Category: EDITORIAL

Donald Trump defied his critics last night and behaved himself; his presence, however, is causing chaos and his meeting with Theresa May is just pointless

You have to give it to him: Donald Trump played a blinder last night in behaving himself impeccably last night at Buckingham Palace.

 

Reading from a plainly entirely scripted by someone other than himself script, the 45^th President spoke politely and didn’t put a foot wrong.

 

Meanwhile, elsewhere, Trump’s arrival caused utter chaos on Central London’s roads – in spite of the fact that he himself went everywhere by helicopter. The gridlock annoyed many and I, myself, stupidly made the mistake of taking a bus from The Royal Courts of Justice to Kings Road with someone who could not walk as taxi drivers said they didn’t want to go from east to west. It took nearly 1.5 hours and no doubt more chaos will follow today.

 

Trump’s meeting this morning with Theresa May this morning, however, is utterly pointless. Given she’ll be gone before the week is out, anything discussed will become irrelevant as soon as her successor takes office. Donald Trump, in fact, should do what he wants: This ridiculous man should simply go and hang out with his equally ludicrous chums Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

 

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Matthew Steeples suggests last night’s European Election results leads to only one conclusion as to how we can move forward

Last night, the Conservative Party suffered its worst defeat since 1832. It was no wonder that Theresa May quit as Prime Minister in advance and given Labour’s equally poor showing, they can hardly crow either.

 

Hilariously Tommy Robinson lost his deposit (and then unsurprisingly threw a temper tantrum, stormed out and tried to blame the press), UKIP leader Gerrard Batten got deservingly turfed out in London, and both BoJo’s sister Rachel Johnson and veteran journalist Gavin Esler failed to get elected for Change (or whatever the party that couldn’t even come up with a logo was called). Worse still, and God help us all, ‘Doris Karloff’ (AKA Ann Widdecombe) will now be off on her broomstick to the European Parliament as an MEP for the shadily funded operation that is The Brexit Party Ltd.

 

The more serious implications of this bizarre and unexpected election, however, is, as Sky News’ Adam Boulton pointed out this morning on his All Out Politics show, if all the ‘Remain’ supporting parties votes and all the ‘Brexiteers’ were combined into two blocks, the result would be 53% in support of ‘Remain’ and 46% for ‘Leave.’

 

Our nation, thus, plainly remains as divided as ever, but with both the Tories and Labour seeing they would be trashed at a General Election, that is likely now off the cards. The only option to break this deadlock remains clear: We need a Second Referendum and we need it now.

 

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Matthew Steeples suggests there should be no tears for Theresa May but instead for the Napoléon Bonaparte style calamity that now could follow

Today marks the 70^th birthday of Jeremy Corbyn and it was, in 1805, also the day when Napoléon Bonaparte was crowned king of Italy in Milan Cathedral.

 

After a week in which Theresa May unjustly turned on the tears for herself – and not for the nation she’s so truly mucked up – we now stand at a crossroads and one that could either propel or destroy Corbyn but also leave our country in exile in Bonaparte’s Saint Helena style fashion. Will the Conservative Party continue on its ruinous path and select Boris Johnson? If so, the likely result at a future General Election will be that party getting well and truly further trounced. A coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats would seem the most likely consequence.

 

As tonight’s results come in in the European Parliamentary Elections, we will likely see an equally worrying trend, the rise of extremist politicians. With both Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson set to do well, we see something else Bonaparte once spoke of: “The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.” God help us all and God help once Great Britain.

 

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As Brexit dominates our nation, we have have forgotten other pressing issues; we must sort this mess and then get back to normal business suggests Matthew Steeples

We live in a morally warped age. With BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday sharing shocking news that there are 5,000 homeless people ‘existing’ (certainly not ‘living’) in one of the richest areas of Britain, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and over 6,000 ex-veterans homeless nationwide, we plainly need to reassess our priorities. How can such a wealthy country allow such a state of affairs to continue? As Chuka Ummuna stated in a column on this very topic for The Independent on New Year’s Eve: “The broken politics of Brexit has masked the horror of Britain’s homelessness… Things have to change.”

 

Brexit continues to dominate our political priorities in this country and though, yes, it has to be dealt with before we can move on, the rise of extremism is certainly the biggest threat we now face. Yesterday, this was summed up perfectly when “woefully unfunny” Nigel Farage and his batshit brained, hater of just about everything sidekick Ann Widdecombe held  a rally – Donald Trump style – at a working men’s club in West Yorkshire. There, to an audience mostly no doubt wearing catheter bags, according to the Daily Mail’s Henry Deedes, ‘Widders’ “squawked” such lines as: “We know what we want!” whilst audience members “interrupted” with: “Ann fer Prime Minister” and shouts of “traitor” about the local Labour MP, Yvette Cooper.

 

Summing up the new Brexit Party perfectly, Tony Blair (yes, I accept he’s hated by the majority, but sadly he’s one of the few speaking sense these days) responded. In stating of Farage and his Mosley-esque crew: “They are not the people to drain the swamp of politics, they are the people that have created the swamp,” he was spot on.

 

Sadly, however, with the remain camp following the same path that they took in the 2016 referendum campaign – that of arrogantly assuming they would just win – and not uniting as one and campaigning hard, they are on the road to yet another loss and to allowing the far-right to take over our once great country. What will we have, if that is allowed? An almighty bloody mess and a morally and financially bankrupt Not So Great Britain with many more homeless people on our streets.

 

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Matthew Steeples asks: “What is the future for the Conservative Party?” given Theresa May has driven it towards complete wipeout

This morning, on Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Nigel Farage announced: “I cannot see the Conservative Party continuing to exist. What is it for?”

 

For once, Farage – whose Brexit Party is amazingly topping the polls for the forthcoming European elections by a mile – is right. The Tories used to be a pragmatic party, but Theresa May has sent them into the abyss. She has destroyed the legacy of Thatcher and makes even John Major look like someone more capable of controlling her own parliamentary colleagues.

 

With even the useless ‘Quiet Man’ (whose volume we all equally ‘turned off’) Iain Duncan Smith stating it is time for May to “set the immediate date for departure or, I’m afraid, [MPs] must do it for her,” the worst Home Secretary turned the worst Prime Minister in history has to pack her bags and exit stage left. If she doesn’t, there’ll most definitely rightly soon be a return to The Sun printing the headline: “Will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights?” and the Tories will sadly become the Dodo of politics.

 

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Matthew Steeples again condemns the bigoted Traditional Britain Group in the wake of their mockery of Stephen Lawrence Day, Johnny Mercer MP and Jacob Rees-Mogg MP even also

Yesterday, on Twitter, the bigoted Traditional Britain Group conformed to type and shockingly condemned Stephen Lawrence Day.

Sharing their poison with their 5,650 followers, this hateful organisation shared a Breitbart columnn that claimed “Stephen Lawrence Day is Politically Correct Nonsense” and then announced: “Your children will be coming back from the Easter holiday to a big dose of propaganda in schools telling them that white culture is racist.”

Next, this ragbag of rubbish – which is has the pugnacious prat and convicted criminal Gregory Lauder-Frost as its vice president and treasurer – turned on the courageous war veteran Johnny Mercer MP. In yet another irrational rant, they complained: “This Mercer sap is at it again, if he’s not attacking Sir Roger Scruton, he’s chastising patriots who oppose the persecution of men who served their country.”

Whilst it is only predictable that the “cheque stealing” Lauder-Frost and his dimwitted henchmen will forever continue in their vile campaign for the repatriation of immigrants going back generations and vendetta against Baroness Lawrence (a lady they disgracefully term a “Left-wing marionette and media luvvie”), that they turn on someone who served in Afghanistan is a little more surprising.

Elsewhere on their official website, in a recent blog post, the Traditional Britain Group condemned a man who they once welcomed to dine with them, Jacob Rees-Mogg MP. Describing the chair of the hardline anti-European European Research Group as someone who “behaved like a child who has been chastised” and someone “we believe, should have stood up to the media in a righteous and just manner when they assailed him over [the] speaking engagement [to their membership]” confirms only that this is a grouping that is off its merry rocker. The Traditional Britain Group truly should now do the decent thing: Shut itself down.

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As Matthew Steeples announces that he has submitted an application to stand for ChangeUK – The Independent Group, he argues that we must all work for a better Britain

Britain is broken. That’s a fact and with a stubborn and frankly disastrous Prime Minister what can we do?

 

Having repeatedly argued the case against Brexit in this title and been on such things as the People’s Vote March, I have never been anything but a publicly ‘out’ remainer. For this I have been criticised in some quarters and targeted by such people as Viscount St David’s and the vile Traditional Britain Group even.

 

To my mind, as a former activist and someone who worked on the leadership campaigns of William Hague in the 1990s and Kenneth Clark in the 2000s, it was not I who left the Conservative Party but they who left me. I, like so many others, found myself party-less and now, today, I confirm that I have applied to be a candidate in the European Elections for ChangeUK – The Independent Group.

 

Whilst improbable that I will even be selected, I want to state that I now feel we must all do what we can to stop Brexit plunging Britain into an era of deeper doom. I urge all readers to heed the words of Edmund Burke: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” and to put their heads above the parapets.

 

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Matthew Steeples suggests those bleating about the Notre Dame fire should get real and use their social media accounts to talk about the victims of terror also

Yesterday in Paris, the Notre Dame Cathedral partially burnt down. Today, already, the crazy sum of £518 million has been donated to rebuilding it.

 

On social media, the world and his wife lamented the loss of, yes, what was a beautiful building, but by God, how did they bleat? People shared memories of their visits there and one went as far as to ridiculously state: “This is the biggest loss for humanity EVER!”

 

Whilst nobody thinks this fire to be anything but sad and an awful loss of heritage, that the social media bores have hijacked this matter is nothing but outrageous. On Friday, in Quetta, Pakistan, twenty people were killed in a terrorist attack. Why didn’t these busybodies bang on about that?

 

#JustSaying

 

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Matthew Steeples argues in support of The Big Cat Public Safety Act and urges readers to support his IFAW fundraiser in London

Tomorrow in London, I will host a fundraiser for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). Alongside a whole array of supporters and personalities, we will raise funds for this the crusading charity’s work protecting elephants in the Amboseli National Park in Kenya, but elsewhere other endangered animals continue to suffer.

 

Whilst headlines last week have highlighted the terrible story of a “big game hunter” (I’d instead term him a “sick, callous monster”) who brags of being “totally unrepentant” after killing 5,000 elephants, 60 lions, 50 hippos and 40 leopards in Africa, in America there are now more tigers living in backyards than there are living wild in the entire world.

 

To help highlight the fact that is easier to buy a tiger in some US states than it is to adopt a rescue dog, Azzedine Downes, president and chief executive officer of IFAW, recently penned an article for The Hill in support of bringing The Big Cat Public Safety Act into law. Implementation of this would rescue over 10,000 big cats currently being kept in inhumane conditions in that country and make it illegal to keep as pets or allow public contact with any lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, jaguars, pumas or cougars.

 

This is a law, just like the ivory ban that I would like to see brought in worldwide, that we must all support. Whilst dreadful animal slaughterers such as Larysa Switlyk and Donald Trump Jr. deservedly attract negative media attention for their barbaric activities, supporting the cause of freeing the big cats held in captivity also must be given rightful attention.

 

To be in with a chance to win a pair of tickets to the IFAW Ambroseli National Park fundraiser in Chelsea, London on the 15^th April 2019, please email [email protected] your full name and telephone number by midnight on the 14^th April 2019.

 

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