Oh! What A Lovely War started life as a radio play in 1961, was adapted for theatre two years later by the great Joan Littlewood, and made into a Bafta award-winning movie in 1969 by then first-time director Richard Attenborough and screenwriter/producer Len Deighton.
It was a musical satire on the First World War, initial optimism and enthusiasm turning into carnage and despair.
I’ve no idea whether Keir Starmer has ever seen the film, but he seems to have embraced Oh! What A Lovely War as a convenient catch-all excuse for the carnage created by his own hopeless Government.
Whatever optimism and enthusiasm may have greeted Labour’s loveless landslide has since descended into deepest despair.
But like those arrogant, incompetent First World War generals sending troops to the slaughter in the trenches, Surkeir keeps feeding the British people into the meat grinder, while blaming everything on Donald Trump and Israel’s war on Iran.
After refusing to join the fight to destroy the world’s No 1 terrorist regime and deny it a nuclear arsenal, Starmer has had no compunction in cynically using the fall-out to disguise the real reasons for all his home-grown catastrophes.
The looming energy crisis and the rocketing price of fuel? Nothing to do with Starmer or Ed Miliband’s lunatic Net Zero refusal to exploit Britain’s plentiful natural resources of oil and gas. In Starmerland, it’s all down to Tehran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for Trump bombing Iran.
The cost of living and youth unemployment, which were already going through the roof because of Labour’s minimum wage, business rates and National Insurance hikes long before the bombs started raining down on Iran?
Trump’s war innit.
Sky-high government borrowing costs? The highest rates of tax since the end of the Second World War? Again, apparently not the consequences of his Chancellor’s inept, schoolgirl mishandling of the economy and soaking the productive private sector to hose down the workshy with inflation-busting benefit increases and hand bumper rises to Labour’s friends in the public service unions.
Nope, blame it on Trump. Rachel even had the nerve to announce that she was ‘angry’ with Trump for declaring war on Iran. That should have him shaking in his Florsheim black leather Oxfords.
The really damaging fall-out is Trump’s threat to pull out of Nato altogether because European nations refused to join the war. Whatever you think of the President’s motives – or Trump himself – the very least we could have done is allow the US airforce to use our bases.
Starmer fell at the first fence, largely to appease his far-Left backbenchers and the sizeable Muslim vote. As a direct result – whether or not Trump is bluffing – Britain today is a more dangerous place. That’s before you even start to consider the parlous state of our Armed Forces, which even the head of the Royal Navy admits couldn’t fight a proper war.
A petulant Trump may have been speaking ill of a once-trusted ally when he mocked our depleted military capabilities. But he wasn’t wrong.
It’s not his fault that defence spending has been run into the sand under both Tory and Labour governments. Nor that Surkeir has no serious plans to increase it significantly in the immediate future.
Labour would rather buy bigger flatscreen televisions for millions of benefit claimants with pretend illnesses than spend money on soldiers and military hardware.
Starmer’s most deceitful deployment of the Oh! What a Lovely War card is his claim that the fall-out from Iran means Britain must rejoin the EU in all but name. Where others see a global crisis unfolding, Surkeir – ever the complete and utter lawyer – spies an opportunity.
Never forget that this is a man who built his political career on attempting to overturn Brexit – the biggest single vote by the British people in favour of anything.
He has no mandate for this outrage – indeed he categorically ruled it out in Labour’s 2024 manifesto – but is now trying to get away with it under cover of captalising on the unpopularity of Trump’s war.
What else will he get round to blaming on the war? The farming inheritance tax? Potholes? Frankly, I wouldn’t rule anything out.
(Meanwhile, the civil service unions – already only required to turn up to the office three days a week – are demanding the right to work from home for the duration of the war. Presumably, in case Iranian missiles target the Red Lion in Whitehall. You couldn’t etc….)
Labour’s five-year tyranny is already unravelling Oh! What a Lovely War-style.
It can only be a matter of time before the Government starts plastering the country with posters featuring Starmer as Lord Kitchener: Your Country Needs Your Money (and it’s all Donald Trump’s fault!).
One muffled cheer for plans to make all councils in Britain use the same parking app. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve just given up and driven off because I’ve got the wrong app or the internet signal is too weak.
North Norfolk is a particular dead zone, but so is North London in places. Older drivers find the technology especially frustrating. Councils and parking firms should be obliged to offer a cash or credit card alternative method of payment.
They should also be subject to legally-enforced price caps. A couple of years ago when I put coins into the machine at our local shopping parade, it cost £1.20 a hour.
When I went for a fish’n’chip lunch recently, the bill for two hours came to £6.93. Where the hell did they get that from? The charge for parking was £6.50, but there was also a 3p ‘convenience fee’, a 20p ‘SMS reminder fee’ and a 20p ‘SMS confirmation fee’. Why a convenience fee? It couldn’t be less convenient?
That’s a total increase of almost 200 per cent on the old coin-based system, when Enfield Council had to pay the wages of someone to empty the meters.
Standardising the parking app across the country is to be welcomed, but don’t be surprised if the cost goes up again as councils and parking company spivs use it as yet another chance to rip us off.
What’s Rachel From Complaints doing moonlighting as a clairvoyant? I had to do a double take at this poster sent by Mail readers John and Jen Hickling.
When the email landed in my inbox on Wednesday, I assumed it must be an elaborate April Fools hoax.
But it turns out the Chancellor’s doppelganger is a real-life happy medium called Marina Nicholson, based in Bridlington.
I should have realised from the off. No one could ever confuse Rachel for a clairvoyant. She can’t see what’s coming next even when it’s in front of the nose on her face.
And, given the state of the economy, she hasn’t got much to smile about, either.
