International
UK election 2024: Nigel Farage could deliver another profound shock to the establishment
From LifeSiteNews
By Frank Wright
With Nigel Farage and Reform U.K. from the right, and George Galloway and his Workers’ Party from the left, the populist element threatens to make the cheerless pantomime of British politics entertaining – and interesting – again.
The United Kingdom’s general election is days away. Thursday, July 4, a memorable date for American home rule, may see a degree of self-rule return to Britain as the liberal establishment is shaken in its heartland by populists from the right and left of the center of permanent government.
Last week current Conservative Foreign Secretary David Cameron said on video that British policy on Ukraine was “fixed” and that nothing would change if Labour won the election – as many expect they will.
Yet a rising tide of populism led by two charismatic figures has complicated the situation.
Despite attempts routinely seen in European nations to “lock out” populists from mainstream media, Nigel Farage’s Reform continues to surge. Mass rallies across the country combine with several polls showing his party now pushing the Conservatives into third place nationally in three polls.
When the first poll showed Reform a point ahead of the Tories, Farage claimed his party was now “the real opposition to Labour.”
BREAKING
Reform UK has just overtaken the Conservatives in the polls.
We are now the real opposition to Labour.
Join me on ITV1 in 20 minutes. pic.twitter.com/jrPaf86PbM
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) June 13, 2024
Farage has complained that his party is not being given fair media coverage. Reform have cautioned against believing mainstream media polls, as their own claim to show far stronger support – such as this from July 1.
As many former Conservative voters openly call for their party to get “zero seats,” Nigel Farage and George Galloway are rising in the polls to challenge both parties of government – widely seen by their traditional voter base as having betrayed them.
Almost all polls exclude Galloway’s Workers’ Party from their calculations, locking his voice out on screen. But it is his voice which has resonated with many who share his support of Gaza against Israel’s ongoing genocide.
Galloway claims that the established parties have “abandoned the working class.” He claims to stand against “the uniparty” of British politics, having denounced the “one-party state” of Britain in colorful terms in the past.
His recent sentiments on the merits of both the Labour and Conservative leaders will be shared by many.
“I have never seen an election in which two people who less deserve to be the Prime Minister of Britain are competing for that office.”
Workers Party of Britain leader George Galloway says voters are fed up with the main political parties. pic.twitter.com/88JotpxXcL
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) June 19, 2024
With Galloway from the left, and Farage from the right, the populist element threatens to make the cheerless pantomime of British politics entertaining – and interesting – again.
Farage came to prominence as a leading figure in the “Brexit” movement, which following then Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum, saw the U.K. vote in it to leave the European Union.
Many British voters – known as “remainers” – sought to remain in and seek to rejoin the E.U., and hope that a vote for the Labour Party will realize this ambition.
British Christian commentator Peter Hitchens criticized the referendum at the time, saying that it introduced a conflict over sovereignty that replaced another. He said that the referendum made the popular vote sovereign at the expense of Parliament, and that the membership of the E.U. had also done the same. This, he said in 2023, had diluted the power of Parliament overall.
'Ever since the 1970s the UK has given away so much of its sovereignty, and people don't realise how little room for manoeuvre the British Government has.'
Peter Hitchens and Alex Deane discuss the UK leaving the ECHR amid the growing migrant crisis. pic.twitter.com/zTLgowelR3
— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 14, 2023
Hitchens concluded that the referendum really contested the supremacy of Parliament in determining the fate of the nation.
Election as referendum on Parliament?
This election can be seen as a sort of second referendum – on the legacy of that Parliament and how its determination to act against the nation should be judged by its population.
The Conservative Party has ruled Britain for the last 14 years. It has attacked Libya (in 2011), unleashing waves of mass migration, which saw the party then call for integration and diversity as scandals over child sexual abuse (2010-2014) and the public execution of a British soldier (2013) by immigrant populations hit the press.
The Conservatives, as with many other parties of the liberal consensus in the West, strongly supported lockdowns and burdened the nation with record borrowing to fund the destruction of the high street businesses, community groups and the education and development of children and young people. They aggressively promoted the so-called “vaccines,” with conservative commentator Andrew Neil saying it was “time to punish the unvaccinated.”
With its “winner takes all” system of “first past the post,” the party with the most votes in each constituency wins. This means Reform may take millions of votes, but still end up with very few seats.
Elections are not only a matter of who counts the votes. They are also determined by who draws the boundaries – in reality and in the media.
Mass migration breaks the game
Yet it is mass migration – and its profound effects on the politics, policing, and practices established in Britain which is mainly driving support to Farage’s Reform. Why is that the case?
It is a reality which can no longer be ruled out of bounds by the politics and media of the establishment.
Mass migration has increased significantly under the Tories, as the Conservatives are known. So have laws against free speech, including a National Security Act which threatens to criminalize investigative journalism. Nigel Farage was himself “debanked” under measures permitted by Conservative rule. The party of law and order has marked the nation by the absence of both.
READ: Press freedom under threat as UK National Security Act could put journalists in jail
Christians have been prosecuted and cautioned by police for praying, preaching the Gospel, and singing hymns. In May 2024, the Daily Telegraph reported that “Christians are the most despised minority in Britain” as a result.
The U.K. now has the highest tax burden in 70 years, and it is set to rise higher still. Taxes have risen in the U.K. more sharply than in the U.S. or the E.U. in the last five years.
For these reasons the most vociferous opponents of the Conservative Party are now its own former core voters.
This election will be lost by the Conservatives. It may finish them. But a massive Labour victory is not guaranteed, and the chaos created by Labour and the Tories in Britain is driving people towards populism to secure a meaningful change – from the politics of national suicide.
A guide for Christian voters
The U.K.’s Christian Institute has produced a guide to all the parties’ policies, showing where each faction stands on issues of concern to the near 60 percent of the population which identifies as Christian, per the most recent census in 2021.
Nigel Farage’s Reform is the only party to oppose the LGBTQI agenda in schools. Reform also supports marriage with a proposed raise in the marred couples’ tax allowance. It wishes to abolish “hate crimes,” including repressive measures on speech, and has pledged to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits most meaningful action against mass migration.
The elephant in the room
The migration issue remains one which dominates ordinary life in Britain, but whose mention has been routinely and deliberately excluded from mainstream debate and media coverage for the decades during which it has taken place.
Nigel Farage has won one referendum – on Britain leaving the E.U. in 2016. Most polls said he would lose that one. One said “Leave” would lose by 10 points.
With the elephant of migration now dominating what little room is left in Britain, Farage may be on course to deliver another profound shock to a system designed to conduct business as usual – regardless of the interests and opinions of its people.
Business
Biden announces massive new climate goals in final weeks, despite looming Trump takeover
From LifeSiteNews
Outgoing President Joe Biden announced a new climate target of reducing American carbon emissions from 61-66% over the next decade, even though President Trump would be able to undo it as soon as next month.
Outgoing President Joe Biden announced December 19 a new climate target of reducing American carbon emissions of more than 60% over the next decade, even though returning President Donald Trump would be able to undo it as soon as next month.
“Today, as the United States continues to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, President Biden is announcing a new climate target for the United States: a 61-66 percent reduction in 2035 from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions,” the White House announced, the Washington Free Beacon reports. The new target will be formally submitted to the United Nations Climate Change secretariat.
“President Biden’s new 2035 climate goal is both a reflection of what we’ve already accomplished,” Biden climate adviser John Podesta added, “and what we believe the United States can and should achieve in the future.”
The announcement may be little more than a symbolic gesture in the end, however, as Trump is widely expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement upon resuming office in January, in the process voiding related climate obligations.
Trump formally pulled out of the Paris accords in August 2017, the first year of his first term, with then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley stating that the administration would be “open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the United States can identify terms that are more favorable to it, its business, its workers, its people, and its taxpayers.”
Such terms were never reached, however, leaving America out until Biden re-committed the nation to the Paris Agreement on the first day of his presidency, obligating U.S. policy to new economic regulations to cut carbon emissions.
In June, the Trump campaign confirmed Trump’s intentions to withdraw from Paris again. At the time, Trump’s team was reportedly mulling a number of non-finalized drafts of executive orders to do so.
Left-wing consternation on the matter is based on certitude in “anthropogenic global warming” (AGW) or “climate change,” the thesis that human activity, rather than natural phenomena, is primarily responsible for Earth’s changing climate and that such trends pose a danger to the planet in the form of rising sea levels and weather instability.
Activists have long claimed there is a “97 percent scientific consensus” in favor of AGW, but that number comes from a distortion of an overview of 11,944 papers from peer-reviewed journals, 66.4 percent of which expressed no opinion on the question; in fact, many of the authors identified with the AGW “consensus” later spoke out to say their positions had been misrepresented.
AGW proponents suffered a blow in 2010 with the discovery that their leading researchers at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, East Anglia Climate Research Unit, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had engaged in widespread data manipulation, flawed climate models, misrepresentation of sources, and suppression of dissenting findings in order to make the so-called “settled science” say what climate activists wanted it to.
armed forces
Top Brass Is On The Run Ahead Of Trump’s Return
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Morgan Murphy
With less than a month to go before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the top brass are already running for cover. This week the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, pledged to cut approximately a dozen general officers from the U.S. Army.
It is a start.
But given the Army is authorized 219 general officers, cutting just 12 is using a scalpel when a machete is in order. At present, the ratio of officers to enlisted personnel stands at an all-time high. During World War II, we had one general for every 6,000 troops. Today, we have one for every 1,600.
Right now, the United States has 1.3 million active-duty service members according to the Defense Manpower Data Center. Of those, 885 are flag officers (fun fact: you get your own flag when you make general or admiral, hence the term “flag officer” and “flagship”). In the reserve world, the ratio is even worse. There are 925 general and flag officers and a total reserve force of just 760,499 personnel. That is a flag for every 674 enlisted troops.
The hallways at the Pentagon are filled with a constellation of stars and the legions of staffers who support them. I’ve worked in both the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Starting around 2011, the Joint Staff began to surge in scope and power. Though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not in the chain of command and simply serves as an advisor to the president, there are a staggering 4,409 people working for the Joint Staff, including 1,400 civilians with an average salary of $196,800 (yes, you read that correctly). The Joint Staff budget for 2025 is estimated by the Department of Defense’s comptroller to be $1.3 billion.
In contrast, the Secretary of Defense — the civilian in charge of running our nation’s military — has a staff of 2,646 civilians and uniformed personnel. The disparity between the two staffs threatens the longstanding American principle of civilian control of the military.
Just look at what happens when civilians in the White House or the Senate dare question the ranks of America’s general class. “Politicizing the military!” critics cry, as if the Commander-in-Chief has no right to question the judgement of generals who botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan, bought into the woke ideology of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or oversaw over-budget and behind-schedule weapons systems. Introducing accountability to the general class is not politicizing our nation’s military — it is called leadership.
What most Americans don’t understand is that our top brass is already very political. On any given day in our nation’s Capitol, a casual visitor is likely to run into multiple generals and admirals visiting our elected representatives and their staff. Ostensibly, these “briefs” are about various strategic threats and weapons systems — but everyone on the Hill knows our military leaders are also jockeying for their next assignment or promotion. It’s classic politics
The country witnessed this firsthand with now-retired Gen. Mark Milley. Most Americans were put off by what they saw. Milley brazenly played the Washington spin game, bragging in a Senate Armed Services hearing that he had interviewed with Bob Woodward and a host of other Washington, D.C. reporters.
Woodward later admitted in an interview with CNN that he was flabbergasted by Milley, recalling the chairman hadn’t just said “[Trump] is a problem or we can’t trust him,” but took it to the point of saying, “he is a danger to the country. He is the most dangerous person I know.” Woodward said that Milley’s attitude felt like an assignment editor ordering him, “Do something about this.”
Think on that a moment — an active-duty four star general spoke on the record, disparaging the Commander-in-Chief. Not only did it show rank insubordination and a breach of Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 88, but Milley’s actions represented a grave threat against the Constitution and civilian oversight of the military.
How will it play out now that Trump has returned? Old political hands know that what goes around comes around. Milley’s ham-handed political meddling may very well pave the way for a massive reorganization of flag officers similar to Gen. George C. Marshall’s “plucking board” of 1940. Marshall forced 500 colonels into retirement saying, “You give a good leader very little and he will succeed; you give mediocrity a great deal and they will fail.”
Marshall’s efforts to reorient the War Department to a meritocracy proved prescient when the United States entered World War II less than two years later.
Perhaps it’s time for another plucking board to remind the military brass that it is their civilian bosses who sit at the top of the U.S. chain of command.
Morgan Murphy is military thought leader, former press secretary to the Secretary of Defense and national security advisor in the U.S. Senate.
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