Mad Hatter: Have I gone mad?
Alice: I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are."
“Already, in just two months, the conflict initiated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine has escalated from a localised act of aggression into a full-blown proxy war between NATO and Russia. Arms are pouring into Ukraine, and the bellicose rhetoric has inflated to match. President Biden has urged “regime change” in Russia. His Defence Secretary has stated that the US war aim is to “weaken Russia” for years to come." Stop the War
Meanwhile Britain’s Boris Johnson has told us that Putin is a ‘crocodile’. Armed Forces Minister James Heappey has said that British weapons can be used to attack targets in Russia itself and Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, has declared that the full defeat of Russia is a “strategic imperative” and that, “the age of engagement with Russia are over.”
They speak for a party that has taken £2 million in donations from oligarchs with links to Russia and Putin. Maybe they are stamping their feet and shouting, ‘Not enough. Give us more. Give us more.’
At least we have an opposition party who challenge this. Well no. Starmer has said that support for stopping wars is not allowed and has made approval of nuclear weapons a condition of party membership. His close advisers include Peter Mandelson, who parties on Russian oligarch yachts and sits in the House of Lords alongside Russian press barons.
Never mind. At least our heroic leather jacketed actor-president, Zelenskyy, is fighting the good fight. Wait a minute. He has shut down opposition media, imprisoned independent journalists and closed down leftist parties. And it appears he is himself an oligarch. I didn’t find this out from the pages of Socialist Worker, but from The Guardian, in pages written before they rallied behind the blue and yellow flag.
But Volodymyr Oleksandrovych is happy. In March he said,“Today my life is beautiful. I believe that I am needed. I feel it is the most important meaning in life – to be needed. To feel that you are not just an emptiness that is just breathing, walking, and eating something. You live.”
I don't think his fellow citizens would agree with him. It's time to call time on their mad hatters tea party.
I leave you with these patriotic words from our Foreign Secretary .... "I don't know if you've tasted crisps in other countries, but I really think British crisps are world leaders. I went to China and they told me there is only one type of potato available there."
