At least Neville Chamberlain had rhetoric. The phrase may have represented the nadir of British appeasement, but “peace for our time” had a lovely ring to it. Keir Starmer, however, probably finds its resonances with the Book of Common Prayer distasteful, given that modern Britain is for “people of all faiths and none”. So he plumped for “fed up” instead.
“I’m fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up and down on energy, businesses’ bills go up and down on energy,” he told Robert Peston in the Gulf. Forgive me if I do a little sick. The Prime Minister didn’t seem to mind when, thanks to Ed Miliband, Britain had the highest industrial electricity prices in the OECD even before the war in Iran. But when prices rise because of a struggle against the most evil regime on Earth? That gets right up his nose.
If I were an Iranian parent, say, who had lost a child when the regime massacred more than 30,000 people in 48 hours in January, or a relative of a victim of Tehran’s recent surge in executions, my sympathies for Starmer’s irritation at rising domestic bills might be limited.
Thus does Niceism buy time for the jihadis. What a time to be alive. It followed, of course, that wonderful Napoleon Complex moment in Riyadh on Thursday when Starmer smoothly told journalists that “we’ve just reached this ceasefire”, as if he had anything to do with it. But even that was not all.
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