Rabid Season, Part 2 – the muddy cliffs of Dover

On Monday I posted about the madness that has gripped America during the presidential interregnum – between the November election and Trump’s inauguration next week. Things are almost as rancid here in the UK. We have our very own version of Gladiator 3: the Conservatives and the Reform Party scrapping in the colosseum of public opinion over ownership of Britain’s extreme right. But this will simply be an entertaining overture, before Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate, duly installed as Elon Musk’s gauleiters, get on with the job of purging Britain of its grooming gangs, mosques, curry houses, drag queens and gender-ambivalent therapy patients.

I jest, of course. But by gum, we British really need sorting out, don’t we?  The real madness lies in the relentless campaign against our government and its leading figures by both domestic and foreign enemies.

As if Labour’s task of clearing up the wreckage created by the last government wasn’t hard enough, a gang of well-connected trolls have decided to make their lives even harder by resurrecting the alleged “Pakistani grooming gang” scandal. Thanks in large part to Musk, the level of vilification aimed at Keir Starmer, Jess Phillips et al compares nicely with the press received back in the day by the likes of Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Then there’s the “two hundred and fifty thousand victims”, of the grooming gangs, according to the godfather of X. Or is that “up to a million” as he claimed in another tweet? That’s surely an impressive exaggeration even by Truskian standards. Taking the lower figure, if you assume that each grooming gang member was responsible for seducing ten girls (which would make you wonder how they managed to pay attention to their day jobs), such a ratio suggests that there are 25,000 miscreants out there, most of whom have never been identified, let alone prosecuted. Somewhat unlikely, I suggest.

But Musk has many willing helpers. Over many decades of watching politics in Britain, I can’t recall a similar level of vituperation hurled at a relatively young government as is currently the case. In yesterday’s issue (13/1/25) of The Times – a newspaper that in the past studiously avoided the attack-dog tendencies of its nearest competitors – each of the three stories on the front page is designed to raise the hackles of people who might otherwise be prepared at least to give Labour the benefit of the doubt. The headlines tell all….

“Tech firms can plunder NHS archive to fuel AI revolution” under plans to be announced by Kier Starmer. Note the inflammatory use of the word “plunder”. Not “access” or “make use of”, but plunder, the first cousin of steal.

“Labour’s net-zero push ‘hands power to Beijing’”. This warning comes from the former head of MI6, who fears that Labour’s “ideologically-driven” push towards net zero is increasing China’s power over our economy. The stinger, of course, is the implication that ideological fanaticism (Labour) trumps realistic pragmatism (Tories, Trump et al). The Yellow Peril rides again.

As for the third story, no brick-by-brick demolition of a government’s credibility would be complete unless the wreckage emanates a whiff of corruption. And who better to be accused of corruption than Labour’s anti-corruption minister, whose auntie is the former prime minister of Bangladesh, who was dismissed for corruption among other transgressions. Now some of Tulip Siddiq’s election material has been found in Sheikh Hasina’s “luxury palace”. A long story this, but the underlying accusation is clear: auntie was corrupt – so is her niece. (Yesterday, she resigned. First blood to the demolition squad.)

The only other feature of the front page is a photo of the frozen English countryside. Even The Times couldn’t find a reason to blame Labour for the current cold snap.

The Starmer blood-fest is not confined to the newspaper media. The newsfeed that greets me when I open my laptop gleefully leaps upon every negative story about him that the algorithm can find.

Take the links presented to me this morning:

The Daily Express says: World leaders invited to Donald Trump inauguration including Milei as Starmer ‘snubbed’. Just to confuse the faithful, the news feed chucks in Daily Mirror’s assertion of the Truth behind Elon Musk’s claim Keir Starmer snubbed at Donald Trump’s inauguration, which, it claims, Starmer never intended to attend in the first place!

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail screams that Labour’s law ‘threatens Brits’ ability to speak freely at the PUB’. Imagine! A mortal blow struck at one of Britain’s treasured cultural institutions.

Not to be outdone, The Daily Telegraph pops up with a headline inviting us to look at  The charts that show Starmer’s Britain is falling badly behind. Economic trends whose origins stretch back way beyond the life of the current government.

I’m not saying that Starmer and Labour haven’t made mistakes All governments screw up, especially the inexperienced ones. Even Elon Musk’s new rockets blew up a few times before his engineers made them fly. But the informational area bombing aimed at Starmer and his team over the past months is so relentless as to be positively sinister. And to think that one of my country’s proudest cultural emblems was once fair play….

It seems to me that without our even thinking about it, a process is going on in the UK similar to that in the United States, through which the Republican party and its billionaire donors, by taking control of media that previously may have been impartial, by forming political organisations masquerading as think tanks and by creating huge funding wells ready to flood target states with money in the form of political donations, have massively shifted public opinion against Democrat incumbents.

We not yet at such an advanced state of political subjugation, otherwise it would have been impossible for Labour to have been elected last year. But it’s worth reflecting that there are now two parties with – if the opinion polls are to be believed – a large share of popular support, touting policies that would have horrified right-wing icons from my youth such as Margaret Thatcher. And let’s not forget that these parties are egged on by media proprietors both old and new – old in the case of Rupert Murdoch, and new in the case of the financiers who own GB News, the current standard-bearer for the far right.

Labour have another four years in power, with a very healthy majority. But should they falter enough in the meanwhile to trigger a new general election, expect the long-term effort to neutralise any political organisation to the left of far right to work up into a frenzy of spending and, inevitably, misinformation.

I carry no torch for Labour – I didn’t vote for them in the last election. But neither would I go anywhere close to the assortment of headcases and cultists that control the Conservatives and Reform. Never have, never will. In my view, the strength of British political life has always been that not since the eighteenth century has any party been able to achieve long-term ascendency.

I don’t want that to change. The reasons why it might are for another time. But for those who look across the Atlantic for indicators of future trends here in Britain, I refer you to an interesting article by Thom Hartmann, a “progressive” writer and radio show host, who has written an article in which he describes in some detail how Republican strategists, aided by massive funding from billionaire backers, have managed to upset the traditional balance between the main US political parties. Well worth a read, even if you don’t share his political inclinations.

Here’s a key passage:

Want to seize control of a nation and turn it into a neofascist state with the consent of the people? Just take control of the channels of public information and news, and then turn lies about your opponents and their supporters into a perceived reality.

Over the past 50 years, Democrats have been busy focusing on and working out policies to benefit average Americans. Increasing access to medical care, $35 insulin, reducing student debt, the CFPB to protect people from banks, cleaning up the environment, American Rescue Act, Inflation Reduction Act, etc.

Republicans and billionaires aligned with them, however, have not only fought against all these efforts, but, far more importantly, have engaged in a massive power play to shift control of popular opinion — and thus control of our government — toward themselves in a way they believe could be permanent.

You can clearly see Hartmann’s bias, and I’m not suggesting there’s a direct parallel with the UK, especially in terms of the objectives of the oligarchs. But the techniques for undermining opponents are similar, and have been used continually since the Brexit Referendum (and there’s my bias emerging!).

So is Britain, in electing a Labour government last year, an outlier, as we stand rather nervously against a global movement towards authoritarian, not to say fascist, politics? That’s for you to say, dear readers. As for me, I’m keenly interested in seeing to what extent history is about to repeat itself. Or not.