History Repeating

There have been some big developments over the past few days, both here in the UK and internationally. I'll start with the former.

The big news is that Angela Rayner's gone from the Labour hierarchy: the Minister for Housing resigned following a report by The Telegraph that she hadn't paid 40 grands worth of Stamp Duty. She's gone from both her role as Deputy PM and Deputy Leader of the Labour party too, so the race for that position is hotting up. But will the re-jigging of the Starmer cabinet offer anything new? The new Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, the erstwhile Justice Secretary and Palestinian activist, doesn't seem to be doing much good:

"1,000 cross Channel on Shabana Mahmood’s first day at work"

Sure, it may be a bit of an unfair accusation to lay on to someone not a week into a job, but she's come out pretty butch about the whole thing: "Abuse of our immigration system is a serious threat to public safety". Given the first results, that statement seems like a load of rubbish. Appropriate action for a "serious threat to public safety" would be to turn each and every one of those guys away. Go out to the channel, see what's happening. Don't just threaten to cut visas for countries that refuse to accept returns of migrants. That's not gonna cut it. Not when over 30,000 illegal migrants have come ashore in this year alone.

~Even the French PM voiced concerns about the state of the UK. Though, more on the economic front, and warned that higher and higher taxes in le Francaisrépublique will result in the same exodus of wealth happening in France as is happening in the UK. But that was just before this happened:

"France to get third PM in a year as Bayrou resigns after confidence vote"

Mr. Bayrou has joined Mrs. Rayner in the list of high-level European resignations this past week. There's a nice symmetry to the whole thing really: The former went while he admonished about the results of the UK levying punitive taxes; the latter went because she didn't pay such punitive taxes.

While France does what Britain did a few years back, insofar as having three different prime ministers in the same year, Britain does what France did a few (more) years back, insofar as having a bunch of boats come ashore its beaches. Except these aren't boats of a saviour to help defeat an evil force. Oh no, quite the reverse I'm afraid. The evil force is coming ashore and it's the good guys on the retreat.

Part of me feels bad for the ousting of Mr. Bayrou. Unfortunately though, any guy or gal trying to push-back against the loony spending-addicted government of (name any country here, most likely you'll be right), you're asking for trouble. “You can overthrow the government" he said, "but you can’t erase reality. France has not known a balanced budget for 51 years,” he told MPs. "Reality"-whoa fella, bold word to be bandying about these days. Western debt-ridden countries don't live in "reality". When French public debt stands at 114 per cent of GDP, and the only guy bringing forward measures to counteract that has had to pen his letter of goodbye to the president, please don't mention the R word.

As for "erasing reality", the French governing class aren't quite there yet. Living in it? No. Erasing it? Give it some time...