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’.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 