to jail, despite the corruption. Despite Trump telling his followers to buy stocks, four hours before finally pausing tariffs.

Those buying included, according to reports, rabbit hole occupant Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. From the Democrats’ side of the House, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mused “Any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now … It’s time to ban insider trading in Congress”. Trump was, meanwhile, celebrating.

There he was in the Oval Office, pointing to two of his guests and telling “He made $2.5 billion today and he made $900 million. That’s not bad”. One observer noted “Speaker Mike Johnson was ALSO caught on camera saying it was a good day to buy stocks. This is text book market manipulation”. There should be an investigation. Will there be one? Don’t bet on it.

And then came the dénouement: as ITV political editor Robert Peston put it, “We just learned that the world’s most powerful person, Donald Trump, has a boss: the bond market”. Not only were tariffs paused, he had to row back on them for smartphones and other electronic devices coming from China. But the Chinese Government is not making any tariff exemptions for the USA.

If anyone had been in any doubt as to Donald Trump’s fitness for public office, the tariff fiasco has exposed his shortcomings. The USA is having its economy trashed by a shambling old fool, an inept and failed businessman, an amateur human being. He took on the real world, and the real world won. The MAGA cult might not believe it, but they are now just an irrelevance.

The EU and China have begun talks to reduce electronic vehicle tariffs. Tesla EU sales were down 45% year on year to January. Art of the deal my arse.

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Trump Tariffs - The Art Of The Stupid

To great fanfare, and applauded by all the wrong people, Combover Crybaby Donald Trump has announced the imposition of tariffs upon imports from most countries outside the USA, although not, for some reason, Russia or North Korea. There had been much talking up of the move beforehand by those out there on the right. But the markets have not been persuaded.

The tone struck as propaganda was disseminated was noted by the BBC’s Faisal Islam: “President Trump cheered on by auto-workers and oil and gas workers in Rose Gardens as he proclaims ‘Liberation Day’, decrying ‘foreign scavengers’ with expected universal and reciprocal tariffs on every country in the world”. Today, 900 of those auto-workers were laid off.

But back to Faisal Islam. “President says tariffs will raise ‘trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and national debt’… which rather suggests a somewhat universal character to these ‘reciprocal’ tariff”. It also suggests that Trump is more stupid than had previously been thought. Meanwhile, the “tariff” against which Trump was reciprocating had been figured out.

One Tweeter put it directly. “The supposed ‘tariffs charged to the US’ are just the total trade deficit as a % of US imports by country, with a floor of 10%. Just laughably stupid”. So all those countries he has singled out are not necessarily imposing tariffs. Worse, some of those who might have been expected to side with Trump were horrified by the whole exercise.

Like Dan, Dan The Oratory Man, who denounced the move. “The policies just announced are batshit crazy. They will cause a recession. And, when they do, the people who backed them will blame foreigners or globalists or some such, and double down”. Or blame something Joe Biden did or didn’t do. Or Hillary Clinton’s emails. Or perhaps the Fake News Media will have done it.

As for the UK only being hit for 10%, while the EU gets slapped with twice that percentage, Jim Cornelius had a caution. “The reason why Trump's UK tariff is 10% and not like EU's 20% has absolutely NOTHING to do with Keir Starmer being a brilliant negotiator, or Trump loving an invite from the King. It's because we're not as good at selling stuff to the USA as the EU is”.

So how did the markets react? The BBC brought bad news: at 1520 hours, “After opening down sharply, the main US indexes have continued to edge lower. The Dow Jones is now down 3.6%, the S&P 500 is 3.8% lower while the Nasdaq has dropped 4.8%”. MAGA cultists are, unsurprisingly, trying their best to slag off the markets, as if they don’t matter. Except they do matter.

But they weren’t important enough to tempt any of Reform UK’s MPs, and certainly not self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, to turn up to the Commons for a statement on UK-US trade and tariffs. Maybe the great Farage will be able to explain Trump’s reasoning to us all.

Like “the Cook Islands, Vanuatu, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon made it onto [Trump’s] tariff hit list… but [not] Russia". Another Tweeter expanded on that finding: “Neither Russia nor North Korea got even Donald Trump's 10% minimum tariff. But he did tax [two] islands that have only penguins, and another one that contains ONLY a US military base”. Well, well.

And in the wake of the devastating earthquake that hit Myanmar recently, Dara Ó Briain mused “These is something particularly crass and callous about announcing a 44% trade tariff against Myanmar, this week, of all weeks”. Meanwhile, the idea that sanctions mean no US-Russia trade was debunked: the USA imported around $3 billion of Russian goods last year.

This move is down to Trump, and Trump alone. He has not sought the approval of Congress. He will blame others when it fails, as it will with the certainty of night following day. He should not be allowed to get away with any move to deflect or deny: he had ample opportunity to take advice from those who understand these things. He chose not to. His actions are about to screw over the lives of many who were foolish enough to vote for him.

Sadly, many of the rest may also be casualties. Donald Trump is not a serious politician. As Cloughie might have put it, “he’s a clown, young man”.

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Donald Trump - A Fart Of A Deal

With the possibility increasing daily that his “diplomacy” on the Russia-Ukraine conflict will prove to be Dead On Arrival, more and more citizens, along with increasing numbers outside the USA, are realising that Combover Crybaby Donald Trump was only a successful businessman for the purposes of The Apprentice and its various spin-offs. Reality is somewhat different.

This is, after all, someone whose, to quote the Wikipedia entry, “over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times between 1991 and 2009”. A casino should be a license to print money, so how Trump’s businesses had to file for Chapter 11 protection should tell you something about his abilities.

Or lack of them. Most major banks wanted nothing to do with him following those corporate bankruptcies. Yet this was the individual whose signature book is all about the Art Of The Deal. And this is what he no doubt wanted the world to think about when he waded into the conflict between Russia, the aggressor, and Ukraine, the country that repelled them for three years.

He, the great Donald J Trump, would show his detractors that he alone could secure a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Maybe his peacemaking efforts could even secure him the Nobel Peace Prize. Joe Biden never won that! Those Fake News Media channels and papers never won it either!

And so it came to pass that the Trump Gang let the world know that continuing the conflict in Ukraine was pointless, which is true, but also that the bad guys were, at least by implication, those headed by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which was a pack of propagandist lies, except in pro-Russian talking points, something that only fuelled the suspicion that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and his gang in the Kremlin had Kompromat on Trump.

But not to worry, The Donald then showed the world his superior diplomatic ability by inviting Zelenskyy to the White House, and with his monumentally stupid Vice President J D Vance, ambushed the Ukrainian President, following that by having the visitors’ delegation thrown out. He stopped aid and intelligence sharing for Ukraine. As if Russia was pulling his strings.

Then he made sure that the word got out: Ukraine could have had a deal, although what kind of deal was not told. European leaders reaffirmed their support for Ukraine; Trump became enraged and claimed the EU was “very, very nasty”. He then rambled at length about the EU having been formed in order to screw over the USA. Not much Art Of The Deal on view here.

Nor was there much art in Trump’s next move, reported by Kyiv Post: “Trump reportedly won’t restore military aid or intelligence sharing with Ukraine - even if Kyiv and Washington strike a deal on mineral resources - NBC News … He wants Zelensky to cede territory to Russia, take steps toward holding elections, and possibly step down”. Some deal he’s offering, or maybe not.

As for his understanding, or lack of it, of actions having consequences, as he rambles, threats, and blusters, orders for F-35 fighter aircraft are being cancelled in favour of alternatives built not in the USA. More jobs lost, more momentum for the economic downturn. His Ukraine ceasefire proposal was effectively ignored by Putin. But then came the fruits of that diplomacy!

“THOUSANDS OF UKRAINIAN TROOPS ARE COMPLETELY SURROUNDED BY THE RUSSIAN MILITARY, AND IN A VERY BAD AND VULNERABLE POSITION” he told. But not to worry, “I have strongly requested to President Putin that their lives be spared”. Except this was very obvious Kremin propaganda. And that Peace Prize was not getting nearer.

Maybe he could get the press to be a little nicer to him. Not after ranting “These newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative. And it has to stop. It has to be illegal ... it just cannot be legal”. The one who brought back free speech, eh? Trump’s deal making wizardry is just a sham. The Russians are laughing at him. He’s crashing the economy.

But he is good at rambling incoherently. So that’s all right, then.

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Reform UK Laid Lowe By Musk

Not since the split in the Peoples’ Front of Judaea has there been a more futile and pointless gesture than the urging, by some among our free and fearless press who should know better, to found a splinter party out there on the right led by those who have grown fed up with Reform UK and the leadership of its self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage.

Yes, Reform UK is a Farage one-man band, as was the Brexit Party before that, and back in the mists of time, as UKIP was before idiots like Paul Nuttall and Adolf von Batten led it. But Farage knows how to whip up the mob just short of being called for incitement. He also knows how to be vague enough on policy not to give so much away, and let the voters assume he’s with them.

That, along with the constant scratching of the racist itch, either explicitly or merely a little nudge-nudgery, is how Reform UK scored themselves enough of the popular vote at last year’s General Election to get five of their supposed big hitters elected. It is a reality which some on the right are finding extremely difficult to understand. One of their number is Elon Musk.

Muskrat has already told anyone who will listen that Farage is no longer the right leader for the party, while appearing to lean towards Rupert Lowe. This may have emboldened Lowe, but now the landowner and former not-always-popular chairman of Southampton FC has found himself cast out, reported to the Police for alleged bullying and threats of physical violence.

And it then got worse: as the BBC has reported, “A senior lawyer appointed by Reform UK to independently investigate allegations against MP Rupert Lowe and his team has denied making comments he says she made … Last week, Lowe said he had spoken to the senior lawyer looking at the claims and said she had told him she was ‘shocked’ at the process, and that no evidence had been given”. Got that? There was then more. A lot more.

“On Sunday, the lawyer, a KC who has not been named by the party but whose credentials have been verified by the BBC, said: ‘I have seen a number of statements made by Mr Lowe MP which are attributed to me and which describe my reactions to the process conducted by the party into the allegations made against both Mr Lowe MP and his constituency manager’”.

HOWEVER. “'I find myself in the unfortunate and regrettable position of having to make this statement to correct the record … I have not expressed either 'dismay' or 'shock' at any time as to the process. Nor have I said 'there is zero credible evidence against [Mr Lowe]', let alone said this ‘repeatedly’”.

It got worse still. “He accused the party of an ‘outright lie’ in claiming he had not co-operated with the investigation … ‘I have been in discussions with my legal team this afternoon, and this will be followed by legal action in due course …I will not have my name dragged through the mud as part of a political assassination because I dared to question Nigel Farage. You have to stand up to bullies, and I am doing exactly that.’”. He’s lost the Reform whip.

But that has not stopped the wacko end of the press, exemplified by the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, punting headlines like “Ousted Reform duo may create new party”. The other part of this duo is Ben Habib. And then the FT joined in, but why is not known.

“Musk looks at backing rival to Reform as Farage feud sinks party in civil war” tells their headline. Well, Muskrat can throw as much dosh as he likes at a vehicle for Lowe and Habib, but it won’t make it fly, or make it credible. Indeed, Musk’s own credibility is not an exactly bankable currency right now.

For instance, after Twitter/X/Whatever suffered a series of outages yesterday, The Great Man declared that the culprit was a DDoS attack, which had originated in Ukraine. Sadly, he was lying: that’s not how it works. David Gilbert of Wired has put it directly: “Twitter's servers were not secured properly and were publicly visible”. In other news, Tesla shares have lost $700 billion in market value since December 23rd last, down 53%.

Musk has screwed his own credibility, and whoever has screwed that of Reform UK, it too is screwed. The Fash eats itself. Just rejoice at that news.

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So Farewell (For Good) Darren Grimes

Never before had fifteen minutes of fame (or infamy) been stretched so far beyond the limits of elasticity. Push was surely destined to give way to shove, and so it came to pass that the not really crafty Darren Grimes was “let go” by Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”), to the great relief of all those who had hoped it might happen rather earlier.

So how is this being spun? “Darren Grimes has announced he is departing GB News in an emotional message to viewers. The Saturday Five host has been a staple of The People's Channel since January 2022 … Announcing his decision to step away, Darren said: ‘This is it my friends, this is my last Saturday Five show on GB News’”. Pow! Zap!! DULL!!!

Sadly, there was more. “It's been an absolute joy to see this show, The Saturday Five, go from strength to strength, especially as I helped launch it two years ago … I think it's unique in the British broadcasting market and I know it'll continue to be a great success with these amazing guys here each week”. You’ll have to imagine him taking out his king-sized onion.

And, sadly, yet more. “And it's a a really bittersweet moment because while I'm excited for what's next, I also want to take a moment to acknowledge what this platform and, more importantly, what you, our brilliant viewers, have meant to me personally”. Wasn’t he supposed to have been finished?

“Over the last few years, I've had the privilege of speaking directly to so many of you as saying the things that far too many in the media are far too afraid to actually say … I feel we've tackled the issues head on, we've laughed at the absurdities of modern Britain and we've stood firm”. And then it got worse.

“Darren shed a tear as he continued his announcement with the other members of The Saturday Five panel - Emma Trimble, Dr Renee Hoenderkamp, Alex Armstrong and Cai Wilshaw - comforting Darren and laying hands on his shoulders”. Who they? Who knows? And, indeed, who cares? Oh, and “I'm off to pursue personal projects, but the fight for free speech, for common sense and for truth, it goes on and it must”.

That would be the “fight for free speech, common sense and truth” that saw Dazza broadcast an interview with crusty old bigot David Starkey, in which The Great Historian talked about “damn blacks”, for which he “had several honorary doctorates and fellowships revoked, book contracts and memberships of learned societies cancelled, and his Medlicott Medal withdrawn”. Grimes could have edited it out. He failed to do so.

Grimes, it should not be forgotten, got off a charge of breaking electoral spending law by claiming that his mis-statements were unintentional - in other words, that he was incapable of filling in a form correctly. He has gone from pro-EU and pro-Lib Dem activist to rabid foreigner-baiting Brexiteer, but not just to score clicks and attention, plus get a berth at GB News, oh no.

His last role at the channel was fronting a show called The Saturday Five, a shameless copy of The Five on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse). The latter is one of FNC’s biggest ratings successes; its GB News copy hardly registers in that department. Whether that has anything to do with Dazza getting his marching orders I will leave for others to decide.

So what “personal projects”, other than desperately hawking his CV to anyone he can find, will Grimes be pursuing? Who knows, and, again, who cares? He’s just another to be found surplus to requirements at the hugely loss-making broadcaster, after Desperate Dan Wootton, not very good actor and DOA tunesmith Laurence Fox, and poundshop padré Calvin Robinson.

The problem for all of those who have gone before Dazza is the discovery that GB News is, to all intents and purposes, the very lowest rung in the media ladder, and not a place from which mainstream outlets are wont to recruit. This time it may really be the end - so he may end up having to find himself a real job. Big Issue seller? Fruit picker? Tube carriage cleaner?

Whatever. There goes Darren Grimes, finally on his way … out.

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Zelenskyy Encounters The Stupid Zone

And so it came to pass that, after Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer visited the White House and supposedly got Combover Crybaby Donald Trump in a more amenable frame of mind regarding the future of Ukraine, that country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Washington DC to experience for himself the masterly negotiating skills of the orange man-baby.

Except that no such skills were on display, because this, like the rest of the myth surrounding Trump, is horseshit of the basest quality. The Donald is only a serious businessman for the purposes of The Apprentice; in real life, he is a serial failure in such matters, and in all likelihood could not negotiate his way out of a paper bag. Nor could his Vice-President, J D Vance.

Zelo Street described Vance as a moron, because he is a moron. This skill was on full view as the world’s media assembled to see just how much successful softening-up had been performed on Trump earlier in the week, only to discover that the answer to that one was None At All.

Worse, it was clear that the sole reason Zelenskyy had been invited to DC was to humiliate him in front of the assembled media representatives. The problem for Trump and Vance was that he declined to be humiliated, and instead remained in combative mood when confronted with the onslaught of weapons grade stupidity from two individuals more ridiculous than Laurel and Hardy, but without any of the talent, or, indeed, any of the laughs.

Vance decided to talk about diplomacy. Zelenskyy had news for him: “Putin broke the ceasefire. What kind of diplomacy, JD, are you speaking about?” JD, for his part, fired back as if playing the lamest PR for the University of Lame in Lame City in the state of Lame. “I think it's disrespectful to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media”.

Kaitlin Collins of CNN noted “What just happened in the Oval Office was nothing short of remarkable. What began with questions about security guarantees for a ceasefire with Ukraine turned into an angry shouting match between Trump, Vance and Zelensky. Trump was fuming, ending with, ‘We have empowered you to be a tough guy…You either make a deal or we are out. You don’t have the cards.’” What deal would that have been?

Aaron Rupar had more from Trump: “Don't tell us what we're gonna feel. You're in no position to dictate that. You're in no position to dictate what we're gonna feel. We're gonna feel very good and very strong. You're right now not in a very good position. You're gambling with World War 3”.

Who was dictating to whom, though? Clearly, more sneering humiliation was needed to show the foreigner who was boss. And so it was that a deeply stupid questioner called Brian Glenn piped up “Why don’t you wear a suit?!? Do you own a suit?” Who is this Brian Glenn? As if you needed to ask.

Drew Harwell of the WaPo knew. “The reporter who asked Zelensky if he owned a suit, Brian Glenn, is from the pro-Trump network Real America’s Voice and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend. He got one of the rare Oval Office interviewer spots after the White House blocked the Associated Press”. Mehdi Hasan added "What a joke this country has become. Far right Trump flatterers cosplaying as journalists in the Oval Office”.

It got worse: the Trump gang then asked the Ukraine delegation to leave the White House, a move which was briefed to Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) as “kicked out”. At FNC, Bret Baier, formally one of their more sane pundits, suggested to Zelenskyy that he should apologise to Trump. But for what? A deliberate, crude and pointlessly stupid ambush?

Ron Filipkowski of Meidas Touch concluded “Trump and Vance needed to create an incident to provide a justification for their pre-planned abandonment of Ukraine now, then separation from NATO in the near future. That’s what that was all about, and that was always the way a second Trump term was going to go”. And the free world needs a new leader. Sharpish.

The USA is now in the hands of deeply stupid people. As in, more deeply stupid than any of their predecessors. Be afraid, people. Be very afraid.

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