Delusional Britain
There are it is claimed more Admirals than ships in the British Navy. The British Army has twice the number of ceremonial horses than tanks. The horses are good for be-plumed ceremonial parades down the Mall and for marching in splendid red uniforms on various Royal occasions.
But the British army is smaller today than it was before the Napoleonic Wars. Its full time strength in 2024 numbered 72,510 personnel.
The London Times cartoonist, Peter Brooks, on the 17th January, responded to Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and his promise to send a British peace keeping force to the Ukraine in the event of a truce in that war. Peter Brookes has Keir Starmer taking of his jacket and being transformed into Lance Corporal Jack Jones of “Dad’s Army” fame, which was a hilarious British TV sitcom (1968-1977) about the home guard during WW2.
Lance Corporal Jim Jones (played by Clive Dunn) is a local butcher from Walmington-on-Sea and a member of the local Homes Guard platoon. He is depicted in Peter Brooks cartoon standing at the end of the line shouting “Don’t Panic, Don’t Panic.” The caption reads: “Time to man up and grow these pesky Yanks what we’re really made of!
40,000, troops would be needed for the proposed British contribution to the Ukrainian peace keeping force, which is half of the British army’s strength.
Sir Keir Smarter signed a hundred year pact with the Ukraine and Britain has committed £12.8 billion so far to the Ukrainian struggle. This support will continue Sir Kier said “for as long as it takes.”
But Lord Dannatt, the former Chief of the General Staff of the Army said: ”We do just don’t have that number available.”
This is not surprising. The British Armed forces have suffered thirty years of neglect and has been hollowed out for years. It has already given over many of its tanks and artillery piece to Ukraine.
A London Times recent survey found that half of Generation Z (That is the generation born between 1996 and 2010 who grow up in the digital age) would not fight for their country and believe that Britain is a “racist country.”
There is nothing as remotely funny as “Dad’s Army” on British TV these days. All of the fine actors who starred in that show are now dead.
The British are gearing up to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) on May 8th, when WW2 in Europe was eventually and thankfully over. Thanks of course to American intervention, and to General Dwight Eisenhower’s leadership of the Allied Forces. As well as to the massive (and allied) Soviet army in the east.
Sir Keir Starmer is off to Washington DC to speak to President Trump on Thursday as he claims” “A bridge between Europe and the USA.” President Emanuel Macron of France is also on his way to Washington and will beat Keir Starmer on Monday as the first European leader to enter Donald Trump’s White House door.
But Sir Keir follows a long list of previous visitors to the Trump White House, including Benjamin Netanyahu on February 3rd, Smigera Ishiba of Japan on February 7th, King Abdulla II of Jordan on February 11th, and Narunda Modi of India on February 13. The first U.S.-Russian meeting in many years took place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, under the auspicious of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto Saudi leader, who also promised President Trump as $600 billion investment in the U.S.
So much for the “special relationship” with the United States that the British continue to somehow delude themselves about. Even under President Biden who preferred Ireland and took Hunter Biden, his errant son, with him there on a state visit to his (their) old sod.
Winston Churchill invented the idea. It was intended to encourage and fortify American engagement in Europe in WW2. Churchill’s mother, Jennie Jerome, was after-all an American. Churchill knew America well having traveled extensively across the country, and unlike many of his social class in Britain, Churchill liked and admired Americans, and he believed fervently in the future of the English-speaking world.
Dean Acheson one of the key architects of the post WW2 “Global Order” and of its key institutions like NATO, debunked the idea of the special relationship in his speech at West Point on December 5, 1962. Dean Acheson said that “Great Britain had “lost an empire but not yet found a role.”
Occasionally the “special relationship” did work: Under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for example. But for much of the time Dean Acheson was right. It was a British illusion. Great Britain did find a post-imperial role (temporarily) within the European Community. But in an act of gratuitous national self-harm under the guise of a national referendum in 2016, the country did a Brexit. Ironically the idea of a referendum was an invention of Napoleon.
Not that here are sufficient problems galore back at home. In fact it is very difficult to find anything that works in Britain these days.
The two most grotesque examples are the two utter failures of the “prevent” program. In Nottingham three people were murdered: Two young 19 year old college students, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Mally-Kumar, and a school caretaker, 65 year old Ian Coates, by Valdo Calocane. Valdo Calocane was born in Guine Bissau, moved to Madeira when he was three, and then to Lisbon. He and his family came to the UK in 2007. He had been prescribed anti-psychotic medication but had stopped taking it.
Nottinghamshire police said it had “previously engaged with him on a number of occasions between 2020 and 2022.” He had been arrested but it was considered that “his risk to others was low.” The families of the murdered victims in Nottingham were entirely dismayed by the prosecution and the failure of the authorities to keep them informed. In February 2025 they met with the Prime Minster who promised that a judge led public inquiry would take place “within weeks.”
In Southport, Merseyside, 17 year old Axel Rudakubana murdered three children and injured ten others and two adults attending a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop. He was later charged under the Biological Weapons Act and the Terrorism Act in relation to the possession of ricin and an Al-Qaeda training manual.
Axel Muganwa Rudakubana was born in Cardiff, Wales, to parents who are Christians from Rwanda, who moved to the UK in 2002. In November 2019 he was referred to the ant-extremism Prevent scheme and was eventually referred three times over the next eighteenth months. Six-year old Bebe King, seven-year old Elsie Dot Stancombe, and nine-year old Alice da Silva Aguiar, were murdered. No-one has been held to account for the series of errors and misjudgments. Valdo Calocane and Axel Rudakubana were permitted to walk free on the streets and both went on to their horrific killing spree’s.
The British State has not covered its-self in glory in many other instances. To mention only the most grotesque. The Post Office Sandal where only a TV drama borough about a public recognition of the gross injustice done to thousands of local post masters accused, prosecuted, and jailed for thievery, and all because of a faulty Japanese IT system. Lives were destroyed of upright ordinary honest citizens. Some committed suicide.
The infected blood scandal, where thousands died and most who survived are still waiting for adequate compensation.
The endless Covid inquiry is estimated to cost £208 million, or £144,939 per day.
The Grenville Tower scandal where so far the police investigation has yet to begin despite clear indication of fraud and corruption in the re-cladding of the tower bloc in one of London’s richest boroughs which turned the residential bloc of social housing into a towering inferno and killed 72 residents.
Similar cladding has still not been removed from thousands of buildings across the country and as a consequence residents find they are unable to sell their proprieties. This is not to mention the farmers mighty upset and mobilized by changes by the Labour government’s changes in the threshold of inheritance taxes.
The key dispute, however, is over immigration to the UK, both legal and illegal (as it is the U.S., Germany, France and Italy). And migration is fueling the anger and the rise of right-wing anti-immigrant political parties.
After the killings in Southport there were riots in the town and the local Mosque was attacked as were the police. Lack of information from the authorities did not help. It was many months later that information on Axel Rudakubana’s terrorism charges became available to te public.
In the meanwhile many of those rioters had been identified, charged and imprisoned. They were “far-right” activists according to Prime Minister Starmer. The British State in this case acted with remarkable speed in identifying, charging and imprisoning the rioters. They were mainly angry white, working class, British citizens.
The latest estimate from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) for 2023 is that 1.2 million migrants emigrated to the UK. Of the 1.2 million, 86% were from non-EU countries, 10% from the EU. In the last census 16% of the population was born outside the UK (India, Poland, Romania and Ireland). London had the largest percentage of the population who were foreign born, standing at 40% (in the NE it was 7% and in Wales it was 7%.)
The major public focus has been on the illegal crossing of the Channel in small boats (rigid-hulled inflatable boast, dinghies and kayaks). These numbered 29,588 in 2024. The UK government’s cost of putting up migrant in hotels is £5 billion. The migrant hotels were the target of the rioters.
It is hardly surprising the migration remains a major political issue, and not only in the UK. Vice-President J. D. Vance was not wrong to highlight this in his speech at CPAC where he said that immigration is “the greatest threat” in the U.S. and Europe. It should be no surprise that discontented voters in the UK are all signing up to Nigel Farage’s anti-immigrant Reform UK political party.
And now we have the revelation from Simon Hart as to what British parliamentarians were up to all this time. Not that it is any surprise after Boris Johnson’s (Bo-Jo’s) party-gate. Simon Hart was the chief whip (a marvelous name for the party disciplinarian who is the political leader whose task it is to enforce the “whipping system” which ensures that legislators who are members of a political party attend and vote on legislation as the party leadership prescribes). He was appointed as Chief Whip under the last Conservative Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. Sunak was worth $487 million in 2024, and his wife, Akshata Murty, who he met at Sanford University, is worth $1.2 billion. She is the daughter of an Indian billionaire. It was said (unkindly) at the time that the Sunaks were worth more than King Charles III.
Simon Hart, the MP for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, was chief whip for 21 months between 2010 and 2024. He has just published a book which opens the lid on his daily activists activity in the House of Commons. It is mind boggling.
He had a desperate message from one Tory MP: “I met a woman outside the Carlton Club whom offered me a drink, I now think she is a KGB agent and she wants £600, and she has left me in room with 12 naked woman and CCTV.”
Matt Hancock the former Health Secretary during the Covid shutdowns tells him he wants to go off into the jungle in the TV series “I’m a celebrity. Get me out of here.” Simon Hart asked him when? “Tonight” Hancock answered. Hancock was apparently paid £400,000 to appear in the show. But Hancock had a good (or bad) precedent. Bo-Jo’s father, Stanley Johnson, had also been a “celebrity “ in the jungle on the show.
Simon Hart found his government driver unfamiliar with narrow roads of West Wale: “He just crawled along”. He had to deal with Chris Pincher, accused of groping young men in the bar at the Carlton Club, a private member club in St James, London. One of Pincher’s accusers said he had behaved like “a pound shop Harvey Weinstein.” He was accused of sexual misconduct for allegedly groping two men while he was drunk.
And Scott Benton, the MP for Blackpool who had offered to lobby ministers for money on behalf of gambling investors. The Scott Benton saga sounded like a scene from the hit period crime drama TV series about an ambitious and ruthless Birmingham crime family, the “Peeky Blinders.” The problem for Scott Benton was that it was all a sting setup and filmed by the London Times.
“Among today’s HR is the report that a departmental spad (a special adviser which is political appointee who supports ministers) went to an orgy over the weekend and ended up taking a crap on anther persons head. To make matters worse, a House employee went to a party dressed as Jimmy Saville and ended up having sex with a blow up doll.”
Jimmy Saville was the serial paedophile employed for many years presenting “Top off the Pops” and “Ask Jimmy” by the BBC. Simon Hart’s book is called “Ungovernable” and is published by McMillan.
Sir Keir Starmer’s government seems to think it can deploy the Royal Family to butter up President Trump. He certainly enjoyed his last State Visit to Britain when he was received at Blenheim Palace (where Winston Churchill was born to a younger son of the Duke of Marlborough). And he visited Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle (where he walked in front of her when he was about to review the honor guard). And he was given a splendid State Banquet by the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
But under King Charles the Royal Family has it own problems. The King’s brother, the always boorish Prince Andrew, is in disgrace over his long friendship with the disgraced American paedophile, the late Jeffery Epstein, his refusal to leave his mansion in the grounds of Windsor Castle despite King Charles admonitions to do so, let lone his shady dealings with a Chinese spy and various authoritarian kleptocrats.
The Royal correspondents (a particularly nauseating snobby sycophantic coterie) continue to refer to Katherine, the Princess of Wales (just recuperating from cancer, as is King Charles, and who is one of the few truly genuine members of royal family) as Kate Middleton, whereas they never ever refer to the Queen (Camila that is not Elizabeth), as the former Mrs. Parker Bowles.
And of course there is the self-exiled Prince Harry and Megan, the Duchess of Sussex, ensconced in their luxurious villa in Montecito, California.
But then the British Army’s does have its 500 horses which it can magnificently parade. After all their forerunners participated in the charge of the light brigade during the Crimean War where they were all mowed down by Russian guns, a memory which no doubt fills President Vladimir Putin with delight.
Credit graphic: ID 258577039 © Yee Xin Tan | Dreamstime.com
