Warmonger Donald Trump was elected vowing to keep the US out of military conflicts but theere is no crisis he cannot make worse
Warmonger Donald Trump blowing up talks between Britain, France and Germany with his Iran attack is the deranged Dr Strangelove in the White House demonstrating he is not to be trusted.
Not just because he was elected vowing to keep the US out of military conflicts, although that broken promise is fuelling his oddball Maga alliance back home.
Impulsive, reckless Trump is untrustworthy because one, there is no crisis he cannot make worse and, two, this toddler man President doesn’t give a fig for the views and values of America’s traditional allies in Europe and Nato.
Flannel from Israel ’s out of control Benjamin Netanyahu, a hawk on whose watch the horrific Hamas pogrom occurred and bloody Palestinian ethnic cleansing has been pursued, unintentionally confirms Trump made the wrong call.
No wonder UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres branded the strikes a “dangerous escalation” and “direct threat to international peace”. Mercifully, the International Atomic Energy Agency detected “no increase in off-site radiation levels” after stressing it had no evidence Iran was developing nuclear missiles.
To be against military attacks on Iran is not to endorse a tyrannical regime, just as decrying the Iraq invasion was never a sympathy vote for Saddam Hussein.
The issue is how to achieve a better, safer world – and Keir Starmer must keep Britain distant from such aggressors or he will trigger a blowback that could collapse his own regime.
Funny old game, football
Sunderland, back in the Premier League, once conceded three own goals in seven first-half minutes against Charlton in a 3-1 home defeat to go bottom and be relegated from the top flight at the end of the season.
Keir Starmer loves his football too and texted congratulations when the Mackems won promotion to the Championship three years ago, yet the Arsenal fan now in No.10 risks emulating Sunderland’s 2003 fate unless he stops Labour ’s own goals.
Disability benefit cuts is the latest of these.
Scores of unhappy MPs are threatening to abstain or rebel amid talk of as many as a dozen parliamentary aides and ministers contemplating resigning from Starmer’s government.
They would be following former Shadow Disabled People Minister Vicky Foxcroft in doing so.
She is a politician who overcame childhood sexual and domestic abuse to champion others and so could not stand such callous cuts. Labour MPs busily writing report cards for constituents have a lot to boast about ahead of July 4’s anniversary of independence from the Tories.
NHS revitalisation, rising living standards, higher minimum wage, vastly improved job rights, housebuilding, rail renationalisation, a secure and renewable energy drive, trade deals, beginning to get to grips with migration and asylum, more grafters in employment and four interest rate cuts are Labour payback. I would not include squandering extra cash on defence when we already spend more than most but nearly all Labour MPs probably will.
Yet scything benefits such as axing the Winter Fuel Allowance for millions, before reinstating that for the majority of pensioners, is another avoidable own goal. It’s what Louise Haigh, unfairly derailed as Transport Secretary, called unpopular decisions overshadowing the good.
Even George Osborne, an austerity Conservative Chancellor who imposed deeper and nastier welfare cuts, recognises they will look much less fair should current incumbent Rachel Reeves ease taxes on wealthy tycoons bleating they will quit Britain.
There is no sign of Starmer repeating the winter fuel U-turn on benefits and unless he does, the winners from it will be Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and Ed Davey.
Putting the ball in Labour’s net instead of scoring against Reform, the Conservatives and Lib Dems invites a fate I endured Sunderland suffering.
Tories and Reform are two peas from same pod
The misnamed Reform-linked think-tank Centre for a Better Britain putting out feelers to Tory right-whinger Robert Jenrick is further evidence that Nigel Farage and prominent Conservatives are peas from the same political pod.
Thatcherite Farage is a former Tory member with so many “second” jobs he’s Parliament’s worst moonlighter. He is a City slicker peddling policies – NHS, tax, steel nationalisation – he doesn’t believe in and would never implement to trick working people into making him the PM.
He’ll do a dirty deal with the Tories if it’s in his best interests. And then like Brexit, he’d kick supporters in the wallets. Vote Reform, get conned again.