That cartoon is from the days of British Tory PM Bonking Boris, but it applies equally well to the hapless Labour PM Kier Starmer, Why Starmer is doomed:

Only a year ago, the soft-Left establishment commentariat who make up what remains of the Labour Party’s constituency exultantly heralded the incoming government as a new dawn of political order. “Just having a stable government who will be there for five, maybe ten years,” Andrew Marr sagely told the Question Time audience, meant that “for the first time in many of our lives, actually Britain looks like a little haven of peace and stability.” A year on, we find Marr writing of his fears of “uncontrollable community tension or, to put it more bleakly, race war”. As Marr warns, “This is a genuinely perilous moment for social democracy. I hope it’s not too much for the struggling government we have, but I worry.”

It took only 12 months, the life-span of a shrew, for a Labour landslide to transmute itself into a struggling government barely able to contain social cataclysm. If a country’s stability can be measured in the longevity of its leaders, then Britain remains in a period of near-revolutionary ferment. Who can say with confidence that Starmer, Britain’s sixth Prime Minister in a decade, will see out his full term, or even that his party will?

At the time of writing, with the Chancellor weeping on the front bench, and Starmer’s authority within his own party having followed his welfare reforms down the drain, the Labour government reeks of approaching death. Already almost as unpopular as the Conservative Party at its terminal nadir in government, Labour is in office without power, in helpless possession of a historic majority it cannot use and is unlikely ever to repeat.

The answer is worse than just a Labour government filled with incompetence and is in the sub-title: The state is losing all legitimacy. This the Tories are in no position – even were there an election tomorrow instead of 2029 – to take advantage of, for they’re even more responsible (along with Tony Blair) for this growing disaster sprouting symptoms in almost every area of government. You think Reeve’s weeping was a “personal matter”?

Her bond-market face really isn’t ready for public view. She still has the stress-related cottonmouth problem; her pain is most apparent when she smiles; she makes an effort to listen, to laugh, to look involved – she takes a deep breath and then something dies inside her, her face settles on the edge of the table in front of her and she is alone with her sorrow. 

Alone but for the 1.5m watchers meming her grief.

It’s worth noting because the markets certainly are.

All this failure is showing in the polls of course, including one that produced this result:

A pollster this weekend asked voters what they considered the main achievements of Starmer’s first year. The resultant word cloud contained one giant word – “Nothing”. In truth, Labour seem to have genuinely believed that all they had to do was replace the Conservatives, and all would be well again. That’s why they have made such a mess.

Not that things are that much better in California where recovery from the Los Angeles fires are proving to be as slow and screwed up as Adam Carolla predicted six months ago.

The prophecy unfolds, There Was Never Going to Be Any ‘Rebuilt’ Pacific Palisades:

As of midday July 1, 2025, the LA County Permitting Progress Dashboard showed 890 rebuild applications in the Eaton Fire area, but only 44 building permits have been issued, taking an average turnaround of about 10 weeks to get through the process.

And speed matters. A survey of fire victims found that the longer it takes to rebuild, the more likely it is people won’t move back.

That’s the whole idea. Bass and company want to build high density housing on such land, likely for all their beloved illegal aliens. This is not an assumption:

Six months after the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires, California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled $101 million in funding Tuesday for “multifamily low-income housing development” that will “contribute to a more equitable and resilient Los Angeles.” The priority is for “geographic proximity to the fire perimeters of the Eaton, Hughes, and Palisades fires.” 

I admit I’m having a hard time being sympathetic, since these people almost certainly voted repeatedly for Democrats in city and State government, and likely gave money to them and their causes.

But to be fair, a GOP party member in that benighted state, where the GOP has been powerless for twenty years, thinks that the blame can be shared around:

  • 5% Abortion! (The Democrats nationalise every election, this and TDS is their main cry and who cares about local issues)
  • 10% Casual Racism and George Soros (If you’re Black or Brown you’re won’t be held to the same standards of criminal behaviour by Soros-backed District Attorneys)
  • 10% Incompetence + Malfeasance (“The unholy alliance of public sector unions and one-party rule means that the incompetent get cushy government jobs from which they can never be fired“)
  • 10% Laziness (The GOP doesn’t use shoe leather to register voters)
  • 20% Scaredy Cats (People intimidated by shunning from speaking up to demand competence, common sense, or public safety)
  • 45% Envy (Wealthy “liberals” support all this shit because they don’t think it will affect them. The millionaires in Palisades and Altadena discovered that isn’t true)

All that can be applied to many democracies around the world at the moment, whether Britain or New Zealand – or Canada. In the case of the latter an interesting story of Canada getting into the private sector space launch game via a company called NordSpace, also produced this nugget:

Goel agrees with Milburn’s “risk averse” observation of Canada, but hopes NordSpace can help change that. “Maybe we can tweak that over time, especially with the success of launch,” Goel said. “I think that’ll send a strong signal.” He hopes the signal resonates throughout the country, but doesn’t expect the gospel to spread all at once.

“In Canada, [if] you mentioned to anybody that you’re building a rocket engine and you want to test it on their farm or on an industrial plot, they’re just going to have an allergic reaction to it right away,” Goel said. “We got kicked out of every location you can imagine.”

Sheesh, and I thought our anti-nuclear shit was batty. But we’re obviously not as bad as Canada since we have Rocket Lab, despite the best efforts of wankers like this (fortunately he’s now distracted by the Israel-Hamas war).

Meantime the US workforce is being educated by this…

Also this from the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Randi Weingarten.