What exactly has changed as a result of that election, other than a different team of snouts in the trough?
Starmer’s first act as Prime Minister of the UK was to attend a NATO warmonger fest and promise unlimited resources to keep the terrible and unwinnable war in the Ukraine going. In addition he is pledging to increase UK “Defence” spending to 2.5% of GDP, or over £18 billion a year extra – a massive bonanza for the arms industry.
Let us be absolutely plain that this is not “defence”. There is no country which has any plan or even vague intention to invade the UK. In modern history, only Germany, France and the Netherlands ever had such plans (the Netherlands actually succeeded but nobody noticed as the victors write the history).
Russia and China in particular have no intention whatsoever of attacking the UK. Let me write that again because, while it should be a basic fact of international relations, it is one that our entire geopolitical system depends upon denying. In fact I am not sure I have ever seen it stated plainly anywhere else.
Russia and China have no intention whatsoever of attacking the UK.
Our “defence” expenditure is not for defence. It is for power projection overseas. It is spent on aircraft carriers and worldwide nuclear submarines, not on anti-missile defences around British cities.
Our “defence” expenditure is geared to attacking other countries. And attack other countries we do. Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen to name but a few. We are currently attacking Russia by proxy.
That picture is not Gaza but Sirte in Libya, once Africa’s most prosperous country, after receiving the benefit of NATO “defence” expenditure.
Ask yourself this simple question – when did a Russian missile last land on British soil? The answer is never. Yet Starmer has just announced we are explicitly sending Ukraine missiles capable of striking inside Russia.
Aircraft carriers have no purpose whatsoever except power projection. There is no defensive use of an aircraft carrier. You don’t park them just off the UK to intercept incoming attacks. Aircraft carriers have the sole purpose of taking aircraft to attack countries far away from us. They are agents of imperial power projection.
Starmer’s second call after NATO was to meet Joe Biden to do homage. Which is fitting in this context as our aircraft carriers are incredibly expensive platforms for American aircraft. If Biden had any idea who Starmer was at the time, he will certainly have forgotten by now.
All of this money dedicated to destroying human beings is a firm pledge by Labour. There is however no firm pledge of anything for the NHS beyond further “reform”, which means piecemeal privatisation. There is no firm pledge for anything that does not kill people. It is of course a question of priorities.
For one quarter of the cost of the pledged increase in defence spending, Labour could both lift the two child benefit cap, thus taking over 300,000 children out of child poverty, plus give junior doctors the 30% pay increase they deserve.
Instead we have the unchanging priorities of the British Establishment, enforced by a Labour team who are more heartless and self-serving even than the Tories. Amazingly Labour are more in thrall to the private healthcare lobby, more in thrall to the armaments lobby and more in thrall to the Israel lobby.
Since the advent of universal suffrage, no government has ever been elected with the votes of a smaller percentage of eligible voters. 34% of those voting delivered a massive landslide under the ludicrous UK electoral system, and with a low turnout only 20% of eligible voters backed Starmer.
Picture 70 adults inside a big superstore. On average only 14 of them voted Labour. You can be walking down several aisles and to the checkout and never pass anyone who voted for this government. That is the foundation of popular “support” on which this Starmer regime rests. As the gap between rich and poor grows at unprecedented speed, it is not public support Starmer has to worry about, but something much more fundamental than that.
The Establishment is hacking away at the foundations of public consent to be governed.
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It has just been reported that the turnout for the general election was the lowest since universal suffrage was introduced in 1928 (for the record, it was 52%). If we were actually a democracy, the political class would be worried about this. They won’t be, of course.
Whn Iran got a similar turnout – at least in the first round – BBC commentators were saying this seriously calls into question the legitimacy of the result, since it was effectively a boycott. Strange they didn’t say anything like that about the UK election.
I am glad you posted this Glenn, because I was going to post exactly the same thing. This is the first election where I didn’t vote, because I do not believe tha5t our electoral system is fair and democratic.
A political (boss) class can’t exist in a democracy…. I don’t vote in undemocratic elections, because I believe in democracy. It looks like I’m in the biggest voting bloc; join us.
52%!!!
Someone else here mentioned how during Corbyn’s tenure as Labour’s leader, the BBC political pundits and others in the MSM, constantly talked about ‘homeless voters,’ i.e. those disenfranchised by Labour’s left-wing political platform. Yet, we haven’t heard the term used once in relation to Starmer’s drift to the right? And this despite it being far more apt now.
Had turnout fallen below 50%, no govt derived could’ve legitimately claimed to reflect the will of the British people! It’s already a hellishly tenuous claim for Stamer’s Labour ; since Labour have 64% of the seats based on a 33% vote share in an election with a 52% turnout.
It’s a crisis of democracy engineered by the UK establishment. We need a proportionate voting system or next time – as disillusionment with Starmer’s Labour really kicks in – it’ll be well under 50%.
For the record, Paul, turnout in this year’s general election was 59.9%, slightly higher than it was in the 2001 election (59.4%) – which was the lowest since the ‘Coupon Election’ of 1918.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/12/lowest-turnout-in-uk-general-election-since-universal-suffrage-report-shows
52% on the day then, I assume? The rest postal / proxy votes?
If it falls below 50% next time – a real possibility imo, as people conclude Starmer is a hollow, establishment sent, Tory continuity plant – then that’d be an important psychological threshold crossed : More people would have chosen not to participate in a participatory democracy, than those who did. How, at that point, could the establishment continue to maintain our democracy is functioning properly?
Besides Starmer’s ridiculous, unrepresentative landslide, built on a mere 33%, there’s the Reform party’s serious underrepresentation. Have you noticed how Wikipedia have, for the first time, excluded other parties : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_election – they’ve presumably done this to prevent people noting how utterly absurd the result FPTP has given us, truly is. Reform got 4.1 million votes and for that, they ended up with a paltry 5 MPs. Labour achieved 9.7 million votes and got 411 MPs. Hard not to conclude we need a fairer voting system.
“Reform got 4.1 million votes and for that, they ended up with a paltry 5 MPs”.
To my mind, even more ridiculous than the Labour-Reform discrepancy is the Liberal Democrat/Reform one.
The Liberal Democrats got 12.2% of the votes and 72 seats! Reform got 14.3% of the votes and 5 seats.
Clearly the system is amply supplied with means to discourage or even prevent the rise of new parties.
Tom, the rock band Status Quo put out the track “Again and Again” in 1978
The status quo in Britain must have listened because since then we’ve had them acting out the lyrics of the song.
“Again again again again again again again again”
Thanks for your reply Goose. Yes, they must be referring to turnout on the day, which means that postal votes must have been around 13% of total votes cast. This is considerably lower than the 20% or so that it’s been for the past few elections, probably due to older Tory voters with postal votes being so appalled by their antics that they didn’t bother voting this time. Anyway, I’m not sure that most people pay that much attention to turnout. To be fair to Wiki, they’ve listed all the parties that got more than 500 votes in the results sections for UK general elections going back many years. FPTP is hardly ideal but, on the plus side, it does make it considerably more difficult for fascist parties to gain traction.
Lapsed Agnostic – what a disgraceful comment. You think that we have over 4 million fascists in the UK? Seriously, you need to give your head a wobble. What you are saying, is that you only want a certain type of democracy.
Thanks for your reply Andy. I’m afraid my previous comment wasn’t disgraceful though, and I don’t need to give my head a wobble (copyright JOBby Enterprises – monetising Remoaner rage since 2016). Where did I state that Reform UK were fascist? That’s right, I didn’t, since I consider that party to be on the populist, but non-fascist, right. I was instead referring to the BNP, National Front etc, both of which are still (just about) going. In the 2009 European Parliament Election, the BNP got 6% of the vote. That would have given them around 40 MPs in a UK general election with full PR, meaning that the Tories would have very likely had to enter into coalition with them (and probably with other right-wing parties like UKIP), in order to be able to form a government. Under FPTP, no BNP MPs – or ones from any other far-right party – have ever been elected in the UK.
I don’t even think that most of the hundreds of thousands of people that voted BNP in 2010 were fascists – they just wanted mass immigration to end – but most of the MPs that they would have elected under PR were (despite claiming to have moderated their views under Nick Griffin’s leadership), and would have had no problem with suspending democracy had they ever come to power. Whilst there’s always room for improvement, I don’t think there’s huge amounts wrong with a type of democracy that has served the UK fairly well for decades. Hope that clears things up.
LA, I apologise for misunderstanding your post.
Excellent Craig, Starmer is dangerous and his drive to ramp up a war with Russia via the Ukraine is palpable.
Not a word for those who suffered for decades from a post office scandal under the three main parties; nothing on the decades-old promises to present a mental health policy and services fit for patients – no wonder they end up lavishing in police cells and prisons.
Looking grandiose, he is easing the planning system to build on green belts, school fields and parks – the places that make cities livable. He did not say a peep about compensating those who were given contaminated blood from the US.
He’s hanging on to Netanyahu, when near enough 70% of Israelis scream for an election and a ceasefire.
He is a useless self projectionist, a dangerous prick.
What Sturmer wants is irrelevant, he’s a message-boy.
Ah yes. Trident.
In 2017 the MOD sanctioned a test firing mid Atlantic of a Trident missile from one of our submarines. It was meant to fly east. It didn’t. It decided to fly west towards the USA.
6 years later and they tried again. This time the booster failed and the missile went plop not far from the sub.
Each test cost 17m pounds.
What a waste of time and money. Just scrap Trident. It does not work at any level. Deterrence? Nope.
Put the billions saved into the NHS. 👍
Don’t forget to never mention the billions wasted on PPE.
The establishment would rather burn money than ever use it to help the people or the country.
“It does not work at any level.”
It works very well at doing what it was designed to do, which is transfer a large amount of money from the British government to the US arms manufacturers and give the UK a weapon that is under US control. It is not designed to be actually used against anyone.
Regarding those two Aircraft Carriers, built at a cost of, I believe, £7 billion. Appears from what I have read in the past and more recently, they aren’t projecting imperial power anywhere, anytime soon. One broke down off the Coast of the Isle of Wight, was therefore unable to take part in joint Naval exercises off Norway, and needed to be towed away for repairs, whilst it’s partner broke down somewhere near the Dutch coast over a year ago. From what I recall, one failure was due to the crew not lubricating the prop shaft, whilst the other is inoperable due to the multi sections of the prop shaft being misaligned during construction and not running true. There’s even mention of one being scrapped to provide spare parts for its partner. Anyhow things are looking bleak for these seaborne trophy platforms. Oh, btw do they actually have any Aircraft to carry yet?
Bliar-Brown’s dowry to the Tory (Officials) in 2010. ;O)
Those aircraft carriers and much of our navy have nothing to do with defence of the realm. They are there as public subsidies to arms manufacturers. How much time have these ships actually spent at sea? They don’t even project the power they were alleged to. Strategically they are stuffed against the increasing number of countries with effective land based anti ship missiles. These will increase even more as Putin has said he will counter our arming of Ukraine by arming those we would prey against in future. A serious government would genuinely defend the country against the small risks we face by having armed forces who could actually defend us in the event we are attacked.
> Strategically they are stuffed against the increasing number of countries with effective land based anti ship missiles.
A large carrier is supposed to operate as part of a carrier group. A carrier on its own can’t really defend itself, escept by launching its planes. It’s nuts that we built two of these things, without laying any plans to build a coupla dozen destroyers (and man them, of course).
Send ’em to the red sea and see if the guys in flip-flops with AK47s can create a new reef.
Stevie Boy, there is a “breaking yard” in India for large ships. It basically is a piece of flat coast. The large ship is beached and an army of 50,000 or more day labourers attack the unwanted behemoth with hand hammers and spanners and dismantle it – in the vid I saw of this activity, the day labourers only had loin-cloths/ shorts on. It looked like back-breaking labour, dangerous with loads of toxic chemicals slopping about and the pay was just enough to buy the day labourer and their families an evening meal
Goodness knows what would happen if they were given AK’s and sandals – though I might be able to take a guess lol
“Strategically they are stuffed against the increasing number of countries with effective land based anti ship missiles”.
Or silent, almost undetectable diesel submarines. Little of relevance has changed since 29th November 1944, when the Japanese aircraft carrier “Shinano” was sunk by four torpedoes from the US submarine “Archerfish”. The biggest carrier ever built outside the USA, and to date the biggest warship ever sunk by a submarine, “Shinano” was converted from a battleship – sister ship to “Yamato” and “Musashi” – but never even got into action. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Shinano
Often in recent years, submarines both of NATO nations and of potential enemies have got inside NATO naval exercises – easily close enough to sink a carrier using torpedoes.
Sea Power was the route of Anglo European imperialism against Mackinders World Island of EurAsia.
It is now surpassed by satellite, drones and hypersonics that can reach out their deadly reach across the hemisphere.
Submarines are also now mostly useless because of such detection methods. Only able to hide in the deepest trenches of the Oceans – whats the point of them? As carriers of nukes as a deterrence against first strike? Unmanned Submarine drones and submarine killer drones that can stay on patrol for years mean that old style Carrier Groups are easily beaten. Even by amateur armies shooting them in giant ponds…
When it comes to shipbuilding – it ain’t the Russians, Koreans, Japanese and certainly not the US that does that or even produces enough steel ! It is of course the Chinese and any knowledge of the hundreds of ships they are churning out would make any effete aristo naval family man wish he’d stayed in his bath tub playing battleships.
I think you will find that there are a number of Russian submarines, armed with scores of hypersonic and transsonic missiles, in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, arbitrarily close to the shores of the USA and the UK. Don’t believe everything you are told about gee-whiz Western “technology”.
Obviously I didn’t make clear the gist of which side has the advantage.
Natzo is screwed in sea power. The only major advantage the Anglo Europeans had in that realm for centuries is nullified. That includes the US.
Pepe Escobar has it right when describing the battle for uni polarity and the US hegemons quest for leadership of the world, the US through its cutting edge ‘NATO’ vassals, now expanding into the far east to confront/contain China with further sanctions and by surrounding China with military bases, it never ends and for the US the prize of superiority over the world, justifying its self authored ‘Rules based order’. Problem is China, Russia and the other fast growing BRICS nations will not allow this to happen. Fasten your seat belts the US/UK mean business and if that means arms buildups and social decay at home, so be it.
“The Big Picture remains: the future of the “rules-based international order” is being decided in the black soil of Novorossiya. It’s Unipolar Order v. Multipolar, Multi-Nodal Order.
NATOstan is not in the position to dictate any pathetic mumbo jumbo to Russia. Putin’s offer has been the last one. Won’t take it? The war will go on all the way – until total surrender.
There are no illusions whatsoever in Moscow that the collective West may accept Putin’s offer. Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the SVR, has been blunt: the conditions will only get worse. Putin announced just the “lowest level” of Moscow’s conditions”.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/07/09/the-big-picture-behind-viktor-the-mediators-peace-shuttle/
“Putin’s offer has been the last one”.
I doubt if that is strictly accurate. What Mr Putin has often said, however, is that each subsequent deal offered will be less favourable to the West. It seems likely that he is actually better at “the art of the deal” than Mr Trump, or any Westerner.
Now we see the effect of the lustration against Corbyn affiliates/affiliated views past couple of years. In a way, the ousting of Corbyn was a coup, made up of slander, lies, disinformation. Instead of socialism, we get brazen neo-lberalism. Instead of social spending, we get military spending. Instead of local business, we get corrupt globalist companies like Blackrock (“Starmer wins backing of billionaire BlackRock chief: ‘He offers hope to British politics’” – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-starmer-blackrock-support-fink-b2432113.html). Instead of peace/diplomatic efforts we get aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza and flirting with nuclear war by escalating the situation in Ukraine.
One wonder why Starmer was such in a hurry to call Netanyahu after becoming elected, people did not vote for him to sucking up for a genocidal racist warcriminal. How out of touch is this man?! He could not even pretend to take a stance against Israel for his electorate!
UK’s Starmer to Netanyahu: There is ‘urgent need’ for Gaza ceasefire
New British premier also urges return of all hostages, more aid for Gazans; tells Israeli PM he hopes to deepen ‘close relationship’ between countries after landslide win last week
https://www.timesofisrael.com/uks-starmer-to-netanyahu-there-is-urgent-need-for-gaza-ceasefire/
I cannot stand his pro-israel-wife that do her best to keep a low profile but seems to have Keir in her vice regarding his views on Israel.
The introduction of Blackrock is terrifying. Britain is going to be put in hoc to these vultures until the end of time. The same “investors” have been lined up to oversee the reconstruction of Ukraine, but at least that agreement was imposed under the cover of mass destruction and war by a nakedly corrupt dictatorship. What excuse has Britain got?
As regards Gaza, I’m sure Starmer’s wife played a part in transforming him from a “Boycott Israeli Racism” man into a hard-core zionist. But remember both his campaign to become Labour leader and his general election campaign were primarily bankrolled by Israel lobby money.
“both his campaign to become Labour leader and his general election campaign were bankrolled”
Greg are you not being too harsh?
A greasy man has climbed a greasy pole – is this not an occidental “Takeshi’s castle”? Should we not celebrate this plucky Brit and his amazing transformations, his amazing gyrations – all to service the whim of our governing power – whoever or whatever that is. It’s certainly not the recently elected government
Vovan and Lexus pranked David Cameron ten days or so ago, pretending to be Poroshenko. When asked about the outcome of the election regarding Ukraine, Russia and the war, Cameron told “Poroshenko” that there would be no change in policy! He said “Britain” was very keen to see the war continue, more keen than America! Cameron said “I think the British policy is fixed” So the burning question is : who fixed it? Blackrock, the City, Goldman Sachs, MI5?
https://rumble.com/v53q8w7-prank-with-david-cameron.html
A hall of mirrors in a “sceptred isle” where democracy is merely a rumour adumbrating at the periphery
“Vovan and Lexus pranked David Cameron ten days or so ago…”
Is there no limit to their powers? Alternatively, is there no limit to the ignorance, stupidity, and gullibility of Western “leaders”? They have fooled Thomas Bach, Giorgia Meloni, Christine Lagarde, Angela Merkel, J. K. Rowling, Andrzey Duda, Kamala Harris, Prince Harry, Elliott Abrams, Juan Guaido, Adam Schiff, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Leo Varadkar, Boris Johnson, Bernie Sanders, Justin Trudeau, Tom Tugendhat, Ben Wallace, Priti Patel, and no doubt many others.
The most amazing thing is the openness and freedom with which leading politicians such as Boris Johnson, Ben Wallace, Leo Varadkar, and others are willing to talk with people who ring them up and pretend to be important figures. Even if Wallace had been talking to Zelensky, rather than Vovan and Lexus, he should never have even thought about saying some of the compromising things he did over an unencrypted phone line. The pranksters unerringly skewer pretentious idiots by appealing to their greatest weaknesses – love of celebrity and desire to appear important.
Tom the JK Rowling one was prime rib. The fake Zel snorted with gay abandon, yet she carried on regardless, even when he asked for help ruining the career of an actor the fake Zel didn’t like lol
I am not picking on her, there are more important people like you say but it made me think her a fool being led by the nose of a very cheap, ill-made copy of Zelenski. After the third snort, I would’ve asked the fake Zel if he wanted to be alone to consume his drugs but she just agreed with him, ignoring the obvious snorting and swallowing noises- like a ignorant cult acolyte knowing only one thing – this man and his voice was truly important and she must appear to be going along with things – unsettling in extremis
Very well said.
One thing that has changed is that several independents came within a whisker of defeating their opponents (our host included – minus the skulduggery). All really impressive, really eloquent.
If we get another five years, they may be able to build on that.
True, the criminals in charge seem to prefer to chance a nice, juicy, hot war. I’m sure they calculate that will help pre-empt any domestic protest as we all close ranks in true Orwellian style against the designated enemies.
But (and I’m surprised to be saying this) there is some hope while people like Craig, Leah, Faiza, Andrew, Jody, George and many others are still with us. Thank you to you all.
I can’t do much as a lowly foot solder but I will damn well try.
Very good article.
Those people who tell us we must supply arms to the Ukraine never say that about Gaza and Yemen.
First we had Lord Snooty [Cameron] shilling for Nato war against Russia – Ukraine needs more air defence, more long range missiles and tanks, we need to spend stolen Russian assets, Russia will have to pay reparations, all NATO countries must spend 2% GDP and more on defence – then he urges US speaker Johnson to get US money to Ukraine. Now Starmer is saying the UK will spend two and a half percent of GDP on defence. Wow. Those power projection aircraft carriers mentioned by Craig are straight out of a nineteen fifties movie. Today one hypersonic missile which Russia and China have in abundance can easily take out these floating coffins; even the Houthis claim to have them. It’s true John Wayne did single-handedly destroy US adversaries but he is dead, replaced by that walking cadaver and warmonger Genocide Joe. In his latest gaffe-filled speech – after introducing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as Vladimir Putin, then arriving to his own press conference more than 50 minutes late – a coughing, slurring Joe Biden then called Donald Trump his Vice President as he attempted to show the world what a ‘goodest boy’ can do. God help us all.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/crucial-press-conference-today-cracks-form-bidens-senate-wall-donations-dry-delegates
Our democracy has been sacrificed on the altar of maintaining US world hegemony and preserving the wholly subservient ‘special relationship,’ hasn’t it.
The US clearly has a voracious appetite – and the means & resources – to control as many countries as they possibly can and democracy and sovereignty in those countries be damned. The Future Leaders Exchange Program (FLEX), funded by the U.S. Department of State is a means by which they can do this in Eastern Europe and beyond. It’s no doubt a great way of recruiting US ‘agents of influence’ i.e. assets; promoting their careers in a quid pro quo relationship. FLEX operates in Armenia, Azerbaijan. Czechia, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. 35,000 compete annually in multiple rounds of testing to earn a FLEX scholarship, which provides for them to spend an academic year in the US living with a volunteer host family and attending a U.S. high school.
Needless to say, you don’t want those who’ve been through this ‘recruitment’ program anywhere near decision making. No one can serve two masters.
I first became aware of this FLEX programme when George Robertson proudly declared himself to be an ‘Atlanticist’ and a member of the Henry Jackson Society. It’s really a NATO grooming gang.
Robertson later rose to high office within the US Foreign Legion despite (or perhaps because of) local disquiet associated with the Dunblane school massacre. Lord George keeps a fairly low profile these days but his legacy remains: any website that does not moderate comments BTL might face the wrath of the law, following a test case involving Robertson who claimed he was defamed.
I suppose the US would justify it by saying, if we didn’t do it, the Russians or Chinese would. But would they? The US, and their corporate media allies would be the first to call out any politician emerging from similar scholarships in Russia or China, as ‘puppets’ of those two countries. Especially so, if said politicians were taking pro-Russia or pro-China positions on various issues like the FLEX people take very pro-US positions.
It seems like democracy is being usurped everywhere, doesn’t it. The EU is increasingly militaristic, and the EU Commission acts like an autocratic extension of NATO; which itself is a vehicle for US control over EU foreign policy via arms deals and intelligence sharing, giving the US leverage over EU govts. NATO itself isn’t democratic either; in the sense that Europeans don’t have referenda on the admittance of new members. And if we did, the sensible electorates of Europe would’ve probably prevented its eastward expansion. Even today, would all NATO countries vote to admit Ukraine to NATO, or the EU, if asked in referendums? I think everyone knows the answer. The Dutch heavily rejected a security and trade deal with Ukraine in their referendum. Did we vote for NATO? Did we vote for its expansion? Important questions as Article 5 commits all members to collective defence. The politicians have been far too blasé about expansion and its ramifications.
“I suppose the US would justify it by saying, if we didn’t do it, the Russians or Chinese would. But would they?”
The Fugs got there long ago – in 1966, actually. One of Ed Sanders’ and Tuli Kupferberg’s best songs; for my money it gets further into the psychosis of war even than Bob Dylan’s brilliant songs such as “Masters of War”.
https://genius.com/The-fugs-kill-for-peace-lyrics
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffq6X8YHeXg
Kill, kill, kill for peace
Kill, kill, kill for peace
Near or middle or very far east
Far or near or very middle east
Kill, kill, kill for peace
Kill, kill, kill for peace
If you don’t like the people
Or the way that they talk
If you don’t like their manners
Or they way that they walk
Kill, kill, kill for peace
Kill, kill, kill for peace
If you don’t kill them
Then the Chinese will
If you don’t want America
To play second fiddle
Kill, kill, kill for peace
Kill, kill, kill for peace
If you let them live
They might subvert the Prussians
If you let them live
They might love the Russians
Kill, kill, kill!
“Kill ’em, kill ’em, strafe those gook creeps!”
The only gook an
American can trust
Is a gook that’s got
His yellow head bust
Kill, kill, kill for peace
Kill, kill, kill for peace
Kill, kill, it’ll feel so good
Like my captain said it should
Kill, kill, kill for peace
Kill, kill, kill for peace
Kill it’ll give you a mental ease
Kill it’ll give you a big release
Kill, kill, kill for peace
Kill, kill, kill for peace
Kill, kill, kill for peace
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!
Changes will definitely come under Mandelson, Reeves, Streeting and Starmer but not for the better. The ruling class knows it can get away with much more under a Labour banner aggressively backed by liberals and people like Mick Lynch. That is why the Savile-Epstein party has been given the easiest of rides from the media and has received glowing endorsements and cash from all manner of billionaire oligarchs.
Excellent post, Mr. Murray, succinct and to the point, should be compulsory reading for every adult in the country. I didn’t vote in the sham election. If you vote it only encourages the bastards. And if I had voted, I would have been helping to perpetuate a system with which I fundamentally disagree and which needs to be replaced from the top down.
Guy Fawkes was 419 years ahead of his time.
For me nothing really changes with Westminster governments in mind only the face if who leads the UK changes, you get to vote on that but behind the scenes everything stays the same same, we don’t get to vote on any of that, the two-child benefit policy cap, which country to invade or regime change next, what sanction to apply to who, which private company or think tank gets huge taxpayer funding etc.
No the machine behind the public face never skips a beat, we only vote for a face and a mandate that, that might or more often might not implement, the games rigged, we can’t change what’s needing changed just by voting alone.
The (US) is well ahead of us on this.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/08/10/its-never-about-the-us-president-its-about-the-us-empire/comment-page-1/
Great article.
Every year, no matter the governing party, more bills/laws are passed, always curtailing people’s freedom. Recently, much more power has been given to agents of the state, especially the police. Restrictions have increased on protest and dissent. The public never chooses any of these laws, they happen because it’s the Establishment accruing more power to itself.
To vote in a GE is to consent to any restrictions the state decides to impose. To vote for your own enslavement.
The Encyclopedia Britannica:
“Totalitarianism is a form of government that attempts to assert total control over the lives of its citizens.”
The other week I looked at the electronic program guide on TV and noticed so many police ‘reality’ shows, I decided to start writing them down (over two days). The following list is by no means complete –
999: Criminals Caught on Camera, Inside the Force 24/7, Shoplifters: Caught Red Handed, BritCam: Emergency on Our Streets, The Force: Manchester, Police: Night Shift 999, Police Interceptors, Police Suspect No.1, Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders, Brit Cops: Law & Disorder, Cops UK: Body Cam Squad, Brit Cops: Rapid Response, Sky Coppers, Night Coppers, Football Cops, Highway Cops, Car Pound Cops, Traffic Cops…
That’s a lot of shows about how great the police are, and how these reluctant heroes bravely put us public scum bang to rights…
The above list is just the UK police. There are also ‘Border Force’ shows (UK and other countries), shows about how great bailiffs are (yes, you’re actually supposed to root for beefy bastards taking poor people’s stuff), and yet more shows about how great the police forces of Australia, USA etc. are.
I can’t watch these programs for long, but a few seconds of Police Inteceptors showed, in between their exploits, ‘info’ screens appearing about one of them, with their ‘favourite movie’, ‘favourite band’ etc… all designed to make you love your
slavemasters/overseersheroic guardians.Edward Bernays:
“As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.”
That was in 1930. The ‘technical means’ have indeed been developed since then…
Good points. And it’s not just the police but the profusion of ‘security guards’ everywhere these days, and increasingly throwing their weight around on the pretext of the ‘explosion’ in shoplifting, as well as parking wardens. I increasingly despise authority in almost any guise, with the exception of some of the most frontline emergency services staff.
“ 999: Criminals Caught on Camera, Inside the Force 24/7, Shoplifters: Caught Red Handed, BritCam: Emergency on Our Streets, The Force: Manchester, Police: Night Shift 999, Police Interceptors, Police Suspect No.1, Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders, Brit Cops: Law & Disorder, Cops UK: Body Cam Squad, Brit Cops: Rapid Response, Sky Coppers, Night Coppers, Football Cops, Highway Cops, Car Pound Cops, Traffic Cops…”
That list is a complete description of Western Civilisation at this moment except “Top people Cops”, a show which is never made and you don’t even mention all the Oz and American versions viewable on the telly – seen one seen ‘em all surely?
Have you seen the comic strip from 80’s/90’s Viz comic called “The Bottom Inspectors” James?. A branch of the Bizzies that specialise in stop and search of the great Great British public, in order to inspect their nether regions for crimes against hygiene. Violators face long spell in Re-education Camps in the great Great British countryside. The Bottom Inspectors depicted had a Prussian/Tuetonic tinge to their physical appearance, which is probably unfair – most nations are capable of producing vicious jobsworths it would seem.
I was very struck, when Starmer went to Washington for the NATO meeting by how similar his approach was to that of Tony Blair. Instant subservience to American policy. He would invade Iraq if that were in question today. However, in spite of the announcements, I rather doubt that the 2.5% of GDP for defence spending is going to be achieved. There was a feeling of show about the proclamation. I think that was because he doesn’t have the support behind the policy (on top of the low showing which gave him a big majority in the election). As far as I know, going to war in Ukraine is not popular, and there’s widespread support for Gaza in Britain, which means he’s announcing a policy which has little public support, not a good look for a new PM. He’s already doubling down for an unpopular policy, like the Americans do all the time now, and in his first week.
‘Doubling down’ is evidence of the policy having failed first time round. The Ukrainian policy was aimed at weakening Russia both through military might and economic isolation. After two and a half years it is obvious that the policy was as misconceived as many of us stated at the time. NATO cannot defeat Russia in Ukraine.
So there is no stomach for direct involvement of UK troops inside Ukraine. The UK losses suffered so far have been in the hundreds, principally of military experts whose NATO H.Q.s have been identified by Russian intelligence. This goes unreported in western media but UK soldiers being sent to their near certain death could not be covered up so easily.
Laguerre
You know what I was thinking as I watched his press conference: he”s detestable. I despise him because of the leadership campaign lies; whereby he presented himself as a dovish man of peace to win over members. Who does such a thing? The lies that won him the leadership promised a far more jaundiced view of US foreign policy. And there he is, promoting NATO like its some infallible gift of the gods.
The only thing that will prevent this performative rogue going full on ultra-hawk, will be his own MPs’ desire for electoral survival. They witnessed how Blair threw everything away over Iraq; they witnessed millions march against war, some, even may have been among them? And they know, despite the flattering majority, their support is very fragile indeed.
I have to say that I don’t remember him presenting himself as a ‘dovish man of peace’. His record of action never suggested that either. I always took him to be a Blair-like person in his policy, and that’s what actually happened in Washington. As a wholly-owned servant of the Lobby, it was never likely to be otherwise. He just went further than I expected.
There’s also an important distinction to make between domestic and foreign policy. Blair wasn’t too bad on domestic policy, better than the catastrophic mess under the Tories at any rate. People generally vote on the basis of domestic, not foreign, policy. So that is why Starmer got in. We’re still waiting to see what Starmer’s domestic policies are going to be like.
Laguerre
In his own words:
Based on the moral case for socialism, here is where I stand :
Pledge 4.
Promote Peace and human rights : No more illegal wars. Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act and put human rights at the heart of UK foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and justice.
Can you reconcile that with his display in Washington, and his loosening of the criteria for Storm Shadow use to include mainland Russia?
His whole leadership pitch was a performative sham.
The only difference is whether the wars are legal or not. He’s not taken war off the table. scarcely a difference from Blair, or many PMs. And domestic policy?
He’s not a liar like Johnson, who never opened his mouth without uttering a lie.
I’m not defending Starmer by the way; I’m just trying to see him in proper perspective. It’s not comparable to the Tories.
Laguerre
Just examine the pledge : no more illegal wars.
The only way of interpreting that, is: he wouldn’t commit the UK to any war without the UN’s authorisation. He agreed these pledges in 2019, he knew full well then, that Russia and China sit on the P5, and therefore the likelihood of UN agreement in support of a US-led military intervention, say against Iran, is zilch. In the current diplomatic chill, there’ll never be authorisation for a US/UK led military intervention from the UN. But he doubled down on it , with a promise of a Prevention of Military Intervention Act!
Yet, here we are, already, Starmer in office but a few days, with everyone believing Starmer would instantly commit UK forces to join the US in attacking Iran. And his pledge is void and meaningless.
He was one of the imperial sycophants applauding when Biden introduced Zelensky as ‘President Putin’ at the warmonger fest. A limp lickspittle to the powerful and bully of the weak.
I have since discovered that the stats are even worse. 20% of registered voters backed Starmer, but far from all adults are registered to vote. Starmer actually got one third of 52%, not 60% as widely reported, so not much over 17%…
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/52-turnout-uks-election-lowest-172828646.html
Sparticus
Any idea of the numbers of people who voted by post and by proxy in terms of parties?
The number of Tory votes in 2019 doubled from 2017, and Labour’s went up 20% I hear.
Also ID proof will have put a lot of possible electors off particularly amongst the less well off people.
So far lord Ashcroft has not published any analysis of the results.
If we wait for the MSM to dive deeper the Earth will have been swallowed up by the Sun.
Or we could just ask Laura Kuenssberg?
Many countries ban mail-in (postal) votes and proxy voting precisely because of the very high fraud risk. France banned absentee voting in 1975 because of massive fraud. Among other crooked practices, they found mail-in ballots were used to cast the votes of dead people. Lots of countries don’t allow it. It was reported the 2014 Scottish referendum’s mail-in votes, had an unusually high ‘No’ count, compared to the balance of votes on the day.
Amazing how the likes of Streeting did just well enough to win, isn’t it.
Some would claim the UK has too much probity for such underhand electoral mischief. But that’s delusional; we had military top brass discussing ways of removing a left-wing Labour PM in a coup, remember, and UK forces using Corbyn’s image for target practice. Wouldn’t trust the elite at all, not to meddle in what they’d justify among themselves, as the ‘national interest’.
It used to be very difficult to get a postal vote, you had to be practically bed ridden. Then under Tony Blair, and masterminded by John ‘two jags’ Prescott, it was suddenly made much easier. The patter was that there was a crisis of participation in democracy and postal votes would encourage people to vote.
The French, though, do have a voting system for citizens abroad (in the embassy, I think). There are even députés who represent that sector of the population. I thought there was proxy voting, but I’d have to check with my Parisian friend, who’s up on the subject.
Great Article, Craig. Thanks for that … a frightening future WWIII is all but on.
and check this clip out on Piers Effin Morgan when Aaron Mate is for 34 mins not allowed to speak without constant interruptions … the whole thing was infuriating to watch>>But this guy near the end openly saying what the plan for Gaza is – Remove Palestinians and repopulate it with “Good Arabs” Sickening Speech.
Aaron Mate’ GOES NUCLEAR On Piers Morgan Show – 34 mins –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kQMKPawmrs
Ps… Sweary words alert from Sabby going ballistic
Agree with this 100%. The “changed” Labour Party is the party of no change and Starmer is dangerous with his serpent tongue and weasel words like the vile Blinken, who wields much of the power in the United States.
This country has to tread very carefully. Russia might never have historically attacked us yet, and in fact we have sometimes been allies, but we have certainly attacked Russia in the past. We have recently used Storm Shadow missiles against it and keep on threatening more. We need to be mindful of the fact that Russia has the nuclear capability of wiping us out with a couple of quick blows and the sooner we wake up to the fact and start talking peace the better it will be for all of us.
Starmer has since been corrected.
Because that missile was the result of a joint project with the French(Franco-British) , the UK needs French permission to authorise Storm Shadow use against mainland Russian targets. France, as a NATO ally has to agree in other words.
This just illustrates how shallow Starmer is, making glib statements about loosening targeting criteria, without consulting. It’s the sort of gaffe the media would’ve crucified Corbyn over. Not suggesting that Corbyn would have tried to authorised such use though. Heck, I doubt Corbyn would’ve even wished to attend a NATO summit.
More on it here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/12/feckless-britain-has-handed-putin-an-undeserved-victory/
Richard Kemp thinks Starmer’s irresponsible move, followed by a retraction, has been a humiliation. So much for the ‘grown-ups’ being back in charge.
Look at the facts about Starmer:
⦁ played a key role in prosecuting Assange
⦁ refused to prosecute the paedo, friend of the Establishment, Jimmy Savile
⦁ stabbed Corbyn in the back, and spread lies about him (‘antisemitism’ BS)
⦁ cost Corbyn the election by refusal to accept brexit result (Corbyn was naturally anti-EU)
⦁ loves the imperial war machine, aka Nato
⦁ loves Zelensky, and wasted no time going over there to kiss his arse
⦁ loves Biden, and wasted no time going over there to kiss his arse
⦁ is fomenting (potentially) WW3, by intending to send missiles to Ukraine which can hit Russia directly
⦁ loves the Israeli regime, and refuses to critisize at all their disgusting, ongoing mass-murder of civilians
⦁ committed to fantasy ‘renewables’ despite geology, and the laws of physics
Yet, he’s supposed to offer some sort of hope? This ‘man’ will do anything to bend in service of power. He is amoral.
The prosecution (against voting) rests.
Some are comparing Starmer to Blair, but Blair was superior to Starmer in every way politically : presentationally in terms of oratory and in his grasp of complex detail. Blair’s gravitation to the Labour party, like Starmer’s, was profoundly odd: his father Leo, whom he adored, was the Tory chair of the Durham Conservative Association and all set on becoming a Tory MP, until illness prevented that. Tony Blair, joined the Labour party in 1975 and stood for parliament in 1983, Labour were then under leftist, Michael Foot, it was the height of CND protests.
It could be that both Blair and Starmer were recruited and groomed by the establishment to infiltrate and control the party’s direction by the security apparatus. This isn’t all that fantastical if you think about it; there was a Cold War underway, in Blair’s era, and authorities were paranoid about Russian influence in the Labour party and especially among the unions. I’ve no idea if that hypothesis is correct , but I do know If we don’t want these unscrupulous securocrat cabals controlling our political destinies in the UK, we’ve got to move away from the two-party system that is FPTP. It’s way too easy for the establishment plus their media friends, to manipulate the leaderships of the big two parties.
It is possible (likely, even) that Blair and Starmer were establishment plants. The ‘deep state’ (or whatever you want to call it) is utterly paranoid and unscrupulous.
FPTP is beneficial to the rulers – they have no desire to change it, and ‘we, the people’ have no mechanism to. Except one (the one nobody wants to mention, because it’s highly dangerous).
Anyway, it could be argued that in a world of declining resources, changing the ‘leaders’ won’t change much in material terms. In many ways, the ‘good times’, powered by the discovery of FF, are coming to an end. No one can prevent that.
Still, ‘managing the decline’ could be done more fairly, eg by dissolving the goverment, after allocating all UK adults/families an equal area of land (of the whole UK land mass) and saying “there you go, the rest is up to you”…
People would naturally co-operate and form local groups and alliances, without any central government necessary.
“People would naturally co-operate and form local groups and alliances, without any central government necessary.”
No they wouldn’t. How do you think we got to where we are today, starting from independent groups of hunter-gatherers back in pre-history? Sure as shit it wasn’t by naturally co-operating and forming local groups and alliances.
Bayard
The UK needs three things to be successful:
i. Proportional representation for Westminster : new parties = new thinking, new ideas. Coalitions will spur much needed reforms that the big two will never countenance, due mainly to their own selfish desire for unrepresentative, disproportionate absolute majorities.
ii. Embrace federalism; give regions genuine power to legislate and differentiate from each other; the one size fits all from London disempowers people and fosters a sense of unavoidable powerless decline. Powerful regional govt works well everywhere in Europe i.e. it’s tried and tested.
iii. Introduce a written constitution that codifies the limits of the state and genuinely holds the powerful to account. Only corrupt morons think all power should be concentrated in a monarch, or the corrupt HoC.
Without these things, the UK is condemned to managed decline.
I would go further, Goose, and propose that organised political parties should be made illegal, under pain of very harsh punishment.
It’s a matter of how you look at it, and we have all been heavily brainwashed for decades to see political parties as beneficial. The US Founding Fathers, on the other hand, disapproved of parties just as much as they despised and detested democracy. They saw parties – correctly, I believe – as conspiracies against the citizens. A political party is like a commercial cartel, but even more pernicious.
It will no doubt be argued that outlawing parties is “idealistic” or “Utopian”. True, there would be a LOT fewer huge plans, strategies, manifestos, regulations, etc. But how bad would that be? Important or urgent issues would have to be thrashed out between MPs in real time – ensuring that only really competent people could survive as MPs, and that the wheels of legislation would grind far more slowly. All good!
Imagine how the recent election would have gone if parties were illegal. Every single seat would have been contested on the character, record, and policies of the individual candidates. No saying, “Oh, I support the party line!” People like Messrs Murray and Galloway should have been shoo-ins, along with many other talented, hardworking, and (above all) honest people.
And if the Yanks wanted to bribe Parliament, they would have to approach every single MP separately. Much more expensive and time-consuming; and they would get their head in their hands from the honest ones.
Goose, as Tom Welsh points out, one of the main problems with the current system is political parties. We should be voting for the candidate, not the party. All forms of PR are based on the party system. The only reform of the electoral system that doesn’t do this, is multi-member constituencies.
The problem with suggesting solutions to the problems with the UK is that, to the people who caused the problems, they are a feature, not a bug and the only people who could solve the problems are the ones who like it that way. I think Starmer’s government will be a good thing in that it will continue to abrade away the mask of “democracy” that has shielded the oligarchs who run, and have always, run this country since there began to be countries in the British Isles.
The old people who are dying now are lucky enough to have lived through the one brief period when the oligarchs were on the back foot, when a large proportion of the working population of the country were trained in the use of arms and had used them to kill.
(Reply to Bayard’s comment on July 13, 2024 at 09:01)
“No they wouldn’t [naturally co-operate etc.]”
Er, yes they would.
For most of human history, about 300,000 years, we lived as hunter gatherers in sustainable, egalitarian communities of a few dozen people. If you count all human species, it goes back millions of years.
Australian Aborigines lived for millennia as hunter-gatherers, until invaders brought ‘progress’ and ruined things for them.
The crazed power pyramid that dominates now, only started to develop from about 10000 BC. It hit the accelerator with the discovery of FF, and grew to its present, enormous complexity.
That very complexity makes it vunerable, and now depletion is causing cracks to appear.
Bayard
Quote: All forms of PR are based on the party system.
I assume you’re referring to the ‘closed’ candidate lists? I know that’s a concern for many; namely, that you get lists agreed in private, with party cronyism and patronage ensuring leadership toadies are at the top of those lists, giving a better chance of them being elected. But you can have ‘open lists’ under PR, which in effect, would be like incorporating a local primary. I’m not going into the details, suffice to say that PR doesn’t have to mean ‘closed lists’ and the associated patronage and cronyism.
James
Because of the UK’s layers upon layers of official secrecy, we may be the most corrupt state in the West and no one would know; in fact such a suggestion would be treated as preposterous. Our judiciary’s power to open investigations into political corruption and hold the executive to account is seriously curtailed in the UK, compared to say, Italy or Spain. The establishment resist a written codified constitution for this very reason. There’s evidence a plenty that the UK intel agencies have politically authorised ‘free rein’ to do the unconscionable, and as a result are almost certainly vastly overreaching. They would surely be in violation of what would be contained within a written constitution, that is… if we had one. Thus, they and the politicians don’t want any such checks and balances : It’s about what’s best for them, not us.
We may be being held to ransom by an establishment with simply too many dark secrets and skeletons in the closet to allow a real accountable democracy in the UK. Were the UK to conduct our own equivalent of the Church Committee hearings in the U.S. (part of a series of investigations into intelligence abuses in 1975), hundreds of senior establishment people and officials could possibly be jailed.
Conservative and Labour parties protect each other’s senior figures from investigations-it’s like a secret, knowing pact. Whistleblowers are despised and hounded, as Craig has attested. The core of the Conservative party and Labour, under the centre-right, are aligned to the point of overlap, protecting this corrupt system.
Goose
Good point about a written constitution. However, recent acts of parliament (especially the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021) give agents of the state virtual free rein to commit any crimes up to and including murder, in the service of the state. They just write their draconian laws and MPs rubber stamp it all.
The corruption and secrecy run deep. The security services probably have loads of stuff on potential whistle blowers to keep them in line, Epstein style. I do believe it’s all so corrupt that it’s beyond repair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_Human_Intelligence_Sources_(Criminal_Conduct)_Act_2021
James
Anyone who thinks the UK doesn’t need a written constitution and codified rules, because, we’re a bastion of integrity in our processes already, need look no further than the Assange case.
Does anyone seriously believe there was no judicial interference in that case? The CPS deleted all their records and emails relating to the case, in breach of their own guidelines too. The state basically toyed with a man’s life, health and sanity, at the behest of a foreign power. A foreign state that, vindictively, wanted him to suffer for embarrassing them.
Goose,
There is little doubt in my mind that what you suggest is largely correct.
The infiltration by Special Branch operatives of leftist organisations is now being revealed in an inquiry. (In keeping with our genderist times, the deceit of this is reported more along the lines of deceiving a sexual partner, than in seeking to subvert the political balance of the UK. The personal being more important than the political, it seems. )
It would be naïve to assume the same process was not happening within the mainstream Labour Party itself. Neither Blair nor Starmer were obvious Labour Party types- anymore than Mandelson, Reid, Straw and some big buffoon whose name (I think he became defence secretary?) eludes me for the present were ever really members of some Trotskyite group at university. It’s just security services backstory.
FI, I was at Edinburgh University same time as Gordon Brown and Kirsty Wark of Newsnight fame. I have never doubted where their allegiance lies.
“Blair was superior to Starmer in every way politically : presentationally in terms of oratory and in his grasp of complex detail.”
So what you have against Starmer is that he is not charismatic. The rest is still to see; too early to say.
Not that I have anything in favour of Starmer, but there is still the likelihood that he will be better than the corruption of the Tories, which was really awful.
My guess is that the corruption will be the same, just less blatant under Labour. The shocking thing about the Conservatives (Labour are now just another type of Tories) was that they no longer cared how visible their corruption was.
The only reason their bribes from private health interests and the Israel lobby are not visible is because the media refuses to report it. But even the BBC has headlined some of large bribes Starmer has received from big business and individal billionaires, reporting it as if it is something the public should be reassured by.
I can’t help if you believe that Blair’s or Starmer’s corruption was as bad as under the Tories. The Tories were an overt pillage state : divert everything into their own pockets. Blair wasn’t like that. As for Starmer, we don’t know yet.
“I can’t help if you believe that Blair’s or Starmer’s corruption was as bad as under the Tories.”
Well, as you say and as I said, with Starmer we don’t know yet, but I expect that it will be as bad, but just not as openly. That’s because Starmer’s Labour are the Tories rebranded to make them acceptable to an electorate fed up with the previous lot of Tories. In any case, how would you know how bad corruption was under the Blair government when it was all kept under wraps? We only know so much about the Conservatives’ corrupt activities because they didn’t bother to hush them up.
“as you say and as I said, with Starmer we don’t know yet”
What a pair of jokers.
Blair did not take office promising 20 billion in cuts to public services (same as Osborne) or vowing closer relations with a nation committing genocide. The cunts are firmly back in charge of Labour, just as you wanted.
Fucking own it.
Laguerre
The real giveaway to corruption levels, I believe, is how wealthy they become post-politics, having left office and politics altogether. Watch where Starmer and Reeves go upon leaving office.
In countries in Africa, the leaderships are often overtly corrupt in power ; getting caught red handed taking bribes etc. That’s not how it works in the West; it’s more sophisticated, with plausible deniability built in. Typically, the big investment banks play the role of post-election patrons, taking them on in non-executive roles, or consulting or advisory roles, roles that there’s nothing to suggest they are remotely qualified for. They often receive staggering sums – up to £250k – for half-hour speeches before tiny audiences in tropical locations. Then there’s the fabulous book deals for their memoirs; memoirs no one will purchase or read.
The real giveaway? What do you consider the payments they have received to privatise the NHS, to hand infrastructure renewal and the green transition over to Blackrock and to aid Israel in genociding the Palestinians? Uncorrupt democratic politics?
Greg Park
Those ‘donations’ are supposedly to cover their office expenditures though, aren’t they? i.e. pay for researchers etc. I don’t think those donations go into the MPs’ personal accounts? That’d be a beyond blatant form of corruption if they did.
It does look as sketchy as all hell though, and it should stop. They already get expenses for staff, and many abuse that process by employing a spouse or other family relative. The truth is; you can be as good or as bad an MP as your conscience permits. Some MPs do work really hard for their constituents, whereas other MPs don’t even hold surgeries; claiming they are fearful for their own safety. An argument no one should have much sympathy with; as if they can’t fulfil their role, why are they still in the job?
They are bribes to enact policies against the public interest. Against your interest. Unless you’re a Clent journalist of theirs or a Labour Right man like Laguerre why would you want to downplay it?
Blair was better than Starmer in terms of his strengths and skills. As a result of which, he was able to be far worse in his effects.
Tom Welsh
From a British perspective, if you’re anti-war, it may be better if Trump wins in November.
The fact is, the Pentagon won’t want to conduct a major campaign with Trump calling the shots as commander-in-chief. According to insiders, the top brass view him as too impulsive and irrational to conduct a major campaign with him at the helm.
And secondly, Starmer would find it nigh on impossible to sell ‘Trump’s war’ to his party and the wider, more sceptical UK population.
Imperial Britain did a lot of bad stuff; but at least they called the War Office the War Office.
In the 1960s the politicians started using Orwell’s ‘1984’ as an instruction manual.
That is a very good point. I think it was around 1964 when they changed the name. It was known as ‘The War Office’ until then.
The word ‘Office’ is rather reassuring I suppose. A bit like ‘affordable housing,’ ‘growing our economy,’ or ‘securing our borders.’
Charles Clarke, an Oxbridge clone, was the buffoon whose name eluded me in an earlier post.
Charles Clarke is hardly your typical Oxbridge clone, David, since he looks more like a toby jug than Lord Toby Jug:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Clarke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Toby_Jug
He was also never Secretary of State for Defence. If you’re looking for a NewLabour Defence Secretary who was a buffoon, look no further than Geoff ‘Buff’ Hoon.
Small correction: the overwhelming majority of what NHS staff have been asking for is pay restoration, not pay increase, and is still far less than they deserve.
It’s not only far less than they deserve, it’s also far less than is needed to attract enough capable Brits into the health-care professions to run the NHS.
Unstated government policy is still to poach expensively-trained people from poorer countries.
Craig states that the Labour Party are “more in thrall to the Israel lobby”. I would suggest that so also are the Conservative party. But neither could abase themselves more than the US Congress, soon to be regaled by that murdering scumbag Netanyahu. Here is the late Uri Avnery describing the last time Netanyahu spoke to Congress…..
“There they were, the members of the highest legislative bodies of the world’s only superpower, flying up and down like so many yo-yos, applauding wildly, every few minutes or seconds, the most outrageous lies and distortions of Binyamin Netanyahu.It was worse than Stalin’s Supreme Soviet, when showing less than sufficient respect could have meant death.
What the American Senators and Congressmen feared was a fate worse than death. Anyone remaining seated or not applauding wildly enough could have been caught on camera – and that amounts to political suicide. It was enough for one single congressman to rise and applaud, and all the others had to follow suit. Who would dare not to?
The sight of these hundreds of parliamentarians jumping up and clapping their hands, again and again and again and again, with the Leader graciously acknowledging with a movement of his hand, was reminiscent of other regimes. Only this time it was not the local dictator who compelled this adulation, but a foreign one”.
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1306359471
This reminds me of an incident reported by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in chapter 2 (of Volume 1) of The Gulag Archipelago. At a district party conference, people stood up to clap Stalin. The applause went on for many minutes, but no-one dared stop, because secret police were waiting to see who would stop first! Finally a paper factory director did. He was arrested and given 10 years on some imaginary pretext. His interrogator said to him ‘Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!’ Solzhenitsyn gave this as an example of Darwininian selection, and how to grind people down with stupidity.
Who would have thought that anything like this would happen in America? At least they won’t get 10 years for stopping applauding first. Not at the present time. But Trump may set up a dictatorship if he gets elected in November, following the notorious “Project 2025”, and then things may be different. George Galloway in his talk show seems to predict that Trump will win by a landslide. I hope he’s wrong, or Sinclair Lewis’ 1930s novel It can’t happen here (which Waterstones displayed and sold in 2016 when Trump was last elected) could start coming true.
Glad to see Mr Murray’s educated language 🙂 marked for myself 2 words and a phrase to learn, thank you!
—
Don’t mourn your democracy. You did it yourself, turned your democracy into a cult.
I’m now using the generalized “you”, I hope everyone understands that I mean the opposition of those social processes that took place in your and in my part of the planet.
You were simply Europeans, a wonderful description, with a predominantly geographical meaning and some associations with a historical background. You were free.
Then you started running around with your freedoms, as we say “like a fool with a brightly painted knapsack.” You were so happy about your social achievements that it became a source of pride and a feeling of superiority. Your historical past, namely the experience of colonization of less developed countries, largely influenced your mentality, and you began to consider yourself the most successful people on the planet. Your American branch doesn’t hesitate to use ‘exceptional nation’ about themselves.
You became arrogantly picky in choosing your partners, and in the end you organized a special narrow Union of Europeans. As if an economic union, but in fact it’s political and military alliance.
Compare ‘European’ and ‘EU citizen’. Feel it? Some grandeur, some government, some responsibility, something bigger and greater and putting their curious nose and greedy hands into more corners of our planet 🙂
You think that there’s a place in the EU for new white Ukrainians, but do not rush to grant membership to the dark-skinned Turks who has been waiting in the line for too long. (Frankly, I think that the overt Nazism of the current Ukrainian regime does not actually shock Europeans, but is something natural or at least tolerable, although it’s indecent and unprofitable to approve it out loud.)
You don’t notice when you are arrogant, and you seem to believe that the period of superiority in development is eternal.
Democracy is freedom, and freedom, ladies and gentlemen, means flexible response to reality. That is, you are free to think one way or another, express your opinion, listen to other opinions, change your mind, doubt, postpone a decision or introduce a test period – many options are available to a democratic society until you make a final decision. This is what freedom is.
What you live in now does not include any of the above.
Now you must follow what you are told, otherwise you will be punished.
This is a cult.
And you will die if you continue this. Like the USSR ceased to exist with its ossified ideology – the cult of communism.
You will perish like a business that has stopped collecting feedback from customers and staff, but simply monotonously carries out its internal procedures – a cult of traditions and bureaucracy.
You will loose the original meaning as a marriage in which the spouses are not interested in each other’s affairs, but simply carry out their routine rituals day after day – the cult of habit and hasteless life style.
Such cults do not survive shocks, and the world is now already going through a series of not very large shocks, with great ones ahead.
Was there an “eternal post-Cold War peace.”?
2.5%?? Pah! I spit on your two and half percent.
“Hold my beer , let me show you my gigantic 5 %.”
‘‘– GEROMAN — time will tell – 👀 – @GeromanAT
MIC won.
’ ‘Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal 48m
🚨🇵🇱BREAKING: POLAND TO SPEND 5% OF GDP ON DEFENSE IN 2025
Foreign Minister Sikorski announced Poland will allocate 5% of GDP to defense in 2025, up from 4% this year, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Sikorski: ”We are number one in NATO, including the US, in proportion.
We are no longer in eternal post-Cold War peace.”
Deputy Defense Minister Tomczyk confirmed a 10% budget increase in 2025 to a record high.
Army chief General Kukula emphasized the need to prepare for an all-out conflict.
Source: Reuters “
——————-
To the Last Pole now – not happy with 10k not so secretly already fed into the ukrop mincer when they weren’t even supposed to be there!
So what happens next – first the rest of Europe will regain their cheap plumbers and builders, the sandwich shop gorgeous girls return. We in tge U.K. will see more illegal migrants from there – they will join many who have already settled here over the last 30 years.
Good for us! We need the demographic enrichment of migrants, all Europe does.
I’ll be able to get hold of their hard working abilities and get the major repairs done around the house. Etc
Second they will be forced into Galicia and beyond to ‘reclaim their ancient imperial lands’ as some glorified debt collector bailiffs, on behalf of the Collective Wastes Bankers and Agro Industrialists to ‘claim’ the Lands they ‘bought’ from ‘Flash Harry’ Shelensky. With our new Spiv Brave Sir Keith leading from the back. To retake Crimea and Break Russia for his zionazi masters, huzzah!
Third – the dumbest ‘pollack’ (not being racist just pointing out that they have long been butt of many a joke in the USA as being the stupid person around, same as the Brits used to say of the Irish, and the Irish about their own Kerryman..) will go with their Banderite Poles murdering neighbours (yup they are really that dumb!) against the eternal anti Nazis- and lose hundreds of thousands of more young men to enrich the black soil there.
Sikorsky and Applebum – the latest modern day Macbeth’s – never forget his gleeful “thank you USA” for destroying the NS2 , the spiteful real life Psycho wife. They will be the New, ‘Greatest Wartime Leaders’ as Shelensky is ‘retired’. His little flabby cocaine stained nose preserved like Lenin , a mummified trophy to inspire future generations of dumb ukropians into believing that Bandera was their Father and yes!Shelenski their trans human ’mother’ …
We really deserve all we are going to get. There are so many idiots who think that having had a change of political party in No10 is a sinecure. It will be reinforced if the Spanish somehow don’t turn up tomorrow! A feel good Cool Brittannia, Kool Aid Trip .. into the fascist Abyss.
As we carry on believing all such nonsensical , Russophobic, anti-Putin propaganda.
It’s insane how many otherwise sane peoples don’t see through that yet. Who support Palestine and can see the injustice through the propaganda – many have reacted to the pictures and news of REAL dead Palestinian children.
Yet they still insist that journalists are killed and imprisoned by a dictator Pootin, whilst totally ignoring Assange. Whilst still repeating the base lies of him escaping rape charges. Never rembering the collateral murder videos that started his persecution. That Starmer was directly involved in not only that, but in covering up many crimes like Savile and Blair illegal WoT and lies of WMD… In their hippy dippy minds there’s not a Tory government anymore so all is well! Fucking stupid children still believing in Santa Claus.
Will they object or jump up and salute when Brave Herr Starmztrooper announces tub thumping patriotic nonsense – as he starts climbing into tanks and airplanes in his new designer Hugo Boss type uniform to go with his IronMan makeover?
That is us Little Englanders now, going from Dumb, Dumber to Dumbest.
Simon Tisdall, is in fine form in today’s Guardian. He wants to bomb Russia, which he believes was the raison d’etre for NATO existing in the first place. In his view Biden is too cautious and Scholz ‘over fearful of nuclear conflict.’ So we might yet see Starmer in a flak jacket, directing operations on the eastern front.
One problem is also that there is less and less of a difference between left and right. Atleast here in Sweden you could tell the difference between left/right back up until circa 2000. But then something changed quickly, – ideology died. Majority of western nations have ended up with pretty much 2 big parties effectively blocking out any other party from gaining power. Why are western journalists/leaders foaming at lets say Russia when they claim that the parties ruling Russia + the majority of opposition parties there, work in tandem when the exact same thing going on in the western parliaments? How many real opposition parties is there in a typical western nation that actually stand on the opposite end of things? Close to zero in every EU nation. Deep down the western leaders are chillingly authoritarian and I fear that in some decades many western nations will drift develop into dictatorial regimes and it will be justified (according to themselves).
yeah…just look at the Finns and their new immigration law which is called the harshest europe-wide. They are instrumentalizing RU threat to lay out a new legal structure which can be expanded against any “alien” whether RU or not in coming years.
Since such laws are never devised with short-term expectations and plans. But: You always need an ad-hoc justification to introduce them.
Same is true for the authoritarian turn which you are describing – these things had been waiting in the drawers of Swedish legal experts for a long time I am pretty sure.
(Wonder what a Henning Mankell would have said about all this today and what he could have revealed about trajectories reaching back into the 1970s and 1980s.)
AG
Exactly the whole debate about “hybrid warfare” is so stupid,it is not like Russia force these refugees to go to the nordic countries, the refugees, themselves want to go these nations and they have the right to apply for asylum. Suddenly this ironclad (asylum)-right is now somehow considered, in the pathetic term, “hybrid warfare”. Everything the west do not like is “warfare”which is distubring in itself because it use military lingo when dealing with civil issues.
“military lingo when dealing with civil issues”
One of the most disturbing phenomena now.
I am constantly trying to tell people. They just shrug it off…
Jack
The only country powerful enough to reshape the political landscape in a European country is the US.
In Sweden, Carl Bildt was a v.prominent politician; shaping policy, throughout that period. Carl Bildt passed confidential papers to his handler in the US embassy in the 1980s. He’s also allegedly been involved in various cover-ups https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Carl_Bildt
The US are relentlessly energetic, shaping a world, including European govts and the EU in their interests, as they see them. And they’ve not had any US President, certainly not in recent times, who’d thinks that manipulation of allies, a reprehensible attack on sovereignty and democracy.
Look at Ukraine and Nuland’s entitled interference; look at the US’s controversial ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, ordering the German government to close Norde Stream 2.
Kissinger put it best : It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.
ah thx for the link.
There was a relentless exchange between Bildt and Mearsheimer I believe 2 years ago…
Bildt is an idiot or am I missing something there?
Jack, I think that “left” and “right” ceased to be usefully meaningful by about 1919. Originally, they referred to the preferred seats of delegates to the French States General at the time of the Revolution; conservatives to the right, radicals to the left. Already then, some of the radicals (left) were the most crazily totalitarian.
In the UK and much of the West today, there are no political conservatives. The “Conservative” Party (whose very name is a blatant lie) has presided over huge and fundamental changes in society – most fundamental of all, the wholesale change in the nature and composition of the “British” people. The last fairly conservative PM may have been Ted Heath or Alec Douglas-Home; Macmillan was fairly radical, and Mrs Thatcher extremely so.
Another issue is language like this used by Jean-Luc Mélenchon argueing that France´s RN necessitates a “cordon sanitaire”.
Is he aware of the etymology?
Where is the difference between calling immigrants parasites and regarding voters of RN a disease, the latter of which Mélénchon is doing.
See his phrases on Jacobin:
“(…) It is a cordon sanitaire against a party hostile to the republican nature of the state, such as the Rassemblement National, coming to power, for all the reasons expressed a thousand times on the subject. (…) The attempt to transform a cordon sanitaire into a political alliance is a baseless abuse of political power. It comes on top of the one that denies the election result and the victory of the Nouveau Front Populaire. The two form an unacceptable whole.(…)”
I would be surprised if Mélenchon ever used the term “cordon sanitaire” for Macron´s RE.
In fact dumb as I am initially I thought RE and RN are the same party.
If this sort of total neglicence of realities in France by one of it´s main left representatives is regarded as a sane path I don´t see any light for European politics.
see:
Mélenchon: Macron Is Wrong. France’s Election Had a Winner.
By Jean-Luc Mélenchon
https://jacobin.com/2024/07/melenchon-macron-france-left-winner
And with such fundamental split in the population – however one in fact only provoked by party politics – (it´s not a genuine split in the population!) – we won´t find the power to stop the genocidal ideology towering above this pseudo conflict from carrying on with it´s (self-)destructive project for the “New American Century” aka “New European Century”.
The Left in Europe is destroying it´s own basis by artificially striking divisive border lines through the populace. It´s nothing different than what infamous G.W. Bush said with his: “Either you are with us or you are against us.”
The rise of the right after WWI as an entity of its own was only made possible with the destruction of the left, the originally Marxist movements, which had nothing to do with the ideological grievances associated with it today. It was a labour movement fighting for the rights every member of a society should have.
The right picked up on a few pieces and then transformed most human demands into an ideology.
To those with a little time I recommend this 90 min. talk with Andrei Martyanov and Scott Ritter:
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/07/later-today-garland-hosts-scott-and-me.html
They cover a lot. But the gist of it makes an excellent argument how BRICS is countering the genocidal path of the US and Europe by a combination of projecting “hard” and “soft” power.
The evidence puts BRICS into the position of a trustworthy broker and ally because, as Craig states above:
“Ask yourself this simple question – when did a Russian missile last land on British soil? The answer is never.”
And this simple question is enough to convince most countries to pick a certain side.
So unless Mélenchon and friends all over Europe do not understand the shifts taking place globally and unless they are not adapting, their cause – as far as it is an honest one and not some bullshitting “cordon sanitaire”-like lack of any plan of their own – s a lost cause.
And with it old dame Europe.
Owen Jones, being interviewed on the always excellent Majority Report, weighed in on our current state of politics and Starmer / the new red Tories in particular.
He calls Starmer the worst liar to become a Prime Minister, second only to Johnson. He also mentions how Starmer’s Labour genuinely delight in the misery of the Left, such as when they dressed up in Israeli flag garb for the Eurovisions, just to rub their noses in it.
The interview starts about 21:30 mins/seconds in:
https://majorityreportradio.com/2024/07/10/7-10-what-will-starmer-labour-do-in-charge-w-owen-jones
Concerning to note that all this is giving rise to far-right factions becoming ever more popular, and politics ratchets rightwards still further.
Another place where nothing changed, unfortunately, is Blackburn. Since the infamous Adnan Hussain is notoriously backed by the Uniparty.
Maybe in 5 years, or preferably before, since Starmer can’t last that long.
A piece attacking Adnan Hussain tonight in the Telegraph : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/13/pro-palestinian-mp-told-rally-no-difference-israel-isis/
He allegedly compared Israel’s government to ISIS.
*The ability to read Telegraph articles(for free) seems to depend on the browser you use.
I couldn’t be paid to read the Telegraph Goose. I consider it like the “Necromicon” HP Lovecraft wrote about. I reckon you could use a copy of the Telegraph to summon the Lloigor lol
https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Lloigor_(species)
The thing is these days the information is everywhere. When nitter died a few months ago, I was amazed to realise the content on X became available from other sources after about 12 hours or so – I would imagine ditto for the Telegraph, Guardian etc,
Yemeni forces appear to quite formidable now as they fight to stop the Zionist genocide. US forces are not what their tv shows and movies make them out to be.
“US Navy fighter pilots have described as “traumatizing” their encounters with Yemen’s Armed Forces launching daring strikes on Israeli-owned and -bound shipping in the Red Sea in retaliation for the occupying regime’s months-long genocide against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
The fighter pilots came home in Virginia on Friday after nine months of maritime clashes with the Yemeni military and their missile and drone strikes, in what CBS News referred to as “the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II.”
The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group, which includes three other warships supported by squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornets, was tasked with protecting Israeli vessels and US-allied warships in a Red Sea corridor that leads to the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean.
The carrier strike group left Virginia in mid-October last year but its deployment at the strategic waterway was extended twice following the escalation of Yemen’s pro-Palestine retaliatory attacks.
“Honestly, it was completely unbelievable,” Lt. Cmdr. Charity Somma told CBS News. “I don’t think anybody on board that carrier strike group was expecting that to happen.”
Commander Benjamin Orloff, a Navy pilot, told reporters in Virginia Beach that most of the sailors, including him, were not used to being fired on, given their previous military engagements in recent decades.
“It was incredibly different,” Orloff said. “And I’ll be honest, it was a little traumatizing for the group. It’s something that we don’t think about a lot until you’re presented with it.”
When asked by CBS News if what they faced could be described as the most intense naval combat since Word World War II, Orloff called the description “pretty apt.”
Underlining the severity of the Yemeni military’s confrontation with the US Navy forces, Orloff said, “This was not long-range projection. This was…right in our face.”
that´s a great story, right up Andrei Martyanov´s alley (“US has no clue of fighting war any more”)
However sophisticated the defensive tech, throw enough at a target and eventually its defences will be exhausted and it’ll be overwhelmed. The US and UK are geared to fight near peer enemies; the Houthis cheap mass produce drones, including unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) and various ballistic missiles pose a new dilemma because of the cost of interception. Interceptor missiles the US uses SM-3 ($9.7 million to $27 million a piece) SM-2 $2 million,and the SM-6 $3.9m, this against Houthi drones costing $20,000 a piece and probably a lot less than that in real terms. Defending Israel from Iran cost the US close to a billion dollars alone.
“The US and UK are geared to fight near peer enemies”
May be on paper which is however not worth the ink.
Martyanov and Ritter I believe do make enough sound arguments to prove that neither US nor GB would stand a serious chance in all out war short of WMDs. (see my link above)
Which is why NATO might be trying to provoke just that by some ground operation in a couple of years.
(I still don´t see their end game after that however if it´s not nuclear holocaust or nuclear winter which can be caused even by a “limted” nuclear war in Europe or on RU territory.)
I don’t like the underlying assumptions driving this; the idea that war with Russia is somehow inevitable. It’s like Europe is on a one-way road with no exits.
There’s a shared belief among NATO countries that Putin’s ambitions involve a revanchist desire to recreate the Soviet Union(USSR), by force.
Paradoxically, it may be Trump who plays the role of peacemaker for Europe. Breaking the NATO groupthink on Ukraine of ever more weapons. Biden looks set to gift him the presidency too. With his often unintelligible, increasingly slurred speech, Biden is like some punch-drunk boxer, looking for that one big last fight – while those around him refuse to tell him it’s a big fight too many.
“I don’t like the underlying assumptions driving this; the idea that war with Russia is somehow inevitable. It’s like Europe is on a one-way road with no exits.”
That´s precisely the issue and argument that is pushed without end in sight.
None other than George Kennan pointed out that there would be no bigger tragedy for the US economy if the then USSR would disappear as an enemy.
Regarding not just the stakes but the nature of the conflict now it is completely insane.
NATO intends to protect us from evil which NATO is producing.
Orwell had smartly anticipated the hermetic immanence of perfect propaganda. You don´t just offer the patriotism, not just the solution for the problem – no, you produce the problem too. Eventually there is no enemy at all, no threat to defend against. Only the fiction of one. (The Goldstein-paradox from “1984” of course.)
I have somehow doubts about Trump.
Lets assume he does freeze the thing – remember what happened between 2016-2020 on the level of disarmament treaties. Will he stop provoking RU for real? Why should he? And if so, why should war over Taiwan be better?
Getting the 7th US Fleet obliterated is not a sensible gamble from the POV of the world´s security.
…sry to coming back to Trump, but this Brian Berletic 18 min. piece argues that Trumpy makes no difference. That stuff is in the second half. It is a post originally made due to the shooting. But I found the other things in it more interesting
“Trump Assassination Attempt: Security Lapses, Manipulating Public Perception”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6-z0PqTKeU
p.s. the 1993 NYT piece on the WTC bombing and FBI he is quoting he has linked too, which is a cool service:
https://archive.ph/Pjqyr
Possible negotiations on Ukraine which you are referring to are not part of the analysis however.