The Mirror’s Kevin Maguire says British Government is merely an onlooker as Russia and Israel supporter Donald Trump stays on the wrong side of morality
Like firebombers pouring petrol on smouldering resentments, dangerous Right-wingers plot to benefit from flames they hope to ignite.
Hate-mongers Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are no mere commentators in loudly voicing resentments, disinterested analysts warning a country could explode in anger Incendiary words and deeds from Reform and Conservative rabble-rousers smack of incitement from a reckless group seeking to benefit from a repetition of Southport-style riots – this time triggered over asylum hotels.
This mob deserves to see their fingers burned for deliberately or otherwise raising temperatures, although mercifully the weekend protests were smaller than some predicted and perhaps yearned for. It comes after police arrested 15 people on Saturday as clashes erupted across the UK over the use of asylum hotels.
READ MORE: My grandparents fled Hitler, today in London someone screamed ‘filth’ in my face
In an Age of Unreason, facts and truth are replaced by rage and lies as they were after the terrible murder of three young girls in Southport.
Lies spread then about the supposed killer, when the actual suspect was British-born and no small boat asylum seeker,, are echoed now when all residents of these hotels are falsely portrayed as threats to society. The Hard and Far Right thrives on culture wars to divide and rule, forever seeking divisions. Take the sudden hanging of flags. This is about prejudice not pride, often deliberately provocative to spark a reaction.
Slippery Farage has the air of a John Bull who’d be disappointed if the widespread unrest he warns about doesn’t occur.
Self-combusting Jenrick is an unconvincing Faragist mini-me, the Conservative Immigration Minister suddenly demanding the closure of the very hotels he put asylum seekers into. Ditto Badenoch, urging Conservative councils to legally challenge accommodation into which people were first housed by a Conservative Government she sat in.
Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and the UK Labour Government acknowledge and are working creatively to solve an issue inherited from the Tories.
This is a clash between essentially two types of politician: builders and wreckers. Farage, Badenoch and Jenrick are wrecking balls, creating or magnifying problems then screaming wildly without developing workable solutions.
Starmer and Cooper are builders, seeking ways forward, however imperfectly and on occasions without success.
In the Age of Unreason the builders are fighting a rearguard battle against the screeching wreckers.
Let’s hope they win or the country might go up in flames.
Warlords exposing Britain’s irrelevance
Twin warlords of death Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu expose Britain’s irrelevance on the world stage.
Vlad the Invader pulling puppet Donald Trump’s strings leaves Keir Starmer and other democratic leaders in the feeble coalition scrambling to prevent the US President demanding Ukraine’s total surrender to Russia’s violent Tsar.
Similarly with Israel a UK Government finally with a better position over the murderous slaughter and starvation of innocent Palestinians in Gaza is ignored by Netanyahu’s extremist settler regime, Trump again the key man on the wrong side of morality.
Taking principled positions from the start, pursuing an ethical foreign policy, calling out Putin, Netanyahu and Trump, would surely be superior to shilly-shallying in the name of diplomacy in pursuit of non-existent influence.
That way Britain would at least be on the right side of history.
Right-whingers threatened by Angela Raynor’s success
Sneering snobs smear Angela Rayner because they’re threatened by a Deputy PM who is a popular Labour working class success, overcoming the grimmest of starts in life to be reborn a political star.
Exaggerated hysteria over buying a South Coast flat with her boyfriend near his kids underlined grotesque resentment that a girl fed dog food by a troubled mother who then left school pregnant aged 16 has climbed to the top through the trade union movement, Tony Blair’s children’s centres and true grit.
Do Britain’s reactionary Right-whingers, both Conservative and Reform, actually want those who come into this world shackled to remain downtrodden? Sometimes I wonder. Rayner’s real crime is to refuse to be bullied as she champions wider opportunities, challenging powerful vested interests that are keeping back working people today.
Yes, she does own an Ashton-under-Lyne constituency home in Greater Manchester but not a real so-called third in Whitehall when she’s a tenant in a place that comes and will go with the job.
The hypocrisy is Tory newspapers owned by landed barons regularly targeting Rayner because she isn’t like them.
Wealth tax on the few needed
Well-heeled entrepreneur and Patriotic Millionaires UK founder Julia Davies is a nightmare for the selfish rich and an avenging angel for all those of us who want a fairer and better Britain. She’s made a shedload and with the likes of former City trader Gary Stevenson argues from experience how a wealth tax on a few folk like her could raise £24billion to fix our struggling economy and crumbling public services.
Davies details convincingly how 2% or £20,000 on each million of assets over £10million would be loose change and they’d still still be £530,000 better off annually per million because wealth that excessive earns at least 5% a year.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the Budget wouldn’t need to put up taxes on 99.96% of the population if she did on the 20,000 or 0.04% who wouldn’t miss a few quid.
GOING UP
Persuasive clarity and grasp of asylum seeker hotel issues from Labour former Justice Secretary Charlie Falconer should see him deployed more often. His killer fact was Rwanda
would’ve taken only 300 migrants a year, six a week. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s France plan is an initial 50 a week or more than eight times as many.
GOING DOWN
Politics is a dirty trade but Keithley and Ilkley Tory muck-spreader Robbie Moore owes Shipley Labour neighbour Anna Dixon at the very least an apology when police are investigating death threats against her blamed on a grooming gang disputed video he posted online.
SPEAKER’S CORNER
“I don’t like trade unions.” Reform’s Greater Lincolnshire Mayor and Tory MP defector Andrea Jenkyns let the cat out of the bag when yours truly was on Jeremy Vine’s Channel 5 show last week with her. Farage is a worker-exploiting Thatcherite Fat Cat and his Hard Right party’s stuffed with ultra-Conservatives who detest job rights, the welfare state and a healthy NHS. Bashing migrants is their cover.