Reform UK has another MP after scraping a win in the Runcorn & Helsby by-election by just six votes, overturning a huge Labour majority. Their candidate Sarah Pochin thanked Nigel Farage for his ‘leadership’ in an echo of a Trump cabinet meeting. The awful Andrea Jenkyns, former Tory MP for Morley & Outwood, has won the mayoral election in Greater Lincolnshire for Reform. The firm (for it is not actually a party) will no doubt gain many more council seats when the results are announced later today. It also reveals that we are not immune to the ever-rightward drift seen in the USA and parts of Europe. The last 15 years of disappointing economic growth and stagnant living standards is to blame.
Labour are haemorrhaging support and don’t seem to have an answer. I think the plodding, timorous, legalistic, and technocratic approach that Starmer has adopted is the root cause. He is neither departing too much from the old Tory/Farage position or setting off in an entirely different (and unashamedly pro-European) direction. It is far too cautious.
The results are both good and bad news. Bad, because it will reinforce Labour strategists in thinking they need to emulate the far right even more. But it’s also good that Reform will be actually running a few local authorities and mayoralties. They will prove to be just as incompetent as Trump’s MAGA loonies are in America. It will shine a light on Farage like never before.
I think it also reveals just how stupid many voters are in Britain. There are plenty of examples from history of what happens when the far-right takes power, but the most recent is taking place before our eyes in America with Farage's favourite despot after Putin currently running riot through the constitution and cocking a snook at the law while he does it. Immigrants, blacks, women and minorities have every reason to fear what's coming as the white supremacists and Christo-nationalists in Trump's administration wantonly dismantle their civil rights and trash the economy.
Men like Trump, Farage and Boris Johnson are popular with wealthy donors and political parties because of their extraordinary ability to persuade voters to act against their own interests. This clearly can only be done by telling lies, twisting facts and generally conning people. You can’t convince a majority to make their own lives worse using truth, facts, and reality, it’s impossible.
Con men are not of course rare. Every country has its fair share, but they generally tend to pick their victims or ‘marks’ as they’re known.
The ‘gift’ these super con men possess is the almost unique facility to do it en masse. This can’t be taught or acquired but it is learned behaviour, sometimes unwittingly, and it makes them extremely valuable. They have no empathy with us ordinary folk, they're not focused on improving our lot and making a better society. They are simply useful idiots, intermediaries using voters for their own glorification and enrichment while they themselves are being used by their wealthy backers.
Farage portrays himself as a champion of the working class battling against the establishment even as political commentators recognise he has easily been the most influential politician of his generation, without ever holding any responsible position.
Voters lurch from one charlatan to the next, usually on the right, each offering evermore simplistic, fantastical and totally unachievable goals. Tory members chose Johnson then we got Truss, now Badenoch. Each worse than the one before, all trying to out-farage Farage. Even Starmer thinks he has to tack in Farage’s direction, and he will see last night’s results as confirmation that he’s right.
No, he is not. When Farage fails, as he will, his backers will find someone else, someone even worse, to pursue their agenda. It will continue until a politician comes to the fore who is prepared to counter the allure of the extreme right. If that doesn’t happen, we are in big trouble.
Starmer, I am sure would do far better by offering a far more open, immigrant-friendly and unashamedly pro-European future and argued for it vigorously. At the moment he is practically endorsing Farage and backing a slightly more muted version of Reform's policy platform. It isn't going to work, and last night showed it.
The usual exodus from Trump’s White House begins
Trump’s National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz the man who accidentally invited a journalist onto a Signal chat group involving national security matters, and his deputy have both ‘resigned’ from Trump’s government amid talk of a replacement being sought for Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. They are the first of many in what increasingly looks like a repeat of the rapid personnel turnover that occurred in his first term.
Waltz will become the US ambassador to the UN, replacing Dorothy Shea, a career diplomat. She obviously doesn’t matter, being a civil servant and even worse, a woman. This is just to avoid having to admit Waltz, definitely not a DEI hire, had to be fired for incompetence. He was described as ‘leaving’ or 'departing' as if he's a train, so it’s not clear if he was sacked or forced to resign.
The day before being ousted, Waltz was caught on camera in the White House checking his Signal messages while next to the president. These people are shameless.
Marco Rubio is to take over as NSA temporarily until a permanent and suitably sycophantic replacement can be persuaded to join the madhouse. It is not a post that is usually held for very long. Occupants are either too clever for Trump, using long words and being well-informed ( eg John Bolton) or completely stupid and incompetent (eg Mike Waltz).
In his first term, Trump's national security advisers and their terms of office were:
- Michael Flynn: 24 days
- Keith Kellogg (acting): 7 days
- H. R. McMaster: 1 year, 48 days
- John Bolton: 1 year, 154 days
- Charlie Kupperman (acting): 8 days
- Robert O'Brien: 1 year, 124 days
By comparison, former President Joe Biden had one national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, throughout his entire four years. Bill Clinton had two in eight years, George W. Bush had Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley, again in two terms. Barack Obama had three, none of whom were in office for less than 20 months and most lasted years.
Trump is now on his seventh after one term and 100 days.
Finding a replacement for Waltz will involve a tricky balance, as all Trump's appointees do. The low-wattage choices need to run multi-billion dollar agencies, often with thousands of employees, so finding the right person is fraught with problems. Ideally, you need to be slightly more stupid than the president, yet not so stupid that you can’t chew gum and fart at the same time, to use a Lyndon Johnson phrase.
Being even more incompetent and ignorant than Trump of course immediately eliminates about 90-95% of Americans, or more.
If you are capable and with proven abilities, you need to keep quiet about the chaos, ineptitude and sheer idiocy surrounding you and be prepared to carry out policies that make no sense and are counter to everything you have ever believed.
Being adept at appearing equally stupid when in proximity to the president is also a useful attribute.
One example, is Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer and golf buddy to Trump, appointed to lead negotiations with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government in a bid to end the Ukraine war. Witkoff didn't need to do moron impressions, he came into the administration ideally suited as a “f*****g bumbling idiot”
This is what a former member of Trump’s first administration has called Witkoff, I suppose it was exactly what we expected. The famously stupid reality TV host can hardly afford to appoint a lot of polymaths. They wouldn’t work for him anyway and since he needs to dominate his cabinet, men and women like Witkoff, dim as Toc H lamps, are the only option.
Finally, in a nationwide poll of 5,025 voters carried out by what is described as the ‘nonpartisan’ (is anyone nonpartisan in America nowadays?) Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a majority (52%) now believe Trump is a "dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy” including 17% of Republicans.
The people are starting to see through Trump.
