Situations Vacant: Brexit Secretary – the one person in the country who can’t just shout just “get the **** on with it” at the telly. David Davis, who was leading negotiations to leave the EU, has resigned from the government, a man “unpersuaded” that the UK’s negotiating approach “will not just lead to further demands for concessions” from the wonks in Brussels. Good news, then, for Leavers who don’t fancy Theresa May’s plans for a soggy Brexit; and good news for Remainers who want to talk about Brexit “chaos” and demand a second referendum (oh, save us).
Who gets the job? Thrusting Michael Gove, maybe. How about Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary who says May’s Brexit plans are like a “big turd”? So selfless is Johnson that he won’t do a Davis and resign when invited to sell a steaming pile of crap to the majority of us who voted to leave the EU, but back it to the hilt, as he has done. “I hate this,” said Andrea Leadsom during a big meeting Cabinet meeting at the PM’s country pile in Chequers, but “I’ll support you no matter what decision you take.” The EU’s negotiators don’t stand a chance against these principled pillars of public service.
After the excitement and decisiveness of the Referendum result, we’ve been told that there are multiple Brexits. The UK is leaving the EU. Unless there’s an appetite for a second referendum – which away from Gina Miller’s white stuccoed salon and Tony Blair’s bankers’ orgy there isn’t – we’re heading out. The details will then be sorted out, which was ever the way. Brexit has come to resemble less a divorce than one of the aforesaid Blair and David Cameron’s attacks on Iraq and Libya: identify the useful enemy, champion ‘regime change’, blow the whole thing up and let god knows who sort out what happens next.
What unites the factions behind Jeremy Cobyn’s Labour? In a word: Jews. Obscurantist theories about Jews are now back in the mainstream. Jew baiting and Jew hatred never went away, of course. Overt anti-Semitism in the West became unfashionable, the stuff of far-right goons and governments in the Middle East. But now thanks to Corbyn and his fans, Jew hatred is the done thing in the left wing. They say it’s all “smears“. It isn’t. Labour has rejected the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s [IHRA] definition of antisemitism. Its working definition is accepted by thousands of public bodies. But not the British Labour party.
The IRHA defined anti-Semitism thus:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong.” It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.
That definition is adopted by the current UK government, the Crown Prosecution Service and many other nations. But Labour has written its own rules. And it’s one so to help itself deal with members accused of Jew hatred. You might suppose that Jews know anti-Semitism when they hear it. Corbyn’s Labour knows best. Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl and Jewish Leadership Council Chair Jonathan Goldstein can’t work out why Labour has move to rework the definition of Jw hatred. “It is for Jews to determine for themselves what antisemitism is. they says. “The UK Jewish community has adopted in full the IHRA definition of antisemitism, as have the British Government, Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament, 124 local authorities across the country and numerous governments around the world… (Labour’s) actions only dilute the definition and further erode the existing lack of confidence that British Jews have in their sincerity to tackle antisemitism within the Labour movement.”
Labour dropped the alliance’s stipulation that it was racist to accuse Jewish citizens of having a greater loyalty to world Jewry than their own country, or to hold Israel to a higher standard than other democratic nations. The international definition implies that Ken Livingstone’s “Hitler was a Zionist” fake history or comparisons of Israel with Nazism are racist. Labour prefers to hide in a forest of equivocation. It is normal to draw metaphors from history, its Jewsplainers state. It is not antisemitic to use them “unless there is evidence of antisemitic intent”. As you can rarely look into another person’s soul and prove intent, I take that to mean Labour is giving many of its racists a free pass…
Recently departed Labour staffers describe as a “political project” the party’s decision to make Jews the only ethnic minority Labour denies the right to define the racism they face.
Why Jews? A study found that “more than half of Muslims (55%) held at least one anti-Semitic attitude”. It’s absurd and insulting to think all Muslims are Jew haters. But Corbyn – formerly a presenter on Iran’s Press TV – courts the Islamist vote. And Corbynist do so love a conspiracy theory. Jews, you know, are behind anything and everything, including the Salisbury chemical weapons attack.
Cohen adds:
It ought to be notorious that antisemitism is an anti-democratic project built on almost two millennia of religious prejudice. The Tsarists and fascists used it to dismiss human rights and free elections as tricks the Jews used to hide their secret power. The old Marxist-Leninists who surround Corbyn were not so different. They also believed human rights and democracy were shams – only in this instance they hid the machinations of corporate capitalism. It’s only a small leap to say the capitalists are Jews – or “Rothschilds” as Corbyn’s supporters so tellingly call them – and you have reached the other side.
Conspiracy theorists toss up all manner of oddities. Corbyn’s supporters deride those who say climate change is hyped or ‘fake news’ but can buy a Left-wing magazine that shows this on is front page:
And what of the letter written to the Guardian by find minds worried that “the debate on anti-Semitism has been framed…to weaponise it against a single political figure just ahead of important elections”?
How can it be that so many self-proclaimed anti-racists on the Left have a problem with Jews? And why can’t they see what anti-Semitism looks like?
Owen Jones is such a wag really, isn’t he? Apparently flying a hot air balloon that looks like a caricature of Trump over London during his upcoming visit is going to say something. Even that it will upset, possibly shock, Americans.
That blimp will be the perfect mascot for the mass demonstrations that will form Donald Trump’s welcoming party next week. Trump is hoping to use Britain as a perverse PR exercise, to show that he has indeed made America “great again”, that the country is now respected. Instead images will be broadcast across the globe of thousands of the citizens of America’s closest ally ridiculing the most powerful man on Earth, accompanied by a giant balloon of the president in a nappy.
You see, the Americans have that First Amendment to their Constitution. And they believe in it, they really believe:
A giant balloon dubbed “Trump baby” has been given the green light to fly near parliament during the president’s UK visit.
London mayor Sadiq Khan’s Greater London Authority has approved a request for the flight after thousands signed a petition and a crowdfunding campaign raised more than £16,000 to get the six-metre inflatable off the ground.
Strict rules are in place for the flight from Parliament Square Gardens, with the balloon being tethered to the ground and restricted from floating higher than 30m (98ft).
That First Amendment giving an absolute right to free speech. They’ve even got a system of determining what is free speech that is unlimited and what can be limited for reasons of security – causing a riot isn’t something anyone wants for example – called the Supreme Court:
Campaigners raised almost £18,000 to pay for the inflatable, which they said reflects Mr Trump’s character as an “angry baby with a fragile ego and tiny hands”
Trump baby blimp is ‘biggest ever insult to a sitting president’, Nigel Farage claims
I used to work for Nigel but will disagree with him here. He and I have said far worse about Obama to each other for example.
And Americans really, really, believe in that free speech stuff. It was noted that burning the American flag is likely to cause a riot – and it is, it’s their equivalent of trying to grope the Queen or something. You’ll not survive trying it unharmed. But the Supreme Court considered it – there was a law banning flag burning sa a result of the likely outrage of doing it – and decided that burning the flag is political speech. Which it is of course. And as such people were free to do it. And to accept the consequences of doing so as well.
And again, Americans really, really, believe in free speech. Sure, what you can say is limited by the libel laws. Politicians aren’t protected by the general libel laws. They’ve got to prove malicious libel – not just that what you said is untrue, that it’s untrue and damaging, but also that you said it to deliberately harm them. A tough set of tests to pass.
By American standards a balloon of Trump in a nappy is small beer indeed. Actually, the likely response is for them to say :
“Gee, These Brits, they too have this free speech thing. They’re almost as free as us I guess. Almost.”
Remember Nick? Of course you do. He was the whistleblower who knew all about VIP peadophiles abusing and murdering children in Westminster. He’s heading to court. No, no to confront the perverts. He’s in count to answer 12 counts of pervert6ing the course of justice and one count of fraud.
The People had the scoop
Sunday People – Nick
Thanks to Nick’s allegations – which one leading copper called “credible and true”; detective superintendent Kenny McDonald, the man heading Operation Midland, knew everything was true before the investigation was over and any trial had even begun – police, who had taken to calling accusers “victims” investigated former Prime Minister Ted Heath (who was stubbornly dead at the time and unable to help police with their enquiries), former Home Secretary Leon Brittan (also dead – his accuser said he pointed the finger at him for a ‘joke’), Field Marshall Lord Bramall (alive and innocent) and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor (also alive and innocent). All four innocent men had their names dragged through the mud and reputations brutally damaged.
“Named’? Surely “innocent” or “accused”
The story was popular with the Daily Mirror and associated titles. But whilst the Daily Mail gives an entire page to the story of Nick’s trial, the Mirror buries it on”NAMED: EX-PM Ted Heath”, the page 7. In a small and short column headlined “VIP sex gang accuser Nick faces 13 raps” and a photo of Ted Heath captioned “NAMED: Ex-PM Ted Heath”, we read that Nick is heading to court and that “detectives said his claims…were ‘credible’.” Not quite. They said Nick’s allegations which sparked Operation Midland were “credible and true”. The Mirror’s sister title The People called it a “sensation”. Fiction was treated as fact.
Of course, anyone into conspiracy theories will roll their eyes and think Nick the accuser morphing into Nick the defendant was always going to happen. The rest of us should wonder about due process and how claims of historical sex abuse came to define policing and bind a nation.
Compare and contrast the following news on Clean Bandit (the soundtrack for Marks & Spencer – the bands rider is Marks & Spencer mozzarella salads and quinoa) – fronted by a couple of poshos, including Grace Chatto. In 2017, Chatto wore a pro-Jeremy Corbyn t-shirt for a BBC broadcast. In a bid to retain its commitment to political impartiality, the Beeb blurred out the slogan championing ‘Jeremy Corbyn’, theformerstar of Iran’s Press TV. Chatto, a keen Corbynist, talked about that and the band’s headlining of Jez Fest. Chatto told the Huffington Post:
“Well, I think the BBC has shown, you know, they showed a really terrible bias against Jeremy Corbyn in the run-up to the general election, and that [censorship] was just part of it…
[Labour] had that huge triumph in the election, and I think the media’s been a bit different [since the election result]. But now the BBC bias is kind of like creeping back a little bit. I think, anyway…
“For me, I’m not that interested in reading newspapers, for example, so the Labour Live event is a really good way for me to engage in party politics and hear speeches and have discussions. It’s all changing.”
In 2015, Clean Bandit were at another politically infused festival: the European Olympic Games in enlightened Azerbaijan. That’s the country where “dissenting voices are practically absent from mainstream media and critical journalists risk arrest and imprisonment”.
“President Ilham Aliyev has been waging a relentless war against his remaining critics,” Reporters Without Borders said in 2017. It said “independent journalists and bloggers are thrown in prison if they do not first yield to harassment, beatings, blackmail, or bribes.”
Musical interlude:
Emin Milli had something to say about the The Games:
UK band Clean Bandit, the supposed stars of the closing ceremony, did not even mention their appearance to their thousands of social media followers…
The regime decided it would target the messengers, banning journalists and human rights activists from the Guardian, Platform and Amnesty from entering Azerbaijan during the games.
t seemed like a public relations disaster but perhaps Aliyev doesn’t care anymore. His people have even started issuing threats to Azerbaijanis abroad.
Last week, I received a message from Azad Rahimov, Aliyev’s sports minister: “We will get you wherever you are and the state will punish you for this smear campaign against the state that you have organised. You will get punished for this. You will not be able to walk freely in Berlin or anywhere else. You must know this.”
It would appear that Azerbaijani journalists and activists are not safe at home or abroad.
Something else for censorship-busting Chatto not to read about in the papers she doesn’t read.
One of the long running shouting matches out there is over the legalisation of cannabis. It’s worth remembering that it’s only just over a century since it was actually legal. Actually, back in Victorian England everything was legal, yes including the morphine and opium. It was concern over people being able to enjoy themselves which led to both the drugs bans and that idiot Prohibition over in the US.
Given that cannabis doesn’t harm anyone why not undo that historic mistake and make it legal again?
The report from the Institute of Economic Affairs has valued the UK’s black market in cannabis at £2.6bn.
OK, there’s quite a lot of it going on already then.
A report from the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) says decriminalising the Class B drug would also lead to savings for the police and other public services.
Well, yes, there’s an awful lot of idiocy that we’ll be able to stop doing.
Margaret Thatcher’s favourite free-market thinktank has called on the government to legalise cannabis, arguing that the move could save more than £1bn generated from extra taxes and other savings in public services.
The thing is though that we don’t really want to do it for the tax take. The point being that we’re only here talking about consenting adults. And it’s a basic matter of freedom and liberty that consenting adults should be allowed to get up to what adults consent to. Sure, some of these things will be wasteful – say, Simon Cowell – some will be damaging – Simon Cowell – and yet that’s the whole point of freedom itself. We get to do as we wish, even Simon Cowell. The only truly moral constraint is when our activities prevent others from enjoying those same rights.
So, legalise cannabis just in order to legalise cannabis.
As the report itself notes, if we do legalise it then we can tax it. Actually, we could tax it pretty highly and still have it being cheaper than the illegal stuff is today. And we’ve got to gain our tax revenue from somewhere. So, yes, tax it and collect some money.
But the reason for the legalisation is because there’s no reason it should be illegal.
It is possible – gosh, it might even be – that Donald Trump is a little over the top in his rhetoric and beliefs. It’s also entirely true that he doesn’t quite grasp the right end of the stick on a number of points. But that doesn’t mean that everything he says is wrong. Such as this, that the European Union was set up to be in opposition to America:
During the President’s speech in Fargo, North Dakota, he blasted the EU for taking “advantage” of the US.
He said: “We love the countries of the European Union.
“But the European Union was set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank.
“And you know what? We can’t let that happen.”
Yes, over the top and all that. But there is still much more than just a grain of truth to it. For the EU really was set up in order to be against the US.
Not in the sense of being in a shooting war with them of course. But to be an alternative power in an economic war, most certainly. Much of what the EU does only makes sense if it is all about building up the continent into being a global power. The euro, for example, is meant to weld the various economies together. We’ve got the EU diplomatic service which is meant, over time, to take the place of the various national ones. That we’ve five – count ’em, five – Presidents of Europe might be overshoot but it’s all part of that building a Federal Government of Europe.
This isn’t, despite the fact that I am, froth mouthed anti-EUism. This is what the founders of the thing, the current defenders of it, all insist is true. They want Europe to be that global power, so as to be in opposition to what they see as that gauche Americanism.
Whether we all think this is a good idea r not is another thing. But Trump is right here. The EU always was meant to be a counterbalance to the US.
The People’s Vote March was about walking for another referendum – this one intended to upset the result of the EU referendum. On June 23, 2016, 17.4 million voted for Britain to end its membership of the EU; 16.1 million wanted Britain to remain. How many people were on the streets of London in support of giving us another go? The number matters to the protestors because – get this – this was a march for populism:
500,000
Just heard that the Met said there were more like 500,000 in #PeoplesVoteMarch today. Can anyone confirm this? If it's true surely @theresa_may can't ignore so many and get away with it…….
— Marilyn Holness #FBPE #WATON (@marilynhansen11) June 23, 2018
“Hundreds of Thousands”
What will your abiding memory of June 23rd now be? The year of that fatal referendum result? Or 2018 when hundreds of thousands marched through London and turned the tide against Brexit? #PeoplesVoteMarch#StopBrexitSaturdaypic.twitter.com/7KvSfdqYFf
Looks like ‘Hitler’ had a rethink. President Donald Trump has rescinded a policy that separates children from their undocumented parents in migrant detentions. The outcry was understandable over children being isolated in “cages” and “tender age shelters” while their parents were jailed and prosecuted for illegal border-crossing. US immigration officials tell us 2,342 children were separated from 2,206 parents between 5 May and 9 June.
“It’s about keeping families together,” said Mr Trump as he put his big felt tip to the latest decree. “I did not like the sight of families being separated.” The “zero tolerance policy” of criminally prosecuting anyone who crosses the border illegally remains.”I think anybody with a heart would feel very strongly about it,” he added. “We don’t like to see families separated.”
We especially don’t like to seem them split up by uniformed men and women on the telly. This was cruelty manifest. The pressure built and Tump blinked.
And what of the view we’ve seen? Brendan O’Neill watched TV anchor Rachel Maddow shed a tear as she told her MSNBC views of children in tender-age shelters in South Texas:
Maddow began to weep. She turned away from the cameras and asked her producers to flash up some graphics while she regained her composure. Cue an outburst of social-media solidarity. ‘I’m weeping too’, virtually everyone said, for what’s the point in weeping these days if you don’t tell everyone about it? The unrecorded tear is a wasted tear in our narcissistic era.
…Ms Maddow and the army of online emotionalists who live-tweeted their weeping alongside hers somehow managed to maintain eyes as dry as the Sahara during far worse things done by previous administrations.
Where were their sobs when Obama and Clinton’s misadventure in Libya not only killed… 27 women and children but also contributed to the destabilisation of Libya and to the exodus of more than 600,000 Libyans? … Why didn’t they cry when Obama ramped up the deportation of Haitians in 2016? ‘Natasha Joseph’s almond-shaped eyes brim with tears as she cradles her pregnant belly’, started one report about a Haitian woman who was thrown out of the US while her husband was imprisoned in Arizona. Her husband would not witness the birth of their child. Shattered Haitian families don’t deserve public weeping, it seems. Because the shattering was done by politicians these people admire.
The children deserve compassion. The oneupmanship is nasty. It’s not the Holocaust. Right? Michael Hayden, a retired Air Force general who ran the National Security Agency as well as the CIA, is no historian:
The story is worked into a frenzy. Swathes of people are monstered. Fact are blurred. Idiocy prevails. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an architect of the “zero tolerance” policy, told us why Hayden is wrong. “It’s a real exaggeration,” says Sessions said on Fox News, “because in Nazi Germany they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country.”
Did anyone in the US study history?
But the Nazi analogy is apposite, right? MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough says the Trump administration is “just like the Nazis”.
To miss the parallels in what our government is doing today, you would have to be blind. It’s there in the way that Donald Trump invokes the boogeyman of MS-13 to justify the imprisonment of children too young to tie their shoes. It’s there in the stories of detainees who have no idea where Homeland Security has taken their children, and have no way of finding out.
Yes, our government is only rounding up human beings, not executing them or burying them in mass graves. But the roots of that evil are there — they have, to an extent, always been there. Does it need to flower into something truly monstrous before we recognize it for what it really is? Hitler also did things by degrees, nipping away at freedoms and piling one small indignity on top of another. That has been the strategy of the Trump administration: first racial insults, then stepped-up enforcement, then the wall, then the cage.
Meanwhile… immigration. What are you going to do about it? “They could be murderers and thieves and so much else,” the president said on Monday. “So we want a safe country, and it starts with the borders. And that’s the way it is.”
The New York Timessaid this year: “Some migrants have admitted they brought their children… because they believed it would cause authorities to release them from custody sooner… Others have admitted to posing falsely with children who are not their own, and Border Patrol officials say that such instances of fraud are increasing.”
When Eurydice Dixon was raped and murdered in Melbourne, Victoria, she went from private individual to public property. Daniel Andrews, premier of Victoria, thought it wise to take to Facebook and opine at length:
’Eurydice Dixon was 22 years old. She was an aspiring comedian. Smart, funny. She lived in the inner north. Surrounded by friends.
She had a phone.
She was using it: “I’m almost home safe.”
She was keeping an eye on her surroundings. Looking out for herself. Being responsible. Doing everything we expect.
But Eurydice did not make it home safe.
In a few days, women across Melbourne will gather in Princes Park for a vigil of her life.
And they will do so firm in the knowledge that Eurydice died because of her attacker’s decisions – not because of her own.
They’re right. And we need to accept that fact, too.
We’ll never change a thing until we do.
We’ll never change this culture of violence against women. All women.
We’ll never change the fact that one woman in this country dies every week at the hands of a partner or former partner – someone they loved, in the safety of their own home.
We’ll keep asking “Why didn’t she leave him?” instead of asking “Why did he hurt her?”.
We’ll keep asking “Why was she alone in the dark?” instead of asking “Why was he?”.
We’ll keep ignoring the real problem, instead of actually fixing it.
So our message to Victorian women is this: Stay home. Or don’t.
Go out with friends at night. Or don’t.
Go about your day exactly as you intend, on your terms.
Because women don’t need to change their behaviour.
Men do.’
If male Australians really think violence against women is ok, and all men must accept their share of the blame for the heinous crime, why is there so much upset among men at the death of Eurydice Dixon? Why can men be blamed – millions and millions of them – for the actions of one man? You begin to wonder who has the problem. Andrews is at pains to be the wokiest bloke in the chamber. But laying the blame for this appalling crime at the hands of all men and a country’s culture only excuses the actual criminal and recasts all women as victims.
A 2005 report released by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC), Homicide in Australia: 2003 2004 National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP) Annual Report found that:
36 per cent of homicide victims were female and;
49 per cent of female victims were killed as a result of a domestic altercation (as compared to 15 per cent of male victims).
Domestic violence is a doubly cruel crime, leaving the victim with nowhere to run. But it’s not all men. To say it is demeaning.
Turns out we it was no joke about Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party being unable to organise a piss-up in a brewery. The Observer has the last laugh on labour Live, aka Jez Fest:
There was no visible revolt over the fact that half the crowd had coughed up £35 for their entry and the other half had been bussed in for free after the Labour party started desperately giving out tickets to make up the numbers. The growing sense that the leadership should not be reliably left in charge of party organisation at a brewery was compounded by the fact that the Workers Beer Company refused to provide keg versions of its product, because they were “reserved for high-volume events”.
First stop a field in North London. Next stop the entire country…
Brexit matters trouble the Guardian’s readers as they made their way to Jezfest, aka Goodstock. What would it all mean for au pairs? One of the most-read stories on the Guardian’s website begins: “Au pair shortage sparks childcare crisis for families.” This from the paper that mused: “Is au pairing the new slavery?” and “Au pairs on a pittance: the young women minding kids.” And so to the looming Brexit disaster for the Guardian’s caring readers:
Many families are facing a childcare crisis following a 75% slump in the number of young Europeans willing to work as au pairs, as Brexit, plus other factors such as last year’s terrorist attacks in London and Manchester, deter young people from coming to the UK.
May, June and early July are when most au pair placements are arranged, before the beginning of the school term in September, but Guardian Money has learned that some agencies are unable to find a single young European for British families to even interview.
Or to put it another way not versed in the paper of the knowing liberal who outsources child rearing on the cheap: ‘Brexit ends au pair slavery’; and: ‘Brexit ends scandal of teens minding other kids.’ Says the paper, at pains to assure readers that an au pairs shortage affects not only middle-class professionals who can’t afford full-time staff:
While families who have an au pair are often characterised as well off, agencies say many are “ordinary” people such as doctors, nurses, firefighters and academics who work long hours, have long commutes or do not work nine to five, which means breakfast clubs and after-school clubs often do not benefit them. An au pair can be an affordable alternative to employing a nanny.
Since when did GPs and university dons become anything other than middle-class and wealthy? Does the Guardian really think GPs – average wage: £100,000 per annum – are anything but well off?
Maybe it does? And maybe if Brexit happens their kids will have to put their own plates in the dishwasher? The horror!
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Live Festival was terrific fun. Let’s see what you missed as Corbyn continues his drive to turn a mainstream party into a fringe movement:
John McDonell sings Find The Magic Money Tree:
Clean Bandit Don’t Need No Educashun
Before anyone slags off Clean Bandit for being public school, fees at Latymer are barely 6k per term. It's basically a state school. #LabourLive
— CorbynFan #RJCOB🇻🇪🇵🇸 (@CorbynSuperFan) June 16, 2018
Jeremy Corbyn front The Average White Band (Diversity No-Mix)
The next Labour government will give our NHS the funding it needs, ensure everyone has a home to call their own and build a world class education system.
This is getting silly: with so few socialists attending and so many conservative journalists turning up, #LabourLive is at risk of turning into a Spectator garden party. https://t.co/M6x3r7x3rj
Baseball caps off to Donald Trump. It turns out that he and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un want to make America great again. The paid had “a really fantastic meeting. A lot of progress” says Donald in that manner he of saying things like he’s heard the words for the first time. It’s why he says everything twice, isn’t it, because after guffing out the words the first time he tries to work out what they mean so repeats it. If the first peroration gets a cheer, he might say it three times. So how was it, Don? “Really very positive,” he explains. “I think better than anybody could have expected. Top of the line. Really good.”
And now after the tea and the handshakes, the other guys and gels – “my people”, as Don calls them – will sort out all the details, you know, the stuff about nuclear weapons, trade, human rights, lots of tanks aimed at South Korea, repatriating the dead and other odds and sods. And that’s to say nothing – and nothing was said – about North Korea trading with the EU, the US or even UKplc, North Korean students being able to study overseas and the general opening up Mr Kim’s hermetic camp. But let’s not split hairs. North Korea back in the fold of international relations is good thing. Its people will get richer.
Many papers lead with a photo of Trump looking like gameshow host – Mr Kim, Come On Down! ‘You wanted peace but… you got a prawn cocktail. Hard cheese! Or more like no cheese at all, or meat or much food for your people of any sort.’
In case you missed it, this is the document Don and Kim signed:
1) The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity
2) The US and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula
3) Reaffirming the 27 April 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula
4) The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
The media is the message, right? Don’t sweat the details because life will take care of those. The doings will out. So Trump can denigrate his predecessors. Only he can do it the right way. And maybe you can do if you stay tuned, buy the book, watch DVD and work out if the 30m people – that’s the number Trump said he was saving – can be saved from obliteration by the power of narcissism.
This is an amusing little story which illustrates how the absurdity of economic sanctions can worm their way into the society at large. Kim Yong Un – you know, fattie who runs North Korea – we’d rather like him to be at a summit where we can all talk through how we’ll beat him up unless he gives up those nuclear bombs. Yet he can’t turn up because he can’t find a place to stay:
Just one day after President Donald Trump announced the US-North Korea summit is back on, the US and Singapore are looking for ways to bear the cost of Kim Jong Un’s accommodation, including the North Korean leader’s preference for a five-star, $6,000 a night hotel.
The Washington Post reports that paying for North Korea’s accommodation during the June 12 summit would conflict with US Treasury Department sanctions and require a waiver to be signed to temporarily bypass them.
North Korea can’t pay the bill. Because that would mean the hotel taking money from North Korea and that can’t happen because of the sanctions against North Korea. The sanctions existing because of the Big Bad Bomb problems.
Kim’s trip to Singapore, which would be the furthest he would have travelled as leader, has posed a number of logistical challenges for White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin and Kim’s the de facto chief of staff Kim Chang son.
Although Mr Hagin is open to footing the bill, US Treasure Department sanctions require a waiver to be signed before America can pay for his luxury stay, the Washington Post reported.
America can’t pay the bill because that would mean spending money on Kim Young ‘Un. Something they’re not allowed to do because of the sanctions. You know, the sanctions over the Big Bad Bomb problem. The Big Bad Bomb problem we’d like to sit down and discuss with Kim Young ‘Un.
I admit to finding all of this amusing. Although not quite as amusing as something that happened a couple of decades back. I was doing business with the government of North Korea. No, it’s OK, it was legal back then. They had to issue a letter of credit – it’s a promise to pay, backed up by a bank that there really will be payment – and their bank refused to issue one. It wasn’t for a lot of money, not a lot for a country that is. $250,000. But their bank – one in Singapore as it happens – refused to issue it on the grounds that North Korea didn’t have that much money.
Who knows, maybe it’s not about sanctions now, perhaps they just don’t have the cash?
Jeremy Corbyn has “antisemitic views”. So says Jonathan Arkush. Arkush is the outgoing president of the board of deputies. He says the Labour Party leader “has views which are antisemitic, and he has problematic views”. Arkush tells the Daily Telegraph that British Jews are asking: “Do we have a future here?”
Under a country governed by Corbyn: yes, of course Jews will continue to live in the UK. One remarkable characteristic of Jewish history is the persistence with which they are persecuted. Some Jew always stays on to light the lamp, denying Mohammed and Jesus’s claims of divine destiny by waiting for the true Messiah. Will derelict synagogues in London, Leeds or Manchester become stopping points on tourists walks, like those in India, Cuba, Morocco, Turkey, Iraq, the Czech Republic, Syria, Italy and all other places where the Jews were dispossessed and expelled? Will the country under Corbyn do its bit for the deep history of Jewish victim hood? No. Well, not yet.
The future for British Jewry might not be a vibrant one. Better, of course, if British Jews become the right sort of Jews. But Arkush does not speak for all British Jews, even if the Mail does bill him as ‘The Tribe’s’ “chief”. The bilge that ethnic minorities in the UK have ‘community leaders’ who speak for their kind sticks in the craw. Don’t lump us all in together. Don’t divide us into groups. You don’t need to be Jewish to see that Corbyn’s Labour has a little problem with Red Sea Pedestrians. Arkush speaks for himself. And we can listen. Jews, after all, are often rather good at spotting Jew haters.
“He was a chairman of Stop the War, which is responsible for some of the worst anti-Israel discourse,” says Arkush. “If he shares the prevalent discourse about Israel, then that view is unquestionably antisemitic… I think we are all entitled to some clarity on his real views about Israel.”
Corbyn is too nuanced and slippery to let the electorate know his real views on much. But he does have a spokesman to tell everyone that Arkush comments are “personal attacks without any evidence to support them… Jeremy has been absolutely clear that he is a militant opponent of antisemitism and is committed to driving it out of our movement.”
He is? Got any evidence of anything he’s done to prove it?
“Jonathan Arkush’s attempt to conflate strong criticism of Israeli state policies with antisemitism is wrong and undermines the fight both against antisemitism and for justice for the Palestinians,” the spokesman adds. “It should be rejected outright.”
Rhea Wolfson, a member of Labour’s national executive committee, is shocked by the comments. Her words take up half the Guardian’s story on the matter. The paper offers no words in support of Arkush’s view. “Jeremy Corbyn is not antisemitic, he does not hold antisemitic views,” Wolfson tweeted. “I cannot understand what Arkush is trying to achieve here but I know it isn’t about being constructive.
“Jonathan Arkush has never spoken for me, for many other young, progressive Jews, and he doesn’t in this article. We have a lot of work to take a lot of poison out of the debate… around Israel and Palestine, making blanket accusations isn’t constructive and doesn’t move towards a better debate or solutions.” So much for Corbyn being militant. It’s a debate he wants.
The Guardian story is headlined: “Jeremy Corbyn’s views ‘could drive Jewish people from UK’.” So if you’re a bigot, vote Jez, right? The paper finds no space to report what Arkush also said. This from the Tele:
Mr Arkush said: “We have always felt Britain is a generous, fair-minded, exceptionally tolerant, mutually respectful country where Jews have been secure, well accepted and in return they have contributed vastly.
“That is why I am so troubled that, particularly in the last few months, there is an increasingly widespread question asked over the dinner table – which is, do we have a future here, and what’s that future going to look like? In its current, widespread form, it is very new.” Asked if he attributes this new anxiety in the community to Mr Corbyn’s leadership, he said: “Yeah. I do.”
You do wonder how any British Jew can vote for Corbyn, or, indeed, be a member of the Labour Party he heads. But it takes all sorts to make a ‘community’. And – get this – not all Jews are the same.
Is Jeremy Corbyn rectionary? SNP Mp Mhairi Black says the Labour Party leader told her he was backing Scottish independence during a private conversation. Corbyn says Scottish independence because it would be “catastrophic” for Scotland.
The Paisley and Renfrewshire South MP tells the HuffPost:
“He has had unelected lords in his cabinet. He’s had scandal upon scandal, and don’t get me wrong, I get that there is a whole lot of backbenchers against Jeremy, but he has sold his soul. He has sold out in terms of austerity. He has sold out in terms of Scottish independence – because I know that he doesn’t believe the things he says about independence now.”
Asked directly how she knew Corbyn supported independence, she said: “From talking to him.”
Labour say the story is nonsense.
In other news: Corbyn says Scotland “holds the keys” to him getting into power.
Ubiquitous pollster Sir John Curtis told Sunday Politics Scotland:
“The truth is if the SNP vote were to go up a couple of points at the next election, Labour’s chances of getting an overall majority are significantly diminished. If the SNP vote just falls a couple of points and the Labour Party are doing roughly where they were last time, then Labour’s chances improve significantly.
“So, Scotland is now absolutely central to the battle for power at Westminster, particularly as far as the Labour Party is concerned.”
Is the SNP strigrring? Does Corbyn simply agree with whatever popular position gets him the most votes?
The story of the Tory and the racist joke features Pendle Council, Lancashire, and Rosemary Carroll’s return to the Conservative party’s ranks. In July 2017, Carroll was suspended from the Conservative Party for sharing a joke on Facebook. The Lancashire Evening Post added a dash of tautology and called the joke “racist and derogatory”. Council leader Mohammed Iqbal made an official complaint and called for Carroll councillor to be expelled from the Council and the Conservative Party.
Pendle Tory leader Coun. Cooney acknowlegded the “racist post which had been shared on Facebook by one of our councillors” and stated: “We will not tolerate racism of any form.”
By now you want to know two things: what was the joke and what happened next? Well, the Daily Mirror reproduces the joke. Most other newspapers and the BBC do not. Indeed the BBC says: “Tories urged to act in ‘racist joke’ row at Pendle Council,” the broadcaster unsure what is racist. Without the joke, the story is lacking. Here it is:
“I took my dog to the dole office to see what he was entitled to. The bloke behind the counter said ‘you idiot, we don’t give benefits to dogs’. “I argued ‘why not? He’s brown, he stinks, he’s never worked a f***ing day in his life & he can’t speak a f***ing word of English’. “The man replied: ‘His first payment will be Monday’.”
Nasty stuff.
Carroll spoked to LADbible. Her apology contained a blend of sympathetic back story and the caveat now routine in all apologies, the one that places the onus on the recipient and their reaction, ‘if I have caused offence’. She said:
“It was a mistake, obviously, somebody posted it to me and I thought I was deleting it. I don’t use Facebook much. Everything has gone over the top now. It was a genuine mistake. I can only apologise, because I am not racist by any means. All I can say is, if I’ve caused offence, I am truly sorry. I don’t do stuff like this and have closed that Facebook thing.”
In May, Carroll rejoined the Tories.
Tory leader Paul White says Ms Carroll had “learned form her mistake”. Mohammmed Iqbal says: “They should have done the decent thing and distanced themselves from her. I’m appalled. The suspension was a gimmick.”
Carroll’s return was timely. In the council elections, the Tories won control of Pendle council by a single seat. The Conservatives control Pendle with 25 seats, ahead of Labour’s 15 and the Liberal Democrats’ nine.
And then the story got bigger. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said it was “unacceptable” for Carroll to return. “To have the Conservative Party take control of that council by reinstating a councillor who used the foulest, foulest joke, a racist joke is unacceptable,” he said.
If Carroll’s return is wrong is – and argue amongst yourselves if it is – is it also wrong for Naz Shah, Jeremy Corbyn and others accused of racism to be in the Labour Party?
Shah was John McDonnell’s PPS. Shah is the Bradford West MP – and what if her job gave the Labour Party an overall Commons majority? – who shared on Facebook the idea of “transporting” citizens of the world’s only Jewish state (that’s Israel, not New York) to the middle of the USA. Having called for a country to be obliterated and “foreigner” Jews forcibly relocated away from what many see as their ancient home, she added the comment “problem solved”.
The JC added: “Shah also posted a tweet with a link to a blog which claimed Zionism had been used to ‘groom’ Jews to ‘exert political influence at the highest levels of public office’.” The BBC adds: “A number of other posts emerged, with her comparing Israel to the Nazis and saying ‘the Jews are rallying’.”
Nasty. Labour suspended Shah. But she apologised, kept her job and her salary. After a brief suspension (a little over 3 months), Shah was back.
Former Labour major of London Ken Livingstone is still suspended by Labour. He said Shah’s comments were “rude and over-the-top” but not anti-Semitic – even though Shah accepted it was and apologised. And then he doubled down, opining: “When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”
Livingstone’s refusal to accept that he had ever come across anti-Semitism in his 47 years in the Labour Party. And hence his refusal when pressed on the BBC’s Daily Politics today to accept that Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, whom he invited to London and who wrote that “every Jew in the world” should be fought by “every Muslim”, was anti-Semitic because he had never said anything anti-Semitic to him.
Back to Jeremy Corbyn, then, of whom Nick Cohen writes:
Corbyn invited Hamas and Hizbollah to Parliament and called them his ‘friends’. Bear in mind that Hamas’s Charter is explicitly genocidal – it makes it clear its supporters want to kill Jews and repeats Nazi conspiracy theories. Their founding Charter also rules out any peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestine problem. It says:
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.
See a pattern?
Ben McIntrye has a good article in the Times on why Livingstone is no historian:
The suggestion that Hitler backed the idea of a Jewish homeland underpins an association between Nazism and Zionism that is fundamentally antisemitic. It is also wrong. “You can’t expel someone for stating historical fact,” Livingstone insists. But his claim is not a fact: it is a distortion of history, a defence of the indefensible that has undoubtedly emboldened antisemites within his party, leading to the current meltdown…
The Haavara Agreement was really just one more way of ethnically cleansing the Jews from Germany and taking their wealth. The idea that it represented any kind of support for a Jewish homeland, a central tenet of Zionism, is ludicrous and a deliberate perversion of its real import…
The idea that the Holocaust was due to the onset of “madness” on Hitler’s part is also wrong, reducing a programme of collective evil to an act of insanity on the part of one man. Hitler’s genocide was not the unexpected policy of a lone madman but premeditated, rational by Nazi logic, and purely wicked.
The oldest trick in the book of cornered politicians is to claim to have been accused of something they have not been accused of, and deny it. “I did not say Hitler was a Zionist,” the former London mayor said. “And that was why I was suspended.” Again, not true: he was punished because he claimed Nazi “support” for Zionism, a more subtle insinuation and a misreading of historical fact.
After Livingstone’s comments, things escalated. The Times again:
John Mann, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism, branded Mr Livingstone a “Nazi apologist” in a confrontation outside a TV studio that was captured live on camera. Mr Mann is reported to have called him a “f***ing disgrace”.
When the party released a statement early in the afternoon to announce Mr Livingstone’s suspension, a spokesman added that Mr Mann had been summoned to see the chief whip about his conduct.
Michael Dugher, Labour MP for Barnsley East and a former frontbencher, said that announcing the actions at the same time represented “drawing some kind of moral equivalence between John Mann and Ken Livingstone”.
“Yet again they’ve prevaricated because it was another of their close allies up to their necks in antisemitism again,” Mr Dugher said.
On Saturday, International Holocaust Memorial Day, Mr Livingstone, 72, a former mayor of London, appeared in a programme called Has the Holocaust been exploited to oppress others? on the Iranian state-owned channel Press TV.
He said that Hitler had worked with the Zionist movement to move Jewish people to Israel: “He worked with the Zionist movement to move . . . to get 60,000 to go, but it was about half a million — and then he changed his policy and went for genocide.”
The presenter, Roshan Muhammed Salih, told viewers that Mr Livingstone, who has been suspended from Labour since April 2016, had been “targeted by the Zionist lobby here in the UK”.
You know who else used to appear on Press TV? Yeah: Jeremy Corbyn who used to present a show on the channel – although since Labour was exposed as haven for anti-Semites, traces of Corbyn’s journalism seem to have vanished from YouTube.
Corbyn and ‘Yvonne Ridley’ – someone of that name also used to present a show on Press TV – both voice their support for an anti-Semitic mural in East London.
If Rosemary Carroll’s return to the Tories is “unacceptable” to Labour – she underwent diversity training and apologised; Shah went on a “journey” of self-discovery and apologised fully; Corbyn says of supporting a huge painting of Jewish bankers sat on the backs of naked workers, something the Guardian says “resembled a homage to the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer”, “I sincerely regret that I did not look more closely at the image I was commenting on.”
Labour only notices racism when it’s not about them and everyone else is pointing at it.
UKIP is going to kill you. Kill your first born. Kill everyone you love. Following a hammering at the polls, UKIP’s General Secretary went on the BBC’s Today programme, telling Nick Robinson about the party’s plans for a dramatic return to the fore:
“Think of the Black Death in the Middle Ages. It comes along, it causes disruption then it goes dormant. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
Sod all that guff about UKIP turning the clock back to the 1950s or even the 1930s – it’s the 1340s.
Image: Rats dancing at the time of the plague. Oil on canvas by an unknown Flemish artist, 17th century.
As the Government inches towards its removal targets for people unsuited to their environment – farewell, Amber Rudd – the Press look around for the next scalp. They spot Diane Abbott, the Labour shadow home secretary. The Sun thunders “DIANE DISASTER “, zooming in on Abbott’s “car-crash interview” with TV’s Piers Morgan. Lest the paper’s position be unclear, it adds: “The disastrous interview came after the resignation of Amber Rudd as Home Secretary.”
Says the Sun:
Pressed on the [illegal immigration] issue, Ms Abbott refused EIGHT times to lay out exactly what her solution would be if she got into power.
As ever, the non-event on mid-morning telly between Paxman-lite and Blinky hits Twitter:
Viewers watching will make their own mind up about what you were trying to do. As for me I will keep campaigning for justice, not treating the #Windrush generation and others who have a right to be here as if they were illegal.
Diane Abbott refuses SIX TIMES to say what SHE would do with illegal immigrants in her latest car crash interview
We know journalists are rubbish at sums but surely the Sun and Mail can decide if Morgan repeated himself 6 or 8 times? (The Mirror says it’s 6.) You can watch the video of the chat if you can stand it – but you might wonder if repeating the same line of questioning is more vainglorious balls than an actual attempt to get an answer. But the poor questioning and the non-answer gets the headlines – no fewer than three times on the Daily Express website:
STORY 1: “What is Labour immigration policy? Piers Morgan frustrated as Diane Abbott fails to answer”
STORY 2: “‘You couldn’t give me a straight answer’ Morgan hits back at Abbott after fiery TV clash”
STORY 3: “Piers Morgan Twitter: Good Morning Britain star continues HEATED debate with Diane Abbott”
Good to see the country finally having a sensible debate on immigration – not.
Michelle Wolf’s standup gig at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night was joyous. Wolf’s most memorable comments were pointed at press secretary, Sarah Sanders, and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka.
Smoke roasted
Not everyone shares Wolf’s sense of humour. White House adviser Mercedes Schlapp and her husband, Matt Schlapp, who chairs the American Conservative Union, left early. The man with the ear of the most powerful man in the free world later tweeted about a stand-up comic: “Enough of elites mocking all of us.”
You set ’em up, Matt and Mercedes. We’ll knock ’em in.
Watching a wife and mother be humiliated on national television for her looks is deplorable,” wrote MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski.
Sanders looked unimpressed. What did she expect? If you can take Wolf’s voice, which should be bottled and sold as a contraceptive device, listen in:
Did Wolf go too far?
Here’s Michelle Wolf’s take on White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. https://t.co/9Hn6dbt9Mw
That bit about the “smokey eye” is nasty. But Jean Hannah Edelstein tells Guardian readers that “Wolf was in fact complimenting the appearance of Sanders’ makeup”. Yeah, right… (Rolls eyes.)
A mere 22 months after the incident, Marc Wadsworth has been expelled from the Labour Party. The Momentum activist made comments at an antisemitism event – no, not a rally for Labour anti-semites, although Corbyn’s Labour could fill a large venue for that do; Wadsworth clashed with Jewish MP Ruth Smeeth at the launch of Labour’s inquiry into antisemitism. You’ll recall that Labour invited Shami Chakrabarti to investigate the rampant Jew hatred in its ranks. She joined Labour, discovered a “minority hateful or ignorant attitudes and behaviours” and was made a Labour peer and shadow attorney general. What looked like a duck, walked like a duck and quacked like a duck was a dead ermine, said Shami admiring her new robes.
But the Labour Party’s Jew haters kept popping up. Being antisemitic in Labour was not rare at all. Things came to a bit of a head when something finally stuck to nuanced and slippery Jeremy Corbyn, who admired a massive public artwork, an artwork Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson called “a horrible anti-Semitic mural”. Corbyn wanted it kept on display. The local Labour mayor thought it revolting and ordered it to be painted over.
Corbyn, who was at the launch of the party’s antisemitism drive, was filmed on camera talking with Wadsworth at the event. Both deny being antisemitic.
One paper stirred the pot, reporting:
A video has since emerged showing the Labour leader laughing along with Mr Wadsworth as they exit the launch. Mr Wadsworth can be heard saying: ‘You saw what happened.’ Mr Corbyn replies: ‘Yeah, I did.’
It’s here – but there’s very little to it. Leader meets fan might be the better description of the happening:
Wadsworth denies any wrongdoing. He says today:
“I deplore anti-Semitism, anti-black racism, Islamophobia and all forms of prejudice, bigotry and discrimination that I have campaigned against all my political life and will continue to do so.
“With my brilliant legal team, who won the arguments hands down, I will be looking at all my options to legally challenge the decision.”
The Guardian outlines the case:
Wadsworth came to prominence after he challenged Smeeth at the launch of Shami Chakrabati’s inquiry into antisemitism in 2016, accusing her of working “hand in hand” with a Telegraph journalist.
Smeeth has said she was reduced to tears by his remarks. Wadsworth, who was distributing flyers at the event, has said he did not know Smeeth was Jewish.
The matter was heard by the National Constitutional Committee (NCC), Labour’s top disciplinary body. Says Labour:
“The NCC has found that two charges of a breach of the Labour party’s rule 2.1.8 by Marc Wadsworth have been proven. The NCC consequently determined that the sanction for this breach of Labour party rules will be expulsion from membership.”
The rule states that “no member of the Party shall engage in conduct which in the opinion of the NEC is prejudicial, or in any act which in the opinion of the NEC is grossly detrimental to the Party [including actions] might reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice based on age; disability; gender reassignment or identity; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; or sexual orientation… racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or otherwise racist language, sentiments, stereotypes or actions, sexual harassment, bullying or any form of intimidation towards another person on the basis of a protected characteristic”.
Labour MPs, Chris Williamson and Clive Lewis gave character references for Wadsworth. Lewis said people “do not get to be judge, jury and executioner when it comes to who’s expelled or not. Go read a history book about what happens when an accusation equals evidence.”
Smeeth is pleased – but makes no specific mention of antisemism:
But is it over? Is it there? Ken Livingstone, currently suspended from Labour over remarks linking Adolf Hitler and Zionism, tells LBC today:
“I’m not discussing anti-Semitism until after the election is all out the way because it is a complete diversion. We had this last year in the run-up to the local elections then. We had it two years ago in the run-up to the election of Sadiq Khan. It didn’t damage us at the last two local elections but it is a complete diversion.”
When Donald Trump and Melania were welcoming the French President and his wife, the First Couple opted to wear flannels and thereby best absorb some of drooling Macron’s copious amounts of salvia (see hands, faces, necks – the guy gets rid of best he can but we’ve started to notice; he’s almost resorted to licking people).
A lovely little story producing giggles among the Remainaiacs – Nigel Farage’s kids, the very kids of that arch anti-EU campaigner, have German passports. As well as their UK ones of course. This is, of course, producing more than a little mirth.
Nigel Farage has admitted two of his children have both British and German passports, which would allow them to take advantage of free movement rights post-Brexit, but insisted they feel British rather than European.
Nigel’s second wife is German, her children gain German citizenship that way. So far, so not funny. But that Farage’s second wife is German allows a little explanation of Ukip itself and the Leave campaign which led to Brexit. I can be trusted as a source on this, I used to work for Ukip, directly for Nigel, even stood as an MEP candidate for them.
We’ve no problem at all with Europe. In fact, rather like, even love, the place. The wines, the food, the people, the other countries, why not, many of them are fabulous (and then there’s Belgium of course, the rudest word in the known universe). Why wouldn’t we like all these things – and I speak as someone who lives in Portugal.
