UK Plans to Build New Missiles to Target Russia Linked to Pentagon’s Mad Conventional Strike Scheme
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 26.07.2024
Sources told UK media this week that Britain has partnered up with Germany to develop and deploy a new intermediate-range missile designed to target Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Veteran Russian military observer Alexei Leonkov says the plan is inextricably linked to the Pentagon’s highly dangerous Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) initiative.
UK Defense Secretary John Healey spoke to his German counterpart in Berlin on Wednesday about a plan to jointly develop a new strategic missile with a 3,200 km range, The Times reported on Thursday, citing sources said to be familiar with the idea.
Once developed and fielded, the new missiles would be deployed in Germany, according to the publication, replacing the American ground-based long-range fires that Washington recently announced would be stationed in the Central European country beginning in 2026.
Both the American missiles and the proposed new British-German missile would have been prohibited under the 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which banned the development, production and deployment of ground-based missiles in the 500-5,500 km range. Washington violated the treaty for years, according to Moscow, and unilaterally scrapped the agreement in 2019 and immediately began testing of new long-range weapons after falsely accusing Russia of possessing a ground-based missile system with a range beyond 500 km.
One of The Times’ sources said the US weapons expected to deploy in Europe in two years’ time are meant to “bridge” a gap in European NATO allies’ own capabilities. The source did not clarify what motivated the US to ask its allies to create an entirely new missile instead buying or agreeing to permanently field existing American ones.
A joint declaration from Healey’s talks with his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius, mentioned a commitment to “undertake a long-term, comprehensive cooperation in the field of long-range capabilities” to provide “deep precision strike” potential. The details are reportedly still being worked out, with no additional information made available, besides the new missile’s expected role as a conventional fire designed to destroy enemy tactical nuclear delivery systems.
The Storm Shadow is currently the furthest-reaching conventional missile in Britain’s arsenal. It has a range of about 240 km, and has been deployed extensively by Ukraine in the NATO-Russia proxy war. The Taurus KEPD 350 is Germany’s longest-range missile system, and has a range of up to 500 km. Berlin has refused to send the air-launched weapon to Ukraine, expressing concerns that doing so would make Germany a “party to the war” because German troops would be on the ground training Ukrainians to use the missiles.
A British Defense Ministry spokesperson told The Times that the deepening UK-German defense relationship is currently “in early stages” and that work on “any new programs” has “not yet commenced.”
Europe Joins US’s Dangerous Conventional Prompt Strike Scheme
“The deployment of these missiles, both American and British, is connected to two things,” Alexei Leonkov, editor of Russia’s Arsenal of the Fatherland military affairs and technology magazine, told Sputnik, commenting on The Times piece.
“The first is the global concept, the strategy under which NATO has been restructuring toward since 2002, which is the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) concept, whose essence centers around the need to destroy the nuclear potentials of an adversary like Russia or China,” Leonkov said.
Thought up by the Bush administration, CPS envisions the mass deployment of thousands of conventional long-range missiles fired simultaneously in a massive surprise attack to destroy as much of an enemy’s strategic arsenal as possible, decapitate its leadership, and destroy remaining fired nuclear missiles using missile defenses.
The primary danger of the idea stems from the concern that it will make the prospect of a ‘limited’ nuclear war seem more palatable for Pentagon planners, and hence increasing the temptation to launch aggression.
The second reason for the British-German plan to develop a new missile centers around the fact that the Americans “are running late, or perhaps have lost the technologies used to create intercontinental missiles with a range beyond that of the Minuteman-3,” Leonkov argues.
“Why do the Americans want to switch up some of their missiles for European ones? I think that most likely, the missiles they have developed may not have proven entirely successful. Hence they’ve decided to attract a European consortium led by the UK.”
On top of that, as Washington’s strategic competition with China in the Asia-Pacific heats up, the number of missiles available for deployment in Europe may be limited, Leonkov believes.
The defense observer can’t rule out that the new British-German missile project may be focused on the creation of a maneuverable hypersonic vehicle, with Britain’s BAE Systems already working on a number of projects in this direction, and cooperating with US defense companies on their hypersonic projects.
In fact, these new European weapons may be the mystery “developmental hypersonic weapons” that the White House mentioned in its press statement earlier this month when it announced the deployment of new long-range strike systems to Germany from 2026 onward, Leonkov said.
Leonkov is confident that these new missiles’ mission will be to overwhelm Russian air and missile defense capabilities, and that if they are developed and fielded, Europe will become the first priority for a Russian strategic attack.
Recalling the European NATO missile threat which faced Moscow in the 1980s, Leonkov characterized the alliance’s present plans as an attempt to give rise to a Cold War 2.0, only this time far more dangerous.
“Russia today is not in a position where it has a vast security belt in the form of the Warsaw Pact countries that it did during the Cold War. Therefore, decisions will need to be changed radically. It’s clear that it will be necessary to strengthen the country’s anti-missile and anti-aircraft defense, but also take steps so that these missiles never appear on the European continent in the first place, while there is still an opportunity to do so,” the observer stressed.
Specifically, Russia will need to make clear in its nuclear doctrine that the deployment of such missiles in Europe will pose a direct threat, and give itself the right to launch a preemptive strike to eliminate this threat, Leonkov suggested.
Under its existing nuclear doctrine, Russia reserves itself the right to use nuclear weapons only in retaliation to an enemy attack using nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction, or in the event of conventional aggression so severe that it puts the existence of the Russian state in jeopardy. In June, President Putin hinted that Russia might revise its nuclear doctrine in response to existing threats.
What the US needs more than anything is “a quick solution that would close the issue for a while,” Leonkov said, referring to the constraints Washington will face in deploying vast numbers of long-range strike systems both to Europe and Asia. Russia’s main goal at this stage will be to “act proactively” to respond to this new threat, the analyst concluded.
London pro-Gaza workers conquer Foreign Office to demand Israel arms embargo
Press TV – July 24, 2024
Pro-Palestine protesters have obstructed the entrances to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) headquarters in London, expressing their dissatisfaction with lack of action on the part of the new Labour government in altering UK policy regarding Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Some 300 demonstrators outside the government office on Wednesday waved the Palestinian flag, while holding placards and banners that read “Genocide Made in Britain” and calling on the British government to ban arms exports to the occupying Tel Aviv regime.
At least nine activists were arrested after clashes erupted between law-enforcement and the protesters.
The Workers for a Free Palestine, which coordinated the demonstration, stated that their objective was to hold the foreign secretary, David Lammy, accountable for his previous statements and ensure that he follows through on his own calls for transparency by releasing legal guidance on UK arms sales to Israel.
A protester from the organization said that if the advice “confirms Israel has breached international law as the shadow foreign minister, Alicia Kearns, says it does – the government should immediately halt arms exports to Israel.”
In March, the FCDO faced allegations from former Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Alicia Kearns regarding the concealment of legal advice indicating that Israel is in breach of international humanitarian law in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Lammy, 52, is facing criticism for his inaction regarding the ongoing licensing of UK arms exports to Israel, and for not providing clarity on whether the UK would detain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visited Britain following an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan formally asked for the issuance of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
Labour has up to this point only changed one aspect of their policy towards Gaza by declaring that the UK will reinstate funding to the UN relief agency for Palestinians UNRWA.
“It is clear after a fortnight that the government could have acted by now, but is instead prevaricating as hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza die. Labour talks about due process, but the people of Gaza cannot wait. Palestinians are demanding answers now,” a person at the demonstration said.
The Workers for a Free Palestine has coordinated additional blockades, where thousands of workers and trade unionists have closed down arms factories throughout the UK.
On May Day, the organization orchestrated a demonstration at the Department of Business and Trade, effectively blocking all entrances to the building. As a result, the building was closed and employees were advised not to report to the office on that day.
UK chief of staff says West should be ready for war in three years
Al Mayadeen | July 23, 2024
The new chief of the British Army General Staff has warned that Britain must be ready to fight a war in three years and double the army’s lethality as threats from Russia, China, Iran, and the DPRK escalate.
General Sir Roly Walker, the head of the general staff, told reporters that the West was facing “an axis of upheaval” with rising military ambitions, warning that a conflict with one nation may lead to another detonation elsewhere.
He argued that the UK and its allies must prepare “to deter or fight a war in three years,” emphasizing the seriousness due to China’s “threat” to Taiwan, Iran’s nuclear goals, and Russia’s military buildup evidenced by the war in Ukraine.
Walker cited US reports claiming that China’s President Xi Jinping had directed military readiness for a potential Taiwan “invasion” by 2027, alongside concerns about Iran potentially violating nuclear agreements and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
In a subsequent speech, Walker stated that he had “a bold ambition” for the army to “double our fighting power in three years and triple by the end of the decade,” not with additional resources but by utilizing technology and techniques developed on Ukrainian battlefields, such as drones and AI.
He argued that Russia, China, Iran, and DPRK‘s independence was growing, citing that they are becoming more supportive of each other with weapons and intelligence.
Walker predicted that it would take “five years to grind their way through” to re-capture the eastern Donbass, costing 1.5 million fatalities, arguing that Russia could recover despite this and may emerge with “a sense of wanting retribution for the support that was given to Ukraine,” thus constituting a higher medium-term threat than previously thought.
As the Labour administration has only recently begun a strategic military review following the election, Walker asserted that Britain has an “absolute urgency to restore credible hard power in order to underwrite deterrence.”
Ministers Were Informed Of mRNA Lies During Mandates, Cardiologist Reveals
Dr Aseem Malhotra had a direct line of communication to the Health Secretary
By JJ Starky | The Stark Naked Brief | July 19, 2024
We’ve had another mainstream breakthrough.
Yesterday, Dr. Aseem Malhotra appeared on TalkTV to discuss the UK government’s Covid response in light of Baroness Hallett’s report on the first module of the Covid Inquiry.
Commentators were surprised. Most predicted that the Covid Inquiry chair’s report would echo sentiments seen during proceedings, suggesting that lockdowns, despite all credible evidence, were the only viable solutions for dealing with Covid.
So when Hallett’s team concluded that “the imposition of a lockdown should be a measure of last resort… indeed, there are those who would argue that a lockdown should never be imposed,” it almost seemed strange.
During the interview, much like his January 2023 appearance on the BBC where he pivoted from discussing statins to linking Covid vaccines to cardiovascular issues, Malhotra shifted the focus to vaccines.
He covered a lot of detail in quick succession. He argued that the term “vaccine” used for mRNA products is misleading, as they are better described as gene technologies. He cited peer-reviewed reanalysis of Moderna and Pfizer’s clinical trials, which showed an adverse event rate closer to 1-in-800, a figure that outweighed Covid hospitalisation risk. He also mentioned that Israel saw a 25% increase in cardiac events among people aged 16-39 during the vaccine rollout.
But the standout moment came when Malhotra discussed his involvement in a court case in Finland concerning an entrepreneur who was denied entry to a café because he was unvaccinated.
Malhotra revealed that he witnessed a World Health Organisation (WHO) chief scientist testify under oath that by December 2021, the mRNA vaccine offered zero protection against Covid. He then disclosed that he had texted Sajid Javid, the UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, informing him of this testimony, but Javid effectively ignored it.
Former UK Secretary State for Health and Social Care Sajid Javid
It has been difficult to gauge what certain officials knew at what time. However, now we have an indication that some were categorically made aware that their policies were illogical and at direct odds with the evidence-base.
Press releases show that Javid’s department finally revoked the Covid vaccine mandate for health and social care staff on March 15, 2022, months after Malhotra made contact.
In November 2021, a survey of industry leaders estimated that up to 20,000 carers had already quit or been sacked over mandatory jabs. Given the mandate carried on to March the following year, that could be a vast underestimate.
Malhotra, who once advocated for everyone to receive the vaccines before his father reportedly passed away from them, notably said, “This is the biggest corporate crime committed by the drug the industry.”
TalkTV did not post the interview on YouTube as the platform continues to issue strikes to channels discussing the topic. So here it is in full.
Summary of Hallett’s Report on the Covid Inquiry:
- Ad Hoc Intervention: Epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse described lockdown as an ad hoc intervention with no prior planning, guidelines, or clear expectations.
- Lack of Scrutiny on Consequences: The novelty of the lockdown approach meant there was no time to scrutinise its potential side effects, leading to ill-prepared policies with unknown consequences.
- Significant Economic Impact: The report highlights the 25% drop in GDP between February and April 2020 due to lockdowns, representing a major gap in the UK’s assessment of pandemic risk.
- Missing Topics: The report does not discuss the UK government’s evidence that the Test and Trace system had minimal impact on reducing Covid infections despite its high cost.
- Balancing Factors in Health Emergencies: The report emphasises the need for a balanced approach in health emergencies, considering economic impact, social wellbeing, and effects on education, as advocated by former chief medical officer Sally Davies.
- Exclusion of Certain Testimonies: Testimonies from Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty are notably absent, indicating a potential shift from previously dominant perspectives during the pandemic.
- Real Story of the Report: The report suggests that the UK was not prepared for the “wrong pandemic”, but rather that it resorted to an unprecedented policy without a proper evidence base or risk assessment. It advocates that lockdowns should be a measure of last resort, and perhaps never used at all.
Top 10 NHS dietary advice FAILS (from a doctor)
Dr Philip Bosanquet | August 4, 2023
The NHS dietary guidelines are not fit for purpose (in my opinion).
Buy The Concise Nutrition and Lifestyle Guide: https://www.bosanquethealth.com/book-… (available worldwide via Amazon).
Visit Bosanquet Health: https://www.bosanquethealth.com The 10 fails are:
10. Approaching healthy eating / nutrition from a calories-in vs calories-out energy balance focus (failing to take into account Leptin).
9. Basing meals on starchy carbohydrates (failing to understand the root cause of insulin resistance, number one driver of obesity and chronic disease).
8. Minimising fat intake (due to it’s calorie density).
7. Promoting seed oils (vegetable oil, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil) as healthy, whilst stating saturated fat is bad / causes cardiovascular disease (papers on this are listed below, see also video on animal fat: 
• Why ANIMAL FAT is the ultimate SUPERF… ).
6. Advising people not to delay or skip meals, including breakfast (failing to appreciate time restricted eating / intermittent fasting).
5. Advice of healthy snacks.
4. Advice on artificial sweeteners as a substitute for sugar.
3. No mention of the gut microbiome, of organic food being better for humans and the environment than non-organic food, of minimally processed or unprocessed foods in preference to overly processed foods, or the quality or nutritional density of food choices.
2. Switching from full cream / full fat / whole milk to semi skimmed / reduced fat milk to help kids lose weight (!). Failing to take into account fat soluble vitamins including vitamin D.
1. Some of the recipe examples given.
Links to papers on saturated fat: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28864…
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24723…
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26268…
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34796…
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34547…
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34717…
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34509…
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27071…
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23386…
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34290…
Dr Philip Bosanquet The Low-Tech Lifestyle Medic
content (except quotes) copyright to Dr Philip Bosanquet 2023 ©
The UK election results hide a truth Labour won’t want you to hear
By Graham Hryce | RT | July 10, 2024
Many political commentators in the UK have failed to grasp the true import of the Labour Party’s electoral victory last week.
Some pundits see the party’s record majority as confirmation that politics in Britain has shifted back to the center – in contrast to the shift to the radical right that has characterized politics in most European countries in recent years.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Labour’s primary vote – 9.7 million but still a lowish 33.8% – increased only marginally, despite the complete collapse of the Conservative vote.
The most important aspect of last week’s election was the transfer of thousands of votes from the Conservative Party to Nigel Farage’s populist Reform Party – particularly in those “red wall” constituencies that Boris Johnson had single handedly captured from Labour at the 2019 election.
Reform received some 4 million votes – 14% of the total votes cast. The UK electoral system meant, however, that Reform only won five seats – including, most importantly, Farage himself.
This significant voting shift did, however, unseat more than 200 Tory MPs, including a former prime minister and a number of cabinet members, and ensured the election of Labour candidates in droves. This does not, however, constitute a “shift to the center.”
What actually occurred last week was predicted, prior to the election, by some conservative commentators who had become completely disenchanted with the Conservative Party, and had cast their lot in with Reform.
Matt Goodwin, for example, urged voters to engage in an act of “creative destruction” by voting for Reform, knowing full well that this would result in a landslide Labour victory.
Goodwin, in effect, urged voters to destroy a Conservative Party that, in his view, had long ago ceased to stand for genuine Conservative values – so as to clear the political landscape for a Reform victory at the 2029 election.
From this perspective, Starmer’s victory is simply a necessary political prelude to the creation of a viable British populist party that will be capable of governing in its own right in the next few years.
Whatever the prospects of this happening may be, such a perspective correctly predicted the imminent demise of the Rishi Sunak-led Conservative Party, and reflected what has actually been happening in UK politics for the past decade.
Other commentators – including Starmer propagandists and, curiously enough, some from the conservative right like Peter Hitchens – see Starmer’s win as a victory for “the most radical left-wing party in UK history.” Such a view could not be more mistaken.
There is nothing at all “left-wing” – in the traditional sense of the term – about Keir Starmer or the Labour Party that he has refashioned in his own image since its disastrous election loss in 2019.
Starmer has spent the past five years ruthlessly purging the Labour Party of the last remnants of left-wing Bennite radicalism – whose most recent proponent was the hapless Jeremy Corbyn. It is not for nothing that Starmer has ditched almost every element of the Labour manifesto that he so eagerly embraced not so long ago.
It is perfectly clear that Starmer’s Labour Party will govern for the global elites – not the traditional British working class or those other social strata that have been displaced and left behind by globalization.
Starmer may refer endlessly to his “tool setter” father in interviews, and Angela Rayner may go on ad infinitum about her poverty-stricken background – but this is all posturing and propaganda of the crudest kind. And it did not fool working-class voters in the “red wall” seats last week – they voted for Farage, not Starmer and Rayner.
Starmer’s first post-election speech is a surer guide to the elite policies that his Labour government will pursue.
Starmer immediately shut down the hopelessly ineffective Rwanda scheme – thereby foreshadowing in reality, whatever he may say publicly, his commitment to increased levels of immigration, a key global elite policy. Sunak was also committed to increased levels of immigration, notwithstanding his stated policy position to the contrary.
Also revealing was his comment that “we have too many prisoners” and his appointment of James Timpson as the minister of state for prisons. Timpson is on record as having said that two-thirds of those in British prisons should not be there, and he is famous for employing ex-prisoners in his shoe-repair chain.
Could there be a more elitist and woke policy than freeing prisoners in large numbers? The residents of London and other large cities in the UK must be looking forward the increased crime rates in which such a policy will inevitably result.
Starmer also reaffirmed his commitment to supporting the Zelensky regime in Ukraine in the strongest possible terms.
There can be no doubt that a Starmer Labour government will pursue elite policies such as these, and it will resort to radical constitutional reform in order to do so. Peter Hitchens has correctly drawn attention to Starmer’s radical plans to reform the House of Lords and further empower an already ideologically committed judiciary.
All of this is about governing in the interests of the global elites – it has nothing whatsoever to do with genuine left-wing politics.
What then can we expect to happen in British politics under a Starmer government over the next five years?
First, it is inevitable that the Conservative Party will disappear as a major political force.
The Tories have been deeply divided and led by fourth-rate politicians for decades, and Brexit exacerbated these problems to such an extent that the party tore itself apart once Brexit was finally implemented, after a debilitating internal battle, by Boris Johnson.
Johnson – although a flawed politician in some respects – was the only effective leader that the Conservative Party has had in the past decade.
Like Benjamin Disraeli and David Lloyd George, Johnson was something of a Tory outsider, a charismatic leader who understood that the electoral appeal of the Conservative Party could be significantly broadened by adopting policies that appealed to British patriotism and the traditional working class.
Johnson’s “get Brexit done” and “leveling up” policies allowed the Conservatives to appeal to disaffected traditional Labour voters and, at the same time, effectively neutralize the appeal of Nigel Farage’s UKIP Party.
These policies, together with Johnson’s charismatic leadership and campaigning skills, enabled him to win an extraordinary 80-seat majority at the 2019 election.
Notwithstanding this unprecedented electoral victory, within three years the Remainers and others within the Conservative Party (Johnson never had the support of a large majority of MPs) had joined forces with with the global elites, the mainstream woke UK media, the Supreme Court, and a raft of fourth-rate politicians of all political persuasions to ruthlessly destroy Johnson’s political career.
He was finally finished off by a narcissistic and vengeful populace who were, wrongly and foolishly, outraged at the Partygate affair.
Once Johnson had been deposed, the fate of a deeply divided Conservative Party under utterly incompetent leaders like Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak was sealed. In fact, last week’s collapse of the Tory vote was richly deserved, and Truss in particular deserved to lose her seat.
And one only has to observe the unseemly squabbling taking place this week between the half-a-dozen or so candidates for the Tory leadership – they include such luminaries as Robert Jennick and James Cleverly – to see that the Conservative Party does not have a viable future no matter who is eventually chosen to lead it.
What is the likely fate of the Starmer Labour government?
Like all mainstream governments in Western countries that represent the interests of the global elites, Starmer’s government will be unable to remedy any of the fundamental problems confronting the UK – because it is unwilling to introduce the genuinely radical economic and social reforms that would be necessary to bring that about.
Stramer’s government will be unable to resuscitate the ailing British economy. It will do nothing to solve the cost-of-living crisis or reduce energy prices. It will not be able to reverse the decline of the NHS or improve the delivery of government services. It will continue to support America’s proxy wars with all the adverse domestic consequences that follow from such a misguided foreign policy. And its firm commitment to woke policies will only intensify the culture wars that have so deeply divided British society for the past few decades.
It follows that, within a relatively short period of time, the British electorate will become disenchanted with Starmer and his government. Its fate will mirror the fate of the Biden, Macron and Sholz administrations.
The Reform Party will probably become the major beneficiary of this disillusionment – but whether it will be able to capitalize on it is very much an open question.
Populist parties do not have a good record of delivering on their promises, and the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system makes it almost impossible for minor parties to win large numbers of seats.
Farage himself was in two minds about coming back to lead the Reform Party and contest the election – and five years is a long time to spend in opposition as the leader of a party with only five MPs.
The French electoral system is much more favourable towards radical right-wing parties than the British, and in America Donald Trump had to take over the Republican Party in order for it to become an effective political force. Trump realized in the 1990s that he could not win the presidency as a third-party candidate.
If Farage is to become a significant political leader he may have to take over what is left of the Conservative Party after last week’s election.
Rather than bring about a “shift to the center” or usher in a “radical left-wing government,” Keir Starmer’s election victory is, therefore, much more likely to ensure that UK politics staggers along in much the same chaotic and dysfunctional fashion that it has for the past decade.
That appears to be the most that voters in Western democracies can hope for these days.
Graham Hryce is an Australian journalist and former media lawyer, whose work has been published in The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Sunday Mail, the Spectator and Quadrant.
A tale of two cities: have we seen a ‘surge to the Left’ in British and French elections?
By Gilbert Doctorow | July 9, 2024
In the past five days, parliamentary elections were carried out in Britain and in France. The results were dramatic, attracting a great deal of media attention.
In this brief essay, we will look behind the bald facts of vote counts and strive to make sense of where the UK and France are headed. What does the latest news tell us about the ‘managed democracies’ in Europe? I will direct particular attention to the different electoral and governance systems operating in Britain and France, given that these respective systems were so influential in delivering the results we are seeing?
*****
The sitting governments in both France and the United Kingdom were overturned in the past week. Looking at the winners, one might conclude a new or updated Left has won in both elections. If so, this runs directly counter to the media bugbear of resurgent populism that supposedly endangers democracy. Should the winners break out the champagne?
In Britain, Labour won a landslide victory, taking absolute control of Parliament and ending 14 years of Tory chaos and misrule. In the American vernacular, British voters were given the opportunity to ‘throw the bums out’ and they availed themselves of it. Tory leader and incoming Prime Minister Keir Starmer achieved this success by having expelled from the party the genuinely Leftist former leader Jeremy Corbyn and taken up the winning ‘New Labour’ centrist position first defined by former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Some of the more odious former or present Tory ministers, such as the holder of the record for shortest time serving in 10 Downing Street, Liz Truss, lost their seats in Parliament.
In France, Macron’s party, or ‘movement,’ yesterday lost its tenuous hold on parliament, coming in second to the New Popular Front, as the united Left parties call themselves, in a three-way race. Macron and his supporters could savor a victory of sorts by having risen from the ashes of the European Parliament voting on 6 June and of the first round of balloting for their national parliament a week ago, when they appeared to enjoy no more than 15 – 20% of voter support. Now they hold nearly a third of parliamentary seats and can hope to forge a coalition with the united Left parties to keep their sworn enemies, the so-called ‘Extreme Right’ National Rally of Marine Le Pen, away from the levers of power. The outcome is what political commentators call a ‘hung parliament’ in which two of the three rival blocs of deputies will try to form a ruling coalition while the President tries to stand above the bickering and back-stabbing while exercising near-dictatorial powers of legislating by decree.
That there will be a lot of bickering is beyond doubt: the single most prominent voice in the New Popular Front is that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the France Unbowed party. He is the embodiment of anti-capitalist spirits within the country, and though he claims that the Left is ready to govern, and though he or one of his allies may well be tapped by Macron to form a cabinet, it is hard to see how parliament and president can cooperate on anything whatsoever in the days and months ahead. It is nearly certain that France will continue its descent from relevance within the EU and within the world at large that the dimwitted and cowardly François Hollande oversaw from his CIA-stage managed electoral victory back in 2012 onwards. In his years in office, Macron has tried repeatedly to rescue the country from its descent by one failed initiative after another.
*****
The opposing principles of the electoral and governance systems in Britain and France are ‘first past the post’ in the former, where victory is handed in each district to the candidate with the greatest number of votes, and inclusive, proportional representation in government of the latter wherein seats are reserved for representatives of minorities in the voting public. I say this in the full knowledge that the coalition governments which are the almost inevitable consequence of power sharing schemes and are widely practiced across the Continent, are the rare exception, not the rule in France. In France, it has been customary for one party to hold an absolute majority in parliament and to form a cabinet of ministers that shares the same policy priorities and is chosen from among those prepared to assume power at any time in what the British call a ‘shadow cabinet.’
The strength of the British system is that it makes possible sharp changes in direction of government policy when the public is persuaded that the powers that be are not functioning in their interests. The weak point is that given the often low levels of voter turn-out and the share of votes cast held by the winning party relative to all votes, the incoming government may actually be said to represent a very small percentage of all eligible voters. Margaret Thatcher, for example, dramatically changed the direction of the British government while having enjoyed no more than 25% of the popular vote.
In the given case of the British elections on 4 July, something similar occurred. It has been widely commented by political analysts, and stated most succinctly and pointedly by the leader of the Reform UK party Nigel Farage, that the vote for Labour was not so much attributable to support for Labour as it was a rejection of the Tories. By Farage’s estimate, perhaps half of the Labour vote falls into this category, so that the actual support level of Labour and its policies may have been no more than 18% of the electorate. Of course, this detail is swept under the carpet in the headlines and opening paragraphs of the reports we read in the press and see on mainstream television.
The strength of the Continent-wide system of power sharing and coalitions is its ‘progressive’ appearance, its very inclusiveness. Inclusiveness, let us remember, is the new divide between Conservatives and Liberals, whether it goes by the name ‘identity politics’ or not. It long ago replaced policies for how you divide up the economic pie among contending strata of the population. On the Continent, many different parties get to share in the responsibilities and spoils of power.
I put the accent on ‘spoils,’ because I maintain that coalitions are a formula for institutionalized corruption. Governments are formed by back-room deals among the various parties in the agreed coalition. Ministerial portfolios are allocated with scant attention to the competence of the appointees for the given post, looking instead to the need to reward top party personalities for their adherence to the coalition. And the policies set out may well be in sharp contradiction with one another, meaning implementation can well be inconsistent and ineffective. There can be no better illustration of the pitiful results of coalition building than the current federal government of Germany, where ill-educated and wholly incompetent ministers such as Annalena Baerbock at Foreign Affair and Economy Minister Robert Habeck are a disgrace to the good name of European statesmen and women from generations past.
Let me emphasize here that a hung parliament was precisely the wish of Macron and his immediate entourage when they understood that there was no chance of their own list of candidates holding onto power alone and there was every risk of Le Pen getting an absolute majority. The pro-Macron forces of French politics are strongly pro-market, as one would expect from a leader who entered politics after making his career in the counting rooms of the Rothschild bankers and brokers. Yet, out of purely opportunistic calculations, in the week between the first and second rounds of balloting, they reached agreement with the New Popular Front on which of the two would withdraw their candidate from the race in given electoral districts so as to better ensure victory over Le Pen’s party there. It worked, but will the resulting parliament work? That seems not to interest M. Macron at this moment.
*****
In his victory speech, following official release of the vote results, Keir Starmer twice made the remark that in power he will place ‘country above party.’ Emmanuel Macron and his allies have pursued the opposite, party above country, and France will be the worse for it.
But then again, we in the pro-Sovereignty, anti-globalist, anti-supranational bureaucracy Opposition can only say ‘the worse, the better.’
One thing is certain in France: the country will be rent with internal discord at the highest levels of government. The Fifth Republic has survived periods of ‘cohabitation’ between a President of one party and set of policy priorities and a parliamentary majority held by another party with different policy priorities. It has not experienced the cohabitation with a hung parliament that we see now.
As regards foreign policy, our newspapers today speak of the blow to Israeli interests that the approach to power by Mélenchon with his pro-Palestinian bias signifies. We hear less about what the electoral outcome in France signifies for the war in and about Ukraine. A victory by Le Pen would certainly have put a check on any further French military commitments to Kiev, and possibly would have led to French withdrawal from NATO. For the moment, that very possibility has been eliminated. Nonetheless, a weak and divided France, such as we shall see in the months ahead, is good news for those of us who wish to see an end to the spineless conformism at the top of European Institutions leading us all towards Armageddon.
Regrettably, in Britain there will be no change from the pandering to Washington’s worst instincts and unlimited support for the dictator in Kiev. The only voice in British politics who stands for reason on relations with Russia is Nigel Farage. It is some small consolation that Farage has won a seat in Parliament, even though the 15% of the popular vote that his party achieved has not been rewarded by more than a handful of seats.
Postscript: One reader has brought to my attention the fact that France in fact has a first past the post as opposed to the proportional representation system so common elsewhere on the Continent. Accordingly I shift my emphasis elsewhere in the French situation and say that the outcome is uniquely due to Macron’s opportunism and tactical thinking at the expense of strategic thinking and patriotism; he has engineered a three way split in the lower chamber to keep Le Pen from power while knowingly making Franch ungovernable and returning the country to the instability it suffered during the Fourth Republic.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024
Will Labour’s ‘change’ agenda include Palestine?
By Dr Daud Abdullah | MEMO | July 8, 2024
From a purely moral point of view, the British government, and the Labour Party in particular, should have been the first to recognise the State of Palestine given their historic role in the dispossessing three-quarters of a million Palestinians. They should not be dragged kicking and screaming to do so. After all, it was the Labour Party which officially adopted at its 1944 annual conference the policy; Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out, as the Jews move in.
Houthi: US surprised by Yemen’s naval tactics, failed to stop retaliatory operations in Red Sea
Press TV – July 7, 2024
The leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement says the Yemeni armed forces’ naval tactics in the Red Sea have taken the United States off guard, adding that Washington’s advanced military technology has failed to stop the Arab country’s retaliatory operations.
Abdul-Malik al-Houthi made the remarks during televised a speech on Sunday, where he praised Yemen’s advanced military and missile capabilities in confronting the coalition of the US, Britain, and Israel which he referred to as the “triangle of evil”.
Houthi went on to say that Yemen’s naval operations have frightened the enemies, noting that US aircraft carriers in the Red Sea are escaping rather than attacking and its MQ-9 Reaper drones are continuously shot down.
He also pointed out that many countries were not caught in the trap laid by the US-led coalition against Yemen and even had direct coordination with the Arab country instead.
“The biggest failure of the United States was that it could not include the countries neighboring the Red Sea in operations to support Israel. Washington also failed to force the Arab and neighboring countries to attack us from their soil,” he said.
The Ansarullah leader further said that the US is trying to use Saudi Arabia to exert pressure on Yemen, warning that any Saudi “hostile action” against Yemen will benefit Israel and the US.
“America intends to bring Saudi Arabia into an all-out war with us and return the situation to the peak of tension,” he said, while urging for Muslim unity and cooperation.
He also emphasized that Yemen will not remain idle in the face of aggression and will not watch the nation’s economy collapse.
Yemeni forces have repeatedly launched drones and missiles against Israeli and Israel-bound ships since mid-November last year, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians against Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.
Back in January, the United States and Britain began striking Yemen in order to dissuade the country from targeting Israeli ships which carry arms and logistics for the onslaught on the besieged enclave.
Despite months of US-led airstrikes, Yemeni forces have continued their operations, drawing from an arsenal of increasingly advanced weapons to attack Israeli, US and UK vessels in and around the Red Sea.
Tale Of Two Weather Stations
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | July 3, 2024
Below are photos of two weather stations in Hull.
One is run by the University of Hull’s Environmental Department, the other is used by the Met Office for climatological purposes and typically runs two degrees hotter.
It does not take a genius to work out which is which!
…
Met Office Still Opening Junk Weather Stations
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | July 5, 2024
As we know, 77.9% of the Met Office’s temperature station network is junk Class 4 and 5.
But how many of these have been added in recent years?
The Met Office have now sent me a full list of stations, showing both Class and opening date. Since 2000, 58 stations have been added, out of a current total of 380. However only nine are acceptable Class 1 and 2s:
| Class | No |
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 8 |
| 3 | 5 |
| 4 | 29 |
| 5 | 15 |
| Total | 58 |
One Class 4 station was opened as recently as last year at Arthog in Wales.
It is one thing having poorly sited stations which have been around for decades. But I personally find it unacceptable that the Met Office have deemed it appropriate to carry on opening so many more, which they know full well should not be used for climatological purposes.
It is surely not beyond their wit to build a few pristine Class 1 sites. Which leads us to the conclusion that they are doing it deliberately.
Meanwhile in other news, the hottest place in the UK yesterday was ……………… HEATHROW!!
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From the Archives
Evidence for the German Euthanasia Program Compared to the Holocaust
NS Euthanasia Propaganda Poster, around 1938. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
By John Wear | Inconvenient History | August 31, 2017
I have been asked the question: Why do you think the German euthanasia program happened during World War II, but not the Holocaust? This article will show that the evidence for the German euthanasia program is overwhelming, while the evidence to support the Holocaust story is severely lacking. … continue
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- New Study: A 40-Fold Increase In Earth’s Main Greenhouse Gas Contributes To Cooling The Ocean
- New Study Highlights The ‘Dominant Role’ Of Aerosol/Cloud Interactions In Shaping Climate
- Munich’s First-Ever Green Party Mayor Declares First Ever City Water Use Restrictions… Fines Up to 50,000 €!
- Experimental Lab Research: The Climate Sensitivity To A 400-Fold Increase In CO2 Is 0.1°C
- Fatal Snobbery: In France, It’s Better To Die From A Heatwave Than To Do As Americans
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