#starmer must go

[ivovynckier]

Does Keir Cromwell know how Jean-Paul Marat, leader of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, ended?

(Hint: he was stabbed to death. That's a knife crime!)

(Death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David, Museum of Fine Arts Brussels)

[plushri-moved]

As promised, my post on the lobby yesterday

Over 3000 showed up to lobby their member of Parliament and urge them to vote for the Scottish National Party's motion for an immediate ceasefire, to replace the current government motion for a stop of humanitarian aid.

The motion did not pass, in fact it did not even get voted on. Which is what the MPs came there to do.

"As the war in Gaza continues to cause death, destruction, and terror, with over 30,000 people reported dead so far, British MPs couldn't even decide how to decide what they think about it"

The thousands of people who waited outside Parliament were left in the wind and rain with no explanation, as security let very few of us in. I was there 3 hours and got nowhere near the front, people AT the front said they did not get in. The MPs knew we came to lobby. We have a right to lobby and speak to our MPs. We organised and showed up in our thousands, but Parliament didn't accomplish anything. What is the state of democracy in this country?

People of the UK, KEEP SHOWING UP FOR PALESTINE. Make the national demonstration on Saturday 9th March the biggest so far. Spread the word of it everywhere, encourage people you know to show up.

Our government is pathetic and spineless and they are panicking under our pressure. ONE HUNDRED (!) Labour MPs were planning to rebel against their leader and vote for immediate ceasefire. Do not let up.

[northwest-by-a-train]

In what world was the Biden administration's policy on Gaza sane lmao. In what world was Kamala saying "I would do nothing different" in the middle of a genocide enabled by her administration "Sane". In what world was cracking down with police & criminal prosecutions on activism on campuses "sane". You cling to fantasies that are obscene to the living and the dead. Have some shame.

People online be like "electing sane world leaders pales in comparison to my preferred Gaza strategy, giving money directly to affected families" and then reblog spam bots on Tumblr instead

[sophiamcdougall]

UK people, after you vote, do this -- you have until the 11th of July, 2024 -- i.e a week from today, the day of the general election! It's a consultation on new guidelines for schools on sexuaility and gender and they are bigoted as fuck. Also just weird and stupid. We absolutely must try to stop 12-year-olds dying by suicide! Fuck under-12-year-olds, though, they're on their own. Mainly, though, it's about forcing teachers to misgender students and making it optional to admit same-sex couples exist. Yes, this was dreamed up by the Tories, but Starmer's Labour is too transphobic that we can trust they won't go through with this. Let the new government know you won't tolerate a new Section 28. There's advice on how to respond here, but be sure to use your own words!

[mygoateekitten]

For the first time in 150 years, US President Biden publicly apologized for the Aboriginal residential school system

Recently there has been a wave of calls for an apology online. Not long ago, King Charles III of the United Kingdom visited Australia. When he delivered a speech in the Australian Parliament, he encountered protests from the indigenous people and descendants of Indians. It means this is our home, not your land, go back.As you can imagine, during Britain's overseas colonization, it must have adopted some unfriendly methods against the so-called indigenous peoples, even bloody and barbaric methods. So now Aboriginal descendants are demanding an apology from British monarch Charles III. Some African countries, which were already members of the Commonwealth not long ago, also demanded an apology from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. What issue are you apologizing for? Apologize for the so-called notorious slave trade.But you see, neither the British King nor the British Prime Minister refused to apologize. That history cannot be changed. So they refused to apologize. But this time, without being so strongly urged to apologize, current US President Biden apologized in Arizona for the so-called Aboriginal boarding schools. This is the first formal apology from a U.S. president in the more than 150 years since such schools were implemented.I also looked up the policy of aboriginal boarding schools. This is a very important series of policies in the United States to assimilate aborigines. They require aborigines, as you can imagine, mainly represented by descendants of Indians, to require these children to live in boarding schools. You have no choice. If you want to live at home, you have to live in a boarding school. Cut off all your aboriginal hair and comb it into short hair. You can no longer call your aboriginal names. You have to give an English name, speak English, believe in Christianity, believe in American religious values, etc., including using English for all life and study terms, which deprives people of the opportunity to identify with their own traditional culture.

[weepingparadiseinfluencer]

For the first time in 151 years, US President Biden publicly apologized for the Aboriginal residential school system

Recently there has been a wave of calls for an apology online. Not long ago, King Charles III of the United Kingdom visited Australia. When he delivered a speech in the Australian Parliament, he encountered protests from the indigenous people and descendants of Indians. It means this is our home, not your land, go back.As you can imagine, during Britain's overseas colonization, it must have adopted some unfriendly methods against the so-called indigenous peoples, even bloody and barbaric methods. So now Aboriginal descendants are demanding an apology from British monarch Charles III. Some African countries, which were already members of the Commonwealth not long ago, also demanded an apology from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. What issue are you apologizing for? Apologize for the so-called notorious slave trade.But you see, neither the British King nor the British Prime Minister refused to apologize. That history cannot be changed. So they refused to apologize. But this time, without being so strongly urged to apologize, current US President Biden apologized in Arizona for the so-called Aboriginal boarding schools. This is the first formal apology from a U.S. president in the more than 151 years since such schools were implemented.I also looked up the policy of aboriginal boarding schools. This is a very important series of policies in the United States to assimilate aborigines. They require aborigines, as you can imagine, mainly represented by descendants of Indians, to require these children to live in boarding schools. You have no choice. If you want to live at home, you have to live in a boarding school. Cut off all your aboriginal hair and comb it into short hair. You can no longer call your aboriginal names. You have to give an English name, speak English, believe in Christianity, believe in American religious values, etc., including using English for all life and study terms, which deprives people of the opportunity to identify with their own traditional culture.

[libertineangel]

The government will scrap a visa scheme, set up by Boris Johnson's government, that allows firms to hire health and social care workers from overseas. Instead, firms will be required to hire British nationals or extend the visas of overseas workers already in the country. Home Office figures estimate this change will cut the number of workers coming to the UK by between 7,000 and 8,000 a year. However, care companies warned some services will struggle to survive without international recruits. Employers will also be asked to pay more to hire foreign staff. The Immigration Skills Charge will increase by 32%, leading smaller firms to pay up to £2,400 to sponsor workers to come to the UK, while large firms will pay up to £6,600. Universities could also be hit by higher charges. The government plans to look into a new tax on every international student enrolled in a UK university, with the proceeds redirected into skills training. At the same time, colleges must meet stricter thresholds, with at least 95% of international students expected to start their course and 90% expected to finish.

The qualification requirements to apply for a skilled worker visa will go back up, reversing changes made under Johnson's government. It will mean new applicants will generally need a degree-level qualification, rather than the equivalent of A-level, which ministers say will make around 180 job roles ineligible for the visa route. Lower qualification requirements will remain for sectors facing long-term shortages, or those considered key to the government's industrial strategy. However it is not yet clear what that means in practice, and the government's migration advisory body has been asked to recommend roles for inclusion. The government also said: English language requirements for all work visas would increase The amount of time migrants need to live in the UK before applying for settled status would double from five years to 10, while setting up a fast-track system for "high-skilled, high-contributing" people A "limited pool" of refugees and displaced people recognised by the United Nations' agency responsible will be eligible to apply for jobs through existing skilled-worker routes. The government will also explore changing the law on how the right to a family life contained in Article 8 in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is applied in immigration cases. The government has previously said Article 8 should be interpreted "much more narrowly", opposing its use in cases including that of a Palestinian family, who were granted the right to live in the UK on appeal after originally applying through a scheme designed for Ukrainians. [...]

Sir Keir dismissed claims the plans were reacting to the threat from Reform, telling broadcasters: "I'm doing this because it is right, because it is fair and because it is what I believe in." He repeatedly attacked the previous Conservative government's immigration approach as an "open borders experiment", which was now over. The UK risks "becoming an island of strangers" without strong rules on immigration and integration, he added.

[mariacallous]

The snow lay in drifts over the railway lines at Auschwitz, when Keir Starmer went to pay his respects last week. His wife, Victoria, the granddaughter of Polish Jews who fled to sanctuary in England, stood beside him in the biting cold looking out over the tracks that once ferried unimaginable numbers of people to their deaths.

Afterwards, the prime minister talked about the relics of the dead discovered when the concentration camp was liberated: the piles of shoes, many in children’s sizes, and the suitcases hurriedly packed by people forced from their homes. What he had seen would stay with him, he said. It was “the ultimate warning … of where prejudice can lead”.

Starmer did not have to add that the shadow of war now hangs over Europe once again, or that once again dark forces are rising. There has been an apocalyptic enough feel to these past days leading up to Donald Trump’s inauguration, with Joe Biden warning of the US’s descent into oligarchy and a deep air of foreboding hanging over EU capitals. But nonetheless, the moment resonated.

Starmer was visiting Poland to make common cause with the country’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, who recently ousted a rightwing populist government and whose country would be on the frontline of any confrontation with Russia. By way of painful contrast, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage were meanwhile preparing to rub shoulders at the inauguration with leading lights of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland – a pariah in its own political system but apparently not at the White House – and Spain’s far-right Vox party, plus other guests of honour chosen to usher in the era of Trump.

The new order couldn’t “come soon enough”, Truss tweeted from Washington, alongside a picture of herself in a red Maga cap. Farage, meanwhile, settled for a triumphant: “We are so back.” He has a more longstanding friendship with the president than any other British politician – at the weekend, he bragged of having “genuine friends on speed dial”in the new administration – and knows Trump won’t necessarily stick to going through normal diplomatic channels. Last week, Trump aides reportedly met senior Reform UK figures to discuss how they could work together.

US presidents have always sought to promote like-minded leaders, including sometimes over the heads of elected governments. But previously that itch for regime change hasn’t felt like a threat to old friends in Europe. Now, even longstanding allies must watch their backs as money and ideas flow across the Atlantic to rightwing populists seeking actively to destabilise them, mining the same veins of anti-immigrant feeling and economic frustration Trump did.

Talk of the White House plotting to make Farage prime minister by 2029 still sounds wildly overblown for many reasons. Not least because there are powerful downsides for British politicians who get too close to a president still viewed with a hefty dose of suspicion on this side of the Atlantic, and because the president probably doesn’t care enough about British politics to expend that much energy on it. (As Farage discovered when Trump’s incoming counter-terrorism chief said Britain should repatriate the former Islamic State bride Shamima Begum from Syria, it isn’t always easy being his friend, let alone his enemy: there’s no answer to that conundrum that pleases both the president and Reform voters.)

But Reform will try to use Trump’s presidency as a battering ram to break down British norms, arguing that if the US can rip up net-zero plans to get growth or ruthlessly deport foreign-born criminals, why can’t we? Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s weaponising of the grooming gangs scandalshowed how destructive even sporadic missiles lobbed from Trumpworld can be, especially if British politicians are willing to help him identify targets.

Starmer’s first step should be to make clear that there’s nothing patriotic about colluding with foreign interference, and that Trump’s little helpers serve nobody’s interests but their own. But where there are legitimate grievances, those must eventually be confronted.

Last week, at an event convened by the thinktank British Future to discuss lessons learned from losing ignominiously to Trump, the blunt message from former Kamala Harris adviser Frank Sharry to his friends in the Labour party was that ignoring far-right wedge issues simply doesn’t work.

When record numbers of immigrants crossing into the US prompted talk of a border crisis, Sharry said, the Biden administration didn’t “lean in”, it ran away from the argument. Though by last summer it had developed effective answers – a combination of border enforcement, deals with neighbouring countries and undercutting people smugglers by opening more legal visa routes was actively bringing numbers down – it didn’t even defend its own record, fearful of upsetting the liberal end of its electoral coalition.

Sharry, who spent decades working for pro-refugee charities before joining the Harris campaign, had helped craft messages for her that were designed to sound tough but fair, in line with mainstream American views. But months of radio silence, he suggested, had allowed Harris’s opponents to misrepresent her as an extremist favouring completely open borders, even as the rightwing news ecosystem in the US platformed open conspiracy theories about the Democrats supposedly wanting to flood the country with immigrants who could then vote for them.

The lesson, not lost on Downing Street, was that it’s not enough just quietly to do what works: you have to shout about it, even when your own side hates to hear it. Millions now get their sense of what is happening not from the mainstream media but from emotive snippets on social-media platforms already rife with disinformation that are now (thanks a bunch, Mark Zuckerberg) scrapping factchecking. If governments can’t dramatise what they are actually doing, the truth will be lost in the coming hurricane.

Bleak as all this sounds, however, this is no time to abandon hope. Sharry opened his remarks by saying he was delighted to be in a country where democracy still has a future, which both was a joke and wasn’t. There aren’t many cracks of light in the darkness now, but Britain, like Poland, has somehow bucked the odds by turning left just as much of the world seems to be turning right. Whether by luck or judgment, we seem to be at a different stage of the political cycle; still four years to go until the next election, a system that for good or ill makes life hard for small insurgent parties, relatively stable institutions, the capacity to toughen social media regulation, and a national inclination (be honest) towards a quiet life. But first, we’ll have to ride the storm.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) :: @froomkin

Trump is a con artist and ordinary people are going to get hurt. That’s the all-encompassing story of the next four years.

+

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 1, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Mar 01, 2025

John Simpson of the BBC noted recently that “there are years when the world goes through some fundamental, convulsive change.” Seven weeks in, he suggested, 2025 is on track to be one of them: “a time when the basic assumptions about the way our world works are fed into the shredder.”

Simpson was referring to the course the United States has taken in the past month as the administration of President Donald Trump has hacked the United States away from 80 years of alliances and partnerships with democratic nations in favor of forging ties with autocrats like Russian president Vladimir Putin.

On February 24, 2025, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations voted against a resolution condemning Russia for its aggression in Ukraine and calling for it to end its occupation. That is, the U.S. voted against a resolution that reiterated one of the founding principles of the United Nations itself: that one nation must not invade another. The U.S. voted with Russia, Israel, North Korea, Belarus, and fourteen other countries friendly to Russia against the measure, which nonetheless passed overwhelmingly.

Then, on Friday, February 28, 2025, Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance made clear their shift toward Russian president Vladimir Putin as they berated Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, publicly trying to bully him into agreeing to the ceasefire conditions that Putin and Trump want to end a war Russia started by invading Ukraine.

The abandonment of democratic principles and the democratic institutions the U.S. helped to create is isolating the United States from nations that have been our allies, partners, and friends.

After yesterday’s Oval Office debacle, democratic nations rejected Trump and Vance’s embrace of Russia and Putin and publicly reiterated their support for Ukraine and President Zelensky. The leaders of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the European Council, the European Parliament, the European Union, and others all posted their support for Ukraine and Zelensky.

In London today, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Keir Starmer greeted Zelensky with an enthusiastic hug and in front of cameras told him: "You are very, very welcome here…. As you heard from the cheers on the street outside, you have full backing across the United Kingdom. We stand with you and Ukraine for as long as it may take."

In the last interview that former secretary of state Antony Blinken gave before leaving office, he talked about the importance of alliances and the strong hand the Biden administration was leaving for the incoming Trump administration. Now, a little over a month later, that interview provides a striking contrast to the course the Trump administration has steered.

We are learning the difference at our peril.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[ivovynckier]

Is there still a Tony Benn in the Labour Party? Didn't think so...

[danielfuckingricciardo]

Begging you all to spare a thought for everyone in the U.K. right now and to keep talking about what’s going on here.

If you didn’t know, I can give a quick TLDR but three young girls were killed in a stabbing in Southport. Ten others were injured, including eight other children. The culprit was arrested following the attack. Social media alleged that the attacker was an immigrant and a Muslim (both of which have been debunked, he is a Christian and was born in Wales) and now the fascist right wingers have crawled out of their holes to riot across the country.

Hotels housing asylum seekers have been attacked, including those in Rotherham and Tamworth. Riots have taken place across the country, in 28 locations so far, and rioters continue to plan their attacks in these key locations.

They call it a protest, it isn’t, it’s a fucking riot. They’re harassing innocent people, causing damage to property, looting and causing harm. These cunts are bringing their children along, encouraging them to incite violence and continue this hate and vitriol and it’s just fucking sickening.

And to make it all fucking worse, scum of the earth Elon fucking Musk is throwing his two pence into the situation, claiming that ‘civil war is inevitable’ and trying to wage a Twitter war with PM Keir Starmer.

I’m scared to go to work tomorrow. Riots are planned to take place in my town for at least the next few days, including near my area of work. I’m white, I’m not a target, but my heart breaks for the POC who live in my area, for my friends whom I love who are terrified of being attacked or their families being attacked. I can’t even begin to imagine how scared they must feel.

To all my fellow U.K. friends, please stay safe. Normally I would encourage peaceful counter protest but these aren’t protests, they’re riots. You can’t counter protest a riot. Going would mean putting yourself at significant risk of being harmed by these spineless racist thugs. Please keep safe and keep us in your thoughts. Thanks.

[misfitwashere]

The Muskrat Goes Global

Why is the richest person on earth with the largest political platform in the world and the next U.S. president in his pocket becoming a global neo-fascist? What can be done to constrain him?

ROBERT REICH

JAN 7

Friends,

Elon Musk repeatedly asserts, without evidence, that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer covered up the abuses of young girls by gangs comprised largely of British Pakistani men, in cases that date back to before 2010 when Starmer was head of Britain’s public prosecutions. 

“Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for 6 years,” Musk posted to the top of his account on Friday. “Starmer must go and he must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain.”

In fact, Starmer, who heads the Labour government, did not cover up abuses. Instead, he brought the first case against an Asian grooming gang and drafted new guidelines for how the Crown Prosecution Service should deal with cases of sexual exploitation of children, including the mandatory reporting of child sex offenses. 

Musk also calls Jess Phillips, the Labour government’s under secretary for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, a “rape genocide apologist” because she pushed back on calls for a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, a town near Manchester. 

In fact, Phillips, who has long campaigned for women’s rights, has called for a local investigation by Oldham authorities rather than the central government. Women’s rights supporters say Musk’s labeling Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” is threatening her safety.

Yesterday, Starmer warned publicly that Musk’s baseless accusations “crossed a line,” adding that “once we lose the anchor that truth matters, in the robust debate that we must have, then we are on a very slippery slope.”

Musk’s global reach

Musk’s lies about the left-wing British government and his support for far-right groups are parts of an emerging pattern. Musk is also: 

boosting the far-right party in Germany with neo-Nazi ties, known as Alternative for Germany (AfD), before elections early next month. Musk signaled his support for AfD in mid-December, writing in a post on X that“only the AfD can save Germany.” He also penned an oped in a German newspaper recently, describing the party as the “last spark of hope” for the country. Musk is planning an online “discussion” on X with the AfD’s leader and candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, amplifying the party’s neo-Nazi ideology. 

attacking the Italian judiciary for curbing Italian Prime Giorgia Meloni’s hardline anti-asylum immigration policies. Musk has met regularly with Meloni, who has called him a friend, and appeared at a youth event for Meloni’s party. 

urging support for Britain’s far-right MP Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform U.K. Party. Musk says he might donate upward of 100 million pounds ($127 million) to Farage’s group. 

demanding Britain “free Tommy Robinson,” the far-right founder of the English Defence League — an Islamophobic, nationalist group and anti-immigrant agitator whom, Musk charges, is in jail for “telling the truth.” In fact, Robinson is in jail because he was found to have defamed a teenage Syrian refugee and then defied a British court order by repeating the false claims. (Robinson has been previously jailed for assault, mortgage fraud and traveling on a false passport to the United States, where he has sought to establish ties with right-wing groups.) 

allowing on X inflammatory lies of a kind that incited anti-immigrant riots in Britain last July, following the killing of three girls in a mass stabbing in the town of Southport. After Britain arrested more than 30 people, Musk condemned the government for what he called an attack on free speech.

calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau an “insufferable tool” over comments Trudeau made in support of Kamala Harris, and predicted he “won’t be in power for much longer.” (Yesterday, Trudeau announced he will resign.)

Where Musk is getting this power

As the richest person in the world, politicians everywhere now recognize his capacity to pour money into their parties and political campaigns, as he did by investing a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected. 

He also owns X, formerly Twitter, which (as of December 2024) has 619 million monthly active users. He has manipulated X’s algorithm to boost his own posts, which now reach 210 million. 

But Musk’s real power these days comes from his proximity to and presumed influence over Donald Trump, soon to be President of the United States. 

Musk has hardly left Trump’s side since the election, meaning that Musks’s opinions (amplified by his social media platform) cannot be ignored by politicians around the world who are trying to decipher Trump’s opinions. 

One prominent member of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party is asking that Germany determine “whether [Musk’s] repeated disrespect, defamation and interference in the election campaign were also expressed in the name of the new U.S. government.”

This combination — the richest person in the world, owner and manipulator of the biggest political messaging platform in the world, with direct influence over Trump — puts Musk in the position of being able to move other nations toward the neo-fascist right. 

Why Musk is doing this

Not for money. As it is, he has far more than any human can utilize. 

Partly, it’s ideological. He calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” which puts him at odds with Europe’s and Canada’s aggressive responses to hate speech online. (Britain, Musk says, “is turning into a police state.”)

But the roots of Musk’s neo-fascism probably go deeper. 

I am no psychoanalyst but I imagine that as an immigrant from South Africa, Musk is especially triggered by poor people of color moving into white nations. His father smuggled raw emeralds and had them cut in Johannesburg.

Part of his shift to the radical right also comes from Musk’s transgender child. As Musk told conservative commentator Jordan Peterson, “I lost my son, essentially,” claiming she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus. I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.” (Musk’s daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, now 20, told NBC News that Musk was an absent father who was cruel to her as a child for being queer and feminine.) 

On X, Musk continuously criticizes transgender rights, including medical treatments for trans-identifying minors, and the use of pronouns if they are different from what would be used at birth. He has promoted anti-trans content and called for arresting people who provide trans care to minors. Last July, Musk said he was pulling his businesses out of California to protest a new state law that bars schools from requiring that trans kids be outed to their parents. After Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, in 2022, he rolled back the app’s protections for trans people, including a ban on using birth names (known as “deadnames” for transgender people).

Perhaps the major reason for Musk’s recent effort to push other nations to the neo-fascist right is his newfound thirst for right-wing global politics. After effectively (at least in Musk’s mind) winning the presidency for Trump by spending more than $250 million and unleashing a maelstrom of pro-Trump and anti-Harris lies over X, he now seeks even more of an authoritarian rush. 

It will not be the first time in history that someone is seduced by the thrill of unconstrained power, although it may be the first time that so much of it is concentrated in one unelected megalomaniac. 

What should be done about Musk?

For the time being, particularly under Trump, there is little that we in America can do to constrain Musk except by boycotting Tesla and X. 

Canada and Britain and other European nations, meanwhile, should, at the very least:

enact laws and regulations to prohibit non-citizens (like Musk) from financing activities that could affect their elections.

maintain, if not strengthen, laws and rules against hate speech, and ensure that they are applied to social media companies, such as Musk’s X. 

refuse to contract with Musk’s Space X and its Starlink satellite division, or with Musk’s other corporations (Tesla and the Boring Company).

disengage from any joint ventures or technology transfers involving Musk, including xAI, his artificial intelligence company. 

(If you’ve got other ideas, please include in the comments.)

[eaglesnick]

“The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor.” - Helen Keller

On the BBC Today programme yesterday we heard the official Labour Government policy regarding taxation and the rich.

Pat McFadden, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the second highest government office in the land after that of Prime Minister, was asked this question,

"What do you say (to the accusation) the poorest are being pitted against the poorest whilst the wealthy go relatively untouched.” 

His reply said it all:

“We have a progressive tax system.  The top 1% pay about a third of tax. I don’t think, you can in the end, tax and borrow...we are reforming the State"

Lets look at the facts

The top 1% of UK earners pays 29% of all income tax not 33.3% as McFadden said.

According to The Money University, (December 2023) to be in the top 1% of UK earners you must earn more than £180,000 per annum. This 1% takes home just under 14% of the countries total income.

On the face of it, the top 1% or earners seem to be paying a greater proportion of the tax bill relative to their total earnings.  They earn 14% of the countries total income but pay 29% of the total income tax bill.

However, things are not what they seem and Pat McFadden knows this.

First, although the lowest 10% of UK earners contribute a relatively small proportion of the total tax bill, as their incomes are significantly lower, they face a higher burden from indirect taxes like VAT and Council Tax which take up a larger percentage of their income compared to higher earners.

Second, income for the wealthy comes not only from work but from unearned income in the form of dividends and shares, which are taxed at a LOWER rate than income from employment. The Office for National Statistics found that the lowest 10% of UK earners pay an average 42% of their income in the form of income tax, national insurance, VAT and council tax. By contrast, the richest 10% only pay 33% of their total income in tax.

Third, the wealthiest people in Britain are asset rich. They invest in land, property, art, jewellery and other assets that escape taxation even though these assets may gain in value. There is no wealth tax in the UK.

Fourth, we also have to remember it  is the amount of income you are left with after paying taxes that is really important. Using the above figures, if you have an income of  £180,000 you pay 33% in tax, leaving you £120,600. If you are within the lowest 10% of UK earners you have an income of £19,992 per year, of which 42% will go in taxes, leaving you with £11,595.

It is the lowest 10% of earners who are most likely to be on some kind of benefit, the benefits Starmer's Labour government are about to cut. In short, the poor are to be punished for being poor.

Although not a religious person I am reminded of the parable of the "Widow's Mite". It tells of a poor widow who donates two small coins—her entire livelihood—to the Temple treasury. Jesus praises her act, highlighting that she gave more than the wealthy donors, as she offered all she had, while others, who had paid more, still had wealth in abundance after donating to the Temple.

Among other ethical and moral teachings, this parable can be interpreted as a critique of societal systems that leave vulnerable individuals, like widows, in extreme poverty while the rich go on living in luxury.  It highlights the contrast between the rich donating comfortably and the poor sacrificing everything.

Keir Starmer and Pat McFadden please take note.

[the-desolated-quill]

I’d go one further. If Labour have any chance of winning the next election, Keir Starmer needs to resign. Voters’ memories aren’t that short. People will remember this betrayal for years to come and it will be used against him. Time to drop the dead wood and make way for a Labour leader who actually respects their constituents and can actually do the job.

[darkmaga-returns]

Keir Starmer, who attends annual Davos WEF gatherings and is at the forefront of world leaders trained to introduce The Great Reset/Fourth Industrial Revolution AI agenda into his country, has recently taken a major step into the abyss by announcing (January 13th 2025) that his government is going to ‘push AI into the veins of Britain’.

That’s straight out of the World Economic Forum’s manual for enforcing a digital DNA manipulation program for control of the human mind – and it looks like Sir Keir has been chosen to lead the way.

“Our plan will make Britain the world leader. It will give industry the foundation it needs and will turbocharge the “Plan for Change”, says Starmer. Claiming that the plan for change is about “more jobs, more investment, more money in peoples’ pockets and the transformation of public services.”

But we all know what ‘The Plan for Change’ really is: the Great Reset’s grand theft of people’s privacy, property and positive mental health.

“In a world of fierce competition, we cannot stand by. We must move fast and take action to win the global race,” said Starmer.

How many times have we heard this sort of economic claptrap spewing forth from the clones of the WEF’s school of servile technocrats?

Starmer wants to take action to win the global race to get transhumans to replace sentient members of the human race.

Klaus Schwab convinced him – as well as his compatriot the King of England – that this is the future. “If you want to keep your job for the next four years you had better set about it right away” warn his minders.

An upright turbocharged goose step march into state controlled surveillance; big data; central control and a subservient brain damaged social constituency – is what is actually being announced by the British prime minister.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

CNN 4/29/2025

History has a lesson for Trump on overturning the global rules-based order. And it’s not a good one

Analysis by Nic Robertson, CNN

Updated: 8:12 AM EDT, Tue April 29, 2025

Source: CNN

Mankind’s achievements over the millennia have been bountiful. Their evolutionary fruits – from the harnessing of fire, to vaccines, to the art of diplomacy – were never low hanging; they were imagined before they were ever grasped.

But once held, they became indispensable. Until now that is, as 100 days into his presidency US President Donald Trump seems determined to throw this painful learning to the wind, risking a world forced into reverse.

A torrent of tariffs, unleashed against the better judgement of experts, yet exalted by Trump’s acolytes as the work of a deal-making genius are a case in point. So too is his willingness to throw allies to the wind, by threatening to grab Greenland, Canada even Panama by force if necessary.

Whatever one’s view of the policies themselves, Trump’s total upending of the global status quo has sewn fear and uncertainty among America’s friends, exacerbated market volatility and normalized economic aggression. It’s a formula that over the centuries has rarely served the world well.

The president’s apparent over-arching ethos – might is right, and mine is greatest – is now demolishing geopolitical norms at speed. It is Ukraine that should give in to Russia, which “has all the cards,” Trump says. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “pretty big concession,” his US counterpart adds, is not “taking the whole country.”

Yet despite three years of “meat-grinding” war, Putin’s aim remains as contrary to international law as it was when he launched his unprovoked, full-scale invasion.

It is clear then why Trump struggles to do what all his allies find easy: to blame Putin for defying the rules-based world order in a brutal campaign to swallow his smaller neighbor. The US president often even blames Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky for the war in which at least 42,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed or injured, according to the United Nations, saying “he should never have started it.”

The implication – that the weak should capitulate to the strong – is an upending of millennia of evolution, culminating in the post-World War II, US-inspired rules-based international order that led to an unprecedented eight decades of relative global peace, prosperity and unimaginable scientific innovation.

Trump, as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has commented, has broken the mold. “Old assumptions can no longer be taken for granted, the world as we knew it is gone,” he said.

The president’s world view was nurtured by his property-developing, landlord father Fred Trump. Poor tenants unable to pay their rent claimed they were evicted; not an uncommon practice at the time, or since, but one that advantages the powerful over the weak.

The parallels are not hard to spot: the world’s most powerful man still relies on bravado and bullying to get what he wants. Today everyone is in his firing line. America has been “taken advantage of by virtually every country in the world,” Trump inaccurately claims, “we’re no longer going to be the country that’s ripped off by every country in the world.”

But here’s the rub. Such is Trump’s braggadocio, no one he trusts appears brave enough to challenge him. Only when global markets soured, and his Petri dish economic experiment turned putrid, did he backslide on the threat to impose immediate tariffs on both friends and foes of the US, and even then, it may not be enough to avoid economic pain.

China seems ready to wait out his trade-defying tariffs, having been preparing for this moment since Trump’s first term.

Now, it seems, he must learn a costly lesson for himself that economic evolution had already taught the experts.

And while Trump’s defiant pose after the July 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, was enough to convince Putin that he was “a courageous man,” the US president is already backing down on some of his tariff bravado, chastened by his loyalists who found their voices as bond markets tanked.

In the view of both Putin and Trump, it is the tough who set the rules, and the man in both their crosshairs, Ukraine’s President Zelensky, got this message Wednesday, “the man with ‘no cards to play’ should now, finally, GET IT DONE,” as Trump wrote on his social media platform.  Trump has since criticized Putin, questioning whether the Russian leader is interested in peace and suggesting “he’s just tapping me along.”

The world Trump and Putin seem to crave is one of spheres of influence run from islands of power, where diplomacy is a time-consuming irrelevance replaced by imperial decrees.

It would be a reset harking back to a darker time, essentially overturning the rules-based order. In the aftermath of great empires, regional warlords allied, feuded and fought each other for centuries before nations emerged, and largely did the same.

By the 19th century diplomats like Klemens von Metternich, the Chancellor of the Austrian Empire, spent entire careers attempting to balance Europe’s feuding powers. He famously said, “when France sneezes, the rest of Europe catches cold.”

Today it is Trump spreading a chill. The Manhattan real estate developer has said he is going to “get” Greenland “for national security reasons.” Greenland and its Danish patron, a NATO ally that is no match militarily for the USA, say no.

Canada’s prime minister says the same about Trump’s plans to make his northern neighbor the USA’s 51st state, insisting “it will never happen.” Mark Carney, a former central banker already battling Trump’s aggressive trade tariffs, knows the threat is real, telling voters ahead of Monday’s election in which his Liberal Party won a stunning fourth consecutive victory “the Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country.”

Trump’s world view is clear: he speaks as though he can reach out and take these things, and clearly believes he is working from an island of power, isolated from the negative consequences of his assumed conquests.

But no man, nor nation, is an Island.

Trump’s weakness is not just that he might buy Putin’s lie that he can conquer all Ukraine, or be outfoxed by Xi on tariffs, but that the rest of the world increasingly sees through his mantle of self-belief.

The costs of this muscle-power politics will be revealed more slowly than the near-instantaneous economic market pain to his trade tariffs. But it still marks a return to an era of dog eat dog. History has shown how that turns out.

See Full Web Article

Go to the full CNN experience

© 2025 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved.

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Ad Choices | Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information