FlyTheNest

Morning all.

Unite are disaffiliating from Labour.

There were a few seconds of Trump's rally speech last night on French radio this morning, how he decided on "EPIC FURY" as the name for the operation .

Ghastly, but a masterly delivery still for his sort of audience.

Ugh !

David Hearst, editor in chief of Middle East Eye, says that Donald Trump’s claims that Iran is collapsing under US and Israeli attacks are detached from reality. While Trump called for a popular uprising after the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hearst notes that thousands instead filled the streets across Iran to mourn and pledge vengeance.

Hearst says that Khamenei’s Iran had acted cautiously for years, avoiding attacks on Gulf neighbours, refraining from closing the Strait of Hormuz, and even attempting negotiations with Washington. The assassination of Khamenei during Ramadan, he adds, may have had the opposite effect of what Trump intended, revitalising the Islamic Republic rather than weakening it.

All systems are go for a QT review this evening.

Good news !

Question Time tonight came from Wythenshawe. I was curious about how the audience would pan out because I used to know the place quite well, you've got the Wythenshawe estate itself, then all the posh Tory wankers from Sale, and the audience reflected that dichotomy. What seemed to unite them however was their disdain for Labour and Starmer.

For Labour we had Lucy Powell. Lucy, let's not forget, was supposed to be saviour of the soft Left, we were told she'd provide an alternative voice to ravings of Blue Labour. Well tonight we heard that voice and I had to make a conscious effort not to tune it out and stare at the ceiling instead. She burbled, she waffled, she offered bland platitudes and faced tumbleweed from the audience all evening. Even when she gave a half decent answer after a bloke asked her to spell out how Labour was helping people financially it fell on deaf ears. The only interesting thing she revealed was quite how much she despised Mandelson while implying he was a misogynist. If tonight’s performance was anything to go by I think Starmer and his cronies can sleep safely in their beds.

For the Conservatives we had Harriet Baldwin. Dear oh dear. To be fair to Harriet her travails this evening were not of her own making. How could anyone try to make a rational defence of the nonsense Badenoch has been spouting over the last couple of weeks (in particular)? It was almost painful watching her squirm when she had her own leader's contradictory gibberish quoted back to her. Joining the attack on Iran didn't actually mean attacking Iran apparently, it just meant supporting our allies, despite the fact Badenoch explicitly called for British jets to bomb Iranian missile sites. Then unbelievably it got worse for her when she started blathering about using North sea oil for energy security only to have it pointed out to her that unless we nationalised the oil companies it wouldn't make a jot of difference. Which ironically is what Iran was trying to do 70 years ago before the British and Americans engineered a coup and here we are.

For obtuse right wing dickheads with terrible Scottish accents we had Fraser Nelson. Fraser really cares about the Iranian people. I mean really cares. He looked askance around him shocked at the lack of support for Trump and the Israeli's bombing of Iran and tried to imply he was the only one who wanted the Iranian people to have their democratic freedom. All performative bollocks of course, as later without even the slightest hint of understanding the irony of what he was saying he claimed Churchill was the greatest Britain who had ever lived over some nonsense fuss about bank notes. He also came out in defence of Starmer saying he shouldn't resign over Mandelson but should have resigned over not cutting benefits for the sick and disabled enough. What a dick.

For the Greens we had Sian Berry. Guess who faced the most intense interrogation from Fiona Bruce of all the panelists tonight? As Sian pointed out as far as their defence policy goes the Greens are merely echoing Mark Carney in Canada and if we'd followed the energy policies they'd been advocating for decades we wouldn't be so exposed to world events. She basked in the loudest round of applause of the evening after calling out Trump and the Israeli's murderous bombing of Iran, asked the right wing panelists to listen, and quite rightly said the British public were against it.

For god knows why we had Kay Burley. Honestly what was the point? She's a self important idiot who used it as an opportunity to aggrandise herself like some low rent Piers Morgan. A total waste of everyone's time.