Sovereign Rights and Petty Legalisms

In its usual sure-footed and statesmanlike fashion, Team Starmer has proclaimed itself not entirely clear on the Trumpster administration's plans for Venezuela. While it is self-evident that Venezuela's right of self-defence is neither as absolute as Ukraine's nor as sacred as that of the Righteous State, certain questions remain as to whether military aggression and colonialism are against international law when the White House doesn't care one way or the other. For the time being, a spokesbeing was extruded to clarify that Britain had not been informed of the assault and therefore had neither the right nor the inclination to hold any opinion on the matter; save that the business of setting out a democratic future for Venezuela's oil and minerals is "for the Americans now and for Venezuela," presumably in that order.

Business as Usual

Has the head-tribble lost its mojo? Are its radioactive defecations into the tangerine cranium blocked by constipation? Few other possibilities can explain the apparent fact that the Trumpster has commenced the new year with a very ordinary Latin American resource grab. Even the kidnapping of the Venezuelan leader and his wife is hardly unprecedented: George Bush senior, as prim and prissy an old-style Republican as anyone could wish against, did the same with Manuel Noriega in Panama almost forty years ago, and on the same gossamer pretext of a war on drugs. While there will doubtless be relief in some quarters, there will indubitably be a price to pay should any suspicion dawn that the head-tribble no longer rules and that the Trumpster has begun to act like a normal US president.

Capital Growth

Patriots will rejoice to see that His Majesty's Government's favourite Islamic fundamentalist head-choppers remain as zealous as ever in their implementation of British values. During the year just gone, the House of Saud supplemented its moderate rampage in Yemen with a sensible massacre of alleged drug traffickers and various others, the quantity of executions exceeding the impressive record set during the year before. Rights organisations and other malcontents have carped and criticised as ever, and some have even claimed that the House of Saud's dedication to law and order undermines its modernising efforts. In light of modern Britain's intensive concern with decapitating human rights, this is surely a grave injustice.

Royal Discretion

Whatever lessons our Mother of Democracies may have learned from the case of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Gentleman, it appears that Norway has yet to absorb them. The son of the local Crown Princess is to face trial on charges of illegal sneak-filming, domestic violence and four counts of rape, though he apparently denies everything except a minority of the violence. On the mainland, of course, the idea of putting Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on trial was always a self-evident absurdity: the Crown Prosecution Service can hardly be expected to turn the monarch's relative into a mere subject of inquiry. Instead the matter was dealt with internally, with a few Ruritanianisms lopped off the mode of address and a certain enforced economy of accommodation. As a result, not only has the taxpayer been spared the expense and prurient temptations of a trial; but the nation's overstretched and under-resourced women's health and rights organisations, unlike their Norwegian counterparts, have not been inconvenienced by a sudden surge in business.

No Foe Too Formidable

Much like the greatest country in the world, whose uniquely robust and superior cultchah is under continuous existential threat from a few thousand refugees, the World Cop by the grace of God has endured deadly danger at the tentacles of enemies many and horrid. Nicaragua, North Korea, Libya, Cuba, Iran, Iraq and Venezuela are just a handful of the world-bestriding behemoths which have imperilled the leader of the Free World, brushing aside its meagre armed forces and nugatory nuclear arsenal with insidious infiltration and morale-sapping asymmetric terror tactics. Among the latest is Tonga, which has a population a full one-seventh the size of Washington DC's and has now joined various melanin-mongering powers of darkness on the Trumpster administration's new year travel blacklist. It is certainly to be hoped that such measures will prove adequate to protect the leadership of the Free World, and that the Tongan onslaught will not necessitate excessive invasions of San Francisco or nuclear strikes on Salt Lake City.

For Justice, Decency and Our Way of Life

Although the Reverend Blair had few scruples about putting Britain's plucky little soldiers in the firing line in the service of the late Dick Cheney and his pet chimpanzee, the possibility of their being answerable for war crimes was clearly a different matter. His reverence took care to ensure that British soldiers suspected of beating an Iraqi prisoner to death would not be tried except by other British soldiers who would understand, rather than by the International Criminal Court which is mostly for wogs, or by a civilian court which might imagine that bigger and richer war criminals ought to be made answerable as well. Eventually a corporal was found guilty of inhumanity towards civilians, cashiered and sentenced to a slightly shorter term in jail than is currently being served, without trial, by several people who objected to inhumanity towards civilians.

Medicinal Pricks

Remarkably enough, a mere third of the Farage Falange's local authority gauleiters are vaccine deniers, despite the conspiracy theory's endorsement by a cardiologist who also happens to be quack-in-ordinary to the Trumpster administration's Kennedy brainworm. Among the Falange's medico-intellectual élite is naturally the brilliant leader of the upsucking Kent cadre, who has boasted that her accomplices are "not afraid to debate topics that other people have decided must be silenced." As with those not afraid to debate the shape of the planet or the authorship of Shakespeare, the mere presence of long-established and verifiable truth does nothing to obstruct the feast of reason. Nevertheless, the profitable-healthcare wing of Team Starmer has not thus far found it expedient to follow the Farage Falange's lead on this particular topic; evidently the moderate and sensible view is still to prefer customers over corpses at least some of the time.

Routine Cleansing

A forceful response has been ordered after one of the Palestinian Untermenschen reduced the master race by two, in violation of all civilised values and in defiance of the international community's preference that at least one side in the conflict ought to cease fighting. Just as it would be wrong and antisemitic to connect the October 2023 attacks with the occupation of Gaza, so the attack by a denizen of the West Bank is to receive a response proportionate to the Righteous State's sacred right of self-defence. Denouncing any such response as collective punishment would also be wrong and antisemitic, given that the Righteous State tends to respond in more or less the same sacrosanct manner whether anyone attacks it or not.

Kings and Things

Hopes of an Anglo-Trumpster trade deal will doubtless be revitalised with the news of an impending royal visit to the kingdom of the head-tribble. The last such occasion was during the almost equally distinguished presidency of the Bush chimpanzee, presumably because he was the last American leader with sufficient intellectual acumen and personal dignity to be impressed by the House of Windsor. Next year's visit will coincide with the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the USA's declaration of independence from a mentally incompetent autocrat of German descent; fortunately for everyone concerned, Team Starmer's United Kingdom is unlikely to reciprocate in kind.

Not Peace, But a Sword

While the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Defender of the Faith have contented themselves with mouthing the usual seasonal platitudes, the Trumpster and his head-tribble have celebrated the birth of Baby Jesus in the proper style, by wog-bombing some African Muslims. From the days of Saint Peter until now, loving one's enemies to death has been as central to the true faith as arbitrary government and eternal torment; and the beneficiaries in this case were not only Muslims but Nigrahs as well, which makes their extrajudicial execution as authentically Murcan as it is quintessentially Christian. Those who claim that the conflict in Nigeria results from the interplay of more complex historical, economic and social forces are of course edging perilously close to the un-American heresy of Dialectical Materialism, and it is to be hoped for their own sake that they can redeem themselves through accepting and sharing in the Trumpster's crusader spirit.