Professor Christopher Painter

Starmer transitioning from 'making Brexit work' to 'we are not the Britain of the Brexit years any more'. The European tectonic plates are moving.

Surely just a matter of time before Trump Administration overwhelmed by Epstein Files, deeply embedded in associated networks as it was - with ever-escalating trajectory of their impact and members of Congress having access to unredacted documents. Number of times Trump himself mentioned astounding.

Over recent days virtually all mainstream media political commentators have mis-read the signs. Let the full implications of that sink in. Groupthink on stilts - feeding off each other.

'Contemptible' might be a better word to describe it.

Something else amplified during recent events: just how much of the media's output is merely a cacophony of competing noise, adding little or no value to national public discourse and understanding!

Would be deeply ironic if a British Prime Minister became a casualty of the exigencies of dealing with a volatile/corrupt occupant of the White House in order to safeguard UK interests - a President for whom Badenoch has expressed admiration and Farage positively fawned over.

Getting on her moral high horse over Starmer's appointment of Mandelson, Badenoch was a minister during all of the endemic corruption of Johnson's Premiership, until its very dying days. Her ethical principles were such that she had no compunction about retaining Office!

Don't focus on the convicted felon in the White House, whose fingerprints are all over the Epstein Files; or international war criminal in the Kremlin, into whose subterfuge Epstein was drawn; nor the one in Israel whose intelligence services have compromising material on Trump. All too big picture!

The individual pieces are all falling into place. Epstein's links with Russia; Trump circle's entanglement with Epstein; Trump's indulgence of Putin. MAGA conspiracy theories were there to distract us. As well as crimes committed on an industrial scale, these networks compromised Western security.

Mandelson yet another example of those moving in powerful circles who think normal rules do not apply to them. All there in BBC One's #Industry, using dramatic effect to skewer life styles of the rich. Thank goodness it's caught up with him. Many more to go, not least the other side of the Atlantic.

Victims are no nearer justice from the rich and powerful men who exploited them when the Trump règime has gone to such enormous lengths to launder release of the Epstein Files. So many associated with that règime are obviously deeply implicated.

So the real scoundrels turn out to be those spreading the conspiracy theories.

Redressing imbalance in much of reporting of Starmer's Government.

Not only global instability, for as witnessed in Minneapolis such règimes also turn on their own citizens.

For those struggling to recall the lessons of a pre-1945 world heavy in ideology, the consequences of ultra-right alternatives are again coming clearly into vision: global disorder; stratospheric inequality; and rampant corruption. Beware of fool's gold from Reform canvassers knocking on the door.

Apparently Trump is making US security guarantees for Ukraine dependent on relinquishing territory that Putin has failed to conquer. That means these security guarantees are worthless anyway.

Trump over-reached on the global stage with his Greenland debàcle and derogatory comments about NATO troops. He has now over-reached in the domestic arena with the madness of ICE in Minneapolis, combined with continued suppression of the Epstein Files.

On news that matters: Minneapolis.

The public are rather tired of politicians standing for elected office promising to serve their alloted term, only to renege on that commitment the moment personal ambition gets the better of them.

Any British politician who advocated Trump's re-election in 2024 shouldn't be let anywhere near public office. No ifs and no buts.

Trump just makes stuff up. What he says has no known reality reference point. That he needs psychological help is the very least of it.

The week began with much of the media reporting that Trump had humiliated Starmer. As it draws to a close, that humiliation is all Trump's, with Starmer's reputation enhanced. We rediscover that a week in politics is a long time!

On a good week, a Trump policy may last for as long as 5 days.

Trump rules out taking Greenland by force, drops threat of tariffs on Nato The US president says he has

Oh, my!

BBC News - www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cj...
Trump rules out taking Greenland by force, drops threat of tariffs on Nato - BBC News

Fruits of Trump's foreign policy: a brutal règime still holds reins of power in Venezuela; an even more brutal règime survives in Iran; Putin acts with greater impunity in Ukraine; and Trump's 'Board of Peace' has surreal membership and with mission-creep beyond Middle East will wither on the vine.

I fear Donald Trump is cracking up under the pressure of it all.

His insatiable appetite for control and wealth is, however, ultimately a manifestation that he is psychologically a very disturbed and needy person.

That too. A combination of mental instability and financial greed.

Trump himself has now made it abundantly clear, through his obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize, that Greenland has nothing to do with national security, but everything to do with the disturbed state of his mind.

A self-inflicted domestic political disaster. This is going to be cathartic for American voters - and similarly inclined voters elsewhere.