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Until the early hours of November 9, 2016, I used to ponder my notion of an ideal American president.
In a nutshell, he would do all the things the middle and working classes needed for the United States to thrive once again.
He would confound high-brow economists who said, ‘[Effective economic solution] cannot be done.’
Fortunately, the United States has had that great man — my ideal — in President Donald Trump since January 22, 2017.
President Trump has accomplished what egg-headed experts — the brightest minds in the world — deemed ‘impossible’.
His accomplishments are too many to list here, but here’s a summary:
One of my readers, Daughn, had this to say about the president’s appeal on another site (emphases mine):
All the guys who were the academics, the ones who went to Harvard Biz/Yale Law, couldn’t deliver 3% GDP in the past decade.
And moms and dads paid for their mistakes. Red states were hollowed out. Our factories = gone. Homes = foreclosed.
It left America vulnerable, and it’s THEIR fault.
Chickens home to roost.
Even worse……
All the guys at Brookings/Council on Foreign Relations screwed up in the Middle East, couldn’t win a damn war in Afghanistan with trillions of dollars to spend and 20 yrs to do it.
And moms and dads in red states buried their sons and daughters.
Trump paid attention to the electricians, the guys who drive the trucks, the women who cut hair for a living….. they’re a whole lot smarter than those who were supposed to be leading the country.
The establishment of both parties has failed.
That’s an excellent summary, explaining why the much maligned president has been gaining ground since 2017.
Could we call him the People’s President? I think so.
With the coronavirus situation, President Trump has suspended his rallies for the time being. That does not mean we will not be seeing him out and about, though.
On Thursday, March 5, Fox News invited him to take part in a Town Hall forum in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Joe Biden’s birthplace.
It was the most watched cable news show in history (i.e. going back to the late 1970s):
Dr Dawn Michael makes an excellent point. Dems must have been watching, otherwise the figures would not have been as high.
Martha McCallum and Bret Baier presented the Town Hall, available here in full. What an exceptional 57 minutes — well worth watching:
I’m not alone in my opinion. This lady analyses election data. She has done sterling work so far in 2020. Here is what she had to say about the Town Hall:
The president was very conversational in his answers but didn’t miss a beat:
I don’t know who chose Scranton — Trump’s campaign team or Fox News — but it was perfect:
Those who do not have time to watch the show in full might enjoy viewing the highlights:
The president enjoyed the evening as much as the audience did:
Then it was back to the White House:
I am so grateful that I have my ideal president — the People’s President — during my lifetime.
Tens of millions of Americans would agree.
I will have more on the 2020 campaign soon.
In the meantime: MAGA!
On January 21, 2020, the BBC’s radio and television presenter Victoria Derbyshire interviewed a Briton who lived as a woman for four years before returning to manhood.
Richard Hoskins tells his story here (two weeks left to view, probably geolocalised) and says of his life as a transsexual (emphasis in the original):
‘I used gender transition as a form of escape’
For four years, Richard Hoskins lived as a woman.
But he now believes it was a reaction to the trauma of losing three children, rather than relating to his gender identity.
He has now detransitioned, and tells the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire that more must be done by the NHS to ensure others are properly assessed before treatment begins.
In the clip below, he explains that he had PTSD after the loss of his three children and from earlier sexual trauma as a child. Derbyshire, whose television news and chat show has recently been cancelled, kept showing him national guidelines saying that medical practitioners are following them to the letter. He counters her arguments by saying that what is needed before any of that takes place is one-on-one therapy, which he had after he had become a woman and felt increasingly uncomfortable.
Please watch this two-minute video (‘or’ in line two should read ‘of’):
In Britain, it is very difficult for medical practitioners not to eventually sign off on transsexual procedures. There is legal and professional pressure so to do.
The comments following that tweet are enlightening and show just how wrong ‘following the procedures’ can be:
It turns out that Richard Hoskins is actually Dr Richard Hoskins, a lecturer in theology and present-day criminologist.
He helped police in a horrific murder case that took place in London in 2001. A little boy, known only as ‘Adam’, had been mutilated and thrown into the Thames by Tower Bridge. He was close to being swept away into the North Sea. After Hoskins became involved, more similar cases in London came to light.
Hoskins wrote an award-winning book about it called The Boy in the River, available on Amazon, from which an excerpt of the synopsis follows:
Unable to identify the victim, the Murder Squad turned to Richard Hoskins, a young professor of theology with a profound understanding of African tribal religion, whose own past was scarred by a heartbreaking tragedy. Thus began a journey into the tangled undergrowth of one of the most notorious murder cases of recent years; a journey which would reveal not only the identity of the boy they called Adam but the horrific truth that a succession of innocent children have been ritually sacrificed in our capital city.Insightful and grippingly written, The Boy in the River is an inside account of a series of extraordinary criminal investigations and a compelling personal quest into the dark heart of humanity.
According to the highly interesting readers’ comments, in the book, Hoskins discusses his experiences as a missionary in the Congo. He seems to have spent part of his earlier life there before returning as an adult to spend six years there. His Wikipedia entry gives brief details about his life, mostly focussing on his career as a lecturer and, later, as a criminologist.
One reader wrote, in part:
When Adam is pulled from the river the Police come to him seeking guidance in a belief system which seems so alien. Dr Hoskin’s personal story run’s parallel with the cases he provides help on, fighting to maintain his sanity and marriage in the face of the case reports he must read and interpret for the benefit of Police and Courts to make sure all understand this is not an Africa problem steeped in tradition but a terrible corruption by a minority in recent years of a faith that has lasted hundreds of years with the victims being dreadfully abused before, in the most extreme, death.
The Evening Standard‘s review said, in part:
As well as being an important book for all sorts of reasons, The Boy in the River is a remarkable one. The horror it evokes will be matched by a sense of disbelief that such appalling things are happening, now, in London. What makes it all the more powerful is the deliberately measured manner in which it is written. Throughout, there s a sense that Hoskins is struggling to maintain his own equilibrium, his own sanity even, as he explores what he calls, with ample justification, the darkest underbelly of human nature.
It is worth emphasising that only a small percentage of the Congo’s Christians practice such brutal syncretism involving ritual child abuse and sacrifice.
Yet, from this, it is understandable why Hoskins was traumatised.
From this we can see that the urge to change one’s sexuality or remove body parts is complex. Not everyone has as involved a past as Dr Hoskins, however, therapy should be strongly advised in such cases before further action is taken.
There are other ways to come to terms with one’s highly personal conflicts:
I hope that Hoskins and others in the same situation continue to speak openly.
One week ago on Friday, January 31, 2020, millions of Britons celebrated Brexit Day.
David Kurten, Brexit Party member of the Greater London Assembly, tweeted:
James Higham of Orphans of Liberty called our attention to the fact, that despite our celebrations, little has changed. We’re merely in a transition period, not full Brexit. To those celebrating, he wrote:
That’s the majority view, everyone on our side so wants it to be true, when it quite palpably is not:
# Still in the Customs Union
# Still in the Single Market
# Still only a small percentage of our fishing waters
# Still in the EU Army and no plans to leave
# Still paying the EU billions to prop them up to keep fighting us …
Agree fully on all points!
Still, it was worth celebrating getting even this far against the Remainers in our own country and in the EU:
On the morning of January 31, Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) gave a press conference in which she restated both her opposition to Brexit and her goal of holding another referendum for Scottish independence. The last one was held in 2014.
I fully agree with becabob’s tweet below the Daily Record‘s front page and have often expressed the same thought to my friends:
EU leaders also made speeches to representatives from the media. David Sassoli, the Italian President of the EU Parliament, lamented the criticism heaped upon the European Union. He said that he was referring to people on the Continent — not the British — and said that could not understand it.
Sassoli went on to say that the EU ‘rules’ and ‘regulations’ were in place to prevent ‘the strong’ overtaking ‘the weak’.
I wonder. Outside of MEPs, voters in EU member states have no voice over senior EU bureaucrats appointed to their various positions. They’re an unelected elite who tell MEPs how to vote. The EU Parliament essentially rubber stamps whatever legislation they are told to approve.
Moving along, the EU removed the British flag from their premises in Brussels:
Hear the cheers in a British sports bar as it happened:
The EU’s Guy Verhofstadt, an arch-enemy of Brexit, posted a video from the Alliance Party in Europe:
Meanwhile, television broadcasters were upset that Boris had a No. 10 team film his exit statement to the nation. Normally, that would have been done by one of the main channels, with permission given to the others to air it. On January 30, The Express reported:
The BBC has warned it might not air the message, which is understood to be a fireside chat.
A spokesman said: “There is a long-established process for recording statements by the Prime Minister at significant times where one broadcaster records it and shares the footage.
“The BBC and the other broadcasters are well used to following this usual process, which respects our independence as broadcasters.
“If Number 10 wants to supply its own footage we will judge it on its news value when deciding whether to broadcast it, as we would with any footage supplied to us by third parties.”
Mr Johnson’s address is one of a number of celebrations to mark Brexit day.
Government buildings in Whitehall will be lit up in red, white and blue, while Parliament Square and Pall Mall will be decorated with British flags.
On a happier note, the Prime Minister’s girlfriend Carrie Symonds posted a photo of Dilyn, their rescue dog from Wales:
That evening, Russia Today was the only media outlet to film Brexit Night for four hours:
At 10 p.m. the BBC, Sky News and ITV broadcast news programmes which lasted until 11:15 p.m. I watched ITV, and I’m glad, because the BBC and Sky gave little coverage of Leavers and, instead, focussed on Remainers.
ITV showed Cabinet members approaching No. 10 for a quiet party that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was throwing for them, his staff and other friends of Brexit, e.g. former Labour Party MP Gisela Stuart.
Just as the newsreader was about to announce who was going in — around 10:06 p.m. — the television played up. It was time to retune the channels, which was aggravating, as we missed the next five minutes of coverage. This is an important detail, more about which below.
ITV showed us coverage of the big party at the rugby club in Morley, which is just outside of Leeds in West Yorkshire:
Happily, ITV showed the fireworks display on their rugby pitch. They were probably the only municipality to have one.
Andrea Jenkyns MP helped to organise the event, which was packed, and probably arranged for permission for the firework display. Fireworks are now officially banned for the year until November 5.
This was the scene in Morley earlier in the day (the Twitter thread has great tweets):
The BBC chose a different locale, Boston in Lincolnshire, for their coverage:
They sang Auld Lang Syne at 11 p.m.:
In the southeast — in Kent — this was the scene at 11:00 p.m. along the famous white cliffs of Dover. This is a lovely little video:
In Brussels, the buildings in the historic centre of the city were illuminated beautifully. Thank you:
In London’s Parliament Square, thousands gathered for the countdown, including former Labour MP for Vauxhall Kate Hoey, an ardent supporter of Brexit:
Earlier, Kate Hoey gave an interview to Sky News:
Returning to Parliament Square, the chap in the middle has been campaigning in Parliament Square for the past few years. As far as I know, he did it without pay and, unlike his Remainer counterpart Steve Bray, never brayed about Brexit, but greeted passers-by instead. Anyone who wanted to talk about Brexit with him could do so:
Steve Bray, who continually ruined many live broadcasts from No. 10, says he will continue braying. Shameful. He was paid £80 a day, he said, to shout all the time. It’s a wonder he has a voice box left:
Here’s a nice ‘pan’ of those in Parliament Square:
This was the big moment in Parliament Square. Thanks to America’s OANN for capturing the atmosphere in their video:
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage was on hand to address the crowd:
The Houses of Parliament looked stunning:
The Department for Exiting the EU formally closed:
Steve Barclay MP formally resigned his position in that department:
Now on to No. 10 Downing Street, the scene of Boris’s subdued party (click photo to read the full article):
Recall that, at the beginning of this post, I mentioned that the television required retuning. No one inside No. 10 was aware of that. Unfortunately, when the big moment came and Boris had intended for everyone to watch the countdown televisually, he had to make do with banging a small gong instead.
I don’t know if any of the nation’s broadcasters showed Boris’s address to the nation at 10 p.m. that night. I tuned in to ITV around 10:05.
Here it is in full:
He aptly and congenially explains that a) he understands that not everyone supports Brexit, b) outlines the next ‘act’ in this continuing ‘drama’ and c) tells us why leaving the EU is the ‘healthy and democratic’ thing to do, referring to the referendum result from 2016.
I am really looking forward to the months ahead. I believe that Boris, flawed though he is (aren’t we all?), will be making history in all the best ways for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
For at least 20 years, populism has been popular in the Netherlands.
Former Labour MP Ed Balls has a BBC Two television series called Travels in Euroland with Ed Balls.
In his episode in the Netherlands, he asks at the end how populism can be stopped.
Yet, he missed the most important point of his own interviews.
Populism is not the R-word.
On the contrary. Populism asks that immigrants assimilate into their new culture. It also asks for orderly borders.
He meets a man named Willem, who talks about his girlfriend in the Gambia. Her name is Jojo. When Ed Balls goes to Willem’s house for lunch, the Dutchman speaks affectionately of her and says he bought her a bicycle — her new, preferred mode of transport (two-minute mark):
So, we can say that populists are, in the main, multiracial. They do not, however, want their own culture erased out of history.
The clip shows that Balls missed the whole of Willem’s message.
But, then again, Balls is Labour and he is making this series for the BBC. What else can one expect?
On Thursday, January 16, 2020, the BBC’s Question Time (QT) had an unusual guest: an actor.
He was no ordinary actor, as the presenter, panel and live audience were to discover.
Laurence Fox, co-star of the popular Detective Morse-spin-off series Lewis, spoke his mind cogently and calmly.
What he said was controversial to half the people who heard it and common sense to the other half.
Guido Fawkes promptly posted Fox’s ‘best of’ moments early Friday morning (emphasis in the original):
Few knew who Laurence Fox was before last night’s Question Time appearance. After this barnstorming performance Guido reckons his appearances will be more keenly anticipated.
Most viewers would make time to watch QT were Fox on it again. However, unlike Guido, I doubt whether he will be invited again. Although his views are centrist, that’s too balanced for the programme, known for its overwhelmingly left-wing panel and presenter (Fiona Bruce) as well as the blunt, emotional discussions, if one can call them that.
No one with any common sense watches QT unless there’s someone on they want to see. I only watched the programme in full after seeing Guido’s post.
This was one of the best QTs ever, because of Fox.
One wonders if the programme researcher who booked him still has a job. I hope so, because ratings on the online replays of the show must have gone through the roof over the past week.
This is what Spiked‘s columnist, Patrick West, wrote about the actor only a few weeks ago in November 2019 (emphases mine below):
We need more Laurence Foxes
Most intelligent grownups don’t pay attention to the political opinions of actors. The film Team America summed it up. Their opinions are usually shallow and conformist. Not so the actor Laurence Fox.
He is decidedly un-luvvie in his opinions and pastimes. The Lewis actor told The Sunday Times the other week that he recently walked around south London in a MAGA hat. He’s fine about multiracialism, but hates multiculturalism: ‘You have to be a Somewhere person. If you’re in England, be English.’
He openly doesn’t hate Donald Trump. He doesn’t think there should be 50-50 gender quotas for scriptwriters at RADA. He calls his fellow thesps ‘hypocrites’ for supporting Extinction Rebellion while leading ‘high-carbon lives’. He is irked most by today’s culture of conformity. ‘Our parents taught us to think for ourselves and then stayed out of the way. Now our kids turn up with a preconceived idea which they’re getting from school.’
Research by King’s College London’s privacy institute published last month showed that young people today had much more liberal views on soft drugs, homosexuality and abortion than they did 20 years ago …
This is the great paradox of our day: young people are more tolerant than they used to be, except towards those who question the consensus.
You can see an interview here from December 1 in which he describes his MAGA hat experience in London and the Trump Derangement Syndrome he received:
This is the full 27-minute interview:
The Telegraph‘s Madeline Grant was also on the QT panel last Thursday. She wrote about it on Friday morning, including a clip of the show when the Sussexes departure from the Royal Family was discussed:
The woman attempting to take Fox on over his views on the topic turned out to be a BBC plant, a lecturer at Edge Hill University (a former teacher training college):
Now on to Madeline Grant’s article, most of which lies behind a paywall:
To say I was in a state of panic on the way to Liverpool for my maiden Question Time outing on Thursday would be an understatement. I imagined vomiting onstage, trying to speak and croaking, wardrobe malfunctions, furious audience members throwing tomatoes, and more. I considered pulling a sickie or emigrating.
Yet the experience defied my expectations; with a rare Right-leaning panel, a terrific audience posing intelligent questions, a generally polite and enjoyable conversation without the point-scoring tedium that often accompanies such shows.
Perhaps the most astonishing revelation, however – the needle in the haystack, the flying pig, the blue moon – was the presence of a non-woke actor on the panel. My new friend Laurence Fox, who perfectly captured public resentment of stifling identity politics and the culture of permanent offence. He skewered the hypocrisies of pontificating celebrities and disconnected politicians. And, like Ricky Gervais’s tirade against the Hollywood elite at the Golden Globes, his words found a receptive audience …
The aforementioned lecturer, Rachel Boyle, accused Fox of being ‘privileged’ in his comments about the Duchess of Sussex. The Telegraph‘s Jamie Johnson wrote an article, free to view, which recapped some of what the actor said:
Responding to a claim from an audience member that the media’s treatment of Meghan amounted to “racism”, Mr Fox responded: “It’s not racism… we’re the most tolerant, lovely country in Europe.
“It’s so easy to throw the charge of racism and it’s really starting to get boring now,” he continued.
The audience member then described Fox as a “white, privileged male”, to which he responded: “I can’t help what I am, I was born like this, it was an immutable characteristic.
“To call me a white privileged male is to be racist,” he claimed.
You can read an analysis of Boyle and QT here. She tweeted on Saturday, January 18, and got a number of pro and con responses, including this one:
Fox believes that the media turned on the Sussexes when they decided they did not want to put in the hard work as Royals yet still get paid a salary:
Further discussing Meghan and Harry’s decision to quit as senior royals, he told host Fiona Bruce: “When you’re younger you do want to make a life for yourselves.
“So I do empathise with them, but I do think there’s a little bit of having your cake and eating it which I don’t enjoy.”
Absolutely! The more one reflects on this, the more one can see the British public’s indignation at the indirect insinuation by the Sussexes that we’re just not good enough for them. They cannot bear the idea of pressing our oh-so-common flesh on a regular basis. They’re far too good for the likes of us. What snobs.
Returning to QT, the first of Fox’s brilliant comments came on the subject of climate change and frequent flights. He willingly admitted to flying a lot:
Joking about the hypocrisy of celebrities who fly regularly, Fox said: “The carbon footprint’s huge.
“But we make up for it by preaching to everyone how they should change their life.”
Yes! (Looking at you, Sussexes — along with dozens of others!)
Fox received lots of praise from QT viewers:
The Mail on Sunday has more reactions from Twitter on Fox’s views as expressed on QT.
In this interview with journalist and polemicist James Delingpole from January 16, Fox discusses his attitude towards dating:
The aforementioned Mail on Sunday article reported some of what Fox, 41, said on the topic:
Laurence Fox has revealed he once broke up with a girlfriend because she liked a pro-#MeToo TV advert.
The actor, 41, told his ex-lover: ‘Bye. Sorry I can’t do this with you,’ after she praised Gillette for their TV campaign on ‘toxic masculinity’.
He also said he no longer dates women under 35 as they are ‘too woke’ and most of them are ‘absolutely bonkers’ …
The controversial Gillette advert subverted the razor brand’s famous ‘The Best A Man Can Get’ slogan by challenging traditional views of what it means to be a successful man.
It featured news clips of reporting on the #MeToo movement, as well as images showing sexism in films, in boardrooms, and of violence between boys.
In an interview with the Delingpod podcast, Mr Fox, who has two children with actress Billie Piper, 37, said of his Gillette argument: ‘I don’t know how we ended up together. It was a very short relationship.
‘We were walking down the road together and she was talking about how good the Gillette advert was. I just looked at her and went, ‘Bye. Sorry I can’t do this with you.’
It is not clear which former girlfriend Mr Fox was referring to.
He told the podcast that before his current relationship began, he was put off dating women under 35 because they are ‘primed to believe they are victims’ …
Mr Fox’s previous girlfriends include DJ Lilah Parsons, Sky Sports News presenter Kirsty Gallcher, 43, and Vogue Williams, 34.
Asked what his former flame would think about him sharing the unusual reason for their break-up he told the podcast: ‘She will probably sit there and say, ‘See I told you he was patriarchal. He’s abusing me and I’m offended.’
That same day, Fox gave an interview to Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill, an ex-leftist who is now centrist and/or libertarian. This is a good discussion, just a little over an hour long. O’Neill clearly agrees with Fox:
Fox said, among other things, that he was very grateful that people were beginning to be more open about their views in the face of political correctness. As a result, he believes the tide is beginning to turn.
Millions of us are grateful to Laurence Fox for going on national television and unreservedly voicing his opinions in a calm, civilised manner.
Happy New Year!
Happy new decade!
I enjoy, albeit with trepidation at times, looking back at the decades I’ve lived through and charting the change from beginning to end.
O tempora, o mores!
1960s
In 1960, growing up in the United States, I remember that things were still quite formal. Most people took care in the way they spoke and in their appearance. They were careful to conduct their households in a respectable manner. By the middle of the decade, that began to change but not too noticeably.
By 1968, a social revolution was underway, including sexually. What was once private became public. Attire reflected that. Women began wearing skirts above the knee. Men’s clothes became more form-fitting.
Sloppiness and drugs became fashionable with the advent of hippies. Even though they were a small minority, they received a lot of media coverage. A slogan connected with them — ‘If it feels good, do it’ — began to pervade society at large.
Cinema and television reflected this change.
At home, Americans moved from watching westerns to tuning into a zany comedy hour. In 1960, Gunsmoke was the most viewed programme. In 1969, it was Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Gunsmoke had moved to sixth place in the Nielsen ratings.
Film genres and themes also shifted. In 1960, the great epics were popular, with Spartacus the highest grossing film and Exodus coming third. Psycho was second. In 1969, while Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was in the top slot, Midnight Cowboy was at No. 3, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was No. 6 and an X-rated movie, I Am Curious (Yellow) was No. 12. It would have been unthinkable in 1960 that an urban drama about homosexuality, a movie about swingers and one that was pornographic would have been so popular nine years later.
1970s
The cultural shift continued in the 1970s. American magazines and newspapers devoted many column inches to social drop-outs experimenting with communal living. Swingers were becoming popular in suburbia. Again, those were two small sub-groups of society, but everyone — even the most respectable — knew about these two phenomena.
Pop music got bolder, more sexualised. I remember in high school that we talked a lot about sex and could hardly wait to start dating so that we could experiment. Our parents wondered what was wrong with us. The idea of sin and the forbidden went out the window. ‘If it feels good, do it’ had spread to the middle classes. Previously forbidden carnal acts were encouraged as being completely ‘natural’. This furthered the evolution of a shame-free society. Today, I read that some teenagers don’t kiss on a first date; instead they engage in oral sex.
Interestingly, one of the most suggestive singers of the decade, Eric Carmen of the Raspberries, laments where this has led today:
I remember neighbours of ours getting divorced. The wife said that she could earn her own living now, thank you very much. The husband was heartbroken. We felt sorry for their two children. Until then, my family and I personally did not know any couples who got divorced. It just didn’t happen to everyday individuals. However, divorce rates continued to rise and, these days, no one bats an eyelid.
More women started working. What began as a liberating elective would turn out to be a mandatory means of survival in marriage in the years that followed. Few of us knew that then, though.
Returning to music, it was a great decade for youngsters. FM radio produced rather excellent stations devoted to little known genres that never reached Top 40 AM stations. Through them, we discovered prog rock from Britain: Yes, Rick Wakeman, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, to name but three musical greats. There were many more, too numerous to mention here.
Near the end of the decade we had disco. Saturday Night Fever was a huge box office hit and propelled John Travolta from television (Welcome Back Kotter) to cinema fame.
The most popular television sitcoms, such as Welcome Back Kotter, were all set in metropolitan areas. In terms of television in general, The Waltons was probably the only show with a rural setting.
Halfway through the decade, I spent a year in France, which was much quieter than the US socially and still quite formal, even though the more leftist state university students were generally unkempt and unwashed. In many respects, the country was a bridge between the 1960s and the 1970s in the nicest possible way.
1980s
Leaving university, I recall that many of my friends latched onto the Reagan zeitgeist and became conservatives.
They turned into their parents and lost the fun-loving verve they once had. I stayed single the longest, so was more acutely aware of a shift into respectability and suburban living.
I lived in a major US city then, earning my own way in life. For relaxation, I used to go to matinees at the weekend. The price of admission was cheaper and the cinemas were nearly empty, giving me the impression I had the big screen all to myself.
I saw a lot of world films in the first part of that decade, some from Brazil and Australia but mostly Britain and France. French film became a passion. Even one of the UHF television channels showed French films from the 1950s. Bliss.
As far as music was concerned, my favourite FM station played British and European singles apart from reggae on Sunday afternoons. More bliss.
Then, around 1986, something began to change. Although my favourite radio station stayed the same, the movie theatres weren’t showing as many foreign films. Within a couple of years, they stopped showing them altogether. One of my lifelines had vanished, sadly. The American films that replaced them were not very good, either, so I stopped going to the cinema.
Everything became very one-dimensional. America, somehow, had lost the link with the zeitgeist of European culture, which it never recovered. It used to be that people in the 1960s and early 1970s made a two- or three-week trip to western Europe to see the historic sites they learned about in school. It was what we today would call a bucket list item.
Fortunately, by the end of the decade, employment events intervened — and further improved — for me.
1990s
Living in England, I realised that I had an insatiable appetite for history and politics. I learned a lot about both thanks to a gift subscription to The Spectator, which I had read about in English lit class in high school. It’s been around since 1828.
In 1990s, my in-laws told me that Margaret Thatcher’s time was up. She had become too full of herself. We had high hopes for John Major.
I remember the 1992 election, which Major won handily. I could not understand the rage of my female colleagues who expected Neil Kinnock to win. They stayed up all night drinking, waiting for a Labour government that never came. The next day, at work, they were hungover, tearful — and, above all, angry. Why did they think he stood a chance? Perhaps I had been reading too much of The Spectator, but I had no doubt that Major would continue as Prime Minister.
By 1997, most of us felt change was needed. The Conservative MPs on the front bench seemed like tired, bloated bureaucrats. None of them had an original idea. Most seemed to be lining their own pockets. I was most consterned by Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley, who started closing A&E (Accident and Emergency) services at local hospitals. What was she thinking?
When Tony Blair became Prime Minister in 1997, nearly everyone I knew rejoiced. Change was coming.
And how …
2000s
The first few years of Labour were fine. I was enjoying my work too much to pay any attention.
By 2005, I longed for a Conservative government, especially when Gordon Brown became PM with no general election.
After that, Labour became unbearable, banging on about people’s personal lives and habits. The smoking ban came into force in the summer of 2007. Ministers assured us in television interviews that private members clubs and hotels would be exempt. No, not at all. It was a blanket ban everywhere.
It was during this decade that London elected its first mayor, Ken Livingstone. He served two terms and introduced the city-wide congestion charge for motor vehicles, which we called the Kengestion Charge. My colleagues at the time reminded me that, as head of the old GLA (Greater London Authority), he was known as Red Ken.
Boris Johnson succeeded him, also serving two terms. His administration made the streets tidy again and also lowered crime.
By 2006, I started looking more closely at the EU and the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels who seemed to rule our lives. I agreed with those disgruntled Britons who wanted a referendum on our membership.
Most of all, however, I was sick and tired of Labour, to the point of despair.
I also asked my far better half to cancel my gift subscription to the The Spectator, as it had changed its editorial line considerably after Boris Johnson left as editor. Although more people now read it, it is a former shadow of itself. I would not call it neither conservative nor traditional at all any more.
2010s
Hope came in the May 2010 general election.
The Conservatives had to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. It was the David Cameron and Nick Clegg Show, but at least Labour were out of the picture after 13 years.
David Cameron referred to himself as the ‘heir to Blair’. It took me some time to see it, but he was not wrong.
He set out to reform the Conservative Party and alienated older, faithful members in their local associations. CCHQ suddenly did not need their help.
On a broader level, Cameron will probably be best remembered for opening up marriage to same-sex couples and for offering us the EU referendum, billed by all parties as a ‘once in a lifetime’ choice which they all pledged to implement.
A number of televised debates took place in 2016. I watched them all. Some of my friends were less than convinced by the Leave proposition. The one clincher was Brexit The Movie, which is an hour-long eye-opener about the Brussels gravy train and better than any of the debates, no matter how good:
I stayed up until the early hours of the morning of Friday, June 24, 2016 to watch the result. When it was clear that Leave had won, I went to bed. The next day, my far better half and I woke up to Cameron resigning because he did not like the result. We had a celebratory lunch in London and went to a party that evening that had been planned months earlier. I remember the apprehension we both felt about sounding out the other party guests as to their views on the EU. We later discovered that were not alone. Finally, someone there broke the ice upon his arrival by exclaiming:
Is everybody HAPPY? I certainly am!
At that point, we were free to talk about Brexit.
Theresa May became Prime Minister later that summer.
Across the pond, another sea change was happening: Donald Trump’s candidacy. It was even more of a shock when he won. A startled nation awoke to find that Hillary Clinton was not their president.
The conflicts about Brexit and Trump continue today. Opponents to both have grown ever more vehement.
On September 20, 2019, the British website Spiked issued a thought-provoking documentary on Trump and Brexit. It’s 26-minutes long and well worth watching. To cover Brexit, their reporters interviewed residents of Southend-on-Sea in Essex. To cover the Trump phenomenon, they interviewed Pennsylvania journalist Salena Zito and residents of Erie, which was once a major industrial powerhouse in that state. It has fallen on very hard times, indeed:
The major theme running through both is, as they put it, ‘change’, which I believe they should have called ‘self determination’ and ‘recovering the aspirational dream’.
One thing that struck me was the interview with the owner of a gym in Erie. He said that his father raised seven children on a janitor’s salary:
You couldn’t do that now.
Too right. Both parents now have to work — unlike in the 1960s — and few households can support more than two or three children.
People in Britain and the United States want to work and save more of their hard-earned cash. They also want good job opportunities for their children.
A fisherman in Southend said that, because of EU rules, he is restricted to an ever-smaller part of waters in which to fish. The number of fishing boats has continued to decline, he added, and the number of fisherman has also dropped dramatically. That is why he, and many others in Southend, voted Leave in 2016.
The decade closed with Boris Johnson’s landslide victory on December 12. Historian David Starkey explores what this means for the nation in this 57-minute documentary from The Sun, ably conducted by a young reporter:
Starkey explores the evolution of Parliament since Victorian times, when it became the institution we know today. As many Northern constituencies flipped from Labour to Conservative, Starkey says that Boris’s pledge to revitalise the North will mean little unless he espouses their values of patriotism, which, he says, has been a dirty word for many years.
He says that Boris could well become a figure like Charles II, who restored the monarchy beginning in 1660. Many of their personality traits are similar, he notes, particularly their penchant for bringing a nation together and reforming it at the same time. It is well worth watching when you have the opportunity.
There is much more to Starkey’s interview than summarised here. He talks about the people of the North, Labour, Jeremy Corbyn, David Cameron, Tony Blair and, significantly, Benjamin Disraeli. Starkey hopes that the PM will study his Victorian predecessor’s successes closely.
With that, I must close for now. There are many developments over the past 60 years that I have not mentioned. This is merely to give an idea about the direction that Western society took as the decades rolled on.
Welcome to 2020. Let’s hope it brings many good tidings. I wish all of us the very best.
For my British readers, a documentary well worth watching is the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg’s one on Brexit and Boris.
The Brexit Storm Continues: Laura Kuenssberg’s Inside Story is very well made, indeed:
Laura gives us behind the scenes footage of herself with the press corps, her BBC colleagues and, best of all, leading Conservative and Labour politicians discussing Boris’s first 100 days.
There is some amazing and interesting footage, including a few seconds of the Prime Minister’s bare shins. He wears short socks. Perhaps it is time for Carrie Symonds to buy him a few pairs of knee-length ones for televised interviews.
It is obvious that the BBC loathe Boris and it looks as if Laura is no different. They were all rather nasty to top adviser Dominic Cummings at No. 10 in preparing for an interview with Boris.
Speaking more broadly, Laura seemed to think Boris was taking foolhardy gambles with Brexit and the election. Well, we know how the election turned out. We’ll find out about Brexit in the New Year.
Contrary to the negative replies from Labour supporters to her tweet above, she is neither a Conservative nor a conservative. She’s a canny journalist doing her job, and it’s paying off. This documentary bears her name.
All of that aside, viewers will be able to see the offices of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Gove as they welcome Laura for interviews. They will also be able to watch short exchanges with Steve Baker. I enjoyed the little snippet of the BBC trailing Baker and fellow MP Mark Francois after the Saturday, October 19 session in the House. As it was all a bit hard going, Baker asks Francois if he would fancy a drink. The cameras stop just before the two cross the road to repair to a pub.
I am not a BBC news fan, and I don’t trust any of their reporters or presenters, but for anyone missing politics over the holiday period, this documentary is well worth watching.
The charges of anti-Semitism that have dogged Labour since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader in 2015 beggar belief.
Labour has the highly dubious distinction of being the only other political party than the BNP to be formally investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission for anti-Semitism.
It is unclear why anti-Semites within Labour have felt so free to be so open with their hatred.
The front page article in The Sunday Times from December 8 has chilling content (click on image to read it in full):
Few are saying Jeremy Corbyn himself espouses the same hate, but he seems to be doing little about it. This is what he said on the last debate of the campaign on Friday, December 6:
Yet, the diversity campaign video that Labour issued on Saturday, November 30, mentions every ethnic and religious group in some way — except the Jews!
The Daily Mail has the story along with the video (emphases mine below):
Mr Corbyn posted the one minute and eight second video about diversity on Twitter on Saturday with the words ‘this is our strength’.
The video uses a speech by shadow equalities secretary Dawn Butler as a voice over in which she lists various different groups and insists ‘a Labour government will value you’.
But the video does not refer to British Jewish people in a move which has sparked fury and risks worsening Labour’s existing anti-Semitism crisis.
The party remains under formal investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over its handling of allegations of anti-Semitism …
Ms Butler said in her speech: ‘If you are in social housing, if you are LGBT+, if you are straight, if you are a traveller, if you struggle to pay the rent, if you wear a hijab, turban, cross, if you are black, white, Asian, if you are disabled, if you are old, if you are young, if you don’t have a trust fund.
‘If you didn’t go to Oxbridge, if you are working class, if you are under 18, if you are aspirational, if you work, if you are a carer, if you feel you won’t live beyond 25, if you have ever ticked the ‘other box’.
‘You have a future and you are worthy. Worthy of equality, worthy of dignity and worthy of respect and a Labour government will value you. Just be your authentic self.’
The video ends with a statement on screen which reads: ‘Our diversity is our greatest strength. Let’s unite and unleash the potential of all our people’.
The situation has been serious for at least a year. Yet, it would appear as if most of our main media outlets are purposely ignoring it.
Imagine if the Conservatives had this problem. It would have been headline news, front and centre, all year long.
How did I find out about it earlier this year? Via Guido Fawkes.
In looking through my bookmarks, however, I found a few Press Association articles from 2018:
‘Corbyn sorry for “pain and hurt” caused by anti-Semitism in Labour’ prior to a protest by Jewish leaders in front of Parliament (March 25)
‘Corbyn faces renewed calls to tackle Labour anti-Semitism’ (April 1)
‘Shadow minister “frustrated” over Labour’s slowness to tackle anti-Semitism’ which features a protester holding a sign saying ‘For the many, not the Jew’ and mentions Labour MP Thangham Debbonaire being criticised by her Bristol constituency Labour Party for attending the aforementioned rally against anti-Semitism (April 8)
Things went quiet until July 2019, when the BBC’s Panorama investigated charges of anti-Semitism against Labour. This was just after the the Equality and Human Rights Commission had begun their formal investigation. Guido Fawkes‘s team distilled the hour-long documentary into a video just under nine minutes long:
Labour’s Disputes team, comprised of a handful of people, was in charge of investigating claims of anti-Semitism. Then, Corbyn appointed a new party General Secretary. Under her leadership, few suspensions were issued. Instead, letters were sent reminding offending members of the party’s code of conduct. One by one, the longer-serving members of the Disputes team resigned. One had a nervous breakdown. Another seriously considered committing suicide.
One Labour MP interviewed said that things started to go downhill once Corbyn made his pro-Palestinian views more widely known. It appears that pro-Palestinian party members thought they had licence to abuse the notional enemy, with Jewish members suffering verbal abuse for their faith.
On August 2, Guido Fawkes posted ‘Labour Anti-Semitic Incidents Hit Record Numbers’, which says in part (emphasis in the original):
A damning report published by the Community Security Trust – the charity set up to protect Jews from antisemitism – has shown that there have already been 100 incidents of anti-Semitism which are “examples of, or related to arguments over, alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party” in the first half of this year alone …
Alarmingly, there was a spike of 55 incidents in February and March alone – when several Labour MPs including Luciana Berger left the party over its endemic anti-Semitism. Almost 20% of anti-Semitic incidents across the whole UK were linked to the Labour Party in March, with the CST report noting that Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis “clearly has an important bearing” on the record-high number of incidents recorded. All the while Corbyn continues to dismiss it as just a case of a few members occasionally ‘dipping’ into antisemitic language…
The MP mentioned, Luciana Berger, joined the Liberal Democrats.
One month later, a Brexit-supporting Labour MP stood down to work for the Conservative government under Prime Minister Boris Johnson:
On September 12, Guido Fawkes posted a schedule of fringe meetings for the Labour Party conference, ‘Labour’s Anti-Semitic Conference Line-Up’, which ends with this:
The problem for Labour is surely within their party these views are no longer fringe…
On October 16, a Labour MP from Liverpool, Dame Louise Ellman, resigned her party membership. She is featured in the BBC Panorama video above:
More former Labour MPs began to denounce Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
The next was Ian Austin, who was an independent MP before Parliament dissolved on November 6:
Former Home Secretary David Blunkett — now Lord Blunkett — was next:
Charles Falconer — Baron Falconer — served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain under Tony Blair. On November 26, he gave the BBC his thoughts on the Chief Rabbi’s condemnation of Labour:
Britain’s former most senior civil judge is also deeply concerned about anti-Semitism in Labour:
Former Labour MP Ivan Lewis is calling on voters to back Boris:
Yet, the anti-Semitism continues. The bookmarks I have are too numerous to include here.
Going back to The Sunday Times of December 8, referenced above, little is actually being done about anti-Semitism at Labour HQ (paywall):
Moving on to other topics, it has been said that Jeremy Corbyn wants to do away with MI5 and specialist law enforcement.
This happens to be true, as evidenced by these photos of the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Organiser featuring Jeremy Corbyn. Click on any of the tweets below to see the full thread. Click on any of the images themselves to see the full text:
Former leftist and veteran political pundit Rod Liddle succinctly summarised historical reasons not to vote Labour — Corbyn in particular — on Thursday. This is from a recent BBC Question Time programme in Bishop Auckland:
Reports have emerged saying that Hamas are actively supporting Corbyn’s election on Thursday:
Then there is Brexit. Corbyn has been very non-committal on where he personally stands. Historically, he has been thought a Leaver, but, as his party supports either Remain or Leave as a member of the Customs Union — worse than remaining as a full EU member — interviewers could not get him to make a commitment either way.
We also have the outrageous spending pledges from Labour.
This is a long but interesting thread debunking them. Highly recommended:
A shorter thread follows. Even this leftist says that we can’t take these pledges seriously:
Kate Hoey, a Brexit supporter and, most recently, Labour MP for Vauxhall in south west London, urges Bournemouth West voters to back Boris by voting for the Conservative candidate, Conor Burns:
These are only some of the many reasons not to support Labour, especially on Thursday, November 12.
On Tuesday, November 19, 2019, ITV showed the first debate of the election campaign.
Supporters of smaller political parties criticised ITV for inviting only Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, but, in reality, only one of the two will be Britain’s next PM:
At that point, a week before Remembrance Day (hence the poppies), the Liberal Democrats’ Jo Swinson was confident she had a real chance at becoming PM:
Although Conservatives believed Boris should have been harder hitting on Labour policies, he probably pulled back because a) this was early in the campaign and b) he wanted to help convince undecided or low-information voters that Conservatives have the better policies.
Afterwards, ITV News reported on the highlights (emphases mine):
In the opening exchanges, the prime minister warned the UK faced more “dither and delay” under a Labour government.
He said a vote for the Conservatives would be a vote to finally “get Brexit done”.
“If you vote for us, we have a deal that is ready to go. Approved by every one of the 635 Conservatives candidates standing at this election,” he said.
“As soon as we can get that deal through Parliament, as we can in the next few weeks, we can get on with the people’s priorities.”
But Mr Corbyn retorted that he could not deliver on what he was promising.
“That idea that the Prime Minister Boris Johnson’ deal can be dealt with and finished by the end of January is such nonsense,” he said.
“What he is proposing is a trade deal which will take at least seven years to negotiate whilst at the same time saying he will negotiate a special trade deal with the European Union.
“The two things are actually incompatible.”
Also:
Mr Corbyn’s shifted focus onto the NHS, claiming the service would be part of trade negotiations with the US.
Mr Corbyn accused the prime minister of conducting “secret meetings” with the US about the NHS and a future trade deal.
The Labour leader said: “What we know of what Mr Johnson has done is a series of secret meetings with the United States in which they were proposing to open up our NHS markets as they call them to American companies.”
To this claim, Mr Johnson replied: “I’m amazed how often this comes up.”
Mr Johnson insisted: “This is an absolute invention, it is completely untrue, there are no circumstances whatever that this Government or any Conservative Government would put the NHS on the table in any trade negotiations.”
That was the week after Prince Andrew’s disastrous interview on the BBC, which had aired the previous Saturday evening. Moderator Julie Etchingham asked the two leaders about the monarchy. I have highlighted what the PM said, because it has been often misquoted since:
Asked if the monarchy is fit for purpose, Mr Corbyn simply replied: “It needs a bit of improvement.”
Mr Johnson answered: “The institution of the monarchy is beyond reproach,”
Ms Etchingham then asked if Prince Andrew is fit for purpose.
Mr Corbyn highlighted how sympathies should be with Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, which Mr Johnson echoed.
Boris never said the monarchy was beyond reproach, meaning individual royals. He remarked on the institution itself.
Corbyn, who has been repeatedly accused of downplaying anti-Semitism in his party, which, oddly, has been rampant since he took over as leader in 2016, brought up Jeffrey Epstein. As everyone following the scandal knows, his surname is pronounced ‘Ep-steen’, but Corbyn deliberately pronounced it ‘Ep-shtein’, putting real emphasis on it.
The former editor-in-chief of The Independent, Simon Kelner, wrote an editorial about it for the i paper, ‘Conscious or not, Jeremy Corbyn’s mispronunciation of Jeffrey Epstein’s name matters to British Jews’. Too right it does:
The question, which we can be sure will never be answered, is this: did Corbyn do it, consciously or unconsciously (they’re both as bad as each other, by the way), to make Epstein sound just a little more sinister and foreign and, relevantly in the context, more Jewish? It’s hard to come up with an answer that doesn’t make the Labour leader appear either malevolent or incompetent. Given the wall-to-wall media coverage devoted to the scandal over recent days, it stretches credulity to suggest that Corbyn hadn’t heard Epstein’s name pronounced correctly multiple times.
… it was a very emphatic delivery – is something else entirely, and Corbyn had to go out of his way to summon up the mittel-European pronunciation …
I am more of a pedant than I am an anti-Semite hunter, but my synapses were twitching on both counts. I have a high threshold for anti-Semitism, and I have never thought that there was a prima facie case against Corbyn in this respect. In fact, I share some of his views on the politics of the Middle East. But this definitely pulled me up short. Having just watched his epically short-tempered interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4, which was filmed in 2015 but went viral this week, it made me wonder whether Corbyn might just be, to borrow [the BBC’s] Eddie Mair’s epithet about Boris Johnson, a nasty piece of work.
While the mispronunciation of Epstein’s name may not be viewed by the majority of viewers as overtly anti-Semitic, it definitely had a nasty edge. No one is offended on Epstein’s behalf (that would be ludicrous), but if I found it offensive, many, many other Jewish people would have found it more so …
Whether I am reading too much into a slip of the tongue is open for debate. But what is not in question is that Jeremy Corbyn should be doing all he can to persuade Jewish voters that, on anti-Semitism, he doesn’t just talk the talk. And what he did here was, apart from anything else, very bad politics.
More on this follows below.
Members of the audience were allowed to ask questions:
The debate ended with a hypothetical question from an audience member about what Christmas presents the two leaders would give each other:
Before their closing remarks, the prime ministerial hopefuls were asked what Christmas presents they would buy for each other.
Mr Corbyn said: “I know Mr Johnson likes a good read, so what I would probably leave under the tree for him would be A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and he could then understand how nasty Scrooge was.”
Responding, Mr Johnson said: “I would probably leave a copy – since you want a literary reference – a copy of my brilliant Brexit deal.”
Pressed by host Ms Etchingham to give a non-political answer, Mr Johnson said: “Mr Corbyn shares my love of plants and trees. I think maybe some damson jam,” to which Mr Corbyn said: “I love damson jam.”
At that point, Boris walked over to Corbyn and invited him to shake hands. It was a spontaneous moment, and it’s a pity that ITV did not report on it. Viewers could see Corbyn backing away from Boris with his outstretched hand. After seconds of hesitation, he extended his own for a limp handshake. Boris’s was much heartier.
What did the general public think? Interestingly, the result was similar to that for the Brexit referendum, which was 52% to 48%:
Leaders of the two main parties take part in debates like tonight’s, in part, to try to win over undecided voters.
A YouGov snap poll suggested 51% of Britons believed Mr Johnson won the debate compared to 49% for Mr Corbyn.
Those who answered “don’t know” were removed from the result, with YouGov adding the figures are so close as to be within the margin of error.
ITV’s political editor Robert Peston told news presenter Alastair Stewart that Jeremy Corbyn needed this debate to present a positive game-changer for Labour, who were trailing in the polls then and continue to do so now. Peston said that it was a draw. People who want Brexit done will vote for Boris. People who are worried about the NHS will vote for Corbyn:
Tom Harwood, who works for Guido Fawkes, said that Labour missed a trick with their claim that the Conservatives would ‘sell the NHS’ to President Trump:
Interestingly, our EU negotiator for Brexit, Michel Barnier, noticed another of Harwood’s tweets — and ‘liked’ it:
Dear me. Whatever next?
Well, the Labour-supporting newspaper, The Mirror, did not exactly go overboard in favour of Corbyn’s performance. Then, again, Prince Andrew was still making the headlines:
At the weekend, the polls remained static. More than one person thought this was because of the anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. They are the only other political party other than the extreme British National Party to be investigated for it. Shameful:
One week later — Tuesday, November 26 — Corbyn appeared on the BBC for an evening interview with veteran broadcaster Andrew Neil. He looked tired, ‘low energy’ (to borrow a Trumpism) and cranky. Neil took him to town on anti-Semitism, forcing him to admit nearly everyone in Britain would be poorer under Labour as well as false claims about the Conservatives wanting to sell the NHS to Trump:
It was generally agreed that, only days after Prince Andrew managed to give one of the all-time worst interviews on television, Corbyn managed to rival him:
This is how bad it was:
These were some of the newspaper headlines on Wednesday:
Andrew Neil began by asking Corbyn if he thought a particular statement about ‘Rothschild Zionists’ was anti-Semitic. Corbyn refused to say, until after the fourth time Neil repeated it:
Guido Fawkes said (emphasis in the original):
Jeremy Corbyn had to be asked four times before admitting ‘Rothchild Zionists run Israel and world governments’ is an anti-Semitic trope. This’ll undoubtedly put the minds of 80% of British Jews to rest…
Corbyn offered no apology for the anti-Semitism in sections of the Labour Party. This video is subtitled:
Andrew Neil grilled Corbyn on taxing everyone more, not just the wealthy:
Neil exposed the fact that Labour’s costings make no sense. Where’s the money coming from? The reply is not an actual Corbyn quote, by the way:
Labour supporters accused Neil of interrupting Corbyn, but:
The Sun has an excellent summary of the interview:
The next morning, ITV’s Piers Morgan picked up Corbyn’s daft comment on ISIS:
The interview got very good ratings:
With regard to the NHS, Neil scored points there, too.
Even Barry Gardiner, the erudite, effete veteran Labour MP — technically a Labour candidate, now that we are approaching the election — couldn’t defend his leader to Andrew Neil with regard to his questionable statements about the Conservatives wanting to sell the NHS to the United States. This interview took place 24 hours later:
Guido Fawkes commented:
The second excruciating Andrew Neil interview Labour has had to go through took place last night, when Shadow Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner was shown up over Jeremy Corbyn’s blatant fibs to the electorate. Labour are banking on people not being bothered to read the 451 pages they produced. Unfortunately for them, Guido has…
With this and snapping at a journalist for mentioning anti-Semitism, Gardiner has not been having a good media round…
Those interested can follow Guido’s link in his first paragraph to see the documents in question.
Jeremy Corbyn is talking a lot of nonsense not only on the NHS but everything else his party proposes.
One thing is for certain: so far, he has been a gift to the Conservatives.
