by Jonathan Todd
Benjamin Netanyahu has been prime minister of Israel for longer than anyone else in the history of the state. Vladimir Putin is Russia’s longest-serving leader since Stalin. Silvio Berlusconi served as prime minister of Italy for longer than anyone since World War II.
America has done well to rid itself of its right-wing populist president in only four years – especially when set against the infrequency of one-term US presidents and the advantages bestowed on the Republicans by the Electoral College.
It seems, more than anything else, his shambolic handling of a pandemic that has now killed approaching 240,000 Americans undermined President Trump. The departing president has had an uneasy relationship with scientists, like Dr Anthony Fauci, that advise on Covid-19.
Rather than being beheaded, as Trump’s former adviser, Steve Bannon, suggested, Fauci will be empowered under President Biden. While no heads appeared on pikes outside the Trump White House, he went further than any other US president to normalise violence as a political tool – recently, for example, failing to condemn his supporters who blocked Biden’s campaign bus.
The transition to Biden is a step away from aggression and grievance, towards compassion and reason. America has turned a page. With more votes than other candidate in American history and the highest vote share of any challenger since FDR in 1932, Biden will win the popular vote by more than four million.
Polls prior to the election indicated that the Democrats would win the presidency, Senate and House so decisively that Biden would enjoy the latitude to introduce a programme of reform as ambitious as that introduced by FDR with relative ease. Sadly, America did not quite so comprehensively turn the page. But Biden enters the White House with the need for such transformative legislation much more widely recognised – including, it might be suspected, by the incoming president himself – than when his most immediate Democratic predecessors, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, did so.
Having campaigned in poetry, there is a desperate need for Biden prose big enough to meet America’s deep problems. However, notwithstanding the opportunity afforded in January by two elections in Georgia to salvage Democratic control of the Senate, such ambitions likely depend upon Republican Senate votes.
Biden represents change, the persistent importance of Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, continuity. Perhaps, given the sand that McConnell threw in Obama’s wheels, bitterly so.
At the Hampton Roads Conference, during the American civil war, Abraham Lincoln amiably recalled his service in the House years previously with Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, as McConnell and Biden will now reflect upon their years together in the Senate. Stephens broke off their chat on old acquaintances by asking:
“Well, Mr President, is there no way of putting an end to the present trouble, and bringing about a restoration of the general good feeling and harmony then existing between the different States and sections of the country?”
With America again fractious, similar questions hang between Biden and McConnell. Senate Republicans must scrutinise their hearts and ask if America’s unhappiness is best addressed through fidelity to McConnell’s blunt obstructionism. If they do not see national interests to be served in more effective public health and economic responses to Covid-19, they are blind to anything but partisanship.
At least internationally, Biden will have more freedom to galvanise a renewed focus on science, especially as relevant to the pandemic and climate chaos. Where Trump made a ridiculous effort to buy Greenland and disparaged Greta Thunberg, Biden will seek to understand the significance of the Danish mink and to give Thunberg hope.
This will be a breath of fresh air to the world. Maybe, as allies seek new ways to make themselves useful to Biden, much more. Sadly, these gains will continue to escape some.
When Bernie Sanders was saying that, “Biden will become the most progressive president since FDR”, Sanders fans in the UK were saying that Biden would not win. Having backed Jeremy Corbyn to the hilt, these leftists know a winner when they see one. Now that Biden has won, they want to say that he did not win right.
Right-wingers are incapable of winning wrong; left-wingers always find ways to tie themselves in knots.
The fine margins of the 2000 presidential election, for example, did nothing to curb George W Bush’s willingness to utilise the powers of his office.
In different ways, the Biden presidency is likely to be as challenging as Bush’s. The discontents at home and abroad are legion. The tools at Biden’s disposal are constrained. They would be greatly enhanced by victories in Georgia in January – which is where left-wingers should discharge any unused energies.
Biden replaces someone capable of thinking the unthinkable and saying the unsayable. In seeking unity within a country so divided, Biden might be targeting the undoable. But if he brings as much bold imagination to the task as Trump brought a much darker kind, he might succeed. He richly deserves our congratulations and encouragement.
Jonathan Todd is Deputy Editor of Labour Uncut
Tags: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Jonathan Todd, Mitch McConnell
Jonathan Todd’s article is as predictable as death and taxation. The Left – and others – within Britain have never liked the Republican Party. I can clearly remember the vitriol aimed at Ronald Reagan, a President who won a landslide election over Jimmy Carter (a Democrat for whom I retain something of a soft spot). Then, in more recent years, George Bush got it in the neck.
I never liked Donald Trump, just as I don’t like Boris Johnson (or Gove, Hancock, Raab et al.), yet I understand why Americans voted for him. He wasn’t of the establishment, the kind of country club Republican who likes cosy deal-making ‘across the aisle’. I guess some Americans had seen too much of that. And Trump was, when all is said and done, no George Wallace. Yet there was no obvious intelligence or empathy – and the same goes for Johnson, who now seems increasingly out of touch with the electorate who handed him his victory last year.
One or two Democrats are already talking about a return to ‘meat and potatoes’ policies – which means, I think, finding fresh appeal for the blue collar worker. Fat chance of that happening under this ‘Woke’ presidential combination. The rust belt will simply carry on rusting.
As that funny little character in ‘South Park’ says, ‘the Democrats piss me off’.
But Biden isn’t left, he is self-proclaimed “moderate centrist”. And it’s by US standards, by UK standards he is just as right as BoJo.
Not to mention Republican senate that will block every even remotely progressive initiative.
Biden’s politics are actually very Thatcher/Blair-ite. So I don’t think there will be too much real change.
‘A programme of reform’. For that, read the heavy hand of the State laying across all human thought and effort. This weasel word ‘Diversity’, which actually means conformity. And Biden is no Franklin Roosevelt. Nor is America in need of some PC version of the New Deal. More likely he’ll be like Lyndon Johnson, forever meddling and tinkering whilst splashing out billlions of tax dollars to no good or certain purpose. Remember the turmoil between 1964 and 1968.
The notion of defunding the police seemed to go down like a bucket of cold sick. As Spenser says to some leftie in one of the books, ‘Next time you’re raped, call a hippy’.
Having said that, the boys and girls in their traffic warden/lollipop lady gear here in the UK are hardly mastering the art of public relations. The BBC website made me weep with laughter: ‘Can The Police Stop You On The Street’? Yes. Where I live I think we’ve seen Plod on foot maybe once in twenty years. Thirty years ago, someone threatened me with a knife – in broad daylight. Plod’s response? A shrug of the shoulders. Perhaps if someone invited me indoors for a cup of tea, though, they might now shift themselves… unless we turned out to be a pair of ISIS-supporting homosexuals…
Anyway, let Harris and her radical chic chums defund the police by all means. I’m sure the local community support worker will just love answering that call for help at two in the morning…
I very much like the look of Mitch McConnell, who looks as though he will piss on the Democratic firework display pretty quickly.
As the Leftie papers rejoice and another fat-bellied trade unionist prepares to take his seat in the Lords, Sir Steer Calmer is already taking his cue from Plastic Paddy. Well, well, who would have thought it, what a turn up for the book. Expect much chit-chat about coalition-building, even references to Labour being a ‘broad church’ (not heard that one for quite a while). It’s nonsense of course. Calmer took the knee, together with the serial dim-wit Rayner, he’s got a hard-on for the so-called ‘green revolution’ and the whole LGBT diversionary rubbish and more or less the Corbynite agenda. He’s still entranced by the EU no doubt and probably inclined to meddle in Irish affairs if tickled in the right spot. When it comes to Ireland, Roy Mason was my man.
Nothing much good will come out of the United States now, whoever sits in the Oval Office, except perhaps an improved cheeseburger.
Biden is not ‘left’. There is no Left in US politics.
The Republicans are Conservative with an upper-case C, the Democrats are conservative with a lower-case c. They are basically the two wings of our own Tory Party. Think Thatcher & Cameron.
Both Republican and Democrat are low tax, free enterprise, free market parties. Interestingly, Biden is very very global mercantalist in outlook and supports a belief of global tariff-free , quota free, unhindered free trade.
Biden will be a lame-duck president. He will struggle to get his key policies enacted and infuriate the oil-states (Texas, Alaska, Montana, the Dakotas etc) as he rejoins the Paris Accord, and disappoint the auto-industry (Detroit etc etc) with ‘green’ policies that basically end the era of cheap affordable motoring for the masses.
I doubt he will even last the full four years – he has an irregular heart-beat, has had several aneurysms (you are very very lucky to survive one let alone several. My brother, a fit, athletic lad who represented his school at several sports, aged 17, jumped up to head the ball in a school soccer match and was dead before his feet were back on the floor), and had to have brain surgery to repair artery damage.
Of more interest is the Republicans future. Trump is not an aberration. Trumpism has won one Presidency, and just increased it’s vote to the second highest total of any presidential candidate ever, and he’s only lost this election by less than 100,000 votes out of over 140 million. The doctrine is here to stay. Trumpists control the party at grassroots level – a few senior officials are still GOP ‘old guard’, but down on the ground, the GOP is Trump through-and-through. He may even stand again – in 2024 he will only be slightly older than Biden is now. If he doesn’t get the nomination I wouldn’t be surprsied to see any two from Pence, Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump and Nikki Hayley.
The Republicans still control the Senate and the majority of Judges on the Supreme Court are not only Republican, but Trumpist in ideaology and none look lioke they are about to die or retire any time soon.
And there is very very little at federal level that the USA can do about Covid. The USA is a highly devolved country – far more devolved than the UK for example, and the States pretty much do as they please. The Federal Government in Washington simply does not have the authority to make the states comply over health matters.
Now Gordon Brown pops up to offer his two pennorth. Where’s Tony Blair? Surely he won’t be able to resist coming over all statesmanlike. The likes of Brown and Plastic Paddy piss in the same pot.
Brown pipes up, then Charlie Falconer, all dutifully reported in ‘The Guardian’, needless to say. Biden would have much preferred the UK to remain within the EU witters Brown. Does this strike anyone as mendacious? Certainly he would have – the Americans bankrolled Europe for Christ knows how many years and it was a useful buffer during the Cold War. But we had a referendum, Remain lost, and the likes of Brown and Charlie – just like Blair, Campbell, Mandelson and the other members of the tribe – just can’t get over it. Naughty people for voting the wrong way!
It didn’t take long, did it? Plastic Paddy is elected amidst evident voter fraud and the Labour failures are lining up to kiss the hem of his garment.
There seems to be some evidence that Momentum tried to get themselves involved in the Democratic campaign. They may not all be anti-Jewish but they are Hard Left – so where does that leave the editors of ‘Labour Uncut’? Wasn’t Bernie Sanders said to be an admirer of Corbyn?
I had hoped that ‘Labour Uncut’ might take on a, shall we say, ‘Blue Labour’ tinge. It hasn’t. It’s fair-minded but it lacks any alternative vision – which is why, I suppose, it will now be sucking up to the Democrats.
Yes, the Remainers have taken heart and will soon be in full cry. I can hear the arguments for rejoining the EU taking shape very soon indeed, the cries that we should have had a second Referendum, honours for Bercow and Gina Miller etc. etc. Demoracy on their terms, the mid-Atlantic elite, forgetting the stupid, arrogant bullying of Junker, Tusk and that Belgian fart who reminds me of David Mellor.
In fact, I wouldn’t have minded some economic arrangement with Western Europe half so much if it had meant shifting out of the American orbit. Never much prospect of that, though, was there? Not when we owed them so much and for so long after their beloved FDR – more anti-German than pro-British whatever Churchill thought – sprayed money and goods at us.
There we are, though, it’s all part of the historical process. But now all those who applauded or sniggered when Obama came here to threaten and lecture is will imagine they once more have a powerful voice.
I think there is a Left in American politics. And there was once a socialist party. I’m not sure that could be revived now – at least not successfully – but something akin to it might be attractive to some of the stroppier Woke types.
Eugene Debs. Probably long forgotten.
British media excitement over Biden seems to be abating, whilst the progress of EU disengagement brings fresh cheer to John Major, Andrew Adonis and their supporters in ‘The Guardian’ etc. like Polly Toynbee, currently giving her ‘NHS-starved-of-funds’ drum a rest in the toy cupboard whilst proceeding to beat her anti-Brexit, anti-Boris cymbals. Well, fine. It’s to be expected. Only beware, Starmer, of what you say or claim now – it might come back to bite you in the arse, once an election – even a May 2021 one – looms out of the Covid mist.
I do like John Major, don’t you? Such an original thinker. Britain must learn to accept it is no longer a world-class power. Someone should have tried telling Anthony Eden – or even Churchill or possibly Asquith – the same thing. Lord Major, I think the penny might have dropped with some of us. I wonder if he’s familiar with Barnett’s ‘Collapse Of British Power’, which offers the suggestion that the UK’s decline began whilst Dickens was still active. It’s also very persuasive on the so-called ‘Special Relationship’, especially during the Roosevelt-Truman era. Most people know by now, I should think, that John Kennedy’s father loathed the British and hoped that Hitler would win. Another Plastic Paddy…
Just been looking at the actual voting figures. Most people don’t realise but there was a third candidate on the Presidential ballot – Jo Jorgensen, an ultra-Right, ultra-libertarian. In the four key states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia – a total of 57 EC votes, her vote was bigger than the gap between Biden and Trump, and across the nation, her vote and Trump’s combined topped 50%.
America is a very very right wing country and over half the voters are as right wing as Trump or even further to the right, and the Democrats persuading the Greens not to run a candidate in return for promising key green policies to be done this term, probably won the election for Biden.
Wisconsin (10) – Biden over Trump 20,540, Jorgensen 38,415
Pennsylvania (20) – Biden over Trump 45,727, Jorgensen 77,529
Arizona (11) – Biden over Trump 16,985, Jorgensen 49,984
Georgia (16) – Biden over Trump 10,353, Jorgensen 61,894
A truly nauseating editorial in the so-called ‘Independent’ today, referring to the new Washington-Dublin-Brussels axis and suggesting that Johnson simply roll over and do as he’s told. Now, in spite of being a Eurosceptic since chuckling over the allegation that Douglas Jay used to take his own breakfast cereal with him when required to visit continental Europe, I disagreed with having a referendum at all and did not vote. I’ve taken a ‘wait and see’ approach ever since. I also have a grasp about our status in the world – as well as within Europe – and despise the ‘Dunkirk Spirit’/’We’ll Meet Again’ mythology – that has done us no end of harm since the 1940s. And yet. And yet. My country right or wrong, left or right – just like Orwell (who I regard, in some ways, as a bit of a fraud). To me, any suggestion of a Washington-Dublin-Brussels axis borders on treason – and suggests, once again, that the electorate were too stupid to understand what they were voting for. I blame Cameron. I also, to some extent, blame Farage. Oddly, I’m something of an admirer of Roy Jenkins, much as I disagreed with him.
If Biden wants to drink Guinness in the land of his mother, good luck to him. The last time I was in Dublin, had I thrown a stick into a crowd I’d have been lucky to hit an Irishman.
I come from Midlands mining stock myself, but my wife could claim Plastic Paddy status if she fancied it (she doesn’t) being descended from Tipperary Sinn Feiners. No patience in that quarter for St. Patrick’s Day!
The leftie press continues to go blundering about, insulting the intelligence of the Leavers, and will doubtless be hurt and resentful when Labour lose the next election because the electorate take a good look at Starmer and perhaps even check his CV.
so the democrat vote is up 9.5 million on
2016 and the republican vote is up 9 million a 12.5% increase in votes
That’s like The U.K. 2017 election
Tory vote up from 11.34m to 13.65m labour up from 9.4m to 12.9m
Not that there was bigger turnout increase in the U.K. in 2017 it was just we had 2 party politics
A 20% increase for Tories a 40% increase for labour
All this the US election reflects the British change ignores how many more votes Clinton got in 2016 in the first place
Trump the war monger???
Just to put a bit of a spin on this, I loved it when John Lydon came out in support of Trump – and loved even more the achingly predictable responses of people like Moore in ‘The Guardian’. Do they still not know when they’re being had over, these professional lefties? It would appear not.
I still remember that freezing evening in December 1976, turning up at the Kings Hall in Derby, clutching my £1 ticket for the ‘Anarchy’ tour only to be told the gig had been cancelled by the (Labour) Council because, basically, the Sex Pistols were naughty boys for swearing on the telly.
Punk rock opened a good many doors for me and my mates. Cheers, John.
After a year of deadly riots and looting by BLM and Antifa, it’s *Trump* that gets smeared by a charge of encouraging violence? You don’t get stunning stupidity like that every day.
Possibly Robert De Niro – like Jack Nicholson an embarrassment – has never heard of Huey Long.
Mind you, Richard Nixon did seem to develop some funny ideas…
George Monbiot is being his usual sweet self in ‘The Guardian’. Not sure exactly what he’s reaching out for but it probably won’t be anything very realistic given his track record. I think he wants political and economic life to touch base with reality again, a tall order in the modern world where no-one in power is truly interested in the individual. Nice, though, to see Monbiot giving Obama a going-over; same should apply to Blair, Mandelson and their creepy cronies. How far do you have to go back inside the Labour Party to find anyone at the top who cared about human beings? George Lansbury?
Tafia said it first; Monbiot is only following his lead.
Even in the UK, though, where some form of humane socialism might once have been possible, the ball was fumbled and dropped. I grew up in a dingy Victorian back street but even that was better than the soulless council maisonette I ended up in as a single parent – and even that beat hollow any tower block, thanks very much. Anyone in doubt should try watching ‘Our Friends In The North’: slums in the sky. So much for the Wilsonian revolution of the 1960s…
I’ve just been watching that old interview Lydon did with Polly Toynbee in which he slated UKIP – who did admittedly become a bunch of yawn-inducing bores, Farage in particular. But it did start me wondering if Lydon and Toynbee might piss in the same pot. I mean, would the lady now cross the street to avoid JL, she being no cheerleader for The Donald? Or would she, for a few extra quid, treat him, JL, to another coffee and croissant?
Christ, the Sex Pistols had turned into the morons they made the Queen out to be the moment they allowed Biggs in on the act. Most of us had stopped listening by then of course and never thrilled to PIL.
I’ve never quite understood the MAGA side of Trump and his wing of the Republican Party. I mean, when would that have been? Pre-The Bay Of Pigs? Tet? Omaha beach? Gettysburg? What is America now but a failed experiment with a bankrupt culture? And John Lydon has bought into all of that. Within another month or so he’ll be telling someone as stupid as Toynbee what a great gal Kamala Harris is turning out to be.
Mind you, I do share his apparent enthusiasm for the Andrews Sisters.
I wish a few people who are pro-Biden and Harris would chip in to this to give it a bit of spice and balance.
I’m glad Tafia mentioned JJ, but did anyone notice the white supremacist announcing his vote for the Democrats? Interesting, eh?
Libertarianism maybe has its down side, but we could do with a dash more of it in the UK.
Joe Biden repeatedly and continually flip-flopped during the campaign trail over his proposed ban on fracking, depending on whether his audience was in an oil and gas-producing state like Pennsylvania or in environmentally-obsessed California.
But, as President, Biden will have to handle, for example, the situation in New Mexico where Democrat Representative Xochitl Torres Small has repeatedly tried to reassure both her constituents and big business of her and her party’s continued support for the state’s economic mainstay – the oil and natural gas industry.
Yes agree Jonathan – a fantastic result for the world. Apparently 70 per cent of Republicans are still disputing the result – citing electoral fraud but presenting no evidence to support the claim. This action is disruptive and delays the progress of government. America has had an unprecedented number of deaths due to Covid, and the job of a mass vaccination programme needs to be established- this in itself is a logistical challenge. Might be a big ask for the Democrats to control the Senate.
Pleased Kamala Harris is vice – she comes across as very personable, and hope that Elizabeth Warren might be given a post. Really good news – we all needed good news in the political arena – it has been so depressing in recent years.
A.J the lyric to god save the queen is referring to the public as the morons ,no the queen
regarding Trump the first 3 things bay of pugs etc, you mention were the Democrats
On a better lighter not well done to ian lavery john trickett, For saying Labour should apologise for the 2nd referendum for remain on the ballot paper at he general election ,the fact so many idiots have took to Twitter to say that it’s appeasing fascism and Brexit is for Nazis and that it’s conceding that labour have to copy UKIP and be Nazis to get the worming class votes ,shows how out of touch labour is
Quite an interesting article by Chakraborrty in ‘The Guardian’ about what some sections of the media are now calling ‘Trumpism’. But doesn’t it have its roots back in the 1960s, after the electorate rejected the sane, rational Barry Goldwater for the colourful but flawed Lyndon Johnson? What did the Democrats then imagine they were going to achieve by simply spraying cash at a virtually insoluble problem like racial inequality, when, as everyone knows, it’s inequality that makes the world go round. To misquote Voltaire, if all are equal who empties the pots that the likes of Bill Gates piss in? Perhaps, here in the UK, we’re just more mealy-mouthed about it all.
But unless people give up their goodies – mobile phones, computer games, big tellies etc. etc. – and rethink their ‘aspirations’ inequality is here to stay and the Left can only respond by trying to shape language and ideas – which they appear to be doing very successfully. Respectable people used to worry about the F-word, then the C-word – now those words are all over the left-wing press and no-one cares less.
Tafia might characterize the US as ‘very right-wing’, but it appears to have succesfully imported political correctness – and was doing so before that pernicious phenomenon was even given a name: aggressive feminism, aggressive homosexuality etc. etc. now all being built on on a daily basis in the name of ‘diversity’. That’s why the police sit on their backsides and do nothing whilst XR and BLM activists have themselves a lovely time defacing and desecrating.
The left-wing press seem to imagine that Donald Trump’s partial departure is somehow bad for international ‘populism’. Oh? I seem to remember first coming across the term in connection with Huey Long – but my memory isn’t all it used to be. As a nurse reminded me over the ‘phone the other day: ‘You’re not getting any younger’. But I digress. Anyway, what exactly defines a ‘populist’? Is it an exclusively ‘right-wing’ animal? Or can it be used to describe and discredit just about anyone who happens to dissent from your, er, point of view? Is Bojo a populist? Le Pen? Sorban? Corbyn? Sarah Champion? Bojo isn’t very popular with me, M.Len Pen I might like to do naughty things to/with, but, as for the rest… Can anyone enlighten me?
What is it with ‘left-wing Democrats’? Do they want everyone to be able to afford $12 cartons of ice-cream? Or do they want the price reduced to next to nothing? Comes to the same thing in the end, I suppose, so long as the quality of the ice-cream stays the same. I wonder how Nye Bevan would have reacted if he’d been told decent champagne was far too good for the working classes and he’d have to settle for a pint of wallop instead!
Apparently the new administration fancies imitating the Hancock/Sturgeon/Drakeford junta and is considering locking the entire United States down for a while. Here in the UK of course it takes about thirty armed coppers all on overtime and danger money to close down a nail bar in Liverpool, so it’ll be interesting to see the outcome of all this on a people who, unlike the English, actually value their freedoms. I love seeing all the old people creeping around in couples sometimes wearing matching masks, just hoping to live a little while longer…
Yet another book from an Obama. Should be seen in many a charity shop by this time next year.
Extraordinary how quickly some left-leaning journalists are writing off Biden.
I must say the Proud Boys don’t sound like a whole lot of fun. No women at all and masturbation allowed only around the time of the full moon. Are they admirers of ‘Tommy, Tommy, Tommy Robinson’ one wonders?
But, as a close friend of mine recently commented, ‘We’re all racists now’. His wife is not English by the way and my first wife was mixed race (Irish-Scots-Chinese). ‘The Guardian’ now tells us that the term BAME is seen as offensive to some, possibly many. So where do we go from here? And is ex-President Obama correct in his assertion that Americans were frightened into voting for The Donald because they hated the thought of a Black Man in the White House? I didn’t like Obama, but that wasn’t because he’s black, it’s because he’s Obama, a phoney liberal bore determined to cash in while the going is good. Let’s just hope that, unlike Ozzy Osbourne, he doesn’t resort to biting the heads off doves and bats in order to increase his personal fortune…
Goodbye and good riddance to Cummings by the way, but I had no idea Carrie Symonds had any influence over government policy and was confined to choosing nappies and baby mush for Wilfred Brambell Johnson. Can anyone possibly enlighten me? Tafia?
I agree that there isn’t the conventional left and right in US politics but it is also disappearing here. What we are moving into is an era of campaign and issue politics around race, gender, the environment and a host of similar matters. The big debate will be over race and blame for slavery which means the white working class have left Labour for good. We still have three years until the next election and if a week is a long time in politics then that’s an eternity.
Perhaps Will Hutton should write a book entitled ‘The Mess We’re In’. Surely Spengler would rejoice. Trump refuses to take his thumb out of his mouth and, as the vulgar saying goes, grow a pair. Johnson looks as if he is either asleep or perhaps suffering from early dementia, whilst Cummings still resembles a snooty middle-class kid who has only just remembered where he left his skateboard. As for ‘Nut Nuts’, the least said the better. Meanwhile, on the ‘Uncut’ side of the spectrum, Sir Steer Calmer is told the party has an ongoing problem with Islamophobia. Oh? And the Muslims wonder why? I thought some of them were supposed to be astute. Then the Jews are handed additional offence by Corbyn’s crowdfunding cronies. As for the NEC…
I do believe, thinking it over this weekend and despite my basic dislike and distrust of the Democrats, that I wish Joe Biden and those who voted for him well. I don’t think I’ve ever actually disliked Biden himself, though, whereas my basic irritation with Boris Johnson – which developed years ago when he used to write drivel in the ‘Daily Telegraph’ – has deepened into something like loathing. Same goes – with knobs on – for the ludicrous Matt Hancock. Starmer, though, is just about the political equivalent of cocoanut water. I just hope, when he finally fades away, he doesn’t do a Blair on us, popping up like a twat-in-a-box every once in a while to offer his nuggets of wisdom…
I wonder which parts of the world Anne and Mr. Todd are thinking of. Those that wish the West nothing but ill, I shouldn’t wonder.
John P.Reid is right about the lyrics to ‘God Save The Queen’. My memory is not what it used to be.
Starmer picks Stormzy on Desert Island Discs. Oh dear God. The Labour Party had certainly travelled a long way in the wrong direction from the era of Major Attlee, who would apparently wince when the port was passed the wrong way.