The Duran Podcast - UK Starmer coalition of the willing crumbles

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

UK Starmer coalition of the willing crumbles

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Kier Stammer and his Coalition of the Willing, which is now turning into the coalition of the volunteers, I guess, because whatever countries want to volunteer to join Kirstammer on his Ukraine peacekeeper adventures, they could go to the many meetings that he's holding in London, but it does look like this coalition of the willing, which was the UK and France, with a little bit of Denmark sprinkled in that this thing has collapsed

what are your thoughts? I think it has collapsed. I think it was always it always had a balance of a quality of unreality. But it's increasingly clear that more and more European countries are opting out of it.

Maloney in Italy has said no. She says that this whole thing is premature and even ill-conceived. She's made it absolutely clear that she's not sending Italian troops to Ukraine under any circumstances. She's, I think, seeing the polls in Italy and is getting the sense of Italian public opinion. And they're dead against it as are members of her own government. I think Spain is coming out against it too.

I think in Germany there's no enthusiasm for this. Poland is adamantly opposed to it because they see this. as weakening Poland's own military defense. So I think that what we've seen over the last couple of about last week is that more and more European countries, the moment they began to understand that Stamber was actually serious about this, they said enough enough, look, this man is out of his mind. We are not going to Ukraine. We don't want to have anything to do with this. they're pulling out. The other thing is the Americans clearly are not behind this. They're not going to provide the backstop. They're not going to provide the guarantee that Stama was saying was the

essential necessity for this. And so that's all ended. The Russians, of course, have been adamantly opposed all along and they are maintaining their opposition. So a couple of days ago, Stama came up with a new idea. He said, well, maybe we won't send troops to Ukraine. Maybe we will actually patrol the skies over Ukraine with our air forces, British and French fighter jets and all of that, which would have to be based in Poland, by the way, just saying. The Russians would interpret that, of course, as an attempt to create a no-fly zone, which it is. And again, There is apparently a shift against this, both by European countries, and most importantly, by Britain's own military. Now, there has been an excoriating article about all of these ideas appearing in the Daily Telegraph today.

And it is clearly sourced from people within the military. In fact, it says so. And you have one military, these are all anonymous because they're serving military officers, but one source after another basically saying this idea is hairbrained, we don't know what kind of mission these troops would be sent to do, how this would work, there's no possibility of sorting out the logistics. We're talking about a 10 to 20, 30,000 man force. The Russians have at least 700,000 men around Ukraine.

The Ukrainian army is already much bigger than ours. What are these people intended to do? What is the military logic and rationale behind the mission? So you can see that the military, the British military, are turning against it as well. And there is a particularly cruel passage in the military. this Daily Telegraph article. And you have to understand now British irony, if you like. They're saying that there's a huge amount of respect within the military for the fact that Stama has given this idea so much of his time that he's worked on it so hard. But, you know,

this really isn't working. When people say that he's given a lot of his time and that he's worked very hard on it. The military people are basically saying to star, mind your own business. Yeah. Is this about Brexit? You floated out this possibility a couple of weeks ago that a lot of this could be about some sort of a return to the European Union, not an official return of the UK to the European Union, but there is talk about the UK signing a customs union deal with the EU. And I do get the sense reading many articles on Stommer's plans for Ukraine, that a lot of it is done in coordination with Ursula and the other guy at the council. What's his name? Gosta, the guy that took for for Michelle. And they are talking a lot about coordinating their defenses, their defense budget,

their defense spending. And it does feel like this could be some sort of a consolation prize. for Stalmer for the European Union. Okay, the United States, they're pulling away from us. Yes, we were defeated in Ukraine. We were not able to send a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine either. But what we did accomplish is we accomplished some sort of reversal of Brexit. So now the UK and the EU, we're best buddies again. What are your thoughts on that?

That is exactly what it is. ultimately all about, I mean, obviously there is a personal issue about Ukraine. Stama is fixated with Ukraine, so is much of the British political class. To be more precise, they're fixated with Russia. So, I mean, you know, that they want to do all of this. But ultimately, the primary agenda, the major focus is to try to get Britain back into Europe. And they can't reverse Brexit immediately, but they say to themselves, if we can establish some kind of new military relationship with the EU, if we can start working with Ursula and Costa and all of these people, if we can create some kind of French, British axis with Macron, who's showing signs of being

very, very worried about maths and the things that the Germans erupting. Then, you know, that brings us back to Europe, we can actually participate at a security level in discussions. In Brussels, we can have our representatives turning up again at the European Council. We might even have Stama himself coming to meetings of the European Council. The European Council, for those who people don't know, is the highest body of the European Union. So he would obviously be there supposedly only to discuss military and security policy, but it would be him coming back into the door. It would be reversing Brexit by stealth in a way. So I think that is absolutely the case. I think a lot of it stems from this. If you look at British politics, it's not an exact overlap,

But overall, to a very great extent, those who supported Remain tend to be anti-Russian pro-Ukraine. And I said, I mean, you know, about 90% of them. Those who supported Brexit tend to be more skeptical about the whole conflict. Now, that isn't an absolute iron rule because, of course, you've got people like Morris Johnson, who was normally part of the Brexit issue, and he is, of course, as we know, a fervid supporter of Ukraine. But overall, if you're looking at the percentages,

that is basically about right. And a lot of people in Britain, particularly the political class, who've always been deeply upset and resentful about Brexit, do indeed see this as a doorway towards starting to reverse Brexit, to start getting Britain involved again in European affairs using security and defense issues as the pathway to do it. Yeah, it makes sense in a way.

If you're Labor, even if you're the conservative party, if you're the political establishment in Britain and you've got reform, you've got Farage. they're definitely eating away at your power base. What you do is you draw a line in the sand and you basically tell the people of the UK, we're the establishment that's going to protect you from Russia. We're the establishment that's working with our partners in the European Union. where the pro-EU, pro-Europe, pro-Colective West part of UK politics, vote us, join us, or your other alternative is isolation via reform.

I mean, that could be the kind of message that they're putting out there or that they want to, they want to get towards, they want to move towards. And in a strange way, it makes some sense, especially when you have a weak candidate, like when you have a lot of weak candidates, but right now you have Stommer. And so you have a guy that doesn't have any charisma. That's effectively just a complete political bore and a political puppet. But you give him this talking point, this message that he can throw out there. You know, the UK is with Europe, the UK is with the EU, the UK is against Russia, we're now the leaders of the collective West. We're going to fight for our defense. We're going to trade with the European Union. This is the future of the UK. Or choose isolation with Farage reform. I don't know. Something along those lines.

You find articles about that all over the media now, except, of course, they're not saying isolation. They're saying go with Farage and accept subjugation by the Kremlin. I mean, this is, I mean, they're much, they take it much further than this, and that we have to increase defense spending because the Russians are at our gates. I mean, the rhetoric is just off the scale here about this. And that is why we must pull our resources with the Europeans. We can't count on the Americans anymore. The Americans are going away. They're even betraying us.

So therefore, unless we want to be taken over and ruled by Moscow, we must make common cause with our French and German allies that crank up defence spending and reintegrate with the new defence and security structures that are being created in Europe. Now, I'm going to say this for a couple of weeks, this actually did have some resonance. You saw, I mean, Stama had a brief upward bump in his support after the Oval Office meeting between Zelensky and Trump. The way it was represented in Britain was that Trump and Vance bullied Zelensky. We know that wasn't the truth, but that was how it was represented. Stama supported Zelensky. People felt sorry for Zelensky. and there was an upward bump as a result in Stama's popularity.

All of the indications are that that's now drifting away. And this narrative that you've set out, which is indeed the official establishment narrative at the moment, you know, we must reintegrate with Europe. We're the people who will defend you. You can't trust Farage. You can't trust reform. We must get back with the Europeans because the Russians are our. on at our doorstep and the Americans are going away. It's starting, people are starting to question this.

Because firstly, the economic situation in Britain continues to deteriorate. We had a contraction in the economy in January. There is a steep reduction in fiscal space, as it's called. In other words, the government is running out of money, just saying. There is talk that in the spring, the government might actually have to raise taxes again, something which in the Chancellor's autumn statement, which you remember we covered, she did raise taxes, but she said that there wouldn't be any further increases in taxes. It now looks as if there will be and it will be justified on the basis of the need to increase defence spending. So people don't want to pay taxes. The government has moved forward with very severe cuts in spending for disabled people.

Now, this is a significant part of the UK population. People have all kinds of disabilities and they get funds for this. Some of them, I mean, there are some cases which are really very distressing to read about. I'm not going to get into the details of this. All I will say is that taking this step has shocked Stamber's Labour Party supporters. It's unpopular with the Labour Parliamentary Party. And a lot of the people who previously had supported Stama, indeed had been passionately supportive of Stama,

are now horrified by this. And they're starting to turn against him. And you can see this in the Guardian, for example, very, very pro-starmer newspaper in Britain. We know its orientation. They now published an article, an editorial, saying that, you know, basically that the Labour Party is betraying its core constituency, that it's not really a Labour Party in any true sense anymore, making criticisms comments about the Labour Party. and what it's become, which are very similar to the ones that we've made on the Turan. It was very strange to read them in an editorial in The Guardian. So this brief bump in popularity is now draining away.

And one senses that, in fact, not only is it going to continue to drain away, but that there is actually an incipient crisis developing. So the Labor Party continues, is going to to start to lose support. Starma is losing support. There are growing doubts about him. The conservatives are not picking up support. They are stuck at 22% in the opinion polls, which is, I believe, worse than what they got in the election. Their leader, their new leader, Kemi Badenok, I think universally is acknowledged to have been a failure. She's completely failed to make any political impact. Over the last couple of weeks, we've had a major attack on reform and on Farage

over an internal dispute within reform. That doesn't seem to have had any effect on reform's popularity, and it seems to be over anyway. And perhaps more alarming still, there's now been confirmation that Farage and Dominic Cummings, remember him? He was the man who used to be Boris Johnson's chief advisor. He was the man who ran the official Brexit campaign in 2016. He was the man who came up with the famous slogan, Take Back Control. He's widely considered to be the single most skilled campaign manager in Britain. Anyway, these two men, Farajan Cummings, who up to now have not got on with each other, they've been rivals. Anyway, they've apparently had a very productive and successful meeting.

So it looks as if they are putting aside their differences. They're very different people. And there's some suggestions that these two parts of the Brexit movement are coming together again. So you're absolutely correct in what you said about, you know, the plan that the establishment has. But it's not clear at the moment that it's going to work, at least not in electoral terms, more likely on the contrary. We're going to see, especially in a few weeks, months time, especially if, as I expect, we start to see electricity. in gas prices, domestic prices in Britain's surge in the autumn, that there's going to be increasing anger and disaffection and people could start to turn against this whole thing.

And we could start to see reform increase its vote in the opinion polls and start to pose an even stronger challenge than it is already. So that's, I think, where we are with British politics at the moment. Can you comment quickly on what's going on in the European Union? And with Ursula, there's an article in Build which is claiming that Ursula has lost a lot of her power. She's no longer the queen of Europe because the United States, they want nothing to do with Ursula. J.D. Vance, when he was at the AI summit in Paris, when Ursula was ready to speak and give her speech, he walked out of the room. I don't think there's been any high-level contact between the Trump administration and Dersel.

She definitely has not been at the White House or the Oval Office. She has not been invited to meet with Trump. So I think that says a lot. There is talk that the defense fund, the defense budget, this $800 billion that Ursula is trying to push through. This is her way of trying to reassert her dominance in Europe by creating this defense fund. Of course, working with the UK is another way for her to show that she still is a player on the world stage, much like Stalber. He's a player on the world stage because he's joining forces with the European Union. The other side of the coin is Ursula needs to show that she's still a big player in world affairs and geopolitics by teaming up with the UK.

But no doubt, her power has definitely diminished because the Trump administration wants nothing to do with her. the United States is not so interested in Europe. And that's where a lot of her power came from. The Biden administration and their support for her and for the European Union. Of course, we have all her failures. It's been five, six years of failure when it comes to Ursula Vangelion as the commissioner, a gigantic, huge failures. And Project Ukraine, the fact that she's lost the war to Russia, that's going to be a big failure for Ursula. Never mind the fact that she's not in any of the negotiations either. Anyway, your thoughts there and we'll wrap up the video. Well, that's a very interesting story. And it's absolutely true, by the way. I mean,

Ursula is now coming under a serious challenge. And it's absolutely the case that the Trump administration wants absolutely nothing to do with her and is avoiding having any contact with her. I mean, they're making it fairly clear, by the way. that they blame her for what they see as the massive democratic backsliding in Romania, just saying, which remember the Americans, J.D. Vance himself brought up. So he's got personal issues with Ursula. And you're absolutely correct that Ursula rose to prominence because she had the backing of the Biden people. I mean, she was always there with Biden all the time.

she got on incredibly well, Blinken and Sullivan and all of that. So suddenly she's looking very isolated. I mean, she's no longer got the support from the Americans that she once did. Yours is starting to get hit pieces about her, by the way. I mean, I read one, which spoke about, you know, how she was isolated. She'd isolated herself that she only works with a small group of very trusted people, basically, from the Baltic States and things of that kind. that she's a poor manager.

What a surprise. The corruption. They're talking a lot about the corruption and the chaps and all that, the text messages. Now, all of this, of course, is partly because the Americans are turning against it, but there is a much, much more powerful enemy, much closer to home. And that is apparently Friedrich Mertz, who is the new chancellor, or will soon be the new Chancellor of Germany. Now, one of the reasons Ursula became so strong

is because, well, the last three years, we've had a weak, chaotic government in Berlin. Schultz was not a strong chancellor. The coalition he led was very fractious. He never had any real control over Ursula. In fact, he did pretty much whatever she wanted. And the Greens in Germany, Harbeck and Berbork, were political allies of Ursula in all her various projects.

Now, we have a new government led by Mouths. It's a coalition of the CDU, CSU and the SPD. The Greens are not part of this coalition. And even on that basis, it would be unsurprising if this new, new government in Berlin said, look, Germany is the biggest country in the EU. If anybody's going to rule and run the EU, it's going to be us. We've done that before. I mean, that was what Merkel did. That's what, you know, we should be doing. Berlin should be the real capital of the EU, not Brussels. So, you know, a stronger government in Germany, or at least a more coherent government in Germany,

would probably want to challenge Ursula anyway, but there is the added factor that apparently Mertz and Ursula hate each other, that there is a longstanding political feud between them because Mertz sees Osula as an ally of his former nemesis, Angola Merkel, and he doesn't like Merkel. and he doesn't like Osula because he sees her as associated with Merkel.

And apparently Matt is somebody who, you know, holds onto his grudges. Now, bear something in mind, Bill Seiton is a right-wing conservative tabloid, very, very close politically to the CDU. So the fact that they are saying that Ursula is losing her power is perhaps They're saying that because somebody from Mounce's office is telling them to. They're not wrong. No. No.

They're not wrong. Yeah. No. I mean, she has been a disastrous EU commission president. The worst. The worst. She has expanded the power of the EU center to extraordinary degrees. She is chaotic.

She's a chaotic. and corrupt, an extremely bad manager and administrator. She has extremely authoritarian tendencies, as we've seen many times. And undoubtedly, those who don't share her ideological fixations are going to dislike her. So it's unsurprising that, you know, her enemies are now gathering. Mertz on the one hand, the Trump people on the other. Mertz and Trump probably disagree about pretty much everything, except their shared dislike of Oscello von der Leyen.

Yeah, and completely obsessed with Russia. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. Yeah. All right, we will end the video there. The durand. Dotlottesie, bitchew, Telegram, Rockfin, and X. Go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update. We are also running a special 15% off all merch on the Duran shop.

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