ROGER WATSON
I was only half listening to the news at the end of the week, and over the weekend, preoccupied as I was with a five-hour drive to Edinburgh. I’d have followed it closely on the radio in the car but as soon as I put it on Mrs Watson, who likes to drive or be driven without any ‘babble’, asks if there is something I am specifically listening to – to which my response is invariably “clearly not and no longer” and off it goes. It would make no difference if I said “yes”.
So, only able to pick up the occasional snippets, I clearly misheard one aspect of the reshuffle caused by the departure of serial house purchaser and persistent tax avoider Angela Rayner. I thought I heard that Shamima Begum had been appointed Home Secretary. This kept me amused for a few miles until we swapped places at the wheel and I could check my phone. Turns out that it was even worse. Shabana Mahmood had been appointed as Home Secretary.
I had been wondering what policies an air-headed ISIS pinup girl could possibly enact. Given her treatment at the hands of the medieval Islamic savages while she acted as a comfort girl for them, there was an outside chance that she might be even tougher on our own enemy within, who we seem unable or unwilling to fight on the beaches, than a succession of Home Secretaries to date. Surely, she has had the Muslimness shagged right out of her; certainly, it looks that way when you see her.
But Shabana Mahmood has brains, experience, and is a Muslim for whom – as she has declared – her faith comes first. If her faith comes first then her values must be completely at odds with our British values of freedom, tolerance and equality (and diversity) as none of these things are visible in Muslim societies. Richard North asks in TCW Defending Freedom “How can a devout Muslim safeguard security and freedoms built on Western values?” Zia Yusuf, head of Reform’s DOGE, has apparently caught her taking exception to “white, males” holding the English flag. She hates us and she hates the St George’s flag.
Of course, the conclusion is that she can’t safeguard security and freedoms built on Western values. She cannot possibly defend values in which she does not believe. As a practising Roman Catholic, I hate our country. To be more specific, I hate what we have become. I hate our government, and I hate the woke values that dominate our policies and institutions. But as a Christian, I am exhorted – by none other than Jesus Himself – to render unto Caesar and to love my enemy.
I interpret that as doing all I am permitted to do, within the law, to shine a spotlight and effect change wherever I have the necessary influence. Ms Mahmood has no such restraints emanating from her religion – which “comes first”. Islam is about discrimination against women, dominance over and death to infidels, and the implementation of Sharia law. Correct me if I am wrong.
I don’t envisage Shabana Mahmood entering the House of Commons with an AK-47 and spraying her fellow legislators with bullets. But her presence as a prominent Muslim in such a prominent position, without the apparent will to demonstrate her patriotism, gives power to the elbows of those who may. She claims that she will be tough on illegal migrants. Pull the other one Shabana. Possibly encouraged by the news that she had been appointed, we ‘welcomed’ over 1000 illegal migrants to our southeastern shores on Saturday.
Further down the reshuffle kerfuffle, Net Zero Brains Ed Miliband was asked to step down but refused to go. Did I read that correctly? “Asked” and “refused”. Starmer’s failure to remove one of the most unpopular and frankly ridiculous members of his government speaks volumes about his leadership skills. Non-existent. I’ll bet Ange is kicking herself now, she should have waited to be asked to resign…and refused.
Ange’s departure has left a vacuum where a black hole already existed. That of the meaningless and pointless position of Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. It seems to be an assumption that the replacement will be a woman. Take a look at the potential candidates – a peek is about all you’ll manage – and consider the possibilities. Sir Keir’s alleged penchant for Ukrainian rent boys may, in part, be explained by the women with whom he surrounds himself. Mrs Starmer clearly wants nothing to do with him.
But every cloud. The reshuffle brings Brain of Britain David Lammy back into the spotlight as Deputy Prime Minister. This raises the possibility that we will see him in action, deputising for the Prime Minister, at PMQs. The extent of his ignorance is legendary. His performance on Mastermind proved that he was anything but. More recently, he had to report himself to the Environment Agency for fishing without a licence. We may never have known except that he decided to do this with the US Vice-President JD Vance. Stupid or what?
Starmer probably thinks that he has saved the day with this reshuffle. But I think he will find otherwise when we go to the polls. He may even be ousted long before a general election if some Labour MPS have any sway over the party. Meantime, unrestrained by any straitjackets – physical or metaphorical – the lunatics are still firmly in charge of the asylum.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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This article (The Lunatics Really Are Running the Asylum Now) was created and published by The New Conservative and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Roger Watson
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Daniel Hannan: Starmer is speed-running the usual lifecycle of Labour failure
DANIEL HANNAN
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere was a Conservative MEP from 1999 to 2020 and is now President of the Institute for Free Trade.
It must be obvious, even to Sir Keir Starmer when he is alone with his thoughts, that Labour has run out of steam. Unable to get reforms past his own backbenchers, rocked by scandals, lacking any vision, the prime minister looks tharn – the word used by the rabbits in Watership Down to describe the glazed state that overcomes them when they are paralysed by fear of a predator or a car.
Did the reshuffle look to you like the work of a man with a clear agenda? Of 26 cabinet ministers, ten have been moved around the table and two replaced. Why? After a year in office, they were presumably just getting properly stuck into their briefs. So why slide them around?
Take the example of Yvette Cooper. She had been either Home Secretary, Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, or Shadow Home Secretary for 15 years. Moving her to the Foreign Office might have been a big statement. Will there be a change in immigration policy? Might Labour withdraw from the ECHR?
Of course not. It’s simply that someone had to take over from the manifestly incompetent David Lammy. We are seeing movement without progress, like car wheels spinning in mud.
What would a genuine relaunch have looked like? Ed Miliband would have been sacked, allowing for a more affordable energy policy. Rachel Reeves, who seems to have arrived in the Treasury imagining that there was a lever somewhere called ‘Growth’ which the Tories had inexplicably refused to pull, and who has been looking sadder and sadder since learning that it does not exist, would have made way for someone who understands economics. Lord Hermer, whose fondness for judicial activism lies heavily across every department, would have been released back into the lucrative world of acting for Britain’s enemies against the Crown.
Has any government been becalmed after so short a time? The only precedent that comes remotely close is John Major’s hapless administration after White Wednesday in 1992. The Conservatives had narrowly won the election in April. In June, Major appalled a chunk of his voters by insisting on ploughing on with the Maastricht Treaty after Denmark had rejected it in a referendum; and in September, the pound dropped out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, which Major had claimed would be an economic disaster.
Instead, the economy recovered, and the Tory party collapsed. Minsters spent the next four years relaunching, reshuffling and rebranding, before going down to a crushing defeat, which saw Tony Blair win the largest single-party majority since the universal franchise.
That happened, let us remember, at a time of strong economic growth. Today, by contrast, the economy is deteriorating, largely because of policies that Labour already knows to be mistaken, but lacks the authority to reverse.
There was excited talk last week about shelving the Employment Rights Bill. Well, like the Prophet Amos, I am no prophet, nor prophet’s son, but an herdman and gatherer of sycamore fruit. But I will make this prediction: the legislation will go through, Labour MPs being necessarily pulled further left by the dynamics of the deputy leadership election.
And I’ll make another forecast: Britain’s long run of structurally low unemployment is over. For over three decades, unemployment here has been lower than in much of Europe, especially Mediterranean Europe, because of our light regulation. If you want to encourage companies to hire people, make it straightforward to fire them.
The proposed legislation makes each new employee a risk. Add in the hike in National Insurance and the massive rises in the minimum wage (up 18 per cent this year, and 55 per cent since 2021) and you end up with what we are now seeing: a Mediterranean-style spike in youth unemployment.
Nothing new, you might say. Every Labour government – literally every one – has left office with unemployment higher than when it started. This one, though, is exceptional for the speed with which it has got there.
Can we take another four years? You can be sure that Labour MPs, knowing that they face unemployment, will do all they can to avoid an early election, and will hang on to every day they can of extra pay and pension contributions. Nothing will change. There will be no surge in housebuilding, no challenge to the model of our useless state-run healthcare system, no benefits reform.
In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, O’Brien dangled the hideous image of a boot stamping on a human face forever. Do you want a vision of the next four years? Starmer delivering his nasal clichés to a staged cabinet meeting, while the country falls to pieces around him.
This article (Daniel Hannan: Starmer is speed-running the usual lifecycle of Labour failure) was created and published by Conservative Home and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Daniel Hannan
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