Politics and mental health – the missing link? – Mental health and politics from a therapist's standpoint

Sunday 19 July

As this lengthy heatwave begins to abate there’s been no matching slowdown in the febrile news agenda despite the imminence of what used to be called the Silly Season. It was always clear that the US ceasefire with Iran wouldn’t last, partly because the deal was breached from the start by Netanyahu continuing to attack Lebanon (Gaza too but we no longer hear much about this tragic place).It was also clear months ago that the US had lost this self-inflicted war despite the frequent manifestations of macho arrogance from Trump, Rubio and Hegseth. It also shouldn’t be forgotten that he started the war without seeking the consent of Congress of his public. But now Trump seems to have entered an even higher level of delusion and manipulation, obviously preparing for the mid-terms in November (when he’s not expected to do well) by making accusations of widespread electoral fraud and Chinese interference, possibly leading to insurrection, some fear. Surely, too, an extraordinary development was the refusal by some media giants to broadcast Trump’s latest rant (Thursday’s prime time address), leading to the President’s ire and threats to withdraw their licences. So perhaps the MAGA media are starting to see the light.

Jounalist Simon Tisdall is worth reading on the subject: ‘Trump, not Iran, is the world’s greatest danger. He’s a one-man weapon of mass destruction. As the bombing starts again, it’s clear the president has dragged the US into a limitless fiasco – and the world into an economic quagmire… Feckless and clueless, Donald Trump is lost in Iran, unable to find a way out of the disastrous war he started. How often have Trump and Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon’s wildling lord of bones, hailed a bogus victory? The president claimed this week to be “winning big”. No one believes him. Even as it counts the vast human and economic cost of his Persian folly, a watching world scoffs at US impotence. Control of the Strait of Hormuz, closed due to Trump’s belligerence, is now the White House’s limited, elusive objective. The grander US and Israeli war aims – eliminating Iran’s nuclear programme, degrading its regional militias, regime change – are less attainable than ever’. And Trump thinks the world has overlooked this severe watering down?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/18/donald-trump-iran-world-danger-bombing-us?CMP=share_btn_url

All of this makes the recent fandango about America at 250 seem rather hollow: how far the country has fallen since its formative years of pioneering spirit and welcoming those in need to its shores. But some commentators at least are bullish:’The country may be going through a period of fractious polarisaton but that should not obscure the momentousness of the constitutional experiment embarked on by the founding fathers… What they declared was revolutionary at the time (that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed and that individuals possess inalienable rights)’…. except, as we know, Trump has hugely and deliberately reneged on these principles and has done his best to silence dissenters.

It may now be the parliamentary recess but no let up here either, key issues being our new PM, the Clacton byelection, Reform’s continuing attempts to evade scrutiny, and the shocking murder of Ann Widdecombe. Oh, and the World Cup. I fail to understand criticism of manager Thomas Tuchel when England has done so well to get as far as they did. And quite a few will still watch the key matches this weekend.

At present the media’s frustration at Andy Burnham not yet outlining his plans in detail is palpable: good move because we’ve seen time and time again over recent years how the usual suspect media ghouls hound and criticize someone to the point of bringing them down. Andy Burnham is keeping most of his powder dry till Monday afternoon, when we will learn who his Cabinet members are and a bit more about his plans. Very positively, these include the crucial aim (from which we can derive some hope) of changing our political culture and economic model from the unhealthy neoliberalism that’s dominated this country for decades. This would be a massive task but the nationalization of water supply, for example, a disaster under privatization, would go some way towards it. As we know he also wants to tackle the social care crisis. In my view it was appalling that this can was kicked down the road yet again in 2024 despite Tory administrations having done the same for so long. There’s also the plan for regional devolution, important because this country’s government and infrastructure are far too centralized, though some fear this would lead to mayoral dictatorships. And the decision to roll back on the plan for digital ID in order to free up those resources – I had been pro that policy but believe it would have run into a lot of opposition.

What’s been very noticeable is the polarized views of those supporting Andy Burnham or at least having some hope of change for his forthcoming premiership, and others angry about Keir Starmer having been effectively deposed. Although it was surprising to hear Louise Haigh, a good friend of Burnham and the first Keir Starmer resignation, blatantly admit that she and Burnham (and no doubt others) had been planning for over a year what some see as a coup, we also have to acknowledge that Keir Starmer, though good at some aspects of the job, was poor at others, had made too many mistakes and had lost the support of many in the party. We just have to wait and see who Burnham appoints to key roles and to what extent he’s able to tackle the main issues facing the country. And people have to be realistic in their expectations, for example, some demanding that he not only stabilize but transform the economy might have to rein in those requirements somewhat. I think he will prove better at facing the inevitable flak and undermining than his predecessor.

And what a questionable bonus – very good of Kemi Badenoch to say she’s prepared to work with Andy Burnham ‘for the good of the country’. This seems more like desperate striving for relevance presented as a great favour than anything else and I can’t see the Tories supporting all of his top priorities of re-industrialisation, devolution, addressing the cost of living, youth unemployment (and the implications of the PIP review), defence spending, social housing and sticking to the current fiscal rules. Just on defence spending, though, MPs and voters could feel sceptical about the necessary cuts to other areas because of the sheer waste by the Ministry of Defence over years.The Week quoted Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times, on ‘bungling is the real defence scandal’, splurging billions on procuring military aircraft, armoured vehicles, etc, which were years behind schedule or had to be scrapped due to technical problems. Not to mention the problem of the items procured becoming obsolete before they could even enter service.

Radio 4’s Profile this week is James Purnell, just appointed as Burnham’s Chief of Staff, a key role, an appointment seen by some as ‘a blast from the Blairite past’. He seems to have led a somewhat charmed work life – Culture and Pensions SoS in the Blair government, the BBC and more recently Chief Executive of Flint Global, an advisory firm (and, worrying for some, a registered lobbyist) which counts Amazon, BP and Uber among its clients. And, of course, networking skill has been key to his advancement: ‘A fan of the theatre, golf, and student politics, he began establishing a network that would prove fruitful for a high-flying career. This continued at Oxford – where he studied Politics, Philosophy, and Economics – and spent summers interning with up-and-coming Labour politician, Tony Blair’. Burnham and Purnell have been friends for years and this appointment might seem a good move, hopefully guaranteeing loyalty: let’s hope it doesn’t resemble the Starmer/Mandelson situation.

Nigel Farage’s resignation from his Clacton seat has widely been seen as a route to avoiding scrutiny of the massive donations he’s accepted but this wily operator seems to have got himself an own goal. He tried on the populist narrative of letting the ‘people’ (of Clacton) decide about him rather than ‘the Establishment’ he himself is a part of, but it doesn’t work like that. The law and parliamentary authorities are the arbiters of whether electoral law and MP conduct rules have been broken, not a small number of voters easily persuaded to support him. So now we have another unnecessary and expensive by-election, on 13 August, But he was not expecting the competition to come in the form of the rather witty Count Binface, the candidacy of whom has given rise to some good slogans eg May the Bin Win and Vote Binface, not Bungface. We were all probably a bit taken aback to learn that the number of candidates is now 34: how many are genuine eg the independents and to what extent has this been cooked up to dilute the Binface vote? Either way, it’s humiliating for Farage: if he wins he will still face the parliamentary Standards Committee and it won’t be a good look if he loses. He’s a survivor but if he decides to leave politics where will that leave Reform? It’s a key question because of other questionable political donations eg to Robert Jenrick have come to light and the way Reform has made political capital out of the Ann Widdecombe murder have attracted opprobrium.

Another difficulty for Farage and Reform has been the right wing press, having supported them for years and the BBC on record for doing so, turning against them during recent weeks, partly due to the by-election ‘summer gamble and farce’. We hear that Farage had ‘a furious exchange’ with the editor of The Times, who was planning to run a story about the Reform leader’s houses. ‘It is a fragile moment for Reform’s relationship with Britain’s rightwing media, whose coverage of Farage and his byelection gamble has taken a negative turn since questions were raised about his funding and finances’.

We tend to hear much more these days about Reform than the increasingly irrelevant Conservatives but of course that doesn’t mean they’re out of the picture. Only today the arrogant Kemi Badenoch has said (besides the preparedness to work with Burnham schtick) she won’t give him ‘a blank cheque’. As if anyone cares what she thinks, especially the government. But some Tories are very much engaged in skulduggery, colluding with the MAGA strategy of trying to convert Europe to its sinister brand of white supremacist nationalism – under the radar. We hear that Trump’s state department intends to allocate $12m to organisations in the UK founded by prominent Tories Jacob Rees-Mogg and Toby Young. ‘The intended grants, revealed in US government documents, are part of a package of support for European groups viewed favourably by the Trump administration. Some former US officials have criticised the funding as a misuse of public money to seek influence over foreign politics. The plans include $7m for 878, a “leading British and American think tank” devoted to “the rediscovery of our ancient culture” and “ending mass immigration”. This is nothing short of sinister, harking back to Trump’s and J D Vance’s arrogant pronouncements about ‘civilizational erasure’ in Europe, and is surely illegal, or should be, foreign donations aimed at undermining our politics and democracy. Apparently Andy Burnham is preparing to be ‘very up front’ with Trump about such issues and let’s hope he won’t just kowtow to the orange toddler.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/17/trump-administration-to-grant-12m-to-groups-founded-by-uk-conservatives-jacob-rees-mogg-and-toby-young?CMP=share_btn_url

Recently there’s been quite a bit of discussion about the future funding of the BBC, in view of the Charter renewal process scheduled for 2027. Many more people are consuming BBC content without paying for it and a substantial number are so dissatisfied with its biased news and current affairs coverage that they’ve stopped listening. The new DG, Matt Brittin, recruited for his knowledge and experience of the digital environment gleaned at Google, has said the licence fee is ‘a busted flush’, which doesn’t sound a very professional way to describe it. But there are objections to a subscription model because that would be more akin to a streaming service and out of keeping with the BBC’s role as the national broadcaster. There are equally objections to the suggestion that a fee could be added to utility bills, thereby catching everyone in the net except those living off grid!

What I’ve never understood is why the BBC doesn’t have a proper password controlled system, rather than just a box asking you (eg on entering Iplayer) if you have a tv licence. In these days of sophisticated technology it shouldn’t be beyond them to develop a system linking tv licence details to email address and password – as so many organizations already do. It will be interesting to see how it pans out next year. The BBC has had to make cuts but has understandably come in for flak regarding their choices, for example numerous viewers lamenting the demise of Winterwatch. Regarding radio programmes like Moral Maze, which can be rather precious and inward-looking, are retained, but the World Tonight (which is quite good for having different contributors from those on earlier news programmes) is being killed off, as is Kate Adie’s From Our Own Correspondent, during which we learn what’s going on in often remote parts of the world usually not covered in the news. On Radio 4’s Feedback programme, the presenter faithfully listens to callers’ complaints and puts them to various managing editors but the result is always denial and lack of preparedness to engage with the arguments. So we, the listeners and viewers, are rendered pretty impotent. It’s experiences like this high-handedness which put people off the BBC just at a time when you’d think they’d be keen to garner support.

Still on the BBC, it’s interesting that a Radio 4 programme presented by journalist and Anglican priest Giles Fraser about the decline of church going made no reference in the trailer and at least the first half hour of episode one of the abuse scandals. It’s extraordinary that this isn’t considered a major factor in declining support but there’s also the offputting and increasingly irrelevant pomp and ceremony including the use of arcane costumes and ceremonial wands. And there’s more: we hear that the Church of England has voted against a plan to rewild 30% of its land by 2030, attracting criticism that as one of the country’s biggest landowners the Church is showing a lack of moral leadership.

‘The C of E owns about 42,500 hectares (105,000 acres) of land, making it one of England’s biggest landowners. Currently just 3.5% of its land is used for nature restoration.The Rev Canon Val Plumb, an area dean in Oxford, introduced a private motion to the General Synod calling for it to rewild 30% of its land by 2030.The UK, along with more than 100 other countries, has made an international commitment to restore 30% of its land for nature by 2030, a target which is considered the minimum needed to halt and reverse the global decline in nature.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/14/church-of-england-votes-against-rewild-land-2030?CMP=GTUK_email

The Royal Family has been much in the news recently, not always for positive reasons. A further spotlight will soon be shining on them because MPs will be voting on a Bill that would strip the King and his heirs of their blanket Freedom of Information exemptions. These type of exemptions leave the door wide open for abuse of powers, like the royal exemption from most taxes and 160 laws, facts people are often unaware of, It can also lead to overreach, for example the expectation that material will be submitted to the Palace effectively for vetting and possible redacting, as apparently has happened with the BBC. This kind of opacity and lack of accountability is just not acceptable in 2026 and never really was. People are now much more aware of the profound inequality underpinning the institution of monarchy and are less prepared to accept it and its trappings such as these opaque privileges.

Green MP ‘Siân Berry’s bill to amend the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, introduced this Tuesday, would end the outright exemption for the King, the heir to the throne and the “wider royal family” from the 2000-era transparency law. Berry wants to open up the royals to Freedom of Information requests – something almost every public body is subject to and which allows researchers, journalists and the public to ask for documents in the public interest. Section 37 of the Freedom of Information Act means the Sovereign (ie King Charles) and the two nearest heirs to the Throne are totally exempt from Freedom of Information requests. There is no ‘public interest test’ that can override this. The rule also covers all communications with them, sweeping up communications with ministers and officials, even if they relate to politics and public spending’. It’s astonishing that this situation has pertained for so long – the British public has been deprive of a great deal of information the royals would rather we did not know. Historians and biographers have usually found that the public interest test hasn’t worked in their favour and the requests for information are blocked. Sian Berry has made clear how deeply embedded in parliamentary culture these prohibitions are, too. There are some good MPs sponsoring this Bill – let’s hope it gets somewhere.

MPs Bid to End ‘Royal Secrecy’ and Open the Crown Up to Scrutiny

Finally, some good nature news, that pelicans in London’s St James’s park have finally bred (after centuries of not doing so) and four chicks have hatched. A Royal Parks warden spokesman said they were ‘gobsmacked’ but that the chicks were delightful. Let’s hope the recent heat hasn’t harmed them! Must go and have a look!

Sunday 24 May

With Trump doing his best to wreck economies and the volatile political scene here it seems the maelstrom never stops although the media have much to answer for regarding the UK. Ever since this government was elected the media have worked to bring it down and their endless right wing narrative creation, speculation and conjecture around a Labour leadership challenge built to a crescendo last weekend, appalling to witness. One viewer described it as ‘fleas on roadkill’ and that’s about the measure of it, the usual suspects like Chris Mason, Robert Peston, Sam Coates and Kay Burley piling in to denigrate ‘Starmer’ followed by attempts to dig up dirt on Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham. Unfortunately they don’t have to look too far on Streeting, who has accepted multiple donations from private healthcare companies and who, just prior to resignation, gave the green light to NHS use of sinister software company Palantir. This means that you and I have no choice as to how this company (with its links to the US and Israeli militaries) will use our patient data.

Good for Sadiq Khan, London Mayor, who has cancelled the police’s contract with Palantir for both procedural and ethical reasons, drawing predictable flak from his Conservative Party opponent at City Hall, who used weak and moral compass free arguments to criticise his decision. Susan Hall complained that this move was ‘tying the police force’s (crime solving) hands behind their backs’ but the Mayor’s committee assessing the contract found serious breaches of protocol relating to it and… the Met didn’t try out other software suppliers. ‘On Thursday, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) said Palantir was the only supplier the Met had seriously considered for the contract. MOPAC said the force had failed to present its procurement strategy for approval – calling it a “clear and serious breach” of procedure, despite the requirement being “specifically emphasised” to the Met’.

The UK CEO of Palantir, Louis Mosley (grandson of Oswald) then had the nerve to ‘hit out’ at Khan, using similar loaded and manipulative arguments suggesting the Met’s effectiveness would be severely compromised. In fact the Met has been hopeless in so many areas of its operations and for so long that its performance could not be attributed to having this potentially dangerous contract cancelled. On Friday’s Radio 4 World at One (22:44 minutes in) there was an interesting discussion about this, Susan Hall followed by backbench Labour MP Martin Wrigley rebutting her arguments and spelling out the dangers associated with Palantir. We won’t have heard the end of this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9wend4lk2no

On the Left opinion seems split as to whether Keir Starmer should be challenged at all (some going as far as calling the challengers traitors) and those who believe he’s done for and they need someone with fresh vision. Some of us will see it from both sides: Keir Starmer doesn’t have a lot of charisma and many detest his Zionism and poor judgement but he’s been up against very difficult circumstances since coming into office (including problems posed by the Trump administration), he’s been good on the world stage and we have to ask ourselves how others might do it better. And it’s true to say (as many have) that two years isn’t half long enough to judge someone on, especially after the 14 years of Tory misrule. Journalist Jonathan Freedland makes an initially unlikely comparison between politics and football, specifically Arsenal winning the Premier League after a 22 year wait. ‘The sensational victory didn’t happen by accident, it took years of dedication and clever planning, something the PM – himself a fan – should note’. He discusses the policies, qualities and habits necessary to succeed, including achieving stability and ‘strategic patience’. ‘Strange to think that while politics demands instant gratification, it’s sport that can demonstrate the value of waiting. Patience was the necessary companion to what has been a defining aspect of the Arsenal project: long-term thinking. I learned this week that the club has a “football intelligence unit”, which five or six years ago laid out a timeline and potential route back to the top’. What’s described sounds like a SWOT analysis, working out a potential ‘window’ for Arsenal to seize.

‘That quiet work went on in the shadows for years – and this week we saw the result. Now compare that kind of long-termism, devising a plan and executing it, with the way government operates. It’s usually, and understandably, focused on the short-term – scrapping a planned rise in fuel duty, for example, to address immediate pressure on the cost of living, rather than advancing the gradual, necessary shift away from fossil fuels’. Besides patience and long termism, he suggests, the work obviously needs a plan and vision. And here we come up against the short electoral cycle which (surely for too long) has dictated many a political path. The long term failure over solving the social care crisis has been a victim of just this. He suggests that whereas Mikel Arteta had both plan and vision, Keir Starmer has had neither. Arteta also gave fans hope, suggests Freedland, something Starmer has manifestly failed to do. ‘He confused optimism with complacency, moving quickly to stamp it out. People will walk through a storm with you if they think you’re leading them to sunshine. But if the destination is grim, or never adequately described, they’ll soon drift away’.

Controversially, perhaps, he implies that Starmer needed to be more like ‘control freak’ Arteta, ‘across every detail’ whereas we saw what Sir Keir’s delegation of responsibility in the case of Peter Mandelson led to. This may be an unfair comparison, though: you can probably micromanage as a football manager much more easily than you can as PM. I admit to knowing next to nothing about football but found this a very interesting analysis: perhaps politicians and the civil servants advising them will better explore in future what they can learn from other fields outside politics.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/22/keir-starmer-arsenal-politics-premier-league?CMP=GTUK_email

Meanwhile, one potential leadership challenger continues to campaign hard in the lead up to the Makerfield byelection. While Andy Burnham has much more charisma and apparently more sense of direction than Keir Starmer, there are some who distrust him and see him as a cynical opportunist. ‘The King of the North’ is thought to favour introducing proportional representation across the UK, a 10-year plan for local services and an overhaul of inheritance tax to pay for the social care system. These policies shouldn’t be considered radical but may seem so because they’ve been avoided by various governments for so long. At least the media have had to wind their necks in to some extent because the leadership challenge they were hoping for and working towards after Streeting’s resignation never actually materialised. Not yet, anyway.

Particularly noticeable amid the various scandals surrounding the Reform Party is the apparent disappearance of Nigel Farage, who usually courts publicity. Time and time again he demonstrates refusal to face scrutiny, the latest example being for the massive donations from the Thailand based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne (dubbed the Count of Dodgy Crypto by some wags and there are ruder versions) but there’s also still the matter of who paid for his house in Clacton. On both issues we’ve seen him change his story several times and this alone prompts suspicion. The media, who have protected Farage and Reform for far too long, should be doing this but very soon tax expert Dan Neidle is expected to release his own analysis of the crypto donations, which should make interesting reading. Reform has presented these donations (Harborne also donated to Boris Johnson) as innocent but no one gives those amounts of money for nothing in return and it’s known that a Reform policy is to expand the use of cryptocurrency. Reform has previously called for deregulation and proposed a new ‘bitcoin reserve fund’ and the forcing of HMRC to accept crypto as a payment for taxes. Reform’s website tells us that, as PM (!) Nigel Farage will enact the Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill, ‘setting out a bold, post-Brexit roadmap to make the United Kingdom the world’s premier hub for cryptocurrency and blockchain innovation’.

And it’s not ‘just’ one donor. The Guardian points out: ‘At another level, there is a constituency of wealthy crypto enthusiasts seemingly rewarding Reform for its role as the foremost cheerleader in British politics for the currency. As well as Harborne, there is Ben Delo, a British billionaire who last week said he had given £4m to Reform since the start of the year, before the government’s cap on donations to political parties by British citizens living abroad came into effect’. So it’s clear there’s nothing disinterested about these donations: the crypto billionaires would benefit hugely from Reform’s policies. Reform reckons 7m people in the UK hold bitcoin, more in the younger generation, and Reform is purporting to wish to help them.

As if this wasn’t enough, over 100 Reform councillors have resigned or been sacked since the local elections, a picture of incompetence but also of expense as byelections will have to be held for those seats. Moreover, there’s instability in the party itself, the chair Dr David Bull suddenly (and without explanation) being deposed, with Lee Anderson moving into that role, Zia Yusuf seeming to have his role changed every few months, and Makerfield candidate Rob Kenyon being found guilty of racist and other vile remarks on an X account he tried to delete and to broadcaster and campaigner Carol Vorderman. The party has no shortage of baggage of its own making without, at present, the input of their AWOL leader, last reportedly seen boarding a Eurostar train to Brussels.

Former Blairite minister Alan Milburn, having been charged with reporting on the seemingly intractable problem of rising numbers of NEETs (Not in work, training or education) and young people going straight from school or college onto benefits has produced the first part of his report. It’s long been a problem but it was nevertheless rather shocking to hear that the UK spends £25 on benefits for such people compared with £1 on measures to help them get into work. This issue is all over the media, including an ‘exclusive’ interview with Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, which included informative clips of Milburn’s sessions with young people. What came across loud and clear was that (those present anyway) they had mostly applied for hundreds of jobs but rarely heard back and they had had no guidance as to how to present themselves or their CVs. Milburn rightly says this is a shameful situation, a failure by the education, health and benefits systems but surely employers are firmly in the frame as well, having unrealistic expectations and little preparedness to take people on. But another key issue not mentioned is surely the diminishing number of jobs due to process automation, AI and factors like employers’ National Insurance and the eventual need, quite possibly, for UBI (Universal Basic Income).

Apparently there were 957,000 young NEETs in the UK from October to December 2025 – equivalent to 12.8% of people in that age category, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. This made me wonder whether lessons could be usefully learned from those who have been successful in finding work – if not in part 1 maybe such material will be included in part 2 of this report. Milburn acknowledged poor mental health as one of the barriers to progress but rightly said that ‘such diagnoses should not mean young people are not expected or encouraged into the work place….. welfare reform is absolutely essential and needs to be done. But as I said, it’s got to be within the context of a wider set of reforms to state institutions’. Therein lies the problem: for far too long timid governments have tinkered around the edges of difficult issues when radical reform is what’s needed but there’s such a fear of alienating colleagues and the public. Keir Starmer had to climb down on his last attempt at welfare reform because of vociferous back benchers but the evidence in this report will surely serve as the intended catalyst for change.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crrpx4p1z71o

Time and time again we see the Palace PR machine going into overdrive, with sycophantic reports and clips about the royals by sycophantic and parasitical ‘royal correspondents’ just when there’s more positive news about the Sussexes but primarily when there’s a resurgence of unsavoury news about the former Prince Andrew. Following on from Kate’s risible trip to Italy last week we see champion of the homeless, William (he of seven luxurious mansions, palaces and weekenders and £23m annual profit mostly tax free from the Duchy of Cornwall) in a hard hat hammering a nail in on a construction site), attracting comments to the effect that it was clearly the first time he’d ever done this. All such performative media footage to deflect from the latest Andrew scandals, namely that the former Queen pressed for him to be made trade envoy (with no vetting) and the useless plod now extending their investigation of Andrew’s alleged Misconduct in Public Office to sexual misconduct (we know from staff accounts about such events on royal properties), allegedly calling for witnesses. They’re also meant to deflect from an updated edition of Andrew Lownie’s book ‘Entitled’. Meanwhile it’s emerged that Prince Andrew allegedly sexually assaulted a woman at Royal Ascot and his mother and his protection officers covered for him. It just goes on and on, reinforcing the set up that endured for centuries but is now being seriously challenged – that rich and powerful men are protected and get away with stuff no ‘ordinary’ citizen would.

The Trump Iran War induced cost of living crisis is anticipated to lead to food prices rising over 50% by November, compared with prices beforehand. But it’s bad enough already and it seems to me there’s not nearly enough of rapacious supermarkets and utility companies being called out. They continue to get away with profiteering and we can bet they don’t take any of the inflationary hit themselves. An article headlined ‘Squeals of horror over price caps – but how are we going to fix our broken food system?’ analyses this pressing issue, starting with the ‘furious’ reactions of supermarket chains to being ‘asked’ to cap prices on essential foods. Yet another sign of arrogance, that they’ve been allowed to get away with taking customers for granted for years, an attitude well and truly displayed by Radio 4’s retail ‘expert’ on speed dial ‘Lord’ Stuart Rose, who, on the Today progrmme, indignantly inveighed against such a measure.

‘But this caterwauling is a distraction from two unpleasant facts. Firstly, the food price surge over the summer and beyond is likely to be significant – and will come on top of a near-40% rise in the price of food since 2020 – due to a devastating combination of the Iran war and a forecast record-breaking El Niño, which will hammer global food production. And secondly, Britain’s food system is painfully exposed to such shocks. The long-held assumption that a global food system can be relied on to meet the nation’s needs, at a reasonable price, no longer applies. With about one-third of the fertiliser trade travelling through the strait of Hormuz, and about half of the world population’s food supply dependent on artificial fertiliser, the shock to global food systems will play out over the next year – regardless of how quickly the strait may or may not reopen’. I did wonder whether this dire situation might prompt more farmers to go organic but that takes time to organize and would be expensive in different ways.

The article goes onto discuss other ‘chokepoints’ in the global food system, which all makes rather alarming reading. Too many of us probably don’t know this stuff but need to, for example the fact of our dependency on a small number of ‘breadbasket locations’ – 60% of global food production occurring in just five countries. Then there are the extensive problems caused by climate change and weather ‘events’ causing markedly decreased harvests. ‘Britain has had three of its five worst harvests on record in the last decade. Losses for farmers are beginning to mount. Last year saw the harvest value of wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape fall by more than one-fifth below its long-run average, costing farmers £828m in lost revenues. Over the whole decade, lost revenues from those weaker harvests now come to £2.3bn’. It’s not only the young people’s worklessness that needs reform but the ‘entire food system’ according to this writer, a fact acknowledged by DEFRA but not publicly. Meanwhile the rest of us not involved in government and food production circles can feel pretty helpless. Perhaps we can expect to see a rise in applications for allotments.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/may/24/horror-price-caps-fix-broken-food-system-analysis?CMP=share_btn_url

Finally, it was really interesting recently to see a list of ‘the greatest literature ever published in English, as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide’. It’s in reverse order and you can click on each link for the author, date and few facts about the book. The article suggests you check to see how many you’ve read. As you’d expect classic authors like Dickens, Austen and others are well represented besides some I found strange choices including the unreadable. I won’t say what got the top spot but it’s one that’s widely acknowledged as one of the best literary works ever published. Time to re-read it!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time

Sunday 3 May

After last week, with the royal visit to the US, more absurd Trump pronouncements and local election campaigning at fever pitch it feels as if the news agenda has gone well and truly into overdrive. With the elections only days away, it’s almost amusing to see Scottish politicians falling over each other to claim credit for Trump having withdrawn his whisky tariff ‘in honour of the King and Queen’. It’s been shocking to see just how poisonous the election campaigning has been in some quarters, the right wing parties telling outright lies about their records and intentions, one of the worst aspects being the cynical conflation of these locals with a general election. The Tories and Reform keep saying ‘Vote X to kick Starmer out’, when the PM can’t be kicked out until 2029 or whenever the Labour Party decides otherwise. Some gullible voters are going to be mightily disappointed when they find out the limits of local democracy. Commenting about some candidates apparently having no actual presence (eg not turning up to hustings) I was informed that all parties use the ‘paper candidate’ system just in order to raise their party’s profile. In my view yet another aspect of electoral practice that needs to be changed: either stand and put yourself out there, facing whatever challenges that might bring or not at all. No cowardly halfway house.

The media are guilty of whipping up fear and alarm about these local elections but the campaigning seems much dirtier than usual. In my view the Electoral Commission should be empowered to take action on the lies peddled (eg the claims that Joanna Lumley supports Reform), the Tories harping on measures which they never addressed during their 14 years in office and Reform’s unelected Zia Yussuf posing as ‘Shadow Home Secretary’ and threatening to ‘carpet bomb’ constituencies whose MPs had voted against the motion to refer Starmer to the Privileges Committee. There’s also the little matter of Nigel Farage’s undeclared donations, which the media have stubbornly failed to challenge. ‘Nigel Farage was given £5m by the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne shortly before announcing he would stand in the 2024 British general election, the Guardian can reveal. Farage had stated he did not intend to stand as a prospective MP but U-turned in June 2024, within weeks of receiving the personal gift from the Thailand-based businessman’. And the latest Reform issue is promoting the JCB PotHole Pro just after they received a £200,000 donation from the company.

So far there’s been little media coverage of these scandals and we know why: the BBC News Director John McAndrew was previously employed in a senior role at GB News, a channel closely linked to Farage. Farage has also drawn flak today for chickening out a second time from appearing on Sunday with Laura Kuennsberg. He’s talked up by his party as ‘the next Prime Minister of the UK’ but there’s no way that it could be someone with such opaque finances and with a tendency to refuse attendance at short notice. Ok, so this was tv but that programme is watched by millions and the UK could not afford the risk of that happening at national and international level.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/29/revealed-nigel-farage-was-given-undisclosed-5m-by-crypto-billionaire-in-2024?CMP=share_btn_url

As we could have predicted, Keir Starmer survived the Tory effort to refer him to the Privileges Committee over ‘misleading the House’, despite Kemi Badenoch’s horribly personal attacks on him during the debate and at Prime Minister’s Questions the next day. Some supporters claimed that she did a good job but she increasingly comes across as an embittered harpy and her deeply unpleasant conduct isn’t consistent with parliamentary standards. The Guardian’s parliamentary sketch writer, John Crace, not for the first time, slated her performance: ‘Step forward Kemi. The Tory leader who is guaranteed to make Starmer look better than he actually is. It’s partly her patronising tone that grates even with her own supporters. A sure-fire way to lose any audience. Then there’s the questions themselves. Always likely to somehow just miss the point’. The expressions on the faces of her front bench would suggest at least some are in agreement with this – they look embarrassed. Badenoch is always calling for one resignation or another, the latest being that of Zack Polanski, but following the predicted poor party performance in the forthcoming elections the Conservatives could well be asking for her to go. Meanwhile, she continues to swamp social media with her lengthy screeds criticizing the government on areas like inadequate defence spending and police numbers when the Tories were the very ones who decimated those resources.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/29/bonus-pmqs-keir-starmer-kemi-badenoch?CMP=GTUK_email

Keir Starmer is by no means out of the woods, though. Many are disappointed with him and we hear that for the second time Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is gearing up to mount a leadership challenge. This makes those plans look quite advanced and apparently several MPs have expressed preparedness to stand aside for him. ‘Allies said he planned to outline a “radical rewiring” of the state in the coming weeks – including sweeping changes to the electoral system and a 10-year growth plan – after a potentially devastating set of elections on 7 May that could end Keir Starmer’s premiership. After a fortnight that left Starmer fighting for his political future over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, the number of MPs backing Burnham is understood to have grown to far more than the 80 required to challenge the prime minister… MPs have discussed the possibility of Burnham offering Starmer the chance to stay on as foreign secretary and continue work on the Iran war and Ukraine. Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner, another leadership rival, are expected to be offered top jobs in a Burnham government.’ Significantly, Labour’s National Executive Committee has now withdrawn their opposition to Burnham standing so there could be some result here. We will see what happens, to quote a Trump cliché.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/01/andy-burnham-westminster-return-plan-within-weeks?CMP=share_btn_url.

A key conundrum for Keir Starmer continues to be pressure to cancel the pro-Palestinian marches, which quite a few are cynically conflating with anti-Semitism (the ‘hate marches’ schtick). Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley says he doesn’t have the powers to stop them but he could make them static. There’s no evidence to link the Golders Green attacks with the marches and it’s well known that a good number of Jewish people also attend the marches, protesting against the actions of the Israeli state. One of the most alarming aspects of the Middle East conflagration must be that Trump clearly no longer has control (if he ever had) over Netanyahu, who continues to attack Lebanon, causing massive damage to this fragile country. ‘Organisers of pro-Palestine marches have said Keir Starmer’s threat to ban some demonstrations opposing Israel’s actions in the Middle East will “strike at the root of free assembly and free speech” in the UK…Starmer said he also wanted the language expressed on some protest marches to be subjected to “tougher action”, including the chant “globalise the intifada”. Intifada is an Arabic word that translates to uprising or “shaking off”. Some pro-Palestine voices use the phrase as an expression of solidarity with Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation while some Jewish groups and leaders have described it as a call to violence’. Very unfortunately the media frequently collude with the second narrative. The next big march is scheduled for May 16^th– again we will see what happens.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/02/organisers-challenge-starmer-threat-to-ban-some-pro-palestine-marches?CMP=share_btn_url

Of course monarchists have seized on the royal visit in order to boost the long redundant institution and the alleged strength of ‘soft power’ and although it certainly was a good speech, it was written largely by civil servants, not Charles himself. Despite Camilla’s gaucheness the couple did conduct themselves well amid the numerous breaches of protocol committed by their arrogant host, such as touching the royal knee and shoulder, cutting in front of Camilla in the line-up and suggesting that Charles would have backed up the US over Iran. But along with many others I suspect that within days Trump will be back to dissing the UK and, given his volatile strategy ontariffs, could rescind the Scotch concession at any time of his choosing. A major failing of the visit, though, was the refusal to meet Epstein survivors, using the flimsy excuse of ongoing police investigations, a figleaf for cowardly avoidance.

It’s no coincidence that the parasitic royal industry and papers like the Telegraph (today musing on Charles having ‘emerged from his mother’s shadow’) have latched onto last week as proof that the arcane institution of monarchy is a good thing and other news sources quote royal aides who suggest that ‘Prince William pays up to £7m in income tax’. Just one problem with this – there’s absolutely no evidence of it. For Charles and William paying income tax on the profits of the Duchys of Lancaster and Cornwall (nearly £50m) is optional and they also aren’t required to disclose their tax returns or pay other taxes. Today a royal aide told the media ‘the King is ‘always guided by the truth and his conscience’. Yet his ‘conscience’ hasn’t reapplied the 161 laws he’s exempt from, next to zero tax or relinquished the royals’ massive benefit from 19 homes and two sets of Duchy profits around £50m besides the grant. Next Saturday, 9 May, sees Republic Day, when there will be a march in central London drawing attention to these issues. It will be interesting to see if certain media play their usual trick of not reporting it. As an X user posted: ‘£7m tax bill apparently. Source: vibes, palace spin and a calculator doing overtime. No figures, no receipts, no independent proof. Just “trust us”. This isn’t journalism, it’s royal PR with a byline. If it’s real, publish the numbers. If not, stop flogging fairy tales as fact’.

For Trump and his team the royal visit provided a welcome distraction from the fact that his Iran war is not going at all well – the worse things get the more arrogant and bombastic sidekick Pete Hegseth becomes. It’s shocking to learn that Since Trump returned to office, the anti-‘woke’ defense secretary Hegseth who has fired or forcibly retired 24 generals and senior commanders, with no performance-related reason given. They apparently had ‘impeccable’ reputations but not surprising that around 60% have been black or female – further proof of this administration’s anti-DEI strategy. But what an own goal – the offloading of these very able sounding men and women surely will hollow out the Pentagon’s intellectual capital at a time it’s needed most.

They’re still struggling to grasp that American might is not the answer to complex issues and wily foes. So the Straits of Hormuz are still closed, with some exceptions, like the Russian oligarch’s yacht, the passage of which must have had Trump spitting. Meanwhile, there can’t be a corner of the globe not affected by Trump’s reckless actions and their effect on economies in terms of shortages and rising costs. On Friday Iran communicated another proposal to Pakistani mediators in order to end the war but how typical of Trump to immediately say he was not ‘satisfied’ by it and also to dishonestly imply that there are ‘talks’ when it’s still all going through mediators. “Right now, we have talks going on, they’re not getting there,” he told reporters, adding that his options remained “either blast them away or make a deal”. Again so lacking in subtlety and any grasp of international diplomacy – this simplistic ‘deals’ schtick is becoming very wearing. Yet again Trump has gone unconstitutionally off-piste, insisting he did not need to consult Congress and the legislative branch in order to continue the war – disputed by legal experts.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/01/pakistan-backchannel-us-iran-deal-peace?CMP=share_btn_url

In another blow to the US, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who the Americans insisted was severely injured and in a coma following the US attack which killed his father, has issued a ‘defiant statement’: ‘Today, two months after the largest military deployment and aggression by the world’s bullies in the region, and the United States’ disgraceful defeat in its plans, a new chapter is unfolding for the Persian Gulf and the strait of Hormuz’.He left no doubt as to the strength of his regime’s resolve: ‘Foreigners who maliciously covet it [the strait] from thousands of kilometres away have no place there except at the bottom of its waters’. Meanwhile the closure of the Straits has put pressure on Trump, with oil and petrol rocketing before crucial midterm elections, also felt by his Gulf allies, who use the waterway to export their oil and gas and who won’t be thanking the President for this collateral damage. ‘The world considers the strait an international waterway, open to all without paying tolls, and Gulf Arab nations, chief among them the United Arab Emirates, have decried Iran’s control of the strait as akin to piracy’. But despite the US Ambassador and no doubt many others saying that the Iranians ‘don’t get to control’ the Straits, this is exactly what they are doing. A good example of a de jure situation actually being controlled by the de facto. We could well ask who will ‘blink’ first.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/30/iran-supreme-leader-issues-defiant-statement-on-strait-of-hormuz?utm_term=69f446898845621e72ced61a6bdf34bb&utm_campaign=FirstEdition&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=firstedition_email

Just as some monarchists use ‘tradition’ as a false argument for preserving that institution, those protesting the removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords are resorting to the same justification. They can’t seem to see that there’s no rationale for the hereditary principle, with its inherent unearned privilege, in a modern democracy and this should have been addressed years ago. Next up will be for the bishops to go. Where we can agree with the protesters, though, is the desperate need to reform the second chamber. Whereas some peers are obviously hardworking and sincere, serving on committees and participating in debates, many political appointees are just taking advantage of the semi-automatic assumption that when they lose their seats they will get a perch in the Lords. A perch which nets them a generous daily attendance fee however short a time they spend there.

On a related issue, it was a massive disappointment for many that the Assisted Dying Bill ran out of time, largely due to the cynical filibustering of a handful of Tory appointees including Lord Gove and Dame Coffey – just two examples of people who never should have been put there. A group of around five Tory crony peers, including Gove and Coffey, were actually overheard plotting to bring this Bill down in order to embarrass the government. So much for their faux concern about ‘safeguards’ and when a huge amount of work has gone into the entire exercise and it being passed by the Commons.

The debate about the use of the controversial Palantir company’s services in the NHS and other public sector organizations has been rumbling on for some time (Keep our NHS Public have regularly campaigned on it and a petition to ditch the system attracted thousands of signatures). I was taken aback to learn that the decision as to whether to use this company, with its dubious bosses linked to Trump and the US and Israeli militaries, was left to individual NHS trusts to decide. In my view this is an example of Trust autonomy which has gone too far – there should be one policy for the entire NHS. The company insists that patient data available via the NHS (what the US has long been after) is not personalized, therefore its use posed no risk, but critics dispute this. Wouldn’t you just know that the contract was awarded by a previous Conservative government and at the time the debate suggested that the then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, had connections with this company via his father-in-law’s behemoth Infosys.

Recently the Financial Times reported that “UK ministers have sought advice on triggering a break clause in Palantir’s contract as they come under mounting pressure to eject the controversial American company from NHS England data systems.” Apparently officials had begun quietly exploring the technical process of removing Palantir from NHS systems – well ahead of the break clause date in February 2027…The FT also reported that some hospital trusts have been slow to adopt Palantir’s software because they simply don’t find it useful – while the health department has been pushing them to use it anyway, partly to get value out of what’s already been paid. One senior NHS figure described a demonstration for hospital chief executives where only half were impressed and the other half said they’d been doing the same thing for ten years. Meanwhile, it’s sinister that the company’s UK CEO, Louis Mosley (grandson of Oswald) is regularly platformed by the BBC as if he’s some acknowledged source of wisdom rather than a likely Trojan horse. It’s sad but also dangerous that many patients won’t even know this is happening and many will never have heard of Palantir and how their personal data could be at risk.

Finally, we hear a lot about influencers (what a flaky way to make a living), including those who irritated Notting Hill locals recently by posing and photographing themselves amongst the striking cherry blossom the area boasts. But now we have a healthier trend, against acquiring more Stuff – ‘enoughfluencers’. ‘The concept is similar to deinfluencing – where content creators discourage followers from buying into trends – but is also about celebrating already having enough, and, crucially, feeling happier for it… n her new book, Not Needing New: A Practical Guide to Finding the Joy of Enough, Kilpatrick lists the benefits of living with less: “An increased sense of calm, less anxiety through clutter, free time away from maintaining the home, a healthier bank balance and reduced debt, children who are learning how to manage delayed gratification’. The article cites seven tips for getting into this: be bolder about borrowing; rewrite the rules of gifting; resist the comparison trap; make it yourself; practice slow shopping; care and repair; less having, more doing. It all sounds good to me – and maybe the Trump Effect on the cost of living will force more of us down this path anyway!

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/mar/27/lessons-from-enoughfluencers-how-to-live-happier-simpler-life?CMP=share_btn_url

Sunday 22 March

As the war in the Middle East rages on, showing ‘no signs of abating’ as the BBC keeps saying, the unconsidered collateral damage is wreaking terrible effects on the global economy and environment. Although Trump is claiming the war is ‘militarily won’ he clearly doesn’t understand the strong constitutional infrastructure underpinning the Iranian regime so ‘winning’ will take a lot more than killing layers of leaders. What has clearly mattered here is Trump’s need to deflect from the Epstein Files and Netanyahu’s long held ambition to drag the US into a war with Iran. But cracks are starting to show in this misalliance. Trump insists he didn’t know in advance about the hugely damaging Israeli attack on theSouth Pars gas field but the optics are terrible either way. If he had known he should have stopped it and if he didn’t it rather shows him up as an owned Israeli leader pawn. US and Iranian threats to blow up more energy facilities are gravely escalating the war, resulting in massive disruption to energy supplies. The Independent suggests that UK energy bills are set to rise by over £300 this summer as the war and attacks on oil and gas fields continue to drive up wholesale gas prices. ‘Wholesale gas prices have more than doubled since the US launched strikes on Iran at the end of February, with further rises expected. The rate is a major influence on energy costs in the UK and the level at which Ofgem sets its energy price cap’. It’s now suggested that household energy bills could reach £2000 by the summer – very alarming.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-energy-bills-prediction-rise-cornwall-insight-b2942443.html

But could we be misunderstanding what this war is really about? I’ve not heard this in the general media but an article by Haviv Rettig Gur in the Daily Mail (one that can be taken seriously) suggests that it’s actually two wars: a regional war involving Israel and its adversaries but also one about the US/China rivalry. Iran is allegedly completely dependent on China for its crude oil exports and China has been integrating Iran’s military systems with its own including weapons which would penetrate US defences. The suggestion that the US is actually addressing the terrible (for them) spectre of China effectively controlling global oil supplies is quite convincing.

Many thought Keir Starmer had done very well in a difficult situation, standing up against right wing pressure by resisting Trump’s demands to use UK air bases. As we saw last week he withstood the lies and insults for a while but has now capitulated and it seems to me the government is having to dance on the head of the PM’s lawyerly pin in order to forge a distinction between ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’ use. It’s widely believed that we’re being further sucked into a Middle East war. Certainly an international row – we now hear that a British military base in Cyprus hit by an unmanned drone strike at the start of the Iran war will not be used by the US to counter Tehran’s missile sites after a significant dispute about it.

Meanwhile, Spain remains defiant and Sri Lanka has ruled out the use of its own bases. Historian Professor Timothy Garton Ash, in an article titled ‘Love Actually? Washington’s current relationship with Britain is more like Contempt Actually’, suggests that ‘if the UK wants to regain serious respect in the world, it needs its European leg as well as its transatlantic one’. Quite so and perhaps this would involve admitting that the so-called ‘special relationship’ has long been dead in the water despite the sanctimonious spouting of some politicians.

‘It must be 40 years since I first heard former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt say: “The special relationship is so special only one side knows it exists.”An American critic of Trump recently asked me the obvious follow-up question: “Why does your government keep grovelling?” More fundamentally, we must ask why so much of official Britain, and especially its security establishment, keeps clinging for dear life to the United States, behaving for all the world like someone stuck in an abusive personal relationship’. Of course there’s been the historical dependence on the US for defence but the Professor opines that ‘there’s a particular, rather pathetic desperation about the way the British cling to Uncle Sam’. He attributes the one-sidedness to several factors including, of course, Brexit. ‘It’s just blindingly obvious that the UK is less important to the US than it used to be because it’s no longer part of a larger bloc. In Blair’s time, for all the long-term waning of influence, Britain still had two relatively strong legs: the transatlantic one and, as a member of the EU, the European one. In 2016, in what we can today see even more clearly was an act of monumental stupidity, Britain chose to cut off its own European leg. Now Trump is cutting the American one… For anyone who loves this country, it’s painful to see how it has reduced itself to being an object of contempt – or at best, pity’..

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/21/britain-us-special-relationship-trump-starmer?CMP=share_btn_url

The shock waves of Trump’s war are not surprisingly being felt in other areas besides energy: Moneyfacts tells us those taking out a new home loan face paying almost £800 a year more on average than before the Iran war as “Trumpflation” pushes up UK mortgage rates. ‘War in the Middle East has added almost £800 to a typical annual mortgage bill in just two weeks, which will be unwelcome news for anyone currently seeking a fixed-rate deal’. Also breaks and holidays could even more be seen as luxuries as the price of jet fuel rises and some air fares go way beyond what’s affordable. It’s to be hoped that airlines and travel companies don’t try to slap surcharges on products already paid for. How long before supermarkets and retailers bump up their prices, too, without taking any of the hit themselves?

World events weren’t good for our mental wellbeing before all this and many now will be feeling seriously disturbed by the inevitable disruption and intensification of the cost of living crisis. Trump’s demented rants and the appalling warmongering of his ‘Secretary for War’ Pete Hegseth (did he feel he didn’t have a proper job without an actual war?) have led to calls for Trump’s impeachment. But he’s still surrounded by sycophants ignorant of diplomacy and statesmanship and seems to think he no longer has to consult Congress before taking decisions with far-reaching consequences. Hegseth came across as particularly unbalanced when lambasting the press for reporting the facts and suggesting they should be praising the administration, even suggesting forms of words for potential headlines. It’s truly alarming when a government tries to control the media in this way, except Trump already does in a way. It seems he has form on what he’s done to the BBC, disadvantaging US media companies which don’t dance to his tune and taking legal action against them. Rather than go to court some have coughed up hefty sums as a kind of damage limitation.

What’s especially noticeable is the Trump administration’s assumption of our stupidity: they constantly resort to specious logic to ‘justify’ this war, which was completely unnecessary given that we now understand the nuclear talks to have been going quite well. One of the main offenders, Hegseth, reckons that they’re going to honour the servicemen who’ve died by ‘finishing the job’, apparently oblivious that such an ill-considered strategy will produce many more dead servicemen to ‘honour’. Another is Trump’s dimwit press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said in all seriousness that steps the President was taking were necessary and justified eg to open the Straits of Hormuz when such steps were only ‘necessary’ because Trump started the war in the first place. Just on the Straits, we hear that over three thousand ships are stranded there but there’s been no consideration of the crews’ plight.

On Question Time the excellent Caroline Lucas said: ‘I think this is an illegal reckless war with Iran that is being waged by Trump and Netanyahu. They have massively underestimated their enemy. Trump is a bully and a blackmailer. He has no plan for an exit strategy, says he will exit when he feels it in his bones. This is a President said who said he would bomb Kharg island just for fun. He suggested he might attack Cuba as well. The type of language Trump and Hegseth are using is just so disgusting. I’ve got their words: ‘watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today, what a great honour to kill them”. This is not Grand Theft Auto, this is real people, real lives. And yet you get the sense from the White House that this is some big game. And all of us are suffering from it’. Not half. Veteran journalist Paul Taylor observed: ‘I fear we are not witnessing the liberation of Iran or Iranians, but a repetition of the cycle of foreign interference that has blighted Iranian history since the British were granted trade monopolies in the 19th century’. Now we hear that Trump is thinking o f ‘ending the war’, the Iranian intransigence clearly being beyond his attention span, and is now thinking of acting on Cuba.

Here we’ve just seen a number of local election party campaigns launched and some of the accompanying posts and videos are embarrassingly bad. You have to wonder who on earth is advising the Tories and Reform, the former leading with a highly curated composite of Badenoch in various macho poses and addresses, adoring sycophants surrounding her, despite her well deserved reputation as a complete failure in the Opposition leader role. ‘The Conservative party is BACK’, it shrieks unconvincingly, wheeling out its alleged policies to get Britain working again and to cut stamp duty, things they notably avoided doing despite 14 years in office. For their part, Reform’s usually show Nigel Farage in full demagogue mode, reminiscent of the 1930s, making all manner of impossible promises and wheeling out gimmicks like a prize of having your gas bill paid. Reform also recently threatened, if elected in a general election, to remove top civil servants and replace them with people more in tune with Reform policies. A disastrous approach, as the US found when it sacked so many experts, leading to a severe weakening of key institutions. Anyway, the policy would run counter to the principle of not politicizing the civil service.

Journalist John Crace has form in very amusingly and pertinently taking Badenoch down and he described her launch as not only ‘a mean-spirited version of Britain but also positively deranged’. ‘We are a party renewed. We are the only party with a plan for Britain. We will make things better. I’m not sure that’s how the rest of the country see it. She was going to drill in the North Sea to make sure our energy supply was not interrupted by the war she had supported. Logic is not her strongest point…Bad people would be punished. There would be 10,000 extra police officers on every street corner. There will be no drugs in public spaces’ etc etc. When the Tories were the ones who cut police numbers dramatically and closed police stations but still get indignant about insufficient police on our streets. The very things she blamed Labour for are the very things the individuals on Kemi’s stage, like Mel Stride, were responsible for during their 14 years of misrule. But what most of us have been more aware of is changing her position on the Iran War and lying about it. ‘The cheek was breathtaking. As was her amnesia. As though she has literally no recollection of anything she said three weeks ago and has the revisionist right to re-edit her life to one that suits her better. She is the sole arbiter of her own reality’.

It’s really not a good idea to take your audience for complete idiots. Crace’s summary of this campaign launch: ‘It had been an exhausting hour. A time of fantasy. One in which it had been easiest to locate the truth by latching on to the opposite of everything Kemi had said. On leaving the building, everyone gave their head a gentle wobble. Just to make sure the world was still the right way up’.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/19/kemi-badenoch-channels-her-fantasies-as-she-launches-the-tories-local-election-campaign?CMP=GTUK_email

Rivalling some politicians for non-stop embarrassingly bad social media posts and videos are the royals: you could almost suspect that more Epstein Files revelations are on the way (they are). Following the publication across the entire media of THAT photo (of Epstein, the then Prince Andrew and Mandelson sitting around a table in their bathrobes) we’ve seen endless eulogies and bigging up of any royal event, notably the huge waste of money that was the State Banquet for the Nigerian presidential couple’s visit. Possibly the most outrageous of recent ones is the news that Charles has been ‘on a mission’ to track down for Camilla the jewellery collection of Alice Keppel, especially a tiara priced at $140k. Apparently it amuses the King that Keppel was Camilla’s great great grandmother, who had an affair with his great great grandfather, Edward VII. Being amused by drawing attention to another adulterous relationship is hardly a good look but no surprise for these hugely privileged, entitled and tone deaf people. Nevertheless, whenever the media, especially the cowed BBC, cover the royal links to Epstein the same mantra is trotted out: ‘There is no suggestion that appearing in the documents implies any wrongdoing’.

At present it seems the Palace PR machine is prepared to do anything, however silly, to keep the royals in the news for what they consider good reasons, except these efforts often fall flat on their face, like today’s about William’s ‘quiet faith’- so quiet it’s effectively silent. One X user got it in one about the tone deaf royals and the hangers on who depend on them: ‘Ever wondered why the “news” feels like a sanitised fairy tale? Because the Royal Rota isn’t journalism, it’s a pathetic, sycophantic PR wing for a redundant institution. These vetted hacks spend their lives grovelling for a nod from taxpayer-funded parasites, spinning one-hour “charity” cameos into Herculean feats of service. It’s a choreographed circus of choreographed smiles and hollow pomp, specifically designed to keep the peasants distracted while the coffers are drained. They don’t report the truth; they protect the brand. The monarchy is a dying gimmick on life support, gasping for its last bit of relevance’.

What’s increasingly striking is just how far Epstein’s tentacles reached into societies’ elites and what an insidious hold he still posthumously exercises over them. The Guardian has analysed more than a million emails (begging the question why more so-called journalists aren’t doing the same) ‘and identified over 150,000 unique emails between Epstein and a select group of elites and influential people (including those sent to or from assistants or close associates). of all the high profile individuals featured, the investigators focus on seven: Andrew Mounbatten Windsor, Mandelson, Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, the Emirati billionaire Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem (yes, the one who co-founded and funded William’s performative Earthshot project), film director Woody Allen, the former head of Barclays Jes Staley, and the economist and former US treasury secretary Larry Summers. ‘In July 2018, Bannon forwarded Epstein an article detailing his plans to launch a rightwing foundation called “The Movement” in Brussels. The text explicitly mentioned Bannon’s courtship of “nationalists of the right from East to West’… Bannon has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and told the New York Times that his relationship with the disgraced financier had been strictly professional’ (Of course he’d say that).

Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayemapparently told Epstein ‘I consider you a close friend and I don’t have anyone I can call a close friend’. Ring any bells? Almost exactly what Sarah Ferguson had told Epstein and it probably applies to many more of these people who allowed themselves to fall under the spell of this poisonous Svengali figure. The thousands of emails show how he connected elites across finance, tech, politics and the arts world and was valued for his networking abilities.’ Seriously, didn’t anyone question this at the time, sense the danger or listen to their intuition, assuming they had any? ‘As Summers put it in a 2017 email introducing Epstein to the editor of a scientific journal: “I know people who circulate among the powerful, among the wealthy and among the brilliant. Jeffrey does all three to a unique extent.” To most ordinary people outside these hallowed circles it will be horrifying that so much corruption and political interference have resulted from this Machiavellian figure and the elites’ abject stupidity and vanity in falling prey to him.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/mar/18/jeffrey-epsteins-elite-relationships-visualised-the-prince-the-sultan-and-the-politicians?CMP=share_btn_url

There’s been no confirmation so far but it’s thought there will soon be a new BBC Director General – Matt Brittin, a former McKinsey consultant who seems to have no tv experience. ‘Brittin, who led Google in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for a decade until stepping down last year, had already emerged as the strong favourite to replace the BBC’s outgoing leader, Tim Davie. Brittin’s potential appointment comes with the BBC battling to cope with huge changes in media consumption driven by the rise of digital platforms such as YouTube, which is owned by Google’s parent company’. Will he prove the right man for the job? We can understand why the rapidly changing media landscape could have led to such a choice but will someone with only private sector experience understand what should still be the ethos of the BBC as public service broadcaster? ‘Brittin has told TV figures that he has long admired the British television industry. Picking up a Royal Television Society fellowship last December, he said it was an industry “I’ve been trying to get into for a very long time”. So this is a good reason to appoint someone, because they’ve been trying to get into the industry for a long time? If his appointment is confirmed let’s hope it won’t prove yet another BBC mistake, although the hopeless Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy will have had a say too. Finally, an interesting article about punctuality drew attention to the common but rarely (if ever) discussed phenomenon of stopped clocks in our communities. There’s actually a Stopped Clocks organization and they say almost one in six town clocks are broken due to councils giving them low priority in their budgets. But it could have wider repercussions than the cash-strapped councils think: one of the founders recalls his mother saying ‘It’s a small thing but when I see a stopped clock I feel somehow uncared for’. I know what she means- seeing these can feel disconcerting and jarring, that something’s not quite right about a place.

Sunday 1 March

As Trump rains down missiles on Iran, accompanied by bellicose rhetoric and aided by Netanyahu, the world seems an even more volatile and dangerous place than previously.

Despite the deeply problematic nature of the Iranian regime, it still seems terrible to me that the Americans and Israelis have taken it upon themselves to kill off the country’s leaders and of course there will be considerable collateral damage. Their ego-driven attempts to avoid criminal proceedings (and, in Trump’s case, Epstein Files investigations) could engulf the entire Middle East, triggering knock on effects all over the globe, not least on energy prices. Explosions have been heard in Bahrain, where the US Navy’s 5th fleet is based, as well as in the UAE, Jordan and Qatar. Total madness. The President’s schtick and false justification for this attack when nuclear talks were well underway seems designed to appeal to his dim MAGA base, cynically playing on their fears which he cultivated in the first place. ‘Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime. A vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world’. An X user observed: ‘The killing of the Ayotolleh will not topple the Iranian Govt. It didn’t the last time. He’d have already been replaced. This isn’t taking sides it’s just a demonstrable fact that the President of Peace doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing’.

I suspect that the experienced and ‘wily’ Iranian negotiator, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, is more than a match for US ‘special envoy’ aka real estate billionaire but diplomatically inexperienced Steve Witkoff. As we’ve seen so many times, rather than invest the time and energy negotiating and coping with complexity, the lack of political intelligence and obsession with macho deal making result in impatience and short term non-solutions like this attack. Indeed, we had it from the horse’s mouth: ‘US President Donald Trump considered discussions with Khameini’s diplomats about the nuclear issue and missile production to be too slow. In announcing the new attack, he called on Iranians to do what they could to take over the government once it was over’.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/01/ayatollah-ali-khameini-obituary?CMP=share_btn_url

In contrast: ‘The Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, steeped in almost 15 years of Iranian nuclear talks, is a near lifelong diplomat who has written a book on the art of negotiations that reveals the secrets of the Iranian diplomatic trade – the feints, the patience, the poker faces…While Araghchi…will have gameplanned the parameters of what Iran can offer in endless consultations across the spectrum of government, including the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, Witkoff works to a shifting brief devised by one man. Trump sees diplomacy as a branch of pro-wrestling. The Iranian foreign ministry regards it as a branch of chess, almost an art form…The Iranian negotiation style is generally known in the world as the ‘market style’, which means continuous and tireless bargaining. It requires a lot of time and energy, and he who gets tired and bored quickly will lose’. Araghchi opines: ‘Diplomacy is not a game that you must necessarily win, but a process where you must necessarily understand the other side’: precisely the style Trump and his acolytes fail to understand, with disastrous outcomes. It will be interesting to see whether this man’s role changes following the killing of the Supreme Leader.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/16/the-patience-and-the-poker-face-irans-wily-diplomat-set-to-face-the-us-in-nuclear-talks?utm_term=6993f955a4293f5cac026f8911618998&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email

Back here there’s not surprisingly been a huge amount of interest and concern over the Denton and Gorton byelection, cynically billed by the right wing media as a referendum on Keir Starmer’s leadership. It was predicted to be a three way fight between the Greens, Labour and Reform and it was clear from the Reform campaign and their shameful bad loser response to Green victor Hannah Spencer that they expected to win. An electoral presiding officer is amongst those challenging the cynical suggestion of ‘family voting’ skewing the result. In my view the 34 year old plumber, already experienced in council politics, and local as opposed to being parachuted in, is exactly the kind of person we need more of in our politics – someone who’s had a proper job as opposed to the many public school, PPE followed by party politics types already dominating Parliament. Coming third was a poor result for Labour, prompting yet more calls for Starmer to resign, yet the Conservatives did so badly they lost their deposit and, astonishingly, there don’t seem to be demands for the hapless Badenoch to follow suit. The result confirms the irrelevance of the Conservatives and the death of two party politics.

Ms Spencer made a crucial observation in her victory speech, which should be obvious but doesn’t seem to have been grasped by the main parties in their Westminster bubble – that working hard used to lead somewhere but now we’ve been gaslit into low expectations. ‘But now – working hard? What does that get you? Because talk to anyone here and they’ll tell you. The people who work hard but can’t put food on the table. Can’t get their kids school uniforms. Can’t put their heating on. Can’t live off the pension they worked hard to save for. Can’t even begin to dream about ever having a holiday. Ever. Because life has changed. Instead of working for a nice life, we’re working to line the pockets of billionaires. We are being bled dry. I don’t think it’s extreme or radical to think working hard should get you a nice life. And if you’re not able to work, that you should still have a nice life’. The Independent’s Quote of the Day was hers: ‘We have shown that we don’t have to accept being turned against each other. We can demand better without hating each other’. Other parties, take note. She also cited what a good number (except the disbelieving media) have been so unhappy with Labour about: ‘And yes, many voters I spoke with from lots of backgrounds were also deeply troubled by this Labour government’s complicity in genocide. I’m proud that the Green Party stands firmly against genocide and war crimes, and defends human rights in Gaza and around the world. And I’m proud to represent a constituency filled with people who care about the suffering of those thousands of miles away, just as we care for our friends and neighbours here at home’.

This point was well made as some (like Tory peer Rachel MacLean on Radio 4’s Any Questions) suggested that people don’t care about ‘foreign issues’. Appalling. Does she want voters to only focus on their own back yard when situations in the wider world are bound to impact us? And not to care about such terrible suffering? I agree, also, with the Any Answers caller who said the problem with Labour was making policy at the top whereas the Greens make policy from the bottom up. Allied to this is Labour’s longstanding strategy of using opaque Svengali-like figures (eg Morgan McSweeney) to determine the party’s direction, so anyone except a small coterie at the very top is effectively excluded. And in another blow for the government, minister Josh Simons resigned ‘to avoid becoming a distraction’(don’t you just love this mantra when usually that individual is already a distraction?), being implicated in what the Independent called ‘an ethics probe into claims that a Labour think tank he previously ran paid for an investigation into journalists’. No doubt the media will be all over this very soon.

Although Reform UK chair David Bull said on the Today programme on Friday that there was no question of voter fraud, it seems Farage has taken a leaf from Trump’s playbook by implying that the byelection was stolen from them. He has unveiled proposals for electoral reform, including a significant restriction on postal voting and the removal of voting rights for Commonwealth citizens. Audacious and unworkable (designed to appeal to disappointed supporters), especially as the postal vote measure would still disenfranchise thousands of people unreasonably deemed ineligible, those with family responsibilities involving travel and those working shifts.

Trump’s warmongering and the byelection have only temporarily bumped off the front pages the biggest constitutional crisis in decades, if not centuries: the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, captured by an amazing shot of him slumping shell shocked in the back of the car, a photo which went viral and which can never be forgotten. The aftermath has seen the increasingly tone deaf royals (what on earth are the PR people and the crisis manager doing?) attending completely unnecessary events at home and abroad (and expensive,

witness the frequent use of helicopters), all billed as ‘duty’, in a desperate attempt to distance themselves from the continuing revelations and implications for the arcane institution of monarchy. There’s a substantial attempt to portray the others as innocent when it’s clear they all knew what was going on and have been instrumental in covering for the wrongdoer. Queen Elizabeth has also been knocked off her saintly pedestal for massively over-indulging her favourite son and largely paying for what they imagined would be his get-out.

Another glaringly obvious campaign, primarily led by all the parasitical royal ‘correspondents’ and other hangers on, is the one to position the Prince and Princess of Wales as squeaky clean and fresh blood appealing ‘to a new generation’ when interviews on Radio 1 showed that, on the contrary, Gen Z thinks very little of them. Today, St David’s Day, we have the painful spectacle of them reading out a short message in Welsh and yet again we have to wonder why the Princes and Princesses of Wales have mostly never troubled to learn Welsh properly. We know that as PoW Charles learned some but it’s unclear whether or not he kept that up. Yes, it’s a difficult language but it surely behoves those with those titles to make the effort.

Support for the monarchy has markedly declined in recent years, especially as more has been learned about their opaque and exploitative finances, and has plummeted further following the scandals involving both AMW’s ‘alleged’ sexual impropriety and misconduct while a trade envoy. The media, especially the BBC, continue to trot out the mantra that ‘Mr Mountbatten Windsor has consistently denied any wrongdoing’, sounding increasinglysilly and patronizing. Themedia’s monarchist agenda really needs challenging because it’s constantly shaping the narrative via choice of language that not everyone will see through. For example, we’re constantly hearing about ‘the threat to the monarchy’, as if this is a bad thing when a referendum on our head of state would be the healthiest option for a modern democracy.

At least last week the BBC platformed the Dimbleby brothers: the cringe worthy sycophancy of Jonathan, ‘friend of Charles’ was painful to behold, whereas David, the presenter of three recent documentaries about the monarchy, was far more challenging about the institution he covered extensively when a BBC employee. Part of the media agenda is to whip up fear about alternatives to the institution, some callers to phone-ins suggesting that there would be no UK without it, ‘the monarchy is the threat that binds society together’ and other such nonsense. There’s also an issue of cost: the royal family costs £137.9 million via the Sovereign Grant but there are also the huge profits totaling around £45 million via the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall which go directly to Charles and William, mostly with no tax paid. Many seem unaware of the opaque finances of these ‘private estates’, which should at least be brought within the overarching Crown Estate, leading to a bit more accountability. Thanks to media investigation, we do know more about the shameful charges these estates levy on public sector organizations such as the NHS besides the exploitative rents these landlords charge their tenants for poorly maintained properties. Although more are seeing the light about the monarchy, this country still suffers quite badly from deference, almost as if serfdom was in the British DNA. One of the most sickening examples must be Reform member and former Tory Tim Montgomerie on Sky News saying ‘we all love Princess Anne and Charles has been a good King’.

In contrast, research shows that the average cost of a republic is around £24 million annually and surely it could cost much less without umpteen hangers on and luxurious trappings. The debate raises the key issue of what royal industry employees, the armies of royal correspondents, photographers, biographers and others would do without this parasitic source of income, so there’s a huge vested interest in keeping it all going. Meanwhile, we hear that the disgraced royal, who had clung like a limpet to his former home Royal Lodge, had shouted when finally ejected ‘I’m the Queen’s second son, you can’t do this to me’. Moreover, he’s apparently been banned from horse riding on the Sandringham Estate, a significant blow for him, allegedly because that wouldn’t be a good look for the monarchy. Surely that ‘ship’ sailed long ago.

Following the arrest and police questioning of Peter Mandelson for misconduct in public office, it was interesting to learn (apparently he was furious with the police at being outed as the source) that it was none other than House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle who suggested (based on something he heard during his trip to the British Virgin Islands) that Mandelson had intended going there. We have to wonder when, if ever, he would have been arrested if he hadn’t been considered a flight risk. And why should he have been allowed to attend a police station for an interview sometime ‘next month’, as if he was doing the police some kind of favour rather than being treated as the culprit he most likely is and as the rest of us would have been? Yet again we see the rich and powerful getting different treatment. Another striking aspect of this is the other oft quoted statement that neither Andrew nor Mandelson were ‘motivated by financial gain’ – as if this is the only kind of gain. It would be surprising if there was no financial gain but the most obvious one was clearly power and influence. Neither motivation excuses misconduct.

As we know (another example of some being above the law and of absurd deference?) it took the police a long time to start any investigation of either Andrew or Mandelson and now both have been interviewed will it go quiet? Do the police imagine they’ve done enough to satisfy the public’s demands for answers and accountability? Business as usual? And why did it take former PM Gordon Brown to instigate these interventions? It seems it was only his 5 page memorandum about the Epstein flight logs to the Metropolitan, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley and other relevant UK police constabularies which pushed them into action. Commentator Simon Jenkins puts the constitutional crisis in a nutshell: ‘What happens next hardly matters: the mystique and awe surrounding the royals had been shattered. The former prince’s arrest must change everything. Whatever happens now, a line has been crossed in the life of the nation (my italics). A once exalted royal, facing serious judicial investigation by authorities acting on behalf of the citizenry’.

As ever with the news agenda there are ripple effects, often quite significant, and the royal scandals have finally caused the ridiculous Erskine May rule that the Royal Family can’t be discussed in Parliament to be revoked, or at least partly. The Commons Speaker seems to have decided that because Andrew is no longer a ‘working royal’ (no such thing, of course) MPs are now free to criticize him and trade minister Sir Chris Bryant didn’t hold back, citing the disgraced one’s rudeness, sense of entitlement and arrogance. But it shouldn’t stop there – this rule has contributed substantially to the lack of transparency and excessive deference around the royals, both of which are inappropriate in the 21^st century.

All these major events shine further light on the media (largely right wing) covering them and the BBC, as public service broadcaster has again shown shown itself to be highly arrogant in dealing with complaints. Numerous complainants about bias and the Kuennsberg Reform PR piece during the lead up to the Denton and Gorton byelection have been fobbed off with feeble and specious arguments. And you can only complain to Ofcom if you’ve gone through the BBC’s process first, thus creating another barrier to resolution. The root of this problem is the appointment by Boris Johnson to key positions four individuals with links to the Conservative Party and many of us think it’s astonishing that since July 2024 they’ve been allowed to remain in post while dragging the elected government down. It was disappointing this last week to find Channel 4 News no different – two presenters effectively interviewing each other in the Westminster lobby and, like the BBC, obviously trying to shape the narrative which undermines the government. They’re clearly disappointed that the government has drawn back from a precipice following the staff changes at no 10. Media folk only conceded that Keir Starmer is ‘safe for now’, implying not for long and after the Denton and Gorton result they won’t let up. It’s strange that the BBC is taking even less trouble to disguise its bias considering that their charter renewal process is less than 18 months away. Quite a few have cancelled their licences – it would be interesting to know how many. (It’s at least 2.4 million since 2020 and that wouldn’t include recent cancellations). With these consumer concerns and the relentless march of streaming giants it does beg the question how would the BBC fare if the funding model changed, licensing was removed and it had to operate within an open market?

Just as we learn that Boots (the first amongst High Street stores) has launched a pilot scheme making the weight loss drugs Wegovy and Mounjaro available in 17 branches, it seems the horribly named ‘fat jab’ has qualities akin to an economic Trojan Horse. Besides the fact that many are only just discovering that they may have to stay on these drugs (with what kind of long term side effects?) for a lifetime because the weight generally piles back on when they stop, the impact of over 2 million patients taking them is having knock-on effects on the wider economy and undermining capitalism, it’s suggested. The Financial Times says that besides the effects on food sales the drugs work on the brain’s reward system, reducing the desire for alcohol, drugs and perhaps even consumer goods, undermining the business model underpinning capitalism. The implication is this is a bad thing, but maybe not, when you think of the problems caused by this model. Whoever might have thought that losing weight the long term traditional way by re-educating eating habits and exercising rather than an expensive quick fix would be a better approach? Meanwhile Big Pharma will be making massive profits but at what cost to patients’ health and the economy?

Finally, on a positive note, we hear an elderly farmer in Hertfordshire was at his wits’ end because flytippers had dumped 200 tonnes of rubbish on his land, which would cost £40k to clear up, but the Environment Agency apparently doesn’t take responsibility for such events and his insurers refused to pay up. This illegal dumping of waste is an increasing problem and we’ve heard nothing further about the huge dump on land partly owned by the Duchy of Lancaster. (Yes, they could well afford the clearance but wouldn’t you just know there’s some loophole which allows the Duchy to wriggle out of any responsibility). Fortunately for the farmer, people affected by his plight ran a fundraising campaign for him and others similarly affected. Let’s hope he and his land can recover quickly from this very stressful event and that action will be taken to apprehend the culprits!

Sunday 25 January

Isn’t it marvellous? The increasingly unhinged Trump gets politicians, media and quite a few of us alarmed and worked up about his takeover of Greenland and tariffs threats, only to back off (good example of TACO – Trump always chickens out), some of his MAGA sycophants even suggesting that ‘the Europeans overreacted’ as if we were stupid to believe him in the first place. His previous policies on tariffs and his operations in Venezuela were sufficient evidence of his capacity to carry out those Greenland threats, various specious arguments being put forward to ‘justify’ the action eg ‘national security’ doing far too much heavy lifting and questioning Denmark’s legitimacy in the island because it’s ‘just a very small country’. Other territories’ sovereignty is of no significance to him, the worst kind of imperialism.

It was only halfway through January when the world was already and still is reeling from Donald Trump’s continuing lawless antics including the further chaos he unleashed in Venezuela and his absurd claim to Greenland. What makes it all worse is the sycophantic collusion of yes-men in the Trump administration and the imperialist theories of Stephen Miller, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and homeland security advisor. Wiki describes him thus: ‘Considered one of the most influential figures of the Trump administrations and Trumpism movement, his politics have been described as far-right, anti-immigrationand white nationalist’. He’s behind Trump’s draconian immigration and other policies and it’s been suggested he’s the most dangerous individual in the Trump camp. But many won’t have heard of him because he hasn’t until fairly recently featured hugely in the media.

Trump notably didn’t consult Congress before the Venezuela operation and surely members will be even more concerned now about what he could be planning outside due process. Polling shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans opposed the Greenland action and some congressional Republicans have issued forceful warnings against Trump’s strategy and steamrollering. Apart from the impressive Canadian PM Mark Carney at Davos this week, no one has challenged his increasingly unbalanced and rambling Trump schtick to point out that this Emperor wearing no clothes (as the saying goes) isn’t rational and is an outright danger to international relations. Before Trump backed down a whole retinue of brainwashed allies, interviewed by the collusive media, continued to back his strategy, one of the most outrageous being US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant eg ‘The Europeans will understand this is best for Greenland, best for Europe and best for the United States… Europeans will understand that the best outcome is for the US to receive control of Greenland’. Europeans ‘understood’ nothing of the kind, of course, except right wing historian Tim Stanley in the Telegraph having suggested that we should accept Trump’s demands and just focus on domestic matters. This sort of appeasement once amounted to treason and perhaps it’s unfortunate that it’s no longer taken seriously.

As ever, Trump claims far more results following his interactions than the other participants. Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General, conceded that their meeting had been very good but that there was still a lot of work to do. Of course Trump is never interested in the detail and nuanced thinking that effective negotiations demand. Aaja Chemnitz Larsen, a Greenlandic member of the Danish parliament, wrote that, despite Trump’s claim of having struck an agreement about Greenland with NATO, the military alliance has no mandate to negotiate anything about Greenland. “Nothing about us, without us’: this is a good expression which was used in some mental health settings, but it’s striking how often authorities who see themselves as superior plan policy without consulting or involving those actually affected. As we know it’s a like this regarding Ukraine.

The best thing might have been for Davos delegates and the media to cold shoulder Trump rather than giving him the oxygen of publicity but it sounds like they were mostly in attendance for what was reported as an hour long, rambling speech: certainly the media clips sounded incoherent and since then some sources have identified one false boast after another. He started by calling Denmark ‘ungrateful’ and said the US had been stupid to give Greenland back to Denmark after WW2: in fact it’s been part of Denmark since 1721 and was never owned by the US. The condescension towards Europe continued, of course, saying the continent was not ‘heading in the right direction’. He’s a fine one to judge, of course.

Of the many examples of misinformation he claimed China had no wind farms when the country ranks number 1 globally for wind farm capacity and has more plans to expand than any other country. Another misrepresentation was that the US had ‘gotten nothing’ from NATO when it got support following 9/11. Yet another was that he’d secured $18 trillion of investment since re-entering office when the figure is closer to $9.6 trillion. The knowledgeable folk there must have had their heads in their hands at all this, especially given the unpreparedness of anyone to challenge him. But it got even worse: hes’s been lambasted to hell and back for daring to suggest that the NATO countries didn’t really help in Afghanistan and kept away from the front lines when 475 British servicemen died during that war and many more were seriously injured. Trump seems on a mission to cause outrage and hurt on a massive scale. Former Chief of the UK Defence Staff General Sir Nick Carter told the BBC: ‘Trump is exceptionally unqualified to comment on war given that he was a draft-dodger…a man who has no interest in service or duty.’

But some Congress members are beginning to call out the blatant disregard for what’s actually taking place. California Representative Jared Huffman is unequivocal: ‘Trump is running the biggest most corrupt criminal grift in criminal history, out of the White House. We take an oath to the Constitution, but it seems all of you took an oath to Donald Trump. This is shameful, a disgrace…To pretend everything is just fine right now? The madman is in Europe driving our friends into the arms of our adversaries. Trump is doing immeasurable damage to our credibility on the world stage and you are just fine with it? What the hell is wrong? I’m not going to just sit here and pretend everything is fine. This is wrong. This is not normal. And I’m not going to normalise it’. And media collusion with the Trump narrative is one of the main problems.

So what’s to be done? Green Party leader Zack Polanski said the UK should consider expelling US forces from British bases: ‘I think it’s pretty worrying that we’ve allowed ourselves to become so reliant on American interests, and that a lot of this depends on if Donald Trump is in a good mood or not’. It’s also been suggested that countries summon their US ambassadors in order to demand accountability and request an apology. Another is that the planned visit to the US of King Charles in April should be cancelled. On Saturday Trump rolled back on his NATO troops comment but it didn’t really constitute a proper apology and it wasn’t via a public appearance, just on Truth Social. It reminded me of the Priti Patel type apology ie ‘I’m sorry you feel that……’ etc, in other words trying to attribute the problem to the other’s over-sensitivity rather than taking responsibility for her own actions.

Countering those who labelled him weak (and the Tories’ regular accusation – ‘spineless’) for not standing up to Trump and threatening counter tariffs, Keir Starmer is now claiming that his stance produced the recent climb down on Greenland, ie diplomacy rather than ill-considered action. He’s also made crystal clear his disgust at Trump’s latest insult about NATO troops in Afghanistan. No doubt his Chequers meeting with the Danish PM Mette Frederiksen will prove productive. If you missed it you might be interested in her Radio 4 Profile broadcast on Saturday 17th – she certainly sounds like a woman to be reckoned with. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002q253

But it gets even worse…Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ for Gaza (which he expects to operate much more widely, some believe competing with the UN or even replacing it) chaired by Trump himself, not only has on it sycophantic sidekicks Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff of little political experience, but the Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Sir Tony Blair. Unbelievably, Putin was invited and has also joined: what could possibly go wrong? It’s pretty clear that this ‘Board’ allegedly for Gaza’s reconstruction would also be about making money for certain individuals. And not only that – we hear Trump is expecting countries to cough up $1bn to be permanent members beyond three years. Invitations were sent to around 60 countries, apparently, and to the EU. Some have been deterred by Putin’s participation but there’s also the fact that the Board’s charter reportedly says Chairman Trump will have extensive executive power, including the ability to veto decisions and remove members, subject to some constraints. Constraints? As we heard recently Trump doesn’t recognise any constraints or limits to his power except his own ‘morality’.

It will be interesting to see which ones finally take up this invitation. In yet another example of performative antics by Trump, the invitation to Canada was withdrawn following Mark Carney’s speech at Davos. It sounds like a disaster for Gaza, a poisoned chalice and, interestingly, Israeli PM Netanyahu said that the US hadn’t coordinated this with them. Sky News told us: ‘In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump called the board ‘the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place’. Nothing like a bit of ambition and hyperbole. Its potential weaknesses aren’t reflected by the media taking this so seriously but surely with those strong and difficult personalities involved it could run into the buffers pretty early on.

Back in the UK, the media have been just as embarrassingly excited by all the intrigue and shenanigans regarding the defections to Reform of Nadhim Zahawi, Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell as they’ve been about the Trump antics. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, as defensive and defiant as usual, tried to suggest it was good riddance because he (Jenrick, the highest profile one) was a terrible liar and worse. Pots and kettles. Of course the damage caused to her party by the now 20 defections is another reason why she’s continued to clamber aboard one bandwagon after another, including opposition to the new Chinese embassy and the Chagos Islands deal when it was her party which negotiated this deal in the first place. It’s rumoured that at least five more high profile Tories are preparing to defect so the saga is likely to continue. It’s raised again the injustice of defectors not calling a by-election as they should do, since constituents voted for the Tories, not Reform. This is yet another example of inadequate parliamentary rules and even weaker implementation – these people should be made to resign their seats and let their constituents decide otherwise they shouldn’t consider themselves legitimate members of the House.

Another domestic source of media excitement is that of Labour’s Andrew Gwynne possibly resigning his seat (conditional upon getting his pension made up despite having been a wrongdoer), seen as facilitating the return to Westminster of Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, potentially resulting in a leadership challenge. It seems unlikely to happen as Starmerites dominate the National Executive Committee and there’s determination in some quarters to prevent Burnham gaining traction. ‘However, Burnham allies suggested there would be significant disquiet among MPs, the unions and party members should the leadership try to block him from returning to parliament, where he served as the MP for Leigh from 2001 to 2017.’Should Burnham decide to run, there are still multiple obstacles standing in his way. He would need to be selected by the NEC – where the odds are stacked against him – and win the byelection in Gorton and Denton against Reform UK and pro-Gaza independents, all before any potential leadership challenge’. So now he’s decided to throw his hat into the ring, the NEC is to decide whether that ‘hat’ can be entered. I hope for all our sakes they decide quickly (or should that be the political cliché ‘swiftly’?).

https://tinyurl.com/mr478stu

Two further stories under-reported or not all by the right wing media relate to Farage’s massive breach of the MPs’ Code of Conduct, blaming ‘administrative errors by his team’, but not challenged about in interviews (there’s definitely an agenda to protect the Reform UK leader) and the Prince Harry/Daily Mail court case. First, it was shameful that the four leading royals disappeared to Scotland on totally unnecessary vanity appearances in order to avoid Harry’s visit. Second, apart from Byline Times, I’ve seen no media coverage of how the disgraceful conduct of the Daily Mail further revealed in court could affect the owner Lord Rothermere’s £500m bid for the Telegraph. ‘Allegations that the Mail engaged in phone hacking, landline tapping, burglaries, and the theft of medical records are threatening to derail its £500 million takeover of the Telegraph’. And here’s a key element – about the finance for the deal. ‘NatWest, the Mail’s long-standing lender and the principal funder of the Telegraph bid, has the power to pull the plug if internal auditors conclude the legal risks are too great. And City scrutiny has intensified as allegations of industrial-scale criminality inside the Mail’s newsrooms are tested in court’. The case has already cost the Mail £30m and that’s without many more claimants’ cases to be considered and there are formidable regulatory issues to navigate. ‘Shares analyst Paul Scott has reviewed DMGT’s accounts and concluded that a £1 billion hit ‘would probably either bankrupt DMGT (Daily Mail General Trust), or at least stretch it to the limit’. At present surely it will be surprising if the Telegraph bid isn’t withdrawn.

Daily Mail High Court Trial Casts Shadow Over Lord Rothermere’s Telegraph Bid

Recently we heard that Radio 4 Today programme presenter Amol Rajan would be leaving (but still playing safe by hanging onto other BBC gigs like his Radical podcast?) in order to unleash his ‘inner entrepreneur’ and enter the ‘creator economy’ via his own company. He’s someone who’s divided opinion and the adjective ‘Marmite’ comes to mind: some have found him a breath of fresh air and a challenge to the usual BBC classism but others find his casual style and garbled delivery annoying and believe he’s contributed to the dumbing down of this programme.

There’s no doubt he rose up the media ranks very quickly. He’d already had an impressive range of posts in print media, for example becoming editor of The Independent at the age of 29. ‘Since joining the BBC as its first media editor in 2016, after a stint as the youngest ever editor of The Independent, Rajan has become one of the broadcaster’s most prominent personalities. He’s hosted documentaries about the royal family and the British class system, filled in as a DJ on Radio 2, headlined his own interview series and chatted to celebrities on The One Show’s green sofa…Little surprise then that last summer, the BBC’s annual top earners list revealed his salary to be somewhere between £315,000 and £319,999’.

The article purports to be about ‘why Rajan had to say goodbye to Today’ but doesn’t really address it except for this suggestion: ‘he has sniffed the air and come to the conclusion that talent and personal brand building have the potential to become bigger than the “show”. And there’s no doubt that he has plenty of talent and a distinct personal brand. Some article comments go further, acknowledging what a state of flux broadcasting is in, not least of which is the rise of the streaming giants. With the BBC Charter renewal coming up in 2027 more and more dissatisfied viewers are refusing to pay the licence and a recent piece of news suggests that YouTube is getting more views than the BBC. ‘What he has undoubtedly realised is that the BBC won’t survive a Reform Government and is gambling that by starting his own production company now, he will be well positioned should that calamity come to pass to hoover up the ‘opportunities’ that will arise’. It will be interesting to see how his new company fares.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/amol-rajan-today-programme-bbc-radio-4-leave-b2873753.html

Needless to say most of the news is pretty damaging to our mental wellbeing, making it even more important to look after our minds and bodies as far as possible. Research has shown that the arts are good for our sense of wellbeing and their heavy use would substantiate such findings. Good news, then, that the Department for Media, Culture and Sport. has confirmed that £1.5bn will be invested in cultural organisations over a five-year period – including £600m for its directly-funded museums and £160m for regional and local museums. Culture secretary Lisa Nandy made a point of saying that the money aims to turn a corner on the underfunding that the sector has faced in the past 10-plus years – underfunding by the philistine Tories, of course, who tried to influence policy by threatening to withdraw funding from institutions they considered ‘woke’. This money will also tackle urgent capital repairs and ‘unite communities in the face of division’. This latter aim is completely contrary to Conservative Party policy.

https://tinyurl.com/f72bn9kc

Contrast this with what’s happening in the US due to Donald Trump’s culture war on anything he considers ‘woke’. It’s beyond disgraceful that key post holders in cultural institutions have been sacked or threatened with termination of their contracts for disagreeing with the Trump administration’s strategy which pursues a very limited view of history (emphasising and instilling pride in ‘Americanism’ and downplaying or eliminating any reference to unsavoury elements like slavery). Trump doesn’t understand or respect the arts or anything that’s not ‘business’ so he’s undermining them and potentially killing them off. Trump’s assault on the prestigious Smithsonian Institution has been described as the intention to ‘reframe the entire culture of the US’. That is some goal!

You may recall that on his inauguration day, 20 January 2025, his executive order (so many of these have been examples of executive overreach) eliminated diversity and inclusion programmes from federal agencies. Only a few months later (although the Smithsonian had already shut down these programmes despite not being a federal agency) another EO called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History claimed that the Smithsonian had ‘come under the influence of a divisive, race-centred ideology that promoted narratives that portray American and western values as inherently harmful and oppressive’. The individual charged with removing this ideology was a 30 something Trump aide with zero experience in the arts. Months later Trump stated: ‘The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been – Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.” To use different language, Trump wanted museums to reflect a Maga vision of American history that was nationalist and triumphalist, and downplayed reflection on darker aspects of its past, specifically its history of slavery’.

It’s just astonishingly backward and dishonest, far worse than anything that’s happened in the UK, so far. (I’m thinking of the right wing ‘anti-woke’ contingent Restore Trust, which, year after year, tries to infiltrate the National Trust’s council in order to take it backwards. You get the idea from its ‘About Us’ – ‘We want the National Trust’s focus and priorities not to be driven by modish, divisive ideologies but rather solely by its noble mandate’. As many National Trust visitors will know many of its grand properties were effectively built and maintained by the profits of slavery and in recent years the Trust has been keen to make this clear via its curatorial policies. Let’s hope the damage Trump has inflicted on the American arts scene won’t be irreversible and that nothing like that ever gains traction here. (It’s not impossible to imagine, for example if Reform ever gets into government).

https://tinyurl.com/ywp72vvc

Finally, now we’re a few weeks into the New Year several articles have been presenting a different take on New Year Resolutions. Especially the self-styled wintering experts suggesting that instead of strict regimes for this or that we should be hibernating and adapting to the season which is not intended for frantic activity. Writer Oliver Burkeman goes a step further in Meditions for Mortals, saying stop trying to ‘sort your life out…Stop stressing about self‑improvement or waiting until you’re on top of everything. This year give yourself permission to prioritise pleasure’. This is the opposite ‘advice’ from all the stuff of self-help books, now a million pound industry which regularly recycles the work of past thinkers and psychotherapists, presenting it as their own. ‘This should be the year you stop trying so hard to turn yourself into a better person, and focus instead on actually leading a more absorbing life’. He reckons no objections to this argument hold any water. ‘In fact, there’s excellent reason to believe that doing more of what you want in 2026 will do nothing but good for your health and wellbeing, for your feelings of overwhelm, and even for the state of society’.

He’s critical of the stance that you need to fix yourself, that there’s something badly wrong with you. ‘And even if there is, it’s not clear that organising your life around the grim struggle to fix it is a particularly effective strategy’. In fact, this author claims that the relentless self-improvement jag is an avoidance tactic, avoidance of making life changing decisions eg about work and relationships. ‘As a finite human being in a world of infinite inputs, you’re always going to have too much to do. So it makes no sense to put off enjoyment or aliveness until such time as you’re no longer facing an unmanageable to-do list; you are, I regret to inform you, likely to end your life with a long to-do list of uncompleted tasks’. Plenty of food for thought here – it would be an interesting exercise to compare how the different approaches pan out for their adoptees!

https://tinyurl.com/mr8k58jc

Sunday 4 January 2026

Happy New Year to all – though it hasn’t started well and it’s not good for our mental wellbeing. The terrible situations in Gaza and Sudan, continuing intransigence from Putin on Ukraine, mounting protests in Iran and this astonishing attack on Venezuela by Trump don’t augur well. Thanks to the lawless conduct of Trump, Putin and Netanyahu, the post-war international world order has broken down and now it seems that organisations like the UN are impotent to challenge the outrageous actions carried out by these regimes. It’s hard to credit that without consulting Congress Trump ordered these macho military strikes, captured the president of a sovereign country and his wife, on flimsy grounds, intends to put Maduro on trial in the US and to ‘essentially run’ Venezuela until there can be a proper transfer of power. Nothing short of colonialism, a violation of international law hiding behind the drug trafficking fig leaf, all to deflect attention from Trump’s diminishing popularity at home and the ongoing Epstein Files scandal. What’s equally astonishing is the failure so far of politicians here and the media to condemn these actions.

BBC News broadcast quite a bit of Trump’s press conference speech (tellingly at his luxury Mar-a-lago retreat) and it sounded nothing short of frightening – bragging, arrogant, inarticulate and unbalanced. It was also irrelevant in places, rehashing grievances against certain generals, Joe Biden and others. Many will no doubt agree with the Law and Policy blogger (David Allen Green), who reckons Trump was given carte blanche for such conduct bythe failure of the Senateto convict him on indictment after the attempted January 6 insurrection. ‘For once he could get away with that, he knew he could get away with anything – and those around him knew they also could get away with anything while Trump was President’. It’s widely suspected that this attack is really to do with Venezuela’s sizeable stocks of oil and rare mineral deposits. On X Occupy Democrats said: ‘The pretext for this heinous act of aggression — which by any definition qualifies as terrorism carried out by the United States — is that Maduro is supposedly the leader of some sprawling drug cartel poisoning our country. In reality, next to zero fentanyl comes from Venezuela. This is about seizing that country’s vast oil reserves and bolstering Trump’s strongman persona amongst his bloodthirsty base’. Acknowledging the faults of the Maduro regime, OD added: ‘Venezuela deserves democracy. But believing that does not mean the US gets to break international law, ignore Congress, and unilaterally overthrow the government of a sovereign nation to police the world’.

It’s quite possible the reckless Trump hasn’t thought through what condemnations were likely to come from China and Russia, a supreme irony Russia calling it ‘an act of armed aggression”, that Caracas ‘must be guaranteed the right to determine its own destiny without any destructive, let alone military, outside intervention’. In most governments politicians and advisers should and would risk the annoyance, even wrath, of their boss in order to make important points but it seems the yes-men in the Trump administration are far too cowed to do so – they’re doubling down, claiming that the actions have been entirely legitimate. In contrast to Pete Hegseth’s Trump puppet appearance on US tv, many are pointing out that this oil is Venezuelan and never belonged to the US. ‘Do we now have the US Military being used as mercenaries for the international oil companies ? That does sound like what the soldiers signed up for’. ‘Venezuela’s oil wasn’t taken from the US, it was extracted from Venezuelan land! How can this worthless douche lie so casually? He sounds like Trump’s parrot, he should be caged! Venezuela was never US territory. Nothing was stolen, they’re the ones stealing from people!’

Commentator Will Hutton gets it in one, IMO: ‘Venezuela’s Maduro is a corrupt, vicious dictator repressing democratic opposition . But the US unilaterally capturing a foreign leader not at war breaches every canon of international law. Justifies Putin in Ukraine/Xi in Taiwan. Might is right. Who next on what pretext? A dark moment’. But another reminder: ‘Context is important regarding Venezuela. We’re talking about a psychopathic leader of a rogue state, who has enriched himself through his own corrupt actions, attacked his own citizens and has no regard for international law Maduro is no angel either’. It’s very chilling, though, that Trump has indicated he may not stop here: at his press conference, he said: “We’re going to have our very large US oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so’. We hear that Americans and others are already protesting against his actions and these could intensify if US military carry out further attacks. It’s early days and the situation is changing all the time but it’s already starting to look like an own goal.

Journalist Simon Tisdall looked at the effect on the wider world: ‘The coup is illegal, unprovoked and regionally and globally destabilising. It upends international norms, ignores sovereign territorial rights, and potentially creates an anarchic situation inside Venezuela itself. It is chaos made policy. But this is the world we now live in – the world according to Donald Trump’. And this world is a dangerous place – no wonder other South and Central American countries are feeling anxious that the same tactics may be used there. Trump has already directly or indirectly threatened Colombia and Secretary of State Marco Rubio is known to want regime change in Panama. But despite Trump’s boast about their military being the best in the world, there’s a limit to the boots on the ground he can use for other attacks. Unless he uses mercenaries and the US has form on this. So much for being a man of peace. ‘Trump’s irresponsible, dangerously erratic behaviour is getting measurably worse. His Venezuela “success” may encourage him to attempt more and bigger, unhinged outrages. Like Mark Antony minus the toga and brains, he struts and preens, cries havoc! and lets slip the dogs of war’.

https://tinyurl.com/3v3mk6ht

At home right wing politicians and the media continue to undermine the government, part of this campaign being to effect the removal of Keir Starmer. Today Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg featured a long interview with the PM, during which the worst example of Tory client journalism sought to undermine everything he said. Her opening sentence of 2026 on air was ‘The Prime Minister has been in trouble for MONTHS’, a terrible way to introduce an interview. Keir Starmer insisted that the May elections don’t constitute a referendum on his leadership. It’s very difficult to achieve when the media are predominantly right wing but the government really needs to get a grip on getting its achievements and positive messages out there. There are indeed valid concerns about this government’s performance but the media often omit the positive stuff, thereby controlling the narrative. The latest plea comes from Chris Powell (brother of Jonathan, Starmer’s national security adviser who was also Blair’s Chief of Staff), who says an urgent plan is needed to ‘wage and win the daily war for attention’ in order to push back the populists.

‘We are at a very dangerous moment. We simply cannot afford to allow Reform UK to have a free run, and become established and entrenched as a credible potential government in the minds of disenchanted voters. The longer they go unchallenged, the more unthreatening and risk-free they will seem to voters. Just hoping that Reform UK and [Nigel] Farage implode, or that the rightwing vote will somehow fracture, is potentially suicidal for our freedom and democracy’. Powell reckons the UK is now ‘a textbook case of an establishment party caught in the headlights, as its populist opponent expertly fills the vacuum of voter pain and disrespect’ but rather than just carrying on, in the same way, remote from voters’ real concerns, it needs a radical re-set of the government’s strategy and messaging. It will be interesting to see if this nettle is understood and grasped.

https://tinyurl.com/4crfk3my

Perhaps one good thing (the only one?) about Venezuela dominating the news is having kept the royals off the front pages for a day or two. In the wake of further Epstein Files revelations including the incriminating emails from ‘A of Balmoral’ (guess the mystery identify) the collusive media have been inundating us with monarchist propaganda, attempting to show these luxurious and out of touch people in a positive light. The deluge increased at the same time as the Cabinet Officewas accused of a cover up after the release of documents including some relating to travel expenses for the former Duke of York as UK trade envoy were withheld at the last minute. ‘The retention of the minutes underlines the way that files relating to the royal family are routinely withheld from release under the Public Records Act. Graham Smith, the chief executive of anti-monarchy campaign group Republic, said there should be no royal exemption at all’.

https://tinyurl.com/y5n8zc9z

At the end of last week one example of monarchist hyperbole was about new titles for William and Catherine, clickbait which turned out to relate to them being granted the right to issue Royal Warrants. This is a form of corruption in itself, as there will be favours going back and forth between the Grantors of Royal Warrants and the organisations selected. Following the news over Christmas that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor was seen driving a brand new top of the range Landrover around the Windsor estate, it emerged that not one but an entire fleet is regularly loaned to the royals by Royal Warrant holder Jaguar Landrover. It will be interesting to see which products are chosen for this honour by the Wales duo, although we’re far less likely to learn if these have resulted in boxes of chocolate and crates of champagne delivered to Forest Lodge.

In the general context of senior public figures including the royals being protected from scrutiny, it was interesting that finally the Met Police has a new policy (surely necessary in all police forces) requiring officers to declare membership of the Freemasons. This is being opposed by the Freemasons (on tenuous human rights ground), who havedemanded an emergency injunction from the high court in order to halt the policy. In my view the Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has proved underwhelming, but he’s right to stick to his guns on this as there have long been suspicions of links between freemasonry and corruption. The Met has much work to do to restore ‘trust and credibility’ in this force and this policy surely has to be part of that. It’s outrageous that the Freemasons would resort to the law to prevent a measure which should have been introduced long ago.

‘The issue has dogged policing, with numerous allegations that Freemasonry membership has led to people covering up for wrongdoing in keeping the organisation’s credo that members stand by one another. The official inquiry into the 1987 murder of the private investigator Daniel Morgan and police corruption that hampered the hunt to find his killers recommended tighter rules on Freemasons in policing’. The police across the board have been astonishingly slow to properly address this problem – perhaps no wonder due to powerful vested interests.

https://tinyurl.com/38e4k7t9

We can wonder whether freemasonry has been at work in the failure of local police forces to monitor trail hunting since the Blair administration banned fox hunting. Last year anti-hunting groups produced evidence of over 230 breaches of the ban, whereby ‘trail hunting’ was used as a fig leaf for continuing the banned barbaric custom. The government’s announcement of a wide ranging animal welfare strategy, including some new legislation, includes banning trail hunting amidstconcerns it is being used as a smokescreen for hunting foxes. There’s plenty of evidence of just this posted by hunt saboteurs, footage showing foxes being torn to shreds, fox hounds seen as no longer performing being shot and abuse and assaults on those trying to protect the foxes. Boxing Day hunts up and down the country were widely featured in the media, including some pretty poor defences of this practice, such as ‘the government doesn’t understand the rural economy’ and interviews with people like kennels managers who reckoned it would be the end of their ‘job for life’, they’d never done anything else, etc. Quite rightly those objecting made a much sounder case for livelihoods and the rural economy not depending on these arcane practices, misrepresented as ‘tradition’. Moreover, many country dwellers wrote to newspapers and posted on social media their opposition to these hunts, some citing destruction of their gardens and killing of pets by these entitled people rampaging through the countryside. Given the longevity of this custom, legislation will be difficult to implement but perhaps even harder to enforce.

Speaking of people dressed up in expensive red attire, what’s been dubbed the ‘ermine arms race’ is the absurd situation of Keir Starmer creating 34 more peers, taking his total to 96, with 850 peers already in the House, significantly outnumbering MP numbers (650). In recent years the Lords has been discredited by two factors: the ‘arms race’ of political parties appointing more and more, arguably to get their legislation through and the corrupt appointment of cronies and the undeserving. But again – no parliamentary rules are enforced so who or what can stop this risible and damaging situation continuing? The irony is that prior to entering office Keir Starmer had pledged to ‘radically reform’ the second chamber but so far it’s just been the planned removal of the hereditary peers. That’s a laudable intention but it could just be that some might be more capable than some of the cronies. One measure which surely needs looking at is the automatic assumption that so many former ministers and MPs who lose their seats should ascend to the Lords. The role of bishops in the Lords should also be questioned. It’s been suggested that the government must act, if only to prevent the possibility of Nigel Farage appointing many more if he’s elected in 2029.

But there’s also a financial consideration. If 850 peers attend 100 times each year at over £300 a day in attendance allowance, that adds up to over £25m. What kind of value for money is this when evidence shows that some just attend, sometimes very briefly, making no contribution? It gets worse as ‘rogue’ Tory peers have been open about blocking the government’s legislation (‘we will grind you down’) when the second chamber is not supposed to oppose the will of the elected chamber. Yet this is happening, for example, with the Assisted Dying Bill, with attempts to ‘talk it out’, the same as ‘filibustering’ which I recall learning about years ago in American history.

‘Labour peers said virtually every bill had been slowed down, from key manifesto pledges on water regulation to rail nationalisation, Great British Energy and the football regulator. The Employment Rights Bill was repeatedly rejected, even after a major concession’. It’s good news that this year ‘the campaign group Unlock Democracy will turn its focus to Lords reform and says it will put the spotlight on a small number of influential peers who it believes are blocking the Assisted Dying Bill’s progress. While the group does not take a position on the issue of assisted dying, it says it is fundamentally a democratic issue’. Let’s hope Unlock Democracy gains some traction on this – it makes a mockery of democracy that these people should be able to wield this power under the radar.

https://tinyurl.com/37mk3488

Finally, when so many jobs aren’t recognised (unlike those related to show business) but play an important role in society and the economy, it was cheering to read of a competition focusing on bus drivers. Michael Leech, from Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, has been named the UK bus driver of the year (organised by the Association of the same name), winning £4,100 in prize money and celebrating with a cup of tea with his wife.‘I’ve wanted to win bus driver of the year for years, but it’s highly competitive. You need to have an exemplary record, good feedback from customers, no prangs on the bus and excellent timekeeping. About 100 drivers from across the country make the grand final in Blackpool. There’s a theory test and practical exam, where you’re asked to park a bus exactly one metre from the pavement and line up a lamp-post to the middle of the hubcap. It’s very tense, but luckily, I managed to be very accurate’. The same article also features Loo of the Year Awards, Convenience Store of the Year, Lollipop Person of the Year and Anorak of the Year (courtesy of the Dull Men’s Club). Long may these awards continue!

https://tinyurl.com/e7jbehw5

Sunday 21 December

As people retreat into intense Christmas preparations, I get the feeling that Donald Trump’s latest attack on Europe isn’t being taken half seriously enough. The sentiments expressed in the US new National Security Strategy are truly disturbing and will certainly be affecting our mental wellbeing at a conscious or less conscious level. Whereas some of us have been saying for years that the ‘special relationship’ is a myth and died some time ago, this didn’t stop politicians trotting this out whenever UK/US relations were discussed. But now we can be in no doubt about Trump’s contempt for Europe and determination not to ‘carry’ it, effectively driving a coach and horses through NATO. Trump’s cowardice with Putin, his preparedness to end the war in Ukraine totally on Russian’s terms and his condemnation of European leaders as ‘weak’, their countries ‘decaying’ are extremely unsettling because for years post-war there was a consensus that stability was underpinned by US power.

But it gets worse: remember J D Vance’s outrageous speech at the February Munich Security Conference, which ‘shook the transatlantic alliance’? It resembled an abuse of hospitality, in my view, that Vance suggested that Europe’s main danger was from within – erosion of democratic norms, censorship, suppression of dissent and exclusion of populist voices – rather than from external threats like Russia and China. The writing on the wall was his declaration that US support would be conditional on governments sustaining ‘free speech’ – the Trump administration’s fig leaf for hate speech. Effectively this new Strategy doubles down on this by not only laying into European leaders but going further down the culture war route, citing ‘civilisational erasure’, long exposed as a racist conspiracy theory (replacement by global elites of white populations by non-white immigrants etc). Although it will obviously take quite some time to get our defence budget up to 5% of GDP, as demanded by the Americans, and our defence capability up to scratch, the US is effectively telling the UK and Europe that we’re on our own. With Russia ramping up its incursions into European waters and airspace and simultaneously practising cyber warfare, it’s no casual threat.

Trump is nothing if not an erratic turncoat and all this makes the extremely expensive State Visit look rather a foolish and complacent exercise. Trump was reportedly disrespecting the UK and Europe even on his way home from it. US support for ultra-right wing European parties borders on political interference in their democracies -indeed, the new strategy arrogantly assumes dominance of the western hemisphere and the right to influence European affairs. One commentator said ‘Trump has essentially declared civilisational war against Europe’s liberal democracies’ but veteran journalist Andrew Neil said the Strategy gets ‘a lot right’. Who needs enemies when there are friends like this? He cites weak minority governments which have ‘gorged themselves on welfare spending for far too long’ and calls the Strategy ‘a wake-up call for a slumbering continent’. Perhaps Europe has been complacent for too long but when Trump and others criticise ‘weak’ regimes it’s clear they see simplistic bull-in=-a-china-shop politics as the only effective approach, without appreciating the need for nuance and negotiation. A supreme irony is thatover the coming months, the US Supreme Court will confront more cases in which the government invokes national security to justify the suppression of speech. There’s also Trump’s plan to make tourists reveal 5 years of social media history – people are already saying they daren’t visit the US because of what they’ve said about him on Facebook and X etc.

But we also have to wonder about the timing of this macho gesture, coinciding as it does with Trump’s declining performance in the polls, continuing speculation about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, legislators’ criticism of the Justice Department for withholding Epstein files and overly redacting others, and his absurd law suit against the BBC. And this isn’t all: the two latest criticisms are his takeover of the country’s national art centre (Kennedy Centre) using political skulduggery to remove ‘woke’ senior staff and programming, and threats of military action to sovereign governments like Venezuela and Colombia, citing specious reasons.

Regarding the BBC, veteran journalist Alan Rusbridger asserts in Prospect magazine that the BBC has no choice but to teach Trump a lesson. The overtanned egoist has no genuine grounds for his legal action – it’s political theatre, as several commentators have observed. Yet another macho battle to take a heavy toll on all involved but hey,that’s ok as long as the perpetrator believes it will appeal to his MAGA base. What he exploits ‘is a profound sense of the weakness of media and other organisations. Trump knows how to use litigation to exploit weaknesses and to obtain favourable outcomes…’. Although the BBC should never have committed its error of judgement involving the spliced footage, such errors are apparently not seen as a legal cause of action. Attributing exaggeratedly bad motives to the BBC has been seen as a way Trump’s lawyers can keep the case going, designed to get the Corporation to capitulate and settle – just as timid US broadcasters have done.

‘The BBC should, however, stand firm and prepare for trial. This does not necessarily mean that the case will go to trial: almost all civil lawsuits settle before a full hearing. But it is only by showing that it is genuinely ready to go all the way that the BBC can seek to bring this to an end on favourable terms. And faced with such fortitude, Trump may himself make a favourable offer or even pull the case completely… Trump’s perspective is that here is yet another vulnerable media organisation with unimpressive leadership and another opportunity for him to gain leverage’. Rather than a very expensive settlement the BBC must fight this claim, which comes at a very unfortunate time given the Charter renewal process in 2027. There’s plenty to criticise the BBC for, particularly its biased news and current affairs coverage, which Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy is either oblivious to or pretends to be, but I would defend it to the hilt in the face of Trump’s absurd aggression. As Trump himself so often says…. ‘we’ll see what happens’!

https://tinyurl.com/5fwb546k

Of course Trump isn’t alone in coming across as increasingly unbalanced. Perhaps the most prominent home grown public figure is Liz Truss, who, rather than exhibiting some humility and contrition for her extremely damaging administration, has doubled down on her eccentric economic theories, takes every opportunity to disloyally cosy up to Trump (US trips funded how?) and now has her own tv show on YouTube. The Guardian called ‘her latest plea for Maga attention’ hamfisted and ‘hapless ravings from a cupboard’. She apparently made her debut with a long ‘barking mad’ monologue lambasting everything from the ‘deep State’ to ‘eco zealots ruining British towns’. As she’s been ostracised by the UK she’s apparently aiming to be embraced by the American right. ‘Her opening monologue was nothing more than a laundry list of Maga stereotypes about the British. The woman longs to become Donald Trump’s Lord Haw-Haw, or at least a version of Lord Haw-Haw who looked and sounded like a bucket of spanners had just dropped on his head’. Her coup de grace was to declare the BBC ‘fake news’ (remind you of anyone?) for covering up that ‘Britain is going to hell in a handcart’. She seriously needs help but it’s unlikely she will seek it – the inability and hubristic unwillingness of those who refuse to reflect on the consequences of their actions causes so much damage in both public and private life.

Another public figure who fits the latter description (but who’s at least sane) is former Tory Chancellor George Osborne, the man of many jobs. He went on X with ‘personal news’ that he’d got himself a job in AI because this was the most exciting field to be in right now, etc etc, prompting questions as to how the privileged manage to just jump into jobs and plum positions (like chairing the British Museum, though the major theft of museum artefacts took place on his watch) with apparently little effort. ‘George Osborne getting a new job isn’t exactly news. Since leaving frontline politics, the former chancellor has served as the chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, edited (not entirely successfully) the Evening Standard, advised asset manager BlackRock, joined boutique advisory firm Robey Warshaw, been appointed as the chair of the British Museum and taken on roles including advising crypto firm Coinbase. Oh, and like any white man of a particular age, he co-hosts a political podcast’. But this latest job he’s landed, with Open AI, the purveyor of ChatGPT, is seen in some quarters as a bit of a sinister risk we need to see off, because AI is now emulating the path taken by other industries before it (eg defence, oil and pharma). It’s suggested they’re acting more like ‘quasi governments’ than companies, getting themselves embedded in countries’ very infrastructures and recruiting political figures to act as their acceptable public face.

‘Osborne is not the first to don the branded hoodie and Silicon Valley lifestyle. His fellow coalition government bod Nick Clegg blazed the trail as head of global affairs for Meta. At the time of his initial hiring as a vice-president at Facebook in 2018, his appointment was treated as a PR move – a big name to help the company navigate scandal and scrutiny. But it hinted that platforms had become political actors, whether they liked it or not. The industry’s outsized spending on lobbyists (€151m in Europe alone at the last count) to support the political beasts is an indication of what is at stake’. These tech companies are trying to anticipate regulation so they can get around it and have it not interfere with their income streams: they’re not hiring these public figures (Rishi Sunak is another example) for their technical expertise but for their knowledge of institutions and their valuable networks. It’s a kind of Trojan Horse which needs recognising as such. The threat was evident when Trump had the temerity to ‘warn’ the Australian government regarding their under 16s social media ban, a ban which of course will impact the American tech giants. ‘The more tech companies start to act like politicians and global leaders, the more we need to treat them like it. That doesn’t mean deference; it means more scepticism and journalistic interrogation’. The world is watching the Australia experiment with great interest and the UK already has a panel focusing on it – let’s hope they also factor in the danger of these companies’ tactics.

https://tinyurl.com/39ufzvww

As sure as eggs is eggs, whenever some more unsavoury news about Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is likely to emerge, Kensington Palace, supported by zillions of royal industry dependents and social media bots release a deluge of monarchist propaganda. The current example is the latest Epstein Files revelations, which showed the former prince in various compromising situations, quickly accompanied by multiple mainstream and social media posts about Kate and William’s Christmas card (pointed out by many that this was an old photo dating from April, allegedly photo shopped), Prince William’s ‘major’ new role with the SAS (which isn’t major but just another patronage) and William taking George to a centre for the homeless to serve them Christmas dinner. Pure PR exercises but cynically designed to gaslight us into thinking they have any valuable role when costing so much. But it didn’t even end there – it’s constant and last night the final of Strictly Come Dancing was interrupted for a tribute to the departing presenters from ‘Camilla R’ to be read out. Meanwhile, Mountbatten Windsor remains above the fray, moving to a small and ‘temporary’ home on the Sandringham Estate in the New Year while a larger home is being refurbished. Surely the smaller home would suffice, but despite the appearance of harsh treatment of his brother, the King constantly gives into his demands, including one for various servants such as butler, cook and housekeeper. The arrogance and entitlement know no bounds.

It’s been cathartic watching David Dimbleby’s three part series for BBC tv, What’s the Monarchy For? The former BBC veteran, no longer tied to the Corporation’s monarchist shackles, has been refreshingly straightforward, even combative, asked key questions of his interviewees, skewering this institution in the process. Way overdue. Two striking examples come to mind, illustrating the longstanding cowardly and passive approach taken by politicians and others, causing these interviewees to squirm. One was discussing the King’s prolific letter writing to governments over the years, clearly intended to shape policy under the radar, letters routinely placed at the top of the relevant minister’s pile. ‘When Dimbleby points out that this is pure hypocrisy – Charles has the right not to be neutral, but also has the right to maintain the appearance of neutrality? – a floundering Grieve (Dominic Grieve, former Conservative minister and Attorney General for England and Wales) weakly denies it’. Another was when Dimbleby challenged former Chancellor George Osborne about the huge cost of the monarchy: Osborne complacently said it was better to spend money this way ‘than on the NHS and benefits’. Shameful.

https://tinyurl.com/y7awhm3h

Lest we get the impression that because of their warmongering the Russians have got all the answers here’s an amusing story published in The Week. The launch of its first robot to be powered by AI proved embarrassing because spectacular malfunction caused it to fall flat on its face. The manufacturers promised that it could walk, handle equipment and communicate fluently with people. But when it walked onto the stage in Moscow ‘to the theme song of Rocky, it began to stagger, before collapsing in a heap’. The funniest thing was surely that when assistants tried to hide it under a curtain, it continued to flail ineffectually. A commentator at the launch called it the ‘first robot with alcoholism’.

Finally, we can wonder whether this could be one of the worst things for Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. The former Prince is humiliatingly the butt of the best Christmas cracker joke of the year. ‘The annual competition is commissioned by the comedy channel U&Gold (formerly Comedy Gold) and decided by the British public. It usually produces a topical winner that sends up one of the biggest stories of the year.This year’s winner was written by Ben Smith from Chelmsford, who pithily summed up Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s fall from royal status: “Why is Prince Andrew not writing any Christmas books? He hasn’t got any titles!” Smith receives a top prize that includes £1,500 towards a holiday’.

https://tinyurl.com/23aput84

Happy Solstice and festive greetings to all.

Sunday 23 November

As Trump’s capitulatory and short-termist non solutions to Gaza and Ukraine struggle to take hold, not surprisingly, and Budget speculation gets worse, not better, there are three interesting sources of silence. One is that the BBC, having lost another Board member this week, has still not received the threatened law suit from Trump (is he just biding his time or has he been advised he doesn’t have a leg to stand on?) and it’s bad news for them to be losing so much licence fee revenue. Increasing dissatisfaction with the BBC and the compulsory nature of the fee has led numerous consumers to stop paying, some under the false impression that they don’t need a licence, but there seems to be very little checking. To get the content while evading payment I saw a recommendation to get a VPN and tick the box which asks if you have a licence. ‘The BBC is now losing more than £1bn a year from households either evading the licence fee or deciding they do not need one, according to a cross-party group of MPs who warned the corporation is under “severe pressure’. Attempts to enforce payment of the licence fee are also stalling. The number of visits to unlicensed homes increased by 50% last year, but it did not translate into either higher sales or successful prosecutions’. As the BBC charter renewal date is not that far off (2027) it will be interesting to see what they come up with as potential funding solutions. The Corporation seems to have learned nothing following the recent Panorama/Trump debacle, at least regarding its news and current affairs output – as right wing biased as before, if not more. It was appalling having ‘Lord’ Gove on the Today programme on Friday actually defending Boris Johnson given the findings of the Covid Inquiry, especially when Gove has been seriously implicated in the corrupt PPE VIP lane.

https://tinyurl.com/4fmznv5e

The second more predictable source of silence is Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. The former Prince had been given till Thursday to respond to the US Congress’s request to give evidence regarding what he knew about Epstein but no surprise, again, that this arrogant royal is treating the request with the contempt he’s used to doling out. King Charles’s hope that he has now, given recent the defenestration, put the Andrew scandal ‘behind him’ will likely prove in vain as the US is not letting this story die and the British public is increasingly losing interest in and commitment to the monarchy. Pressure is coming from various quarters including Keir Starmer, who said that ‘in principle anyone with knowledge of child sexual offence cases should disclose what they know’, clearly alluding to Andrew.

Following the agreement to release the Epstein files, we can expect further revelations concerning this disgraced character, who continues to live in luxury despite the spin of exile. And amongst ‘conditions’ that he’s laid down for leaving Royal Lodge, he’s refused to be ‘confined’ in his future home at Sandringham, despite royal family disapproval that he was seen riding his horse around the Windsor estate last week.

Meanwhile, royalist propaganda and bots continue to swamp the media, especially social media, with posts of various royals’ activities misrepresented as ‘work’, especially those of William and Catherine. Last week she gave an embarrassing opening address at the first Future Workforce Summit, a word salad clearly written by someone else and which she struggled to deliver, constantly looking at the notes and manifestly without the ‘passion’ she purports to feel. While, of course, the business leaders listened politely, the reaction of others was damning, along the lines of this privileged woman, living in luxury, has the temerity to address senior workforce and early years experts about the importance of ‘love’. It certainly is extremely important but, contrary to what the royal industry and her ethereal videos want you to believe, she did not develop this thinking herself – the crucial importance of early childhood was the work of 20^th century psychoanalysts like D Winnicott. As one X user tweeted: ‘This is such an embarrassment, no job Kate lecturing businessmen on ‘love’. As if businesses were run on Kate’s puerile feelings or as if the princess has a clue of how employment or profit work in the real world’. Another said: ‘Got diverse family with independent business people, teachers & highly qualified people who’ve decades of experience in Social Care, Nursery Care, Early Years Teaching & SEN & Kate should go find another bloody hobby. Everyone I know has absolutely nothing to learn from her’.

But what’s been noticeable since the early days of the marriage and is undeniable now is that the Princess has an eating disorder which the royal industry gushing about her has turned a blind eye to. Her obvious weight loss and gaunt appearance have been prompting more and more comments and speculation as to what could be behind this. Of course this has echoes of Princess Diana and her own mental health struggles. Despite their luxurious lifestyle it can’t be easy living in this bubble, forever under a microscope and hedged in by the expectations of others.

The third silence relates to former head of Welsh Reform, Nathan Gill, who has now been found guilty of accepting Russian bribes (and other allegations of Russian involvement have long dogged Reform) and sentenced to a ten and a half year prison sentence. The media have been supportive of Reform UK for some time (the BBC openly admitted this) so didn’t cover this subject and, extraordinarily, top dogs Farage and Tice denied even having met Gill despite footage of them together. But Reform’s Zia Yusuf has now broken this silence, describing Gill as ‘treasonous, horrific, awful’ in an interview with Sir Trevor Phillips on his Sunday morning political show on Sky News. ‘Sir’ Trevor suggested to Yusuf that these events would affect people’s ability to trust anything Reform said about Russia. Gill had been well embedded in Reform, but Yusuf responded ‘I think it is unreasonable to besmirch everyone else at Reform and the millions of people around the country who support Nigel and support our party’.

There’s been another silence that, now it’s been broken in part, is breathtaking in its dishonesty and disrespect. I’m talking about Boris Johnson’s initial silence, with no formal response, following Baroness Hallett’s second report on the Covid Inquiry (set up by Boris Johnson himself) which rightly condemned his chaotic management of the pandemic and the toxic culture which was allowed to take hold in Downing Street, leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths. One X user cited 44 serious mistakes, including failure to attend key COBRA meetings, allowing sporting events like Cheltenham to go ahead, facilitating the discharge of Covid positive patients into care homes, Eat Out to Help Out, lack of testing at airports and many more which all indicate a criminally slack approach to this life-threatening situation.

But it gets worse: Johnson has been found to have lied under oath, surely leading to criminal prosecution. Regarding his activities between 14^th and 24^th February 2020, he told the Inquiry in December 2023 that ‘There wasn’t a long holiday that I took. I was working throughout the period and the tempo did increase’. But official activity logs have revealed this to be untrue, that that he took time off at a crucial time, walking his dog, taking motorcycle rides and hosting lunches and overnight stays for family at friends at Chevening. And what has brought all this to light, you might ask. We have to be grateful to the individual (s) who leaked this information and a transparency outfit I’d never previously heard of called Distributed Denial of Secrets. They describe themselves as ‘a non-profit that specializes in publishing, archiving and analyzing leaked and hacked datasets, while protecting sources. It is the world’s largest public library of previously secret information’. How the presumptuous charlatan must have been infuriated by the revelation of his lies.

Lady Hallett’s report described February 2020 as ‘a lost month’, citing the fact that there were no Cabinet meetings between 14 and 25 February. Johnson was not briefed ‘to any significant extent’ on the virus during this period and received no daily updates. Such a contemptuously casual approach clearly indicates an individual not suited to public life, let alone this role.

No wonder the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice have started a petition with the aim of bringing about legal action – public inquiries have to be about accountability besides ‘learning lessons’. It’s absurd that the main perpetrators in this tragic situation (Johnson, Cummings, Hancock, Sunak and Gove) have so far escaped any consequences for their grossly cynical and incompetent mismanagement. They should be prosecuted for misconduct in public office, but somehow such privileged people manage to remain above the fray. Even more astonishing, then, was Radio 4 Today’s choice of ‘Lord’ Gove to reflect on the report’s findings and its clear blame of the former PM. While Johnson himself remained silent yesterday, he was defended by Gove and also ‘Sir’ Mark Spencer, (unsurprisingly) Nadine Dorries, Tory MP Joe Robertson on Question Time and Rachel Johnson on LBC. An X user observed: ‘Conservative MP Joe Robertson’s dismissal of COVID negligence criticism reveals a chilling truth: the party’s moral compass remains broken. This isn’t just political defense, it’s institutionalized contempt for accountability’.

But now Johnson has attracted the ire of many by using his Mail on Sunday column to blast the Inquiry and Lady Hallett, a classic case of shooting the messenger. It’s a longstanding and cowardly defence to attack the means of seeking truth and justice and the individual in charge rather than considering one’s own role in a bad situation – I bet the mendacious clown learned this technique at Eton alongside their ethos of ‘cultivating effortless superiority’. He (of ‘let the bodies pile high’ notoriety) wrote: ‘Have these people lost their minds? More than three years after the end of the pandemic, they are still wrangling about what went wrong…Some judge has just spent the thick end of £200 million on an inquiry, and what is the upshot? She seems, if anything, to want more lockdowns. She seems to have laid into the previous Tory government for not locking down hard enough or fast enough – just when the rest of the world has been thinking that lockdowns were probably wildly overdone… I think it’s pretty obvious. Lady Hallett has been unable or unwilling to address the really important questions’. The irony which seems to have conveniently bypassed ‘Boris’ is that the two questions he reckons are key (Where did the virus come from and were the lockdowns worth the terrible price we paid?) were not in the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference which he himself approved.

He then has the nerve to describe Lady Hallett as ‘hopelessly incoherent’ and even purports to empathise with the victims and their families who, it’s been clear all along, he’s held in contempt, especially given what we later learned about Partygate.’ ‘So, faced with the agony of the Covid victims and their families – and their entirely understandable desire for catharsis of some kind – she has decided that the neatest thing is to administer a judicious kicking to the Tory administration, who no one much has an interest in defending except me, and to move on’. The families are clear: ‘He has no place in public life and we are calling again for Boris Johnson to lose all of his ex-PM privileges following the inquiry report’. Having penned his column, Johnson is now tweeting parts of it, to which the response has been forceful – the anger is palpable. One of the more polite ones reads: ‘Oh dear, what an inept response to the very clear findings that you and your shambolic government made a complete mess of the situation, resulting in thousands of premature deaths and costing the UK £billions. You and many of your colleagues should be on trial’. It will be interesting to see who else steps forward to defend this man. Also now attracting ire is a huge long ranting defence from Dominic Cummings accusing the report of being ‘damned lies’ and the result of ‘stupidity and incompetence’.

https://tinyurl.com/6t8e9znz

There have been other surprising events this week, some of which seem to have gone under the radar. One is the surely astonishing offer from Labour’s Clive Lewis during BBC’s Politics Live to give up his seat for Andy Burnham, amid continuing speculation regarding Keir Starmer’s leadership. He later said this had been a ‘hypothetical question’ put to him and he did not intend to stand down, but perhaps it’s an indication that such a move could be considered at some point.

Another surprise has been the Daily Mail group’s offer to purchase the Telegraph for £500m after the previous deal fell through. I thought it further proof of the lack of proper regulation in this country that the bidders have anticipated no strong pushback from the government but they might be well aware of the weakness of Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy. One right wing rag buying another? The business model sounds most unhealthy: ‘The Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) said it had entered a period of discussion with RedBird IMI, which is a joint venture between the United Arab Emirates and the US private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners. RedBird Capital’s own bid for control of the Telegraph collapsed last week’. A Liberal Democrat peer, Chris Fox, has expressed the doubts many will have: ‘…we are sceptical about concentrating so much agenda-setting power in the hands of so few…’ and, urging the competition regulator to ‘rigorously examine’ the terms of the agreement, he spoke of the need to ‘ensure we don’t get an even more unbalanced media market for consumers and competitors’. This is a crucial point because most of our media, print and broadcast, are in right wing hands. If this bid succeeds it will be interesting to see how the BBC responds, as they nearly always cite the Telegraph and the Mail first in newspaper reviews.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2eg1w0n81o

It’s frustrating that government and officialdom are always late catching up with damaging trends and a key example must be the insidious inroads into the UK made by Chinese online retailers who escape import tax, prime culprits being fast fashion purveyors Temu and Shein. The BBC obtained data showing that the value of small parcels shipped from China to the UK under an import tax exemption more than doubled last year to £3bn.The government is reviewing the rules which lead to imports of small packages worth £135 or less currently avoiding customs duties. UK business owners and industry groups rightly want action to protect bricks and mortar retailers from being undercut and to protect consumers from potentially faulty goods. We Brits have been far too supine about this, less so in France. In Paris other organisations have been pulling out of a luxury department store, BHV, because Shein has set up there and there have been significant public protests. It’s the first time Shein has ventured a bricks and mortar presence and it’s not being taken casually. The Week quotes The Spectator: ‘Don’t look on this as just another retail opening- it’s cultural surrender’, because for ‘more than a century, BHV has ‘embodied a certain Parisian ideal of accessible luxury, craftsmanship and good taste’. It seems that Shein is regarded as the direct opposite. Some Parisian commentators have called it ‘the Walmartification of French fashion’ and ‘Paris renting out its soul to Chinese algorithms’.

But we, as well as the Parisians, have a big responsibility here. Too many have been seduced by the desire for cheap stuff at the expense of quality and environmental principles. Shein has been associated with ‘well documented vile labour and commercial practices’ but not unlike Primark and others here in the UK, what do the purchasers care when they can get some cheap stuff with zero hassle? It seems short termism rules supreme despite the concern in some quarters about these ‘regulation skirting companies’ effectively closing down domestic companies. I never thought I’d approve of anything Trump did but here’s something: he’s imposed a 100% tax on parcels from Shein and similar and shipments to the US have dropped 40%. That is some result. The EU and the UK need to do something similar but individual consumers need to understand what their desire for cheap fashion is doing to domestic industry and the environment.

Besides the Budget another over-hyped event coming up is Black Friday, trailed for weeks on end but which might prove useful if we’re clobbered by Rachel Reeves’s measures. This coming week the BBC is focusing on scams. ‘Scam Safe week brings together content from across the BBC including TV, radio, iPlayer, Sounds and online – to help the public stay informed in the fight against scams’. Consumers have been warned about Black Friday scams and also adverts which may not be scams as such but which are misleading, such as promoting a product at a higher price for a while then reducing it just before next Friday, to make it look more of a bargain. I’d be interested to know just how much people do benefit from this heavily hyped event.

Finally, on a lighter note, we often hear about library amnesties and books being returned after years but now The Week cites a plate stolen from a Cambridge College over 100 years ago being returned. It was swiped from Gonville and Caius College by a Gordon Stewart Wimbush in 1908 and on his death his widow passed it to a close family friend, then in her 20s. I wonder why this lady, now 85, waited all this time to return it to ‘its proper home’ and also if the college is still using the same china! The response of the college is not recorded.

Sunday 9 November

Today is Remembrance Sunday and although it may well be different from London in other parts of the country observation has definitely been declining in recent years. A while back many would sport poppies weeks or certainly days before the main commemoration and the two minute silence would be observed in workplaces and in public including cafes. It’s not the case now. It was interesting to see a bit of a tussle on social media following a post about the lack of poppy wearing. Some respondents said they wouldn’t do it as it glorified war but quite a few said they regularly donated to veterans’ charities but chose not to take a poppy. All proof that we can’t afford to make assumptions about people’s views and experience. Inevitably there have been the usual sanctimonious comments in the media from politicians and others about ‘sacrifice’ etc when many of them have been guilty of stirring up dissent and making zero sacrifices themselves.

Another phenomenon, of course, has been the appearance of the royal family, a longstanding tradition but one which they may think helps validate them given recent unsavoury events. It’s been really striking that the Palace PR machine has released multiple monarchist bots on social media, swamping us with posts about William on yet another environment busting long haul trip in aid of his performative projects while he lectures us about the climate crisis, the Princess of Wales and what she’s wearing and now Prince George and what a great king he’s going to be. Not if anti-monarchists can help it.

Having spent years covering up for him, the King only took action on the then Prince Andrew when the scandal surrounding him continued to dominate the news and raise further questions about the continuity of the arcane and expensive institution of monarchy. King Charles only managed to prise his brother from Royal Lodge by making him a hefty one off payment and an ‘annual stipend’ intended to stop him overspending. Each decision eg about removal of titles was just enough, it was thought, to quell public discontent but the public weren’t buying it and, humiliatingly, the King had to keep making further gestures towards ostracism than he had intended to. Most people don’t believe that exile in another luxury home with an annual allowance is much of a punishment. The move was billed as being ‘as soon as practicably possible’ but this is a bit of a nonsense when it will actually be the New Year, in order for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s presence not to mar proceedings at the Sandringham Christmas. But what a hard bargain this arrogant de-princed individual is driving: we now hear that he’s demanding the same level of staffing that he’s had at Royal Lodge – a butler, housekeeper and cook at least. Why on earth in his humbled position would he need a butler? But the weak king will probably accept these conditions based on his form for caving.

So many commentators seem to be missing the main issue here and that is why there’s all this focus on the performative gestures of punishment when what’s needed is a criminal investigation of what he knew and when especially in view of the lies he’s told the media and public. There’s also the issue of his highly questionable financial arrangements and how he could afford his lavish lifestyle, partly enabled by some unsavoury connections he made when operating as a trade envoy. This isn’t just a personal matter because the sources of his finance touch on national security. The decisions taken by the King, with the collusion of this government, are widely seen as being about damage limitation, preserving the luxurious royals’ reputation rather than about justice and accountability. We keep hearing ‘no one is above the law’ but the royal family and other elites are in practice. Apparently AMW has until November 20^th to respond to the US Congress request for him to give evidence over there regarding Epstein and it’s highly likely that lawyers and Palace staff, guarding their own positions as well as his, will recommend not replying and certainly not complying.

The royals seem to have fallen into the age old trap of believing that by excising what they see as the poison will be enough to deter well justified and way overdue attention and scrutiny – of their opaque finances, their being exempt from major taxes and numerous laws and the sheer amount they cost. Not only is the sovereign grant £86.3 million but besides the favourable conditions granted to the Crown Estate, the profits of the two Duchys (Lancaster and Cornwall) go straight to, respectively, King Charles and Prince William. But it doesn’t work like that: if anything this whole Andrew debacle has focused more attention on the arcane and hugely expensive institution of monarchy itself. Support for the monarchy is at its lowest ever level and especially given the parlous state of the country’s finances more are rightly asking why do we need it? The servility and deference (which some are still clinging onto) of previous times have goneand, thanks to the internet, social media and investigative journalism we know much more about the monarchy than at any other time. In recent years there have been media exposures of these issues by the Guardian (The Cost of the Crown), the Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches. The Guardian one partly focused on what the royals do in return for the largesse they receive (very little and the work of projects is done by others, not them), and the responses they received from courtiers and others was one of surprise that any reciprocation would come into the equation at all. For its part Channel 4 discovered the exploitative way the Duchys were run, charging high rents for land and properties with no proper maintenance and the charges were also the same for strapped public sector organisations like the NHS.

In addition, several myths abound which monarchists use to justify the institution’s existence, for example the idea that it brings in tourist income. There’s actually no evidence of a link between this income and the royals, and France gets many more tourists (especially to Versailles) when they’ve not had a monarchy for centuries. Cutting ribbons and attending charitable events and the like are billed as ‘work’ when they’re not and besides all the expensive travel involving frequent use of helicopters, William and Kate in particular have been criticised for the number of luxurious holidays they take (at least 8 this year so far). Another argument royalists resort to is that some of the 19 homes they have in their portfolio are their ‘own’, eg purchased by Queen Victoria etc – but as veteran Labour politician (and former chair of the Public Accounts Committee) said, the land and property ownership were only made possible because of historical gifts and inherited wealth. They have not earned it themselves and it should belong properly to the state. Some of those using these arguments are amongst the army of royal ‘correspondents’, photographers and other hangers on, who depend on royals for their living, constituting a form of parasitism. What would they all do if they had to seek alternative work?

We hear regularly about the King’s plans for a ‘slimmed down monarchy’ but we don’t see much evidence of change. All these are serious questions in the 21^st century and the conduct of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is only part of a much larger picture.

As the long anticipated Budget approaches there’s been no end of speculation and ‘kite flying’ about what it may or may not include, with increasing efforts by media figures to trap government interviewees into disclosing details. This becomes very tedious after a while eg interviewers like the right wing Nick Robinson, Chris Mason or Laura Kuenssberg divert from the main subject of the interview with the aim of landing a gotcha, only for the recipient to respond ‘I won’t be drawn…’ etc or ‘I honestly don’t know… that’s a matter for the Chancellor’. Of course right wing parties won’t suggest this but we should have had a proper wealth tax from the start of this government and some commentators have said a fair approach is a land tax. And there should be much more tax applied to the royal family, which currently manages to escape most of them due to historical precedent which needs challenging. At the same time Opposition parties engage in much scaremongering besides speculation, for example about taxes rising when they actually need to in order to maintain crumbling public services. This political habit of demonising tax is very harmful, in my view: it creates a ‘tax cuts good, tax bad’ narrative that can strongly influence voting patterns.

Speaking of which, that was quite some result recently in Caerphilly, where, contrary to the expectations of Reform UK, they were roundly rejected in favour of Plaid Cymru, a key element having been strong tactical voting to keep Reform out. Of course it was a massive wake-up call for the main parties as well, and as various commentators have observed, we’re seeing anyway the beginning of the end of the traditional two party system. Besides the nationalist parties doing better, the much more ethical Lib Dems and Greens (particularly following the election of leader Zack Polanski) are rising up the ranks. The government is not performing well, with numerous disappointments and resignations over the 18 months of their administration, and with the rise of Reform the Tories have been flailing around on the sidelines despite the arrogant bullishness of their leader Kemi Badenoch and gimmicky policy announcements like the one on stamp duty.

Commentator Andy Beckett suggests that the end of safe seats and long careers could lead to less complacency but the demise of large parties could result in greater corporate influence. And already the largely under the radar influence of powerful lobbies is toxic to our politics. Another key factor is the unsatisfactory nature of the first past the post system. ‘Every party’s gains or losses could be hugely magnified or minimised by an electoral system not designed for such multiparty competition… Experienced ministers and veteran rebels may become even more rare. Swing voters – easy to identify in battles between two parties – may be replaced by a multitude of still more fickle electoral groups, chased by half a dozen parties. Meanwhile, party heartlands may crumble, old loyalties overcome by dynamic-seeming new choices’. A third option he identifies is that this could be a temporary phase until a more settled political order takes hold.

I thought the most striking part of his piece is the 2013 quote from the Irish political scientist Peter Mair, from his book Ruling the Void: ‘The age of party democracy has passed. Although the parties themselves remain, they have become so disconnected from the wider society, and pursue a form of competition that is so lacking in meaning, that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form’. That’s so true about parties becoming disconnected from society, many politicians existing in the privileged and well-remunerated Westminster bubble whatever they say about what they allegedly hear ‘on the doorsteps’. Usually we only see them on said doorsteps prior to elections and it seems quite a few don’t hold regular constituency surgeries and some none at all.

https://tinyurl.com/rkh3bj55

With the rise of right wing parties in Europe and Donald Trump’s increasingly reactionary tenure in the US, it was very good news to at least see some Americans fighting back with the election of the Muslim DemocratZohran Mamdani elected as Mayor of New York City. No surprise that the vengeful Trump immediately declared war on him and threatened to withhold federal funding – something surely he should not have the power to do. It will be very interesting to see how the situation develops especially as more MAGA supporters become disillusioned with Trump.

Two current news items about the broadcasting industry are focusing minds on how we use the broadcast media in 2025 and what we’re prepared to pay for. A veteran of the industry, Sir Peter Bazalgette, commented that given the power of the streaming giants it was inevitable that some consolidation would take place, but surely the news that ITV is seriously considering selling part of its organisation to Sky is quite alarming. The mostly right wing ownership of all media means that we need more diversity of provision, not less. But a marked decline in advertising revenue is a reality which might well force them down this path. Such a sale would be worth £1.6 billion and include the public service broadcaster’s terrestrial TV channels and streaming service ITVX.

Rather riveting IMO is the row that’s broken out following Boris Johnson’s accusation of BBC left wing bias following the discovery that footage of Trump had been doctored and put together to suggest his complicity in the events of that fateful 6 January 2021. Radio 4’s Today programme presenter Nick Robinson allegedly ‘blasted’ Johnson over this accusation (absurd as the BBC is manifestly right wing in its news and current affairs coverage), linking it with plots to bring down the BBC. Our former PM said Director General Tim Davie had serious questions to answer and threatened to withhold his licence fee. (I never understand people saying this because most of us pay by direct debit and I’d have thought it doubtful that Johnson never watches BBC content, meaning that he’d be in breach of the law. Silly me, though – lawlessness is his second name). It’s this tweet of Robinson’s that seems to have annoyed Johnson the most: ‘Hands up all those who think Boris Johnson is well placed to lecture anyone else on upholding standards & admitting mistakes. As I said this morning on Today, ‘it’s clear that there is a genuine concern about editorial standards and mistakes. There is also a political campaign by people who want to destroy the organisation…Both things are happening at the same time’.”

For once I agree with both these two: there is indeed a difference between seeking accountability and trying to bring the organisation down but there’s also a longstanding and deep-seated arrogance characterising the BBC. The issue is much wider than bias – there’s well proven misinformation and news omission, which make a mockery of its recent advert condemning disinformation and which finishes with a dramatic flourish – ‘trust is all: it’s OUR BBC.’ Yet ‘Defund the BBC’ often appears in social media and there’s certainly some resentment about the licence fee. I wonder how the BBC would fare if it was forced to change to a subscription model. As the fee comes up for reconsideration in 2027 it’s a reasonable question.

Apparently the BBC’s chairman, Samir Shah, is set to apologise to MPs tomorrow following this criticism of the Panorama broadcast last October. Yet another performative gesture in public life – I wouldn’t have thought his apology (a letter, not even in person) would make much difference at all. The whole affair has also shown again the weakness of Culture Minister Lisa Nandy, who has every ‘confidence’ in the BBC and the useless Ofcom. The irony of the entire situation is that Boris Johnson appointed Tories to at least four key positions in the BBC and now he’s chosen to find fault with them when they depart from the bias he prefers. But maybe Nandy is finally showing some strength, with the news this evening that both Tim Davie and Deborah Turness have resigned. A good result but I wonder why now when there has been plenty of cause for them to go before now. Let’s hope Boris Johnson doesn’t try to attribute these developments to his intervention.

A very important piece of legislation has been making its way through Parliament and last weekMPs debated amendments to Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, destined to get Royal Assent before the end of the year. Angela Rayner wrote a moving piece explaining why it was so important and pointing out the relentless efforts of right wing parties to upend it. ‘This game changing package of measures includes protection from unfair dismissal, strengthened sick pay, bereavement leave, action against sexual harassment at work, a ban on zero-hours contracts, an end to fire and rehire, and a genuine living wage. It means family rights such as flexible working and parental leave from day one, stronger protections for pregnant women, and steps to tackle the gender pay gap. It also includes an historic fair pay agreement in social care – a new, legally binding pledge that will set minimum pay and employment terms for care workers in England and improve the standard of care. Taken together, this package would be the single biggest boost to rights at work in a generation. And yet, our bill has faced fierce criticism from the Tories and Reform, and relentless lobbying from vested interests.’

In City AM Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Andrew Griffith, penned a scaremongering article saying ‘Employers are dreading this Bill. Written by and for the trade unions, it poses a dire threat to businesses and the wider economy, both of which are already struggling under the weight of Rachel Reeves’ tax hikes. And it also spells disaster for the jobs market – and everyone who is either looking for a job or at any risk of losing one’. We get the usual arguments about how ‘Labour doesn’t understand business’, when the Conservatives themselves haven’t been great role models in that area. But the Tory and cross party amendments the government rejected do sound worthy of consideration, eg reversal of Labour’s plans to scrap the 50 per cent minimum turnout required for strike ballots, which (in Griffith’s words ‘would allow militant activists to shut down vital services at will’. Meanwhile Labour says a poll found that employers are largely in favour of the bill. What’s surely depressing, though, is the view in some quarters that organisations only work well when workers are deprived of rights. An important and overlooked point surely is that given all political parties are concerned at the rising numbers of people not in work, not seeking work, on sick leave etc, measures aimed at improving workplace conditions and rights must be a good thing.

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On a positive note, it was great news to hear that the overlooked area of older people’s housing was the winner of this year’s Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling Prize. The Appleby Blue almshouse is a modernised form of this historic model of accommodation, located in Bermondsey, South London, consisting of 59 flats for pensioners on low incomes, with some great sounding communal facilities designed to tackle loneliness such as a roof garden, courtyard and community kitchen. This kind of thing should be the norm, not the exception – there’s just too much older people’s accommodation that’s grim and institutionalised. Hopefully this project will energise other architects to follow suit.

Finally, many will have been amused at the news that hoax council letters were sent to homes flying the St George’s flag in Gloucestershire, informing them that they would be required to house refugees because ‘we know you would be proud to assist your country’. A Reform councillor called the letters ‘childish’ and ‘silly’ whereas we could probably do with more wheezes like this!