David Cameron: British Prime Minister or American puppet?

If this Tweet from Rowena Mason, the Guardian's political correspondent is true then we have proof that David Cameron, the British Prime Minister is actually acting in the interests of a foreign power.

Ed Milliband has played a wonderful game up to now, but can he raise the stakes and now go after Cameron? A motion of no confidence using this as evidence that the Tory is unfit to be Prime Minister should be put down as soon as possible.

Cameron is on the ground: now is the time to kick him until he whimpers.

Just how significant was yesterday's vote?

Just how significant was yesterday's House of Commons vote to prevent Britain going to war against Syria? Just have a look at this cutting from the front page of the Norwich Mercury of the 2 March 1782:

In case you are wondering about the connection, that vote was the last time to the House of Commons reigned in a government hell-bent on war. Back then it was the Tory, Lord North, who wanted to keep fighting the American colonists and that vote meant that the Commons was no longer prepared to continue the fight.

Yesterday, over 230 years later, the House of Commons reigned in another Tory, David Cameron, who wanted to sent the young men of Britain off to die in yet another of the imperial adventures that have so plagued the twenty-first century up to now.

That is how significant it all is. The Commons took control of the executive and made it toe the line and that has not happened on a matter of war for more than two centuries.

The final end of empire

Yesterday's vote in the House of Commons to reject a war against Syria may be the final nail in the coffin of Britain's imperial dreams, let's hope so at any rate.

In the aftermath of the Suez disaster when the Americans pulled the plug and demonstrated to London that the country could not move without America's permission, the British had two choices. They could have retreated into a post-imperial sulk, or they could accept the reality of the situation and work with it. Harold McMillan's telephone call to President Eisenhower when he genially said, "Over to you, Ike," shows which path the British ruling class chose to take. McMillan would later say privately that he saw Britain's role as being akin to that of the civilised Greeks vis a vis their thuggish Roman overlords. That analogy conveniently overlooked the fact that the Greeks who served the Romans were slaves, but we can see what he was getting at.

With the honourable exception of Vietnam, for the next half century our country acted as America's most loyal servant and all the talk of a special relationship could not truly disguise the fact that the relationship between Washington and London was more akin to that between a man and his dog than any true partnership between sovereign states.

This policy reached its logical conclusion in 2003 when President Bush gave the order to initiate the war against Iraq and simply forgot to tell Tony Blair. The point is that Bush was giving the order to British troops as well as his own. Blair's spin mongers had to run around in blue-arsed fly mode to spin that act of cravenness away.

What happened last night was the end of all the fantasies about "punching above our weight on the world stage," and the final acceptance that the days of empire are now over. It took a long time, but the House of Commons last night buried the last remnant to the old British post-imperial dream.

Is Ed Miliband running the show?

“No 10 and the Foreign Office think Miliband is a fucking cunt and a copper-bottomed shit. The French hate him now and he’s got no chance of building an alliance with the US Democratic Party,” said a senior government source. The fuckers are rattled! I cannot believe just how much the fuckers are rattled. Go on, Ed: your father would be proud of you today.

As Cameron got out of his car yesterday afternoon to walk into 10 Downing Street, a journalist shouted: "Is Ed Miliband running the show?"

On the evidence of the past few hours, that is exactly what he is doing and the government must be wondering just how will they explain their failure to their masters in Washington?

Syria: Labour forces a Tory climb down

What a difference 24 hours makes. Yesterday it looked certain that London would follow cravenly along behind their masters in Washington and lob a few missiles into Syria while the Americans sent hundreds into the country. Parliament was recalled to rubber stamp the move, because as we all know, our rulers are loyal to the USA and just have to support whatever nastiness that odious country wishes to pursue.

So what went wrong? By yesterday afternoon it was obvious that the numbers did not stack up for a victory in a Commons' vote so none is to be called for the moment. Just why did America's most trusted servants remember what their balls were actually for?

We are lucky in having a Tory government. Had Labour been in power then Miliband could have done a Blair and relied on his payroll vote coupled with the overwhelming majority of the Tory opposition to win the vote. Hard though it is for any normal person to believe, but having a Tory government came in handy yesterday because it is always easier for Labour to be true to its principles when it is in opposition.

Secondly, the seeming rush to war reminded more than a few people, especially on the Labour side, of 2003 and the similar rush to go off and start a war against Iraq. I honestly doubt if many people back then actually believed in all the weapons of mass destruction nonsense, but I suspect that many thought that it would be a cakewalk that would end very quickly, and bring tasty reconstruction contracts in its wake. The seemingly open-ended desire of the Americans to bomb Syria must have led many to speculate that if the air offensive failed then an invasion of the country was probably the next option. 

Finally, the intervention of Tony Blair in favour of the aggression needs to be considered. His remarks may have shifted more than a few Labour doubters into the opposition camp. People will have remembered his promises of a decade ago and the lies that were told to ensure that America's will was adhered to, and they would have remembered the price that our country paid in blood for that criminal adventure. In his own small way, Blair may have unwittingly helped to avert an immediate attack in 2013, something which must gall him if he ever thinks about it.

We are not out of the woods yet, and the suspension must be that the opposition parties will revert to type and support the USA when the chips are down. However, Labour has a wonderful opportunity to damage the government over this just by seeming to be reasonable and asking for more time to consider just what happened in Syria that may, or may not, require a military response.

The longer that goes on the weaker that the government will be, and that is something that we should all wish to see.

Attacking Syria: a rerun of Iraq

In early 2003 the United States was planning its war against Iraq. It's British client state was involved as a good doggie should, by yapping in support of that act of aggression, and then sending men to die in America's war. Ten years later the USA is now planning another attack on another Muslim country, with Britain tailing along doing exactly as it did a decade ago.

I was involved in that earlier debate and all it did was distract everyone's attention from the pressing matters at home - which let's face it, is where the real enemy lives.

Today parliament has been recalled to discuss this latest coming aggression, but this time I am not going to get involved in the debate. Our line should be that if the man can afford to piss millions up a wall in military action then that same man can afford to repeal the bedroom tax, an issue that is far more pressing for people of my class than a war against a country that most people could not point to on a map. So, the war is at home. We must not get involved in this latest debate, and all we need to say is that anything that is good for the employer class is bad for us by definition, and no further debate is needed.

Now then, how are we going to oppose the bedroom tax, universal credit and zero hours contracts?

Kelly-Jane Stone spills the beans

Meet Kelly-Jane Stone from Watford, and that photo is probably all you will ever see of her if Kelly-Jane has her way as the 26 year old is doing a runner. She has cancelled her Twitter and Facebook accounts, and has decided to be a very quiet girl indeed in the hope that she can avoid the bucket of shit that very many people want to see poured all over her.

She is a now suspended recruitment agent employed by the Transline Group in Hemel Hempstead. Her job was to find casual staff for Amazon, and her hobby was trying to ensure that the "suckers" who did not dance to her tune ended up losing their benefits. She even gloated about it on Twitter which is how it all came out:

Obviously she could not stop anyone's benefits directly as she is not employed by the job centre, but she could 'phone the joke shop and give them some tale about a person, so get the money stopped that way.

In case you are wondering, the man who calls himself Devil's Baguette has also deleted his account. This guy likes stealing money from youngsters, by the way:

I suspect that these two chancers will be hung out to dry, but we need to remember that their real crime was getting caught in public saying what most of them only say in private.

This is the middle class for you: vermin every one.

Russian anchorman's vents about homosexualism

Just one TV anchorman on a Russian channel, giving his views on homosexuality. You may think that he is a trifle over strident, but the audience do not seem to agree.

Channel Four accepts that UKIP is Thatcherite

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Andy Warhol said that one day everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Well, I have just had 15 seconds of that given to me courtesy of Channel Four TV. The station ran a UKIP story on Monday which included a very short piece about me at the 2.30 mark that I thought was very fair. Basically it stated that I was slung out of UKIP for joining in the general hilarity when Margaret Thatcher went off to fuel hell's fires, which is the simple truth.

It is also the truth that Fred McGlade, the full time organiser whose bout of pre-menstrual tension caused the rumpus in the first place, then tried to cover up his buffoonery by denying that fact in various press briefings, but I got UKIP to 'fess up to that truth last month.

Now then, does anybody really think that Northern English council estates will vote for a party that so clearly carries the Thatcherite torch? The Tories have already cut into the party's soft right underbelly with the promise of a referendum, and stories like mine, as they play out on the estates ,should be enough to ensure that UKIP does not get any working class seats either.

All in all the party looks fucked to me and they only have themselves to blame. What should have been a broad anti-EU coalition has become a narrow platform on which a diminishing band of small town Englanders stand.