Tag Archives: Corbyn

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, Conservative Friends of Israel, elections, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, Party Politics, society, the Great Reset, Uncategorized

Boris, Angela, and Macron too

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Tales of Brexit and Biarritz

We have now seen the political theatre playing what seems to be somewhere between comedy and tragedy, or perhaps an unfunny farce. The talking heads and “experts” of the msm have been scrabbling for meaning amid the obfuscation and posturing. Some “newspapers” have even resorted to “experts” in “body language”:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7380561/Boris-twitchy-anxious-veneer-cordiality-says-body-language-expert-JUDI-JAMES.html

Where does the truth lie? Where does Boris-Idiot lie? Everywhere and non-stop?

I find it infuriating to see, on every news broadcast, that part-Jew public entertainer posing as and (literally) playing the part of Prime Minister of this country. A total charlatan.

We now keep hearing the question, as in the TV game show, “Deal or No Deal?”, and, as in that silly but somehow addictive TV show, there is no skill involved. One just opens all the boxes to see what is inside. No skill, but much calculation as to one’s own best bet. In the case of The Boris-Idiot Show, we should ignore the flim-flam of the “head to heads” with what now are supposed to be “world leaders”. All that Boris-Idiot is considering is his own position and ambition; and was there ever in British politics such an empty ambition?

What After 31 October?

Even more than David Cameron-Levita, this latest ZOG figurehead has no real plans for the people of the UK, no interest in their lives or how to improve Britain’s place in the world. All he wants to do is to be seen as Prime Minister and show off. To that end, his girlfriend has cleaned him up and tidied him up a bit, told him to cut down on the rote-learned classical Greek and Latin and the silly obscure English words from the OED, and tutored him in how to appear, even if briefly, “prime ministerial”.

As noted, Boris-Idiot is the most ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government] Prime Minister ever, and his Cabinet is the most Jewish and Zionist ever, despite the fact that most of them are not Jewish, nor even part-Jew. All (as far as I know) are members of Conservative Friends of Israel. All are also extreme finance-capitalist by ideology, though few if any have ever run a successful private business (unless you include the scams of Grant Shapps etc). They want to destroy the few rights that British citizens have qua employee or otherwise for that matter (eg free speech rights).

Johnson does in fact not much care whether “deal or no deal”, so long as the mass media narrative plays well for him. If “no deal”, then “Boris” plays the Poundland Churchill, standing up for lonely isolated Britain against the EU bullies. If the EU offers enough so that Boris-Idiot can present it as some kind of “breakthrough”, then he can play the role of popular returning Chamberlain, waving his piece of paper and proclaiming “peace in our time with the EU”.

The above two characterizations may seem facile, but that is the level Boris-Idiot is on. He has no serious political or ideological position; it is all showy nothingness, relying on simplistic formulae, 1950s or 1960s boys’ comic-paper cartoons about standing up for Britain etc, and on fooling people too stupid or uninformed to see through what is essentially a con-act. That applies to Brexit too.

I myself favour Brexit, favoured Leave in 2016 and still do, but the Brexit process was criminally mishandled by a load of idiots in the Conservative government(s), possibly deliberately, and so now we career into uncertainty.

At first, Boris was pro-EU, pro-Remain, then “sceptical” (as public opinion moved), then pro-Leave, then voted in Cabinet (during his disastrous months posing as Foreign Secretary) for Theresa May’s “deal”, then he decided that his political future would be better served by acting the part of the “battling Brexiteer”, which meant that, out of 65 million UK inhabitants, the 92,000 Conservative Party members who preferred Leave to Remain (or “Brexit In Name Only” and so Boris-Idiot to Jeremy Hunt) in effect appointed the idiot as Prime Minister, with no popular validation as yet.

If Boris thinks that he can fool people into thinking that he has “achieved” a “better deal” than the Theresa May one, he will take it, knowing that many in the UK are now uneasy at what lies ahead. That also has the advantage for Johnson that he will not have to actually organize the UK and/or try to negotiate trade agreements with other states, something at which he has no experience and probably no aptitude.

If Boris cannot get enough from the EU to fool the public, then the Poundland Churchill will reappear, taking the UK out of the EU on the WTO/No Deal basis. Simple as that. There is no thought either way for what is best for the UK and its people. Everything is “what is best for 1. Boris Johnson and (far behind…) 2. The Conservative Party?”

What will happen if a UK general election happens soon after 31 October 2019? To my mind, Boris-Idiot will have to call one fairly soon, before the economy worsens and before he is fully-exposed as being completely incompetent for his present (or any) office.

Brexit Party is key. If the UK stays formally in the EU, via an extension or otherwise, the Brexit Party will stand 650 candidates, win some seats but more importantly, prevent the Conservative Party from winning dozens and possibly 100+. That would very likely mean that the Con Party will not even be largest party in the Commons.

What if the UK does leave the EU on or before 31 October? If that happens via some stitch-up deal and is in fact Brexit In Name Only (BRINO), Brexit Party will still stand those candidates with hope of a high vote-share.

That only leaves “no deal” or “WTO” Brexit. If that happens, and if it happens without chaos, or before absolute chaos and/or economic recession ensues, then Boris the Poundland Churchill can say to Farage and Brexit Party that they should stand down their troops. Like a Pacific salmon, Farage has spawned and can now die having fulfilled his mission. Will Farage do that? If so, or maybe even if he does not, Brexit Party might have little impact on the Conservative vote, if the UK is seen to have truly left the EU. However, it might still impact the Con vote (if Brexit Party can, ironic as it would be, distance itself from Brexit as sole issue, and seek votes on a wider basis…). It is a gamble. Boris-Idiot is a gambler, a chancer.

Never has the Labour Party been lower in public esteem or public support. Not all Corbyn’s fault. The Jews have mounted an attack on Corbyn for 4 years. Some of the mud has stuck. There are other factors. Corbyn and his allies have not really stood up to the Jew-Zionists. They have continued to parrot support for the “holocaust” fakery etc. There is also the “deadhead” nature of most of the Labour MPs around Corbyn (or not). Blacks and browns prominent, but also some of the English ones. Think Kate Osamor. Think Diane Abbott. The whole package is not electorally appealing beyond the ethnic minorities, beyond some of the public service people, beyond those reliant on State benefits and pensions.

I was until recently convinced that Labour would end up as largest Commons bloc after a 2019/2020 general election. Now? I cannot say with any confidence. That might still happen. Alternatively, the Conservatives might be largest bloc, as now, but with fewer MPs. There is now even a small chance (God forbid) that, in the absence of a popular Opposition, and in the possible absence or effective absence of Brexit Party, the Conservative Party might win a majority in the Commons. Boris Johnson might just survive as Prime Minister against the odds (and against merit), and with real power.

If that were to happen, the future really would be cast into the hazard.

Update, 20 October 2021

Having noticed that the blog post has had a few hits today and in recent days, I felt that I should update it.

Well, I was more or less right. “Boris” played the Poundland Chamberlain in the end. He then (as I predicted) called a swift General Election which, in December 2019, gifted him and the risibly misnamed “Conservatives” with an 80-seat majority, which the msm proclaimed to be a “landslide victory”, despite the fact that the Conservative Party popular vote scarcely increased on its 2017 showing.

The factors which propelled a clown (a sinister clown) into power by rigged “popular acclamation” were twofold, basically: the key factor was the collapse of the Labour Party popular vote from 40% (2017) to about 32% (2019); the second factor of importance was that political snake-oil  salesman, Nigel Farage, cynically sabotaged his own Brexit Party, then unilaterally decided to stand down most of its candidates. In the circumstances, amid the Brexit kefuffle, that all but guaranteed a Conservative party victory, though the extent of it must have been beyond the wildest dreams of both part-Jew “Boris” and the Jewish lobby (which was desperate to do down Corbyn)…

Since the 2019 General Election, “Boris” has of course brought in quasi-dictatorial laws giving his Friends of Israel regime wide-ranging social and police powers, all on the back of the 2020-2021 “Covid-19” “panicdemic”. A story, at time of writing, still unfolding.

Party Politics, Uncategorized

UK System Parties Struggle For Relevance

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Overview

The next UK general election must be held by mid-2022 at latest. Pundits have suggested every time between Autumn 2018 and that date. I myself incline to the view that the next general election will be in late 2018 or Spring 2019, but I have no great faith either way.

What interest me are the prospects for social nationalism and I assess them, at present, as close to zero, assuming a general election in 2018 or 2019. Why? Primarily because there is not only no credible social national party, but in effect no social national party at all.

UKIP

What is left of UKIP is being pushed as a fake “alternative” by those who have no interest in actually having a social national government in the UK: conservative “nationalists”; “alt-right” “social media” weirdos (who never criticize Israel or the Jewish Zionist lobby, or put forward any policies for a better society) such as “Prison Planet” Watson and “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin; as well as various others who actually wish to prevent a social national movement developing.

Does UKIP have any chance of resurgence if, for instance, Brexit turns out to be a fraud (as seems likely)? If what is meant by “resurgence” is an increase, perhaps even a doubling or tripling, of its vote percentage, yes; if what is meant is a breakthrough and the election of a bloc of UKIP MPs, no.

At present, after 25 years of activity, UKIP has no Westminster MPs (out of 650), 2 members of the London Assembly (out of 25), and 4 members of the Welsh Assembly (out of 60), as well as 17 MEPs (out of 73 in the British contingent). The last will of course disappear next year even on a nominal Brexit. In 2015, UKIP managed a Westminster vote of 12.6%, which fell back to 1.8% in 2017. In order to get back to the 2015 position, UKIP would have to increase its vote 7-fold (and even then probably be unable to get even one single MP elected).

UKIP has been a winner for the System: it took votes and attention away from the BNP prior to 2010 and has taken the wind out of the sails of social nationalism by, to mix metaphors, diverting the waters of popular discontent angry at mass immigration, the EU, globalism etc. All that popular discontent was diverted into a “safe” channel– not “anti-Semitic” and, in fact, not really even anti-immigration. UKIP after 2010 fielded numbers of ethnic minority candidates. At one point, the favoured candidate to take over the party leadership was one Steven Woolfe MEP, of both Jewish and “African-American” descent. Woolfe had become an MEP in 2014 (UKIP’s peak year) after having come third (with only 13% of the vote) in the North West, which result points to the essentially shallow support that UKIP had even at its peak.

As to the small parties trying to swim in nationalist waters, none has any weight or credibility.

For Britain

“For Britain”, the narcissism vehicle of Irish lesbian ex-secretary Anne Marie Waters, is an anti-Islam one-trick-pony and one, er, woman band, pretty much. Not only has it few members (at an educated guess a hundred or so), but its popular support is effectively non-existent: leader Ms. Waters managed a derisory 1.2% (266 votes) at the Lewisham by-election of 2018, coming 7th in the poll. “For Britain” actually expelled a local election candidate because of alleged links to both National Action and Generation Identity. To make matters worse, that information had come from the partly-Zionist-funded “Hope Not Hate” “antifa” snoop-group. The conclusion is obvious: from every point of view, “For Britain” is a waste of space.

Britain First

Britain First is the most important broadly supposedly nationalist party and is said to have perhaps 1,000 members. It is not, to my mind, credibly social-national, being pro-Israel and expressing support for Jews in the UK. Its leaders are not known for intelligence or cultural depth. Its actions, such as invasion of mosques, throwing bacon at mosques etc are little removed from a Monty Python level of tactics and activity. It has done abysmally in all elections contested to date and in fact has (since 2017) been deregistered as a political party. Another waste of space from an electoral point of view.

Others

All other “nationalist” parties and groups (English Democrats, the rumps of the British National Party and National Front etc) are tiny and not worthy of consideration. One possible exception is Generation Identity, but that is not a political party. Other small but non-nationalist parties and groups are of no importance.

System Parties

It is clear that the next general election will be fought among the long-established System parties. Even UKIP will play only a walk-on role: its likely vote of 1% or 2% is unlikely to make an electoral impression in any but the few most marginal seats.

Conservative Party

The Conservative Party can now be characterized as “donkeys led by donkeys”, with not a lion in sight, unless is included the moth-eaten toy lion called Boris Johnson. The Conservative Party’s best electoral argument is that it is not the Labour Party.

Britain teeters on the brink of social breakdown. The “Conservative” governments since 2010 have slashed spending on police, the legal and justice systems, social security, housing etc. In the past, “law and order” was the Conservative Party’s trump card. Now all that is left is a barrage of empty words.

Who now votes Conservative as a natural thing? The few percent of very wealthy individuals? The –maybe– 25% of the population who are relatively affluent? Buy-to-let parasites? I get a sense that formerly loyal groups —pensioners, ex-military, Brexit supporters, anti-immigration small-c conservatives, suburban homeowners— are deserting the Conservative Party in droves. They may not vote Labour or even LibDem, but are not going to make much effort to vote Conservative. If the Conservatives are only going to get their core 25%-30% vote out, they are in trouble.

Labour

Labour is damaged by being seen (and all the more under Corbyn) as the party of mass immigration, though that is not entirely fair: the Conservatives first triggered the post-1945 immigration trickle that became a flood much later; the Conservatives have presided over enormous volumes of immigration, most obviously since 2010 (despite  –again– empty words against the invasion). In fact, the Labour Party that deliberately imported millions of non-white immigrants was that of Tony Blair, not that of Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour’s strength is that its present policies, such as rail nationalization, utilities regulation, building social housing etc, resonate with a population that has seen living standards fall for a decade.

Labour may lose 30 seats in the 2022 boundary changes, but 2022 seems a long way off at present…

Liberal Democrats

The LibDems were mortally wounded by joining with the Conservatives in the 2010-2015 Con Coalition. At present, their only strength is that some voters in the South of England will vote LibDem rather than Conservative, when they would not vote Labour.

The LibDems presently have 12 MPs, but the boundary changes set for 2022 will cost them as many as 8 seats. The LibDems have been there before, but not for many decades and that was in a political milieu where the typical election in a constituency would be a three-way split; now five or six parties, plus minor and joke candidates, contend. If the LibDems lose 8 seats, that will be close to the end. It was noticeable that their recent Conference was attended almost exclusively by the over-60s and indeed over-70s.

Conclusion

If a general election is held in 2018 or 2019, the likely result is a hung Parliament, probably with Labour as the largest party. If a social national party can be founded within the next two years, it has every chance of attaining power within a decade.

Notes: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Woolfe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Britain

Update, 23 January 2025

Well, having now read the above for the first time in 7 years, I see that my thoughts were almost all correct, yet my ultimate view on what would be the result of a 2019 General Election was not correct. “Events, dear boy”…

I could not have predicted that snake-oil salesman Farage would set up Brexit Party, and at first lead it to the cusp of victory, before stabbing his own candidates in the back, thus gifting the fake Conservative Party under poundland Churchill, “Boris” Johnson, an unmerited electoral bonanza.

Alt-Right, elections, immigration, Party Politics, society, The Great Replacement, The Great Reset, the Great Reset, Uncategorized, white flight

Society, Politics and the Mental Landscape

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It has been proven that to take away the familiar and known from an individual is to disorientate that person. It is a well-practised method of breaking down a prisoner for interrogation, for example (sensory deprivation etc). A less harsh form, usually, is recruit training in armies and similar organizations. However, the same is true in societies generally. When the familiar is taken away, society suffers something akin to a nervous breakdown. The singer Morrissey has commented recently that England now is little more than a memory.

In the UK, we have seen how society was already struggling with the importation of millions of immigrants even before 1997, when the Tony Blair Zionist government (ZOG puppet government) took power. It is now a matter of record that a deliberate decision was taken by the Tony Blair government to import further millions of immigrants, mostly non-Europeans, in order to destroy Britain as it has been and to a limited extent still is; to destroy the racial and cultural roots and foundations of our country. White genocide.

That policy, spearheaded by two corrupt Jews, Phil Woolas and Barbara Roche (both now removed from Parliament), has been successful. Britain is now, at least in part, an ethno-social dustbin. The millions imported have been breeding, prolifically. Recent reports and studies estimate that the UK will become majority non-white by 2050. If one takes England alone, the date can probably be reduced to around 2040. Already, some English cities are English in name and history only or are getting that way: London is already majority non-white (native-born population: 44%), Birmingham and Manchester are rapidly following (57% and 66%), while smaller cities such as Leicester and Bradford are already, like London, mainly non-white.

The above ethno-cultural changes have destabilized the national mental landscape. The change has been accompanied by a propaganda campaign stealthily making use of “soaps” and TV advertizing. The mixed-race family is presented as the norm. Even Midsomer Murders, the archetypal Middle England comedy-drama detective series, was forced, after criticism, to put blacks and browns into the cast lists. This is (as with TV ads) not really reflective of reality but the creation of a new “reality”. Social engineering.

The wrenching apart of the accepted “mental landscape” does not end with the racial-cultural question. It is far wider. It includes the gratuitous renaming of commercial and trade union organizations. Thus the old trade unions, with their easy to understand names and functions, have become amorphous huge conglomerations with names that mean little, such as “Unison”, “Unite” etc, and have abandoned their members’ interests to pursue a politically-correct agenda involving “anti-racism”, “anti-sexism”, promotion of mass immigration etc.

In the same way that the trade unions have been corrupted, so commercial enterprises have been renamed and somehow displaced. Norwich Union insurance becomes “Aviva”, and so on.

The result of this dislocation of the mental landscape on the large scale has been the rupturing of the connection between the people as a whole and the mainstream political parties. The Conservative Party, which once had a membership in the millions, now numbers only a few tens of thousands and is still sliding. Labour, which was going the same way, has recovered under Corbyn to about 450,000, but its popular vote has not recovered. The Liberal Democrats are a very small party in terms of both members and votes. UKIP too has fallen back, in its case to almost nothing, but the fact that it briefly mushroomed into a threat to the older parties indicates that the voters are no longer anchored to System parties. However, a non-System party credible enough to come to the fore has not yet emerged.

Another symptom of the mental-landscape dislocation is seen in the notionally “nationalist” direct-action operations carried out by the “lone wolf” dissidents. The highest profile case is probably that of Thomas Mair, who killed Jo Cox MP a few years ago. In his case, the sheer dislocation suffered by society seems to have triggered a determination to make a point through forceful action.

More significantly, the lack of secure anchorings in society may lead to a volatile political milieu in which a social-national party could be formed, become popular and then move to attain power within a relatively few years.

elections, free speech, historical, historical revisionism, MPs, Party Politics, society, Uncategorized

They Go Like Sleepwalkers, whence Providence Dictates

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Adolf Hitler once remarked that he went like a sleepwalker to wherever Providence or Fate dictated. A cynic might ask why, in that case, did Germany lose the Second World War. I have thought about this over the years, coming to the conclusion (decades ago now) that Germany’s bitter defeat saved not only Germany itself but all Central Europe and even all Europe from terminal disaster.

As is well-known, the atom bomb scientists working on the Manhattan Project (the British end being known as “Tube Alloys”), were almost all Jews who had fled from or anyway left Europe to live in the USA. Their motivation was to create a weapon which would obliterate National Socialist Germany. Japan was but an afterthought.

So focussed were the Jew atom bomb scientists on Germany’s destruction, that when it seemed possible in mathematical theory that detonation of the first bomb in the desert of the South Western USA would cause the world’s atmosphere to catch fire, destroying all life on Earth, those Jews decided to proceed. A sombre fact indeed.

Had Germany not been forced to surrender by complete military defeat, it would have seen its main cities destroyed by atom bombs. The air, water, soil of much of Central Europe would have been contaminated for decades, in fact for centuries. Seen like that, the bitter defeat and humiliating  surrender was a saving grace in the end.

Why do I bring up these facts? Because I want to make the point that agencies above the human level act on what might be seen as “purely” earthly concerns: war, politics etc.

Move now to the present UK political scene. Less than 2 years ago, Jeremy Corbyn, an eccentric and –his critics said– extremist radical, was persuaded to stand in the Labour Party leadership contest and agreed purely because he wanted to have his kind of politics at least represented. It was uncertain as to whether Corbyn would even be allowed to become a candidate, because to stand, a candidate required nomination by 15% (35) of Labour MPs. Corbyn did not have even that much support. In the end, he was nominated, not only by the few who supported him, but by a number of MPs who did not support him and who had no intention of voting for him. Reflect on that. A number of MPs who were anti-Corbyn still nominated him and without those nominations Corbyn would not even have been on the ballot. As it was, Corbyn only managed to scrape onto the list with 36 nominations (inc. his own), the last a few minutes before nominations closed.

Once on the ballot, Corbyn’s support mushroomed and he won easily, overwhelmingly. The same happened when there was a challenge to his leadership the following year. Events happened by which his opponents were wrongfooted. There seemed to be an aura of invincibility around Corbyn and his campaign. Indeed, in 2015, Conservatives were urged by Toby Young and others to join Labour under the £3 offer scheme and then vote for Corbyn, on the premise that a Corbyn leadership would sink Labour!

Mainstream media commentators seemed unable to fathom Corbyn’s appeal. Journalist Janan Ganesh, for example,  wrote that Corbyn’s election “spelled disaster” for Labour. I wonder if he wishes now that he had spiked that opinion!

Coming up to the 2017 General Election, the polls predicted Labour’s worst-ever disaster, with its MP bloc being reduced from 230 to as few as 150. Some predicted an even lower number. That general perception of Labour’s defeat persisted until about two weeks before Election Day, when the Prime Minister, Theresa May, suddenly destroyed both her own carefully-crafted public persona and her party’s chances. The bursting of the Conservative Party balloon was palpable. The polls immediately narrowed and by Election Day were showing the parties almost neck and neck. We should, again, reflect on this: Theresa May, for no reason, destroyed her own party’s campaign. For me, “the Hand of God” is shown here.

The eventual result of the General Election was a Labour MP bloc of 262, up from 230 and something few had seen coming. As for the Conservatives, though some loyalists said that “Labour lost”, that was and is not how it feels. The Conservatives lost 13 seats (317 won, down from 330) and their House of Commons majority. Corbyn’s stock rose and he is now said to be higher in public esteem than Theresa  May, while Labour is higher in the polls than the Conservatives.

Taking it as a fact, for the purposes of argument, that higher forces are protecting Corbyn, why would that be so? After all, he is some kind of agnostic, it seems, is not overtly religious or spiritual and does not on the surface seem to have anything to commend him to what Schwerin von Krosigk termed “the Angel of History”. All one can say to that is the admittedly-platitudinous comment that “God moves in mysterious ways”. There are a few ideas that come to mind: the Conservative Party may now be prevented from imposing a Jewish-Zionist repression on freedom of expression on the Internet, for one thing. It is also far less likely that the UK can get involved in Israel-instigated wars or attacks in other parts of the world.

It may be, also, that it is necessary that the UK has to have a weak System government, so as to gradually open the door to social nationalism and a completely different society down the line. I cannot say. All I can say is that it seems as if Corbyn does enjoy a degree of “divine protection” and it will be fascinating to see how that plays out in the coming months and years.

free speech, historical, historical revisionism, Reminiscences and Musings, Uncategorized

Castro and Cuba

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I had no intention of writing about Cuba or Castro following the recent death of “Fidel”. However, the public and mass media reaction, much of it an outpouring of adulation and “me-too” faux-liberal compromise, has impelled me to write.

There is no doubt that Cuba before Castro was corrupt and, for many, poor. Before Castro there was Batista and before Batista, Prio (Carlos Prio Socarras), of whom the British historian Hugh Thomas wrote, memorably, in his mammoth history of the country, that he “fell like a rotten fruit, full of its own corruption.” Prío himself later said of his presidency: “They say that I was a terrible president of Cuba. That may be true. But I was the best president Cuba ever had.”[see Arthur M. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. New York: Houghton Mifflin (2002) p 216].

Prio was in fact someone who tried to keep to constitutional proprieties and it was his decision not to act extra-judicially which allowed the harsher figure of Batista to seize power in 1952, Prio himself having been elected (by free and contested election) in 1948.

Cuba in the 1950s was sometimes described as somewhere between a Latin American country and a detached, poorer, part of the United States, the latter for long its effective suzerain.

It would be easier to make a quick judgment of Castro’s rule had the United States not (and typically) engaged in ham-fisted great-power and quasi-colonialist geopolitics over the island. Those American interventions continue to muddy the waters: attempts to assassinate Castro, the Bay of Pigs “invasion” of 1961; above all, the partial embargo (which Cuba called a “blockade”) imposed initially in 1960.

No-one can say for sure whether Cuba would be much different had it had the chance to trade freely with the USA, its neighbour and natural main trading partner. Probably not much. Venezuela is another and more recent example of the inability of a Latin American socialist economy to perform adequately for long.

The  bien-pensant “usual suspects” in the UK (the absurd Tariq Ali, Ken Livingstone, Jeremy Corbyn etc) are now saying that the Castro dictatorship was sort-of acceptable because Cuba had good education and good medical services. On that basis, they should be very kind indeed to German National Socialism, which provided the same and in fact far more (and with far less repression, in reality).

In fact, long before the Soviet subsidy disappeared, Havana was falling to pieces, as were the Cuban roads and railways. I myself had fleeting and peripheral contact with Cuba, otherwise seen by me only from the sea (between Cuba and the Bahamas) and the air (flying over Cuba between Tampa, Florida and Grand Cayman).

I was asked, when a practising barrister in London circa 1995, to help a scientific start-up based at Porton Down, Wiltshire, the high-security  biological warfare facility, then recently partly-privatized. A small company of scientists had a bacterium which turned biomass into fuel (unscientific me calling it the turning of straw into gold). I thought of Cuba with its sugar-cane detritus, lack of fuel and high technical-education levels. Unfortunately, the Cuban Embassy in London did not respond, unlike the Ukrainian: I visited Porton Down with the then Ukrainian Ambassador, Mr. Komisarenko [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serhiy_Komisarenko]. Nothing came of that in the end, but it seems that, in more recent years, a company called Havana Energy, headed by ex-Labour Party MP Brian Wilson, has been producing energy that way in Cuba. The Cuban Embassy’s unresponsiveness told me all I needed to know about the Cuban bureaucracy: unalert, lethargic, useless, bearing in mind the country’s crying need for fuel.

Since the early 1990s, Cuba has gradually been moving towards a capitalist economy. No doubt that process will continue. Eventually, some kind of greater rapprochement with the USA will happen.

In this blog post, I am more interested in the puerile reaction of the kind of people in the UK who are letting off Castro on human rights and economic efficiency because Cubans have a health service and a school system. Jeremy Corbyn has excelled himself in ignorant misunderstanding. He just digs himself deeper with every statement.

The mass media and in particular the BBC is, as one might expect, doing its bit to eulogize about Castro, saying that he “turned a small island into a major force in world affairs.” Where does one start in unpacking such nonsense?

The reaction to Castro’s death tells me something else: those in the UK who think themselves “socialist” are willing to turn a blind eye to historical, political and economic realities so long as the label is right.

Update, 5 January 2019

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6558991/Rich-kids-COMMUNISM-Fidel-Castros-model-grandson-flashes-wealth-European-vacations.html

Update, 14 February 2026

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/13/no-water-or-electricity-and-children-begging-in-streets-filled-with-rubbish-but-this-is-why-i-wont-leave-cuba