Sir Keith Starmer and His Magical Changing Principles

Sir Keith Starmer is easily one of the most impressive politicians in the UK. He brushes his hair every day, wears nice designer suits, and tries really hard to never upset Conservatives (with a big "C" or a little "c"). 

Sir Keith effortlessly performs impossible feats like transforming himself from a socialist into a conservative and then into a centrist in an eye blink. He just has to utter the magic words "Focus group" and voila! we have a totally new man with a totally new set of beliefs. What is especially impressive about Sir Keith is how his views always perfectly align with whatever he thinks the general public want him to think. He is a real conviction politician.

To paraphrase the great Tony Benn, there are two kinds of politician - weather vanes and sign posts, and obviously what the public want is a weather vane.

Take, for example, the Labour leadership contest where Sir Keith was uttering words like "radical" which he wouldn't fucking dare utter now, unless it's to sneer at a Corbyn supporter and tell them how childish they are. Sir Keith even promised to honour the Labour manifesto, yes, that set of leftie policies which gives his upper-middle class base nightmares. And I'm pretty sure he once called himself a socialist, prior to him becoming the nation's number one culler of socialists. What a guy!

Today we are facing one of the most important pieces of legislation in our lifetimes, legislation which threatens the very fabric of what is, let's be honest, an already extremely shit pseudo-democracy, and Sir Keith is flip-flopping all over the place.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill (I typed that by memory so probably got it wrong) is that notorious piece of legislation which Screamy Patel wants to force through Parliament to steal your democratic right to peacefully protest. Screamy wants to tell you where you can protest, at what times your protest must start and finish, and how loud any protesters can be. Protests will need Screamy's advance permission, and if anyone so much as picks up a megaphone, or starts chanting, or stays a little beyond their allocated time slot, they could face up to ten years in prison. That's more than a fucking rapist gets! 

Screamy also wants to jail people for ten years for defacing statues, but she is yet to clarify whether that includes gammons shagging the statue of Winston Churchill. We can but hope.

Up until Friday, Sir Keith was planning to abstain on this sinister, authoritarian piece of legislation, but now he has flipflopped, I mean magically transformed his principles, after uttering the words "focus group." Now Sir Keith is actually going to vote against the bill and he is acting like he planned to do this all along, prompting his supporters to attack Diane Abbott for her earlier criticisms of the abstain position.

Suddenly Starmerrhoids can see that abstaining would've been stupid, but of course, if Sir Keith did abstain, the same people would defend him to the hilt. Totally. Not. A. Cult.

Looks like Sir Keith changed his mind on abstaining because angry centre-right Blue Ticks realised they'd lose their ability to protest, if ever the Tories planned a train line through their back yard or allowed an Aldi next door to their local Waitrose. Privileged people realised they were losing their voice too, so that's why things had to change. 

I mean it's fine when plebs lose their voice. They only use it to ask silly questions like "Why can't I eat for the last three days of every month?" and "Can we have our polar ice caps back, please?"

You will be pleased to know Sir Keith was not elected Labour leader to represent the plebs, which is why he spends 75% of his time purging them from his party. It's important to remember Labour was founded to represent upper-middle class people and gammons, and if you remove the right to protest, you actually silence the two whiniest, most self-entitled and snowflakey demographics in our society. It is for that reason focus groups said "Whoa!" and Rupert Murdoch said, "Okay, Keith, I'll let you do some opposition today, but just this once."

So Sir Keith looks set to actually vote against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill (again typed by memory), rather than abstain, and you can expect a bit of nasal grandstanding about how much he cares about our democracy. It could, and indeed should, be the perfect opportunity to see Sir Keith soar in the polls, but his shameless opportunism is so painfully transparent, nobody can trust a word that comes from his mouth.

Sir Keith fails to realise the public actually want politicians who believe in something, politicians who understand the complexities of legislation and recognise dangers, even when the majority of people don't. We understand popular opinion can often be dangerous because people are not always privy to the full details and don't have time to pore over them anyways. That's why we elect politicians to do the right thing, even when it's unpopular for them to do so. 

Sir Keith is telling us he will only do the right thing when it's politically convenient and that makes him incredibly fucking dangerous. We are looking at the most authoritarian Tory government Britain has possibly ever seen and we deserve real opposition with real substance. We deserve so much better than Sir Keith Starmer and his magical changing principles. We deserve a viable alternative.

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Why Are They Protecting the Churchill Statue Better Than They Protected Women?

The Metropolitan Police are currently holding a vigil beside the Winston Churchill Statue in Parliament Square, London. Roughly a dozen officers are standing guard around the clock to keep an inanimate object safe, and not just from the gammons who desperately want to shag it.

Anyone who's ever called the police because they've been burgled, knows how difficult it can be to even get the police to visit their home. Those who've reported their safety might be in jeopardy, know that police protection is pretty much non-existent. 

You are on your own, but not the statue. We must protect the stupid statue at all costs. It matters more than people.

The whole situation would seem absurd at the best of times, but now, after a woman has been brutally murdered, allegedly by a police officer? At a time when women cannot feel safe walking the streets at night? At a time when women have held a vigil for their dead sister at Clapham Common, only to be attacked by the police who are supposed to protect them? You have to be kidding me.

Police are devoting maximum resources to protecting the Churchill statue and slamming women to the ground for holding candles at a vigil. Talk about mixed-up priorities!

So what makes this Winston Churchill statue so important, anyways? Wasn't he the great hero who single-handedly won World War 2 and saved everyone from the Nazis? Not so fast...

Who has heard of the Gallipoli Massacre?

Winston Churchill was the First Lord of the Admiralty who was the 'mastermind' behind the Gallopoli Massacre and its strongest public advocate. 'I have it in me to be a successful soldier. I can visualise great movements and combinations,' Churchill once famously bragged, but his infamous military campaign in 1914 was a catastrophic failure with 250,000 casualties, including 111,000 dead.

"I am finished!" Churchill declared afterwards, but only three years later, he was back in politics, serving in the Tory cabinet as Munitions Minister. You would think such a catastrophic failure would be enough to ruin anyone's political ambitions (Churchill certainly thought so), but Tories are always allowed to fail upwards. Just ask Boris Johnson and Priti Patel.

But Gallipoli was not Churchill's only great shame. We also have the Bengal famine...

In 1943, Bengal was suffering from famine while under British rule, and as the Bengali population were starving to death, Churchill was stealing their food supplies.

As Nobel Prize winning economist Armatya Sen pointed out, food supplies would have been sufficient to feed the Bengalis were it not for the Tories - for Churchill - taking them to Britain. Huge supplies of rice and other food was confiscated at coastal regions, out of fear it could be used to feed the Japanese in the event of a Japanese invasion. Journalist Madhushree Mukerjee showed how the British government was warned repeatedly its obsessive food hoarding was leading to starvation, but it continued regardless, and Churchill simply blamed the famine on Bengalis 'breeding like rabbits.'

These human catastrophes were not just the terrible miscalculations of a flawed individual. They were the actions of a sinister man, a vocal white supremacist who described Indians as 'foul and beastly' and was equally scathing in his criticisms of Australian aborigines, native Americans and other races. 

'I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the Black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place,' Churchill said.

Ask any Irish person about the brutality of the notorious Blacks and Tans. 

The Blacks and Tans were the special reserves Churchill sent to Ireland to support the military during the Irish War of Independence and suppress the civilian population with extra-judicial killings, arson and looting. It's fair to say the Irish hate Winston Churchill with good reason.

'Should the order "Hands Up" not be immediately obeyed, shoot and shoot with effect. If the persons approaching a patrol carry their hands in their pockets, or are in any way suspicious looking, shoot them down. ...You may make mistakes occasionally and innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot be helped, and you are bound to get the right parties some time. The more you shoot, the better I will like you,' Lt. Colonel Gerald Smyth said in his address to the first Blacks and Tans recruits. (He was later shot dead.)

Winston Churchill sent the Blacks and Tans to defeat the Irish rebellion at any cost, but it was an error of judgement that only succeeded in strengthening republican sentiment. Churchill was not so much a brilliant strategist, but rather a hot-headed megalomaniac overconfident in his own ability and all too willing to sacrifice innocent lives.

And what's particularly relevant to recent events is Churchill was a misogynist who did not believe women should have the right to vote.

'The women’s suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge. If we allow women to vote, it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well represented by their fathers, brothers and husbands,' Churchill said.

And then there was the Black Friday demonstration of 1910 where Churchill instructed police to manhandle the Suffragettes to bring an end to their protest (and later did the same to striking miners). Sound familiar? The parallel to recent events at Clapham Common seems unnerving, and the fact Metropolitan Police are guarding the Churchill statue, after manhandling women at a vigil is deeply disturbing.

They want to silence our voices.

When Priti Patel talks of banning "disruptive" protests, she is talking about protests like those from the Suffragette or Civil Rights movements - that's why she called the Black Lives Matter protests 'dreadful'. She has shown the same contempt towards innocent life as Churchill, expressing her desire to send the navy to target dinghies in the English Channel and send refugees to a prison island in the mid-Atlantic. It all stems from the authoritarian conservative mindset.

History tells us social progress only ever comes from civil disobedience and people collectively raising their voices. The Tory government wants to outlaw effective protest, ensuring no great strides towards social justice can ever be made again. Just think about that. Imagine the great political heroes of the past facing up to ten years in prison for using their democratic right, or rather their duty, to protest. Ten years in prison - that is what our Tory government would do to people like them.

The year is 2021 and our women still don't feel safe on our streets.

The police are attacking women for holding a vigil and protecting the statue on the basis that Churchill - vocal opponent of women's suffrage - was a 'hero'.

'Oh, but Churchill won the war!' they scream, completely overlooking that 80% of Nazi casualties were inflicted by the Russians on the Eastern Front. Strangely, no Tory is rushing to erect a statue of Joseph Stalin, let alone protect it around the clock. It's almost like we don't give the leaders of other countries a free pass, only our own.

The fact is the Tories keep the focus on these pointless symbols and their ridiculous propaganda because they want the public to know their place and remain silent. It's easy for comfortable people to look the other way when poor people or racial minorities are being trampled on, but recent events demonstrate it's not just them who are in the firing line. It's anyone of any race or class who dares challenge the status quo and fights for people's rights, for public safety, for equality, for social justice.

When the Tories and their brainwashed puppets mock people for being 'woke' or call them 'social justice warriors', this is who and what they are attacking. They are ridiculing and vilifying and even assaulting people who just want to live free and safe lives. They don't give a crap about your well-being and that is why they will always protect a stupid statue better than they will protect you.

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We Need to Have a Conversation About Priti Patel

Priti Patel is the Home Secretary whose immigration rules would have deported her own grandparents, who bullied her staff so badly, one attempted suicide and the government had to pay out six-figure compensation packages, who called British workers the "worst idlers in the world," who is desperate to bring back the death penalty and was humiliated by Ian Hislop on TV when he challenged her on  miscarriages of justice. And I'm pretty sure she smirked when Simba's Dad died in The Lion King.

Patel was previously sacked as International Development Secretary for having unauthorised meetings with a foreign power - Israel - which were not only unlawful but potentially treasonous. Such a transgression should have been enough to ensure she never works in government again, but the Tory Party is woefully devoid of anything resembling talent. And there is something about ruthless, ultra-sadistic females that appeals to the conservative mindset, so Patel was brought back to the dismay of everyone who is paying attention. And since then she has proven herself to be one of the most sinister forces in UK politics.

Patel recently introduced rules so you cannot publicly protest without first obtaining her permission, otherwise you could face a fine or imprisonment. Those rules were initially set in place for the duration of the Covid pandemic but are now set to continue post-Covid. And even worse, she got to impose those rules without parliamentary scrutiny, by amending existing rules through what is known as a Statutory Instrument. This is what you would do if you were a dictator, desperate to cast off the shackles of democracy to impose your will on the masses. And what is so unnerving about Patel is how she is so brazen about it all.

She is so brazen about everything she does.

Take, for example, the Black Lives Matter protests. While most politicians understood this was a sensitive matter and they should speak carefully, Patel could not keep the smirk off her face as she used words like "dreadful" to describe BLM. Patel may be from an ethnic minority, but she is no champion of minority rights. Quite the opposite in fact. And she has made no secret of her desire to clamp down on the right to peacefully protest on numerous occasions.

Indeed, Patel would have banned the Suffragettes or clamped down on the Civil Rights Movement because civil disobedience was central to their protest.

Just look at last night's vigil at Clapham Common. 

Women were gathering to show their respects to a woman who was brutally murdered, allegedly by a police officer. Some were holding candles and others were waving signs in protest, but all of the attendees were clearly behaving peacefully. However, the police felt it appropriate to barge through the crowd, using powers granted to them by Priti Patel. One officer was yelling that a woman was putting his life in danger by gathering in public, but he was the one failing to observe social distancing by getting right in her face. Women were being shoved around and kettled and some were arrested for no obvious reason. 

When one woman was arrested, her friend asked why and she was slammed to the ground, only to then be released. The scenes were absolutely shocking.

The state was sending out a message: Your right to peaceful protest is over. We've had enough of you lot finding your voice. 

The Tories are clamping down on women protesting police violence and also black people protesting police violence by sending the police to use more violence. They are putting our so-called democracy in a stranglehold in much the same way Thatcher did during the miners' strikes, only now our rights are being further eroded, and Priti Patel is very much the architect of this.

And then there is Patel's baby - the Spy Cops bill  - which gives police officers the power to commit any crime, including rape or murder, with impunity. Horrifying. But if you're as horrified as I am about this and want to protest the actions of Patel, you can't, unless you first obtain Patel's permission. That's the absurdity of the situation.

And even if you want to raise public awareness through journalism, rather than "disruptive" protests, you still can't. At least, not without putting your freedom at risk. Just look at Julian Assange who is currently rotting in a prison cell, despite not being charged with any crime, and was only locked up in the first place for skipping bail on charges that were previously dropped. Assange was not being disruptive or putting lives at risk, he was simply doing what any good journalist is supposed to do - reporting the facts. He reported the crimes of our state and was punished for it, mentally tortured, made an example of. And now journalists across the UK have abandoned his cause out of fear they could be next. 

British newspapers are nothing but propaganda arms of the establishment, occasionally offering faux criticisms of the government to maintain the illusion of democratic scrutiny while ensuring they never cross a line and expose the truths that really matter. Truths about how your government is responsible for crimes against humanity at home and abroad.

And while it's obviously true the whole government, and certainly the prime minister, are responsible for this madness, Priti Patel has been central to so much of it. She is the home secretary who revoked the citizenship of a minor and continues to deport the children of the Windrush generation and wants the navy to target dinghies in the English Channel.

Whereas Boris Johnson is the lazy buffoon who wanted the title of Prime Minister for the prestige, but spends most of his time sleeping on the job because he really can't be arsed, Patel is different. She revels in her role as Home Secretary and clearly spends every working minute looking for ways to further erode what is already a very flawed democracy - what with our unelected House of Lords and unelected Monarchy and unelected media moguls and unelected billionaire donors.

You would think these relentless assaults on our democracy would present the perfect opportunity for the "opposition" to step up to the plate, but alas, they are part of the same establishment machinery and are "broadly supportive" or totally silent on almost every government misdeed. They are not offering to be morally superior or more democratically accountable, simply more efficient in their running of the corporate oligarchy. We are talking about a Labour Party that wouldn't vote against the spy cops bill, for God's sake. And without an opposition, without a genuinely critical media, without the right to peacefully protest, all we are left with is a one-party dictatorship. You could argue democracy has already been lost, but if not, it is very much hanging by a thread.

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Democracy Under Threat: The Tories Are Banning Peaceful Protests

In a shockingly draconian move, Home Secretary Priti Patel is quite literally giving herself the legal right to decide which protests are "acceptable." And she is doing so without parliamentary scrutiny by introducing a statutory instrument, which is basically an amendment to an existing law. 

Patel is the minister who was previously sacked for having secret meetings with a foreign power and returned to government, only to bully staff so severely, one attempted suicide and the government had to pay out six-figure compensation packages. And she is not only still in a job, but is attacking one of our most fundamental democratic rights - the right to peacefully protest.

Let's not forget, Patel is also the minister who wanted to dump refugees onto a prison island in the middle of the Atlantic and who is desperate to bring back the death penalty. I could just picture her volunteering to be chief executioner, lining up any Twitter lefties who annoy her and pulling their arms and legs off like harvestmen, smirking the whole time.

Patel is not the kind of person who should hold power in any country, but she certainly wouldn't look out of place in one of the world's worst dictatorships. She is like the school yard bully and your nightmare boss rolled into one, and we somehow let her get into a position to rip up our already flawed democracy. (Shout out to the Labour wreckers who sabotaged the 2019 general election. Slow clap, guys.)

Seriously, this is messed up.

Any protest which Priti Patel deems "too disruptive" can and will be shut down by the police force. And when you consider that Priti Patel considered last year's Black Lives Matter protests to be "dreadful," you can see where this is going. The Tories are basically banning any protest they would find embarrassing or annoying, and threatening you with fines or imprisonment if you disobey. 

There is a word for that: authoritarianism.

This kind of thing has already been happening, of course, with the Tories using the Covid pandemic as justification to silence dissent. Take, for example, the organiser of the NHS pay protest who was fined £10,000 for fighting for a fair deal, after risking her life for this country. What a way to say thank you! Next time, Tory voters, shove your claps up your arse.

The difference going forwards is the new law, I mean statutory instrument will continue post-Covid. We will only be allowed to protest when the government approves - and if the government approves, then it really isn't much of a protest, is it? Imagine gathering in public to raise your voice about an issue Priti Patel deems acceptable. My God.

Laughably, the Tories have put themselves forwards as the champions of free speech, raging against "cancel culture". But only this week, the BBC cancelled The Mash Report for being "too left-wing" and they are now actively seeking right-wing comedians for "balance". Only problem is, right-wingers tend to be about as amusing as a fungal infection in your big toe nail. Comedy is supposed to punch up, not down. Jokes about poor people, foreigners and desperate refugees aren't going to make any decent person laugh.

Make no mistake, our free speech is under attack. 

The establishment is absolutely terrified of the plebs finding their voice, of raising class consciousness, which is why they are flooding social media with their bots and attacking independent media as "fake news." They are looking for any excuse to shut down left-wing voices while raging against "cancel culture" and ensuring only people they agree with are heard. The Overton window was being opened wide by social media and they are desperately trying to close it again. 

So much for a pluralistic society.

We seriously need to get out onto the streets and protest the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, but only with Priti Patel's permission...

British democracy is now so absurd that if you want to protest the actions of Priti Patel, you actually need the permission of Priti Patel, otherwise you could be fined or jailed

— RD Hale (@RDHale_) March 13, 2021

UPDATE: Since this article was published, shocking events have unfolded at Clapham Common, showing police barging through women holding a peaceful vigil for a woman murdered allegedly by a police officer. They have been filmed kettling the women and reported dragging them into vans, even though the women are clearly peaceful and posing absolutely no threat. 

As if the protest bans aren't bad enough, let's remember the recent spy cops bill potentially means the police can act with impunity. This country is rapidly descending into fascism.

Anyways, that's all I have to say on free speech for now, but a couple of more things I wanted to touch upon before I go:

1. "Not all men." Please just stop with this shit. It's like saying, "All lives matter!" 

We know not all men are psychopathic murderers waiting to pounce on passing women. The point is, to a woman, almost every man is a potential threat, but you already know this. If a woman is walking down a dark street and a man is coming the other way, she has no idea if her life is in danger. Therefore, she has no choice but to assume it's all men. I'm not going to say any more here, because we as men need to shut up, listen, and let women take the lead on this matter.

2. Suicide and MSM bullying

Suicide is one of the leading killers of young adults. I know people who've attempted suicide. I've visited them in hospital. It's in no way acceptable to accuse someone of lying when they announce they've had suicidal thoughts. That's an act of violence which can literally result in death.

What Piers Morgan said about Meghan Markle was not just "a difference of opinion". It was the kind of talk that can kill. No matter your difference of opinion, you do not attack someone on suicidal thoughts, and certainly not because they didn't text back after meeting you once. 

We've made a huge deal about social media bullying in recent years, but bullying from the mainstream media is even more dangerous. Jameela Jamil recently tweeted that she considered suicide last year after being relentlessly bullied by Piers Morgan. The man is a public danger and should never be allowed on TV again. It's not a free speech issue. It's a public safety issue. 

TW: suicide

I almost killed myself a year ago because of Piers Morgan’s relentless campaign of lies and hatred against me last February. I’m glad I’m still alive today for many reasons. But watching him leave GMB today is right up there and has me feeling: pic.twitter.com/reygXIMhP9

— Jameela Jamil 🌈 (@jameelajamil) March 9, 2021

And yet Piers Morgan was allowed to resign after his abhorrent behaviour, whereas Nish Kumar was forced off the BBC for being "too left wing." See where we're going here? The left aren't even allowed to have a voice, but the right can bully people almost to death, and they are simply given the option of apologising or resigning. 

By the way, Piers will continue working behind the scenes at ITV, he just won't be allowed in front of the camera, whereas Nish will be finding a new job. Rich white Tories always fail upwards, but the rest of us are forced into obscurity or even prosecuted, simply for using our voice. That is the real cancel culture and it is chilling.

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Time to Abolish the Racist, Paedo-Friendly Monarchy

So the Meghan and Oprah interview aired last night. I didn't bother watching it, but I get the gist. The royals have treated Britain's first Black Princess horribly and they failed to offer any support when the press went for her from day one. Nice family.

Thanks to the media smear campaign, conservatives across the UK have decided they really don't like Meghan, but they struggle to offer any coherent justification. These bastards even accused Meghan of lying when she explained how she felt suicidal. This is particularly concerning, given how gladly royalists looked the other way for Prince Andrew.

So what did Meghan ever do that was so bad?

From what I've gathered from right-wing rants, her many crimes include:

• Being an attention seeker
• Seducing Prince Harry
• Sending emails early in the morning
• Refusing to sleep with Piers Morgan
• Having a Black mother

I suspect point five would be her biggest crime in the eyes of her detractors, including those of her in-laws. It would seem the royal family is so embedded in racism, it would rather implode, than support the Queen's grandson (or possibly James Hewitt's son) for marrying a Black woman. These cousin fuckers were even "concerned" about baby Archie's skin colour, for God's sake. I'm a white man, my wife happens to be Black and my three young children are therefore mixed-race. Anyone who would suggest their skin colour is a "concern" has no business leading our country. How dare they.

The royals were concerned about Archie's skin colour? As a white man who married a Black woman and had three mixed race kids, I'm so far beyond disgusted, I don't know what to say. #OprahMeghanHarry #AbolishTheMonarchy

— RD Hale (@RDHale_) March 8, 2021

The royals were "concerned" about skin colour and they failed to show loyalty to their own family.

Here's the thing: no matter what issues you have with your family, when someone goes for them, the way the press went for Meghan and Harry, you stand by them. You stick up for them. And you certainly don't be racist towards them! That is your job as family. But it seems the royals don't see Harry and Meghan as family. Perhaps it's time to call James Hewitt about a paternity test.

The royals couldn't go against right-wing rags like The Daily Mail, of course, because those rags act as the monarchy's propaganda arm, and without that, public support for the monarchy would dry up overnight. The Queen has to keep the billionaire press barons on side, just as much as the Prime Minister does. And when the Queen's adopted grandson quite rightly spoke his mind about the grotesque behaviour of our media, about how they hounded his mother and wife, the Queen had a choice to make. And her choice was to send the adopted red-head to the gallows.

From a moral standpoint, the fact the royals abandoned Harry and Meghan should be enough to show the nation they are not fit for purpose. They are actually repugnant people.

And when you consider, they chose to pull together to defend Prince Andrew, it makes their lack of loyalty seem all the more sickening. Even if you give Prince Andrew the benefit of the doubt (I don't), the best you can say about him is that he accidentally befriended child sex traffickers, hung around on paedophile island for years, and posed for cosy pictures with some of the victims.

The worst you could say – and this deserves to be tested in court – is that Prince Andrew was a very willing participant. Andy is either a paedophile or a person who befriends paedophiles. Both are completely unacceptable and should be enough to see him stripped of his royal titles. Shit, they should be enough to bring down the royal family. Thank God for the brainwashed masses...

Why do you still support the monarchy, Daily Mail reader? What the fuck is wrong with you?

The Queen apparently addressed the nation yesterday to garner public sympathy ahead of the airing of the Oprah interview. Again, I could not give less of a shit. Her 99 year old racist husband is currently on his death bed and I think now would be an appropriate time to announce her abdication. I'm rather disappointed she didn't do that yesterday actually. Hers is an institution dripping in racism and built on wealth which was stolen from throughout her filthy, rotten empire. It really is time we gave those stolen crown jewels back, turned her palaces into museums and sent Liz into one of those retirement homes where grown adults get told what time to go to bed. If it's good enough for the plebs...

What relevance does the monarchy have to ordinary people?

I remember sitting in my mate's uncle's minging flat in my early twenties when we were broke and homeless and asking what the point of the royal family is. What relevance they have to our lives. The answer was none, of course. Here were people living in grotesque luxury at the expense of ordinary people while we were desperately trying to find work in an unemployment blackspot. Work that would have paid poverty wages. Work that would have seen us treated like dirt. 

What was the royal family to us? They couldn't have given a shit if we'd died in the gutter. And we were supposed to go gooey-eyed at the sight of the rich woman sitting on her £25 million throne with her £4 million hat in her £1 billion mansion? We were supposed to sing God Save the Queen and wave our Union Jacks? We were supposed to fucking bow? You're having a laugh, aren't you?

Ah, but they protect democracy! the muppets say. How does an unelected head of a state which does the bidding of Rupert Murdoch protect a democracy which doesn't bloody exist?

But they bring in tourists, you idiot! Yes, Debra, tourists flock to London in their millions to have tea with the Queen, and if we had an elected head of state, those tourists would simply stop coming and Britain would die.

They have been a great source of hope and inspiration to millions during the pandemic! Sir Keith Starmer insists. Um, they've sat back and watched Boris Johnson cull 130,000 of their subjects through a mixture of sociopathic greed and sheer incompetence, Keith. They've done nothing, absolutely nothing, during this pandemic, other than be horrible to Meghan.

The fact is the royal family is a relic. It's way past its sell-by date. It's anti-democratic by its very nature. And even worse, it has no legitimacy, even by its own standards. It does not actually have a legal right to exist. Don't believe me? Do yourself a favour and read up on how the royals became the royals. It goes something like this:

Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, the Catholic King James II was overthrown and sent into exile by English Protestants led by Dutchman William of Orange who then became William III. Towards the end of William’s life, there were no Protestant heirs to the throne so the Act of Settlement 1701 decreed all Catholic heirs would be bypassed until a Protestant could be found. Our monarchy was then handed over to the German House of Hanover, and all monarchs since are descended from Sophia of Hanover.

Due to anti-German sentiment during World War I, the monarchy changed its name to the more palatable House of Windsor, but the fact remained, a family of German heritage controlled the monarchy, based purely on the outcome of 17th century religious conflict.

Now I've nothing against Germans here, but the fact remains foreigners were handed the throne, simply because powerful British people approved of their religion. I would therefore suggest there is no legitimacy to the Windsors’ claim, based on the right of accession – a right which is absurd in itself. Surely, one can agree now is the time for the monarchy to be abolished? Let Britain join the 21st century and elect its head of state. Let Britain have a democracy.

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The Establishment Has to Go

So the kids are back at school on Monday and I finally have time to write again... 

Now I take lockdown as seriously as anyone, but I'd be lying if I said I'd not been counting down the microseconds to this moment! Three months with three human whirlwinds turning your house into a daily disaster zone is enough to make anyone's brain melt. 

Finally the schools are reopening and the kids are relieved because I've called off the naughty children's home they were about to be sent to. And now they get to stay a while longer and fight over the bashed up old Nintendo Switch which they miraculously have not completely destroyed yet. Phew.

I can thankfully breathe again. And work. And how better to get started than to sum up all the recent happenings I've not had time to write about? This could take a while...

First of all Sir Keith Starmer - what an absolute dickhead.

Pardon my French, but that really needed to be said. It was actually therapeutic typing it out. I personally think Keith is trolling us now. The number one defence his supporters have offered up until this point is that he would be a moderate Tory. That keeping the actual Tories in charge would be even worse for us. That Starmer has us by the balls and we'd better bloody do as he says. Well, that argument is now dead in the water.

This is because Sir Keith has clearly positioned himself to the right of the most right-wing government this country has seen in our lifetimes. 

How can you possibly support this and call yourself left-wing?

Keith is very supportive of Rishi Sunak's plan to hike up tax for the working class, including our wonderful and heroic nurses. But Keith is absolutely furious that Sunak plans to increase corporation tax to 25%. Not only is his position obscene, it's economically illiterate.

"It will hurt growth," Keith says. No, it fucking won't.

Corporation tax is only charged on profit, and only then does the 25% get charged on profit that a corporation does not reinvest. You know how the right have been telling us for years that lower corporation tax encourages investment? Well, to their credit, the Tories are incentivising reinvestment and making those who don't reinvest pay a little more. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm no Rishi Sunak fan boy, far from it. But Sunak is unquestionably to the left of Anneliese Dodds on fiscal policy. And that is unacceptable.

Starmer would like to set corporation tax at around 18%, which would be among the lowest rates of any developed country. Sunak on the other hand, plans to set corporation tax at 25%, which would bring it in line with most developed countries, and most, if not all of them, are performing better economically than Britain right now. 

You'd think Starmer would understand this, given he wants to be Prime Minister. Personally, I think he's livid the Tories have adopted John McDonnell's tax proposal and made Starmer look like a Tory knob head. They've completely outmanoeuvred him again.

No wonder the Tories are 13 points ahead in the polls. 

But wait, that was from before all this happened, and when you consider public approval for the Covid vaccination program is high, you can expect the next opinion poll to make grim reading indeed for Keith. I will try not to laugh.

Corbyn's Labour forged a coalition of public sector workers, the working poor, ethnic minorities, and generally decent human beings. Starmer has attempted to forge a coalition of racists, corporations, and complete and utter bastards. And hilariously, they are now telling him, they prefer the Tories. He is just their plan B.

Keith has dug himself into an almighty hole, and all this comes before the local and mayoral elections. So what has Keith's preparation for these elections been? More Stalinist purges and an attempt to rig the Liverpool mayoral election by installing a neoliberal no one wants. Keith has declared war against Britain's most socialist city and deprived them of their socialist choice in Anna Rothery. I cannot see this ending well for him. 

So what's the solution to all of this? 

Well, I was reading in some right-wing rag, the people around Starmer rather hilariously think the way forward is to purge anyone even slightly left-wing, including deputy leader (and Starmer loyalist) Angela Rayner! You really couldn't make it up. They are making no secret of their plans to turn the Labour Party into UKIP version 2.

Of course, not everyone around Starmer is an insane right-wing nut job, and some are now genuinely fearful they will lose their seats in 2024 as voters abandon Labour in droves. If Keith performs terribly at the local and mayoral elections, it's entirely possible he will be pushed out. However, don't get too excited because these people don't learn and they certainly don't want unity. Expect the next leadership contest to be a complete stitch up with a winner absolutely no one wants, like Yvette Cooper. Vomit.

Just start a new party already, Jeremy Corbyn!

Anyways, that's enough ranting about Keith and Labour because I want to discuss Harry and Meghan and their abysmal treatment by the royal family. Let's be clear: these relics have absolutely no place in modern society and they must go. Like yesterday.

The royals have vilified and tried to destroy Britain's first Black princess while she is carrying the Queen's frigging great-grandchild. How completely and utterly sadistic does one have to be? I genuinely fear for the personal safety of Harry and Meghan and hope they can somehow escape this madness and live in peace.

The sheer hypocrisy of these people.

For years, our royals have flown over to Saudi Arabia to hang out with their mates, the Saudi royal family and sell them bombs which get used to commit crimes against humanity. Now suddenly they're upset that Meghan wore a pair of ear rings gifted by the Saudis? Are you kidding me?

And then there's the bullying accusations which have suddenly come to light two and a half years later, perfectly timed to coincide with the Oprah interview. What were those allegations? That Meghan sometimes sent emails to her staff early in the morning when they were still in bed!

PRINCE ANDREW HUNG AROUND ON A CHILD TRAFFICKER'S PAEDOPHILE ISLAND AND YOU WANT TO INVESTIGATE MEGHAN???

What the fuck is wrong with these people? And how can anyone still support them? I cannot begin to comprehend why anyone would back the royal family after they revealed their sheer vindictiveness for the world to see.

It was particularly heartwarming, however, to see Whoopi Goldberg and her panel on The View absolutely tearing the royals to shreds over this. Here is a clip:

Stop what you're doing and watch the panel on The View absolutely shredding the royal family and calling Prince Andrew a pervert. This really needed to be said. 👏👏👏pic.twitter.com/VoQTpscnlE

— Council Estate TV (@CEstateTV) March 5, 2021

Next thing I wanted to touch upon is the Tories' obscene waste. 

One percent. That is all they can offer our heroic NHS staff. One frigging percent. We asked those people to risk their lives for us and then gave them a pay cut in real terms. But at least we clapped for them. "We couldn't possibly afford any more," says expenses cheat Nadine Dorries who had to repay £3,000 she wrongly claimed. 

Perhaps the Tories spent all of our money paying off Priti Patel's bullying victims. £340,000 is what they reportedly paid to Sir Philip Rutnam after making the poor man's life hell. But Patel is always getting accused of bullying and we are always paying out compensation on her behalf, it seems. And yet she gets to keep her job?

In the real world, if your boss has to pay out six-figure compensation sums due to your behaviour, you get dismissed. But then again, we're talking about Priti Patel, a woman who was previously sacked for having secret meetings with a foreign power, which sounds alarmingly close to treason. It seems no indiscretion is severe enough for the Tories to finally rid themselves of the "Prittster," making me wonder what dirt she has on them.

But it's not just Priti Patel who is proving a huge drain on the nation's resources. I'm hearing we've just given another £15 billion to Serco, taking our spending on Test and Trace up to £37 billion, which according to my maths is 50,000 times more than what the Republic of Ireland paid. Someone please tell me my maths is terrible because this is horribly depressing.

The Tories have a magic money tree for their corporate mates and empty gestures for those who are willing to die for us. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

Anyways, this piece is ballooning a little more than anticipated so I'm going to cut it off there and probably do a part 2 in a day or so. 

In summary, we need to abolish the Tories, abolish the Tories in the Labour Party, and abolish the Royal Family. And if you disagree with those sentiments, we definitely can't be friends! Until next time...

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Can Starmer's Flag Shagging Really Win Over the Red Wall?

I'm from the so-called "red wall" - a northeast working class town where almost everyone is poor, having been shat on by consecutive neoliberal governments of both the red and blue variety. 

I'm as working class as it gets. In fact, a better term would be underclass. I was raised in a council house on a rough estate by a single mother on benefits. We saw all kinds of crazy crap. Drug dealers kicked our door in once, even though we were never involved in any of that stuff. My next-door neighbour drove a car through someone's house, demolishing the living room wall. A little old lady was robbed in front of my eyes when I was playing in the street. 

Fights were an almost daily occurrence and the kids had nothing to do but get in trouble. Our playgrounds were building sites and derelict buildings until we reached the wise old age of 11. From then on, childhood was subways and cider bottles in a haze of cigarette smoke.

So please, if you're from a middle class background, don't lecture me on what is or is not working class. You're not from my world and you have no clue.

The man who was my step-father for a while was your stereotypical working class voter, the kind who Starmer seems to be targeting, but is actually nowhere near as representative as Labour's focus groups suggest. He would take us to football games at the old St James Park, back when a ticket was three or four quid, and my brother and I would be almost crushed to death in the stands at 5 and 7 years old. I honestly don't know how we survived! He would then drag us into jampacked pubs in Newcastle where we'd hear all kinds of racist crap. Ironically, two of this guy's best mates were Black and Asian, but they were okay, apparently, they were "the good kind".

"I love them to death," he'd say, "But all the others, they're <insert racist stereotype here>" He'd then say something like, "I agree with Labour on this or that economic idea, but I also agree with the BNP on this racist idea."

On a positive note, there was always consensus among working men that our country needs socialism. That's why it's so laughable when privileged people tell us working class voters in the red wall don't want left-wing ideas, when even far-right voters up here do!

I know all too well the type of voter Sir Keir Starmer is trying to attract, but Keir clearly doesn't, because he demonstrates such a huge misunderstanding of them and us. I promise you, not one of these people is getting excited by the sight of Keir standing before a Union Jack. Not one of them is nodding along as he praises the Queen and calls her a "beacon of hope". 

Know your fucking audience, Keir!

And another thing, the far-right are not representative of the "red wall". Not remotely. They're the gobshites in the local pub that everyone is scared to challenge. The big tough guys who will take a swing at anyone who disagrees with them. Okay, not all are like that, in fairness. Some do have a decent human side, but a good deal of them are just psychopaths. And I have the scars to prove it. 

Growing up in a town like mine, getting into fights comes with the territory, and that's just one of the reasons I don't bother setting foot in pubs anymore.

Even as a child, I wasn't afraid to challenge these people. When I heard racist crap coming from their mouths, I would call them out (and my mother would quietly agree, but bafflingly still chose to be with her fascist alcoholic boyfriend). 

Sometimes, rather tellingly, I'd get concessions, something like "I know, you're right." Because even these people knew their racist bollocks was wrong. And certainly all of the nicer, politer people within earshot did.

That's a more accurate picture of what life is like around here. A minority of far-right idiots and a quieter majority who reject their world view. But an even more accurate picture would be to say times are changing, that even some of the people who were so entrenched in their racism and homophobia and Islamophobia and all their other bigotries are starting to waiver.

It really isn't uncommon, for example, to hear people who used to express outright disgust at homosexuality, suddenly expressing more inclusive attitudes. I've encountered that quite a lot actually, and as the brother of a gay man, it's been nice to see attitudes change.

The lie we're told is the red wall hates the left-wing. The reality is the red wall has always been left-wing economically, and is socially more left-wing than it used to be. That picture is obviously a simplification, but in my experience, it's fairly accurate.

I've seen, for example, friends I grew up with, people who used to sway me with dumb anti-immigrant arguments, suddenly shifting towards inclusivity. I've seen people who were once vocal homophobes, drinking in gay bars, not because they're gay themselves, but just because they're hanging out with their gay friends. I've seen people who were once open racists, chatting up pretty Black or Asian girls. The last man to give me a taxi ride was rather camp and spent the journey telling me how beautiful he thought Cristiano Ronaldo was!

The point I'm making is that we don't need to make concessions on bigotry because it really isn't that hard to pull a good number of people away from it. Social conservatism is not the norm for the under-50s and only the extremists will cling onto their outdated views.

This is why Starmer's comments on issues like the Black Lives Matter protests and his lack of condemnation on racism and transphobia from his own MPs has been so frustrating to me. I see no tangible benefit to him acting this way, and to the contrary, he is sacrificing votes from minority groups while weakening the fight against bigotry. Labour should be focusing on winning people back to the left, not inching towards far-right territory while taking its voter base for granted.

One line you will always hear around here is "We never vote Tory," or more often some sweary equivalent. Once upon a time, everyone was employed in the mining and ship-building industries, crime was low and communities were strong, and then Thatcherism happened. 

From that point, we knew beyond doubt, the Tories weren't on our side, but then to our exasperation, Labour moved in that same direction. They told us they were just like them.

I find it rather hilarious when middle-class Starmerists tell me who or what the red wall is, when I'm literally part of it. I was raised here, I live here, and in all likelihood, I will die here. So listening to that lot describe northerners or the working class, honestly, they might as well be aliens talking from a different planet. They have no idea, they really don't.

Sir Keir Starmer has gone from draping himself in the EU flag to wanking over the Union Jack, and he honestly doesn't think we can see how superficial this all is. He really thinks we're all knuckle-dragging simpletons desperate to burst into a rendition of God Save the Queen. 

My God, he is so fucking clueless.

Now that's not to say we aren't patriotic around here. Many, if not most, are. It's just we're patriotic in a very different way to what Starmer thinks we are. If you walk through my neighbourhood, you might on rare occasion, see a Union Jack hanging from a window, but these displays are not filling most of us with patriotic pride. They're likely to be met with shrugs of bemusement or mutterings of "What a fucking mess!" It's not that we have anything against the flag. Most of us don't have strong feelings one way or the other, and actually think it looks cringeworthy when we see these very false, OTT displays.

Our sense of patriotism is more like this: We hate imperial wars but love our soldiers. We feel sad to see anyone sleeping rough, and when we see a homeless veteran, we feel a particular sense of betrayal. This is because we want a country where we look out for one another. We want solidarity, and we're not getting it from the Tories or from Labour.

We want more council houses so everyone can get a roof over their heads. We want better pay so we stand a chance of getting on the housing ladder. We want more jobs so no-one is left unemployed. We want affordable utilities and proper investment in our schools and hospitals. 

This is the kind of patriotism we believe in, and if Sir Keir Starmer said those exact words, I promise you, he'd win a lot of people over. Maybe he should hire me to be his speech writer, instead of parroting whatever lines are fed to him by Rupert Murdoch.

Here's the problem: When politicians like Starmer fail to address the above concerns, that's when far-right arguments start reaching people. That's when the disenfranchised start being swayed. It's when Tories start putting the blame onto refugees or other poor people or whatever marginalised group the far-right have targeted. It's not the job of the opposition to join in this game. It's their job to address people's material needs so they're not duped into turning against one another.

It's very easy for the far-right to sway people with emotive arguments. They just have to say the name Lee Rigby, for example. But it's important to remember Lee himself utterly rejected these politics, according to his family.

Around here, almost everyone is anti-establishment because the establishment offers nothing for us. Wages are crap and everyone is on Universal Credit, even when we're working. The kids are on free school meals, our streets are falling apart, our public services are shite, and we desperately want change. This is why so many northerners voted for Brexit. They wanted to shake up the establishment, and I may disagree with Brexit, but I very much understand the sentiment.

And now we have Mr Remain thinking the way to win back voters he lost with his People's Vote is to double-down on his pro-establishment credentials and say how much he agrees with the Tories. This is not what we want. It really isn't.

How about telling us what you stand for, Keir? How about telling us your plan to make tangible improvements to our lives? Because empty gestures and hatred of Corbyn will only get you so far.

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