Starmer’s support for Trump’s Epstein war may be the final blow to Labour in Scotland
Speymouth
America has gone to war in the Middle East at the behest of Netanyahu again, when Trump attacked Iran in June last year and assured us that Iran’s nuclear weapons programme had been completely destroyed it hadn’t really been completely destroyed at all. Trump lied. I’m shocked I tell you, shocked.
I’m no fan of the brutal and oppressive Iranian Islamic Republic, being opposed to American imperialism does not automatically make you one of the good guys – leftist Putin apologists take note – but the abhorrence of the Iranian regime does not legitimise the fact that yet again Trump has taken the USA into an illegal war without the approval of Congress or a UN resolution and moreover did so while negotiations with Tehran were ongoing. It’s not the Iranian clerical fascist leadership which will bear the brunt of this military action, it’s innocent Iranian civilians. The assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei will not lead to the collapse of the regime, Iran is not Iraq or Libya. Iran has robust contingencies in place to deal with the death of a leader, all that will happen is that Khamenei will soon be replaced with another clerical fascist who is even more cruel and hardline.
Trump, the “Peace President” has bombed eight countries in the past year alone. Those, especially those on the left, who welcomed his presidency saying that he was going to end wars should hang their heads in shame, you are the very definition of useful idiots.
This new war feels a lot like the Iraq War, like Iraq, the attack on Iran is based on a lie about weapons of mass destruction and just as in Iraq there is no plan for what comes next. Trump clearly lied about “obliterating their nuclear weapons” just months ago and now has no plan for what to do in Iran should he succeed in decapitating the regime. Saddam Hussein was toppled and we got the Islamic state and years of chaos and violence, these things rarely go according to the plans of the West, but in this case Trump has no idea what to do next.
That bid for a Nobel Peace Prize is going terribly well isn’t it? The Americans gave us Operation Desert Storm, now we have Operation Distract from Epstein. Scores of civilians have already been killed, including over 100 children slaughtered when an American bomb hit a girls’ school. That’s how you show your displeasure at Islamicists not wanting girls to get an education, you aim a missile at a girls’ school. But at least no one is talking about the allegation that amongst the Epstein files that the Department of (in)Justice has illegally withheld are documents which detail Trump’s alleged rape of a thirteen year old and the death threats made to get her to stay quiet.
As sure as night follows day, within hours of the American bombing starting, Keir Starmer popped up from his crypt and stopped sulking about the Greens in order to cheerlead for Trump and Netanyahu’s war and to let us know that the UK fully supports the illegal American attack on Iran. There’s nothing an unpopular authoritarian likes more than a foreign war to divert people’s attention from their domestic political travails. You might have thought that a human rights lawyer would have something to say about an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state in the midst of diplomatic negotiations about the future of the nuclear programme which was ostensibly the reason for America’s attack, but all Starmer had to say was – and I paraphrase – “We’re all for it and we’re all for participating in it.” Still, at least he didn’t blame it on Zack Polanski.
It’s funny how the politicians who are most keen on whining about immigration and refugees and asylum seekers are also very keen on starting the wars that create refugees and asylum seekers. Neither Starmer nor Trump has learned anything from the decades of Western military intervention and the forever wars in the Middle East.
There’s a lot going on domestically too. Let’s start with Starmer’s shocking response to Labour’s humiliating defeat in Thursday’s Gorton and Denton by election. Starmer could have promised that the Labour party would listen to the concerns of an electorate which had abandoned Labour in droves. He could have promised to reflect on the lessons from the defeat and reach out to those who have been disaffected and alienated from the Labour party over the past eighteen months. He could, at the absolute minimum, have accepted responsibility for his party plummeting to a distant third place in a by-election in a seat which Labour has held since the 1930s and in which it took almost 51% of votes at the general election in July 2024.
But Starmer didn’t do any of that. He blamed the voters and angrily tossed out some Islamophobic dog whistles while fulminating about how the Greens divide people. Starmer promised he’d keep on fighting, he’d fight both left and right, but mostly the left. The truth is that lashing out in all directions isn’t strength— it’s what you do when you’ve got no idea what you actually stand for. The world is descending into war because a criminal American president seeks a distraction from his depravity and the UK is led by a moral vacuum of a man who is set to cheerlead for another illegal American and Israeli war.
Meanwhile the Labour party in Scotland continues its downwards death spiral into impotent irrelevance. As Labour in Scotland prepares to send the depleted ranks of its foot soldiers out of the trenches to face electoral annihilation, Scotland Secretary Douglas Alexander imperiously put Anas Sarwar back in his box and humiliated him by telling the press: “Anas set out his position a couple of weeks ago, and the fact is he is clear now that his responsibility is not to be a commentator on British politics…” Sarwar will now face going into a Scottish election expecting voters to make him a First Minister who is not allowed to comment should the government in Westminster make a decision which is damaging to Scotland’s interests and whose political insignificance within the broader UK Labour party has been starkly exposed.
Sarwar has been reduced to pleading with independence supporters to hold their nose and vote for him, a desperate and pathetic plea when he and his party have no vision about this supposed Union which they believe it is imperative Scotland remains a part of, no answers to the UK’s inequality, lack of democracy and the overweening domination of London and the South East.
Most importantly of all in the Scottish context Labour has nothing to say about the very nature of a Union which Scotland is assured is voluntary, yet Labour refuses even to acknowledge the need to agree on a mechanism through which Scotland’s electorate can make its wish for another independence referendum clear. Trump’s Epstein War in the Middle East may bring about the end of the Labour party in Scotland. Labour was already in a parlous state as it goes into the Scottish election, Starmer’s support for Trump’s illegal war may be the final blow that finishes the party off.
But the travails of Sarwar and Labour in Scotland tell us that even with the relentless propagandising of BBC Scotland and a press which is overwhelmingly opposed to independence, Anas Sarwar still has no hope of becoming first minister. It’s not just Labour’s influence in Scotland which is dying as Labour again becomes the party of an unpopular and illegal war in the Middle East, the baleful influence of BBC Scotland may be dying too.
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