The Duran Podcast - UK Starmer total commitment to neocon policy

Episode Date: July 21, 2024

UK Starmer total commitment to neocon policy

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the Kirstammer government's new program. And let's also perhaps talk about the event that is taking place in the UK, some European Council foreign policy events where all of the big decision makers in Europe are gathered. At this moment, Kirstehmir's hosting this event, and even Zelensky showed up. or no surprise. That Zeletsky showed up because the last place he wants to be in is Kiev. Anyway, what is Kirstavar's plan going forward for the UK? Well, it's a fascinating situation because, of course, he's now prime minister. He has this thumping majority behind him.

He's achieved it with 33% of the vote, just over a third of the vote. I have been doing a bit more number crunching, by the way. and I've established that no government has won a majority in the House of Commons with this level of support in the country. 33% of the vote does not usually produce a majority in the House of Commons, let alone a landslide majority, which again illustrates how unstable this whole setup is. So anyway, Stama is in this position. A lot of people say that, you know,

Britain has returned to stability. What Stama is doing is all the things that we said he would do. He is doing more of the same. He's going to adhere to the Sunat government's fiscal targets. Probably he has no choice there, actually. The budgetary position in Britain is very bad. There's not going to be any fundamental changes in the tax. Apparently, that's all been ruled out.

There was a king's speech. This is the speech that the king of Britain makes to the House of Parliament. It outlines the government's program. There's been a lot of commentary about this. If you read the Daily Telegraph, you'd say that this is a massively ambitious and very dangerous and ill-thought-out program. If you go to the Guardian, you say this is a massively ambitious and brilliantly thought-out program, which is going to lead us to the sunlit uplands. I say that there is actually no program there of any kind to speak of at all.

It is more of the same, more of the same sort of things that the Sunat government was already doing. You have a few things which are intended to keep the left happy. So there's going to be extensions on workers' rights, except perhaps there won't be. But anyway, that's the plan. We're going to nationalise the railways, except perhaps we won't, because when you actually look at what's being proposed, it doesn't actually seem like we are, in fact, going to set up a British railway, a British, nationalised British railways of the kind that we used to have long ago.

there's going to be a nationalised energy company, except, of course, that it's not actually going to produce any energy, or run the oil wells or provide the electricity or do any of that kind of thing. I'm not really sure what it's going to do, to be honest. But anyway, it is going to be set up. And a little bit of class wall, we're going to have VAT attached to school fees. So people who want to send their children to private schools, the fees which are really unbelievably high, are going to get higher still because they're now going to have VAT tagged onto them, which, well, there is a small but, you know, fairly vocal minority of people in Grisian who do send their children to private schools. They won't be happy, but Stama probably calculates that they vote conservative anyway.

So he's not particularly bothered about that, I suppose. And it's an easy thing for him to do to appease the left. But if you put all that aside, to me, compared with what other governments have done, governments that have really changed the direction of Britain, like the Thatcher government of the 1980s, or the Wilson government of the 1960s, or the Atlee government of the 1960s, or the Attlee government of the 1980s, 1940s. This is very, very thin rule for an incoming government with a huge majority to do.

And for the rest, foreign policy, complete reaffirmation, total commitment to the NIACON project in every form. The new foreign secretary, David Lammy, has published a big article in foreign affairs in which he talks about progressive realism, which essentially looks exactly like the unrealistic, progressivist neoliberalism of the neoliberal humanitarian interventionists. He says there mustn't be any wars like Iraq and Libya and Afghanistan. We mustn't have that all over again. But at the same time, we made a big mistake by not intervening more in Syria and against Russia.

So I don't really see what the difference is. Why he's saying, you know, these wars were bad, but these other wars were good. Anyway, it's exactly the same. Complete reaffirmation to all of that. The Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, almost the first country he visits is Israel, where he meets with Netanyahu and appears to give Israel the unstinting support has received before. The British government is now being. busy lobbying the ICC, the International Criminal Court, to revisit the arrest warrants on Netanyahu and a gallant.

And is having some success in doing that also, by the way. Stama meets with Biden. We're told that he found Biden on absolute top form, you know, that he was enormously impressed by Biden. I mean, I'm only exaggerating a little, but you know, that you found Biden, you know, with an impressive grasp of every issue. And, of course, we have the European leaders all come to Britain. Britain is meeting with them there. It's not exactly clear why, because we're told that Britain isn't actually going to rejoin

the European Union, at least not for the moment. But nonetheless, we want to be friends with them all again. And of course, we are 100% behind Zelenskyy and Project Ukraine. So it's more of the same exactly. As there's a few little tweaks to the left with private schools, talk of public, nationalised energy companies and nationalised railways, which, as I said, if you drill into it, doesn't really look very real to me. relaxation of the planning laws to please people on the right so that you can build more houses,

except again, I don't think there is going to be much actual relaxation of the planning laws, because the lobbies that will stop that are so strong in the UK. We need a much more purposeful government to do that. But fundamentally, all exactly the same as before. and a foreign policy that attaches Britain full square to a neocon project, which everybody can see is failing, and which the Trump vans team, which looks likely to be elected in November, are in the process of repudiating in the United States.

Why is Kirstehmur going to, to implement? implement the same failed policy when it comes to foreign policy of Sunac. Labor, why is labor going to do this when they realize this is such a loser policy, especially with regards to elections? You see, I don't think they do understand that. I think they still think that the policy that they want to follow. I would say that Lamy, in that article in Foreign Affairs, is still absolutely endorsing in the full way, you know, the whole concept of US hegemony.

He still talks about the US as essentially the indispensable country, all of that. I don't think they can quite bring themselves round to accepting that these changes that we, so many people can see, are really going to happen. They still think that the world is. where it was in the year 2000 and that yes Trump is saying all kinds of things and we're very worried about that he's picked vans and we're very worried about that the world is changing we're worried about that too but ultimately deep down they they still think that the world is still as it was before and that they're still on the they're still joining the winning team and that that

winning team, the neocons in other words, is going to go on winning. It's very strange. Lammy at one point in his interview, rather his article, his front-of-fence article, makes a very, very interesting admission. He says that when Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister of Britain in 1997, Britain's economy was bigger than those of China and India combined. Today, it is smaller than India's and only a small fraction of China's. So that shows how much the world has changed. So Lammy says that and that every other part of his article effectively denies that reality. So at some level, they know all of this, but they don't want to acknowledge it.

And they just pretend, they just go on doing what has worked before, what they're used. used to. They don't want to experiment with real change, either in Britain or internationally. And they just, you know, drift along because that's their comfort zone and they don't want to leave it. Because they're captured. I mean, ultimately, they're captured. Yeah, they're captured. And they can't, yeah, they can't figure out a way to look after Britain's national interests. They're looking after the globalist national interests. I mean, the policy listening to you, the policy to me sounds like it's just, you know, putting your foot on the accelerator as the car goes over the cliff. I mean, I don't know. Is there any other way to

describe it? There's no, there's no break. There's no break in any of it. There's no break. There's no break. And, you know, you've put a clamp on the wheel. You can't turn it. I mean, you just carry on straight on. I mean, that's all you can do. The interesting thing in Britain is that there are very, very strong criticisms of all of this, both on the left and on the right. If you go on the right, I mean, there's a whole new politics around Farage. I mean, he's criticized Project Ukraine. He's the one British politician who takes Donald Trump seriously. He wants to meet with him.

He's hoping to, you know, change. If he comes in, he understands that there needs to be a change of direction. If you go to the left to the sort of people who formerly supported Corbyn, who's, by the way, still in the British Parliament, he was re-elected as an independent. Well, you will also find lots of criticisms there. They too understand that British foreign policy needs to change. Both the right people on the reform side and on the left, you find new ideas about how to change Britain. You may agree with some, you may completely disagree with them, but at least there is new thinking going on there. But in the Labour Party, the government in the mainstream, there is no thinking at all. Anybody who has any ideas is pushed aside.

And they generally do believe that they are the adults in the room, that they're the serious, mature people who are doing things right. Everybody else, all these people on the left and on the right, who say things have to change are just flaky and really should be ignored. All right. Can the UK actually, final question, can the UK actually make any difference in Project Ukraine given? I mean, Kirstammer is now hugging Zelensky. He's showing more support where he's trying to outdo Sunak, it seems,

and the conservatives in their support for Ukraine. they have this meeting taking place in Britain that they're hosting. Is there, though, anything realistically can the UK actually do anything with regards to Ukraine? I mean, what? No, it's just posturing, I guess. It's absolute posturing. I mean, they supplied the challenges, as we all remember, and they all failed. They supplied the storm shadows and they didn't achieve very much.

The British Army is down to one brigade, apparently they can deploy. That's about 4,000 men. That's not going to make any significant difference. The British Air Force, the RAF, is about numbers, about the same number of fighter jets, that the Netherlands, Denmark and all the others are supplying to Ukraine. That's the Royal Air Force. The British Navy is racked with problems. The country has massive budgetary issues.

It cannot change the trajectory of the war in Ukraine. Now, if we had a different type of government, one that was generally realistic and looked at things in a completely different perspective, then of course Britain does continue to have a certain diplomatic influence. They could come out and say, Project Ukraine has failed. We need negotiations now. they could send the foreign secretary to Moscow or they could meet with the Russians in New York if they can't bring themselves to go to Moscow. They could engage in some genuine diplomacy and that might make a difference. But of course they're not going to do that.

This bunch are unable to do that. And the British establishment, the British political class overall agrees with them. Going forward, by the way, because, you know, I've, talked about Britain situation many times. There are some people, Dominic Cummings perhaps, he's been writing some very interesting things recently, and others who say, you know, we've got to carry out fundamental reforms in Britain as well. We've also got to reconsider our economic and trading relationships. We're outside the EU, which is the other big economy in Europe. In fact, Now, by far, Europe's biggest economy, which is outside the EU, maybe, maybe restoring an economic

relationship with Russia would make a great deal of sense for us. We can trade with them. They can trade with us. We've still got some things we can help them with, you know, finance and all that. They've got lots of things they can give to us. Maybe that's what we should do. Again, you're not going to find anybody in Britain in the political class who wants to to go there. And of course, with every day that passes, those opportunities that still exist, and they're becoming very limited. I mean, they're gradually being whittled away. This is, I mean, we've already had our end of empire moment in Britain. This is a kind of decay that follows from that, which, for somebody who lives here,

and who has, you know, feelings of deep attachment to this country. I find it very sad. All right. We will end the video there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, bitchchew, telegram, rock fin, and Twitter X, and go to the Duran shop. Pick up some limited edition merch. The link is in the description box down below.

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