Happy Commonwealth Day to our readers around the globe. The King took time out from his hectic schedule of non-stop Ramadanadingdong jubilations to issue an insipid message, for which I suppose we should be grateful.
Later this week, His Majesty will gain a new Canadian prime minister whom he may recall as his late mum's Governor of the Bank of England - Mark Carney. So, if Trump is minded to reprise his recent form of address for Justin Trudeau and refer to the new PM as "Governor Carney", it will (in the American tradition of turning transient office into lifelong title - "Senator Romney", "Vice President Pence"), be accurate.
In our most recent Tale for Our Time, a character remarks en passant:
Worship involves a touch of mystery. You must remember that. It was the lack of that that made Empire Day fail in the last century.
And yet on this Empire Day it would seem that we have merely replaced one imperial class with another. In the old days, the Marquess of Lansdowne was Governor General of Canada one minute, Viceroy of India the next. Today the coming men of the new globalist administrative class are governors of one G7 nation's central bank one minute, prime minister of another G7 nation the next. In between the two Mr Carney amused himself with various globalist rackets such as COP26, a Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets, a transnational Alliance for Net Zero. Or maybe being Governor of the Bank of England and Prime Minister of Canada are the amusing diversions and the Klaus Schwab fronts are where the real action is.
At any rate, chaps like Carney and Sunak and their distaff chums Chrystia Freeland and Dame Jacinda are what national politics have dwindled down to - 1-800 candidates who are everywhere and nowhere, wafted around the planet, ever upward.
Events, dear boy, events: less than six months ago, it looked as if Pierre Poilievre could coast on his apple-munching all the way to Sussex Drive. Whether he can negotiate these changed circumstances is an open question: he is, like Farage, prone to over-gatekeeping.
~Three months ago, upon the overthrow of Boy Assad, I wrote:
Ah, but Arab Springs eternal. The jihadists now in charge of Damascus were, not so long ago, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Isis, but don't worry, the expert analysts assure us the leadership has become far less 'ideological' and far more 'nuanced'. Is John Kerry doing a little light consulting work for them..?
We are tourists in the heart of darkness: we know nothing and we learn nothing.
Well, that didn't take long. As I write, the gleeful smiling men of the new regime are going to the Alawite and Christian neighbourhoods, hunting down their prey, and then, after they have had their sport, killing them:
Syria's new government was broadly praised for its "moderate" nature by the neoliberal intelligentsia and the legacy media. Here's a video of them abusing minority Alawites for fun before executing them, also for fun. https://t.co/o8FaLZBCqg
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 7, 2025
Many readers find these close-ups distasteful. But, as I wrote two decades ago in America Alone, welcome to the world of "the state-of-the-art primitive": He kills for fun - and then uploads the smartphone footage to his social-media account. If you prefer Syria in tasteful long-shot:
This isn't Gaza.
This isn't Judea and Samaria.This is Syria. Last night.
Arabs murdering others Arabs, depending on what type of Arab they are.
Why isn't this all over mainstream media?
Oh right yeah, because they can't twist it and blame the Jews.
— Kosher🎗🧡 (@koshercockney) March 7, 2025
Islam always inclines to be (another old catchphrase of mine) king on a field of corpses. You could ask a Jew in Afghanistan, or a Christian in Iraq. Oh, wait, no, you can't - because they're either dead or fled, and on America's watch. For all his blather about "nuance", the sophisticated progressive likes his foreign policy simple: oh, could I have a heartwarming flag avatar and some Bono doggerel about the heroic national leader? Any more than that cuts into my Kardashian time...
Why should what I called twenty years ago "the re-primitivisation of the map" be confined to Syria and Gaza? Answer: it won't be. One day you'll see the above in Marseille and Malmö...
~In 2007, as their marriage was falling apart, the late David Gest alleged in the divorce papers that Liza Minnelli had beaten him up. Liza is a 5'4" woman a decade older with two hip replacements. Longtime readers may recall my initial reaction: Why didn't he just run for his life? Or stroll for his life?
We now learn that Nigel Farage has somehow been duped into appointing the Mohammedan David Gest as the Reform party chairman. Emerging out of nowhere as Nigel's Islamo-sugar-daddy, Zia Yusuf now claims that Rupert Lowe - one-fifth of Reform's parliamentary caucus - made threats of physical violence against him. Zia (mid-thirties) is half Rupert's age (pushing seventy). Yet, instead of strolling for his life, Mr Yusuf went to the Metropolitan Police, who were of course thrilled to have yet another excuse for setting aside London's mountain of unsolved (and indeed uninvestigated) crime. Short of dispatching the SWAT team to the next Allison Pearson tweet, for BritWankerCoppers the Great Yarmouth MP's threat to launch the Geezer Blitzkrieg is as good as it gets:
Interesting - A spokesman for the Met Police says: "On Thursday, 6 March we received an allegation of verbal threats made by a 67-year-old man on Friday, 13 December."
"Officers are carrying out an assessment of the allegations to determine what further action may be required."...
— Calgie (@christiancalgie) March 7, 2025
What was Zia Yusuf doing in the three months between December 13th and March 6th? Presumably, he was traumatised and sobbing, curled up in the foetal position on the shagpile of the Reform UK corner office until he could summon up the strength to dial 999 on the very day Rupert Lowe made his rather modest criticism of Farage.
No one who has had any dealings with Nigel this last quarter-century will be the least bit surprised by the events of the last three days. I more or less predicted as much at the foot of Friday morning's column. But most of you know how I feel about Nige. So how about we hear from Kathy Gyngell at The Conservative Woman? Kathy is one of the few UK media types I genuinely admire - and for the last year she has been a loyal and enthusiastic supporter of Farage and Reform. Sample headlines of Mrs Gyngell's Nigel columns:
Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man
Fixing Broken Britain the Farage Way - a Great Reforming Political Speech
That's not how I feel - but then I speak as someone who wound up paying for the f**ker's make-up, when he and Angelos Softcockoulos decided to screw over a GB News freelancer. At any rate, Kathy Gyngell felt differently - until Friday, that is. Yesterday she wrote:
When I read Rupert Lowe's rebuttal to the allegations on Friday afternoon, I tweeted that it could not have been written more forcefully. When I read the Reform UK statement that came from Zia Yusuf, Reform UK's Chairman, and Lee Anderson, its Chief Whip, I had just one thought: they have just added their signatures to Britain's death warrant, the fools.
A classic of its genre, every line 'read' of the very things they should be fighting. A woke 'offence culture' declaration.
Oh no, I thought, this is 'Hope not Hate', 'Me Too' and 'subjective hate crime' rolled into one! Suspending an MP for 'bullying' who had allegedly made rude or disparaging comments about women? Reporting an alleged verbal threat to the police from a colleague? I mean, grow up! This is the waste of police time that they should be condemning! And frankly if Rupert Lowe did do any of this, who cares? I don't. All in all, it's a testament to what's wrong with our political culture – the culture that Reform UK should be standing up against. Are they blind?
Do read the whole thing. She's right: A genuine reforming party would not go bleating to the plods that Liza Minnelli beat the crap out of Zia Yusuf. It would take the same attitude to Scotland Yard that Elon Musk takes to US Aid or Trump to the federal Department of Education.
By the way, any "investigation" is not into Rupert Lowe personally but to someone in his office. Yet, by intentionally misleading and obfuscating about such things, Yusuf and Farage are #MeTooing Rupert Lowe into what Lee Anderson is probably a day or two away from calling "the Poundland Harvey Weinstein".
Two possibilities:
1) If Yusuf is faking his PTSD, he and Farage are contemptible; or
2) If Yusuf actually means it, are this pair of Princess Pussypanties really the men to save Britain?
More from Katie Hopkins:
This is the Katie's Arms - my pub over on Insta. It is AFTER HOURS and meant to be enjoyed with a beer.
WATCH what has gone on at Reform, the real reason for Nigel's behaviour and my rage for decent Brits.
Join us - 8pm on Fridays on my insta pic.twitter.com/wad5yn7dgI
— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) March 8, 2025
Or the short version from my friend Leilani Dowding:
F**k you, @Nigel_Farage.
A lot of the guys are scared of Nigel. The girls less so.
~We had a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with my column on the British state's determination to kill Tommy Robinson. Saturday brought Rick McGinnis's movie date All the President's Men, while my weekly music show celebrated a cavalcade of songs from Caterina Valente to Telly Salavas. My Sunday I-told-you-so moment considered the advance of first-cousin marriage, and our Sunday Song of the Week offered a quintessentially Canadian song.
If you were too busy this weekend venturing some small criticism of Nigel Farage and now wondering why you've been arrested as a paedophile, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.
~In this eighth year of The Mark Steyn Club, we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in our first flush and are still eager to be here as we cruise on towards our first decade. We're thrilled by all those across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Surrey to the Solomon Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. We have quite a bit of fun in The Mark Steyn Club, with audio adventures, video poems, planet-wide Q&As, and much more (heart attacks permitting). We appreciate the Club is not to everyone's taste, but, if you're minded to give it a go, either for a full year or a three-month experimental period, we'd love to have you. You can find more details on The Mark Steyn Club here - and, if you've a loved one who'd like something a little different for his or her birthday, don't forget our special Gift Membership.