According to Dame Emily Thornberry’s recent tweet the US Ambassador to Israel is an “idiot.”
This lofty philosophical analysis was offered to the world because Ambassador Huckabee posted that if Sir Keir Starmer had been Prime Minister during WWII “the UK would be speaking German.”
Huckabee rose from humble beginnings to become Governor of Arkansas for eleven years (with an economy equivalent to Kuwait’s). He also twice ran for his party’s presidential nomination, was a popular broadcaster in the US, and is now a United States Ambassador in one of the most challenging regions in the world.
Dame Emily of course famously tweeted a picture of a house bedecked in Flags of St George during a by-election campaign and had to step down as a Shadow Minister after being accused of sneering. More recently her Prime Minister declined her services in his cabinet. Perhaps her tweets would benefit from more considered reflection.
Ambassador Huckabee was obviously right about Starmer. Sir Keir is a leader who blows with the wind to such an extent that the Beaufort Scale doesn’t have a number for it.
Hence his reversals on grooming gangs, winter fuel, his “island of strangers” speech and much else besides.
But Starmer is not the only one. The state of Western leadership generally is frighteningly poor.
The European leaders this week lined up in the White House like the cast of Grange Hill waiting to see the headmaster. They looked so docile and intimidated by President Trump that it felt like the musical accompaniment to their arrival should have been the Pathétique Sonata.
Europe always used to look to the UK to do the heavy lifting with the US in times of stress; now Starmer was so sidelined that he was cut out of the Oval Office photos.
Forty years ago when the Americans invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada, Margaret Thatcher was so incensed by not having been consulted over the invasion of a Commonwealth Realm with the late Queen as Head of State that she rang her friend Ronald Reagan and berated him. “What a woman!” he is reputed to have admiringly said to his staff after the call. Nowadays the combined nerve of the entire Western leadership wouldn’t be enough to raise a soufflé between them.
The supine adherence to the anti-West agenda when it has come to recognition for a Palestinian state is another case in point. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently referred in a press conference to European leaders who telephone him and tell him he is doing the right thing but that they can’t say that openly. One can just sense how true that is. The West is being led by political pygmies.
When Emmanuel Macron took office, France’s deficit was 2.6 per cent of GDP. Last year it was 5.8 per cent, the worst in the eurozone.
Macron is now so despised by his electorate that Marine Le Pen’s RN Party is this month leading Macron by 18 per cent.
Starmer is so weak he is bullied into submission by his backbenchers on what seems a fortnightly basis; he buckles to an advisory panel on Diego Garcia and kowtows to Mauritius, a country with a population the size of an English market town and one so geopolitically insignificant that the Land of Narnia would have more gravitas.
Meanwhile our Prime Minister’s trade envoy travelled to Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus while the Prime Minister chose to criticise Israel as an “occupying power” and declines to put any pressure on Hamas to release hostages. Although the envoy has now resigned, following understandable pressure from Cyprus, he was not sacked by Starmer. One occupation is presumably fine, the other is unacceptable. Two tier Keir.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia went to China a few weeks ago to prostrate himself before Xi on what was criticised in the antipodes as an unusually long trip by a sitting prime minister. Despite the length of his visit he failed to raise any security issues with the Chinese except when he asked Xi to please let him know next time before they conduct live fire exercises off the coast of Sydney causing civilian flights to be diverted mid-journey. Xi of course gave him short shrift.
When it comes to the out of control antisemitism in Australia Albanese has been unwilling to stand up to the epidemic of attacks, hate speech, and arson, including on a Melbourne synagogue. Instead a visiting Israeli politician seeking to reassure anxious Aussie Jews was denied a visa by Albanese. Netanyahu’s leaked letter to Albanese doesn’t pull any punches- and makes it quite clear that history doesn’t look kindly on appeasers.
Canada’s PM Mark Carney, despite bravura talk during their recent election that he would stand up to Trump, has already folded like a sack of potatoes so that he can appease the US President by abandoning his plan to impose a digital services tax.
The world respects strength. Bad actors simply take advantage of appeasers. With leaders like the current crop if it wasn’t for Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu the anti-Western forces would be overwhelming the battlements.
According to Dame Emily Thornberry’s recent tweet the US Ambassador to Israel is an “idiot.”
This lofty philosophical analysis was offered to the world because Ambassador Huckabee posted that if Sir Keir Starmer had been Prime Minister during WWII “the UK would be speaking German.”
Huckabee rose from humble beginnings to become Governor of Arkansas for eleven years (with an economy equivalent to Kuwait’s). He also twice ran for his party’s presidential nomination, was a popular broadcaster in the US, and is now a United States Ambassador in one of the most challenging regions in the world.
Dame Emily of course famously tweeted a picture of a house bedecked in Flags of St George during a by-election campaign and had to step down as a Shadow Minister after being accused of sneering. More recently her Prime Minister declined her services in his cabinet. Perhaps her tweets would benefit from more considered reflection.
Ambassador Huckabee was obviously right about Starmer. Sir Keir is a leader who blows with the wind to such an extent that the Beaufort Scale doesn’t have a number for it.
Hence his reversals on grooming gangs, winter fuel, his “island of strangers” speech and much else besides.
But Starmer is not the only one. The state of Western leadership generally is frighteningly poor.
The European leaders this week lined up in the White House like the cast of Grange Hill waiting to see the headmaster. They looked so docile and intimidated by President Trump that it felt like the musical accompaniment to their arrival should have been the Pathétique Sonata.
Europe always used to look to the UK to do the heavy lifting with the US in times of stress; now Starmer was so sidelined that he was cut out of the Oval Office photos.
Forty years ago when the Americans invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada, Margaret Thatcher was so incensed by not having been consulted over the invasion of a Commonwealth Realm with the late Queen as Head of State that she rang her friend Ronald Reagan and berated him. “What a woman!” he is reputed to have admiringly said to his staff after the call. Nowadays the combined nerve of the entire Western leadership wouldn’t be enough to raise a soufflé between them.
The supine adherence to the anti-West agenda when it has come to recognition for a Palestinian state is another case in point. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently referred in a press conference to European leaders who telephone him and tell him he is doing the right thing but that they can’t say that openly. One can just sense how true that is. The West is being led by political pygmies.
When Emmanuel Macron took office, France’s deficit was 2.6 per cent of GDP. Last year it was 5.8 per cent, the worst in the eurozone.
Macron is now so despised by his electorate that Marine Le Pen’s RN Party is this month leading Macron by 18 per cent.
Starmer is so weak he is bullied into submission by his backbenchers on what seems a fortnightly basis; he buckles to an advisory panel on Diego Garcia and kowtows to Mauritius, a country with a population the size of an English market town and one so geopolitically insignificant that the Land of Narnia would have more gravitas.
Meanwhile our Prime Minister’s trade envoy travelled to Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus while the Prime Minister chose to criticise Israel as an “occupying power” and declines to put any pressure on Hamas to release hostages. Although the envoy has now resigned, following understandable pressure from Cyprus, he was not sacked by Starmer. One occupation is presumably fine, the other is unacceptable. Two tier Keir.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia went to China a few weeks ago to prostrate himself before Xi on what was criticised in the antipodes as an unusually long trip by a sitting prime minister. Despite the length of his visit he failed to raise any security issues with the Chinese except when he asked Xi to please let him know next time before they conduct live fire exercises off the coast of Sydney causing civilian flights to be diverted mid-journey. Xi of course gave him short shrift.
When it comes to the out of control antisemitism in Australia Albanese has been unwilling to stand up to the epidemic of attacks, hate speech, and arson, including on a Melbourne synagogue. Instead a visiting Israeli politician seeking to reassure anxious Aussie Jews was denied a visa by Albanese. Netanyahu’s leaked letter to Albanese doesn’t pull any punches- and makes it quite clear that history doesn’t look kindly on appeasers.
Canada’s PM Mark Carney, despite bravura talk during their recent election that he would stand up to Trump, has already folded like a sack of potatoes so that he can appease the US President by abandoning his plan to impose a digital services tax.
The world respects strength. Bad actors simply take advantage of appeasers. With leaders like the current crop if it wasn’t for Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu the anti-Western forces would be overwhelming the battlements.