One of Trump’s many weaknesses is his ignorance of history, Brian Reade says, as his Churchill insult thrown at Keir Starmer this week showed – we must stand up to his bullying
For a man who does a wicked line in insults, the one Donald Trump fired at Keir Starmer was pretty lame. “This is not Winston Churchill we’re dealing with,” said The Incredible Sulk, after Starmer didn’t feel it was in Britain’s interests to once more blindly follow an American right-wing nut job into a conflict in the world’s most unstable region, with no justification or planned endgame.
A conflict chosen by a ratings-challenged, semi-senile, god complex sufferer, who set up a Board of Peace to grab the limelight but was now bored of peace and views war as a better route to win adoration.
One of Trump’s many weaknesses is his ignorance of history. Had he any nous he’d know that telling the leader of Britain’s Labour Party that he’s nothing like the man who set the Army on striking Welsh miners, sent troops to Liverpool to kill two people during a transport strike, dismissed hunger marchers as shirkers, and sent the Black and Tans on a murder spree in Ireland, was something of a compliment.
Had he any self-knowledge he’d realise that Churchill, who saw military action in India, Africa and the Western Front, would have despised the coward who dodged the Vietnam draft, mocked the brave war pilot John McCain for being captured, and claimed British troops in Afghanistan, 457 of whom were killed, were nowhere near the action.
But then, the British right, who now robustly support a war which the stooges around Trump have given five different explanations for, simply to attack Starmer, also have a shaky grasp of history. Nigel Farage said the so-called “special relationship” was now “without doubt the worst it’s been” since Suez.
Yet since then Harold Wilson angered Lyndon Johnson by refusing to send troops to Vietnam, Joe Biden threw us under the bus with his rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Margaret Thatcher fell out with her great pal Ronald Reagan for being non-committal over the Falklands and invading Grenada, a Commonwealth country, without telling her. So “sh*t happens”, as the man who put the creep in mission creep, Pete Hegseth, will no doubt tell us after the next bombing of a school full of Iranian girls.
Of course Britain needs a decent relationship with the US for many things, especially intelligence sharing. But who would be in a rush to share intelligence with a verbally incontinent, near 80-year-old President who doesn’t know the difference between Greenland and Iceland, who announces the start of a possible World War III wearing a baseball cap, and surrounds himself with nodding, mad-eyed, fundamentalist freaks?
Who would want a relationship with a petulant, paranoid thug who acts like a wife-beater, demanding the right to abuse and demean partners for not obeying him, then treats them with an even greater contempt when they accept the relationship and come back for more? As Starmer, who grovelled with a state visit invite to Trump in front of the world’s cameras, found out to his cost and our shame.
If the saying about bullies only respecting strength is true, then Starmer should carry on standing up to Trump, not crawl back for another slapping, especially as the last YouGov poll showed that 81% of Brits can’t stand this toxic president. Besides, can any of us honestly say whether the Mad Mullahs or the Manic Megalomaniac is the greater threat to Britain’s economy and world peace?
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