Arsenal’s woeful display against West Ham at ‘not-so-fortress’ Emirates last week robbed me of my only source of optimism for 2024. Jesus’ two missed headers, Saka’s waning ability to terrify fullbacks, and Declan Rice’s revealed mortality, jolted me out of a blissful, fantastical dream in which the Gunners were unassailable shoo-ins for the Premier League title. And just in case my revived pessimism was unfounded, they were even worse against Fulham on New Year’s Eve. How depressing. 2024 promises to be a tough year.
The rapid Balkanisation of Britain will continue. The weekend’s events in Camberwell testify to that. Eritrean immigrants demonstrating their gratitude for Britain’s hospitality by attacking the Metropolitan Police. They were terribly upset about the Ethiopians, apparently, so took to the streets with sticks and bats, hitting Ethiopian-looking coppers. Meanwhile, a Sudanese terrorist was awarded the right to remain in the UK, his identity withheld to help him murder infidels, presumably. And in Sheffield, a family feud redolent of those usually found in Karachi led to the death of an innocent father and husband.
These follow the ‘pro-Palestinian’ hate-marches that so pointedly expressed the malign consequences of multiculturalism. A utopian patchwork of tolerant and mutually respectful communities we ain’t. Britain’s Jewish citizens, in particular, are under attack, predominantly from those who submit to the Religion of Peace. But also from the radical left that has made common cause with the so-called ‘oppressed’ of the world. The celebrations that greeted the rapes, murders and beheadings of over 1,200 innocent Israeli civilians on 7th October were gut-wrenching. They were also indicative of a profound moral rot that has taken hold in the West – a moral rot that’s being fed, among other things, by mass immigration and identity politics.
The slow death of Britain is set to continue into 2024. And the almost certain election of a Keir Starmer-led Labour government will no doubt accelerate the process. The Pabloist of St Pancras has until now been rather coy when it comes to sharing his plans for office. But we should expect the worst: Net Zero on steroids, gender self-identification, the continuation of mass migration and the cultural assault upon Britain’s history and identity, and the economically stultifying regulatory shadowing of the EU in preparation for our eventual re-entry. These are just some of the treats he has in store for us. But looking at the premiership of Tony Blair, the last Labour leader to conceal his far-left philosophical roots, we cannot discount the demolition of what’s left of our constitutional settlement too. He’s admitted his radical intentions, after all – without, of course, damaging his electoral prospects by explaining what they are.
And as our slow, agonising national suicide continues, we face a perplexing nexus of external challenges. Iran and her proxies threaten our interests, one of them being the survival of the only liberal democracy in the Middle East; Russian troops, armed with Iranian weapons, grow in strength, and continue to execute their barbarous assault upon the Ukrainian people; and the serpentine Chinese premier continues to menace the Indo-Pacific, and, in particular, Taiwan’s independence. This albeit loose alliance of autocratic, totalitarian regimes, represents the most profound challenge the Western democracies have faced since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, the pieces on the geopolitical chessboard are almost in place. And this comes at a time when the West is at its weakest: riven with internal divisions, economically and militarily atrophied, and, most of all, lacking in self-confidence. Do we even want to survive as a civilisation? I have my doubts.
2024 looks bleak. And now, even The Arsenal, my one source of excited optimism, have let me down.
Joe Barron is a teacher and writer. You can subscribe to his Substack here.
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We import all the sectarian clutter from every corner of the globe (mainly Africa, the Middle East and all the Islam controlled hell holes. Then when the clutter explodes on our streets and TV screens we are to remain silent about it. We are all just a bunch of Islamophobes and racists apparently. Name calling is such a powerful tool for the progressive left open border people.
Ain’t that right. Import garbage and an ideology that is totally at odds with ours and you deal with the fall-out. A no-brainer, surely…There’s evidently a fair amount of the ”progressive left open border people” on here then!
There are, and you can often see a whole series of red thumb downs all the way down the list of comments. It is like the same lone wolf leftist. Quite funny. I would like to see these people explain to the families of the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing why they are all “racists” and “Islamophobes”.
Look on the bright side, Aston Villa might yet go a Leicester. Blessed with much the same team that the woeful Gerrard took into a relegation fight (well, whimper), Emery’s turned them into winners playing the most attractive football available. In McGinn they have the standout player in the league & Watson, fed by industrious wide men is made to look brilliant.
Just shows what leadership can do.
I am not a footy supporter but are you saying the players are nothing special and don’t deserve six figure pay packets every week/month and it is only because they have a competent manager they can succeed.
I think you are saying that. So why the big salaries in football or BBC, etc.
No, I didn’t say anything about pay. They get paid the market rate. It’s neither right or wrong, it just is.
The players are all top class but under one manager they relatively underperformed & under another they overperformed.
Except if Emre was such a great tactician he would surely have seen at half time that Man United were sending balls over the top of Villa’s high defensive line and their forwards were running through on goal time after time, and he would have moved that defensive line back 20 yards. ——-But he chose not to do that and Villa surrendered their 2-0 lead and lost 3-2.
I want to be optimistic going into a new year but I can’t find any positive stories or examples around the migration topic, sadly;
”Jens Spahn is one of the leaders of the German CDU, a long-time member of the Bundestag (since 2002), former state secretary (2015 to 2018) and former minister (2018 to 2021) under Angela Merkel.
“There will be a risk of a ‘terrible awakening'”, Spahn said in the most dramatic speech by a political leader of the German establishment. The “country could tip over,” Spahn says. “It is above all the cultural area influenced by Islam in which hatred of Jews, incitement against gays, non-equality between men and women are too often part of everyday culture. There are not many Muslim majority countries where people of other faiths have an easy life. Or (where) women have equal rights or gays and lesbians somehow enjoy minority protection. So they just don’t exist. And that also has to do with the culture”.
“We currently have 1,000 migrants entering Germany irregularly every day. A thousand every day, and many of them have been influenced by this culture. That’s where they grew up. It didn’t disappear just because they crossed the border. In my opinion , many people were not aware of the magnitude of the task at hand when hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people come to us from such a characterized cultural area.”
“One percent of the world’s Afghan population lives in Germany. I have been to Afghanistan three or four times. Some parts of the country are medieval and this has left its mark. Now there are also people who are fleeing from this Middle Ages, and yet we are growing in a society like this. At some point we will find ourselves in such a mess that others could solve it in a radical way. And I don’t want that. Absolutely not. This is another Germany. We can go on like this for a few more years, then a terrible awakening awaits us.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/382793
Essentially a Rivers of Blood speech.
Jens Spahn, Germany’s health minister (prior to Karl Lauterbach) during the so-called pandemic, with pretty much the same catastrophic behaviour as his British colleagues, member of the German government in 2015 when Angela Merkel decided to open Europe’s gates to all and sundry. He has been critical of the massive influx of males but it is his political party, CDU (just like the UK Conservatives, an originally conservative party), that refuses to contemplate working together with the AfD, the only (truly conservative) party in Germany which openly criticizes open borders.
The CDU/CSU (Christan Democratic Union/ Christian Socialist Union) is the post-1945 new coat of the old Zentrum¹, the party remote-controlled by the Catholic church. They are not and were never a conservative party.
¹ One can conjecture that his name change was mostly motivated by the need to obscure that that’s the party whose votes turned the enablement act into a formally legal constitutional change.
Spahn was the health minister responsible for most of the German Corona circus. His other qualities are mostly that he managed to convince at least one bearded guy to have sex with him, ie, he doesn’t have any.
It needs to get a lot worse before people will actually take meaningful action. Bring on Starmer.
Yes. But I fear it getting worse. I didn’t want my children and grandchildren to live in ‘interesting’ times.
I understand completely. The way I see it we have two roads though, one gives us a chance, the other doesn’t:
1) a slow drip feed of communist changes. The salami continues to be sliced so thinly that people either don’t notice or don’t care. This takes us down such a narrow road that we cannot turn back.
2) an avalanche of communist changes. This spectacle cannot go unnoticed. People will have two choices – curl up and die, or dig your way out. The latter is the action we need of course, and the action I believe most people will take.
I use the word ‘communist’ because I believe that’s exactly the direction of travel society is becoming deliberately driven in.
Blair and successors will consider all your report as signs their hopes and plans are soon to come to fruition.
Unfortunately we have been here before.
1956 Suez canal nationalised.
1961, following Britain’s relinquishing authority in Kuwait, Qasim announced that Kuwait would be incorporated into Iraq and the military threat was seen, by Britain, as imminent.
1964 ‘Although Labour did not increase its vote share significantly, the fall in support for the Conservatives led to Wilson securing an overall majority of four seats.’
1966 Paris government announces that France would withdraw from the integrated structure of NATO effective 1 July 1966.
1968 Russians invade Czechoslovakia
1968 Tet offensive Vietnam. 2,500 U.S. troops killed.
1969 Op Banner British Army operation in Northern Ireland.
1973 OPEC countries cut production of oil and placed an embargo on oil exports to the United States after Richard Nixon requested $2.2 billion to support Israel’s war effort. By the end of the embargo in March 1974, oil prices had risen 300%
1973 UK three day week announced under the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act
1976 Oil crisis and political problems delay the UK government’s road programme
1976 IMF bails out UK
Twenty years of poor leadership: Eden, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan
Under a succession of increasingly silly leaders (Major, Blair/Brown, Cameron, May, Bunter, Truss, Sunak), now as then, we have lowered our military and economic guard.
The country pretty much knows now, as then, what needs to be done.
All that is required is a leader with some backbone to lead that programme of swingeing reform of Whitehall, the NHS and the rest of the public sector.
I see you did your homework
Not in 1973
When there was no electricitee
Well get your candles out because rolling blackouts are a-coming. Courtesy of the Green Tyranny. If you thought 1973 was bad you ain’t seen nuthin yet.
The haircuts and denim flares, stackies, Tamla Motown disco, will be worse?
You paint a grim picture indeed.
No the flares etc is not what I was referring to. It was the energy problems I was speaking of. ——-Net Zero will cause rolling blackouts never before seen. All because of the pretend to save the planet politics. ——–PS Yes I was into Motown as well
Judging from the text, the author’s desire to survive as a civilisation is certainly nil.
Chinese Coal Powers Britain’s Net Zero – latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
‘Russian troops, armed with Iranian weapons, grow in strength, and continue to execute their barbarous assault upon the Ukrainian people’
I don’t agree with that statement! It was inevitable that Russia would invade Ukraine given the provocation (that’s all been hashed and rehashed many times on Daily Sceptic’s pages or in the comments, so we will have to agree to disagree, I suppose). Haven’t we (the West, especially the US and UK) been instrumental in prolonging this war when peace might long ago have been achieved?
It can be conjectured that not sending arms into Ukraine would have caused its government to surrender to whatever the Russian demands happen to be. But this is by no means certain and Putin simply withdrawing his troops without any demands being met would certainly have had this effect.