LADIES and gentlemen – let’s hear it for the Prime Minister, who is playing an absolute blinder on the world stage.
Sir Keir Starmer has danced through the diplomatic minefield of this scary new world like Fred Astaire on steroids.
ReutersSir Keir Starmer – pictured meeting Donald Trump – has acted shrewdly to maneuver through the evolving dilemmas playing out on the world stage[/caption]
The PM has sucked up to President Donald Trump when he needed to.
And yet Starmer has stood up to the MAGA White House when it was the right thing to do.
Presenting Trump with an invitation from King Charles for an “unprecedented” second state visit had this most difficult POTUS purring like a big fat orange pussycat who just got the clotted cream.
And yet when Vice President JD Vance apparently implied the UK “has not fought a war in 30 to 40 years”, Starmer stood up in the House of Commons to remember the 642 British troops who died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We will never forget their bravery and their sacrifice,” Starmer told hundreds of MPs — and one ignorant Veep.
The black swan event for Starmer’s Government is the United States of America walking away from the alliance that has ensured peace in Europe for 80 years.
Our world has changed overnight.
Our old assumptions belong to the past.
Incredibly, Trump has had to deny a report that he would appear with Vladimir Putin to inspect the Russian troops on May 9 for the Moscow Victory Day Parade — the day Russia celebrates the end of what they call the Great Patriotic War.
That would have made the rehabilitation of the murdering thug Putin complete.
AFPStarmer has done Britain proud on the world stage, and must replicate this at home[/caption]
But in this new world, Keir Starmer has given the British people what we wanted most from our Prime Minister — HOPE.
Hope that despite Trump’s man-crush on Putin, there may yet be a just and lasting peace for the heroic people of Ukraine.
Hope that, despite the rampant American nationalism rocking the rafters of the Oval Office, the special relationship between the US and the UK may yet mean something more than a meaningless soundbite.
Hope that whatever trade war Trump launches on the European Union he detests and believes was set up to “screw” America — nothing to do with the two world wars that ravaged Europe, then — the UK may still have a healthy trading relationship with the US.
Whoever you voted for at the General Election, denying Starmer is doing us proud on the world stage is just churlish.
But every leader who shines in the international arena is, in the end, confronted by the messy problems of back home.
Away from home, Starmer — and President Macron of France — are organising a massive “coalition of the willing”; 20 countries or more to defend Europe against future Russian aggression.
Back in Blighty, Keir often seems to be leading a coalition of the incompetent.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who never even ran a whelk stall, makes the economic growth we all crave look like an impossible dream.
GettyEd Miliband last year rashly promised that he would cut our energy bills by £300 a year[/caption]
HARD DECISIONS
And budgeting £1.4TRILLION to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050 no longer looks like an act of self-harm.
It looks like an act of national suicide.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband should be sacked today.
We need an army, a navy and an air force — not more wind turbines and solar panels.
And it costs a jaw-dropping £8million a day to house illegal immigrants.
That can’t continue.
For 80 years, the peace and prosperity and security of Europe was underwritten by the US.
Starmer must show he can protect the UK’s borders and spend money smartlyAFP
Whatever the fate of Ukraine, that is all over now.
Right now, nothing is more important than ramping up the defence of our nation.
This means some very hard decisions about where the money comes from.
Starmer has already trimmed foreign aid to increase the defence budget to 2.5 per cent of national income by 2027.
This is a good start.
But in a world where we might actually have to fight a hot war against Russia — without America — it is only a start.
Last year the UK Government spent £53.9billion on defence.
And spent around £300billion on welfare.
That is no longer tenable.
It is not even sane.
Starmer has shown himself to have more steel than many of us gave him credit for.
For a left-wing, former human rights lawyer from North London, it must have been excruciating for him to cut foreign aid to increase defence.
But he did it.
And now he has to make more tough calls.
Obscene sums are wasted on welfare, the destruction of traditional British industry to fund Net Zero and paying for migrant hotel rooms.
Everything must change.
Starmer has proved that he has the right stuff to protect Ukraine’s borders.
Now Keir must show he can protect the borders of our own country.
Fable’s woke farce
Rachel Zegler’s comments have added to the bad press around the Snow White remakegf
THE trailer for Disney’s new version of Snow White looks pretty good to me, but the film has been surrounded by controversy.
Someone remarked that Prince Charming is “a guy who literally stalks” Snow White.
Unfortunately for Disney, desperate to promote their £212million live-action remake, that sceptic was Snow White herself, actress Rachel Zegler, 23.
And there was a fuss made about the casting of Zegler – so brilliant as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story – because she is of Latina background, and there was a row about making the seven dwarves cartoon figures when there are plenty of dwarf actors who would have loved the role.
The problem is that the story of Snow White comes from a fairytale written by the Brothers Grimm in 1812.
Yes, the Prince stalks Snow White – and kisses her without consent when she is comatose.
Yes, Snow White shacks up with seven men in the forest.
Yes, the original goes on at some length about how lovely and white Snow White’s skin is.
But is Snow White racist?
Is it about stalking?
Is it about inappropriate living arrangements?
Is it about consent?
Only if you ignore the magic.
Snow White is a 213-year-old fairytale that has enchanted generations of children for centuries.
And the captivating, un-PC story it tells will never be woke, no matter how much Hollywood wants it to be.
A SOUL-destroying survey on Thursday’s World Book Day revealed 40 per cent of Brits had not read one single book over the past year.
The land of Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming and Jilly Cooper . . . and 40 per cent could not manage one title in a year?
The home of Jane Austen, Douglas Adams and John Le Carré and a year goes by without reading one book?
I guess it is really hard to read when you always have that bloody phone in your fist.
Racy Sabrina and Charli reveal watershed fail
OFCOM was flooded with complaints after Sabrina Carpenter’s raunchy Brit Awards performanceGetty
Charli XCX’s see through top also prompted complaints from TV viewersSplash
OFCOM has received more than 800 complaints over the minimalist outfits worn at the Brits by saucy Sabrina Carpenter and cheeky Charli XCX.
I suspect those 800 viewers complained as much about the timing as what the lasses were wearing (or not).
When Sabrina opened the show on Saturday night it was only 8.15pm but Sabs looked like she was already dressed for bed.
Whatever happened to the watershed?
I can’t imagine what it must be like watching singers dressed like lingerie models with an eight-year-old.
No news yet on how many viewers had no complaints.
David a real talent
New York Dolls’ former frontman David Johansen has died aged 75Rex
DAVID JOHANSEN, former frontman for the inestimably influential New York Dolls, has died at the age of 75.
And I vividly recall the night that music changed forever.
The New York Dolls played two songs – Jet Boy and Looking For A Kiss – on November 27, 1973, on BBC Two’s Old Grey Whistle Test.
Bob Harris sneered, “Mock rock”.
But it was not mock rock to the teenagers who would go on to form bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Jam, The Damned and Buzzcocks.
Fourteen-year-old Steven Patrick Morrissey was watching in Manchester and the spark that would become The Smiths was lit by the Dolls that night.
Here was the real thing.
Wild. Chaotic. Raucous. Young and dumb and full of fun.
David Johansen never hit the commercial big time.
But this Mick Jagger lookalike – they could have been brothers – fronted the Dolls, the band that other bands loved.
And for that, David Johansen – a smart, sweet, lovely and funny man – will always be remembered.
Party Lowe point
WITH Reform UK riding high in the polls, it is incredible that Rupert Lowe, MP for Great Yarmouth, should choose this moment to question the leadership of Nigel Farage.
“It’s too early to know if Nigel will deliver the goods,” sniffed Lowe, whose head has been turned by becoming Elon Musk’s favourite to lead the party.
Now Mr Lowe has had the party’s whip withdrawn after accusations of bullying, which he denies.
The sight of Reform’s MPs kicking lumps out of each other has to be the most ridiculous political schism since the People’s Front of Judea fell out with the Judean People’s Front in The Life Of Brian.
Would Reform even exist if Farage moves on?
I suspect not.
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