Two Tier Keir in TROUBLE?

[TIGHTCHOKE]

An interesting piece by Allister Heath in the Telegraph.

"Keir Starmer is in terrible trouble. Desperately unpopular at home, he is losing his friends abroad. Almost the last socialist standing in a world shifting Right-wards at breakneck speed, our accidental Prime Minister cuts an isolated, befuddled, almost pitiful figure. His Leftist comrades Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau and Olaf Scholz are on the way out; Emmanuel Macron is a laughing stock.

The future belongs to Donald Trump, Canada’s Pierre Poilievre, Argentina’s Javier Milei and even Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s crime-busting, pro-Bitcoin president, and to the Eurosceptic, anti-immigration parties rising across Europe. All look at Britain with a mix of sadness and incomprehension. To the Right-wing counter-elites seizing power worldwide, Starmer embodies our accelerating decline, his values at odds with the global mood, the inadequacies of his Government painfully obvious. We are the country nobody wants to copy, a case study in what not to do, the subject of a cruel experiment in destroying a successful and cohesive society.

Like a dinosaur who miraculously escaped the mass extinction of his companions, Starmer plods on, unable to recalibrate to the new zeitgeist, chasing an EU mirage that no longer exists, stubbornly hiking tax and spend, doubling down on mass immigration and overpriced energy, oblivious to the flashing red lights in the City as gilt yields rocket to their highest levels since 1998.

The Prime Minister was caught by surprise by the verbal onslaught unleashed by Elon Musk over the grooming gangs abomination, but that is nothing compared to what will happen when Trump takes office on 20 January. Starmer’s inflexibility means the special relationship is unlikely to survive: its demise, catastrophic for UK interests, would serve as the epitaph of his failed premiership.

Trump sees the UK and European countries as whingeing, ungrateful scroungers. He will demand much greater defence spending, but Rachel Reeves, facing a renewed fiscal crisis as our borrowing costs surge, won’t want to slash welfare and is unlikely to deliver more than a token increase. Trump will react furiously.

If that doesn’t break the special relationship, the administration’s likely embrace of lawfare will stun a Westminster establishment that doesn’t understand the modern Republican Party. Starmer, a Left-wing lawyer, is about to be given a taste of his own medicine.

Even though Israel possesses its own independent courts and its own robust democracy to deal with law-breaking or abuses, and despite the fact that the Jewish state is meant to be our ally, Starmer imposed sanctions against a handful of Israeli settlers accused of attacking Palestinians. Biden approved similar sanctions.

The Left cheered at this embrace of extra-territoriality and disregard for national sovereignty, but, in its arrogant belief that the wokerati would always be in power, failed to grasp the threat to its own interests of setting such a precedent.

The Maga Right has none of the inhibitions of its predecessors. It is planning to leverage the power of a recaptured state to annihilate its enemies. Many US conservatives are now calling, in all seriousness, for sanctions to be imposed on British politicians deemed to have not done enough to combat the obscenity that are the grooming gangs. Some want UK citizens convicted of raping young girls but released after short sentences to be directly penalised by the US.

Britain risks being treated like a country with a broken justice system by a global super-power: it is a farce and an embarrassment. Foreign intervention on a domestic matter, even if spearheaded by well-meaning conservatives, isn’t the solution: the answer is a better UK government committed to delivering justice to the victims. Our morally bankrupt bien-pensant elite is triply to blame.

There is an even stronger campaign underway to impose sanctions on British officials who restricted arms sales for Israel, for tacitly helping enemies of America. The International Criminal Court is certain to be targeted: its chief prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan is British. There may be extradition requests, as well as attempts to go after Labour for allowing activists to campaign for Kamala Harris. The “human rights” house of cards could be toppled, destroying the centre-piece of the Starmerite worldview.

More generally, America is about to start exporting Right-wing values again, putting it at odds with Labour’s Britain. US foreign policy has long been profoundly ideological, though the belief system has varied: America backed our membership of the European Community (bad), supported anti-communism (good), fought Islamism after 9/11 (good), and became a massive exporter of woke and environmental nostrums, working with Wall Street and Silicon Valley (bad).

The British Left embraced this latter onslaught: it welcomed donations to the pro-EU camp from US banks. Starmer took the knee in 2020, defying Trump and aligning himself with the far-Left, US BLM movement. British firms adopted deranged teachings of US-centric critical race theory.

All of this is now being reversed. We are living through the greatest “vibe shift” to the Right since 1979-1980, confirming, as per Newton’s Third Law of Motion, that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.

Far from promoting DEI, the US will combat it. Trump wants to ***** and ditch green targets and treaties. Musk wants to reinvent himself as a Right-wing George Soros, funding Right-wing causes globally, terrifying the British Left. Scores of corporate giants are ending DEI. Numerous Wall Street banks have pulled out of net zero initiatives. Meta – which owns Facebook and Instagram – has reembraced free speech, parting company with Nick Clegg and aligning itself with Musk’s X. Exporting the First Amendment may become a US foreign policy priority. We can expect trade sanctions against UK and EU interests if Starmer or Brussels seek to prevent American social media firms from hosting material that is legal in the US.

Britain and Europe will face a new kind of conservative US imperialism, manifesting itself not just in attempted land grabs (such as reversing the surrender of the Chagos, or trying to absorb Greenland) but by tying trade sanctions to politics and policy. Everything is about to change. Starmer doesn’t stand a chance."

[Arielvb]

That’s spot on !  Have a beer after that .

        Gary

[muncher]

We will have to suffer before this clown government is removed. 

[johnphilip]

Great interesting factual report bring it on.

[redial]

1 hour ago, muncher said:

Couldn’t agree more.

[Scully]

I do hope so. 

[aldivalloch]

Well, I resolved quite along time ago to avoid these threads, but I'm prepared to make an exception for this one and say simply that anyone who sees merit in a resurgence of the Right inspired by the daft ramblings of the ridiculous man-child that is Donald Trump, and his loony acolytes, needs to have a long, hard think to him- or herself.

Be careful what you wish for.

 

[Weihrauch17]

44 minutes ago, aldivalloch said:

Well, I resolved quite along time ago to avoid these threads, but I'm prepared to make an exception for this one and say simply that anyone who sees merit in a resurgence of the Right inspired by the daft ramblings of the ridiculous man-child that is Donald Trump, and his loony acolytes, needs to have a long, hard think to him- or herself.

Be careful what you wish for.

 

I wish for anyone except Labour, they are a true economy wrecking and social cohesion disaster area in record time.

Edited Wednesday at 23:16 by Weihrauch17

[Penelope]

13 hours ago, muncher said:

We will have to suffer before this clown government is removed. 

Yep, time to grin and bear it and wait for better times.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

It just gets worse, come on TTK explain this away.   

"Pound falls to lowest in over a year as borrowing costs soar."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1404j3xmxdo

[Raja Clavata]

I visited the US (Michigan) shortly after Trump was voted in the last time and did not come across anyone at that time who admitted to voting for him.

When I was in Nevada this time last year just about all the Uber drivers I spoke to were pro Trump.

I’m back there again now and so far every single one of them I’ve spoken to believes Trump has saved America.

It increasingly feels to me like this country is on a self harm mission, just when you think it can’t get any worse you get to be proven wrong.

I do understand the shift of public sentiment towards the right and have no doubt the current complete shower of manure we have in government are sealing the fate for our next government to be right/ populist but I also fear we could somehow find a way / ways to totally mess that up too.

But for my Mum and kids I’d almost certainly be looking to transfer to the US right now.

Not Nevada I might add.

[old man]

The difficulty here is we need common sense and a strong moral compass round about the middle point.

Not those numpties of an orange or green hue either, circus clown material.

Seemingly not achievable UK 2024.

[Westward]

They don't get it, but then has any of them ever worked for a living in anything resembling an everyday workplace. (i.e. not a bank or a political research dept.)?

They would gain some support if they massively reduced immigration, both legal and the other kind, and started undoing the vast array of benefits contrived by Gordon Brown which allows spongers, wasters, layabouts and loafers to live in comfort whilst thumbing their noses at the mugs who actually contribute to the country!

[JohnfromUK]

17 minutes ago, Westward said:

They don't get it, but then has any of them ever worked for a living in anything resembling an everyday workplace.

They came in promising to GROW the economy.  We kept being told that they were going to have the highest growth in the G7.

What they did was have done so far is kill of the small beginnings of growth that had just about begun as a result of the previous Gov'ts actions.  Push up the cost of employing people.  Pour money into the unproductive public sector.  Push up inflation which will in turn push up interest rates and reduce investment, push up long term bond rates (i.e. the cost of borrowing) by borrowing irrespective of consequences.

ALL of these actions are exactly the reverse of what is needed for sustained growth - which MUST be led by the private sector - and for that you need to CUT the cost of employing people, CUT the cost of borrowing and those will ) if they believe it which is now unlikely) encourage private sector to invest and grow.

That mean less money for the public sector which must be trimmed.  Note that the UK civil service was around 480,000 under Gordon Brown, fell to 380,000 under Cameron, then began to grow again under May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak (who apparently had no control over it) to the current roughly 513,000 (source here) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/11/the-civil-service-grew-under-the-tories-can-starmer-reduce-it-without-further-harming-morale)