A Tragicomedy in Two Parts

‘A week is along time in politics’  is one of those clichés that demonstrate the power of the genre: Sometimes reality catches up with truth without trying.

After the UK’s appointed but never elected to office Prime Minster Rishi Sunak (Winchester College, Lincoln College Oxford, Stanford University) announced his decision to ask the King to dissolve Parliament (the Prime Minister and the Monarch have to agree and always do; the alternative is problematic …) he stood in a downpour outside No. 10 Downing Street to tell the rest of us and was drenched on camera. Then he went to Belfast – no, I don’t know why either, who does? – and, now dried out, made a speech standing next to the dock where the Titanic was built. I am not making this up to humiliate him.

From this spectacle everyone on the political spectrum decided Sunak was intent on throwing the forthcoming General Election. I mean, how else could one explain this Ealing Comedy level of absurdity? The dullest headmaster in all of British history, Sir Keir Starmer (Reigate selective grammar, Leeds University, St Edmund Hall Cambridge) was going to walk into Downing Street not by popular acclaim but because he was the only other stuffed suit on offer ¹. The thing that most divided the pundits was how big the Tory wipeout will be and the scale of the voter abstentions; but even on 40 per cent voting levels the Tories would lucky to beat Jeremy ‘Hizbollah are my friends’ Corbyn’s dismal 2020 result. Extinction it is.

That was a week ago …

The Coronation of Sir Keir that seemed so certain last week is now in tatters. This for two reasons – or, perhaps the same reason joined at the hip. First, Labour left wingers who swoon for the days of Jeremy Corbyn (‘the Prince over the Water’– look it up yourself) and second, the continuing fighting in Gaza. The link between these two points is Jews. Obviously, Gaza is top of the national agenda for urgent attention for the Labour left …

Having dumped Jeremy Corbyn, his one time mentor, out of the Labour Party, Starmer has also sandbagged a few others from Momentum, Jeremy’s personal S.A. bodyguard, arriving this past week at the door of Diane Abbott, a ‘dear friend’ of Jeremy’s and reliable enemy of anyone running her party (except that is for her ‘dear friend’ Jeremy).

A practiced race baiter, Abbott has been marginalised by Starmer recently and is marked for an early exit, possibly to that Elephant graveyard, the House of Lords (that rest home for failures Starmer has hinted he would like to shut down – you see his thinking). Otherwise universally despised², Abbott³ mysteriously remains a darling of the Labour left and Metro luvvies and all those simple-minded fortunates who have not met her. It was in truth a bit brutal of Starmer but, hey, that’s politics baby!Over several decades Abbott’s off the cuff comments on race have been a train wreck for the Labour Party. She has even been condemned by Caliph of Londonistan Sadiq Khan!

To hear Abbott making her race-based train wreck comments to camera in her cut glass accent is a Bridgerton too far.

When Abbott announced to her people she had been blocked by ‘Starmer’ to stand once again in war torn vibrant Hackney  as Labour’s candidate, there was the predictable indifference outside the M25. However the London Bubble responded as one stung on its collective bottom and demanded of Prime Minister-in-waiting Starmer why, oh, why!? Falling back on his many years as Crown Prosecutor, Starmer deployed the ‘search me, guv’ defence. And looked convincingly clueless. Not so fiery Angela Rayner (Coal Board comprehensive, expelled) Starmer’s kneel mate. (Do your own image search!) She hinted (the way Lavrentiy Beria did I imagine) that if Diane wants to stand, she will stand and I, Rayner say so!

Even our useless national media picked up this contradiction must mean a ‘power struggle’. Could it be that tough as week old lettuce Starmer had been spanked in public by the Deputy Headmistress from Hell Shocker!? S*d Sunak! This is the big story! Suddenly the Good Ship Starmer had stuck a ‘berg. Could it be as big as the one Rishi apparently never received the memo about?

Starmer, who served twice in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet and voted Remain in the Brexit Referendum, has sat on his hands much of his short career. Now since becoming leader there is hardly a policy he once stood by that he hasn’t reversed – it’s a long list. He has also purged Corbyn, his erstwhile mentor who gave  Starmer his first shadow ministerial positions (his having entered Parliament as recently as 2015). Et tu Brute? The supposed reason for Corbyn’s Stalin level ejection from the party was his attempt to excuse the anti-Semitic character of his time as party Leader (see below). Corbyn’s refusal to accept this was a failing plus Corbyn was useless anyway.

Diane was a ‘dear friend’ of Jeremy. I can write no more as this is a family blog. It turns out that quite a few more Labour MPs are also, but less literally. The cabal around Starmer has been successful in some degree in cancelling these or offering them a bribe of a place in the Lords (so it is rumoured). In this context, ‘the purge of the leftists’, Tony Blair’s name has been mentioned as an advisor to Starmer; Blair won three general elections, one after Gulf War II and that ‘march’ so, naturally, is particularly hated by the Labour left and many more, not that he cares.

Bringing us up to date, Diane’s ‘dear friend’ Baroness Chakrabarti, herself author of a report white washing clearing Jeremy Corbyn, whose ‘dear friends’ include Hizbollah, of being antisemitic. Chakrabarti (Bentley Wood Grammar, L.S.E.) was ennobled by Lord Cameron of Shanghai. The plot is thinning faster than one can say ‘brain drain’.

Today, Gaza and Israel’s response to the 7th October massacre suddenly is the issue for the activists to beat Starmer over the head with, all of them Corbyn’s ‘dear friends’, who are royally pissed at Starmer’s refusal to outright condemn the Jews Israel, leave alone defiantly assert Hizbollah’s right to defend itself! Thanks to this not to be ignored faction active everywhere and in all places there can hardly be anyone left in Blighty who couldn’t now recognise the ‘Palestinian’ flag. That’s the future. An issue this country cannot do anything about overarches all the others close to home and there are plenty. The left’s luxury beliefs, Palestine and trans. Even the B.B.C. thinks this is a split in Starmer’s march back to power …

The Liberal Democrats, finger on the national pulse as ever, wish for more Premier League football games on free to air. Well, least they aren’t shooting dogs.

1. Spare me Ed Davey!

2. ‘Abbott’s decision in 2003 to send her son to the private City of London School after criticising colleagues for sending their children to selective schools, which she herself described as “indefensible” and “intellectually incoherent”, caused controversy and criticism’ – Wikipedia

3. In 2008, during a BBC One This Week interview between Abbott, Michael Portillo and Andrew Neil, Abbott said about the Chinese leader Mao Zedong: “I suppose some people will judge that on balance Mao did more good than harm… He led his country from feudalism, he helped to defeat the Japanese and he left his country on the verge of the great economic success they are having now.” She finished by saying: “I was just putting the case for Mao.” – ibid