A "Fantastic Deal" or Shameful Appeasement?

I have voted Labour all my voting life - and I'm 80 now. Sometimes I have voted for Labour through gritted teeth, but always with the perhaps naïve belief, that although I might disagree with a particular policy or action Labour would always act in my, and others', best interest; in short I have always believed Labour to be a party of some integrity. Until now.

I will probably continue to vote Labour since the alternatives are unconscionable. But, as I sit here reading Mandelson's weasel words and watching his face (one can tell much about a person from studying their face and eyes as they speak- and in Mandelson's case none of it is good) and Starmer's "fantastic", "awesome" gibberish clap trap, I am ashamed to be British. Both of these representatives of His Britannic Majesty's Government anxious to be the most grovelling as they (and through them, we) pay fealty and homage to a power crazed man and a morally bankrupt and kakistocratic US "government". I use the word "government" loosely. Trump and his acolytes are not just unreliable but erratic, untrustworthy, uncouth, functionally illiterate, egregious and, arguably, criminal demagogues.

And I think 1938, Appeasement...............We made the same mistakes when dealing with another such madman - Hitler, who had already, like Trump made plain his intentions. British PM Neville Chamberlain returned from making a "deal" with the Fuhrer, he waved a piece of paper and said "I have reached agreement with the German Fuhrer - we have peace for our time". Well, that didn't end well and we all know what followed. On this anniversary of VE Day when our fathers and grandfathers fought and died for the very ideals and principles that Trump and his government are criminally treating with disdain we can and must do better.

Shame on you Keir Starmer; I believe that you are inherently a good man with the best of intentions but you have got this dreadfully and frighteningly wrong. And Peter Mandelson, sadly, I cannot say that you are inherently a good man with the best of intentions; you are, without doubt, a venal, self absorbed and self serving egocentric - you need to take a long hard look at yourself, your integrity and, indeed, your moral compass. We have forgotten the lessons of 1938 which led to the catastrophe of 1939 - in Biblical terms we have sold ourselves for a mess of pottage .

I know not whether this is a "fantastic deaI" as Keir Starmer calls it but I do know that it is a deal that should never have been done and I am ashamed of my country today. Almost a century ago John Maynard Keynes, the man whose wisdom, intellectual brilliance and economic skills gave us (and other western nations) the wealth and raised living standards that we still enjoy today, famously said “Once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the accountant’s profit then we have begun to change society for the better......” . Keynes was not wrong then and his comment is still applicable to day - for it poses a question that Keir Starmer and Peter Mandelson did not ask of themselves. Instead of asking "Can we make a deal with a power mad felon demagogue", they should have asked themselves "Should we make a deal with a power mad felon and demagogue"? We live in a world where profit and riches now, as a matter of course, trump morals and integrity and are fast losing our moral compass.

In 1770 Oliver Goldsmith's poem "The Deserted Village" - a savage social commentary on the money driven inequalities of his day - famously warned us: ".....Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay....". And in 2025 we both, individually and collectively, our societies and our political systems, our beliefs, our moral compass, guardianship of the planet, our very humanity are in decay as the acquisition of wealth and all that goes with it, profit and loss, making a deal dominate our mindset and actions. If you want evidence of this look to the USA with its gross inequalities, its gun crime, its lack of social and health care, its obsession with celebrity culture, its racist society, its opioid crisis, its burgeoning homelessness, its increasingly extremist political landscape, its Trump government........it is a society well on the path to terminal decay - and we in the UK, with this deal are one more step down that road to decay; increasingly happy to follow the same path to ruin. We should have done the right thing, been "disobedient to the accountant's profit," and taken the harder, but morally correct path; stood up for the hard right and not the easy wrong; stood with our close, reliable, decent allies - nations who have over the centuries often looked to us as a beacon of fairness, decency, wisdom and integrity and said "No, this shall not be, not on our watch". We should have said "Thank you but no thank you" to Trump's entreaties to make a deal. Sadly and worryingly we have, instead, chosen to make a cheap and grubby "deal" with a crew of reckless and feckless snake oil salesmen. We will not be thanked or thought well of by those who come after us.