“Keir Starmer is ‘running scared’ at the growing backlash over his plans to axe winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners, the Tories said last night.
As Parliament returned after its summer break, the Prime Minister warned panicking Labour MPs that he would not tolerate dissent over the raid on the elderly, saying he would be ‘really tough on this’.
In a move which has infuriated opposition MPs, government sources indicated ministers would reject calls for a Commons debate and vote on the controversial plan, which was pushed through during the summer while Parliament was in recess.”
[Daily Mail]
What a brave little man “two-tier” Keir is! Willing to be “really tough” in repressing pensioners…
The bastard has only been Prime Minister for two months (as of tomorrow), and has already shown, comprehensively, that he is in the wrong job.
People must keep in the forefront of their minds that only 4 people, out of every 20 eligible to vote, voted Labour; and only 4 out of every 12 that did vote, voted Labour.
Starmer-Labour has no real mandate to govern.
Starmer has told the Jew Zelensky that Labour intends to supply the shambolic, brutal dictatorship in Kiev with £3 billion p.a. (supposedly indefinitely) from British taxpayers, while cheating British pensioners out of about £1Bn-£2Bn annually in terms of winter fuel payments.
At least that money will not have to be sent to the Kiev regime for too long— the dictatorship will probably be rolled over within a year or so.
Tweets seen
21,063 illegal migrants have now crossed the Channel this year, 7,477 since Starmer's Labour came to power
135,385 have now entered Britain illegally since 2018, equivalent to a city the size of Exeterhttps://t.co/2L7hI23QUA
…but that figure for “illegal” migrant-invaders is only about 5% of the whole immigration invasion or migration invasion in that time period.
Germany has now started to deport migrants back to Afghanistan. 7 EU states have called to revise safe zones in Syria to allow the return of refugees. Many are now waking up to the disaster the elite class has created. The UK should do the same https://t.co/fiigufysE3pic.twitter.com/8RciHeHC94
Sooner or later, the whole cultural sector in the UK will have to be purged.
Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, enthuses about the crimes against humanity being perpetrated in Gaza by what he calls “our heroic soldiers” – yes, if you or I conflated the Jewish people with Israel, we’d be called antisemites.
“Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, enthuses about the crimes against humanity being perpetrated in Gaza by what he calls “our heroic soldiers” –yes, if you or I conflated the Jewish people with Israel, we’d be called antisemites.
He then reveals that his son, Danny, is among the soldiers in Gaza. He says he is “immensely proud” of what these soldiers are doing in Gaza – so far they have killed 23,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
He concludes: “What Israel is doing is the most outstanding possible thing that a decent, responsible country can do for its citizens.” Is Mirvis not giving his religious blessing to genocide here?“
The sheer cheek of the bastards (((them))). Mirvis was born in South Africa, lived much of his life in Israel/Palestine, relocated to Ireland, and finally washed up on our shores. Now he purports to tell us what to do and what not to do. Typical.
[Mirvis with Labour Friends of Israel member and apologist Yvette Cooper, now Home Secretary; a moneygrasping expenses cheat and would-be dictator]
As to “genocide”, one reads all sorts of nuanced arguments as to whether the mass slaughter indulged in by Israeli Jews in Gaza (and elsewhere) is or is not “genocide”. Does the label really matter? They have done what they have done…
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[SS-man and others with kitten, dandelion bloom, and grenade; people often forget that love for animals was integral to National Socialism, a theme later expanded on by such as, notably, Savitri Devi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savitri_Devi]
[“Badenweiler“, but no matter…]
More tweets
Hardly anyone knows that universities spend huge amounts of taxpayer money on international students. The British Academy is particularly bad. UCL one of many examples. NB. PhD means you can bring dependents. pic.twitter.com/lFbnqBxL1q
The Russian ambassador to the USA, Anatoly Antonov, believes that the United States will not be able to "hide behind the ocean" if the situation in Ukraine turns into a global one.
“The Russian ambassador to the USA, Anatoly Antonov, believes that the United States will not be able to “hide behind the ocean” if the situation in Ukraine turns into a global one.
Other statements by Antonov:
– No arms deliveries to Kiev will change the situation on the battlefield.
– Washington’s idea that Russia collides with Europe using the Ukrainian crisis will not pass. – Agreements between Ukraine and the USA regarding the conflict in Ukraine are being implemented “without the knowledge” of Russia. – American officials ignore the obvious atrocities of the OSU: murders, violence against prisoners of war and ordinary people. – The recent visit of Ukrainian officials to America was aimed at “begging” for weapons and money, but also to tighten Washington’s policy against Russia. – The American project “Ukraine” brings huge sacrifices for the Slavic people, but Russia will cope with the new challenge.“
The post-election honeymoon is over, with Keir Starmer's favourability ratings falling to their lowest levels since he became prime minister, recording his worst net favourability score since February
— Newspaper articles collection (@NewsArticleColl) September 3, 2024
Interesting both in itself and in the fact that Iran is supplying Russia when, in days of yore, the old Soviet Union would have been the one supplying, and Iran (etc) the recipient, whether or not the actual end user.
No detail, of course, as to how many, what type, what payload etc. It is impossible (for me) to assess at all what weight the missiles will have on the battlefield.
— Newspaper articles collection (@NewsArticleColl) September 3, 2024
Hard to see how that accomplishes anything. The high-value targets are those involved in electrical production and distribution, the railways, the roads, military activity and, above all, the higher-ranking members of the Kiev regime itself. Bullseye? Zelensky.
Hungary will not survive without Russian oil, says Foreign Minister Szijjarto :
" If Hungary stops oil supplies from Russia, we simply will not survive, we will not be able to feed the country in a broad sense. We simply will not be able to satisfy the demand for fuel"
— Newspaper articles collection (@NewsArticleColl) September 3, 2024
“Hungary will not survive without Russian oil, says Foreign Minister Szijjarto : ” If Hungary stops oil supplies from Russia, we simply will not survive, we will not be able to feed the country in a broad sense. We simply will not be able to satisfy the demand for fuel” Earlier, Szijjártó accused the European Commission of protecting “Ukrainian blackmailers” who threatened the energy security of Hungary and Slovakia.“
From what I saw 23 years ago, Hungary is a decent country of usually-reasonable people, not a corrupt mess like Ukraine.
The best Ukrainian pilots were killed even before the Western countries delivered F-16 fighters to Kiev, writes the "Wall Street Journal". 🇺🇦 They include pilot Alexei Mesya, who died while piloting an F-16 fighter jet last week, as well as Andrei Pilshchikov, who died last… pic.twitter.com/ja5LaJaIiZ
— Newspaper articles collection (@NewsArticleColl) September 3, 2024
“The best Ukrainian pilots were killed even before the Western countries delivered F-16 fighters to Kiev, writes the “Wall Street Journal”.
They include pilot Alexei Mesya, who died while piloting an F-16 fighter jet last week, as well as Andrei Pilshchikov, who died last August during a training flight. The newspaper emphasizes that both soldiers participated in a meeting with US senators in June 2022 and actively advocated for deliveries of F-16s to Kyiv.”
The USA could include long-range JASSM cruise missiles in a new aid package to Ukraine as early as this fall , writes Reuters. pic.twitter.com/7eMpKIkDdf
— Newspaper articles collection (@NewsArticleColl) September 3, 2024
The shortest distance between the Ukrainian border and Moscow is 523 miles; therefore, in principle, Moscow could be hit by such missiles.
The Kiev regime should bear in mind that Russia has many thousands of long-range missiles, including thousands carrying, or capable of carrying, nuclear warheads.
Late tweets
'We're quite bad at talking about Britishness.'@GoodwinMJ says 'there is something incredibly unique and special about coming from these islands' and calls for more celebration of British history after a survey finds there's been a steep drop in national pride. pic.twitter.com/uZLJQtO4t4
“...a steep drop in national pride“? Is that surprising? The population of the UK is now about 20% non-white, in England specifically much higher, and in the major cities such as London and Birmingham the figure is about 50%; in some cities much higher.
The English person finds himself or herself wandering the streets full of non-Europeans, many of which in the UK are predators and/or scavengers.
It becomes impossible for the “average” English person to buy or even rent a property.
A million or more migrant-invaders enter the UK every year, few leave, but about 200,000 real Brits leave the UK each year, desperately seeking a better life, mostly in Anglophone countries such as Australia, New Zealand etc.
What is there to be proud of now? In fact, there are still things of which we can be proud (new transport infrastructure, some rewilding and other environmental programmes etc), but nothing that really touches the heart; and socially, educationally, culturally, the country is sliding all the time now.
The UK is slowly sliding to a kind of social/cultural/civil war of sorts, made complex and sluggish by a number of factors.
The Israeli Defense Forces hit the Namaa College in the Gaza Strip, under the pretext that it was being used as a Hamas base. pic.twitter.com/kTfYa8ohoP
— Newspaper articles collection (@NewsArticleColl) September 3, 2024
President of the Israel: We are burying our soldiers one after another
We are fighting on several fronts and experienced the biggest defeat in the history of Israel and the biggest security failure. pic.twitter.com/l8fsvKmIt3
— Newspaper articles collection (@NewsArticleColl) September 3, 2024
"We need it at the moment"
Zelensky told NBC News that Ukraine plans to hold the captured Russian territory in the Kursk region indefinitely pic.twitter.com/B78OB2WLW0
— Newspaper articles collection (@NewsArticleColl) September 3, 2024
The Kiev-regime forces will probably not be able to hold that territory even until the end of this year.
[“Off with their heads!“—Starmer and the “rioters” (protesters)]
£11 BILLION (and more) to Malaysia etc, £3 BILLION every year to the Jew-Zionist regime (dictatorship) in (part of) Ukraine. This Starmer-Labour government is itself a scarcely-legitimate regime, having been voted for by only 4 out of every 20 people (and only 4 out of every 12 that actually voted).
Meanwhile 95% of British people continue to get poorer, starting with pensioners:
“A Southampton pub landlady has spoken about ‘horrendous’ abuse from her ‘bully’ ex-partner – who squeezed her C-section wound days after having their baby.“
[defendant and victim prior to the material events]
“The court heard he had been previously convicted for offences involving Anneliese dating back to June 2020, when he choked, punched and kicked her, as well as damaging property – receiving a suspended sentence.
But things escalated again when she found out she was pregnant with their son in May 2023with his abusive outbursts continuing until two days before she gave birth on November 8 last year.
The court heard he would manipulate Anneliese financially, asking for money for food when he actually wanted to buy drugs and alcohol.
He told her to kill herself while carrying their unborn child and called her ‘worthless’, ‘overweight’ and ‘fat’ after she gave birth, telling her to ‘get to the gym’.
He was arrested on December 1, days after the incident when he squeezed the scar at her home in Romsey on November 28, when one of her friends reported his abuse to the police.
But the court heard he continued to contact her, ignoring his bail conditions – something he denied doing.
Worster pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm, criminal damage, two counts of assault by beating and two counts of common assault.
At his sentencing, Judge Robert Hill, Assistant Judge Advocate General, branded him an “out and out bully who gets violent”.
He was given another suspended sentence: 15-months, suspended for two years, and also handed a six-month restraining order.
But, Anneliese said: “I am just a bit disappointed that it is another suspended sentence. I thought where he had been convicted before it would be maybe a bit worse for him.“
[Southampton Echo]
Comment perhaps unnecessary (?).
Still, interesting, in an England where the “wrong” online post can easily land someone in court, and even in prison.
Ostalgie
[East Berlin, 1970s]
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Moscow looked better back then (arguably).
More tweets
Our Prime Minister dresses in clothes costing £16,200 and wears glasses costing £2,485 given to him by Lord Waheed Alli. @Keir_Starmer's salary is £166,786 and someone else buys him his clothes yet he thinks pensioners shouldn't get £200 to help keep warm this winter pic.twitter.com/Q3VTrrZ9aT
— Northern Gardener🌱🇬🇧🏴 (@aNorthernGarden) August 26, 2024
Get rid of him and his Labour Friends of Israel Cabinet.
Hey MSM,
When you’re all comfortably seated in the No.10 Rose Garden listening to his “restoring trust speech” will any of you have the balls to ask Starmer why he blatantly lied to the public to win power and if he can expect to be arrested for posting online misinformation? pic.twitter.com/cja4kf6VWQ
These “people” add nothing positive to our society. They can neither create such a society nor even maintain one created by others; indeed, they cannot even live as parasites (predators and/or scavengers) in a civilized society without degrading it and dragging it down into the mire, into the swamp.
Will they all be fast tracked through the courts and paraded on TV for all to see?
I’ll answer that: NO!
‘Two Tier’ Keir and his two tier judicial system on full display.
“Two-tier” Keir has already “taken the knee” (kow-towed to) the black or non-white mob, along with thick-as-two-short-planks Angela Rayner. The aforesaid mob therefore have no respect either for Starmer (understandably) or for our society; they know they will usually be given a free pass.
I know what I think should be done about this “Labour”-label government but, because Britain is rapidly becoming a multikulti police state, I cannot say so expressly on the blog.
Nope.
I don't think they'll have the police, home office and CPS make glossy videos with dramatic music of their arrests and reveal their names and home addresses either.
We know what England, especially but not exclusively London, is now like. What will it be like in 2034 or 2044, if a proper social-national government cannot take the reins of supreme power?
I want to live in a country where stabbings aren't just a part of the daily news cycle. How did Britain decline so fast?
Ironic that a [person posing as] Prime Minister, “Two-tier” Keir, who has a huge Commons majority, is no more fitted for his rank than were his predecessors: the little Indian money-juggler Sunak, Liz Truss, “Boris”-idiot or Theresa May.
I got an early taster of just how thin-skinned Keir Starmer is. Before the 2019 GE, I quoted him the part of the Labour 2017 manifesto that promised to end free movement with the EU – a promise that he got Corbyn to drop. I just sent him the quote. He blocked me. pic.twitter.com/QVAteeiCAG
So the question devolves to “how can we get rid of him?“…
I don't normally link to @UKLabour pages, but really everyone needs to read Keir Starmer's speech to appreciate its scary mix of authoritarianism and vacuousness.
He has nothing to say on immigration – literally nothing. And he has no understanding of how to generate growth. So…
“I don’t normally link to @UKLabour pages, but really everyone needs to read Keir Starmer’s speech to appreciate its scary mix of authoritarianism and vacuousness.
He has nothing to say on immigration – literally nothing. And he has no understanding of how to generate growth. So he resorts to more of what Labour always do – raise taxes, borrow money, pay it out to their clients.
True, but Frost neglects to add that the only reason the British people are now saddled with Starmer is because the “Conservatives” proved themselves utterly useless for 14 years.
Even Starmer’s (and Rachel Reeves’) exculpa is derivative, copied from that of Cameron-Levita, Osborne and Danny Alexander 14 years ago. Does anyone remember that? All the bs about having “examined ‘the books’ and found that there is no money” etc.
Talking points
More tweets
“Earlier this year the government gave more family visas to relatives of Somali nationals than it gave work visas to physicists, chemists & biologists from all other countries combined. What kind of country are we building here?”https://t.co/2L7hI23j52
Ha. Rhetorical question, of course. A multiracial, multicultural, utterly shambolic dystopian police state, held together only by fear of increasingly severe and, eventually, savage policing and sentencing by politicized police, prosecutors, and courts.
"Here's the truth. Most of the people coming to Britain on work visas are not doctors & nurses in the NHS. They are doing low-skill, low pay work, pulling down wages, undercutting workers & contributing to declining standards of living for everybody else"https://t.co/2L7hI23j52
Horrifying. Keir Starmer and his ilk are heavily protected from this. They will NEVER personally experience the results of their madness. It's ALWAYS the ordinary (mostly White) middle-class guy/gal who feel the pain and loss.
I just don’t think Labour have a serious plan for stopping the boats and I just don’t think anybody in Westminster is being honest with the British people. Enough of the lying, the misleading, just tell it straight https://t.co/2L7hI23j52
Of course, “the boats” are only about 5% of the whole problem of mass immigration, 95% of which is —superficially— “legal” immigration.
The head of the Kyiv regime admitted that the army is facing a difficult situation on the contact line in Donbas, and that Ukraine does not have enough money to produce its own weapons.
" It is an expensive program and money should be invested in it. But there is no money for… pic.twitter.com/RB2BDfTrSv
"Even answered a question about extra payments to prisons which really pissed people off. Prison staff being paid extra “for all the hard work they’re doing” recalculating release dates. I have no idea what else was said during that hour, it was all gobbledygook." 2/5
"I want to be paid more money for this job and when I come to work I want to park my car for free, sit at my own desk, have a manageable workload, not be spoken to like a child or a piece of shite…." 4/5
"…and not have a dumbass probation manager who doesn’t know their arse from their elbow unless someone higher up draws them a diagram. It’s never going to happen so like those about I’m leaving too." 5/5
Ha. I wonder what my probation officer would make of that, were she to read my blog?
Yes, dear readers, those of you who are not regular readers of the blog…I myself am, in effect, on probation, the result of my free speech trial, conviction, and sentence (trial November 2023; sentence March 2024).
15 “rehabilitation days” (in fact, mostly fairly short meetings, so far), and a financial impost, being the (notional) costs of trial— £734 in all, a third of which was crowdfunded by a few generous donors.
…thus it was that, thanks to the Jew-Zionists, and their police and “Clown” Prosecution Service dupes, I joined the “criminal classes”, or at least the convict classes.
Actually, I rather like my probation officer, despite the fact that, ideologically, at least as I apprehend, we are poles apart. My next scheduled meeting will be in September.
The whole Kafka-esque situation rather tickles me (when it does not irritate me), though of course I should never have been subjected to nuisance and inconvenience, should never have been charged, certainly should never have been convicted and, even then, should have received by way of sentence something purely nominal, such as a £50 fine (if anything).
— We All Need Vitamin Sea 🦖🦕 (@Lifes_A_Beach72) August 3, 2024
A special law was passed JUST FOR KIER STARMER to save tax on his pension when he retired from public Prosecutions in 2013. The Coalition government afforded him this unique right. This needs to be known widely. He's just cut The Winter Fuel Allowance… Happy to stand… pic.twitter.com/F84xdlhdsZ
“A special law was passed JUST FOR KIER STARMER to save tax on his pension when he retired from public Prosecutions in 2013. The Coalition government afforded him this unique right. This needs to be known widely. He’s just cut The Winter Fuel Allowance… Happy to stand corrected but here’s a government document.“
[tweeter “@juneslater17”]
“Not a lot of people know that” (I certainly did not).
Typical.
Jessica Simor, yet another “human rights” barrister who secretly —or even openly— wants to institute police-state measures if people say things with which she disagrees.
Incidentally, Jessica Simor was a fervent supporter of the joke “party”, Change UK, at which I used to laugh on the blog before it went down the drain. I occasionally laughed at her too.
As I have said for months —if not years— Labour, Starmer-Labour, will “solve” the illegal Channel crossings by simply rubberstamping 90%-95% of applications in France (or even in Africa and Asia), thus magically turning illegal migrant-invaders into nominally “legal” ones.
The remaining 5%-10% will then still try to cross the Channel anyway and, once here, will not be deported, just as at present.
Starmer-Labour has even less intention than Sunak-Conservatism of stopping mass immigration aka migration-invasion. Once you read about the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan, all will be made clear…
Starmer-Labour is a falsely-“elected” dictatorship, and even tyranny, which, even more than the last 14 years of fake “Conservative” misrule, offers the people nothing.
‘They are hooligans.’
Former Brexit Secretary, Sir David Davis MP, detaches the rioters from concerns arising about mass migration. pic.twitter.com/nMHZcopo5I
How about detaching thevery few “rioters” from the thousands of entirely-legitimate protesters? Not to mention the tens of millions who want England to be England, not a rubbish dump for people from the most backward parts of the world?
In fact, where was David Davis, where was Starmer, where was Yvette Cooper, when the Gypsies of Harehills (Leeds) were rioting, only a week or so ago? Nowhere, or excusing them. Same with the Bangladeshi rioters in East London.
The System is trying to demonize all white (i.e. English) dissenters or dissidents by focussing the msm on a few bottle-throwers. Also, of course, ignoring the fact that our society is slowly collapsing, and mainly by reason of mass immigration.
You still neither listen nor see, do you? Ordinary voters have had years of being lied to, and taken for granted by successive governments. @Keir_Starmer accuses us of being far right. Rioting can never be justified. People are angry. You are part of the problem. #EnoughIsEnough
System MPs, System scribblers, and System TV talking heads are almost all in favour of mass immigration. Enemies of the people and of the future of the people.
This is the only dialogue the government have listened to so far though. People have been voting against migration for 20 years and been ignored. The British are sick of being foreigners in their own land and the crime that comes with it #EnoughIsEnoughpic.twitter.com/b2NEOneOdf
What Britain needs, though, is not an urban riot scenario but a disciplined social-national movement, something which at present does not exist.
“Our wonderful NHS”…
UPDATE: Within the next hour I’m being discharged from hospital after 6 days. I will have the op to remove my gall bladder in around 6 weeks time. In the meantime, a lot of R&R. Had a little bit of a tear up when I said goodbye to the nurses on the ward who have been so lovely to… pic.twitter.com/0fKYFdbnlZ
Superficially, System political commentator Iain Dale’s tweet commends the NHS, but not if you look a little further.
My first wife, an American, suddenly had terrible pain one Saturday morning in 1991 (I think it was). We drove to a general practitioner doctor in a small strip mall nearby. She had not been to him before but in the USA it is not usually necessary to be registered (unlike, as I believe, in the UK) to get an emergency appointment like that.
The small doctor’s office had no-one waiting, so once a patient left (about 5 mins), the Italian-American GP saw my then wife. He diagnosed her (it later turned out, entirely correctly), within a few minutes, as having a gall bladder problem, and suggested a couple of possible hospitals. He then charged her USD $25, cash on the nail.
We drove to the suggested hospital, about a 25-minute drive down the Garden State Parkway.
[Garden State Parkway, New Jersey, USA]
The suggested hospital was not very far from the Parkway, half a mile perhaps.
A modern hospital, the car park almost empty (and no charge for parking, unlike the absurd and sometimes stressful situation in the UK).
On entering, I think no-one there except a couple of uniformed nurses or whoever behind a glass-screened reception desk.
My then wife, in some pain, explained her problem, and was asked what insurance she had. That was not a problem, because she had a high level of medical insurance that went with her job (she was an employee of the U.S. Federal Government). She was then admitted through the security door and escorted away by a nurse. I was asked to wait.
A short time later, the reception person told me that the Head of Surgery would be down to speak with me. Imagine that in the NHS…
The Head of Surgery was a tweed-suited character, redolent of reassurance and expertise, like a surgeon in a Hollywood film, and sporting a full white beard, a bit like Sigmund Freud but more solid-looking and self-confident than Freud as seen in the photo below.
I was greeted pleasantly by the Head of Surgery, and informed that my wife had to have a gall-bladder operation and that that would be done either later that day or the next day.
In the end, my first wife spent three days in hospital, mostly on her own in a comfortable if rather white/cream and basic room (no wards in that hospital, unlike the UK; France also has only individual or shared rooms).
On discharge, the bill was itemized minutely, despite everything being covered by insurance, and nothing needing to be paid by us. It was posted to us a couple of days later (for our records only). I think that it was (33 years ago) about USD $24,000. Expensive… thank God for the insurance.
Two or maybe three nights stay, one operation, medications, other stuff used, food, drink etc.
So, thinking about that, and comparing that to Iain Dale’s experience, I have no idea how long Dale suffered before even getting a consultation and diagnosis. Not same-day, anyway. Weeks? Months?
Then again, how many NHS patients with similar-level problems (excruciating pain but nothing immediately life-threatening) would get immediate attention, immediate hospitalization, and almost immediate surgery? (I think the operation was done the following day).
Of course, in the UK you can get quicker attention if you pay privately, or have BUPA insurance etc. I have no idea whether Dale was in an NHS hospital or not. All, the same, his operation is scheduled for six weeks’ time! My first wife only had to wait for about 20 hours.
I am of course not medically qualified, but I thought that that experience was worth recounting.
Naturally, the elephant in the room is insurance or money. Without one or the other, I wonder whether an American would get even medicines or painkillers, let alone surgery; I cannot say. We hear that 40% of Americans are either uninsured or under-insured. The only good thing Obama did was to try to reform that situation (as I understand it). I do not know what Medicaid and Medicare might now offer.
“Free at point of use” healthcare is the NHS trump card, of course.
Few would want to import the American healthcare system to the UK, with the American inequities and money-orientation. However, the NHS is now a pretty basic service in most respects, as compared to many advanced countries. Too many people accept its deficiencies and treat it more like an object of veneration than a useful service, a service which, however, now needs to be properly reformed.
Incidentally, a year prior to the above events, my first wife had been recommended to have a scan, in relation to something else, and had been given a choice of seven hospitals within a 30-mile range where that could be done. In the same year, 1990 I think, one of the largest teaching hospitals in the UK, King’s College Hospital, Denmark Hill (South London) had had to appeal for donations from the public to get such a scanner machine. I recall the banner (like a big red thermometer) hanging on the outside of the hospital when I often passed by c.1990.
More tweets seen
Terrifying scenes from the Israeli army's targeting of schools sheltering Palestinian civilian refugees in western Gaza City. #GazaGenocidepic.twitter.com/dxol23ODvo
For the first time, footage of the launch of Storm Shadow cruise missiles by front-line Su-24M bombers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces appeared online. According to preliminary data, the launches were carried out in Crimea. pic.twitter.com/4AQLxTWXFI
According to the narrator of the Nevil Shute novel, On the Beach, once famous and even filmed, “thus the world ended, not with a bang but a whimper” (if I recall it correctly from about 50 years ago). Will our known world end with a bloody big bang or two (in the Middle East, first)?
Anticipation of the Iranian response: A security consultation between the Prime Minister and the heads of the security system will take place at 20:00 Isrsel time at the Kirya in Tel Aviv. pic.twitter.com/EjbfpeqcLz
That is a building in Tel Aviv occupied by the Israeli Ministry of Defence.
The problem is we could stop the boats in 36-48hrs at source but there is zero appetite to do so. This is all part of a planned population replacement implemented by Soros and other globalists
Muslim mobs attacking protestors in Middlesbrough.
Not once has Starmer recognised that Muslims are causing mayhem.
They nearly murdered a man yesterday by throwing a projectile at his head and a liaison officer had to plead with the MDL to drop off their weapons at the Mosque. pic.twitter.com/tjOvu4XEwR
Everyone moaning about so called far right thugs. But at least they're not at the windows with fucking machine guns!! Rotherham right now. #UKRiotspic.twitter.com/oiNZ6tuQRJ
Saw Starmer making part of his statement, or threats, really, on TV news earlier this evening. A few thoughts came to mind.
Firstly, it is clear that the events across the country have frightened both Starmer and equally-rattled Yvette Cooper. They both looked scared, behind the threats and bluster.
Second, only a month after the General Election, it is clear that Starmer has woken up to the fact that the British people have no love for him and Labour, despite the electorally-rigged “landslide”. He knows that only 4 out of every 20 eligible voters voted Labour. In his heart, he must know that he really has no mandate.
Thirdly, Starmer has decided to rule by threats and fear. He wants to make people, “ordinary” citizens, fear the consequences even of attending a protest, or talking about events online. The tactics of a police state.
Fourthly, Starmer said that people arrested by reason of any of the above would be remanded in custody, i.e. not given bail. That is not Starmer’s decision to make, not so long as the UK retains any vestiges of being either a “free country” (though that ship has sailed, I think) or even “a society under law”.
It is not for a political office-holder, which is all that Starmer is, to effectively instruct (whether on the TV news or otherwise) magistrates, District Judges, and Crown Court judges as to whether they will grant bail or not.
A month into office, and Starmer-Labour already looks like a panicked police state.
This will not end well.
Late tweets seen
Keir Starmer should have condemned violence on all sides
One cannot see, as some simpletons did in the 1970s, the conflict in Northern Ireland as simply a kind of “national liberation struggle”. More a kind of several-hundred-years-old sectarian conflict between two populations, and mainly occurring in a relatively few areas of the province.
The methods of the IRA in the 1970s and 1980s particularly were brutal and callous. Despite some harsh measures on the part of the British and/or Northern Irish authorities, the sort of 1930s/1940s Soviet-style clearances that might have finished the whole problem were never used, nor ever even contemplated.
The British never really hit the IRA infrastructure as hard as they could have. Gerry Adams was, ludicrously, allowed to be notionally “on the dole” for many years, ferried around in one of the black taxis used extensively by the IRA. He and McGuinness and the like were never killed, their families never arrested, their properties never destroyed.
I think that it is clear that the British always favoured, at root, a nice polite Westminster-style “political solution”, even if that meant, strategically, giving in to Sinn Fein (and thus the IRA) in the long run (if only because the birth-rate of the “Republican”/Catholic population was higher than that of the “Loyalist”/Protestant population).
The same happened in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, a country I myself visited in 1977. In 1979, the British played it their usual way, with a nice polite conference at Lancaster House in London (a rather nice small palace, of sorts, which I saw when invited to a couple of receptions in the 1990s).
The British used their intelligence services to bug the hotels of the delegates, and made sure no-one blew the place up. Emerging from that was the idea of a British-style “election” from which would inevitably emerge the winner, that nice, well-educated, little man, Robert Mugabe.
That’s how Britain has done these things since 1945— superficially slick, well-organized, without too much noise or violence in most cases (until the British have left), but in the end, a complete disaster. It started with Indian Partition in 1947.
The bombings etc carried out by the IRA were terrible. Having said that, they were not a tenth of one percent as deadly or as wounding (in bald numerical terms) as, say, the American bombings of countries such as Iraq in the past 30 years, and even smaller by proportion than the bombings in Germany, Japan, France, Romania etc carried out, mainly, by the British and Americans during the Second World War.
Anyone listening to System/Jew-Zionist-lobby pundits such as Dan Hodges is likely to be disappointed, at least most of the time.
Lot of hype before PMQs. It is impossible for Liz Truss to perform as badly as currently expected. As I said last week – though this part was strangely overlooked – it doesn’t matter how she performs. We are beyond that.
I agree with the above, though. This is not now about a piece of Westminster Bubble theatricality, but about the fact that million upon million British people are now going to suffer terribly simply because stupid Liz Truss and woolly-head Kwarteng have been trying to play a performative game with the future of Britain.
Understand Liz Truss has been informed by Graham Brady the traditional threshold of letters for a leadership challenge has been breached. But he is insisting on a threshold of half the parliamentary party before acting.
It now seems likely Putin will detonate some sort of nuclear device in or around Ukraine. That will precipitate the biggest global crisis since Cuba. This morning ministers and Tory MPs are saying the only person they can find to lead us through that crisis is Liz Truss.
Even so, need one take seriously most British “security and intelligence” sources? Those people have been wrong most of the time since 1945 (and, indeed, were for much of the 1939-45 period).
Which Tory MP in a marginal fracking seat is going to put loyalty to Liz Truss over loyalty to their constituents? What lunatic is putting together this strategy?
If the only reason Tories aren’t removing Truss is fear of a general election, they are acting in the party not the national interest. Voters can see through that and will wreak a harsh revenge.
Mirabile dictu— I even find myself in agreement with sleazy Bryant this afternoon. Not that one need be a political genius to see the obvious truth of that tweet, of course.
Just Stop Oil protest live: Updates as activists block A4 Cromwell Road leaving traffic at a standstill 🛢
“I went for a scan and that showed nothing at all, so the consultant said, ‘I hate to say this but I wonder if it could be Parkinson’s’,” he recallshttps://t.co/1Hd0dv7MZtpic.twitter.com/MdzAJANqZu
📈 When they examined the gut bacteria of the patients again after 12 weeks, they found the so-called good species of gut bacteria had increased in those who had taken the probiotic, while the bad species had declined
Diskin doesn’t want to overstate the difference it made to him, but says: “I probably walked a bit better [while taking the probiotic]. Movement was a bit easier. It was a positive experience overall”https://t.co/1Hd0duQJXtpic.twitter.com/AiXzZ1QNwC
Amazingly @trussliz unable to confirm she would increase carers’ allowance by 10.1% following question from LibDem leader @EdwardJDavey. Plainly she did not get permission from @Jeremy_Hunt#PMQs
This is NOT what the CX said to me on Monday. What he said was he couldn't commit to anything specific on spending ahead of Oct 31…. wonder how he'll react to being bounced by the PM https://t.co/blwVKGXAI1
BREAKING: PM has just said in the HoC "I am protecting the triple lock on pensions" Comes just 48 hours after the CX told me he couldn't commit. A line kept this morning by cabinet too. What on earth going on? Is it her position that counts or Hunt's? #PMQs
If the Prime Minister (yes, even if it is Liz Truss) commits expressly to something, commits to it in the Chamber of the House of Commons, and in response to a direct question, that’s that…or else.
As I blogged yesterday, if the Triple Lock is not reinstated, then that is effectively the end of the Conservative Party, because the hard core of Con support consists of pensioners. If most of them abstain or vote elsewhere, the Conservative Party might really end up with a national vote of 10%, and that would leave them with 50-100 MPs, quite possibly at the bottom of that range.
The Conservative Party is polling around 20% or so. Take away half or three-quarters of that, and you are left with 5%-10%. Goodnight Vienna.
Prime Minister says she is completely committed to the triple lock, throwing taxpayers under the bus.
Oddly, Ian Blackford says she’s “throwing pensioners under the bus”. Is he deaf or just a bit thick? #PMQs
Lose/lose for the Conservative Party. Election now means about 50 Con Party MPs left (ironically, as blogged yesterday, probably including Liz Truss), but the only alternatives are to keep her as PM until the next general election, which might mean a near-total wipe-out, or to replace her as soon as possible, and then hope that at least a third to a half of the Con Party MPs can be saved, 100-175 of them.
As Truss says "I'm a fighter" the noise drowns out any more remarks. If this was a boxing match, someone would have thrown in the towel. Truly truly awful PMQs for the PM. Tory MPs faces truly miserable
Actually, it’s true: Liz Truss is a fighter, a noisy, aggressive, stupid, pointless woman used to pushing herself to the fore. Trouble is, once the silly bitch has forced herself to the front, there is almost literally nothing in her arsenal (intellectually or otherwise), and that is as true in the House of Commons as it is in any possible nuclear confrontation with Russia.
Will that be the next Liz Truss attempt to channel Thatcher and the Falklands? To try to create a “Falklands Factor” or “Belgrano Moment”? If so, a big mistake, and we may all be the victims of it. Russia is not Argentina, it has many thousands of nuclear weapons, many more advanced than our own few (most newspapers etc say the UK has 30-60, some claim 100).
Yes, it may be that Russia could only land 50 or 100 nuclear weapons on us. Is that OK? Do people think that anything much would be left?
Of course, Jason Stein, before working for Truss was a PR advisor for Prince Andrew, who advised him not to do the notorious Newsnight interview, and left his position on the back of that. Perhaps now he can go and work for someone with stronger morals.
— Glen Arthur Ezekiel Meskell-Brocken (@meskellglen) October 19, 2022
“Stein”? (((J)))? Looks like it…
[Jason Stein]
Liz Truss is, apart from all her other faults, totally in the pocket of the Jew-Zionist and Israel lobby. She “proudly” said as much at the recent Conservative Party Conference, at the fringe event organized by the horrible “Conservative Friends of Israel” [“CFI”].
I posted, yesterday, Peter Oborne’s excellent analysis of the Truss/Kwarteng “government”:
I noticed that Oborne says that, over the past decade, the Conservative Party has been “captured” by “about four” groups, the primary one being “the super-rich“.
Another, interpenetrating, would be the Jew/Zionist/Israel lobby.
Giving unconditional cash to the poorest people in the world allows them not outsiders to decide what they need. It can deliver better nutrition than a nutrition program, better employment than an employment program. But the aid world still resists cash.. https://t.co/euwtxNWbV6
I agree. Generally, the aid monies stick to the aid “industry” itself, its executives, to corrupt governments and officials etc. Look at “Save the Children”: millions of pounds wasted on the salaries and expenses of sex pests and rapists such as Brendan Cox, the then husband of assassinated “Labour” MP, Jo Cox. I think that Brendan Cox alone was getting something like £300,000 (maybe £200,000 or so) a year, and he was not even the top boss!
If you want to help the poor of Asia or Africa or elsewhere, 9 times out of 10 your best bet is to just find a family and give money to them. No take-out, no bureaucracy; just a bit of money to help them get on.
There may be circumstances where a large-scale project can have good effects, but that is usually better done on the governmental level.
The prime minister and chancellor agreed to keep the triple lock on pensions before Liz Truss stated her commitment to it at #PMQs, Downing Street has said.
Is Harry Cole pushing for war with Russia? Bad idea, if so.
Incidentally, we read that Cole has “the best security and intelligence contacts” of all mainstream journalists in London. Maybe, but how can he check the veracity of what he is being told? What do his contacts want in exchange? What is their agenda?
Oh Ffs what a load of tosh anything to support the govt cutting every dept and making everyone poorer while spending an extra 157 billion on defence
We are living in unusual times. Historically, more money spent on defence meant more real security for the British people. Now, the reverse is the case. More money spent on defence may mean a greater chance of a nuclear attack on the UK, especially when billions of pounds are wasted on the Jew-Zionist regime in Kiev, which (((typically))) is alternately wheedling and demanding more from us daily.
At the same time, the Royal Navy cannot or will not even secure our shores from migration-invasion.
More tweets
Wow. @trussliz has now over-ruled @Jeremy_Hunt and pre-committed that the state pension will rise in line with 10.1% inflation. This really is a car crash. “I’ve been clear we are protecting the triple lock” she says. Opposite of what Hunt told me on Monday
Wealthy Jew Peston may think that keeping the Triple Lock is a “car crash“, but Liz Truss and her fellow Con MPs know for certain that they are toast if it goes. I have blogged today and yesterday about it.
It is a simple calculation: with Triple Lock, the pensioners who are the core of Conservative electoral support will stay on board, most of them; without the Triple Lock, over half, maybe three-quarters, of the Conservative vote just evaporates, leaving the Conservative Party in an existential hole.
It may well be that international bankers prefer “austerity” for the British people, while parasites siphon off hundreds of billions, but the British people beg to differ.
When will idiots like Peston start working for the British people, and stop spouting System finance-capital propaganda?
You want to cut spending? Close down 90% of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, none of which are doing anything at all useful now. Also, stop sending money to arms manufacturers and to Kiev.
“After weeks of City chaos, and scoldings from Larry Summers and the IMF, even the most liberal and tofu-loving of commentators have bought into a dangerous idea: that you can never buck “the markets”.
Behind this mentality lies a whole mix of things, including the very understandable schadenfreude that comes with watching the Britannia Unchained lot find out that the markets don’t actually love them back. And who wouldn’t find joy in seeing the double-breasted, vacant-eyed, permanently post-prandial beetroots who between them make up the Conservative parliamentary party await an electoral tide that will sweep them out into generational oblivion? But the “markets know best” is not the lesson of the past few weeks, or the pandemic, or the bankers’ bailout before it. And believing so puts you on a collision course with voters.
You can see the result today: the UK is once again in the grip of austerity and anti-democratic politics – when we got into this crisis precisely because of austerity and democratic failure. The vast spending cuts made by George Osborne wrecked our hospitals, our schools and our town halls, and stoked the frustrations that ensured Brexit. I heard it over and over while reporting before the referendum – passersby declaring they were voting out, and citing as their reason nothing to do with Brussels and almost everything to do with the Tories. Their mum’s wait for an operation, their kids’ inability to get a council house, the loss of industry, the black hole left by privatisation: 40 years of bombed-out economics and bullshit politics.
To prove how far we have regressed, the politician who is once again everywhere is Osborne, easily the most ruinous Conservative minister this century. Others might name the layabout liar Boris Johnson or Truss the malfunctioning android, but it was Osborne who robbed Britain of a future. In the 2010s, interest rates hit rock-bottom and markets were practically screaming for governments to spend and invest. The UK could have rethought and rebuilt its post-crash economic model, but he chose to trample on the working poor and to cut, cut, cut. He is a big reason why Tory economics now has only two settings: cutting taxes for the rich, which never produces growth, or pursuing austerity that never brings prosperity.
Even today, Hunt is copying Osborne’s moves, right down to outsourcing politics to the financiers – just look at the newly installed panel of economic advisers, which comprises just two representatives of giant asset managers and two hedge-funders. Yet Jeremy cannot be George, because his role model cut public services so far there is nothing of substance left to take without them falling over. Now inflation is in double digits (unlike the prime minister’s approval ratings), it is devouring every Whitehall budget.
This is the UK’s horrific doom-loop, where voters are told the untenable is inevitable, while the sensibles keep mouthing stupidities and capitalists mirthlessly toast a cadaverous capitalism. Further downstream, surveys suggest over half (54%) of the 4m households on universal credit have gone without food in the last month, sick people in Wales can wait nearly two days inside an ambulance before getting admitted to A&E, and about 100,000 households each month are rolling off their mortgages into financial disaster.“
[The Guardian]
I have noticed that “George” Osborne (Gideon Osborne), that nasty part-Jew “a nobody-but-with-money”, is now once more all over the TV politics shows, dispensing his “wisdom”.
It’s like It’s a Wonderful Life but without any angels to help people. Maybe what Britain needs are avenging angels. As people now say, “just sayin’.”
Suella Braverman
Suella Braverman must be the shortest-serving Home Secretary ever. Like her predecessor, Priti Patel, another one of Indian origin, she talked a good game on migration invasion and immigration generally. Whether she would have been any more effective, I doubt. Anyway, that’s her gone as Home Secretary, gone as part of the Government, but not as MP: she scored over 63% of the vote last time, so has a safe seat even in these times.
Apparently, she may be replaced by the Jew Shapps, who, about a decade ago, posed as other (invented) people, even using false identity badges, in order to sell get-rich-quick schemes in the Palace of Westminster and elsewhere.
Can this “shitshow” of a government actually get much worse?
[Update, 31 August 2023: In fact, Suella Braverman, having been appointed Home Secretary on 6 October 2022, and having resigned on 19 October 2022, was reappointed by new PM Rishi Sunak only six days later, on 25 October 2022! As of time of writing, she remains, albeit ludicrously, pointlessly, and uselessly, in post. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suella_Braverman.
Meanwhile, the Jew Shapps, the shortest-“serving” Home Secretary in history (6 days), and who has had other jobs since October 2022, has only today [31 August 2023] been appointed (ludicrously), Defence Secretary].
Late tweets seen
A glimpse into the infinite vacuum that is the mind of a lockdown supporter: https://t.co/7L4Egiz5ZL
“Useless“? Well, maybe (I have never heard of her). More useless than, say, Liz Truss, Boris-idiot, James Cleverly, Therese Coffey, and a hundred others?
Christ, I once met @trussliz, she was the most useless person I ever met then and remains so 5 years on
Tory MPs are saying Liz Truss sacked Wendy Morton in the lobby and marched her out and the deputy chief whip had now resigned in protest, writes Nick Gutteridgehttps://t.co/RC4J7uWIvI
How mad does this “shitshow” have to get before someone just takes Liz Truss outside and…well, you get my meaning?
Meanwhile, Tory MPs told the BBC that chief whip Wendy Morton, and the deputy chief whip, are no longer in post.
One furious Tory MP described the chaotic events as a "shambles and a disgrace".
— Rob de Nazar🔶 🇺🇦🌿🌈United Progressives🧡💚❤️💛 (@robdn) October 19, 2022
Prime Minister Liz Truss grabbed Wendy Morton’s arm to try to persuade her not to resign but Morton left the lobby trailing the Prime Minister behind her. In the chaos, the premier did not vote.
There was a time, not so long ago, when British people laughed at goings-on of that sort overseas. Italy, Spain, maybe Yeltsin’s Russia, parts of Latin America or Asia. More than awkward. Humiliating for the whole country.
Well, there it is. Anyone not wealthy, and over the age of 65, as well as quite a few people of lesser age, who votes for the Conservative Party, is now a turkey voting for Christmas.
During the currency of the 2010-2017 governments, David Cameron-Levita realized that the only reliable demographic voting Conservative was that of “older people” generally— the older the voter, the more likely was he (or she) to vote Con, and also the more likely that that voter was to actually vote at all.
UKIP and, also, Farage’s other and later vehicle, Brexit Party, were mainly made up of fairly grey-haired and mostly ex-Conservative members and voters, people who at least vaguely realized that the Conservative Party was actually helping to destroy Britain, as the young Disraeli once wrote [“the great Conservative Party, that destroys everything“] and wanted a party that reflected their views better.
The trend is more or less the same now, except that UKIP and Brexit Party do not exist in any real sense, though Reform Party has taken up some of that slack.
Cameron-Levita and his cronies knew that fewer and fewer “younger” people, especially voters under the age of 30, were voting Con. That underlined the need to consolidate the Con vote in older age-groups, and especially the group that not only mostly voted Con, but could be relied upon to cast a vote, those in receipt of a State Pension, meaning those over 65 and some over about 62 (the eligibility age being slowly raised over time).
There were other factors: the older sections of the population were also those more likely to own a house or other dwelling outright, having either never had a mortgage or having paid it off while in their fifties, typically. The rise in nominal money-value of residential property therefore benefited that same group of older people.
The older sections of the population, especially the pensioners, were also those who favoured Brexit the most.
It is widely accepted that the general elections of 2015 and 2017 were won by the Conservative Party entirely by reason of the pensioner vote.
The data shows that there are still some clear patterns along these lines, although the waters are somewhat muddied by a move away from two-party politics.”
“The average age of the Conservative voter is such that the steepness of its “age curve” (the increasing probability of a person at 2017 voting Conservative given their age) is now almost certainly steeper than the natural degree to which people “get” more Conservative as they age. This is important as it suggests that new cohorts of voters cannot replace and replenish the ranks of the Conservatives, even if they do naturally get more Conservative over time.”
The Conservative Party induced that reliable pro-Con voting bloc to carry on voting Con by introducing the “Triple Lock”, by which State Pensions would rise by the rate of inflation, or average pay, or 2.5% a year, whichever of the three was the greatest.
That obviously suited most pensioners very well, and secured those two election victories.
Poorer pensioners who received both State Pension and Pension Guarantee Credit were also served not badly, because the State Pension was covered by the Triple Lock, while Pension Guarantee Credit would still increase in amount, though only in line with inflation.
Rishi Sunak suspended the inflation part of the Triple Lock in 2021 (for financial year 2022-2023) [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53082530], thus —if you like— cheating pensioners; he also thereby broke the election pledge the Conservative Party made during the 2019 General Election.
Sunak, best known for his “panicdemic” “free money” giveaways, probably has that Triple Lock default, or sleight-of-hand, to thank for his not being ushered in as Conservative Party leader in 2022.
The vast majority of actual Conservative Party members are either pensioners or not far from becoming so. The, so-to-speak, “Indian giver” was basically given a slap by the Conservative Party pensioner membership. Had he not cheated the pensioners, Sunak would almost certainly be Prime Minister by now.
I’m laughing…
Now, it seems that the Liz Truss government may or may not continue with —that is, reinstate— the Triple Lock after 2023 (she still says yes…), but State benefits including Pension Guarantee Credit may or may not be uprated in accord with inflation— they may even be frozen.
“Under the triple lock, pensions increase by the highest of earnings growth, price inflation or 2.5 per cent a year.
The government temporarily suspended the wages element of the pensions triple lock for 2022-23 to avoid a disproportionate rise of the state pension following the pandemic.
…“With inflation into double-digits, average earnings (total pay) of 5.5 per cent isn’t expected to be the deciding factor in next April’s state pension increase. The state pension is likely to increase by around double this at over 10 per cent, confirmed in September’s inflation figure published next month.”
…“While prime minister Truss committed to reinstating the triple lock in the immediate term during her leadership campaign, questions will remain over its affordability and whether the triple lock will survive in its existing form in the manifestos of all parties ahead of the next general election.”
[FT Adviser]
Can Liz Truss be trusted or relied upon? I think not (and her husband knows not!).
One thing is for sure— if Liz Truss or woolly-head Kwarteng short-change the “grey vote” any time between now and the next general election, that “grey vote” will either vote elsewhere or even just abstain, though it is ingrained in most of those of pensionable age that they should at least vote, as a civic duty.
There is also the point that house prices are forecast to fall, perhaps significantly, in 2023.
The Conservative Party is now around 20% in the opinion polls. Most of that hard-core 20% is composed of the “grey vote”. “Mess them about” by interfering with the State Pension and/or Pension Guarantee Credit, and the Con vote nationally, at a general election, might fall to as low as 10%. Then it would be “Goodnight Vienna” for the Conservative Party.
But what are these qualifications worth? @tabitasurge. Before hyper-inflation was introduced in 1920s Germany, that country had very few multi-millionaires. After hyper-inflation, everybody in Germany was a multi-millionaire. See the point? https://t.co/2VibqSWtfU
Quite. Meaningless “exam passes”, “degrees” etc. Is James Cleverly any better or worse a Foreign Secretary for having a “degree” in Hospitality Management? It might even be “worse”…
She was groomed by dark-money lobby groups working for Big Tobacco, Big Oil and foreign oligarchs. Now Liz Truss is in office and trashing this country on their behalf. pic.twitter.com/vFkobN8euo
What's heading our way? Apart from the detail that NATO sanctions that are 'starving Europe' of Russian gas, every word of this article is true. While the MSM gloats over the 'success' of Ukraine's 1916-style offensives, economic disaster is hitting home.https://t.co/iu64xiD59u
We are where we are, in the now-ubiquitous phrase. The prime-ministerial chair once occupied by the likes of Pitt, the 1st Duke of Wellington, Gladstone, Lloyd George, Churchill, Attlee, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher etc is now occupied by a public entertainer of mixed ethnic and cultural origins, born in New York City, brought up partly in the USA and Belgium, and until recently a dual passport-holder. A rootless cosmopolitan playing out a performance as an “upper-class” “Englishman” caricature. Am-dram Churchill. Poundland Churchill.
Boris Johnson, Boris-idiot, Boris the clown. More to the immediate point, Boris without a majority, soon. As a child of eight years, Boris Johnson wanted to be “world king” and has for decades schemed and cheated and lied in order to get to the nearest position (outside the monarch’s own ambit) that England allows: the rank of Prime Minister. However, he has not become “King of the World”, but “King for a Day”, the traditional role, in the Revels, of the Jester or Fool (“…for who but a Fool would be King for a Day?”).
The Conservative Party elected Boris Johnson its leader. Conservative MPs voted to reduce the field to two. Conservative Party members, some 140,000 of them, voted and 66% of them, about 92,000, preferred Boris Johnson. It is not my purpose of this article to rail more than en passant against the absurdity that allows a prime minister to resign and for her successor to be, in effect, elected by 92,000 (mostly very elderly, mostly rather well-off financially) Conservative Party members (out of about 50 million voters generally). This article is for the purpose of examining electoral chances.
First of all, we have the Brexit chaos. I favoured Leave. I still favour Brexit. However, the whole process was criminally mishandled by the Conservative government of Theresa May.
How will Brexit affect a general election? I assume that the House of Commons will not allow a WTO or “no deal” Brexit, and so any general election that is then called will see Boris Johnson parking his tanks on the lawn of Brexit Party and trying to go all out for, effectively, the Leave vote of 2016. There are dangers for the Conservative Party in that.
Brexit is not the only issue in a general election. Some more affluent voters may vote Conservative for tax or other reasons even if they oppose Brexit. Also, many in the population will never vote Conservative even if they favour Brexit. Many despise Boris Johnson and will never vote Conservative as long as he is the leader. This is, if chess, three-dimensional chess.
However, now that the Conservatives under Johnson present themselves as the “Leave”/Brexit party, it can be assumed that a sizeable number of former Conservative voters who favour staying in the EU will migrate, at least temporarily, to the only significant Remain-supporting party, the LibDems. Where else can they go? It might be argued that many Conservative MPs favour Remain, and that those MPs will receive a special vote based on that. Don’t count on it. The label is the primary motor, and if Conservative means Leave, many Remain voters will leave…the Conservative Party.
If the next general election is called without the UK having left the EU, or having left on terms dictated by the EU (Brexit In Name Only), then Brexit Party will be waiting to snap up the hard-core Brexit vote.
Brexit Party intends, at present, to contest all 650 seats. Its mere presence ensures that dozens, maybe even beyond a hundred, Conservative MPs will lose their seats, in some cases to Brexit Party, but in more cases to the LibDems or Labour.
There has been talk of a Conservative/Brexit Party electoral pact, but that carries the danger of gifting the Brexit Party a bloc of seats. which might challenge the Conservative Party more strongly later.
Labour, though now called by msm commentators a Remain party, is more nuanced. Corbyn’s fence-sitting tactic, though much criticized, is all that he can do in a circumstance where Labour-held seats were more often (about 60%) Leave-voting, though most Labour voters voted Remain (because, as I blogged recently, Labour votes are increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer seats).
It may be, anyway, that Labour voters have concerns other than, or as well as, Brexit: low pay, the Conservative attacks on the social welfare and benefits system, the burgeoning crime and disorder problem etc.
The composition of the Boris-idiot Cabinet and government will not attract many former Labour, LibDem or floating voters.
My conclusion is that the Boris Johnson government may struggle to attract the votes of more than 30% nationwide. Recent opinion polls have put the Conservatives at anywhere between 23% and 30%. Labour has been between 18% and 28%. LibDems around 16%-20% and Brexit Party 14%-20%.
If the Conservatives continue to lean towards Brexit strongly, they risk losing many of their pro-EU voters to the LibDems, but if they try to fence-sit or move more towards Remain, many of their previous voters will vote for Brexit Party or stay at home.
There is also the Boris Factor, but we see that, even though there has been a “Boris Bounce”, its effect has been slight. The Conservatives are still polling at or below 30% (as is Labour). Indeed, it could be argued that, for many former Conservative voters, especially in marginal seats, Boris-idiot is not an attraction but a turn-off. I concede that that is a guess, but it is at least an educated one.
I have fed various recent opinion poll results into the Electoral Calculus calculator [see Notes, below], and it is quite hard to come up with a Conservative majority in the Commons. Most results show a hung Parliament with either Lab or Con as largest party. Only one showed a Conservative majority (of one vote). In several cases, both main System parties were as many as 80 MPs short of a majority.
Now we all know that the “glorious uncertainty” of the Turf is carried over to the field of battle of British elections. It is hard to predict elections in Britain and “a week is a long time in British politics”, as Harold Wilson said. Also, Electoral Calculus is a fairly rough guide. Having said that, it seems clear that, at least in the short term, the Conservatives are on the back foot here. Any gamble to increase the Conservative majority in the Commons may well backfire, as in 2017. That would mean the end of The Clown as Prime Minister, but would also mean something of a political and even Constitutional crisis.
These should be fertile days for social nationalism, but we are as yet not even in the game…
David Cameron-Levita as Prime Minister always made sure that the interests of pensioners were prioritized, in particular by introducing the “Triple Lock” on State pensions. Pensions have been one of several issues taking greater prominence over the years by reason of the increasing average age of the population of the UK.
There were clear practical political reasons for this policy. Support for the Labour Party at elections is fairly even across the half-dozen usual age groups, whereas support for the Conservative Party is concentrated among the old and middle-aged: just under 50% of all Conservative votes are those of persons aged over 65 years. Hardly any young people intend to vote Conservative (in the 18-24 age group, below 4%).
The loyalty of the over 65s has been reinforced by pensioner-friendly policies. There are signs now that the Conservatives intend to, in the oft-seen phrase, “throw the pensioners under a bus”. In 2017 Phillip Hammond wanted to remove part of the Triple Lock, but the DUP insisted on its retention in part-payment for DUP “confidence and supply” support in the Commons.
The Conservative Party is already getting some flak from the elderly for the BBC’s announcement that free TV licences will be withdrawn for those of 75+ years. There are rumblings about bus passes for pensioners. Overall, it is clear that the free market crazies now in the ascendant under Boris-idiot want to target the elderly as they have already done the disabled, sick, unemployed etc.
The Labour Party is now the party of the blacks and browns, those dependent on State benefits, and of the public service workers. The Conservative Party is now the party of the rich, the affluent, the buy-to-let parasites and the like, and (many of) the elderly. If the elderly who are not particularly well-off desert the Conservatives, the Conservative Party is in big trouble, because only about 10%-15% of UK voters can really be described as rich or even affluent, certainly no more than 20%. In 2017, the Conservative vote amounted to 42.4% of votes cast. If half or more of those votes suddenly disappear, the Conservative Party is quite likely to disappear with them.
Well, we all now know that, in December 2019, Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party won a supposed “landslide” at the General Election. In fact, the Conservative Party vote was only 43.6% of votes cast, but Labour’s vote fell to 32.1%, and that decided the matter.
Key was the decision of Nigel Farage to stab in the back his own candidates and supporters by withdrawing Brexit Party from serious contention. That was the key act that ensured a Johnson/Conservative win.
Brexit Party ended up with 2% of the vote nationwide. Had Farage and Brexit Party gone all out to win from the start, Brexit Party might have got 15%, which though giving Brexit Party few if any seats, would have tipped the balance back to hung Parliament territory.
Other factors were the elderly and late middle-age voters sticking with the Conservative Party, and the relentless and mainly Jewish anti-Corbyn campaign in the msm, which helped to crush Labour’s chances.
